Who's been a naughty Education Minister, then?

Tony Abbott says Government has 'no plans' to scrap university amenities fee 

So, Chris Pyne was on a bit of a frolic of his own the other day, then?

I presume the wrath of Peta was upon him, perhaps.

Dare I predict:  Pyne will be a liability for this government.

Bill Gates saves the world?

Atomic Goal - 800 Years of Power From Waste - NYTimes.com

The technical problems with the Gates' sponsored "TerraPower" reactors sound daunting, but it's nice that he's trying, I guess.

I choose to believe it is important to believe in free will

Does non-belief in free will make us better or worse?

An observation

The new layout for Slate is awful. 

An unusual clarification

Why do people want to eat babies? Scientists explain.

True, it is a curious thing, the way people will interact with babies this way.  I have a vague recollection that CS Lewis even made a comment about it once.

It seems it's all to do with smell.

I am also amused that at the end of the story, the reporter has found it necessary to add this:

Based on responses to this story, I should probably make something absolutely clear: You should never attempt to actually eat a baby. 
The headline, subhead, and lead to this story are not meant be taken seriously. Together they are, in the parlance of journalism, "the thing that gets people to read the article."
There is never any excuse to harm a child. The impulse that I described in this article does not take the form of an urge to literally bite, chew, and digest a small infant.
Rather, in my experience at least, it arises in utterances such as, "Your baby is so cute I could just eat him all up!" and in behaviors such as placing the baby's toes against the lips and repeatedly uttering the syllable "nom," in an attempt to elicit a giggle from the baby. 
I realize now that such phrases and actions are not actually very common. Or normal.
Still, I hope that you will not only stand firm with me in refraining from infant cannibalism, but that you will also urge your friends, family members, and neighbors to do the same.

Nice sarcasm.

Meanwhile, in Palestine...

Man tortures mouse that ate wages | GulfNews.com

A strange story about what some find funny in Gaza.  But there are animal lovers in the Middle East, as one of the comments indicates:

You will have my curse and you will suffer to death what u have done to the poor creature who doesn't know anything. this is animal cruelty. What goes come around and very sure you will suffer the same. way. I believe my god and you will get what you have done to this innocent animal.

Unpleasant procedure discussed

Prostate biopsy blamed for preventable superbug deaths

A relative of mine recently had this biopsy, and I did wonder how high a risk for infection it must carry:

Melbourne urologist Jeremy Grummet said an increasing number of men were falling ill with superbug infections after prostate biopsies when there was a way to avoid them.

The surgeon at The Alfred, Epworth and Cabrini hospitals said the rise of multi-drug resistant bacteria known as superbugs meant the traditional path for a biopsy needle through a man's rectum was causing 2-5 per cent of patients to suffer a serious infection.

This meant at least 142 of the estimated 7125 men having the procedure in Victoria each year were being admitted to hospital for treatment within days of the test.

''We have studied statewide data and there have been two deaths in Victoria from this in the last five years,'' Mr Grummet said.

''Many patients require [intensive care unit] admission until the bacteria have been cleared and patients have lost fingers and toes due to the effects of septicaemia on blood flow.''

Mr Grummet said although the transrectal biopsy was the current standard of care used in 95 per cent of cases, it involved piercing the rectum wall with a needle on the way into the prostate, exposing the patient's bloodstream to bacteria in their rectum. This was a problem for men whose rectums were harbouring superbugs thought to be found in some waterways and foods, especially overseas where antibiotics are used in farming.

Heart stopping

Change of heart vital to stopping needless cardiac arrest deaths

Well, I didn't know this before:

Each year, about 3800 people have a cardiac arrest in NSW. A staggering 90 per cent of them don't survive. But, with these three measures in place, we can drastically improve the survival rates across NSW. We can save lives.

In the US city of Seattle, 48 per cent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims survive. This is almost five times better than the rate in NSW.

Seattle has achieved this impressive feat by providing extensive CPR training to the public, rolling out a network of publicly accessible defibrillators and creating a cardiac arrest registry; the same measures the Australian Resuscitation Council NSW is asking to be implemented here.

Cardiac arrest accounts for 10 times more fatalities than road deaths. Yet while the road accident toll has been slashed in recent decades, cardiac arrest survival rates remain worryingly static. Our success in reducing road deaths shows what a tremendous impact a concerted, targeted and well-resourced public health campaign can have.

We know what we need to do to reduce hundreds of needless deaths each year from cardiac arrest. Now we just need the support of the government to do it.

He mentions Queensland and Victoria as being a bit more advanced than NSW in setting up a defibrillator network.  I must admit, I did see one somewhere recently and was a bit surprised.  They are all over the place in Japan, but I assumed that was just Japanese safety overkill, and did not realise that there may be known good outcomes in cities that have set up these programs.

Out of the blue

Christopher Pyne reveals university shake-up

I don't follow university education policy at all closely, but what I find interesting about this story (and the interview I just heard on the ABC) is that it appears the university sector pretty much had no idea that the coalition had plans along the lines that Pyne is indicating.

That's what you get for having pathetic media coverage of elections, I guess.  Ooh - here's Kevin taking a selfie!  Look, Tony's hugging a puppy!

Update:  I like Ken Parish's sarcastic take on this.

Update 2:  Seems I was being too harsh on the media about this.  Why should they ask a question about a policy which appeared already firmly in place?:

It was Abbott himself who said the Coalition needed to “purposefully, calmly and methodically” deliver on their election promises now that the Coalition has “won the trust of the Australian people.” The Coalition denied there would be a cap on university places in 2012; blatantly lied to the public on ABC’s 730: “We have no plans to restore the cap. We do believe that the more students who are doing university, the better”. Their Real Solutions manifesto stated: “we will strengthen higher education and encourage Australian of all ages to further their education.” Those newly announced plans prove otherwise.

Abbott accused Julia Gillard of being a liar by endlessly squawking her “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead” quote, conveniently cutting off her repeated statements about carbon pricing. Funny, then, that the Coalition repeatedly lied to the Australian public , leading us to this Trojan horse surprise.

Annabel on the secrets at sea

Asylum seeker policy: we're all mad here 

 Mr Morrison now assures us that "operational reasons" preclude the timely release of information. Because I am operationally challenged, or perhaps because I have insufficient security clearance, I cannot understand how turning boats around in secret instead of in public creates a greater deterrent, operationally.

My best guess is that the removal of boat arrivals from the daily news, and the deletion of their struggles at sea from the national ledger, are calculated to deprive the people aboard those boats of the last hope they had; a vocal contingent of Australian citizens who still looked at them and felt sorry.

If ever there was a government policy that will soon be reversed, this is it.

A pity - I like their yoghurt

Tamar Valley Dairy in voluntary administration

So, how's the new anti-science, militarized, Murdoch approved, Tony Putin government going?

Still getting the Generals up on TV, I see.

Uncle Rupert, meanwhile, seems to be a pushover for a free dinner paid by people with more money than sense (namely, IPA members):



Oh, so he's a libertarian now?   Well, that'll explain (as well as the ditching of the younger, liberal wife, and being the wrong side of 80) the new found disbelief in climate change and pricing carbon.  

Back soon...

Another day, another Abbott government with the Generals photo

I still seem to be the only person commenting about how the Abbott government's persistent appearance on the TV news with set up photo opportunities with the Generals who will Protect Us an inappropriate use of the military and an embarrassing look internationally:

The only good thing that I hope comes of this is that the military may already be cheesed off about it.  
 

Rising waters

Climate science: Rising tide 

This is quite a good article on the complexities in calculating likely sea level rise under global warming.

The unevenness of the rise is something not often highlighted:

Adding to the complexity, the oceans do not rise evenly all over the world as water is poured in. Air pressure, winds and currents can shove water in a given ocean to one side: since 1950, for example, a 1,000-kilometre stretch of the US Atlantic coast north of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina has seen the sea rise at 3–4 times the global average rate⁵. In large part, this is because the Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic current, which normally push waters away from that coast, have been weakening, allowing water to slop back onto US shores.

Finally, waters near big chunks of land and ice are literally pulled up onto shores by gravity. As ice sheets melt, the gravitational field weakens and alters the sea level. If Greenland melted enough to raise global seas by an average of 1 metre, for example, the gravitational effect would lower water levels near Greenland by 2.5 metres and raise them by as much as 1.3 metres far away.

It's on again...or rather, "off" again

Over the years here I have made the occasional observation that the anti-circumcision movement is just  nuttily obsessed and full of dubious claims.  It really qualifies as an anti-science movement - its arguments are so drenched with emotion and hyperbole, and many of its advocates simply sound neurotic.  Whether it is anti science that mainly attracts the Left or the Right (see my previous post) I am not 100% sure - Left leaning, I would have thought.

So it's interesting to see this article in Slate listing in some detail how the internet has become dominated by this fringe crowd; and how many of their arguments are proved wrong and wrong again by proper studies, but they don't care.  It bears a remarkable resemblance to the climate change "skpetic" movement in this respect, despite that being a definite Right wing phenomena. 

And have a look at how many comments the Slate article is attracting - more than 5,000, I think!

I also see that the argument about whether it should be available in Australian public hospitals again as a mere preventative measure is about to hot up too, according to this story.

As to my attitude to the matter:  I thought I read somewhere years ago that some American doctors thought it was most safely done a few months after birth, and that local anaesthetic could be used then.  It seems clear that the health benefits of it are much more significant than once thought, and (obviously) the procedure has caused no unhappiness to the vast bulk of the routinely snipped prior to it going out of fashion.  I think it is looking quite reasonable to do it as a preventative health measure, and it should at least be available at public hospitals for those parents who want it for that reason alone.

How anti-science moved to the Right

John Quiggin � The global party of stupid (slightly updated)

Interesting post from John Quiggin; this part in particular:

It’s striking in this context to recall that, only 20 years ago, the phrase “Science Wars” was used in relation to generally leftish postmodernists in the humanities, who were seen as rejecting science and/or promoting pseudoscience (while some of this stuff was rather silly, there’s no evidence that it ever did any actual harm to science). These days postmodernist and related “science studies” critiques of science are part of the rightwing arsenal used by Steven Fuller to defend creationism and by Daniel Sarewitz on climate science. The routine assumption that the analyses put forward of innumerate bloggers are just as valid as (in fact more valid than) as those of scientists who have devoted their life to the relevant field is one aspect of this, as is the constant demand to “teach the controversy” on evolution, climate science, wind turbine health scares, vaccination and so on.

In the short run, the costs of attacking science are small. Scientists aren’t that numerous, so their conversion into one of the most solidly anti-Republican voting blocs in the US has’t had much electoral impact. But, eventually the fact that conservatives are the “stupid party” gets noticed, even by rightwingers themselves.

Mind you, I would probably put anti-vaccination in the "mainly Left" side of the ledger.

Fear of wind turbines is, however, almost certainly a politically manipulated phenomena led by anti-climate change groups.  An interesting article at The Conversation about this is here.

As I suggested in a previous post....

Colorado's 'Biblical' Flood in Line with Climate Trends | Climate Central

Look, I know that not every flood is going to credibly be related to climate change; but when I read about a big flood these days, I go looking for reports as to whether the rainfall that led to it is record breaking, and by what amount.  

If the rainfall is of an intensity that smashes previous records, and given that we know the atmosphere is carrying more water now than it used, then the relationship to global warming is looking pretty good.

The most awesome medical condition, ever

Auto-Brewery Syndrome: Apparently, You Can Make Beer In Your Gut : The Salt : NPR

This story is so remarkable, I want to re-print the whole thing.   But here's just half of it:

A 61-year-old man — with a history of home-brewing — stumbled into a Texas emergency room complaining of dizziness. Nurses ran a Breathalyzer test. And sure enough, the man's blood alcohol concentration was a whopping 0.37 percent, or almost five times the legal limit for driving in Texas.

There was just one hitch: The man said that he hadn't touched a drop of alcohol that day.

"He would get drunk out of the blue — on a Sunday morning after being at church, or really, just anytime," says , the dean of nursing at Panola College in Carthage, Texas. "His wife was so dismayed about it that she even bought a Breathalyzer."

Other medical professionals chalked up the man's problem to "closet drinking." But Cordell and Dr. Justin McCarthy, a gastroenterologist in Lubbock, wanted to figure out what was really going on.

So the team searched the man's belongings for liquor and then isolated him in a hospital room for 24 hours. Throughout the day, he ate carbohydrate-rich foods, and the doctors periodically checked his blood for alcohol. At one point, it rose 0.12 percent.

Eventually, McCarthy and Cordell pinpointed the culprit: an overabundance of brewer's yeast in his gut.

That's right, folks. According to Cordell and McCarthy, the man's intestinal tract was acting like his own internal brewery.

The patient had an infection with Saccharomyces cerevisiae , Cordell says. So when he ate or drank a bunch of starch — a bagel, pasta or even a soda — the yeast fermented the sugars into ethanol, and he would get drunk. Essentially, he was brewing beer in his own gut. Cordell and McCarthy the case of "auto-brewery syndrome" a few months ago in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine.

This makes me wonder whether some college students will try some experiments on themselves.  Perhaps if you neutralise stomach acid first with an antacid, then take a tablespoon or two of freeze dried yeast, followed by some starch....

Michelle confirms what we knew

Public servants victims of long Coalition memories

 The story of Andrew Metcalfe, who is out of Agriculture, goes back quite a way. Metcalfe formerly headed Immigration. In 2011 he gave a background briefing to journalists (later attributed to him) in which he suggested that Abbott’s policy of turning back boats, while effective under Howard, would not work now, because the asylum seekers would scuttle the boats and Indonesia would not agree to the policy.

The two cardinal sins in Coalition eyes are believing in a carbon price and not believing in turning around boats.

Blair Comley, who went to Resources after Labor scrapped the Climate Change department, had a major hand in Labor’s carbon policy and was a stronger defender of it. Enough said.

Metcalfe also came up with the "Malaysia solution", so of course he couldn't stay, even though Amanda Vanstone worked with him under Howard and spoke highly of him.

And remember Maurice Newman and his "myth of climate change" article?  Well, doesn't this augur well for environment:

 There are two new heads. Gordon de Brouwer becomes secretary of the Environment department and Renee Leon will head the Employment department. Both have been senior in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (de Brouwer an associate secretary); sources say de Brouwer has a strong advocate in business leader Maurice Newman.

 What's the bet that if Maurice endorses him to head environment, he's a climate change skeptic in private?