More detail on the prospects for home brew heroin

Engineered yeast paves way for home-brew heroin : Nature News & Comment

There's considerably more detail here on the story about yeast being engineered for making opiates.

I see that they haven't actually done it yet, or made it efficient, and the researchers are calling for serious discussion on regulation to prevent any such future engineered yeast from getting into the hands of the public.

In short, finding it being used by your neighbourhood bikies is likely many years away yet.

Sorry, any "war on drugs is futile" meme layers out there, this doesn't support your case.  It shows what sensible people should do - regulate to do their best to prevent foreseeable future problems. 

Worse than not watching the news

How Fox News Is (Still) Hurting the Republicans - The Atlantic

Some amusing findings in a recent report from a Republican aligned operative:

(a) that Fox’s core viewers are factually worse-informed than people who follow other sources, and even those who don’t follow news at all, and (b) that the mode of perpetual outrage that is Fox’s goal and effect has become a serious problem for the Republican party, in that it pushes its candidates to sound always-outraged themselves.

About designer babies

I see that Jason Soon is continuing his enthusiasm for the future enhancement of the human gene pool by direct genetic manipulation.   (I suspect all the clones under the masks in Star Wars look just like him.)

Skipping over, for a moment, the unforeseeable mistakes and unintended consequences that I would bet a testicle will be inherent in direct genetic manipulation, here's a thought pertaining to the supposed wisdom of people making such reproductive decisions:  given that there is one clear and obvious way in which the (illegal but enthusiastically used) market in baby selection has been already been given a good run in places like India, China and South Korea, namely gender selective abortion, why should anyone have grounds for optimism that the widespread selection for "good" qualities in future would be handled wisely and have any better result for society overall?

[The large disparity between male and female births in those countries is surely not a good thing, by anyone's reckoning.]

Rat empathy re-visited

Rats Forgo Treats to Rescue a Distressed Cage Mate - D-brief

Another great rat experiment here - showing that, most of the time, rats will save a drowning friend over having a tasty chocolate treat.

If the helper had been in the pool previously, they were more likely to save their buddy.

As it happens, over the weekend, my son and I had to sit through a Powerpoint presentation by my daughter as to why she should get a pet rat.  (All households work this way, don't they?)

This study, which I only read today, is helping her cause... 

Head down for 60 days

In Germany, there will be bed rest experiments to simulate the effect of weightlessness on health.  Sure, these have been done before, but the details make me feel queasy just thinking about it:

In the first major study to be carried out in Envihab, the challenge will be to lie in bed for 60 days in a row to study the effects of long duration spaceflight. The experiment starts this summer and the medical team is currently in the process of selecting 12 participants....

 “To cheat gravity, we tilt the subjects head-down by six degrees,” says Limper. “This is very important, so that the head is below the rest of the body.”

Stuck at this peculiar angle, the volunteers will also be expected to eat a nutritionally controlled diet and go to the toilet using bedpans and urine bottles. They will be monitored 24 hours a day on close-circuit TV and even be transferred to special water-proof tilted beds to take a shower.

Then, for more fun, they'll be put in a centrifuge:

Future studies will also employ a device located at the heart of Envihab: a human centrifuge. Contained within a large white (windowless) cylinder, it consists of four arms, around three metres long, arranged in a cross about a central axis. One of the arms is fitted with a bed, so doctors can spin volunteers to simulate varying accelerations.

It is deliberately smaller than most human centrifuges. “We think this is more or less the size we could implement on a space station,” says Limper.

I hope the participants are paid well...

Worst ban ever

I did tune in yesterday to watch Andrew Bolt try on his jihad against the ABC with Malcolm Turnbull, and noted that he claimed (again) that he has articles that are "banned" under the Racial Discrimination Act.

Since the article concerned (which appeared under two titles, as I understand it) is still hosted in full at his own blog, this must be the most ineffective "ban" ever made by a court [/sarc].

Update:  OK, so there were two articles, one is now at his blog and one on the Herald site;  I had forgotten.  For my Google challenged commenter I provide links here and here. 

The muted Right

Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else that the criticism of last week's Budget from the ABC collective (the Australian, Bolt and Catallaxy) been rather muted? 

Sure, Sinclair Davidson has been on the media quite a bit saying that the Budget is not what the economy needs, but he seems to be saying it with a resigned shrug to the effect of "that's politics for you."  I see that Henry Ergas is taking a similar line, while saying he harshest words for Bill Shorten for being "shrill" and not compromising.  I'm pretty sure Judith Sloan also took a "heavy sigh" approach, but that was it.

I don't quite understand why - have they given up on being strongly influential on the Liberal Party?

Yet more Lomborg

Rabbet Run features a post about Lomborg's dubious method that (apparently) helps ensure that climate change drops in priority when he's doing his "let's decide what problem should be dealt with first" exercises.   The argument dates back to 2009, though, and it's surprising that it isn't more widely known than it seems to be.

The post also features this nice graphic that's been a recent hit on the twittersphere, and it sure doesn't hurt to promulgate it further:

Meanwhile, at The Conversation, there's an interesting post up with the title Bjorn Lomborg’s consensus approach is blind to inequality. 

The argument is that the cost-benefit analysis that is Lomborg's shtick now does not have adequate   regard to intergenerational inequality. The explanation of discounting is dealt with pleasing clarity:

The picture is complicated even more when considering issues where the benefits are deferred – such as taking action on climate change.

Cost-benefit calculations typically deal with this by using “discount rates”. Typically, humans are not good at deferred gratification; we would much rather have $100 today than next year, so discount rates place a lower value on returns the further they are in the future.

This approach is contentious, particularly in environmental economics, where the benefits of our investments accrue to future generations rather than ourselves. Do we have the ethical right to discount the value of the lives and livelihoods of future generations against our own shorter-term financial benefit?

In climate economics, the time horizons are so long that even a relatively low discount rate can generate apparently absurd conclusions. More generally, any discount rate can be interpreted as a preference for intergenerational inequality: it systematically values the welfare of future generations at a lower level than our own.

 But someone in comments disputes the take on "utility" in the article, saying this:

Your explanation of utility is not quite right and quite unfair to poor old Jeremy Bentham. Given diminishing marginal utility of income, a concept devised by Bentham, an investment that generates a smaller financial return but accrues to a poor person rather than a rich person could easily be considered superior in terms of utility. It seems to me your criticism of Lomborg is precisely that he doesn't assess investments in term of utility.

Regardless of that, another comment in the thread perhaps make a more general point that sounds about right:

I started working in the cost-benefit area in the 70s, directly applying the Tom Peters, Deming, et al methodologies. In those days the benefits in particular specifically included non-financial outcomes but this aspect seems to have been lost in today's economic rationalist approach.

Even this article says that in a CBA "You work out the economic cost of a particular investment (or policy) and estimate its economic benefits".

Admittedly it then points out the omission of inequality but there are many other omissions in the same line that we cannot quantify (basic health, environmental health, future opportunities of particular strategies such as pure research and education in the arts, etc.)

This is also the most glaring omission in Lomborg's approach, as he trivialises the science and ignores the intangibles. Even his claim of economic projections beyond say a couple of years have to be regarded with a pinch of salt.

Economics is only one discipline. We need more than that for human progress.

No need to see

Over the weekend, I see that the Fury Road movie got couple of bad reviews - one in The Conversation, and the other by David Stratton, who usually bends over backwards to be positive about Australian films.

On the other hand, overseas critics, even ones I enjoy and more-or-less trust, such as Anthony Lane, think it's great.  But when I read the description of what it's about (a cross between Titus Andronicus  and Cannonball Run, Lane indicates) I am thoroughly satisfied I should not see it.

A nose for physics?

Hey, a year ago I linked to a paper on arXiv about the transmission of information without the exchange of energy.

Now my favourite physicist blogger has posted about it too, and she seems to think it's quite significant.

I can't remember how I first found the paper (I do sometimes just read the long list of papers at arXiv, but have been doing less of it lately) but I am encouraged that perhaps I have a good nose for interesting physics, even if I can't quite comprehend it. 

The soon to be transgendered Gerard

Inspired by Jonathan Green's tweet this afternoon "Gerard's continuing journey through the past", I've had a quick scan of Mr Henderson's Media Watch Dog of today, and realised something.

At the risk of being accused of sexism:  what male partner of a lengthy relationship with a female has not had the experience of said wife or partner reminding them of some slight or offence caused by him years or decades ago, about which he has either completely forgotten or barely remembered?  

It seems to me that Henderson is psychologically already akin to a never forgetting wife/girlfriend, but worse by an order of magnitude or three.   In fact, it would not surprise me if he was a woman in a former life, or is one of those odd cases of a man of advanced age who suddenly announces he was always a woman on the inside and starts the "transition".  

Something to look forward to, and you read the prediction here first.

PS:  for God's sake Jonathan, you're a lovely chap and a good broadcaster, but we've seen enough photos of your horse being pampered to last a lifetime.

Politics is a difficult game

I rarely mention Bill Shorten, but after last night's reply to the Budget, it's time that I did.

First, as a politician, I feel neutral about him.   He did come out strong when he was first making a name for himself, but it was later clear he was undergoing some terrible stress from being caught up in the Rudd/Gillard wars (as well as from a not insubstantial amount of turbulence in his personal life.)  

Some people find his delivery now too often "mannered", and I can see where they are coming from; but bloody hell, we had a three word sloganeering, unprincipled, windvane of an Opposition leader who got the top job, which I find more offensive than some flat "zingers".

As for his performance this year - he's caught in the perennial problem of how much firm policy an Opposition can announce ahead of an election without risking it being semi-adopted (or flaws exploited) by the government of the day.

I thought the speech last night was praiseworthy for having some actual content (unlike Abbott's speeches in reply), but man, it is such a dangerous game for Labor to be talking about any form of new spending without being 100% clear about its funding.

As for the aim of lowering small business tax rate to 25% - despite my ridiculing of Laffer, and the race to the bottom in tax rates that small government types refuse to acknowledge - I don't actually dispute that there may be room for corporate tax to reduce given the international comparisons.  It is a bit weird for Labor to be sounding like Laffer endorsers, although I see that Shorten wasn't talking about the overall tax rate for companies.  And listening to Bowen on the radio this morning, he did say Labor acknowledges that "it is not easy" to get to that rate, and hence the need for bipartisanship, and I guess that sounds like they are at least not being simplistic about all tax cuts paying for themselves. 

In a general sense, though, unlike the "say anything" and frankly anti-science approach of this government, I find it hard to credit that people don't think that Labor at least sounds like a party that genuinely thinks about the role government policy can take in moving the economy into new directions, with their emphasis on education and investment in technology.   The Abbott government thinks the future lies in roads and new dams in Northern Australia, and the future will look after itself.   (It's like the Ord River project never happened.)

On the other hand, one thing that concerns me about Labor is there reflexive objection to any increase to the GST.  If you ask me, a modest increase to 12.5% would not kill consumers but immediately raise substantial amounts:

Based on 2014-15 data, each 1 per cent extra on the GST would raise about $5.4 billion (increasing to $6.4 billion in 2017-18), meaning a hike in the GST rate from the current 10 per cent to, say, 15 per cent would add more than $25 billion per year to government revenue, escalating to more than $30 billion per annum within three years - if nothing else changed.

I really wish Labor would reconsider their position on this, but as I say, politics is a difficult game.

At least the major parties are both realists as far as being prepared to look at revenue measures (Hockey and his attempt at recovering more tax from transnationals, for example;  although his hit on the already exploited class of young international workers who live on gruel and $5 a day while picking fruit - I think I barely exaggerate - seems a very odd priority.)   Labor is on a sensible line in its desire to gain some revenue from the wealthy with millions of dollars in superannuation.   I suppose that's a vaguely optimistic note to end on.

Quite a bit of confidence in it this time around

El Nińo 2015: Largest ever?

Here's a good article summarising the confidence forecasters now have that 2015 will have a strong El Nino.  And the consequences include possible heavy rain for Southern California, which would be good for dried up reservoirs, but may not end longer term drought:

 For those hoping for an end to the drought, multi-year rainfall deficits in California are now so huge that even a very wet year likely wouldn’t erase them. What’s more, heavy El Niño rainstorms frequently come to California via tropical atmospheric river events,
also known as the Pineapple Express. While those rains can help fill dwindling reservoirs, they’re often too warm to produce significant snowpack in the mountains—which is crucial for agricultural needs during the following summer.

So remember that for later in the year when Andrew Bolt claims that climatologists were wrong about the California drought.

I wonder if the heavy rain that it usually brings to parts of South America can reach over to the other side of the continent too, to help drought ravaged Sao Paulo?  (Speaking of which,  I see that an area close to that city has a terrible crime problem.  I kind of assumed it was a safer place than that.  And this article is an interesting take on the drought:
São Paulo water crisis shows the failure of public-private partnerships.

For the "tax land" fans out there

The land tax: What happened to towns like Fairhope, Alabama, that tried Georgism.

A somewhat interesting look at what happened in a few places in America that tried a radically different idea for raising tax.

The future for Andrew Bolt

Yay for Daley

A 'dull and routine' budget that relies on group denial

That John Daley really has a knack for clear writing and explanation on the economy.  (OK, there's another Grattan Institute co-author on this as well.  Sorry Danielle.)

This article confirms what virtually everyone - except this chronically dissembling "say anything" government - knows:  this budget forecasts a return to surplus on a timetable that would be a fluke if it's achieved.

It also shows a government that has incredible inconsistency.  What a great summary Daley and Wood give here:

As well as asking people to accept these rosy assumptions, the budget
also requires impressive mental gymnastics to reconcile this year’s
budget with last year’s rhetoric.

Last year the government said everyone should contribute to the task
of budget repair through a range of unpopular budget measures. One year
later and many of those measures have either been abandoned (GP
co-payments, pension indexation and six-month waiting periods for
Newstart allowance) or are unlikely to pass the Senate (changes to
Family Tax Benefits and higher education reforms). Some groups –
particularly small business – are simply winners.

Last year Tony Abbott was the “infrastructure Prime Minister”. In
this year’s budget, Commonwealth spending on transport infrastructure
falls from 0.5% of GDP in 2015-16 to 0.3% in 2018-19. The largest
addition to infrastructure spending is for the Northern Australia
Infrastructure Facility, which will only cost .02% of GDP per year, and
even that relies on the government finding commercial partners yet to be
identified.

Last year, a “gold standard” paid parental scheme was a “signature
policy”. This year, parental leave payments are in effect being cut for
those who already receive them from their employer.

Last year, we were told that government was too large and spending
was too high. This budget proposes four years in which Commonwealth
spending will be a greater proportion of GDP than all but the two years
of financial crisis under the Rudd-Gillard governments.

Last year we were told this government would fix the budget through
spending reductions, not higher taxes. This year, budget repair is
supposed to result primarily from the tax take increasing by 1.7% of GDP
in four years.

But the greatest cognitive dissonance comes from the government’s fundamental approach to budget repair. While doing nothing was not an option in the face of the “debt and deficit disaster” a year ago, the government has done precisely that. This budget recognises that 2014-15 will be much worse than forecast in last year’s budget. It is probably sensible to slow the pace of budgetary repair in the face of a weakening economy. However, if the recovery forecast for 2016-2018 is as strong as the budget forecasts, then there needs to be substantially more budget repair in these later years. Australia cannot afford otherwise.

  

Just for the record...

...I find it hard to understand the appeal of the Mad Max films.   Post apocalyptic grubby, ugly, violent worlds leave me completely cold, and wishing that all concerned would just have a good bath.  (It's not just desert based films that have this problem - I was recently watching part of Waterworld and wondering how many people didn't like it because of the Costner's unwashed looks - even though he had plenty of ocean to swim in.)

It looks like the revival of the Max series is getting very strong reviews, and I have read that it has much more stunt work that is obviously real than found in many CGI infested films these days.   I suppose that's a good thing, given my complaints along those lines over the years, but I still have no interest in the peculiar genre it inhabits.   And if it is a good movie, it sure isn't reflected in the trailers, which looked completely un-engaging.  

The "say anything" government

This budget has all the features typical of Tony Abbott - opportunistic, unprincipled, a genuine unreliable windvane prepared to say whatever he thinks will go down well with the audience in front of him at the time.

As I understand it, the serious cuts to health from last budget are unaddressed, and I haven't heard anything about the fate of university funding.  The government is hoping that other stupid ideas that sprang from nowhere last budget are quickly forgotten (making young unemployed starve for 6 months being one of the most prominent ones.)

As many people are saying (even those on opposite sides of economics commentary - such as Judith Sloan and Ian Verrender), the budget is in many respects like a Swan one - forecasting return to surplus on assumptions that everyone thinks are brave, very brave.  In Hockey's case, they are not just the guesstimates on increasing national growth and international stability, but also that he can get measures through the Senate.  And bracket creep is to do so much of the lifting, while the retired rich on superannuation are being promised they won't lose their tax free income.  Yeah, that's fair...

As with any government, it's virtually impossible for them to not come up with some decent measure, so the tightening of pension assets tests is hard to criticise.   

But the overriding thing is the way this government changes rhetoric and policies with wild inconsistency.   (And then has the gall to pretend it hasn't really changed much.)  

Contrarian for a living

I've been looking around at some Lomborg stuff, given the continued complaints by the Australian that the University of WA decided it didn't really want to host a contrarian after all.

Media Watch noted that Lomborg very recently came out complaining about international subsidies for fossil fuels - a very Green Party position it would seem.  Yet his views about the poorest of the poor needing to burn coal to lift them out of poverty have been on high rotation for the last couple of years too.  [Oddly, a short video shows him talking about the - very real - problem of bad health caused by indoor fires for cooking:  yet his segue from that is not the simplest one (make sure they have cheap ovens that use chimneys - I saw something about this on TV or the net  recently) but the big one about them needing fossil fuels.]

And I don't think he has ever changed his position that climate change needs a lot of research money put into clean energy.  (Although I think he is now leaning to promoting carbon capture after burning fossil fuel  - which has been proving to be as impractical as skeptics always thought it would.)   Somehow, I can't quite see how this is a natural match to his "the poor need coal" line - or at least, does he mean they need more expensive and innovative coal power stations in Africa than even the American's can get to be cost effective?

As Desmog blog notes, Lomborg has been personally doing OK out of his "consensus" pet projects, and there is no doubt he is favoured by the rich, libertarian leaning Right regardless of things he sometimes says that are Green tinged.

Which leads me back to a comment made by someone in Media Watch, which I think likely summarises him accurately:

Bjorn Borg's talent is game theory. He will play the two sides of the narrative to create confusion. Once you understand his end game, you are trapped neither by your own narrative of climate change being a left right issue, nor by Lomborg's manipulation of the narrative. He is a double dog whistler that sets both sides barking at each other
This is what is important:

1. He is selling to Abbott and co. the promise of confusion around climate policy through the emphasis on other areas.

2. He is selling the opposite to the media so that he can present a misinterpretation of his stance and extend the attention he receives.
3. Everything he has contributed and continues to contribute is of a lower quality than the research and academic standards that are on offer. The government can find better people to ask better questions and get better answers with less money. But it chooses confusion.

Once you understand Game theory, his trickery becomes transparent, and even slightly hamfisted application of it to create the simple goal of confusion and inaction.

Keep directors away from fiddling

I am pretty sure that I only ever saw Blade Runner at the cinema on its original release and never got around to watching it again on VHS or DVD - until last night.

I was aware that the Director's Cut was controversial - friends told me years ago they didn't like it as much as the original, but it seems it is all you can get easily get now.  (That or the "Final Cut", which I gather keeps all the deficiencies of the Directors Cut, but at slightly greater length.)

And boy, are the Director's Cut skeptics right, or what?

The film is not that easily followed without the voice over that Scott complained was forced on him.  And while it's hard to recognise exactly which scenes are new, it drags in a way I certainly do not recall the cinema version did.  I started nodding off, and my son complained he didn't really get the plot.  (I think he could sort of follow the overriding plot - but the film seems not to adequately explain itself at the smaller scale - from one scene to the next.) 

More broadly, it's hard to remember a film which a Director's Cut has improved, isn't it?  Even Spielberg can't be trusted when it comes to this - I prefer the cinema version of Close Encounters to the Special Edition. 

The lesson is that studio enforced changes are sometimes right - and directors need to leave close enough alone.  Especially Ridley Scott...