Complicated evolution

BBC News - Many human 'prototypes' coexisted in Africa

The story of the evolution of humans seems to always be getting more complicated.  For whatever reason, though, I just don't find it all that interesting.  

In defence of renewable targets

Here's a defence of government enforced renewable energy targets even when you have carbon pricing.

Sounds relatively convincing to me.

One other energy fact that I have heard a couple of time this week in the discussion about Australian electricity cost is that demand for electricity is falling quite significantly.   Climate Spectator has run some articles about this, but I hadn't been paying attention. 

Gender mix up kids

What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress? - NYTimes.com

This magazine length article looks at the issue of kids, particularly boys, who from a young age are attracted to feminine dress and interests.   Not a problem in my household, but you can see how it must be a difficult issue for parents to know how to react to.

A look at the Mormons

Adam Gopnik: Mormonism’s History and Meanings : The New Yorker

Gopnik has a good article here about the history of Mormonism.  I don't think it contains many surprises, but I just note these paragraphs about some of the religion's more curious ideas:

 Smith held (especially in the sermons he preached toward the end of his life) that God and angels and men were all members of the same species. “God that sits enthroned is a man like one of you” and “God Himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man” were two of his most emphatic aphorisms on the subject. (People who were “exalted,” in Smith’s language, were men moving toward godhood, as God himself had once been a man who achieved it.) Although in many other respects, as Fluhman and Bowman point out, Mormonism was orthodox in its outlook—Jesus is the sole Messiah, and his history as told in the Gospels is taken to be true, if incomplete—the doctrine of God-as-Man divided Smith’s cult from the others, and scared the pants off even charismatic Protestantism: the Protestants were willing to accept that we are made in his image, but not that we are made of the same flesh.

This doctrine led in turn to various theological niceties, which seem to have risen and receded in the faith’s theology over the years: one is that the birth of Jesus had to have been the consequence of a “natural action”—i.e., that God the Father knew Mary in a carnal way, in order to produce the Messiah. (This doctrine is currently in disfavor, but it had a long life.) Another is that God, being an exalted man, must have a wife, or several wives, as men do; she is known as the Heavenly Mother, and is a being distinct from Mary. (Smith’s belief in exaltation evolved into the belief that other planets were inhabited by men even more exalted than we are; Smith taught that the truly exalted will get not just entry into Heaven but a planet of their own to run. This is now taken, or taught, metaphorically, the way conventional Christians often think of Hell, but it was part of the story.)

Libet re-considered, again

Brain might not stand in the way of free will - life - 06 August 2012 - New Scientist

An interesting report here on a new experiment revisiting the matter of the brain's "readiness potential" and whether it really means free will is an illusion.

Lovely planet

Found via Bad Astronomy, have a look at this pretty picture of Earth from a new weather satellite.  There doesn't seem to be all much green in Africa, does there?

Site meter mystery

Site Meter has been acting crazy for a week or more;  all due to a server move apparently.   Now it doesn't seem to be working at all, and I can't tell where visitors are coming from.   (Well, not from my longstanding favourite visit counter, anyway.   Google Stats works, but it presents too much information, almost.)

Last week, some Spiegel Online blog mentioned my mocking of James Cameron.  A couple of weeks ago, a Finnish magazine blog mentioned my Olympics orgy post.  I need to know whether my new found popularity in European language websites is going to continue.  I am still also waiting for the Revolver map counter thingee to show when I have had a visit from Iceland and Madagascar.   But obviously, I am gradually (very gradually) taking over the world, so it will happen one day.

What a record

Found via Planet 3.0, this Media Matters post about the pattern that the Wall Street Journal always seems to have followed on environmental issues is very revealing.

New blogs noted

The kerfuffle over Watts and Muller last week has led me to find two Australian climate skeptic watching blogs - Watching the Deniers is back and looks nicer than it did before.   Then there is also a newcomer uknowispeaksense, which looks pretty promising.   On the international side, it's about time I added Peter Sinclair's Climate Denial Crock of the Week.

An American blog about various things apart from climate change gets a look in too.

Real Climate finally talks about the Watts/Muller war too, but in a way that doesn't add much.

Anyway, must get around to adding the new ones to the roll...

Watts down with that - Part the Second

I really think Anthony Watts might be starting to crack up.  This post from a couple of days ago, begins with:

I’ve been sitting on this little gem for a year now, and it is finally time to point it out since nobody seems to have caught it.

It's about the BEST temperature analysis.  Watts complains that, following a 1 to 5 scale of how well weather stations are sited, the enemy Muller's BEST analysis has put the mid range class 3 in with the high quality classes 1 to 2.  And this is just wrong, so wrong, according to Watts.  He's been waiting to see if they would correct this for a year.

But the nutty thing is - he then goes on to point out that the BEST papers acknowledgement they have done it, and explain that they think it is the right thing to do.  In fact, as the temperature trend was lowest in class 3 (for whatever reason), adding it to the worst two categories (4 and 5) would make them seem not as bad as they would otherwise be.  (Remembering that the Wattsonian theory is that poor siting of stations leads to a warming bias in the temperature record.)  

So what the hell is Watts complaining about?  

And yet, being the Watts worshipping automatons that they are, quite a few comments to the thread are along the line: "ho, ho, ho, you really caught them out this time, Tony."  (Thankfully, there are some comments saying - are you really sure this is significant, Tony?)

Really, I don't know what he's going to come out next.   I wouldn't be surprised if it was something to do with how the density of his moustache is significantly better than Richard Muller's.

A big, new, thing discovered

The headline in the LA Times is: Oh, come on! It's a salamander...sort of, but the first line gives you an idea of what to expect from the photo:

Biologists studying a drained river in Brazil have discovered a new species of amphibian that looks disconcertingly like a male organ.

Researchers have called the eyeless creature, known formally as Atretochoana eiselti, a "floppy snake," but it is not a reptile. Rather, it is an amphibian more closely related to salamanders and frogs.

It is a disconcerting looking creature, and it's surprising that new things like this can still be discovered these days.

Talking to Michael

The dark knight rises: Perhaps Michael Palin isn’t the nicest chap in Britain after all… - Profiles - People - The Independent

Don't be put off by the title:  there are no revelations of a "dark side" to Mr Palin.  It's a very long and quite interesting interview with him.

Fasting for life

BBC News - The power of intermittent fasting

This article, about a BBC show that looks at whether fasting is a good way to extend life in humans, talks in particular about Alternative Day fasting.  You can also do it for just two days a week:

I decided I couldn't manage ADF, it was just too impractical. Instead I did an easier version, the so-called 5:2 diet. As the name implies you eat normally 5 days a week, then two days a week you eat 500 calories if you are a woman, or 600 calories, if you are a man.

There are no firm rules because so far there have been few proper human trials. I found that I could get through my fast days best if I had a light breakfast (scrambled eggs, thin slice of ham, lots of black tea, adding up to about 300 calories), lots of water and herbal tea during the day, then a light dinner (grilled fish with lots of vegetables) at night.

On my feed days I ate what I normally do and felt no need to gorge. 

I stuck to this diet for 5 weeks, during which time I lost nearly a stone and my blood markers, like IGF-1, glucose and cholesterol, improved. If I can sustain that, it will greatly reduce my risk of contracting age-related diseases like cancer and diabetes.

Current medical opinion is that the benefits of fasting are unproven and until there are more human studies it's better to eat at least 2000 calories a day. If you really want to fast then you should do it in a proper clinic or under medical supervision, because there are many people, such as pregnant women or diabetics on medication, for whom it could be dangerous.

I was closely monitored throughout and found the 5:2 surprisingly easy. I will almost certainly continue doing it, albeit less often. Fasting, like eating, is best done in moderation.

It does sound relatively do-able,  I guess.

Whether it's good for you still seems up in the air, though.

Recommended TV

There's a new series of Horrible Histories being shown on ABC3, and I just watched this Darwin song, done as a style parody of David Bowie, and "ch-ch-changes" in particular.   Very clever.



And hey, I see it's not just me who finds this show good viewing.  Here's the Guardian TV blog earlier this year:

 CBBC's Horrible Histories is a wonderfully curious thing: wildly praised, yet woefully undersold as really funny … for a kids' show. But Horrible Histories isn't just the best show on children's television – it's one of the smartest comedies on TV.

That's a bold claim, admittedly. But with the fourth series – broadcasting every afternoon this week – it's time to stop patting Horrible Histories on the head for not being rubbish, and accept that it's a genuinely brilliant comedy in its own right. There are few British comedies that can touch it for ideas, writing and performance

Rude bits

Over the last week, three stories caught my attention:

1.  Avoiding pregnancy.   Teenage pregnancy rates have dropped pretty sharply in the US, and this Slate article asks how and why.

The first partial explanation is a bit of a surprise:    teenage virginity is on the rise.

According to federal surveys of teenage girls, 49 percent reported they were virgins in 1995, but 57 percent said they were in 2010. (The trend was even more pronounced among black teens, whose rate of abstinence rose from 40 percent to 54 percent.) However, these modest changes don’t fully explain the dramatic drop in teen pregnancy.

So the main explanation:

...the key to lower pregnancy rates has been a shift from condom use alone to more effective hormonal methods like the pill. It turns out that not all contraception is the same. No matter how well-educated they are, teens who do use birth control can’t reliably use condoms every time. To be sure, condoms prevent sexually transmitted diseases and are an important public health tool. But we now realize they should never, ever be the sole method of birth control for teens. They find condoms too much of hassle to use time after time—so they don’t.

 However, the article then goes on to point out that the pill is far from perfect:

Earlier this year, Washington University researchers led by Jeff Peipert reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that 5 percent of women in a study who were on the pill got pregnant within a year. Among those under 21 years of age, almost twice as many did. Take a moment to reflect on that. Imagine you are a concerned parent who accepts that your high school senior has sex. You take her to the doctor and she starts taking the pill. The data show that this is much better than just telling her to use a condom during intercourse. However, before graduation, 1 in 10 such girls will be headed for the delivery room or abortion clinic. That is a breathtaking failure rate.

Well, this just supports one of Steve's Rules For Life:   hey, if you're not prepared for a possible pregnancy, don't get into a sexual relationship.   

Of course, the Slate article then ruins my rule by pointing out that modern IUDs are a really effective way to avoid pregnancy:  

 ...the risk of contraceptive failure was 22 times higher with the pill than with IUDs in adult women, and double that for teens.

 I didn't realise IUDs were so effective.  Don't tell the kids.  Just stick to my Rule instead.

2.   The circumcision wars continue, this time with a push from a couple of Australian medical figures saying that the medical profession's solid turn against it in the 2000's was not really evidence based.   I always suspected this was the case.   It seemed to me that, for whatever reason, there was a turn against it going back to about the 1980's that was more cultural than anything else, and now the health benefits side is making a comeback.   We'll see how this develops.

Speaking of circumcision and culture, while Googling the topic, I stumbled across stories about how, in the Philippines, some cities put on "circumcision parties" to provide the operation safely for pre-teen boys.  As a government news agency explains:

Hornido attributed this phenomenon to the preference of the boys to have their circumcision done during the long summer vacation.

Circumcision is being done in the Philippines mainly for cultural reasons and not so much because of its health concerns. Among the Filipinos, the practice symbolizes the rite of passage into manhood.

However, Hornido urged parents to have their boys undergo safe medical circumcision by health professionals instead of the crude method of circumcision practiced in the Philippines known as ‘pukpok,’ performed mostly in rural villages by a local surgeon called "manunuli (one who circumcises)."

Well, I didn't know that.   Actually, like most Australians, there is very little I know about the Philippines culturally, which is odd considering its proximity to us.

3.  What's that doing there?    It turns out that human papilloma  virus is in a lot of prostate cancer.   (Mind you, it's in a lot of healthy ones too.)   But still:

“Recent unpublished experimental evidence by other researchers suggests that HPV and EBV can collaborate to promote the survival and proliferation of cancer cells, so our findings may well have important implications for understanding and preventing prostate cancer,” said Professor Whitaker.

“Significantly, in our prostate samples we found a high-risk strain known as HPV 18, which is known to be associated with other human cancers.

“HPV 18 is a common high-risk strain in Australia and is a specific target of the Gardasil vaccine now offered free to teenage girls to protect against cervical cancer.

“We note recent proposals to offer Gardasil to Australian teenage boys as well, with the aim of preventing the spread of the virus to women through sexual contact. 

“If HPV 18 is also associated with prostate cancers, as our research suggests, vaccinating boys may yet prove to have an unexpected direct benefit for them as well.”

It does sound a decent reason to extend the vaccine to boys.

Spoilt salade

How to make the perfect salade nicoise | Life and style | The Guardian

Hey, here's another one of these Guardian blog articles that go into far more detail than seems strictly necessary as to the possible variations of a common-ish dish.   The last one I noted was about pasta  carbonara; this time it's another favourite of mine - salade nicoise.

But it starts to go off the rails straight away, with the writer (Felicity) saying she really doesn't like canned tuna, and just prefers it with anchovies alone (ugh); also, apparently some people insist that boiled potato in it is an absolute abomination.

Well, this is all rather silly.   Chunks of a good quality canned tuna (in olive oil) are essential, and some modest amount of boiled potato make it a filling meal.   As for the other vegetables, I usually - um , julienne is the word I think I need - carrots and cut up some green beans and steam them just for a minute or two, then poor cold water on them to stop the cooking and leave them crisp but with the rawness taken off a bit.   That and lettuce are the main ingredients; well, if you aren't counting the olives, tuna, potato, salad onion, capers and boiled egg.   Not sure if always add tomatoes or not - my son won't eat them, which I find odd.   I think the vinaigrette I use is usually just lemon and olive oil, with garlic and a little bit of sugar. 

Anyhow, as I say, these articles in the Guardian do get a bit carried away.  As someone in comments says:

This kind of article is testament to the levels of debauchery now prevalent in the food porn industry. What utter, utter toss.

Well, maybe that's going too far.

But the biggest spoilsport of all in the thread is George Monbiot (!) who writes:

 I love what you do Felicity, but "the issue of fish" isn't just a matter of taste and money. It's also a matter of conservation, especially when it comes to species like tuna. Could we not make a decision that some species should be off-limits in recipes? And that if they are to be discussed, we can remind readers that this is a moral choice as well as a gastronomic one?

Oh dear.  I can't even enjoy canned tuna in oil once a week?

Actually, I was under the impression that some headway had been made in protecting tuna, and I also thought that your common canned varieties were not the most endangered.   Now I have to check this again, otherwise I will be thinking of George the next few times I make my salade nicoise.

Do not trust The Australian

Another piece of misleading and rubbish reporting on climate change at The Australian, with Graham Lloyd (and whoever came up with a snide headline "Data on global warming 'adjusted'" spending about 80% of an article about Watts and Muller  on Watts' draft "paper", without mentioning that Watts himself (and "co-author" McIntyre) have acknowledged at least one serious problem with it.

This  is just dishonest reporting with an agenda.  Lloyd refers to the online controversy about the matter, but simply chooses not to tell us that as between Watts and Muller it is definitely, without doubt, Watts who is in the most embarrassing position.

More detailed criticism of Watts' work is up at Skeptical Science.

Modern Judaism

Alive and well | The Economist

This Economist piece has a (sort of) upbeat take on modern Judaism.  Of interest.

Bond fun

Skyfall trailer: what it reveals about the new Bond | Film | guardian.co.uk

The Guardian has a bit of fun analysing the new, longer trailer for the next Bond film.  Some of the comments are pretty witty too, although the main gist seems to be that, well, there really does seem to be a limit to number of Bond plot devices in the universe.

Watts down with that

There's quite an effective takedown of Anthony Watts and his claim to be the one who started the ball rolling with concern about weather station siting issues at Revkin's blog.  I think I have read something similar before, but this explanation is nice and pithy:

Watts has promoted himself as the only person who really cares about siting issues, and that he basically introduced the issue in 2009 ("until I came along ..."). In fact, back at least as far as 1999, a program was created to develop stations specifically for climate research, and to site them very, very carefully. They exceed the Leroy 2010 siting criteria. This is the US CRN http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/crn/. These stations were set up beginning in '04. Even Watts could tell you that 2004 occurred before 2009. The Menne 2010 paper makes an explicit comparison between the USHCN "good" and "poor" sites, and vs the CRN sites. See Menne's figure 7. There is no significant difference. The idea that Watts is the lone ranger who has brought siting issues to the fore is false, although Watts would like you to believe it. This was a very well-known issue in the research community for a couple decades, at least (see Karl et al, 1995 for example). Watts has relentlessly blogged on the issue, but that doesn't mean he was a) original, or b) right. It is emphatically not Watts who brought this up. It's just that Watts has refused to accept answers he doesn't like. His latest draft is a scientific mess, and is far more illuminating about how tightly held preconceived notions can drive a "result" than it is about climate.