Unhelpful

Slate has a report on tracking down the creator of the stupid video which has led to riots in the Middle East. 

The worrying part of the video for the actors involved is how it appears the most offensive lines were dubbed over their actual taped lines later.  As someone in the comments thread at Slate says, can't these actors sue this guy for putting their lives at risk?

If idiots want to put American lives at risk, I wish they would at least do it via their putting own face to their material and take the consequences personally.

Downton discussed

Since I never got around to watching Downton Abbey (series 1 or 2), I won't bother embedding the David Mitchell gripe about what happened to show.  It did amuse me, though.  I wonder if he right when he says the second series went nuts.

As found on coffee tables in Poland

Exorcism boom in Poland sees magazine launch – The Express Tribune

WARSAW: With exorcism booming in Poland, Roman Catholic priests here have joined forces with a publisher to launch what they claim is the world’s first monthly magazine focused exclusively on chasing out the devil.

“The rise in the number or exorcists from four to more than 120 over the course of 15 years in Poland is telling,” Father Aleksander Posacki, a professor of philosophy, theology and leading demonologist and exorcist told reporters in Warsaw at the Monday launch of the Egzorcysta monthly.

 Gee.  I wonder if it's available on Zinio for iPad yet?  More from the article:

According to both exorcists, depictions of demonic possession in horror films are largely accurate.

“It manifests itself in the form of screams, shouting, anger, rage – threats are common,” Posacki said.
“Manifestation in the form or levitation is less common, but does occur and we must speak about it — I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” he added.

With its 62-page first issue including articles titled “New Age — the spiritual vacuum cleaner” and “Satan is real”, the Egzorcysta monthly with a print-run of 15,000 by the Polwen publishers is selling for 10 zloty (2.34 euros, 3.10 dollars) per copy.

My personal views on exorcism are tentative and cautious, but I will leave the explanation for another day.  I'm still amused that there should be a magazine devoted to it.

Talking about the Arctic Ice

Ice loss shifts Arctic cycles : Nature News

 A good article here about the loss of Arctic ice.  The uncertainties in the modelling are noted:

Computer models that simulate how the ice will respond to a warming climate project that the Arctic will be seasonally ‘ice free’ (definitions of this vary) some time between 2040 and the end of the century. But the observed downward trend in sea-ice cover suggests that summer sea ice could disappear completely as early as 2030, something that none of the models used for the next report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comes close to forecasting¹.

“There’s a tremendous spread between observations and model projections,” says Serreze. “It might be that natural variability is larger than assumed, or perhaps models don’t get the change in ice thickness right.” Uncertainty also remains over the strength of various natural ‘feedbacks’. For example, an exposed ocean is darker than an ice-covered surface and so absorbs more solar heat, causing yet more warming and melting.

A lack of fine detail about circulation patterns in the Arctic Ocean could also be throwing off the models. For example, a survey carried out in 2008 revealed 20 formerly unobserved eddies, each some 15 to 20 kilometres in diameter, in waters north of Canada. “Whether these are new features, and what role they might play for ocean-mixing processes, we don’t know yet,” says Yves Gratton, an oceanographer and Arctic researcher at the National Institute of Scientific Research in Montreal, Canada.

 Ice loss could also accelerate if the ice pack’s underlying waters warm up. Unlike in most of the world’s oceans, the coldest water in the Arctic, at −1 °C to −2 °C, is at the surface; below a depth of 200–300 metres, saltier and warmer water of about 1 °C flows in from the Atlantic. The cold surface layer — called the halocline — isolates the sea ice from the warmer water below.

But the halocline is vulnerable to warming from above, says Henning Bauch, a marine geologist at the GEOMAR research centre in Kiel, Germany. A thinning halocline — something that has not yet been observed — would not only jeopardize the sea ice but could also melt the carbon-rich permafrost beneath shallow coastal waters², releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

 The article also notes that it may well mean a lot of snow this winter in the US or Europe.

This and that

Really interesting stuff seems a bit hard to find lately, so I'm going for a handful of moderately interesting things today:

*   Bryan Appleyard had an interview with poor old Clive James in August which I missed (being in the Sunday Times and all), but it is available via Appleyard's website.

Clive says (amongst various other health problems) that he had a complete stoppage of the waterworks.  How often does that happen to men who keep putting off prostate operations, I wonder.   Sounds extremely unpleasant, but surely you have plenty of warning?

Everyone seems to like his "Cultural Amnesia" book.   Maybe I should try it?

*  Can't say I know much about the Texas "bone wars" of the 19th century.  Physorg has an article about some historical letters which shed a bit of light on the intrigue, described as follows::

Jacobs describes the late 1800s as a period of intense fossil collecting. The Bone Wars were financed and driven by Cope and his archenemy, Othniel Charles Marsh. The two were giants of paleontology whose public feud brought the discovery of dinosaur fossils to the forefront of the American psyche.

Cope, from Philadelphia, and Marsh, from Yale University, began their scientific quests as a friendly endeavor to discover fossils. They each prospected the American frontier and also hired collectors to supply them with specimens. Cope and Marsh identified and named hundreds of discoveries, publishing their results in scientific journals. Over the course of nearly three decades, however, their competition evolved into a costly, self-destructive, vicious all-out war to see who could outdo the other. Despite their aggressive and sometimes unethical tactics to outwit one another and steal each other's hired collectors, Cope and Marsh made major contributions to the field of paleontology, Jacobs said.

 There's no doubt a book out there somewhere about this.

*   In climate change news, Murray Salby last year got some notoriety by giving a lecture to a skeptic friendly crowd (most of whom, I am sure, could not really make head nor tail of the detail of his argument) about how he had shown that CO2 had little to do with increasing temperatures.  He promised a paper was going to be published about it, but it has not appeared.  From what I can gather, a paper just published from some other scientists runs pretty much the same argument.  Real Climate looks at it and finds the obvious flaws (similar to those that had been pointed out after Salby outlined his idea last year.)

Back to the drawing board, skeptics.

*  The transparently misleading spin put on climate change by The Australian continues, with a subheading to a report about Kurt Lambeck winning a prize for his work in the field as follows:

CLIMATE change moves at a glacial pace, according to an Australian researcher whose work has been recognised with one of the world's richest science prizes.

 Given that Lambeck has had opinion pieces saying things like this:

The independent messages from the four academies and the geological society are consistent and urgent....

Recognising that the consequences of climate change are potentially global, serious and irreversible on human time scales, the Australian Academy of Science has published such an assessment, The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers.

I expect he might be a tad annoyed at the spin put on his cautious words about uncertainties regarding the future rate of sea level rises.

Krugman notes

Paul Krugman has a nice, clear writing style, doesn't he?   I note this passage today regarding Republicans not making sense:

Right now Mitt Romney has an advertising blitz under way in which he attacks Mr. Obama for possible cuts in defense spending — cuts, by the way, that were mandated by an agreement forced on the president by House Republicans last year. And why is Mr. Romney denouncing these cuts? Because, he says, they would cost jobs! 

This is classic “weaponized Keynesianism” — the claim that government spending can’t create jobs unless the money goes to defense contractors, in which case it’s the lifeblood of the economy. And no, it doesn’t make any sense.

What about the argument, which I hear all the time, that Mr. Obama should have fixed the economy long ago? The claim goes like this: during his first two years in office Mr. Obama had a majority in Congress that would have let him do anything he wanted, so he’s had his chance.

The short answer is, you’ve got to be kidding.

As anyone who was paying attention knows, the period during which Democrats controlled both houses of Congress was marked by unprecedented obstructionism in the Senate. The filibuster, formerly a tactic reserved for rare occasions, became standard operating procedure; in practice, it became impossible to pass anything without 60 votes. And Democrats had those 60 votes for only a few months. Should they have tried to push through a major new economic program during that narrow window? In retrospect, yes — but that doesn’t change the reality that for most of Mr. Obama’s time in office U.S. fiscal policy has been defined not by the president’s plans but by Republican stonewalling.

It's all connected

Climate extremes and climate change: The Russian heat wave and other climate extremes of 2010

This recent paper by Trenberth and Fasullo notes the combination of ENSO and AGW led to high sea surface temperatures which led to floods and heat waves, at least in part.   The abstract provides more detail:

Natural variability, especially ENSO, and global warming from human influences together resulted in very high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in several places that played a vital role in subsequent developments. Record high SSTs in the Northern Indian Ocean in May 2010, the Gulf of Mexico in August 2010, the Caribbean in September 2010, and north of Australia in December 2010 provided a source of unusually abundant atmospheric moisture for nearby monsoon rains and flooding in Pakistan, Colombia, and Queensland. The resulting anomalous diabatic heating in the northern Indian and tropical Atlantic Oceans altered the atmospheric circulation by forcing quasi-stationary Rossby waves and altering monsoons. The anomalous monsoonal circulations had direct links to higher latitudes: from Southeast Asia to southern Russia, and from Colombia to Brazil. Strong convection in the tropical Atlantic in northern summer 2010 was associated with a Rossby wave train that extended into Europe creating anomalous cyclonic conditions over the Mediterranean area while normal anticyclonic conditions shifted downstream where they likely interacted with an anomalously strong monsoon circulation, helping to support the persistent atmospheric anticyclonic regime over Russia. This set the stage for the “blocking” anticyclone and associated Russian heat wave and wild fires.

 But nonetheless, the last line is:

Attribution is limited by shortcomings in models in replicating monsoons, teleconnections and blocking. 

The expectation is that 2013 will be hot.  It will be "interesting" to see what knock on effects it has for the climate.

Today's biology lesson - Part 2

There's been a show running on SBS on a Sunday night called Inside Nature's Giants, which involves dead animal dissection to learn about their odd biological features. 

Last night, it was the kangaroo's turn (even though I would hardly think they count as "giants"), but in any event I was reminded about the odd feature of how female kangaroos can keep an embryo in stasis in their uterus (of which they have two, as well as three vaginas) while they have a joey in the pouch. 

I was wondering how much is known about how the biology of that works, but Googling is not showing up all that much information on the topic.  Embryonic diapause has its own Wikipedia entry, but it's pretty brief.  It does show, though, that quite a lot of mammals can do this trick.

The whole topic reminded me of a later Heinlein novel, in which the heroine turns out to have been secretly carrying an embryo, at body temperature of course, in a small genetically engineered "pouch" in her navel.  I think it must have been Friday, but even that has little information on the Web.  Anyhow, I remember thinking at the time that body temperature stasis of a human embryo seemed a bit unlikely, but I don't recall if at the time I realised that there were local mammals doing this trick. 

I wonder how much biological study this has ever received.  It would be a good trick if it could be applied to human embryos, in lieu of freezing them.

Today's biology lesson - Part 1

My seminal link with manga god Osamu Tezuka | The Japan Times Online

Well, here's a strange column about the famous creator of Astroboy (there's a photo of him looking natty in a beret) and his background in science.  Previously thought to have studied medicine, it seems he might only have done a PhD in ... snail sperm.

Which leads the writer to then note his own experience in studying silkworm sperm.  It's odd:

I was looking at another species with unusual sperm: the silkworm, an insect that has been bred for more than 5,000 years in China.

They are amazing animals. They have been bred for so long by humans that they have lost the ability to reproduce on their own: They require humans to bring them together. They have also lost the ability to fly. But they still beat their wings, and when they crawl over your hand, you feel tiny gusts of wind from their wings, like mini fans directed at your skin....

And here's why I briefly studied them: Like all butterflies and moths, silkworms have two types of sperm, produced in a roughly 50:50 ratio of ones with cell nuclei containing the DNA needed to fertilize the egg, and ones containing no DNA that are therefore unable to fertilize eggs. A sperm that can't fertilize an egg! What good is that?

That's the mystery, and while there are lots of ideas — the best among them being that the dud sperm are used as some kind of soldiers to fight off the sperm from other males in order to give their DNA-carrying brothers a chance — there is no consensus on their function.

 Yes, when you raise silkworms at home, as I have done a couple of times with the kids (involving a drive every second day to a mulberry tree in a neighbouring suburb on a vacant block of land to fetch leaves), the moths that emerge look weak and pathetic as they merely flutter a bit and don't move much.   But, in fact, this is normal.  

As you were....

You say "pomodoro", I say "tomato"

For some reason, this article from May was showing as special report on the SMH site this morning.  It's actually an interesting look at why Italian canned tomatoes are so cheap in Australia, and way outsell the home grown product.

I do sometimes buy Australian cans out of sympathy for a struggling industry, and I think it is true that their quality is now equivalent to the overseas ones.

Update:  here's a review of a book all about the history of the tomato in Italy.

Hard to disagree

Two conventions, two Americas. Seldom has the divide been greater | Michael Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer

This column begins with this:

Over the past two weeks, both major American political parties held their nominating conventions – and that's pretty much where the similarities end. After interminable speeches, cloying videos and occasional moments of rhetorical eloquence, the philosophical and tonal divide between them has never felt broader. Quite simply, Democrats and Republicans operate in two completely distinct realms, one that is defined by an attachment to reality and one that is increasingly detached from it.

If their three-day convention in Tampa is any indication, Republicans reside in a fantasy world where government plays no role but that of malevolence, where the free market is the salvation to all that ails this nation and where the country is locked in a Manichaean struggle between the forces of freedom and a failed, socialist interloper named Barack Obama.

It was a point driven home to me in Tampa when I overheard a Republican delegate declare in a sweet voice, reflecting more pity than anger: "There's a communist living in the White House."

 I find it hard to disagree (with Cohen, not the nutty Republican).

The bits of the conferences that I saw are reflected pretty accurately in this part of Cohen's piece:

Moreover, a party once derided for playing interest-group politics showed no hesitancy about going down that road in Charlotte. The convention was full of obvious appeals to women, gays, blacks, Hispanics, young people and, in the constant references to the successful bailout of the US car industry, organised labour. These are the groups that form the backbone of the Democratic coalition and are essential to the party's long-term success. Democrats far better than Republicans appreciate the destiny of demographics and they have done a far more effective job of cultivating these voters. Indeed, the contrast between the hues in Charlotte and Tampa was remarkable. The Democratic party is a party that looks like the palette of the American experience, not just in skin colour, but in class level. The Republican party (the one in the Tampa convention hall) is one that looks like Sunday brunch at a country club.

 And yet, you have right wing commentators like John Hinderaker scratching their heads over why the polling between Obama and Romney is close.  It should, according to JH, be an obvious walkover for Romney.

Funny, isn't it, how it doesn't seem to occur to those currently to the forefront of the Right in America that, you know, voters might actually be smart enough to realise that Republican policies such as:

a.   at a time of serious government budget deficits, the first step should be to reduce taxes, especially for the rich;

b.  at a time when both sides of politics agree that America is right to get out of Afghanistan, and defence spending should accordingly be able to be reduced,  a permanent and substantial increase in the defence budget is the right thing to do

don't make any sense at all.

Honestly, I can't recall the Right of politics in the US ever looking as stupidly ideologically driven as it does now. 

It surely cannot go on this way.

More HH amusement

On this week's episode of Horrible Histories, the kids and I were most taken by this segment:



And that was even before I Googled it to find what it was parodying:




All very amusing...

In further defence of Obama

I see that Charles Johnson has had a series of posts called "The Myth of Obama the Socialist", which argue that he is not the "big spending socialist" that Republicans claim.

Part III, which summarise his argument, and looks specifically at the debt he inherited, is here.   Interestingly, it's full of graphs and figures, some from what people would say are "suspect" sites (such as Think Progress), but also the Cato Institute (!) and the Ludwig von Mises Institute (!!).  

Johnson,  now loathed by the Right for his abandonment of them, seems to me to make a pretty good looking case.

Googling around, I also found this column by Ezra Klein in February this year, looking at the question of the Obama deficits.  He starts:

When Obama took office, the national debt was about $10.5 trillion. Today, it’s about $15.2 trillion. Simple subtraction gets you the answer preferred by most of Obama’s opponents: $4.7 trillion.

But ask yourself: Which of Obama’s policies added $4.7 trillion to the debt? The stimulus? That was just a bit more than $800 billion. TARP? That passed under George W. Bush, and most of it has been repaid.

There is a way to tally the effects Obama has had on the deficit. Look at every piece of legislation he has signed into law. Every time Congress passes a bill, either the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the effect it will have on the budget over the next 10 years. And then they continue to estimate changes to those bills. If you know how to read their numbers, you can come up with an estimate that zeros in on the laws Obama has had a hand in.

 It turns out to be a bit of a complicated question as to who to assign responsibility to for various things that affect the deficit, but the conclusion he reaches is this (my bold):

In total, the policies Obama has signed into law can be expected to add almost a trillion dollars to deficits. But behind that total are policies that point in very different directions. The stimulus, for instance, cost more than $800 billion. So did the 2010 tax deal, which included more than $600 billion to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years, and hundreds of billions more in unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut. Obama’s first budget increased domestic discretionary spending by quite a bit, but more recent legislation has cut it substantially. On the other hand, the Budget Control Act — the legislation that resolved August’s debt-ceiling standoff — saves more than $1 trillion. And the health-care reform law saves more than $100 billion.

For comparison’s sake, using the same method, beginning in 2001 and ending in 2009, George W. Bush added more than $5 trillion to the deficit.

 My feeling that Obama has been relatively competent, as far as Presidents go, seems better justified than I realised.  

Mary and the Romans

I've been meaning to note that I quite enjoyed the 3 part doco series "Meet the Romans" on SBS the last 3 weeks.

Mary Beard wrote and hosted the series, and as I liked reading her Times columns, at least until they went behind a paywall, I was looking forward to seeing this.

That said, she did take a bit of getting used to as a host.  She was a bit repetitive, particularly in the first episode, and a bit, um, over enthusiastic at times; but by the last episode tonight I had become  accustomed to her style.

The theme of the series was to look at ancient Rome from the point of view of the day to day life of the ordinary folk:  the goings on in politics and emperors was definitely not the subject of the show.   Given that the Romans had a habit of writing their life story on their tombs, many of which are recorded or still standing, their stories are still very readily accessible.

Episodes 2 and 3 can still be viewed on line at SBS (for now), and I think large chunks of it may also be permanently on Youtube.  (This clip from tonight's episode showing a baby's cradle was touching.)

UPDATE:  soon after posting this last night, I checked my email account via which I get notice of comments left on posts, and found this:

 I'm not behind the paywall... easiest way to access is through the TLS website, totally free (glad you got to like the series) 

But it hasn't (at time of writing this) appeared in comments on the post, and I can't see why.    

In any event, thanks Mary.   Yes, her blog is here.  Silly me.

Taking plastic seriously

Catalyst: Plastic Oceans - ABC TV Science

I was quite surprised by this story on Catalyst earlier this week.  The link contains the video and transcript.

The first surprise:  that the shearwater birds that live on Lord Howe Island appear to frequently die of stomachs absolutely loaded with plastic - which they apparently mistake for fish in the ocean. 

Lord Howe Island is in the middle of the South Pacific and has a tiny population - it's about the last place you would expect serious problems from marine plastic rubbish to arise.

The second surprise:  this part of the story, where they start talking about plastics that eventually break up into tiny pieces are still a major concern for their toxic effect:

Dr Jennifer Lavers
They have what I call the invisible toxic effect. It, it's less easy to detect but equally as scary.
The plastic itself inherently contains a wide array of chemicals that are used during the manufacturing and processes. When the plastic is put out into the marine environment and it floats around in the ocean for let's say ten or forty years it really does last forever, it basically acts like a little magnet or a sponge and it takes all the contaminates that are out there in the ocean environment that are really diluted in the ocean water and it concentrates it up, onto the surface.
Plastic itself has up to a thousand times a higher concentration of containments on its surface than the surrounding seawater from which it came. And when the animal, whether it's a turtle or a seabird takes that into their body those contaminants leach out into the blood stream and is incorporated into the tissues.

NARRATION
Jennifer Lavers collects and weighs plastic from dead birds and sends the feathers off for lab analysis. They reveal what contaminants are in the body.

Dr Jennifer Lavers
The flesh footed shearwater on Lord Howe Island is officially the world's most heavily contaminated seabird just from mercury alone. So the toxic threshold that's widely regarded around the world for birds is four point three parts per million. Anything above that four point three PPM is considered toxic to the birds. Well flesh footed shearwaters on Lord Howe Island are between one thousand and three thousand parts per million.

 The story indicates that the problems with broken down plastics getting into the food chain (right from the plankton level!) is just starting to be widely recognized in research.

It's a cause for concern, by the sounds... 

Things you learn

I've just found something useful.

When you use a pc to try to watch Colbert or the Daily Show from their Comedy Central websites, you get blocked from watching the videos in Australia. You can use an overseas proxy server to get around this, I suppose, but I haven't bothered trying.

Mediate sometimes puts up some of the videos from those shows on their site, and they aren't region blocked, but they don't put up much.

I have just now learned that if you use an iPad, even just via a browser (ie, without loading the shows' apps), you can get an iPad digest version of the shows which contains videos you can watch from Australia.

It's a lot less content than from the normal website, but it's a lot more than I have been able to watch over the last year or so.

Fellow iPad users of Australia who did not realize this, you can thank me later....

A bad, bad look

Twitter Reveals an Ugly Underbelly of Misogyny | The Moderate Voice

Is it any wonder that women are leery of voting Republican?

The Clinton speech

The Bill Clinton speech at the Democrat convention is getting some rave reviews, and rightly so.

I have never thought Clinton a particularly gifted speaker, and I have quite neutral feelings about his presidency, but this speech really was something. He was articulate; gave detail where it was needed to counter Republican memes (and in particular, to summarise perfectly the problem with the Romney tax plan); and made several well deserved calls for the Right to come back to the centre for the good of the nation.

Former Bush aide Matt Latimer, clearly no fan of Clinton's style, still reached this conclusion, with which I thoroughly agree:

Here’s why I think Bill Clinton’s speech was successful. For all of his tortured arguments and wonky, ponderous asides, Bill Clinton made a substantive case. He dealt with facts and statistics. He made points and then explained why he made them. He had details. Boy, did he have details. In short, he did what almost no one at the Republican convention tried to do, what few conventions bother to do anymore. He treated the American people like thinking human beings.

The only problem I see with the speech was that it was so effective, where does it leave Obama to go in his acceptance?  I guess a nomination acceptance speech is not the place to be doing the sort of detail that Clinton managed anyway, but I think there is still a bit of danger in Obama sounding too full of mere "hope and change-y" rhetoric again.   In fact, I wouldn't think it a bad idea if Obama appeared somewhat contrite about not being able to live up to expectations that people had built up around him.   

One other point:  while I guess there are still ways for this convention to go sour for the Democrats, who can credibly argue that in both appearance and content it is not putting the Republican one to shame?  And this is driving the Right wing bloggers nuts, I reckon.   Unbelievably, Andrew Bolt  thought the Clint Eastwood empty chair routine was devastating (well it was, but not in the way Andrew thought):

Clint Eastwood didn’t just hit the ball out of the park at the Republican convention. He smashed it through the White House windows.

One of the most effective political speeches I’ve ever heard, although most of its power came simply from the man who delivered it.

Bolt hasn't commented on the Clinton speech yet, and as I say, it remains possible that the Democrats could try something that backfires on the last day as well.  But from this point in time, it's looking like the lingering impressions from the conventions are going to be from Clint and Clinton.

Andrew, if there is any faint glimmer of objectivity left in your head, which do you think is going to play well in history?

Update:  for some pretty funny stuff from Jon Stewart on the convention, you can see a 10 minutes clip here at Mediaite.

Significant biology news

Breakthrough study overturns theory of 'junk DNA' in genome | Science | The Guardian

Seems a decent explanation is given in this quite long report.

Unexpected goings on in the tea plantation

Deadly witch hunts targeted by grassroots women's groups

An odd story from India, where (apparently) life amongst the poor village tea pickers can be dangerous:

In 2003, at a tea plantation in Jalpaiguri, five women were tied up, tortured and killed after being falsely accused of witchcraft in the death of a male villager who had suffered from a stomach illness. Chaudhuri interviewed the villagers at length and found that such attacks are often impulsive and that the "witch" is often killed immediately. Widespread alcoholism is also a factor, she found.

But the study also documents examples of the women's groups stopping potential attacks. In one case, a woman was accused of causing disease in livestock and an attack was planned. Members of the self-help groups gathered in a vigil around the woman's home and surrounded the accuser's home as well, stating their case to the accuser's wife. Eventually the wife intervened and her husband recanted and "begged for forgiveness." 

Through the loan program, each woman is issued a low-interest, collateral-free "microcredit" loan of about 750 rupees ($18) to start her own business such as basket weaving, tailoring or selling chicken eggs. Participants meet in groups of about eight to 10 to support one another.

That's an odd side benefit of microfinance...

The melt in history

Climate change skeptics are deploying the old "this [record] Arctic melt is not so unusual when you go back in history" ploy, so Skeptical Science has a long and detailed look at studies that show this is not true. Good job.

Jet stream is on the move

 Measurements of the movement of the jet streams at mid-latitudes, in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, 1979 to 2010

Interesting paper which says the jet streams, and weather systems, have been on the move  for the last 30 years, and the predominant reason appears to be the direct radiative forcing from greenhouse gases.

Stewart on the empty chair

I am not his biggest fan, but Jon Stewart's take on the Eastwood empty chair routine is pretty much exactly what I expected: pretty funny, and insightful about the politics of it too. Here it is:

What a melt

It hasn't bottomed out yet either:

Something to note as a matter of caution, though.  Andy Revkin has taken a very careful approach on this, and reminds us that one paper found that modelling indicates that (suprisingly) intermittent positive trends in Arctic ice are still possible on 2 -20 timescales until the middle of the 21st century.   This must be remembered; as any temporary recovery in the next decade will be claimed by the climate change denialists as proof positive that AGW predictions were wrong.  (Just as they love to falsely claim that the 2011 Australian floods were inconsistent with climate change predictions.)

However, I would have to guess that this "reversal in trend" possibility is looking a bit improbable given the dramatic loss of volume in sea ice.

Modelling sea ice behaviour does seem to be a particularly complicated thing, though.

American Politics

I was rather critical of the lack of qualifications and unrealistic and over-inflated rhetoric of "hope and change" through which Obama got the Democrat nomination and the presidency. And to be honest, so much of American domestic politics is so complicated, with the way their party allegiances in Congress don't work in the same way they do here, that I'm not the most comprehensive reader there is about arcane Washington fights over budgets and legislation. 

So, with that qualification, what's my feelings about the Obama presidency from this point in time?   My general impression is that it has been, more-or-less, competent enough.  Not earth shatteringly brilliant, of course.  I don't think anyone argues that.     Quite a few mistakes and embarrassments, but all Presidents have those.  But not terrible.  Or, if you like, no where near as bad as his lack of qualifications would have indicated was possible.  The general impression is one of a pretty cautious man of reasonable character* who hasn't stuffed things up to a significant degree.  But then again, nor has he been able to take action on certain matters as he should.

My general impression is bolstered by an article in The Economist  which argues that he deserves more credit than he is being given on economic policy.   This feels about right to me.

But of course, a significant part of my feelings about Obama is derived not so much from seeing that he especially deserves credit for leadership and smarts, but from seeing how the Right in the US has run off some ideological cliffs in the last three years, and simply does not appear credible in so many ways now.

Everyone knows I think climate change is important, and really despise the way a handful of unconvinced climate scientist's opinions have been inflated by virtue of the internet into a powerful public and political influence against taking action on CO2.  This quintessentially unscientific enterprise has had its greatest effect on the Right in the US, no doubt because small government and libertarian inclinations are strongest there and these ideologies are always inclined to be hostile to government action of any kind which interfere with how businesses operate.   It's a major embarrassment for those who think the Right is usually the side which is the most pragmatic and accepts evidence as to what works and what doesn't, and is not stuck on ideologically fixated non solutions as the Left can be.

I worry now that readers may think that I put attitude to climate change as my number one priority for assessing politicians.  But, honestly, is it my fault that this does indeed seem to be the bellwether for common sense and reliability in most matters now?  I mean, even if the Tea Party was not effectively forcing Republican candidates to become overtly dismissive of global warming, I  am sure I would still be dismissive of their economic ideas which are, essentially, a triumph of ideology over practicality.

For example, have a look at this article in The Atlantic about Romney's ill formed and "impossible" tax plan.   I don't trust Krugman on absolutely every point, but I find most of what he complains about in the Republicans to be credible and biting.   His recent column on health costs, for example, or his long standing assessment that Paul Ryan has an undeserved reputation for being serious on fiscal policy. 

I don't have a problem with the proposal that the US economy needs some major tax overhaul, and that spreading the tax base is a good idea, and removing some silly deductions is badly needed.   But it seems that you do not get serious and fair plans being put by the Right anymore - in fact Krugman argues the Republicans are stuck on stupid from way back.   Instead, you get things like Herman Cain with a 999 plan that is so extreme in its effects that even the Wall Street Journal was cool about it.  And you get a fetish about returning to a gold standard (from Cain and sympathetic sounds from Ryan - who, for God's sake, is quoted as saying he finds Ayn Rand influential on the topic.)

It's hard not to conclude that the problem is simply that, while all politicians hate the idea of selling increased taxes to the public,  the part of the Right which is absolutely ideologically committed to the idea that increases in taxes are universally Evil and Bad, and decreases in taxes always and in every circumstance a Good Thing, is currently in control of the Republicans.  Along with this goes the idea that small government is always better government, and (now) that Keynesian spending is always bad.  And gold.  Going back to gold is always good.**

These are, frankly, matters where ideologiy is triumphing over pragmatism, and either ignoring evidence, or interpreting evidence with this predetermined conclusion in mind.   It is no wonder that those who hold these views are nearly always also disbelievers in climate change.

And look at how separated from reality Right wing commentary is becoming.   Large slabs of it in the US, and some of the equivalent wingnuts in Australia, thought that Clint Eastwood's performance at the Republican convention was unalloyed brilliance that was somehow all the more effective for being rambling and looking like it was being "winged" (as indeed it was.)  Ann Althouse:

AND: Here's the whole Eastwood performance. Is it really that hard to get? No, they're merely playing dumb (and humorless), even though they want the other party to be known as "the stupid party."

UPDATE: I just rewatched the performance. It was great! Hilarious... subtle... well-paced.... The haters are totally bullshitting and playing dumb (assuming they are not actually dumb). And what they are trying to do is scare other celebrities: Toe the line or we will destroy you. That crushing repression is the opposite of what the performing arts should be about.

I can handle people saying something like "it wasn't so bad, it played well enough to the crowd" (even though I personally think the fact the crowd found some of the ill considered jokes hilarious made them look pretty stupid).  What I can't get (to the point of doubting people's sanity) is the assessment that it was a brilliant bit of "jazz improvisation" or (to paraphrase someone at Catallaxy) that it was culturally important as giving Americans permission to finally be dismissive of Obama.   The crazed Obama and Gillard hating mind that wrote that knows completely about the rabid wingnut blogs in the States (he links to them frequently), and endorsed Limbaugh slut-calling of Sarah Fluke; yet he thinks the nation was waiting for permission to be crude, rude and ugly towards Obama and anyone who supports him?

As I say, the Right, in large part, has gone stupid;  I'm just sitting here waiting for it to return towards me.


*  I tend to sympathise with most Presidents of either persuasion, although I always felt very cool towards Reagan -  I just never got the "Great Communicator" tag and was not convinced that there was much in the way of natural intellect there.  I have always been persuaded by Christopher Hitchen's take on the man.  But it's arguably the most important job in the world, constantly involving complicated decisions of life and death with  regard to military and foreign affairs in particular.  I don't really see why anyone wants the responsibility and takes it on.

**  The linkage between climate change denialism and a fixation on gold is remarkable. Australia's Jonova and her husband David Evans are gold bugs from way back.

Last week's good health news noted

Chocolate reduces stroke risk for men, research claims

Yes, this is cheering, even if the effect is not huge:

Larsson writes in the latest edition of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology: "High chocolate consumption was associated with a lower risk of stroke."

Men who ate the most chocolate, a weekly average of 63 grams, had a 17% lower risk of stroke compared with men who ate none. The correlation did not seem to differ depending on different types of stroke.

Larsson corroborated her findings by conducting a meta-analysis of five other studies, containing a total of 4,260 cases of stroke across Europe and the United States. She found the risk of stroke for individuals in the highest category of chocolate consumption was 19% lower compared with non-chocolate eaters. Every increase in chocolate consumption of 50g per week, reduced the risk of stroke by about 14%, Larsson found.

Also, it's odd that this result from Sweden was not all based on dark chocolate:

  Larsson said: "Interestingly, dark chocolate has previously been associated with heart health benefits, but about 90% of the chocolate intake in Sweden, including what was consumed during our study, is milk chocolate."

Still, they recommend dark chocolate, but obviously in modest quantities.

The other good news was that it appears starving yourself for long life seems not to be worth the effort.  There's a very good article at Slate about the recent monkey study about this, but it explains a lot more about the background to the calorie restriction idea, which goes back to the 1930's.  I also didn't know this:

The history of calorie restriction research is strewn with odd results that have been left unexplained (at best) or outright ignored (at worst). When Steven Austad of the University of Texas–San Antonio tested wild-caught mice, for instance, he found no caloric-restriction-induced increase in lifespan. In another study, researchers created 42 different cross-bred mouse strains and found that in a third of the strains, caloric restriction actually seemed to shorten lifespan. And even Clive McCay, the father of caloric restriction, found weird results: In his 1935 experiment, caloric restriction worked only in the males.

In fact, caloric restriction really seemed to work best in standard laboratory mice. This may be because they are predisposed to eat a lot, gain weight, and reproduce early—and thus are more sensitive to reduced food intake. (Slate’s Daniel Engber has written about how overfed lab mice have distorted scientific research.)

Even better, the article notes this:

 Several studies have shown that excessive leanness—seen often in calorie-restricting humans—can be as risky as obesity. Taken together, these studies suggest that the optimal body-mass index is about 25, which is on the verge of being overweight

Given that I'm only about  2 or 3 kg over BMI 25, I'm somewhat encouraged.

Small brains recognize trouble...larger brains, not so much

BBC Nature - Birds hold 'funerals' for dead

Paul Ryan Is a Climate Change Denialist

More "Bugs R Us": gut, mouth and skin edition

I recently mentioned the article in The Economist which detailed the growing realisation in biology that humans (and all animals I guess) are best viewed as ecosystems, given the incredibly diverse and important role the bacteria that live in and on us play in health and illness.

Since then, there have been a few things about bacteria and health that have come to my attention:

Gut:   Four Corners had a fascinating documentary about the research indicating that at least some types of autism are related to harmful intestinal bacteria.  Unfortunately, the particular strain that they were talking about appears to be very difficult to remove permanently with antibiotics.

Although this idea appears to be catching on only slowly in the medical community, it was hard not to be impressed with the video apparently showing the difference the antibiotic treatment made to the behaviour in the young kid who had been treated for a while a decade or so ago.  (He's now 19 and still suffers autism, but had to stop the antibiotics since they just can't be taken forever.) 

I don't think they mentioned it, but I wondered whether anyone had thought about trying the icky but apparently effective idea of "fecal transplant" as a way of getting rid of the unwanted bacteria in autistic kids.  Googling the topic, I see that indeed this is an area of interest.  The Atlantic had a recent article about people wanting to do "at home" fecal implants (!)  Only with doctor's guidance, I would suggest.

Mouth:   In the Australian forum for wingnuts (and those who like to tell them they are wrong) that starts with the letter "C", I recently noted that I assumed that the differences in mouth bacteria might account (in large part) for why some people just seem to be more susceptible to cavities, despite having relatively low sugar diets and normal dental hygiene.

I had likely forgotten that I had read something about this years ago, as the topic does get a brief mention in an article in Scientific American in 2002:

All bacterial biofilms are not alike, however. Although Mutans streptococci and other species have been implicated as primary culprits in causing caries, some people who are infected with these species of bugs don¿t get cavities. Genotypically different strains of the same bugs exhibit varying levels of cariogenicity. Therefore, it¿s not just the quantity of plaque biofilm present, but the specific strain with which one is infected that is important in predicting who might get cavities.

 This is obviously an area of ongoing research, and this abstract of a 2009 Japanese paper indicates the situation is complex:

Recent analyses with ribosomal RNA-based technologies have revealed the diversity of bacterial populations within dental biofilms, and have highlighted their important contributions to oral health and disease. Dental biofilms are exceedingly complex and multispecies ecosystems, where oral bacteria interact cooperatively or competitively with other members. Bacterial interactions that influence dental biofilm communities include various different mechanisms. During the early stage of biofilm formation, it is known that planktonic bacterial cells directly attach to surfaces of the oral cavity or indirectly bind to other bacterial cells that have already colonized. Adherence through co-aggregation may be critical for the temporary retention of bacteria on dental surfaces, and may facilitate eventual bacterial colonization. It is likely that metabolic communication, genetic exchange, production of inhibitory factors (e.g., bacteriocins, hydrogen peroxide, etc.), and quorum-sensing are pivotal regulatory factors that determine the bacterial composition and/or metabolism. Since each bacterium can easily access a neighboring bacterial cell and its metabolites, genetic exchanges and metabolic communication may occur frequently in dental biofilms.

Most interestingly, while Googling this, I also stumble across the ongoing efforts of a Florida company Oragenics to prevent cavities by introducing genetically modified mouth bacteria to out compete the harmful ones:

 Our replacement therapy technology is based on the creation of a genetically altered strain of S. mutans, called SMaRT, which does not produce lactic acid. Our SMaRT strain is engineered to have a selective colonization advantage over native S. mutans strains in that SMaRT produces minute amounts of a lantibiotic that kills off the native strains but leaves the SMaRT strain unharmed. Thus SMaRT Replacement Therapy can permanently replace native lactic acid-producing strains of S. mutans in the oral cavity, thereby potentially providing lifelong protection against the primary cause of tooth decay. The SMaRT strain has been extensively and successfully tested for safety and efficacy in laboratory and animal models.

SMaRT Replacement Therapy is designed to be applied topically to the teeth by a dentist, pediatrician or primary care physician during a routine office visit. A suspension of the SMaRT strain is administered using a cotton-tipped swab during a single five-minute, pain-free treatment. Following treatment, the SMaRT strain should displace the native, decay-causing S. mutans strains over a six to twelve month period and permanently occupy the niche on the tooth surfaces normally occupied by native S. mutans.

Their website goes on to explain that trials have been done on animals (presumably successfully) but FDA requirements for human trials have been tricky:

 After we submitted additional information, the FDA issued a clinical hold letter in June 2007 for the proposed trial with the attenuated strain, citing the need for a plan with respect to serious adverse effects; a plan for the eradication of the attenuated strain in trial subjects’ offspring; and a required pregnancy test for female partners of subjects. We submitted additional protocols in response to the FDA’s concerns. In August 2007, the FDA issued a clinical hold letter with required revisions to the protocol for offspring of subjects. We submitted a response to the clinical hold letter in September 2007, and the FDA removed the clinical hold for our Phase 1 trial in the attenuated strain in October 2007.

We are in the process of commencing a second Phase 1 clinical trial of an attenuated version of our SMaRT Replacement Therapy, which will examine the safety and genetic stability of the SMaRT strain during administration to ten healthy adult male subjects over a two-week period. As a precautionary measure, this trial will use an attenuated version of the SMaRT strain that is dependent on D-alanine, which is a specific amino acid not normally found in the human diet. D-Alanine will be administered though a mouthwash provided to the patient group, and must be administered daily or the attenuated strain will perish in the oral cavity. We expect the second Phase 1 clinical trial of the attenuated strain, including a three-month follow-up examination of subjects, to be concluded in 2011. If the second Phase 1 trial of the attenuated strain is successful and if the FDA lifts the clinical hold on the IND for the non-attenuated version of the SMaRT strain, we anticipate that we would conduct a third Phase 1 trial using the non-attenuated SMaRT strain instead of the attenuated version.

All rather complicated, but it sounds as if we might be hearing soon about whether it works in humans, or not.

Skin:  There was also news this week that the adult red faced skin condition rosacea may be caused by the bacteria that live in the face mites that quietly live in the pores of many faces.   (My January 2011 post which featured a photo of them and had the catchy title "The bugs, they're all over me!" remains one of the more commonly Googled way that people arrive at this blog.) 

This would seem to provide a good explanation as to why rosacea usually responds to antibiotics, as  it seems no one had previously quite understood why.  It was known that people with rosacea usually had higher numbers of face mites than other people, and sometimes success has been had with trying to kill the mites directly.

The last bizarre part of this biological story is that face mites apparently don't have an anus (see, I avoided trying to work out the plural for "anus") so the gut bacteria in them don't get out until the mite dies.  But when they do, they cause an immune reaction that causes inflammation and redness.


Truly, it seems that bacteria rule.

And finally:   you know what my mind always wanders to when reading about these topics?   George Lucas and his bizarre sounding introduction of "midi-chlorians" as being behind The Force:

Without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to us, telling us the will of the Force. When you learn to quiet your mind, you'll hear them speaking to you."

―Qui-Gon Jinn, to Anakin Skywalker

Obviously (and confirmed by Lucas) based on mitochondria, this seemed a really weird way to give a materialistic explanation for The Force.   But, the more I read about the importance of bacteria, the more I worry that Lucas might be the accidental Einstein of biology.

Selfishness re-considered

Physicists suggest selfishness can pay 

Frank Tipler thinks that games theory explains why selfishness doesn't pay, and that therefore the future  Omega Point that is God naturally doesn't like it.

I didn't realise that so much thought continues to go into games theory, but this article notes how there has been recent controversy over whether previous conclusions about how to best play the prisoner's dilemma  still hold up. 

This is hard to summarise, but it's interesting to note that Freeman Dyson is one of the guys putting thought into this.  I think the conclusion is that it still seems safe to assume, in an evolutionary context, that co-operation is best.

Lucky for Frank, then...

How did that slip through?

Activation of old carbon by erosion of coastal and subsea permafrost in Arctic Siberia : Nature : Nature Publishing Group

I noticed this article via a mention on The Australian's website this morning.  Yes, that's right, The Australian.  What's going on?  The regular science editor on holiday?  

Anyhow, while it is basically an estimate of how much carbon (and CO2) could be coming from defrosting Siberian permafrost, the figures are quite large sounding:

Thawing of Arctic permafrost could release significant amounts of carbon into the atmosphere in this century³. Ancient Ice Complex deposits outcropping along the ~7,000-kilometre-long coastline of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS)^{4, 5}, and associated shallow subsea permafrost^{6, 7}, are two large pools of permafrost carbon⁸, yet their vulnerabilities towards thawing and decomposition are largely unknown^{9, 10, 11}. Recent Arctic warming is stronger than has been predicted by several degrees, and is particularly pronounced over the coastal ESAS region^{12, 13}. There is thus a pressing need to improve our understanding of the links between permafrost carbon and climate in this relatively inaccessible region. Here we show that extensive release of carbon from these Ice Complex deposits dominates (57 ± 2 per cent) the sedimentary carbon budget of the ESAS, the world’s largest continental shelf, overwhelming the marine and topsoil terrestrial components. Inverse modelling of the dual-carbon isotope composition of organic carbon accumulating in ESAS surface sediments, using Monte Carlo simulations to account for uncertainties, suggests that 44 ± 10 teragrams of old carbon is activated annually from Ice Complex permafrost, an order of magnitude more than has been suggested by previous studies¹⁴. We estimate that about two-thirds (66 ± 16 per cent) of this old carbon escapes to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, with the remainder being re-buried in shelf sediments.

For those who say "why does a thawing Arctic ice cap matter?", there's part of your answer.

Sick

Yes, no doubt about it, I have finally succumbed to (what I assume is) this season's flu.

At least an illness like this makes one better appreciate how good "normal" feels. I used to feel that way about hangovers too, but as they get worse as you get older, it does seem a waste of the next day for something that can be avoided.

Some random observations:

*  I like the way you can customize Google news now;

* Who can really admire Apple when they seek to enforce some ridiculous patents.

* I hate websites that scroll sideways. The Global Mail will fail for this reason alone.

Goodnight...

Potty mouth Luther

Horrible Histories recently featured a sketch about Luther and his toilet issues, noting (amongst other things) that he used to write to his friends describing recent bowel movements.

Although I knew that he had spent a lot of time sitting on the toilet, I wasn't quite aware of how much he referred to poop and scatological matters generally in his writings and sermons, so I went looking for more information.

And here's what I found:  a pretty interesting research paper from 2008 that looks at the question of why Luther engaged in scatological expressions so much.   This has, apparently been the subject of much academic attention over the years, and the paper summarises the various schools of thought, before concluding that, in the context of German culture at the time, throwing literary "shit" at his enemies gave him the desirable air of virile masculinity.

It would seem that Germans have always had a scatological bent - I'm sure someone has had a go at explaining that, but I'll go looking for that another day.   This part notes the way poop was used in disputes at the time:

 Ain't history grand?

(As an aside, this description of Luther's eyes is of interest:

Seems a good lead for a science fiction story based on his being a robot; but I guess all of the sitting on the toilet suggests a design fault.)

Reading about this reminds me that the other great nation with an unusual degree of interest in poo is Japan.  I'm sure there must be lots of material on the net about this, but here's  a short-ish but useful essay on the topic.

I may well have noted this unusual connection before:  why do two nations so far apart have this in common?   Like the esoteric stories of Jesus travelling to India (or Japan), was there a prophet of digestive  health who travelled from Germany to Japan in the first millennium AD, proselytising the importance of having well formed poo, but who remains mysteriously unrecorded in history?

Just a thought for someone's future research endeavour.

Calling the aliens

Backreaction: How to beat a cosmic speeding ticket

Well, this is very hard to follow in the details for a non physicist, but Sabine Hossenfelder has a go at explaining her new paper looking at (what I take to be) speculative physics that may allow faster than light communication.

I want to note it here just in case she's right.

Possum returns

The possum under the balcony has been away for quite a while, but she's started turning up again - with youngster in tow.    (The photo could be clearer, but you get the idea.)

No big surprise

BBC News - Young cannabis smokers run risk of lower IQ, report claims

The findings come from a study of around 1,000 people in New Zealand.
An international team found those who started using cannabis below the age of 18 - while their brains were still developing - suffered a drop in IQ.

A UK expert said the research might explain why people who use the drug often seem to under-achieve.
For more than 20 years researchers have followed the lives of a group of people from Dunedin in New Zealand.

They assessed them as children - before any of them had started using cannabis - and then re-interviewed them repeatedly, up to the age of 38.

Having taken into account other factors such as alcohol or tobacco dependency or other drug use, as well the number of years spent in education, they found that those who persistently used cannabis - smoking it at least four times a week year after year through their teens, 20s and, in some cases, their 30s - suffered a decline in their IQ.

Natural variability is not always your friend

Given that we now have now officially got an extraordinarily low Arctic ice extent (with a couple of more week's melt to come), the climate change "skeptics" are casting around for reasons as to why it doesn't mean all that much.

One of the more credible attempts at this appears to come from Judith Curry, who points us to a recent paper arguing that the enhanced warming in the Arctic from 1965 to 2000 was mainly due to a natural variability:

There seems to be a large multidecadal variability in the complex ocean–atmosphere system that can superimpose itself atop the global warming signal. It seems to be identifiable with a few large-scale patterns in the temperature fields; when phases of the pressure modes match up one with another they can enhance the rate of warming, especially on the large, wintertime continents. It is not yet known whether cooling periods can happen as well in this scheme. Nor do we know exactly the origin of the multidecadal long-term variability that has been identified. It could be related to anthropogenic causes, or it could just be part of the natural system’s internal variability.

But - as the summary notes before this conclusion:

What causes the two primary decadal empirical pressure patterns to ramp up their amplitudes and line up their phases in such a way as to encourage lots of warm air polewards onto the big continents during the study period and not at other times? Wallace et al. do not address this issue but list several contenders.

One possibility is that the anthropogenic factors are actually inducing this change in circulation, perhaps even through stratospheric connections as mentioned earlier. They seem to lean toward unforced natural variability at the decadal scales.

So:   even if you accept that the radiative forcing alone is not doing this (and I would presume that the fact that the IPCC did not predict an Arctic ice melt this fast indicates this may be right)  it remains quite possible that anthropogenic changes to circulation patterns are altering what appears to be natural variability to make it worse.

Besides which, even if there are no anthropogenic reasons affecting the circulation change, doesn't the whole exercise mean that even modest AGW is a problem when it gets a multi-decade boost from natural variability?

I mean, you see this failed excuse making re solar influences too:  sure, a quieter sun could make parts of the Northern Hemisphere cooler for a couple of decades, and that could be partially offset by AGW, but none of that helps when the sun goes back to normal.   What could be a mere bit of breathing space for just one area of the world would be no reason to not be working to dramatically reduce CO2 for when a short term cooling effect wears off.

Also - the particular problem with loss of Arctic sea ice - even if it is largely happening at the moment due to natural variability - is the feedback potential that it gives to AGW.   This might be a particularly unlucky coincidence that gives the AGW effects on the polar region a boost up to a level that it's not going to drop back from anytime soon. 

The "do-nothing" climate skeptics are interested in the short term only.  They do not take seriously the long term interests of the residents of the planet.

UPDATE:   In any case, here's a 2012 paper which appears to contradict the claim that natural variability has had much role to play in the recent Arctic ice loss.

Given the lack of evidence of substantial polar ice loss in other warm Earth periods, it seems to me to not make much sense that natural variability (uninfluenced by humans) is the substantial cause.

Tax in the US

Paul Ryan tax cuts: American fiscal conservatives who ignore the debt are gambling. - Slate Magazine

This article looks at the current Republican obsession with reducing taxes.   I can certainly understand how widening the tax base would make sense, as would reforming the tax system to reduce deductions; but the rush to first of all move in and reduce taxes in a way that the rich simply don't need at this point in time makes me think the party is simply stuck in a stupid ideological mode.  As it says:

In most countries, to be “fiscally conservative” means to worry a great deal about the budget deficit and debt levels—and to push these issues to the top of the policy agenda. In many eurozone countries today, “fiscal conservatives” are a powerful group, insisting on the need to boost government revenue while bringing spending under control. In Great Britain, too, leading Conservatives have recently proved willing to raise taxes and attempted to limit future spending.

The United States is very different in this respect. Leading politicians who choose to call themselves “fiscal conservatives”— such as Paul Ryan, now the Republican Party’s presumptive vice-presidential —care more about cutting taxes, regardless of the effect on the federal deficit and total outstanding debt. Why do U.S. fiscal conservatives care so little about government debt, relative to their counterparts in other countries?

 The article goes on to talk about the history of the idea, and ends on this note:

Ryan and other Republicans undoubtedly want to cut the size of the federal government, and they have articulated plans to do this over several decades. But, in the near term, what they promise is primarily tax cuts: Their entire practical program is frontloaded in that direction. The calculation is that this will prove politically popular (probably true) while making it easier to implement spending cuts down the road (less obvious). The vulnerability caused by higher public debt over the next few decades is simply ignored.

For example, Ryan supported George W. Bush’s spending spree. He also supports maintaining defense spending at or near its current level—resisting the cuts that were put in place under the Budget Control Act of 2011.

The assumption here—unstated and highly questionable—is that the U.S. will be able to sell an unlimited amount of government debt at low interest rates for the foreseeable future. There is no other country in the world where fiscal conservatives would want to be associated with such a high-stakes gamble.

The battle of the cutes

Trouble at Kangaroo Island - Nature - Environment - The Independent

I seem to have missed this, if it was in the Australian media:  

Kangaroo Island, south of Adelaide, is one of Australia's most popular tourism destinations, thanks to its profusion of native wildlife, which includes koalas, kangaroos and the world's smallest penguin species.

But lately there have been dark goings-on in the animal kingdom: the New Zealand fur seals have been devouring the fairy penguins.

Penguin numbers have dropped by half on the island, according to some locals, who want the seals to be sterilised, relocated or even culled. Now they have come up with a new suggestion: shoot them with beanbag rounds – a method more commonly used to control riots – if they approach penguin colonies.

Personal taste

Not all of these David Mitchell soapbox rants are so good, and as with nearly every single modern comedian except for Jerry Seinfeld, he's starting to swear a bit too much, but I quite liked this one:

                
                   
                   
                   
Some of the comments following this at The Guardian are pretty funny too.   Bacon is always a good subject for humour.

Speaking of swearing comedians, I saw Tony Martin's second book of autobiographical stories (A Nest of Occasionals) going for $5 in some remainder-ish bookshop, and have finished reading it.  He really is a talented and funny writer, even though he swears too much.  I particularly liked the last story, about a trip back to New Zealand to learn about his grandparents.   (Young Tony had a quite unsettled, and unsettling, childhood.  In fact, one gets the impression from an earlier chapter - about all of the medical probes he has had over the years -  that he may still suffer from the lingering stress of his childhood.)

I see from Martin's fairly extensive Wikipedia entry that he's now divorced.  His last TV venture was also not so good.  As far as I know his falling out with Mick Molloy has not yet ended in a Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin style televised reconciliation.   Maybe he needs a hug.

The universe and all that

There was a university press release that got a lot of publicity recently, about "quantum graphity" - rather a bad name by whoever came up with it, I thought.

Anyhow, ars technica has a cynical look at the PR exercise, and as I expected, there is probably less to this than it seems.

Of more interest, I think, is this story about measurements indicating that spacetime is pretty 'smooth':

Some theories of quantum gravity say that the universe is not smooth but foamy—made of fundamental units called Planck lengths that are less than a trillionth of a trillionth the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Planck lengths are so small that there's no way to detect them, except via photons like those that make up gamma-ray bursts. Here's why.

The wavelengths of these photons are some of the shortest distances known to science—so short they should interact with the even smaller Planck length. And if they interact, the photons should be dispersed—scattered—on their trek through Planck length–pixilated spacetime.

 In particular, they should disperse in different ways if their wavelengths differ, just as a ping pong ball and a softball might take alternate paths down a gravely hillside.

 You wouldn't notice the scattering over short distances, but across billions of light years, the Planck lengths should disperse the light. And three photons from the same gamma-ray burst should not have crashed through the Fermi telescope at the same moment.

 But they did, and that calls into question just how foamy spacetime really is. "We have shown that the universe is smooth across the Planck mass," Nemiroff said. "That means that there's no choppiness that's detectible. It's a really cool discovery. We're very excited."

Armstrong remembered

This ABC site has many tributes from all over the place to Neil Armstrong.

Isn't it funny how real life works out compared to fiction?   A science fiction story with the first man on the Moon being such an incredibly modest and self effacing character just wouldn't have worked, yet that's the way things panned out. 

Goodbye, ice

There is likely to be a lot of (well deserved) publicity about the new Arctic sea ice extent minimum that will be reached in the next day or two.   In fact, according to some ways of counting the sea ice, we're already there.

People also need to remember that it has been a long time since the Arctic was ice free in summer;   according to a 2005 article, it may be 800,000 years ago, although I think I have seen suggestions to the contrary elsewhere.   It seems the Eemian period of global warmth about 125,000 still had winter sea ice in the Arctic, even while ocean levels were 3-7 m higher than today.   (While Googling, I stumbled across the question posed by the Institute for Creation Research - "Are Polar Ice Sheets Only 4500 Years Old?"  What was I worried about?)

But apart from the extent of Arctic ice, the volume of ice gives the better picture of what has been happening.  Tamino came up with this moving graph (click on it) some time ago, but he has reposted it.   It is pretty amazing.