Big hail

Having suffered some house damage in a hail storm exactly one year ago, I certainly have a good idea how scary it would have been to be in the huge and damaging hail that hit the Sunshine Coast on the weekend.   

The biggest hail stones appear to be the of the type which are make up by smaller hail freezing together, but that still makes for a massive chunk of  ice falling out of the sky.  I think there was a report of one person injured directly by the hail; it's a wonder there weren't more.

Dubious theory noted

I seem to have missed "biocentrism," as coined by medical Professor Robert Lanza, but it got a run in The Indpendent the other day, in a somewhat confusing article which says Lanza thinks his theory means that there is definitely life after death.  It sounds rather like Hugh Everett's idea that he would continue living in another corner of the multiverse - but not quite.   (I don't know that anyone has put this "multiple versions of everyone" idea to much philosophical, theological or science fiction consideration yet.  It always seems to me that it must be good for some interesting conjecture about God and the meaning of the universe, and it's a topic I often find myself thinking about in the shower.  Never with any worthwhile result, however.) 

Reddit has an article on it which contains more criticism, and there is a Wikipedia entry too.

Doesn't seem all that promising to me...

Captain Shaky

I knew nothing really about the events portrayed in Captain Phillips, even though they only occurred in 2009, and this is an excellent way to have seen the movie yesterday.

It's a very solid film:  good acting, pretty good writing, and just a really interesting story.  But there are a couple of, not exactly reservations, but at least observations I would make:

a.  the US military obviously fully co-operated with the film, and it's no wonder, given they are the heroes of the piece.   But the movie does perhaps treat them as so superbly efficient that, on reflection,  they seem just about too good to be true.   I can't really call this a criticism of the film - the US military probably deserves some unreserved cinematic high praise at least once in a while - but it wouldn't have hurt to shown one military character being a bit more human.

b.  Given that I have spent the last decade or so concentrating more on children's movies than adult ones, this was the first film I have seen by Paul Greengrass.  David Stratton and others have long complained or at least noted this director's love of hand held camera, or "shaky cam", and I have finally seen what it is like.

It's self evident that the style works best for documentary style story telling, and this movie certainly fits the bill.   As I have already indicated, it didn't ruin the movie for me, but I have got to say, it must surely make a director's job a hell of a lot easier to do an entire movie in this fashion.  I mean, it's virtually a complete jettison of concern about careful composition of a shot:  the actors just need to be approximately where they should be, and the cameraman just has to get them approximately in shot.  I would also assume it makes shooting the film a hell of a lot faster.

But given its limitations, it would seem almost a cheat to me if Greengrass got a Director's award for the film, no matter how much critics liked it.     

Still, I recommend it.

Yet another possible solar/hydrogen "breakthrough"

Researchers create a low-cost, long-lasting water splitter made of silicon and nickel

New proposals for putting together solar power and hydrogen production from water seem to be cropping up all the time.   It would be good if one of them ever got to production scale.

I see this article suggests the hydrogen would be used in fuel cells to generate power overnight or when it is cloudy.   (Well, hot salt systems seem to work overnight anyway.)   I wonder if this is more efficient than just burning hydrogen under the salts to keep them hot?  

Some other article I read recently suggested that putting small nuclear reactors at solar power stations could work well too.  I can't find it right now, though...

Friends in high places

Gina Rinehart meets Coalition MPs in secret trip to Canberra

Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart, invited a small group of Coalition friends for drinks in her private hotel suite, after planning a secret flight to Canberra to visit the Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce.

Some of Mrs Rinehart's closest political friends, the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and Liberal Party senators Cory Bernardi and Michaelia Cash, were invited to join the billionaire for the intimate gathering on Wednesday night.

The iron ore magnate, who has vigorously supported Prime Minister Tony Abbott's plans to abolish the carbon and mining taxes, suggested the politicians meet for drinks in her Canberra hotel room to avoid media attention.

It is understood the reason for Mrs Rinehart's surprise trip to Canberra was so she could attend Parliament House to watch Mr Joyce's maiden speech on Thursday as the newly elected MP for New England.

It is understood Mrs Rinehart's secretary booked a room in the Hyatt Hotel and organised a private jet to fly from Sydney to Canberra late on Wednesday.

The billionaire had also planned to meet senators Bernardi and Cash and the Speaker, Ms Bishop, for lunch on Thursday after Mr Joyce's speech.

Yeah, well, that's a great look isn't it.  Not just swinging by to dine with old buddy Joyce, but to meet up with the new Speaker of the house, during a term in which several policies in which Gina is personally interested financially will be hotly contested.    

 

And Abbott's idea of government in secret (covered well on 7.30 last night) continues to attract only muted criticism from the Murdoch press.

 

Abbott is just showing himself as the most appalling hypocrite, even by the normally low standards of politicians. 

The Kevinburg finale

As I wrote elsewhere last night:

Rudd performed well in initial interviews on his return, but his old policy-on-the-run habit re-asserted itself during the campaign, as well as his vanity. Still, it’s true, I would have preferred Labor to have won this election under him, as I consider Abbott has certainly become a flakey politician with no sign of having good intuitions on anything currently important.

But having lost the election, it is indeed a good thing to see the final end of the Rudd experiment, which in terms of the internal affairs of Labor, was a clear disaster.

Update:   

Julia Gillard has wished Kevin Rudd well following the announcement of his resignation from Parliament.

Ms Gillard tweeted her best wishes on Thursday morning to the man who ended her prime ministership.

 She's obviously not an embittered ex politician.   She was always likeable, and remains so.  

High dollar frustration

Reserve Bank should intervene to push down the Australian dollar

Tim Colebatch continues his argument that the ongoing problem for the Australian economy is the high Australian dollar, and it deserves Reserve Bank intervention.

I had thought that the Abbott government would reap the benefit (under false pretences) of an Australian dollar which appeared to be heading down to a permanently lower rate.  But it keeps hovering around the mid 90's, which is not good enough.  As Colebatch argues:

The high dollar cannot last forever. But there is a limit to how long companies can go on losing money while waiting for the dollar to fall. We are allowing a temporary over-valuation to shut down economic capacity permanently. This is not how the successful Asian economies operate.

I find this a very convincing take on the matter.

How many still displaced in Japan

Little hope of evacuee homecoming | The Japan Times

I had been wondering recently about the number of people in Japan who are still displaced as a result of the Fukushima reactor accident, but it's been hard to find current numbers via Google.

The article above gives an indication, however:

There is still little prospect that nuclear refugees will be able to return to their homes near the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, the government said in a new report.

The report, submitted to the Diet on Tuesday, notes that the reclassification of evacuation zones around the plant has been completed and that the cleanup is continuing.

But the government failed to specify when evacuated residents — some 81,000 as of September — will be able to return to their hometowns.

Challenges cited by the government include the need to ease health worries and stop false rumors about radiation exposure.

According to the report, which covers progress between October 2012 and September this year on reconstructing areas hit by the 2011 natural and nuclear disasters, the total number of evacuees is now around 280,000, compared with about 470,000 shortly after the disasters.

 So, about 81,000 appears to be the answer.

When nuclear goes wrong, it is massively disruptive and hugely expensive to clean up.

They chose the wrong typhoon

HotWhopper: Ethically-challenged Anthony Watts is seeking revenge, playing games with tragedy. How low can he go?

I have been meaning to add a link to the Hot Whopper blog, where Sou puts in what is now almost certainly the most detailed and comprehensive critiques of Anthony Watts and his increasingly desperate Watts Up With That blog.

As the story linked above explains, Watts unwisely chose to publish a way-too-early post along the lines of "you see, this typhoon wasn't as bad as the media made out" post.

I'm not sure if they are still updating the number of dead, but the post is one of the most embarrassing things Watts has ever published.

As David Appell and Andrew Friedman note, actual climate scientists are cautious in their comments about climate change and typhoons.   But even Lomborg says it would seem the research is pointing towards possibly fewer, but stronger, typhoons in the future.   Then he goes on to complain that it is immoral (!) to use this typhoon to argue for CO2 cuts, because adaptation is better!   He's become a one track idiot - adaptation to 6 m storm surges in seaside towns and villages in poor countries like the Philippines or Bangladesh?  Yeah, sure. 

UPDATE:   someone in comments wanted me to update this.   You can see my response, but I will add an update after all, from a blog post that has a good discussion of why typhoons are particularly destructive and deadly in that part of the world.  I thought this part was especially interesting:

There are hints that global warming may be playing a  role here: One 2008 study (pdf) in Nature found that the very strongest typhoons in the northwest Pacific seem to have become somewhat more intense since 1981 — by about 20 mph, on average — as the oceans have warmed. Yet making out a clear trend in tropical cyclones over the past few decades is notoriously difficult, and attributing the strength of a single storm like Haiyan to man-made climate change is even harder.

Interesting.  You have to wonder whether those scientists in the "attribution wars" who always urge caution (to the point of being dismissive) on AGW contribution to an extreme weather event are actually the ones being somewhat prematurely misleading.

In defence of Tom

Tom Cruise did not make widely reported claim that acting is as tough as combat 

I saw them talking about this on Sunrise over the weekend - how Tom Cruise had said that making movies was like fighting in Afghanistan.

If you read the above link, in fact poor old Tom was careful to be specifically dismissive of the suggestion. 

This was just an appalling bit of mischief making by someone in the media, by the looks.

Tom may be in a nutty religion, but he has made many very good science fiction and action films, and I just want people to leave him alone.  (Readers are invited to imagine me overly emotion in a Youtube video making this plea.)  

Ted Cruz - Student jerk

Ted Cruz was a polarizing figure at Harvard Law, foreshadowing his partisan profile in the Senate - Politics - The Boston Globe

Tea Party "hero" (for leading a campaign that failed and led to the Republican's loss in popularity, but hey, whoever said the Tea Party had smarts?) Ted Cruz is the subject of a not very complimentary story in the Boston Globe about his time at Harvard.  An example:

As they were entering their second year in law school, Melissa Hart agreed to give Cruz a ride from New York, where Cruz was at the end of the summer, back to Cambridge. She didn’t know him well, but he sought her out after she had been given a prestigious award for first-year students.

“We hadn’t left Manhattan before he asked my IQ,” Hart said. “When I told him I didn’t know, he asked, ‘Well, what’s your SAT score? That’s closely coordinated with your IQ.’ ”

“It went from, ‘Nice guy,’ ” she said, “to ‘uh-oh.’ ”

 Strangely, he was very keen on acting at that age.   The article suggests he still is.

I also see that the Australia Tea Party sub branch known as Catallaxy has commenters who think he is a promising Presidential candidate.  I suspect the Democrats would celebrate if he does run.
 
 

Arty photography made easy

The range of free or cheap apps available on tablets these makes arty photo manipulation ridiculously easy.  One effort by my primary school daughter, for a school project, for example:

I am still a little surprised, however, that it is hard to find a photo app that really does everything you can on (say) some PC software.  There is usually something I can't do on my Android tablet.  Then again, I haven't gone and just got the Adobe Photoshop Touch app, which I see is only $10.  

This will probably be my Christmas present to myself.

PS:  for anyone who cares what I think about apps, I find Sketchbook Pro is really a very good art app which is very useful for dealing with photos too.  It does take a bit of getting used to, though.

Recent possum visits

Babies and bugs

Babies weak immune systems let good bacteria in 

As any new parent knows, infants are notoriously susceptible to bacterial infections. A study now suggests that the body engineers this vulnerability deliberately, allowing beneficial microbes to colonize the baby’s gut, skin, mouth and lungs. Learning to manipulate this system could lead to treatments for infections in newborns, and perhaps even improve the way babies are vaccinated.

n the womb, a fetus is sterile. But from the moment that a baby travels down the birth canal, bacteria and fungi begin their colonization. How the immune system tolerates this sudden influx of invaders has been a mystery.

I wonder, from where do babies born via caesarian pick up their useful bugs.   Must look around for that information later...

Update:  an answer? -

In vaginally-born babies, the bacteria destined for the gut microbiota originate primarily in the maternal birth canal and rectum. Once these bacteria are swallowed by the newborn, they travel through the stomach and colonize the upper and lower intestine, a complicated process that evolves rapidly.

Infants born by cesarean section—particularly cesareans performed before labor begins—don’t encounter the bacteria of the birth canal and maternal rectum. (If a cesarean is performed during labor the infant may be exposed to these bacteria, but to a lesser degree than in vaginal birth.) Instead, bacteria from the skin and hospital environment quickly populate the bowel. As a result, the bacteria inhabiting the lower intestine following a cesarean birth can differ significantly from those found in the vaginally-born baby.

The wages of sin (or at least, dubious taste)

To dye for? Jury still out on tattoo ink causing cancer

Given that I would be pleased if the entire tattoo industry was banned, and my "anti tattoo league" post continues getting hits and (often) upsets the tattooed of the world, I have been reading the stories about the possible dangers of tattoo ink with interest.  The article above is not sensationalist enough for my purposes, but it gives a reasonable background.

I hear the trip is going well...

Just trying to get an extra click or two...

Longer lives

An extra six months to live: babies can now expect to reach 82 in Australia 

That's nice.

But I was surprised that we are third behind not only Japan (that was expected) but also Hong Kong.

Given that I would say the average diet in Hong Kong contains much more fat than Japan, I am surprised it is up there in the longevity stakes.  Is it because they both eat a lot of fish?

Uh-oh

Risk of massive asteroid strike underestimated 

The asteroid that exploded on 15 February this year near the city of Chelyabinsk in the Urals region of Russia was the largest to crash to Earth since 1908, when an object hit Tunguska in Siberia. Using video recordings of the event, scientists have now reconstructed the asteroid's properties and its trajectory through Earth’s atmosphere. The risk of similar objects hitting our planet may be ten times larger than previously thought, they now warn....

The rock was an ordinary chondrite from the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, as revealed by its trajectory and by its elemental and mineral composition, mainly silicates that formed the Solar System billions of years ago. At the time it entered the atmosphere, its mass was of the order of 12,000–13,000 metric tonnes, report two studies published online today in Nature¹ and another study published at the same time in Science². This is nearly twice as heavy as initial estimates had suggested and also larger than revised estimates published in June.

The asteroid roared through Earth’s upper atmosphere at an initial speed of around 19 kilometres per second — more than 50 times the speed of sound. At an altitude of between 45 and 30 kilometres, the heavily fractured, and hence rather fragile, body broke into pieces and finally burst into gas and dust at around 27 kilometres' altitude.

“Luckily, most of the kinetic energy was absorbed by the atmosphere,” says Jiří Borovička, an asteroid researcher at the Astronomical Institute, part of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Ondřejov, near Prague. ”A more solid rock that might have blasted closer to the ground would have caused considerably more damage.”

Where Pope Francis is coming from

This does sound consistent with the way Pope Francis has talked since taking on the top job, and it is very remarkable:

What is the fundamental difference between Judaism and Christianity? Writing for Commentary in 1948, Irving Kristol argued that while Judaism took human experience as its starting point, Christianity began with principles it believed to be eternally true and demanded that human life conform to them. Judaism, he averred, posits “an unbreakable bond between the love of God and the love of all reality” and sanctifies all dimensions of life. Christianity, in contrast, encourages asceticism as a means of transcending our creaturely nature.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio—now better known as Pope Francis—strongly disagrees. In On Heaven and Earth, a series of conversations with Rabbi Abraham Skorka of Argentina translated in April, he asserts that Christianity must understand the needs of humans. He rejects attempts to impose dogmatic principles onto human life, and thinks that the Church must be sensitive, and even sometimes deferential, to cultural change. Indeed, he notes, “religion has a right to give an opinion as long as it is in service to the people.” In so arguing, he presents a vision of Catholicism that is both deeply principled and unabashedly heterodox.   
               
Bergoglio insists that the Church cannot transcend culture. He is unafraid to illustrate how the Church has changed in response to shifting cultural trends, pointing to, for instance, its recent acceptance of divorcees as full members. He takes this point further by suggesting that more changes might be necessary. In an astonishing concession, he opines that the Church’s sensitivity to the course of human events might someday lead it to discard the celibacy requirement for the clergy.

Krugman rubs it in

Paul Krugman has some fun in yet another post about Republicans who refuse to give up on their "dire inflation just around the corner" warnings:

Back to the evidence versus the orthodoxy. I can, in a way, understand refusing to believe in global warming — that’s a noisy process, with lots of local variation, and the overall measures are devised by pointy-headed intellectuals who probably vote Democratic. I can even more easily understand refusing to believe in evolution. But the failure of predicted inflation to materialize is happening in real time, right in front of our eyes; people who kept believing in inflation just around the corner lost a lot of money. Yet the denial remains total.

I guess it’s a matter of who you’re gonna believe — Ayn Rand or your own lying eyes.