The tunnel problem

There's a good article in Slate about possible technical solutions to preventing tunnelling from Gaza to Egypt. Unfortunately, there are no obvious easy answers, and a lot of ideas have been considered seriously, including building a moat! (It's amazing how hard it is to secure even a very short border, isn't it?)

While you're at Slate, it's worth reading Christopher Hitchens' "no regrets" column.

(And while I am at it, can someone tell me if I am placing that apostrophe correctly when a person's name ends in "s". I can't recall lately, and both choices look wrong to me.)

UPDATE: there's a follow up post at Slate in which Saletan expresses his annoyance at the way a Foreign Policy blog ridiculed the idea that technology can solve the Gazan problem.

Saletan's response is well argued (he never claimed it was the sole solution), but also, it argues along the lines I was suggesting recently. Namely, that the issue of the potential for legitimate "above ground" trade via Egypt is an important one, despite (I would add) it seeming to attract very little in the way of commentary from a media which is happy to keep running commentary that blames Israel for creating a "prison" state. (Only it's a prison with a potentially open door to goods from a neighbouring arab State.)

Improbable stories from the near future

[Yes, I have realised, I still don't know how to spell "Barack" correctly. So sue me. Anyway, what's wrong with being "Bruce" or "Barry" instead?]

Answer: None

If there is some award for the silliest "Jews are as bad as Nazis" comparison in the press, this one from an opinion piece by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent would have to be in the running:

How many Palestinian Anne Franks did the Israelis murder, maim or turn mad? Unless the Israeli state can see that equivalence there is no future for Palestine...

Let's remind ourselves from Wikipedia:

After the war, it was estimated that of the 107,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands between 1942 and 1944, only 5,000 survived.

The comparison with Gaza (for the current conflict) is about 1,300,000 with 1,298,700 survivors. Yes, I can see the similarity.

After all, as Yasmin likes to point out, Israel's blockades have created a Gazan prison, although she forgets to note that there is a border with Egypt. So I suppose it's a bit like that tragic situation in Holland in World War II when that long established Jewish country on the border wouldn't let Anne Frank or her family flee from the Nazis, or even let proper trade be established with the Jews.

Spookily similar, I say.

Fighting Arabs

Why the Arabs splinter over Gaza - International Herald Tribune

Not a bad summary here of the rivalries within the Arab world that has stopped them from having anything like a uniform response to the Gaza situation.

The famous landing

As I have missed all TV news since Friday, I hadn't seen 'til tonight this video of the actual river landing in New York. It's very impressive:

Bourdain on Saudi Arabia

I happened to see an episode of Anthony Bourdain's culinary/travel show No Reservations this week, in which he travelled to Saudi Arabia.

It was pretty interesting, as we virtually never see that country through the eyes of a Western tourist. Bourdain seems to be surprised to find that people there can laugh and have a sense of irony, even without alcohol, and in a way I can understand his reaction. It's hard to think of a country with a bigger reputation for inhibiting fun, but of course life no where is completely without some pleasures.

But still, I did get the feeling that the country and culture ended up being treated too softly. for example, his female host is said to be the first woman film maker allowed to move around with her camera crew and not have a male relative with her. That would explain such oddities as Bourdain and her being able to eat together alone in the Saudi equivalent of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the "family" area, I suppose.

Anyhow, it's not a bad show. You can see how they cook baby camel and eat the huge carcus with their fingers. (OK, so I am being too sensitive, but I didn't find the way the skeleton is gradually revealed as the gathering eats the flesh especially appealing.)

You can see all of the episode on Youtube.

Staying awake sometime helps

Mind Hacks: I struggle, fight dark forces in the clear moon light

So, a study in Schizophrenia Research has found a relationship between insomnia and paranoia in both the general public and people with psychosis. That's hardly surprising.

But here's something I hadn't heard before:

Sleep has an interesting relationship to mental illness. While sleeplessness and disturbed circadian rhythms have been linked to mood disorders for many years, sleep deprivation is known to have an antidepressant effect and is sometimes used to treat the most severe cases of depression.

Sleep deprivation in short bursts only, I assume they mean.

That'll teach them

Venezuela breaks off ties with Israel | International | Jerusalem Post

Go to the link to see the great photo of Chavez in a decorative tea cosy. At least, that's what I think it is.

Furthermore:

Venezuela's Foreign Ministry said Caracas also plans to denounce Israel's military actions at the International Criminal Court and the South American nation "will not rest until it sees them punished."

Expect lack of rest, then.

A suggestion

A love vaccine might be just the thing - International Herald Tribune

From the report:

In the new issue of Nature, the neuroscientist Larry Young offers a grand unified theory of love. After analyzing the brain chemistry of mammalian pair bonding - and, not incidentally, explaining humans' peculiar erotic fascination with breasts - Young predicts that it won't be long before an unscrupulous suitor could sneak a pharmaceutical love potion into your drink.

The report speculates that an "anti-love" potion could then follow.

Maybe it's been done before, perhaps in some 1950's or 60's Doris Day movie that I can't recall, but doesn't this sound like a good premise for a comedy movie?

How to blow $10 billion in one hit

Peter Martin: We've only just begun to try to stimulate the economy

Hmm. Peter Martin today explains why the Rudd government's Christmas bonuses were never likely to have lasting effect on holding off a recession, and didn't even really work to keep retail strong. (Adjusted for inflation, Christmas retail figures were not as good as they first sound, and in fact were barely above the preceding level.)

Funny, I thought he was pretty supportive of the idea when it was announced, although I must admit he did note that its effect would "fade" early this year. (This didn't seem to be an actual point of criticism though.)

Now he says:

Professor John Taylor of Stanford University devised the so-called Taylor Rule used by central banks to set interest rates. He told the American Economic Association's annual meeting in San Francisco this month that neither of the Bush government's two emergency tax rebates in 2002 and 2008 had made any difference to consumer spending. The problem was that they were temporary. We adjust our spending based on what we think we are going to be earning, not on the dollars that happen to fall into our pocket on any given week.

Given that the first of these failed rebates was in 2002, weren't Peter and other economics commentators aware that they did not make significant change to consumer spending? (I didn't know either, but economics is not something I profess to know much about.)

On 16 October last year I wrote:

I am still waiting to see more criticism of the short fuse of this spending too.

It seems economics commentary is a game anyone can play at these days.

A dissident on China's woes

A tidal wave of discontent threatens China | Wei Jingsheng - Times Online

The whole article is worth reading, but there was one point which surprised me:

China has a $2 trillion foreign currency reserve but it also suffers from a huge disparity between the rich and poor: while 0.4 per cent of the people hold 70 per cent of the wealth of the country, a fifth of the population - more than 300 million Chinese - have daily incomes of less than one dollar.

Now that's wealth disparity.

UPDATE: according to Wikipedia, the equivalent figures for the USA are:

...at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth, and the top 1% controlled 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth.

So, does this mean that wealth concentration is roughly 20 times worse in China than the US? Gosh. Good thing they are communist, or who know hows bad it could have been!

Another observation

Has anyone else noticed how relaxing it is not to have Kevin Rudd's face or voice on TV for a protracted period. (I suppose Laborites used to feel the same when Howard was on holiday too, but he wasn't the media tart that Rudd is.) It's a bit like the relief when you stop and remove an irritating pebble that's got into your shoe.

High density good or bad?

In comments a couple of posts back, I noted how the writer of the Slate article about environmentalism claimed that the "greenest" way of living was in a high density city like New York; not by being in a city with lots of suburbs.

But today, in the Sydney Morning Herald, someone from an organisation "Save our Suburbs" argues with figures that high density development in Sydney would make more CO2, not less. Here's some of his arguments:

The Australian Conservation Foundation's consumption atlas shows people living in high-density areas have greater greenhouse gas emissions than those living in low-density areas. A study by EnergyAustralia and the NSW Department of Planning shows the energy used by a resident in high-rise is nearly twice that for a resident in a detached house. Think of all the lifts, clothes dryers, air-conditioners and lights in garages and foyers. ...

Research in Melbourne shows people squeezed into newly converted dense areas did not use public transport to any greater extent and there was little or no change in their percentage of car use.

There is not enough difference in the emissions of public versus private transport to counter the increased emissions of high-density living. For each kilometre CityRail carries a passenger, it emits 105 grams of greenhouse gases, while the average car emits 155, and modern fuel-efficient cars such as the Toyota Prius emit just 70.

I am a little suspicious of the slant being put on some figures here. In the second paragraph, for example, he talks of little change in "percentage" of car use, but is that taking into account the much shorter distances that may be being driven when you live close to the city, even if you still use your car to get to work?

Similarly, given that air-conditioning is so popular now, I would expect that one saving in energy use would be that small apartments don't take much energy to heat or cool, and are insulated by the other apartments around them.

On the other hand, suburban gardens and plants must be given some credit for absorbing CO2, I guess.

Maybe (just guessing here) to get full credit as a low CO2 emitting city, you have to reach a threshold level of density where a very large proportion of residents almost never have to rely on a car, such as in New York or Tokyo.

I'm sure someone's looked at this, but I don't have time to find the answer now.

Not the wisest investment

Many home turbines fall short of claims, warns study | Technology | The Guardian

Here's an amusing bit of Green perversity:

Home wind turbines are generating a fraction of the energy promised by manufacturers, and in some cases use more electricity than they make, a report warns today. The results of what is thought to be the most comprehensive study undertaken of the industry show the worst performers provided just 41 watt-hours a day - less than the energy needed for a conventional lightbulb for an hour, or even to power the turbine's own electronics.

On average the turbines surveyed provided enough electricity to light an energy-efficient house, but this still only represented 5%-10% of the manufacturers' claims, said consultants Encraft. ...
It found the best performing turbines would generate "clean" electricity equivalent to that needed to manufacture them in less than two years, while the worst performing ones would take 40 years.

Nothing to dislike, except the price

Toyota pulls wraps off all-new Prius

Toyota says the new car, revealed Monday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, will achieve an estimated 3.7L/100km in the city and 4.0L/100km highway, for a combined rating of 3.8L/100km. The first-generation Prius was rated 4.6 L/100km combined fuel consumption, the second generation was 4.1....

Toyota says the 2010 model, which goes on sale this spring, has the lowest drag coefficient of any mass production car - 0.25. A normal sports car often has a drag of 0.32 or higher.

According to the Courier Mail, it will cost $40,000 here.

I wonder what is environmentally best for a moderate driver living in a family home: spend around $20,000 on a 3 year old Camry, and use the other $20,000 to put solar hot water and a small-ish solar cell system on the house, or buy a Prius?

Rationalist Vs Romantic Environmentalists

Environmental writing since Thoreau. - By Johann Hari - Slate Magazine

Here's an interesting discussion of the two branches of environmentalism. The romantics see it as a spiritual crisis which could be solved by most people living in caves again; the rationalists see despoiling the environment as simply a physical problem that doesn't need spirituality in response.

Hari makes an interesting point:

I'm with the rationalists. And yet this division—which seems so plain and irreconcilable to me—keeps being muddied by the contributors to this collection. Wes Jackson offers the most romantic fantasy of the book—but he is a distinguished scientist. Al Gore offers the most lucid popular summary of hard climate science we have—and then attributes the disaster, in an unexplained leap of logic, to a "spiritual crisis." Almost all the rational accounts here let romantic tropes seep into their writing as rousing quasi-religious end lines. Why? It feels as though the rationalists don't have enough confidence in their own intellectual tradition to inspire and rouse people. It's an old Enlightenment fear: Are we too irrational and poorly evolved a species to respond to neat reason?

I would say that opposition to nuclear being a substantial part of the response to greenhouse gases is largely based on the romantic view, yet typically it will be dressed up by Greens with facts and figures (talking about the long half life of isotopes, for example) to give it a more rationalist sheen.

The same is probably true for opposition to geo-engineering ideas, although they are all so novel in concept that there is plenty of room for debate by the rationalists as to whether the cure will be worse than the disease.

I guess the thing the romantics have on their side is that nearly any urban dweller (with the exception of people like Woody Allen, I guess) likes at least some connection with nature, whether it be by having a garden with birds, or just visits to a nice beach or national park every now and then. Still, going wholeheartedly into the clutch of romanticism is bad for humanity overall. (The ultra romantics don't want us here at all!)

An observation

Fierce Focus on Tunnels, a Lifeline for Gazans - NYTimes.com

Like many bloggers, I have resisted getting involved in commentary on the current Gaza/Israel war. It's hard coming up with anything original to say, but the above article in the New York Times (well worth reading despite its title which sounds somewhat biased) does raise an interesting question.

Why does the fact that Gaza has a significant border with Egypt seem to attract so little attention? The talk is always of Israel controlling Gaza's borders and even sea access, but it doesn't control the border with Egypt. If Israel imposes a blockade, and Egypt does not provide much in the way of legitimate access to aid via its border, why does Egypt seem to never attract much in the way condemnation from the EU and others for not assisting the Gazans?

Yes, Egypt does not want to encourage Hamas either; but if it is good to criticise Israel for creating a humanitarian crisis, why be so silent on Egypt's role?

The apparent use of tunnels to import food and other goods would hardly be necessary if Egypt allowed it to regularly enter via the above ground border, would it? So why doesn't that happen? Is it because a search regime to ensure trucks are not smuggling weapons along with other goods would be too hard to implement?

I am also not talking about the issue of what assistance Egypt should give right now; I am questioning the longer term issue of how Egypt deals with Gaza. If there is a (literally) underground economy, why not make it a legitimate "above ground" one instead, at least if you can guarantee that it is not involving supplying Hamas with weapons?

This Pajamas Media article from 2 January also raised the issue of why the Western media does not question more why Hamas dithers about opportunities to take Egyptian assistance (in this case, to take some of the wounded.) It's worth reading too.

What do you suggest?

I knew my relative anonymity here would come in useful one day.

For the last couple of months, my wife and I have been suffering with new neighbours in the rental house next door. It's a father and his 18 year old daughter. The owner of the house, with whom I had contact before these new tenants arrived, told me that she was letting it to a "mature age" man, suggesting that this was a good sign. It has proved anything but.

The problem is, the father, perhaps because he is a smoker (or perhaps he was raised in a tent, or some other reason I can't fathom) virtually lives in the outdoor entertainment area that is very close to one end of my house. He also speaks, and argues, with the volume set permanently on "11". His relationship with his daughter is, um, erratic in the extreme. By which I mean: on any given evening, there may be several shouting matches, much swearing at each other, demands from the father that the daughter respect him, shouted demands from the daughter that the father stop drinking and asking for her money, screams from the daughter (on the few occasions he has actually entered the house) that he is "hurting" her, but then also at random points during the evening the sounds of the daughter laughing and teasing him. The father has told other people on the phone that he thinks the daughter is on drugs. However, it is always the daughter who at least has the common sense to know that her father's voice may be disturbing the neighbours. She repeatedly tells him to keep his voice down; he never does.

This has made one end of our house (where the childrens' rooms are) virtually uninhabitable before about 10 pm. Being summer, this has not proved a huge obstacle yet, as the children are spending a lot of time sleeping in the air-conditioned room at the other end, but it has been clear for some time that I have to either:

a. have a calm, try-to-keep-it-cheery type talk to the father during the day along the lines that he should really realise that he talks very, very loudly, and my house is very, very close at one end to his, and sound travels very well of an evening. I could suggest that I now know so much about him that I could write his biography, and if he has any desire for privacy at all he should really try to spend his evenings inside his house; or

b. start calling to them from the kid's window of an evening that for God's sake they have to stop yelling and carrying on at each other every bloody night, as they are invading my privacy.

I came close to taking option b tonight. In fact, I also came close to calling the police because the daughter was again shouting and saying that he was hurting her, this time repeatedly. Yet, I still had the feeling from the tone of her voice that nothing really serious was going on. I suspected he may have had her arm and was trying to force an apology for something or other out of her.

Still, it went on long enough that I did attempt to ring the police, but not as an emergency. Maybe the constabulary just turning up to check them at any point in the evening might make them realise they can't carry on this way all the time. However, while waiting on the line, the daughter went silent. Then, both of them were outside, and the daughter was clearly not under threat.

However, this is still where it becomes more disturbing in a way. The daughter and father had a prolonged conversation about what the father was going to do about some man, who had "crossed the line". Her side went like this "you keep talking about breaking his legs, but I don't want it to be physical. I do want his life ruined. I want him in jail, and he has to know he can't live in Sydney. I want to live in Sydney. I want you to tell me exactly what you are going to do. You can't get anything physical done to him, because it will be traced back to you. But he has to be threatened, he has to have his life ruined; he has to know that what he has done is wrong, that he has crossed the line, and he can't live in this country. I was born in this country, he wasn't."

The father's responses was along these lines: "Don't worry I can arrange it. I can get him threatened all right. It's not so easy for me to get the physical stuff done now anyway. But I don't want you taking a phone call from him and then changing your mind and being manipulated by him again. Don't worry, I'll look after it" etc.

This would be followed by reassurances from the daughter that she was well and truly finished with the man (presumably an ex boyfriend), followed by more requests to have her father detail and promise exactly what he would do to him.

Ludicrously, the daughter frequently told the father to "just whisper" what he would do, as she didn't want the whole neighbourhood to know about this. She, however, was not shy about detailing her desires for (apparently criminal) action in a normal speaking voice so close to my house.

So, what do I do now? It half crossed my mind that I could simply tell them from the darkened window I was standing near: "well, too late now. I've heard all of this; I know who you work for and that they may not take kindly to this information. If you chose in future to live quietly inside your house for the rest of your lease, I may not have reason to pass on the information on." Maybe that could result in them both deciding against doing anything serious to the un-named Sydney man, as well as living more quietly. (I suppose it could also mean some threat being made to my well-being.)

I did not do that.

Now, I am left with information that a neighbour is apparently planning some serious interference with the life of some Sydney migrant, and while the father was indicating that he would not in fact arrange to "break his legs," it also sounded like what he does intend to arrange may well escalate into violence. Furthermore, the daughter insisted several times that she wanted the guy "in jail". How did she expect that to be achieved? The father did not make it clear exactly what he would do, but he did keep reassuring her that it would be something serious, and she had better not change her mind. There was, at the end, the suggestion that they would talk more about it in the morning.

Of course, if acting out of pure self interest, it would suit me to see the daughter move to Sydney.

I also can see the police not being particularly interested in an overheard conversation if it did not end up detailing exactly what the father would arrange to "ruin" this guy's life.

However, given that I know what the father does for a living, it is conceivable that he does have connections to arrange something bad for the guy. The funny thing is, he has talked to his daughter of the moral corruption of young people these days, and how his work has really "opened his eyes" to this.

I am inclined to talk to the police tomorrow anyway. Anyone else have any other suggestions?

UPDATE: police spoken to, note taken of general concerns about domestic violence possibly taking place. Headed home for my regular dose of evening shouting and swearing. Swearing becomes particularly loud and agitated at around 10pm. I go to the end of the house where I can hear all: daughter had put Tabasco sauce in father's mouth (I think) while he slept. Reason remains unclear (she swears as much as he does, so it presumably wasn't punishment for using naughty words). I think I heard her say from inside the house "you weren't breathing," but I could be wrong.

Maybe I should arrange for the Sydney guy's legs to be broken so she can move to Sydney and I can get some peace and quiet.

UPDATE 2: last night's outdoor discussions under my window went something like this:

Father: you manipulate me.
Daughter: no, you manipulate me.
Father: you lie too.
Daughter: I don't lie, or if I do, I learnt it from you. You lie all the time.
Father: So I lie, do I?
Daughter: Yes you do, you lie all the time, and you manipulate...
Father: it's you who manipulates
Daughter: Stop f****in interrupting me! You do that all the...
Father: You're the manipulator...

[Repeat with minor variations for the next 20 minutes.]

As for the fate of the Sydney fellow, things are looking up. It would appear that the daughter (aged 18) up and went to Sydney over Christmas to visit him, not telling her father where she was. (She was actually upset last night that her father had gone to a party on the second night of her absence, instead of staying at home and fretting about where she was.)

But, crucially, at one point of the daughter/father love in last night, she complained that, despite their discussions for days, her father had not yet arranged to "frighten" him. The father said he wouldn't, because she was still infatuated with him. (A point she strenuously denies.)

So, Ahmed of Sydney, (from Turkey originally, I think,) you may be spared an intimidating visit yet.

Holiday movie report (like you care)

Here's my short takes on 3 current holiday movies:

* Madagascar 2: many good jokes, including one Twilight Zone reference early on which made me laugh a lot, but no one else in the cinema seemed to understand. The penguins are certainly given a larger starring role, but I don't rate it as highly as the first, mainly because I missed the more measured pacing of the original, and a key part of the plot (how the giraffe is in love with the hippo) just doesn't make much sense.

* Bedtime Stories: horrible mishmash writing that tries desperately to maintain adult insider jokes (including references to Paris Hilton being a slut, and Howard Hughes' phobias) while getting most of its kiddie appeal by repeated cuts to a CGI hamster with fake big eyes. The story features the lamest idea for creating a dramatic climax that I think I have seen for a couple of decades. You would have to adore Adam Sandler's schtick to like this film if you are over 10.

(Speaking of Sandler, I found him remarkably unfunny in a recent Leno interview, and the joke at 2min 40sec manages to be both in very poor taste and very stupid, although I thought Leno's response was appropriate.)

* Tale of Despereaux: The pick of the bunch so far. I am surprised to see it's had a mixed reception, but I am certainly on the side of those who found it extremely charming. For once, I felt I had an understanding of what it means to see an animated film that is well directed. It is very distinctively cinematic and clever, the animation is really outstanding, and the facial expressiveness really seemed right on the spot.

It also has a surprising moral seriousness by the end. As some reviewers have noted, it has no pop-culture gags at all, and that in itself is rather refreshing in quality animation.

The storytelling could have been tightened a little (one plot point really deserved an explanation that was never given) but it still seemed to be well received by the audience I was with.

Highly recommended.

More on sabotage from the future

The apocalypse has been postponed | Science | guardian.co.uk

The Guardian has a handy page (above) with links to articles relevant to the issue of whether backwards causation from the future is the reason why the LHC broke down.

One of the papers I was familiar with (the one where a couple of physicists suggested drawing cards to decide whether to turn the thing on!), but the other article about vacuum collapse is new to me.

In any event, my idea is more dramatically satisfying: that it is active interference from humans in the future that is caused the blow up.

Since I made my first post about this, I have remembered reading Gregory Benford's Timescape novel, which involved tachyon messages from the future to prevent ecological catastrophe involving the oceans. (I didn't care for the novel much: like too much "hard" science fiction, it was technically of interest but the characters were just not very likeable.) Maybe it is the subconscious influence of that novel that lead to my interest in ocean acidification too!

My suggestion is very close to that, although the idea of direct sabotage from the future is a little different. (And, almost certainly, is the subject of another science fiction story somewhere.)

One of those "apropos of nothing" posts

I recently saw a story on Japanese TV about the incredible mechanical dolls of the Edo period, and while Youtube doesn't have that particular clip, it does have this one from a chat show last year. I promise you, these dolls are amazing. (You will also see why Japanese chat show formats can be quite irritating):



I see from Wikipedia that the Japanese inventor who made these (Tanaka Hisashige) also started what eventually became the Toshiba company in 1875. Store that away in your brain somewhere, it might just one day come in useful. Or not.

More odd features of the libertines

Doing It: Books: The New Yorker

Didn't a new edition of The Joy of Sex come out a year or two ago, with updated text and pictures? I have a vague feeling of reading about that then, but there is a current New Yorker article about a recent edition, and it's fascinating and funny.

It seems that, to be at the forefront of sexual liberation, it helps (like Alfred Kinsey), to be quite the oddball in your private life. Take this for example:

Comfort had a tendency to focus single-mindedly on a given notion or project at the expense of any kind of balance: while he was a student at Highgate School, in London, he became convinced that he could concoct a superior version of gunpowder. He blew off much of his left hand. By the time he was finished with his experiments, his thumb was the only remaining digit. Later in his life, when he was practicing medicine, he said that he found this claw he’d created “very useful for performing uterine inversions.”

Of course, it is also important not to get too hung up about fidelity in marriage:

For more than a decade, Comfort had been sleeping with Ruth’s best friend, Jane Henderson. (Comfort met both women at Cambridge.) Comfort and Henderson took dozens of Polaroids of their erotic experiments, which they gave to the publisher Mitchell Beazley along with Comfort’s manuscript—originally titled “Doing Sex Properly.” The artists Charles Raymond and Christopher Foss were charged with transforming those photographs into pencil drawings, although the couple they depicted looked nothing like Comfort and Henderson.

And naturally, you wouldn't be on the conservative side of politics:

Comfort and his wife, Ruth, divorced shortly after “Joy” came out: the unpleasantness of his infidelity seems to have been heightened for Mrs. Comfort when her husband became internationally known as “Dr. Sex.” In 1973, a few months later, Comfort married his mistress and muse, Jane, and the two moved to Santa Barbara so that Comfort could assume a post at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a liberal think tank. The move also gave them closer proximity to the Sandstone, a clothing-optional community of utopian swingers in Topanga Canyon, which was reportedly visited by Timothy Leary, Sammy Davis, Jr., Betty Dodson, and the porn star Marilyn Chambers, and which Comfort and Jane had frequented since 1970. “Often the nude biologist Dr. Alex Comfort, brandishing a cigar, traipsed through the room between the prone bodies with the professional air of a lepidopterist strolling through the fields waving a butterfly net,” Gay Talese wrote in “Thy Neighbor’s Wife.”

Of course, conservatives are just as capable of infidelity, but it has long seemed to me that for those on the Left (especially politicians), their scandalous predilections are usually ones of scale (sleeping with large numbers of different people), whereas those on the Right tend more towards fewer bodies but kinkier sex.

In other sex news: Opinion Journal reports on the wrong-headed spin that the media recently gave a study about teen pledges.

You too can play President

In hard times, White House replica goes up for sale

Heh.

We'll see

'Big Bang' machine to be ready by summer - The Independent

The £4bn "Big Bang" machine, which suffered a catastrophic malfunction soon after being switched on last September, is expected to be restarted in June.

Not if my call to time travelling agents from the future to intervene works again.

(Well, OK, if you insist, I did not actually send out a specific call that led to the first breakdown, but I like to think they read my blog.)

More big statues needed

Rio's famous Christ statue faces bigger rival

So, a Brazilian town wants to build a bigger statue than Rio's famous one.

Everyone likes giant statues, don't they? Yet not many people seem to know about the giant white Kannon statue in Sendai, Japan. There is a series of photos of it here. (My own date from pre-digital days, but if I can find them in a drawer somewhere, I'll scan one.)

The statue is hollow and you can walk up ramps looking at various vignettes about Buddhist thoughts. All quite impressive.

Yes, the world needs more giant statues. The UN should designate "Giant Statue Day" to raise awareness of this important issue.

Update: here are photos of the 9 biggest statues in the world. There are a few in there that I didn't know about before. See - there is clearly a need for increased giant statue awareness.

Some further thoughts: in this era of every city having a giant ferris wheel observation platform thingee (I predict they will go out of fashion overnight,) I would much prefer that each city have their own giant statue. Much community interest, and probably shed blood, could be generated by competitions for the preferred theme of the statue, which must incorporate a human shape. Sydney clearly is the perfect place for a new equivalent to the Collosus of Rhodes, straddling the Harbour Bridge. I can see Paul Keating offering to be a face model for it.

A cool Japanese house

It's been a while since I linked to a nice bit of archi-porn, but this one is well worth the "click". (Although, it is reminding me of some other building I can't quite recall. It could even be something from a Gerry Anderson show I am thinking of.)

Oh. It's just occurred to me that 1960's puppet shows have been a significant influence on my taste in architecture.

Furry love

Here's a pretty remarkable video of interspecies fondness:



I found it via this post at one of the Scienceblogs, where the writer wonders whether the rat loves the cat because it has toxoplasmosis (a favourite topic here at OD). I tend to agree with one commenter, though, that it seems much more likely a case of animals that were socialised together while young. If toxoplasmosis were the explanation, wouldn't it mean that every house cat on the street would be being chased by adoring wild rats?

The Artistic life

Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites by Franny Moyle review

It's hard to resist reading about the erratic and convoluted sex lives of famous artists or writers. From the review above:

Desperate Romantics opens in 1848 with the ambitious art students Hunt, Millais and Rossetti founding the mysteriously named PRB in order to represent poetic, religious and mythical stories in a bold, realistic style. They joked that the sign on the studio door would be interpreted by the uninitiated as “Please ring the bell”, but for the raffish associate member Walter Deverell, PRB stood for “Penis rather better”. A moot point perhaps, as far as the priapic Rossetti was concerned, but the same could not be said of Ruskin. In the year that the Pre-Raphaelites formed, the critic who would do more than anyone else to champion the Brotherhood married 19-year-old Effie Gray. Their honeymoon night, as Moyle puts it, “did not go well”.

What happened when Effie removed her nightgown has kept biographers occupied for decades, and Moyle suggests that the groom was overcome by innocence as much as horror. Either way, Ruskin's inability, or refusal, to consummate his marriage runs parallel to the inability, or refusal, of Rossetti to resist seducing everyone he met.

It is hard to tell which was the more lethal, Ruskin's fear of the female form or Rossetti's fetishistic obsession with it. Ruskin told Effie that he would make her “his wife” when she was 25, at which point he housed her with Millais in a cottage in the Highlands and placed himself in a hotel on the other side of a bog. Within a year, the breakdown of the Ruskin marriage was discussed more than the Crimean war and Effie had become Mrs Millais. Ruskin's next infatuation was with the 10-year-old Rose La Touche. After being besieged by Ruskin for 17 years, Rose starved herself to death.

I always have the impression that the number of famous artists who married once, were faithful to their spouse, raised a happy family, and died financially secure at home must be very small. Instead, their private lives usually seem to be a walking disaster zone for themselves or those around them.

Tipler and crackpottery

The Varieties of Crackpot Experience | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

Oh dear. My favourite physicist Frank Tipler has come out as a global warming sceptic. (Well, just remember I don't pin the need for CO2 reductions on global warming anyway.)

This post about him is not very fair, but it's by Sean Carroll, a physicist who (despite his group blog moving to Discover magazine) keeps bringing up politics, religion and gay rights in a typical leftie atheist scientist fashion in a blog that is ostensibly about science and physics. The paraphrase of Tipler's comments on global warming make his comments sound much worse than they are.

Still, part of the reason I like Tipler is because it is never 100% clear whether (or at what point) he has truly fallen into crackpottery. (He also answered a couple of my emails years ago.) Certainly, it would seem he was stretching the credibility way too thin with his last book in which the miracles of Christ were given quasi-scientific explanation. He gets up atheist's noses by talking about the Omega Point God as a scientific fact.

Still, I suspect that his science work is more important than is usually acknowledged.

But there is no reason in particular to expect that a moderately famous physicist who has made his name in work on relativity and cosmology should have any special expertise in atmospheric physics and climate studies, so I don't think anyone skeptic should be too heartened by his views.

Maybe I should email him with some of the anti-Skeptic blogs that are around...

More about small nuclear

Backyard reactors? Firms shrink the nukes. | csmonitor.com

I see the idea is to bury them about 100 feet underground. I assume earthquake survivability is factored in, then.

The comments following the article are interesting too.

The English are strange

Icy four-day queues for beach huts - This Britain, UK - The Independent

Around 50 people queued in sub-zero temperatures for up to four days to get their hands on a beach hut lease today.

Lets on the wooden huts on Avon Beach, Mudeford in Dorset come up annually on a first-come, first-served basis for the summer period.

They have no electricity, running water and it is forbidden to sleep in them ....

But that did not stop two families setting up camp four days ago and queuing in shifts for the leases which went on sale today.

Only following the lead of Chairman Kev

Beijing urges firms to 'purify' Web from porn - International Herald Tribune

If he turns up to collect his Oscar, I'll really be impressed

Michelle Williams admits being haunted by Heath Ledger's ghost

Kinda hard to fit into the taxi, though

Guide horses for the blind? - International Herald Tribune

(Great cartooning opportunity here for someone).

Back to the serious stuff

AIMS Media Release January 2, 2009

It’s official: the biggest and most robust corals on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have slowed their growth by more than 14 per cent since the "tipping point" year of 1990. Evidence is strong that the decline has been caused by a synergistic combination of rising sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification.

A paper* published today (Friday 2 January 2009) in the prestigious international journal Science and written by AIMS scientists Dr Glenn De’ath, Dr Janice Lough and Dr Katharina Fabricius is the most comprehensive study to date on calcification rates of GBR corals...

On current trends, the corals would stop growing altogether by 2050.

"The data suggest that this severe and sudden decline in calcification is unprecedented in at least 400 years," said AIMS scientist and principal author Dr Glenn De’ath.

And here I was thinking that the Americans had cornered the market in really strange surnames.

But I shouldn't make light of him: it sounds as if his work is a pretty significant milestone for showing that the Great Barrier Reef really is in serious trouble. (And as for the ocean acidification component, it will happen regardless of air temperature.)

By the way, Tim Blair and his readers seem to take profound pleasure in their ignorance lately, when it comes to ridiculing any and all geoengineering concepts for dealing with CO2. For example, iron fertilization of the oceans as an idea has been around for a long time, and has often been discussed in popular science magazines like Discover or New Scientist. Sure, many scientists are sceptical of it being a good idea, but it has been tried on a small scale, and calling it the equivalent of a madman's idea is just displaying ignorance. It also shows an attitude more appropriate for a certain class of annoying self centred teenager, where ridicule is the easier option than actually trying to understand something. (Overly idealist teenagers who think they will change the world overnight are also annoying in their own way, as Blair knows.)

As with Andrew Bolt, Tim shows no sign of even a vague attempt at informing himself as to the real issues of climate change and ocean acidification, and just accepts any skeptical opinion with open arms. (He recently provided a link to "electric plasma" fan Louis Hissink, a well known climate skeptic at Jennifer Marohasy's. His fondness for Velikovsky's eccentric - although admittedly fun to contemplate - ideas puts him well outside the geologists' mainstream. )

I've said it before and will say it again: taking shots at exaggerations and media reporting on the "warminist" side is one thing, as is scepticism that carbon trading is going to work, or that the answer lies in a few million windmills.

But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The holiday photos post

The Christmas break was surprisingly enjoyable this year, considering some of it was spent in a dome tent in a camping ground which was both teeth-rattlingly close to the Pacific Highway, and under the flightpath to the Gold Coast Airport. (It was the best that could be arranged at short notice, but fortunately I like watching planes on approach.)

[By the way, has there ever been a more annoyingly complicated tent design devised than the now strangely popular dome style? To fully secure the thing in all its variations seems to take an extraordinary number of pegs. At least it didn't leak. Much.]

Anyhow, apart from time at the local beach and in the shopping centres to escape the midday heat, we had a nice day trip from our just-over-the-border location to view Byron Bay: a first time for me, despite it only being a couple of hundred km from Brisbane.

It was a beautiful day, and the views from the cape are great. Here's the view south:


And north:

The lighthouse itself:



A view showing the lighthouse keeper's quarters (part of which you can actually stay overnight in, although I was told you have to book a long way ahead):

However, be warned. Normal holiday traffic in Byron Bay is every bit as bad as they say. The one road into town slowed down to about 10 - 20 kph from about 8km out. Nice place to visit for a day: not sure I want to stay longer.

On another day, we made a short trip up to Springbrook in the Gold Coast hinterland. Purling Brook Falls is an under-appreciated, easy to access waterfall (the photo is not great, but you get the idea. If you squint, you might be able to make out the viewing platform up and to the left of the top of the falls. They are pretty high.):


Here's my favourite shot: an unusual looking bug (a type of dragonfly perhaps?) found on the path near the falls:


Lovely.

Another first: eating at a Nepalese restaurant, the Kathmandu Kitchen at Kingscliff. It is just the right kind of restaurant- a BYO with main meals in a very acceptable price range, friendly family service, and delicious food. Very highly recommended.

Must spend some more time on the far north coast of New South Wales, even though I still say that as soon as you cross the border, the ocean feels colder. (I know a former Novocastrian who agrees with me.)

Death by mochi - 2009 edition: now with additional death statistics!

Time for the annual Opinion Dominion New Year's post about the number of Japanese folk who have started the year in the most unfortunate way:

Tokyo Fire Department officials said Thursday that five elderly people had died and at least eight others had been hospitalized after choking on mochi rice cakes in the metropolitan area on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Is posting on this every year starting to test the limits of oddball funny? Oh well. I figure if it's good enough for the national Japanese press to report it, it's good enough to be repeated here. (It's not like I keep a chart on the wall, you know.) Other people do this too: here you can read of deaths reported from other parts of Japan.

If you are relatively new to this blog, you can read the reason why so many people choke on it in my earlier post here.

Actually, while Googling around the topic, I turned up this surprising figure from an article in October 2008:

The choking death last week of a schoolboy in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, has spotlighted a little-known fact in Japan: More than 4,000 people choke to death on food every year....

According to data compiled by the health ministry, 4,407 people died by choking in 2006. By age, about 85 percent were over 65. Only one that year was in the 10-to-14 age group.

By type of food, "mochi" pounded rice was the top culprit, followed by rice, bread and "okayu" rice porridge.

And you thought that fugu was the most dangerous thing to eat in Japan. (According to Wikipedia, it now only causes a handful of deaths per year, although many more hospitalizations than that.)

Update: sorry, but I see that the links to the Japan Today source for the 2009 stories do not work anymore, and only take you to the current day's page. Not sure I can fix that.

Como el cerdo desnudo dice ...

Merry Christmas, readers

10 odd things about this blog

1. It's persistently unpopular. (Well, I think that's odd.*)

2. In any event, the fact that I still blog and Tim Dunlop doesn't gives me uncharitable pleasure. (He was a bore, yet got paid for it!**)

3. Low visitor numbers let me see where regular readers are from. Maybe this has been mentioned before, but there is a very regular repeat visitor who seems to come from or via Bowral in New South Wales. This person is perhaps the most faithful daily visitor, although Tim from Melbourne might drop in more often in any one day. More exotically, there is another visitor - less frequent lately, but still here sometimes - from South Africa. I have still no idea who either of these people are. There are very, very few visitors from the continent of South America. This is obviously the great untapped potential for readership there. Hola! (and Ola!) ¡Tendré una cera brasileña masculina en su honor!***

4. It is remarkable the number of people who come here via the search "Julia Gillard's ear lobes". There are many more ear lobe observers in the nation than I would have suspected.

5. "Old time sex" also seems to be a perennial favourite search term. Is it old time people who search for old time sex?

6. There's also a search or two per week for "A lonely cow weeps at dawn" since it was mentioned here. Listing the title of porn movies is obviously a way to increase hits.

7. I realised, when Club Troppo invited people to nominate their own posts for consideration as "Best Blog Posts" of 2008, I don't do essays. The entry I nearly self nominated was only about 600 words long. Funny, it feels to me like I am writing more than I do.

8. Why wasn't this horsey post from 2007 nominated for an award? It's a personal favourite.

9. I like my travelogue-ish posts, and am often pleased with the photos accompanying them, but (almost) no one ever comments. (Well, I did get one comment earlier this year, but it was deleted for containing the word "schlong".)

10. No one has ever donated a cent. I am thinking of announcing that I am in fact transgender and in need of the operation, as that worked for at least one other blogger. Don't tell the Pope, though.

* Too eclectic for its own good, is my theory. It also manages to have a broadband annoyance factor: those on the right who are climate skeptics (ie, about 95% of them, it seems) no doubt tire of posts on CO2 and ocean acidification; and those on the left probably don't enjoy semi-regular bagging of Islam, China, and gay rights.

** Add "unnecessary catty comments" to the list of reasons why people don't visit.

*** I will have a men's brazilian wax in your honour!

Colebatch criticism continues

One little word undoes the PM's claims on greenhouse gases | theage.com.au

Tim Colebatch argues that the major faults of the current European ETS are repeated in Kevin Rudd's proposed scheme.

Worth reading.

Ghosts of Everest

Voices in the air -- Windsor 337: a2667 -- BMJ

Here's a an interesting first hand account from the British Medical Journal of spectral assistance being provided to a an exhausted climber on Mt Everest. It's not an unusual story, apparently.

As with my recent post about bereavement "ghosts", the author of the article knows that the scientific explanation is the brain playing tricks because of the unusual stress it is under. (Indeed, the deprivation of oxygen aspect of the Everest stories can be seen as being the same explanation for death bed visions - where a person close to death starts chatting to an unseen, deceased, relative in the room. These are at their most suggestive of the supernatural when the "visitor" is of a relative who has recently died, yet the dying person had not been told.)

All very inconclusive, of course, but interesting nonetheless.

Greenhouse stuff

Paul Sheehan has a column in the SMH today about Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme which about right.

I would add this, being my thoughts since I wrote my initial rambling post:

* regardless of the issue of the variable target, which greatly offends many for being too soft, and about which I am still undecided, the more fundamental problem is the design of the scheme itself. If the scheme is badly flawed, the targets it aims for are not that relevant anyway;

* I remain sceptical of all ETS's, for the reasons which have been given a lot of publicity in the international press lately (see my various posts on this). However, it would seem the only hope of international sentiment moving away from using ETS as the concept would be if Obama's advisers were strongly against it, and the US started to push for carbon tax instead. Who knows if that will happen?;

* Kevin Rudd seems to have come up with the worst of all possible worlds: a target idea which keeps no one happy (well, except for some of the polluters); an ETS; and an ETS that seems to repeat the mistakes already identified in existing schemes.

* Few are saying it, but I think it confirms Malcolm Turnbull's earlier criticism about Rudd's early start up date for an ETS: it is better to get it right and have a scheme that starts a year later, than to rush into one which is fatally flawed.

In other greenhouse commentary: Andrew Bolt cited David Evans again on Saturday about the alleged absence of a "hot spot" in the atmosphere being strong evidence against greenhouse gases as the cause of global warming.

Club Troppo's Nicholas Gruen knows Evans personally, and managed to get him to agree to taking part in a debate in comments to a Troppo post.

It worked very well, and I have to say (not to my surprise) Dr Evans does not look like the winner, not by a long shot. (The comment by "Rex Ringshot" seemed particularly valuable, and showed that non-scientists can write helpful explanation.)

Did Andrew Bolt follow the argument, I wonder?

Wind farms and truth in advertising

Promoters overstated the environmental benefit of wind farms - Telegraph

The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) has agreed to scale down its calculation for the amount of harmful carbon dioxide emission that can be eliminated by using wind turbines to generate electricity instead of burning fossil fuels such as coal or gas.

The problem was the BWEA liked to use a figure based on older, dirtier coal fired plants; but as British coal power is much cleaner now, the BWEA is being forced to revise its claims.

The most interesting part, though, is the ridiculous number of turbines needed to make big inroads into renewable targets:

Hundreds of wind farms are being planned across the country, adding to the 198 onshore and offshore farms - a total of 2,389 turbines - already in operation. Another 40 farms are currently under construction.

Experts have previously calculated that to help achieve the Government's aim of saving around 200 million tons of CO2 emissions by 2020 - through generating 15 per cent of the country's electricity from wind power - would require 50,000 wind turbines.

But the new figure for carbon displacement means that twice as many turbines would now be needed to save the same amount of CO2 emissions.

Ho ho ho..Merry Christmas (sarcasm mode)

Gaza: Hamas to end cease-fire with Israel - Los Angeles Times

A funny post

Marina Hyde: Nicole blows it with the Aborigines | Life and style | The Guardian

The wonderful Rex (the Runt)

I'm not sure if he has ever made an appearance on Australian TV before, but I've only recently discovered the very eccentric but very amusing Rex the Runt on ABC2. It's an Aardman claymation production, but much "edgier" than Wallace & Grommit.

Many, if not all, episodes are on Youtube, or you can find them via the official website. Here's a sample for your consideration:



It makes me happy, but why didn't I know about this show before??

In case you hadn't noticed...

... the meeting of the American Geophysical Union is on at the moment, and this Nature blog: In The Field: American Geophysical Union Archives has heaps of interesting posts about the various talks and papers being presented.

There appears to be nothing substantial in the way of global warming scepticism there (sorry my band of conservative greenhouse skeptic readers). But here are some of the more interesting posts:

* the main protagonists in the "hockey stick" controversy were together still disagreeing. (I personally am of the view that it was not that important an issue anyway.)

* here's another confirmation that Arctic ice is not just melting more in recent summers, it's getting thinner too.

* what are the odds of really abrupt climate changes? There's some relatively good news in there (Atlantic ocean circulation that keep England warm isn't expected to stop this century, and massive amounts of methane from underground may also stay in place for that long.) But, they now think ocean level rises will be faster and higher than IPCC last reported.

Even so, I don't tend to get too worked up about this (rising sea levels) as an issue, although I suppose I should if a metre in a century is possible. Certainly, it hasn't started yet, and engineering at least has a chance of addressing it in many areas. It's not as if the large rises be detected as soon as they start happening, and they will take many years to be fully realised.

My hunch is also to not be so sure on the methane issue. It seems poorly understood.

* here's a novel suggestion for climate geo-engineering that sounds much more "do-able" than most other ideas. (It's about getting rid of high altitude clouds.)

British character cycles

Paul Johnson writes about what he observed of people's stoic behaviour during the great depression in England, and it ties in well with this recent essay by Theodore Dalrymple concerning the modern change in British character.

Dalrymple describes it this way:

Gradually, but overwhelmingly, the culture and character of British restraint have changed into the exact opposite. Extravagance of gesture, vehemence of expression, vainglorious boastfulness, self-exposure, and absence of inhibition are what we tend to admire now—and the old modesty is scorned. It is as if the population became convinced of Blake’s fatuous dictum that it is better to strangle a baby in the cradle than to let a desire remain unacted upon.

Certainly, many Britons under the age of 30 or even 40 now embrace a kind of sub-psychotherapeutic theory that desires, if not unleashed, will fester within and eventually manifest themselves in dangerous ways. To control oneself for the sake of the social order, let alone for dignity or decorum (a word that would either mean nothing to the British these days, or provoke peals of laughter), is thus both personally and socially harmful.

While he doesn't really examine in detail the reasons behind this change of national character, he does make the interesting claim that the British have acted that way before:

Before the English and British became known for self-restraint and an ironic detachment from life, they had a reputation for high emotionalism and an inability to control their passions. The German poet Heinrich Heine, among others, detested them as violent and vulgar. It was only during the reign of William IV—“Silly Billy,” the king before Victoria—that they transformed into something approaching the restrained people whom I encountered as a child and sometimes as a doctor.

As always, he is an interesting, if rather gloomy, writer.

Just a naughty "manager"

Russia rewriting Josef Stalin's legacy -- chicagotribune.com

Good grief. I knew Stalin was still considered a folk hero by many older Russians who miss the days of communism, but I didn't realise his image was being rehabilitated with the help of the State. According to the story:

In Russian classrooms, history teachers are guided by a new, government-approved textbook, Alexander Filippov's "Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006," which hails Stalin as an efficient manager who had to resort to extreme measures to modernize the lumbering Soviet agrarian economy.

There were, writes Filippov, "rational reasons behind the use of violence in order to ensure maximum efficiency."

A museum commemorating Stalin as a national hero opened in 2006 in the southern city of Volgograd. The following year, a 40-episode television drama broadcast on a state-controlled network whitewashed Stalin's crimes and portrayed him as Russia's savior.

Putin apparently told history teachers "We can't allow anyone to impose a sense of guilt on us."

What a dangerous ideologue he is.