You can tell the news isn't inspiring me this weekend...

Yes, I'm down to re-posting cat Christmas photos...

Baby face

I was very amused by the photo used for this story on Slate this morning:

Smoke away, kids

If Marijuana Legalization Sends the Wrong Message to Teenagers, Why Aren't They Listening? - Hit & Run : Reason.com

Reason, unsurprisingly, poohs poohs the idea that legal marijuana (medical or otherwise) has caused an increase in teenage use of the drug.   Yet it does note:

It is true that marijuana use among teenagers has been "drifting higher in recent years" (as the University of Michigan researchers who oversee the Monitoring the Future Study put it). But this upward drift began around 2007, whereas the first medical marijuana law (California's) was enacted in 1996. In between, past-month use among high school seniors went up and down, but it did not exceed the 1996 rate until 2011, 15 years after cannabis was first legalized for medical use. It certainly does not look like marijuana reform is driving increases in adolescent pot smoking. If you dig a little deeper, comparing cannabis consumption trends in states with and without medical marijuana laws, there is little evidence that such legislation boosts pot smoking by teenagers.

 and they end up saying:

  I would therefore not be surprised if legalization is accompanied by an increase in marijuana consumption by teenagers, although not because of the message it sends so much as the increased access it brings.

Yeah, talk about your finest of lines, there.

In all honesty, given that there seems to me to now be clear acceptance amongst the medical researchers that teenagers in particular should not be using marijuana due to its effect on still developing brains, what I am most surprised at in the Reason story is the percent of American teenagers who do use it by year 10, let alone year 12.

This, of course, will be a matter of little concern to libertarians. 

Note to time travellers

Was Jesus a common name back when he was alive?

If one was travelling back to Israel at the time of Christ, it seems to me that it may not be all that easy to identify Him until he started to get a reputation as a preacher*:

Many people shared the name. Christ's given name, commonly Romanized as Yeshua, was quite common in first-century Galilee. (Jesus comes from the transliteration of Yeshua into Greek and then English.) Archaeologists have unearthed the tombs of 71 Yeshuas from the period of Jesus' death. The name also appears 30 times in the Old Testament in reference to four separate characters—including a descendent of Aaron who helped to distribute offerings of grain (2 Chronicles 31:15) and a man who accompanied former captives of Nebuchadnezzar back to Jerusalem (Ezra 2:2)....

What was Jesus' last name? It wasn't Christ. Contemporaries would have called him Yeshua Bar Yehosef or Yeshua Nasraya. (That's "Jesus, son of Joseph" or "Jesus of Nazareth.") Galileans distinguished themselves from others with the same first name by adding either "son of" and their father's name, or their birthplace.

Now, I don't know how big a town Nazareth was at the time, but it seems a very good bet that there was more than one "Jesus of Nazareth", and (I would guess) another local "Jesus, son of Joseph" sometime before our Jesus hit 30.

And while on the topic:  I see that Wikipedia has at this entry (under the subheading "Jesus") a list of science fiction books and stories featuring time travel back to Jesus' time.

The one story idea which I don't see mentioned there is a time travelling expedition from the future to make sure the Jesus story as shown in the Gospel happens.  (Sponsored by someone from the Catholic Church who has lost faith, but figures on utilitarian grounds that the net benefits of belief to society would be worth the fraud, and employing one of the modern illusionists of the kind we see on TV now apparently performing convincing tricks in the middle of the street.) 

Having thought of this idea quite some time ago, it has had the unfortunate effect that when hearing a Gospel reading at Church, my mind often wanders to how a modern illusionist would replicate the effect.   Certainly, the glowing or shining appearance of angels, especially at night, is easy to imagine with simple UV light; unconsumed burning bushes (yes, I know, wrong Testament) would be easy as, too, and so  on.


*   Yes, I know a bit of Jesus identity confusion did feature in one episode of Red Dwarf, and I'm not being completely original.

Abbott's understanding questioned (again)

RET cuts: Why Abbott has got it all wrong on green energy | Crikey

The argument about the effect of renewable energy on costs to business and households is, I do tend to find, a difficult one to follow.

But, given that I think Abbott is not smart enough to know who to take advice from, I'm naturally willing to believe he's wrong on this, for the reasons outlined in the article above.

The creepy Watts

Quark Soup by David Appell: Being Clear About Watts

It's been clear for years that Anthony Watts is immature in his personal attacks on people in climate science he disagrees with.   (Who can forget his snide questioning of whether they are patriotic enough to fly the American flag), but David Appell has been a recent target of his attention.

What's clear is that Watts just makes things up, both on science*, and in his personal attacks.  

* He had no basis for a claim he made to Andrew Bolt, which I covered a couple of years ago.  Andrew Bolt never corrected it.

Bitcoin dissed

Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire - Charlie's Diary

I have pretty much ignored the Bitcoin story - it seemed to be a popular idea with the same Libertarian crowd that likes the idea of floating artificial islands of nerds doing whatever Libertarians fantasise think it would be cool to do together all day (I dunno - play paintball?) - and therefore it was safe to assume it was a bad and anti-social idea.

So, today I see an article by Charlie Stross with his list of reasons why it is, indeed, a bad and anti-social idea.  (I would have my doubts about the carbon cost issue, though, but everything else seems fair enough.)

I repeat my recent theme - Libertarians are useless.  It probably would be a good idea if they all lived on one giant ship together, as (of course) they would be well armed (you know, just in case), and within 12 months some argument over an arcane matter of economics that no one else in the world worried about would result in a civil war and the sinking of their ship, both literally and metaphorically.

Two issue Tim

What did I say in ranty post yesterday about Tim Wilson not exactly being inundated with work as Human Rights Commissioner?

I noted two issues he is or is likely concerned with:  s18C as used against Andrew Bolt (he's against it), and the anti bikie legislation in Queensland and elsewhere (where anyone could accurately guess - he'd be against it.)

And so it came to pass (it is nearly Christmas), Tim has an article in the Fairfax press this morning in which he talks about two issues - the ones I identified.  (Oh, alright, he mentioned a third one, which has already been decided yesterday by the High Court, so he ain't going to be taking a lot of phone calls on that matter either.)

So we can pretty much see the future here:   Tim will have a lot of arguments at Commission meetings about how his mate Andrew Bolt should never again face the horror of being taken to court when he refuses to acknowledge insulting, race based, mistakes, and will fail to persuade them that the law should be abolished in its entirety. 

And he might take some extra phone calls (more than the 4 or so the HRC currently annually takes on freedom of expression issues) from bikies, in which his response will be "mate, I sympathise, I really do.  And I'm writing an article about it as we speak.  But not much else I can do at the moment, we're waiting on the High Court decision."

What a completely useless, partisan, appointment.

Update:  I see that in comments flying about the internet, many have noted that one would have thought the biggest concern of a "Freedom Commissioner" might well be the incarceration of thousands of attempted immigrants on Christmas and Manus Island.   Has Tim ever been known for talking about them, instead of his mater of Bolt and his really hurt feelings?   Is there a little bit of a problem with "freedom of expression" from those who are involved in this hush-hush business?   And is there anything that the HRC could do about it anyway? 

I see that someone says he was on Insight once when the topic was assylum seekers, but no one has turned up what he actually said.

But lots of people haver noticed his tweet from 2011:

Walked past Occupy Melbourne protest, all people who think freedom of speech = freedom 2 b heard, time wasters ... send in the water cannons

Yes, just what the HRC needs:  a commissioner not afraid to use water canon on people he disagrees with.    

The Useless Libertarians Who Think They're Useful

I don't recall the libertarian types of the Institute of Paid Advocacy (the right wing think tank funded, at least formerly, if not presently, by tobacco companies, and now in the pocket of Gina Rinehart and - I expect - Rupert Murdoch) being particularly concerned about s18C of the Racial Discrimination Act until Andrew Bolt found himself being prosecuted under it.

I assume that Bolt decided to fight rather than apologise for making inaccurate claims in an article with a clearly ridiculing tone.  Or was he put up to a fight by his bosses prepared to fund his defence for the purposes of a bit of corporate grandstanding?  Who knows?  In any event, Bolt lost, has been carrying on like the biggest martyr ever in the history of Australia for free speech, despite his offending columns still being easily Googled to this day (with a "corrective notice" as ordered by the Court heading them), and all the while has had his hand held by the likes of John Roskam and Tim Wilson of the IPA, and Tony Abbott (the professional weathervane who became Prime Minister) while being told soothing words about  how outrageous this whole action has been and he really is a tragic victim.

This has, psychologically for Bolt, been the worst thing that could have been done.

But the IPA, taking their cue from that and the Labor government's Finkelstein review into media regulation (which went no where, given that the government had no particular media scandal to hang their hat on) have decided that Freedom of Speech is the top way they can build a fake political crisis; and their supporters, clearly not the brightest people when assessing genuine political problems, have been happy to send money, despite the publicly available financial reports on the IPA website showing they have cash reserves of 1.5 million dollars which they appear to be saving merely for a rainy day.   Fools and money, etc.

And now this is all topped off by the Abbott government appointing Tim Wilson to be a "Freedom Commissioner" on the Human Rights Commission.   Yes, Tim Wilson from the organisation that has as a policy position the abolition of the HRC.

In this exchange on the Drum with the President of the Commission, Wilson was all outraged that the Commission did not specifically use the words "free speech" in a submission made to the government a year or two ago.

But what is more interesting is what Triggs notes in response (at 2.31) - the Commission takes 17,000 calls a year from the public, with a total of 4 being about freedom of expression.

Yes, Brandis:  for the sake of 4 complaints a year, there is a need to have a Freedom Commissioner on the HRC.

Wilson's sole job seems to be to advocate for a repeal of s18C - the Bolt section - and Wilson's background in IP, trade and climate change denialism indicates no particular experience in matters of human rights at all.   (Oh sure, he's no doubt been to dinners with Andrew Bolt and assured him he's a martyr.)    What else he is supposed to spend his time on once the 18C issue is dealt with by the government - who knows?    Prime advocate for bikies, perhaps, to have the freedom of association in criminal gangs?   Yes, they'll be some useless grandstanding to be done over that, perhaps.  And apart from that issue, given that the Abbott government is not going to introduce anything like what Labor was contemplating for media regulation reform, what is he going to spend his time on?

This is the most blatant political appointment conceivable to an unqualified big mouth and wannabe politician from what has become he most disreputable think tank in the land.  (On that last point, as an example - as far as I know, Sinclair Davidson has never sought to defend the IPA's adoption of Gina Rinehart's Northern Australia "special treatment" program from this criticism by John Quiggin.  Indeed, Davidson carries on like the biggest drama queen of all on the free speech issue, recently telling anyone from the Jewish lobby who are expressing concern about repeal of s18C that this is a some sort of dramatic fork in the road.)

Remember my rule of thumb:  any person who has a good education yet spends their time on climate change denialism - they're not to be trusted on anything.  This applies to Wilson, and anyone from the IPA.   Of their crew, I only have a bare tolerance for Chris Berg, who (as far as I know) tends to steer away from the climate change issue.  Yet he, of course, is also a Freedom drama queen.  They all are. They are also useless and not to be trusted on the matter of the development of good policy.  They know the answers already (small government!  less taxes! climate change is a fraud! Repeat and repeat), and always work backwards from there.

Exactly

Conservatives Have No Idea What To Do About Recessions | Business Insider

Thanks to monty for the link, which explains exactly the problem with the Republican economics, and indeed with Australia right wing economists:

Log your dreams in public

Naked in public? Dreams Cloud wants to get inside your mind | Crave - CNET

I haven't looked at the app yet, but the idea of people publicly logging their odd dreams sounds like it might be sorta fun, at least for a while.

Does Tony Abbott know what he is doing?

Reserve Bank Reserve Fund foreign currency Australian dollar | Crikey

Bernard Keane in Crikey notes that Tony Abbott seems to think that his government giving the Reserve Bank $8 billion (and causing an immediate increased "blowout" - don't media organisations love that word  - to the budget deficit) is about the Reserve Bank being able to intervene to drive down the Australian dollar.

Bernard says this is  not the case:

But the odd thing about Abbott’s remarks linking the $9 billion to pressure on the dollar is that there is no link. In contrast to the urgency portrayed by Hockey, the RBA hasn’t received the funding yet — as Treasury’s briefing on the issue to then-treasurer Wayne Swan earlier this year noted, there is no mechanism for the government to simply hand $9 billion to the RBA, so it will require a parliamentary appropriation. The RBA will in turn use the funding to buy foreign currencies, mainly the US dollar, because it aims to hold just over half of its assets in foreign currencies.

The $9 billion in fact has no bearing on whether the bank can intervene against the strength of the dollar — for one thing, it’s nowhere near enough to make a big difference. And pushing the dollar down will actually increase the value of the bank’s foreign currency holdings, rather than deplete its assets as Abbott appeared to suggest. It seems that Abbott doesn’t have a basic grasp of why exactly he’s blowing a $9 billion hole in his own deficit (no matter how much he might insist it’s Labor’s deficit).

Worse, he has created the impression that the $9 billion handout has a quid pro quo that the independent RBA will now intervene against the dollar. Our trade-exposed sector, particularly manufacturers but also miners (whose contracts are usually set in US dollars) will all benefit from a fall in the dollar, with flow-on benefits for federal government tax revenue. This will help the Abbott government avoid the nightmarish fate of the Gillard government, which had to sit back and watch as the Aussie dollar hammered the trade-exposed sectors of the economy and slashed corporate tax revenue while the RBA hummed and hawed about why the dollar wasn’t reacting like normal to a fall in our terms of trade.

Abbott’s remarks apparently caused confusion and concern at senior levels within the bank — yet another legacy of Hockey’s $9 billion handout, and the Prime Minister’s hazy grasp of economics.

Pressure on mothers to be

Developmental biology: Support mothers to secure future public health

Quite an interesting commentary here on the vital role for public health that science increasing sees in having healthy mothers right from pregnancy.

For example:

The Hertfordshire data and similar records from other UK towns revealed, for instance, that a person weighing 2.7 kilograms (6 pounds) at birth has a 25% higher risk of contracting heart disease in later life, and a 30% higher risk of having a stroke, compared with someone weighing 4.1 kilograms (9 pounds) at birth³.

These findings were soon strengthened by data from a cohort of 20,000 people born in Helsinki between 1924 and 1944. This study showed, for example, that if all the babies at birth had had weights within the highest third of the total range, the incidence of diabetes in later life would have been halved⁴. In the years since, numerous other studies, involving people from places as diverse as Europe, India, Guatemala, the Philippines and South Africa, have revealed similar correlations with effects that extend to the health of grandchildren.

In the past 15 years, researchers have begun to understand the biology underlying the links between development and chronic disease. The evidence suggests that women should start eating healthily well before they get pregnant. Women who are obese, for example, accumulate more metabolites (such as insulin, lactate and triglycerides) in their ovarian follicles⁵ than do women who are not obese. This accumulation can reduce their fertility and increase the likelihood that their offspring will develop certain diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer, later in life.

 And how about this for some justification for my feeling that IVF has involved too much mucking around with nature:

 At the moment of conception, the growing embryo seems to be exquisitely sensitive to its nutritional environment. Studies of babies born through in vitro fertilization, for instance, have shown that birth weights can be affected simply by changing the constituents of the medium in which the embryos are cultured.

It would certainly appear that it will be decades yet before we truly know the long term health consequences of the IVF techniques.

Spin, spin, Sheridan

Now this is a phone call I would like to have the exact transcript to.

Greg Sheridan took a call from the Indonesian ambassador to the US on the weekend who was  delivering President SBY's reaction Sheridan's (and The Australian's) Saturday story that there really was good reason to spy on his wife.

I found the reasons given pretty unconvincing, and could only imagine that SBY would find them offensive, but Sheridan is trying to put the phone call in the best possible light:

Dr Yudhoyono instructed Dr Djalal to ring me to convey the President's personal reaction to the stories. Dr Djalal checked with Dr Yudhoyono that these remarks could be publicly attributed to the President. The President said he found elements of The Weekend Australian's coverage showed balance and that there were some positive aspects of the coverage.

Dr Yudhoyono also pointed out that it was he, as President in 2005, who first moved to elevate the Indonesia-Australia relationship to the higher plane it has existed on in recent years. Since that time, he said, he had worked consistently to improve the relationship between the two countries.

He said the dispute over the spying story had hurt him personally. The President said he was determined to repair the relationship and would work towards a solution. This needs to happen through the steps the two nations had agreed on. It also needed to happen in a way that satisfied his domestic needs.

This has the heavy smell of spin around it, doesn't it?    On Sheridan's part, I mean.  I would like to know how much of the conversation was about the "personal hurt", and whether they was mention of "negative elements" as well as the "some positive elements".

Politicians and movies don't mix

It's regrettable that Al Gore headed "An Inconvenient Truth":  he gave Right wingers an excuse to claim a serious environmental issue as being something only a "Lefty" should worry about.

But now we seem to have another good example of a politician unwisely getting into the movie business.  Rick Santorum is the CEO of a Christian movie company, and its first release "A Christmas Candle" is receiving some disastrous, but pretty funny, reviews.  The movie features Susan Boyle, a bit of casting that appears to have very wrong.

Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian:

The urgent question of when Susan Boyle will give us her cinema debut has been settled. She makes a truly extraordinary appearance in this film, not just singing but acting, too, playing a churchwoman with the voice of an angel in a stilted, treacly, and, frankly, bizarre tale of yuletide miracles....

Every 20 minutes or so, Boyle is allowed on to say a line, which she does weirdly quietly, as if talking in her sleep. Her facial expression never changes. And all the professional actors around her look stunned, like those Dallas cops when Jack Ruby stepped forward to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald.

It's not just a Left wing Guardian reviewer, though.  In the Daily Mail:

So I didn’t go to watch The Christmas Candle, Boyle’s big-screen acting debut, with the same negativity as the audience when Ant and Dec sent her out on stage four years ago.

Maybe she’d be just fine.

Unfortunately, she isn’t. Boyle really can’t act.

In fact, Ant or Dec might have been more convincing as church warden’s wife Eleanor Hopewell, and one of Boyle’s co-stars, Lesley Manville, has publicly questioned the decision to cast her.

Yet the big problem with this film is not dear old Subo and the slightly creepy little giggles she keeps emitting, it’s the muddled narrative.

And another (although this review does leave poor Susan alone):

"The Christmas Candle" is a determinedly retro-minded holiday saga that contains no foul language, gruesome violence indeed anything beyond the mildest suggestion of hanky-panky, and for a certain portion of the moviegoing public, these absences alone would be enough to warrant a recommendation. The trouble is that the filmmakers have also neglected to include such other elements as wit, style, energy or anything resembling a coherent narrative.

Better luck next time, Rick! 

It's OK when Rupert does it...

So, how's this supposed to work?

The Guardian and the ABC report from the Snowden leaks that Australia had targeted the Indonesia President's wife's mobile phone, causing a major diplomatic falling out which is supposed to cured with some future protocol.  Presumably, this will involve an indication from us that we agree it's not a nice thing to spy on politicians' wives.

The ABC Collective* condemns the Guardian and the ABC for publicising the spying story.  Against our national interests, etc etc.

Story goes quiet for a couple of weeks.

Then today, The Australian comes out with headline stories that read:

Hey!  It's quite OK to spy on Indonesian President's wives after all!  Kevin Rudd made a good call!

How the hell is that supposed to help repair the relationship?

In fact, isn't it just about the worst possible thing that you could do if our robot Foreign Minister is still negotiating some future promises with the Indonesians?   No, according to Bolt, it's important that the Right attack the Left for criticising the decision to spy on her.

This is ludicrous behaviour by the Right, if you ask me.

 * The Australian, Andrew Bolt, and Catallaxy, for any new reader.

Who knows what this means for education policy?

Nature trumps nurture in exam success: GCSE results 'mainly determined by genes,' says landmark study of twins

Michelle's summary seems pretty right to me

Grattan on Friday: 100 days and the "adults" still have a lot of growing up to do.

It starts:

It is just 100 days on Monday since the election, but the Abbott government lacks that air of excitement that power often brings. Rather, it is staggering towards Christmas, mugged by moving from rhetoric to reality, from the disciplined order of opposition to the setbacks and unexpected challenges of office.

We will do, Abbott pledged before the election, reeling off intentions, only to find there are many things, including the core promises of repealing the carbon and mining taxes, that he can’t do, at least for the moment.

He’d run a government of no surprises, he said. Well, he has been surprised, unpleasantly – most notably by the revelations about Australian spying in Indonesia, as well as by Holden’s intended departure.

And there’s been the unsettling reminder that voters were more anxious to throw out Labor than enthusiastic about the Coalition; now they’re unimpressed by the government’s early efforts. This week’s Newspoll had the ALP leading 52-48%. Satisfaction with Abbott’s performance was 40% - it has fallen steadily from 47% in October. Opposition leader Bill Shorten’s satisfaction rating was 44% - it has risen steadily from 32% in October.

Spooky children's stories

The Science of Reincarnation | The University of Virginia Magazine

The work of the late University of Virginia Professor Ian Stevenson on reincarnation was mentioned in comments here recently, and I see now that the University still has a psychiatrist who conducts research on the topic.

The link gives a pretty good example of one case he knows about in detail.

I am  a bit surprised to see that 70% of children who suddenly claim to have lived before are male.   But it is interesting to hear of American cases.  If I recall correctly, one of the big issues with Stevenson's work which (I think) dealt with a lot of Indian cases, is that the kids were being raised in a society which already accepts reincarnation, and they would surely be influenced by that in their imaginative life.

That's a lot harder to see as an influence in America.  

You should also read the comments following the article.   Some people are "appalled" that the University magazine would run such an article.

Wasted trip

BBC News - Dinosaur asteroid 'sent life to Mars'

 The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs may have catapulted life to Mars and the moons of Jupiter, US researchers say.

They calculated how many Earth rocks big enough to shelter life were ejected by asteroids in the last 3.5bn years.

The Chicxulub impact was strong enough to fire chunks of debris all the way to Europa, they write in Astrobiology.

Thousands of potentially life-bearing rocks also made it to Mars, which may once have been habitable, they add.

"We find that rock capable of carrying life has likely transferred from both Earth and Mars to all of the terrestrial planets in the solar system and Jupiter," says lead author Rachel Worth, of Penn State University.

"Any missions to search for life on Titan or the moons of Jupiter will have to consider whether biological material is of independent origin, or another branch in Earth's family tree."