I have not let through any Graeme Bird comments for quite a while now, but he can't take a hint and is still making appearances in moderation, calling me a Jewish c.. etc. Do you really wonder, Graeme, why no one lets you comment for long on blogs?
But with my renewed interest in UFOs, and the particular evidence of the strangely acting "tic tac" thing over the ocean in 2004 that has impressed me so much (again, not the videos, but the pilots' accounts of what they saw), I am here to announce that I will let any comment that Graeme might like to make (on this post only) about what he thinks is going on.
Of course, any reference to Jews, or swearing, will mean the comment does not appear at all.
And by the way, I found myself in pretty much complete agreement with the commentary in this guy's video about the matter, which came out 8 months ago, but I only saw it recently:
Update: that'd be right. Just when you give him permission to comment on one matter, he doesn't. Not yet, anyway.
An article at Vox argues that giving up beef, but at the cost of eating more chicken, results in a net increase in animal suffering. Meat bred chickens have a much worse life than your average beef cattle, and it takes huge numbers of them to match how much meat you get off one cow. In fact, I am a bit surprised by these figures:
I would have thought Americans (and Australians) eat a lot more of a pig in a year than that. And one cow takes 8 years for one person to eat? I just checked on my calculator - that's only about 500 g per week. I guess that's possibly right, but it sounds on the low side to me. (Wait - the calculation is based on per capita consumption - so taking into account those who eat no beef, I guess that means that those who do would take less than 8 years to get through a cow.)
Anyway - the ethics of working this out is all pretty slippery. How upset should we be that millions of unwanted day old rooster chicks are sent through a meat grinder due to the egg industry? I mean, they haven't lived long, and presumably not much has gone on in their brains...but they're sort of cute too and it feels - I don't know, wastefully wrong? - to bred something to only want to kill it on birth. Is the small scale level of an individual suffering compounded when it's happening every day in the tens of thousands?* (Fortunately, technology may put an end to the practice soon, anyway.)
At least there is one thing I feel pretty confident about - I am never going to be worried about bivalves and crustaceans and animal suffering. Probably any fish too - although I don't want to think about octopuses too much!
* Again, my calculator tells me that if estimated of 12 million killed every year in Australia is correct, that's 32,000 every day. :(
A new study, published in Lancet Psychiatry, examines the
effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicide rates. After reviewing data
from 21 countries, the researchers found no significant increase in
suicide risk since the beginning of the pandemic, despite initial
concerns that rates would increase. They urge vigilance and attendance
to the long-term effects of the pandemic on mental health....
They attribute the lack of increase in suicide rates to several
factors, including concerns being raised early on about the potential
negative impacts of stay-at-home orders and school and business
shutdowns on mental health. While self-reported experiences of
depression, anxiety, and suicidal thinking increased during the time
period examined, it did not appear to affect overall suicide rates in
the countries included in the study.
An additional factor is the increased emphasis and accessibility of
mental health treatment and services made available by some countries
during the pandemic, which may have buffered against some of the
damaging effects of the pandemic.
The researchers also highlight the role of community as being a
potential protective factor. For example, communities made have made an
effort to support individuals at-risk for mental health or other
concerns, or households may have developed closer, stronger
relationships through increased time together. An overall sense of
togetherness as communities as a whole weathered the pandemic may have
also protected against a rise in suicidality.
On the other hand, in news that has given Adam Creighton an erection:
Hey, this is an interesting short item at The Conversation about how medieval smart Christians understood that lunar and solar eclipses were natural, although they could read into them a sign from God.
I find myself sympathetic to this take on China by David Frum: the West is over-estimating its strength, and in a way that may be harmful to our own interests. (He is basically repeating the argument made by another guy, but it sounds pretty convincing to me. And I watch CGTN propaganda!)
A coronavirus outbreak on Mount Everest
has infected at least 100 climbers and support staff, a mountaineering
guide said, giving the first comprehensive estimate amid official
Nepalese denials that the disease has spread to the world’s highest
peak.
Lukas Furtenbach of Austria, who last
week halted his Everest expedition due to virus fears, said on Saturday
one of his foreign guides and six Nepali Sherpa guides had tested
positive.
And as for "ultra marathons" as a sport - it seems to me these attract disastrous consequences for participants far too often. Ordinary marathons are a dubious enough exercise in pointless exertion, if you ask me. Making them more extreme is just silly.
Well, this Tom Scott video, which features a short interview with the (still sharp) James Lovelock (age 101) was very interesting:
Did I know before this that rock-solid frozen rodents were capable of revival? I think I had read about this, many years ago, although I don't think I knew Lovelock had been involved. (If you asked me, I would have assumed it was research done in the United States). It does certainly explain why science fiction from the 1960's on thought that this was a prospect for humans too.
As for James Lovelock - as I have notedbefore, we can safely ignore his opinions on climate change now, but he is still a remarkable and pretty charming man.
If you have watched the 60 Minutes interview I linked to a few posts ago, or one of the other interviews David Fravor has given elsewhere, you will recall that both he and the other pilot who saw the object were puzzled by its erratic motion when it low above the ocean.
This reminded me of other, classic, UFO sightings where the object moved in a very odd fashion. Do many people know about the way some have been described as having a 'falling leaf" motion as they descend? Here's a classic account, for a book by David Clarke:
Very odd. Daylight sightings leave less room for misinterpretation of lights.
Here's the abstract from a Science paper out yesterday:
Aqueous redox flow batteries could provide viable grid-scale
electrochemical energy storage for renewable energy because of their
high-power performance, scalability, and safe operation (1, 2). Redox-active organic molecules serve as the energy storage materials (2, 3), but only very few organic molecules, such as viologen (4, 5) and anthraquinone molecules (6), have demonstrated promising energy storage performance (2).
Efforts continue to develop other families of organic molecules for
flow battery applications that would have dense charge capacities and be
chemically robust. On page 836 of this issue, Feng et al. (7)
report a class of ingeniously designed 9-fluorenone (FL) molecules as
high-performance, potentially low-cost organic anode electrolytes
(anolytes) in aqueous organic redox flow batteries (see the figure,
top). These FL anolytes not only display exceptional energy storage
performance but also exhibit an unprecedented two-electron storage
mechanism.
...when its Right wing places like the Wall Street Journal and Sinclair Davidson at Catallaxy decrying the effect of Left wing "woke" ideology on education standards, while it's the very same outlets which are full of readers who think they got a proper education before modern teachers ruined everything, but are also anti-Covid vaxxers and climate change deniers (or "do nothing" proponents.)
Which is not to say that there isn't a valid argument to be made over the way education seems particularly prone to certain fads and fashions and ideologically motivated arguments. But, seriously, look in your own backyard first, critics.
Trackless trams are neither a tram nor a bus, though they have rubber
wheels and run on streets. The high-speed rail innovations have
transformed a bus into something with all the best features of light
rail and none of its worst features.
It replaces the noise and emissions of buses with electric traction
from batteries recharged at stations in 30 seconds or at the end of the
line in 10 minutes. That could just be an electric bus, but the ART is
much more than that. It has all the speed (70kph), capacity and ride
quality of light rail with its autonomous optical guidance system,
train-like bogies with double axles and special hydraulics and tyres.
It can slide into the station with millimetre accuracy and enable smooth
disability access. It passed the ride quality test when I saw kids
running up and down while it was going at 70kph – you never see this on a
bus due to the sway.
The autonomous features mean it is programmed, optically guided with GPS and LIDAR
technologies, into moving very precisely along an invisible track. If
an accident happens in the right of way a “driver” can override the
steering and go around. It can also be driven to a normal bus depot for
overnight storage and deep battery recharge.
As the article notes, Sydney might have been a lot better off with this system running down George Street (although I didn't realise how extensive the light rail in Sydney was until my last visit.)
Doctors are reporting a twenty-fold increase in
people presenting with syphilis-related eye infections, as Melbourne
grapples with a surge in cases of the sexually transmitted infection.
In the early 2000s the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital was recording approximately two cases per year of ocular syphilis.
A team of doctors at the hospital in East Melbourne then researched the condition from 2006 to 2019.
In 2018, 17 cases of ocular syphilis were recorded with infections increasing to 21 in 2019, seven of whom were women.
I would assume that this indicates that there are more women (and men) than before who are unaware of having caught it (because I would have thought this is not one of the likely first signs of infection.) Then again, the CDC says:
Like neurosyphilis, ocular syphilis can occur at any stage of infection.
Ocular syphilis can involve almost any eye structure, but posterior
uveitis and panuveitis are the most common. Symptoms include vision
changes, decreased visual acuity, and permanent blindness.
News stories of increasing rates of the disease usually talk about it in the context of gay men (or "men who have sex with men"), especially in light of reduced condom use due to reduced fear of HIV (and that PrEP medication gaining popularity.) But this report seems to make a point of emphasising the number of women who are catching it. A fair enough warning, I guess...
I have said it before, but I will repeat - there may well be good explanations for the US Navy "UFO" videos, because it is hard to understand properly what you are looking at, and the aircraft and camera movement effects can be deceiving. I'm also pretty sure that new radar systems can give bogus targets, so if there is any talk of new sophisticated radar systems seeing new stuff, I don't assume it is real.
Also, maybe it's just his physical appearance, but this dude does not sound or look like the sharpest person to be making intelligence assessments on UFO incidents:
He in fact gives me the impression of being an attention seeker.
However, that Navy pilot David Fravor's account of his 2004 visual sighting of a "tic tac" object above the water, which then zoomed up towards him as he moved down towards it, has always sounded to me to be pretty convincing evidence of something completely novel and inexplicable as known technology.
But - I did wonder if he might just turn out to be a self promoting fantacist. I mean, he seems smart and sincere and sensible, but you never know.
Well, that idea seems to be dealt with adequately by last weekend's 60 Minutes episode which for the first time showed us a second (female) pilot who was on the same sortie (in a second F 18) and backs up everything Fravor says on the many interviews he has been on. She also appears smart and credible.
It is very hard to see how their sighting could be a case of mistaken identity: the most obvious "tic tac" shaped thing in the skies would have to be a balloon, but they both seem to say that it moved in complelely un-balloon like fashion, including departing the scene at incredible, almost instantaneous, speed.
It's pretty fascinating that they also say that the whole ship knew within an hour or so that they had seen something that was commonly called a UFO, and everyone thought it was just a big joke. Pretty amazing that it took so long for the story about it to actually come out.
You know the other multi witness, high weirdness, case that this reminds me of - the O'Hare airport sighting of 2006. The object sounds as if it was about the same size, and zoomed off at the same incredible speed. I have never (to my recollection) seen interviews with the witnesses to that case, though.
Piping an oxygen-rich liquid through the anus could be a life-saver. A
new treatment for failing lungs that involves such a process has been
successfully tested in pigs....
The researchers anaesthetised four pigs and put them on a ventilator
that gave them a lower breathing rate than normal, so their blood oxygen
levels fell. When they gave two of the pigs enemas of the oxygenated
fluid, replaced once an hour, their blood oxygen levels rose
significantly after each infusion. The same effect happened when the
fluid was delivered by a tube surgically inserted into the rectums of
the other two pigs.
If there is a similar-sized effect in people, it would be enough to
provide a medical benefit, says Takebe. He thinks the approach could be
especially useful in low-income countries that have fewer intensive care
facilities. “Ventilators are super-expensive and need a number of
medical staff to manage,” he says. “This is just a simple enema.”
One problem is that gut function may be impaired in people sick enough to need intensive care, which can cause diarrhoea, says Stephen Brett at Imperial College London. “It’s too early to say if this has got any legs,” he says.
Yes, interesting point about the enema aspect. I wouldn't know for sure, but I didn't think it took all that much liquid insertion via enema for the intestines to want to shoot it out again. How's that supposed to be stopped?
Of course, the Wall Street Journal would give high publicity to a new book by a guy who has been well identified as a climate change contrarian - a "do nothing" advocate, it's too expensive - and people like "Stagflation!" and "leave the tobacco companies alone!" expert Sinclair Davidson are impressed and his blog is covering the book like it's finally vindication.
Ken Rice has a useful post showing how Koonin's arguments have been looked at and dismissed for a number of years. Just because he has a new book repeating his past bad arguments doesn't change that.
UFOs are in the news, particularly the Right wing news, again:
Ezra Klein did an interesting column last week in the NYT about what it might mean if there is about to be a disclosure of proof of alien intelligences operating on Earth. I think this view is probably right:
There is a thick literature on how evidence of alien life would shake
the world’s religions, but I think Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of
the Vatican Observatory, is quite likely right when he suggests
that many people would simply say, “of course.” The materialist
worldview that positions humanity as an island of intelligence in a
potentially empty cosmos — my worldview, in other words — is the
aberration. Most people believe, and have always believed, that we share
both the Earth and the cosmos with other beings — gods, spirits,
angels, ghosts, ancestors. The norm throughout human history has been a
crowded universe where other intelligences are interested in our comings
and goings, and even shape them. The whole of human civilization is
testament to the fact that we can believe we are not alone and still
obsess over earthly concerns.
