How it's (sometimes) made

Birth of ball lightning

I found this via a climate change site, or all places.  It sounds like an interesting paper on the still not well understood phenomena of ball lighting.  The abstract:

 Many observations of ball lightning report a ball of light, about 10 cm in diameter, moving at about walking speed, lasting up to 20 s and frequently existing inside of houses and even aeroplanes. The present paper reports detailed observations of the initiation or birth of ball lightning. In two cases, navigation crew of aircraft saw ball lightning form at the windscreen inside the cockpit of their planes. In the first case, the ball lightning occurred during a thunderstorm, with much lightning activity outside of the plane. In the second case, large “horns” of electrical corona were seen outside of the plane at the surface of the radome, just prior to the formation of the ball lightning. A third case reports ball lightning formed inside of a house, during a thunderstorm, at a closed glass window. It is proposed, based on two-dimensional calculations of electron and ion transport, that ball lightning in these cases is driven and formed by atmospheric ions impinging and collecting on the insulating surface of the glass or Perspex windows. This surface charge can produce electric fields inside of the cockpit or room sufficient to sustain an electric discharge. Charges of opposite sign to those outside of the window accumulate on the inside surface of the glass, leaving a ball of net charge moving inside of the cockpit or room to produce a pulsed discharge on a microsecond time scale.

Ruining a good story

DNA has a 521-year half-life : Nature News

Quite an interesting story on working out exactly how quickly DNA degrades:

Determining that rate has been difficult because it is rare to find large sets of DNA-containing fossils with which to make meaningful comparisons. To make matters worse, variable environmental conditions such as temperature, degree of microbial attack and oxygenation alter the speed of the decay process.

But palaeogeneticists led by Morten Allentoft at the University of Copenhagen and Michael Bunce at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, examined 158 DNA-containing leg bones belonging to three species of extinct giant birds called moa. The bones, which were between 600 and 8,000 years old, had been recovered from three sites within 5 kilometres of each other, with nearly identical preservation conditions including a temperature of 13.1 ºC. The findings are published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B¹.

By comparing the specimens' ages and degrees of DNA degradation, the researchers calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That means that after 521 years, half of the bonds between nucleotides in the backbone of a sample would have broken; after another 521 years half of the remaining bonds would have gone; and so on.

The team predicts that even in a bone at an ideal preservation temperature of −5 ºC, effectively every bond would be destroyed after a maximum of 6.8 million years. The DNA would cease to be readable much earlier — perhaps after roughly 1.5 million years, when the remaining strands would be too short to give meaningful information.

“This confirms the widely held suspicion that claims of DNA from dinosaurs and ancient insects trapped in amber are incorrect,” says Simon Ho, a computational evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. However, although 6.8 million years is nowhere near the age of a dinosaur bone — which would be at least 65 million years old — “We might be able to break the record for the oldest authentic DNA sequence, which currently stands at about half a million years,” says Ho.

 I guess mammoths and Tasmanian tigers are still in with a chance, though.

Foreign policy Mitt

Mitt Romney foreign policy speech at the Virginia Military Institute was the most dishonest one he has delivered yet. - Slate Magazine

Fred Kaplan really serves up the criticism of Romney for his recent speech on foreign policy.

I certainly get the feeling that Romney is way, way too simplisitic and Tea Party populist in what he will say on foreign policy.   Whether that translates into action if he were president is another matter - in the same way that many Democrats are disappointed that Obama went way more "gung ho" on military matters as president that his earlier rhetoric might have indicated.

But that's the worry with Romney - a former moderate Republican who has had to swing Tea Party right to get the nomination, and now is making (some) vague swings a bit back towards the middle (re his tax promises), but all without detail.   Where he would end up as president seems to be anyone's guess.

Slipper slipping away

It suited the Right to act appalled at the "misogyny" of Peter Slippers' stupid and deeply embarrassing text messages to a staffer, and of course, it was not practically possible for Lefty politicians to defend the texts as acceptable.

But in truth, there is quite a lot of puffed up fakery in this:   as if there aren't thousands of things said every year by male (and female) politicians of a lewd, crude or ribald nature which would be deeply embarrassing if revealed to the public or other politicians. 

As far as I am concerned, the text message causing the most outrage is not an example of misogyny (a hatred of women) per se:  seriously, how often have drunk young women in a ribald mood talked to each other about how they think men's bits are not inherently attractive to them, and do we call them men haters?

However, there is also no doubt that the whole series of texts between Slipper and Ashby do show a character of great immaturity and poor judgement. It reminds me most of the Troy Buswell chair sniffing incident.  Even if he had done the act to an audience of men only after the woman concerned had left the room, surely people hearing it would think "what sort of mental 15 year old have we got doing this job?" 

Given Ashby's frequent ribald responses to Slipper's text, and his entire highly suspect and self serving way he has handled the matter, I think it's a very hard call to say whether it should be found to be sexual harassment by Slipper.   Certainly, if it is, Ashby deserves virtually nothing in compensation.

But regardless of the outcome, Slipper's character as exposed by the texts did render him as too embarrassingly immature a figure to be Speaker in the long run.   I think Labor would have moved to encourage him to resign anyway, but caught yesterday by Abbott's early move, they were in a difficult situation.

At least Abbot got to also shoot himself in the foot by, stupidly, using a similar refrain as Alan Jones.  What poor taste political judgement was that?   The Right in Australian politics at the moment is, to a large extent, very embarrassing in the way it is treating women politicians in Labor.   

Absorbed into the hive mind

iPhone 5 review: Marveling at the existence of the greatest phone ever made. - Slate Magazine

Farhad Manjoo apparently dissed the iPhone 5 at first, but now has been absorbed into the Apple hive mind, which has ordered him to pay penance by writing some of the most over the top praise of the product imaginable:

 When I pick up the iPhone 5 and examine it closely, I find it difficult to believe that this device actually exists. The iPhone 5 does not feel like a product that was mass produced. In a strange way, it doesn’t feel like it was built at all. This is a gadget that seems as if it fell into the box fully formed. If you run your hands around its face, you scarcely feel any seams or other points of connection; there’s little evidence that this thing is a highly complex device made from lots of smaller things. Instead it just feels like a single, solid, exquisitely crafted piece of machinery, and once you pick it up you never want to put it down....

With the iPhone, Apple is building products at a level of quality that may be unprecedented in the history of mass manufacturing. But the only way to know what that means for you, a user of the phone, is to pick it up and feel it, because objectively it does not sound like a big deal. If I tell you the greatest thing about the iPhone 5 is how it “feels,” you’ll accuse me of being a superficial aesthete who cares more for form than function. You don’t care how a phone was built or how it looks; you just want it to work. But I think that argument misses something important about what it means for a phone to “work well”: When you’re holding a device all the time, how it feels affects its functionality. Or, as Steve Jobs might say, how it feels is how it works.

 I think he just left his girlfriend for an iPhone5.

Across the light barrier

Physicists extend special relativity beyond the speed of light

I have no idea whether their work is likely to hold up or not, but it's always interesting listening to real scientists talking about faster than light:

Now two physicists – James Hill and Barry Cox from the University of Adelaide in Australia – have shown that Einstein's theory of special relativity can be logically extended to allow for faster-than-light motion.

They're quick to point out that their finding in no way contradicts the original theory, but simply provides a new aspect of it. "As far as I'm aware, this is the first natural, logical extension of Einstein's own theories," Hill said. "We certainly haven't superseded Einstein. The two theories are entirely consistent."

There have been other suggestions of objects exceeding c – tachyons, for example – but these superluminal motions require complicated mathematics such as imaginary masses and complicated physics to ensure real, meaningful outcomes. In contrast, Hill and Cox's proposal arises from the same mathematical framework as Einstein's theory.

The bit where they get a bit more speculative, perhaps for a PR boost?:

Although the theories cannot answer what happens at c, the scientists suspect that an object crossing the "light barrier" may have some very interesting consequences. They compare our current understanding of this boundary to that of an object crossing the sound barrier for the first time, an event that was highly disputed before it was achieved in 1947. "People wondered what would happen," Hill said. "Were we all going to disintegrate? Would the plane fall apart? It turns out passing through the speed of sound led to a big bang. I suspect going through the speed of light will be more interesting. I have a feeling the world will change in some dramatic way as we move through the speed of light. All sorts of things could happen. Time and space could interchange." He thinks that an experimental test of such a feat is not out of reach.

Food porn to the max

A wild goose barnacle chase | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

The Guardian is a pretty good site for food porn, and there's no better example than this post about eating barnacles in Portugal.

The food itself is described as follows:

The goose barnacle has to be one of the most beautiful foods on the planet. The bright enamelled head with its ruby lips sits atop a snakeskin sleeve which pulls away to reveal a glossy, lucent finger of flesh, marbled and grey at the neck, bright orange at the tip. They're the punks of the crustacean family.

Actually,  the writer is making them sound like the disturbingly genitalia-like members of the crustacean family.

As to the experience of eating them, well:

Not a drop of goodness escapes the barnacle when it's cooked. The tightly-woven sleeve acts like a bag, sealing in the essence of the ocean. There's a gentle intensity to the barnacle flesh. Similar, in a way, to octopus, only more refined. They're nothing like a mussel, all tubes and organs. They're simpler. Purer. The best of the sea boiled down into a mouthful.

But goose barnacles don't just taste of the ocean: they actually immerse you in it. Quite often (unless you're an expert, which I'm not) when you pinch off the sleeve, you get a fat squirt of brine in the eye or down your chest. It's a strangely mimetic experience. In being eaten, the goose barnacle shares the theatre of its life with you.

You finish the meal wet, as if you've just been out on a wave-splashed rock with your mouth open.

For good measure, the writer concludes with a phenomena that often happens with that other pleasure of the flesh:

 And yet, after 20 minutes on the beach to dry the front of your shirt you find your thoughts turning back to the barnacle.

I trust I'm not the only person to have successfully decoded the writing.

In the comments that follow the article, there are quite a few people scoffing at the prose, but I liked this entry in particular:

Sweet? Living in Galicia. I've had them many times. To me, they taste of nothing but rubber in sea water. It's small wonder they need the myth that they are an aphrodisiac - just like oysters and the dreadful durian fruit.

Interesting to note that they used to used only as fertiliser on the fields and that, during Spain's years of hunger in the 50s, the locals still wouldn't eat them.

Wonderful what marketing can do.

Oh, and they can reach 300 euros a kilo at Xmas. In Madrid at least.

I guess it will callos (tripe) next for the treatment.

 Update:   I suppose if I'm talking seafood as a stand-in for genitalia, it's hard to avoid the fuss being made over the whole Slipper/Ashby texts which give new meaning to "things you wish you never knew a politician thought or said".   If Slipper likes mussels, even if he also has a interest in goose barnacles, does talking this way really indicate misogyny?   Bad taste and embarrassing to hear, sure; much like Prince Charles' weird way of chatting to his girlfriend.   And it's not as if a lot of women don't have less than complementary things to say about men's rude bits:  if you Google the topic, you'll see a lot of consensus on the matter that quite a lot of straight women think they may be useful but aren't at all attractive.

I think a lot of right wingers like Bolt are just getting precious about this because they want to see Slipper go, and Labor embarrassed.

Moving pictures for those who do not understand words

It has been widely noted that climate change fake skeptics from Anthony Watts, to Graham Lloyd in The Australian (if he isn't one, he sure writes like one) have been trying to deflate interest in the remarkable Arctic ice loss of past couple of decades by pointing to increasing sea ice in Antarctic, as if one off sets the other.

Climate scientists know and have explained in media articles that this is a rubbish comparison, but still it seems that fake skeptics just can't read, or have trouble with comprehension, or something.

Now I'm doubt I am the first blogger to put these videos in the same post, but here they are.

You, yes you - the climate change skeptic in the back row - don't you dare leave this post without clicking on both videos, and then say after me "I'm sorry, I didn't really understand before what a con this argument was.  There is no comparison whatsoever between the minor differences in Antarctic sea ice over recent years and the amount of Arctic ice lost over the same period."

One:  Antarctic sea ice in September over the last few decades:



Two:  Arctic sea ice over the same period:

Economics and climate change, again

Andy Revkin recently linked to this post talking about how can you make the best judgements about dealing with climate change when there is still a lot of uncertainty about the exact extent of the problem, particularly at the small regional level.

I thought it pretty much confirmed what I had been thinking recently about the dubious use of economics to try to forecast the effects many decades into the future:

The politicians and other leaders who make (or influence) such decisions do not like deep uncertainty. They do not like it, Sam I Am. They want something specific to plan for. Expert recommendations. Metrics, targets, and “deliverables.” Otherwise there’s no way to determine the most efficient use of resources, how to minimize costs and maximize benefits, which course is optimal. So they ask analysts for cost-benefit analysis (CBA).

CBA is useful in some circumstances, particularly where there are bounded time spans and known risks. But remember, there’s a difference between risk (statistically quantifiable) and uncertainty (not). It is the difference, if you will, between Rumsfeld’s “known unknowns” and his “unknown unknowns.”

As time horizons and uncertainty increase, CBA becomes less and less useful, more and more “a knob-twiddling exercise in optimizing outcomes,” as economist Martin Weitzman put it. Differences in social/political/ethical assumptions, like discount rates, start determining model outcomes. “Results from the CBA,” says the World Bank, are “extremely dependent on parameters on which there is no scientific agreement (e.g., the impact of climate change on hurricanes) or no consensus (e.g., the discount rate).” It’s still possible to construct models and get answers, but the danger becomes higher and higher of getting the wrong answer, i.e., optimizing for the wrong thing.

The answer, says David Roberts, (and he is quoting the approach that is argued in a World Bank white paper) is to go "robust":

Now, whenever I criticize cost-benefit analysis, someone will ask, Well, what’s the alternative? What else can you do but weigh costs and benefits? How else would you make decisions?

Funny you should ask! Turns out the World Bank white paper everyone’s* talking about has a great deal to say on that very subject. It describes various alternative decisionmaking procedures and gets into the weeds of some case studies. And if that doesn’t sate your nerd thirst, have no fear, the literature on climate change and uncertainty is extensive. Go nuts.

For the rest of you, though, I just want to focus on the top-line idea. It is this: Shift the focus from optimality to robustness. Rolls right off the tongue, no?

The optimal decision is the one that achieves the best cost-benefit ratio in a given set of conditions. A robust decision can be expected to hold up, and perform reasonably well, under a wide variety of possible conditions. To make the optimal decision, you must be able to quantify risks. When there is uncertainty rather than risk — “multiple possible future worlds without known relative probabilities” — one is better off with robust decisions.

The optimal decision aims for efficiency; the robust decision aims for resilience. A resilient solution may not be — probably won’t be — the one best suited for whatever circumstances do end up coming to pass. But it is, from the present-day perspective, the one most broadly suited to the widest array of possible futures.

An optimal solution is cost-effective, if you get it right (obviously). But strategies aiming for optimality are brittle. If you optimize for one thing and run into another, you risk degradation or collapse (or, like Ho Chi Minh City, just wasting a buttload of money). Robust decisions and investments often cost more in the short- to mid-term; the extra money is effectively spent as insurance against unforeseen outcomes. A robust solution retains its integrity in a wide array of circumstances.

When it comes to climate change, most economic models are premised on CBA — the search for efficiency. The World Bankers suggest an alternative, based on robustness, and yes, it involves yet another acronym: CIDA, or Climate Informed Decision Analysis, also known as “decision scaling.”

This sounds quite sensible to me.

Another documentary recommendation

I see this is the second episode in the series, and I missed the first one, but tonight's documentary on SBS "Battle Castle - Chateau Gaillard" was very good. 

I did point out to my son that I somehow doubted that Richard the Lionheart and King Philip of France really had their strategy meetings while fully suited up in chainmail, as the re-enactments indicated.

Still, it taught us quite a bit about castle design, and then castle siege techniques, of 1200.

The show is available on SBS for another 2 weeks.  Beyond that, I can't see it on Youtube, but the Wikipedia entry on the castle is pretty detailed.

The increasingly odd quantum world

Photon reaches from beyond the grave in quantum trick - physics-math - 04 October 2012 - New Scientist

This sounds quite significant:

 If you have two pairs of entangled photons, taking one photon from each pair and entangling them disengages the two original pairs, and creates a second, fresh entanglement between the two, left out photons. Eisenberg's team used the swap to entangle a photon with one that no longer existed.

More details in the article.

An atheist assesses the movement

Why Richard Dawkins' humanists remind me of a religion | Michael Ruse | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

I'm not familiar with Michael Ruse, but it is evident from this column that he an atheist of some prominence who nonetheless sees that the in-fighting within the broader atheist movement is very much like the fights between religions.  An entertaining and accurate sounding assessment.

Words needed

The somewhat alarming appearance of John Laws at the start of his 7:30 interview last night is another photo crying out for a caption, word or thought bubble.   I've been toying with some ideas, but a winner is not yet obvious...

The New York Times does not approve

Mr. Romney’s Government Handout - NYTimes.com

The above editorial in the New York Times really takes a torch to Mitt Romney's use of complicated tax system to minimise his taxes.   Their position is this:

What his tax practices show is not illegal or unethical behavior, but rather the unfairness of a tax system that provides its most outlandish benefits only for the very, very rich and savvy. What is worse is that Mr. Romney has proposed making this profoundly dysfunctional system even more unfair.

After detailing ways Mitt has avoided gift taxes, the article ends on a note that I think really hones in on the point that he not only wants to maintain benefits that only the rich use, but make the tax changes to benefit the rich even further:

Like most Republicans, Mr. Romney wants to eliminate the estate tax entirely, even though it currently applies only to estates of more than $10 million for a married couple. That would cost the treasury more than $1 trillion over a decade, but it would be a huge benefit for Mr. Romney’s heirs and for the other 0.3 percent of estates rich enough to qualify for the tax. Getting rid of the estate tax would subvert the gift tax (it was established as a backstop, to keep estates from being passed on before death) and would spare the rich all this complicated “estate planning,” which is just a euphemism for avoiding the tax.

As Warren Buffett has said, the estate tax increases equality of opportunity and curbs the movement toward a plutocracy. Mr. Romney’s plan to get rid of it, helping his family but few others, is one of the sharpest illustrations of his distance from ordinary Americans.

But I have a question...

How intuitive morality has challenged the rationalists

Ross Gittins spends this column summarising a book he has just read:   The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion, by Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia.

Here's the key part at the end:

Haidt argues morality is, in large part, an evolved solution to the free-rider problem. We develop norms of acceptable, co-operative behaviour and find ways to sanction people who aren't co-operating.

His empirical research into the moral sentiments of people from around the world leads him to identify six dimensions to people's moral concerns. First is care/harm; we are sensitive to signs of suffering and need, and despise cruelty. Second is liberty/oppression; we resent attempts to dominate us. Third is fairness/cheating; people should be rewarded or punished in proportion to their deeds.

Then there's loyalty/betrayal; we trust and reward team players, but want to sanction those who betray the group. Next is authority/subversion; we recognise rank or status and disapprove of those not behaving properly, given their position. Finally there's sanctity/degradation; we care about what we do with our bodies and what we put into them.

Haidt believes these moral concerns are shared by people regardless of their culture, nationality or wealth. But, of course, people interpret them differently and put more weight on some than others.

Our differing moral emphases are reflected in our differing political sympathies. So the unending battle between small-L liberal and conservative policies is a manifestation of ''deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society''.

Haidt finds that small-L liberals' moral concerns are limited to just the first three dimensions: they care deeply about the harm suffered by minorities and the needs of the poor, about oppression and about fairness.

Conservatives, on the other hand, care about all six dimensions. Their most sacred value is to ''preserve the institutions and traditions that sustain a moral community''. So they worry also about maintaining loyalty, acceptance of authority and the sanctity of our bodies.

The conservatives' broader range of moral concerns means they understand the motivations of liberals better than liberals understand the motives of conservatives.

Haidt argues the community benefits from the ever-present tension between the two sides - each emphasises important aspects of maintaining a good society - if only we could restore a greater degree of civility between the contending parties.

OK, that sounds pretty good for conservatives.  But here's the thing: in the matter of the biggest free rider problem of all, why are conservatives in the US so prominent in climate change denial?   

Is it that they are merely temporarily in the midst of a over-inflated concern about liberty (the second moral sentiment listed above)?    Certainly, that would explain why US libertarians have (mostly) aligned against believing in AGW, but why are US social conservatives (including evangelicals, for example) along for the ride with them? 

Of course, the Pope and European conservatives are counter-examples and show conservatism does not have to be that way.   (See Roger Scruton in particular.)  But the US remains a special example.

Maybe a good product?

V3Solar | The Most Efficient Solar Energy Under the Sun

A somewhat dubious sounding report at phys.org  led me to the above site, for a company promoting its new spinning solar panel system.

Interestingly, it seems to be based in Australia.   Looking at the website, I'm not entirely sure that there aren't some big exaggerations.   Parts of their claims just don't sound right to me, but I'm no electronics engineer.

If it does work as claimed, and can mean a massive reduction in area devoted to solar panels, I wonder whether they would make PV solar farms a more viable thing.  We'll see.

Ignoring the evidence on "Dexter"

I see that Slate is giving Dexter publicity (again.)   It's funny how certain TV shows are deemed so important as to gain continual assessment on certain liberal media outlets, isn't it?   The Guardian does it with Doctor Who; Slate with various Showtime or other cable shows.

In any case, I've never watched more than 20 minutes or so of the show, but I've always had reservations about it thematically:  a man with a compulsion to kill who channels it only towards those who deserve to be killed.   The psychological set up for it is pure comic book:  as a kiddie he saw his own mother murdered and sat in her blood for days.

Apparently, the show did have its critics at the start who worried about it encouraging empathy with a serial murderer, as this discussion in the article linked above notes:

Waldman: I'm interested in the way the show portrays people stressed to the breaking point. Everyone has an idiosyncratic coping strategy. Quinn and Batista knock back doubles at the bar. Deb runs alone on her treadmill. Dexter murders people. Do you think the show is trying to normalize Dexter's kills? By showing us all these dysfunctional outlets for stress in other characters?

Bosch: I've always thought that this is less about normalizing serial killing—when the show debuted, many critics were disgusted at being asked to empathize with a murderer—than about trauma. How Dexter might have been a normal person had he not been subjected to the unthinkable trauma of witnessing his mother being murdered, then sitting in her blood for days. Really, the show tackles PTSD—and its lesser forms—in a spectacular way.

Waldman: Yes. I think you’ve nailed the show’s philosophy. But in its throwaway details, I sometimes feel we’re asked to believe that Dex isn’t that bad. And then there’s the question of whether he could be a vigilante hero.

But such quibbles seemed to stop worrying critics (and the studio) a long time ago.

Therefore, I was surprised to read a few months ago (it previously had some publicity apparently, but I had missed it) about a Canadian murderer who, it was clear, drew inspiration from the show: 

Twitchell, 31, was found guilty by a jury last April 12 in the October 2008 slaying of Johnny Altinger. He is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Altinger, 38, was lured to a southeast Edmonton garage by an ad on an internet dating site. He was bludgeoned and dismembered.

Twitchell's fondness for the television show Dexter was well documented during the trial, and he had a Facebook profile under the name of protagonist Dexter Morgan, a vigilante serial killer who masters the perfect crime.

Here's the article in the Fairfax weekend magazine that fills in more detail the highly imitative aspects of this gruesome murder.  It's a really horrifying read.

Googling around, this is not the only murder (or planned murder) associated with the show:   a 17 year old who strangled his 10 year old brother claimed to have felt "just like Dexter";   a 21 year old was committed to psychiatric care amidst allegations that he was directly inspired by Dexter to kill people who he thought had committed crime;   murderers in Sweden and Norway claimed similar inspiration; and a woman who killed and dismembered another in Los Angeles was very clear about the connection:

In a profanity-laced note in which she described in grisly detail how she killed a 22-year-old Marine wife, one of the three people now charged with murder says she patterned the killing after the television show "Dexter," about a serial killer.

In the note to police, Jessica Lopez describes strangling Brittany Dawn Killgore "as if my idol Dexter had spoken directly to me."

Lopez, 25, wrote that she then decided to dismember Killgore's body: "I made a few attempts to chop her up like Dexter with Masters power tools but I was afraid it was too loud and it sucked at cutting flesh."

Killing Killgore was not as easy as the television show, Lopez wrote: "I thought I was defending the family and it would be simple like Dexter."

Yet has this effect of the show received the attention that it deserves?  No.

Is it really necessary for there to be dozens of victims of a murderer imitating a movie villain (as in the "Batman" shootings) before people think hard about the effects of making fictional violence "cool", or deserving of empathy?

I've always been leery of movies that make "bad" cool, or darkly attractive in any way really.  "Silence of the Lambs" left me cold;  "Pulp Fiction" I have frequently complained about; and I can't think of another good example right now, since the genre is not one I am keen to see anyway.  But at least any individual movie is a short lived experience, compared to (what will end up as) 8 seasons of a TV show all about a serial killer.  How many hours of living in the mind of a serial killer is that for the psychologically disturbed viewer?

Now some people will say that this is an over-reaction: if it wasn't Dexter, a mad person might claim inspiration by something else, or indeed may find it convenient when caught to claim fictional inspiration.   (On the other hand, are there psycho killers out there who haven't mentioned to the investigators how they felt Dexter gave them ideas?)

I'm not convinced.   Basically, I think the makers of this show, the critics who got over their doubts about the "empathy with a serial killer" question, and the audience that is care free about its clear, demonstrated and repeated effect on encouraging psychos to attempt to imitate it,  all have something to be a bit ashamed of.  

Derren hunts ghosts

Last week's episode of Derren Brown Investigates was pretty much a waste of time.  No one sensible has ever seriously believed that some Russian system for teaching the blind to see via their psychic power was genuine, have they?   So why bother investigating them?  It was mildly amusing in parts, and showed that people can really fool themselves into believing anything, but still.

This week's episode dealt with more "concrete" psychic stuff:  an American ghost hunter who believed he had good EVP (electronic voice phenomena) and photos of spirits.  I had never heard of the guy before - Lou Gentile (who has died since the program was made) - but it appears he was reasonably well know in the States via a radio show.

Well, the evidence turned out to be very underwhelming.  In fact, I'm starting to suspect that atheist Derren might go looking for evidence of the paranormal from slightly flaky characters.

Still, the show was of interest because Lou showed a video of an exorcism he had organised, and Brown later went to a neurologist who specialised in epilepsy to discuss it.  The neurologist showed video of a woman having a type of fit which did suggest how exorcists could mistake some serious back bending as levitation.  The relevant part is shown starting at about 5min 20 sec into this section of the show:



Lou also got quite irate when an audio expert told him his EVP were most likely interference.  But Brown was basically gentle with the guy, concluding that he was just fooling himself, but not being dishonest.

Quite interesting.

Moonrise seen

I went off to see Moonrise Kingdom, the latest Wes Anderson film which was very well reviewed, yet has mainly had an art house release in Brisbane*.   I pretty much understand why now.

I enjoyed it well enough, but I do think it was a little too "art house arch" for its own good.  I'm a latecomer to WesWorld, and have only seen Fantastic Mr Fox and  The Life Aquatic (etc), so I don't really know whether he always gets a bit over the top silly in parts of  his films or not.  (Yes, I know, I must see Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums:  I will one day, they are waiting at the DVD hire.)  But this one did have a sequence or two which were too unrealistic even for a highly stylised movie like this one.

On the up side, the child actors are very good, but the adult parts are a bit underwritten and the eccentricity seemed bit forced.   The direction is pleasing in its own way; in many respects it is reminiscent of how he did Fantastic Mr Fox.    Music seems really important to Anderson, and this is certainly the case in this film, and it's one of its best features.   The staging of the Noah play in the church was particularly charming.

It's definitely worth a look if you are sympathetic to his eccentric approach.

* It's at the Palace Cinemas, which have (like all cinemas should) a bar in the foyer and the ability to bring your glass of wine into the cinema with you.  Sure, in Gold Glass cinemas they bring the wine to you, but this seems a much better idea.  I've never been to a Palace Cinema before, but I expect I will be going there again...

A fair look at budget woes

Where did the mammoth US budget deficits come from? - CSMonitor.com

This article from the CSM seems to me to take a very fair approach to the not so simple question of how to apportion blame for the US deficit.

While it agrees that the recent Obama response to a question on this was wrong, it remains clear that Republicans must allow for a very significant part of the problem to have come from George W Bush policies.  Given that tax cuts and defence spending were a large part of those, don't Republicans wonder that Romney  policies to reduce tax rates (yes, I know, even if removing deductions is supposed to make them revenue neutral,) and increase long term defence spending, just don't sound right?