For my own reference...

Second Glance: Appreciation of Pauline Kael

I always liked Pauline Kael's reviews, and in fact mentioned her in conversation last weekend, not realising that there was this article about her to be found on Arts and Letters Daily.

The fading voice

Christopher Hitchens: Unspoken Truths | Culture | Vanity Fair

Poor old Christopher is losing/has lost his voice and writes about it, quite movingly, in this piece.

Great moments in university advertising

I noticed an ad at the top of Rottentomatoes that I thought had an amusingly inappropriate picture on it, and followed the link to this page of Open Universities Australia, which even the link says is about their "terrorism" related courses.

The picture is there (top left, in case you need to have it pointed out):



That seems a particularly enthusiastic grope going on, doesn't it? I'm sure that's why most people get into Security and Counterterrorism as a career.

Then the page also includes this heading:


Sorry, I can't enlarge this without blurring it more, so you have to click on it to see it more clearly, and see whether it's just me, or do all those heavily armed counter-terrorists look like they're about 16? (I know, I know, you hit your 40's and all police officers start to look like kids, but really...)

But then the body of the article starts like this:

Yes, the writing is about starting your studies in Early Childhood Education, for which lessons in use of a submachine gun would, no doubt, come in very handy for class control. (Nothing gets the kids' attention better than a burst of gunfire into the air, I guess.)

Anyway, count me as officially amused. And is someone at Open Universities having a lend? Maybe it was a student's work on display? Or is it deliberately diversionary advertising? (So you thought you wanted to be a heavily armed policeman/security dude, but did you consider teaching primary school kids first?)

Roman urban myth

BBC News - Rome braces for 'prophet-predicted quake'

It can't be allowed to happen: mad Muslims would probably claim it as punishment for the death of bin Laden.

Pays to look up every now and then..

BBC News - Dubai: 'Suicide jump' from world's tallest skyscraper

A man has committed suicide by jumping from the world's tallest skyscraper in Dubai, according to its owner.

The man, in his 20s, fell from the 147th floor of the 2,717ft (828m) Burj Khalifa, landing on a deck on the 108th floor, local media reported.

I wonder who uses the deck on the 108th floor. It seems from a previous article that it is not the tourist observation deck.

The future of coccoliths

Ocean acidification: Carbon dioxide makes life difficult for algae

Here's some bad ocean acidification news for us all, about coccoliths (the calcium carbonate shells of some algae.)

"We know that the world's oceans are acidifying due to our emissions of CO₂ and that is why it is interesting for us to find out how the coccoliths are reacting to it. We have studied algae from both fossils and living coccoliths, and it appears that both are protected from dissolution by a very thin layer of organic material that the algae formed, even though the seawater is extremely unsaturated relative to calcite. The protection of the organic material is lost when the pH is lowered slightly. In fact, it turns out that the shell falls completely apart when we do experiments in water with a pH value that many researchers believe will be the found in the world oceans in the year 2100 due to the CO₂ levels," explains Tue Hassenkam, who is part of the NanoGeoScience research group at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen.

Professor of Biological Oceanography Katherine Richardson has followed research in the acidification of the oceans and climate change in general and she hopes that the results can help to bring the issue into public focus.

"These findings underscore that the acidification of the oceans is a serious problem. The acidification has enormous consequences not only for coccoliths, but also for many other marine organisms as well as the global carbon cycle.".....

And from the abstract of the PNAS paper itself:

However, ancient and modern coccoliths, that resist dissolution in Ca-free artificial seawater at pH > 8, all dissolve when pH is 7.8 or lower. Ocean pH is predicted to fall below 7.8 by the year 2100, in response to rising CO2 levels. Our results imply that at these conditions the advantages offered by the biogenic nature of calcite will disappear putting coccoliths on algae and in the calcareous bottom sediments at risk.

This is the worst sounding bit of ocean acidification research that has come out for quite some time.

Agreed

Club Troppo - In Praise of Gillard’s Malaysia Solution

I think Ken Parish's assessment of Gillard's "Malaysia solution" is pretty much spot on. Even Andrew Bolt was conceding on his show that it may well work to stop boats coming, and the trade off is not as bad as it seems.

Best almost flying toy ever?

I have seen something about this device before; maybe I even had a video here, but I can't be bothered checking. But this video seems new, and it's awe-some. (Did I sound like a cool dude just then? Oh well, must try harder.)

A bit more detail needed, but still..

Small Modular Reactors: Safer and Cheaper? | Climate Central

How come I've missed the Climate Central blog til now? It looks pretty good.

Anyhow, a few weeks ago they had the post linked above about small nuclear reactors, which I have speculated before might be the better route towards rapid roll out of nuclear power. But I did wonder about the wisdom of burying them.

The post does deal with some of their questionable aspects, but more detail is needed.

And I need to clean up my blog roll again.

Great heading

Spotted in the New York Times: Apart From The Vampires, Lincoln Film Seeks Accuracy

Tim Colebatch on the budget

Takes guts to squeeze the middle class

I haven't noticed Tim Colebatch writing at The Age much lately, but here's his take on the budget delivered last night.

I still say he's the clearest, most balanced economics columnist around today, so I find his view of the budget pretty convincing. Short version: it does cut quite a bit, and the real issue in getting back to surplus is the drop in revenue.

Harrison the Wise

‘Cowboys & Aliens’ star Harrison Ford: Most special-effects films are soulless now

I've said much the same myself at this blog over the years:

“I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you’ve lost human scale,” Ford said. “With the CGI, suddenly there’s a thousand enemies instead of six – the army goes off into the horizon. You don’t need that. The audience loses its relationship with the threat on the screen. That’s something that’s consistently happening and it makes these movies like video games and that’s a soulless enterprise. It’s all kinetics without emotion. I don’t have time for that.”

I certainly hope the oddball combination of cowboys and aliens works.

Ecstacy down; shamans up.

Designer drugs beat Ecstasy�(Science Alert)

Here's a story detailing the current trend in ecstasy and "designer drug" use in Australia and elsewhere.

The trend is down, as it has been in many other countries over a number of years. I thought the explanation may be in the recognition of undesirable effects on long time users, but it might be more mundane than that:

Regular ecstasy users have also indicated that there has been a marked drop in the purity of ecstasy, with a significant number of tablets containing no MDMA, the active ingredient of ecstasy.

Ha.

Mind you, drug users value playing with their brain chemistry over common sense:

Designer drugs which have been picked up by the survey, albeit in small numbers, include mephedrone and BZP, a central nervous system stimulant which reportedly has more side effects than amphetamines.

“In our 2010 survey, 16 per cent of users reported recent use of mephedrone, a synthetic stimulant closely related to amphetamines but with hallucinogenic properties,” said Dr Burns.

Oh yes, like that sounds like a good idea: combine amphetamines with hallucinations. Not only will you find bugs under your skin, you'll be awake for 30 hours to watch them.

It is of interest to me, though, to note that one particularly intriguing drug, DMT, has a small number of illegal users here. This drug was the subject of an interview with researcher Rick Strassman at Boing Boing recently.

If you're going to have a hallucination, I suppose having one in which spirit guides or angels are there to meet you is probably the most interesting kind to experience.

But, as with nearly everyone else older than a teenager, I don't believe the "Doors of Perception" theory that any drug is really letting you see into the true nature of reality. I therefore still wouldn't trust what exactly DMT is doing to my neurons to let me "see" the "spiritual" world. My intuition is that it can't be healthy.

Thanks, Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi helps fund Qld cyclone shelters

Since I have done my fair share of ridiculing the laws and society of the Gulf states over the years, I should say that this gift to my home State was very nice of them. Thanks.

Do not trust them

Favorite Denier Tricks, or How to Hide the Incline | Open Mind

Good post by Tamino (he's been on a roll lately) showing why you cannot take any graph, or any statement, at Watts Up With That on face value.

In other climate change news, this paper, about observed changes to cloud cover over 25 years sounds to me like an important one, but I haven't seen it written up anywhere yet.

TV reviews from the weekend

Bolt Report: I didn't see all that much of it (and the time slot of 10am on a Sunday is going to help ensure this continues in future. I reckon all people interested in politics, even on the right, are going to be more interested in a range of views from Insiders rather than the mono-view of Andrew Bolt, and an hour devoted to politics on a Sunday is more than enough for most people.)

The opening part, where Andrew got to editorialise (it was rather like him reading out one of his own columns) reminded me of Alan Jones' short-ish TV career. I seem to recall he did much the same thing. The problem is, it doesn't make for great television, particularly when those watching already have read his views in the Herald Sun. Just how often can we expect something unexpected from him in one of these openings?

And then the panel "debate", in which three commentators who hate the Gillard government got to express their hatred of the Gillard government. I didn't see all of this, but I was hoping Mark Latham would at least get to say at some point "And by the way, Andrew, I think you are completely and hopelessly wrong on climate change. I consider it the most important political issue for years to come." Because that is what Latham believes. But, I am guessing, Mark didn't get past the invitation to put the boot into former co-worker Gillard.

No, I think the show is not going to work. Andrew Bolt worked best in debate on Insiders, where he had other people to rein in his tongue when needed. Too much control in his hands will not work, I expect.

Dr Who: Apart from the irritating reversion to Russell Davies era reference to homosexuality, where a 1969 FBI agent notes his desire to marry his black boyfriend (oh yes, so very likely, that scenario), I realised something after watching this somewhat confusing and rambling episode.

Namely, the greatest bits about the modern revival of Dr Who are definitely not the episodes with the long story arcs. Yet Steven Moffat is concentrating on the long story arcs to the detriment of the show overall.

Think about it: the most memorable parts of the new show have been individual episodes in which characters and situations rang emotionally true. For me, none of these memories come from the multipart episodes with complicated plots.

Let's face it, with time travel done in the rubbery way it is on this show, we know that there is never any dire end of the universe situation which can't be undone. So it's starting to get tedious that great dramatic "this will be the end of everything" plot arcs still seem to be what the show is now concentrating on. And since Moffat took the helm, the stand alone episodes have, by and large, been weaker than they were when he was writing them for Russell Davies.

There is a small element of interest in trying to pick up hints as to what is going on in the current series, but really, I did consider the first Moffat series story arc to not be particularly effective or memorable. They are just too cluttered.

Anyway, I'll keep watching, but I think I have now put my finger on the problem with the Moffat approach.

Update: I've decided my take on Dr Who sounds too cranky. I still like the characters in the current series quite a lot, it's just that I've decided that Moffat is way too fond of the long, complicated plots running through a series. Now, I suppose you could say that the "traditional" show has always been long stories told in weekly episodes, but they were never as grandiose and messianic as the long arc plots as they developed under Davies. (In fact, I don't think there was much in the way of long episodic stories under the first season or two of Davies, but they did come much more to the front as he went on.) And, as I say, I tend to find it is the "stand alone" episodes turned out to be the most memorable. So I would prefer it to go back to that "new" direction.

A handy Hayek summary

Friedrich A. Hayek, Big-Government Skeptic - NYTimes.com

I've never been all that interested in books by economists with a broader philosophy about society: short summaries of their views seem to be all that can hold my interest.

This review of a new edition of one of Hayek's books seems to provide a useful summary with respect to him.

I note these bits:

(It may, however, surprise some of Hayek’s new followers to learn that “The Constitution of Liberty” argues that the government may need to provide health insurance and even make it ­compulsory.)

So, Labor was following a Hayek line in introducting Medicare?

And the last paragraphs seem key:

In the end, what drove people on the left crazy about Hayek back in the 1950s is the same thing that makes him appealing to a Glenn Beck today. Hayek made the slipperiest of slippery slope arguments: the smallest move toward the expansion of government would lead to a cascade of bad consequences that would result in full-blown authoritarian socialism. If anything, however, the history of the past 50 years shows us that the slippery slope has all sorts of ledges and handholds by which we can brake our descent into serfdom and indeed climb back up. Voters in the United States and Europe took seriously the arguments about the dangers of big government and reversed course after the 1980s. Indeed, the pendulum swung so far backward that financial markets were left dangerously unregulated prior to the financial crisis. President Obama’s return to “big government” didn’t last more than a year before it was met with fierce ­resistance.

In the end, there is a deep contradiction in Hayek’s thought. His great insight is that individual human beings muddle along, making progress by planning, experimenting, trying, failing and trying again. They never have as much clarity about the future as they think they do. But Hayek somehow knows with great certainty that when governments, as opposed to individuals, engage in a similar process of innovation and discovery, they will fail. He insists that the dividing line between state and society must be drawn according to a strict abstract principle rather than through empirical adaptation. In so doing, he proves himself to be far more of a hubristic Cartesian than a true Hayekian.

Hard to believe....

Rampaging dollar 'could hit $US1.70' as budget and industries threatened | The Australian

This rise against the US dollar is all very nice for the Australian tourist, although I still don't understand why our dollar has made a slower rise against the Yen.

Magical intrigue in Iran

Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery | World news | The Guardian

Maybe it's just me missing the articles, but this story seems to have been overlooked this week in the wider media, given the excitement and intrigue of the Bin Laden killing.

It's pretty fascintating:

Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits).

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

The arrests come amid a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several MPs to call for the president to be impeached.

The article then explains the people involved in a power play underway in Iran, then gets back to the magic bits:

But the feud has taken a metaphysical turn following the release of an Iranian documentary alleging the imminent return of the Hidden Imam Mahdi – the revered saviour of Shia Islam, whose reappearance is anticipated by believers in a manner comparable to that with which Christian fundamentalists anticipate the second coming of Jesus.

Conservative clerics, who say that the Mahdi's return cannot be predicted, have accused a "deviant current" within the president's inner circle, including Mashaei, of being responsible for the film.

Ahmadinejad's obsession with the hidden imam is well known. He often refers to him in his speeches and in 2009 said that he had documentary evidence that the US was trying to prevent Mahdi's return.

What a fantastic Muslim conspiracy theory: the US trying to prevent the return of the Hidden Iman. I presume that someone, somewhere, is figuring out how the death of Bin Laden factors into this.

Suggested posters for today's No Carbon Tax rally in Brisbane

Only time for a couple.....

Sketchbook Pro improves

Yay. Sketchbook Pro, my iPad sketching and art app of choice, has finally been changed to make it easier to keep favorite brushes and colours on the screen.

This news will mean nothing to nearly every reader, but it's significant to me. I find doodling with a finger is the second most enjoyable thing about an iPad.

Doesn't look like this on TV...

One in three Africans is now middle class, report finds | Global development | The Guardian

Sounds to me like the African Development Bank might be talking things up a bit, though, when the report notes figures like this:

Possession of cars and motorcycles in Ghana, for example, has gone up by 81% in the past five years.

The significance of that all depends on the base you're coming off, after all.

Anyway, it's of interest. I tend to have little interest in visiting the place partly because I've read about too many parasitic and other diseases that can be caught there. (Yes, I know, tourists do go there and survive.)

A story of fish, ice and history

I mentioned in my photo post of Tasmania yesterday the Salmon Ponds just outside of Hobart, and how much I enjoy visiting them.   (I had previously been there by myself in 1995; this time it was to show my family.  Children like it a lot because you buy fish pellets with which to feed the large, hungry trout and salmon.) 

The place provides a short history on the introduction of trout and salmon from England to Tasmania which involved several failed attempts to ship the eggs there under sail.   The credit seems to belong mainly to one Sir James Youl:  born in Parramatta, educated in England, moved to Tasmania, then to England again.  (Call me ignorant if you will, but I find it  a bit surprising to realise that “normal”people from even the first half of the 19th century were undertaking the lengthy voyage to and from England for reasons such as education.)  The short story of what he did regarding shipping fish is shown in his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography:

Youl is best remembered for the introduction of trout and salmon to Australasian waters. Earlier attempts in 1841 and 1852 had failed because of the difficulty of keeping ova alive under artificial conditions en route to Tasmania. His shipments on the Curling in 1860 and Beautiful Star in 1862 failed, and next year he directed experiments involving the use of moss in ice-vaults. On 21 January 1864 the Norfolk left England carrying more than 100,000 salmon and trout ova packed in moss in the ship's ice-house. Ninety-one days later the first successful delivery of living ova was made into Tasmanian hatcheries on the River Plenty. Victoria and New Zealand had supported the Tasmanian ventures and their rivers were soon stocked also.

But the details are a bit more interesting, and by the wonders of Google Books, you read it all as recorded in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London from 1870.   The story starts at page 14.  You can download the entire volume as a 47 MB .pdf  if you want a full nine hundred or so pages of the Proceedings for that year.  (If you do download it, make sure to check the index at the back, where the digitiser’s fingers are caught on the scan on more than one occasion.  I suppose he or she must have been tiring of the job by then. )   

So, back to the story.  It seems they first tried to ship out salmon spawn, but these attempts all failed.  They then hit on the idea of transporting the fertilised eggs, but in the first attempt in 1852, in a large tub of water with 50,000 odd ova, they hatched too early, the water got too warm and putrid, and none survived. 

Someone hit on the idea of keeping the eggs cold, so the next attempt in 1860(the first involving Youl, it seems) involved using ice in the ship to cool the water.  But all did not go well:

Note the reference to Wenham-Lake ice?   I noticed at the Salmon Ponds this visit that the ice used in these attempts came from America.(!)

I have a vague recollection that I had once read about the American ice trade of the 1800’s, but I’m not sure.   But again, to my surprise, I see now that an enterprising fellow by the name of Frederick Tudor, made a highly successful business of cutting ice from the lakes of New England  and shipping it to England and even further afield (it even made it to India.)  

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but this strikes me as a little known and unusual example of  global enterprise:  ice shipped from America then used in attempts to get fish eggs to Australia.

So back to the fish.   The next attempt was in 1862, involving a different set up, but the ship struck bad weather, the ice again ran out, the water temperature rose and the eggs again all died.  But this time they found that some eggs, laid in moss and put directly in the ice box, had survived longer.

This led to Youl in England running experiments with the fish eggs on ice.  (You can’t freeze the eggs, just keep them really cold.)   It slows the development down, long enough to get them to Australia.

So the successful method was eventually implemented in 1864, with the fish ova packed in wooden boxes between damp moss (some had charcoal in them too), holes were drilled in the sides, and they were packed in ice in the ship’s ice house.   They survived the 3 month trip, and were taken up the Derwent River, being carried overland on poles to the Salmon Ponds, were they hatched and a significant number survived.

Maybe it’s just because I love eating salmon and trout (it’s certainly not because I am a fisherman of any note), but I find this unusual bit of Australian history a pretty fascinating story of 19th century determination and enterprise.

Old horse news

I was Googling the news for horse accidents (as one does - they've been causing much mayhem lately) and noticed that at the end of the links there were several for Google News Archives, which led to scanned newspaper articles like this one from Alabama in 1924 - advising us that the Prince of Wales had been knocked unconscious when thrown from his horse.

Have News Archive links always been automatically showing at the end of Googles News searches? If so, I can't say I have noticed til now. What it is this - a conspiracy to make us learn more history?

You see, the rest of the news from Alabama in 1924 is pretty interesting:

* 4 Army Airships Ready to Make Attempt at Flight Around the World. (All to prove American air supremacy.) Now I’m curious as to whether they made it.

* Arthur Brisbane (modestly noted as “the World’s greatest editorial writer”) gives financial advice: “Be careful how you sell francs short and be careful how you buy European bonds. Invest your money in United States optimism, and you will come out right in the end.”

I wonder how that panned out…

Maybe this will convince the public...

BBC News - Giant ants spread in warm climes

A giant ant growing over 5cm (2in) long crossed the Arctic during hot periods in the Earth's history, scientists say, using land bridges between continents.

The ant, named Titanomyrma lubei, lived about 50 million years ago and is one of the largest ant species ever found.

Fossils were unearthed in ancient lake sediments in Wyoming, US.

Writing in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, a Canadian-US team shows that giant ants, now and then, almost always live in hot climates.

Fight the return of ants as big as hummingbirds - fight global warming!

Holiday snaps

The family was off to Tasmania a couple of weeks ago, and as is traditional around here, it’s time to put up some photos:

Penguins at Low Head, at the mouth of the Tamar River north of Launceston.   The family was pretty impressed how you just had to stand still, and the fairy penguins would wander past your feet on the way to the shrubbery.   I expected penguin tours to keep you at a further distance.

   We stayed just the one night at Low Head at    the Pilot Station.  This house was ridiculously good value, and only vaguely gave the impression of being haunted. 

It sits right on the water, so you get this view from inside:

Very pretty.

Next:  the drive along the north coast is prettier than I expected.   And the small town of Stanley, famous for the large protuberance into the ocean called the Nut, didn’t fail to charm:

The photo above was somewhere on the north coast, and I believe they were onions in the field.

Onto Hobart, and one of my favourite places near there is the Salmon Ponds, where trout and salmon were first introduced to Tasmania from England in the 1850’s.  This is of itself a pretty fascinating story, but today the ponds are notably for the large, large fish they still breed there, and the lovely gardens:

And of course, Hobart itself is a charming small city, and here’s your stereotypical harbour view:

We stayed at an odd sort of motel at Sandy Bay, but it was in a great location, close to the university, and heaps of cheerful places to eat (with a lot of Asian food in particular.)    The streets are full of quite charming cottages and houses:

 

That’s enough for now, I’ll do a separate post for a few more pics.

How come Bear Grylls never used this technique?

Pizza cake ... how to turn a pile of earth into a wood-fired cob pizza oven in a matter of hours

From one universe to the next

Some Black Holes May Pre-Date The Big Bang, Say Cosmologists - Technology Review

Some wild physics time. Considering that there was recently a paper speculating that it might be possible for a planet to orbit inside a black hole (I was sure I posted about that, but where?), could it be that black holes could be used as a lifeboat to get from one collapsing universe to a new expanding one?

Of course, there are a couple of problems here: not many scientists expect the current universe to collapse; and even if it did, getting out of the black hole lifeboat may be an issue.

The Chinese believe...

It seems there is no serious doubt amongst Chinese scientists that global warming is happening, Yet surely, if you were to believe skeptic arguments that scientists like to please their financial masters, China would be the country with political incentive to pooh-pooh climate change and encourage research to show it is either not happening, or not so serious.

Yet such thoughts seem rarely to occur to climate change skeptics.

It won't be hot every day...

Persisting cold extremes under 21st-century warming scenarios

A paper here notes that models still suggest that cold extremes will still happen during the 21 st century despite a general warming trends.

You have to point to this sort of stuff so that skeptics don't claim cold snaps mean no global warming.

Why not to concede to those who want to wait and see

Only In It For The Gold: On Waiting for Catastrophe

Michael Tobis is in less dramatic mood in this post, in which he makes reasoned comments about the suggestion that the US (and Australia!) are not going to be convinced to take CO2 action until observable, dramatic, catastrophic events clearly related to climate change are happening.

China and thorium

China shows a world lead in clean nuclear energy�(Science Alert)

Earlier this year the Chinese Academy of Science announced plans to finance the development of a programme to develop Thorium Fuelled Molten Salt Reactors (TFMSR). This is the first of four “strategic leader in science and technology projects” that the Chinese Academy of Science will be supporting.

Not yet understood

Strange cosmic ray hotspots stalk southern skies - space - 03 May 2011 - New Scientist

Cosmic rays crashing into the Earth over the South Pole appear to be coming from particular locations, rather than being distributed uniformly across the sky. Similar cosmic ray "hotspots" have been seen in the northern skies too, yet we know of no source close enough to produce this pattern.

"We don't know where they are coming from," says Stefan Westerhoff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Toying with E

Ecstasy associated with chronic change in brain function

Interesting comment in this report:

"There's tension in the fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy between those who think Ecstasy could be a valuable therapeutic that's not being tested because of overblown fears, and those who are concerned about the drug's potentially harmful effects," Cowan said.

"We're not on one side or the other; we're just trying to find out what's going on in the brain – is there any evidence for long-lasting changes in the brain?"

The message in news reports needs to be accurate, Cowan said. His team's studies suggest that the current message should be: "If you use Ecstasy recreationally, the more you use, the more brain changes you get."

Hunch proved correct

I had noticed recently (from a climate science website) that a paper had come out which was co-authored by climate skeptic Pat Michaels, arguing that the recent loss of ice in Greenland was no big deal. It claimed (from the abstract):

We find that the recent period of high-melt extent is similar in magnitude but, thus far, shorter in duration, than a period of high melt lasting from the early 1920s through the early 1960s.

Funny, I thought, I don't recall seeing this being bragged about at Watts Up With That. Maybe there is something not quite right about the paper.

Now I see an article at Skeptical Science confirms my hunch.

And climate skeptics have the hide to complain about peer review being broken!

UPDATE: having read through the comments to the Skeptical Science article, and the comments to an earlier post by Lucia, I can see the argument that Dr Box himself may have been doing a bit of grandstanding. This is more complicated than it first appears, although there does seem little doubt that some skeptics have treated the paper as if it is a case of "nothing to see here" (in Greenland melt, when in fact it is getting faster.

Hitchens on Osama

Osama Bin Laden's legacy: It will depend in part on what Obama does next. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

An interesting take on the legacy of Bin Laden by Hitchens here. He argues he gambled and lost:

Ten years ago, I remind you, he had a gigantic influence in one rogue and failed state—Afghanistan—and was exerting an increasing force over its Pakistani neighbor. Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers were in senior positions in the Pakistani army and nuclear program and had not yet been detected as such. Huge financial subventions flowed his way, often through official channels, from Saudi Arabia and other gulf states. As well as running a nihilist international, he was the head of a giant and profitable network of banking and money-laundering. He could order heavy artillery wheeled up to destroy the Buddhist treasures of Afghanistan in broad daylight. A nexus of madrassas was spreading the word from Indonesia to London, just as a nexus of camps was schooling future murderers.

And he decided to gamble all these ripening strategic advantages in a single day. Then, not only did he run away from Afghanistan, leaving his deluded followers to be killed in very large numbers, but he chose to remain a furtive and shady figure, on whom the odds of a successful covert "hit," or bought-and-paid-for betrayal, were bound to lengthen every day.

It seems thinkable that he truly believed his own mad propaganda, often adumbrated on tapes and videos, especially after the American scuttle from Somalia. The West, he maintained, was rotten with corruption and run by cabals of Jews and homosexuals. It had no will to resist. It had become feminized and cowardly. One devastating psychological blow and the rest of the edifice would gradually follow the Twin Towers in a shower of dust.

Pointing out such failure is the best way to celebrate his death.

The Best of British

There were two great bits of television from Britain over the weekend: the royal wedding, and the new episode of Dr Who.

First, the wedding. Apart from the unnecessary inclusion of a large number of horses (not all of which seemed to be completely under control at all times - typical), the wedding, and London, looked terrific.

As for the latter, I'm sure it was the high camera angles and absence of cars that gave what I consider a very misleading impression of the city compared to what it looks like on foot. The problems are that the place is pretty flat, and no one ever got to redesign the city to create anywhere much with a long line of sight lined with impressive buildings. For the tourist, it tends to be a matter of working out which Tube route via which to make your unscenic way to the next point of interest, which usually suddenly pops into view when you turn a corner and you're just about on top of it. From recollection, this is particularly a problem with St Paul's Cathedral.

You can say you get the same effect from New York City, but at the same time, being an island, it is a relatively easy matter to get some distance (every tourist does the Statue of Liberty) and see the bit picture. The top of the Empire State helps in that regard too.

But I like cities with a bit of geography: at least some higher points from which you get a bit of an encompassing view. But that's not London. (It is now 20 years since I visited - maybe it is a better place with the vehicle tax, and so on. But despite it having features of great interest historical interest, I just don't think it rates as an overall attractive city. I thought even the parks were kind of dull.)

Anyway, now that I have that off my chest, the main thing about the wedding that impressed me (apart from an elegant and assured looking bride who gave the impression that she was not intimidated by her future role) was the church service itself. It was very robustly and traditionally Christian in a way that, frankly, one does not routinely think of in association with the Anglican Church any more.

Of course the TV coverage I was watching couldn't help but keep reminding us that the guests included an aging couple who had rented a womb to make a baby so one of them could play grand dads without the shuddering inconvenience of actually touching a woman. Personally, the Archbishop of Canterbury asking Elton and partner to leave, and perhaps using a whip to enforce it, could have made the event even better, but I guess I can't have everything.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm not the only one who liked the service and homily: it got a favourable write up at the First Things blog. Oddly, though, the comments that follow contain the most sweeping condemnations of the event I have read:

The Saxons are a cruel and brutal people, ineloquent and unmusical. A grim and dark race who seem to have never felt Italian sunshine. Throughout history they have persecuted and dominated their neighbors and done great damage to the Faith. Tell me, why are we celebrating their “fertility?”

I see Peter Hitchens managed to be a sourpuss about the whole thing too.

Hard to please everyone.

Which brings me to the first episode of the new series of Dr Who. I thought it was pretty good, and actually seemed directed in a clearer, less cluttered way than the first of the Moffat series. The current batch of actors in it are all very likeable in their roles, I think; and as some people noted on The Guardian blog, the BBC seems to have finally improved the music mix so you can actuallyhear dialogue over the blare.

Lets hope the improvements continue.

Lindsay stays loyal

Rudd was beheaded, and it was all for nothing, Tanner laments

It's interesting that Lindsay Tanner says that Labor dropped Kevin Rudd because they couldn't see that he could recover in the polls.

I'm sure that was part of it, but surely the fundamental reason it happened was because few could bear the way he organised himself and his office. Let's not forget passages such as this from just one of the post mortems after he was deposed:

The prime minister was a loner, far from consultative and keen to centralise power in his office. He appeared to have no mates in politics.

One veteran who has known Rudd since his days in Foreign Affairs says: "There are only two sources he goes to for advice: God and the cat." Cabinet was often out of the loop, on big issues and small. When Rudd announced the appointment of former National Party leader and deputy prime minister Tim Fischer as the ambassador to the Vatican, cabinet greeted the decision with stony silence. Only Foreign Minister Stephen Smith knew in advance about the appointment.

A well-placed Canberra insider said ministerial calls to the PM's mobile phone were always diverted to staffers, generally a gofer. From the time he became opposition leader in 2006, virtually none of his senior colleagues had a direct line.

They got in touch by sending a text. The story has often been told how Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was forced to get on the same plane as Rudd to give him a detailed briefing on the national broadband network.

Now we learn that booking a flight with the PM to get face-time was almost standard operating procedure. One Rudd staffer joined the boss on a flight to the Middle East, en route to Afghanistan, to brief the PM. The staffer then flew straight back to Sydney.

The outcomes of giving Kevin a chance to recover in the polls looked like this:

a. Kevin fails and we lose government;
b. Kevin succeeds and we have to put up with working with him and his appalling staffers, likely made even worse by a second success, for another 3 years.

They was no upside to keeping him.

Agony aunt Sam

The most overly self-exposed professional blogger in the world, Sam de Brito, wrote last week:

A month or so ago, I found I was suffering from four Hs: I had an outbreak of herpes, sported hives all over my body and, wonderfully, also discovered I'd developed haemorrhoids. Oh the joy.

The fourth "H" was heartbreak, ostensibly the cause of the first three Hs, as I mourned the loss of daily contact with my daughter since splitting with my partner late last year.

Well, yeah: more of your typical case of more than anyone (well, me especially) really needed to know about him.

But today's post from Sam (featured prominently at the top of the SMH: I do not visit him as a matter of routine) :

For all of today - that's Friday - from roughly 9am until 5pm, I will endeavour to answer every question or comment posted on the blog.

Soooo, if you have a question or a topic idea, write a comment and I'll do my best to reciprocate. I won't, however, be answering questions about my break-up or daughter.

If you'd like any advice on writing, journalism, getting published, getting into TV script-writing, blogging or how to shag chicks, I'll be happy to offer what help I can.

I suppose we should be grateful that he won't answer break up questions, but honest to God, what else is there in his life that we don't know already?

And why would anyone ask relationship questions of a man still effectively in the middle of his own breakup?

Yet, when I read the comments, there are many Sam admirers, who seem to find his take on all things male helpful. This says something worrying about modern social mores and Australian men, I'm sure, even though Sam's main life insight (as far as I can tell - see the very title of his blog) is that men shouldn't lie to women to get them into bed.

Which leads me to this agony aunt question he got today:

I'm currently dating a chick. She's the prettiest girl i've ever gotten this close to - i am totally physically smitten with her, and with her demeanour.

We have plenty in common, but also we're quite different.

Things are progessing well, but i have a little doubt in the back of my mind.

what do i do man?

- baz

Shag a lot. See what happens. Don't tell her you love her. Don't get her pregnant. - Sam

Err, I think I've detected a little problem here with Sam's understanding of women.

Doesn't everyone know that "shagging a lot" with any woman, regardless of whether the guy says he loves her or not, will invariably lead to the woman assuming he loves her. Jeez, wasn't this even the subject of a recent Natalie Portman movie? Sure, some women will say this won't happen to them, but it's biology. Men must assume it will happen.

Therefore, to recommend "lots of shagging" without any care as to how it will be interpreted is effectively to promote another form of lying.

So it's a big F (for Fail) in my assessment of his advice; but we knew that already.

As a sort of footnote, I extract this bit from another recent post of his I read today:

I was walking down the street a few weeks back and, vain creature that I am, checked myself out in the side window of a parked car and saw something quite disturbing.

As I moved, my chest was jiggling. Not heaving up and down like we're told a manly pectoral should, but jiggling, like a ... breast...

The next day I bought myself a pair of bathroom scales and stared down at them, dumbfounded: I was 100 kilograms.

Two years ago I weighed 86 kilograms and belonged to group of men I call "Quickdraws" because, as soon as there's a hint of sunshine, I had my shirt off to flex and strut.

I don't know, I wouldn't be completely surprised if Sam wasn't someone who's going to have a middle aged or late life sexual identity crisis. If he did, we would hear about it in all the gory psychological detail, I'm sure.

And I'll repeat my main problem with this: anyone's free to run their own blog about their own life in any detail they want. What really gets my goat is that this is a mainstream media blog carried by Fairfax. It wouldn't have happened when I were a lad!

Uhlmann on aboriginal issues

ABC The Drum - Political engagement is a universal constant

Chris Uhlmann, who I think has not turned out to be quite the climate skeptic in his 7.30 job as some might have hoped, writes about his visit this week to Alice Springs, which has led to some interesting reports on his show:

The trip has, again, brought into sharp focus the difficulty of doing anything meaningful to improve the lot of indigenous Australians, partly because they exist in a witch's brew of politics.

The feuding in Aboriginal leaders is extraordinary. And it is not just a divide between urban and regional leaders; there are sharp differences of opinion on the Northern Territory intervention in central Australian communities.

Overlayed on that is the politics of welfare, with competing ideologies fighting for the right to impose their worldview.

Then there is a state government which has, all too often, spent the Commonwealth money intended address indigenous disadvantage in the suburbs of Darwin.

No one disputes that something had to be done to protect children from neglect and abuse and to slow the rivers of grog. It's just as clear that one of the intervention's real failings was the failure to consult. That meant it did not get the one thing it needed to endure: the goodwill and enthusiastic support of the people it was aimed at helping.

But given that consulting here so often ends in a stalemate, it's easy to understand how a professional politician might choose to act rather than sit and watch a tragedy unfold.

I have noticed that Tony Abbott's contribution about the drinking issues in Alice Springs have so far consisted of asking that public drinking laws be enforced. Yet when Uhlmann asked him about large bars that are licenced from 10 to 2 and cater exclusively to an aboriginal clientele, all Tony would say is that he would like companies "from Coles and Woolworths down" to act responsibly in how they supply alcohol. I think it was Radio National today that he was asked about $2 bottles of wine that are available there. (Gosh, I never go below $3 clean skins from Dan Murphy's myself.) Again, he said something like "well, we need to enforce current laws first before we get into more draconian laws."

I think he must be reading Catallaxy.

It sure sounds to me like there is a complete lack of corporate responsibility going on there, and that it would not hurt to tighten licencing hours too. (Although, I guess the result of too much tightening of them would be ever larger amounts of takeaway grog and more public drinking which you couldn't control effectively anyway.)

It is a very intractable situation, seemingly.

Distressing news

Sad to say, it is the PM's living arrangements which have led to my children learning that couples are capable of having children without being married.

This all started at breakfast with the question "Does Julia Gillard have a boyfriend?" I thought it best to dignify Tim's status above that of mere "boyfriend" by explaining in a bit more detail that in some families, the man and woman never marry. My daughter took the opportunity to get in advance practice of some innate teenage-girl-rebellion-just-to-stir-her-parents genes by announcing that was good, she would not get married.

It was my son, on the other hand, who (though I thought he might have worked this out for himself already, but evidently not) piped up with "so people can have children without getting married? Wow." I was tempted to say "no, actually they can't, nor sleep in the same bed, it's illegal", but honesty is the best policy, regrettably.

So there you go - Julia and Tim need to marry, to prevent the further corruption of my children.

Not much of a surprise

Business gives cold shoulder to Coalition climate plan

As far as I know, no one of significance thinks the Coalition plan is worthy of support.

Shrugged indeed

Atlas sucks: Failing film producer vows to give up - Salon.com

Last Monday, Tim Blair noted a Hollywood Reporter item detailing what a surprisingly (by independent film standards) strong per screen box office Atlas Shrugged (part the first) seemed to have for the first weekend. Might expand to a 1000 screens!

Hollywood Reporter didn't exactly figure on the fact that all of those who saw it on the first weekend represented the sum total of Ayn Rand fanboys in the United States, and you know, despite their disproportionate noise in political circles, there probably just ain't that many of them.

Hence it expanded to more screens (four hundred and something, not the 1000 the producer speculated on) and took about half the takings the next week.

So, that's a touch over $3 million, for a $20 million film.

Those figures are bad enough for the producer to wave the white flag. You could expect Salon (and me) to take pleasure from this, and we do:

And so its producer, an exercise equipment company CEO (I mean a DYNAMIC PRIME MOVER) who spent $20 million of his own money to finally put Rand's vision on the big screen, is giving up. The film will not expand to 1,000 screens. The second part of the trilogy will not be produced. (That is the real shame, here: The second part is where hundreds of people die horrifically of asphyxiation. And the best part is that they all totally deserve it for being "looters.") (No one will miss part three, which would've just been a three-hour-long speech.)

And so John Aglialoro, the film's producer, will "go Galt" and retire to the desert, where his ability to manage a company that produces exercise equipment will allow him to create the perfect society.

Sounds to me like it may not even get a cinema release here. Sinclair won't be left in the dark by himself after all.

That sounds healthy...

Study predicts how tattoos will age

A couple of surprising things from the above article:

"Tattoos are incredibly popular worldwide with more than a third of 18-25 year olds in the US sporting at least one design," said Mr Eames.

That's a bigger proportion than I would have expected. Then there's this:

Tattoo inks are a suspension of water-insoluble particles, such as mercury, lead, cadmium and iron, which are injected under the skin using a needle.

Over time, these inks become dispersed as the cells which contain them die, divide or leave the body.

My, that sounds like a healthy past time: injecting your cells with poisonous metals. Are there ever any health consequences of that?

Hey, it seems the FDA has been looking into it since 2008. Seems they are taking their time about it, though.

What a pity. It would cause me some amusement if it turned out the FDA wanted to restrict tattooing somehow.

Ups and downs

Michael Tobis has an odd post up in which he seems overcome by another wave of pessimism about winning the battle with "pseudoscientists" over climate change, but he tempers this by the odd sort of "upside" that the future without changing course will at least not be boring. In fact, it will have a bit of science fiction-y excitement about it. (Starving masses needing factory food from the moon, perhaps?) [To be fairer, his point is probably more that people who want climate change action don't do themselves any favours by painting a "boring" picture of the future that sounds like it's windmills everywhere while everyone becomes a happy hippy artist.]

Good old Michael at least wears his heart on his sleeve, and given that I've previously speculated on the coming Carbon Wars (cruise missiles being sent to destroy Chinese coal power plants, anyone?) I kind of like it when someone who's actually doing climate science stuff makes even wilder guesses as to the future. (Frankly, I think my idea of a group of modern Captain Nemos patrolling the oceans in submarines to sink coal carrying ships is more "do-able" than food factories on the Moon. This Navy Rear Admiral is completely on side with climate science, after all.)

On the slightly up side, given yesterday's depressing story about how China's consumer goods industry more than makes up for the carbon reductions the West has achieved, there is this story that Chinese carbon emissions might not continue rising forever:

Well before mid-century, according to a new study by Berkeley Lab's China Energy Group, that nation's energy use will level off, even as its population edges past 1.4 billion. "I think this is very good news,'' says Mark Levine, co-author of the report, "China's Energy and Carbon Emissions Outlook to 2050" and director of the group. "There's been a perception that China's rising prosperity means runaway growth in energy consumption. Our study shows this won't be the case."

But what are the assumptions here?:

The new Berkeley Lab forecast also uses the two scenarios to examine CO2 emissions anticipated through 2050. Under the more aggressive scenario, China's emissions of the greenhouse gas are predicted to peak in 2027 at 9.7 billion metric tons. From then on, they will fall significantly, to about 7 billion metric tons by 2050. Under the more conservative scenario, CO2 emissions will reach a plateau of 12 billion metric tons by 2033, and then trail down to 11 billion metric tons at mid-century.

Several assumptions about China's efforts to "decarbonize" its energy production and consumption are built into the optimistic forecasts for reductions in the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. They include:

• A dramatic reduction in coal's share of energy production, to as low as 30 percent by 2050, compared to 74 percent in 2005

• An expansion of nuclear power from 8 gigwatts in 2005 to 86 gigawatts by 2020, followed by a rise to as much as 550 gigawatts in 2050

• A switch to electric cars. The assumption is that urban private car ownership will reach 356 million vehicles by 2050. Under the "continued improvement scenario," 30 percent of these will be electric; under the "accelerated improvement scenario," 70 percent will be electric.

Well, I guess those figures are possible, but sound just a tad optimistic. Maybe China is interested in going to the Moon to set up the food factory farms just in case this all goes belly up.

Michael, pass me the bottle.

Eye Phone

After mentioning Apple yesterday, I was very amused to see a recent episode of Futurama last night which turned out to be a whole episode parodying the company and its fanboys:



It was the funniest thing I have seen for a long time.

Considering thorium

Why is no one talking about safe nuclear power?�(Science Alert)

Julian Cribb sings the praises of thorium reactors as having a lot of passive safety, as well as other attractive features (including scalability in size, and no need for large amounts of cooling water.)

I must admit, I have read little about them, and thought that, to a large extent, they were still pretty experimental.

I guess it's time to correct my knowledge deficiencies.

It's complicated, Part 2

New study links ozone hole to climate change all the way to the equator

....researchers at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science report their findings that the ozone hole, which is located over the South Pole, has affected the entire circulation of the Southern Hemisphere all the way to the equator. While previous work has shown that the ozone hole is changing the atmospheric flow in the high latitudes, the Columbia Engineering paper, "Impact of Polar Ozone Depletion on Subtropical Precipitation," demonstrates that the ozone hole is able to influence the tropical circulation and increase rainfall at low latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere. This is the first time that ozone depletion, an upper atmospheric phenomenon confined to the polar regions, has been linked to climate change from the Pole to the equator.

As the BBC version of the story notes:

The team found that overall, the ozone hole has resulted in rainfall moving south along with the winds.

But there are regional differences, particularly concerning Australia.

"In terms of the average for that zone, [the ozone hole drives] about a 10% change - but for Australia, it's about 35%," Dr Kang told BBC News.

The CSIRO will no doubt be very interested in the study.

It's complicated

Study shows developed nation's reduction in CO2, outpaced by developing country emissions

Despite the emergence of regional climate policies, growth in global CO2 emissions has remained strong. From 1990 to 2008 CO2 emissions in developed countries (defined as countries with emission-reduction commitments in the Kyoto Protocol, Annex B) have stabilized, but emissions in developing countries (non-Annex B) have doubled. Some studies suggest that the stabilization of emissions in developed countries was partially because of growing imports from developing countries. To quantify the growth in emission transfers via international trade, we developed a trade-linked global database for CO2 emissions covering 113 countries and 57 economic sectors from 1990 to 2008. We find that the emissions from the production of traded goods and services have increased from 4.3 Gt CO2 in 1990 (20% of global emissions) to 7.8 Gt CO2 in 2008 (26%). Most developed countries have increased their consumption-based emissions faster than their territorial emissions, and non–energy-intensive manufacturing had a key role in the emission transfers. The net emission transfers via international trade from developing to developed countries increased from 0.4 Gt CO2 in 1990 to 1.6 Gt CO2 in 2008, which exceeds the Kyoto Protocol emission reductions. Our results indicate that international trade is a significant factor in explaining the change in emissions in many countries, from both a production and consumption perspective. We suggest that countries monitor emission transfers via international trade, in addition to territorial emissions, to ensure progress toward stabilization of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Here's my half stupid suggestion: can we agree that Apple products are as good as they need to be for the next 20 years? In fact, now that I think of it, all computers are as good as they need be for the next ten to 20 years.

I'm pretty happy with TV technology as it is too. Does anyone need a better audio system than those available at the moment?

If you stop making things brighter and shinier, maybe people will stop buying new ones. Then China can shut down several factories in a few years time, people in the West won't buy so much stuff, and we can all feel better about importing less CO2.

Just call me Clive 2.

Couple of videos about ocean acidification

There hasn't been much noted about ocean acidification here for a long time, but I thought these two videos were worth a look.

The first makes me feel cold just watching it. Mind you, I am not sure of the significance of the phytoplankton polymer production that he is researching, but still it's interesting to see the efforts scientists go to:



The next is about ocean acidification generally, and the effect on larvae of some shellfish in particular. Seems a sensible man: