Wouldn't have guessed that

Caffeinated coffee may reduce the risk of oral cancers

High or Low?

Studies differ on climate change and warming severity, researchers trade jabs - Capital Weather Gang - The Washington Post

There's a really good post here summing up the contradictory conclusions of two recent papers - one saying climate sensitivity is likely to be at the higher end of the range (Trenberth), and one saying it should be on the lower side (Schlesinger).

Each criticises the other's approach quite strongly.  

But even Schlesinger is pragmatic and thinks the world still needs to be cautious:

Despite Schlesinger’s more optimistic outlook, he stresses sharp emissions reductions must begin, in case his estimates are wrong.

“...for argument’s sake, let’s suppose the [climate sensitivity] is larger than the values we determined....humanity must act sooner and more rapidly...” Schlesinger said.

Indeed.

A useful figure to know

BBC - Future - Health - Sex: What are the chances?

I missed this article from earlier in the year, but I reckon it has a good figure that is handy to know for anyone who needs to talk to teenagers about consequences:

 The bottom line is that a single act of intercourse between a young couple has on average a one in 20 chance of pregnancy – this assumes the opportunity presented itself on a random day, as these things tend do when you are young.

 However, the article then goes on to talk about the effectiveness of various forms of contraception, but only seems to quote figures if they are used correctly.   This seems a bit of an oversight.

Stupid right wing moochers

If there's a right wing thing I can't stand, it's when they use the Randian term "moochers", even if half in jest.   Anyone who has been a fan of Rand is automatically suspect, in my books; but to use her terminology just shows the continuing influence of a crank and a sympathy to her appalling lack of a social conscience.

But the funniest thing is when right wing starts "mooching" themselves.   Climate change fake skeptics are pretty expert at this.  Who can forget the request for money from the American family who ran into environmental problems with their feed lot in WA.    They blamed their alleged prominence in the climate change skeptic movement for their problems (never with any real evidence, as far as I could see.)   Promoted via Jonova and Watts Up With That, there appeared to be a lot of money pledged for their "save the farm" action, which may or may not be continuing, as they decamped back to the US anyway.

Now look at the latest example - Mark Steyn, who has stupidly decided to go out of his way to insult and defame Michael Mann on the pages of National Review Online, got full NRO support, which now publishes this ad:

Oh diddums?  More from their webpage:

As many of you know, National Review is not a non-profit — we are just not profitable. A lawsuit is not something we can fund with money we don’t have. Of course, we’ll do whatever we have to do to find ourselves victorious in court and Professor Mann thoroughly defeated, as he so richly deserves to be. Meanwhile, we have to hire attorneys, which ain’t cheap.

Righto.  So a publication that is making no profit decided to escalate a fight by challenging him to sue after they called him "the man behind the fraudulent climate-change “hockey-stick” graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus" and approved this quote:

Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.

What idiots.

Steyn and (much of) the Right in the US have become an intellectual embarrassment. 

And yes, it's affecting the Right as constituted in Australia:

South Australian senator Cory Bernardi, formerly Mr Abbott's parliamentary secretary, said: ''I do not think human activity causes climate change and I haven't seen anything that changes my view. I remain very sceptical about the alarmists' claims.''

Queensland senator Barnaby Joyce said the whole debate about whether humans were causing the climate to change was ''indulgent and irrelevant''.

The Coalition has a large fracture line within its ranks on this issue, and it has serious consequences on leadership and policy more broadly, since dismantling the Labor carbon "tax" and replacing it with the half baked Abbott scheme (which no economist supports as a better scheme for its intended purpose) will have  serious knock on budgetary consequences.   

It's the issue that poisons everything on the Right.  

Eurine-eka

Brain cells made from urine 

It's about using kidney cells excreted in urine and reprogramming them to be (something like) embryonic stem cells.

Hobbit hobbled

Time for celebration for those of us in the very, very small club of  "Go Away, Tolkien" (an incorporated association):  The Hobbit has only* got 74% on Rottentomatoes, and quite a few of the more prominent critics have been giving it a pretty good thrashing for being way, way too long and mostly dull.

But the most interesting thing is the poor reaction to the high frame rate version.  This, from Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian, is pretty typical:

The second unexpected point is the look of the thing. Jackson has pioneeringly shot The Hobbit in HFR, or High Frame Rate: 48 frames a second, as opposed to the traditional 24, giving a much higher definition and smoother "movement" effect. But it looks uncomfortably like telly, albeit telly shot with impossibly high production values and in immersive 3D. Before you grow accustomed to this, it feels as if there has been a terrible mistake in the projection room and they are showing us the video location report from the DVD "making of" featurette, rather than the actual film.

Some other critics have noted that it makes it way easier to spot the changes from special effects shots to reality, and that it makes fast motion look wrong (speeded up, I think they say.)

Isn't this fascinating?  I'm pretty sure I read about high frame rate film back in about the 1980's, maybe in something like Omni magazine, or perhaps Discover.   It was thought to be the way of the future.

But, it turns out, too much clarity look bad. 

I wonder why that is.  I could go for the philosophical explanation:  maybe we prefer soft edges over reality, just as people don't like to think too much of the materialist/existentialist view of the world that says it is ultimately meaningless after the suffering and temporary bursts of happiness of life. (I am full of Christmas cheer, hey?)   Of course, the religious and (in particular) Christian come back is that ultimate reality is better than what we get living in this muck.  I take it that Heaven looks better than high quality video, though.

Or it could be that part of our normal vision that we concentrate on means the perimeter is not sensed as if it is in focus, and hence our normal vision does not have a widescreen clarity that sharp digital has?

Anyway, all that matters is that some people don't like it.  Yay. 

*  all of the Lord of the Rings movies scored in the 90 percent range.  It was a lonely job, being bored with those films.  

Death of the monocle too?

Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore dead, aged 89

I noticed Moore's name on the cover of some magazine the other day, which surprised me because I assumed he had probably died already.

Anyway, now he has.  We never saw much of him in Australia, as far as I can recall, but his grumpy face was memorable.  (Like Julius Sumner Miller, looking rather stern and easily annoyed seemed to be part of the pop scientist mystique in the 1960's.  These days they have to be all smiley so as to not scare the kids.)

But as the title of this post suggests, Moore's photo at the link shows him wearing a monocle.   Surely he must have been one of the last surviving monocle wearers?  Or is there an Eastern European country where this is still the fashion?

Fun with tablet

 

Update:  these were done using Paper Camera, an Android app which to my mind does this conversion to sketch or painterly image far better than any other app I have seen.  It also does it "in camera" so you can immediately tell what shots look good with it.  I must write about the differences I've found using Android and an iPad soon. 

The problem with practical jokes

What a sad story, how the nurse who was taken in by a prank call from Australian FM radio appears to have committed suicide. 

The Age is still running a column from a day or two ago about whether the radio station should have apologised, and basically suggesting that the answer is "no", as it was only the silly English who were upset.  An online poll suggested most people agreed:

The column did make the observation, which has now been rendered a major, major understatement:

The jokesters, however, know it can go badly wrong. A Kyle Sandilands radio stunt involving a lie detector test and a 14-year-old, who revealed she was a rape victim, was deplored across the nation.

I don't listen to FM Breakfast Radio, and never have really, and the only prank calls I remember from AM radio were ones where a friend or family member was involved in the set up.   These type of calls, I think, have little chance of going wrong.  

But calls that may put the job or reputation of the receiver on the line - isn't it time there were recognized as always immature and inherently cruel?  

Time to grow up, FM Radio.

And as for the radio hosts who made the call:  they shouldn't appear on air, anywhere, again.  They're not going to starve to death, I'm sure.  It's the least they or the radio industry can do to show remorse.

Gopnick on Lincoln

The high cost of Abraham Lincoln’s uncompromised morality. : The New Yorker

Always a fine writer, Adam Gopnick here looks at Lincoln.  I haven't read it properly yet, but I'm sure it's worth reading...

Sounds like a solar power "win" to me

Solar power keeps electricity peak down | National - Rural | BigPond News

Record temperatures across Queensland have helped show solar power units on private homes are keeping peak electricity demand down in rural areas of the state, a utility says.

Ergon Energy, which supplies regional areas of the state outside Brisbane and the south east corner, says the most noticeable impact is on the mid-afternoon peak loads.

Temperatures on Tuesday soared to 40 degrees across much of Queensland, with new records for December were set in the southeast, and while they dropped slightly on Wednesday, temperatures were still above the monthly average.

With solar power units in regional areas capable of generating around 173 megawatts (MW), Ergon says as much as 150mw is flowing back into the system from private homes.

Chief executive Ian McLeod says peak demand of 1957 MW during the heatwave was down by 14 per cent on the record peak of 2285 MW in January 2010.

'After a number of mild summers this heatwave has been the first real test of where peak demand is heading on those few hot days of the year,' Mr McLeod said in a statement.

'The record growth of the last decade may be behind us.

'A reduced peak demand reduces the need for more investment in new substations or increasing the capacity of existing substations and powerlines and this takes the pressure off rising power prices.'

Carbon pricing needed everywhere

U.S. energy revolution transforms climate debate - CNN.com

This article by Dieter Helm from Oxford makes the point that the technological advances in the US which have provided it with heaps of  (gas) energy resources has really changed expectations as to how to deal with encouraging a move off fossil fuels.  But at least gas is less harmful than coal, as a stepping stone.

Still comes down to this:

The next steps are harder: A carbon price is a necessary condition for facing up to the pollution our consumption is causing. If we don't want to pay the price of our pollution, then we don't want to tackle climate change. So far, the sad reality is that we are not prepared to act. That is why nothing much has been achieved on the carbon front since 1990.

Why then might the U.S. consider putting a price on its carbon emissions, through taxing pollution? One powerful reason has nothing to do with climate change: It needs the money. Taxing carbon might be politically painful, but not as painful as taxing income. So for the wrong reason there are some grounds for optimism.

What would be even better is if some of the money were spent on new technologies. Current renewables can't bridge the carbon gap. Low-density intermittent energy just doesn't generate enough electricity to carry though decarbonisation. But future renewables just might, and here is not only the best hope on the climate front, but also precisely where the U.S. stars. Its deep technological base and its entrepreneurial culture provide one of the best places to drive through the necessary advances.

For the rest of the world, the lessons are much the same. Everyone needs to switch out of coal, and gas provides a now much more abundant alternative whilst we develop new technologies. Sadly Europe is engaged in a dash from nuclear and gas towards coal.

It needs to waste less money on current expensive renewables -- especially the really expensive options like offshore wind -- and get serious about future renewables. Next generation solar technology is an obvious candidate. And everyone needs to put a carbon price in place.

The climate change problem can be cracked, but not through current policies. And in the meantime the world needs to get used to the idea that the U.S. no longer needs the Middle East to keep its cars and industries moving.

Back to climate change

I've given readers a bit of a  break from climate change posts, but this item from a couple of weeks ago is important.

Real Climate noted some new research indicating the (possibly) very strong regional differences in a warming world.   It's all to do with how atmospheric flow changes.  Here's a couple of key paragraphs:

I think there were some surprising aspects in Deser et al.‘s results. Not that I didn’t expect natural multi-annual variations to be important (on shorter time scales, they are very pronounced), but what strikes me is the strong contrast (on a 50-year time scale) between the global mean temperature (lower graph), which was not very sensitive to the regional atmospheric circulation, and the regional temperatures which were strongly influenced.

It has long been recognized that local and regional climate would warm at different rates than the global mean, but not with such large differences as presented by Deser et al. at the time scales of 50 years and for continental scales. Their results imply that while some regions could experience almost zero warming over 50 years, this will be compensated by substantially stronger in other regions (because they also find that the global mean temperatures to be largely insensitive to the different model initial conditions).

These results also imply a surprisingly long persistence of weather regimes in different parts of the world. Usually, one tends to associate these with inter-annual to decadal scales. However, Deser et al observe:

Such intrinsic climate fluctuations occur not only on interannual-to-decadal timescales but also over periods as long as 50 years… even trends over 50 years are subject to considerable uncertainty owing to natural variability.

These findings were in particular important for the winter season at mid-to-high latitudes. Hence, they could be entirely attributed to chaotic dynamics. On the other hand, the two simulations that they highlighted in their study represented extreme cases, and most of the simulations suggested that the future outcome may be somewhere in between.

My interpretation of Deser et al.‘s results is that the range of possible future temperatures gets broader at the same time as the most likely outcome follows a warming curve. This means that the most likely scenario is warming for the future while there still is a small possibility that the temperature for a particular location hardly changes (or even cools) over a 50-year period.

What strikes me as important about this is it surely means that those economists or advocates who argue for money to be spent more on adaptation to climate change rather than limiting emissions are barking up the wrong tree.

It has long been acknowledged that regional effects of climate change are harder to predict that the bigger picture - this research seems to go further in demonstrating this.   So if you are a politician, how can you reliably predict what adaptation projects are most appropriate to your particular region?

Not a novel story - but a somewhat worrying one

It was only in August that I noted a report that Israeli researchers had found long term decline in human sperm count and quality:

Over the last 10 to 15 years, the concentration of sperm samples collected by the bank dropped 37% from 106 million cells per milliliter to 67 million, according to Dr. Ronit Haimov-Kochman, a leading Israeli infertility researcher at the Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center.

Now a very similar sounding study in France finds much the same:

New research shows that the concentration of sperm in men's semen has been in steady decline between 1989 and 2005 in France. In addition, there has been a decrease in the number of normally formed sperm.

The study is important because, with over 26,600 men involved, it is probably the largest studied sample in the world and although the results cannot be extrapolated to other countries, it does support other studies from elsewhere that show similar drops in semen concentration and quality in recent years.

They found that over the 17-year period there was a significant and continuous 32.2% decrease in semen concentration (millions of spermatozoa per millilitre of semen), at a rate of about 1.9% per year. The researchers calculated that in men of the average age of 35, semen concentrations declined from an average of 73.6 million/ml in 1989 to 49.9 million/ml in 2005.

In addition, there was a significant 33.4% decrease in the percentage of normally formed sperm over the same period. Changes in the way sperm shape (morphology) was measured during this time may partly explain this decrease and make it difficult to give an estimate for the general population. However, the researchers say that these changes do not account for the total decrease in the quality of sperm morphology observed over the study period.

In their paper, the researchers write: "To our knowledge, it is the first study concluding a severe and general decrease in sperm concentration and morphology at the scale of a whole country over a substantial period. This constitutes a serious public health warning. The link with the environment particularly needs to be determined."

 A few observations:

a.   the Israeli's decline seems to have started from a much higher starting point.  I wonder what the explanation for that might be.

b.  the Israeli report at my first link noted that 20 million per ml and below count as "abnormal" sperm counts, and the French figures indicate that the average is heading that way very rapidly.

c.  As noted at the end of the French report - surely it's most likely that it is something environmental that is causing this, and the figures do sound as if it is something deserving really serious and urgent research.

This deserves greater attention in the media, I reckon.

UPDATE:  the Guardian has a good article looking at this study, and noting the history of controversy over whether declining sperm counts are "real" or just an artefact of changing  laboratory methods.

Certainly, it seems to my amateur scientist eye that the French study goes a long way towards showing that it is real.  The Guardian article notes that there is no detail of socioeconomic factors that might account for why the men in the study had lower sperm counts (such as if they were more likely to be smokers or drinkers), but as the original article I linked to suggested, the men who end up in fertility clinics are probably more likely not to be from the poorer classes, and to have reasonable health if they have been trying to conceive.  The sample, in other words, may be biased for higher than average sperm counts, not lower.

Novel topic No 8 - the Evils of Tea

An odd article in phys.org:

Poor women who drank tea were viewed as irresponsible as whisky drinkers in early 19th-century Ireland, new research by Durham University has unearthed.

Critics at the time declared that the practice of tea drinking – viewed as a harmless pastime in most past and present societies – was contributing to the stifling of Ireland's economic growth, and was clearly presented as reckless and uncontrollable. Women who drank tea wasted their time and money, it was said, drawing them away from their duty to care for their husbands and home. It was felt this traditionally female responsibility was vital to progressing the national economy.

Pamphlets published in England at the time suggest that the concerns about tea drinking were also felt widely outside Ireland. Some believed it threatened the wholesome diet of British peasants and symbolised damage to the social order and hierarchies.

 According to the Durham University paper, published in the academic journal Literature and History today (5 Dec) and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, reformers singled out tea drinking amongst peasant women as a practice which needed to be stamped out to improve the Irish economy and society.

Author Dr Helen O'Connell, Lecturer in English Studies at Durham University, who analysed pamphlets and literature from that time, said: "Peasant women were condemned for putting their feet up with a cup of tea when they should be getting a hearty evening meal ready for their hard-working husbands.

  This is the best bit:

Pamphlets the reformers distributed to peasant households lambasted tea drinking as a luxury poor women could not afford and which could even cause addiction, illicit longing and revolutionary sympathies. It was also said that tea drinking could even be akin to being a member of a secret society, a belief which heightened political anxieties at a time of counter revolution within the Union of Britain and Ireland.

Dr Helen O'Connell said: "The prospect of poor peasant women squandering already scarce resources on fashionable commodities such as tea was a worry but it also implied that drinking tea could even express a form of revolutionary feminism for these women.

"If that wasn't enough, there were also supposedly drug-like qualities of tea, an exotic substance from China, which was understood to become addictive over time."

A novel topic No 7: the birds' bath

One of the nice things about our house is that we have a birth bath in the back yard which is easily visible from the dining table and kitchen.  Hence, we often get to watch birds bathing while eating lunch.  (You can also see the bath from the main lounge area too.)   It's fun watching birds bathe:  everyone should have such avian facilities in their yard.

But, it has occurred to me - why do they bathe at all?   Does the water help remove lice?  Google is my friend, and leads me to some information:

When birds bathe in water or saturate themselves with dust they are actively maintaining their plumage. In well-watered areas bathing is most common, in arid ones dusting is more often observed. Experiments with quail show that frequent dusting helps to maintain an optimum amount of oil on the feathers. Excess plumage lipids, including preen oil, are absorbed by the dust and expelled along with dry skin and other debris. If quail are prevented from dusting, their feathers quickly become oily and matted. Dusting may also help to discourage bird lice, but no experimental evidence exists as yet showing that to be the case.

Wrens and House Sparrows frequently follow a water bath with a dust bath (one reason to suspect an anti-parasite function for dusting). Overall, the amount of time and effort birds put into bathing and dusting indicates how critical feather maintenance may be. Feathers are marvelous and intricate devices, but keeping them functional requires constant care.

A bird is considered to be bathing whenever it uses any of several stereotyped movements to wet its feathers. One pattern, wading, is commonly observed in birds with strong feet and broad, short, flexible wings. In a typical sequence a bird stands in the water, fluffs the feathers to expose the bare skin between their bases, and rapidly flicks the wings in and out of the water. The breast is submerged and rolled vigorously back and forth, and then, as the front end emerges, the head is thrown back, forming a cup with the partially elevated wings and tail, and dousing the feathers of the back. Those feathers are elevated so that the water reaches the skin, and then lowered, forcing the water between them. The sequence may be repeated, with the bird submerging farther in each cycle, until it is a mass of soaked disarranged feathers. Variations on this theme can be seen in different species, such as robins, thrushes, mockingbirds, jays, and titmice.

So, it seems the dust might be more important than the water in removing lice?  Oddly, I can't find, even via Google scholar, any papers on water itself removing parasites.   But preening is important:

After bathing, birds dry themselves using ritualized movements. Even swimming birds must force the surplus water from between their feathers to protect their insulating properties. Anhingas and cormorants, which often sit in a characteristic sunbathing posture with drying wings spread, are perhaps also thermoregulating. (Vultures take on similar sunbathing postures in the morning. Sunbathing, which occurs in many birds, may stimulate skin parasites into activity so they can be more readily picked off.) Songbirds shake themselves to throw off water by vibrating wings and tail and ruffling feathers. All birds normally follow bathing with preening.  

More on preening from another website: 

 Preening is the simplest and most common of feather care activities. It involves two different actions, nibbling and stroking. All other feather care activities seem to be a prelude to preening, or at least end in a bout of preening. Preening serves the function of returning feathers to their correct position and form and often involves the addition of oil to the feathers from the Uropygial gland. Wiping is simply wiping the feathers with the bill, pressing them into place and perhaps spreading some oil over them. Nibbling is a more serious attempt to put the feathers back into pristine condition. The bird uses its bill to nibble along the edges of feathers straightening them out and ensuring the barbules are all zipped up.

 One thing I am not sure I have heard about before, however, is "anting":

Many different songbird species have been observed picking up single ants or small groups and rubbing them on their feathers. Less commonly, other songbirds "ant" by spreading their wings and lying on an anthill, and squirming or otherwise stimulating the ants to swarm up among their feathers.

The purpose of anting is not well understood, but the most reasonable assumption seems to be that it is a way of acquiring the defensive secretions of ants primarily for their insecticidal, miticidal, fungicidal, or bactericidal properties and, perhaps secondarily, as a supplement to the bird's own preen oil. The former explanation is reinforced by a growing body of evidence on the biocidal properties of ant secretions and by an observation of a jungle Myna (Acridotheres fuscus) actively "anting" with a millipede, whose potent defensive secretions (evolved to fend off the millipede's enemies) could be smelled from 15 feet away. Likewise, the observed correlation of anting activity with high humidity might be explained by the documented fungicidal properties of ant secretions. Because the seasonal timing of anting and molting (spring and summer) often correspond, some have suggested that anting may soothe the skin during feather replacement. It seems more likely that the seasonal relationship simply reflects the greater activity of ants during those periods.

Interesting.

UPDATE:  here's another way birds deal with parasites - by lining their nests with cigarette butts!

Birds have long been known to line their nests with vegetation rich in compounds that drive away parasites. Chemicals in tobacco leaves are known to repel arthropods such as parasitic mites, so Monserrat Suárez-Rodríguez, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, and her colleagues wondered whether city birds were using cigarette butts in the same way.

In a study published today in Biology Letters¹, the researchers examined the nests of two bird species common on the North American continent. They measured the amount of cellulose acetate (a component of cigarette butts) in the nests, and found that the more there was, the fewer parasitic mites the nest contained.

A musical interlude

One of these kids is my daughter, playing the weekend before last:



But she told me that piece was really easy.  Last weekend, there was a mini concert at school, and she got to show her skill with very nice piano accompaniment.  I videoed it on our not so expensive camera, but have deleted the video part for privacy reasons.  The ending is very special:

  

Novel topic No 6 - watch out below!

So, some people study landslides.  Hence, we have The Landslide Blog.

With increased intensity of rainfall expected under AGW (whoops, sorry, that's not a novel topic) there will probably be more and more work for landslide specialists.

The blog is full of scary photos of the aftermath of landslides.   For example, this row of terrace houses in England did not do well out of the recent rains:

And some landslides seem to just be giant boulder slides:

A better view of this road hazard:

An even better bit of road blockage was in Malaysia earlier this year:

  

No one was killed.  

Anyway, it's an interesting natural disaster blog.

Novel topic No 5

This beer is highly recommended:

Novel topic No 4 - a cheap shave

I don't mind using shaving soap and a brush for shaving, but my preference has been for the tube lather soaps, which don't require a cup.  The Fauldings brand has been in supermarkets forever.

But I have always wondered about shaving sticks.  These have also always been in supermarkets, but I never understood the shape.  A couple of years ago I bought one, broke it in half and used it in a cup, but the pieces moved around and it was kind of annoying.

Of course, if I had checked the Web, I would have learned how to use one in the proper way.   Some guy has an illustrated guide (with some upmarket looking stick) here.

It is acknowledged in comments there that the more ubiquitous Palmolive shaving stick is pretty hard, and needs a bit of a dip in water before application.   However, it is clear that the stick has its fans. 

It's also clear that some men think a great deal about their soap-and-brush shaving experiences.  For example: 

I just used a Palmolive shave stick for the first time - wow! I have a heavy beard and had two-days growth.

After soaking the stick for a few minutes, I face lathered with a semi-broken in semogue 1305 boar, a 3rd use Personna IP and a 61 Fat boy. I had three good passes with the lather on the brush and touched up a bit with the stick after for some buffing.

I had tried to stick on Saturday thinking that it would behave like my Tabac stick (wet face, rub stick). The Palmolive is a much harder soap, so there was little lather. I did some B&B research and learned to soak the soap a bit and today perfection.

It provided a nice cushioned lather, lubricated and protected well. I like the scent, finding it to be be damp-forest smelling. Palmolive will be a permanent part of my rotation.

***OLD MAN SCENT ALERT*** The scent of Palmolive is definitely old school. If you like the scent of Williams, Tabac, Van Der Hagen, you'll like this scent. I happen to like all of these very much, so the scent of Palmolive is a plus for me.

Is there any benefit to grating this stuff into a bowl? Has anyone does this?

Yes, there are men who know a great deal about shaving brushes, with terminology that sounds vaguely associated with weaponry.  I still use a cheap-ish looking one I know for a fact I got in 1984.  I did not use it for many years, but still.

Anyhow, yes I have found using a Palmolive stick the "right" way works well, and the stick seems to be lasting a very long time.