Nothing coming from nothing critiqued

‘A Universe From Nothing,’ by Lawrence M. Krauss - NYTimes.com

Found via Not Even Wrong, this review attacking Krauss' key idea in his book ""Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing" is well worth reading.   The key point:

Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from? Krauss is more or less upfront, as it turns out, about not having a clue about that. He acknowledges (albeit in a parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that every­thing he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted. “I have no idea if this notion can be usefully dispensed with,” he writes, “or at least I don’t know of any productive work in this regard.”

But you should read it all.

Snakes and spiders (or at least, snake and spider)

I got quite a surprise today when outside to see if the possum was home (in her hidey hole under the deck just outside the front door).    A rather large (well, about a metre, which is large enough) snake on the rocky garden bed spotted me before I spotted it, and shot off at high speed in front of my feet into the bushes.    Snakes going past me at a distance of 50 cm or less is too close for comfort, no matter what species they are.

The good thing, I suppose, is that  although it was out of sight very quickly, I did at least get to see that it was pretty much a uniform olive green colour, and looking at this website, I would be inclined to think it was a common green tree snake, which is non venomous.   Most of the dangerous snakes seem to have some pattern or banding on them, although the potentially dangerous yellow-faced whip snake seems devoid of pattern too.   In fact, now that I look at this other site, the whip snake seems a distinct possibility.  I mean, do green tree snakes end up on the ground very often? 

Despite living in this house for about 8 years now, with rather large bushes and trees in the front, and bushy neighbours’ gardens, as well as rats in the roof and (sometimes) seen in the back yard, this is the first snake of any kind I’ve ever encountered.  I’m sure they must be around, but out of sight out of mind is the best policy as far as snakes are concerned.

As for spiders, this one was sitting prominently in the sun this afternoon, and stayed still for a close up with my cheapish camera.  

The body colours remind me a bit of the patterns of Jupiter. (Just a little.):

It would appear to be a female St Andrews Cross spider.  Now you know.

Fear of white

A review of White Bread, a new book about our nation’s fear of flour. - Slate Magazine

What an interesting story told here about the history of white bread, and how it's been the subject of much condemnation well before my lifetime.  Some extracts:

 As Aaron Bobrow-Strain makes clear in his epically well-researched White Bread, our culture’s tendency to focus what we as individuals put in our mouths often goes along with classism and xenophobia. Just as whole wheat acolytes pity white-trash white-bread eaters, and gluten-free converts showcase their discipline through vegetables and lean proteins, so, too, did turn-of- the-century crusaders attempt to spread the gospel of good food to less enlightened masses.

Between 1890 and 1930, Bobrow-Strain writes, Americans transitioned almost completely from homemade bread to store bought bread—and specifically to bread made in large factories. Hygiene fears were a major reason. The emerging understanding of germ science led pure food crusaders to preach against the dangers of mother’s kitchen, which couldn’t hope to achieve the level of cleanliness of a large bread factory, nor the heat necessary to kill the “yeast germs.” “You and your little oven cannot compete,” one newspaper article informed women after the turn of the century. Scientists and food reformers also warned against mom-and-pop bakeries, whose reputation for substituting cheap substances like chalk and alum was further undermined by the presence of so many swarthy immigrant workers, whose hygiene was considered suspect.

White bread, untouched by human hands and carefully wrapped for hygienic transport, became a symbol of purity....

But during the '20s and '30s, the nation was gripped by panic over white bread. A wave of experts with questionable pedigrees began warning about white bread’s nutritional content, harkening back to the teachings of 19^th-century ascetic Sylvester Graham, who believed that refining wheat undermined God’s intent. (Graham had a number of interesting theories, including that consumption of meat, seasonings and rich foods lead to rampant masturbation.)

Dietician and radio show host Alfred W. McCann claimed that 400,000 children a year were sent to “little graves” because they were raised on white bread. Food pundits said that white bread could cause blindness and disfigurement. A 1912 article in a journal called “Life and Health” made the dubious claim that in countries where there was no white bread, there was no cancer. Bobrow-Strain writes that white bread was implicated in a slew of illnesses including “diabetes, criminal delinquency, tuberculosis … rheumatism, liver disease, kidney failure …” White bread’s fortunes sunk, and bakers, who preferred white flour in part because it was cheaper to mill and could be stored longer, were beside themselves.

The article goes on to explain that the food industry got pro-active, and by the 1940's, adding vitamins was one way they successfully fought against the anti-white cranks.   (Actually, as a child, I don't recall seeing any brand of bread advertising its additives, like they do now.  Maybe Australia never succumbed to fear of white bread?)

All very interesting.

More religion reading

I've been looking around for religious themed stuff for Easter.

Slate is having a hard time coming up with anything new. They have again posted a 2008 story on early Christian understanding of the resurrection, and I see that I linked to as a result of their 2010 re-posting of it.

I guess it is a bit of a challenge coming up with new ideas about it; unless, of course, you come up with something like the image on a cloth causing a whole misunderstanding. (See a few posts down below.)

In other religion stuff on the net, I see that Stephen Crittenden has been writing articles at the Global Mail website, and they are pretty good. One is a summary of the story about the forced resignation of Bishop Morris of Toowoomba (a story about which I have always had some trouble finding the details); and a somewhat more critical than I expected review of the troubled leadership of recently resigned Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. (Williams is only 61, I learned to my surprise. His eyebrows seem decades older than that.)

I only know of Crittenden because of his hosting the (now axed) Religion Report on ABC's Radio National, but I see from his Global Mail profile that his background is more in arts and culture generally. He's not snobbish about it, though, writing a piece about how much he likes the Simpsons. (He notes with approval some American analysis that points to the way it both satirises but re-affirms the nuclear family. As I have been watching it in re-runs a little more often lately, and catching up with episodes and evolving storylines over the years since I stopped regularly watching it, the number of times the show does this has been on my mind lately. I was also pretty surprised that the Simpson's Movie was so sympathetic to Flanders, given the degree to which he is routinely satirised for extreme religious conservatism.)

Anyway, I've strayed off religion haven't I...

How about this: a blog post from England about the question of why the Catholic Church still seems a little leery of cremation. However, given that, as with the writer of that post, I know of a Catholic Church with a newly installed columbarium (a place for keeping the ashes), it does seem that at the parish level, accommodation with cremation is being made (literally).

Evil rabbits

Someone at Fairfax has gone through an Easter slideshow at AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com* and picked out some good evil Easter Bunny photos.

Some people clearly have no idea when it comes to costume design.

* a site which is premised on a good idea, but which seems to show that too much of a good idea is sometimes too much.

The world catches up with me

Hydrogen Storage Could Be Key to Germany's Energy Plans - Technology Review

I've asked this question years ago (it got a mention at this very blog in 2007):  couldn't you potentially get around the "unreliable base load" issue with large scale solar power (at least for plants built near a permanent water supply) by devoting a portion of the electricity being produced on a good sunny day to electrolysing water into hydrogen, storing it, and then burning it to get a gas turbine going for a rainy day?

Seems that it wasn't such a stupid idea after all:

If Germany is to meet its ambitious goals of getting a third of its electricity from renewable energy by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050, it must find a way to store huge quantities of electricity in order to make up for the intermittency of renewable energy.

Siemens says it has just the technology: electrolyzer plants, each the size of a large warehouse, that split water to make hydrogen gas. The hydrogen could be used when the wind isn't blowing to generate electricity in gas-fired power plants, or it could be used to fuel cars.

Producing hydrogen is an inefficient way to store energy—about two-thirds of the power is lost in the processes of making the hydrogen and using the hydrogen to generate electricity. But Siemens says it's the only storage option that can achieve the scale that's going to be needed in Germany.

Unlike conventional industrial electrolyzers, which need a fairly steady supply of power to efficiently split water, Siemens's new design is flexible enough to run on intermittent power from wind turbines. It's based on proton-exchange membrane technology similar to that used in fuel cells for cars, which can operate at widely different power levels. The electrolyzers can also temporarily operate at two to three times their rated power levels, which could be useful for accommodating surges in power on windy days. 

Some day my rightful place as CEO in charge of the Earth will be recognized by the planet, or at least aliens reading this blog who may have a better chance of installing me to that position.  They need to get a move on, though.

Improving mouse houses

Animal testing: Be nice to mice… | The Economist

Quite a charming report here with mouse information that's news to me:

Although medical science’s favourite critters relish temperatures of a little over 30°C, laboratories routinely keep them at five or ten degrees below that. This is not in order to torture the beasts but, rather, because when kept warm they are unmanageably aggressive. The downside is that they have to eat more than they otherwise would, in order to keep their bodies warm. That changes their physiology. And that in turn alters the way they metabolise drugs, with possibly confusing results.

The report then notes a study suggesting that labs don't have to increase temperatures to get them responding better to drugs; they just have to provide them with paper with which to build nests.   

Nice.

In the toilet

Hey, it's Easter, which always calls for its fair share of religion posts.

Does it count if it at least comes from Biblical Archaeology Review? Yes, that's enough of a connection for me. (The magazine is often pretty interesting reading, actually.)

Today I am recommending: First Person: Privies and Privacy

It's a quick look at some of the history of privacy while attending to one's daily toilet needs, and makes this observation:

We have long known that ancient notions of privacy are different from ours. But how different and in what ways remain far from clear. At several Roman-period sites, like Ephesus, Rome and Pompeii, archaeologists have found long benches with rows of adjacent toilet seats with no provision for privacy. What is less well known is that these provisions were not for the ordinary person but were for the elite.

Which leads me to another observation: The higher the social station, the less concern for privacy. Which brings me back to Eglon (and Henri III): Royalty was unconcerned with privacy. But the issue may not have been privacy at all. Royalty could do what it wanted. What might be distasteful for the average person was a prerogative of status. What would be offensive to or for the average person was permitted to royalty—indeed, may even have been a mark of privilege.

Well, that's interesting, when in the more modern setting, lack of toilet privacy is generally seem as something that de-emphasises privileged status. I remember as a child being surprised when watching the 1950's movie "No Time for Sergeants" on TV, which featured a key sequence involving a barracks latrine. The thing was, this was a row of toilet seats with no privacy screening at all; something which I thought was taking military group cohesion a little too far. (You can it on a short video clip here.) Attending to this in the field is one thing, but making barracks with no toilet privacy seems quite another.

In fact, while everyone is aware that no privacy while showering was long a feature of public swimming pools and sports locker rooms, I have never known of anywhere where there was a lack of privacy for defecation.

Anyway, this also reminds of a recent story from India, a country renowned for its lack of toilets:

New data from the country's 2011 census shows 59% of Indian households have a mobile phone. Only 47% have a toilet on the premises (and that includes pit latrines that don't use running water).

Lack of toilet privacy is certainly no sign of higher status in that country.

So ideas of privacy change. I wonder what ancient Romans would think of someone doing the equivalent of posting about their sex life on Facebook, or a newspaper column. It would be the equivalent of having a board in the public square where you could pin notices about it, I guess, and might have been thought of as rather unedifying. I hope so, anyway.

The odd explanations for the inspiration for Christianity

Mystery solved? Turin Shroud linked to Resurrection of Christ - Telegraph

I meant to post about this a couple of weeks ago but forgot. Now I see that Australian breakfast television is doing a story on it for Easter Sunday morning. How odd.

Anyhow, short version: Cambridge art historian believes the Shroud of Turin is authentically the shroud in which Jesus was buried, but:

It was, suggests de Wesselow, seeing the Shroud in the days immediately after the crucifixion, rather than any encounter with a flesh and blood, risen Christ, that convinced the apostles that Jesus had come back from the dead.

As The Telegraph link above further explains:

What the apostles were seeing was the image of Jesus on the Shroud, which they then mistook for the real thing. It sounds, I can’t help suggesting, as absurd as a scene from a Monty Python film.

“I quite understand why you say that,” he replies, meeting me half way this time, “but you have to think your way into the mindset of 2,000 years ago. The apostles did see something out of the ordinary, the image on the cloth.

“And at that time – this is something that art historians and anthropologists know about – people were much less used to seeing images. They were rare and regarded as much more special than they are now.

“There was something Animist in their way of looking at images in the first century. Where they saw shadows and reflections, they also saw life. They saw the image on the cloth as the living double of Jesus.

“Back then images had a psychological presence, they were seen as part of a separate plane of existence, as having a life of their own.”

How does this rank with other "out there" theories for what inspired the establishment of Christianity? I would say: better than "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross", the very 1960's inspired idea that the whole Christ thing was (more or less) one big hallucinatory story spread by "magic mushroom" folk of the middle east. As Wikipedia notes about the author (and his book, which was pretty big in its day):

The reaction to The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross ruined Allegro's career.[3][4] His detractors considered his somewhat sensationalist approach deplorable and his arguments somewhere between unconvincing and ludicrous.

The "Shroud of Turin is the resurrection" theory I would also rank above Barbara Thiering's so-called "pesher technique" reinterpretation of the New Testament, which caught the imagination of a certain type of ABC religious types in Australia in the early 1990's. (I seem to recall her getting quite a run on shows hosted by Geraldine Doogue.) I have just found this handy summary of the deficiencies of the professor's theory from the New York Review of Books:

Professor Barbara Thiering’s reinterpretation of the New Testament, in which the married, divorced, and remarried Jesus, father of four, becomes the “Wicked Priest” of the Dead Sea Scrolls, has made no impact on learned opinion. Scroll scholars and New Testament experts alike have found the basis of the new theory, Thiering’s use of the so-called “pesher technique,” without substance. The Qumran pesher—the word itself means “interpretation”—is a form of Bible exegesis which seeks to determine the significance of an already existing prophetic text by pointing to its fulfillment in persons and events belonging to the age of the interpreter. Professor Thiering, by contrast, turns the sequence upside down, and claims that the authors of the New Testament composed the Gospel story so that pesher technique could subsequently be fastened to it.

So, it's a bit of a step up from those theories: at least it acknowledges Jesus existed, and doesn't rely on the Apostles being off their face on magic mushrooms every second day. But still, it ranks quite highly on the implausibility stakes.

Botanic gardens, Brisbane

Looking on the bright side, I guess...

Indian girls become child brides instead of prostitutes. - Slate Magazine

India is a country still, shall we say, in need of some social reform:

  India accounts for more than 40 percent of the world’s child-marriage cases, according to a recent UNICEF report. But, this wedding and betrothal ceremony is actually a welcome event. That’s because these girls are the youngest generation of the Saraniya community, a nomadic Indian tribe that had once traveled with the Maharaja, where the men had sharpened swords and made weaponry while the women had "entertained” the troops. When India achieved independence in 1947, the Saraniyas found themselves out of work, and for lack of options, returned to prostitution as a means to support their community.

Over time the community became dependent on the income from prostitution. Although the government had allotted the Saraniyas some land, the former entertainers didn’t know much about farming, especially daunting on land without water, working wells, or any sort of irrigation facilities. Faced with a drought and no work, the number of sex workers pushed into the hundreds as villagers recruited new girls into its fold at age 10 or 12. “If a daughter is not engaged or married by the time she’s 10 years old, she’ll be pushed into the flesh trade,” says Mittal Patel, secretary of Vicharta Samuday Samarthan Manch, an Ahmedabad-based NGO that works in the community. Often it’s the mothers who did the pushing, as the families were desperate for some income.

The solar system's GPS

How interstellar beacons could help future astronauts find their way across the universe

Maybe I've heard of something similar before, but what a neat idea:  using x-rays from pulsars as a sort of GPS system for spaceships travelling the solar system and beyond. 

Could be accurate to within a few km, according to the article.  Provided you're not trying to land your spaceship with it, that sounds pretty accurate.

Colebatch on cuts

Budget cuts will bring on recession

Tim Colebatch is one economics commentator who argues the Federal government's forthcoming budget cuts will hurt the economy rather than help it.  He notes Canada (with a conservative government) has resisted the call of the right wing to do otherwise.

We shall see what happens here, I suppose.

Will Republicans listen?

Shawn Lawrence Otto | A Message from a Republican Meteorologist on Climate Change

This is a really good plea from a Republican meteorologist for his party to stop denying climate change and be realistic about the issue.

No way back?

The news this morning is that the Federal Labor primary vote (according to the Nielsen poll) is back down to under 30%, with two party preferred at 43/57.

As far as I can tell there is no obvious reason for the large 7% (!) slump between this poll and the last. I guess there might have been some Queenslanders in the sample who felt they were on a roll and decided to punish Federal as well as State Labor, but who knows? I don't recall anything at the Federal level in the last month (apart from lingering resentment from the Rudd/Gillard fight?) which should cause this, and in fact most commentators seem to think Gillard looked more confident since winning that stoush.

Anyway, everyone seems to agree that Labor federally is facing a bit of a perfect storm. When the carbon "tax" is introduced and electricity prices go up, people will blame the government and ignore the compensatory measures. (Some of those are pretty significant though, so maybe the commentators are too pessimistic about that?)

And before that, the talk is of the government having to savagely cut back "middle class welfare" to get the budget back to surplus. This is, of course, something that conservative commentators, not mainstream economists, have been urging as a matter of utmost necessity. Yet what's the bet that cuts that are too deep will heighten the complaints that the two speed economy is causing middle class suffering, and the government will be perceived as causing more. I expect a huge amount of cynical posturing from the Coalition along these lines.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure I've ever heard what the government can do about this two speed economy issue. In some sectors, particularly tourism and parts of manufacturing, the high Australian dollar seems to be at the heart of the woes, and there's nothing to be done about that.

I guess that a world wide retreat from the threat of another financial crisis would help improve confidence generally, and signs of improvement in the US economy will too. The things the West does not need right now, I would guess, is an exploding Middle East (due to an ineffective attack on Iran by Israel with US support) or for China to undergo some uncontrolled economic crisis.

Anyway, the fact remains that with its budget, it seems the Labor government is at risk of both losing some support of mainstream economists for cutting too harshly and consolidating its incredibly low primary vote with the electorate.

Yet, it still seems to me that mainstream economists, both in the private sector and academically, have not thought this government has not done anywhere near a terrible job on the economy, and consider it to have been more a victim of circumstances beyond its control, contrary to the perceived views of the electorate. (Who, puzzlingly, still - in the face of all evidence to the contrary - seem to view Kevin Rudd as a saint who was knifed by the witch Gillard.)

It's a very strange time in politics, and while Federal Labor certainly has had its significant mistakes and mis-steps in the last few years (mostly under Rudd), it is being treated much worse by the public than it actually deserves.

By the way - I agree with Barrie Cassidy: Julia Gillard could have dealt with the carbon tax "lie" allegation much better than she did. She did not want to be branded as "tricky", and so said she would not quibble about whether a fixed carbon price leading to a carbon trading scheme is properly called a "tax". But given the huge amount of confusion in the public about this issue, she may as well have argued the point.

As an example of this confusion - Robert Manne last week in a lengthy critique of Labor said twice that Gillard had promised "not to introduce carbon pricing" during this term. This is just wrong, or at the very least very misleading, yet few people in the comments section following that article pulled him up on this.

Here is what was reported in The Australian on election eve:

In an election-eve interview with The Australian, the Prime Minister revealed she would view victory tomorrow as a mandate for a carbon price, provided the community was ready for this step.

"I don't rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism," she said of the next parliament. "I rule out a carbon tax."

This is the strongest message Ms Gillard has sent about action on carbon pricing.

While any carbon price would not be triggered until after the 2013 election, Ms Gillard would have two potential legislative partners next term - the Coalition or the Greens.

She would legislate the carbon price next term if sufficient consensus existed.

Now, she obviously started a scheme earlier than indicated by the story, there is no doubt about that, and the quibbling about what is and isn't a carbon tax can be had, but it is still extremely careless and wrong of Manne to represent the story this way:

.....having promised the electorate that her government had no intention of introducing a price on carbon, having scrambled back to government as the leader of a minority government - Prime Minister Gillard now signed an agreement with Greens for the creation of a parliamentary committee to broker the outlines of a carbon tax/emissions trading scheme.

So add that to the swirling mass of confusion and resentment that is the Australian electorate at the moment, and this situation does look pretty crook.

Climate change psychology

I see that Chris Mooney has written a book "The Republican Mind" that looks at the different character types of people who are attracted to the opposing conservative and liberal sides of politics. It is being discussed around the place in relation to climate change in particular.

This is an especially interesting topic, because until the last decade or so, I would not have said that conservatives (at least of the non-American variety) showed signs of being strongly anti-science. Even the Americans, with their significant chunk of disbelief in evolution in the population, still seemed easy convinced of science-y (or at least technological) things like the "Star Wars" laser defence system proposed by Reagan, and nuclear power generally.

But there is no doubt that AGW has changed this.

So, while I have long thought that that conservatives and progressives do tend towards some differences in character and world outlook, I am sceptical that this has much to do with the fierce resistance to accepting what mainstream science is saying on climate change. This blog post at the Economist discusses this, and the comments following it are well worth a read too.

In Australia, John Quiggin has noted the book as well. It is only a matter of time before it is discussed at the frequently embarrassing-as-an-advertisement-for-the-Right blog Catallaxy, but there will be virtually nothing of value said about the topic there by its regular crew.

Far from encouraging

Nankai quake scenario menaces Pacific coast | The Japan Times Online

They've been revising some estimates for potential future tsunamis in Japan, in light of last year's experience, and the results sound remarkable:

 Wide swaths of the Pacific coastline stretching from Honshu to Shikoku may be hit by tsunami over 20 meters high if a newly feared megaquake occurs in the Nankai Trough, a Cabinet Office panel warned Saturday.

The new warning comes after the panel revised its 2003 estimate to reflect new findings from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Tohoku region's coastline last year.

The 2003 report said no areas would see tsunami higher than 20 meters. The updated report is based on the assumption that the earthquake will have a magnitude of 9.0.

The tidal waves generated by the Nankai Trough temblor would slam areas from Kanto to Kyushu, with waves of up to 34.4 meters likely in Kuroshio, Kochi Prefecture, and between 10 and 20 meters in parts of Shizuoka, Kochi and Miyazaki prefectures.

Urban areas of Tokyo would see tsunami up to 2.3 meters high, but the village of Niijima in the Izu Island chain, which is administered by Tokyo, could face deadly waves up to 29.7 meters high, the panel said.

Sunday morning balloon

I was half awake at 6.30 when I heard a gas burning sound coming from outside. It took me a minute to realise what it was, but the balloon was a bit further from the house than I expected:


Sounds travel a long way on quiet Sunday mornings.

To be used how?

LG unveils flexible e-paper display

 LG has announced it has started mass production of its electronic paper display (EPD) product, with a planned launch in Europe next month.

What exactly do they intend doing by way of a different product with flexible e-paper, I wonder.   

A minor but amusing Bleat

For some reason, I particularly enjoyed James Lilek's most recent bleat, looking at a couple of old American advertising characters. (It's a bit surprising that these figures continue to exist in any format on modern packaging - I can't really think of any Australian equivalent. Well, except for Louie the Fly, I guess, but even he only appears on TV.)