Easter at home

That was a bit of a bland Easter break.  We did go fishing at Raby Bay (Cleveland) on Friday morning though: only the adults caught a few small ones to release, but at least the kids got bites and some fun.  But then a cold took out the son for the next couple of days, and forecast rain for Sunday meant we were housebound, so I offered to finally get around to painting the bathroom and toilet with a can of paint bought for the purpose probably 5 or 6 years ago.  It had actually started rusting at one spot inside the can (I didn't realise this was possible) and so the paint job was enlivened by the occasional streak of brown amongst the cream colour.  It didn't happen too often, but the paint itself didn't seem great quality (it was a cheaper brand) and I have had better painting experiences.  It will soon be 10 years that we have been here - and this job means the interior repaint that started in the first year has now been finished.  (Probably just in time to start with new colours for the rest of the house.)

Going back to my son's cold, he did keep using the Samsung tablet despite my complaint that this would be the fastest way he could spread his illness, especially to the alternative person who mainly uses it (me.)  I have for a while been going to speculate here on this:  I wonder if the remarkable spread of tablet computers is going to be the main factor behind the next influenza epidemic that wipes out a large percent of the population.  Maybe after the collapse of civilisation,  Apple will be deemed to be a symbol of evil and pestilence. 

Anyway, Sunday morning featured what I guess counts as a family tradition.  The kids don't worry about eggs (in fact, my son still doesn't care for ordinary chocolate much, even though he'll eat chocolate cake and lamingtons), but they do like to eat a jelly rabbit with marshmellows for Easter breakfast:

You can tell it's a rabbit, can't you?  At least it didn't disintegrate on removal from the mould this year.  It's a real downer when that happens.  (Not really - the kids find that funny too.)

On the other up-sides, I've started reading a 1960's book I got last year by some German academic about Israelite religion (I skipped forward to the bit about human sacrifice), as well as a new (second hand from the Bookfest) Graham Greene - The End of the Affair.   It's pretty short, so that should be easy to finish quickly.  I also now have the second volume of the Norman Sherry bio of Greene.   I haven't read the first one yet, given that I am not entirely sure how interesting it is to read so much detail about such an odd character.  Well, no, I assume it is interesting; it's just that I keep giving priority to time on the internet.

I beat my daughter at cards on Saturday night, which was well deserved after she thrashed me the last two times we played.  (Spit and James Bond are the preferred games at the moment, with the occasional round of Jacks and Fives.)

I think the BBC comedy Rev., which I have been meaning to recommend, might have finished Sunday night on ABC1. (No, now that I check, it looks like it has one more episode to go, but it is also going to be coming back.)  I don't know how accurate it really is, of course, but it certainly feels like an insightful dig at the state of the Anglican church in England.  It has very good acting all around, and a title character who the writer is wise enough to let redeem himself somewhat by the end of most episodes.  I tire of shows where a jerk is a jerk throughout. 

Oh dear.  Back to work tomorrow... Or today, now.

A General Patton Easter

Lords of Karma and Military Reincarnation � Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

I've been looking at another history side about odd things, which I should add to the blogroll, and was reminded of something I think I have heard before:  George Patton's belief in reincarnation went so far as to at least speculate that he was the Roman soldier who pierced Christ's side during the crucifixion:

 Patton did write a poem  Through a Glass Darkly, which described these various lives. So Patton seems to suggest, with characteristic modesty, that he had been the soldier who had stabbed Christ on the cross: ‘Perhaps I stabbed our Savior/ In His sacred helpless side./ Yet I’ve called His name in blessing/ When in after times I died.’ The poem includes the words ‘So forever in the future/ Shall I battle as of yore,/ Dying to be born a fighter/But to die again once more’, which might go quite well to a heavy metal beat.

I wonder if that made George a bit sombre and prickly around Easter time?   And anyway, how come George seemed to believe he was always going to be a fighter?  Isn't the point of reincarnation to believe that you can change into something better/different over time, based on past experience?

It's Easter, so a bit about crucifixion

History of Good Friday execution method: When did we stop crucifying people? - Slate Magazine

This short Slate Explainer article notes that it is said that Constantine  outlawed crucifixion after his conversion, although the matter is not without doubt.  In any event, it is interesting to be reminded about the nastiness of the punishment (and to be reminded that Saudi Arabia still does it - even in this last week):

Even if Constantine did, in fact, end the practice of crucifixion, it’s not clear that he did so out of respect for Christ’s execution. Aurelius Victor, the earliest historian to claim that Constantine banned crucifixion, explained that the emperor was motivated by a sense of humanity rather than piety. Crucifixion is a pretty gruesome way to go—significantly worse than the New Testament makes it seem. Although Christ reportedly expired in a matter of hours, many crucifixion victims clung to life for days. Even in Roman times, it was considered an exceptionally cruel punishment, reserved mainly for those who challenged state authority, such as insurgents and enemy soldiers. (Joel Marcus of Duke described crucifixion as “parodic exaltation,” because it gave rebels the fame they sought, albeit in a grotesque form.) By some accounts, Constantine replaced crucifixion with hanging, a less painful execution method. Constantine’s supposed ban on crucifixion came as part of a package of reforms, further suggesting that he was merely exercising human mercy. Branding prisoners’ faces, for example, was also prohibited around the same time—a reform that had nothing to do with Christ’s execution.

Whether or not Constantine put a stop to Roman crucifixions, he definitely kicked off the Christian fascination with crucifixion and the cross. Before Constantine’s reign, it appears that images of the crucifixion were mainly used by pagans to taunt Christians. The third century Alaxamenos graffito depicts a worshipper standing next to a donkey-headed man on a crucifix. The inscription reads, “Alexamenos worships god.” Not until the fifth century did Christians widely adopt the crucifixion as their own symbol, and the faithful then sought out pieces of Christ’s cross.

A technique not tried...

Hard-boiled eggs: Why you should never actually boil them.

As l usually find myself boiling eggs about once a month (for tuna salad), I feel I should give this a try.

Hearing voices

BBC News - The people who think they tune into dead voices

For some reason, the BBC News magazine has an article about the history of EVP - Electro Voice Projection - which all started with Konstantin Raudive in the 1960's.

I wouldn't have thought the whole business could be described like this:

Nowadays, EVP is a standard tool of ghost hunters worldwide. There are hundreds of internet EVP forums and many serious and well-educated people who see it as proof positive that the dead are trying to talk to us.

For example, Anabela Cardoso, a former Portuguese career diplomat who lives in Spain and publishes the Instrumental Transcommunication Journal. She has a well-equipped recording studio and claims to have replicated the Gerrards Cross findings. 

"My voices are not little voices," she says. "They are loud and clear and totally understandable." She offered to send me a CD.

Apparently the CD contained voices in Spanish and Portuguese which "are not really very clear", but they are voices.

Raudive's recordings are not very impressive, apparently, and he went into a loony direction:

 After Breakthrough was published, Raudive progressed from voices captured on tape to voices coming from animals, in particular a budgerigar named Putzi, who spoke in the voice of a dead 14-year-old girl.

 Uhuh.

The article does note some interesting psychology:

 As Joe Banks, a sound artist, points out, a dead person speaking in studio quality wouldn't be nearly so convincing as a voice you must strain to hear. 

Banks has an ongoing project called Rorschach Audio. He suggests that the voices are the aural equivalent of inkblot tests devised by Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach. He argues that while the EVP experimenters think they are doing parapsychology, they are actually unwittingly carrying out psychology experiments. 

For example, if you take recorded speech and replace every sixth of a second with white noise, the speech is still comprehensible. But if instead of white noise you use silence, it's much harder to understand. 

We are naturally well-adapted by evolution to imaginatively reconstruct speech against a noisy background - imagine trying to whisper in a windy forest to your hunting companions. 

EVP enthusiasts, Banks thinks, aren't idiots. They are just being fooled by audio illusions that take us all in.

 Interesting.

From the world of science fiction

Brain scans predict which criminals are more likely to reoffend 

In a twist that evokes the dystopian science fiction of writer Philip K. Dick, neuroscientists have found a way to predict whether convicted felons are likely to commit crimes again from looking at their brain scans. Convicts showing low activity in a brain region associated with decision-making and action are more likely to be arrested again, and sooner.

Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist at the non-profit Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his collaborators studied a group of 96 male prisoners just before their release. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the prisoners’ brains during computer tasks in which subjects had to make quick decisions and inhibit impulsive reactions.

The scans focused on activity in a section of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a small region in the front of the brain involved in motor control and executive functioning. The researchers then followed the ex-convicts for four years to see how they fared.

Among the subjects of the study, men who had lower ACC activity during the quick-decision tasks were more likely to be arrested again after getting out of prison, even after the researchers accounted for other risk factors such as age, drug and alcohol abuse and psychopathic traits. Men who were in the lower half of the ACC activity ranking had a 2.6-fold higher rate of rearrest for all crimes and a 4.3-fold higher rate for nonviolent crimes. The results are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences¹.

 Pretty amazing.  

White people's fears

The Roots of Anti-Government Gun Culture in America - The Daily Beast

David Frum has a look here at an interesting sounding book about how American attitudes to gun ownership have evolved.    The paranoid basis run by the NRA (Americans need to be allowed to be armed so as to defend themselves against their own tyrannical government) has its basis, the books argues, in the Black Panther movement in the late 60's.  The big change, of course, is that it is now the white and the (relatively) rich who say they fear their own government, not the poor blacks.

Quite a weird turnaround, isn't it?

Hello all you Gillard haters out there, part 2

The days of relying on natural resources are over

Ken Davidson summarises an important recent story:

Nathan Fabian is chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change, which advises 65 major institutional investors who are responsible for funds with a market valuation of about $1 trillion.

Fabian told a recent business Climate Alliance conference in Melbourne: ''A positive trend in the evidence of climate change impacts, from actual recent events, is becoming clearer. This is an important development … As you would expect with these developments in the science, the notable additional scrutiny is coming not so much from civil society, but from the elite economic institutions around the world and the investment community as well.''

The science now suggests that 2 degrees of warming is no longer safe. The International Energy Agency says that the world has a 50/50 chance of keeping warming to less than 2 degrees, if only one-third of the known reserves of fossil fuels are exploited. The International Panel on Climate Change says that to reduce the risk of breaking the 2 degree barrier to one-in-five would require leaving 80 per cent of the known reserves in the ground. (More risky than Russian roulette!)

Fabian quoted a recent report by Jun Mao, chief economist for Deutsche Bank, which shows that China will switch from being a net coal importer to net exporter by 2017; that the price of seaborne coal will fall to $70 a tonne; that even at $87 a tonne, 43 million tonnes of production from Australia would be forced off line; and that new developments planned in the Galilee Basin would not be profitable and couldn't attract finance.

The respected Carbon Tracker says that companies reliant on coal revenues are in an asset bubble. This might help explain why the market price of equities of mining companies such as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Anglo American have continued to fall, despite the recent recovery in the share market generally.

The writing is on the wall for the lucky country. Unless we can manage risk - impossible without incorporating the environmental damage of burning fossil fuel in the price - the chance of dodging the bullet of catastrophic climate change is remote.

Hello to all you Gillard haters out there...

You probably don't even understand the policy you hate the most:

Study finds widespread ignorance about carbon tax

Nine months after its introduction 54 per cent of people believed the tax, which specifically excludes motor fuel, had pushed up prices at service stations. Most people surveyed also estimated that their cost of living had risen by $20 or more a week, while 5 per cent put the increase at more than $100 a week.  The government's modelling came up with $9.90 a week.

Asked about compensation, 49 per cent said they had received nothing at all, whereas the compensation package introduced with the tax applies to 90 per cent of the population.

For all of you Julia Gillard fans out there.......(hello?)

Well, at least Harry Clarke likes her too...

Meanwhile, John Quiggin, who (despite otherwise sounding a sensible enough chap) has been a Rudd booster for a long time, has made no comment on Thursday's events.  He'll probably blame Julia for not resigning for the good of the Party. 

When Julia plays DayZ

OK, so it was a rush job...

Universal mysteries

There's a new, more detailed, map of the cosmic microwave background out.   It does not resolve some oddities:

It has also uncovered a surprise. The simplest models of inflation predict that fluctuations in the CMB should look the same all over the sky. But Planck has found asymmetries in opposite hemispheres of the sky, as well as a ‘cold spot’ that covers a large area, which were also noticed by WMAP. “It defines a preferred direction in space, which is an extremely strange result,” says Efstathiou. This rules out some models of inflation, but does not undermine the idea itself, he adds. It does, however, raise tantalizing hints that there may yet be new physics to be discovered in Planck’s data.

Today in politics

Today's spectacularly peculiar episode in the ongoing Rudd Wars just goes to show what serious damage can happen in political parties when personality based civil wars get entrenched.

Although I can't remember much of the detail now,  this all reminded me of the interminable years of the Peacock/Howard rivalry in the 1980's:  the big difference being that it all went on while their party was in Opposition, and helped keep it there.   I have trouble remembering when a party that was in government has had such a protracted internal division.

I suppose it is hard to know how active Rudd has been in encouraging the undermining of Gillard in the last month or two; it is possible that the journalistic backgrounding has been mainly initiated by his supporters off their own bat.  However, what is surely clear is that he has never got on the phone to call them off, telling them, for example, that he really did not want the job and they were only hurting the government.

Here's a suggestion for Kevin:  you are (puzzlingly) popular in Queensland.  The Labor Party here desperately needs a high profile leader in State Parliament.   Resign from Federal Parliament, take a year or two off, get some sleep, work your way into State Parliament, and you'll soon have a good crack at being a long term Queensland Premier.

An unpleasant sounding way to go

Man dies after parasitic worms invade lungs

The man died in California, but was a Vietnamese immigrant:

The 65-year-old man was apparently infected by the worms in Vietnam, one of many countries in the world where they're known to infect humans. About 80 percent to 90 percent of people die if they are infected by the worm species and then suffer from so-called "hyperinfection" as the worms travel through their bodies, said report co-author Dr. Niaz Banaei, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University School of Medicine.

The man's case emphasizes the importance of testing patients who might be infected with the parasite before giving them drugs to dampen the immune system, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, who's familiar with the report findings. "You have to think twice before starting big doses of steroids," Hotez said. "The problem is that most physicians are not taught about this disease. It often does not get recognized until it's too late."

I wonder if this has ever happened here?

She makes it sound so attractive

Can you imagine Blackpool without swimming in the sea? I couldn't bear it | UK news | guardian.co.uk

Someone writing in The Guardian remembers fondly her childhood at the beach at Blackpool, with scenes like this:

As a Blackpool girl born and bred, I revel in the nostalgia of childhood summers spent dipping toes in shallow water before slowly heading deeper into the unknown, stepping carefully for fear of disturbing an angry crab with his pincers at the ready....

For as long as I can remember, Blackpool beach has never been particularly clean. I remember as a child wistfully looking at postcards of exotic destinations such as Italy and Turkey, where glittering green oceans made the yachts that sailed upon them appear brilliant white.

I remember wondering why our sea was brown, not turquoise, and why the sand was dotted with empty cans of Special Brew and the odd plastic bag.

 Heh.

Guess the Dad

BBC News - Kenya condom advert pulled after religious complaints

This is an interesting story from the BBC about an ad promoting condom use in Kenya getting pulled off air because it dealt with a real situation - a married woman having another lover.

It would seem that extra marital relationships are surprisingly common in that country:

Dr Cherutich told the BBC the advert had been launched because up to 30% of married couples had other partners.

Around 1.6 million people out of Kenya's population of 41.6 million are living with HIV, according to the UN.

In the video, the reporter says that a 2009 study also indicated that most people in these relationships do not use condoms.  Although the article doesn't mention it, this surely means there must be a lot of kids with different fathers from the presumed one.

The report says it is church and Muslim leaders who are unhappy with the advertisement, saying the government should promote faithful marriages instead.   But it also notes that 80% of the country is Christian.

As with the contraceptive mandate in the US, where the US bishops do not want increased access to a product their own congregations use against Church teaching, it seems to me that some Christians have become pretty good at blaming governments for their own failings in convincing their congregation to live differently.

More bad timing for Labor

Huge export earnings rise tipped for resources sector | The Australian

Of course, if the Coalition gets in, it's goodbye any form of mineral tax to help run the country.

New baby

Our fertile possum visitor and her new, squashed, offspring:

Hard to disagree

Poor planning has doomed Labor's media reform - The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I find Bruce Hawker a dull analyst on TV, but I find it hard to disagree with his general take on how Labor seems to approach policy.

For the first time, I feel that Gillard will soon lose the leadership.  She presumably gave the go ahead to Conroy to run with the "it's all or nothing with these media reform proposals and we will not negotiate" tactic.  Conroy doesn't have a good head for politics - literally, with that haircut of his - but this is just the latest in a series of poorly judged approaches by him.

Whoever gets the leadership needs, I think, to make it clear that Labor needs to look at how it deals with processes.  No more announcing policies that have yet to be finalised (Gillard and using Timor for asylum seekers, for example).  

If Rudd does rise from the grave (groan) he at least needs not to be triumphalist.  In fact, he probably can't afford that due to the lack of people who would then work for him in the ministry.  But he should acknowledge that the haphazard approach to policy began with him, and say that he will work hard to make sure that the party's policy formulation appears, and in fact is, a result of careful and considered process, and not the results of running around at the last minute to get a policy seemingly just for the sake of having a policy.  He could also promise to slow down personally and let his staff get some sleep.  

It seems to me that Rudd is so puzzlingly popular with the public that the Coalition could not actually run for long with all of the deep personal criticism that Labor politicians came out with last year, because people would soon think the Coalition was being unfair. 

I find Crean harmless and reasonable but he doesn't have much charisma with the public.

As much as I think Rudd is not a man to be admired or liked, if it is between him and Crean I think it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the party would do better under Rudd. 

If Gillard retains leadership, I would still wish her well, and maintain my belief that she is the most unreasonably despised politician this country has ever seen.

Today's history lesson

BBC News - The African chief converted to Christianity by Dr Livingstone

Here's a short account of the missionary work in Africa by the famous Dr Livingstone.  Just one convert, but an important one.  The story has many interesting parts, including this:

This was how things stood when Sechele first met Livingstone - he ruled a half-tribe. Livingstone persuaded him to make peace with his other uncle by sending him a gift of gunpowder for his rifle.

The uncle was suspicious that the gunpowder was bewitched, tried to neutralise it with fire, and in the resulting explosion was killed. Sechele thus ruled over a reunited Bakwena.

And here's bit of bad luck:

As Sechele grew increasingly interested in Christianity, he found two huge barriers in his way. One was rain.

Tswana tribes had rainmakers, whose job was to use magic to make the rain come. Livingstone, like all missionaries, vehemently opposed rainmaking, on both religious and scientific grounds. 

Sechele happened to be his tribe's rainmaker as well as kgosi, and Livingstone's stay coincided with the worst drought ever known, so Sechele's decision to stop making rain was predictably unpopular.