Tipping points are back?

Risk of multiple tipping points should be triggering urgent action on climate change

My impression is that concern about climate change tipping points has been out of fashion in the IPCC  for some years, and that those who have been worried about things being worse than they seem (such as Hansen with his papers) have been rather pooh-poohed by others.

But they are still possible, and still worth considering, even if I am again dubious about the attempt to economically value them.

Privacy and clean cars

The Atlantic has an article about how smart, self driving cars are likely to mean the final nail in the coffin of privacy.

The one thing they don't mention, though, in the context of a future fleet of shared self driving vehicles, is the matter of people doing rude things in them and how you could stop that without some serious privacy infringement.  (I'm sure I posted about that recently, but again Google is failing me.)   I sort of want to claim to be one of the first people to anticipate that problem; but then again, I'm not sure it's something to want to get credit for.   After all, it would appear that it has not yet occurred to American teenagers, since in a recent survey they don't appear all that keen on automated cars.

In other self driving car news - Wired has an article about infrastructure changes that self driving cars will likely need.  (It's not big a list, though.)

The persecuted Ted

This is the first clip I have watched of Samantha Bee on her new TV gig, and I'm not sure I like her delivery.  But nonetheless, this clip about how amazingly unpopular Ted Cruz is with his fellow Senators still has many funny bits:

A lovely piece by Jericho

I no longer see my daughter's Down's Syndrome, I only see a beautiful girl called Emma | Greg Jericho | Opinion | The Guardian

More Bolt than you could possibly handle

Andrew Bolt is going to do 4 nights a week on Sky News??   Gee, are there that many people willing to be interrupted in interviews to keep it going?   And bear in mind his TV audience couldn't really stay with him once a week over the long run, let alone 4 times a week.

A rather strange decision by a cable network I don't get to see anyway, and (I would guess), an unhealthy workload for Andrew.

Nurse!

Good Lord.  I think the world's foremost free market economist from RMIT (the one who knows that 95% of other economists don't understand the subject) may be on the verge of needing a compulsory rest in a peaceful white room somewhere.  Here's his reaction on viewing Disney's current hit animated animal film Zootopia:

It is impossible to describe how depraved this film is. In every way worse than I could have imagined. It makes you understand how Europe and America have ended up with civilian invasions for which there are almost no psychological defences across the culture. Here is the final line of the film which is its ultimate message, superseding even the often-repeated mantra that “anyone can be anything”. These words are the actual point:

“Trust – and make the world a better place.”

We are a generation of naive and guileless fools, and if you are looking for the evidence, the 99% critics approval with the audiences at 95% tells you a great deal about what you need to know.
Not recommended, although the 108 minutes passes easily enough if you are curious about understanding how intellectually defenceless and inanely stupid our culture has become.

Mind you, I haven't seen the movie yet.  Somehow, though, I can't see it provoking anything like the same reaction.
 

Testing the limits of my enjoyment

As readers might be able to tell, I like science.   Always have.  Read a lot of kids' science books in primary school, sometimes, for example, spending pocket money on buying a new "How and Why" book - remember those?  And people gave me children's encyclopaedias as a gift, or books about space.  (Happily, even in Year 8 I got a spacey book from school as some sort of achievement prize.  I think I'm remembering this right - I still have it on the shelf and should check.)

This is by way of background to explaining that I have taken particular enjoyment in helping my kids with their school science.   Honestly, for parents like me, I wouldn't mind if the school could just sent me the assignment and cut out the middle child.  (I'm joking - sort of...)

But this weekend, my patience on this was tested.  

My son had to a write up of an experiment on Newtons laws of motion (so far, so good); but the experiment set up was this:  rolling two different sized (different weight) marbles down a slope and measuring the time taken.  Not only that, but it was done on four different surfaces (carpet, wood, pipe, and some non slip mat.)

He did this at school, and got some results.  (I had to learn about Excels charting functions to make him do the bar charts better though.   Now we both know.)

But the problem is with the interpretation and discussion section.

Let me assure you, dear reader, that any time spent Googling the topic such as "does a heavier ball roll down a slope faster than a lighter ball" will quickly show you that this is a topic that causes massive confusion, and is actually very complicated and well beyond the simple "Newtons three laws of motion."   (If you think I'm exaggerating, go have a look.   It's a topic that is much worse than the more straight forward "why do objects fall at the same rate under gravity in a vacuum.")

It really drove me a bit crazy trying to work out what my son could legitimately and accurately say regarding this, given the relatively light exposure to Newton that a Year 10 student gets.  I think I came up with some useful suggestions, but did the silly teacher really have to complicate this further by the use of different surfaces? 

This is by far the worst science assignment my son's teacher had ever me work on, and I expect better next time!

Well, that makes voting for Bill Shorten easier...

So, Wilson got pre-selection by 142 to 140 votes.   Reminiscent of the start of the Tony Abbott climb to the position of Most Embarrassingly Weird Prime Ministership since Federation, really.  I expect pretty much the same of Timbo's parliamentary career.

Watching Joan

Wow, that Luc Besson 1990's Joan of Arc (on SBS tonight) looks absolutely fantastic, and is very enjoyable in its over the top sort of way.   I see that Besson made it after the truly awful Fifth Element, yet it was that film which was his critical and commercial success.   How wrong is that?

A good, odd list

From the BBC, I learn that there is an annual prize for oddest book title of the year.  The shortlist for this year does sounds enticing:

Actually, that last one might have some information on something I find odd - the matter of medieval belief that witches would happily kiss Satan's infernal you-know-what.   (Oh look, it has a Wikipedia entry.)  Doesn't that seem a rather odd myth, and hard to fathom how it started?*   Now that I think of it, what does the (much less specific) "kiss my ass" derive from?

* But then again, how did any weird story about what witches could do get started.  I read about this one years ago:

 German clergyman Heinrich Kramer described the epidemic in Malleus Maleficarum (1486)—one of the most famous medieval treatises on witches—writing: “Witches ... collect male organs in great numbers, as many as 20 or 30 members together, and put them in a bird’s nest, or shut them in a box.” But the disembodied penises didn’t just hang around. “They move themselves like living members and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many,” Kramer wrote.

 It's the little detail of "eating oats and corn" that really floors me as a bizarre thing to dream up.

The paranoid style in Australian politics

There's nothing like a stupid university student office invasion/demonstration/semi ransack to bring out the  "crack them over the head with batons/just shoot them" reaction from those who comment at Catallaxy.

And yes, of course it was stupid and pointless and damaging, and some arrests based on video identification would be well deserved.

But long time commenter CL, who has a paranoid streak a mile wide about how leftists are out to get Catholics, and gays are out to get the children, now thinks queer university students are out to kill conservative's wives, apparently:

Oh, and anti smoking campaigners - it's personal, didn't you know?:

I wonder if he's still a smoker.  It apparently contributes to paranoia.

Petty

I find it pretty distasteful the way Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair  (more or less) high five themselves when their media opposition downscales journalist jobs.  All tied up with their campaign against "leftists" generally, and the ABC for allegedly crowding out the news media here.

This argument is beloved of their aging, remarried boss; except that I don't see how it can account for the fact that American newpapers, without anything like a government funded media outlet competitor, have been suffering exactly the same decline for the last decade or so.

And let's face it:  apart from the basic news services, commercial TV here gave up serious domestic and international journalism decades ago in favour of magazine TV.   Was this due to ABC "crowding out"?  I doubt it. 

Still sounds 'orrible..

Dance yourself happy: the rise of the sober rave | Music | The Guardian

Tim and the pre-selection

Funny how The Australian and Andrew Bolt are coming out strongly in support of professional self promoter Tim Wilson in his pre-selection run.   Does Bolt's son still work for the IPA?   I almost feel he should make a disclosure of that before he does one of his puff pieces on how suitable ex IPA people are as Liberal politicians, because it will be only be another couple of years and Bolt the Younger will be making a run as well.  (I see wet behind the ears James Paterson's maiden Senate speech - which I haven't watched - included promoting an Australian embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  At last!  The really important issue that the citizens of Victoria have been waiting for their Senator to finally tackle.   They'll be dancing in the streets.)

Honest to God:  if Tim Wilson gets up in this preselection at the other end of the country from me, I'll have trouble voting for the Liberals for another decade at least.

Laughably, Bolt says of Wilson:

Tim Wilson has a long record of publicly fighting for Liberal values and has the scars to prove it.

Like the "scar" of a directly gifted Human Rights Commission job worth about $400,000 in salary and benefits?  What Bolt means is "Wilson supported me when the s.18C case was taken against me, which I could avoided by an apology and correction for mistakes, but instead decided to grandstand and lost.  Of course he's well suited to be a Liberal candidate in a safe seat, then."

Georgina Downey, on the other hand, may have had a bit of a charmed life as a daughter of a famous politician;  but I find it hard to credit that a person with this academic and work background outside of thinktank wankery is not smart and well qualified for political life:

Ms Downer is a lawyer turned diplomat who served in Australia's embassy in Japan for four years. The mother of two has a Masters in Public International Law from the London School of Economics and degrees in Law and Commerce from the University of Melbourne.  She is fluent in Japanese and French.

The Liberal Party needs to distance itself from the mystery corporate funded ideologues of the IPA, not get tied up with them closer.   If they go with Freedom Boy, it will be their loss.  

An interesting take on the Nordic system

Why Bernie Sanders Is Adopting a Nordic-Style Approach - The Atlantic

The basic message is that it's not that Nordic folk are more altruistic - it's that they see their style of socialism-lite is great for the middle class.  In other words, they support it because they are selfish.

Better than increasing, anyway

Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions Have Now Been Flat for Two Years Running

New data published by the International Energy Agency extends the surprising finding, discovered last year, that global carbon dioxide emissions have stopped growing despite continued economic growth. The latest data show the trend has continued for a second consecutive year, which the IEA says is a result of renewable energy accounting for 90 percent of new electricity generation in 2015. China’s slowing economic growth has played a key role in these figures as well, though, and with India and several other developing economies set to grow substantially over the next several years, it’s not clear how long we can expect this “decoupling” trend to continue.

More Alzheimers related research

Re-energizing the aging brain

...new research on mice shows that the brain's energy reserves can be increased with a daily
dose of pyruvate, a small energy-rich molecule that sits at the hub of most of the energy pathways inside the cell. These results need to be replicated in human subjects, but could ultimately lead to clinical applications.

"In our new study, we show that long-term dietary supplementation with pyruvate increases the energy reserves in the brain, at least in mice, in the form of the molecules glycogen, creatine and lactate," says lead author Heikki Tanila, Professor of Molecular Neurobiology at the A. I. Virtanen Institute of the University of Eastern Finland.

Sounds serious

Drought and rising temperatures 'leaves 36m people across Africa facing hunger' | Environment | The Guardian

I've noted before that we don't get a lot of media attention in the West about droughts in other countries as they develop.   It seems to take shots of malnourished and starving kids from the subsequent famine before you see much publicity on TV.

I see that El Nino has not been kind to other parts of the world, too:

Months of below-average rainfall have conspired to produce the worst
drought in Vietnam in the best part of 100 years. It has been reported
that the Mekong River is at its lowest level since 1926.

The ongoing El Nino weather pattern is thought to be the main cause of the lack of rainfall affecting the country.

Vietnam is not alone in suffering drought. Neighbouring Cambodia, and
Laos, as well as Thailand and Myanmar, have been experiencing water
shortages as a result of the weather phenomenon.

Cringing for comedy

I didn't plan on watching the much publicised "Luke Warm Sex" last night; but I fell asleep near the end of The Weekly (still a good value show that Crikey seems oddly determined to dislike) and woke up 20 minutes later to find Luke McGregor about to nude up with a handful of typical modern nudists.  (By which I mean: aging with a fair share of rotund.   For whatever reason, social nudity is just not young folks' thing, now, apparently.   Nude in cyberspace, on the other hand, is near compulsory.)

I watched this last 10 or 15  minutes, and decided I can't handle McGregor, except in an acting role.

I thought he was good in Utopia, for example, where he wasn't playing himself.

But in last night's show, it was hard to avoid the feeling that he was not being himself, but acting out some intensely cringeworthy version of himself.   Or at least I think this is what was happening - I find it impossible to judge how authentic this guy is being when he is trying to pass himself off as himself.

And just as there's no dignity in comedians (usually female, these days) who want to talk about their vast sexual experience, there's also none in one wanting to talk about how little sex he's had.

Luke Buckmaster was not impressed.  Nor was I.

And speaking of Australian comedy, I never saw figures for how badly the last season of Please Like Me went.   It was shown at an odd time slot, started with very low ratings, and I would guess went downhill from there.   But apparently it got made because of American investment.  It must surely have ended its run now, though. 

Talking about cities

For the last few years, it has seemed to me that inner city Brisbane has been a bit stuck in a developmental rut.   While there was a burst of apartment building there back about 10 to 20 years ago, it seems that much of it is really designed for the likes of visiting students and and the rich young, all of whom I would assume move away to bigger digs once they decide to have a baby.

I guess this is not unique to Brisbane - I suspect the same thing has happened in Melbourne.  Sydney, less so, because of the proximity of the older residential inner city areas to the centre.  

But in Brisbane, the result you get is an inner city area that is not quite alive after about 3pm on a weekday.

I occasionally am in the city at that time for work, and (if I have not been able to have lunch earlier), I always find it sort of depressing the way the myriad coffee and lunch outlets are shutting down by that time.   Must be good hours for the workers, I guess, but a city that feels like it is shutting down at that time doesn't feel fully lived in. 

Of course, you can still find places open if you go up to the Queen Street Mall, which is relatively attractive and busy as far as inner city pedestrian malls go, but the city as a whole just feels like it needs higher, lived in, density.

I'm not sure how you cure that, as I guess that even if you said that residential development had to be more spacious and attractive to families, the cost would still be prohibitively high, and they may figure they can get nicer outlooks at the city fringe (such as at Teneriffe - which is booming - but it is not a convenient walk to the city.)

Anyway, just my thoughts....

Update:   perhaps I am being a bit tough here.  I mean, I guess there are parts of most major inner cities (save for the megacities like Tokyo) which are only going to be populated during business hours.   And, I have to say, that South Bank, just across the bridge from the inner city, is (in my opinion) actually the most successful arts/culture/recreation precincts of the Australian cities.   Southbank and Grey Street are very popular;  the Performing Arts centre is well used and has attractive outdoor eating;  the Queensland Museum is a bit underwhelming, though.   But overall, it is very lively and inviting area any day of the week.

The problem though is the gaps between the areas - South Bank and Kangaroo Point are popular at night, but go across the river and there are several empty streets til you get to the Mall.  Same if you head down to the Valley.   I have read that high class dining, which used to be a reason to go to some of the back streets in the city at night, is pretty much dying in favour of more casual eating.   (I can understand why, too.)   So it may be just one of these things at the moment.   But yeah, I would like to see more low rise residential closer to the inner city to see if that gives it more life.