Feeling vaguely depressed

Columnists like talking about aluminium as "congealed electricity":  all the better for some of them to huff and puff about how pricing carbon makes that industry uncompetitive in the long run in Australia (if you keep carbon pricing.)

Funny how then they can keep blaming carbon pricing for Alcoa closing down a smelter now, when there is a government that says it is determined to end it, and even Judith Sloan has to admit that it was sheltered from its full effects for years yet.

A broader picture of what has happened with aluminium comes from (surprise) the Fairfax press, which notes:

 Four decades ago, the United States, the USSR and Japan accounted for almost 60 per cent of aluminium production. Today, China accounts for more than half the global total. The big four producers from 40 years ago have a share of just over 10 per cent.

China is in effect subsidising its aluminium production. The industry is a means to an end: smelters and electricity generating capacity have been developed in tandem, locking in cheap power for the smelters, but also extending China's power grid, and opening up new parts of the economy for industrialisation and economic development.

The shift in aluminium production away from the developed world to the developing world and to China and particular kept a lid on aluminium prices as energy costs rose, however. Profits on aluminium smelting have been squeezed, forcing smelter closures around the developed world: Point Henry is only the latest, and it will not be the last.

Anyhow, I figure a good name for the Tea Party-ish Right, both in the US and Australia is "congealed stupidity".

Honest to God, I have never known the Right of politics to contain so many annoying, rude, over-simplying and intellectually vacuous people as it does at the moment.   What on earth has caused this?  (And no, it's not me moving to the Left - it's a large part of the Right positively moving towards anti-intellectualism and ignoring evidence for ideological reasons, both on science and economics.)  Is it because a fair slab of the Left has moved somewhat to the centre, compared to (say) the decades of the 60's to the 80's?   I honestly do not understand what has gone on here culturally, but something has.

So, to cheer me up, here's something you don't see every day (found via Rabbett Run):



Update:   Alcoa specifically denies the carbon tax was behind its decision to close Point Henry. 

Why should they disbelieved when they may have profited from the free permits?

Now, to make me happier:  rat tricks.  (I never knew they were as trainable as they obviously are.)

I don't know...

Can scientists know that they do not know?

Imagine you knew everything about the current universe – the state of every single
particle – and all the laws governing the universe's evolution. Endowed
with such knowledge, you could then predict the future, right? French
mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace thought so.

Not so, according to an analysis by SFI Professor David Wolpert – not even for the non-chaotic, non-quantum-mechanical universe that Laplace assumed.

The explanation in the article is not at all clear, but it seems an interesting argument worth following up.

UPDATE:   here's a short .pdf report from Nature in 2008 on Wolpert's idea.     

Are people comfortable with this?

Australia spied on Indonesia talks with US law firm in 2013 | World news | theguardian.com

Look, I've always assumed that mobile telephone systems were not super secure, even when they moved from analogue to digital.

So I've always assumed that politicians who talked about sensitive stuff on their mobile phones were being careless.

But even so, I am surprised at the purpose for which intelligence is being used by Australia and the US, according to the Snowden leaks. This, for example:

Australia listened in on the communications of an unnamed American
law firm which was representing Indonesia in the discussions and passed
the information to the National Security Agency, according to a document
obtained by the New York Times.

It is unclear what the discussions were about - but two trade disputes
around that time were about the importation of clove cigarettes and
shrimp, says the paper.

A monthly bulletin from the NSA’s liaison office in Canberra said the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) was monitoring the talks and offered to share any information with the US. It offered up that “information covered by attorney-client privilege may be included”.

I am also a bit puzzled that the issue is getting a bit of a soft run in the media here.

I mean, the bugging of the East Timor government operations when commercial matters were underway seems to be half forgotten by the public already.

Now evidence of bugging legal advice on the vital issue of clove cigarettes and shrimp?

I expected that certain industries might carry on their own intelligence gathering, but to have governments so fully involved in matters of commercial benefit - this seems to me to be something the public should be talking about, but it isn't. 

UPDATE:   an article in the Christian Science Monitor accuses the NYT of over dramatising the story, and points out that in the fact the US could have told Australia to not provide them with the advice the US lawyers were giving.

But but but:   what the article doesn't address is whether anyone should be surprised or question that Australia was collecting intelligence on Indonesia trade talks and offering to hand that to the US. 

The article says that the NYT times story, if stripped of  "spin, drama and adjectives" is this:

A 2013 memo leaked by Edward Snowden shows that Australia's version of the NSA, while engaged in electronic surveillance of an Indonesian trade delegation, came across communications between the Indonesian officials and a US law firm the country had hired for help with trade talks.  

Isn't that controversial enough??

Gut bacteria and milk

How Breast Milk Engineers a Baby’s Gut (and Gut Microbes) 

It seems quite a complicated story that is being sorted out - how mother's milk both encourages some of the right bacteria for the gut, and inhibits others.  In fact, it appears it passes on microbes within the milk itself, too:

And, of course, their study highlights yet another benefit to
breastfeeding. It’s unique in isolating the effect of a single (major)
ingredient of milk, but Kaetzel notes that breastfed infants also get a
wide spectrum of other helpful substances.

For example, it contains its own microbes. Lisa Funkhouser and Seth Bordenstein have speculated that the lymphatic system conveys bacteria from a mother’s guts into her mammary glands, where they can be taken up by suckling infants.

If pups that don’t get SIgA from their mothers have weird bacteria in
their lymph nodes, could they then pass on different microbes to their own offspring,
when the time comes for them to produce milk? “There could be some
really exciting transgenerational consequences from not ingesting sIgA
in mother’s milk,” says Hinde.

Typical

Climate sceptic to head Abbott review into renewable energy target

The Abbott government has launched a formal review of Australia's 20 per
cent renewable energy target, choosing senior business figure Dick
Warburton – who has been sceptical about mainstream climate change
science in the past – to head it.

More pathetically poor judgement from this lousy PM.

More bodily functions

The Lowy Institute blog notes a Youtube video that is part of a UNICEF campaign to encourage the good people of India not to do their business outdoors.  "Poo2Loo" is the catchy theme.

I see that there is in fact an entire Youtube channel devoted to this campaign.  Amongst a dozen or so videos, it features one with a musician  (presumably well known in India?) who has signed "the pledge against Open Defecation".  (Yes, they put in the capital letters there, not me.)

Sadly, although these videos appear relatively new, they don't have high view numbers yet. 

Here, I'll do my bit - this is a short one involving an apparently common occurrence in Indian parks:




It's all a bit odd, in that the campaign seems to suggest that it is a matter of personal responsibility as to where they go; whereas I thought it was mainly a matter of poor people not having toilets to go to in the first place.

In any event, they make the country sound like such an enticing place for the Western tourist.

Out of the way, stupid

I see that Judith Sloan, whose living now seems to comprise of:

a.  putting a veneer of polite reason on her right wing economic and political views when writing in the Australian and appearing on ABC TV, while

b. mouthing off at a blog that everyone who disagrees with her is pretty much a socialist idiot

wrote over the weekend in reference to Christine Lagarde (head of the IMF):

Honestly.  Surely the times of insisting that the IMF top job goes to some European socialist should end? 

Now I don't follow European politics closely, but as far as I can tell, Lagarde, a former conservative politician, is a socialist in Sloan's eyes because she takes climate change, and its future effects on economies, seriously. 

Yet she faced criticism in The Guardian for doing things of which one would think Sloan would approve:

It is, indeed, astonishing that one the major architects of the punitive and ineffective bailouts in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, should now found herself at the helm of the IMF. The European Union has proved incapable of designing a proper anti-crisis policy for the eurozone. Both the US administration and the IMF had to intervene to prompt a Franco-German led eurozone to take steps to prevent an impending catastrophe. In May 2010, the EU eventually launched the €700bn Financial Stability Mechanism. Not only did the funds prove insufficient to reach their stabilising objective, but a lack of leadership was also blatantly exposed. While Germany urged more austerity measures on Greece, Ireland and Portugal, Christine Lagarde warned Greece that it was at risk of default if "it didn't do more to bring its public finances into order". No doubt that the quasi-bankrupt Greek government will have found it helpful.

First, Lagarde sided with the European Central Bank in opposing any form of restructuring of the Greek debt. Then, she softened her stance and agreed to a new bailout along the same austerity lines that made the previous bailout fail. In true neoliberal fashion, the candidate to the IMF directorship supported the idea that Greece should privatise state assets, to be sold to Chinese buyers. These failed policies have inflicted nothing but unnecessary suffering on European peoples, and have largely contributed to boosting a resurgent far right across Europe. Lagarde was one of their main instigators.

 And I also note it was the Socialists in France who got her into a bit of legal trouble regarding a claimed financial scandal. 

Funny old socialist she is, then.

But apart from Lagarde believing in that well known socialist conspiracy, climate change;  Sloan probably finds outrageously outrageous Lagarde's recent comments on inequality:

“Business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum should remember that in far too many countries the benefits of growth are being enjoyed by far too few people. This is not a recipe for stability and sustainability,” she told the Financial Times. 

We'll have to see what other things come from Sloan World in the next few months.

Flatulence noted

As Jason's twitter account might be the only one in the world that pretty regularly mentions this blog, it's time for another bit of cross referencing.  It was via his re-tweet that I learnt about the amazing Edo scroll of a Japanese fart battle.   Not exactly the Bayeux tapestry, but funnier.

Harmless recreational drug news

James Delingpole, the science commentator who freely admits knowing nothing about science, wrote about the recreational use of drugs, particularly cocaine, last Christmas:

It makes people happy; by and large it doesn’t do anyone any serious physical or mental harm.

(To be fair, as much he doesn't deserve it, he did also list the negatives of cocaine snorting too - but they had nothing to do with health, apart from noting that it "ruined sex".)

Recent news from the US:

In the 24 hours after using cocaine, a young adult's risk of a stroke increases almost sevenfold, according to a new study.

The risk for stroke associated with cocaine use is much higher than with other stroke risk factors, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and smoking, said the researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

"Cocaine is not only addictive, but it can also lead to disability or death from stroke," said lead researcher Yu-Ching Cheng, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

And yes, I am aware that 7 times a small number is still a small number, but it's not insignificant:

It is estimated that about 13,000 Americans aged 15 to 44 suffer a stroke each year, Cheng said.  "Based on the data in our study, we estimated that about 300 young stroke cases are associated with acute cocaine use each year, but the estimate may vary depending on the prevalence of cocaine use in different sub-populations," she said....

 "Cocaine comes up over and over as being implicated in stroke in people of all ages," said Dr. Richard Libman, vice chairman of neurology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y.

The peculiar matter of decreasing psi

Looking back at parapsychology over my lifetime, in the late 60's and the whole of the 70's there was  a pretty popular idea that scientific proof of things such as ESP or other psi powers would be soon established, and likely understood as a part of nature that had just not been properly recognised before.  (And/or, a part of human evolutionary progress.)  Science fiction by Larry Niven, and to a degree, Arthur C Clarke, incorporated this theme, as did some TV shows.  And I doubt that non fiction books on the paranormal have ever sold as well as they did in the 1970's, and perhaps into the early 80's. 

In reality, though, the investigation of psi seemed to progress in haphazard fashion, with promising early experiments and studies fizzling out.   Ganzfeld experiments for ESP testing seemed to be finally be a potential repeatable demonstration of ESP, but there is now doubt about that.

Given the slipperiness of the evidence in the field, I have often wondered whether anyone had written science fiction in which alien or supernatural operatives actively interfered with parapsychology research in order to keep humans in the dark about the true nature of reality.  I suspect its already been done (you could say it's been done for UFO's with the Men in Black.)

But I didn't realise until this weekend when I read this essay "The Capricious, Actively Evasive, Unsustainable Nature of Psi"that in fact there had been a a lot of pondering within parapsychological circles over the last couple of decades about the mysterious way psi has often seemed to dissipate after early successes.

The .pdf article at the link, which appeared in the Journal of Parapsychology ten years ago (I found it via comments at Michael Prescott's blog) is a good read.   The author (James Kennedy, who I had not heard of before) did some work in parapsychology himself, and some autobiographical detail appears in this other paper.

He fully acknowledges that many people will go to the obvious explanation - that declining positive results are simply because of of improved experimental rigour - but notes (if briefly) that there are circumstances where this cannot really explain it.  This example seems odd:

Targ described another case:
[W]e did a series of trials some time ago where we had nine successes in a row forecasting silver futures changes, and then I triedto replicate that . . . and got eight out of nine hits. . . . I then sought for replication to take advantage of this mechanical psi machine we had created and I got eight out of nine failures. That has really stopped my personal psi investigation for a couple of years while I have tried to meditate on what the problem is here.  (Targ, Braud, Stanford, Schlitz, & Honorton, 1991, pp. 76–77)

Kennedy seems to be sympathetic to the view that something very personal goes on with psi, and it sounds as if believes in some type of external higher consciousness being involved.

While this may sound too "spiritual" for hard nosed skeptics to take him seriously, he nonetheless seems to write well on the topic, and to be an interesting character. There are links to many of his papers here.  

Modern Japanese ghosts

 Ghosts of the Tsunami 
The link is to a lengthy essay in the London Review of Books about the Japanese experience of ghosts and possession in the aftermath of the tsunami.

It gives a pretty good description of the Japanese attitude towards religion and spiritual beliefs, I think, and I had never read before about how they came to the fore in some people after the disaster.

Made me happy

Last weekend, I caught a bit of Rage on Saturday morning, and once again was surprised that so much effort goes into making good quality video clips to go with songs that are today's pop music. 

As I think I have written here before, it really feels as if  there should be an audience for music video clip shows again, but I assume it's the audience fragmentation of the music market that prevents this.  A bit sad in a way - I remember it as sort of fun watching such shows with other people when they were big in the 1980's.  (Not Countdown though - it was, of course,  routinely cringeworthy.) 

Anyhow, this is all by way of introduction to the pleasing video for a song that I would otherwise just consider a bit of an annoying earworm after a while:

Made me laugh

(Found on Boing Boing.)

Oh, diddums

Ha!  [Some of] the freeloading libertarians of Catallaxy threads, who believe in property rights and are pretty big on laws enforcement (but only if it doesn't stop them doing what they like - see their attitude to speeding tickets and random breath testing) are a bit upset that George Brandis is indicating a crack down on illegal downloading of TV and media.

They are the same people who want to put physical retail out of business by only buying on line from overseas.

What a bunch of selfish gits who want expensive stuff to be made for them for free, or next to nothing.

Silkworms to the rescue

Scientists create powerful flu vaccines from silkworm DNA

Researchers said they have developed a new method of creating large
amounts of flu vaccine by using the genetic code of silkworms.

They said the new procedure is quicker and less costly than conventional methods.

The major component of flu vaccines is a special protein that exists on the surface of flu viruses.

Led by Kuniaki Nerome, director of a biological resources center in Nago, the team of researchers synthesized DNA that helps enable the protein based on the genetic information of a flu virus. The scientists then introduced the synthesized DNA into the genetic code of
silkworms.

After the silkworms turned into chrysalides, Nerome and his colleagues crushed the insect pupae and purified the resulting powder. They then found the special proteins with exceptional high purity on the surface of the powder particles.

It's surprising that anyone would come up with this idea for silkworms, isn't it?

And the Award this year for outstanding hypocrisy goes to....

Former Howard minister Nick Minchin to replace former Labor premier Steve Bracks as Consul General to New York Oddly, this was mentioned by Michelle Grattan and Fran Kelly on Radio National this morning without either of them remarking on the breathtaking hypocrisy of this act by a government that was indicating it was sick of these "jobs for the boys" appointments. If I recall correctly, even some of the numbskulls on Catallaxy threads were saying when Bracks was sacked that it would be a bad look to put Minchin in his place. What an annoying government.

Old time swimsuits and swimming

My recent post about the odd American history of nude (male) swimming made me realise I didn't know anything significant about men's bathing fashions, apart from the vague idea that Speedos where invented in Australia.    I was sort of right about the Speedo brand, although I am still not sure where the design for brief, modern male speedos (as beloved by European men over 60) came from.

One of the best single sources on this topic of men's bathing fashions generally is probably this photohistory page about the Brighton Swimming Club, which is headed by this photo which did the rounds of the internet last year:

 Apparently taken in 1863, I suppose it suggests that the triangular, brief-ish swimwear has been around for quite a while.  (Many have also noted that it offers proof that Stephen Colbert is a time traveller - see the man in the dead centre.)

The article says that prior to the mid 1800's, English men did just generally swim separately nude, but from the second part  half of that century bathing costumes become enforced.  The French seem to have a classier design of swimming shorts, if these illustrations are anything to go by:


 Or perhaps they're just swimming in their underwear?  I don't know.

Incidentally, the painting on the left may feature men modestly clad, but there nonetheless does seem to be a awful lot of gazing and posing going on.

 


Back in England, here's a photo of how incredibly unhealthy English bathing male specimens could be.  (Actually, he looks not long for this world, but seems cheery enough.)    

 
English men have come a long way since the 19th century in terms of healthy body development, I'm sure.   But then again:






Oh look, it's professional ignoramus and spindle body James Delingpole.  The insubstantial musculature is a good match for the intellectual weight of his opinions on matters of which he freely admits knowing nothing.  In his sign off from blogging at the Telegraph today, he says:

And thank you most of all to those of you who have supported me through thick and thin. Thanks for your technical expertise and advice (it prevented anyone ever noticing that I'm an English graduate and know NOTHING about science apart from, maybe, how to grow copper sulphate crystals)

As with Andrew Bolt, this does nothing to stop climate change denying twits from hanging on every word of his assessment of the state of the science.


Anyway, I digress.

It would seem that the increase in mixed bathing at the beach might have been behind men going for the neck to knee design.  But it can't just have been Queen Victoria's influence:  the link I am copying most of these illustrations from has a couple from France with the guys in the old, horizontal stripped neck to knees.

And onto Australia.  Things look very English-like in the early 20th century.  This shot is at Redciffe in 1910.  Shirtless boys seem acceptable, but I'd like to know how many females drowned from the incredible wet weight of their attire.  And is that the Queen Mum on the far left?:

But swimming carnival types do seem to be in pretty lightweight looking attire:



 Yes, that man's got one leg.  This is from 1914, and he's all round fit guy Charles Olsen.  You can read all about him here.

Well, it's getting late, but there are a heap of somewhat interesting photos of swimmers and pools available through the Queensland State Library.





I like this photo for the contrast between the well dressed, we're-out- for-the-day attire of some of the spectators, and the amazingly primitive swimming venue.  It's from 1910, but the location is not disclosed.  Country Queensland, perhaps:

Brisbane used to do a lot of its swimming in the Brisbane River in enclosures, but there don't seem to be a lot of  photos of what people wore.  I guess it was just generally the same gist as what's above.

But move forward to 1935 and it looks like at least some men were brazenly going topless, so to speak, at Shorncliffe in Brisbane:

Anyway, fast forward to post war, and apparently the 1956 Melbourne Olympics had a swimwear impact:

But it wasn’t until the 1956 Melbourne Summer Games that the ‘classic’ men’s swimming briefs made their first appearance. The new swimming trunks were made of nylon for the first time, and were worn proudly by the Australian swimming team, who took home eight gold medals. This exposure solidified Speedo’s hold over the market, and led to Speedo becoming the sole manufacturer and distributor of Jockey-branded underwear in Australia.

 So there you have it.  I'll keep looking at photo archives for swimming in Australia.  You can find great things like this 1900 photo of Bondi Beach:

It's amazing to think that until at least last year, there was a guy alive who could have been a toddler in that photo.  Well, if he weren't living in Japan, that is.

That's it for now...

Scandinavia may be an odder place than I thought

From a review of the book "The Almost Nearly Perfect People - The Truth about the Nordic Miracle":

Booth starts with Denmark because he lives there - his wife is Danish and their children study at Danish schools. That gives him an insight into the country that doesn't quite extend to the others, which he has merely visited and researched, his views of them perhaps coloured by his experiences of Denmark. (I would have the same problem. I live in Sweden; when I visit the other Nordic countries I see them through Swedish eyes, and behind them British ones.) He is at pains to point out how different they all are, and how scathing each nation is of the others. I can vouch for that. You should hear my partner on the Danes. She's going to love some of the ammunition provided here. Can it really be true that 'seven per cent of Danish men have had sex with an animal'? (Not the same one, surely.)

One of the major problems with this book is that it provides no sources or references, so we can't rely on everything Booth writes. Much of it is impressionistic, and I have to say that many of its impressions of the Swedes don't accord with mine. On the other hand, Booth is absolutely right to be angry about Sweden's record in the Second World War, which still ought to be a source of shame to Swedes, but which most of them seem blithely unaware of. This may be one of the things that fuels the arrogance that their neighbours detect in them. In Finland, which Sweden refused to help in its Winter War of 1939-40 against the Soviets, it is also apparently seen as evidence of Swedish men's 'gayness' - that and the hairnets that were ordered for the Swedish military in the 1960s, when long hair was fashionable. (Booth is good on Finnish 'macho' culture.)

It's been an exhausting century

German burnout | TLS

At the link  is an interesting review of a couple of books that look at the particularly German interest in modern life causing "exhaustion" or "burnout".  The funny thing is, "modern" life has been causing this for a very long time, apparently:

Martynkewicz marshals an impressive range of evidence to establish that
numerous German bourgeois and bohemians living around the turn of the
twentieth century felt physically and emotionally drained by the demands of
what they perceived as an ever more complex modernity. Perceptive case
studies include the “tired colossus” Otto von Bismarck, the diet-obsessed
Friedrich Nietzsche, the sharp and ascetic Cosima Wagner, the depressed
Protestant Max Weber, and the fitness fanatic Franz Kafka, as well as Gustav
Meyrink, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke and many other key figures of
German modernism.

Rilke’s famous dictum “Du mußt dein Leben ändern” neatly sums up the resolute
attempts of these characters to counter their exhaustion-related disease by
subscribing to various tenets of Lebensreform (lifestyle reform). It
is one of the many strengths of this fine study that the intricate
connection between these salvation-promising reform movements and exhaustion
is so cogently demonstrated: Martynkewicz shows that the fin de siècle
did not just produce exhaustion, but also saw the advent of numerous
strategies to counter and even to prevent its effects. “In times of weakness
and illness”, he writes, “the longing for salvation and redemption, as well
as for saviours, spiritual guides, prophets, trainers and dieticians,
multiplies.” Among the prophets we encounter are the naturopath Ernst
Schweninger, whose allegedly miraculous regime was said to have transformed
the “obese and miserable dotard” Bismarck into a strong and “elastic” young
man; the raw food advocate and deviser of Bircher muesli, Max
Bircher-Benner; his colleague Heinrich Lahmann; and the endocrinologist
Eugen Steinach, who performed and popularized dubious and later discredited
rejuvenation operations.

Other practices that were frequently mobilized to counter exhaustion include
nudism, vegetarianism, macrobiotics, gymnastics, yoga, gardening and
expressive dancing.

 Rather a pity they weren't too exhausted for World War 2, though....

This story will be like catnip for Andrew Bolt

In The Guardian:

The Church of England has said that it will, as a last resort, pull its investments from companies that fail to do enough to fight the "great demon" of climate change and ignore the church's theological, moral and social priorities.

Although the church's Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) has resisted calls for the church to pull its money from fossil fuel companies, insisting that engagement is the best way to effect change, its deputy chairman told the General Synod that it was considering "all options" when it came to developing future investment policy.