Poor Phil

Still no easy - legal - way to go - Opinion - smh.com.au

Philip Nitschke, the doctor who really, really, respects the right of anyone to kill themselves, even if it is just because they don't like being old, complains that he just can't get anywhere with re-introducing euthanasia legislation in Australia. Whose fault is this? A secret coalition of fundamentalists, of course:

In "Voting for Jesus", a recent article in Quarterly Essay, Amanda Lohrey identifies a fundamentalist, all-denomination Christian lobby that would have been unimaginable half a century ago.

As an activist of 40 years on a range of issues, I have never been confronted with such an anonymous opponent.

When the former prime minister Gough Whitlam warned me several years ago that no politician could afford to be railed at from the pulpit at preselection time I didn't appreciate the full meaning of his advice. I do now.

Maybe the most outspoken critics of euthanasia identify as religious, but I find it hard to believe that there aren't a fair number of the secular, agnostic, or only nominally religious who have doubts about euthanasia, and in particular find Nitschke's broad brush attitude to suicide off putting.

Mysterious weapons, or stupid rumour

IslamOnline.net- Muslim Affairs - Asia - Politics & Economy

Sorry, no time for positive posts yet...

The above story starts with this:

As I write this, doctors in the Gaza Strip are telling me they are puzzled by the condition of the Palestinian dead. X-rays of the bodies of those strafed by the F-16 fighter jets and Apache attack helicopters show no indication of shrapnel shards. Instead, limbs have been severed and corpses burned to a crisp.

I am told that there is no technology available to determine what has caused this. Even the wounded are making the desperately under-equipped medical staff scratch their heads. Their injuries are not responding to conventional treatment.

And there the mystery is left, as the article goes on in more conventional (pro Palestinian) fashion.

The Palestinian News Network says this:

Dr. Al Sakka told Voice of Palestine Radio that the Israeli army is using new types of non-conventional weapons against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the recent attacks. He said, “They are targeting the Palestinian body with unconventional weapons and with that comes a phenomena we have not seen before in any Israeli bombardment we have lived through for many years.”

He continued, “The hospital is central and sees almost all cases of injuries and deaths as a result of Israeli against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. These Israeli bombings are entering the body and fragmenting, causing internal combustion leading to up to fourth degree internal burns, exposing the bone, and affecting the tissue and skin.”

The doctor added, “These tissues die, they do not survive, which obliges us to perform arm or leg amputations, and there are fragments which penetrate the body and do not show up on X-rays. When entering the body they spark like a combustion firearm, but not chemically. They seem radioactive.”

He confirmed that there were dozens of wounded legs and arms. Many of them had been burned from the inside, and distorted to the point that they cannot return to life again.

I remain very sceptical. At the (I think slight) risk of being proved wrong, this just seems to be an example of the conspiratorial anti-semitic rumour mill of Palestine.

UPDATE: Little Green Footballs has a post with a translation of a statement by a loopy French MP. This part is relevant to my post:

According to the same testimonials, the Israeli army would be using fragmentation bombs, and “vacuum packed” bombs that result in destruction by implosion. The bodies then look like totally dislocated puppets, like rag dolls.

Just wait til they let loose the Ark of the Covenant. (Note: am satirising stupid rumours, not death of children.)


UPDATE: comment from Kieran is correct: I was unfamiliar with the term "vacuum bomb" , but Wikipedia confirms it is a nick name for a thermobaric weapon (which I think is far more commonly known as a fuel-air explosive weapon.) That'll teach me not to Google or Wiki search a term before I post.

Modern Muslims

Ask-Imam.com [18129] Can divorce happen over a text? and what are the consequences when a husband says to his wife go F*** your dad.

It would seem that the "jury" is still out on whether a Muslim can divorce his wife by SMS.

Good to see modern technology being used for innovative purposes.

(Perhaps I had better find something good to say about Islam soon. The weight of my posts could be described as just a little unbalanced at the moment!)

Black holes at CERN - the bad news and the good news

0607165.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The link is to yet another arXiv paper, this one only a few days old, about creating mini black holes at the LHC at CERN.

The bad news: the paper uses the cautious sounding words:

Once produced, the black holes may undergo an evaporation process (my emphasis).

Maybe that wasn't intentional; it seems that there are extremely few physicists who are prepared to even consider doubts that a few have expressed as to whether Hawking Radiation (HR) exists at all.

For the good news: as I have noted before, some believe that the HR process may leave a "black hole remnant". I haven't noticed anyone talking much about them, and my concern remains whether there is any concieveable risk from them. However, this paper suggests a surprising possible use if such things exist:

If stable BHRs really exist one could not only study them with various experimental setups but also use them as catalyzers to capture and convert, in accordance with E = mc2, high intensity beams of low energy baryons (p,n, nuclei), of mass ∼ 1AGeV, into photonic, leptonic and light mesonic Hawking radiation, thus serving as a source of energy with 90% efficiency (as only neutrinos and gravitons would escape
the detector/reactor). If BHRs (Stable Remnants) are made available by the LHC or the NLC and can be used to convert mass in energy, then the total 2050 yearly world energy consumption of roughly 10 (to the power of) 21 Joules can be covered by just ∼ 10 tons of arbitrary material, converted to radiation by the Hawking process via m = E/c2 = 1021J/(3·108m/s)2 = 104.


By the way, that figure for the total energy requirements for earth is 10 to the power of 21; I have trouble showing such scripts here.

So, if I read this right, they are saying that use of black hole remnants means conversion of about 10 tonnes of dirt could power the entire world. Neat.

Remember, you read it here first.

If your friends don't support you, blow up your women

Palestinians demand Arab involvement | Jerusalem Post

From the story above:

Enraged by the failure of the Arab countries to help Hizbullah and Hamas in their confrontation with Israel, one of the major Palestinian militias announced on Tuesday that it had recruited dozens of women to join the fight against Israel.

Dressed in military fatigue and armed with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles, the women were sent to march in the streets of Gaza City, chanting slogans in support of Hizbullah and Hamas and calling on all Arabs and Muslims to launch a war against Israel....

The decision to establish the new force comes one week after the armed wing of Fatah announced the formation of a female suicide bomber unit to launch attacks against Israel. Um al-Abed, a spokeswoman for the group, said last week that over 100 women from the West Bank and Gaza Strip had signed up to carry out suicide attacks.

"Today we have established an army of women to defend the Arabs and Muslims," said Shayma al-Koka, one of the leaders of the force whose members marched in Gaza City on Tuesday. "If Arab men can't defend the honor of the Arabs and Muslims, then the women will fulfill their duty.

Yes, OK, that's pretty hot

Tomorrow may be Britain's hottest day ever - Britain - Times Online

I recently joked about how Britain considers anything above 30 degrees as a heatwave. Well, it appears that tomorrow may reach 38, which counts as "hot" anywhere. The Times says:

Roads have begun to melt and fans and air conditioning are placing massive demands on electricity suppliers as forecasters predict an all-time record high temperature for Britain tomorrow, when the mercury could nudge 38C.

OK, it's hot, but roads shouldn't be melting. What do they use there, toffee for bitumen?

More credible advice from India

Could you be bisexual?- The Times of India

Is it too early to be making fun of India? Oh well, I'm not finding much to laugh about, so I have to go back to this fairly recent article from the Times of Indian with its typically odd Indian slant:

Religious ideas linked to procreation and the need to find an issue to perform the last rites also lead many men into tying the knot, when they would rather be with other men.

Forty-year-old Lisa, who discovered her husband with another man five years into her marriage, was told by her counsellor that 99% of men are homosexual and they only marry to have children. "I don't necessarily subscribe to that theory," she says sighing. "But it helps me stay in my marriage."

Novel theory, that. The first rule of counselling in India must be "keep the customer happy."

Have a look at the very last couple of paragraphs on page 3 of the article if you want some further amusement.

Protecting astronauts

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - Plasma bubble could protect astronauts on Mars trip

Sounds like a difficult engineering job to me.

Continuing the anti-semitism theme...

FrontPage magazine.com :: Apocalyptic Muslim Jew Hatred by Andrew G. Bostom

See the long article that puts Islamic theology and eschatology at the core of the intense anti-semitism behind Hizbollah and Hamas.

I wonder what Karen Armstrong says about this. Frontpage is always aggressively pro-Israel, but I don't assume that its articles of this nature are inaccurate for that reason.

Some background on anti-semitism

Paul Johnson: The Anti-Semitic Disease

While looking around for material on the Internet by Paul Johnson about Israel, I found the above long essay from 2005 about anti-semitism.

He's a great writer, and as a conservative, entirely trustworthy. (Actually, I'm sure that I once heard Labor brainiac Barry Jones complimenting one of his books, so he can't be too bad.)

Johnson blames much of the current anti-semitism on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, recognised by everyone in the West(except complete neo Nazi nutters) as pure fantasy - a fact first clearly identified nearly 90 years ago, but still given currency in the Arab world. Johnson says that the book influenced not only Hitler, but also Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, who went on to become the Mufti of Jerusalem. Johnson writes that he was:

....head of the biggest landowning family in Palestine. Al-Husseini was already tinged with hatred of Jews, but the Protocols gave him a purpose in life: to expel all Jews from Palestine forever. He had innocent blue eves and a quiet, almost cringing manner, but was a dedicated killer who devoted his entire life to race-murder. In 1920 he was sentenced bv the British to ten years' hard labor for provoking bloody anti-Jewish-riots.

But in the following year, in a reversal of policy for which I have never found a satisfactory explanation, the British appointed a supreme Muslim religious council in Palestine and in effect made al-Husseini its director.

The mufti, as he was called, thereafter created Arab anti-Semitism in its modern form. He appointed a terrorist leader, Emile Ghori, to kill Jewish settlers whenever possible, and also any Arabs who worked with Jews. The latter made up by far the greater number of the mufti's victims. This pattern of murdering Arab moderates has continued ever since, and not just among Palestinians; we see it in Iraq today.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, the mufti rapidly established links with the Nazi regime and later toured occupied Europe under its auspices. He naturally gravitated to Heinrich Himmler, the official in charge of the Nazi genocide, who shared his extreme and violent anti-Semitism; a photo shows the two men smiling sweetly at each other. From the Nazis the mufti learned much about mass murder and terrorism. But he also drew from the history of Islamic extremism: it was he who first recruited Wahhabi fanatics from Saudi Arabia and transformed them into killers of Jews,— another tradition that continues to this day.

For a more detailed history of the Mufti, see his Wikipedia entry here.

Johnson's conclusions about the effect of anti-semitism on the Arabs are tough but hard to disagree with:

...by allowing their diseased obsession to dominate all their aspirations, the Arabs have wasted trillions in oil royalties on weapons of war and propaganda and, at the margin, on ostentatious luxuries for a tiny minority. In their flight from reason, they have failed to modernize or civilize their societies, to introduce democracy, or to consolidate the rule of law. Despite all their advantages, they are now being overtaken decisively by the Indians and the Chinese, who have few natural resources but are inspired by reason, not hatred.

Go read it all, as they say.

Funny time for Pirates

The New Yorker: The Critics: The Current Cinema

Watching the Middle East conflict hasn't left much time for fun this last week.

However, Anthony Lane's review of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie encourages me to give it a go:

At two and a half hours, “Dead Man’s Chest” is far too long, but thanks to Depp—and to Bill Nighy, properly mean beneath his suckers and blubber—it swerves away from the errors committed by the other big movies this summer. If it swallowed a hundred and thirty-five million dollars in its first weekend, that is because of what it doesn’t do. It doesn’t bother to philosophize; it has nothing to report on perturbations within the human or superhuman condition; nor does it labor the nostrum, beloved of every sage from Gandalf to Xavier in “X-Men,” that with power comes responsibility. Instead, Verbinski’s movie trumpets the joy of irresponsibility, and, as for power, it never gets invited to the party.

Yes, I wish Spielberg could find it in him to do a purely fun, silly movie again, such as the undervalued "Temple of Doom", or the even less appreciated "1941". (The latter is somewhat of a guilty pleasure, but Pauline Kael defended it.)

You read it here first

The purr-fect parasite - Health And Fitness - smh.com.au

The SMH above runs an article about cats and toxoplasma, based on the same article I reported on a couple of weeks ago. (The SMH does not talk about the most interesting thing though - the fact that it seems that toxoplasma infections can cause madness.)

As a general question, I am curious about how many journalists or newspaper writers now get their inspiration for articles from following blogs of interest. (Not that I am suggesting I had anything to do with the SMH article.) I notice that I seem to have a fairly regular visitor from News Limited, who I would like to think is someone important, but of course it may be the janitor.

Bartlett, Armstrong, and me, on the Middle East

The Bartlett Diaries - Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Us - updates

Senator Andrew Bartlett seems a nice enough guy, in a semi-depressed, lefty high school teacher-ish sort of way. His post (above) about the Middle East crisis seems to mark out nicely the sort of wishy washy paralysis that his line of thinking lends itself to:

The way the so-called "‘war on terror"’ is portrayed and prosecuted includes a very strong inference that it is a battle between militant Islam and the West – in crude but none the less reasonably valid terms, "‘them"’ and "‘us’". I don'’t accept the view that this is a struggle between Islam and the West, but unfortunately, the more it is portrayed this way by western leaders and commentators, the more this perception can become a reality...

He goes on to cite (with approval) the recent Karen Armstrong article in The Guardian. I have just read the article, which was referred to in the essay I recommended in Saturday's post.

The more I read of Armstrong's take on Islam, the more suspicious I become of the validity of her views. Of course, I should actually read her books and some detailed criticism of her work, but I am just reporting a strong suspicion here. [I have started reading some internet criticism of her; it seems there is plenty of it about, but the search for what some authoritative historians say about it continues.]

As for what Armstrong thinks of the current crisis, she says:

Doubtless with this anniversary in mind [the London bombings], the prime minister has complained that British Muslims are not doing enough to deal with the extremists. The "moderate" Muslims, he said testily, must confront the Islamists; they cannot condemn their methods while tacitly condoning their anger. The extremists' anti-western views are wrong, and mainstream Muslims must tell them that violent jihad "is not the religion of Islam".

This regrettable step will put yet more pressure on a community already under strain. It ignores the fact that the chief problem for most Muslims is not "the west" per se, but the suffering of Muslims in Guant¡namo, Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Palestine. Many Britons share this dismay, but the strong emphasis placed by Islam upon justice and community solidarity makes this a religious issue for Muslims. When they see their brothers and sisters systematically oppressed and humiliated, some feel as wounded as a Christian who sees the Bible spat upon or the eucharistic host violated.

She states that radical Islamists hate moderate Islamists just as much, if not more, than the West.

I find it rather extraordinary that a call for moderate Islamists to do more to reject the extremists in their midst can be called "regrettable". My take on her examples:

Guantanamo: while some innocents caught up in this, most had (presumably) at least had some connection to the actual militant combatants. If these people despise moderate Muslims, as Armstrong complains, why is their detention such a problem for the moderates?
Abu Graib: very bad behaviour dealt with when revealed. The rule of law and taking responsibility for what your own military does seems to be the lesson that moderates should be told to take from this.
Iraq: surely everyone now sees this as mainly between the branches of Islam. That a framework for a modern and fairer style of government has been set up by the West, and apparently endorsed by the high voter turnout, seems beyond dispute. Does Armstrong think there is any point at which the West can stop being blamed for the inability of conflicting sects to make a government work?
Palestine: an ongoing sore that the militants recently chose to inflame.

Surely the main problem with Armstrong's comments are that they indicate complete sympathy towards the unfortunate tendency of many Muslims to prefer the mantle of victimhood, and to avoid responsibility for ongoing conflict by its radical elements, or to take opportunities as they present themselves and make them work. That is what will hurt much more than a call for moderates to be involved in attempts to de-radicalise their militants. (Who, after all, are clearly in the midst of many Western muslim communities, not isolated from them.)

Back to Bartlett's post:

The trouble with governments trying to insist that we are at war with so-called Islamist terrorists is that the paradigm of war virtually forces people onto one side or another, as the middle ground tends to get blasted away by both extremes.

In what respect are they "so called" terrorists, Andrew?

Perhaps I am being a little mean here; I actually did have some earlier reservations about the use of the phrase "war on terrorism" when Bush first invoked it. I have a preference for keeping the term "war" for the traditional sense of armed conflict between nation states. Using it loosely does encourage ideas such as the application of the Geneva Conventions in circumstances where the "combatants" use techniques which invalidate the right to protection under those treaties. The Supreme Court's recent majority ruling may in fact appear more reasonable to people than it should because of the use of the phrase.

However, the state of the world since 9/11 has caused my initial doubt about the use of the term to evaporate.

The advantage of the term is that it reflects the seriousness of the issue and it is, after all, consistent with the terminology that mad Islamists use themselves.

That the Left can still find an issue with it indicates a lack of willingness to call a spade a spade, and revives the spectre of political correctness with its rparalysisparaylsis on certain issues from the 1980's and 1990's. It does not help them politically regain power.

Having said that, there naturally may come a point at which the conduct of the campaign by the Israelis may become indisputably morally wrong and/or counterproductive to their long term interests. It is just that simple tallies of how many civilians are killed by Israel compared to their own loses is not going to be the test, and in my books Israel seems far from reaching the point of legitimate criticism yet. (I don't have significant problem with the infradtructure targetting either, as I can several legitimate reasons to attack them in this particular case.)

The ever helpful Iranian leadership

Iran Focus-Iran’s Supreme Leader says Israel is “satanic and cancerous” - Special Wire - News

Well, it not just the loopy puppet-ish President who likes to throw petrol on the fire. The religious leadership has this to say:

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described Israel on Sunday as “satanic and cancerous” and praised the Lebanese group Hezbollah for its “jihad” against the Jewish state.

“This regime is an infectious tumour for the entire Islamic world”, Khamenei said in a speech that was aired on state television.

He rejected the demand by U.S. President George W. Bush that Hezbollah disarm, vowing, “This will never happen”.

Kind of late to be worrying about it now

Jonathan Chait: Is Bush Still Too Dumb to Be President? - Los Angeles Times

This LA Times columnist decides to bring up the issue of Bush's intelligence again. Why bother when he is on the last leg of his fixed term anyway? Maybe he thinks it be added to the grounds for impeachment.

Out of proportion?

neo-neocon: The danger of "proportionality" in war

The always readable Neo-neocon has a good post on the issue of proportionality in war. A key paragraph:

It's in the interests of those with less power, and fewer arms, to advance the doctrine of "proportionality." This evens the playing field, something like a handicap in golf, and makes the game better sport for those with fewer skills. The concept of proportionality comes, no doubt, at least partly from fear of a truly disproportionate response; from some sort of concern for the weak. But it also comes from a disproportionate concern that weaker, third-world countries shouldn't be disadvantaged in any way because of their weakness, that they should be allowed to attack a stronger nation with relative impunity because, after all, they're weaker; and, after all, they're "brown;" and, after all, the West is imperialist and guilty; and, after all...and on and on.

But go read it all, and watch some of the fireworks in the comments too.

A good essay on the trouble with Islam

To the death

I just found this recent essay from The Guardian on the question of Islam and terrorism, and it's very good.

The last paragraphs:

As I argued in a piece on Ken Loach's film The Wind that Shakes the Barley on Cif two weeks ago, ideology - uncompromising, appealing to purity of thought and action, murderous - is required to give real or imagined wrongs a framework, a cause and both a battle cry and a battle order. You must fight for something as well as against something. And one of the most powerful of such ideologies has been, in very different forms, an appeal to oneness: oneness of nation and ethnos (Nazism); one-ness of class and party (communism) and oneness of faith, state and thought (Islamism).

The ability to dehumanise large tracts of fellow human beings, because they are non-Aryan, or bourgeois, or non-Muslim, lends great strength to the cause: strength enough to cause adherents to gladly murder, and willingly die, for it.

Israel and it enemies

Aljazeera.Net - Lebanon divided over Hezbollah raid

Aljazeera explains the conflict within Lebanon on the role of Hezbollah in that country:

Dalia Salaam, a Lebanese Middle East analyst, says, "Hezbollah is currently the only political party in Lebanon fighting to save the country."

"The US and Europe should ask Israel to restrain itself. After all, no one, not even President George Bush or the Israeli government, can afford to escalate the situation."

But Ramzi Salha, a travel agent, says: "Whatever the agenda of Hezbollah is, it is not necessarily the agenda of the Lebanese people.

"They have not been designated by the Lebanese people to decide what is best for the country."

With the 22-year Israeli occupation over, many Lebanese say it is time for Hezbollah to lay down its weapons as demanded by UN Security Council resolution 1559.

Few are suggesting a return to war is coming, but Hezbollah's rivals are increasingly complaining that the only Lebanese group that was allowed to keep its weapons after the civil war has become more powerful than the state.

As you may expect, I also like Charles Krauthammer's article on the current situation. He highlights a point that has bothered me a lot over the years: the media's seeming amnesia about the fact that Israel only ended up with the occupied territories because it won the wars that attempted to eradicate it as a nation:

For four decades we have been told that the cause of the anger, violence and terror against Israel is its occupation of the territories seized in that war. End the occupation and the "cycle of violence'' ceases.

The problem with this claim was that before Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, every Arab state had rejected Israel's right to exist and declared Israel's pre-1967 borders -- now deemed sacred -- to be nothing more than the armistice lines suspending, and not ending, the 1948-49 war to exterminate Israel.

Finally, this Lebanese issue of having a heavily armed militia force that is separate from the government armed forces seems to be the same problem facing Iraq, Gaza, and probably other countries, for all I know. How do the people of these countries think that they can ever be properly governed when private armies are allowed to retain arms? Until this fundamental problem is rectified, unrest in the region will surely continue indefinitely.

Time for a Conservative government

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Health | IVF hurdle for single women and lesbians to be overthrown

From the above story:

Fertility clinics and NHS trusts will no longer be able to stop single mothers and lesbian couples having IVF treatment following a shake-up of embryology regulation expected later this year.

The public health minister, Caroline Flint, yesterday gave the clearest indication yet that a child's "need for a father" will be removed as a requirement before a woman undergoes fertility treatment.

A change of name from "fertility treatment" is deserved then, because a failure of "fertility" is not what they are "curing". How about, "Government insemination service" instead, at least for the NHS ones?

That's all it what ever about??

Novak-Rove exchange lasted 20 seconds - Yahoo! News

Good Lord, it was even more trivial than what anyone seemed to imagine:

Regarding Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip, Novak said he told Rove, "I understand that his wife works at the CIA and she initiated the mission." The columnist said Rove replied, "Oh, you know that, too."

"I took that as a confirmation that she worked with the CIA and initiated" her husband's mission to Africa, Novak said. "I really distinctly remember him saying, 'You know that, too.'"

"We talked about Joe Wilson's wife for about maybe 20 seconds," Novak said.

According to Rove's legal team, the White House political adviser recalls the conversation regarding Wilson's wife differently, saying that he replied to Novak that "I've heard that, too" rather than "You know that, too."

Leunig renews attempt to court the Palestinian readership

Cartoons - Cartoon - Opinion - theage.com.au

I'm surprised that Tim Blair doesn't seem to have a post yet about Leunig's latest cartoon.

Having a go at the suffering of children in war and conflict is a legitimate subject for a cartoonist. But Leunig's take suggests that the Israelis are targetting children deliberately.

Also, just how hard is it to be even handed when drawing a cartoon? Here's a suggestion: fold the paper in two, and one side draw some Hamas terrorists shooting a completely indiscriminate rocket into an Israeli city, and hitting a school. On the other side, draw a half dozen palestinian kids being killed as "collateral" in a reprisal attack (being careful to also show the dead adult terrorists who were actually the target.)

There, pithy point about children being unwitting target of terrorism and war is made; dishonest blaming of one side only for killing kids avoided. Is that so hard to do?

While we're at it, show children on one side being given guns to brandish on the streets, watching a neverending media glorification of matyrdom, and being taught that everyone in the neighbouring country (which has no right to exist) is a legitimate target until the neighbour State ceases to exist. On the other side show...oh, well maybe a bit of a problem finding the balance there.

Timothy Leary back from the grave

Independent Online Edition > Health Medical

A very odd story this:

Forty years after Timothy Leary, the apostle of drug-induced mysticism, urged his hippie followers to "tune in, turn on, and drop out", researchers at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, have for the first time demonstrated that mystical experiences can be produced safely in the laboratory.... For the US study, 30 middle-aged volunteers who had religious or spiritual interests attended two eight-hour drug sessions, two months apart, receiving psilocybin in one session and a non-hallucinogenic stimulant, Ritalin, in the other. They were not told which drug was which.
Note in bold the first thing to question about this study.

One third described the experience with psilocybin as the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes and two thirds rated it among their five most meaningful experiences. In more than 60 per cent of cases the experience qualified as a "full mystical experience" based on established psychological scales, the researchers say. Some likened it to the importance of the birth of their first child or the death of a parent. The effects persisted for at least two months. Eighty per cent of the volunteers reported moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction. Relatives, friends and colleagues confirmed the changes.

Ooh, sounds all so inspiring. But then:

A third of the volunteers became frightened during the drug sessions with some reporting feelings of paranoia. The researchers say psilocybin is not toxic or addictive, unlike alcohol and cocaine, but that volunteers must be accompanied throughout the experience by people who can help them through it.

I just find it incredibly hard to believe that they could ever overcome the unreliability of such "therapy". Wasn't there enough work done on using hallucinogenic and other mind altering drugs (such as ecstacy) in the 1940's to 1960's to see that this is not a worthwhile way to go?

Japanese lesson of the day

The Japan Times Online - Porn 'anime' boasts big U.S. beachhead

From the above article:

The popularity of Japanese animation overseas was again highlighted in Anime Expo 2006 in California earlier this month, but a growing boom in the genre's pornographic segment is raising eyebrows among the world's fans of Pokemon and other less-graphic content.

"The best-selling product overseas now is a pornographic makeover of 'Gundam Seed,' " said Masuzo Furukawa of Mandarake Inc., referring to a popular Japanese animation....

The general intolerance toward pornographic animation and comic books in the West is another factor for overseas fans to seek out Japanese products, Furukawa said.

"Fans in America seek something special in this anime, and reading them is cathartic," he said.

The pornographic anime boom has even made the word "hentai" (perverted) recognizable among anime fans worldwide. Hentai is now used overseas to describe anime with strong sexual content.

Love the use of "cathartic" with respect to what is basically porn.

Einstein at home

Letters reveal Einstein's personal life - Yahoo! News

If, like me, you have never read an Einstein biography, this short article gives some brief insight into his private life:

Einstein is known to have had a dozen lovers, two of whom he married, Wolff said.

Most striking about the more than 1,300 newly released letters was the way Einstein discussed his extramarital affairs with his second wife, Elsa, and his stepdaughter, Margot, the archivists said.

Michanowski is mentioned in three of the newly unsealed letters.

In a letter to Margot Einstein in 1931, Einstein complained that "Mrs. M." — Michanowski — "followed me (to England), and her chasing me is getting out of control."

What was the attraction? One assumes it had more to do with fame and power than physicality. (Funny how the same in a woman makes most men nervous.) More:

Einstein's dalliances and abrupt, even cruel treatment of his first wife, Mileva, have been documented in biographies. He has also been portrayed as an indifferent father unwilling to take on the obligations of parenthood.

Gutfreund said the latest collection shows Einstein to have been more involved with and warmer to his first family than previously thought. Letter from the boys showed "they understood he loved them," he said.

What happened to the Einstein boys, I wonder. What a liability to have in science class in high school!

And Einstein himself got a bit sick of his own theory:

The father of the theory of relativity apparently did not want to be bound up with it eternally. In a 1921 letter to Elsa, Einstein confided, "Soon I'll be fed up with the relativity. Even such a thing fades away when one is too involved with it."

Second childhood indeed

BBC NEWS | Health | Dolls 'help Alzheimer's patients'

A couple of months ago I had to make a short visit to a retirement village/nursing home type of place. When I was leaving, I noticed an elderly woman in the sitting area nursing a teddy bear wrapped in a blanket.

I later mentioned this to my mother who said that she knew that soft toys were often used by nursing homes residents (or at least the ones with dementia).

The study above shows how important that such toys can have with dementia patients. "Second childhood" is a more accurate phrase than I had previously realised.

The always irritating Phillip Adams

Ethics the issue, not proclivities | Phillip Adams | The Australian

My very first post in this blog was about Phillip Adams "outing" Graham Kennedy on his radio show, while Kennedy was still alive. Adam's studio guest, Kennedy's long time close friend Noelene Brown, was invited by Adams to talk about this, and (to her credit) she flatly refused, saying it was a very private matter for Graham and she was not comfortable talking about it.

Mind you, Adams made it clear that he thought highly of Kennedy. He just seems to have a complete blind spot about respecting the right to privacy over the matter of sexuality. (Which is ironic considering that I recall one interview with Adams in which he explained how furious he was with media talk about his private life when he went through a divorce.)

Fast forward to today's Adams column (above.) Talk about disingenuous. While denying that Alan Jones' sexuality is important, and noting that that other media commentators (David Marr and Mike Carlton) had "distorted" the debate about Jone's biography by "outing" Jones, Adams then goes on to talk in detail about the aftermath of the "London incident" which was what originally brought Jone's sexuality into public discussion!

Adams even paints himself as something of a supporting hero, although it is hard to believe the teenage boy mentality that would lead Adams to send a message to Jones of the type he admits to:

Thus when an entire station was aghast at allegations of an incident in London I sent him a cheery message of support. Told him to keep his chin up. Said something Edna Everage-ish about British spunk.

(Adams says that Jones subsequently visited Adams home to explain the incident, so maybe Jones didn't take offence. I still wonder what others think of Adam's level of maturity, and would indeed like to see a biography of him.)

Again, Adams is completing ignoring any concept of a right to privacy, and in the process takes the opportunity of praising himself as the hero for being the one who wants society to better accept homosexuality. What a jerk.

Political Theatre

Take a note: it won't help Costello at all - Opinion - smh.com.au

Nothing much to say about Howard/Costello. All part of the political theatre, and not very edifying. If politicians did not spend so much time on internal party maneuvering they could devote a lot more time to policy and things that matter to their constituents.

As Gerard Henderson notes in his column above:

The fact is that there are few genuine friendships in politics - for the obvious reason that politicians are involved in a continuing contest for the top job.

Maybe true but kind of sad.

Now for something completely different: yowies, UFOs and bad smells

Yowieland

See the link for a Fortean Times article on yowie sightings in Australia. (For the foreign reader, a yowie is Australia's version of bigfoot.)

I have never had much interest in yowie stories, but one thing that interests me about them is the association of the beast with a foul smell. This is because when I was about 19, an acquaintance with whom I had sometimes been camping (in a group) in bush locations around South East Queensland told me that he had gone camping (with one or two other mates, I forget) and had been frightened by loud crunching sounds in the undergrowth in the middle of the night. What disturbed him most was the intense foul smell that he said accompanied the sounds. It was the smell in particular that make him frightened, and convinced him it was not just some sleepless kangaroo or other mundane explanation.

He was an odd character, but one that I would describe as pragmatic and not given to fantasy. I guess the belief that yowies smell bad might have been around generally then; I seem to recall that it was the first time that I had heard of it, and it was only later that I read of other people's accounts that did indeed mention the smell.

If scary crunchy sounds are caused by other animals (and I guess something as mundane as a cow or deer would make heaps of sound,) I am not sure what large (or small) animal in Australia is routinely accompanied by a bad smell. It is this relatively minor aspect of the story that makes it more convincing.

Interestingly, bad sulphurous type smells have been associated with paranormal phenomena of all kinds, even UFO's. (There are some who think yowies, bigfoot and other strange creatures are visitors from another dimension, hence the connection with the paranormal.)

I remember, again when I was about 19, glancing through a book on the interesting Kaikoura UFO sightings of 1978 by a journalist who was on the airplane. I seem to recall that he mentioned that after the incident, for several weeks at least, he would unexpectedly notice sulfurous smells around him. (I think he said it seemed the smell was on his skin, but it is a long time ago that I was furtively looking at the book in a shop.) At the time, I remember thinking that he was a bit of a nutter for drawing this connection. Perhaps I was a little unfair. (I also know that many people think it was squid boats lights that the planes were misidentifying. I don't know; I haven't read much about it to have a firm opinion.)

It does seem odd to me, though, for any modern story of UFOs (which most people have thought are just advanced technology) to be linked with a smell that a few centuries ago would have been taken to be evidence of demonic association.

All part of life's interesting oddities.

Kids today

man of lettuce: Kidults

A worrying story over at Man of Lettuce about some teen girls from families with more money than sense.

Imre on the gullible

Fellow travellers' tales | Features | The Australian

Interesting story by Imre Salusinszky on a conference looking at the phenomena of the Australian academic "fellow travellers" who went to the Soviet Union and loved what they saw.

I like this line best:

As for McAuley, Tasmanian critic Cassandra Pybus found his anti-communism such a puzzle in her 1999 book, The Devil and James McAuley that she was forced to put it all down to suppressed homosexual impulses.

Obviously.

An interesting test for hidden dimensions

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - Mini solar system could reveal hidden dimensions

I wonder, do readers like the way I can jump from talking crap (see last post) to theoretical physics?

Anyhow, the story above proposes an slightly odd sounding experiment to test for hidden dimensions. (Build a tiny version of a solar system and run it in space.) Neat.

Toilet humour to start the week

Foreign Correspondent - 04/07/2006: India - Untouchables

For those who missed last week's Foreign Correspondent, the link above is to a transcript of the story on toilets in India. (Or more particularly, about the lack of toilets there.)

Some extracts:

BORMANN: It’s staggering that in a country of one billion people 80 percent don’t have a toilet and most in cities and towns aren’t connected to a sewage system anyway. That’s eight hundred million people going in the open in rivers, under bridges, anywhere they might hope to get some privacy.

The footage showed that indeed there is little privacy there. Not much sign of toilet paper for the poor masses either.

The story showed the undertouchable woman whose job it was to clean out the "toilets" in some houses. These were accessed from an external hatch, with the poor woman covering the poop with some dust, putting it in a bucket, then going a short distance and putting in an open running gutter/drain in the street!

Oddly enough, said a woman from a charity that specifically is all about building toilets:

It’s not that this is a poor man’s problem, in many places people have the money to build houses but they do not think it necessary to create a toilet or to construct a toilet.

I don't mean to sound too impolite, but compared to the rest of the world, it's kinda taking a long time for this idea to catch on , isn't it?

The story also featured an odd man in a toilet museum. His funniest line was:

The day you give a clean toilet to a lady she will never go on the road to do this thing.

I'm pretty sure any man will go for the toilet over using the river, too.

India in many respects sounds a very interesting place to visit. I assume that smell is not one of them, though.

Colour and movement

Islamophobia and The Guardian

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Out of a cycle of ignorance

The link is to a Guardian column by American John Esposito, in which he complains about Western Islamophobia.

I don't have time to double check his take on the recent polling of Muslim nations, but I do recommend the reader's comments following the article for some very strong counterarguments. I like "Ryans" post in particular, which is a bit too long to copy here.

Rats supporting conservatives, again

news @ nature.com-Rats taking cannabis get taste for heroin-Study suggests cannabis-users may be vulnerable to harder drugs.

Here we go again. Nothing terribly conclusive about the above work, but yet again a case of drug research seemingly coming round to validate old fuddy-duddy conservative's long held suspicions about marijuana:

Neuroscientists have found that rats are more likely to get hooked on heroin if they have previously been given cannabis. The studies suggest a biological mechanism — at least in rats — for the much-publicized effect of cannabis as a 'gateway' to harder drugs.

The discovery hints that the brain system that produces pleasurable sensations when exposed to heroin may be 'primed' by earlier exposure to cannabis, say researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who carried out the study.

I note that one site criticises the report, but on some fairly spurious grounds:

But the article did not note that the problem with the “gateway theory” is that the vast majority of cannabis users never try harder drugs. While most illegal drug users start with the most widely available illegal drug — marijuana — most marijuana users start and stop with cannabis. Some 50 percent of high school students try marijuana before graduation, but just eight percent try cocaine, six percent try methamphetamine and less than one percent try heroin. This is why the Institute of Medicine, in a 1999 report on the use of marijuana as medicine, gave no credence to the gateway idea.

In fact, the news@nature report does talk about the role of social issues when you talk of "gateway drug". The point of the study was clearly stated as this:

There has long been a debate about whether exposure to drugs such as nicotine or marijuana might lead to harder habits. Many argue that the most important factors in the equation are social ones: people who get one drug from a dealer are probably more inclined to try another. But researchers are still interested to know whether there is any physiological effect that might additionally predispose users of so-called soft drugs to harder-drug addiction.

Fair enough. Seems to me to not be too much point in being nitpicky about what exactly the "gateway theory" means, if studies do confirm use of cannibis means greater addiction to harder drugs if you try them. (Even if it is only social reasons as to why you have the opportunity to try them.)

UPDATE: Futurepundit's post on this story points out that it should be no surprise. Early alcohol use is a clearly related to increased alcoholism in future too:

In results that echo earlier studies, of those individuals who began drinking before age 14, 47 percent experienced dependence at some point, vs. 9 percent of those who began drinking at age 21 or older. In general, each additional year earlier than 21 that a respondent began to drink, the greater the odds that he or she would develop alcohol dependence at some point in life. While one quarter of all drinkers in the survey started drinking by age 16, nearly half (46 percent) of drinkers who developed alcohol dependence began drinking at age 16 or younger.

Hitchens time again

Cause and Effect - It's time to stop blaming the good guys for problems in Iraq. By Christopher Hitchens

It's been a little while since Hitchen's last Slate column on Iraq. The new one is pretty good though. (It even has a bit of Bush bashing to keep everyone happy.)

The final paragraph though is good:

Whatever its disagreements over the initial confrontation may have been, the international community has a moral and legal obligation, expressed in a major U.N. resolution, to assist in the reconstruction of Iraq and to support its elected government. This cannot happen while serious powers like Russia use even their own victims to make the wrong point. And it cannot happen while so much of the intellectual and media life of this country is infected with Putinism: a nasty combination of the cynical with the unrealistic.

What a laugh

Beazley against history revival | News | The Australian

Beazley and the State education ministers do nothing to help their credibility by their poo-pooing (or should that be "pooh-poohing"? - my education has gaps) reaction to the Federal proposal to get history back to some fundamentals. Teachers being so highly unionised, what else can the Labor side say?:

KIM Beazley has dismissed the push by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop to reinstate the teaching of traditional Australian history in schools as an "elite preoccupation"...

South Australian Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith said: "We believe the necessary facts in a child's education should be determined by teachers and experts in the field, not politicians."...

Tasmanian Education Minister David Bartlett said he was "horrified" by the proposal and added: "If this is a stalking horse for John Howard's personal Australian history being taught inschools then I am not interested."

What a hoot! Problem is, I strongly suspect that most of the public would be well on side with the Federal government on this one, and don't like teachers setting the agenda (or coming up with unintelligible methods of reporting progress). It's just that the educational academics (and many teachers) don't realise it. Or think they know what is best anyway.

Palestinian apologist ignores rockets

'Dispute' or 'occupation?' - Opinion - theage.com.au

The Age has a staff writer today come to Hamas' defence. Interesting that while the capture of CPL Shalit is mentioned (in a way to suggest that it is wrong to blame the Palestinian Authority for that), the continual rain of missiles from Gaza into Israel since the withdrawal from Gaza is not.

Question: why should Israel recognize the Hamas "government " when it acts as if it has no intention of policing itself to prevent terrorist attacks from Gaza into Israel?

That the "man in the street" in Gaza suffers to varying degrees from Israel's response is not really in doubt. But why don't they take the line that they have to show real self governance to prevent the counterproductive provocation? How hard would it be for a "real" government anywhere else in the world to have patrols to see where the missiles are being launched from, or built?

The column also says:

Hamas, meanwhile, has limited itself to de facto and not de jure recognition of Israel because it understands that the sovereignty which stands in need of recognition is not Israeli but Palestinian. Or, to put it another way, the question is not "is Israel?" but " where is Israel?"

To be honest, I don't quite follow what Hamas (or elements of it) have said recently about "de facto" recognition of Israel. But, as far as I know, no one is questioning that those towns now receiving missiles from Gaza are definitely Israeli towns.

UPDATE: for an opinion piece that does seem to talk realistically about the whole Palestinian problem, see this one in the Jerusalem Post. An extract:

I still believe what I've always believed - that Israel has no right to rule the Palestinians, that ruling them is bad, not good, for Israeli security, so it's both immoral and impractical for Israel to gobble up the only territory the Palestinians have for their own.

However, the belief I've lost is that the Palestinians are a basically rational, reasonable nation, that they can be talked into putting down their weapons and making peace with Israel - if not out of goodwill, than out of their own self-interest.

What I believe now is that only Israeli military deterrence, which will no doubt require the periodic use of force, can get the Palestinians to stop fighting.

I strongly recommend it. Pity it ends on such a pessimistic note, though.

Not smart Part II

IAF strikes school, Internal Ministry building in Gaza | Jerusalem Post

As a sign that at least certain elements in Gaza do not want any form of quick resolution to the crisis there, an even longer range missile is shot into Israel:

The attacks came after a Kassam rocket traversed a record range of 12 kilometers and landed Tuesday night for the first time in the heart of Ashkelon, sending the city's 120,000 residents into a state of fear that their city would be bombarded by rockets like Sderot has since the disengagement last summer.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert termed the Kassam attack a "grave escalation" for which Hamas is responsible and for which there will be far-reaching ramifications.

Taxing airplane gas in Europe

Air fares 'to double' as Europe votes for green tax - World - Times Online

From the above:

AIR passengers will be charged up to £40 extra for a return ticket within Europe to pay for the environmental impact of their journeys, under plans approved by the European Parliament yesterday.

MEPs voted in favour of the “immediate introduction” of a tax on jet fuel for flights within the 25 member states of the EU. The charge would double the cost of millions of budget airline flights.

This is going to go over a treat with the public.

Some more:

Andrew Sentance, BA’s head of environmental affairs, admitted that aviation could account for almost half of Britain’s total CO2 emissions by 2050, compared with 6 per cent today.

Something tells me that such figures are likely to be rubbery in the extreme.

Meanwhile, what is to be done about China and India?

Death of a parapsychologist

Guardian Unlimited | Obituaries | John Beloff

Anyone with more than a passing knowledge of parapsychology would have heard of the name of John Beloff. He's now off finding out first hand if there is life after death.

From his obituary above comes this piece of irony:

By the time Beloff visited Rhine, he was already acquiring a reputation as a psi-inhibitory experimenter - that is, an experimenter whose presence seemed to discourage the appearance of evidence for psychic functioning. None of his experiments yielded positive results.

He sounds just the right sort of person for this line of inquiry, though:

In an area where passions run high and opinions too often are guided by prejudice, Beloff relied on data and reason. He had no theistic inclinations; and always demonstrated an even-handed approach to the material and to opposing points of view. So although he never overtly encountered the paranormal first-hand, and although he never succeeded in obtaining evidence for psychic functioning in his own experiments, he saw no choice but to accept at least some of the evidence for ESP, PK, and survival of death.

Shuttle sightings

Thank God the shuttle launched successfully. A 4 July takeoff disaster would have attracted no end of commentary on the dire symbolism for the United States.

In Brisbane, there would seem to be many morning opportunities to see the shuttle in the next few days, and one evening opportunity low to the north. From the Nasa website comes this list for Brisbane (more details are at the site):

SHUTTLE
Wed Jul 12/05:44 AM
Thr Jul 13/06:05 AM
Fri Jul 14/04:55 AM
Sat Jul 15/05:17 AM
Sun Jul 16/05:39 AM
Tue Jul 18/04:52 AM
Wed Jul 19/06:20 PM

It is good to show it to young children.

The Alan Jones affair

Disputed book 'may out Jones' - Top stories - Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au

Well, Mike Carlton gives voice to the reasons that everyone must have already suspected were behind concerns that Master's biography of Alan Jones will attract a defamation action. (That sentence will make absolutely no sense to a reader from overseas.)

I have just a few comments:

1. Defenders of ABC left wing bias often allege that it is just balancing up the right wing media bias as demonstrated by Alan Jone's power. But, surely all moderately thoughtful right wingers, who generally hold down jobs and don't sit around listening to Sydney daytime radio, don't find Jones persuasive or very likeable, do they? And if he is seen to have political influence on "struggle town" listeners, aren't they are exactly the type who virtually never listen to or watch the ABC to get the counterbalance to the Alan Jones bias.

2. How anyone finds him even likeable as a media personality has long been beyond my understanding.

3. There is little explanation in the media of the point that in legal actions, the winning party is generally awarded costs (that is, they are to be paid by the loser). However, the way legal costs are done means that there is always a significant percentage of the total costs to the client that will not be recoverable from the loser. As a rough rule of thumb, I think this can be around 30% of the total costs, but probably it depends from case to case and in which jurisdiction. I imagine that if you have a bunch of QC's involved it might be higher, but I am just guessing.

Therefore it is not inconsistent to have a legal opinion saying that the ABC should win a defamation action, but still to have the commercial concern about how much money may be lost in defending it. As I take it that profit from Australian published books is not all that high (given the limited market), it seems reasonable grounds for concern for a commerical enterprise.

4. That said, it is easy for the likes of Phillip Adams to paint this as a case of political appointments to the ABC board acting politically. It would be good if they could defend themselves of that charge. (Does anyone know what the 3 most controversial members of the board think of Jones anyway?)

5. If the book is published by someone, which seems likely, then no one has been denied the dubious pleasure of reading the biography anyone. (And Chris Masters can stop moaning as if all his work is for nought.)

UPDATE: Oh. Keith Windshuttle has denied he was involved. Good.

The "rat community" gets uptight

1,000 pet rodents euthanized; rat lovers furious

From San Francisco comes a story which uses political language in a context that just makes me giggle. (There's also a twist that no journalist could resist):

Rat lovers were furious Wednesday that a Petaluma animal shelter had euthanized more than 1,000 of the rodents taken last week from a man who had been hoarding the creatures inside his home.

Roger Dier, 67, was cited for misdemeanor animal cruelty last week after animal control officers found hordes of squealing rats inside his dingy one-bedroom house in Petaluma. Nancee Tavares, the city's Animal Services manager, had promised to find homes for as many rats as possible but admitted Wednesday that some 1,020 of them had to be put down. ...

Rat fanciers, who had formed an e-mail chain called "petalumarats" in an attempt to find homes for the rodents, were horrified. The shelter was bombarded Wednesday with angry phone calls and e-mails. Most members of the rat lobby felt they had been misled.

"This is an unspeakable injustice to those rats who deserved better," Phyllis Mason, a self-described rat lover, wrote in an e-mail. "Why didn't the Petaluma Animal Shelter give us a chance to help? ..."

Tina Bird, of Campbell, said the rat community was in the process of mobilizing when the rodents were killed.

"Maybe they would have been better advised to leave the animals in their horrible conditions until we, the rat community, had a few days to get moving," she wrote in an e-mail...

Now for the odd connection:

She said Dier, a convicted armed robber who first gained notoriety when his home in Southern California was used as a hideout for two men later convicted in the 1963 plot to kidnap the son and namesake of Rat Pack leader Frank Sinatra, didn't seem like a bad guy, just a bit troubled.

"He's an intelligent man to talk to, but he smells like rat urine," Tavares said.

There are photos to the story too, if ever you wanted to see the effects of having a thousand rats lose in your house. (The rats themselves are pretty cute, in my books.)

Too late for the Schiavo family now

news @ nature.com�-'Miracle recovery' shows brain's resilience - Man who 'awoke' after 19 years shows how nerve cells can regrow.

The article above seems highly relevant to the Schiavo case, but it is no use now:

The amazing recovery of a man who had spent almost two decades in a barely conscious state has revealed the brain's previously unrecognized powers of recovery.

Terry Wallis became a media star in 2003 when he emerged from the minimally conscious state (MCS) in which he had spent 19 years, since suffering severe brain damage in a motor accident. At the time, his 'miracle' recovery was a mystery. Researchers who have examined his brain now think that his emergence was due to painstaking regrowth of the affected areas that ultimately allowed him to regain some of his faculties....

Neurologists are reluctant to declare that PVS, the condition at the centre of the controversial debate over US sufferer Terri Schiavo, can ever be truly permanent. Earlier this year, researchers made the bizarre discovery that some PVS patients could be roused with a simple sleeping pill (see 'Sleeping pills offer wake-up call to vegetative patients').

But the tendency is to assume that the chances of recovery trail off with time, an assumption that will be overturned by the latest discovery, Laureys hopes. "That's the real message," he says.

Having said that, the article does not suggest that such remarkable recoveries are ever likely to be anything other than rare. However, if in the Schiavo case there were no issues with the cost of her treatment, and a family who wanted to be actively involved in caring for her, it does seem a pity that they were denied the chance to see if she could recover.

At least they are having the debate

Hewitt cool on Catholic leader's call for abortion inquiry - Health - Times Online

Britain shows good sense in at least having a debate about late term abortion limits. (It is also interesting that the Catholic Church is involved, but not in any hysterical sense.) In Australia, late term abortion has trouble even making the agenda.

One other thing of interest from the above article: it refers to there being about 200,000 abortions a year in Britain. That's with a population of about 60,000,000. In Australia, the figures for abortion are a bit rubbery, but seem to be around 100,000 on a population base one third that of Britain.

Why is our rate seemingly so much higher?

What counts as a "heatwave" in Britain

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Britain set for 'blistering' weekend

From the above:

Weather forecasters today predicted that a mini-heatwave would hit the UK over the next few days, with temperatures in southern England set to reach the low 30s.

Temperatures across the UK will rise over the weekend, with England expected to get most of the dry, clear weather. They are predicted to reach 30C tomorrow and 32C on Sunday and Monday in southern England.

Cloudier conditions are expected from the Midlands to the north, but temperatures are still likely to reach 25C in Scotland by Monday.

Paul Knightley, a forecaster at the PA WeatherCentre, said temperatures would be "blistering over the next few days". "Everyone should remember to drink plenty of water, use suncream and don't sit in the sun too long," he said.

Pathetic! If I lived there, I would be praying for global warming.

Krauthammer on the Gaza crisis

TIME.com - Remember What Happened Here

Charles Krauthammer always talks bluntly about the Middle East, and his column on the Gaza crisis summarises the situation well.

One snippet that is particularly interesting is this (on the reason that rocket attacks on Israel have continued after the pull out from Gaza):

The logic for those continued attacks is to be found in the so-called phase plan adopted in 1974 by the Palestine National Council in Cairo. Realizing that they would never be able to destroy Israel in one fell swoop, the Palestinians adopted a graduated plan to wipe out Israel. First, accept any territory given to them in any part of historic Palestine. Then, use that sanctuary to wage war until Israel is destroyed.

I wonder what Palestinian supporters have to say about that.

Mark Steyn (and me) on the Supreme Court

Court finds a right to jihad in the Constitution

In the article above, Steyn strongly attacks one element of the US Supreme Court decision against the military commission process (namely, the application of a part of the Geneva Conventions to a captured al Qaeda member.)

His basic argument is a summary of part of the dissenting judges' opinion, which is well worth reading in the original. An extract (which makes more sense if you read Steyn's article first):

The President's interpretation of Common Article 3 is reasonable and should be sustained. The conflict with al Qaeda is international in character in the sense that it is occurring in various nations around the globe. Thus, it is also "occurring in the territory of" more than "one of the High Contracting Parties." The Court [the majority, I think this means] does not dispute the President's judgments respecting the nature of our conflict with al Qaeda, nor does it suggest that the President's interpretation of Common Article 3 is implausible or foreclosed by the text of the treaty. Indeed, the Court concedes that Common Article 3 is principally concerned with "furnish[ing] minimal protection to rebels involved in ... a civil war," ante, at 68, precisely the type of conflict the President's interpretation envisions to be subject to Common Article 3. Instead, the Court, without acknowledging its duty to defer to the President, adopts its own, admittedly plausible, reading of Common Article 3. But where, as here, an ambiguous treaty provision ("not of an international character") is susceptible of two plausible, and reasonable, interpretations, our precedents require us to defer to the Executive's interpretation.

The Australian media was full of "Howard should embarrassed" commentary on this, with Michelle Grattan particularly harsh:

Howard claims he is not embarrassed by the American judgement. He should be. In retrospect (and for that matter, at the time), the Government's November 2003 statement accepting the military commissions looks craven.

Maybe it would if 3 Supreme Court judges had not agreed with Howard and Bush. There is no acknowledgement in Grattan's article that it was a 5/3 split decision. Yes of course that is still a "win", but split decisions (or at least close ones) mean the losing side has not lost face completely.

And I suspect that any non lawyer reading it can see that the dissenting judgement is far from implausible in its reasoning. It was also expressed in strong terms. Take this opening paragraph:

On December 30, 2005, Congress enacted the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA). It unambiguously provides that, as of that date, "no court, justice, or judge" shall have jurisdiction to consider the habeas application of a Guantanamo Bay detainee. Notwithstanding this plain directive, the Court today concludes that, on what it calls the statute's most natural reading, every "court, justice, or judge" before whom such a habeas application was pending on December 30 has jurisdiction to hear, consider, and render judgment on it. This conclusion is patently erroneous. And even if it were not, the jurisdiction supposedly retained should, in an exercise of sound equitable discretion, not be exercised.....

And from way further down, where they consider the majority's other arguments even if they are right on the jurisdiction to hear issue:

We are not engaged in a traditional battle with a nation-state, but with a worldwide, hydra-headed enemy, who lurks in the shadows conspiring to reproduce the atrocities of September 11, 2001, and who has boasted of sending suicide bombers into civilian gatherings, has proudly distributed videotapes of beheadings of civilian workers, and has tortured and dismembered captured American soldiers. But according to the plurality, when our Armed Forces capture those who are plotting terrorist atrocities like the bombing of the Khobar Towers, the bombing of the U. S. S. Cole, and the attacks of September 11--even if their plots are advanced to the very brink of fulfillment--our military cannot charge those criminals with any offense against the laws of war. Instead, our troops must catch the terrorists "redhanded," ante, at 48, in the midst of the attack itself, in order to bring them to justice. Not only is this conclusion fundamentally inconsistent with the cardinal principal of the law of war, namely protecting non-combatants, but it would sorely hamper the President's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy.

Of course, I am no expert on US law, but a reading of the dissenting judgement does give the impression that it was the majority that was pushing the interpretative envelope here, not the dissenters.

National Review's editorial on the decision is white hot with anger, and having looked at the case now, I can see why. The editorial seems very well argued to me.

Bashir helps ensure peaceful outcome (not)

Indonesian cleric: Israel is the enemy | Jerusalem Post

The Jerusalem Post notes:

"Israel is the enemy of Allah," militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir told hundreds of members of the Muslim-based Crescent Star Party in the capital Jakarta. "That is why Indonesia should send holy warriors there."