Horsing around

It seemed time for my once a decade or so trip to the theatre, and what more popular show could I pick than War Horse?

I liked the Spielberg movie a lot, as did my son, and so I also took him to the stage play (the first real professional show he has seen.)

This might have been a bit of a mistake.  The normal progress is to see a stage show and then the film, and the added realism of the latter does not jar in any sense.  But I think, especially for a younger person, seeing the film first adds to the awareness of the "staginess" of a stage production.  He still liked it, more or less, but did comment that the some of the actors seemed to be being too dramatic.  I said that it's something you have to get used to in live theatre - it doesn't allow for whispers and the same subtlety of acting as does the audio and close ups of cinema.

But as for my reaction:  I assume it has been said before, but I kept thinking while watching it "this is like a masterclass of the very best in stagecraft and what can be achieved in theatre."  The lighting design, the sets which work with suggestion more than materials, the back projection, the music, the use of songs as linking device, and, of course, the puppetry.   I mean, it is kind of ridiculous triumph of theatre that the reunion of a man and his (artificial) horse makes a substantial  number in the audience cry.

I saw part of a documentary of how the show was made in Britain a few months ago - it took an extraordinarily long time, with a huge number of people involved.   They really deserve their success.

I was going to end this by noting that I would not go so far as to say that it has cured me of a preference for the additional realism of cinema; but really, they both deserve admiration whenever they work and win over an audience.

Saturday night fish recipes

A few weeks ago, I tried this salmon recipe from the Coles website: ginger and soy glazed salmon with buk choy.  The glaze and the salmon worked a treat, but the coconut rice (which I had never tried cooking before) burnt thoroughly on the bottom of the saucepan despite my attempt to use as low a gas flame as I could, and was unusable.   Maybe a heavier based pan next time?  I didn't realise coconut rice could be tricky.

Tonight, it was an old favourite, from an old recipe book I've had for maybe 20 years - The Macquarie Dictionary of Cookery.

This book, which I see was reprinted in 1991, is truly remarkable for the terrible quality of the illustrations.  There are no photos at all, just the occasional bad black and white line drawing.  For example, the entry on Spanish cooking  is illustrated thus:

Yet, despite the terrible look of the internal pages, it has proved to be a pretty reliable resource for your basic household recipes.  If you want a straight forward recipe for scones, stews, or (as in tonight's case) trout with almonds, it's very reliable, even if you have no idea at all what the final result should look like.

I've made the trout with almond recipe before and always liked it.  Strangely, given her general love of all seafood, my wife eats trout but without great enthusiasm.  I've always liked it, and I just can't work out why she downplays its qualities.  So I get to cook it only once a year or so.

Tonight, the kids ate this too and had no complaints.  Farmed trout is always available and (I see with pleasure) a reliably cheap-ish fish too. (About $16 a kilo today for filleted trout at Coles, and one big fillet each is plenty for this dish with lots of butter.  I cringe at buying fillet fish which is more than $30 a kilo, as many are these days.)

Anyhow, for each of my future reference, in case my crappy Macquarie cook book ever falls apart, here it is:

I don't worry about whether it's fresh parsley or not I use with the almond sauce; tonight I used oregano (which grows permanently and reliably in our garden, unlike parsley) in its place, although I also had a bit of thyme and its flavour works well in a butter sauce I think. As I indicated earlier, I just buy rainbow trout fillets if I can, and don't worry about extracting the bones.  They are so fine they are not going to chock anyone, and even my kids didn't bother pulling them out as they ate.

Maybe I can work up to having it once every 6 months, or 4, if I am lucky!

Revolution revised

New Revolutionary War books by Nathaniel Philbrick and Joseph Ellis ignore modern historical research. - Slate Magazine

Not that I know much about it to start with, but this Slate article, complaining that new popular histories of the American War of Independence leave out some of the more interesting recent academic takes on the matter, is interesting.    For example:

In his new academic press book, The Men Who Lost America, Andrew O’Shaughnessy shows that the British mismanaged the war not because they were unabashed tyrants but precisely the opposite: They were struggling to manage the most democratic government the world had ever seen. Britain’s popularly elected parliament never had more power than in the 1770s. But partisan politics paralyzed the government. Legislators were divided over how to respond to the American protests, and a free press only fanned the factional flames. King George III, an avid supporter of the Enlightenment, advocated a powerful display of force abroad in part to assert control over his nascent democracy at home.

 And:

Take what happened in Virginia, where the war was ultimately won. Wealthy planters were happy to champion liberty so long as their lives weren’t put on the line, as an article in a forthcoming collection of scholarly articles shows. They paid poorer men to fight for them, and when they tried to institute a draft, less affluent Virginians rebelled, knowing they’d be forced to carry the burden. The rioters demanded a volunteer militia, and at a high price: They wanted land as payment, and, just as importantly, slaves to cultivate that land with. Virginia’s elites grudgingly conceded, confiscating slaves from abandoned loyalist plantations, and handing out Native American lands that the British had given up after the war ended. Even still, when the patriots won at Yorktown, Va., in 1781, the battle that ended the war, Virginia’s militia made up just 20 percent of the patriots’ 15,000 troops. The Continental Army, most of them northerners, provided about one-third, and more than one-half were French.

These new pop histories of the Revolution are oblivious to the war’s global dimensions, as well as the quotidian reality of ordinary colonists, despite their claims to the contrary. They naively indulge the Revolution’s idealistic rhetoric, even if they dutifully note how those words failed to be put into practice. It makes sense; after all, there’s nothing’s less romantic than the complicated, disheartening truths of war-torn societies. The irony is that these new histories all try, rightly, to make the Revolution seem relevant again. Yet paying more attention to the new scholarship would show how much more similar the Revolution was to our own wars now.

Perhaps there’s a lesson we could learn from the Revolution’s losers, the British, for instance. They took on what looked like an easy war abroad to patch over partisan divisions at home, yet nonetheless lost the war because of imperial overreach. Or perhaps we could learn something from the vast majority of ambivalent colonists, the ones unsure whether the war was even worth it. The Revolution scared them, or held false promises. Their experience provides a sobering lesson about the hubris of war, but one we can still thank them for today.

A strange musical story

From the Spectator, a very strange story of how a Schumann concerto came to be re-found and played:

Robert Schumann met a wretched end. He died in a lunatic asylum where he thought the nurses were feeding him human faeces. Meanwhile he drove his fellow residents mad by sitting at the piano and bashing out nonsense-music until he had to be dragged away — a grotesque indignity for the creator of the most bewitching quicksilver fantasies in the history of the instrument.

After Schumann’s death in 1856, the violinist Joseph Joachim hid away the strange concerto that the composer had written for him in 1853 because it showed evidence of softening of the brain. Clara, Robert’s widow, agreed. That became the conventional wisdom. The violin concerto was suppressed until 1933 when — appropriately for such spectral music — the disembodied voice of Schumann contacted two of Joachim’s nieces during a séance and demanded its recovery. The work was fished out of the Prussian state library and championed by the Nazis, who saw it as an alternative to the devilishly hummable violin concerto by the Jew Mendelssohn.

Go away, Chris

Labor is sinking and the captains are to blame - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I've never thought much of Chris Uhlmann:  I don't think he does great interviews, and is not overly intelligent or personable as a TV host.  Despite having a Labor politician wife, and presumably having considerable contact with many on the inside of the party, I don't think he's ever particularly enlightening, and he is inclined to catastrophic forecast for how Labor is fairing.

Today's column is one of the worst examples of this.

Why won't his wife punish him for me?  Please?

More self amusement...

Fact checking Peter Anderson

So, the Australian today has an opinion piece by Peter Anderson, from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, complaining that the Gillard minority government didn't do much for business, was too union friendly, and increased costs and regulation, and business wants Rudd to go to an election now.   All very much in line with Rupert Murdoch's twitter-casted position (which I am presuming will end up in an Australian editorial soon, if it hasn't already):

Australian public now totally disgusted with Labor Party wrecking country with it's sordid intrigues. Now for a quick election.

But Googling around for other things Peter Anderson has said in the past, I see he was not happy with the carbon price policy of Julia Gillard, and was happy to promote this prediction in 2011:

DAVID TAYLOR: The chief lobby group for Australian business is most concerned about the potential hit to company bottom lines as a result of the tax.

PETER ANDERSON: Well the research that has been independently prepared, which we released yesterday, shows that small and medium businesses that are trade exposed are going to suffer losses in profitability of between 10 and 20 per cent.

Shouldn't there be enough time now to see how this dubious sounding prediction has panned out?

And as for Anderson's interest in the Coalition's policy:

SABRA LANE: The Government's been strong on this point though. It says that it's consulted widely. It had a number of round table groups. I think you were a member of one of them.
PETER ANDERSON: The Government has undertaken some consultation but it has come up with a flawed proposal.
SABRA LANE: Do you support Tony Abbott's plan to cut carbon?
PETER ANDERSON: Not necessarily. The business community has to subject that proposal to exactly the same rigour that we are subjecting the Government's proposal to.

 Yeah, sure.  I bet we'll see a lot of concern from Anderson about a policy that no economist in the land thinks makes sense for the purpose it says it seeks to achieve.

The accessory for the dedicated US politician

How to Not Urinate for 11 Hours - James Hamblin - The Atlantic

The answer, in the case of the Texas Senator who recently filibustered a proposed abortion law, is (apparently) to insert a urinary catheter and have a bad strapped to her leg.

In other examples of US politics are its weirdest (did it invent the filibuster, by the way?  Why does it seem no other country in the world follows this strange endurance procedure?):

Strom Thurmond famously opted to keep a bucket in an adjacent cloakroom, where he could relieve himself while still keeping a foot on the Senate floor. During a 2001 filibuster, St. Louis Alderwoman Irene Smith had aides surround her with tablecloths while she relieved herself in a trash can in the middle of City Hall. O beautiful for spacious skies.

The whales I never knew were there

Whale carcass may be towed out to sea to save pod | Environment | guardian.co.uk

The story is about some stranded killer whales up at Fraser Island, and ends with this:

Killer whales, also known as orca, follow the humpback whale migration along Australia's east coast to prey on calves.

I didn't know that.  Obviously, their tastes don't run to humans all that much, as I have never heard of an orca being seen anywhere near a beach on the Gold or Sunshine Coast as they pass on their way to or from Hervey Bay. 

I actually assumed they always stayed in colder waters.  My knowledge of marine biology is obviously lacking.

The use of on line photo editting to amuse myself continues (most people can safely ignore...)

PS, the face came from here.   By the time you squash it in, it's sorta hard to tell, I guess.

Some hope yet for a more realistic European carbon market

Europe’s politicians vote to resuscitate carbon market : Nature News Blog

From the link:

The world’s largest carbon-trading market may awaken from its coma: politicians in Europe’s parliament today agreed a plan to revive market prices which have collapsed in the recession.

It’s a change-of-heart from a parliament which had rejected the same idea in April. But although it would lift the market out of total irrelevancy, the plan still won’t raise carbon prices high enough to spur investment in low-carbon energy, which was one of the European trading scheme’s key goals when it was launched in 2005. So some politicians say much deeper reforms are needed. What’s more, the plan still needs to be approved by the ministers of Europe’s member states – a decision that won’t be taken until after Germany’s elections in September.

Clever, clever birds

Animal master-burglars: Cockatoos 'pick' puzzle box locks (w/ Video)

From the article:

A team of scientists from Oxford University, the University of Vienna, and the Max Planck Institute, report in PLOS ONE a study in which ten untrained Goffin's cockatoos [Cacatua goffini] faced a puzzle box showing food (a nut) behind a transparent door secured by a series of five different interlocking devices, each one jamming the next along in the series.

To retrieve the nut the birds had to first remove a pin, then a screw, then a bolt, then turn a wheel 90 degrees, and then shift a latch sideways. One bird, called 'Pipin', cracked the problem unassisted in less than two hours, and several others did it after being helped either by being presented with the series of locks incrementally or being allowed to watch a skilled partner doing it....

After the cockatoos mastered the entire sequence the scientists investigated whether the birds had learnt how to repeat a sequence of actions or instead responded to the effect of each lock.

Dr Alice Auersperg, who led the study at the Goffin Laboratory at Vienna University, said: 'After they had solved the initial problem, we confronted six subjects with so-called 'Transfer tasks' in which some locks were re-ordered, removed, or made non-functional. Statistical analysis showed that they reacted to the changes with immediate sensitivity to the novel situation"

You can videos of the parrots being extraordinarily clever at the link: it seems I can't embed them.

Here comes the drop

There was quite a bit of interest amongst people who follow the state of the Arctic ice cover earlier this year when a large part of it become fractured and broken in (I think) a way that hadn't been seen before.

But then, the NSIDC graph showing ice melt in summer showed ice cover staying much higher for a month or so longer than last year.

But the drop off in cover is now in progress:

The new, improved Kevin

Honestly, it's not just because I don't want Tony Abbott to win, and everyone knows I have long disliked Kevin Rudd and did not think he deserved his win in 2007; but....

I think it's undeniable that Rudd gave an extraordinarily self assured and good performance on his first 7.30 interview last night.   I feel pretty confident that it would have been causing no small amount of anxiety in Abbott's office as they watched it.  

Then this morning, the headline in the Australian indicates Rudd doing exactly the kind of thing that I had been thinking Gillard needed to do:  be seen to be "punishing" the New South Wales Right.

I am not sure what has happened at News Corp overnight, but even Julia Gillard is getting (well deserved) credit for the grace and dignity with which she took her loss of position last week.  This cannot hurt Labor overall.

And back at the ABC, Alan Kohler makes the point I have elsewhere:  Julia Gillard was remarkably unlucky in many respects (I'll do a post listing them one day), and it is certainly possible that any new government will reap the benefits of some positive changes just coming into effect now:

If the ALP loses this year it can count itself very unlucky indeed: the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd Government will have exactly encompassed the second-biggest crash and world recession in history followed by the slowest, most difficult recovery.

Compare that with John Howard, who, after winning that 2001 election, governed during one of the great economic booms in history, escaping into satisfied retirement 24 days after the stock market peaked.

Julia Gillard, in fact, was doubly unlucky because a key part of America's recovery from the bust that its own credit excesses had caused was the debasement of its currency. When the 2010 election was held on August 21, the Australian dollar exchange rate was 89.38 US cents on its way to parity by the end of that year and $US1.10 by mid 2011.

So by coincidence, Gillard's leadership more or less exactly encompassed the period of Aussie dollar strength, caused entirely by US dollar weakness. The good news is that it has allowed 2 percentage points to come off interest rates because of low inflation, but that didn't help Australia's first female prime minister.

 I would not be surprised to see significant betting market odds moving towards Labor as a result of all of this.

Update:   More news of good politics from Rudd:

Kevin Rudd has offered Tony Abbott a series of unprecedented briefings from the nation's security chiefs as he attempts to turn the tables on the Opposition Leader in the debate on asylum seekers.

The Prime Minister has written to Mr Abbott promising access to the heads of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Australian Federal Police, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Immigration Department, saying the coalition should have the latest confidential information on people smuggling.

Rudd's approach to this is very much like Peter Beattie, I think:   admit a past mistake, but move forward with a positive "we can fix it, though" attitude, and people might accept it.

And he is making Abbott look defensive and as if he is the one playing politics if he won't take the briefings on offer.

One final point:  Rudd's manner of speaking last night seemed to me to have few of his old Rudd-isms.    It was more direct, and (if I recall correctly) had none of his faux folkiness which so many have found annoying in the past. 

Update 2:  Anxiety levels are rising at Catallaxy, and the name calling increasing.  How amusing.  

Whoops

I seem to have found a way to delete comments by accident when using my tablet last night.   Two were disappeared, but it wasn't intentional..and I am sorry about that.

How they deal with child abuse allegations in Poland

Poland: A dark side of the Catholic Church | The Economist

Someone writing in The Economist in May this year:

One of the three items also featured my own experience whilst trying to investigate a case for France 24 television. We had spoken to a man who told us he had been abused in the late 1970s by someone who was now rector of a parish in Szczecin. We travelled to the parish and found the cleric in question (who cannot be named for legal reasons) leading mass. Afterwards, I asked him whether he had any comment to make on the allegations, and got an astonishing reaction. Accusing us of filming illegally, the priest led both me and the cameraman into the rectory… and locked us in.

After a few minutes we tried to escape, and were violently blocked by the cleric. Fortunately, in the scuffle that ensued he dropped his keys and we were able to get out. Our detention had lasted less than ten minutes and nobody was hurt. But since we had managed to film the whole thing on two cameras, we gave some of the footage to local journalists.The story made the national news the following day, prompting a degree of fuss, though not exactly an uproar.

What is remarkable is the reaction from the Church. For two days neither parish nor diocese would comment at all. Then came a statement from the diocese spokesman to the effect that they were looking into the possibility of charging us with trespassing and slander. According to prosecutors no such complaint has yet been lodged. We had already reported the incident to the police.

The spokesman also told TVN he had no knowledge of paedophilia charges against the priest in question. The very same spokesman’s signature is on documents relating to the formal complaint the victim lodged with the diocese more than two years ago

A couple of hydrogen fuel cell car stories

Acal Energy says its new hydrogen fuel cell is good for 300,000 miles

From the company's press release:

"Degradation has long held back the potential for the widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells in the automotive sector. Breaking the 10,000 hour threshold during rigorous automotive testing is a key reason our hydrogen fuel cell design and chemistry has been selected for trial by a number of the 6 top automotive OEMs."

He continued: "With our technology, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can drive over 500 miles per tank of fuel, and can be refuelled in less than five minutes, emitting only water. For a driver, the only difference from driving an internal combustion engine car is what's going in the tank, but for the environment the significance of zero carbon emissions is enormous".

I wonder how much a tank of hydrogen will cost, though...

This article Honda, GM plan to establish alliance for fuel-cell vehicle development indicates that quite a few car companies are pursuing the technology, so maybe there is something to it.

The Australian's war on science hots up?

Today it's aging economist Maurice Newman with a litany of crap to the theme of "climate change is bunk" in The Australian.   By the end of the week, it will probably be IPA anti wind gadfly Alan Moran.  We all know from off hand remarks made elsewhere on the web by Judith Sloan (the paper's "contributing economics editor") that she thinks its all overblown rubbish too, but she doesn't tackle the topic head on.   (There are childcare teacher "dimwits" to call out, after all.)

Seriously, is anyone keeping a count on the number of anti climate change articles appearing in the Australian in the last few months?  My impression is that their frequency is increasing, perhaps in anticipation of an election? 

Abbott's scheme taken apart

Tony Abbott's paid parental leave policy: high cost, low benefit | Business | guardian.co.uk

Go to the link for a cool, calm explanation from Greg Jericho as to why Tony Abbott's parental leave is too generous, and too expensive, for no good reason.

A sad case

Parents warned after girl's battery death | The Australian

I for one didn't realise lithium button batteries were as dangerous as this for little kids:

SAFETY experts are trying to educate parents about the dangers of button batteries after the death of a young girl who swallowed one. 
 
Specialists tried desperately to save the four-year-old after she was taken to a hospital on Queensland's Sunshine Coast on Sunday with stomach bleeding.

But there was little that could be done for her.

Safety experts say they're worried parents don't fully understand the dangers in so many household items.

Kidsafe Queensland says an estimated four children a week are rushed to emergency departments across Australia each week after swallowing the batteries.

The biggest danger is when parents don't realise their child has swallowed a button battery, which tends to lodge in kids' throats.

Often parents can simply think their child is coming down with something, with symptoms including vomiting, coughing, abdominal pain and fever.