Strange science time

I mentioned recently that it seems that the creation of "naked singularities" (without the cloak of a black hole event horizon) at the Large Hadron Collider is considered a possibility. It seems that their creation via the same astrophysical process of gravitational collapse that leads to black holes is still being considered too.

This recent paper looks at the possibility that may account for some of the most powerfully energetic events in the universe. Here's some extracts:

Impulsive cosmic events combine two main puzzling features, namely an extremely short time of emission (order of a second) and a very high energy fluence. The main challenge therefore is to find a unique mechanism which allows at once for both properties.

The most impressive examples of the above type of events are the Gamma Ray Bursts. The total energy emitted can be as high as 1054 ergs, mostly concentrated in a pulse as short as a second. This amount of energy appears much more stunning if we think to it as being the energy emitted in a second-long pulse by 1010 galaxies each made of 1011 Sun-like stars, each emitting at a rate of ∼ 1033 ergs/sec., concentrated in a region probably smaller than a galactic core!

OK, I knew Gamma Ray Bursts were powerful, but that just sounds ridiculous. I wonder how far away from one you have to be in order to stand any chance of survival?

The paper goes on to explain that naked singularities comprise a Cosmic Time Machine, which, if I understand it correctly, can beam out huge amounts of energy from the the past and future. The author believes that these may account for some (all?) Gamma Ray Bursts.

Still, there seems to be a limit on how long the burst can last (luckily!):

Evidently the longer a naked singularity lasts as such the more luminous will be the burst because longer is the future development which will be ”compressed” by the time inversion and therefore more are the photons which will contribute to the prompt emission. This mechanism may lead to undesirable bursts of infinite intensity! Naked singularities however appear to prevent this circumstance. It is well established that a naked singularity decays to a black hole.

For the possibility of naked singularities being created right here on Earth, maybe late next year at the LHC, go see the paper extracted at my previous post here.

I presume that astrophysical naked singularities may be very, very different from the ones formed at the LHC, but as I said in my last post, it would be nice to see the possible consequences of having then in Europe clearly addressed.

The X ray bag

Found over at Red Ferret Journal, try taking this bag on board your next flight, especially if it's to the USA:


As the witty guy who writes for RFJ says:

The X-Ray Bag is guaranteed to raise a chuckle at the airport security line, oh yes. They’ll be laughing and smiling and pointing you out as a really interesting and funny person. Heck, they may even invite you home to meet the family when you get back from your trip. Or you’ve paid the bail money. Either way, it’s a wonderful way to meet people and make new friends.

A very unlucky person

Paintball Accident Made Him a Widower, and Then a Crusader - New York Times

In 2004, a husband and wife took their 10 year old son to a paintball park, but then this happened:

A 14-year-old player inadvertently detached a valve, launching his gun’s carbon-dioxide-filled cylinder as an unguided missile. It struck Ms. Contois, who was watching from a picnic area off the field, in the back of the head. She never regained consciousness, and died at the scene.

It is hard to credit just how unlucky she would have to be to die that way.

The Eddie Elephant in the Room (a TV rant)

So, Channel 9's new TV boss David Gyngell thinks that putting back Eddie McGuire into a super rich, super long, version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire is a good idea?

Funny, I seem to recall that when the show used to offer a paltry million bucks, it was dragged out from 60 to about 80 minutes most nights. A $5 million prize will likely mean a purported 80 minutes ends in 120 minutes. Why not just say it will be three hours then let it run right through to Today?

Although "Millionaire" maybe used to rate well enough, I have a general theory that Channel 9's problems really began when Eddie started appearing more on screen (not just when he tried his hand at management.)

I have always found him an unappealing screen personality who gives me the strong impression that he is likely a jerk in real life too. The impression was reinforced when I read in a review of "Who Killed Channel 9" that his sophisticated sense of humour included this:

When the producers walked into McGuire's office, according to Cress' diary, "Eddie is standing with his back to us, feet splayed apart and his hands firmly on the desk. 'From what I've heard about you guys, I guess I'm going to have to assume the position' ".

Cress comments: "I always suspect that someone who begins a business meeting trying to put you at ease with a man-joke is probably leading up to something less funny."

Anyway, everyone knows how Gyngell could revive Channel 9. Everyone.

Here's the new promo: Channel 9: The One that Won't Stuff You Around

Yes indeed, absolutely everyone knows that the crucial problem with most commercial television in Australia for the last, I don't know, 5 or more years, is that they decided to STUFF EVERYONE AROUND.

Do I need to spell it out? How many series are now run from episode 1 to even episode 10 without a 2, 3 or 4 week hiatus (possibly more than one,) during which there may or may not be old episodes from the same series 3 years ago, as well as at least one a change in the time-slot. (And that may be from sometime vaguely reasonable to something completely unreasonable.)

And how about this for another radical idea: programming will follow age appropriate times. I'm not talking MA shows after 8.30 pm either. No, the most astoundingly puzzling programming I have seen for years is the two English antique shows (Bargain Hunt and Antiques Roadshow) being shown on Nine between 5 and 6pm. What the hell? This doesn't count as a show with any conceivable general family interest: certainly it would send children running screaming from the room. Has Nine decided that it must help parents by running these moribund shows so as to convince primary schoolers they can then do their homework before dinner at 6? And the people in retirement villages who may want to watch it are probably in the dining room eating at 5.30 anyway.

All Gyngell has to do, apart from "boning" McGuire permanently, is to announce that, of all the commercial TV in Australia, Channel 9 will be the only one now to show series for a full, continuous season, with no weeks of interrupting repeats, and a guarantee of (at most, and only if it is truly deserved) one timeslot change per show per year.

(And Antiques Roadshow will not be shown, but a special DVD set will be send to the half dozen people who have been watching it.)

Car park terrorist

New Scientist Technology Blog: Hybrid cars: Too damned quiet?

The post above is about the issue of the potential danger of silent hybrid cars (well, at least until their petrol motor kicks in.) Should they make some sound when in electric mode?

I don't think this commenter was joking when she wrote this:

Personally, I find it great fun to drive around underground car parks in 'stealth' (electric only) mode, creeping up behind people with laden shopping trolleys and gaggles of screaming kiddies, and scaring them out of their wits.

On the open road I haven't hit any pedestrians - blind or otherwise - yet, but have nearly collected a couple of cyclists who didn't look, or signal, before changing lanes.

But seriously, I think education is the answer. Everyone, from littlies learning to cross the road, up has to learn to rely on their eyes and not just their ears. As for the blind - they should be able to feel the vibrations and hear the slight 'crunching' sound the tyres make on most paved surfaces. I've had to learn that pedestrians and cyclists aren't necessarily aware of my presence and are likely to try and throw themselves under my wheels.

Hitchens and a death in Iraq

A Death in the Family: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com

Christopher Hitchens writes very well about his dealings with the family of a young man killed in Iraq who had cited Hitchens as inspiring him to enlist.

Model

Recognize this?

The Japanese cartoon ran in Australia in the 70's. It's Space Cruiser Yamato, and this model was one of the fiddliest I've ever taken glue to. The boy is impressed, though.

Famous last words

Wild Thing: Books: The New Yorker

The oddest thing I learned from the above article about the (generally dislikeable) ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev was that his last words were "Moby Dick". Not quite in the "Rosebud" league, is it?

Mark that one down for your next trivia competition.

Sounds interesting

How I faked it for the Nazis - Times Online

There's a movie on the way about a large scale Nazi counterfeiting operation. Sounds an interesting story, even if changed somewhat for the film.

He's right

Guardian Unlimited: God knows where all the religious novels went

Being quite the fan of Evelyn Waugh and CS Lewis, I agree.

As it happens, I have never tried Graham Greene, but will get around to him one day.

Yes, novels informed by a Catholic or quasi-Catholic sensibility are hard to come by these days.

Getting better

Sony Unveils Second Edition of Reader Digital Book

I don't think the first one was even released in Australia.

In any case, the features of this second version sound considerably improved.

Katz on Gillard (or so he wishes)

Rudd's right-hand woman is one foxy lady - Opinion - theage.com.au

I haven't recommended a Danny Katz column for a while, but this one is quite funny.

Update: I have noticed that, whenever I recommend a Danny Katz column, I seem to get quite a few visits from someone in Melbourne who is Googling his name. Does Mr Katz spend every Thursday searching for comments on his latest column? Not that there would be anything wrong with that, but if it's you, D Katz, just make a comment here, or send me a carton of wine as a reward for saying nice things about your writing. I probably increase your readership by at least 2 or 3!

A good point...

This link is to a post by Bryan Appleyard, which leads to his review of a book which claims to take a scientific approach to showing that something like a "soul" exists.

The book may be of interest, but I liked this first comment to the post, as it seems to me quite true:

One thing that intrigues and baffles me as a non-scientist observing this latest fad in materialist determinism is how enthusiastic, sanguine and comfortable modern "brights" have become with this stuff. Not so long ago, when guys like Sartre ruled the roost, atheistic materialism was supposed to be terrifying and only for the stalwart--remember all that stuff about having the near superhuman courage to stare into the abyss of nothingness? Now everybody seems to be having a big party scorning that scary old free will, and religion is positively terrifying.

More things I didn't know

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Volcano erupts on Red Sea island

Hey, it's quite an extensive list really (the things I don't know), but the fact that there are any volcanoes in the Red Sea could have been included until this story broke.

Having heard the report, I wondered whether anyone had ever speculated that volcanoes in that area might have something to do with some Old Testament stories.

And, of course, Google quickly reveals that someone has suggested it already. (Jeez, don't you hate how it's getting harder and harder to even imagine that you have had an original thought since the internet came along.)

Anyhow, Colin Humphreys has suggested that Mt Sinai was an active volcano at the time Moses was hanging around there. Go have a read of his few pages from Google books (at the last link) and see if it sounds credible. (I suppose we should be asking geologists too, but they might ruin an otherwise plausible idea.)

Hitchens on China

Burma's foul regime depends on Beijing.

Christopher Hitchens points out the number of bad regimes that China supports, and it's very many indeed:

Is there an initiative to save the un-massacred remains of the people of Darfur? It will be met by a Chinese veto. Does anyone care about Robert Mugabe treating his desperate population as if it belonged to him personally? China is always ready to help him out. Are the North Koreans starved and isolated so that a demented playboy can posture with nuclear weapons? Beijing will give the demented playboy a guarantee. How long can Southeast Asia bear the shame and misery of the Burmese junta? As long as the embrace of China persists. The identity of Tibet is being obliterated by the deliberate importation of Chinese settlers. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man who claims even to know and determine the sex lives of his serfs (by the way, the very essence of totalitarianism), is armed and financed by China.

A fantasy economy

It's amusing to watch the catfight going on at Larvatus Prodeo about whether it is fair enough or not to say something so obvious to common sense like "ideally, it is better for children to have two parents rather than one."

That's "too sweeping" for Mark Bahnisch, who one suspects has never had children. (I would post that over at LP itself, but because I am questioning motivations and his personal experience of life, I suspect I would be in breach of its "be nice, unless it's conservatives" comments policy.)

Mark's problem is he doesn't like marriage as an institution at all, and (despite the thousands of studies showing the better life outcomes for children with two parents, and the fact that marriages last longer than de facto relationships), to start sounding like you might even be heading towards the suggestion that the old fuddy duddy idea of marriage is generally the best way to raise children is just too conservative in principle to contemplate.

But this comment by Mark really caught my eye:

Btw, personally, I support a guarenteed minimum income and I’m not in the slightest bit troubled by whether people choose to work, or surf, or bring up babies. In a society where the incentives are as strong as they are for most people, most will choose to work. But it doesn’t worry me in the slightest if people don’t, and how they choose to spend their lives.

Well, if anyone can ever find better evidence to show why we don't let sociologists run economies and countries, let me know!

UPDATE: more explanation from a later comment by Mark:

....the proposal is not for the minimal levels of benefits grudgingly payed now and hedged around with nasty conditions (= “responsibilities”) but rather either through direct income transfer or through a negative income tax for a generous level of income to go to all adults in society as of right. Interestingly, there’s more support for this among libertarians than social democrats these days, though it’s a classic social democratic policy - both in providing equality of opportunity with a big kick along and in refusing the notion that work is a good in and of itself and to be valued no matter what its nature.

In fact, because the entire bureaucracy of surveillance and punishment would be abolished, you could probably have lower taxes and still give everyone 20k a year or whatever. Just imagine - no centrelink, no dole diaries, no… this stuff is inordinately expensive.

Colour me skeptical, as maybe the libertarians at Catallaxy think this is a serious idea, but it still sounds very silly to me. It might be able to sold on novelty value to someone like Pauline Hanson, though. I'll email her straight away.

More delegation

Rudd vows to charge Iran leader | The Australian

From the report:

In a dramatic lift in diplomatic pressure on a bellicose and defiant Iran, Kevin Rudd has committed a Labor government to take "legal proceedings against President Ahmadinejad on a charge of incitement to genocide".

The Leader of the Opposition said the charge of incitement to genocide "could occur through the International Court of Justice on reference by the UN Security Council" because of Mr Ahmadinejad's public statements.

Oh yes, I can see Ahmadinejad being terrified of this prospect.

Really Kevin, this just makes you sound all the more committed to sending problems off to someone else to solve.

Corrigan's robots take over Brisbane (Port)

Yesterday I took the day off to do something vaguely entertaining with the family for the school holidays. This turned out to be a trip to the Port of Brisbane and the bayside suburbs. The end result: increased admiration for Chris Corrigan.

More astute readers with an interest in wharf productivity may already know this, but I had missed the fact that since the end of 2005, Patrick's Brisbane container terminal has been operating a "world first" automated system. You have to take the Port of Brisbane guided bus tour to understand what is going on ($27 for a family ticket, complete with rather laconic guide) but you can see a bit of how it works and it's pretty fascinating.

Most of the wharf area is fenced off, leaving it alone to 20 or so of the straddle carriers that formerly need people to drive them. The ones at Brisbane instead operate all on their own. Here's a photo to see what I mean (the red things are the straddle carriers):


From the bus, you can see trucks park inside a few bays to collect containers. The driver gets out and the autostrad (for this last little section of its task) comes under the control of a wharfie with a remote control. The container is lowered on the truck, which drives off, while the straddle carrier goes back onto the wharf area and finds its own way back to pick up another container.

Here's some more information about it from Patrick's website:

The automated 10-metre high, 65-tonne straddle carriers are fitted with sophisticated motion control and navigation systems which allow them to operate unmanned - moving and stacking containers from the quay, into holding yards, onto vehicles, and back to quay cranes with pin-point accuracy.

Unlike other automated systems, the AutoStrad moves freely on a 'virtual' computer-generated grid which can be applied to most existing terminal facilities and does not expensive capital works to install in-ground nodes or wires to operate.

Speaking at the official opening, Patrick Managing Director at the time Mr Chris Corrigan said when it was decided to set about trying to automate a fleet of massive 65-tonnes machines - even some involved in the project suspected it was an impossible task.

"Almost a decade later, the result is far beyond our expectations and represents an entirely new approach to terminal design," Mr Corrigan said.

According to Forkliftaction.com (a website I am only likely to visit once in my life!):

The AutoStrad system was developed by Patrick Technology & Services (PTS), a joint venture between Patrick and Kalmar Industries. PTS claims the AutoStrad system is a world first.

Research on the automated straddle project began in 1996 and, in 2001, Kalmar joined PTS as an equity partner. Patrick, as majority shareholder, owns intellectual property rights for most of the on-board technology and all the essential real-time control systems.

So, right from 1996, when the wharfies were fighting to keep their privileges in place, Patrick (and, I assume, Corrigan) were preparing the true way of the future.

Ah, you lefties can have your Combets and Julian Burnsides as your heroes. Instead, I'll take someone who had the vision to create a field of giant roaming cargo robots.

Back to politics

Footy's over, back to politics.

Glen Milne's article in the Australian this morning reports on a speech George Brandis gave, in which he made the point that funding for the arts has grown significantly under the Howard government, not that you would ever know that by listening to artists. (If there is something funny about those figures, we'll hear it from LP soon enough.)

I liked this from the article:

In a speech to the Sydney Film School in July, Keating declared: "It is no secret that the arts are having a very bad time of it in Australia these days; a bad time of it not simply in terms of funding, which is the thing most often discussed, but rather in terms of the milieu for its growth and prosperity."...

At a recent speech to the National Press Club, Brandis took Keating on, acidly dismissing his Sydney Film School remarks thus: "I suppose if you spend 11 1/2 years in a sulk things would tend to get away from you a bit."

Newspoll is stick stuck where it's been forever. But if Howard doesn't call the election this week, now that the sport is out of the way, he will suffer from the impression that he is clinging to power. On the other hand, he does need a long campaign to have any hope. What's the longest election campaign in Australian history, I wonder? Is 8 weeks out of the question?

Andrew Bolt on Insiders yesterday made the point that Howard does not seem to be getting much value out of the spending announcements of late (such as increased drought relief). I agree.

Meanwhile, I see Four Corners is having a show about Dr Haneef tonight, with an extended interview with him. Somehow, I have my doubts he will win more public sympathy.

An inconvenient consultation

Muslim dentist ‘made patient cover her head’ - Times Online

From the story:

A Muslim dentist insisted that a young woman wear an Islamic headscarf before he would agree to treat her for toothache, the General Dental Council was told yesterday.

The patient, a community nurse, alleges that she reluctantly told Omer Butt, 31, who runs a dental practice in Bury, Greater Manchester, that she was a nonpractising Muslim.

It is alleged that the dentist then told her that he would refuse to register her as an NHS patient if she did not cover her head. She was in so much pain that she agreed to borrow a scarf from a nurse at the clinic.

OK, so how does this work with the Muslim doctors we have in Australia? If they work in our public health system, do they have an issue with seeing Muslim women (of which we have an increasing number) if their head is uncovered?

On placebo treatment

Bad science: Pinning down a remedy for backache | Science | The Guardian

The apparent success of acupuncture for treating back pain this week got a lot of publicity with media reports on a recent study.

The article above indicates that acupuncturists should not to be too excited about this. It appears that "random" needle puncturing (where there were needles inserted, but at random points, rather than the carefully chosen points that proper acupuncture theory would dictate) proved almost as effective as "real" acupuncture.

Yet both "fake" and "real" acupuncture did considerably better than the normal medical approach.

I can't be bothered Googling for the details now, but it is my understanding that acupuncture had come out reasonably well from many carefully controlled trials for certain conditions. Although the esoteric Eastern quasi-mystical theory that is behind it is not something I am ever going to sign up to, I have long had the impression that it is the most credible of the 'alternative' medicines. Simply putting pins in people sometimes seems to work at a much higher rate than other therapies.

Anyhow, the article I've linked at the top goes on to talk about the placebo effect generally. Everyone knows it works, but the problem for Western medicine is that both ethically, and from a point of view of medical litigation risk, its widespread use can't really be contemplated.

This has always seemed quite a pity to me. Maybe doctors can argue that the natural therapies have placebo all to themselves anyway. But the natural therapists don't think they are giving placebo treatment. They won't give a sugar pill any more than a GP will.

Can't there be a category of doctor that is given licence to prescribe any therapy whatsoever without risk of litigation, including alternative therapies and placebo? I mean, don't those who participate in studies like the acupuncture one know and consent to possibly be in the group that is given the placebo? Yet it still works for some of them.

So can't we have doctors that the public knows are permanently licenced to try placebo?

Just a thought.

UPDATE: I should've guessed. Horses have been getting acupuncture too. Oh, but horses don't have a placebo response, says a doctor, so that proves it's not working just by placebo effect on humans too.

Look, horses are the last animals to trust in an trial of anything medical. They would just find it funny to put up with the pain of 50 needles, then prance about as if their sore back is cured, because they know that this doctor will be encouraged, resulting in thousands more humans being pricked every year. I bet they have a chuckle about that.

...in which the author seeks to discredit horses, but is in for a surprise

I started out to try to prove horses will be the end of civilisation, but the figures led me somewhere else. Follow the story:

From this site we learn that no one knows how many horses there are in Australia. It's between 900,000 and 1.8 million. However, I assume this is talking about domestic ones. Another site estimates there are 300,000 feral horses. (It also says there are up to 5 million feral donkeys! Who knew that?) Let's just assume 1.5 million horses combined, to be conservative and get round figures.

How much methane does a horse produce? Easily found (more or less) : 18 kg per year.

So let me get my calculator. That's 27,000,000 kg of methane a year.

But remember, methane is much worse than CO2 for warming. It is 21 times worse in fact.

So this leads us to horses making the equivalent of 27,000 tonnes x 21 = 567,000 tonnes of CO2 each and every year.

According to this site, the average car makes 4 tonnes of CO2 a year. So the horse population is making the equivalent greenhouse gases of 142,000 cars every year.

There are two ways of looking at this. If we had no horses in Australia, we could safely run an extra 142,000 cars on the roads with no net increase in CO2 - equivalent gases. But how many cars are there already in Australia? I am surprised to see it is about 10,000,000!

Hardly seems worth doing away with all those horses after all. Damn!

In fact, if one car makes 4 tonnes of CO2 per year, and a horse makes 18 x 21 = 378 kg of CO2 equivalent per year, then every car owner could run instead 10 horses a year (4,000/378).

For the average family of 4, they could give up the car and have two and bit horses each!

No, horses are our salvation, after all. (At least if you ignore the greenhouse contribution of their decaying excrement and the cost of growing and moving tonnes of feed around the country. Also, at least a car doesn't die from an upset tummy (colic) or get a fright every time it sees an inanimate object it doesn't like the look of. This last point was made by Stephen Fry in an interview on Parkinson, if I recall correctly.)

I still think they are stupid.

VITAL UPDATE (in which the author is vindicated by new information) : No, they are evil after all! Their relatively "green" greenhouse gas bottoms might make you think it is better for the planet to own ten horses instead of one car. But it is all a plan to lure humans to death and injury. Here, from the Australian Medical Journal, no less:

The risk of injury while horse riding has been estimated as between 1 per 320 to 1 per 1000 hours of riding.^4,6 The variation in reported population-based risk of horse-related trauma of between 18.7 injuries per 100 000 to 9.5 injuries per 1000 population per year illustrates the difficulties of accurate data collection and variable inclusion of non-riding injuries.⁷ Interestingly, the overall risk of injury from horse-related activity has been determined to be greater than that of car racing or riding a motorcycle, and the rate of hospitalisation from falls from a horse equivalent to that from playing rugby.

Hehe. I know what horses are thinking. "Get on my back, stupid bipedal feed provider. See how long you last. The earth will be ours! Hahahahahahahaha!"

No, I've upgraded them from "stupid" to "evil".

Nurse?

Lovelock's idea

Scientists propose 'plumbing' method to solve crisis of global warming - Times Online

James Lovelock mentioned this idea while he was in Australia recently, but here it is spelt out in more detail. The New Scientist version of the story spends more time on the skeptic's reaction.

(Short version of the idea: lots and lots of pipes in the ocean that use wave action to pump up nutrient rich water to the surface, leading to more plankton, and more CO2 uptake.)

This idea has been around in a slightly different version since the 1970's at least, as it was featured in Jerry Pournelle's book "A Step Further Out," which is still on my bookshelf. His idea was to use the water sucking tubes to generate electricity too.

In New Scientist last week they had a pretty good article on the proposals for fertilizing the oceans with either iron or urea. Unfortunately, it's not on line for free.

The article did point out that one of the unknown issues of any form of using plankton growth to take up more CO2 is that it is not very clear how much of it ends up at the bottom of the ocean, which is where it really needs to be for long term sequestration.

Still, even if fish eat a lot of the plankton, how much fish poop sinks and how much of it floats? In a post last year, I noted an article that said that krill like to poo at depth, which makes them a (literal) CO2 sink. So who knows. Maybe the concentration should be on fertilizing the southern ocean, which is where I think most of the krill hang out.

Seems to me worthwhile trialling these ideas anyway.

Promises promises

Mike Steketee has made many posts critical of the Coalition this year, so it's good to see him making some pretty cutting remarks about Kevin Rudd's propensity to make commitments that he is never likely to be around to see achieved:

The Government is wrong to characterise Rudd as a policy-free zone: he has announced reams of initiatives. It is just that many of them have an elusive quality. Take his promise to ensure that nine out of 10 schoolchildren complete Year 12. It’s a laudable goal, but when would it be delivered? By 2020 is the solemn promise. That is in the fifth term of a Rudd government, unless it is the Gillard or Shorten government by then, or perhaps the Turnbull government after Malcolm’s frustrated ambitions get the better of him and he switches over to the winning side.

Don’t imagine that Labor is not accountable for such a promise: it has set an interim benchmark of 2015 to lift retention rates to 85 per cent. That is only three or four elections away.

Are we getting slightly ahead of ourselves here?

And he then goes into detail on the other policies "on the never-never." (Funny, I did a shorter version of this Steketee column a few of weeks ago.)

Also, journalists have indicated before that Kevin is not personally genuinely liked even within his own parliamentary party, and his refusal to commit to anyone getting the job they currently shadow if they form government will do nothing to alleviate that. It seems a particular insult to Wayne Swan if he won't commit to him being Treasurer. (It's a marriage of convenience for both Swan and Gillard to be seen as so close to Rudd at the moment anyway, as I understand it.)

Update: Rudd has had to come out today and promise Swan, Gillard and Tanner their positions. A bit of a turnaround, and something to do with faction power too, I suspect. I imagine there were a few calls last night about his attitude yesterday.

Not so long ago

Research team says extraterrestrial impact to blame for Ice Age extinctions

From this report:

No one has found a giant crater in the Earth that could attest to such a cataclysmic impact 13,000 years ago, but the research team offers evidence of a comet, two and a half to three miles in diameter, that detonated 30 to 60 miles above the earth, triggering a massive shockwave, firestorms and a subsequent drastic cooling effect across most of North America and northern Europe....

The magnitude of the detonations would have been huge.

“A hydrogen bomb is the equivalent of about 100 to 1,000 megatons,” Bunch said. “The detonations we’re talking about would be about 10 million megatons. That’s larger than the simultaneous detonation of all the world’s nuclear bombs past and present.”

That's a lot of energy.

But let's not spend a paltry million dollars a year to help track down dangerous space objects heading our way, hey Peter McGauran. Just keep looking after the horsies with a $110 million plus assistance package.

I still think the horses are faking it for a rest. Go get a real job, horse people.*

* Readers are advised that this blog has an official policy of encouraging irrational dislike of horses.

More on gay Iran

The Guardian has two items of interest about sexuality in Iran.

The first story (which on the main page of The Guardian's website is given the very wildly understated heading "Doubts over Iran's no gay claims") explains how Iran in fact has a very high rate of sex change operations. Second only to Thailand apparently:

Sex changes have been legal since the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution passed a fatwa authorising them nearly 25 years ago. While homosexuality is considered a sin, transsexuality is categorised as an illness subject to cure.

The government seeks to keep its approval quiet in line with its strait-laced stance on sexuality, but state support has actually increased since Mr Ahmadinejad took office in 2005.

His government has begun providing grants of £2,250 for operations and further funding for hormone therapy. It is also proposing loans of up to £2,750 to allow those undergoing surgery to start their own businesses.

Am I the only one to find it very hard to imagine why Khomeini would be persuaded to be all kind and understanding of transexuals but still want all sodomites to die?

The second Guardian article is in Comment is Free by the author of an entire book on homosexuality in Arab countries. He makes this interesting point:

Of all the Muslim countries, Iran at the moment is probably the most active in persecuting gay people. This probably has less to do with religion than local political and cultural factors.

Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson, authors of Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, argue that this was a reaction - at least in part - to sexual behaviour in the Shah's court. They refer to "a long tradition in nationalist movements of consolidating power through narratives that affirm patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, attributing sexual abnormality and immorality to a corrupt ruling elite that is about to be overthrown and/or is complicit with foreign imperialism".

That makes some sense. Political revolutions anywhere have often been been preceded by rumours of self indulgence and sexual decadence in the ruling class, and I suppose if the revolutionaries are Islamic they may concentrate on alleging homosexual decadence more than heterosexual.

Not a bad idea

Broadband beyond the grave offers web service for the dead

Users of YouDeparted.com can issue posthumous instructions for everything from their funeral to feeding their pet, cancelling bills and magazine subscriptions, organising their will and other financial matters, sending final letters to friends - and foes - and delivering a valedictory video address summing it all up.

All that's required in this life is a computer, some inputting, and a minimum of $9.95 (£4.93) a year. Once a user has died, and it has been confirmed to the site by designated family members or friends, the content is released as he or she instructed.

Being able to posthumously send a bunch of nasty emails to all and sundry has a certain appeal. I don't think there is anyone I actually want to do that to right now; but I like the idea of having the ability to do it.

Could be some new legal cases coming up as to whether electronic instructions can be legally constitute a will.

Also, Pauline Hanson could have used this service for her "if you are seeing this, I am dead" speech.

Wind power skepticism

Ill wind changes Rudd's course towards Gore | Herald Sun

All of this article by Terry McCrann is worth reading, especially if the figures he gives for the amount of power wind is actually generating in Germany is correct:

On average across the year, the 7600 MW of installed wind capacity produced 1327MW. That's an operational level of 18 per cent of capacity. In rational terms, it's insanity.

Indeed as E.ON Netz notes, installed wind capacity went up 12 per cent in the year but actual wind power fed in to the grid went up just 1.5 per cent. Because of lower "wind availability".

The way you 'solve' this is that 'traditional' power stations with capacities equal to 90 per cent of the installed wind power capacity must be permanently on line to guarantee power supply.

So not only do you have to install six to seven times as much wind capacity as the output you will actually get, but you also have to build 'shadow' coal/gas/nuclear(?) as well.

That's one power station for the cost of 12 or so.

Did I say insanity? Unless you can build big enough batteries to store the power generated when the wind does blow.

Funny I should say that. E.ON has actually pioneered exactly such a battery. It's the size of four shipping containers, uses 'undisclosed' chemicals and can produce all of 1MW for four hours.

So not only do we have to have windmills blanketing the country-side, but millions of 'super-batteries' as well. Plus some new coal stations anyway.

We had them all shot

Ahmadinejad speaks; outrage and controversy follow - CNN.com:

When pressed about the harsh treatment of women, homosexuals and academics who challenge Iran's government, Ahmadinejad painted a rosy picture, saying, "Women in Iran enjoy the highest levels of freedom," he said.

He elicited laughter and boos from the audience at Columbia University when he said, "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals, like in your country."

That comment reminded me of Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen, as I am sure I have read that he had to have someone explain to him what homosexuals did when the issue of law reform for sexual matters came up.

Ahmadinejad in fact has the same "folksy" image as Bjelke- Petersen, the main difference being that (as far as I know) Joh didn't secretly pine for nuclear weapons.

Evading the details

Media Watch: Have We Met? (24/09/2007)

People who read Catallaxy know the story that Phillip Adams claimed to have had a "chilling" interview on his radio show with Helen Dale.

This story was dealt with in somewhat peculiar fashion on Media Watch last night, which seemed to want to spend as much time on other issues as pursuing the truth from Adams. The transcript on the Media Watch website (above) does not cover all of what was on the TV version .

Clearly, Adams was being evasive in his semi-retraction on LNL. He admits he did not interview her on that show, but implies an interview, or at least a meeting, did occur elsewhere without specifying when or where.

Oh well, I guess he might be more forthcoming to the ABC complaints people.

Real big of them

Taliban Allows Polio Vaccinations:

Thousands of Afghan children have received polio vaccinations after the Taliban movement agreed to allow health workers to operate safely in the south, the United Nations children's fund said. ...

In the past, health workers have been abducted in the region, which has has seen the heaviest fighting between the Taliban and international forces.

UPDATE: I missed a lot of it, but Four Corners last night looked interesting, being all about Afghanistan and the continuing pretty dire way most women are treated there, even when not under Taliban control. Still, there were some optimistic signs of revival of girls' education again, for example.

I still have trouble getting my mind around the concept that the Taliban are happy to kill teachers who dare to educate girls, though.

Irony warning

The Times of India does report widely on domestic violence and the mistreatment of women, but also carries many advertisements for marriage matchmaker services. You would think they might be a bit more careful about how closely these items are placed on the same page (see above.)

The paper also picks up a story from the Daily Mirror about railway track suicides in London. It is said that it's a lot of unhappy asian women causing the high numbers in particular areas.

This kind of suicide is really the most inconsiderate type possible, but thinking clearly is not really high on the agenda of those who do it, I suppose.

Making no sense

Tokyo sanctions an extended cull of Taiji dolphins | The Japan Times Online

The Japan Times has taken a very front line position in running articles criticising the annual dolphin slaughter in one part of Japan.

The result: this year's quota increased, and the killing season extended.

Given that the meat has been convincingly shown as unsafe to eat, it is a really bizarre exercise:

The creatures' meat is even included in school meals, and though the government knows full well it is toxic — up to 87 times the permitted level of methyl mercury was found in a joint Japanese/New Zealand 2005 academic study of samples bought from shops (see JT, Nov.1, 2006) — it seems it will do nothing now, perhaps preferring some scapegoating and deep bowing when awful human afflictions arise in the future. And as for Japan's meek vernacular media, well don't wait for them to raise a stink.

China's social problems, again

In China, 190 children are snatched every day.

It's an interesting article about another unintended consequence of China's one child policy.

The one who really doesn't know when to quit

Rudd's post-birthday slip-ups | NEWS.com.au

Yes, Kevin does have a problem: he doesn't know when to let the issue of his heart operation fade away. The story above shows that he is still using it in an attempt at humour:

When asked how he celebrated, Mr Rudd said: "With great sobriety ... well they tell me I've got a problem," referring to revelations this week about a heart operation he had 15 years ago.

On the TV news last night, I saw him make a fake clutch at his heart after missing blowing out one of his candles on his cake.

My advice: No one sensible actually thought this was a damaging issue, Kevin; or at least it wasn't until you had minders who denied you ever had an operation, and you and your fellow parliamentarians started ludicrously suggesting that it took a Liberal Party private investigator looking at your medical records to discover you had the operation.

Leave it alone. Even by bringing it up in attempts at humour, it reminds people of an episode that has backfired badly.

(Matt Price thinks that "Labor’s contrived and co-ordinated squealing about alleged dirt units, private detectives, slime files and mud-slinging will work." I think he's wrong; it is now too transparently a tactic.)

UPDATE: the Courier Mail now reports that it has seen a sheet alleging a Coalition minister is a closet gay. Shock! Labor or its supporters actually circulate dirt on their opponents? Who'd have thought?

UPDATE 2: now it's said that the gay minister stuff was originally leaked to Laurie Oakes by a Liberal Party figure, as part of internal politic-ing for positions. Funny business, politics.

You know, the first time I ever heard the old one about Keating having an affair with a young guy was from a solidly rusted on Labor supporter and well connected member of her union. Clearly, she had heard it from someone within the Labor movement who sincerely believed it, as she had not immediately dismissed it out of hand.

Rumour mongering follows some bizarre paths in politics, and life generally I suppose.

Another springtime pic

From my backyard, again.

Ackroyd's unusual interests

Soul survivor | News | Guardian Unlimited Film

Follow the link to an interesting interview with Dan Ackroyd. I knew he was interested in the paranormal, but not the extent to which he is a true believer.

Just not very funny

Summer Heights High episode upsets ecstasy death family

Even before this story came out, I had been intending to post about my puzzlement over the (apparent) popularity of Chris Lilley's satirical "Summer Heights High".

The three characters he plays are intensely dislikeable, each in their own way. And yes, we have all seen irritating teen girls, heard smart-arse islander boys, and know that drama teaching may be particularly attractive to a self-absorbed (presumably gay) man; but is there any reason to try to blend these characters into a mockumentary of such length? To me, they are just not interesting enough, and show no sign of development from week to week. The story line of the drama teacher writing songs about the drug overdose girl became so unrealistic that it just became stupid. I don't blame the family of a real drug overdose victim being upset.

At least Kath & Kim is not entirely populated by unpleasant central characters. True, Kim is totally without redeeming features, but I always felt that everyone around her was written to have at least some good in their character.

Summer Heights High strikes me as very similar in tone to the dark Australian "comedy" films to which I have never responded either.

A good week for the government

This week has seen a very solid momentum swing back towards the government. The highlights:

* the Rudd/Labor humbuggery about "smear campaigns" is, I reckon, finally starting to be revealed clearly as such to the public after yesterday's performance in Parliament. It has irritated me all year that Rudd has been getting away with this: carrying on as if stories clearly created by journalists (such as the issue of the Eumundi farm, or the strip club incident, or the heart operation) were being created by the Liberals; and acting as if it were some revelation that politicians or their staffers seek to background journalists on the past lives of their opponents (as in Gillard.)

Rudd went one lunge for sympathy too far with his questions about the heart operation story yesterday, and it clearly backfired. Have a look at Matt Price's very disdainful comment on this in The Australian this morning. (It was also very clear to anyone who had seen Downer on Lateline the night before that he had not idea of the story until that day.)

Rudd's attempt at a comeback to Costello "not having courage to take on Howard" is clearly a losing argument, especially when you see Costello reacting with glee as if it is water off a duck's back. The re-invigorated Costello is going to have a high profile during the campaign, and provided he and Howard compare their notes very carefully every morning and don't start accidentally contradicting each other, I think their handover approach may work reasonably well.

* As noted in a previous post, a hot culture war issue over lesbians and IVF can't hurt Howard, as it will perhaps persuade any doubtful Hillsong types that the Liberals are (at least marginally) more socially conservative than Labor.

Incidentally, Mark Bahnisch had a post at LP this week in which in response to me, his "buddy", he claimed the IVF lesbian case was a "storm in a teacup". Since then, I've read at least 4 newspaper commentary pieces on it, even one today, and noted the thousands of angry comments to various forms of media. For a sociologist, he seems completely tone deaf to what his society is actually talking about.

* The government's success in striking a deal with one of its strongest aboriginal critics in the Northern Territory is really very significant, and undercuts a lot of the carping criticism by aboriginal rights tragics who prefer ideology over success on the ground. Labor types may doubt The Australian's version of the story, but the story about it on The 7.30 Report was very positive too.

Of course, it is true that aboriginal issues are not a significant vote changer for 95% of Australians, but it is still a positive story.

* For those who read newpapers, there is also this positive comment on John Howard from Alan Greenspan:

In his memoir The Age of Turbulence, for which he was reportedly paid an advance of $US8 million ($9.3 million), Greenspan writes: "Prime Minister John Howard impressed me with his deep interest in the role of technology in American productivity growth. Whereas most heads of government steer clear of such detail, he sought me out on such issues during visits to the US between 1997 and 2005.

"He needed no prodding from me on monetary policy. His government in 1996 had granted full independence to the Reserve Bank of Australia."

Priced by the word, this pat on the head for the Australian leader is worth $US2800, but it's priceless if you're a prime minister in search of accolades from modern American heroes.

Expect to see that used politically here soon.

Yes, a pretty good week really.

Too good to be true

Sunny Outlook: Can Sunshine Provide All U.S. Electricity?: Scientific American

Maybe I worry too much about small global risks, but one issue with extremely high reliance on solar power is what happens if something disastrous causes the sun to be blocked for months at a time? For example, a supervolcano, a small to medium size asteroid strike, or accidental nuclear war.

It would mean the immediate end of power for months, and surely that would make national recovery all that more difficult. (Presumably, coal or gas fired plants would not last much longer, as such a disaster would cut fuel supply too.)

But I think once they are fuelled up, nuclear plants run pretty much on their own for a few years, don't they?

It would seem to me to be a matter of caution to always keep some nuclear power plants on line for this reason alone, even if solar became as truly ubiquitous as the optimists hope.

When surgeons get bored with normal operations...

ScienceDaily: Surgeons Remove Patient's Gall Bladder Through Vagina

This idea of surgeons going in and removing organs via various orifices has been reported before, and research in the field goes on, obviously. The whole idea just makes me feel queasy, and my intuitive reaction is to sceptical about how much better such methods can really be. God knows if I were a woman, there would be no way I would prefer via vagina procedure over a simple incision. (There's a sentence I will probably write only once in my life.)

Bringing back the culture wars

The news story about the lesbian couple suing their IVF doctor for providing them with two healthy children instead of one has raised a stunning amount of antagonism from the public. News Ltd had readers' comments on this story yesterday, and although I can't find them now, there seemed to be about one supportive post to every 50 very angry ones.

I note that yesterday's initial report had more detail of the mother's neurotic sounding reaction than today's version linked above. The Daily Telegraph version had this part which was sure to raise eyebrows across the nation:

The woman said she enjoyed some aspects of the pregnancy, such as decorating the girls' nursery, but other parts were distressing, including purchasing a pram.

"It was like the last frontier of acceptance to spend hundreds of dollars on a pram," she said.

People would have been upset if it were a heterosexual couple complaining of the same thing, but add into the mix the fact that it's lesbians, and far from poor ones at that, and you have the ideal circumstances for a real culture war about gays and making children. Lucky John Howard, I think, as a conservative cultural backlash on such issues must surely be easier for him to handle than Labor. (Penny Wong, I am waiting for your comments about this case.)

To illustrate how angry people get about this, on talk back radio this morning I heard a man complaining how he and his ex wife had failed at IVF, how much it had cost them, etc, and then he started crying when he said that he was so angry to hear one of the women on the radio saying that if they won the case they would buy 2 Harleys and travel around Australia. The radio announcers had to interrupt quickly and reassure their listener that the earlier call (which I had missed) was fake. I presume this man heard what was intended to be a satirical call and assumed it was true.

The thing is, it is clear the doctor is admitting a mistake, and I am not entirely sure what his defence is. If the judge actually finds in favour of the women, the public outcry will be huge.

I expect that this case, regardless of its outcome, will make the issue of gay relationship financial rights all the more politically sensitive. These women are, at the very least, unhelpful to that cause.

I would also be curious to know how many of the public are against the idea of lesbians ever making their own children, whether it be by IVF, donor semen, or whatever. I suspect that people may well draw a strong distinction between lesbians who end up with children as a result of a failed heterosexual relationship, and those who have only ever been in lesbian relationships but use artificial methods to conceive. The public may well be more conservative on this than many people think.

Spring 2007

Taken in my backyard at lunchtime today.

Death to apostates

Comment is free: Supporting Islam's apostates

Interesting article. I note with particular interest the quote from the Koran which is a good example of the, ahem, problematic nature of that document.

(Go on, Geoff, hit me with some Armstrong niceness about how unfair I am being.)

All year 'round tastelessness

One of the pleasures of spring is that it is asparagus season. Of all the vegetables, asparagus seems to me to be a particularly adult taste: I think it is pretty unusual to find a child who likes it, but one can develop a particular fondness for its subtle flavour later in life.

But this post is really about the pointlessness of importing asparagus. In the last couple of years, all year round imports from Thailand and (I think) Peru mean that asparagus is nearly always available. However, even though it sometimes looks good on the shelf, I have found it to be almost completely tasteless on the couple of occasions I have given it a try.

I just don’t see the point of providing such produce. One of the pleasures of food is enjoying its seasonality. I guess I could see the point if it actually tasted good, but unless I have been unusually unlucky, asparagus is just a vegetable that does not travel well. Who buys it and keeps the market for it alive?

The other thing about this is the waste of energy that is involved. You don’t have to be a Monbiot to think that moving a tasteless vegetable around the globe would have to be perhaps the most worthless use of petroleum (and generator of greenhouse gases) that you can imagine. I suppose the aircraft’s cargo hold may have been coming here anyway, full or empty, but it still irritates me.

Go out and just buy your Australian asparagus in season. (Or for that matter grow your own. My father used to do that and once it is established you can get heaps of spears year after year.)

The trouble with epidemiology

From last weekend's NYT magazine, there's a long and very interesting article on why it seems medicine keeps changing its mind as to what is "good" for our health. It's well worth reading if you have any interest in public (and private) health.

More please

Newspoll boss says gap will close - National - theage.com.au

The most important thing about the latest Newspoll is the Coalition primary vote is back over the magic 40% line, barely. As I have noted before, it may be a 10% gap, but it only takes a 5% swing to put the parties on even pegging again.

Mark Bahnisch has been so overcome with excitement at the prospect of a Labor win that he can't seem to see the downside of anything Kevin does. His commentary is so positive for Labor now that one suspects he hopes for a job out of a new Rudd government.

In this post, he thought Kevin conducting a premature campaign launch last weekend was evidence of Labor "taking control" of the timing of the election. He even seems to think that Rudd routinely ignoring the government benches during Question Time is a good look.

I think most people would see the clear danger in both of these that they can come across as hubris and arrogance.

I also suppose you could not expect Rudd to not try out his Mandarin at APEC, but even then I wonder whether to some in the electorate he looked a little too smugly proud while doing it.

Just to show my even handedness, I will say that Peter Costello on Radio National breakfast came across as all platitudes and little substance today. His talk of having a vision of "inclusiveness" for the marginalised without explaining specific policies to achieve it comes across as just as much blather as what Rudd says at the moment. I am really not sure how he would come across as PM.

Danish dictionary required

New terrorism case confirms that Denmark is a target - International Herald Tribune

This article talks about concern that Denmark is a particular target for Islamic terrorism, and contains this brilliant quote:

At home, the children of Muslim immigrants complain of job discrimination and integration problems, feeding the disenchantment of the small but growing Muslim population.

"In the schools, Danish teachers are always talking about democracy and human rights, but now they see what Denmark is doing in Afghanistan and what they did here with the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad," said Imran Shah, 31, who leads a youth group at a local mosque. "They ask themselves, is this a democracy or are they talking about double standards?"

Yes, I suppose that damned fine democratic institution known as the Taliban is not getting its chance to enforce human rights in Afghanistan because of Denmark and others. A small investment in a dictionary so as to understand what the terms "democracy" and "human rights" mean might come in handy for Imran.

Twice the harm

Skunk strength has doubled, studies suggest | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

There's always a lot of argument around the issue of the increasing strength of cannabis over the years. It would seem that, in England at least, there is clear evidence that the average strength has doubled in the last 10 years.

I assume something similar would have gone on in Australia too.

It also adds some weight to my scepticism about claims that the additional harmfulness of modern, hydroponic cannabis is due to the fungicides and other chemicals used on it while it is growing.

Credit where it's due

Workplace Ombudsman proves his mettle - National - theage.com.au

It's surprising to see this reported in The Age, of all papers:

Since March 2006, the Workplace Ombudsman's office has won back $19.4 million in underpayments for 13,700 employees, dealt with 21,000 cases (most of them within three months), taken 73 matters to court, and secured penalties totalling $683,555.

The Government continues to give Mr Wilson more funding to take on more tasks — and he is adding 100 workplace inspectors to the present 220.

But the labour movement now has no idea what to make of this creation of WorkChoices.

Labor's IR spokeswoman Julia Gillard has lashed the Government's "big government industrial relations bureaucracy" and promised to cut its funding. But last week, ACTU Secretary Jeff Lawrence called it a "really important" body, saying it is "not properly resourced".