Some insight into Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick - A dream movie revisited

Last year, I saw the doco "Stanley Kubrick's Boxes" which gave a good account of the directors obsessively detailed movie preparations.

Now, you can buy an extremely expensive book that sets out all of the incredibly detailed preparation Stanley Kubrick made for his never funded film about Napoleon. In the article about it, the author makes some comments which I think are pretty interesting:

"At a deeper level, his never-ending interest in observing human folly was the wellspring for nearly all his films," writes Harlan in the book. "Napoleon was the ideal study subject. One of Stanley's often repeated notions was that, since we are all driven by our emotions, our belief that we might be governed by rational thought is a vain illusion." Kubrick's widow, Christiane, believes he struggled to understand how such a capable man as Napoleon could be so manipulated by the philandering Josephine, or have so hopelessly miscalculated the Russian campaign that defeated him. "When Stanley was young, he played chess for money for a while in New York," she says at the book's launch party later that evening. "[He believed] Napoleon might have learned to control himself better had he played chess. Stanley thought if you are too emotional, you lose."

I presume it was this distrust of emotion which led to Kubrick's pretty consistent inability to convincingly have emotion shown in his movies.

Proof of an afterlife

Johnny Cash releasing another posthumous album

The second biggest pair of undies I've ever seen

Governments’ Go-To Vendors Get it Done

Go to the link to see the photo.

Tell him he's dreaming

Abbott makes play for Greens preferences

I've made the point elsewhere, but I'll repeat it here: Abbott is not showing a firm grip on reality if he thinks he can credibly convince Green supporters to preference the Coalition when he:

a. showed all the policy conviction of a windsock on the issue of climate change over the last 6 months;
b. called climate change "crap" only a couple of months ago;
c. gave arch skeptic Minchin Resources and Energy, and put Joyce on the front bench.

It doesn't matter how big his Green Army will be, if you aren't convincing on climate change, you aren't going to get a Green vote within coo-ee of you.

Yet another possible early test

Seeing a diagnosis: How an eye test could aid Alzheimer's detection

It's about how spotting the death of cells on the retina may be able to used as an early Alzheimer's test. This quote at the end is of particular interest:

"Few people realise that the retina is a direct, albeit thin, extension of the brain. It is entirely possible that in the future a visit to a high-street optician to check on your eyesight will also be a check on the state of your brain."

Innovative uses for radioactivity in the 19th century

What Were They Drinking? Researchers Investigate Radioactive Crock Pots

The article is about a particular water jar, but the introduction is generally of interest:

Radioactive toothpaste, suppositories, makeup: Would-be inventors seeking to capitalize on the discovery of radioactivity in the late 19th century produced a plethora of questionable medical devices and treatments. Among the most famous of these was the Revigator, an earthenware vessel that, according to an advertisement, would infuse drinking water with "the lost element of original freshness -- radioactivity."

Radioactive suppositories? For that inner glow of health, I suppose. Here's more detail from an article at MSNBC:

And a truly amazing advertisement sells Vita Radium Suppositories (High Strength): radioactive suppositories intended for daily use that “are absorbed by the walls of the colon” so that “every tissue, every organ of the body is bombarded by its health-giving electric atoms.”

Ah, I knew it would be on the net somewhere. Here's a link to an original advertisement for them. I see that they are recommended for "sexually weak men" and are "also splendid for piles and rectal sores".

So concerns about sexual performance led to men using radioactive suppositories. Maybe someone accidentally cured their prostate cancer that way.

Handy to know

Blood pressure drugs can halve risk of dementia, say researchers | Society | The Guardian

Apart from the good news at the start of this article, I hadn't heard this before:

...the loss of ability to smell could be an early warning sign of Alzheimer's and prompt earlier diagnosis, separate research suggests. It is known that Alzheimer's can lead to the loss of a sense of smell, although why that happens is unclear. A study in the Journal of Neuroscience, by American scientists working on mice, links the failing ability to smell to the buildup of amyloid, a toxic protein that is an indicator of the disease. Experts said the findings suggested loss of smell could be used as an early indicator of the condition and thus ultimately improve medical care.

Longer lived mini black holes

Production of tidal-charged black holes at the Large Hadron Collider

I see from the above paper that physicists are still looking at certain theorised types of black holes that the LHC might produce, and which might "live" long enough to leave the detector. (I presume instead of instantaneously turning into a spray of decay particles.)

This guy reckons that they are unlikely to be produced in the lifetime of the LHC. (I see that he mentions Plaga's paper - predicting one possible form of black hole disaster - in his footnotes too, even though he makes no comment on it.)

I should be encouraged by the result, but I am still struck by how little they know about what may really happen there.

Reading ramble

The news and my favourite websites are strangely un-engaging at the moment, so I'll talk about what I've read over the last 6 months or so. It's not much, and few are probably interested, but what the hey.

* Graham Greene: I have mentioned here before that I was starting to get into Graham Greene. Since then, I have finished "A Burnt Out Case" (a fairly late novel in his career) and liked it quite a lot. It's sort of dark, well and truly within what I understand to be "Greeneland," but with a tragic redemption at the end, which I think reflects Greene's own complicated views on life and religion. I can recommend it, especially for people with a Catholic background.

But then, I read his early popular novel, "Brighton Rock". It has a great opening, but later I thought some of it was really tortured and outright bad writing. For me, it doesn't really ring psychologically true at all, and I am very puzzled as to why it apparently made his name as a novelist. He clearly developed his prose into a cleaner, more direct and psychologically subtle style later in his career, and I would strongly advise anyone interested in him not to start with this book.

I think I will go on to read some of his most famous novels, such as The End of the Affair, and The Heart of the Matter. But there is no doubt he is a bit of a depressing read overall, and it's not like I want to spend all that much time getting to know his world.

* Young adult time. Australian writer John Marsden is famous for his "Tomorrow" novels, featuring Australian teenage protagonists responding to a (very improbable) Asian invasion of the country. I therefore tried the first one in the series (Tomorrow, When the War Began) when I found it in a second hand book shop. (I saw from the name written inside that it probably was a prescribed read for a grade 9 student.)

I don't have any problem with reading "young adult" books; my natural inclination to be bothered/uninterested in lots of swearing and sex in fiction actually makes it something I should incline towards. (And I'll take Heinlein's "juveniles" over Stranger in a Strange Land any day.) But I doubt that much of it now is written as outright entertainment.

Anyway, as for this book: it's not bad, but I did find it peculiar that Marsden should chose to write from the perspective of a teenage girl, even if she is a pragmatic and strong character. There were some sections involving relationship talk which, while I imagine were probably realistic for a modern teen, I could still imagine teenage boys being completely bored with. This relationship stuff seemed to me to be too clearly didactic, in that they seemed an attempt to get teenage boys to understand things from the female perspective.

I was not impressed enough to be bothered continuing with the series, but it wasn't a complete loss.

* Will I ever find an active science fiction writer I like? I gave modern science fiction another go with John Scalzi's "Old Man's War". The reviews (and the man in the bookshop who recommended it to me) noted that it is similar in style to Robert Heinlein; and it's true, especially in the first third or so where there is a lot of wise-cracking, lively character exchanges, and I was initially impressed.

It has an excellent sequence in which our main character gets his mind swapped into a new, cloned, tweaked and improved version of his body.

Yet, by half way through, the improbability of the setup was starting to bother me, as was the idea that in two hundred years time, military training would still use exactly the same psychological approach that has been in the 20th century.

Then back to a good point: the inter-stellar drive was clever in concept.

Then back to the bad: it sort of peters out a bit, and ultimately left me uninterested in reading the sequel.

The extremely patchy appeal of the novel reminded me of my reaction to Peter Hamilton's "The Reality Dysfunction". I really liked some of its passages, found some other parts a bit slow and irrelevant, and in the last substantial section it seemed to change tone completely to a visceral fight which was very unappealing. Basically, he badly needs more severe editing.

Why do I find it impossible to find a current science fiction writer whose novel I like from start to end??

* More Truman Capote: I'm currently reading "In Cold Blood", after earlier enjoying "Breakfast at Tiffanys." I really like his writing style, and am quite enjoying it, despite knowing that it may not be the most accurate account of the event possible. (I haven't seen the popular "Capote" movie about the process of his writing it yet, and I'll save that until I have finished the book.)

Capote himself certainly did not lead the happiest of lives. I like to use the fact that I have had a relatively happy and stable life as the reason why I will probably always be incapable of creating great art!

Make your own bad pun for this one

Astronauts' urine clogs space station water recycler - Telegraph

Late nights

Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno Bash NBC In Monologues

For an Australian, the most amazing thing about the late night TV scene in America is that it exists at all. 10 to 11 pm (Jay Leno's short lived slot) is considered prime time, and the reason he is being moved is because of the poor lead in ratings he is giving to the local news.

The late show slots start at 11.35, yet you get all this drama around who will do them when the incumbent is due to go.

Is Australia the only country in the world in which it seems no one expects there to be a significant TV audience after about 10.30? It's virtually impossible to imagine Australians being greatly concerned about what starts at 11.30 pm, especially on a weeknight.

The only reason I see these shows now is because cable TV here shows them from around 8.30 to 10.30.

And, incidentally, I remain puzzled as to why O'Brien has rated so poorly in his new slot. I thought he had toned down his sometimes irritating act to just the right degree, and Andy Richter and him are a likeable pairing, as far as these things go. He does remain a seriously strange looking guy though, if you ask me.

I've sort of given up on Letterman over the last couple of years, when it seemed clear to me that he was getting too serious about politics.

I know that the American TV schedule has been like that for decades (it was one of the things that really surprised me about it when I first visited), but I remain puzzled as to how the importance of such late night viewing evolved there.

Near miss

Asteroid or Space Junk? Object Makes Close Pass by Earth Wednesday | Universe Today

It's only 10 - 15 meters across, but it would at least make for a very big flash in the sky.

More details on the mixed up temperatures

Where did global warming go? Here's where...

Yet another excellent post at Skeptical Science showing with illustrations how the Northern Hemisphere cold snap is distributed, and the unusually warm areas that are accompanying it.

In which I get amusement at other people's embarrassment

Publicly Sleeping Salarymen | loneleeplanet

If you read Japanese blogs, you'll know from time to time people publish photos of drunk Japanese men who fall asleep on the train (or elsewhere) in embarrassing positions. I don't usually link to them, as it does feel somewhat unfair to the poor guy who obviously was in no position to consent to the photo, let alone its publication on the internet.

But, with this collection of the "10 of the best" examples of this genre, I'll give up my scrupples for today, especially as some of them are really very funny. (I think the entry on "The Backbender" may be best.)

Persistent and pantless

Cover up or face life in jail, naked rambler is warned - Crime, UK - The Independent

Naked rambler Stephen Gough has been warned he faces spending the rest of his life in prison if he continues to refuse to wear clothes in public.

The former Royal Marine, a veteran of two “boots-only” hikes from Land’s End to John O’Groats, has spent most of the last four years in solitary confinement in Scottish jails after stripping off on a flight to Edinburgh. Since then he has declined to wear prison uniform or to appear clothed in court resulting in further custodial sentences for contempt.

This week he was found guilty of causing a breach of the peace following his arrest as he left Perth prison in December where he had just finished serving a 12-month sentence for the same offence. On that and a previous occasion police have been waiting to re-arrest him at the prison gates.

This all started from his attempts to walk nude across England:

Mr Gough completed his first naked ramble across Britain in 2003 during which he was arrested 15 times and spent 140 nights in jail, mainly in Scotland where the authorities hold a dimmer view of public nudity than in England and Wales. He finished his second hike with his then girlfriend Melanie Roberts three years later.

I don't know. If his problem is just that he wants to walk nude in the countryside, and his actions are all a protest about that, is it worth the effort to imprison him? If, however, he also was dropping into the corner shop nude to buy a bottle of milk, well I can see how that's a problem people shouldn't have to live with.

Sounds reasonable

From Rio to Copenhagen the model was wrong | The Australian

Geoff Carmody summaries the whole problem with the UN approach to climate change and the principles that should be adopted to start from scratch. (They point towards a carbon tax, basically.)

All sounds very reasonable to me.

Jerks and safety on public transport

Club Troppo - Vigilance against violence

Club Troppo has an interesting post about an incident of racial harassment and assault (in terms of someone fearing for their safety) on a Melbourne train.

Amongst all the discussion, I see that no one mentions the obvious point: people felt much safer from such incidents in the days when there used to be a railway "guard" on the train (who could be contacted if there was a real problem on board) and there was also the knowledge that every station would be manned and the behaviour could be immediately reported to that person.

Saving costs by removing people as far as possible from the transport system has undoubtedly made it feel less safe, yet it seems that re-populating railway stations for this reason is just never considered seriously because of the cost. But even a moderate step towards this would, I am betting, be greatly welcome by the public.

It is a feature of modern Australian cities which has gone backwards over the last 30 years.

Get that woman out of there!

Dezeen - Axial Symphony by Design Systems

I think I quite like this apartment refurbishment by a Hong Kong company, although I am curious about how hard it will be to maintain the mini mountain range on the terrace. You can't exactly run of mower over it, although I suppose a whipper snipper may do. (Kids would love it as an area to play with toy cars, soldiers or whatever.)

But what's this? There's a woman in shot in one of the interior photos. And she's slouching on the sofa! This is not allowed in architectural photography. All interiors must look unsullied by any evidence of actual humanity (including magazines, old newspapers, the mail, food, crumbs, the dog, and of course, people.) Big mistake.

Real estate bubble or not?

In China, fear of a real estate bubble - washingtonpost.com

There seems to be a fair amount of different opinion expressed in the article as to whether China has a real estate bubble that is about to burst, or whether it will hold for many years yet.

Of course, they already know about yurts, so it may be a bit redundant for me to mention again my favourite solution to all housing problems.

Lindzen criticism mounts

Lindzen & Choi's "feedback is nothing to worry about" paper from last year is facing more criticism.

Given that even Roy Spencer thinks Lindzen got this wrong, it would seem a fair bet that he did.

More money from dead bodies

Now you can be mummified just like the Egyptians - Science, News - The Independent

We haven't heard much about the plasticised skinned body exhibits lately, so it must be time to come up with some other ghoulish use of dead bodies for public entertainment. Cue England, that new bastion of inappropriate and degrading entertainment on TV:

We've had the first televised real autopsy and the first on-screen assisted suicide. The latest wheeze to challenge the British public’s attitudes to dying comes from Channel 4, which is appealing to the terminally ill to find someone to donate their body to be mummified for a reality television show – then displayed in a museum for two years.

Way to run a country

Chavez's snap devaluation sparks panic in the aisles - Americas, World - The Independent

The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez promised to send soldiers into shops to seize businesses from owners who raise prices in the wake of the country's steep currency devaluation.

People had crowded into shops over the weekend to snap up imported televisions and electrical appliances, fearing that the devaluation of the bolivar was about to send inflation soaring.

"Right now, there is absolutely no reason for anybody to be raising prices of absolutely anything," Mr Chavez said on his weekly TV show. "I want the National Guard on the streets with the people to fight against speculation. Publicly denounce the speculator and we will intervene in any business of any size." To audience applause, the president added that the government would take over shops and give them to their workers if price rises were discovered.

Options, none of them good

Israel and Iran: The gathering storm | The Economist

Here's a very good article on the current situation and the limited options available in dealing with Iran's nuclear program.

The top hat controversy

Times Archive Blog: Why inventors weren't always hailed as heroes

The Times website has a link today to a Times Archive Blog story about inventions that caused a social stir in their day. Most strange is an account of the first top hat being worn on the street causing quite a disruption.

It is not so clear whether the story is true, but there is a link to the Times 1926 article which discusses it.

In fact, the whole Times Archive Blog looks like a very entertaining resource, and I am sad to have not discovered it before.

Doctors in trouble

Doctors gone bad stories are always interesting (or, I suppose, horrifying if you happened to have been their patient) and there are a couple of pretty spectacular cases of note lately:

* She was just trying to be helpful:

A DOCTOR has been struck off the medical register for giving a woman 22 prescriptions for mood-altering drugs, knowing she was secretly spiking her husband's coffee with the tablets for four years.

Yuk-Fun Christina Port, a GP in Deniliquin for more than 20 years, wrote prescriptions for about 3000 antidepressant and anti-psychotic tablets, including the highly toxic drug lithium carbonate used to treat bipolar disorder, without examining, diagnosing or monitoring the man.

Dr Port also changed the type of medication prescribed and increased his dose at the wife's request even though she had not seen the man for about six years, the NSW Medical Tribunal found.

Dr Port said she felt pressured to prescribe Sinequan, Aropax and Zoloft because the man's wife said he was becoming violent at home and she feared for the safety of her children.

* a former neurosurgeon seems to be finding it particularly hard to kick a habit:

A LEADING neurosurgeon charged with supplying drugs to a woman found dead in his apartment has been arrested for breaching his strict bail conditions.

Suresh Surendranath Nair, 41, was arrested shortly after midnight yesterday when Kings Cross detectives raided his apartment in Bondi.

His arrest came after surveillance police alleged the Malaysian-born surgeon separately hired three female escorts over 2½ hours, taking them back to his first-floor unit in Hall Street.

As part of his bail conditions, Dr Nair is barred from hiring any sex workers or taking illicit drugs.

The raid on the unit came a week after Dr Nair discharged himself from a private hospital where he had been undergoing treatment since being charged in relation to the death of Suellen Domingues Zaupa, 22, at his Elizabeth Bay unit on November 21 last year.

Three escorts over 2 1/2 hours? Seems kind of excessive, doesn't it?

And you thought House getting hooked on prescription painkillers was a scandal.

An innovative use for DNA science

Are the Taliban descended from ancient Israelites?

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Are the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan descendants of an Israelite tribe that migrated across Asia after it was exiled over 2,700 years ago?

This intriguing question has been asked by a variety of scholars, theologians, anthropologists and pundits over the years, but has remained somewhere between the realms of amateur speculation and serious academic research.

But now, for the first time, the government has shown official interest, with the Foreign Ministry providing a scholarship to an Indian scientist to come to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and determine whether or not the tribe that provides the hard core of today's Taliban has a blood link to any of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and specifically to the tribe of Efraim.

Shahnaz Ali, a senior research fellow at the National Institute of Immunohaematology, Mumbai, has joined the Technion to study the blood samples that she collected from Afridi Pathans in Malihabad, in the Lucknow district, Uttar Pradesh state, India, to check their putative Israelite origin.

She's be doing genetic testing on the samples. If the theory pans out, I somehow can't imagine the Taliban being impressed. In fact, I thought the Israeli Government might be funding it just to annoy them.

But, it's possible that a historical link might be capable of good, and indeed at the end of the article, one researcher thinks this is the point:

Navras welcomed Shahnaz's research grant. "It's a great news that now my research would be analyzed scientifically," he said on his blog.

"I don't know what would be the outcome of the DNA analysis, but it would provide us a direction to resolve the complex issue. I also hope that such effort will have positive ramifications and will bring the Muslims and Jews close and enable them to forget historical animosity," Navras wrote

So it may be a case of government funded DNA research for peace. Neat.

Confirming what we knew

Boys will be boys when it comes to toys - life - 08 January 2010 - New Scientist

Seedy Sydney

I don't often find myself in agreement with Miranda Devine lately, but I reckon she's pretty right about the always slightly seedy atmosphere around the southern end of George Street.

Other big cities like New York apparently manage to push out the sex shops and general depressing sleaze from their entertainment areas, but somehow Sydney seems never to have quite managed that. (Mind you, it's been some years since I visited, but later this year I'll be there for a few days.)

Movies that jump the technological shark

I just saw the second half of the 2005 Jodie Foster movie "Flightplan". I knew the set up, and was curious to see the explanation for where the missing kid had disappeared on the plane.

I hadn't realised that the script would solve that problem by pretending that a plane somewhat resembling the new Airbus A 380 would have absolutely cavernous amounts of open space both above and below the passenger decks. It was so ridiculous, this internal design of the aircraft, that the movie just plummeted into a black hole of implausibility so overwhelming that I found it impossible to believe that any viewer could have found it engaging. Do people really think the hidden nooks and crannies on a passenger plane look something like a standing inside a Zeppelin?

Looking at the summaries of reviews at Rottentomatoes, it would seem that critic Mark Ramsey similarly found this the defining feature of the film:

It's an obscenely big plane. "Where is my daughter?!" asks Jodie. "Did you search the plane's tennis courts? The plane's new ballpark? Get me this plane's governor! NOW!

It's not often that technological ludicrousness ruins a movie for me. I mean, I'm not one of those people who likes to be overly analytical and worry about the fact that in Star Wars we can hear an explosion in space, or some such. Sometimes things are a bit silly and laughable but are sort of dramatically right, and you don't come away thinking that movie was ruined. But other times, that just doesn't work, and I can think of 2 movies in which technological silliness smacked me in the face so hard I could no longer enjoy it:

GoldenEye: no it wasn't the laser in a watch. Yes, ridiculous I know, but impossibly powerful gadgets had been in many of the Bond films for many years and I can overlook them. What I couldn't forgive was the absolutely 100% gold-plated absurd idea that a satellite weapon would have to be controlled by an antenna the size of the Arecibo Observatory, (of course, it was the Arecibo Observatory used in the film,) which also had to be hidden in a fake lake! I mean, even in 1995, satellite telephones were already in use with small laptop sized antennas, and even smaller handsets were in the pipeline. The satellite in question was not orbiting Pluto, for crying out loud; to use EMP it had to be in low earth orbit, not even geosynchronous orbit. What an inexcusably weak excuse for getting an interesting location into a movie. Didn't anyone point out this made no technological sense at all?

For some reason, it seems that every few months my mind goes back to GoldenEye and how annoyed I was at this incredibly stupid plot point. Maybe therapy is called for. Send me money someone, I will put it to good use.

Armageddon: to the best of my knowledge, this is by far the biggest collection of stupid, wrong, or improbable space science stuff ever assembled into one loud movie. Too many things wrong to possibly list. As Phil Plait wrote:

Here's the short version: "Armageddon" got some astronomy right. For example, there is an asteroid in the movie, and asteroids do indeed exist. And then there was... um... well, you know... um. Okay, so that was about all they got right.

Any reader with a different favourite example of a silly bit of technology that ruined a movie, you are welcome to share.

Planetary disaster averted

No, a nearby supernova won’t wipe us out | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

The Daily Telegraph and The Sun both reported this was a relatively immanent danger to the Earth. As it wasn't picked up by more reliable sources, I suspected there might be less to the story than first appeared. Seems I was right, even if it wasn't the papers' fault

Prat blog

For those of you who just can't get enough of the only TV show host ever to urinate on his shirt and wrap it around his head, (he was feeling a touch hot at the time, and an application of warm urine apparently helps,) I've just discovered that "Bear" Grylls has his own, not frequently updated, blog.

He's significantly more annoying than Steve Irwin, who at least kept his unnecessary wildlife interventions to simply annoying them; not eating them. (That's assuming you can believe anything at all on "Man vs Wild". For all I know, every animal he eats raw may have followed him into the wilderness in an icebox.)

Worse still, it seems from his blog that he was appointed "Chief Scout" in England last year. That would put me off encouraging a child to the organisation.

Every time I see the show and the mention of him being ex-SAS, I just imagine a bunch of groans from the soldiers who used to serve with him. "That prat again...!"

Unnatural selection

Brow Beat : Beauty, American Beauty: Sam Mendes Directs James Bond

Slate has some mildly amusing fun with the announcement that Sam Mendes (!) is in talks to direct the next James Bond.

Presumably, this may at least mean that we don't get a repeat of the hypershakes and hyper-editing of Quantum of Solace. (My son saw some of it on TV recently and said, quite unprompted by his Dad, "it's too fast". Smart boy.)

However, whether it will also mean a Bondian mid-life or sexual identity crisis is another matter.

Things change slowly in the Middle East

Nearly a year ago to the day, I posted about how Egypt's blockade of Gaza attracts almost no attention from media critics of Israel. I see from this article that the blockade continues, and Egypt is working on ways to make the border even more secure.

Meanwhile, what happened to the Christmas hope that Shalit was about to be released? Oh. Still under consideration.

The magic plastic e readers

BBC News - Plastic Logic e-reader aims to challenge Kindle

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is apparently packed full of new e-readers this year, and the flexible plastic screen one shown in the video at the above link does look very cool, except that its odd squarish dimensions (while great for a genuine newspaper reading experience) looks a tad too large to safely carry in your briefcase.

The Skiff reader looks like the nearest rival to Plastic Logic, but no one knows how much it will cost.

And cost is a pretty significant issue.

Very, very nerd news

Japanese Live Action Star Blazers (Space Battleship Yamato) Trailer

I didn't know they were making a live action version of Space Battleship Yamato in Japan. They've released a teaser trailer for it that you can see at the above link.

I wasn't a huge fan of the cartoon, but it was of interest.

In even worse Muslim/Christian news:

Egyptians riot after 7 killed in church attack

Three gunmen in a car sprayed automatic gunfire into a crowd leaving a church in the town of Naga Hamadi. The lead attacker is identified as a Muslim...

Police suspect that the Wednesday night attack was in retaliation to a rape of a Muslim girl by a Christian man in the same town two months ago. Muslim inhabitants of the town had rioted for days last November and attacked Christian properties there after the rape, according to local reports.

Fighting over the name of God

Malaysia Says It will Appeal 'Allah' Ruling - WSJ.com

A fight is going on in Malaysia over a Catholic Malay language newspaper's court win against a government ban on its use of the word "Allah" for God. According to the above article:

The Arab word Allah has been used by Malay-speaking Christians for centuries, much as it is used by Christians in Arabic-speaking countries or in Indonesia, where, like Malaysia, the concept of a single deity was introduced by Arabic-speaking traders. Rev. Lawrence Andrew, editor of the Herald, says there's no other appropriate term for God in Malay.

The paper had a pretty good case:

The church's Herald newspaper filed a lawsuit in 2007 challenging a government ban on it using the word Allah as a translation for God, complaining that the prohibition discriminated against Malay-speaking indigenous tribes who converted to Christianity decades ago.

The newspaper has a circulation of about 14,000 and is available only in Catholic churches, although some Muslims have complained that it is possible to look up Malay-language material using the term Allah on the Herald's Web site.

Muslim activists mobilized almost as soon as the High Court's verdict was delivered. The National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students contended that Christian missionaries using the word Allah could trick Muslims into leaving their faith, and the influential Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement said it plans a demonstration against the verdict in Kuala Lumpur on Jan. 8.

The Malay-language Utusan Malaysia newspaper reported that the influential mufti of northern Perak state, Harussani Zakaria, called the verdict "an insult to Muslims in this country."

Some Muslim groups are planning protests for tomorrow. All pretty amazing, really.

UPDATE: a bit of church burning in KL overnight.

And a bit more on the background of the use of the word "Allah" by Christianity appeared in the Jakarta Post article on the arson attack:

Many Muslims in Malysia have refused to accept the argument that "Allah" is an Arabic word that predates Islam, and that it is used by Christians in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Indonesia regularly in their worship.

Can't they parachute in Karen Armstrong to sort this all out?

Very odd

Cellphone radiation is good for Alzheimer's mice

Regular exposure to an electromagnetic field identical to the ones produced by mobile phones seems to improve memory in mice with symptoms of Alzheimer's disease...

To the researchers' surprise, the memory of both normal and transgenic mice exposed to the electromagnetic field (EMF) seemed better by the end of the experiment than that of a control group of mice that were not irradiated.

Arendash speculates that radiation might increase the electrical activity of neurons, which could in turn improve the brain's ability to form memories. An experiment in 2000 found that if people were exposed to an EMF equivalent to mobile-phone radiation before they went to bed, their brain activity during sleep increased....

They found that the brains of transgenic mice that had been exposed to the EMF from two months old did not contain as many plaques as transgenic control mice of the same age that had not been exposed to the EMF.

What's more, in the older transgenic mice, which had already developed brain plaques before the experiment began, the EMF exposure seemed to have broken up and shrunken the plaques. Arendash say he doesn't know how the EMF could do this.

That's a very surprising finding, and as the article says, it would have to be replicated to be sure the effect is real.

Never liked Wimps

BBC News - Dark matter 'beach ball' unveiled

This article talks about the inferred shape of the presumed dark matter around the Milky Way. It seems it's not like a round ball, but a squashed one.

This is why I've never felt that WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) seemed like a good explanation. I mean, if they exist, why do they form squashed ball halos around galaxies in the first place? If they are weakly interacting with normal matter, why don't they exist in just a more or less random clumpiness right through the universe? I don't know that I have ever read much that addresses that issue.

As for large clumps of normal matter forming dark matter, that's always seemed kind of unlikely too, according to my gut reaction.

That's why the idea that there is something wrong with our understanding of gravity has always seemed to me to be just as likely, but MOND theories don't seem to be advancing much.

Poor Japan?

TigerHawk has an interesting post about Japan's debt problems.

The comments are worth reading too.

Not cold everywhere

BBC - Richard Black's Earth Watch: Arctic roots of 'upside-down' weather

That's interesting. According to Richard Black, while much of the Northern Hemisphere is having an unusually cold winter, some parts that are normally very cold aren't.

A very unusual talent

Frogs' secret disposal system revealed : Nature News

Plant thorns, spiny insects and even radio transmitters don't stick around for long inside tree frogs. Researchers have discovered that these amphibians can absorb foreign objects from their body cavities into their bladders and excrete them through urination.

Would be a good party trick if a human could do it.

Law, science and black holes

There's a very detailed and carefully argued article by a US Assistant Professor of Law about the LHC and safety concerns available at arXiv. (It would seem the article is to appear in the Tennessee Law Review, but I can't see if Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame, who is a Tennessee Law Professor, has noted it yet.)

It's very long, and I have only looked through the first half, but it seems very careful and accurate in its summary of the history of the scientific debate over its safety.

It even covers the concerns of Rainer Plaga, and agrees with my view that they never seem to have been adequately addressed.

The arXiv blog summary of the article is here. Both it and the original article are well worth a read.

UPDATE: hey, I've been Instapundit-ed! Thanks, and welcome all. There's a lot of old posts here about the LHC and black holes, but sadly you have to use the somewhat erratic search function to find them. (Why can't Google perfect search within the very blogs it owns?)

Sex in Malaysia, Part 2

Malaysian Polygamy Club Draws Criticism - NYTimes.com

Yesterday I posted about unfortunate young Malaysian couples getting a knock on their hotel room door from the Islamic "morality police" and facing charges.

Proving it's a land of contrasts, I suppose, is the above article about the increase in Islamic polygamy in the same country. One of the wives interviewed says:

“Men are by nature polygamous,” said Dr. Rohaya, Mr. Ikram’s third wife, flanked by the other three women and Mr. Ikram for an interview on a recent morning. The women were dressed in ankle-length skirts, their hair covered by tudungs, the Malaysian term for headscarf. “We hear of many men having the ‘other woman,’ affairs and prostitution because for men, one woman is not enough. Polygamy is a way to overcome social ills such as this.”

Well, only for those rich enough to provide support for the additional wives, one suspects.

However, it is interesting to note that further down in the article, one critic of the system points out that:

...she knew some well-educated, financially independent women in Kuala Lumpur, including business executives and lawyers, who had chosen to become second or third wives.

“Usually they marry late, they do a second or third degree, they put off marriage until later and they find it difficult to find an unmarried man,” she said. “One of them said ‘all the good men are either married or gay.”’

The women of Sydney who have the same complaint could have their predicament cured by some radical changes in the Marriage Act, then.

And if polygamy were allowed here, but only by men taking on wives richer than themselves, maybe even I could be persuaded of its benefits. :)

Nerd grief

The fall-out from Doctor Who

Caitlin Moran's description of her and her daughter's shared devastation at David Tennant's departure from Dr Who is pretty funny:

Dora and I did a good fifteen minutes of mother/daughter nerd-mourning together - crying whilst flicking through Doctor Who Magazine and saying "Oh that's a good Ood still". Then Dora progressed into the "anger" stage of bereavement: at one point shouting, "Tom Baker managed seven years - WHY COULDN'T DAVID?"

I didn't know she even knew who Tom Baker was. At that point I realised that whilst I was walking wounded, she was metaphorically doing a geek haemmorhage. As Dora lay on the floor, moaning, "WHY did he have to GO?", Pete had a moment of genius, and downloaded a Doctor Who audiobook, read out by Tennant. Comforted by the prospect of there being at least one more David Tennant adventure to be had, Dora finally fell asleep listening to it - AT SODDING 11.30PM

Big explosion noted

Runaway anti-matter production makes for a spectacular stellar explosion

University of Notre Dame astronomer Peter Garnavich and a team of collaborators have discovered a distant star that exploded when its center became so hot that matter and anti-matter particle pairs were created. The star, dubbed Y-155, began its life around 200 times the mass of our Sun but probably became "pair-unstable" and triggered a runaway thermonuclear reaction that made it visible nearly halfway across the universe....

Garnavich and his collaborators calculated that, at its peak, Y-155 was generating energy at a rate 100 billion times greater than the sun's output. To do this, Y-155 must have synthesized between 6 and 8 solar masses of radioactive nickel. It is the decay of radioactive elements that drives the light curves of supernovae. A normal "Type Ia" thermonuclear supernova makes about one tenth as much radioactive nickel.

"In our images, Y-155 appeared a million times fainter than the unaided human eye can detect, but that is because of its enormous distance," Garnavich said. "If Y-155 had exploded in the Milky Way it would have knocked our socks off."

Over 40 years ago scientists proposed that massive stars could become unstable through the production of matter/anti-matter particle pairs, but only recently have large-scale searches of the sky, like the ESSENCE project, permitted the discovery of these bright, but rare, events.

Maybe we just live in a lucky corner of the universe.

Playtime for lawyers

BBC News - France mulls 'psychological violence' ban

I didn't realise the French could be quite so silly.

Cool photo

The_view_from_Burj_Dubai_by_shebanx.jpg

Found this via comments to a Guardian piece on the new skyscraper in Dubai.

New Year in Malaysia

52 unmarried Malaysian Muslim couples face jail for hotel liaisons

Scores of officers fanned out across budget hotels in central Selangor state before dawn on Jan 1, knocking on doors and detaining unmarried Muslim couples who were sharing rooms, said Hidayat Abdul Rani, a spokesman for the Selangor Islamic Department.

The detained, mostly students and young factory workers, are expected to be charged with “khalwat,” or “close proximity,” which under Malaysia’s Islamic Shariah law is described as couples not married to each other being alone together in a private place.

“We chose to have this large-scale operation on New Year’s Day because many people are known to commit this offense while celebrating such a major holiday,” Hidayat said.

In Selangor, “khalwat” carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a fine.

Movies and kids

Sci-fi epic doesn't kid around: critics - Film - Entertainment - smh.com.au

My 9 year old son is very keen to see Avatar, but I finally checked the rating and found it was M. After speaking to a person who has seen it, I've decided not to take him.

This article quotes someone who believes that:

"...Avatar was not suitable for children under eight ''due to scary and disturbing scenes and violence'', and was ''not recommended'' for children eight to 12.

''Some of the research indicates that parents don't always know when their kids are handling a movie well,'' said Ms Biggins yesterday. ''There are longer-term impacts on kids that don't always show up at the time.

It certainly seems to me that some parents are ridiculously careless about what movies they take their kids to, and I particularly recall my surprise at the number of young boys that were in the cinema when I saw Terminator 2 back in the 1990's. I quite disliked the film anyway, and I suppose you could argue that most of the violence is robot on robot. But killing a guy with a metal spike through the eye, various other breakings of human bones, the general bleak, dark tone of the whole film, and a real lack of any particularly sympathetic characters to my mind made it one of the most obviously unsuitable films for under 10 year olds that I could imagine.

Basically, most parents seem to pay no attention to the classification a film receives.