More on arctic ice loss being felt down south...

Arctic ice loss amplified Superstorm Sandy violence

Cornell and Rutgers researchers report in the March issue of Oceanography that the severe loss of summertime Arctic sea ice—attributed to greenhouse warming—appears to enhance Northern Hemisphere jet stream meandering, intensify Arctic air mass invasions toward middle latitudes, and increase the frequency of atmospheric blocking events like the one that steered Hurricane Sandy west into the densely populated New York City area. 

 The article, "Superstorm Sandy: A Series of Unfortunate Events?" was authored by Charles H. Greene, Cornell professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and director of Cornell's Ocean Resources and Ecosystems program; Jennifer A. Francis of Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences; and Bruce C. Monger, Cornell senior research associate, earth and atmospheric sciences. 

The researchers assert that the record-breaking sea ice loss from summer 2012, combined with the unusual atmospheric phenomena observed in late October, appear to be linked to global warming.

A strong atmospheric, high-pressure blocking pattern over Greenland and the northwest Atlantic prevented Hurricane Sandy from steering northeast and out to sea like most October hurricanes and tropical storms from the Caribbean. In fact, Sandy traveled up the Atlantic coast and turned left "toward the most populated area along the eastern seaboard" and converged with an extratropical cyclone; this, in turn, fed the weakening Hurricane Sandy and transformed it into a monster tempest.

An interesting mystery

Mysterious light blamed for circle of fire - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Here's the report in full:

Tasmanian police and firefighters are unable to explain the source of a beam of light which reportedly fell from the sky and formed a circle of fire in a Hobart suburb.

Early Saturday morning police and fire crews received calls from concerned residents in Carnegie Street at Claremont, who reported seeing a bright light igniting a fire in a nearby paddock.

Tasmania Fire Service officer Scott Vinen says the blaze was quickly put out, leaving an obvious burnt patch.

He says the bizarre incident has everyone baffled.

"Once we put the fire out, we kind of walked through the fire and tried to find something," he said.
"We thought a flare or something may have landed there, but we couldn't find any cause."

The Fire Service says it will not investigate further.

 I can't see it mentioned in the Hobart Mercury.  What a pity:  I would like to directly hear interviews with witnesses.

Colebatch is back

Past was a blast so now it's back to the future

My favourite economics journalist of late is back, making reassuring sounds about the economy.

Hope he's right...

Lighter than air - then and now

Hindenburg mystery solved after 76 years - Science - News - The Independent

Speaking of lighter than air things, I noticed somewhere last week that the management of the US helium supply is still a vexed issue.

But how much is there left in the world?  According to the Chairman of the Balloon Council (what a job!) in a piece he wrote for CNN, there's enough for 300 years at current rates of use.  Of course, I suppose there is a question about how much you can trust the front man from the party balloon industry. 

Celibacy reconsidered, any decade now...

I thought that the article by Frank Bruni reprinted in Fairfax today put the case against celibacy in the Catholic priesthood very well.

And looking at the Guardian, I read for the first time the background of the allegations made by a few priests (and an ex priest) against the Scottish Cardinal O'Brien.  It is pretty sordid, but most remarkably, it appears the timing is a complete co-incidence with the Pope's resignation, which is not I had assumed:

The four complainants made their statements to the papal nuncio, Archbishop Mennini, around 8 or 9 February. On 11 February the pope resigned. The first response the complainants received from the nuncio said O'Brien should continue to go to Rome because "that will make it easier to arrange his retirement to be one of prayer and seclusion like the pope". The complainants recognised church subtext. In a message to me one wrote: "This is saying, 'leave it to us to sweep it under the carpet and you can forget about it. It will fade away as if we have dealt with it.' Not acceptable."

On 22 February, the cardinal gave an interview to the BBC about going to the conclave. He also said that church rules on celibacy should be reviewed. Informally, the men heard that the church was unhappy about that interview. Action would be taken. The cardinal would not go to Rome.

So did the church act because it was shocked by the claims against the cardinal or were they were angry he had broken ranks on celibacy? Two days later, the Observer published the story.

The other regrettable thing, of course, is how unfortunate it is that a Cardinal caught in scandal about his own sexual behaviour should be one who breaches solidarity on celibacy.  This gives the perfect out for the old boys network to dismiss his call on character grounds and claim him as part of the homosexual element that has caused the problem of child abuse.  (It would appear one of the major blind spots of Benedict that he was right on board with this theory, despite lots of evidence against it.)  But in reality, one could say that (assuming the allegations are true) it is quite legitimate of someone who has failed at celibacy to be the one to make the point that it is a road too hard (and unnecessary) for priests to follow.

One thing for sure:  the simplest thing the new Pope could do to indicate to the world that the Church is open to realistic reform and change would be for the celibacy rules to be relaxed.

It is, probably, too soon for the whole Humanae Vitae question to be revisited, but I would guess that would be a job for the next Pope.  Catholics will just have to continue ignoring that teaching until it is overturned.

Looking forward to this

(The first movie was very funny.  You ought to see it, with kids or not.)

I predict it won't happen

Mars mission poses greater risk to human life than Nasa would allow | Science | guardian.co.uk

The Guardian lists all of the technical and other problems that this proposed slingshot missions would face. 

Yet still, it seems not to have made the key point (and I can't say any other report I have noticed has either):   there is no point in sending people on a dangerous mission with untested life support equipment in a tiny can just to spin around a planet, take some photos, and come back.   

This article says the capsule would have a about 7 cubic meters space.  But some articles say the inflatable living quarters part would have a volume of 17 m3.  The pressurised volume of the International Space Station is 837m3.  Skylab, with a crew of 3, had a volume of 368m3.

Spending more than 500 days in a volume of 17 m3 is, in itself, nuts.

Is there a reliable medication available for the sudden development of claustrophobia?

Especially if the inflatable module develops a leak and has to be evacuated?

I read somewhere that the mission won't take pressure suits.  No EVA then to get away from each other for a while.

This is not going to happen...

Putting baby outside

For some reason, the BBC Magazine had a look recently  at the peculiarly Nordic habit of putting babies outside during the day for a nap - including in the middle of winter.  They value fresh air highly, apparently, regardless of the bitter cold, and manage to bundle the kids up enough that they don't freeze to death.  

If you have a look at this follow up, you can also see a Dutch "baby house", looking all the world like a rabbit hutch in the back yard, being used in the 1970s.  Really, you ought to watch the video:  it looks very, very strange to Australian eyes.  

Maybe its our residual fear of dingos, or something; but doing either of these in Australia would cause uproar if it appeared on Today Tonight, or some other tabloid TV show.

End times discussed

Could the Higgs mass determine the end of the universe?

 According to quantum theory, it’s possible that the lowest energy state of our universe – when there’s nothing but space and time – isn’t the lowest possible state of all.

In this picture, there exists an even lower energy state, one that our universe could transition to. That might not sound too ominous until you learn that in the lower energy state, all the protons in all the matter in the universe decay, with the unfortunate side effect that we cease to exist.

Worse still, the transition could happen at any time, anywhere in the universe, and expand at light speed from a tiny bubble until it annihilates the entire universe as we know it, which would be, you know, bad.

Recently, this idea was re-examined within the context of the Standard Model of Particle Physics – the modern quantum theory of subatomic particles and their interactions. Precise calculations dictate that the stability of our universe is intimately connected to the mass of the Higgs boson (and the top quark), a parameter which – thanks to the efforts of Large Hadron Collider – is now known to be about 125 GeV.

It is the conclusions of this re-examination that have raised a furore in the media: the Standard Model predicts that for our universe to be stable, the Higgs mass needs to be larger than 129.4 ± 5.6 GeV, so it only just fits within the uncertainties.

Ergo the end is nigh, at least in the units of time that cosmologists work with. But don’t stock your matter-collapsing-proof shelter just yet – those time scales are billions to trillions of years.

 The article goes on to note that, as the Standard Model doesn't cover everything, there may well be an "out."

The other person who had a lot hanging on the mass of the Higgs was Frank Tipler, who had predicted a Higgs mass way of 220 or so for his Omega Point theory to work.

Sadly, I have not seen any comment by him since the LHC announcement of its measurement last year.

That seems fast...

'Nearby' supermassive black hole rotates at close to the speed of light | Science | guardian.co.uk

Phil Plait at Slate gives a bit more detail:

As the material swirls around the black hole, it emits X-rays at a very specific energy—think of it as a color. But as it orbits that color gets smeared out due to the Doppler effect. The amount of smearing indicates how fast the material is moving, and that in turn can tell astronomers how fast the black hole is spinning. This can be complicated by the presence of dense clouds of material farther out from the black hole that absorb X-rays and mess up our observations. The new data from NuSTAR allowed astronomers to show that the smearing seen is definitely due to rotation and not obscuration, unambiguously revealing the black hole's tremendous spin: just a hair below the speed of light!

Most black holes spin far slower than that, so something ramped this hole’s spin way up. One possibility, as I mentioned above, is material falling in over time. Another is that it ate one or more other black holes, which is creepy but possible. Galaxies collide, and when they do their central black holes can merge, growing larger. If the geometry is just right, this can create a single black hole with more spin. Due this a few times, and you can spin one up to fantastic speeds.

I’ll note that NGC 1365 is a massive galaxy, easily twice as large as the Milky Way (an we’re one of the biggest galaxies in the Universe). That’s exactly what you’d expect from a galaxy that’s spent a lifetime eating other ones. Cosmic cannibals grow fat when the hunting’s good.

The movie finance business still hard to understand

DreamWorks Animation takes $87 million write-down on 'Rise of the Guardians' - latimes.com

I promise I'll stop talking about movies soon, but this report shows (apparently) that a $145 million movie that takes in $300 million globally can still be said to have lost $87 million.

And this at a time when I thought digital projection was meant to make a substantial saving by studios not having to get film prints made and distributed around cinemas.  Also, I thought with kids films there was often substantial profit from DVD releases, but would this Christmas movie even be released yet? The movie is well suited for an Easter release.

Very odd. 

No rehabilitation needed

Japan’s prisons: Eastern porridge | The Economist

A somewhat interesting look here at how Japanese prisons operate.  (Watch the video too.  The interior of the prison looks pretty decent, but no reading?  Wow.)

Spielberg considered (again)

Oscars 2013 and Spielberg: The storyteller is part of our cultural DNA - CSMonitor.com

A reasonable enough, lengthy article here on Spielberg's career and development as a director.

But to see how nutty some of the reaction against him is now, read the handful of comments that follow it.

One thing that bothers me - last time I checked, a couple of weeks ago, Spielberg has not made a decision on his next movie. 

Irony, humour, etc

Well, at the First Things blog of all places, there's a decent post complaining about the attempts at humour at the Oscars show last night.  It goes on to note that the overuse of irony is actually the death of humour:

Irony, and its near-cousin sarcasm, is the lingua franca of popular culture. The more deeply we tread into this part of our national consciousness, the more we realize the breathtaking vanity of its values. Irony is, in the end, self-referential, so once it becomes self-self-referential, it has created a hall of mirrors that ultimately implodes into meaningless parodies of itself that are, well, humorless even to those toward whom the jokes were originally aimed.

When everything is ironic, irony ceases to be ironic. It lapses into mere meanness, leaving an incredibly bitter aftertaste. Indeed, the life-root of bullying just may be irony. What struck me last night was the utter brutality of much of the attempts at humor. The writers were equal-opportunity offenders, but this is, to some extent, what we find in a worldview where nothing is worth defending or treating as precious. I have a vague recollection that Henri Bergson once said that humor is the first step toward acceptance; I wonder if the corollary is true: if everything is acceptable, is there anything that can be humorous? Do rules, in some rudimentary way, actually generate humor? If comedy is always transgressive and the world (in the interest of tolerance) no longer allows transgression, then have we lost the ability to laugh? Based on the evidence of last night’s show, I have to wonder.

Actually, I think I stop understanding the argument by the last two sentences, but I was sort of with it up to then...

Not everyone liked Argo

Argo **** yourself: Ben Affleck’s Iran hostage movie is the worst. - Slate Magazine

Am I to take it that there is a lot of swearing in this film? 

Doesn't seem right...

Want to emigrate to Australia? Be warned – it's not 'hot Britain' | Rae Earl | Comment is free | The Guardian

You get some pretty wacky takes on Australia from British migrants, but this one seems to describe a place that is barely recognisable as being drawn from reality. 

Good background on a harmful bug

Understanding the recent listeria-linked cheese recall

Climate change working in ways not quite expected

Weather extremes provoked by trapping of giant waves in atmosphere

"An important part of the global air motion in the mid-latitudes of the Earth normally takes the form of waves wandering around the planet, oscillating between the tropical and the Arctic regions. So when they swing up, these waves suck warm air from the tropics to Europe, Russia, or the US, and when they swing down, they do the same thing with cold air from the Arctic," explains lead author Vladimir Petoukhov.

"What we found is that during several recent extreme weather events these planetary waves almost freeze in their tracks for weeks. So instead of bringing in cool air after having brought warm air in before, the heat just stays. In fact, we observe a strong amplification of the usually weak, slowly moving component of these waves," says Petoukhov.

The report ends on a note of caution:

...the 32-year period studied in the project provides a good indication of the mechanism involved, yet is too short for definite conclusions.

but it still sounds like an important study.

Zach for the Oscars

Re the Oscar show last night, which I tried to speed up with much use of fast forward on the digital recorder, but still couldn't compress to an hour and a half I was aiming for.

Seth MacFarlane:  He can sing! He can dance!  He can't mature beyond the age of 18!

OK, there were a couple of funny bits - the seduction of Sally Field was OK, and having William Shatner appear was amusing, but should have been funnier.

Seriously, MacFarlane is too smugly amused by himself, and his whole brand of humour is built on the sort of self aware political incorrectness that most people grow out of by their twenties.

So, I was thinking - what has gone wrong with finding an amusing host for the Oscar shows?  It easily feels like 15 years or more since I've seen a host who I thought was doing a good job.  Steve Martin used to be good, but not the last time he co-hosted.  Same with Billy Crystal.   Hollywood outsiders - like Lettermen - crash and burn.  Some people liked Hugh Jackman, but I don't care for him in anything he ever does.

What the show needs is amiable LA insiders who can do a bit of comedy.  Hosts don't need to sing and dance - let the professionals do that.  It doesn't need "edgy" or ironic comedy, but it does need someone who appeals to a younger demographic.

So who fits this bill?   It came to me last night. This guy:

Well, that's his latest role, as helpful flying monkey in the heavily promoted OZ film, but this is the man himself:

I mean, who doesn't like Zach Braff?    Who didn't like Scrubs?   In fact, he could do the whole hosting job as if it is a dream sequence from that show.    (You could surely do worse than hand over the entire comedy writing job for the Oscars to that creative team.)

Who knows, if I had a readership, I think this could be a campaign that would take off.  

Instead, we'll probably get Whoopi Goldberg for yet another attempt at a return to form.

Lincoln seen (and analysed)

In a minor triumph of parental pressure to have a 12 (nearly 13) year old boy see an educational movie that he may well not like, I convinced my son to see Lincoln with me yesterday.  He likes history a lot, and maybe has read some Horrible History stuff about the Civil War (he knew about the shooting in the theatre, definitely) so I did have at least something to work on.  Be warned, I said, the movie is mainly about politics, so there is a lot of talking; and you will almost certainly be the youngest person in the audience. (I was right on that count.)

On the drive to the cinema, I gave him a bit of background on Republicans and Democrats in the US, and tried to be helpful by suggesting that he could almost certainly impress his teacher if he could just somehow casually mention to her that he had been to see it.  He could even pretend that he really liked it, even if he didn't.  (He wouldn't be in on this subterfuge.  Kids these days - I don't know.)

So, how did he like it?

Well, I had warned him that I wanted absolutely no complaint during the movie that it was boring, but we did have an argument just before going into the cinema that $5.60 for a regular Slushie was just too expensive. This primed him to be a bit cranky for the first 20 minutes.

But at the end of the day - no, I don't think he found it boring.  Sure, he complained about how a lot of the talk was hard for him to understand, but I could tell that he was always paying attention, if not always for the right reason.  (Tommy Lee Jones, who my kids like a lot from the Men in Black movies, amused him by wearing a bad wig and playing a typically gruff character.)   If it wasn't for the Slushie argument, he might even have admitted to finding it, almost kinda, worthwhile seeing.

So how about me?   It's a thumbs up for being a really fine, intelligent and engaging movie.  I suspect that most people who find it boring may only do so from a point of view that they might have been expecting a more traditional biopic that spans more than the events of the last few months of Abe's life.   

As everyone says, you just can't keep your eyes off Daniel Day Lewis when he is on screen.  In that way it is like the other (to use a hackneyed bit of praise) absolutely mesmerising example of acting in a Spielberg film -  Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List. 

I deliberately did not read too many reviews or articles about the movie before seeing it, and I'm glad I took that approach.  You really don't want to know how nitpicking some people have been about its historical accuracy; and furthermore, I have read articles which have complained that some little detail was wrong, yet this has been contradicted in other articles.  Some of the criticism is of the kind "well, that just doesn't seem likely," but surely there are some matters of speculation involved here that no one can really be confident about.   (Even on a matter such as one prominent appearance of the "f" word, some have said this is unlikely; yet my own recent post on when it came into use indicates to me that you could not be certain that no man would use it that way at the time of the Civil War.)   It seems the movie had made everyone an expert on the Lincoln era. 

Overall, I would have to say that, having now read the relevant articles, it impresses me what a serious job Kushner did in trying to convey a movie that is essentially accurate, for a historical drama that has to fill in some details that aren't known.  I believe that Bob Carr, who seems to be a bit of a Lincoln nerd, praises it in this way as well.

One of the best overviews about its basic accuracy was at Slate.  Another short assessment from a historian who knows a lot about one of the key characters (Seward) says that there were plenty of minor points he thought wrong (the shift in some of the chronology is particularly puzzling, I think) but he still praises the movie overall:

All these points, however, are quibbles. Spielberg has made a great movie about Lincoln, Seward, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Civil War. With very few exceptions, the actors look like and act like the characters they portray; David Strathairn has Seward completely captured.

Even more persuasive are the relationships between the characters. We experience the interplay between Lincoln and Seward, how Seward could disagree with Lincoln yet serve as his most effective instrument. We see how the two men pursued their great goals, ending the Civil War and ending slavery, and how they were prepared to cut some corners to reach their goals. Spielberg and the actors make history alive in a way in which no author, however gifted, could with mere words.

I liked many of the details of the Lincoln household:  the young son Tad absolutely having the run of the house appears to be completely true.  I didn't know that the Lincolns were famously permissive parents, and Lincoln apparently took joy in playing with them.

Some people have complained a bit about the last ten minutes of the film, which I think is nonsense.  Many are simply hypersensitive above how Spielberg deals with emotion and always label it as sentimentalism.   As with Schindlers List, the ending caught me with an emotional wallop that I wasn't really expecting, and I sensed there were others in the audience suppressing a sniffle too.  (Overall, I feel confident that the audience was not finding the movie disappointing.)

So, all praise again to Spielberg.   And go see it.

Update:  Harold Holzer, one of the historical consultants to the movie, says that some of his suggestions were not followed.  But again, quite a lot of his points are of the "I don't think that's likely" character - not that it is known for sure that it could not have happened.  (Tad looking at the photographic plates, for example.  I thought it was suggested at one point that he was not supposed to be looking at them, and we know that the Lincoln were indulgent of his younger son, so how big a stretch is it really?)

Also - now he says this:

Lincoln may have given short, unmemorable speeches at countless flag-raising ceremonies in Washington, but never was he ever seen, as he is in the movie, fetching his manuscript from the lining of his top hat...

Yet in 2009 he said:

Yes, Lincoln did keep scraps of paper in the inside lining of his top hats — probably more often in the days he rode the legal circuit alone than when he was president and had clerks to help him file things.

 So it seems nitpicky why would he even mention the scene in the movie, then.

Anyway, Holzer still praises the movie overall.

Also - as I noted earlier, the main criticism of the movie has really come from right wing nutters who hate Lincoln even though he was Republican (and they also hate Spielberg too for being a liberal.)  Have a look at the start of the second comment following Holzer's article, for example:

The entire Lincoln Edifice Complex is a sham, a lie and a massive coverup of a tyrant who should have been shot the day before his inauguration.Spielberg adds yet another massive load of Bullshit on top the already Mt Rushmore high pile already extant about this singular mass murderer.

And in Australia, the only criticism of the film as "whitewashing" Lincoln that I have seen is from, you guessed it, the Right, in the form of Chris Berg of the IPA.  (Bolt had a bit of whine as well.)   Typical.

Update 2:  Daniel Day Lewis wins the Oscar, and makes what surely must be the funniest  joke of the evening.

Update 3:  I've stumbled across a very good, detailed article that says that Spielberg and Kushner have actually come up with some of their own legitimate historical arguments regarding motivation.   

Update 4:  A Washington Post article complaining about the lack of depiction of Fredrick Douglas in the movie.  Someone in the comment thread points out that he wasn't in Washington much in the couple of months the movie covers.   I have never seen so many people wanting to re-write a historical drama because of it not taking quite the route they wanted it to take.  Also, its worth some of the Lincoln defending comments there, regarding his attitude to slavery and freedom, like this one.