Sounds unwell

I was wondering why he hadn't commented here for a while, but I see that Homer Paxton was/is unwell.   Sounds very unpleasant: get well soon...

Bad news for reefs

Ocean acidification could lead to collapse of coral reefs: To better understand the effect of acidification on coral growth decline, Hebrew University scientists led by Prof. Jonathan Erez and Prof. Boaz Lazar at the Fredy and Nadine Herrmann Institute of Earth Sciences, together with Carnegie Institute colleagues Dr. J. Silverman and Dr. K. Caldeira, carried out a community metabolism study in Lizard Island at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

The researchers compared calcification rates documented in 2008 and 2009 to those measured using similar techniques in 1975-6. Despite the fact that the coral cover remained similar, the researchers found that the recent calcification rates had decreased by between 27% and 49%. These lower rates are consistent with predictions that took into account the increase in CO2 between the two periods, suggesting that ocean acidification is the main cause for the lower calcification rate at Lizard Island.

While previous studies on individual reef building corals have shown that they lower their calcification rates in response to ocean acidification, in the present study this was demonstrated for the whole community. These findings suggest that coral reefs are now making skeletons that are less dense and more fragile. While they still look the same, these coral reefs are less able to resist physical and biological erosion.

According to Erez and Silverman, "The results of this study show a dramatic decrease in the calcification of the reef, and that it was likely caused by ocean acidification. When the rate of calcification becomes lower than the rate of dissolution and erosion, the entire coral ecosystem could collapse and eventually be reduced to piles of rubble. The collapse of this habitat would ultimately lead to the loss of its magnificent and highly diverse flora and fauna."

This strikes me as a pretty significant study, as I would expect that Lizard Island is a bit less affected by river run off issues than reefs further south. 

More depressing Islam news

Iran executes man for heresy | World news | theguardian.com

Well, in the story itself, it appears that the Iranian judiciary is denying it was because of heresy - instead it was more to do with "illicit sex" with his followers;  although it is also said that there was no evidence of the sexual activities.  What's more, there are several long term prisoners for religious reasons:

Iranian authorities are sensitive towards those practising Islam in
ways not conforming to the official line. In recent years, several
members of Iran’s Gonabadi dervishes religious minority have been
arrested and are currently serving lengthy prison terms.

Amnesty said last week that a group of nine Gonabadi dervishes were
on hunger strike in protest at their treatment in prison. They were
Mostafa Abdi, Reza Entesari, Hamidreza Moradi and Kasra Nouri, as well
as the five lawyers representing them who have also been jailed: Amir
Eslami, Farshid Yadollahi, Mostafa Daneshjoo, Afshin Karampour and Omid
Behrouzi.

“The men were mostly detained in September 2011, during a wave of
arrests of Gonabadi dervishes. They were all held in prolonged solitary
confinement, without access to their lawyers and families, and were
sentenced, after two years and following grossly unfair trials, to jail
on various trumped-up charges,” Amnesty said. “The men are prisoners of
conscience, imprisoned solely for practising their faith and defending
the human rights of dervishes through their legitimate activities as
journalists and lawyers.”

All of this from a country that could be useful in the fight against IS!

Drink and violence in the NT

Protecting the right to drink trumps the safety of Indigenous women in the NT | Nova Peris | Comment is free | theguardian.com: In Darwin alone domestic violence-related assaults have jumped 35% in the last two years. It is even worse outside the capital city. The rates of domestic violence in Tennant Creek are 12 times higher than in Darwin. In Tennant Creek police statistics show that only 10% of domestic violence assaults don’t involve alcohol.

In the NT, the right to drink trumps the rights of victims, who are continually bashed in alcohol fuelled violence. I am extremely concerned that the Abbott government has decided to sign up to this approach.

A domestic violence strategy that does not even mention alcohol is not worth the paper it is written on. A domestic violence strategy that continues to allow people who commit alcohol related domestic violence to keep drinking as much as they like will not work.

You would have to suspect she's right.   Also, as someone in comments notes, this is a much more important practical issue than Aboriginal recognition in the constitution.

I put it down as yet another case of bad Abbott government priorities.

Did you hear? - the Minerals Council has made a film as part of its PR campaign...

[Apologies to Laika, which seems a very progressive company and probably won't mind righteous ridicule.  I will review their film shortly...]

Don't tell Rupert Sheldrake...

Stone Age groups made similar toolmaking breakthroughs

Different palaeolithic populations around the world might have developed
a crucial toolmaking skill independently. This conclusion, based on the
analysis of hundreds of artefacts from a recently excavated
archaeological site in Armenia, weakens a long-held theory that Stone
Age people in Eurasia learnt sophisticated techniques from migrating
African tribes. The work is published in Science¹.

A case of morphic resonance, no doubt.  (Heh).

The intellectual quality of Barnaby on climate change

I enjoyed Jane Cadzow's retrospective on the years she has spent writing profiles of well know personalities for the Fairfax Weekend Magazine.   (Her paragraphs about Warwick Capper are especially amusing.)

But her description of what it was like talking to Barnaby Joyce in 2011 about climate change show the dire lack of intellectual rigour we see in so much of this Abbott government:

Joyce, now the federal agriculture minister, talked non-stop, though not always in complete sentences. As we sped along a south-east Queensland highway one morning, he laid out his case against evidence that global warming was caused by carbon-dioxide emissions from human activity. "I'm going to just pour bullshit on that," he told me, "and just say, well, I just, you know, I, and okay now I'll go beyond that ..."

I waited until he paused for breath, then suggested that even if there weren't conclusive proof of man-made climate change, it might be sensible to reduce our emissions. Why not err on the side of caution?

"Erring on the side of caution means we should drop a bomb on Tehran," he replied.

"Does it?" I asked doubtfully. "Well, you know," he said, "because there's a possibility that they're developing a nuclear weapon."

Now, I think everyone finds Barnaby likeable at a personal level (very down to earth and self deprecating much of the time) and, surprisingly, he has been actively telling some other Right wingers around the place to stop with the "Australia can be the food bowl of Asia" overblown rhetoric.  But seriously, it's clear he takes his climate science from Professor Andrew Bolt, as so many in this government do.

He's getting old...

It's as if The Australian is written by Rupert personally.  Here he is, tweeting like he's Alan Moran (maybe he is):

That first word, being used by him, is causing much hilarity (and wishes for his early earthly departure) in many of the tweets that follow.

Hey, I had that weird thought first

In only the second paragraph of his Guardian column about the (rather unimportant) issue of who pays for the first date, David Mitchell, who is making a welcome appearance back at the paper, wonders whether in the future drones will carry embryos across the sky, such that the stork story will turn out to have been a premonition of the future.

I would like to point out that I had odd thought 9 months ago.

That's OK, maybe someone else had written about it before me.   But if he writes soon about my proposed TV series of time travelling, fecal transplanting doctors who change the course of history, I'll expect an acknowledgement.

The ever reliable tobacco industry speaks

BBC News - France to introduce plain cigarette packaging

Hey, interesting to note that France is going the "plain packaging" route for cigarettes.  Apparently, youthful smoking has been on the increase, despite the EU already requiring that packets be plastered with health warnings.

Most amusing, though, is a claim from a tobacco aligned company (although the article does not say what it actually does):

Celine Audibert, a spokeswoman for French firm Seita, which is a
subsidiary of Imperial Tobacco, described the move as "completely
incomprehensible".

"It's based on the Australian experience which, more than a failure, was a complete fiasco," added Ms Audibert.

She should work for the IPA; she makes about as much sense.  

Well known skeptic has some doubts

Anomalous Events That Can Shake One’s Skepticism to the Core - Scientific American

This is a rare story - a widely known skeptic getting a bit spooked by a remarkably meaningful co-incidence (or more?)

It would be great if this sort of thing happened more often.  Skeptics should doubt their skepticism a bit more often than they do, I think. 

(I also trust that this isn't some sort of playing with his readership on Shermer's part.)

Significant movie news

At last!   Some confirmation that Spielberg is about to start shooting his next movie:

The Steven Spielberg-directed Cold War era movie is currently taking over the DUMBO section of Brooklyn. Signs for the previously untitled project, now going by St. James Place, began popping up around the area surrounding the Manhattan Bridge this week, and this morning about two blocks have been taken over by the production.
The film will star Tom Hanks, Amy Ryan, Eve Hewson, Alan Alda, and others. According to a Variety report from June:

"DreamWorks and Disney have dated the Cold War spy thriller for Oct. 16, 2015. Joel and Ethan Coen came on board last month to write the script, which Marc Platt and Kristie Macosko Krieger will produce with Spielberg. The Coen Brothers, who won screenwriting Oscars for Fargo and No Country for Old Men, are revising Matt Charman’s script."

The movie is based on the true story of attorney James Donovan (Hanks), who was "enlisted by the CIA during the Cold War to surreptitiously negotiate the 1962 release of Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 spy plane pilot who was shot down over Russia two years earlier." During his lifetime, Donovan also negotiated deals with Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion,
counseled during the Nuremberg Trials, and in 1962 was backed by Kennedy for as the Democratic candidate for a New York Senate seat (which he lost to Jacob Javits). In the late 1960s, he was the President of Pratt Institute.

 Sounds quite interesting, no?

In non Spielberg related news, I also noticed this week that the new James Bond will be directed again by Sam Mendes, who I thought did a very classy (and distinctive looking) job with Skyfall.  Shooting starts in December, for release in November 2015.  

Then, in December, will be the release of the new Star Wars film.  I don't hold any particularly high hopes for that, as I think JJ Abrams is a poor director.    Possibly better than George Lucas, though.  At least, it would appear, he is limiting the amount of CGI, which is a good thing.

The end of 2015 is going to be pretty full of highly anticipated movies....    

Some awesome photos...

...are to to found in this series of Europe by drone at The Guardian.  (All by one photographer - Amos Chapple.)   Perhaps he won't mind if I paste one of them:

Backyard nature news

The family noticed yesterday some new birds visiting the backyard, and after a perusal of the bird book, it would appear it was a family of apostlebirds.  They look like this:

Not exactly colourful, but their behaviour was interesting:  hoping around the ground in a group of 5 or 6.

And I see from Wikipedia that they indeed seem to be a very co-operative species:

The apostlebird was named after the Biblical apostles, the twelve followers of Jesus Christ.^[5][6] In fact, the species travel in family groups of between 6 and 20, which may coalesce with other family groups into large feeding flocks of over 40. ...

Apostlebirds are a socially living, cooperative breeding species with each breeding group generally containing only one breeding pair, the rest being either their helper offspring, kin or unrelated adult birds. Most group members help construct a mud nest, share in incubation of the eggs, and defense of the nest. Once the eggs are hatched, all members of the group help feed the chicks and keep the nest clean.

Positively socialist!

I take it from one other site, where someone posted a photo of them from Brisbane in 2013, that they are not so common here.  (They generally come from a bit further inland, it seems.)

We seem to be privileged to be seeing them.  Hope they hang around.

Physics and life chemistry considered

Force of nature gave life its asymmetry : Nature News & Comment

Disturbing in its own way

OK, it's not disturbing in a "Nutjob IS followers beheading innocent victims and attempting the local eradication of people of other faiths - including those with the wrong brand of Islam" sort of way, but I still can't watch this without feeling very uneasy about the mix of pretty simplistic religiosity and the US Marines.  (And besides, it looks like worship more suited to a primary school camp than for adult men.)

 

Interesting details on the potential for cheap, flexible solar cells

Cheap solar cells tempt businesses

I know:  it seems that a flexible and cheap version of solar cells has been just around the corner for a long time now, but this article goes into details that does indeed make them sound likely to be commercially available soon.  (Or soon-ish.)

These perovskite ones sound different to what the CSIRO hopes to commercialise.

Sounds like quite a race may be on to get some form of cheap, flexible cell on the market. 

Needed next:  a breakthrough in cheaper storage batteries.

I take this very seriously...

Is Exercise Bad for Your Teeth? - NYTimes.com

Yay!  An unexpected harm from exercise - maybe.  If you're an athlete who does heavy training.


I don't care - any anti-exercise news is welcome in this neck of the woods.   

Yet another reason not to trust them...

The grim story of the Snowy Mountains' cannibal horses. 

Gee.   Jonathan Green (whose twitter feed indicates when he's not in the studio, he's on a horse*) needs to watch his back...

*  quite possibly, he's tried training his horse to operate the panel

Spy stuff

A Private Tour of the CIA's Incredible Museum | History | Smithsonian

Quite a lengthy article here showing more than a dozen, rather interesting, items held in the CIA museum.