Data as old as the universe

Optical data storage has virtually unlimited lifetime

I don't know why, but I always find stories about developments in technology for long term data storage interesting. Perhaps it's because I feel there is science fiction potential there: if you came across alien data storage, it would be good to be able to recognize it.

So, from the link, you can read about an optical system that writes on quartz and should last a very, very long time:

The researchers calculated that the decay time of the nanogratings, and thus the lifetime of the data storage system, is about 3 x 1020 years at room temperature, indicating unprecedented high stability. The lifetime decreases at elevated temperatures, but even at temperatures of 462 K (189° C, 372° F), the extrapolated decay time is 13.8 billion years, comparable to the age of the Universe.

Wow.

Old mental illnesses

Elsewhere in the Atlantic, there was a recent shortish article looking at Greek and Roman understandings of mental illness.  Nothing too startling in there, I guess, although I don't think I had read before that Socrates heard voices:

Socrates seems to have had recurrent hallucinations of one particular type: A voice spoke to him, usually advising him not to do things. His disciples were in awe of this phenomenon, but some of his later admirers thought they needed to explain it away—they thought it suggested that he was slightly cracked.

Strange stories of American nudity

There's an article at The Atlantic with the somewhat unusual title Men, Manliness, and Being Naked Around Other Men.

It's a sympathetic look at the men (and boys) who do not care to be naked around other men, even if they be doctors.  While Europeans, and probably Australians, generally regard Americans as being unduly uptight about nudity generally (the Huffington Post just ran an article "Why Janet Jackson's Nipple Still Matters" to mark the faked wardrobe malfunction's ten year anniversary,) this article at first sounds as if it might be an example of American prudishness.   But it does deal with two rather odd aspects of the history of American, ahem, exposure.

The first is that, across many parts of America, and in some cases right up to the 1970's, schools, colleges and YMCAs enforced male nudity for pool swimming and swimming classes.  The article links to an NPR story about men who do not remember this fondly, particularly as they were not given any choice in the matter during the years of puberty in high school.

It seems that even most Americans under 50 have trouble believing this was so ubiquitous in their own country through most of the 20th century.   Apparently, it started as an alleged hygiene requirement, before chlorination of pools was even available*.   (Seems a dubious position right from the start, particularly as the rule was never rigorously applied to girls and women.)  Some public broadcaster has done a show on the history of this, available through this link.  It's not salaciously handled, although he does sound as if he is personally pretty keen on skinny dipping.  One of the more interesting things he talks about is how it has become forgotten so quickly.  (Part of the answer is that some states never believed in it - but a large number did.) 

It also perhaps helps to explain the reason the YMCA was the subject of  gay double entendre in the famous song.

Given that England sort of has a reputation for public school gay experiences and creepy teachers, one wouldn't be so surprised to hear of a history of this in that country.  But the fact that is it America makes it all the more surprising.  (I don't know that it was ever the practice in Australia either.)

So, the other odd thing in the Atlantic article, or at least in the comments following, is the number of people who talk about their schools having no doors on the toilet stalls.   In fact, this reminded me of hearing one of the Johns from They Might be Giants in an interview in the 80's or 90's mentioning having to go to hospital in Brooklyn, and the toilets had no doors so as to prevent patients shooting up (!)

I cannot, in all my life, ever remember any toilet stall anywhere deliberately not having a door.  Even in Japan, where people are by no means shy in onsen and women cleaners in mens toilets are unremarkable, when it comes to a toilet for defecation, I have never seen one that did not allow privacy.   (Which is a particularly good thing in Asia when it comes to the uncertain arrangements with pants and positioning when having to use a squat toilet.)  Yet this seems to have been an accepted precautionary practice in American schools and hospitals, at least up to the 1980's in the case of the latter.

I think I find the idea of being on the bowl in a semi public environment more disconcerting than having to shower occasionally without privacy.   (Sure, the Romans used to poop communally  and No Time for Sergeants made it clear that some US military barracks followed the same design - presumably it was thought to help "bonding".  But if you have always had privacy while so engaged since the age of 4 or so, it's a very odd idea.)

Update:  a columnist in Houston wrote back in 2008 about the nude school swimming policy he experienced (unhappily) in the early 1960's.  He spends time on the issue of why attitudes changed abruptly around the mid 60's, and thinks it is just to do with increased affluence meaning increased desire for privacy.  Not sure that this really makes sense - Japanese and Scandinavian countries are pretty affluent, and social nudity in the right circumstances is routine.  But then again,  I don't know that they would have ever had the  oddball American view that schools should teach boys only to swim in the nude.

* I wrote a bit about the history of pool chlorination in my post about a visit to Brisbane's old pool at Spring Hill.

Stupid, stupid piece

Philip Seymour Hoffman and a double standard over drugs | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free |

What an air headed piece of writing from Simon Jenkins in The Guardian.

An actor dies of (apparently) heroin overdose, and he takes this as an opportunity to lament drugs being criminalised.

Hey, Simon, here's a few points:

*  how would legalisation of heroin have helped Hoffman?   The rich appear to be able to be buy good quality heroin in large quantities.  (If there is any evidence of contamination in Hoffman's heroin, get back to us.)

*  Hoffman's drug addiction was already being treated as a health problem for him, not a criminal one.   He had been into rehabilitation - he had not been referred to police by the staff there.

*  What do you want?  That the rich only inject themselves in safe injecting rooms, like at Kings Cross in Sydney?  You think if there was one of those in New York or LA that rich actors would make their way there daily to shoot up safely?

The fact is, as I have repeated endlessly, for heroin addicts who want help overcoming a dangerous addiction, the addiction has already been treated as a health problem in Australia, and (I am betting) in many Western countries for decades.

Drug reformers are always exaggerating the benefits of their hypothetical legalisation schemes, even for cases for this where the change would seem to make no difference whatsoever.

Economics isn't everything

Economists in reverse over our car industry

I think the sentiments expressed in this column are quite valid.

In particular, I want to hear from small government, uber free market types, where they think Australian economic future lies.  (I bet they shrug their shoulders and say something like "it's not up to me to decide, let the market work it out.")

The problems with letting long standing industries in manufacturing and food growing and processing die because of present difficulties not entirely within the industries' control are surely how quickly they can be replaced with alternatives, how viable the alternatives are in the long run, and whether you are allowing too much of a "monoculture" of economic activity to develop.
  
It seems to me that free marketeers have fanciful ideas that lowering wages enough, and de regulation, just magically leads to a wonderful diverse economic health, no matter which corner of the world you live in.   I am very skeptical.

Thirsty solar thermal

California Faces Solar Thermal Power’s Drinking Problem | MIT Technology Review

I didn't know that some current designs for solar thermal power plants were so thirsty:

The drawbacks are that solar thermal plants generate large amounts of waste heat, and they consume a lot of water for cooling, which is usually done by evaporating water. Solar thermal plants can consume twice as much water as fossil fuel power plants, and one recently proposed solar thermal project would have consumed about 500 million gallons of water a year.

A technology called dry cooling, which has started appearing in power plants in the last 10 years or so, can cut that water consumption by 90 percent. Instead of evaporating water to cool the plant, the technology keeps the water contained in a closed system. As it cools the power plant, the water heats up and is then circulated through huge, eight-story cooling towers that work much like the radiator in a car.

Dry cooling technology costs from two and a half to five times more than conventional evaporative cooling systems. And it doesn’t work well on hot days, sometimes forcing power plant operators to cut back on power production. In the summer, this can decrease power production by 10 to 15 percent, says Jessica Shi, a technical program manager at the Electric Power Research Institute. On extremely hot days, power production might be reduced even more than that

Poor little rich country

Saudi Arabia: No satisfaction | The Economist
The Economist writes:

Yet rather than the ebullience you might expect, the mood among Saudi
Arabia’s 30m residents (a third of whom are foreign workers and their
dependants) is one of nagging unease. Even as shiny new buildings,
universities, “financial centres” and entire cities sprout, the
machinery of government has remained as creakily top-down and tangled in
red tape as ever. And even as Saudis grow ever more sophisticated and
worldly—about 160,000 of them are studying abroad on government
scholarships, and those left behind are among the world’s heaviest
internet addicts—social, political and religious strictures remain
stifling.

“The government keeps people quiet with money, and in the rare cases
where that doesn’t work, with threats,” says a diplomat in Riyadh. “But
this is not a happy place.” For one thing, ordinary Saudis have no say
in where the money is spent. All too often what they see, following the
much-trumpeted princely opening of each new project, is vast empty
buildings and unused facilities. What they hear is tales of which
privileged courtier or business mogul has pocketed how much.

That's all well and good, but I don't know how they can write about the country being unhappy and not note that there is no alcohol, little prospect of pre-marital sex, and religious police who can have you arrested for conducting black magic. 

The campaign continues

As inspired by this post.

Advice for Mark Steyn

Quark Soup by David Appell: Is the Hockey Stick "flaccid?"

A good post last week from David Appell.

Life suited to interstellar travel, perhaps?

This Leech Can Survive A 24-Hour Submersion in Liquid Nitrogen | Australian Popular Science

Apart from the surprise that you can freeze and reanimate a small parasitic fish leech in liquid nitrogen, there is this remarkable ability it has:

Every single leech placed in -130°F (-90°C) storage survived for nine
months. In other words, these leeches can easily survive at
temperatures lower than those ever measured by a thermometer on Earth, for
as long as it takes to conceive and give birth to a human child. Some
of the leeches survived at this temperature for 32 months, or more than
2.5 years.

They also don't appear to need any time to acclimate to cold, unlike other
cold-tolerant creatures. And they can survive being rapidly chilled to
-321°F and then being thawed to room temperature, repeated up to 12
times over a couple minutes. Some of the leeches put through this
torture, which according to the study no other species could tolerate,
survived for more than a month in a water bath, and apparently died due
to starvation - not because of injuries due to freezing.

Lucky to get through the 60's

The Truths Behind 'Dr. Strangelove' : The New Yorker

I'm a week or so late in posting it, but this story about how an accidental nuclear war could have easily been started by a rogue US nuclear commander is pretty startling.

Life in Antarctica

I'm a cook at one of Antarctica's research stations. Any questions for me? | Jessica Barder | Comment is free | theguardian.com

I see that her blog (linked to in the article) is not updated all that often.  Still, it's always interesting to hear stories about life in Antarctica. 

The odd story of Americans and alcohol - in space

Why Astronauts Were Banned From Drinking Wine In Outer Space

Maybe I had read something about this years ago, but here in detail is the story of how NASA nearly had wine (sherry) in space, as part of their official menu; but the prohibitionist tendencies of enough of the public led it to not happening.

To Canberra and back, Part 4

I hadn't been to Canberra for perhaps 20 years, so it was good to see it again.

I always thought it was a very pleasant urban environment, with all the extensive tree plantings, at least in the older suburbs.  But I have never lived there during an entire winter; I am sure that would be trying.

We stayed at Forrest Hotel and Apartments, within a couple of blocks of cafes of Manuka and across the road (and some extensive parkland stretches) to Parliament House.  It's a great location, and the apartments (I don't know about the motel style rooms in the other part of the complex  - the buildings they were in did look a fair bit more basic) were really well appointed, very comfortable, and good value.  Some photos:

Out the balcony, looking north:

The grounds in front of the apartment:

The lovely, tree lined streets of Manuka








So, where does one take the family in Canberra?   To all of the essentials.

Parliament House:

It is a pretty impressive building, with what is probably the best flag pole on the planet:

OK, so I have been playing with the filters on the tablet.  












Here's a night time shot, the colour came out nice as it was on this one:

 





The photo was taken just after we had sat on the grassy slope of the complex, watching the 9pm New Year's fireworks over the centre of the city.  (Lots of families go to sit on the side of Parliament House to do that; it feels a pleasantly egalitarian to use the building that way):

And everyone likes the long, straight lines of the city as viewed from it:

The free guided tours are informative, and there almost seemed to be almost more Indians, Chinese and others than white anglo saxon in the place when we went there.  Maybe those of foreign extraction appreciate our democracy more than we do...

And it was, of course, where I bought my treasured Julia Gillard coffee mug, as featured in a previous post.  The shop there tries to be pretty up market and dignified; perhaps that's why it has trouble making a profit.  (Actually, looking at the linked story from August 2013, it seems the shop was putting a lot of hope on the sales of Prime Ministerial coffee mugs reviving its fortunes.  At least it worked on me.)

I see this is taking too much space to do Canberra justice.  It will need another instalment. 

Sinclair Davidson doesn't know there was a Coastwatch Oz TV show; verbals a Senator he still leaves being called a "bush pig"at his blog

With a headline to his post "Television isn't always real", Sinclair Davidson is clearly going along with the instant Right wing meme set up by his minions that Senator Hanson-Young was referring to the fictional Sea Patrol TV series in the question she asked yesterday.  In fact, the name of that show was said by one of public servants (and, if you ask me, he was acting in quite a smart ass fashion with his question.) The Senator indicated that was not the show in the way she responded.  She specifically referred to it as dealing with "fishing boats and so forth".  As I recall, Sea Patrol did not routinely deal with "fishing boat" stories; a recent reality TV show did.  (They also stopped making Sea Patrol a few years ago now.)

Coastwatch Oz, which Sinclair Davidson can watch on line here, was the recent reality TV show I believe she was referring to.  (Or, possibly, she may have been thinking of the New Zealand version of the same show, thinking from a quick viewing of it that it was Australian.)

Sinclair Davidson has also acknowledged that he read my earlier post re the Senator being referred to as a "bush pig"at his blog.  He is not concerned to moderate that comment.

He appears pretty often on ABC radio and TV.  He's a Professor at RMIT.  Why does no one ask him about his policy for what he will leave up on his blog?

Update:  I see Andrew Bolt, as is his wont, has merely copied the Catallaxy story and continued the verballing of the Senator.  Why Bolt doesn't just write directly for the blog, given that his ignorance on certain topics well qualifies him, I don't know.

Update 2:   I didn't actually realise when I first wrote this post, but Coastwatch Oz first screened on Channel 7 on the evening of 30 January.   The Senate hearing in question was on 31 January.   If anything, this make it all the more likely that the Senator was referring to the show, not 3 or 4 year old episodes of Sea Patrol.

I also have to point out, in fairness, that Latika Burke also went along with the "she was thinking Sea Patrol was real" meme.  Bad Latika.

Update 3:  in fairness to Bolt, he has updated his post with a reader comment pointing out the Coastwatch Oz explanation.  Will Catallaxy?  Probably not.

And besides:  clearly, Andrew Bolt does not care about the lack of moderation of "bush pig" at Catallaxy, otherwise he would not be recommending people to the blog.

What a hypocrite, when he posts continually about how objectionable he finds Left wing commentary on blogs and twitter.

Update 4:  the Senator complains to the Daily Telegraph that she was indeed referring to Coastwatch Oz, not Sea Patrol, which was not mentioned by her.  Tim Blair still being a smart arse about it.

Does Catallaxy update it's post?   No, of course not.  In fact, his last update tries to reinforce that she was referring to Sea Patrol.   "Bush pigs" don't deserve corrections, obviously.

The extraordinary drinking Russians

BBC News - Vodka blamed for high death rates in Russia

The high number of early deaths in Russia is mainly due to people drinking too much alcohol,particularly vodka, research suggests. 

The study, in The Lancet, says 25% of Russian men die before
they are 55, and most of the deaths are down to alcohol. The comparable
UK figure is 7%.

As ridiculously bad as those figures sound, they actually are an improvement on the not so recent past:

Russia brought in stricter alcohol control measures in 2006, including raising taxes and restricting sales.

Researchers say alcohol consumption has fallen by a third
since then and the proportion of men dying before they reach 55 years
old has fallen from 37% to 25%.

It must be hard running a good economy with so many people drinking themselves into early graves.

"Precious bodily fluids" more precious than thought

Gee.  This research seems quite surprising, and indicates again why IVF fiddling with fertilization is an area with higher adverse consequences for babies:

“We know from several studies that obesity in males can be tracked back to the father’s contribution at the moment of conception. But now we’re starting to understand the very complex signals and information being transmitted by the seminal fluid, and it turns out that seminal fluid and female tissues interact in surprising ways,” says Professor Sarah Robertson, research leader and Director of the Robinson Institute at the University of Adelaide.

“We’ve discovered that it’s not just the sperm, but the entire composition of the seminal fluid which has an important role to play in establishing the offspring’s future health, and this is most notably seen in male offspring.

“If the seminal fluid is of poor quality, it affects the female’s capacity to support an embryo. If the embryo manages to survive despite the poor quality seminal fluid, the metabolism of the resulting fetus will be permanently altered, making it more likely to develop a syndrome of metabolic disorders including obesity, high blood pressure and glucose intolerance after birth,” she says.

The study found that seminal fluid contains signals which trigger production of proteins in the female reproductive tract. The balance between proteins which promote embryo survival and those which cause embryo demise are changed according to the signals present in seminal fluid.

 The recent paper referred to in my last link, by the way, gives me a feeling of some vindication for my innate caution against IVF right from the start.   Here's a crucial paragraph:

Concern has also been raised about the long term health of children born through IVF. Otherwise healthy children conceived by IVF may have higher blood pressure, adiposity, glucose levels, and more generalised vascular dysfunction than children conceived naturally (table 2⇑). These effects seem to be related to the IVF procedure itself rather than to underlying subfertility.33 34 35 36 Animal studies have shown epigenetic and developmental abnormalities after assisted reproduction, which give further cause for reflection.37 Until these concerns are resolved, there should be caution about using IVF in couples when the benefit is uncertain or the chances of natural conception are still reasonable.

Sinclair Davidson runs a blog where "bush pig" for a female politician has become a routine insult

Yes, economist Sinclair Davidson maintains Catallaxy and rarely moderates insults made to female journalists and politicians.  Today, "bush pig", and I'm sure "pig" was used again last week with respect to the same politician. 

He appears fairly often on ABC outlets.

Why is no one in the public challenging him about how he runs his blog?

Record rainfall news

BBC News - UK floods: January rain breaks records in parts of England

Record rains in parts of England; record drought in California.

Is such an intensification of the water cycle while the world gets hotter just a co-incidence?

Is it too early for an election?

It seems to me that the Abbott government, having made a decision to keep Barnaby Joyce and the Nationals happy with keeping ADM out of GrainCorp in Australia, decided that it couldn't be seen to be caving in to that wing of the government again, and went against Barnaby in the decision to not throw any money in to keep SPC alive.

It further seems to me that they got this precisely the wrong way around - they would have been better off allowing ADM's bid for GrainCorp and getting those facilities upgraded with foreign money, and doing their bit to keep the rural food and processing sector happy with supporting SPC to the tune of a pretty measly $25 million.

I say this because:

a. I found Sharmon Stone's defence of the case for government support on Radio National this morning quite convincing.  You can read the reasons which she was basically covering in this article.

b.  I just looked up the amount of money the Government spends on drought assistance, and see that it can range in recent years it has ranged from 700 to 400 million dollars.  Drought (and associated water expenses) is one of the reasons given for why SPC has been in trouble over the last few years (not to mention the high Australian dollar, which - as I have noted before - small government types simply don't like acknowledging is a serious problem for Australian industry).  The $25 million is a pittance compared to general drought support - why aren't small government purists complaining that farmers should just move off the land if they can't make their business turn a profit during the drought?  

c. I don't buy much canned fruit or vegetables, but when I try to support the Australian product, and certainly avoid Chinese products at all costs.  (OK, with tomatoes, I do buy Italian canned ones, but not always, and I feel guilty when I do.)  

So, I hope the Abbott government loses another point or two in popularity over this decision.  The downturn in the Abbott government's polling so soon after an election has been truly remarkable.  I expect it to continue that way.

I think he is incapable of good judgement.

Can't Shorten's mother in law declare some sort of canned fruit state of emergency before she hands over the job to Cosgrove, and let us have another election? 

Update:   what a symbol of the Abbott government, hey? - the fact that Cadbury is getting $16 million for its Hobart chocolate factory, as an election promise.  Compared to fruit growers and processors being told to take a hike.

The Abbott government - the "empty calorie" government that's bad for your health.