Friday history

Here are a few fun history links via Beachcomber's blog:

*  a summary of Edwardian "sexual codes" - amongst the aristocracy, at least.

*  some photos of Victorian era child prisoners.   Photos make history seem not so foreign, don't they; especially colour photos.  Not that these are colour, but I thought I would make that point again after seeing this photo that has been doing the rounds of the blogosphere. Back to the underage criminals: I like this explanation of why good kids went bad:

Ms Rees said: 'The slightly more middle class of the group were 13-year-old Michael Clement Fisher and Henry Leonard Stephenson, who was 12. They were choir boys from St Mary's Church and said to be of respectable parents.

'But they still broke into three houses, stole a violin case, a ring, coins and other articles. All stolen property was returned.'
In a newspaper article at the time of the crime in 1873, it was suggested the boys had thought they were doing 'heroic, manly acts' after reading the 'wrong books' on people like Jack Sheppard, a notorious 18th century highway man.

* An odd story about Nazi "spies" preparing for a air landing in Norfolk before World War 2.  It is from The Mirror, so I hope it's true.  Actually, it sounds vaguely familiar to me, although the article says this is a completely new discovery. 

Just don't burn it

US government abandons carbon-capture demonstration : Nature News

All the money used on it would be better spent on clean energy research, including cheaper battery storage.

It never realistically had a chance of making a big difference, but it was a way for the coal industry to try to improve its prospects.

The lesson: be careful with your choice of feces

Rapid and unexpected weight gain after fecal transplant: A woman successfully treated for a recurrent Clostridium difficile infection with stool from an overweight donor rapidly gained weight herself afterwards, becoming obese, according to a case report published in the new journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

Got to make sure you stick to "skinny" gut bacteria...

Australian Astro????

In the most surprising movie news since, well, just about ever, I read:

The Australian animation studio behind The Lego Movie is to make a live-action superhero movie based on the popular cartoon character Astro Boy

As it prepares to start production on two Lego spin-offs, Animal Logic has signed a deal with Japan's Tezuka Productions for a big-budget movie it hopes to shoot in Australia next year.

Chief executive Zareh Nalbandian said the plan was to create a "Marvel-style" franchise based on the robot superhero.

It is very hard imagining a live action version of the title character.   And I certainly hope they won't use the awful motion capture technique.  

Dedicated readers may recall that in 2009 I gave two thumbs up to the American made Astro Boy movie, which seemed to suffer from marketing failure and was shamefully under-seen.     Re-reading my review, I commend it again to my vast international readership.   

What a joker ...um, I mean joke

Andrew Bolt can't decide if he wants to see Abbott gone or not, so now he's attacking the ABC for an "abuse of power" in its reporting:

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: ... The ABC can identify 10 Liberal MPs who want a ballot on the leadership and another 18 who say they might support one…
SABRA LANE, REPORTER: ... (T)he Prime Minister is resisting a backbench revolt and the perception that he’s increasingly on his own.

Ten - at most 28 - of 102 Liberals MPs want a leadership spill against Abbott, yet the ABC says there’s a “perception that’s he’s increasingly on his own”? And runs carefully selected footage of Abbott sitting as if alone?
The ABC spin and glee throughout this challenge - the active pushing for the Liberals to be less conservative - is unmistakable and an abuse of the ABC’s huge power.
Reform of the ABC is not just critical to tame state power, protect media diversity and promote debate. For the Liberals it is also a fight for survival.

What utter crap.

The nutty Right has become obsessed with blame shifting for their general incompetence onto the ABC, which apparently has brainwashed the public into being soft headed Leftists who will never vote Liberal.  Clearly, it must have acquired this power sometime after the 11 year run of the Howard government.   

With respect to the forthcoming "Bali Nine" executions

As it appears almost certain that two Australians drug smugglers will be executed soon after exhausting all possible appeal challenges, I have been meaning to observe that:

*  that new Indonesian President looked like a bit of a softy (maybe it was his lack of a military background) during the election campaign, but doesn't give that impression now. 

*  honestly, given the way the Abbott government has ruthlessly been dealing with "illegal" asylum claiming boat people on the high seas and in off shore detention,  how could the Indonesian government and people fail to detect hypocrisy when Australians are suddenly asking them to not enforce its national laws?   We're extending the reach of our laws to imprison people on the high seas for weeks at a time - even before they get to our territory.   Our government's behaviour on that issue has made it one of the least credible sources of a plea for mercy.

Mystery missiles

For once a news.com.au tabloid headline about UFOs is worth reading.

Seems a couple of missile looking things have been seen worryingly near aircraft in Perth in the last year or two, and no one has any idea where they could be coming from.

Here's the Crikey blog post on the same topic.

Mystery missiles have been around for a long time, and do represent one of the more realistic sounding classes of "odd things in the sky" sightings.

Greece considered

The Flag-Waving Greek Left | The Weekly Standard

Gee, it's not often now that you can read a Weekly Standard article and get the feeling that it is quite balanced both on politics and economics, but this one all about Greece seems that way to me.

Found via Mr Soon.   

A dangerous libertarian. (Well, they all are, really...)

Rand Paul on vaccination: Resorting to freedom | The Economist

Here's a good, lengthy Economist blogpost about how libertarian ideas work against public health (regarding vaccination).   I might add - throw in their views on gun ownership, and their public health credentials get even worse.  And don't get me started on climate change and libertarian shoulder shrugging...

Nice review of general relativity

General Relativity’s Big Year? - NYTimes.com

Greeks and austerity

A Greek Morality Tale by Joseph E. Stiglitz - Project Syndicate

Sounds pretty convincing to me...

The downside and the upside

The downside for those who would quite like to see Abbott turfed out (at least if it would mean a completely new direction in policy) is that I think the malcontents have given the pro-Abbott faction too much time to consolidate their position.

The upside is that, even if he survives this challenge to his authority, the nation now knows that the party is divided, and a good portion share the public's view that they are being led by a weirdly out of touch dimwit with no good policy sense who doesn't know who to listen to.   That can't augur well for the future life of the government under Abbott.

The stupid English

MPs vote in favour of 'three-person embryo' law | Science | The Guardian

As I have written before - this is crazy.

The reason it is crazy is not (as some pro-life conservatives in this report claim) because it involves destroying embryos to create a third - I mean, just everyday IVF results in scores of discarded embryos every week and they aren't rioting in the streets about that - but because it is a highly artificial process with very likely subtle and unforeseeable long term health consequences for the babies created.   Just as there already is a higher birth defect rate for "normal" IVF babies - the reasons for which remain unclear - it is reasonable to expect more problems if you are fiddling around with the actual contents of eggs.  

All this for a small number of families who simply want to have their own babies instead of adopting or using donor egg techniques.

The Americans are unwilling to proceed with it - at least until more animal studies are done.   Why are the English so gung-ho about this?

Planetary heating continues

A Fresh Look at the Watery Side of Earth's Climate Shows 'Unabated Planetary Warming' - NYTimes.com

There is a new study at Nature Climate Change that appears to offer strong confirmation that the "missing heat" from CO2 is going into the deep ocean, based on the latest Argo measurements.

There is an article about it at The Conversation, but a more detailed discussion appears at the above link at  Andrew Revkin's blog (which, I must admit, I forget to check often lately.)

The issue of deep ocean heat absorption might make surface temperature increase slower than current models indicate, but when you look at the graphs for surface increases since the middle of last century, surely anyone sensible would have to say that it looks fanciful to suggest that suddenly, all further heat is going to start disappearing down that sinkhole, never to bother us again for centuries.  

A slip of the finger

Just noticed this in the online AFR story by Phil Coorey:

The influence of Peter Slipper seems to linger on...

The slippery Creighton

Adam Creighton bemoans in the Oz today that Campbell Newman's desire to privatise electricity distribution is a good thing that Queensland is missing out on:

The Liberal National Party never adequately explained how that would improve the lives of ordinary Queenslanders — by cutting power prices. The Victorian and South Australian governments privatised their electricity distributors between 1995 and 1998. Since then, the cost of Queensland’s electricity network (the biggest component of household bills) has risen more than 120 per cent while falling in the two southern states, according to a recent Ernst & Young study.

Fascinating.  Yet what are the actual electricity costs in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia?  

According to this 2014 report, SA is significantly more expensive, as is most electricity in Victoria.



Adam's highly selective way of looking at matters is not to be trusted without looking into more detail.

Cater in denial

The most hilarious thing in the papers this morning is the irritating wannabe political culture warrior Nick Cater telling the country that we don't know how lucky we are to have Abbott as our PM.  Maybe he didn't come up with the headline, but here it is:  Tony-haters can't cope with reality.

The spin is of cyclonic intensity as he claims Australians don't like Abbott because Labor under Rudd and Gillard has ruined politics in this country.  (Yes, seriously.)

And Cater has his own problem with reality when he claims electricity prices have dropped 10% since the carbon "tax" went.  In fact, his own paper was reporting only a few days ago that the average price reduction was 7.31%, after Abbott promised a 9% drop.   That's some rounding error for Cater.   (Particularly as it appears clear in the report that some electricity drops were only around 5%.)

Cater also talks up jobs growth, when the unemployment rate since the change of government actually looks like this:


source: tradingeconomics.com

Apparently, we should also be grateful to Abbott for causing the Arabs to dramatically drop the price of petrol.    Yes, that makes sense [not].

Cater even has a go at his brothers in arms at the likes of the IPA and Catallaxy for attacking Abbott from the Right.  Yes, it's a real tragedy, Nick.

Meanwhile, I just saw Abbott give a lacklustre morning interview on Sunrise, flanked by Australian flags.  (The background to Abbott's media appearances always appear to be some attempt at subliminal messaging - remember all the Christmas trees behind in December?)

I think everyone - even Cater - knows the truth:  Abbott is just one stupid comment or decision away from losing leadership.   At his current rate of making those, he probably has less than a month...

Update:   Judith Sloan notes that it's not wise for the government to brag about jobs creation, and thinks the "small business" tax cut is a bad idea.  (Yes, it's a worry:  she has been increasingly capable of being cited with approval!  But when someone like her criticises a tax cut, there is almost certainly something to it.)

Update 2:  I can't get to it behind the paywall, but it appears from a tweet that Dennis Shanahan at the Oz has suggested that someone is thinking that Christopher Pyne could be a "compromise" candidate for the Prime Ministership!!   Please, let it be true.   Hahahahaa

He's not for turning

Note:  no suggestion of actual Thatcher-like qualities, such as consistency, intended.   Just looks funny in drag...

Update:  how prescient of me to post this yesterday, when today it is reported:

MPs today continued to leak against the Prime Minister despite a staunch defence of his leadership to the National Press Club in Canberra on Monday.
“Cabinet ministers have been ringing me and telling me things are just untenable,” one MP said.
“Julie Bishop and Tony Abbott now have a Gillard-Rudd like relationship. It can’t go on like this,” another said.
 

Tony's big speech observed

I just dropped in on the Abbott Press Club speech.

Really sounds like an election campaign launch.  I suppose it is - to his Party for his own job.

He's still with the blue tie thing.  Boring.

Now he's talking tough on cracking down on organisations promoting Islamic terrorism.  I didn't realise that the public thought that was a big issue at the moment. 

Gone on a big ramble touching lots of things now, but nothing in depth.

Ooh - now he's reading the bit of the speech leaked to Michelle Grattan this morning.  Deja vu.

Oh - was Maggie Abbott looking a bit dewy eyed then, while he talked about her returning to work? 

A small business tax cut coming.  Yes - that will help the government's revenue problem.

Wants to be remembered for cutting tax.  GST - to change it would need a political consensus.  He's probably right there.  Broken clock, as they say.

Back into repeating last election's slogans.   Boring.

Now talking directly to the public - sounds exactly like a campaign launch.

Onto questions now. 

I missed the first one.

Second one - promising to be more, much more, consultative in Cabinet etc.

Lordy - now into "we're all on  journey" guff.   Well, it's one to the backbench for you, Tone.

Supports fair umpire deciding minimum wages.

Hey a tough question from a journo I haven't heard of before - essentially, telling him he's failed to make transition from opposition to government.  He doesn't answer.

Mark Riley's question rather tough too.

I gotta sign off, though...

My verdict:   he's combative and obviously not planning on resigning any time soon.   Good!  More bad decisions and entertainment on the way then.

When is the next Newspoll out for federal voting intention?  We seem to waiting a long time...

Not sure that this is the best headline...

Global warming won't mean more stormy weather

The article says that the study indicates not more storms, but:

Instead, strong storms will become stronger while weak storms become weaker, and the cumulative result of the number of storms will remain unchanged.