Tired doctors

Patients dying at the hands of doctors working for days on end | The Courier-Mail

Public hospital doctors in Queensland certainly got a lot of publicity yesterday about their long work hours and the mistakes they are leading to. Even though this is all part of a pay and conditions campaign, I doubt there is much reason to doubt the stories of overwork and its dangerous consequences.

On talkback radio, and in comments in the paper, many people make a pretty valid comparison: we have tight laws to try to prevent long distance truck drivers from falling asleep on the job, yet there is no equivalent for hospitals, despite the life and death nature of what they routinely do.

Part of the issue with junior doctors and long hours seems to have been a reluctance of older doctors, who had it tough when they were an intern, to agree that young doctors should have better conditions. And in fact, in the comments in the Courier Mail following the story, there is still evidence of a "suck it up" attitude:

I am actually a doctor at one of the large hospitals in Brisbane and it has been blown out of proportion all this safe hours rubbish. I have not worked over 60 hours in a week for more then 5 years. Most of the doctors are complaining that they do not work enough because they now don't get enough experience. Going to see a senior doctor is not goign to be as safe in a few years time becasue instead of seeing hundreds of different cases on a specific illness he will have only seen 20 or 30 because of all these safe hours hysteria. There are a few exceptions to the rule but in the majority junior docotrs don't get enough experience anymore.... I am sure if you check those doctors records who make the mistakes I have a feeling you would see they probably make mistakes if they are tired or not....

I suspect "Joan" is a crusty old nurse offering her support to that anonymous doctor:

I agree with the doctor in comment 99. Most of the junior doctors are gone by 5pm - regardless of what is happening medically with their patients.The really long shifts disappeared a generation ago - and now those doctors ( as the senior consultants) are actually the ones filling in the gaps left by the "safe hours" campaigners amongst the junior doctors. Without enough experience these junior doctors will never reach the same level of skill that more senior doctors achieved during their early training years. Maybe the problem is that since medicine became a post graduate degree, the young enthusiastic junior doctors have been replaced by older more militant ones. Maybe the current junior doctors can't function under stress - which surely should be a prerequisite in their job.

In a few subsequent comments, many doctors dispute Joan's account of what a breeze the hours now are.

Of course, having more doctors in the system would help too.

Various comments on CO2

Clean coal: Miracle or mirage? - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Four Corners devotes an entire show tonight to the issue of "clean coal" and it would appear from the preview at the link that it will confirm all my suspicions that it is not going to work.

Meanwhile, in the Australian this morning, the much derided Bjorn Lomborg makes the point again that concentrating on CO2 targets without putting adequate investment into new technology is going to ensure the targets are not met. (I would also add that concentrating on a establishing a system which has a built in incentive to invent phoney offsets - such as an ETS - is not going to help either.)

He appears to advocate a very low initial carbon tax but (if I read him correctly) all of the money thereby raised would be going into new technology development. I guess the problem with this is that it would be a case of governments trying to pick winners out of a range of potential useful technology, which has its own risks of failure. But if the problem is urgent, I don't know that we have much choice.

Besides, to a significant degree, we already know one thing that would help - ramping up nuclear power. And my inclination - much repeated here - is to go with small systems that can be quickly deployed. The next generation of big reactors, which do have their advantages, can follow through later.

Fran Barlow has been making comments a lot at John Quiggin and LP about nuclear power. Like Barry Brook, she appears to be a lefty (well, I assume Brook is - he is a scientist who believes in AGW, after all) who has become completely convinced of the need for nuclear to be involved in reducing CO2. Yet, she thinks it is pointless to politically promote this in Australia.

I made a comment at an LP thread about this a couple of weeks ago, to which I think no one replied. I'll make it here then:

I must say I am somewhat puzzled with the attitude that seems to be “sure, we know nuclear would be good, but we may as well forget it as we can’t get it through politically in the foreseeable future.”

Seems a very defeatist attitude towards changing Labor Party policy from a bunch of people who are (I presume) Labor supporters! Of course, you’ll never get the Greens on side, but if you actually had Labor policy change you’re not going to have a problem with the conservative side of politics. That would then render Green control of the Senate irrelevant.

So the crux of the matter is getting Labor to accept the inevitable sooner rather than later. What percentage of sensible Labor Party members do you need before they’ll have the temerity to challenge Labor policy on this?

Barlow's big concern is that, even with the Liberals and Labor both "on side", enough Labor voters will desert to the Greens to be a major problem. But surely not enough to prevent a government being formed in the House of Reps, and to allow for a combined conservative and Labor Senate vote to get it through there?

So when will prominent Labor identities start the push to get their policy changed? Dithering around on blogs about how it is needed is not going to be enough.

UPDATE: if anything, I thought the Four Corners show last night was a little too soft on clean coal. For example, there was very little talk of the practical challenges of how many places around a country are geologically suitable for carbon sequestration, and how you get the CO2 to those spots. I think it could have had more detail on that and other aspects.

UPDATE 2: As I have a rare link here from LP, I'll point people back to this previous post about clean coal from 2007, which may be of interest. This post was pretty worthwhile too, if I do say so myself!

A touch of Dubai in Australia

It would appear that practices common in Dubai have been given a run in Sydney. (Namely, exploiting immigrant labour.)

Presumably, we'll be a bit quicker to do something about it.

(By the way, I was talking to some Australian Dubai residents recently, who claimed that a lot of exploited migrant labour there was used by "reputable" foreign companies that would never try it in their home countries.)

As expected

Bryan Appleyard (who seems to have gone walkabout from his blog without explanation - he does that from time to time) warned in July that a silly public art idea in the middle of London (people get to stand on a plinth and do whatever they like and call it art) was "an invitation to the exhibitionist streak in the British public".

How true. The BBC reports some bloke just took the opportunity to strip off and stand there for his allotted time. He wasn't the first.

The BBC story then sidetracks into what it is that determines whether or not public nudity is prosecuted as an offence. It seems fair to say that it's all just "a vibe" sort of thing. Claimed artistic intent appears to count for a lot, even in the centre of a public space like Trafalgar Square.

Yet, as the BBC notes, a nutty naturist who goes hiking in the nude, not particularly seeking attention, will cop a fine.

Maybe it ought to be decided not on the basis of offence, but rather annoyance, caused to others. That is, I suppose, why no one objects to streakers during important sporting matches getting prosecuted. And it would also provide a basis for artist exhibitionist gits in the middle of London to face the law too.

By the way, that Appleyard post is well worth reading in its entirety for what he says about the "art is what I say it is" movement.

A death noted

Popular ABC radio conservationist Ric Natrass dead at 60

I guess this won't mean anything to any reader outside of Brisbane, but I was sad to read that Ric Natrass had suddenly died. He was mainly known through radio over the years, where he would take calls about about all types of local wildlife and its behaviour. Extremely knowledgeable, entertaining and with a distinctive and cheery voice, he will be missed.

Mystery ship explained

Missing channel pirate ship carried Russian arms for Iran - Times Online

Natural shielding

Earth could shield Moon colonists from radiation | COSMOS magazine

For about seven days a month, the Moon’s orbit carries it inside the protective cocoon of Earth’s magnetic field, where it is partially shielded from the Solar System’s turbulent space weather. Could future colonists use this to their advantage?

A new study suggests that space agencies could use this natural radiation screen when constructing lunar bases or planning the moonwalks of future astronauts.

“The terrestrial magnetic field provides a significant amount of shielding for energetic particles incident on the Moon,” said Robert Winglee, a physicist at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA. “An astronaut, especially if he was far off from base, would be very well protected.”

That's encouraging.

Talking of whales

There's an interesting article in Japan Times talking about whaling history in Japan.

"The Cove", the critically successful documentary about the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, gets a mention too.

One thing that interests me about this is the number of people who seem to never have heard of this event until now. The Japan Times article linked to above points out it has critically reported on this event many times over the years.

Indeed, this little blog first posted on the Japan Times articles it in August 2007, and linked to a Foreign Correspondent program on it which appeared in 2005!

Yet on ABC Radio, Phillip Adams on Late Night Live said he had never heard of it, and Fran Kelly on the breakfast show seemed to be just as surprised.

Hey, Radio National folk: read this blog, or even try watching your own current affairs programs. You might learn something.

Modern toilet trends

'Urinating' Queensland cop shocks onlookers

A QUEENSLAND police officer is being investigated after allegedly being caught urinating on a poker machine inside a Sunshine Coast nightclub last night.

Well, I blame all those fancy-smancy urinal designs you get in modern clubs or restaurants now. No wonder a man gets confused when the real urinal might be a glowing, colour changing part of the wall, as it was in a restaurant I went to a few months ago.

I meant to review that restaurant at the time, as the food was disappointing, the service inadequate, but the toilets were worth talking about.

Apart from the glowing translucent urinal, for the toilet stalls, there was a unisex area, and the door and wall to the toilet cubicle were clear glass until you went in and locked the door, whereupon it went (sort of) opaque. (I had read about this glass before. I think turning or off an electric current changes it from clear to opaque.)

But the problem was it wasn't completely opaque. Men or women sitting in this open area (I think there was a sort of lounge to sit on in the middle if all the stalls were full) could still make out the outline of a person sitting on a toilet through the magic glass.

This is clearly inadequate to anyone wanting complete privacy, and would be particularly inappropriate for any rugby league player who had just met some women he liked at the bar.

A long debate at The Economist

Europe and Islam: A treacherous path? | The Economist

Wow. After a somewhat favourable review for a book worrying that Islamic migration is changing Europe, there are 790 comments. No time to plough through them now, but might be worth a look.

Japanese solar

Solar power's bright future in Japan: Land of the rising subsidy | The Economist

The Economist reckons that the Japanese solar panel industry is well placed to weather the glut of solar power panels that is driving down the price. Good.

Hamas and its little, tiny problem with history

Hamas Objects to Possible Lessons About Holocaust in U.N.-Run Schools in Gaza - washingtonpost.com

You have to laugh at the broad sweep of this statement, made in response to the suggestion by the UN that maybe they could talk about the Holocaust in the schools they run in Gaza:

"Talk about the holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage and religion," Jamila al-Shanti, a Hamas legislative official, said in a statement distributed Tuesday after a meeting among elected leaders of the radical Islamist group and the head of the Hamas-run Education Ministry in Gaza.

Found via First Things.

Immunisation dills

There was a worrying story on last night's 7.30 Report on the very low immunisation rates for whooping cough (and other childhood diseases) in parts of Australia.

The anti-immunisation campaigner who was shown giving a talk inside a church (which, incidentally, should take more interest in the harm the use of their premises may be contributing to a healthy society) came across as real dill, dismissive of serious medical research and doctors generally. How's this for a self serving statement:

MERYL DOREY: Just because someone is a doctor doesn't necessarily mean they're an expert on every area of medicine, and unless they've actually done some independent research into vaccination they may not know more than the average parent who's read a few articles and a book or two about vaccinations.

Yet I thought the response to her from the doctors was really too mild. I wanted them them to be far more incendiary in their attack on her organisation.

I had thought, obviously incorrectly, that government here had really forced the hand on immunisation by requiring it for child care benefits and other reasons. Obviously, however, it doesn't work well enough in some areas of Australia.

Quite right

Survival rests on social revolution | The Australian

Greg Sheridan's discussion of Japan's survival problem seems spot on.

A stepping stone to the green cheese

SPACE.com -- Mouse Hotel Opens on Space Station

Hey, why isn't this getting more publicity? The current shuttle trip to the International Space Station has delivered a half dozen rodent residents who will stay there for 3 months:

The mice are living in a special experiment drawer delivered to the station late Sunday by astronauts aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery. The drawer is split into partitions to give each mouse ample living room.

"Each mouse is in its own little compartment," Robinson told SPACE.com. "The compartments have screens around them so the mice can hold on with their feet so that they're in control of their environment...so they're not stressed out."

It is hard to imagine how a little mouse brain reacts to permanent weightlessness. Do they just cling motionless to the screens for the first 48 hours thinking "what the hell?"

NASA must have video of mice in space already:

Mice have flown in space countless times before, even on space shuttles headed for the International Space Station. But the critters always stayed aboard those shuttles and returned home, said NASA's space station program scientist Julie Robinson. The longest any mouse has lived in space has been about 30 days, and that was while flying on an unmanned satellite, she added.

However, the only video I could find on the 'net is from a 1950's science fiction film, where they view what appears to be real footage of mice having a parabolic ride on a missile. As expected, the mice looked somewhat alarmed.

We can only hope that one or more of them will escape during their sojourn on the ISS. That would gain a lot of publicity for NASA.

Philosopher gets comic treatment

Bertrand Russell: The thinking person's superhero - The Independent

Some amusing quotes from this favourable review of a comic book treatment of Bertrand Russell:

His bitterly lonely childhood (he contemplated suicide) was enlivened, he said later, by thoughts of sex and glimpses of a totally logical world available through Euclidian mathematics. But even Euclid's maths rested on shaky assumptions and unproven "axioms", so how could it lead to certain knowledge of the world?

Through GE Moore at Cambridge, he discovered Leibniz and Boole, and became a logician. Through Alfred Whitehead's influence, he travelled to Europe and met Gottlob Frege, who believed in a wholly logical language (and was borderline insane) and Georg Cantor, the inventor of "set theory" (who was locked up in an asylum) and a mass of French and German mathematicians in varying stages of mental disarray. Back home he and Whitehead wrestled with their co-authored Principles of Mathematics for years, endlessly disputing the foundations of their every intellectual certainty, constantly harassed by Russell's brilliant pupil Wittgenstein. ...

Doxiadis and his team make us feel how cataclysmic was the moment when Kurt Godel, the mathematician, in a lecture, announced: "There will always be unanswerable questions," and proved that arithmetic is "of necessity incomplete" – pulling the rug from under the study of logic. ("It's all over," remarked Russell's friend Von Neumann at the conference, meaning the whole of philosophical reasoning.)

The sinking tax haven

Bankruptcy threat brings new concept to the Cayman Islands … taxes

Oh, forgot to collect taxes, diddums?

A very peculiar suggestion

New Scientist has finally run an article talking about a recent proposal as to why the arrow of time always seems to move forward, rather than backwards as the laws of physics would allow.

The idea is that things do happen "backwards", it's just that in so doing, quantum mechanics if applied on a big enough scale means they leave no information behind that they have happened.

I keep trying to work out how this relates to the "tree falling in a wood with no one to hear it" question. Of course it still makes a sound; the lack of observation doesn't stop that. In the same way, I suppose, just because a "backwards" event can't be detected might not mean that it hasn't happened.

On the other hand, any scientist who believes this idea doesn't have much right to be a ridiculing atheist who criticises believers because they can't prove their God exists.

The Guardian's explanation of the idea, which apparently quotes the author of the paper directly, makes it sound a much more implausible idea, as it would appear to allow for memories to be created but subsequently erased:

He argues that quantum mechanics dictates that if anyone does observe an entropy-decreasing event, their memories of the event "will have been erased by necessity".

Maccone doesn't mean that your memories will never form in the first place. "What I'm pointing out is that memories are formed and then are subsequently erased," he tells me.

When you observe any system, according to Maccone, you enter into a "quantum entanglement" with it. That is, you and the system are entangled and cannot properly be described separately.

The entanglement, Maccone says, is between your memory and the system. When you disentangle, "the disentangling operation will erase this entanglement, namely the observer's memory". His paper derives this conclusion mathematically.

Yes, the Guardian's headline for the report appears most apt then: "Is quantum mechanics messing with your memory?" But are they quoting him accurately?

Drunk hamsters

How Alcohol Blunts Ability Of Hamsters To 'Rise And Shine'

Big surprise! (That was sarcasm): the more hamsters drink, the more it disrupts their circadian cycle.

Hamsters like their alcohol:

The animals were divided into three groups, differing only on what they drank. The control group received water only. A second group received water containing 10% alcohol and the third group received water containing 20% alcohol. Hamsters, when given a choice, prefer alcohol, which they metabolize quickly.

I would kind of like to see how a drunk hamster acts, but the researchers aren't into such voyeurism. Anyway, there's a cute hamster photo at the link.

Hmm...

This will no doubt be an interesting trial as it progresses, as the claims being made sound, at least in part, a bit like the repressed memory ritual child abuse cases:

A FORMER school teacher has emerged as a key witness to the alleged sexual assaults of students, amid allegations that paint a picture of ''rampant pedophilia'' at St Stanislaus College in Bathurst.

The allegations, including that students were forced to have group sex and were hypnotised to have sex with teachers, were heard during a bail review for Brian Joseph Spillane, a former chaplain at the school.

A sensible teacher who observed abuse is obviously important, but claims of hypnotism being used in any criminal endeavour tweak my scepticism antenna somewhat.

A problem long identified

Lay off the linguistics to address English lag | The Japan Times Online

Another suggestion is offered as to why Japanese language teaching is ineffective (teachers have to study linguistics, which is more about analysing a language rather than how to teach it.)

But really, this is just part of the basic problem that has long been identified: they have an obsession about teaching the technical rules of English rather than the its practical application.

Yet nothing much seems to change. Maybe a new government will actually let some fresh ideas blow into all corners, including this one?

Trouble ahead

UK could face widespread seventies style blackouts - The Independent

The UK faces widespread power cuts for the first time since the 1970s, according to the Government's own predictions.

Demand for electricity from homes and businesses is set to exceed the available supply within eight years....

The latest figures cast doubt over the Government's pledge that renewable sources can make up for lower output from nuclear and coal.

They were slipped out in an appendix to the Low Carbon Transition Plan, which was launched in July. The main document set out a target for "clean" technology - such as wind, wave and solar - to supply 40% of the country's power by 2020.

But the extra section suggests that there will be a shortfall by 2017, when the "energy unserved" level is predicted to reach 3,000 megawatt hours per year...

By 2025 the situation is expected to worsen, with the shortfall hitting 7,000 megawatt hours per year.

That would be equivalent to an hour-long power cut for half of Britain over the course of a year.

Actually, in some recent stormy summers in Brisbane, we've had a lot more than an hour-long power cut in a year.

Yurts for all

Why a yurt is better than a country cottage - Times Online

Here's an article in the Times about a family that uses a yurt as its holiday home. The kids have to find firewood to boil the kettle, and there is no toilet, which is getting just a little too "back to Nature" for my taste.

Still, reading about yurts reminds me of my widely ignored thought that maybe the neverending problem with providing adequate housing for remote aboriginal communities is due to the inappropriateness of trying to provide permanent housing for remote aboriginal communities.

When I read about the current controversy over the cost of a current program to improve housing in the Northern Territory, I can't help but feel I was onto something with my half-baked idea. According to that last linked news report, some people think that it is going to end up costing $1 billion to provide 750 new houses, 230 "rebuilds" and refurbishment to 2,500 other existing houses.

Let's see: a company in Bangalow will sell a 10 metre diameter yurt with a heavy canvas cover for around $20,000.

Let's be generous, and allow another $20,000 for changes in design, some sort of decent flooring, etc. (A clan's bunch of yurts could share a central, simple ablutions block, but admittedly I have no idea how to estimate the cost of that.) Maybe $10,000 to get it there and put it up? Rough figure - $50,000 per yurt. Pretty expensive for a tent, but...

If you assume the 750 new houses will take 1/2 of the billion dollars that may be spent on the current program, you can get ten thousand $50,000 yurts for that price. Let's say that my back of the envelope figuring is way out - surely 5,000 is still in the ball park.

At that rate, it hardly matters if you have to replace them every five years.

Maybe I should start the Yurts for All Party as a way of publicising this idea.

Good TV

Last night's Australian Story was a nice one about competitive paper airplane throwing (and a brain tumour.) Happily, the subject recovered from the latter, and has many years of competitive paper plane folding and throwing ahead of him. (I did get the feeling, though, he would be a bit annoying to live near, as your yard or balcony would always be littered with paper planes.)

The episode can be watched here. (After this week it will be archived as "Fly with Me".)

Last Friday's documentary on the Last Day of World War One was also good. Michael Palin makes an good narrator of serious material, and he recounted many stories of soldiers who were, with great pointlessness, ordered on the battle field in the 6 hours or so between the announcement of the ceasefire agreement being signed, and the time it came into effect (at 11am on 11/11.)

It would seem that the full documentary can be viewed via the link here.

Another African problem?

Interesting claim made here that pornography is behind a lot of sexual violence (and lack of safe sex practices) in Africa.

Occasionally there is talk of the similar effect of pornography in remote aboriginal settlements, but the problem never seems to get detailed reportage.

More notes for future reference

Study debunks daily aspirin to guard heart | The Australian

The study on alcohol, carried out on 8830 people in Britain, Scandinavia and the US, found those who drank the equivalent of 10 standard drinks a week - about 15 units - had an 80 per cent higher risk of having an irregular heartbeat diagnosed within five years.

And the study of aspirin found that healthy adults who took a daily aspirin for up to eight years did not significantly reduce their risk of a heart attack or stroke, but did increase their risk of stomach bleeding.

I think I would average 5 to 7 standard drinks a week, so I trust I'm OK.

At last

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | 'Major win' for Japan opposition

Can you imagine the same party governing Australia for nearly 54 years?

Visit to Narnia (South East Queensland version)

Of course, I had to make the trip to Cleveland Point to have a look at the full-scale Dawn Treader, built for the third Narnia movie. It turned out to be a very pleasant family afternoon out.

Cleveland and the southern bayside parts of Greater Brisbane are not areas I get to all that often, but it is a very pleasant area for a drive. Lunch was had at a much better-than-average quality fish and chip place at Raby Bay, which has a row of nice looking outdoor/indoor eateries overlooking the boat harbour. Most satisfactory.

Then it was onto Cleveland Point. You can get very close to the ship:

and there are a lot of people making the trip to have a look.

Filming has not yet started on the ship, so I don't know how close people will be allowed when that happens.

Here is a better side view of the ship, although there is a fair bit of machinery in the way (as always, click to enlarge):


As you can see from the men standing on the ground on the far side of it, it's really full scale. Compared to the various book cover illustrations over the years, it certainly lives up to expectations.

You can't see it so clearly in the photo, but there does appear to be a purple furled sail on board now.

They were apparently testing the rocking mechanism for the ship today, as you can see from the (rather poor quality Blogger-ified) video below:



All terribly interesting, at least for someone who holds the Narnia films in high regard.

Famous actor sees famous ghost?

Patrick Stewart saw ghost performing Waiting for Godot - Telegraph

Would be good to hear it in Stewart's own words, though.

Noted for future reference

Patient Money - Treatments for Erectile Dysfunction Go Beyond a Pill - NYTimes.com

An article all about alternatives to Viagra and similar drugs, which don't always work anyway:

Even among the name-brand drugs, which also include Cialis and Levitra, the medications do not work for about half of the men with E.D.

Just getting healthier can help:

In a recent study of men with E.D., or at risk for developing it, researchers in Italy found that the men could improve their erections by losing weight, improving their diet and exercising more frequently. After two years of significant lifestyle changes, 58 percent of the men had normal erectile function, according to the study, which was published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine in January.

But if that still doesn't work, you can always go for the needle:

If the pills don’t work for you, you might want to try self-administered injections of alprostadil, a drug that helps blood vessels expand and facilitates erections. Granted, this may sound onerous, but the shot, which is sold under the brand names Edex and Caverject, is done with a fine needle, feels no worse than a pinprick and produces an erection that can last up to four hours, according to doctors who recommend it.

Four hours? You would kind of start worrying at the 3 hour 45 minute mark, I reckon.

Fictional 1930's lawyer not modern enough

Atticus Finch and Southern liberalism : The New Yorker

As mentioned here before, I (like millions of other people) hold "To Kill a Mockingbird", both as a novel and movie, in very high regard. Thus, it is always interesting to read an article considering the work in a new way.

The above New Yorker piece starts well, explaining the nature of racial politics in the South in the 1950's.

But then it takes a strange turn when it starts noting, and seemingly agreeing with, criticism of the fictional Atticus Finch for not having the "top down" civil rights activist attitude that came into being in the 1960's. The article provides quotes from the novel that, quite accurately, show Finch as believing racism would be overcome by getting people to realise the error of not recognising the humanity of their black neighbours. As the articles says:

[In relation to the guilty finding in the centrepiece trial in the story] If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn’t. He’s not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He’s Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds...

Finch will stand up to racists. He’ll use his moral authority to shame them into silence. He will leave the judge standing on the sidewalk while he shakes hands with Negroes. What he will not do is look at the problem of racism outside the immediate context of Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Levy, and the island community of Maycomb, Alabama.

How much sense does this make, though, when Mockingbird is set in the 1930's? The article mentions the period of the novel, but never seems to acknowledge that it may be quite unrealistic to have a small town lawyer sprouting a civil rights activist agenda in that setting.

Besides which, how can you really object to the philosophy of Atticus Finch when it is, at its core, the true explanation of racism? The book is so appealing partly because of the truth people recognise in that.

The article ends on what I think is a very peculiar note. It criticises the way the novel ends with Atticus Finch agreeing to let the Sheriff lie to the town about how the villain died. (He will say that it was an accidental self-inflicted stab wound, whereas the reader knows the reculsive Boo Radley did it to save Scout.) Here's what the article says:

“Scout,” Finch says to his daughter, after he and Sheriff Tate have cut their little side deal. “Mr. Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?”

Understand what? That her father and the Sheriff have decided to obstruct justice in the name of saving their beloved neighbor the burden of angel-food cake? Atticus Finch is faced with jurors who have one set of standards for white people like the Ewells and another set for black folk like Tom Robinson. His response is to adopt one set of standards for respectable whites like Boo Radley and another for white trash like Bob Ewell. A book that we thought instructed us about the world tells us, instead, about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama.

This is just silly. Boo Radley is not your average citizen, for one thing, and the Sheriff's decision makes perfect sense, and is perfectly just, in terms of the story.

What the hell does this article's author want Atticus Finch to do - tell the Sheriff "No, no, that's not right. I want you to take Boo, the man who has been so cripplingly shy that he hasn't come out of his house in daylight for the last 20 years, but nonetheless just saved my daughter's life, down to your office in the morning for a good and thorough statement to be taken"? Yeah, like readers would think that makes emotional sense.

Admission of a creepy practice

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China admits death row organ use

According to the China Daily newspaper, executed prisoners currently provide two-thirds of all transplant organs.

The government is now launching a voluntary donation scheme, which it hopes will also curb the illegal trafficking in organs.

The truth behind Andrew's holiday

What's this? Andrew Bolt unexpectedly up and left for a month long holiday in Europe to (ostensibly) celebrate his 50th birthday.

Yet at the very same time:

Britain's climate campers set up their annual protest camp yesterday on Blackheath, the historic London open space that was key in the peasants' revolt.

The 1,000-plus green activists are camped this morning on the fields where Wat Tyler's peasant army assembled for its assault on The City of London in June 1381. And they are planning their own assault – on what they see as the companies, institutions and government departments helping to cause global warming (or not doing enough to stop it).

Co-incidence? In my semi-comedic fantasies, Andrew mixes it up with a bunch of semi-feral climate change advocates, either as a convert or a spy.

Anyhow, his column on turning 50 contained a pleasing humility, I thought. The only odd thing is how it doesn't seem to extend to the prospect that his opinion on climate change might be wrong.

100% female domination

Ant has given up sex completely, researchers say

Add this to the list of things I didn't know:

The complete asexuality of a widespread fungus-gardening ant, the only ant species in the world known to have dispensed with males entirely, has been confirmed by a team of Texas and Brazilian researchers.

Most social insects—the wasps, ants and bees—are relatively used to daily life without males. Their colonies are well run by swarms of sterile sisters lorded over by an egg-laying queen. But, eventually, all social insect species have the ability to produce a crop of males who go forth in the world to fertilize new queens and propagate.

Queens of the ant Mycocepurus smithii reproduce without fertilization and males appear to be completely absent, report Christian Rabeling, Ulrich Mueller and their Brazilian colleagues in PLoS ONE this week.

"Animals that are completely asexual are relatively rare, which makes this is a very interesting ant," says Rabeling, an ecology, evolution and behavior graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin. "Asexual species don't mix their genes through recombination, so you expect harmful mutations to accumulate over time and for the species to go extinct more quickly than others. They don't generally persist for very long over evolutionary time."

If I was in a wittier mood, I guess I could come up with some comment about what a completely female ant society must be like to live in. But I'm not.

On Venezuela

Venezuela: The true cost of cheap gas | csmonitor.com

The Christian Science Monitor has a short item on the cost of gasoline in Venezuela:

Gasoline doesn’t flow from fountains in Venezuela, but it might as well. At 4 cents a gallon, the country has the cheapest gas in the world: Bottled water is 67 times more expensive.

But cheap gas comes at a cost, mainly for the government. The Chávez government is believed to be subsidizing consumption to the tune of $8 billion a year.

Chavez may be left wing, but he obviously hasn't yet caught on with the idea that carbon should have a price..

A few weeks ago, there was a whole half hour about the country on Foreign Correspondent. I didn't see all, but it was very interesting. It certainly showed it as a dirt poor country.

People need gravity to reproduce?

Egg tests find space may be tough place for humans to conceive babies | The Japan Times Online

It is a fascinating topic if you have an interest in the long term prospects for humanity to expand off-planet: how will low gravity affect reproduction.

If this Japanese mouse study is anything to go by, sex in zero-gee might be athletic fun, but it may be bad for fertile eggs:

...the group reported that the growth of fertile eggs slows in a near-zero-gravity environment, lowering the birthrate by half when the eggs are put back into the wombs of mice.

The eggs of humans, as a mammal, could face the same problem, the scientists said...

"If we find out how much gravity is needed for a (human) fertile egg to grow, we may be able to know if a baby can be born at a lunar base," said Teruhiko Wakayama of Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, who headed the joint group with Hiroshima University.

What I'm most curious to know is whether mice (or humans) conceived and born on the Moon will look different and be capable of adapting to full Earth gravity. The suspicion could be that a low gravity human would grow tall and thin, but nature has a way of confounding such predictions, so maybe they would be small instead. As someone somewhere has suggested before, maybe grey aliens are the time travelling descendants of off-planet humanity...

Getting fat from fasting

Gulfnews: Warning against unhealthy eating habits after fasting

I think it has been reported often that the weird eating habits that the month of Ramadan fasting induces often leads to weight increase, which seems a little bit inconsistent with the point of the exercise. As the Gulf News article above notes:

People tend to get more obese and diabetic due to irregular eating and overeating after ending the fast, a senior doctor from the Ministry of Health warned, advising people to eat healthy during the Holy Month.

Fasting during Ramadan can improve a person's health, but if the correct diet is not followed, can possibly worsen it, it warns. The deciding factor is not the fast itself, but rather what is consumed in the non-fasting hours, the Ministry said.

Quite.

But what about this new-age-ish claimed health benefit for Ramadan fasting:

Dr Prem Jagyasi, managing director of ExHealth, the organisers of the initiative, said Ramadan is a great opportunity to focus on bringing back a balanced and healthy lifestyle in people's lives who do not normally watch their eating habits. "Ramadan requires to give the stomach a break, and by doing so one will be able to break down and expel the collected toxins from body," he said, but notes that it is very important to understand the proper practice of eating healthy.

Is there any scientific justification at all for believing fasting eliminates "toxins" from the body? I would be surprised if there was.

The unlikely economics of carbon capture

Carbon capture project in West Virginia illustrates obstacles to 'clean' coal -- latimes.com

AEP executives estimate that the cost of carbon capture for a modest-size coal plant of about 235 megawatts would start at $700 million. That works out to about $100 for a ton of carbon dioxide, far above the projections made by the Environmental Protection Agency about prices under a cap-and-trade scheme similar to one passed by the House in June. MIT put the cost of carbon capture and storage at $50 to $70 a ton. (The Waxman-Markey bill would give the first six gigawatts of plants -- equal to about seven average-size plants -- a $90-per-ton subsidy in the form of free allowances.)

Capture-and-storage devices also require large amounts of energy. The Alstom approach uses about 15% of the power plant's energy output; other processes use as much as 30%. That means the utility must buy other energy sources to cover the shortfall. (The energy lost is part of the $700-million cost, AEP executives said.)

Obama is apparently being advised that "There is no credible pathway towards prudent greenhouse gas stabilization targets without CO2 emissions reduction from existing coal power plants."

I can't see it working.

Do not provoke the cows

Hoofed and dangerous: Britain's killer cows

Four people have been trampled to death by cows in just over eight weeks this summer, prompting British farmers and the Ramblers Association to warn yesterday of the potential dangers.

The spate of incidents is regarded as highly unusual; in the past eight years there have only been 18 deaths in total caused by cattle of all kinds – including incidents involving bulls, which have always been known to present risks.

When chickens ruled the earth

Canadian scientist aims to turn chickens into dinosaurs

Hans Larsson, the Canada Research Chair in Macro Evolution at Montreal's McGill University, said he aims to develop dinosaur traits that disappeared millions of years ago in birds.

Larsson believes by flipping certain genetic levers during a chicken embryo's development, he can reproduce the dinosaur anatomy, he told AFP in an interview.

I didn't think much was known about how to "flip" genetic levers, let alone specific ones.

I can't imagine the likes of PETA being too impressed with this, if it will involve lots of deformed chicks being born.

A quick quote

The 10 most historically inaccurate movies - Times Online

Mel Gibson movies keep featuring in this list, and I like this line from the article about The Patriot:

Gibson (rugby) tackles history again with his turn as an honest farmer drawn into the American Revolutionary War, which historian David Hackett Fischer claimed in the New York Times “is to history as Godzilla was to biology.”

Goldilocks revised

Anne Fine deplores 'gritty realism' of modern children's books - Times Online

So, one English writer of children's fiction says too much of it is too dark and depressing.

Another [Children's Laureate (!) Anthony Browne] disagrees, and tells us about his worryingly re-imagined Goldilocks:

“There are both types of endings, happier and unhappier. I prefer open endings. I don’t think we are living in an age of depressing, dark endings. If you look at Jacqueline Wilson, she does deal in gritty realism, but her books don’t lack aspiration.”

He recently changed the ending to his forthcoming book — Me and You, a retelling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears in which Goldilocks comes from an impoverished background — so that the ending was less miserable. “My original version had Goldilocks being chased out of the bears’ house and her ending up on bleak, dark streets. I decided to give it a more ambiguous ending, so now she is running toward something that may or may not be her mother.”

So, I suppose her impoverished background explains why she had to go into the bears' house in search of food? Here I thought kids liked to think she was just a naughty girl.

And what is this about her running towards "something" that might be her mother? Does he intend the book to be some sort of psychological test where you can judge your child's outlook by what they think the ending means?

Sack him, whoever has the job of appointing Children's Laureate.

Khatastrophe

Is Yemen Chewing Itself to Death? - TIME

Well, I knew little of the habit of khat chewing until reading the above fascinating article. Apparently, Yemen is hooked on this legal-for-Muslims alcohol substitute:

Khat is popular in many countries of the Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa, but in Yemen it's a full-blown national addiction. As much as 90% of men and 1 in 4 women in Yemen are estimated to chew the leaves, storing a wad in one cheek as the khat slowly breaks down into the saliva and enters the bloodstream. The newcomer to Yemen's ancient capital can't miss the spectacle of almost an entire adult population presenting cheeks bulging with cud, leaving behind green confetti of discarded leaves and branches. ...

At around $5 for a bag (the amount typically consumed by a single regular user in a day) it's an expensive habit in a country where about 45% of the population lives below the poverty line. (Most families spend more money on khat than on food, according to government figures.)...

"You sit up discussing all your problems and think you've solved everything, but in fact you haven't done anything in the last four hours, because you've just been chewing khat and all your problems actually got worse," says Adel al-Shujaa, a professor of political science at Sana'a University and the head of the Yemen Without Khat Association. Plus, he says, "all the decisions you've made are bad because you've made them while on khat."

And there are other problems, like the water it diverts from useful things, such as growing food. What a problem.

RealClimate looks into Plimer's questions

RealClimate: Plimer’s homework assignment

A detailed examination here of Ian Plimer's questions to George Monbiot, for those who are following the story.

Andrew Bolt seems to be avoiding it, for one.

Kennedy strikes a pose

St Mary's in Exile of the Trades and Labor Council has had a new website up for a few weeks now, but they seem very slow to post new videos of the weekly liturgies. It wouldn't be because, as far as I can guess from the last one I viewed, congregation numbers are dwindling somewhat?

Anyhow, for more amusement, have a look here to see Peter Kennedy in full Christ-like pose in a photographic work entered in the Blake prize for religious art. George Pell has noted "There is almost an element of kitsch about it", and he's not far wrong.

For more self-aggrandisement from the supposed leadership of the group, have a look at Terry Fitzpatrick's article in July Green Left Weekly:

On April 19, a huge mob of St Mary’s people made a pilgrimage out of a church and into the Trades and Labor Council (TLC) building, home of the Queensland Council of Unions.

They walked out of the church to the TLC, 200 metres down the road in silent vigil with candles and lanterns, banners and balloons - not unlike the Jews of the Old Testament escaping from the slavery of the Egyptians to the liberation of the Promised Land (minus the balloons).

As for the Church they didn't want to be told they were no longer a part of:

We too feel liberated from the shackles of a failing institution caught up in dogmas and creeds that belong to another age. We felt it was time to take a stand from the constant bullying we have experienced for many years.

He then goes on to list the things for which they have been "bullied": blessing gays and lesbian relationships, not using "sexist" language, signing a treaty with local aborigines.

With so much mistreatment, why did they ever want to stay?

Well deserved

Regular marijuana usage robs men of sexual highs - New Scientist

Stoners may be trading sexual highs for the chemical kind. Males who smoke marijuana daily are four times more likely to have trouble reaching orgasm than men who don't inhale, finds a new study of 8,656 Aussies...

Even though many male smokers experienced sexual problems, they reported more partners than non-smokers. Marijuana users were twice as likely to have had two or more sex partners in the previous year than men who didn't smoke pot.

Pitts' team found an even stronger trend for increased sexual activity among female smokers, who were also seven times more likely to have been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection in the last year than non-smokers. However, female smokers had no more problems in the bedroom than abstainers, Pitts' team found.

It's interesting to read the comments that follow the story, many of which are somewhat amusing:

Perhaps stoners are just twats and that is why these problems occur. Yeah - from those I've known that hypothesis fits the data pretty well. I never met a stoner who wasn't a total wanker. Someone needs to do the necessary research to confirm it.

And:

Here are my (unscientific) theories

1) more partners

the stoners just can't be bothered to put up with each other's crap all the time and thus split more readily

2)trouble reaching orgasm

the stoner just can't stop thinking about that new cushion recently purchased, how do they make them that fluffy!?

Can't help myself

Look, I'll stop obsessing about the fact that Inglorious Basterds got good reviews and has opened strongly. Any day now, I promise.

But in the meantime, I have a few observations:

* The geography of critical reaction is puzzling. Reviews from the United States were good overall, with the notable exceptions of the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, the New Yorker and Slate.

Yet in England, it was hard to find a good review. The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, the Telegraph are all bad reviews. The Times, for example:

"When we finally get to it (Tarantino has never been one to cut to the chase when he can masturbate through endless pages of smarty-pants dialogue) , the film’s climax proves to be its downfall."

This surprises me, as I hate most other cultural movements in England at the moment, but at least their critics seem well and truly "over" Tarantino.

I thought the explanation may be that the closer you get geographically to the reality of the War, the more offensive the film may look. But in Germany, the reviews are apparently enthusiastic. Oh well, it's not as if German sensibilities were ever easy to comprehend. I suspect that giggling about the moustache alone would have prevented Hitler's rise to power in any other European country.

In Australia, it's all positive reviews as far as the eye can see. You would have thought, given our cultural position straddled somewhere between the United States and England, there would be some negative review somewhere, but there isn't, as far as I can tell. Odd.

* The fans are a worry: those sophisticates who aren't worried about the empty rattling sound made by the space in his head where Tarantino's maturity should reside should at least worry about the types of fanboy they are probably sitting next to in the cinema. I base this on the ridiculously aggressive response you see in comments whenever there is a bad Tarantino review. The worst ones I saw on Rottentomatoes, referring to a desire that the reviewer's wife be raped, have (I think) now been deleted. Let's face it, a lot of his fans get off on the violence.

Full marks to Kenneth Turan at LA Times who wrote:

"As it goes on and on, 'Inglorious Basterds' feels increasingly like the kind of hollow, fanboyish cinema that is all the rage these days."

"Hollow" seems the perfect word when talking about Tarantino.

* What is it with the Left and movie violence now? Back in the 1960's and 1970's, it seemed that it was primarily the Left that used to disdain unnecessarily graphic movie violence. Revenge and vigilante movies were (correctly I think) seen as an angry right wing phenomena, at a time in which there were still identifiable right wingers working in Hollywood.

Now, virtually all reviewers, and all of Hollywood, come across as Left wing, yet they have embraced a nerdy director with a revenge and violence obsession. They have also, more generally, made their peace with graphic violence and gore, no matter what the context or reason for for it. Even apart from Tarantino, think of the Saw movies and the other examples of an especially grotesque and sadistic slasher genre that has come into its own in the last 10 years.

Yet, as with the extensive amount of real sex in Shortbus, having seen something once or twice seems to mean critics - even those who presumably might be somewhat middle of the road in their politics - won't question the morality or wisdom of what's on the screen anymore. The only issue you will sometimes seen raised is the feminist aspect of a story. A movie perceived as anti-feminist will be still be in for an ideological hiding, but that's about the extent that lefties worry about movie morality now.

Well, that's just not right. Sure, some critics take Tarantino to task for his morally vacuous use of violence, but it's damn few, and to Lefty luvvies like David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz it doesn't matter a hoot.

Grow some moral testicles again, Lefties, and make a call on the morality or social effect of what you are watching on the screen for a change.

Unpleasant household duties

Yes, that's how my Sunday morning was spent - in the roof space tracking down a dead animal which had chosen - with a sense of revenge, no doubt - to die directly above the linen cupboard. Hence, when getting new towels on Saturday night, we were greeted with a strong dose of dead animal smell. I don't think it has gotten into the sheets and blankets, but it's a little hard to tell.

At least this time the culprit was easily found: as expected it was a dead rat. They are frequent noisy visitors to the roof space during winter. Baits laid a couple of months ago evidently were still doing their job. It was full of maggots, so at least I got to it in time to avoid the mystery plague of flies getting through the exhaust fan into the house which we have had before.

On two previous occasions, dead smells from beyond the ceiling have been hard to find, mainly because there is fibreglass insulation up there. When you think about it, putting insulation in the ceiling, while no doubt sensible, must look to rats like a gigantic housing estate made especially for their benefit: rat-scale acres of nice, soft fluffy stuff under foot that's easy to tunnel through and make a nest out of.

Anyway, while I was up there I did move around more insulation, and found two other mummified rat bodies. If only they made roof cats....

Speaking of dead bodies, and apologies for making light of a human tragedy, didn't that American model who was (apparently) killed by her husband looked remarkably like an android kewpie doll, or something artificial, in the most common photo the media seems to be using.

A slight delay

Too busy to post til this evening, I think.

A Tarantino antidote

The Dawn Treader – Now with Tail (Updated!) | Narnia Fans

While I continue to gnash my teeth over the fact that critical success presumably means Tarantino will get to make another film, I can take some solace from the fact that, not too far from my house, they have built a full scale Dawn Treader for the next Narnia movie.

Good pictures of it are at the link above.

They are also allowing people to visit and watch filming from 31 August.

Very cool.

UPDATE: this very Catholic blog, which you can get to via the above link, has many, many more photos. One thing I am curious about: as you can see from some of the photos, the tide goes out a fair way at this part of Moreton Bay, leaving an un-photogenic rock-and-mud flat behind. Even when the tide is in, the water is not particularly blue and clear close to shore. How do they get around that when filming? Special effect sparkling ocean inserted later?