Sounds kind of improbable to me...

Life possible in the early Universe 

Aliens might have existed during the Universe’s infancy. A set of calculations suggests that liquid water — a pre­requisite for life — could have formed on rocky planets just 15 million years after the Big Bang.

Abraham Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has realized that in the early Universe, the energy required to keep water liquid could have come from the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the Big Bang, rather than from host stars. Today, the temperature of this relic radiation is just 2.7 kelvin, but at an age of around 15 million years it would have kept the entire Universe at a balmy 300 kelvin, says Loeb, who posted his calculations to the arXiv preprint server this month (http://arxiv.org/abs/1312.0613).

Loeb says that rocky planets could have existed at that time, in pockets of the Universe where matter was exceptionally dense, leading to the formation of massive, short-lived stars that would have enriched these pockets in the heavier elements needed to make planets. He suggests that there would have been a habitable epoch of 2 million or 3 million years during which all rocky planets would have been able to maintain liquid water, regardless of their distance from a star. “The whole Universe was once an incubator for life,” he says.

 But as one critic says further down in the article:

Christopher Jarzynski, a biophysicist at the University of Maryland, College Park, is not convinced that life could exist in a uniformly warm Universe. Life on Earth depends thermo­dynamically not only on the heat source of the Sun, but also on the cold cosmic microwave background, which provides a heat sink, he notes. “Life feeds off this,” he says. And Alexander Vilenkin, a cosmologist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, says that a few million years is too short a time to produce intelligent life.

 Anyway, if true, and aliens did evolve then, it certainly sets up well the idea that our alien overlords (like the ones in 2001 A Space Odyssey) are very old indeed. 

Love fight

A rather odd on line fight has broken out between those who hate the movie Love Actually, and those who defend it.  (The 10 year anniversary of its release seems to be the motivation for this re-assessment.)

Christopher Orr started it with his lengthy explanation of why he thinks the movie is awful and actually anti-romantic.  His critique is not perfect - he says he thinks Bill Nighy is terrific, whereas I always find him hammy and annoying.   But he makes a pretty strong case against the movie overall.

(I just found the movie extremely unconvincing in virtually every story thread.   I wrote at the time that I found some of the stories verging on creepy, but I've actually forgotten which ones now.)

Orr's article has now been followed by this:

I Will Not Be Ashamed of Loving Love Actually - Emma Green - The Atlantic

and she brings in CS Lewis to defend her take on the movie.  (!)  [I somehow have my doubts that he would have taken to the love story between actors doing fake porn scenes.]

Other haters and lover of the movie have taken this as a cue to join in.  I see that this Australian entry is pretty good - she seems to dislike it in pretty much exactly the same ways I do.  After than, you can read a defence of the movie on Mother Earth News.  Then you can go visit another Australian woman who dislikes the movie.

I think the "noes" have it.

UPDATE:  An English young bloke in The Guardian now has a go at Australians for criticising it, even though this round of criticism started in America, declaring it his favourite movie, ever.  (!)   I think he should be a little embarrassed about that, in all honesty.

Drink up

BBC News - Artificial sweetener aspartame 'is safe'

I work on the assumption that if the Europeans think a food additive is safe, it almost certainly is.

An early Christmas present...

...at least for those of us who didn't vote for Abbott.

From the Financial Review:

The Abbott government’s extraordinary collapse in public support has been confirmed in the latest Newspoll, which puts Labor well ahead on a two-party basis and shows the Coalition has lost its carbon tax advantage.

The Newspoll, published in The Australian on Tuesday, finds the Coalition’s election-winning margin has been erased in just three months, with Labor now leading the two-party preferred vote with 52 per cent compared with the Abbott government’s 48 per cent.

The poll result confirms an Australian Financial Review/Nielsen poll, published two weeks ago, which was the first since the election to show that voters had dramatically shifted allegiance away from the Coalition, despite the party’s landslide win on September 7.

This translates into a 5.5 per cent swing against the government since the country voted, a shift strongly represented in the Financial Review’s Poll of Polls.

 Actually, I don't really think that it was "a landslide victory", but apart from that, a good report!

Counting men

I've noticed in the last 6 months that some conservative Catholics in the blogosphere have taken to claiming that the CDC in the US thinks that only 2% of men engage in "same sex behaviour".   (And conclude from that "hardly anyone is gay - why is gay marriage needed?)

In fact, the 2011 study they rely on says this in the abstract:

Estimates of the proportion of men who engaged in same-sex behavior differed by recall period: past year = 2.9% (95%CI, 2.6–3.2); past five years = 3.9% (3.5–4.4); ever = 6.9% (5.1–8.6).

 Which, of course, indicates that the true percent of gay or bisexual men would likely be around 4 - 5%.

With that background, it was interesting to read this article in the New York Times  in which a guy with a PhD in economics looks at the different threads of evidence and agrees with a 5% figure for "men who are predominantly attracted to men".

The most interesting aspect of the article is, however, the evidence he looks at for those parts of America where it seems men are more likely to be "in the closet".   (It's centred in the Southern, evangelical States.)    I thought this part was an innovative bit of research, and a bit darkly amusing:

Additional evidence that suggests that many gay men in intolerant states are deeply in the closet comes from a surprising source: the Google searches of married women. It turns out that wives suspect their husbands of being gay rather frequently. In the United States, of all Google searches that begin “Is my husband...,” the most common word to follow is “gay.” “Gay” is 10 percent more common in such searches than the second-place word, “cheating.” It is 8 times more common than “an alcoholic” and 10 times more common than “depressed.” 

Searches questioning a husband’s sexuality are far more common in the least tolerant states. The states with the highest percentage of women asking this question are South Carolina and Louisiana. In fact, in 21 of the 25 states where this question is most frequently asked, support for gay marriage is lower than the national average.

 The other point that gays rights activists can rely on when talking about the relevance of numbers is this (I only thought to look this up on the weekend):

By 1933, German Jews were largely urban, middle class, prosperous in business, and well represented in the professions (especially medicine and law). They were culturally integrated but represented less than 1 percent of the total population.

PS:  I still don't support gay marriage, and would prefer it be dealt with by civil unions, perhaps even following the Tasmanian model which allow for other co-dependency relationships to be registered too.  But at least I don't argue dishonestly about it.

The Australian applauds itself

Given that The Australian has possibly the most annoying paywall system on the planet, as well as being essentially a print version of the Catallaxy blog on its opinion pages and its politics generally, I missed a truly remarkable editorial they ran last week, until I read about it on John Quiggin's blog.

This loonpond post contains the editorial in full as illustrated by First Dog on the Moon.  (You may notice it is also where I read the Tom Tomorrow cartoon featured in my last post.)

Although we don't know who wrote it, as Uncle Milton at JQ's blog noted:

The Oz’s piece, while anonymous, reads like it was written by Nick Cater. His writing has the air of painful frustration that the enemies of everything he holds near and dear refuse to go away.

I find Cater very annoying and shallow.  I have read reviews of his book indicating that he really spends a lot of time on environmentalism as a culture war dividing line.   I suppose it is, but only because the Right went stupidly anti-science about it.

Asians and Republicans

GOP starts a tough struggle to win back Asian American voters - latimes.com

The LA Times has an interesting article here on the way the Republicans lost the Asian vote.

Until they return from the Tea Party Right wing policies (and there is little sign of that at the moment), it is hard to see Asians returning to them.  Some extracts:

Asian Americans have shifted dramatically away from the Republican Party over the last two decades — more so than any other voting group. In 1992, Republican George H.W. Bush won 55% of the Asian American vote against Democrat Bill Clinton. Last year, President Obama won 73% against Republican Mitt Romney, a better showing than the president's 71% support among Latinos, according to exit polls....

The shift in Asian American political sentiments started during the Clinton years and owes much to the prosperity of his two terms as president, which enhanced the appeal of a Democratic Party that, from the civil rights movement on, had always seemed more welcoming to minorities.

Hastening the trend has been the rightward turn of the Republican Party.

Opinion surveys have found Asian Americans more willing than white voters to support tax hikes to reduce the federal deficit, more supportive of a large, activist government, friendlier toward immigrants in the country illegally and more favorably disposed to Obamacare than voters overall. All those positions clash with today's prevailing GOP sentiment.

The harsh Republican tone on immigration, directed mainly at people crossing illegally from Mexico, has been especially damaging.

And speaking of the last US Presidential election, I came across this last week and found it quite funny.  I hope the words are readable:

A good summary

Abbott team in government loses control of conversation | World news | theguardian.com

I thought the above article by Lenore Taylor in yesterday's Guardian was a pretty good summary of how the Coalition government is going.  (Short version:  not very well.)

I liked this bit in particular:

Similarly, there were many in the Coalition who sought to deflect attention from Guardian Australia’s spying stories by trying to start a fight they were itching to have anyway about the role and remit of the ABC.

Both Guardian Australia and the ABC took the decision that publication on the Indonesian spy story, with all requested redactions on actual national security grounds, was in the public interest. Abbott himself acknowledged that “plainly it was a story”. The prime minister and the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, asserted the ABC had made an “error of judgement” in partnering with Guardian Australia to run and “amplify” the story, something that has also been done by many other media organisations around the world. (It is unclear how the amplification would have been appreciably reduced had Guardian Australia run the story on its own and the ABC had then begun following it ten minutes later.)

Cheese in detail

It's Saturday night, and I'm reading an article that contains far more detail about the chemistry and biology of cheese than I really need to know, including this:

In Quicke’s vat, this arrangement has broken down and become curds and whey, on its way to cheddar. If milk is left alone, bacteria quickly start converting its lactose sugar into lactic acid that can eventually start this curdling. This is probably how cheese was first made, but modern needs for safe storage and maturing demand a different approach. Quicke’s minimally pasteurises its milk, and like most modern cheesemakers adds a starter culture including lactic acid bacteria such as Streptococcus, Lactococcus and Lactobacillus. They work hand-in-hand to control which bacteria reach the final cheese, by outcompeting less welcome species and making the environment too acidic for them. And rather than these bacteria doing the curdling, acid conditions help an enzyme preparation known as rennet to do it. Their ongoing acidity development also controls the resulting solid curd’s texture.

Traditional rennet, which Quicke’s uses, comes from soaking a milk-fed calf’s stomach in brine.

 Had some nice goats cheese at dinner tonight, as it happens.

UPDATE:   I was wondering last night how someone first worked out that calf's stomach contained something that was useful in making cheese.  Another site provides the likely answer:

There is a great deal of mythology surrounding the history of cheesemaking, because humans have been making it for a very long time, and the steps involved are actually fairly complicated. The stomachs of ruminants have historically been used to make bags and sacks, and food historians theorize that someone must have stored milk in one a bit too long, allowing it to curdle, and the curdled milk was then turned into a food product. Modern rennet is created through an extraction process that yields neat, dry tablets or a liquid that is very easy to work with.

 Traditional rennet was made by washing the stomach of a young ruminant after it has been slaughtered, and then salting it. The salted stomach is kept in dried form, with cooks snipping off small pieces and soaking them in water when they have a need for the extract. Some cheesemakers continue to make and use it in this way, but the vast majority use commercially processed rennet, which is made by creating a slurry and then subjecting it to a compound that will cause the enzymes to precipitate out.

Another episode of "It's all in the Gut"

Bacterium can reverse autism-like behaviour in mice

Doses of a human gut microbe helped to reverse behavioural problems in mice with autism-like symptoms, researchers report today in Cell¹. The treatment also reduced gastrointestinal problems in the animals that were similar to those that often accompany autism in humans.

Applying this to humans might be a little tricky, although I wonder if you could really do much harm by just trying introducing different bacteria until you find one that helps:

Although many anecdotal reports and small studies have suggested that ‘probiotic’ bacteria, such as those found in yoghurt, and antibiotics can help with the symptoms of autism, Cryan says more research needs to be done. Because there are a number of types of autism in humans, it will be important to look at how different symptoms might be affected by different microbes. Another question is whether the microbiomes of the mice — whose symptoms result from maternal infection — differ from those of mice that are genetically predisposed to autism-like symptoms, Cryan adds.

Here's the main point, though:

“I think there is now sufficient proof of concept where people can start to look at probiotic bacteria to improve brain function in humans,” says gastroenterologist Stephen Collins of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. 

Maybe Freud should have worked with the Kellogg brothers.  (Although, now that I check, they had some freaky ideas about matters sexual such that they might have been a bad influence even on Sigmund.)

Back from the future

Hmmm.  It seems that Blogger's "Search this blog" function has changed to become even more wonky that it used to be - so that the side search box is not working at all now, but I can still use a box at the top left, even though it shows posts in full instead of the way it used to just list them.

Blogger has been a fantastic free service, but it has always puzzled me why they couldn't get this feature quite right.

Anyhoo, that's all by way of background of noting that I am sure I have posted before about my fondness for the idea that aliens are time travelling, very evolved, humans from the future.   Sure, it doesn't explain the whole anal probe meme, but I'm sure dogs, cats and apes get a bit confused as to what's gone on during some interactions with humans, too.

As far as I can recall, there hasn't been a popular science fiction book or movie on this theme, which seems an odd oversight.   I did give credit to Indian Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for presenting aliens as inter-dimensional travellers, though, as that is an idea that has somewhat displaced aliens as mere space travellers, and that's getting closer to the idea that they are future humans.   (I suppose one could argue that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension far pre-dated Crystal Skull in running with inter-dimensional aliens, though.   Why does that movie - which I enjoyed at the time - never get repeated on TV, I wonder?) 

And all of these musings, which I have probably said all before at this very blog, are inspired by this post at the oddball corner of Huffington Post.  Apparently, the aliens as humans from the future goes back to some guy who allegedly had connections to Roswell:

We still really don't know what happened at Roswell, but there is an ancient alien/astronaut link that adds to the mystery. According to a renowned U.S. Navy Commander named George W. Hoover, the aliens may have been human beings from the future... us... come back to, well, interact with... us.

Allegedly, Hoover had top-secret clearance as part of his work as a Naval Intelligence Officer to view the Roswell debris and bodies during the 1950s...and he eventually told a very select group of people before his death of his beliefs. Those people included his own son, George Hoover, Jr. and later ufologist and researcher William J. Birnes, both of whom were made privy to what the elder Hoover knew before his death. Hoover stated during interviews that he believed the aliens were not extraterrestrial, but were extratemporal -- as in time travelers. In addition, he believed they were not really aliens at all... but humans of the future, with incredible abilities to use the power of consciousness to morph reality and travel through the landscape of time.

Mainly good news

US pregnancy rates continue to fall

The decrease in unwanted teenage pregnancies is welcome, although I suppose it may be the case that too many women are leaving having kids too late:

Pregnancy rates for teenagers also have reached historic lows that extend across all racial and ethnic groups. Between 1990 and 2009, the pregnancy rate fell 51 percent for white and black teenagers, and 40 percent for Hispanic teenagers.

The teen birth rate dropped 39 percent between 1991 and 2009, and the teen abortion rate decreased by half during the same period.

Overall, pregnancy rates have continued to decline for women younger than 30.

"The amount of knowledge that young women have about their birth control options is very different compared to a few decades ago," said Dr. Margaret Appleton, director of the division of obstetrics and gynecology at the Scott & White Clinic in College Station, Texas. "Birth control is more readily available to women, and they are more knowledgeable about it."

At the same time, pregnancy rates have steadily increased for women aged 30 to 44. The rate increased 16 percent between 1990 and 2009 for women aged 30 to 34, for example, and 35 percent for women aged 35 to 39.

 But in not so good news, it seems that there may be a link between IVF treatment and increased risk of dangerous melanoma.  

The not-so-noble Old West

It Didn’t Save Wild Bill

I can't find much of interest to post today, so try this:

While researching my second Western Mystery for kids, P.K. Pinkerton and the Petrified Man (AKA The Case of the Good-looking Corpse), I discovered a fascinating fact: very few gunfights played out like the iconic Western movie “showdown”. Two antagonists rarely faced each other like self-moderating duelists on Main Street, one honorably waiting for the other to “draw”. More often one man would “throw down” on another without warning, sometimes even shooting from behind through a window or door.

One night in 1876 in a Deadwood saloon, a famous gunfighter with silky golden locks was shot in the back of the head while playing poker. The shooter, a certain Jack McCall, fled. Hurdy girls screamed and other gamblers recoiled in horror. Wild Bill Hickok, already a legend in his own time, was dead. The reputed inventor of the “fast draw”, Hickok usually took a seat in a corner of a saloon or against wall, so nobody could sneak up on him. But on that fatal  night he sat with his back exposed. Perhaps he was feeling tired of life. He was an alcoholic who rubbed mercury on his skin to alleviate the symptoms of venereal disease. This poisonous treatment made him drool and start to lose his sight. According to Deadwood author Pete Dexter, it often took him twenty minutes to empty his bladder.

Opportunistic conservatives

Hobby Lobby and corporate personhood: The alarming conservative crusade to declare everything—except people—a legal “person.” 

A good article criticising the blatantly opportunistic and unreasonable push by Conservatives in the US to expand enforcement of their views by declaring things to be "persons".   This used to be a Lefty tactic to try to help environmentalism, but now the silly Right is trying to grab onto it.

As used by UFO's

BBC News - RF Safe-Stop shuts down car engines with radio pulse

Well, this is interesting.   There is a subset of UFO cases in which drivers claimed their car was stopped.

I am sure I have read of tests of what it would take to do this in terms of electromagnetisms, and it turned out to be very difficult to reproduce.  But then again, this was many years ago, when cars were far less reliant on electronics than they are now. 

Now, it can be done.   UFO implications are unclear.

An odd series of thoughts

Today I was thinking about the slightly silly suggestion that Amazon would soon have a swarm of robot drones zipping about some city delivering stuff to customers, and the first thing that came to mind was - why Amazon?   Don't they sell mostly books, and they're going increasingly digital?   In fact, I thought, in 100 years time, all human needs will be covered by digital delivery, with the possible exception of food and water.  [But even then, perhaps people will buy a lifetime supply of several tonnes of powdered protein and nutrients and have their 3D food printer arrange it into something different and tasty every night.   As for clothes, it will be so hot that everyone will be a nudist, but even if needed for a special occasion, the 3D printer can probably deal with that too.   Perhaps using some of the starches that can be used for food.  My semi-dystopian nude future is efficient, solar powered, and waste free.]  

As for human companionship, well, half of that is already over the internet, it seems, and it's a wonder there's not some groin clutching device available already that allows telepresence to deal with the baser instincts.  Some scientific team in Japan is probably already working on it as I write.

So, in my (already creepy) vision of digital isolation, what's left that flying drones would still need to carry?   Well, um, carrying on with the matter referred to in the last paragraph, they could play a role in reproduction.   Do I need to spell it out?   In fact, male "donations" can already be shipped directly to a person's home (check out this lesbian owned business's website) in the US, if not other countries; and the only innovation in my weird future is that it's delivered via a buzzing drone passing overhead.

 [In many respects, the present era of reproduction day is way, way stranger already than people imagined would ever be socially acceptable even when I was a child.   Exhibit 1:  Elton John and his partner having two kids and not knowing which is the father?  And this is covered in non judgemental fashion on the cover of celebrity magazines?   I'm having strange thoughts about airborne gametes here, making human society resemble coral spawning, but it's only a minor elevation of the oddity of the present day. ]

But going back to drones:  it's not a big stretch to imagine that frozen embryos might be delivered to your home this way in future.  [Where they can be raised in a RoboWomb with a clear plastic window that makes monitoring progress easy.   Spray on bacteria for when baby is decanted will be important, though.]

Isn't this a great explanation for the myth that babies are delivered by storks?:  it's a premonition of the future!

End transmission.

Slate praises Aldi

Aldi grocery store: best in America, related to Trader Joe’s.

Amusing to read someone in Slate praising Aldi stores.

I like them too.  I think it's the surprise element of what weird item they'll be selling on the centre tables this week that keeps me coming back.  (As well as the European products.)

More odd biology

BBC News - 'Memories' pass between generations

Experiments showed that a traumatic event could affect the DNA in sperm and alter the brains and behaviour of subsequent generations. 

A Nature Neuroscience study shows mice trained to avoid a smell passed their aversion on to their "grandchildren".

Experts said the results were important for phobia and anxiety research.

The animals were trained to fear a smell similar to cherry blossom.  The team at the Emory University School of Medicine, in the US, then looked at what was happening inside the sperm. 

They showed a section of DNA responsible for sensitivity to the cherry blossom scent was made more active in the mice's sperm.

Both the mice's offspring, and their offspring, were "extremely sensitive" to cherry blossom and would avoid the scent, despite never having experiencing it in their lives. 

Changes in brain structure were also found. 

"The experiences of a parent, even before conceiving, markedly influence both structure and function in the nervous system of subsequent generations," the report concluded.

Tony lies

Tony Abbott defends Gonski reversal, saying election pledge was misheard

Let's be clear here - Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne are breaking pre-election commitments regarding honouring the Gonski funding deals Labor negotiated with the States.   Where Tony Abbott is now lying is in his attempt to deny that the pre-election commitment was what it was.

Katherine Murphy in The Guardian does not go quite to the "l" word, although I don't see why she doesn't:

If you promised to match school funding dollar for dollar over the next four years – if you promised that every single school in Australia gets the same deal whether there is a Labor government or a Coalition government after 7 September – then that's what you promised.

You cannot subsequently put it down to some well-meaning person's hallucination, a mass delusion, as Abbott suggested on the Bolt Report on Sunday. "But Andrew, we are going to keep our promise. We are going to keep the promise that we actually made, not the promise that some people thought that we made or the promise that some people might have liked us to make. We're going to keep the promise that we actually made."

 But, of course, no one should be surprised by this.   As Bernard Keane wrote back in 2010, Abbott is simply very prone, even by the low standards we expect of politicians,  to resort to dishonesty when he is put under pressure (as well as being a policy flake who will "say anything" to get elected):

The other issue is that there is long-term context to Abbott’s remarks. In my follow-up piece today, I refer to John Howard’s remarkable capacity to backflip on beliefs he’d held for decades, but still be perceived by voters as a bloke who stood for what he believed in. I was going to include Abbott in that, as one who had learnt well from his mentor. But the difference is that while most of Howard’s back flips took place over a period of years, Abbott’s take place over weeks, as if by being younger and subject to an ever-faster media cycle, Abbott had accelerated the process. While he took several years to change his mind on parental leave, his reversal from dogged advocate of the Malcolm Turnbull ETS strategy to die-hard opponent happened over a matter of months, and his no-new-taxes promise barely last a few weeks.

But Abbott also has long-term form in struggling with the truth in interviews. In 1998, he — commendably — undertook a personal mission to destroy One Nation, partly by funding a disgruntled member, Terry Sharples, in legal action. Trouble was, he later denied to the ABC ever funding Sharples — a blatant lie he was sprung on in 2003. Then there was his curious denial of meeting George Pell during the 2004 election campaign, until Tony Jones jogged his memory and Abbott suddenly recalled that he’d met him the previous week.

Other Abbott credibility gaps haven’t been his fault — such as when his “rolled gold” Medicare safety net election promise was overruled by Cabinet (which would appear to disprove the idea that scripted remarks will always be honoured).

But the impression remains: when put on the spot by the media, Abbott makes stuff up to get himself out of trouble. Stuff that eventually gets found out.

 I will make my bet now:   history will judge Abbott poorly because of this.   What he could get away with as a Minister doing the dirty work of another leader is not going to extend to his time as the actual Prime Minister.

Tape still important

Monitor: Magnetic tape to the rescue | The Economist

I was surprised to learn of the importance still of magnetic tape for large scale data storage.  This article explains why, although there are quite a few objections to certain claims in the comments that follow.