Global Droughts: A Bad Year – Significant Figures by Peter Gleick
Peter Gleick lists the areas which have recently (over the past couple of years) had drought problems.
This seems to me a good thing to keep in mind when reading about the Earth becoming greener. Not much benefit to be had if its greener (and slightly wetter) where no one's living.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Rudd chat
I haven't seen all that many episodes of The Weekly this year (I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I have MKR to blame), but I watched it last night, and was annoyed with the clearly increased amount of swearing on it.
Look, honestly, the writing is (generally) smart, it's only on at 8.30 pm (not like 11pm or later with the routinely sweary equivalent shows - such as John Oliver's - in the US), and the use of 4 or 5 "f...s" in a half hour really doesn't make it any funnier. Get your act together, ABC, and resist the intrusion of language we don't really want to normalise amongst your teen viewers. (As I tell my kids, swearing is partly wrong because it's boring when people develop it as a routine tic. And so many people do.)
Anyhow, I post here mainly to note the "Hard Chat" interview with Kevin Rudd, which was pretty funny. But I thought Rudd looked puffy faced, tired and not very well. I really do suspect his health may not be up to any high powered job, and why on Earth do people like him keep trying to get into positions of power when they can easily retire early and develop other interests and hobbies. (Or do charitable works, or whatever.)
Look, honestly, the writing is (generally) smart, it's only on at 8.30 pm (not like 11pm or later with the routinely sweary equivalent shows - such as John Oliver's - in the US), and the use of 4 or 5 "f...s" in a half hour really doesn't make it any funnier. Get your act together, ABC, and resist the intrusion of language we don't really want to normalise amongst your teen viewers. (As I tell my kids, swearing is partly wrong because it's boring when people develop it as a routine tic. And so many people do.)
Anyhow, I post here mainly to note the "Hard Chat" interview with Kevin Rudd, which was pretty funny. But I thought Rudd looked puffy faced, tired and not very well. I really do suspect his health may not be up to any high powered job, and why on Earth do people like him keep trying to get into positions of power when they can easily retire early and develop other interests and hobbies. (Or do charitable works, or whatever.)
Eating in the news
It's seems it's either too much or too little:
* The BBC reports about some amazing changes in obesity rates in China:
* In other eating disorder news, I was surprised to read about the search for the genetic role in anorexia nervosa. (I just hadn't really thought of genes playing much of a role in it.)
Given that the disease (often/always?) involves people developing a persistent ill founded reaction to their own body image (merely imagining that they are overweight), and transexualism can involve a not dissimilar distress at the look of their body, I wonder if anyone has looked for a genetic component to that?
* The BBC reports about some amazing changes in obesity rates in China:
Researchers found 17% of boys and 9% of girls under the age of 19 were obese in 2014, up from 1% for each in 1985.* In Japan, in the meantime, they apparently don't so well at dealing with anorexia and eating disorders. Culturally, I'm not sure they generally handle mental health issues all that well, but I think they are improving. Slowly.
The 29-year study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, involved nearly 28,000 students in Shandong province.
The study used a stricter cut-off of the Body Mass Index (BMI) than the World Health Organization standard.
"It is the worst explosion of childhood and adolescent obesity that I have ever seen," Joep Perk from the European Society of Cardiology told AFP news agency.
The study said China's rapid socioeconomic and nutritional transition had led to an increase in energy intake and a decrease in physical activity.
* In other eating disorder news, I was surprised to read about the search for the genetic role in anorexia nervosa. (I just hadn't really thought of genes playing much of a role in it.)
Given that the disease (often/always?) involves people developing a persistent ill founded reaction to their own body image (merely imagining that they are overweight), and transexualism can involve a not dissimilar distress at the look of their body, I wonder if anyone has looked for a genetic component to that?
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
In praise of an add-on
I use Firefox as my preferred Windows browser. (It's not bad in Android too, but just a little bit slower than Chrome.)
But I just have an odd urge to praise its add-on Lightshot, a screenshot addition that I use frequently in blogging, but also quite often at work. It is just one of the handiest things to have at hand, and I really appreciate its simplicity, reliability and utility. Thank you, its creators.
And now back to your regular programming...
But I just have an odd urge to praise its add-on Lightshot, a screenshot addition that I use frequently in blogging, but also quite often at work. It is just one of the handiest things to have at hand, and I really appreciate its simplicity, reliability and utility. Thank you, its creators.
And now back to your regular programming...
Much, much bigger on the inside
It's hard not to think of the Tardis when reading a paper like this one: On the volume inside old black holes. It talks about the mind boggling concept of the insides of evaporating black holes being much larger than the exterior surface indicates. The abstract reads:
Black holes that have nearly evaporated are often thought of as small objects, due to their tiny exterior area. However, the horizon bounds large spacelike hypersurfaces. A compelling geometric perspective on the evolution of the interior geometry was recently shown to be provided by a generally covariant definition of the volume inside a black hole using maximal surfaces. In this article, we expand on previous results and show that finding the maximal surfaces in an arbitrary spherically symmetric spacetime is equivalent to a 1+1 geodesic problem. We then study the effect of Hawking radiation on the volume by computing the volume of maximal surfaces inside the apparent horizon of an evaporating black hole as a function of time at infinity: while the area is shrinking, the volume of these surfaces grows monotonically with advanced time, up to when the horizon has reached Planckian dimensions. The physical relevance of these results for the information paradox and the remnant scenarios are discussed.And then, from within the paper itself:
A few numbersImpressive, to put it mildly.
Before closing this section, let us put the above in perspective: when a solar mass (1030 kg) black hole becomes Planckian (it needs 1055 times the actual age of the universe), it will contain volumes equivalent to 105 times our observable universe, hidden behind a Planckian area (10−70 m2).
Perhaps more pertinent is to consider small primordial black holes with mass less than 1012 kg. Their initial horizon radius and volume are of the order of the proton charge radius (10−15m) and volume (10−45m3) respectively. They would be in the final stages of evaporation now, hiding volumes of about one litre (10−9m3).
And as we approach the solemn occasion of the 5th anniversary of the "stagflation" warning...
The ABC reports:
Update: I see today that Sinclair was to be on Andrew Bolt's show on Sky News last night. I don't get cable TV, so I wonder whether Andrew asked him what happened to the stagflation warning that he talked about on the Bolt Report nearly 5 years ago.
(One) of my earlier posts on the 2011 warning (which has proved to be about as wrong as it could possibly be) by Sinclair Davidson here.Consumer prices have fallen for the first time since December 2008, with deflation of 0.2 per cent in the March quarter.The Bureau of Statistics data show inflation was just 1.3 per cent over the past year.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg has expected inflation for the quarter to come in at 0.2 per cent and 1.7 per cent over the year.
Update: I see today that Sinclair was to be on Andrew Bolt's show on Sky News last night. I don't get cable TV, so I wonder whether Andrew asked him what happened to the stagflation warning that he talked about on the Bolt Report nearly 5 years ago.
Another good question
Why So Many Smart People Aren’t Happy - The Atlantic
Here's a key paragraph from the interview:
Here's a key paragraph from the interview:
Raghunathan: That's the plight of most people in the world, I would say. There are expectations that if you achieve some given thing, you're going to be happy. But it turns out
that's not true. And a large part of that is due to adaptation, but a large part of it also is that you see this mountain in front of you and you want to climb over it. And when you do, it turns out there are more mountains to climb.
The one thing that has really really helped me in this regard is a concept that I call “the dispassionate pursuit of passion” in the book, and basically the concept boils down to
not tethering your happiness to the achievement of outcomes. The reason why it's important to not tie happiness to outcomes is that outcomes by themselves don't really have an unambiguously positive or negative effect on your happiness. Yes, there are some outcomes—you get a terminal disease, or your child dies—that are pretty extreme, but let's
leave those out. But if you think about it, the breakup that you had with your childhood girlfriend, or you broke an arm and were in a hospital bed for two months, when they occurred, you might have felt, “Oh my goodness, this is the end of the world! I'm never going to
recover from it.” But it turns out we're very good at recovering from those, and not just that, but those very events that we thought were really extremely negative were in fact pivotal in making us grow and learn.
Everybody's got some kind of a belief about whether good things are going to happen or bad things are going to happen. There's no way to scientifically prove that one of these beliefs
is more accurate than another. But if you believe life is benign, you're going to see lots of evidence for it. If you think life is malign, you're going to see lots of evidence for it. It's kind of like a placebo effect. Given that all of these beliefs are all equally valid, why not adopt the belief that is going to be more useful to you in your life as you go along?
Ice on the way out
Citizen scientists collected rare ice data, confirm warming since industrial revolution
Interesting use of old ice formation records from two parts of the world explained here.
Interesting use of old ice formation records from two parts of the world explained here.
My Kitchen Rules wrap up
Things I learnt from watching MKR this year:
* pasta seems to be extraordinarily "in", again. It seemed that only a couple of episodes (and there were many, many episodes) didn't feature at least one of the team making their own pasta, using the tortuous pasta machinery that 99% of Australian households cannot be bothered with, given the range of fresh and dried pasta available everywhere.
* smearing stuff on plates still seems to be "in", despite my hearing a restaurant food critic in Brisbane on the radio earlier this year say that it was definitely "out". But, I guess, given that the same critic said that fine dining was generally "out" too, in favour of more casual, relaxed (and cheaper!) eating, who would know.
* not enough people understand the magic of serving food on wood platters. These made a disappointingly small number of appearances on the show (actually only once that I can recall now - I notice because I do tend to loudly assure whoever is watching with me that the food must be good because of that.) What is it? Because MacDonalds use them on their "create your own" burgers they are now too downmarket?
* cauliflower is way "in". One of my least favourite veges tastes pretty good as a quasi chip, apparently. I would never have worked that one out myself. A recent article in The Guardian also confirmed the cauli's rise.
* never try making your own gnocchi on a food competition show. It only ever seems to work right about half of the time.
* no one in the universe thinks a meal of one giant meatball on pasta is a good idea: except for that (normally more sensible and somewhat funny) woman on MKR.
* chefs (or at least wannabe chefs) really touch the food you're about to eat an awful lot. I'm not sure I'd even be comfortable within my family as to the amount of direct food massaging on the plate that seemed to go on this year, but from these strangers? I hope professional kitchens use plastic gloves more than that.
That's all I can think of for now. Ben Pobjie's final comedy review about the show perhaps wasn't one of his strongest (like the judges, he does start to run out of steam by the end of the season), but I liked the opening paragraph:
* pasta seems to be extraordinarily "in", again. It seemed that only a couple of episodes (and there were many, many episodes) didn't feature at least one of the team making their own pasta, using the tortuous pasta machinery that 99% of Australian households cannot be bothered with, given the range of fresh and dried pasta available everywhere.
* smearing stuff on plates still seems to be "in", despite my hearing a restaurant food critic in Brisbane on the radio earlier this year say that it was definitely "out". But, I guess, given that the same critic said that fine dining was generally "out" too, in favour of more casual, relaxed (and cheaper!) eating, who would know.
* not enough people understand the magic of serving food on wood platters. These made a disappointingly small number of appearances on the show (actually only once that I can recall now - I notice because I do tend to loudly assure whoever is watching with me that the food must be good because of that.) What is it? Because MacDonalds use them on their "create your own" burgers they are now too downmarket?
* cauliflower is way "in". One of my least favourite veges tastes pretty good as a quasi chip, apparently. I would never have worked that one out myself. A recent article in The Guardian also confirmed the cauli's rise.
* never try making your own gnocchi on a food competition show. It only ever seems to work right about half of the time.
* no one in the universe thinks a meal of one giant meatball on pasta is a good idea: except for that (normally more sensible and somewhat funny) woman on MKR.
* chefs (or at least wannabe chefs) really touch the food you're about to eat an awful lot. I'm not sure I'd even be comfortable within my family as to the amount of direct food massaging on the plate that seemed to go on this year, but from these strangers? I hope professional kitchens use plastic gloves more than that.
That's all I can think of for now. Ben Pobjie's final comedy review about the show perhaps wasn't one of his strongest (like the judges, he does start to run out of steam by the end of the season), but I liked the opening paragraph:
And so it has come to this. Who would have thought, when this season of My Kitchen Rules began, that it would one day end? And yet, after sixty-eight months of intense culinary competition, laughter, tears, success, failure, drama, failure, suspense, failure, heartbreak and some more failure, we come to the 2016 MKR Grand Final, the night of nights for people whose friends once told them they were good at cooking.
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
An Army too far
I was surprised recently at the cinema to see the trailer for a movie version of Dad's Army. It certainly inspired no enthusiasm to see it: if you can't make a good trailer out of 100 minutes of material it's generally a warning about the quality of the full length version. And it seemed very strange that they assumed audience knowledge of the characters and situation - whereas you have to be pretty much over 50, surely, to be in that category. How many movies aiming for that demographic succeed commercially? (Although, it is true, there does seem to be a minor industry in twee British films featuring aging characters made for an aging audience.)
In any case, reading the comments in the Guardian following Peter Bradshaw's lukewarm review lead me to this interesting aspect of the original series. I may have read about this many years ago, but had forgotten:
Speaking of which, there is a long list at IMDB of actors who served in the US military. Some are well known (Jimmy Stewart, for example), but others are new to me: Jamie Farr (Klinger on MASH) actually did serve in Korea? But so did Alan Alda. Didn't know that...
And Rock Hudson served in The Philippines as a Navy aircraft mechanic? Huh. And for true action heroes: Paul Newman flew as a turret gunner on torpedo bombers in the Pacific, and Don Adams was a marine who served in the Battle of Guadalcanal
Makes our modern crop of under 50 actors seem like self indulgent wimps.
In any case, reading the comments in the Guardian following Peter Bradshaw's lukewarm review lead me to this interesting aspect of the original series. I may have read about this many years ago, but had forgotten:
The main difference of course is that many of the actors in the original series were real WW2 veterans themselves.Maybe that's what Hollywood is lacking these days - ex military who are now actors.
Most interestingly, Arnold Ridley, who played the gentle pacifist, Private Godfrey, was actually a very badly injured and highly decorated veteran of WW1 and WW2.
In WW1, as a volunteer with the Artists Rifles, he was gassed, shot, injured by shrapnel, and suffered bayonet wounds to the extent he was invalided out of the army in 1916.
In 1939, he was recalled to the colours and received a Commission, although as an officer looking after supplies in France. But circumstances thrust him into action again, and he found himself commanding one of the rear-guard elements protecting the evacuation of Boulogne. His command fought to the final minute and just made onto the last RN Destroyer in Boulogne Harbour. They sailed out under continuous by attack German dive bombers, where once again Lt Ridley was badly wounded by machine gun-fire.
He was once again invalided out of the forces, but as soon as he had recovered sufficiently, volunteered for the Home Guard, the real "Dads Army"!
John Le Mesurier, (Sergeant Wilson) commanded a Tank Squadron through North Africa and Western Europe, while other members of the cast had similar backgrounds.
Speaking of which, there is a long list at IMDB of actors who served in the US military. Some are well known (Jimmy Stewart, for example), but others are new to me: Jamie Farr (Klinger on MASH) actually did serve in Korea? But so did Alan Alda. Didn't know that...
And Rock Hudson served in The Philippines as a Navy aircraft mechanic? Huh. And for true action heroes: Paul Newman flew as a turret gunner on torpedo bombers in the Pacific, and Don Adams was a marine who served in the Battle of Guadalcanal
Makes our modern crop of under 50 actors seem like self indulgent wimps.
The Whitening (and the Wrinkling)
The coming Republican demographic disaster, in 1 stunning chart - The Washington Post
The demographics for the Republicans do look really bad.
The demographics for the Republicans do look really bad.
A politician being a politician - but it's still annoying
Federal election 2016: Malcolm Turnbull out on a limb over negative gearing
Peter Martin illustrates well that Turnbull is being an opportunistic politician of the typical kind in his willingness to now run a scare campaign on changing negative gearing, when he used to criticise its economic effects.
Peter Martin illustrates well that Turnbull is being an opportunistic politician of the typical kind in his willingness to now run a scare campaign on changing negative gearing, when he used to criticise its economic effects.
Suicide in Greenland
Greenland Has The World's Highest Suicide Rate, And Teenage Boys Are Especially Vulnerable : Goats and Soda : NPR
What a great, if somewhat depressing, bit of journalism here - a lengthy consideration of the high rate of suicide in Greenland. And even if you don't read it all, have a look at the stunning photos of a very bleak looking part of the world.
For an Australian, the similarities between the problem in that country and that in remote aboriginal communities are obvious. Despite smaller communities supposedly having the benefits of social connections, it seems a combination of being caught between two cultures, and the lack of opportunity that physical isolation brings, makes for a high suicide rate.
What a great, if somewhat depressing, bit of journalism here - a lengthy consideration of the high rate of suicide in Greenland. And even if you don't read it all, have a look at the stunning photos of a very bleak looking part of the world.
For an Australian, the similarities between the problem in that country and that in remote aboriginal communities are obvious. Despite smaller communities supposedly having the benefits of social connections, it seems a combination of being caught between two cultures, and the lack of opportunity that physical isolation brings, makes for a high suicide rate.
NPR investigates
How Much Money Do Uber Drivers Really Make? Send Us Your Screenshots : All Tech Considered : NPR
I'll be interested to see what they come up with.
NPR really does some good work - I must get around to adding them to my blogroll.
I'll be interested to see what they come up with.
NPR really does some good work - I must get around to adding them to my blogroll.
Missing from any Anzac Day march I've ever seen
...is anyone dressed like this:
....although I suppose if they were allowed in the march, they'd be slipping over anything resembling a banana skin on the road.
Yes, I guess these chaps (real soldiers from World War 1 - you can read about their entertainment troupe at the Australian War Memorial blog) could give a whole new meaning to "Company clown".
I'm tempted to try to make some pun or other about how they died - many times, on stage - but that would be inappropriate.
....although I suppose if they were allowed in the march, they'd be slipping over anything resembling a banana skin on the road.
Yes, I guess these chaps (real soldiers from World War 1 - you can read about their entertainment troupe at the Australian War Memorial blog) could give a whole new meaning to "Company clown".
I'm tempted to try to make some pun or other about how they died - many times, on stage - but that would be inappropriate.
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Lurking around
I have my doubts I should have been there, but the creaky old stairway that looked not very safe was no longer blocked off (probably due to some work being done on the weekday, by the looks), and there was no one around. So I had a look in this roof space area that I'm not sure has ever been open to the public. (Maybe it was when it used to be used for something else. And I do have childhood memories of its former use. But now that I think of it, the handrail you can see in one photo looks fancy enough that it used to be for public access. And why put a nice big stained glass window in if it couldn't be seen by the public? So yes, I think it probably was formerly open, but hasn't been for a long time.)
The very observant reader of this blog may know which Brisbane building I refer to.
The very observant reader of this blog may know which Brisbane building I refer to.
Friday, April 22, 2016
Good Lord - Donald Trump sounding not unreasonable
Donald Trump was asked about anti-transgender bathroom bills. His answer was … correct. - Vox
No, this is not the start of any turn around in his credibility.
It's just that it's near impossible for any person to be completely wrong on every single political/cultural issue.
No, this is not the start of any turn around in his credibility.
It's just that it's near impossible for any person to be completely wrong on every single political/cultural issue.
Not grokked
Prince Defied Conventional Notions of Race and Gender - The New York Times
He did?
Not meaning to sound mean spirited; and not meaning to detract from the sadness felt by his fans; and perhaps showing my musical and cultural ignorance to an embarrassing degree: but I "grokked" Prince to an even lesser degree than Bowie.
Bowie in interviews could come across as a knowing performance artist who was witty and pretty normal beneath it all: I'm not sure that Prince ever seemed to be more than an embodied performance. (Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that, people. You could say that about quite a few eccentric but talented artists. And, of course, it is not as if I - or many people, it seems - knows what he was like in private.)
I should stop writing now, as it's generally not wise to be going against the popular flow so soon after an artist's death.
He did?
Not meaning to sound mean spirited; and not meaning to detract from the sadness felt by his fans; and perhaps showing my musical and cultural ignorance to an embarrassing degree: but I "grokked" Prince to an even lesser degree than Bowie.
Bowie in interviews could come across as a knowing performance artist who was witty and pretty normal beneath it all: I'm not sure that Prince ever seemed to be more than an embodied performance. (Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with that, people. You could say that about quite a few eccentric but talented artists. And, of course, it is not as if I - or many people, it seems - knows what he was like in private.)
I should stop writing now, as it's generally not wise to be going against the popular flow so soon after an artist's death.
Good to know
Need to remember something? Better draw it, study finds
Researchers at the University of Waterloo have found that drawing pictures of information that needs to be remembered is a strong and reliable strategy to enhance memory.
We pitted drawing against a number of other known encoding strategies, but drawing always
came out on top," said the study's lead author, Jeffrey Wammes, PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology. "We believe that the benefit arises because drawing helps to create a more cohesive memory trace that better integrates visual, motor and semantic information."
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