The Tony Abbott fence straddle continues

Coalition Blow to Local Government Referendum

Tony Abbott is a flaky politician who personally supports the constitutional amendment to clarify once and for all the Federal Government's ability to directly fund local council, but has crumbled under pressure from his dimwit Tea Party/IPA/conspiracist wing of the Coalition to find a way to try to ensure it won't pass.

He's a real disgrace, a million miles from being a "conviction politician" on anything.

A new weapon against high blood pressure

Removing nerves connecting kidney to the brain shown to reduce high blood pressure

Have I heard something about this before?  I can't remember.  Anyway, seems promising (and not overly invasive) for those with really serious blood pressure problems:

A new technique that involves removing the nerves connecting the kidney to the brain has shown to significantly reduce blood pressure and help lower the risk of stroke, heart and renal disease in patients. The procedure, which has very few side effects, has already shown promising results in hard-to-treat cases of high blood pressure....

The procedure, which has been successfully trialled on 19 patients at the BHI, is performed using a fine tube that is inserted in an artery in the patient's leg and positioned in the artery feeding blood to the patient's kidneys. The nerves to the kidney are around the artery and ablated by radio-frequency energy that is emitted from the tube....

Dr Nightingale, who runs the Specialist Hypertension Clinic at the BHI, said: "We have used renal denervation in patients who have hard-to-treat blood pressure. Similar to the results from the basic science experiments, we have also seen reductions in blood pressure which has been essential for reducing the risk of heart and renal disease, and stroke in our patients. This is an exciting new treatment for these patients who have struggled with high blood pressure which tablets are not controlling."

Dr Baumbach, an interventional cardiologist who performed the treatment, added: "The technique is very straight forward, performed as a day case and there are no side-effects. It is becoming a popular technique for patients with both resistance and poor tolerability to high blood pressure medication."

Does Andrew Bolt ever read Catallaxy threads?

Andrew Bolt starts off doing the right thing by calling out anonymous hateful twits who went on line to attack new Labor minister Ed Husic for taking his oath on a Koran, but then he makes a comment which indicates he must (if he was honest) also consider the threads of the Catallaxy (the posts of which seem to supply 30 -50% of his content now) to be the hate-filled poisonous pits:

His anonymous haters are of no account, and do not deserve the attention they are getting. There are too many such trolls on every chat site in the country. They do not deserve to intrude on adult conversation.

Hilariously, the "adult conversation" line is routinely used by the Bolt refugees who have taken over Catallaxy threads as a rejoinder to someone who disagrees with them.

Compare and contrast

Catholic Bishops in the news at Slate:

According to documents released today, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, moved nearly $57 million into a cemetery trust fund in 2007 specifically to shield it from lawsuits by victims of clergy sexual abuse. The New York Times has the scoop:

[T]he files released Monday contain a letter [Dolan] wrote to the Vatican in 2007, in which he explained that by transferring the assets, “I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.”

The Vatican moved swiftly to approve the request, the files show, even though it often took years to remove known abusers from the priesthood.

The files also reveal graphic details of the alleged abuse, including new revelations about its magnitude:

Archbishop Listecki released a letter last week warning Catholics in his archdiocese that the documents could shake their faith and trying to explain the actions of church leaders while offering apologies to victims.

“Prepare to be shocked,” he wrote. “There are some graphic descriptions about the behavior of some of these priest offenders.”

 Catholic Bishops as recently discussed at Father Z's blog:

From a reader:

When I was in grade school (1990′s), I was taught by a very devout teacher that one should genuflect (kneel?) on both knees with a slight bow of the head when entering/leaving the pew during adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.  I have never really seen this any place else, or even heard it discussed.  I don’t recall my grandfather ever doing this, and he spent at least an hour or more before the Blessed Sacrament each week and went to grade school in the 1930′s when all but one of his teachers were nuns.  What is the proper way to genuflect before the exposed Blessed Sacrament?  Thanks!

It is possible, even probable, that there were some variations of practice when the Blessed Sacrament was exposed. Also, conferences of bishops can, by and large, determine proper practices for Catholics in their regions.  If memory serves, some bishops conferences have eliminated the distinction of the “double-genuflection” when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed.  FAIL.

Against the IPA and the whinging anti-nanny staters

One hundred and fifty ways the nanny state is good for us

Simon Chapman attacks the IPA and its generic and predictable "the nanny state has gone too far!" campaign quite effectively, I think; even if one or two on his list of 150 laws which are "good for us" can be quibbled over.

(Just looking at it quickly, the one which I immediately think is legitimately called into scientific question is uniformly enforced bicycle helmets.   I have just read a recent article in the BMJ about the contradictory evidence on this topic, and the reasons why it is so hard to be certain whether it is a net good.   What I think should be clear to everyone is that it is silly to expect city bicycle hire schemes to be wildly successful if riders have to wear helmets while on those bicycles.  Why can't at least those bicycles be exempt?)

But the funniest anti-anti nanny state come back is this quote, which I don't recall seeing before:

Similar attacks once rained down on Edwin Chadwick, the architect of the first Public Health Act in England in 1848. He proposed the first regulatory measures to control overcrowding, drinking water quality, sewage disposal and building standards.

In response, the Times thundered:

We prefer to take our chance with cholera and the rest than be bullied into health. There is nothing a man hates so much as being cleansed against his will, or having his floors swept, his walls whitewashed, his pet dung heaps cleared away.

 That attitude expressed in the The Times uses exactly the same sentiments as Tim Wilson of the IPA and his new bff, the wannabe cultural warrior Nick Cater:

 As News Limited columnist Nick Cater argues in his recent book The Lucky Culture, there is a moralistic crusade by elites who object to “so-called adults” making different choices to themselves.

By standing up against excessive taxes, rules and regulations, Australians are merely objecting to the idea they are “children emotionally and intellectually” because they, for example, like a couple of beers with their barbecue.

 In fact, the idea that The Times could object to laws requiring the cleaning up of a filthy city sounds a bit hard to believe.  But, no, Googling the quote has led me to this page, from the British Library, which confirms that  The Times did indeed editorially campaign against sanitation, as did The Economist (!)  

In fact, in comments very reminiscent of excuses given by small government economists today regarding government led responses to CO2 emissions and climate change, the British Library notes that 160 odd years ago:

While it would seem that many people - from writers like Charles Dickens to social reformers like Henry Mayhew and civil servants like Edwin Chadwick - were in favour of sanitary reform, there were those who were against it. Often, it wasn't that there was opposition to the reform itself but, rather, to the cost or the effort involved in bringing it about.

Some individuals, usually those with an economic interest in property such as landlords, objected to reform measures - including clean water for every dwelling - because of the cost involved to install them in all of their properties.

Others were sceptical that sanitary reform would even improve the population's health. For example, the journal The Economist also objected to the campaign for sanitary reform, mainly because its editor and contributors believed that cholera and other epidemic diseases and illnesses were not directly caused by poor sanitary measures.

 Talk about your lessons from history...

Some pretty good, sweary, analysis

Swear words old and new: Sexual and religious profanity giving way to sociological taboos. - Slate Magazine

There are too many swear words in this article to allow much quoting of it at this blog, but its analysis of how swearing is changing is pretty good, I think.   (Even though it fails to note one big problem with swearing - it can become a very boring verbal tic, and this should be pointed out to all swearers who can't go more than a couple of sentences before using their favourite word again.)

The point that is made regarding the "sociological" taboos is true, I think, and I agree that it, broadly speaking, a good sign:

“What you can see becoming more taboo are racial slurs, but then also anything that kind of sums someone up,” says Mohr. “So people objecting to fat. And especially something I’ve noticed just in my lifetime is retarded. People and kids on the playground just said it all the time. And now, it’s really taboo.”

McWhorter refers to these as the “sociologically abusive” words. “Not God, not genitals, but minorities,” he says, adding a few others to the list. (You know the ones.) These words and utterances, it seems, are tracing a path that is the opposite of the one currently being traversed by bastard and goddamn and other classics of the cursing genre. “Racist, sexist, fatist terms, those sort of things where you insult the way a person looks, or their ethnic identity, have become far more taboo than they used to be,” Allan says. “People with disabilities generally used to be looked at and laughed at, but that’s not allowed anymore. And it’s becoming more taboo.”

......

“Not to sound too Pollyannaish, but I think this is a positive development,” says Mohr, “a sign that culturally we are able to put ourselves in other people’s shoes a little bit more than we were in the past, and, at least notionally and linguistically, respect people of all sorts.”

No one is perfect

No economist or economics journalist is ever completely right.

Take Tim Colebatch, for example.  I've enjoyed his writing this year, but then he came out a couple of weeks ago and said Julia had to go (well, OK, he can claim poll vindication there, but I'm still not convinced), but today he makes this surprising off the cuff claim:

The reason is simple: he keeps rolling out the same old mantras, to the same rusted-on supporters, rather than trying to win the middle ground. His recent policy statements on industrial relations and northern Australia passed muster as sensible policies, but we need a lot more.

No way is the "build infrastructure and they will come" a "sensible economic policy."  In fact, the policy is just to produce a white paper about how to develop the north of Australia, looking at this "food bowl" idea (already looked at a couple of years ago and dismissed as improbable); tourism (which everyone who has been looking at Queensland for the last 3 years knows is vastly subject to currency movements beyond government control, and the weather) and "building an energy export industry" (meaning gas, an idea which private companies are already or planning on doing.)  

 Bad line, Tim.  Even if Gina still owns part of Fairfax, you must get your act together.

The other economics related matter of interest today in The Age is Michael Pascoe's column, in which he suggests Rudd could indeed make a big splash policy wise by promising to borrow a lot of cheap money to build infrastructure.  He says a lot of economists or business figures support this:

Heather Ridout, John Edwards, Warwick McKibbin, Bob Gregory and Bernie Fraser aren't a particularly radical bunch in the usual left-right sense, but to a greater or lesser degree they've all said it could be a good time for the federal government to be borrowing more, not less. The caveat is what that borrowing is spent on: not recurrent expenditure at this stage, but on capital improvements.

Professor McKibbin has been the most radical, suggesting the government borrow big, in the hundreds of billions of dollars big, at low single-digit interest rates and use the money to build infrastructure that offers double-digit rates of return.

A refinement of that broad proposal that would require less borrowing is that the government builds the infrastructure, de-risks it by maintaining ownership for a while (as it turns out the private sector has no idea how many cars might want to go through a tunnel) and then flog it off to the private sector, using the money gained to build the next stage.

Encouragingly, the NSW state budget contained an element of that very thinking in funding the $10 billion WestConnex toll road. With so many failed private-sector tunnels around the nation, the government will build the road, using its access to cheaper finance, and subsequently privatise it.

The NBN model goes part of the way along the Big Idea superhighway, even keeping the funding off the immediate government balance sheet, but it fails on one major test: demonstrable and independently adjudicated double-digit internal rate of return.

McKibbin himself admits the problem with his plan is that you couldn't trust any politician with the money – the temptation to cater for a little vested interest here, a marginal electorate there, some generous political donors everywhere, is too great.

Which is where the establishment of a genuinely independent, arms-length body to supervise the process becomes paramount – a Reserve Bank of infrastructure. Infrastructure Australia is a step in that direction but not good enough, being more of a wish-list body than a ruthless task master.

The Productivity Commission's rigours would need to be employed for a start. Those who have abused government programs in the past would need to be excluded, for example, the Victorian CFMEU after the desalination plant rorting. To be made to work properly, there would be no room for mates of any colour.

It wouldn't be easy to reverse three years of surplus worship, particularly with the opposition sure to run the obvious lines about Labor just wanting to spend and go further into disastrous debt, but it could be done.

Well, as I said on this topic a few weeks ago, I still have this skepticism about how governments (or anyone) can really work out priorities in infrastructure.   I mean, unless its directly related to an industry (a railway line from a mining area to the coast, a new boat harbour near some industry) how do you really put a productivity figure on something like a new cross city tunnel that speeds up a commute by 15 minutes a day?  

I could, I guess, live with massive infrastructure that moves hard towards green energy; but I'm sure many economists would argue that the right technology is something about which governments should not be attempting to pick winners.

A high speed rail system has some Green credentials, but the sparse population that most of it will run through makes it questionable for a country this size.

So, my problem remains:  sure, Pascoe's idea sounds reasonable - but show me the infrastructure that immediately makes sense, and then I'll be completely convinced.

Not to be tried at home

I see that I missed a post at Mind Hacks a few weeks ago about the history of taking drugs in the most unconventional way.  Many wry comments are inevitably to be made when discussing this:

The earliest accounts of rectal administration of psychoactive drugs come from the Ancient Mayan civilization where ritual enemas were commonly used to induce states of trance and were widely depicted on carvings and pottery.

The image above is a Mayan carving depicting a priest giving reclining man a large ritual enema to the point where he sees winged reptile Gods flying overhead. Sorry hipsters, your parties suck.

It wasn’t just the Mayans, though. The historical use of psychoactive enemas was known throughout the Americas and is still used by traditional societies today.

Unfortunately, we know little about the history of similar practices in Africa but they are certainly present in traditional societies today – and largely known to mainstream science through documented medical emergencies.

In contrast, while it seems that enemas and douching were often used in Ancient Europe (for example, Aristides writes in his Sacred Tales that the goddess Athena appeared to him in a dream and recommended a honey enema – thanks your holiness), they do not seem to have been used for bottom-up drug taking.

However, there is some evidence that in medieval Europe, hallucinogenic ointments were applied to the vagina with some speculation that the ‘witch on a flying broomstick’ cliché arose due to the use of a broomstick-like applicator for strongly psychoactive drugs.

As the first synthesised psychoactive drugs became available in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, specialised delivery devices were quickly developed.

Cocaine was especially likely to be applied down-below because, although it makes you high, it is also an excellent local anaesthetic useful for discomfort and minor surgery. The development of cocaine tampons was considered a medical innovation that was “regarded as an especially effective treatment for gynecological diseases”.

I think we can leave it there, before getting to the topic of taking alcohol that way.  

A message across the aether (which will be understood by few - the rest can just ignore it)

Gee, soon Catallaxy open threads will be down to a face moisturising Perth man sharing gin cocktail recipes with a bunch of middle aged women.

That and a handful of other men with anger management issues, a chronic plagiarist whose copied works still appears at the blog, and young male student who likes to defame  female Australian journalists.  (If Latika Burke cares to email me, I'll provide the link.)

Updates:  I have a theory that Sinclair Davidson's continual defence of  Andrew Leigh - which is otherwise incomprehensible, given that every other economist who shares similar positions to Leigh is considered wrong at the blog - must have a science fiction element to it.  Maybe he once travelled back in time and fathered Andrew is my best guess so far.


 

Infallible or not

Why It's Good To Be Wrong - Issue 2: Uncertainty - Nautilus

Physicist David Deutsch has a somewhat interesting article regarding fallibilism, including (partly) in the context of the Catholic Church.   I liked these paragraphs in particular:

Fallibilism, correctly understood, implies the possibility, not the impossibility, of knowledge, because the very concept of error, if taken seriously, implies that truth exists and can be found. The inherent limitation on human reason, that it can never find solid foundations for ideas, does not constitute any sort of limit on the creation of objective knowledge nor, therefore, on progress. The absence of foundation, whether infallible or probable, is no loss to anyone except tyrants and charlatans, because what the rest of us want from ideas is their content, not their provenance: If your disease has been cured by medical science, and you then become aware that science never proves anything but only disproves theories (and then only tentatively), you do not respond “oh dear, I’ll just have to die, then.”

The theory of knowledge is a tightrope that is the only path from A to B, with a long, hard drop for anyone who steps off on one side into “knowledge is impossible, progress is an illusion” or on the other side into “I must be right, or at least probably right.” Indeed, infallibilism and nihilism are twins. Both fail to understand that mistakes are not only inevitable, they are correctable (fallibly). Which is why they both abhor institutions of substantive criticism and error correction, and denigrate rational thought as useless or fraudulent. They both justify the same tyrannies. They both justify each other.

Carbon pricing seems to be working

Is carbon pricing reducing emissions?

A good analysis at the link of whether carbon pricing, and not just a drop in demand, is behind reduced carbon emissions in making Australian electricity.  Here is one crucial part:

Although it’s difficult to point to concrete short term changes in the electricity market, the carbon price is having an impact on long term investment decisions, which is where the real benefits will start to play out. The economics of power systems mean that it’s much easier to materially affect the investment decisions for a new plant than to affect the short-term dispatch decisions of an existing plant. It has been argued that this already means wind is now cheaper than coal if you’re building a new plant, due to the very large impact of the carbon price on financing costs for emissions-intensive generation options.

The market is clearly responding to long term investment signals towards lower emissions generation. The vast majority of new plants in the planning stages are either renewable or gas-fired. Here again we must acknowledge complexity and the contribution of many factors – much of the investment in renewables is driven by the Renewable Energy Target scheme, and could not be supported by the carbon price alone at this stage.

But the lack of proposals for significant new coal-fired plant is a good indication that the carbon price is having an influence over investor decisions. This is where the real pay-off lies – by avoiding the installation of more coal-fired generators we avoid the very significant greenhouse emissions that would result from those power stations over their 30-year-plus lifetime.

Conservative Catholic Paranoia

I've never paid much attention to "Traditionalist" Catholics before (basically, the ones who are devoted to the Latin Mass, actually follow Papal teaching on contraception, and freak out about how everything in the Church has gone to hell in an handbasket since Vatican II.)

But reading the Catallaxy blog,  which has in the last couple of years increasingly attracted a significant number of Traditionalist Catholics and Catholic supporters, has led me to look at some conservative Catholic figures over the last 6 months or so.

What a worry they are.   In the US, they have culturally aligned with the Tea Party, so I suppose it should be no surprise that they seem to like Catallaxy, which is like the Australian Tea Party sub branch.

Father Z's blog  seems to be very popular in the US, and I gather that Zuhlsdorf has been on Fox News quite a bit.  A look around his blog indicates he likes guns, and nuns who use them.  (Yes, really.)  The blog gives an excellent taste of the Pharisaical obsession that this branch of Catholicism has with liturgy. 

He is pals with Michael Voris, a conservative lay Catholic who has built a subscription media business out of videoing himself every second day explaining how the Church must return to its pre-Vatican II state.  He seems to be pretty big in the Trad Catholic circles, but how is it possible that a man (especially an American) who advocated in all seriousness that a Catholic monarchy is "the only way to run a country" still have any popularity at all?  He does tick the box on other Right wing obsessions, though:  climate change is all a conspiracy to do something or other, for example.

In any event, the point of the post is this:  it would seem that the recent legal successes in court cases in the US for gay marriage, as well as Italian media reporting about gay priest in the Vatican, has sent both of the them in great paranoid spasms about the e-vil currently befalling the Church.  Here's Father Z a few days ago:

There are those who hate the Church with as much hate as we love the Church. They are organized, they have a great resources, they have a Dark Prince. Dreadful liberal publications and websites, and even the blitherings of some priests and bishops, are only shadows of the deeper agenda flickered out on the back of the cave for popular consumption by barely witting dupes.

Deeper enemies, like our own beautiful missionaries and martyrs of ages past, are willing to set aside their appetites, put on a facade, and endure for patient years for the sake of a long term plan.

Yes, I buy it. I have seen manifestations of communist, Masonic, and especially homosexual networking in the Church both in the USA and in Rome. It would be stupidly naive to think that it isn’t present. In the USA, Masonic and communist? Maybe not so much.  Elsewhere, yes.  The other thing?  Ohhhh, yes.

Those agents will probably go to Hell.  Let us remember that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church.

However, Our Lord did not promise that Hell would not prevail in these USA or, in the Roman Curia, in any other particular place.

When you hear awful stories, do not become discouraged.

We are nearing some kind of turning point. I think it is time to press forward HARD and with courage to renew our Holy Church’s liturgical worship, the best, clean antidote.

 Yes sir-ee.  Purity of liturgy is the answer to the "homosexual networking" in Rome.   Sure.

Voris has also been in Rome recently at the same time as Zuhlsdorf, both attending the same liturgy conference I think, and if you have never seen him before, this video of him hyperventilating about Roman gay priests and whether there is Satanism involved is as good a place as any, I guess.

(Actually, you could also look at this video in which he also paints the broad picture that the Church has gone all wrong since about 1960.)

These guys are hopeless:   poisonous Catholic Right wing cultural throwbacks who lack charity to a profound degree.  Even if they are "right" on a topic, they express it in such a way that it is embarrassing to say one agrees with them.   The Church will pass them by, but their ugly noise in the meantime is interesting to watch in a train wreck type of way. 

Pancakes and the Sunday morning butter explosion

I see that it was back in 2011 that I last mentioned a pancake recipe that was better than average.

I've decided it was too much work for your average Sunday morning, so today I tried another recipe, this time not from Gourmet Traveller, but from Kidspot.   It worked well, except for the unfortunate microwave butter explosion.  (I have successfully melted butter in the microwave before, but the container used today seemed particularly well suited to making melting butter explode.  Must use cling wrap to contain said explosions next time.)

Apart from that problem, the recipe worked pretty well:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate soda
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 tbsp butter, melted
• 4 tbsp butter for greasing the pan  (???  I am sure this a mistaken quantity.  Just use spray oil anyway)

Method:

In a bowl, place the milk, lemon juice and sugar together and whisk. Leave to stand for 5 minutes. The milk will take on a curdled appearance but that's fine.
In a bowl, sift the flour and bicarbonate soda and whisk in the curdled milk mixture.
Whisk in the egg and cooled, melted butter until well combined.

 Then you cook them.   Oh:  and I added a bit of vanilla essence too, and a pinch of salt.

Nice.

Speaking of movies, again...

I see George Lucas got married this week. Here's the lovely photo from People, assuming of course  that it's not an entirely digital creation from Industrial Light and Magic:

The magazine reports that the guests included "Samuel L. Jackson, Ron Howard, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Harrison Ford, Calista Flockhart and Tyler Perry." What the hey? Since when does Jackson go ahead of a list including Spielberg and Ford?

As it happens, a couple of nights ago I ended up  watching a lengthy documentary on the original Star Wars films that I think is part of the DVD set my wife has.  I had seen it before, but a long, long time ago, in a life time far far away.

Anyhow, I had sort of forgotten how young and weedy looking George was when he made the first movie.  (He would have been 33, if my maths is right.)   The work was genuinely gruelling for him, with a huge amount of studio pressure to wind up the shoot when it started to go over, trouble with editing it, and the special effects taking forever to come together and look half way decent.   He thought he was having a heart attack at one point.  (The same thing happened to Barry Sonnenfeld when he was directing Men in Black 2. In fact, here's his full summary of the stresses he has suffered as a director:

On the first movie I directed, The Addams Family, I ended up fainting when, after a sleepless night, I thought I could maintain some sense of awareness the next day by drinking nine straight espressos. When the head of Paramount Studios said that it was unreleasable, I spent the night weeping on Sweetie's (the wife's) lap. During Men in Black II, I was raced to the hospital with what I thought was a heart attack. After spending the night in the emergency room next to a woman whining, "I need quinine," I was given an echocardiogram and told that I was simply suffering from stress and that I should get into a program of meditation. (I didn't tell the doctor that I was meditating when the chest pain started.) On Wild Wild West, I broke my hand in five places when I punched Will Smith's arm.

In fact, I like nearly everything Sonnenfeld has done.)

But back to George:  sure, he lost his ability to recognise a good story from a so-so one pretty much after Empire Strikes Back (or, perhaps, Temple of Doom,) but he did work really hard for his success, and was essentially behind much of the technological innovation in movie making that was realised with money he generated, so I find it impossible to not have some admiration for him and wish him luck.

The virtual world of Gatsby

I still have no interest in seeing The Great Gatsby, but as it was only a couple of weeks ago that I linked again to a video from a couple of years back showing how they use green or blue screens in TV and movies for results with remarkable realism, I note with interest the new video out showing how the same technique is used to spectacular effect in The Great Gatsby.  (Sure, some shots where the camera zooms in and out make the background look un-real, but there are many, many shots here where it's completely surprising to see how much of what is on the screen is not there when it is shot.)

The Great Gatsby VFX from Chris Godfrey on Vimeo.

No danger for me, but beware Tony

Triathlon Deaths Increasing Among Males Over 40

As the average age of competitors in endurance sports rises, a spate of deaths during races or intense workouts highlights the risks of excessive strain on the heart through vigorous exercise in middle age.

Among the recent casualties: American Michael McClintock, senior managing director of Macquarie Group Ltd and a triathlete, who died at age 55 of cardiac arrest earlier this month after training.

The men's 40-to-60-year age bracket - often referred to as middle aged men in Lycra, or Mamils - now holds 32 per cent of the membership in USA Triathlon, the sport's official governing body in the US.

More fitness conscious than previous generations, their numbers in competitive races are swelling, along with their risk of cardiac arrest. Triathlons, the most robust of endurance races requiring swimming, biking and running, are also believed to be the most risky.

The ways in which over exercise can hurt a middle aged heart apparently includes just physical wear and tear:

Intense exercise for periods longer than one to two hours can cause over-stretching and tiny tears of the heart's tissue, says James O'Keefe, a sports cardiologist and head of preventative cardiology at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri.

This type of repeated injury over years can cause irregular heart rhythms, increased inflammation, scarring and stiffening of the arteries, he says.

Athletic over-achievers tend to think that “more is better,” though when it comes to health, “moderation is almost always best,” O'Keefe says.

This part I find encouraging for my present lifestyle (heh):  

“If anyone is going to have a cardiac event they're far more likely to have one during exercise,” says Davison. A person is seven times more likely to have a heart incident while exercising than at rest, he says, citing a 1984 New England Journal of Medicine study.

Odd if it was in a movie

A movie based on this scenario would seem pretty odd, yet here it is, the subject of an upcoming criminal trial in Melbourne:

A tourist from Holland has claimed she was subjected to six weeks of sexual and physical abuse, mental trauma and a death ''ritual'' in a Melbourne hotel by a man possessed by an ancestor.

The woman, 22, has told police she was repeatedly raped and bashed, felt brainwashed and was blindfolded, hogtied with chains and forced to act like a dog and live on scraps.

A detective testified the woman claimed Alfio Granata, 46, performed a ritual by sealing an envelope with her photo, finger and toenails, a piece of hair and her blood to symbolise her ''being was no more''....

In the police summary, the bisexual woman said she met the two accused at a party in St Kilda last October and later engaged in consensual ''threesomes'' and drug use. It was alleged that by November he became violent to both women and then the tourist felt brainwashed and could not leave before she was subjected to abuse, death threats and trauma until she was admitted to hospital on Christmas Day.

Detective Senior Constable Marc Hodgson said at the bail hearing that Mr Granata had become ''possessed by one of his ancestors''.

Innovative idea for police public relations

Noticed in the Jakarta Post:

Dozens of boys wearing sarongs and black velvet caps looked worried, some sobbing on their moms’ laps, and many fled the police station premises upon hearing their friends scream in pain.

It was a free mass circumcision held by the local police as part of a public relations event to mark the 67th National Police Day on Friday.

Fry (and me) on loneliness

Only The Lonely � The New Adventures of Stephen Fry

A few weeks ago I noted Stephen Fry's "confession" that he had tried to commit suicide last year, despite his self awareness of his mental health problems.  (I saw one of the first stories about it, and probably wouldn't have bothered once it became widespread in the media soon thereafter.)

In any event, I see that he now has a post up at his website which deals mainly with the topic of loneliness.  Last I had noticed, he was a in long term relationship, but the post makes it clear he is single again, and I see now from Wikipedia that he has been since 2010. 

Fry's comments on how he, as a very famous and publicly popular figure who has a very active life can still be lonely, reminded me very much of part of interview I saw years ago with Freddie Mercury in which he expressed a very similar sentiment.   (From memory, it was along the lines that you can be surrounded by people every day who think you're great but still feel you have no friends.)  Given that by that stage it was already known he had led a very active gay recreational sex life, I also felt it a poignant comment on the lack of emotional satisfaction that such a lifestyle could entail.

Anyway, here's what Fry writes:

In the end loneliness is the most terrible and contradictory of my problems. I hate having only myself to come home to. If I have a book to write, it’s fine. I’m up so early in the morning that even I pop out for an early supper I am happy to go straight to bed, eager to be up and writing at dawn the next day. But otherwise…

It’s not that I want a sexual partner, a long-term partner, someone to share a bed and a snuggle on the sofa with – although perhaps I do and in the past I have had and it has been joyful. But the fact is I value my privacy too. It’s a lose-lose matter. I don’t want to be alone, but I want to be left alone. Perhaps this is just a form of narcissism, vanity, overdemanding entitlement – give it whatever derogatory term you think it deserves. I don’t know the answer.

I suppose I just don’t like my own company very much. Which is odd, given how many times people very kindly tell me that they’d put me on their ideal dinner party guestlist. I do think I can usually be relied upon to be good company when I’m out and about and sitting round a table chatting, being silly, sharing jokes and stories and bringing shy people out of their shells.

But then I get home and I’m all alone again.

I think that there may be many people out there who understand this - more than Stephen realises, probably.  When single, intimate (not just sexual) company can be missed sorely; yet when in relationships, any desire for time alone can be seen as being a slight on the partner or family, and people may feel a bit bad for even wanting some time alone. 

It seems to me that this latter attitude was not always with us.  I have the impression that, perhaps up to the 1960's or so, it was not so uncommon for at least the artistically inclined (writers especially?) to travel for lengthy periods away from their family for the experience and personal enjoyment, and it was not thought remarkable.  (Of course, being artists, one would also not be surprised if there were sexual encounters involved as well.)  I'm not sure when the tide turned against this, but I have the distinct impression that it has.

I don't raise this in any particularly autobiographical sense either - I very much enjoy domestic time at home after my long time as a single person, and in any event, the nature of my work affords little opportunity for time away - but if I was idly rich, I wouldn't mind short trips away.  Occasionally.

I'll now end on a note which will probably annoy some readers.  I had often wondered when I was single about how it was that, although I could wish I was more "connected", some people who are very outgoing, busy and popular with people (such as Mercury and Fry) can still feel lonely.   Fry perhaps has bipolar as a possible explanation, but I don't think that is always the case for people who feel like him.

My suspicion is that, for people who believe (or even, perhaps, have just believed in the past) in a personal God (or any non materialist belief system which involves an otherworldly care for their well being?) may always have a more fundamental feeling of worthiness that helps prevent loneliness from moving into despair.   If this is true, it shows the value of teaching such types of religious belief  to children, rather than the modern idea that it is more honest to let them know intellectually about all religions and decide which (if any) is true when they grow up.   And as for not teaching religion at all until people are adults, coming new to a belief in a personal God, or a deceased relative watching over you, carries too readily for them the suspicion of wish fulfilment.  But if you have a child feeling emotionally that it is true, and noticing that it provides comfort for others in their family, I half suspect that the psychological benefit persists even if they become agnostic in the future.

There's probably been some work on this somewhere which I could go looking for, but not right now. 

On the Rudd return

Harry Clarke has a personal dislike of Rudd that's probably even more intense than mine, but his post on the return of the bizarrely popular politician is pretty accurate.  Rather me doing a fresh post, I'll just put here my comment that I made at his blog, with a couple of corrections:

It’s hard to disagree with this analysis. If Rudd had put as much effort into helping articulate government policies as he did in getting revenge on those who dumped him, it could have helped the polling. But it didn’t suit him to do so.

Still, the biggest mystery is why Rudd is relatively popular with the public in the first place. It’s always been a puzzle to me, and it seems to be an unfortunate consequence of most voters only getting their news from the 6 pm TV bulletin that they did not have a clue that Rudd was replaced due to his own (hidden from the public) appalling management skills that many considered made him impossible to work with – not due to some vicious ambition of Julia Gillard to replace him at all cost. Those of us who had been paying attention to stories of the people he was offending (and who knew of his reputation in Queensland under Goss) were not surprised.

Having said that, I don’t want to see Abbott as PM – if anything, the Coalition is the side more in the need of an urgent clean out of ideologues who have been converted to the Tea Party obsessions regarding climate change and a hopelessly over-simplified view of economics. *

Funnily enough, last election I was pretty disappointed with much of Gillard’s campaigning – particularly her hopeless policy of seeking to put off carbon pricing until the silly idea that public meetings would converts dills who get their science from Andrew Bolt and Monckton had been tried.  Hence I actually did not vote at all in the House of Reps, but voted towards Labor in the Senate. But then Gillard started to impress once she formed government and started implementing policies with more care (generally) than the haphazard approach of Rudd.

I suspect this time I will have to vote Labor in both houses of Parliament despite my great annoyance at the Rudd re-ascendency and the appalling way Gillard has been treated in the right wing media and blogosphere. I suppose it does depend on his “new” policy adjustments, though.

 *  I have never, ever seen so much of the Right in Australian politics so ugly and dumb as it is at the moment.   With a few moderates in the Liberals leaving at the election, this could possibly get worse.