Dramatic irony and the pro gun lobbyists

OK, I'll admit it:  I'm one of those who is aware that people are supposed to use "irony" incorrectly all the time, but have trouble remembering its proper meaning.  Checking on the web, though, I see this sub-category for its use:

dramatic irony

noun

irony that is inherent in speeches or a situation of a drama and is understood by the audience but not grasped by the characters in the play.

and that seems a good description for what is going on in the gun control debate every time I read about a perfectly law abiding gun owner who is killed by someone in their family (or of their acquaintance) with a legal gun.

The Sandy Hook killings - Mom killed by her son using her rifles, before going on his school shooting spree.  The family in New Mexico killed by their 15 year old son/brother, all with the weapons his parents legally owned.  (And it seems he had intentions of a bigger killing spree, as with Sandy Hook.)  The latest news on the weekend:  relatively famous military sniper Chris Kyle shot on a rifle range by someone he obviously trusted enough to be handling a rifle near him.

Now, not all ex-military figures are against tighter civilian gun control.  But what were Chris Kyle's views?  As shown on this recent interview, it seems he pretty much accepted the right wing/NRA meme machine on gun control right down the line, even to the point of talking about how much more crime is in Australia because of the John Howard gun laws (yeah, sure) and suggesting that everyone having a 30 round magazine is quite reasonable and if they seek to stop that, well, that's just the slippery slope and soon they'll be disarming Americans entirely.  He may have done his military job well, but when it comes to civilian policy, he had no insights of value.

Here's the thing:  the pro-gun lobby in the US up on the stage just don't seem to "get" the fact that the audience (well, the sensible part of it at least) is in on:  when it comes to the big picture, they are actually making their lives more dangerous by being around guns all the time.   This seems to be so well established in the US and yet is completely ignored every time the NRA and gun loving right wing blogs run some story of how a brave law abiding citizen blew away a home intruder.  Never - and I mean never - do they go on to mention the other side of the ledger:  the number of law abiding citizens who were killed or threatened by someone in the family when a dispute escalated because of the availability of guns.  Nor the amount of accidental shootings in homes and suicides.

Mother Jones  has been collecting some counterpoints to the NRA arguments, and I'll copy some of them here: 

Myth #5: Keeping a gun at home makes you safer. Fact-check: Owning a gun has been linked to higher risks of homicide, suicide, and accidental death by gun.
• For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home.
• 43% of homes with guns and kids have at least one unlocked firearm.
• In one experiment, one third of 8-to-12-year-old boys who found a handgun pulled the trigger.

Myth #6: Carrying a gun for self-defense makes you safer. Fact-check: In 2011, nearly 10 times more people were shot and killed in arguments than by civilians trying to stop a crime.
• In one survey, nearly 1% of Americans reported using guns to defend themselves or their property. However, a closer look at their claims found that more than 50% involved using guns in an aggressive manner, such as escalating an argument.
• A Philadelphia study found that the odds of an assault victim being shot were 4.5 times greater if he carried a gun. His odds of being killed were 4.2 times greater.

Myth #7: Guns make women safer. Fact-check: In 2010, nearly 6 times more women were shot by husbands, boyfriends, and ex-partners than murdered by male strangers.
• A woman's chances of being killed by her abuser increase more than 7 times if he has access to a gun.
• One study found that women in states with higher gun ownership rates were 4.9 times more likely to be murdered by a gun than women in states with lower gun ownership rates.

Now, if it was only the gun loving folk who were getting killed by virtue of their being unaware of this (or, more likely, having heard of such studies but refusing to believe them), well that would simply be a case of shaking one's head at their foolishness.

The trouble is, of course, that legal guns go on to kill other people too.  People who don't have a choice.  Like at Sandy Hook.

UPDATE:   Slates notes that maybe - just maybe - the NRA is starting to lose ground when its creepy leader is getting hostile interviews on Fox News:

If the National Rifle Association can’t even count on Fox News for a friendly interview, does that mean there's been a shift in the debate? On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace interviewed National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre and wasn’t shy about calling him out on his arguments. The interview got particularly heated when Wallace brought up the controversial advertisement that criticized President Obama for providing armed security for his daughters but opposing armed guards in all schools, reports Talking Points Memo. (Video after the jump.)

"They also face a threat that most children do not face," Wallace said of Obama's daughters.

"Tell that to the people in Newtown," LaPierre responded.

"You really think that the president's children are the same kind of target as every other school child in America?" Wallace said. "That's ridiculous and you know it, sir."

Hope for some of my readers yet...maybe

The Tablet - Review: The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology

There's quite a good summary of the controversy within the modern Catholic Church regarding its view of the potential for salvation for those outside of the faith.  It starts:

For most of history, Christians thought that the vast majority of people would go to hell. The gate of Heaven is narrow. In the twentieth century, hell fell into disrepute. Christians, including many Catholics, began to think that most people will be saved. God is merciful and loving. Dante would have turned in his grave. He knew who was going to hell and even to which region in hell.

Vatican II does not contain a single reference to hell even when speaking of eschatology. Karl Rahner claimed that the most significant teaching of the council was its “salvation optimism”. Lumen Gentium (LG), the council’s decree on the Church, was the key. It overturned centuries of salvation pessimism: all non-Catholics (which included other Christians, religious non-Christians and non-religious groups such as atheists) could be saved if they were ignorant of the Gospel and they sought God, or the truth, in their conscience. This was a dramatic development of doctrine. Some protested that it was actually discontinuous with previous teachings – and a minority claimed the council invalid. Others have sought to balance this emphasis with what critics have called a neo-Augustinian theology, foreign to the council. The debate continues.  

 This line further down caught my eye:

Bullivant, who teaches theology at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, London, charts atheism’s complexities and types. He claims that the doctrine of invincible ignorance came into full play at the council and finally allowed the Church positively to appraise certain forms of atheism, when before it could only condemn them.

 Heh.  I didn't realise the Church had developed a special doctrine to describe the Catallaxy blog.

One of the books reviewed in the post argues that the LG decree has been read too often without its qualifications:

They ignore the first chapter of Romans, which is pessimistic. They ignore the footnote referring to Aquinas, which indicates that this salvation is only a “possibility”, not a reality. LG 16 ends with the necessity of missionary work and paragraph 17 develops that theme as an introduction to the decree on missionary activity, Ad Gentes.

That “rather often” suggests a salvation pessimism that was accepted by the Fathers and is not part of a neo-Augustinian plot after the council. 

 It seems to me that a large part of the problem here is that (as far as I know) the Catholic Church has no detailed position regarding what goes after death.   (With good reason, too, given the paucity of detail on the matter in all of the Bible.)  If you assume that most people go to Purgatory, and from there retain the possibility of changing and accepting things they have rejected in life, then that allows a way for ultimate salvation of nearly everyone, doesn't it?   I wonder what atheists would do in Purgatory:  keep interpreting the apparent evidence of their after-death survival in a science fiction way, perhaps?

Old stories and new ideas

Time flies, doesn't it?  I see now that it was back in June 2010 that I first mentioned my wife bringing home some Twilight Zone (the original TV series) DVDs from the Council library on the hunch that I liked the show.  I did, and watched a few episodes with my kids (my son in particular.)

Well, my wife recently repeated the exercise, with a different set of DVDs, and my son remains quite keen on watching it with me.  It pleases me that he likes it, given that I think it still stands up as intelligent entertainment with a substantially more literary aspect to it than what passes for most family friendly TV entertainment today.  Reading the Wikipedia article about the franchise,  I see how important Rod Serling was, not just as producer, but as a writer for the show.   Apparently Warner Brothers still has the rights to 92 episodes written by him, and Leonardo DiCaprio has expressed interest in making a full length movie from one or other of them. By co-incidence, my son also recently saw for the first time the original Planet of the Apes movie, and I spotted Rod Serling as a co-writer of it.  The Wikipedia account of his life indicates he was a pretty interesting character. 

(By the way, another old show, of a decidedly different character, which my son and I have been watching together over summer are the repeats of Red Dwarf on ABC2.  I had not realised how old the original series is - it started in 1988.  I always thought the show was pretty good in a cheerfully low brow science fiction comedy way, and I was annoyed that the new series shown by the ABC just before Christmas seemed to arrive with no fanfare at all, so I missed some of it.  Anyway, happily, my son finds the old series very entertaining.)

But back to the main point:  I have nearly always enjoyed anthology TV series.  I am not sure when TZ was shown on Australian TV; as the first series was made in 1959, it is possible they aired before I was a TV viewer.  In fact, there may not even have been a TV in the house at the time.  (Talk about making me feel old, telling you this!)  Broadcasts in magnificent black and white only started in Brisbane in about 1959,  and my mother has told me that my father resisted getting a TV initially.   Her ordering one without prior approval from the (now long defunct) Waltons Department store caused a bit of a scene at home, with Dad telling her that he would tell the delivery man to take it back.   He didn't live up to the threat, however; the delivery went smoothly, quickly followed by my father becoming the most dedicated television viewer in the household. 

So, the first anthology series I can recall is The Outer Limits, which had a more consistently science fiction bent than TZ.  While I remember it creeping me out quite a bit, no particular story sticks in my mind from my childhood viewing.

Fast forward to the 1980's TV revival of Twilight Zone, which I see now followed the movie (which itself was really only worth watching for the brilliant remake of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.)   But I remember enjoying much of the revived TV series.  The 1980's then also brought us Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories, some of which really were excellent, even if the series had a tendency to indulge too often in whimsy.

All in all, I miss such series, and presume that it is a combination of expense and the difficulty of coming up with consistently good and novel stories which prevents them from ever lasting more than a few seasons at a time.

Speaking of story ideas, I recently stumbled across Writepop, which claims it has more than 1,000 story ideas for science fiction which anyone is welcome to use.   While there are only one or two lines that explain the premise, if I were a student who had a fiction writing assignment, I think I would find this a very useful starting point. (A recent half baked idea of mine featuring time travel and the Bible does not seem to have been covered before, I am happy to say.  Now I only need another 91 ideas to match Serling.)

I see that the site io9, which I think I have only ever briefly seen before, has many articles on writing science fiction, and seems to be a generally interesting place to spend time.   It's good to find new corners of the web for a change.

The (very) late review of Brave (and animation talk generally)

The kids and I never got around to seeing Brave at the cinema, but we watched it at home last night on DVD.

What a seriously flawed movie for Pixar.

The first problem is a technical one:  it could just be our LCD TV is a particularly bad one for low light, but a movie like this which takes place about 2/3 at night (and then often inside a gloomy castle) is hard to enjoy at home without a lot of attempts at re-adjusting contrast and brightness. In fact, I never achieved a satisfactory adjustment.    I suspect a lot of people trying to watch it at home would find this.  The one thing that is really visually eye-catching, though, (when you can see it) is the main character's red hair.  It moves and bounces so realistically that it almost gives the impression of a doll being filmed rather than watching a purely animated effect.

But the big problem is the story.  To my mind, it makes no emotional sense at all.  To summarise:  a well intentioned Queen does the usual thing:  wants to find a husband for her strong headed daughter via an arranged marriage from competing clans.  Mother and daughter argue; daughter is led by magic lights to witch who gives her a magic pie to "change her mother".  Said pie turns mother into a bear.  (?  Why a bear in a fake medieval Scotland?)  Mother and daughter spend a night learning how to get to know each other better - as daughter and bear.  Mother (still as a bear) communicates that she was wrong; daughter makes speech about breaking tradition and everyone "writes their own story".  A bit more to do about the King not realising his wife is a bear, and then bear turns back into mother. Daughter and parents continue living together.

There's a little more to it than that, which I won't bother explaining, but really, this story just doesn't work.  In Brother Bear (a much better Disney film involving people transforming into animals) the "victim" of the transformation had a lesson to learn, and the whole idea of people being able to change into an animal had some resonance in the Inuit tribal setting.   It just doesn't seem to fit into any traditions of Scottish folklore that I've heard about (not that I'm any expert on that, and maybe someone will prove me wrong.)  But what's more - it just didn't seem fair that it was the mother alone who had to undergo the trial in order to learn a lesson.  

Of course it's not the first time that Disney animation has been thematically about a strong daughter finding her own way in life; but this daughter never struck me as a particularly sympathetic character.  Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian probably summed it up well:

Now, in some respects, it is interesting and unusual not to have a conventional love interest, but what we are offered instead is something oddly regressive, binding Merida into the family unit just when she was making that bid for independent adulthood, and we don't learn anything very interesting about Merida or her mum. There was a time when Pixar movies worked gloriously for adults, teens, tweens, small kids, everyone; this one is unsatisfying for all ages.

Interestingly, the Guardian also had a historian briefly talk about the film.  From this, I learnt that some aspects of design in it were more realistic than I expected, but also that bears were not around in Scotland since prehistoric times. 

Now that I've finished complaining about that bit of animation, I saw Rise of the Guardians with the kids over the holidays, and it was a much better experience.   Although it was odd in parts (why the Easter rabbit should be furry version of Crocodile Dundee is beyond me), but there were sequences in the film that did have that emotional effect that was missing in Brave - the explanation of the origin of Jack Frost in particular.   Overall, the movie worked a treat with the audience I was with, even though it is probably fair to call it a more kids-centric film than many others made by Pixar or Dreamworks films.   I see that it only made $100,000,000 in the US (although twice that amount overseas.)  This really counts as under-performing for its quality, and if you are in the market for buying a DVD for some kid you know, I can guarantee this one would please them.  (Not that it is out yet, I expect.)  

It is amazing in its own way, isn't it, when moving illustrations (together with the musical cues, I suppose) can move us emotionally.  As I have said before,  I would be very thrilled to be part of a team that made a successful animated film.

And finally, quite a few places have been putting up this Disney Oscar nominated short Paperman and praising it.  I think it is pretty good, and again shows the sort of magical realism story that is done so well by the medium:

In Utah news

Well, that's kinda amusing.  When following someone's link to the Salt Lake Tribunal on an unrelated matter, I found that it must be one of the few news websites in the world that has a permanent story category heading for "Polygamy". 

A slight improvement for witches

More curbs on Saudi religious police powers | GulfNews.com

Riyadh: Saudi Arabia has set new limitations on the powers of its notorious religious police, charged with ensuring compliance with Islamic morality but often accused of abuses, its chief said on Tuesday.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice “once had much expanded powers, but with the new system... some of these powers, such as interrogating suspects and pressing charges,” will be restricted to the police and public prosecution, Shaikh Abdul Latif Abdel Aziz Al Shaikh told AFP.

The religious police may still arrest those carrying out “flagrant offences such as harassing women, consuming alcohol and drugs, blackmail and the practice of witchcraft,” Shaikh said of the new law approved by the cabinet.

However, the cases of such people will be referred to the police and brought to justice, as the religious police will no longer have the right to determine charges against them, he said.

Looking back at 50's science fiction movies

Nuclear monster movies: Sci-fi films in the 1950s were terrifying escapism. - Slate Magazine

Not a bad review of the themes within the genre here.   A pity they don't mention Earth Versus the Flying Saucers - one of my favourites.

I like the section headed "That women are scary" in particular.   (It reminds me of one of the best laughs in Monsters Vs Aliens.)

It was probably carrying kimchi and a Samsung smart phone

South Korea launches satellite to join global space club : Nature News Blog

Bedrooms and penicillin

Syphilis and the Sexual Revolution � First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

Hadn't heard this theory before:

It may have been penicillin, not the Pill, that triggered the sexual revolution, a new study indicates. Hypothesizing that “a decrease in the cost of syphilis due to penicillin [which, in 1943, was found to treat syphilis effectively] spurred an increase in risky non-traditional sex,” the Emory University economist Andrew Francis discovered evidence that “the era of modern sexuality originated in the mid to late 1950s,” prior to the debut of oral contraceptive pills in 1960. (Full PDF here.)

How much do we really know with any accuracy about sexual behaviour on the big scale in previous centuries, though?   I mean, we know there were a heap of prostitutes in Victorian London, but who was their typical customer, and what was happening in the rural areas in the meantime?   You can say the same about any similar period, really:  we may know from both fiction and non fiction written at the time that certain societies may have been more libertine about certain things for certain periods, but without modern methods of crunching numbers,  it's surely always very hard to be certain about population wide behaviours.

More about marriage and kids

Don't mention the M-word - The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Jeremy Sammut suspects that academics in Australia are too devoted to supporting "family diversity" to come out and admit that marriage has the best outcome for kids, and single parenthood the worst.

I suspect that he may be right.

I have complained about this before:  if governments want to promote good outcomes for kids, they should really be promoting marriage.  Not de facto relationships.  Unfortunately, as the government saves money by treating welfare recipients living together as if they were a married couple, it seems hard to find a way for the government to encourage people into marriage via how benefits work.

And of course, if they did find a way to do this, we would go through the same boring "but why are you discriminating against us just because we don't have a piece of paper:  are you doubting we love each other?" arguments that we got in the 1970's when recognition of de facto relationships really got a kick along.  

I wonder if anyone really has come up with plausible ways government can encourage marriage.

The Prime Minister getting married to her long term partner would, of course, be a good first step!

Update:  someone in the Atlantic warns against promoting marriage by painting too rosy a picture about it.  Fair enough too.

Simplified forecasts for global temperature

Global Temperature Anomaly Forecasts, January 2013 | Climate Abyss | a Chron.com blog

Last year, climatologist John Nielson-Gammon came up with a sort of simplified graphical way of looking at the global temperature trends, and made some predictions from it.

It only works if there is an underlying global warming, and he's expanded it now to update his predictions.

The method looks pretty convincing, and (so far) works.

I meant to post about it back then when he came up with this, but I don't think I did.  It is well worth looking at.

David Byrne admiration post (again)

I see that David Byrne was in Australia a couple of weeks ago for a few shows with St Vincent, a nice young woman with whom he did his most recent musical collaboration.  They didn't come to Brisbane, and I didn't care too much for a couple of the songs I briefly heard on the 'net, but I see they still got good reviews.  Actually, as long as he throws a few Talking Heads songs into any show, I think he will always get admiring reviews:  there just seems to be an enormous well of public affection towards that back catalogue from everyone in the age range of 25 to 65.  (With good reason, I might add.)

But the main reason for the post is to link to the great series of posts he has put up on his journal following his visit.

I've recommended this before:  he is a great writer with eclectic interests, and whether he's covering his visit to MONA in Hobart, watching Spanish experimental theatre doing Verdi at the Sydney Opera House, eating a Moreton Bay bug and (in particular) his long account of the eccentric interests of  Percy Grainger, he is always a great pleasure to read.  

I think I read he is 60 now, but that charisma and strong voice is still there.   I shouldn't be embarrassed about finding him so appealing - just read the comments after nearly any Youtube video and you can tell how much people like him.   

So, to end my annual renewal of devotion to Mr Byrne, a couple of videos.   First, a video of one of the songs he did with St Vincent which I only found tonight and don't mind at all.  It shows him making the odd moves which people like (even though black and white makes him look older):



And secondly, just a short interview where he talks a bit about Talking Heads and how he views collaboration:



And finally - no, seriously, this time - his book published last year "How Music Works" sounds interesting and had some enthusiastic reviews too.

So much for self defence and guns

I haven't looked at the links provided, but I expect this is quite right:

IWF's Gayle Trotter testified at today's Senate hearing on gun safety, and unsurprisingly claimed that guns make women safer. She apparently seems to believe most violence against women resembles Buffy the Vampire Slayer facing down a gang of vampires: 

“Guns make women safer,” Trotter argued, because they eliminate the advantage violent criminals might have in size and strength. “Using a firearm with a magazine holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, a woman would have a fighting chance even against multiple attackers.”

The conservative claim, made by Trotter, that guns are an "equalizer" is about as serious a misrepresentation as you can muster when it comes to violence against women. Most violence against women is perpetrated by men the victim knows in situations that are intimate or social, where guns aren't usually out. If someone during a domestic violence incident scrambles for the gun, it's rarely going to be the person who doesn't want this situation to get more violent....

The fact of the matter is that more guns put women in danger. The Harvard Injury Control Research Center has found that states with more guns have more female violent deaths. Their research also found that batterers who owned guns liked to use them to scare and control their victims, and would often use the gun to threaten the victim, threaten her pets or loved ones, clean them menacingly during arguments, or even fire them to scare her. The Violence Policy Center's research showed that in 1998, the year they studied, 83 women were killed by an intimate partner for every woman who used a gun in self-defense. Futures Without Violence compiled the statistics and found that guns generally make domestic violence worse, both by increasing the likelihood of murder and also by creating situations where abuse is more violent, controlling, and traumatic.

People convicted of domestic violence aren't allowed to buy guns, a sensible reaction to the realities of domestic violence and guns. Unfortunately, the private sale loophole makes it easy enough for a man who wants to stalk or control a woman to get the weapon to do so. If Trotter were truly concerned about preventing violence against women, she would be demanding an immediate closure of this loophole that allows batterers to avoid background checks when trying to buy guns. But she's too busy imagining that women might have to fend off the zombie apocalypse to worry about the real dangers that ordinary women face in this country every day. 

As seen on Baden-Powell's bookshelf

This refers back to a 2004 Christopher Hitchens article on the "mildly Fascist" Baden-Powell.  If I had read it before, I had forgotten this bit:

If Baden-Powell had had his way, the Boy Scouts might have formed close ties with the Hitler Youth. In 1937, he told the Scouts' international commissioner that the Nazis were "most anxious that the Scouts should come into closer touch with the youth movement in Germany." Baden-Powell met with the German ambassador in London and was invited to meet the Führer himself, though the war prevented him from visiting the Third Reich. But he continued to admire Hitler's values, writing in a 1939 diary entry that Mein Kampf was "a wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc."

As Hitchens reports, Baden-Powell also seemed to tacitly approve of the Nazi attitude toward homosexuality. When the head of his international bureau told him that a German scout leader had been sent to a concentration camp, Baden-Powell dismissed it by saying the scoutmaster had been taken away for "homosexual tendencies."

I know that the scout movement still contains some learning about their founder's life and good deeds.  They seem to skip over what was on his bookshelf, though.

A sudden bit of optimism

How Obama will deliver his climate promise - environment - 30 January 2013 - New Scientist

BARACK OBAMA is certainly talking the talk on climate change - promising to put the fight against global warming at the heart of his second term. What's more surprising is that the US - historically, the world's biggest emitter - actually seems to be walking the walk. It is on track to meet Obama's 2009 pledge to cut US emissions by 17 per cent, from 2005 levels, by 2020. The target could even be exceeded, which may give a boost to the long-stalled international climate talks.

Right wing commentary run amuck

Sinclair Davidson seems to have written a piece for the Conversation about the announcement of the Federal election date in a hurry and with nothing of importance to say.

The silliest thing it contains is this:

The date of the election is known, but the government is not in caretaker mode. Given the expectation that the government will lose the coming election, should it be in caretaker mode? Reasonable people can disagree on this point. After all, having the government in caretaker mode for eight months is a bit too long.

No, reasonable people cannot disagree on this point:  no one can credibly even attempt to argue that knowing an election date in advance (as in Parliaments with a fixed term) is relevant to "caretaker mode"; nor has bad polling  8 months from an election ever been suggested before as a reason for a government to stop governing.

Another thing I want to note is this:   I used to get really annoyed with Tim Dunlop when he was a paid blogger for News Ltd putting on the "voice of reason" approach in that forum, and then sneaking off to his own personal blog to make snarky, nasty and personal attacks on John Howard.

Sinclair Davidson is exactly the same on the Right side.   For the Conversation, the voice is Mr Reasonable.  Or when he turns up on Andrew Bolt's show to warn of "stagflation" more than a year ago.   (No sign of that yet, by the way.)  But at the blog he runs, particularly in comments threads, it's the abusive, over the top, voice: 

There is no role for “civility” in a free speech debate. Those who would steal our birthright are scum who deserve all the contempt they have earned. There can be no surrender, no compromise, and no meeting of minds.

Or in the gun control issue:

 Gab – don’t be nice about it. Steve and his ilk are happy to have children murdered to make political points about gun ownership.

And of course, he lets the blog threads run that way too.  Where else on the Right side of politics can we find such witticisms such as suggesting that the way to "deal with" Leigh Sales is to "kick her in the s__ts?"   Or people can tell hilarious [/sarc] jokes about the PM sleeping with her dog.  And Michelle Obama - she's so ug-ly (a theme repeated at various times by nice old conservative Catholics CL, nilk and the most annoying commentator in the world Mk50.)  I see that only today there's yet another reference to Obama as the "Magic Negro"; and who can forget Steve Kates, an economist with an absolute obsession with (what he says is) everyone else in the world not understanding Say's Law (and Keynesian economics being the root of all evil), blaming the Romney loss on "damaged women"?   (OK, that link is to his Quadrant article where the term appeared, but I'm pretty sure he linked to it from Catallaxy.)

Bizarrely, conservative Catholicism gets special protection from Davidson, and in fact the blog seems to be a special haven for them; absolutely rabid sweeping generalisations about Muslims on the other hand - well, they're OK.

I've noticed the blog - train wreck that it is - has been attracting more women commenters lately.  And, of course, Judith Sloan contributes posts, often blithely dismissive of things like climate change and matters in which I have my doubts she has any particular expertise.  (Yes, it's the branch of the right that most resembles the Tea Party.)    Ever a comment from her about how the threads deal with women on the Left of politics?  Not that I've ever seen.   Same with Quadrant writer (and conservative Catholic) Phillipa Martyr.  The threads were absolutely full of foul "slut calling" of Sandra Fluke last year; Rush Limbaugh was the voice of reason, according to them.

The only thing good about this is that it seems to me that Sinclair Davidson can't really have any friends or be influential on the Liberal Party, can he? given that he is so dismissive of them if they don't follow the line on matters he is over the top about, such as free speech.

But what is more annoying is the way that Andrew Bolt, Catallaxy and the opinion pages of The Australian have all become dominated by the same characters who cross reference each other continuously.  It's a mini version of what has gone on in the US with the right wing blogosphere and the Wall Street Journal (and Andrew Bolt's TV show counts as a mini Fox News too.)

What has happened to moderate and sensible right wing commentary in this country?  And why does a large part of the Right have to proudly display the same  (actually, worse) ugliness in discourse that those on the rabid left used to show under (say) John Howard?  

Just can't understand how it lost

National Review post-election summit: Conservatives descend on the magazine’s conference. - Slate Magazine

David Weigel opens his article on attending the National Review post-election "what went wrong?" summit with this:

Early on Friday evening hundreds of conservatives pack the room, stepping in and out of line depending on whether they’re thirsty or whether they’d rather talk to one of the available icons—Mark Steyn! Jonah Goldberg! Rich Lowry!

I get stuck between Steyn, a ring of his fans, and a bar, where I meet an Orlando dermatologist named Darrin. He’d volunteered for Mitt Romney’s campaign, “making calls from my office” when he wasn’t working or raising his kids, and he wasn’t surprised when Romney lost, because he doesn’t put any graft past Barack Obama. “I’m worried about a dictatorship,” he says—really, we have been talking for maybe three minutes before he lays this on me. “I mean, it happened in history. History repeats. Why couldn’t it? How about all the Muslim Brotherhood czars? He’s got like eight different guys in the administration who are members of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

When I start to sound skeptical, Darrin pulls out his iPhone and forwards me an infographic. It’s titled “Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrates Obama Administration,” and it shows six Muslims who work in the administration and “enjoy strong influence.” Another way of putting it: Six mid- and low-level staffers in the administration have, in the past, appeared on panels staged by frightening-sounding organizations. But the evidence worries Darrin. “If I have to go to a freakin’ island to save my kids,” he says. “I’ll do it. I’ll leave the country.”

But, to be fair, over at MediaMatters, Eric Boehlert notes that some voices at the conference did acknowledge that the Fox News led perpetual outrage machine of the last 3 years had been counterproductive.

Baby steps back towards reality, I guess.

Update:  on the third hand, the Salon commentary on the summit thinks that too many Republicans still think the problem was just with the messaging, not their ideas.

About that election date

So, last Sunday Tony Abbott had an event that everyone acknowledged as being exactly like an election campaign launch.  Everyone knows an election has to be held by November at the latest.

This week, Julia Gillard announces the election date, and she's the one some commentators are saying has started the election campaign?

This was certainly the line Chris Uhlmann took, with questions like these in last night's interview with Wayne Swan:

CHRIS UHLMANN: Why you have decided to run the longest election campaign in Australia political history?

CHRIS UHLMANN: Treasurer, this is now a campaign, no matter what you say.

I still say Uhlmann is not very bright and routinely gives soft interviews to Coalition figures and aggressive interviews to Labor figures.  His interview technique rarely adjusts questions much according to the responses.  

I cannot see what the drama is about announcing the election date.   Journalists and political commentators probably find it annoying because it cuts down by about a quarter the normal content of their annual writing in an election year.

It is disturbing that Rudd supporters within Labor are still backgrounding journalists like Uhlmann with their dissatisfaction with virtually anything Gillard done.  Uhlmann noted last night:

So is this a stroke of political genius, or in the words of one disgruntled Labor MP, an "unmitigated disaster of historic proportions".

There is no doubt at all that, in the event of a Labor loss, they will have to take a large amount of the credit.

Single Mums/Moms

What does Ross Douthat blame Roe v. Wade for today? The rise of single moms.

There's an interesting argument put here in Slate as to why there are more single mothers these days:

 The dynamics among abstinence, abortion, contraception, and the decline of marriage are complex, but here we’ll give the short version of an argument that we’ve made in various law-review articles and will continue to make in our forthcoming book, Family Classes. We think the big story of the past 40 years is the disappearance of the shotgun marriage. The shotgun marriage used to hide nonmarital pregnancies. It has disappeared not because of abortion, but because it didn’t work. The shotgun marriage kept couples together only when women had no ability to leave. The sexual brinkmanship of the 1950s (as teens discovered the car and lovers’ lanes) increased the number of brides pregnant at the altar to highs last seen in the 18^th century and fueled the divorce revolution of the 1970s. Douthat is right that a young woman with a promising future preferred the security of the pill and abortion to early marriage to a man who happened to get her pregnant. He refers to a perceptive study by economists George Akerlof and Janet Yellen that observed that once women took charge of their own reproductive futures, men no longer had to “volunteer” to marry the women they had impregnated. The economists, however, were referring to the combined effect of abortion and the pill; a more recent study by economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz found that, between the two, contraception was a key development in the norm shift that began with college graduates. Douthat leaves that part out.

All of this, however, is so 1980s. In the era Akerlof and Yellen studied, men no longer had to propose to women who, after all, had the option of using contraception and had failed to do so. Something different is taking place today: The “Bristol effect” is that the women reject the men who do propose, and then they still have the child. They do so because marriage is no longer a good deal for women with more reliable incomes than the men in their lives. Blue-collar wages flatlined for white men in the ’90s (and did so a generation earlier for black men). During the same period, blue-collar jobs generally become much less stable. The men became less reliable earners at a time when women’s workforce opportunities continue to increase. And while wages alone do not determine marriage, the behavior that often accompanies the lack of a steady job is a turnoff. These trends had already begun in the ’80s for the worst-off portions of the population, but they accelerated for most of the working class in the ’90s.

So the issue is not whether we are going to use anti-abortion sentiment to bring back the scarlet letter. Certainly, not with Bristol celebrated on reality TV. Instead, the question is whether we are going to face up to the challenge of caring for the children who result and the pretense that abstinence can cure the problem.

In the Kansas heartland, the single moms we meet are in tears because the same politicians who oppose abortion are cutting health care and education funding, raising taxes on the poor to finance income tax cuts for the wealthy, and eviscerating protections that had helped keep single mothers employed. Let’s recognize that the celebration of the unintended birth comes with an obligation to care for all our children.

Certainly, the shotgun wedding has been around a long time, if some examples from my mother's family are anything to go by.  In fact, what went on in her rural, working class family in the 1930's and 40's dispels any idea that people held back from pre-marital sex at a time where contraception was extremely limited and - I presume -  abortion in country towns was not readily available.

The funny thing is, as far as I could see, the marriages that happened quickly due to pregnancy turned out to be long and pretty happy looking ones.   I don't really know why that should be - the economic arguments about stable jobs and income noted in the article above seems at first a bit improbable to me.  (It makes it sound like women are more into hard nosed calculations about what's best for them financially than I would have assumed.)  But then again, we are talking about marriages in the 40's and 50's to men with blue collar but long lasting and stable jobs, and limited opportunities for the women to make a good living.  (They also would have had to take much time off to raise children, as child care was not generally available like it is now.)   So, you could say, economics and limited options forced them into marriages.  That sounds unfortunate, except for the fact that they turned out to be happy enough,  long term marriages.  Arranged marriages are also often quite successful.  And there was that recent report about a study showing that people routinely underestimate how much they will change in the future.  

Of course, you can't credibly argue that women should go back to having less options, both economically and in terms of contraception.

But what about the attitude that children will likely be happiest - and have the best life outcomes  - when being raised with the stability of two parents who will be together for the long term?   Why does that have to get lost in the matter of more choice for adults?

And speaking of choices and consequences:  no one is going to put the genie back in the bottle of relatively reliable contraception encouraging fertile people into sexual relationships that are seen as convenient and experimental.  (In the sense that, at the start, people are not sure whether it would work long term.)  But the fact is, no contraception is 100% reliable, and if (unlike your grandparents) you cannot bear the idea of making a decision to live for the next 20 years with your bedroom partner if one of you falls pregnant, then you really should not be having the ongoing sexual relationship in the first place.  And besides which, stop panicking about how unhappy you might be if a partnering decision  is made in circumstances not entirely within your control.*

Well, that's how it seems to me anyway.    Kind of simple, really, yet I have a great deal of trouble seeing what's wrong with thinking that way.     

*  Of course, people will say I am taking no account of safe abortion as an option now in most Western countries.  The thing is, I am cynical about the number of not entirely committed relationships which actually survive an abortion decision.  I know that anti-abortion groups almost certainly exaggerate the psychological harm that abortion causes, but looking at some pro-choice pages, it seems most studies concentrate solely on how it affects women, and not so much on how it affects relationships in the long term.

This man does not deserve to be PM

Tony Abbott made a quasi campaign launch the other day.  It hasn't attracted that much attention both because of it coinciding with the Queensland floods, and the fact that he had no actual policies to announce.

I note, however, that he made this statement, indicating again his attempts at right wing ignorant populism which demonstrates he's just not a serious character when it comes to the serious matter of climate change:

We will have a cleaner environment. Isn’t it bizarre that this government thinks that somehow raising the price of electricity is going to clean up our environment, stop bushfires, stop floods, stop droughts? Just think of how much hotter it might have been the other day but for the carbon tax! We will bring in sensible measures to improve our environment. There will be more trees, better soils, smarter technology. There will be incentives, not penalties and there will be a Green Army marching to the rescue of our degraded bushland, our waterways under pressure. We will work with the Australian people, not against them.

This is childish and pandering to the Tea Party inspired rump of the Right in Australia.   As far as I can see, no economist of note thinks that the Liberal Party's policy, which is supposed to have the same goals in terms of emission reduction, is a more sensible way to do it than carbon pricing.  

Moreover, as this article notes, Abbott is proposing to have prominent climate change skeptics giving him advice. 

Abbott does not deserve the job of Opposition Leader or PM.  The Coalition does not deserve the job of running the country until it has purged itself of the element that is under the sway of the stupid wing of the American Right. 

Floods in the future

I've been muttering ever since the enormous floods in Australia in 2011 that I wasn't sure how well anyone could anticipate how much increased floods due to climate change could cause damage to the economies of countries so affected.

I've been poking around a bit and see that there certainly have been a lot of attempts to try to quantify this, but I guess I am just worried that predicting changed rainfall in regions is one of the less clear aspects giving current climate modelling, and while this may mean that current estimates may be overly pessimistic, they might also not be pessimistic enough.

I note this as an example of one estimate, from one IPCC page:

The impact of climate change on flood damages can be estimated from modelled changes in the recurrence interval of present-day 20- or 100-year floods, and estimates of the damages of present-day floods as determined from stage-discharge relations (between gauge height (stage) and volume of water per unit of time (discharge)), and detailed property data. With such a methodology, the average annual direct flood damage for three Australian drainage basins was projected to increase by a factor of four to ten under conditions of doubled atmospheric CO₂ concentrations (Schreider et al., 2000). 

That does sound serious.   I know nothing more of the paper; I should go looking for it.

Would prefer robot ones myself...

Soldier who lost four limbs has double-arm transplant (Update)

This guy has had some bad luck, to put it mildly:

Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been living with his older brother in a handicapped-accessible home on New York's Staten Island built with the help of several charities. The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.

The weather report

Brisbane is having the cyclone you have when not having a cyclone.
It is currently very windy in the part of Brisbane where I live, which is not near the coast.   Funnily enough, on the evening news, all the reporters on the coast seemed to standing in calmer conditions.  

I hope it calms down in the suburbs soon...

Update:   It's gone 11.30pm and it's still a bit worryingly windy.   I see it's been gusting up to 90 kph earlier this evening, so its not just my imagination. Here are the BOM weather observations:

Update: Apart from a couple of leaks around windows which haven't happened before, everything was OK at home. Haven't even lost power.

As a child in the 60's and 70's, small-ish cyclones heading down the Queensland coast towards Brisbane were more common than these days, but my recollection is that they tended to peter out as a cyclone usually around the Sunshine Coast. Sure, they could turn into a rain depression, but I don't recall much in the way of wind in the suburbs. That's what made this ex cyclone unusual - the widespread wind across the city that started late yesterday and didn't end until late this morning.

The most remarkable video from this event which I saw on a News Ltd website this morning has turned up in several Youtube accounts. If you haven't seen "Surprise car", you ought to. (I think this happened up at the Sunshine Coast.)

As to how bad the flooding will get in Brisbane tomorrow - it seems all very much guesswork.  It seems that one small area near me might be affected again, but I am hoping the modelling is erring on the pessimistic side.  We will see.

Of course, there are parts of Queensland doing it much, much worse (especially Bundaberg, which appears to be facing an all time record flood.)

Interestingly, until this rainfall started in Brisbane, the city was having an exceptionally dry January.  Not sure how the figures will look now.  It did seem to be illustrating what a climate change paradigm of swings from one extreme to another might look like, and it's not pretty.   As I suggested after the 2011 flood, if climate change means one in a 100 year floods start happening (say) once a decade, it's going to be a change of big economic consequence.  

Cheese with an unwanted extra

Poisoning toll rises, 100 foods recalled

So, there's been a major outbreak of listeria from soft cheeses made by the Jindi Cheese company:

 In NSW, a further three cases of the bacterial illness have been identified, bringing the national total to 21. A 34-year-old woman in NSW has miscarried and two men - an 84-year-old Victorian, and a 44-year-old Tasmanian - have died. Each of the new cases have been in people aged over 65, and one of them is in a serious condition.

What I didn't realise before this was how long it can be between eating the contaminated food and getting symptoms - it has a 70 day incubation period!   

I am curious on another point - when you open a soft cheese but forget to finish it for a couple of weeks, you can get some pretty powerful stinky growths on it.  I always worry a bit about how safe it is to eat it, or eat the bits around it the worst bits which I cut off.  I am trusting that it can't develop into anything too dangerous.  After all, Francis Lam at Salon did tell us a couple of years ago about some extraordinarily strong French cheese that seemed it was trying to kill him:

Fromage fort translates as “strong cheese,” and is a bit of a Frankenstein — a potted mash of old bits and pieces, the Parliament-funky rinds of leftover cheeses, and left to molder together for a bit. There’s usually some kind of booze in there for extra kick (and extra protection from bacteria). Whether it’s a food or a dare is largely up to interpretation. You can only imagine what earns the title of “strong cheese” in the homeland of stinky cheese.

Hmm.  Maybe I should try mushing up the old soft cheese with a bit of wine or brandy and see what that comes out like...

Absurd Apple

Apple trademarks "distinctive design" of stores

DNA trying to tell us something

Synthetic double-helix faithfully stores Shakespeare's sonnets 

This was a surprising story:

A team of scientists has produced a truly concise anthology of verse by encoding all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets in DNA. The researchers say that their technique could easily be scaled up to store all of the data in the world.

Along with the sonnets, the team encoded a 26-second audio clip from Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream" speech, a copy of James Watson and Francis Crick’s classic paper on the structure of DNA, a photo of the researchers' institute and a file that describes how the data were converted. The researchers report their results today on Nature’s website¹.

The project, led by Nick Goldman of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) at Hinxton, UK, marks another step towards using nucleic acids as a practical way of storing information — one that is more compact and durable than current media such as hard disks or magnetic tape.

Here's the  most amazing part:

DNA packs information into much less space than other media. For example, CERN, the European particle-physics lab near Geneva, currently stores around 90 petabytes of data on some 100 tape drives. Goldman’s method could fit all of those data into 41 grams of DNA.

 Lots more detail of how it is done is in the article.  As to its potential long term value:

Goldman adds that DNA storage should be apocalypse-proof. After a hypothetical global disaster, future generations might eventually find the stores and be able to read them. “They’d quickly notice that this isn’t DNA like anything they’ve seen,” says Goldman. “There are no repeats, and everything is the same length. It’s obviously not from a bacterium or a human. Maybe it’s worth investigating.”

I wonder if this means there might be a short to medium length message put there by my Creator for use at about this time in history.  "Don't buy Betamax" maybe*.
 
Has science fiction ever covered this?  The nearest I can think of is the ending of Carl Sagan's "Contact", where a message is found hidden inside of Pi.

*  A joke stolen from Good Omens.

Maybe built that way?

Chameleon pulsar baffles astronomers

An international team has made a tantalizing discovery about the way pulsars emit radiation. The emission of X-rays and radio waves by these pulsating neutron stars is able to change dramatically in seconds, simultaneously, in a way that cannot be explained with current theory. It suggests a quick change of the entire magnetosphere....

Pulsars are small spinning stars that are about the size of a city, around 20 km in diameter. They emit oppositely directed beams of radiation from their magnetic poles. Just like a lighthouse, as the star spins and the beam sweeps repeatedly past the Earth we see a brief flash.

Some pulsars produce radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including at X-ray and radio wavelengths. Despite being discovered more than 45 years ago the exact mechanism by which pulsars shine is still unknown.

It has been known for some time that some radio-emitting pulsars flip their behaviour between two (or even more) states, changing the pattern and intensity of their radio pulses. The moment of flip is both unpredictable and sudden. It is also known from satellite-borne telescopes that a handful of radio pulsars can also be detected at X-ray frequencies. However, the X-ray signal is so weak that nothing is known of its variability.

To find out if the X-rays could also flip the scientists studied a particular pulsar called PSR B0943+10, one of the first to be discovered. It has radio pulses which change in form and brightness every few hours with some of the changes happening within about a second.

Dr Ben Stappers from The University of Manchester's School of Physics and Astronomy said: "The behaviour of this pulsar is quite startling, it's as if it has two distinct personalities. As PSR B0943+10 is one of the few pulsars also known to emit X-rays, finding out how this higher energy radiation behaves as the radio changes could provide new insight into the nature of the emission process."...

Geoff Wright from the University of Sussex adds: "Our observations strongly suggest that a temporary "hotspot" appears close to the pulsar's magnetic pole which switches on and off with the change of state. But why a pulsar should undergo such dramatic and unpredictable changes is completely unknown."

Bat family life

Bats split on family living

An odd report here on how one species of bat has different family arrangements depending on where they live.  That seems unusual.

This part suggests that bat bachelors are unlike human ones:

"But it is also possible that the males choose not to roost with the females. When you look at the nursery colony in Ilkley, mothers and pups often have a lot of ectoparasites like ticks and mites. In a warm, crowded nursery, parasites can thrive, especially if there's less time for good personal hygiene. Parasites not only make life uncomfortable but can affect a bat's health. The males that live by themselves are usually very clean in their bachelor pads, so you can understand why they might not want to move in," he added.

I continue to be amazed at how black flying foxes in the colony I pass every day still hang around in the summer sun instead of going for shadier trees.

When the American Right used to be sensible

7 uncovered quotes that reveal just how crazy the NRA’s become - Salon.com

I like this one in particular:

“There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons,” said California Gov. Ronald Reagan in May 1967, after two dozen Black Panther Party members walked into the California Statehouse carrying rifles to protest a gun-control bill. Reagan said guns were “a ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.”

 This article notes that Reagan then swung around to be very pro-gun rights in 1975 in "his column"  in Guns and Ammo magazine, but post presidency he swung again:

The Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 will be remembered as an important piece of legislation for gun rights. However, Reagan also cast his support behind the two most controversial pieces of gun control legislation of the past 30 years. His support of the Assault Weapons Ban in 1994 may have directly led to the ban winning the approval of Congress. Congress passed the ban by a vote of 216-214. In addition to Klug voting for the ban after Reagan’s last minute plea, Rep. Dick Swett, D-N.H., also credited Reagan’s support of the bill for helping him decide to cast a favorable vote.

Does the NRA blame Alzheimer's Disease for his later support of gun control, I wonder?  I see from this article that he was not formally diagnosed with it until 2004, even though many suspect he started to suffer from it during his second term.  (That linked article makes out a pretty convincing sounding case that he was, actually.) 

A spot of good news

With group effort, Japan suicides fall to 15-year low - CSMonitor.com

Of minor interest:

“As they keep blaming themselves for business failure, saying, ‘I’ve done wrong’ or ‘I’ve caused trouble to society,’ that totally impairs their judgment,” says Hisao Sato who started a suicide prevention program in 2002 in Akita city, some 720 miles north of Tokyo. The region is notorious for being home to the highest suicide rates.

I've been within 80 km or so of Akita quite a few times but never visited it.   I am told there is not much there, but it is such a lonely looking corner of the country I've always felt it would welcome my presence as an international tourist.  It is also close to a Marian apparition, complete with weeping statue.  (Mind you, we briefly had one of those in a Brisbane suburb a few years ago, and I went and had a look.  I think I have mentioned that before.)

A look at Hare Krishna

My years as a Hare Krishna

This is an interesting account of a woman who got into Hare Krishna but who has now moved away from it.  She's still sympathetic to the religion, though.

I note that she was obviously no stranger to recreational drug taking before she got into it.  I have a family member who is (last I heard) still in the religion, who came to it with some recreational drug experience (of a worrying degree, apparently.  I don't know the full details, though.)

I guess this is of no great surprise:  I tend to think anyone who tries anything more psychoactive than, say, marijuana, is showing signs of spiritual aimlessness which a strong communitarian religious practice like Hare Krishna is able to address.  (Gee, I still don't like using the word "spiritual".)  

Anyhow, one of the comments that follow the article is cruel, but funny:

I used to live over the back fence from a Hare Krisna house in Brisbane - 24 hour cycle chanting hare krisna, hare krisna, hare rama, rama rama etc. - so I got to know the words.

My take was it suited wimpy directionless people attracted to traditional conservative roles with an appearance of something special and different

Just when you thought nuclear holocaust had gone away...

Nuclear war accidents: Minutemen missiles in silos should be abolished. - Slate Magazine

Ros Rosenbaum argues that the risk of an accidental nuclear exchange is still high, particularly from the land based Minuteman missiles.   Computers are now a large part of the problem:

The silo-based missiles have been "detargeted," we've been told, but can easily be retargeted in seconds with a burst of code containing—say, Moscow's GPS coordinates. They've been detargeted but not de-alerted (something I called for back 2008 in Slate). They're still ready to go, at a moment's notice, vulnerable to hackers despite the claims by some security experts they're "air gapped from the internet"—but think USB sticks.

Nobody has yet explained the incident in late 2010 when 50 nuclear missiles in Wyoming stopped responding to the C3I system for a frightening period of time. The Pentagon hastened to say, hey, no problem, don’t worry that our computer system isn't capable of error-proof command and control of 50 nuclear missiles for just a little while. The episode was not confidence-inducing, and it reminded us how much world-destroying power is entrusted to glitch-prone computer architecture. The fact that this sensational story was virtually ignored is further evidence of head-in-the sand consciousness we have about nuclear power. 

When I discussed the matter of our "launch posture" with a Pentagon general who specialized in nuclear affairs, he refused to say whether these missiles could still be launched on the basis of "dual phenomenology." This obfuscatory euphemism means that once we receive signals from two electronic tracking systems—radar and satellite—that something on the screens looks like an attack, we'd face the "use it or lose it" choice. We'd have to "launch on warning" before we knew that the warnings were not "false positives" like the flock of geese. Fortunately, it's unlikely there could be two simultaneous false positives in our dual phenomenology, but a statistician's analysis has argued that eventually it would happen. One prominent statistics expert, Martin Hellman, one of the inventors of the "trap door" and "public key" methods of encryption for the Internet, calculated a 1-in-10 chance of a nuclear exchange in the next decade, and Scientific American put it at a not-so-reassuring 1-in-30 for the same period.

Bad news from the Andes

Unprecedented glacier melting in the Andes blamed on climate change

While judging what's going on with glaciers in the Himalayas seems to be quite tricky, it has always seemed that the fate of South American glaciers has been clearer.  And it does have serious implications for water supply:

The Santa River valley in Peru will be most affected, as its hundreds of thousands of inhabitants heavily rely on glacier water for agriculture, domestic consumption, and hydropower. Large cities, such as La Paz in Bolivia, could also face shortages. "Glaciers provide about 15% of the La Paz water supply throughout the year, increasing to about 27% during the dry season," says Alvaro Soruco, a Bolivian researcher who took part in the study.

I should also mention that this is one reason I liked Quantum of Solace:  the writers seemed to be well aware of climate change causing problems in that part of the world, and hence the evil scheme to store desperately needed water underground kinda made sense.

An interesting list

What doctors won't do | Life and style | The Guardian

I don't know how came up with the idea for this, but it's interesting to read a list of medical things doctors would not do.

PSA testing gets a mention more than once...

The cold up there explained

Stratospheric Phenomenon Is Bringing Frigid Cold to U.S | Climate Central

People don't like The Bunker

King George Square designer wouldn't change a thing despite calls to bring back the grass  | The Courier-Mail

Obviously, it's not just me then.

I reckon the redesigned King George Square in the heart of Brisbane is a horrendous hot, glare-y and unwelcoming space which people scuttle across as soon as possible to avoid heat stroke, with lines that make it look like there's a bomb shelter beneath it.

Many people seem to agree.

In fact, I have long thought that Brisbane's general appearance took a turn for the worse under Campbell Newman as Lord Mayor.   I never liked his predecessor Jim Soorley at a personal level, but at least he seemed to have a team of urban designers who had decent ideas for the look of the city.  I think Newman  is a typical engineer;  all interested in efficiency and machines, but wouldn't recognize pleasing aesthetic design if it bit him.

More details needed

Spacecraft caused car crash, say pair

Here's a peculiar story from just outside of Brisbane that happened last weekend.  Surely if they were genuine, one of the guys involved is going to turn up on TV to explain more?:

TWO men who walked away from a car crash near Brisbane's Wivenhoe Dam claimed to be chasing an alien spacecraft when found by police.

Police and the driver's insurance company received several sketchy phone calls from the men, who appeared to be convinced paranormal activity caused the crash.

Police received the first call from the men at 2.25am on Friday, saying they had been in an accident at Split Yard Creek and asked for the RAAF to attend...

Police said the conversations with the men were vague and at times barely understandable.

The men began to ''freak out'', telling the insurance company they were about to disappear and referred to the area as the Bermuda Triangle, police said.

Police called the men back, with the second male answering the phone, telling police there were ''some really weird things going on'' and they had abandoned the car.

Police received another call from the men at 4am, claiming that ''something paranormal'' had occurred and ''big bright lights'' caused the car accident.

Police found the men at 4.10am at the intersection of Wivenhoe-Somerset and Hyne roads. They were armed with knives and appeared to be protecting themselves.

The men became aggressive, claiming ''there were more of them around''.
The car's driver was breathalysed. He was over the limit and given a notice to appear in court.

The drink driving offence doesn't necessarily mean much with our .05 limit.  Drunks rarely freak out that way anyway, I reckon.   I have a hunch there might have been more in their system than alcohol, but I would like to be wrong.

Sauerkraut, scurvy and Australia Day

Why sauerkraut is good for you | Life and style | The Guardian

...as long as you choose the unpasteurised sort, sauerkraut is teeming with beneficial lactobacillus bacteria – more than is in live yoghurt – which increase the healthy flora in the intestinal tract.

But where does one get unpasteurised sauerkraut?  Surely the stuff in tins or jars doesn't count?

In fact, the article does point out:

Do not confuse sauerkraut with vinegary, pickled cabbage.

I am not sure now whether I have had proper sauerkraut or not.  The real stuff sounds as if it is easy to make at home:

Sauerkraut is made by lactic fermentation, an age-old technique now in vogue for its health benefits. The necessary bacteria and yeasts are naturally present on cabbage leaves. Apart from salt, which starts the process, no other ingredients are required. So avoid buying brands with added chemical preservatives.

This all reminds me;  I didn't know until the visit to the replica Endeavour in Sydney a couple of years ago that Captain Cook had sauerkraut on board to help ward off scurvy.  According to this detailed BBC history article, it's not clear how successful it was.

Scurvy sure doesn't sound pleasant to see:

Their symptoms were vividly described by Richard Walter, the chaplain who wrote up the official account of the voyage. Here were descriptions of its ghastly traces: skin black as ink, ulcers, difficult respiration, rictus of the limbs, teeth falling out and, perhaps most revolting of all, a strange plethora of gum tissue sprouting out of the mouth, which immediately rotted and lent the victim's breath an abominable odour.

 But there's more:

There were strange sensory and psychological effects too. Scurvy seems to have disarmed the sensory inhibitors that keep taste, smell and hearing under control and stop us from feeling too much. When sufferers got hold of the fruit they had been craving they swallowed it (said Walter) 'with emotions of the most voluptuous luxury'. The sound of a gunshot was enough to kill a man in the last stages of scurvy, while the smell of blossoms from the shore could cause him to cry out in agony. This susceptibility of the senses was accompanied by a disposition to cry at the slightest disappointment, and to yearn hopelessly and passionately for home.

Now we know that scurvy was a cocktail of vitamin deficiencies, mainly of C and B, sometimes compounded by an overdose of A from eating seals' livers. Altogether these produced a breakdown in the cellular structure of the body, evident in the putrescence of the flesh and bones of sufferers, together with night blindness and personality disorders associated with pellagra. In the 18th century no one knew what caused scurvy, whose symptoms were so various it was sometimes mistaken for asthma, leprosy, syphilis, dysentery and madness.

The article points out that, although it had been worked out that citrus juice prevented it, Cook believed it was malt that was keeping his men (relatively) healthy.   In fact, it doesn't mention Cook having citrus on board at all.   I thought he did?

Ah, here we go.  Another article about Cook and scurvy, pointing out that he took "rob":

 
But, the author tells us, there probably was enough useful vitamin C in the Sour Krout (amusingly, that's apparently the spelling at the time) to be an "anti-scorbutic."  Cook used psychology to get the crew to eat it:

It goes on to note that Cook knew that fresh vegetables of most kinds would cure it:

Despite this, some on the voyage did have trouble with the scurvy, including Banks himself:

Well, I think we've all learnt something tonight....

Update:  It's occurred to me that Australians underappreciate the importance of sauerkraut in the maritime exploration of Australia, so I have changed the title.   I suggest making sure some sauerkraut is available at the Australia day bar-b-q this weekend, and if anyone asks why, feel free to quote from this post in your best Robert Hughes imitation voice.

About comedians

Alan Davies interview: 'I'm like a fine wine. I'm maturing' | Media | The Guardian

Alan Davies makes an interesting comment in this interview:

During his career he has seen plenty of clowns who could also benefit from time on an analyst's couch: "There are two types of comedians, self-harmers and golfers. The second lot are out on the golf course, they love being famous, playing golf, having their Rolls-Royce and house in Barbados, with no guilt. For others there is a sense that you had to pay your dues – 'my life is shit'. Why not just play golf and enjoy it?"

I see he is aged 46.  I'm not sure if he seems that age or not.

The Right in the US has gone nuts - Part Whatever

Noonan: His Terms Are Always Hostile Ones - WSJ.com

Peggy Noonan, who I don't read all that often, but who has seemed at times to represent moderate Republicanism reasonably well,  has well and truly decided she's on side with the nutty Tea Party wing of the Republicans after all:

President Obama has been using the days and weeks leading up to his inauguration to show the depth of his disdain for the leaders of the other major party and, by inference, that party's voters, which is to say more or less half the country. He has been spending his time alienating instead of summoning. It has left the political air more sour and estranged. 

As a presidential style this is something strange and new. That has to be said again: It is new, and does not augur well. 

 What was remarkable about the president's news conference Monday is that he didn't seem to think he had to mask his partisan rancor or be large-spirited. He bristled with unashamed hostility for Republicans on the Hill.  They are holding the economy "ransom," they are using the threat of "crashing the American economy" as "leverage," some are "absolutist" while others are "consumed with partisan brinkmanship." They are holding "a gun at the head of the American people." And what is "motivating and propelling" them is not a desire for debt reduction, as they claim. They are "suspicious about government's commitment . . . to make sure that seniors have decent health care as they get older. They have suspicions about Social Security. They have suspicions about whether government should make sure that kids in poverty are getting enough to eat, or whether we should be spending money on medical research." 

And yet, "when I'm over here at the congressional picnic and folks are coming up and taking pictures with their family, I promise you, Michelle and I are very nice to them."

You're nice to them? To people who'd take food from the mouths of babes? 

Then, grimly: "But it doesn't prevent them from going onto the floor of the House and blasting me for being a big-spending socialist." Conservative media outlets "demonize" the president, he complained, and so Republican legislators fear standing near him.

If Richard Nixon talked like that, they'd have called him paranoid and self-pitying. Oh wait . . .

 I'm happy to allow that Obama is not, and never was, the Messiah.  He may have a big streak of vanity for all I know.

But  Noonan's shock and outrage that Obama is telling Republicans that he doesn't think they are acting in good faith and criticising their 4 years of over-the-topic hyperbole and crank theories - that is ridiculous in the extreme.   Republicans have been absurd in the way they have argued under Obama - everything is "socialism", "death panels" (you don't need links for those, surely), "treason", deserving impeachment; even when the ideas under discussion are ones that Republicans at the State level have implemented and only now being expanded to the Federal level (Romney and health care; the contraceptive mandate in many States, Republicans in the New York Senate on gun control.)  The hypocrisy and hyperbole of the Republicans over the last 4 years has been breathtaking.

And as for the President's recommendations on gun control - Noonan thinks they are OK, but still has to struggle to find a way to criticise him:

His gun-control recommendations themselves seemed, on balance, reasonable and moderate. I don't remember that the Second Amendment died when Bill Clinton banned assault rifles; it seemed to thrive, and good, too. That ban shouldn't have been allowed to expire in 2004.

What was offensive about the president's recommendations is what they excluded. He had nothing to say about America's culture of violence—its movies, TV shows and videogames. Excuse me, there will be a study of videogames; they are going to do "research" on whether seeing 10,000 heads explode on video screens every day might lead unstable young men to think about making heads explode. You'll need a real genius to figure that out.

The president at one point asked congressmen in traditionally gun-supporting districts to take a chance, do the right thing and support some limits. But when it comes to challenging Hollywood—where he traditionally gets support, and from which he has taken great amounts of money for past campaigns and no doubt will for future libraries—he doesn't seem to think he has to do the right thing. He doesn't even have to talk about it. It wouldn't be good to have Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino running around shouting "First Amendment, slippery slope!" or have various powerful and admired actors worrying their brows, to the extent their brows can be worried.

What, pray tell, does Noonan think a President can do, exactly, about cinema violence?  (And putting Steven Spielberg in there as if his movies have been groundbreaking in the gratuitous gun violence stakes is ridiculous.   The trend was really started by Right wing Hollywood figures, if you ask me.)

Noonan's commentary has therefore officially become nuts.  The list of moderate Right wing commentary worth reading has become vanishingly small.