Little reported drought

India drought: '330 million people affected' - BBC News

Some more detail on the fairly dire sounding conditions in India at the moment to be found at this report in the Times of India.

The long term issue, is, of course, what effect climate change will have on the variability of monsoon seasons.   What's pretty certain is that India would have to be one of the most sensitive countries to climate change, and building coal powered electricity plants is not going to much help them deal with drought or floods.

Update:  here's a story about the continuing drought in parts of Africa, too.

Have the anti-circ obsessives responded yet?

Circumcision Does Not Reduce Penile Sensitivity Or Affect Sexual Pleasure Later In Life

I presume they have, but a quick Google hasn't shown up where.

Update:  haven't located the outrage yet, but I'm not looking very hard.  In the meantime, I see that Village Voice ran a story late last year on the "wacky world" (their words, but I agree with them) of foreskin restoration. 

Good question...

How on God’s Green Earth Is the B-52 Still in Service? | WIRED

From the article:

Even with the modernization, the currently flying B-52s are all about 55 years old, about the age humans start getting calls from the AARP. This is where the over-engineering comes in. “The airframe itself remains structurally sound and has many useful flying years ahead of it,” the directorate official says. “Most of the B-52 airframes are original and their longevity is a testimony to the original design engineers.” In other words, they did a killer job making a durable airplane. 
Even the flight controls—the yokes in the cockpit, the seats, the control surfaces on the wings and tail assembly, the cable linkages between them—are largely the same as they were when they were built in 1960 and 1961. Of course, inspections are frequent, and the airplanes undergo heavy maintenance inspections every 4 years, during which mechanical and structural elements may be replaced as needed, along with possible replacements of any of each sample’s eight Pratt & Whitney jet engines. But for the most part, the crews in charge today have got their hands on the same BUFFs that crews touched decades ago. In some cases, recent crew members have been sons and grandsons of previous-generation B-52 crew members.

Yep, that's the biggest surprise:  that the airframes are still good.  I presume though that they don't pull G, and I would guess that is pretty much the reason you can't expect a fighter airframe to last anything like that age.  (AFAIK).

For those who haven't experienced it

What does depression feel like? Trust me – you really don’t want to know | Tim Lott | Opinion | The Guardian

I feel that this is an important thing for people who haven't suffered very deep depression (like me) to understand.

Speaking of people with depression, or at least the serious blues:  it seems to me as someone who follows Bernard Keane's twitter feed that he's not been in a great way for some months now.  He mentioned around Valentines Day that he was single at this time  for the first time in years, so I am assuming a marriage/relationship break up? (or, I suppose, a death of a partner?); he's complained frequently about insomnia; and a tweet today sounds something like depression.  Are people who know him personally talking to him about this?   It really tends to read like a public cry for help, in many respects, so I hope someone is answering it...

Battery news

Seemingly good news on the fuel cell/battery research front:

*  urine powered fuel cells seem to be moving ahead.  One day, people may have a better reason to take their smart phone into the toilet with them (heh):

The research team from the University's Department of Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemistry and the Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies (CSCT), have worked with Queen Mary University of London and the Bristol Bioenergy Centre, to devise this new kind of microbial fuel cell that is smaller, more powerful and cheaper than other similar devices.

This novel fuel cell developed by the researchers, measures one inch squared in size and uses a carbon catalyst at the cathode which is derived from glucose and ovalbumin, a protein found in egg white. This biomass-derived catalyst is a renewable and much cheaper alternative to platinum, commonly used in other microbial fuel cells.

The researchers worked on the cell's design to maximize the power that could be generated. By increasing the cell's electrodes from 4mm to 8mm, the power output was increased tenfold. Furthermore, by stacking multiple units together, the power was proportionally increased.
Currently, a single microbial fuel cell can generate 2 Watts per cubic metre, enough to power a device such as a mobile phone. Whilst this value is not comparable with other alternative technologies such as hydrogen or solar fuel cells and other methods of bioenergy digesters, the significant advantage of this technology is its extremely cheap production cost and its use of waste as a fuel, a fuel that will never run out and does not produce harmful gasses.

The research team is now looking at ways of improving the power output of the microbial fuel cell and is confident that by optimising the design of the cell, they will be able to increase the cell's performance.

 Mind you, this type of story always seems to end up with "more research and improvements are expected", but we rarely hear of such innovative products coming onto the market.

*   New, cheap but better chemical batteries may be on the way too:

An unexpected discovery has led to a rechargeable battery that's as inexpensive as conventional car batteries, but has a much higher energy density. The new battery could become a cost-effective, environmentally friendly alternative for storing renewable energy and supporting the power grid.

Don't put your child in the pool, Mrs Worthington

What with poor old Grant Hackett being a goose again, it's really hard to imagine why parents would encourage their children to get into the world of competitive swimming, given all the turmoil that Australian ex-swimmers seem to get themselves into.  Terrible hours for the parents, too.

Road transport safety, and other complaints

OK, I'll accept that the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal's ruling about minimum rates of pay for contractor drivers may have been flawed, given that even Labor was arguing for a delay in its implementation.

However, did the Liberals really have to deny a connection between remuneration and road safety?   As this report notes, the report they relied upon was dubious at best.

The other thing that irks me about this:  libertarian, free market types who hate the idea of government imposed minimum standards on contractors' remuneration are supposed to be big on privacy and dubious of government surveillance.   Yet when it comes to ensuring contractors don't have to drive ridiculous hours because of the low charges big customers can extract from them, the only alternative they have to offer (presumably) is complete technological recording (and someone checking) the details of every single trip.   It reminds me of their attitude to street violence and alcohol:  they'd prefer to have police standing on every street corner to catch every single bit of bad public behaviour, instead of winding back licencing hours as the indirect method of achieving the same result.    They have a distinct tendency to prefer quasi authoritarian oversight of behaviour rather than a more"meta" interference with the way a business can trade.   Because:  business; we love business. 

They also tend to love the "sharing economy" apps like Uber and Airbnb.   Yet, there is concern that Uber results in drivers getting screwed, too.  And Airbnb can be a nightmare for residents in apartment blocks that have suddenly become more like apartment hotels, but without the reception area and staff to police behaviour.   And the regulatory response seems slow and inadequate.

But, hey, Business.  Money.  

Update:  clearly, I'm in a Lefty mood today, so I'll post part of First Dog on the Moon's funny cartoon today about the strange surge of Marxism panic that is appearing in the Australian Right:

Arachnophobes: do not click on the link

Hidden housemates: Australia's huge and hairy huntsman spiders

I'm no big fan of large spiders, so sorry, I'm not about to try to catch a huntman spider and put it outside as the writer suggests.  (Besides, how hard would that be?)

She also seems to have selected photos for this article which are especially guaranteed to freak out any arachnophobe who clicks on the link.

The gay fascist architect

Famed Architect Philip Johnson’s Hidden Nazi Past | Vanity Fair

It's a little hard these days imaging a gay rich American of the 1930's getting enamoured of Hitlerian fascism via Nietzsche, but as this rather fascinating article explains, it did indeed happen.  (I suppose a similar thing can be said of upper class gay English academics and communism.)  

Can't say I knew anything of the anti-Semitic conspiracy mongering of one Father Charles Edward Coughlin before I read this article, either.

This delivery of religion via media pop star has been a big thing in a America for a long time, hasn't it?  (I wrote about it in my discussion of "Anything Goes", too.)

Worrying diseases

Deadly animal prion disease appears in Europe : Nature News & Comment

So, there's been a prion disease (similar to "Mad Cow" disease) floating around part of the world's deer, elk and moose population, and now it has spread (via unknown route) to Norway.

The most worrying thing I find about the report is that the disease is spread between animals via prions in saliva, urine and faeces.  It also seems possible that the disease can arise spontaneously.

If ever a human variant got going, and it was so easily spread, it would be a truly dire problem to deal with.  Especially if prions could be spread through treated sewerage into drinking water. 

I'm going with "daughter of Luke Skywalker"

J.J. Abrams Says Rey's Parents Not In Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Then Clarifies Comments | E! Online

Re-watching Force Awakens this weekend, I'm more convinced than ever that Rey is Luke's daughter.   I would think it likely that Luke inadvertently put mother and child in danger; perhaps the mother was killed, and he decided the only way to protect his daughter was to hide.  I presume he left her in someone's care, but they got killed too?  I have to re-watch the "flashback" scene of Rey again, though...

Free advice to Malcolm

There's much talk about the polling drop in popularity of Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition, and it seems people are suspecting that Labor might scrape in with a hung parliament.  (That seems to be as optimistic as people allow themselves to be when it's a matter of whether a first term Federal parliament can lose outright.)

It seems it's far too late for Malcolm to be able to do any of this, but here's my take on matters which clearly could have helped him, if only he would listen to me:

a.  the gay marriage plebiscite:  polling has shown that a substantial majority favour gay marriage, but quite a majority like the idea of a plebiscite too.   And I understand that - regardless of what the young and hip say,  it is a big cultural and social change, and those on the "pro" side are being panic merchants about how divisive and worrying campaign material on the "no" side could be.   The truth is, the more over-the-top any advertising against it is, the more it is likely to be counterproductive.   And the win the "pro" side is likely to get is likely to be emphatic and end any doubt about the wisdom of the government's acting on it.  The only stupid thing (and it is stupid) that Malcolm has done is talk about it being a separate plebiscite from an election.  He should just have announced it would be at the next election, whenever that would be.   Too late now, I guess. 

b. polling indicates a banking royal commission would also be popular.   It's a peculiar thing, isn't it, that the Coalition gave us two enquiries that I think didn't go over all that well with the public, because they were too obviously politically motivated.  Now the one people would accept, and they don't want to give it.   It's not likely to happen, but Malcolm would be wise to agree to a banking enquiry of somewhat limited scope.

c.  what is going on with tertiary education policy?  The disastrous surprise of the 2014 budget is going to hang over your head during an election campaign, and would have to be neutralised early.

d.  bite the bullet, Malcolm.  A modest carbon tax should be sell-able in the context of  record global warmth and climate change skepticism on its last legs, and raise revenue too.  Impossible, I know, 'til you clean out the skeptic rubbish in the party; but oddly, for unrelated reasons, it seems the skeptics (Jensen, Bronwyn) are getting the dump anyway.   Oh that's right, but countering that you have got the IPA infiltration continuing apace.  You need to attack them, to make a positive headway with the public...

Guardian cannabis comments frenzy

Cannabis: scientists call for action amid mental health concerns | Society | The Guardian

Perhaps I was wrong the other day when I noted that The Guardian readership would be torn up in a "perfect storm" of confused allegiances when it comes to Germaine Greer and her (now) politically incorrect comments on transexualism.  Because if any article is going to drive its readers nuts, it's one like this one at the link - a  long article where experts talk about potential adverse effects of increased use of cannabis.

The comments fury does raise one interesting point, though - quite a few cannabis using readers of some age do come out in strong agreement that increased use of  "skunk" is a bad idea; lamenting that it "does their head in" with its high THC content, compared to the relatively weak levels of the cannabis they smoked in their youth.  And this is an important point that is made in the article:

The reasons for the upward trend [for teenagers getting clinical help for cannabis use] are unclear. As hard drugs fall in popularity, clinical services may simply pull in more cannabis users. But the rise in young people in treatment may be linked to skunk, a potent form of cannabis that has taken over the market and edged out the traditional, weaker resins.

Skunk and other strong forms of cannabis now dominate the illicit drugs markets in many countries. From 1999-2008, the cannabis market in England transformed from 15%-81% skunk. In 2008, skunk confiscated from the street contained on average 15% of the high-inducing substance THC (delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol), three times the level found in resin seized that year. The Home Office has not recorded cannabis potency since.

“There is no doubt that high-potency cannabis, such as skunk, causes more problems than traditional cannabis, or hash,” Murray told the Guardian. “This is the case for dependence, but especially for psychosis.”

Ian Hamilton, a mental health lecturer at the University of York, said more detailed monitoring of cannabis use is crucial to ensure that information given out is credible and useful. Most research on cannabis, particularly the major studies that have informed policy, are based on
older low-potency cannabis resin, he points out. “In effect, we have a mass population experiment going on where people are exposed to higher potency forms of cannabis, but we don’t fully understand what the short- or long-term risks are,” he said.

In Australia, it would seem we might be a bit behind the increase in THC trend, but we're close:

In Australia, a 2013 study found nearly half of the cannabis confiscated on the streets contained more than 15% THC. Prof Wayne Hall, director of the Centre for Youth Substance Abuse
Research at the University of Queensland, said that while most people can use cannabis without putting themselves at risk of psychosis, there is still a need for public education. 

 Of course, some people argue that the answer would be a legalised product, but with lower THC content.


Which raises the question: what did Colorado do about THC strength?  Not much, really.  A recent report from a pro-cannabis website notes:

A proposed ballot initiative and an amendment to a bill in the state House would cap the THC potency of recreational cannabis and marijuana products at a percentage below most of those
products’ current averages.

The initiative would limit the potency of “marijuana and marijuana products” to 15 percent or 16 percent THC.


The average potency of Colorado pot products is already higher — 17.1 percent for cannabis flower and 62.1 percent for marijuana extracts, according to a state study.

But part of the problem is that a lot of the legal cannabis market is not in leaf, but in infused products, and candy and such like.  Perhaps it was a mistake to ever allow that as part of the legal range allowed?  At least Oregon is taking that issue seriously:

Oregon public health officials are moving ahead with rules that would cap THC in marijuana edibles at half of Washington and Colorado limits, saying such a restriction is key to protecting novice consumers and children.A rules advisory committee of the Oregon Health Authority met for the last time Thursday to discuss the proposed rules, which call for limits of 5 milligrams of THC in a single serving of an edible, such as a cookie or chocolate. A package of marijuana-infused edibles may contain no more than 50 milligrams.

Anyway, it's certainly surprising to read that the legalisation process seems to have paid scant regard to this:

“All the studies that have been done on THC levels have  been done on THC levels between 2 and 8 percent,” said Conti, whose  district encompasses parts of Greenwood Village and Littleton. “Most of  the marijuana coming in now, the flowers are being rated at a THC count
of about 17 percent on average, so this is dramatically over, and we  really don’t know that we’ve gotten the true feel on the health risks  associated with that marijuana.”

All good information for other countries contemplating a legalisation path, I reckon.

Even though my preference is simply not to do it. 

I don't mean to be rude, but you're making this up as you go along

A 10-point guide to not offending transgender people - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Look, deliberate rudeness to transgender people is nothing to endorse or encourage, and I had a post recently criticising conservative "panic" about transgender men going into women's toilets.  (Change rooms for pre-op men - well, that's a different issue.)

But this guide to "not offending" transgender people has a few points which shows just how, um, arbitrary some of the political correctness on this issue is.

 For example:

"The best way to ask [a trans person what pronoun they use] is to say
something like, 'I'd really like to be respectful and clarify which
pronouns you use'.

"Don't say 'preferred' pronoun because then it almost sounds like a choice."

Well, if you're asking a 50 year old father of 5 who has just decided he needs to live as a woman, he has made a "choice" - to do it now.

"It's important to remember that a trans person realising or coming to
terms with their gender identity can happen at any age, at any time, in
any place," Fink says. 

 Uh huh.  The "trans community" are, I assume, big fans of transhumanism.  Their ideal world of the future will involve transferring their mind (downloaded onto a USB)  into whatever gender body suits them for any period.  They can just keep two robot bodies in the cupboard.  Or, what about the future as Arthur C Clarke saw it in one of his novels, with male and females looking similar "downstairs", as genetic modification will relocate neatly inside all the male bits which are currently too exposed for safety?


But I digress.

A common expression used in stories about trans and gender diverse people is that they were born in the wrong body.

But this is a stereotype that should be avoided, says Goldner, because not all trans people relate to that experience.

"It's not really accurate and puts an emphasis on the body when gender is
about a sense of innate self, and about a soul," Goldner says. "Unless
someone says they feel OK with [that expression], don't use it."

Grrr.  This is really testing the limits of "why should I even be polite to people who are so precious about everyone agreeing that they are the ones who set the limits as to what you can say to them."


This is starting to get a bit ridiculous, if you ask me.

Bopp and the future

[1604.04231] Time Symmetric Quantum Mechanics and Causal Classical Physics

Fritz Bopp, who I have never heard of,  from a university in a city or town I don't know, has nonetheless got a paper on arXiv that seems to have some interesting ideas (about causal structure and quantum physics); but I don't full understand them...

Update:  seems he is a physics professor, and Siegen is in Germany. (He is the son of Fritz Bopp, who also worked on quantum physics, but died in 1987.  I assume that father and son had some complicated discussions over dinner.)

Probably click bait, but still

Texting in movie theaters? Bring it on | Amber Jamieson | Opinion | The Guardian

Only last weekend, I was telling my kids as we waited for Zootopia to start that, apart from the perennial problem of people who manage to make 15 seconds of loud plastic crinkling to reach just one bit of candy (and take an hour to eat one bag thereof), my latest noticed cinema going anti-social obscenity is the person who decides to light up their mobile screen and text in the middle of a film.

And many readers of the Guardian agree.  Some funny/sarcastic responses to this column:

I hope the theaters who allow/encourage phone/other gizmo use during
film showings are confiscating all weapons at the door, cause this kind
of thing is really going to bring out that kind of thing.

and

Great idea!
Also I miss the drive in experience, so can I bring my truck into the theater as well? Oh, and I never want to see a movie without my howler monkey(s), who love to sit in the back of the pick up and "sing" during a film - people love it!
Amber you are so smart and revolutionary!

Adam has a dream

Land tax: now that really would be reform worthy of the name

A peculiar column by Adam Creighton - he has a dream, a mighty dream - that land tax reform could replace a huge slab of income tax.   Then he ends up by noting that it would be impossible to sell this to land owners.

Give up, Adam.  There are equity arguments for and against it, as with all taxes, but it just isn't going to happen.  (Well, not on the scale you want.)   And I reckon some of your predictions as to the long term effects are really just guesswork.

I can imagine him in retirement like a later day Jim Cairns, sitting in a street market corner selling his esoteric book about how everything will be fixed, if only we could have land tax replace income taxes.

Greenland's record

Scientists: Greenland ice sheet is melting freakishly early

When an April high temperature record is broken this early in the month, by this amount, (even in Fahrenheit), it is remarkable:

Greenland's capital, Nuuk, reached 62 degrees (16.6 degrees Celsius) on Monday, smashing the April record high temperature by 6.5 degrees. Inland at Kangerlussuaq, it was 64 degrees (17.8 degrees Celsius), warmer than St. Louis and San Francisco.

Langen and other scientists said this is part of a natural weather system, but man-made climate change has worsened this. Tom Mote of the University of Georgia said had this natural event happened 20 or 30 years ago it wouldn't have been as bad as it is now because the air is
warmer overall and carries more rain that melts the ice faster.

"Things are getting more extreme and they're getting more common," said NASA ice scientist Walt Meier. "We're seeing that with Greenland and this is an indication of that."

Caravaggio considered

Not sure that I would have put it in the attic,  but it surely would be hard to find the right spot in the house to hang the gruesome work that everyone's talking about.  I mean, look how big it is:

Perhaps in the guest's bedroom, when you really don't enjoy having guests stay over?

Anyhoo, as they say in the classics, I can't remember much about the artist, so went on a quick Google, only to find that the matter of whether he was gay or not has been a popular topic of debate since, well, since he was painting naked or semi naked youth of the male variety.  As an article at The Guardian notes:

A key figure in resurrecting Caravaggio from oblivion was the Italian art historian Roberto Longhi, whose university students included none other than the gay Marxist writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. The curly hair and lingering eyes of Caravaggio's painted youths haunt Pasolini's cinema – a beautiful angel in his film The Gospel According to Saint Matthew seems to have stepped straight out of a Caravaggio painting. His films helped to establish Caravaggio as a modern gay icon, a process completed in the 1980s by Derek Jarman's biopic Caravaggio and the Caravaggio-quoting photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Recently there has been a backlash. The critic Andrew Graham-Dixon argues in his biography, Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, that no real evidence exists to prove Caravaggio was homosexual and that his apparently sensual paintings of young men are, in reality, religious allegories. For instance, Caravaggio's painting Boy with a Basket of Fruit, from which a youth looks at us woozily, his shirt artfully fallen to reveal a muscular shoulder, offering a luscious array of fruits for us to taste, is interpreted as an image of Christ's love whose apparent eroticism refers to the sacred love expressed by the Song of Solomon.

A lengthier article from 1998 goes into the debate in more academic detail, noting that these paintings are taken as evidence of his homoerotic interests:

(Actually, I'm no Robert Hughes, but is that even a good painting when it comes to the neck and shoulder area?  Doesn't seem quite right, that bone and musculature.  The fruit, on the other hand, yeah they look good.)

OK, apparently one critic takes this one as clinching the deal:

The title is Boy Bitten by a Lizard, and, I have to say, it's a pretty odd bit of art.  Apart from the bare shoulder (again), I get a bit of an unfortunate feminised Rowan Atkinson-ish vibe from that face.  The article I last linked to noted one Donald Posner wrote this:

In this painting, homosexuality is pointed to by the fact that the boy's "hands do not tense with masculine vigor in response to the attack; they remain limp in a languid show of helplessness. His facial expression suggests a womanish whimper rather than a virile shout."

Gee.  I might have just gone with the flower in the girl-ish hair.

What about his Love Conquers All, though, which modesty prevents me posting here?   Well, yes, through modern eyes, that would be one that I would think gave his inclinations away.  Yet Wikipedia urges caution:

Inevitably, much scholarly and non-scholarly ink has been spilled over the alleged eroticism of the painting. Yet the homoerotic content was perhaps not so apparent to Giustiniani’s generation as it has become today. Naked boys could be seen on any riverbank or seashore, and the eroticisation of children is very much a cultural artefact of the present-day rather than Caravaggio's. Certainly neither Giustiniani, who was not a homosexual, nor his visitors, appear to have been concerned by the question of modesty – or to have even raised it – and the story that the Marchese kept Amor hidden behind a curtain relates to his reported wish that it should be kept as a final pièce de résistance for visitors, to be seen only when the rest of the collection had been viewed – in other words, the curtain was to reveal the painting, not to hide it. (According to the historian Joachim von Sandrart, who catalogued the Giustiniani collection in the 1630s, the curtain was only installed at his urging at that time). The challenge is to see the Amor Vincit through 17th century eyes. 

Yes, I guess so.  But one has one's suspicions...

   

Hardly a priority

Can an $100 Million Investment Launch Laser-Based Space Travel?

Oh, it's all very fun, I suppose, doing research into pie in the sky stuff that has a rather useless goal.  (I haven't seen the explanation as to how a bunch of micro chip ships getting to Alpha Centuri are supposed to send back useful information, anyway.)

But really, isn't there a whole bunch of more useful local space activities as a goal?   An off planet repository for Earth life on the nearby Moon, for example?  Working out once and for all if there is useful underground water anywhere there?   A space based swarm of micro satellites that could work as an adjustable shield for global warming?   Lunar based manufacturing and launch via innovative methods (lunar elevator, mass driver?)

(I have my doubts space based solar being beamed to Earth is ever going to be practical on a large scale, so pass on that one.)

But year, why not research space stuff that's more directly useful?