On other blogs...

1. Probably everyone who reads me also reads Tim Blair. Still, I think that in his most recent post he comes up with up his funniest line for a long time (after quoting from the NYT):

The children are all too familiar with the apocalyptic warnings of climate change. “A lot of people are going to die” from global warming, a 9-year-old girl from Harlem announced at one point. And a 7-year-old boy from Park Slope said with a quiet lisp, “When you use too much electricity, it kills animals.”

Well, it does if you hook up the electrodes right.

2. Andrew Bolt has a good post on the pessimism of science fiction, brought on by recently re-watching Blade Runner. His conclusion:

Yes, it’s only a film, but it also fits a pattern of imagining of our future.

We actually wind up not much different in our wants, and not less vigilant on the whole against threats, than is often feared. We remain in the West extremely inventive, and driven more by the wishes of the public than the demands of the leaders.

That probably explains why artists and “seers” so often get us wrong, and imagine us becoming in time so much gloomier, oppressed, bullied, atrophied and poor than we inevitably and eventually turn out. In reminding us of this, Blade Runner is a comfort.

True. I also have heard Orwell's 1984 being read on Radio National recently, while I have been driving around town. It reminded me how much I disliked that book, both from a stylistic point of view (I think it is plain awful writing,) and for its ridiculous over-reach in the dystopia it paints. By taking aspects of totalitarianism, which were bad enough in their current form when Orwell wrote, and then exaggerating them wildly with an imagined technology which is still off the mark, combined with a way of writing characters which robbed them of any realistic humanity, the effect became that I just could not take it seriously. (Even with a one child policy, did China develop an "Anti-sex League"? )

3. Zoe Brain has brought to my attention the very enjoyable site Paleo-Future, which seems devoted entirely to looking at how the future has been imagined in the past. (I think it has been mentioned at Boing Boing before, but maybe I didn't follow the link.) I love this sort of stuff, growing up as I did in the (generally) optimistic 1960's, and expect to visit there regularly.

More icky moments in medical history...

Found via Arts & Letters Daily, there's book out called "Impotence - a Cultural History". In the Daily Telegraph review, there's an amusing list of odd impotence cures through history. One that I found odd because it is so specific is this:

...according to Ovid the "right molar of a small crocodile worn as an amulet guarantees erection in men".

Not just any crocodile molar, evidently, but the one on the right. How did the ancients come up with some of this stuff?

The other link from Arts & Letters is to an extract from the book itself, from which one can read a little about early experiments in testicular transplant:

The first experiment in grafting an entire testicle was performed by Dr. G. Frank Lydston on himself, on January 16, 1914. Expressing his disappointment that vulgar prejudices heretofore had prevented the exploitation of the sex glands of the dead, Lydston coolly reported how he transplanted into his own scrotum a suicide victim’s testicle. [p. 186]

L. L. Stanley, resident physician of the California state prison in San Quentin, reported in 1922 that he had first implanted testicles from executed convicts and then moved on to inject into his subjects via a dental syringe solutions of goat, ram, boar, and deer testicles. Altogether he made 1000 injections into 656 men. Stanley had been inspired by work of Serge Voronoff, an eminent Russian-born medical scientist working at the Collége de France. Voronoff in 1919 scandalized many by transplanting the testes of chimpanzees into men. He asserted that “marked psychical and sexual excitation” typically resulted, followed by a resurgence of memory, energy and “genital functions.” [pp. 186-7]

I am sure I have heard of experiments with ground up animal testes before, but I don't recall reading about whole chimp testes bit.

I guess there was little resembling ethics committees in those days.

A good reason to avoid diabetes...

Turns out that diabetic's foot ulcers, even those with antibiotic resistant staph infections, do well with maggot treatment. There's an unpleasant photo of the maggots in action on someone's foot at the linked article.

Adams confirms his philosopher of choice

Scott Adams has a funny post in which he explains that he has discovered he is a follower of Spinoza. His reaction on reading about him on Wikipedia:

Holy cow! My opinions match Spinoza’s perfectly. It turns out that being ignorant is almost exactly like being a well-read student of philosophy who can quote from the work of the masters. How lucky is that?

The rest of the post is fun too. He's quite a wit, although I have noticed that the topic of bestiality seems to appear with unwelcome frequency on his blog.

A small triumph for a woman in Saudi Arabia

BBC NEWS From Our Own Correspondent | The first woman to swim in Saudi

Interesting.

Womb fights

It's an unusual event for me to be agreeing with Alan Ramsey, but his take on Bill Heffernan's revived comments on Julia Gillard seem about right. (Of course, by the end of his article, Ramsey is off on a bit of Keating admiration, and my disapproval of this sets the world right again.)

Despite Bill's clumsy way of putting it (I suspect that about 75% of the problem was the use of the word "barren,") as an issue I still think it is pretty fascinating to watch the modern feminist reaction to this.

As I noted in an earlier post, Julia Gillard seems to have expressed an attitude of "you can't have it all" as her reason for not having children. Isn't this a pretty dramatic, and quite conservatively aligned, change of attitude from the school of feminism that insists that society needs to be arranged so that women can do family and work at once?

Even though she supports Julia, if I were a female politician with children, I certainly can't see that I would be treating Tracee Hutchison as an ally. Maybe you can read Gillard as simply meaning that no one can easily be a mother and federal politician. (In her quote linked at my previous post, she made the point that male politicians only manage because they leave the mother at home to look after the kids. But even that overlooks the fact that some female politicians do manage by having a stay at home father.) Maybe Julia's comments are limited to her own assessment of her own abilities? (Well, I don't think that is right, but I am just looking at all possible spin you can place on it). But Tracee takes the argument to a whole new level:

Gillard's supposition that she couldn't have done babies and politics simultaneously — and done justice to both — should be given the respectful consideration it deserves...

Do you know the people who'll be thinking most about your comments, Senator Heffernan? Women who don't have children, that's who.

Clearly the senator, and many like him, have never considered that women without children probably spend more time thinking about the consequences of choices and the dynamics of society than people who spend their lives flying around the country on parliamentary salaries or up to their elbows in nappy buckets and vomit.

Conversations about nappy buckets and birth choices do not a society make.

Ask a woman with kids how much she thinks family dominates the structure of her life and she'll tell you it occupies most of her waking hours, even if she's juggling a career around it. She won't have given much thought to it, mind you; it's just how it is and she hasn't got time for musing anyway.

Um, doesn't this seem to be saying that it is obvious that women with children have no time to think deeply about anything, apart from what to cook for dinner tonight? What are those mothers doing as politicians then?

One suspect's that Tracee's reaction may be based on her very personal reaction to how other women, and men, react to her as (I assume?) a childless woman:

...ask a woman without kids how often she feels like an outsider looking in on a world she can't connect with and she will have some real insight into the way society functions. Particularly the way it reflects the status of women...

Sounds to me like she has lost a friend or two after they've gone off and joined the world of motherhood. (I could be wrong, of course, and misreading her completely.)

Tracee also seems to hate the way parties like to support families:

Despite John Howard's and Peter Costello's attempts to distance themselves from their wayward senator's latest spray, they are the culprits of turning the family values mantra into political paydirt and their imminent budget sweeteners to families will reinforce it.

Forget about the clever country we once aspired to be, we've become the conception country.

Somehow, I don't the Labor campaign is going to keep her happy either.

The creepy side of Japan

Photos of preteen girls in thongs now big business | The Japan Times Online

What this article says is quite true - if you go to Akihabara in Tokyo, which most visitors do to look through the vast world of consumer electric goods - there are also stores selling magazines and DVDs which, by the cover, clearly are about underage girls in various states of undress.

That Japan tolerates this seems pretty remarkable. As the article indicates, it's not that it doesn't have child porn laws, it seems just to lack the will to enforce them.

Hitchens on Hitchens (and other stuff)

Go here for a short, half amusing, half serious, interview with Christopher H.

Labor knows how to recruit

Rudd's star recruit is raising eyebrows - Opinion - smh.com.au

A very funny opening to this SMH article:

LEADERSHIP, women and sport aren't often seen together. Sometimes when they are, the different worlds collide spectacularly. Take Nicole Cornes, the very blonde wife of Graham Cornes, a legendary South Australian AFL footballer. She remarked yesterday, after her awkward press conference announcing she would be the Labor candidate for the federal Liberal seat of Boothby had been splashed across the front page, that "first thing in the morning when you wake up, you think, oh God, I should have had my eyebrows waxed".

And if I can be allowed to be exceedingly shallow for a moment, has anyone else thought that Peter Garrett's face recently is looking more gaunt and, well, scarier than ever? Compare this photo with this one. (Actually, I don't know how recent the second one is, but if he doesn't smile, he looks pretty crook.)

A gift for pun writers

TV ban is hard cheese for dairymen-News-Politics-TimesOnline

Apparently, England has banned cheese advertisements from children's TV, because it is deemed to be high in fat and salt. (I thought it was also good for teeth and an important source of calcium, but there you go.)

Naturally, cheese makers are not happy:

A survey published in The Grocer magazine, of 100 senior people in the dairy industry, confirmed that the overwhelming view was that cheese is under siege.

Only 2 per cent believed that the Government was supportive of the cheese industry while 52 per cent said that it was actively “anticheese”.

What foods can they advertise on kid's TV, I wonder. Green salad? As a fan of cheese (in moderation) myself, I hope to see rioting in the streets of London over this, and the downfall of the government.

Issues with reproductive technology

There's an interesting article at Slate about a couple of new books on the problems with assisted reproduction (IVF and other techniques).

The main current problem: the number of embryos which are often implanted has lead to a large rise in the number of multiple births, which tend to be bad for everyone (mothers, children and society.) There are also higher rates in IVF children of other odd medical conditions, and no one yet understands why.

The situation in Australia is summarised in a fairly recent Medical Journal of Australia article. It would seem that maybe only 30% of women here try a single embryo implant, and the rest go for double embryo transfer. This is despite the very significant health risks of having twins.

(The Slate article indicates that in America, some clinics may offer to implant 3 or even 4 embryos, which is pretty crazy really.)

I love technology, but have old fashioned views when it comes to reproduction. I can't quite reconcile how a country like Australia can have both an abortion rate of perhaps 80,000 or so per year, and around 5,000 births through IVF. There are clearly thousands of healthy embryos going to waste, while at the same time a relatively small proportion of women are going through expensive, painful and potentially dangerous treatment to have a child that stands a higher rate of illness than a naturally conceived one.

One final, slightly off the wall, point to make. I hope people have not forgotten about the 2001 study which indicated a very strong positive relationship between third party prayers and the success of IVF.

I had wondered why such a startling result was not the subject of follow up studies. However, it seems that the paper was pursued hard by a group associated with the Skeptical Inquirer, who pointed out the generally fraudulent activities of one of the authors. The skeptics attack is explained here. It is worth noting that it is based on guilt by association, rather than establishing how any fraud may actually have been done. (The skeptic's report seems also wrong where it indicates that the Journal of Reproductive Medicine removed the report from its website. It still seems to be there now, as shown by my link above.)

The skeptics also get a bit silly, I think, when they say that the head doctor of the study:

...was investigated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Human Subject Protections, because the researchers never got informed consent from the patients in the trial. Such misconduct is a serious violation of medical ethics and federal rules that were adopted to prevent the kind of atrocities that occurred in Nazi Germany and in the United States during the infamous Tuskeegee Syphilis Study.

Oh come on. What they were studying was something that could only have positive results if successful. Unless skeptics think that there is a risk that God punishes those hopeful women who were being prayed for, this is a pretty trivial issue, isn't it?

I would like to know if anyone else is going to do a similar study, but Googling has not brought up any quick answer to that.

If it was confirmed, it would certainly indicate that, if nothing else, God seems to like babies.

A problem with Starbucks

Bryan Appleyard has an amusing post about irritating people who effectively set up office in Starbucks. (I like the punchline especially.) Can't say that I have ever witnessed this behaviour in Brisbane, but then I don't like Starbucks and rarely visit them.

As far as I can tell, most Australians think Starbucks coffee is not great. I am no great fan of the beverage, but I really like a medium size Very Vanilla Chiller from Gloria Jeans. The GJ franchise just seems a lot more relaxed and less pretentious than Starbucks, too.

Do black holes exist at all?

Could black holes be portals to other universes? - space - 27 April 2007 - New Scientist Space

I missed this last week. Seems that maybe it is hard to tell a black hole from a wormhole.

This is also relevant to the issue of micro black holes. As the article says:

And there might be a way to test the conjecture. Some physicists say that future particle accelerator experiments could produce microscopic black holes (see Atom smasher may give birth to 'Black Saturns').

Such tiny black holes would emit measurable amounts of Hawking radiation, proving that they are black holes rather than wormholes. But if Solodukhin is right, and microscopic wormholes are formed instead, no such radiation would be expected. "In that case, you would actually see if it is a black hole or a wormhole," he says.

An added benefit of wormholes is that they could resolve the so-called black hole information paradox.

Is there any safety significance to a micro wormhole being created at CERN instead of a micro black hole? I suspect not, but it would good to have someone who knows more than a blogger from Brisbane saying it.

Charming

I've complained before about the dire quality of Road to Surfdom since Tim Dunlop handed over the reigns to the likes of Ken L and Aussie Bob.

It's not that it's just anti-Howard; the name calling is offensive. Have a look at the description Aussie Bob gives to ABC newsreader Juanita Phillips in his recent comment here.

Oh yes, the Left is full of respect for women.

Dunlop himself in a post felt free to use c**t for humourous effect, and his commenters were happy to follow suit. JF Beck also had a post on his site recently showing the sophisticated level of debate that Ken L exhibits when challenged. (I might have had something to do with that...)

Anyway, my point is that it's a pathetic site that is only saved from criticism by the Left by being on the Left.

More than you ever needed to know about duck anatomy

In Ducks, War of the Sexes Plays Out in the Evolution of Genitalia - New York Times

Who knew that duck's had such strange genitalia:

Dr. Brennan, a post-doctoral researcher at Yale University and the University of Sheffield, visits the sanctuary every two weeks to measure the phalluses of six species of ducks.

When she first visited in January, the phalluses were the size of rice grains. Now many of them are growing rapidly. The champion phallus from this Meller’s duck is a long, spiraling tentacle. Some ducks grow phalluses as long as their entire body. In the fall, the genitalia will disappear, only to reappear next spring.

Not much chance of a duck hiding his interest during summer.

Mad scientist at work?

One of my ongoing duties to my embarrassingly small readership is to keep an eye on arxiv.org and report on papers that I don't understand but which still seem important, or at least entertaining.

My latest find is a topical one for Australia. The extremely prolific Russian-American scientist Alexander Bolokin has a recent paper with two novel approaches to extracting water from the air in large quantities. The paper itself, in far from perfect English, is here.

The two ideas:

1. A 3 to 5 km high (!) and 200 m wide inflatable tube is erected and supported by wire cables. Moist air is heated at the bottom, rises up through the tube (drawn up by the wind shear at the top of the open tube.) Moisture condenses at high altitude, is collected and on its way back down is used to generate electricity (through a turbine at the base, I think he means.) He also has a wind turbine at the top, although one expects that this may be rather heavy and not be good for the balance of a 3 km high inflatable tube. Solar cells on the outside of the tube get a mention too.

As I will explain below, Bolokin has a real fondness for high inflateable towers as potential tourist attractions, and this tower also has elevators and tourism built into the concept.

How much water does he think this will produce? About 224,000 Kilolitres a day. According to the Courier Mail, the south east region of Queensland was currently still using about 700 megalitres a day. So one tower does not do away with the need for rain entirely, but would make up a very reliable big percentage of daily use.

2. The second idea is to pump moist surface air through a tube beneath the sea to a depth of perhaps 30 m, where (so he says) the water temperature is 5 - 10 degrees. I assume water is then condensed out too, but the details of this method seem poorly explained compared to the big tower. Certainly, though, the engineering involved in getting air down to 30 m below sea level sound a lot less daunting than getting it up a tube 3 km high.

You can't accuse him of not thinking big, at least.

But is he making any sense at all?

One of his other recent ideas is for an inflatable space elevator filled with electron gas. His "electrostatic mast" would simply be built from the ground up, up to 36,000 km high or more. (Actually, he says that current strength materials would allow one to be built up to 500 km high; bigger ones require new material, I think.)

Bolokin notes that a feature of such a tower would be the "entertainment and observation platform", although he does not specify at what dizzying height this could be.

One other idea he mentions:

The airship from the thin film filled by an electron gas has 30% more lift force then conventional dirigible filled by helium. (2) Electron dirigible is significantly cheaper then same helium dirigible because the helium is very expensive gas. (3) One does not have problem with changing the lift force because no problem to add or to delete the electrons.

So, while he appears to have done sane enough work in past, has Bolokin jumped the shark with these ideas? Or is the future really inflatable?

Current movie dross

It's good to see Quentin Tarantino having a certified flop. His main oeuvre of ironic dark splatter fun has never appealed to me, and (dare I say it, because he does have his intelligent defenders) has always seemed to me to be the work of an immature man made primarily for immature men.

There are worse films around, though, and it always surprises me that the surge in misogynistic horror (including Australia's own recent entry - "Wolf Creek") has been attracting an audience, but little in the way of public outcry. The Guardian has a good article about this disturbing trend. You would have thought that even "third wave" feminists might have been more vocal about this, but it seems to attract very little attention, apart from the odd scathing review.

Even without the misogynistic element, I just don't get horror generally. Tension and scares are fine, enjoyable even, but a desire to see the blood and guts and body bits dismembered - what exactly is the appeal? Give me Hitchcock and a knife in the back any day over a realistic depiction of decapitation.

Reviewing the flat earth

It’s a mad old world-Arts & Entertainment-Books-History-TimesOnline

This looks like an interesting book, covering the history of the idea of the earth being flat. It was not as common an idea as some people seem to think:

....it’s really quite stupid and credulous of us now to believe that most medieval people thought Columbus would fall off the edge of the world. They could see as well as you or I that a ship disappears over the horizon after a few miles, or that during a lunar eclipse, the shadow of the earth on the moon is round. Duh. There was “no mutiny of flat-earth sailors on the Santa Maria”.

Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, St Augustine and Bede were all firm “globularists”, in Garwood’s pleasing neologism, while Newton refined things still further by showing that we really lived on an “oblate spheroid” (the earth bulges in the middle, to you and me).

More on evidence of psychosis and marijuana

BBC NEWS | Health | Cannabis 'disrupts brain centre'

This report indicates that some very specific experiments with THC should really be putting the final nail in the coffin of the the arguments against there being cause and effect between marijuana use and schizophrenia.

Also, it notes that:

Experts are concerned that street cannabis is becoming increasingly potent. It is thought that average THC content has risen from 6% to 12% in recent years.

This increase in potency is highly disputed by some, but I presume "the experts" do have some proper basis for the claim.

An increase in THC sounds to me like a more plausible explanation for the danger of hydroponically grown marijuana, rather than it being due to the pesticides and other chemicals used while it is growing.

Hitchens on George

George Tenet's disgraceful new book. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

Christopher thinks little, to put it mildly, of George Tenet's claims of being scapegoated over Iraq.

Japan, Sex and History

Japan's love affairs with sex | The Japan Times Online

This essay is not particularly well written, but contains enough semi-sordid educational material that it is worth reading.

For example, the founding myth of Japan has the first two deities as a husband and wife:

A charming account of their courtship follows, in which the god and goddess shyly discover each other's sexual parts and Izanagi declares:

"I wish to unite this source-place of my body to the source-place of thy body.''

Their first offspring were islands; then came a profusion of gods and goddesses, one of whom was Amaterasu, the sun goddess.

I wonder if that "source-place of my body" line works in bars in Japan today.

Hitchens' religion series

For those who haven't already noticed, Slate is running excerpts from Christopher Hitchen's new anti-religion book.

Of course, I don't agree with his thesis, but he at least promises to be a wittier and less irritating writer on the topic than the likes of Dawkins. (His preconceptions clearly influence even his literary judgement though; in the first extract he dismisses CS Lewis as a "dreary" apologist! Lewis may have flaws in some of his arguments, but a "dreary" writer he surely isn't.)

A couple of the extracts are already interesting: those summarising the foundation of Islam and Mormonism (and looking at the similarities between the two.)

Given our proximity in time to the founding of Mormonism, it is remarkable how that church is successful in light of the (relative) ease of investigation into the circumstances of its creation. (Of course, the Church of Scientology is an even more puzzling success.)

On the move in and out of Iraq

Comment is free: Iraq's refugee crisis

That there has been very large population displacement within and out of Iraq is clear. With such large population shifts, it's a wonder that there is not more regional multinational interest in helping end the turmoil. However, as the article notes:

Two million Iraqi refugees are scattered around the region, the great majority of them in Jordan and Syria, with smaller numbers in Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt. Because they are urban refugees - not housed in tents, but rather blending in with the local population in the host countries - they are easily ignored.

I guess that the countries who are most interested in the internal situation in Iraq (I presume, Iran and Saudi Arabia) don't have many refugees and see it as not their problem.

The Tablet reports that things are not going well for the remaining Christians in Iraq either:

Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk warned that attacks on Christians by radical Islamic groups, previously localised in sectors of cities such as Baghdad and Mosul, had now spread across the country, even into areas previously considered a safe haven for Christians.

"In Iraq Christians are dying, the Church is disappearing under continued persecution, threats and violence carried out by extremists who are leaving us no choice: conversion or exile," said the Chaldean archbishop.

Radical Sunni groups in areas of Baghdad were threatening local Christians with violence unless they paid a jizya, or "donation", towards the insurgency, immediately converted to Islam, or handed over their homes and fled the country, Archbishop Sako said...

Ten of Baghdad's 80 Christian churches have closed since 2003. Fifty thousand Iraqis are fleeing the country each month, according to the UN. While they make up 5 per cent of the population, Christians constitute 40 per cent of those fleeing.

Radical Sunnis are such a likeable bunch.

Update: Tigerhawk has a long and interesting post about a talk given by Lawrence Wright, who seems to know what he is talking about when it comes to al Qaeda. Good reading.

Just strange

BBC NEWS | Europe | Dutchman's Noah's ark opens doors:

A half-sized replica of the biblical Noah's Ark has been built by a Dutch man, complete with model animals.

Dutch creationist Johan Huibers built the ark as testament to his literal belief in the Bible.

The ark, in the town of Schagen, is 150 cubits long - half the length of Noah's - and three storeys high. A cubit was about 45cm (18in) long.

The ark opened its doors on Saturday, after almost two years' construction, most of it by Mr Huiber himself.

Al Gore should have been invited to the opening too.

Cranking up the insincerity

Rudd silent on economy, says PM. 27/04/2007. ABC News Online

Kevin Rudd has to resort to the patently silly forms of attack on conservative politics and the PM for the sound bites on TV tonight:

He says a Labor government would set a new standard.

"We stand for community, we stand for country, we stand for the planet," he said.

"By contrast, the conservatives stand for the three great ennobling values: me, myself and I."

Oh, bring me a bucket.

And as for Howard:

"Mr Howard doesn't really believe in a single idea which didn't appear on black and white television."

This is good in its own way. Resort to such platitudes, which we all know Rudd doesn't genuinely believe (he has the personal friendship with Joe Hockey to illustrate that,) means that he is should start to be seen as cranking up the insincerity for marketing purposes. He is thus shown to be just another politician, which may be the start of of a drop in his puzzling popularity.

Speaking of insincerity, Tony Jones on Lateline last night, interviewing a Kevin Rudd who seemed to me to be unusually giggly, missed a golden opportunity in this section:

KEVIN RUDD: ...... Mr Howard's not interested. We could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, I'm advised, by up to 30 per cent by affecting, by implementing, such an effective demand-side management approach. And lastly, what do we do about clean coal and what do we do about hybrid cars and those sorts of things? We've got clear cut policies on the table for the future. What do we get from Mr Howard? Resounding silence, because he's rooted in the past.

What you do, Kevin, if you really believe in them, is drive one yourself. (Not that Tony Jones made that rejoinder).

More Ehrenreich scepticism

Scotsman.com Living - Books - Party, party, party

This is a good sceptical review of Barbara Ehrenreich's book "Dancing in the Streets" that I mentioned a few posts ago.

Strange goings on in Italy

After a flurry of cases in the 1980's, things have been pretty quiet in Britain and the USA recently with regards to claims of satanic child abuse. However, it has made an appearance again in Italy:

Three women teachers were among six people arrested yesterday accused of sedating and sexually abusing children as young as 3 at a school near Rome.

The teachers — two of whom are grandmothers who had taught at the school and at Sunday school for decades — are said to have part in the repeated abuse of 15 children aged 3 and 5 for a year, filming them in sexual acts with satanic overtones at the teachers’ homes and in a wood.

Even the parish priest defends the accused:

Ottavio Coletta, the Mayor of Rignano Flaminio, said that the town of 8,000 people was enveloped in “a poisonous climate of hatred and vendetta”, and Father Erri Rocchi, the parish priest, said he still believed the teachers were the victims of “malicious tongues”. He said that the women were church-goers and taught at Sunday school.

Unless there is actual video evidence, the odds of eventual acquittal for the accused would have to be extremely high.

Attention space cadets

NASA's Mission to the Moon: How We'll Go Back — and Stay This Time - Popular Mechanics

The current issue of Popular Mechanics at the newsagents in Australia has a cover story about the planning at NASA for the return to the Moon. Happily, it is already on line.

Good reading!

Criminal law reform

To serve justice, you have to get past all the babble - Opinion - smh.com.au

Richard Ackland returns to the issue of reform of the criminal justice system in his column today. Worth reading, even though I suspect that 90% of lawyers in Australia are very resistant to any serious change in this area. (I am just pulling figures out the air, but I would like to see some proper research on this.)

Problem not solved

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Despair stalks Baghdad as plan falters

Just so I can't be accused of ignoring bad news from Iraq, this assessment of the grim picture in Baghdad still, I reckon, supports my view that the "get out now" crowd are the ones who would hurt Iraqis more if they got their way.

The ridiculously complicated games of Iraq

Despite his rhetoric, Sadr needs U.S. - for now - International Herald Tribune

This article explains the complications caused in Iraq by Moktada al-Sadr's ever changing (and often contradictory) actions in Iraq.

It seems extremely unfortunate that such a character has a stage on which to strut.

Meanwhile, it is disturbing to see what passes for sensible commentary on the increasingly deranged Road to Surfdom. Ken really feels for the citizens of Iraq (no issue there), but lets this wave of emotion lead him to say the following:

Yet millions of Australians and tens of millions of Americans, people of ordinary intelligence and goodwill, accept all this being done in their name with the complacent justification that the Iraqis are better off than they were under Saddam, or that the known tragedies associated with the occupation pale into insignificance compared to the tragedies that are predicted to accompany any withdrawal – even though the consequences of withdrawal are unknowable and the gates of hell forecasts are made by people who have a blatant vested interest in the occupation continuing.

So, what is more immoral? Leaving now, even against the wishes of a rabid anti-American like al-Sadr (see article above)? Or trying to assist in the prevention of the sectarian violence between civilians, which is clearly what most of the death is now about?

It is possible that an immediate withdrawal might mean that the country settles down in a shorter period, but in all likelihood only at the cost of a dramatic rise in death, displacement and mayhem first. (Who wouldn't expect a serious partition attempt if the US left right now, and who expects that it could be done without large loss of life?) It is quite ridiculous to suggest this view is only promoted by those with "vested interests" in America staying there.

What it comes down to is this: Ken prefers the idea of gambling with the lives of civilians, rather than see something in place that is specifically designed to help protect them. I don't see how you can seriously argue that staying there for now is not the moral thing to do.

UPDATE: a column in The Guardian also takes up the point of the complicated and often duplicitous actions of all the major Middle Eastern players in Iraq. It is well worth reading, but the general point is that many parties who claim to want the US out of there are just posturing. They actually want America to stay, at least for the time being.

Not everything said in this analysis might be accurate, but overall it sounds fairly plausible. It certainly indicates why, contrary to the normal expectation of Western democracy, the opinion of the people in Iraq on this is not something is deserving of enforcement at the moment.

UPDATE 2: Diogenes Lamp posts about a funny/serious letter to The Age about the silliness of comparing Iraq to the V-Tech killings.

War bride stories for ANZAC Day

The 7.30 Report - ABC

This year, the fate of Australian war brides has been getting a lot of attention. Last night's story on 7.30 Report (link above) was a pretty charming interview with a couple of WWII war brides from Australia who ended up in America. (The sprightly 90 year old was nicer than the other one, but she did remind me somehow of Barry Humphries in drag.) Go have a look at the video.

There's also a recent book out (Swing By Sailor) about 669 war brides who went to England in 1946 on a semi-converted British aircraft carrier. This Bulletin article summarises the story:

If any of the brides was apprehensive about what lay ahead, she tried not to show it when the ship left on July 3, 1946. It had cost £16,000 to convert the aircraft-carrier to house 700 women, crew and demobbed sailors, a total of 1854 on board. Berths and bathrooms replaced aircraft hangars; a soda fountain, cinema and even a hairdressing salon were installed. But, writes Dyson, Captain John Annesley "had no idea how unruly a warship of brides could be".

"One of the captain's first talks was about sex not rearing its ugly head on his ship," recalls Monk. Even before the ship had left the Heads, however, there was "carrying on", she says, hooting with laughter. "It was like a smorgasbord to some of the girls - so many lusty young men available."

Hey - I thought it was about going to be with your new spouses! Just goes to show that images of a prime and proper pre-1960's world of sexual behaviour are far from accurate. Also, it sounds like Sydney may have had somewhat of a gay reputation even then:

Edna Wroe met her husband Eddie Monk in front of a jukebox at Playland arcade on Pitt Street. He was blond, blue-eyed and in a tight-fitting sailor's uniform, she says, and "if I wasn't fending the girls off, it was the guys trying to pick him up".

But back to this sex voyage:

As the ship entered warmer climes and the women sunbathed on deck, forbidden liaisons multiplied so quickly that "chastity rounds" were instituted. Monk was one of a dozen women whose husbands were travelling with them. Finding a "nookie hole" proved difficult, she says, because everywhere "was already occupied. Our secret spot was in one of the gun turrets. Being a gunner, Eddie knew".

All this fun can its consequences, though:

Word got back to some of the waiting husbands of affairs between their wives-to-be and crew. Telegrams would arrive saying, "Don't come. You're not wanted". Those who received no letters from their husbands began to wonder if anyone would be there to meet them. Indeed, some Aussie war brides were left stranded; others slipped away with their newfound British sailor boyfriends.

I also heard on Radio National recently a repeat of a documentary about Japanese war brides in Australia. It was very good, but there appears to be no audio or transcript available. The culture shock of moving from Japan to, say, Canberra at that time (as I seem to recall one of them did) must have been enormous.

These are not stories of great hardship, compared to what goes on during war itself, but as social history related to war, it's all very interesting in its own right.

Back to the drawing board

Hamas Says Truce With Israel Is Over - New York Times

Never forgets

Tim Blair has a mind like a steel trap, doesn't he? It often surprises me how he remembers examples of hypocrisy from years ago.

About happiness

It’s sad but Dionysian orgies ain’ t what they used to be--David Aaronovitch-TimesOnline

This is a pretty interesting article on the (apparent) state of unhappiness in Britain now. It also casts a sceptical eye over the recent book by Barbara Ehrenreich which proposes as follows:

It is Ehrenreich’s contention that one significant factor in modern depression has been the suppression, over time, of communal rituals and festivals. And, in particular, the suppression of those events in which human beings collectively gave themselves over to ecstasy.

While initially sounding plausible, there are reasons to be sceptical of this theory. For example, Aaronovitch writes:

If it were possible to apply Ehrenreich’s analysis to the here and now, we should expect to find that those countries most influenced by Calvinism would be the most depressed and unhappy. And what we find is the exact opposite.

One of the comments at the end of the article also notes:

Isn't happinness something that arises within the human heart which subsequently organises parties? The argument of the article is that you organise events in order to generate happinness. Have a party, get slightly hammered, and then you'll get more of a feel-good glow. Well, we've had more and more of that in our city centres over the last ten years and the result, apparently, is less joy.

Oddly, despite pointing out reasons to be sceptical, Aaronovitch still seems to end up thinking that more communal partying is part of the answer:

We need more revelries. We need less anti-fun Nimbyism and more bonfire nights, street parties, open-air samba classes, Olympic Gameses, London Marathons, local carnivals, park concerts, Demis Roussos and raves.

Raves! Surely 10 hours of "doof doof" music at deafening volume is only made enjoyable by the attendees being under the influence of powerful illicit chemicals. (Alcohol alone being inadequate to the task.) Then those who get through the night on ecstasy are likely to have a downer when they come off the drug. No, amateur fiddling with brain chemicals is not a likely path to increased communal happiness.

But before I leave Aaronovitch , I do like this reminder of the extremes of some past communal celebrations:

Today the casualty of a rave might come to in a lockup minus his dignity and his watch. When the Anatolian cult of Cybele came to Rome in the 2nd century BC, its wild celebrations were marked — at their height — by members of the priesthood cutting off their own testicles. You can imagine waking up in the morning, asking yourself whether last night’s revels had really happened, and then looking down.

They don't make clergy like they used to.

People like Andrew Norton know a lot more about happiness research than I do, and it is a mildly interesting topic. But it should never be taken very seriously. I suspect it's like quantum physics; the attempt at observing probably changes what you are looking at anyway.

Great moments in prison administration

BBC NEWS | Americas | False fax allows US prison escape

A prisoner in the US state of Kentucky was mistakenly freed after a phoney fax ordering his release was sent from a nearby grocery store.

Ridicule invited

Sheryl Crow's view on toilet paper: one sheet a visit | News | Guardian Unlimited Music

The most surprising paragraph from this article is at the end:

Crow's environmental opinions are not limited to toilet paper. She also believes paper napkins "represent the height of wastefulness", while she has designed a clothing line which features a detachable "dining sleeve" that wearers can use to wipe their mouth while eating.

She is truly God's gift to comedy writers.

Bad news for Pete

PM gains, but Rudd leads - National - theage.com.au

The Age reports:

People were asked to imagine Peter Costello was PM and then quizzed a second time on how they would vote. Labor's two-party lead rose to 61 to 39 per cent. Asked whether they would prefer Mr Rudd or Mr Costello as PM, an overwhelming 60 per cent preferred Mr Rudd, to 32 per cent for Mr Costello.

I have never really understood Costello's unpopularlity. He doesn't seem to me any more insincere than your average politician, and the media who spend time around him seem to think well enough of him. It's hard to criticise his job as treasurer. He's nowhere near as demeaning to others in his parliamentary performance as Keating was; in any event, Keating showed that nasty headkicking can have an appreciative audience.

So why is he still unpopular?

The household gas chamber

Lucy Siegle: How can I evict house mice? | Magazine | The Observer

From this story one can learn the PETA recommended way to kill a mouse in the house:

...Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) recommends a mousetrap that actually kills the animal, and gave the Radar (Rodent Activated Detection and Riddance device) an award last year. This is allegedly the world's smartest mouse trap: when a mouse trips it, the doors close and a tiny canister releases carbon dioxide. In 10 seconds the mouse is out cold, in 60 it's dead. The device then sends an email to a pest controller - all 'without any toxins going into the environment', boasts Rentokil.

I am sorely tempted to wonder out loud if they are manufactured in Germany, but that would be cruel.

(And anyway, they appear to have been developed in England. Damn!)

UPDATE: It also occurs to me that having such a device in your house must provide one of the most peculiar pretences you could ever use to get out of a date or meeting you were not enjoying: (After checking at your e-mail on your mobile device): "oh, sorry, must rush home, the mousetrap has just emailed me that it has caught something."

Some China reading

A few weeks ago, I noted that there seemed to be some pretty compelling reasons to be pessimistic about China's economy. If there was something fundamentally flawed in what Friedman says, I would like to hear the explanation.

On the issue of potential political instability, there have been a few articles around this week of interest. First, this one (reprinted from the WSJ by the looks) paints a glum picture of the potential for reform:

Many in the West think that Chinese growth has created an independent middle class that will push for greater political freedom. But what exists in China, Mr. Mao argues, is not a traditional middle class but a class of parvenus, newcomers who work in the military, public administration, state enterprises or for firms ostensibly private but in fact Party-owned.

The Party picks up most of the tab for their mobile phones, restaurant bills, "study" trips abroad, imported luxury cars and lavish spending at Las Vegas casinos. And it can withdraw these advantages at any time. In March, China announced that it would introduce individual property rights for the parvenus (though not for the peasants). They will now be able to pass on to their children what they have acquired—another reason that they aren't likely to push for the democratization of the regime that secures their status.

Earlier in the article, it notes that the size of the middle class as follows:

...200 million of China's subjects, fortunate to work for an expanding global market, are increasingly enjoying a middle-class standard of living. The remaining one billion, however, are among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services.

The New Yorker, meanwhile, runs a lengthy article on a political prisoner. It's a pretty interesting read that covers a lot of Chinese modern history.

Finally, China continues in the tradition of nations founded as worker's paradises which have appalling workers' safety standards. Today's news is of a particularly gruesome accident:

At least 32 workers were killed and two injured today when they were buried in white-hot molten steel at a metal factory in North East China, officials said.

The mishap was triggered when a 30-tonne-capacity steel ladle sheared off from the blast furnace, spilling liquid metal onto the factory floor three metres below.

The molten steel engulfed an adjacent room where workers had gathered for a routine shift change, the State Work Safety Administration said.

An exam to remember

Indian teachers 'purify' students with cow urine - World - theage.com.au

Extract:

The Times of India reported yesterday that upper-caste headteacher Sharad Kaithade ordered the ritual after taking over from a lower-caste predecessor at a school in a remote village in the western state of Maharashtra earlier this month.

He told an upper-caste colleague to spray cow urine in a cleansing ceremony as the students were taking an examination, wetting their faces and their answer sheets, the newspaper said.

"She said you'll study well after getting purified," student Rajat Washnik was quoted as saying by the CNN-IBN news channel. Students said they felt humiliated.

Wittier readers than me can supply their own wisecracks.

Evil under discussion

Thought Experiments : The Blog: Evil

Go to the link for a thoughtful blog discussion underway about the concept of evil. (It's in Bryan Appleyard's pleasantly eclectic blog, which is worth checking daily.)

Accidental deaths of WWII

The friendly fires of hell | Jerusalem Post

This article tells the tragic story of 7,000 odd concentration camp inmates accidentally killed in the very last days of World War II.

(As the article notes, it may have been the intention of the Nazis that they all drown anyway, but it is still somewhat embarrassing that it was the British attack that did the job.)

You can learn something new every day.

I don't understand ...

Janet Elder - On Polling - Campaign 2008 - New York Times

This article points out that President Bush has significantly higher support in polls amongst the under 30's than he does with those over 60.

They also support the Iraq war more strongly, and the same age group did the same even during much of the Vietnam war, apparently.

Very odd, is all I can say.

Some Virginia Tech commentary

For some well worth reading blog commentary on the Virginia Tech killings, there are a couple of good posts by Former Spook. As you might expect, Neo-Neocon writes well about it too.

The uncertainties of psychiatry

NEJM -- Treatment of Bipolar Depression

This editorial from the New England Journal of Medicine talks about recent studies on the use of antidepressants for bipolar disorder (the manic/depressive illness). This is of some interest to me because I have recently been reading at work psychiatric reports on someone who was initially diagnosed with this.

It would appear that American psychiatrists don't like to give anti-depressants for it because they believe it increases the risk of manic episodes. Apparently, European psychs don't worry about this much, and a recent study seemingly backing them up. However, the editorial questions whether this is a valid conclusion from the study.

This strikes me as odd: that there are different schools of thought depending on which continent your psychiatrist works.

Given that bipolar and anti-depressants have both been around for a long time, I would have thought that such an issue would have been sorted out long ago.

Instead, you get the feeling that, to a large extent, psychiatric patients are treated by trial and error, with individual biases not necessarily supported by studies playing a significant role.

Everyone should keep their fingers crossed for their continuing mental health.

Hey you!

This has been one of those weeks when I think my posts are particularly entertaining or interesting. As usual, this means no one makes a comment, at all.

At other times, I make a quick post that I don't think particularly well done, and someone at the top of the blogging chain links to it and I get hundreds of "drop-ins" for a couple of days before going back to a normal 30 - 40 hits a day. (OK, that has only happened a few times.)

Blogging is a weird game. Good thing I amuse myself, I guess.

Out there

news @ nature.com - Physicists bid farewell to reality? -Quantum mechanics just got even stranger.

This is not that easy to follow - understanding quantum non-locality never was. I can't even summarise it well, and news@nature stories aren't available for long. Just go and read it if it is your thing.

I wonder whether non-realistic understandings of the quantum world lend credence to the idea that the universe is a simulation running on someone else's (God's?) uber-computer? It only needs to "render" something when someone is looking at it.

Don't leave home without it

'Deflector' shields could protect future astronauts - space - 18 April 2007 - New Scientist Space

More on research into using plasma shields to protect astronauts from radiation. Good to see.

While we are talking about English history..

The past was a stinker | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books

This book review of "Hubbub - Filth, Noise & Stench in England" was re-printed in the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of weeks ago. It sounds like an amusingly appalling read. An extract:

Cockayne has dug deep into the archives and come up with a hundred little snatches of story that show ordinary people bustling about their business and taking care not to step in something nasty. Mostly they don't succeed. The walls of domestic dwellings in the 17th century were routinely bulked out by shit shipped from "the necessary house" and quite likely to dissolve into a nasty goo when the rains came down. One authority noted that few homes outlasted the ground lease of 50 years or so, while one German visitor wondered out loud whether he should venture into the street during a violent storm in 1775 "lest the house should fall in, which is no rare occurrence in London". "Kennels", or drainage ditches, were mostly bunged up with everything from brassica stalks to dead babies, and it was a good idea to carry a stick in case there were any rampaging pigs about (market days got them especially jumpy).

Inside was not much better. In 1756 Harrop's Manchester Mercury advertised a book that claimed to get rid of all household vermin, including "adders, badgers, birds, catterpillers [sic], earwigs, fish, flies, foxes, frogs, gnats, Mice, otters, Pismires [ants], Pole-cats, Rabbits, Rats, Snakes, Scorpions, snails, spiders, Toads, Wasps, Weasels, ... Moles, Worms ... Buggs [sic], Lice, & Fleas &c".

Fish were "household vermin"? Maybe it means silverfish.