Kevin Rudd: "I can still be as silly as the next politician"

Poor John Quiggin.  He runs a civilised blog; his economics seem to me to be about 300% more reliable than  the guff that comes out of Catallaxy; yet he seemed to have a complete blind spot towards the problems with Kevin Rudd.  If anything, he was aggressively against Julia Gillard because, he argued, everything she had put in place had been Kevin's brilliant idea anyway.

No, some of us argued:  what you should consider is that Gillard got some things done by doing the hard slog, working collaboratively, and not just coming up with ideas by doodling on the back of a envelope during a plane flight.  (My evidence for that:  changing education and disability funding after getting reports and recommendations first; the negotiations that led to carbon pricing; how Kevin came up with the NBN.)

Well, those of us who were pro-Gillard can at least take some bitter satisfaction that it would appear our view of Kevin has been reinforced by his sudden (partial) adoption of Coalition policy and rhetoric about the bright future of the North, if only tax rates would drop there.

Admittedly, Rudd's policy seems more limited than Coalition ideas (which sound a tad more grandiose, but are really just to have a good hard look at what to do after forming government), but the worrying aspect of it is - how did he arrive at this idea?  What collaboration within his team and instant Ministers took place before it was announced? 

It's a very worrying sign.

From one end to the other

BBC News - Mouth bacteria may trigger bowel cancer

Researchers say they have uncovered how bacteria may set off a chain reaction leading to bowel cancer. 

Fusobacteria, commonly found in the mouth, cause overactive immune responses and turn on cancer growth genes, two US studies reveal.

The microbes had been linked with colorectal cancer before but it was not known whether they were directly involved in tumour growth.

The early findings are published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

In addition to potential new treatments, the discovery could lead to better early diagnosis and prevention, experts hope.

The first study, carried out by Harvard Medical School researchers, showed that fusobacteria were present in high numbers in adenomas - a benign bowel growth that can become cancerous over time.

The same researchers also did tests in mice showing that the bacteria speeded up the formation of colorectal tumours by attracting special immune cells that invade and set off an inflammatory response which can lead to cancer.

Kevin Rudd: "I can be as silly as the next politician", and some free advice

Kevin Rudd rules out new coalition deal to form government | World news | theguardian.com

As I criticised Tony Abbott for a premature ruling out of forming a minority government, it's only fair that I call out Kevin Rudd for coming up with a similar line.  A case of "if Tony jumped over a cliff, would you too?" being a pretty ineffective line that mothers can use on their future politician sons, I guess.

In any event, we can safely assume both of them are lying.

Here's some other free advice for Mr K Rudd:

1.   enough with the "selfies":  when two ABC comedy shows (the Gruen Transfer team, and The Chaser - with the latter being quite a bit less annoying than usual in their outing last night) spend time on this, it's time to quit.

2.   let's firm up on policy implementation on how you plan to help diversify the Australian economy.  If it needs something like the Hawke approach, talk about that.  Your mysteriously popular (with a segment of the population) personality alone, everyone in the media has now agreed, is not going to get you across the line.

3.  If you're calling out the Abbott approach to budget (as indeed you should) don't fling around rubbery numbers.  If $70 billion is a dubious figure for the Abbott "budget hole" (and all media say it is), don't use it.    You're the side with the immediate issue with rubbery figures - be conservative with your claims about the other side's rubbery figures.   Let's face it - with the public, a convincing sounding $50 billion costing hole is just as bad a $70 billion one.

4.  There will be no harm in putting the boot further into Murdoch papers, but in doing so you have to run a fine line of not appearing to blame them for your polling position, even if they should be (at least partly).   It's one of those weird contradictions of politics:  of course the media plays a major role in how the state of politics is perceived, but people punish politicians who note it and complain about how the media is reporting politics.

5.  Let's see more of your new Ministers on TV and in the news.  They'll remind people that you aren't taking the old team to the election.

Just my suggestion...

Checking in again with the Abbott powerbase...

The "rocketman" post

As mentioned a couple of posts back, I was delighted (much more so than my wife, children, or any other person in the vicinity, it seemed) to see a "rocketman" again last Sunday.  Here's video of him doing a daytime practice at the same Brisbane showgrounds where we were:



The guy doing the flying is David Clarke, who calls himself "Ozrocketman."  (Not sure I'm keen on the name, but it hardly matters.)   He has his own website, and is an ex RAAF aeronautical maintenance engineer who appears to have decided to try to make a business out of promotional flying using his own, homebuilt jetpack rocketpack.  Good luck to him.

On his site there's an excellent video from a kid's TV show explaining how this old "rocketbelt" design (famously built by Bell Laboratories in the late 1950's) works:



For a simplified illustration of why there are three tanks, see this:

David Clarke refers to "ten years" of research to make his own personal rocketpack, although it's a little hard to see why it would take so long these days - there seem to be many enthusiasts on the Web.  I think I have mentioned before on this blog that you can even order one from a Mexican aviation company.  Their website looks flashy, but honestly,  I wouldn't be paying the deposit without some good reassurance that they are still in business.  It would also appear that you might still be able to buy one from an American company which claims their model can fly for up to 75 seconds.  (That seems optimistic - most sites talk of a about a 30 second maximum.) 

Interestingly, it's via the Mexican company's website that I found an ad for a 2010 Discovery documentary about another Australian named David who wanted his own rocketbelt.  Here's the blurb:

Australian jet pilot David Mayman builds and flies his own Rocket Belt. This is the story of a tenacious Australian Jet Pilot, David Mayman, as he strives to achieve his childhood dream of building and free-flying his very own Rocket Belt, only to discover he faces a nearly impossible task. Collaborating with the world’s leading Rocket Belt engineers David risks life and limb to become the world’s next Rocketman. ROCKET COMPULSION will take the audience on a ride that shows point blank why less people have flown Rocket Belts than have walked on the Moon.

In fact, the documentary has its own website too, with a page of short video clips from it, including this one talking about the history of its design:



But by far the oddest tale of what has happened with a rocketbelt is the story of three Americans in the 1990's who went into a partnership to build their own one for profit.  They had a spectacular falling out; one of them was murdered, the rocketbelt went missing, and the partner who had taken it was kidnapped, kept in a box and threatened with it being thrown in the sea.

The story has been the subject of a book, but you can read about it at this site, or just watch the embedded videos there summarising the story.   Pretty amazing.

But going back to technical stuff:  Howstuffworks explains the dangers and expense involved in the hydrogen peroxide rocketbelt:

 Rocket belts run on hydrogen peroxide fuel, which is not explosive on its own. This makes rocket belts slightly safer than jet packs. When the hydrogen peroxide is combined with pressurized liquid nitrogen and a silver catalyst, the chemical reaction generates superheated steam that shoots out of twin rocket nozzles at 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (704.4 degrees Celsius). There's no flame, but it's still extremely dangerous. The result is 800 horsepower or about 300 pounds of thrust [source: CNN.com]. Hydrogen peroxide is a good, reliable fuel, and it's only by-product is water. However, it's very expensive, costing about $250 per gallon (3.78-liters). Each flight uses almost all of the fuel in the tank -- about seven gallons (26.5-liters) per flight.

Some other sites make mention of the pilot having insulated pants legs to make sure the superheated steam doesn't burn them.  I guess you certainly wouldn't want to be too close under a "rocketman" hovering over you. 

 But given their limited flight time, it was interesting to read of an attempt in the 1960's to develop an actual jet powered backpack, which I might have read about before, but forgotten:

In 1969 Wendell Moore and John K. Hulbert of Bell Aerosystems had Williams Research Corporation design a turbojet small enough to be carried on a man's back. The jet was mounted with the intake facing the ground and the exhaust shooting upward to a pipe that split the outflow and pointed back down. Two nozzles were located just in back of the pilot's shoulders similar to those on the rocket belt. The jet had less power for its weight than the rocket engine, but also used much less fuel. Tests were carried out that showed that the pack could carry a man in the air for ten minutes, and with improvements the flight time might reach as long as a half hour (This device turns out to be the one I'd actually seen on the cover of Popular Science). The jet pack seemed to solve the biggest problem associated with the rocket belt: range. Twenty-one seconds was now thirty minutes. 

Here's a photo of this shortlived device from the same site:

Wikipedia (under the entry "Jet pack", but which also talks of the hydrogen peroxide rocketbelt, which just goes to show how confused the terminology in this field has become) gives some further details as to what happened with the turbojet pack:

In 1965 Bell Aerosystems concluded a new contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a jet pack with a turbojet engine. This project was called the "Jet Flying Belt", or simply the "Jet Belt". Wendell Moore and John K. Hulbert, a specialist in gas turbines, worked to design a new turbojet pack. Williams Research Corporation (now Williams International) in Walled Lake, Michigan, designed and built a new turbojet engine to Bell's specifications in 1969. It was called the WR19, had a rated thrust of 430 pounds of thrust (195 kgf, 1,910 newtons) and weighed 68 pounds (31 kg).

The first free flight of the Jet Belt took place on 7 April 1969 at the Niagara Falls Municipal Airport. Pilot Robert Courter flew about 100 meters in a circle at an altitude of 7 meters, reaching a speed of 45 km/h. The following flights were longer, up to 5 minutes. Theoretically, this new pack could fly for 25 minutes at velocities up to 135 km/h.

In spite of successful tests, the U.S. Army lost interest. The pack was complex to maintain and too heavy. Landing with its weight on his back was hazardous to the pilot, and catastrophic loss of a turbine blade could have been lethal.

Thus, the Bell Jet Flying Belt remained an experimental model. On 29 May 1969, Wendell Moore died of complications from a heart attack he had suffered six months earlier, and work on the turbojet pack was ended. Bell sold the sole version of the "Bell pack", together with the patents and technical documentation, to Williams Research Corporation. This pack is now in the Williams International company museum.

 How sad.   Of course, flying with your spine mere centimetres from spinning turbine blades which have been known, from time to time, to shatter and spray out in all directions does make this a design one which few might like to risk.   Still, I assume turbines have improved a hell of a lot since 1969, and I wonder if it will ever be reattempted.

It's taken me a while to find it, but here's some video of the jetpack being flown (and not just in a test setting either: it looks like it got a PR outing to the public):



As it happens, while reading about all of this, news turned up that the New Zealand developed "jetpack" (more like a mini personal flying vehicle, really, but it still looks awesome) has advanced:

The New Zealand makers of a one-person jetpack hope to have it on sale by the middle of next year. The Martin Aircraft company says its jetpack can reach speeds of up to 70 kilometres per hour and soar 1 kilometre high. 

The Christchurch-based firm has been testing its prototype 12 via remote control. 

The New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority said the jetpack has now been issued with an experimental flight permit for development test flying, which allows someone to pilot the aircraft.

 In case you have missed it, this is what they look like:

  

I'm seriously looking forward to seeing one of these at the Ekka in the future.

Q&A reaches new I&A* levels

Last night while composing my account of Sunday's expedition, the ABC's Q&A show was on in the background.

Someone should make a highlight tape of how spectacularly annoying Christopher Pyne and Janet Albrechtsen (who, I only recently realised, separated from her husband a couple of years ago and is now the partner of Liberal heavy weight Michael Kroger) frequently showed themselves to be.   In a further bizarre twist, it seemed to me that Tony Jones kept cutting Penny Wong short in her attempts at responses to yapping Pyne's over the top claims.

I then saw Malcolm Turnbull being very sarcastic on Lateline with Anthony Albanese.  

The one upside of this is that I think the Coalition is already looking very cocky and too self assured that they are going to win the election. 

With only a percent or two to swing in the right seats, this could well come back to bite them.

* Irritating and annoying.

Yet again, an Ekka report

Look, there was no "House of Pork" to be spotted yesterday at the RNA show, but it was replaced by something much more significant:  the re-appearance of a "rocketman" display which I had not seen live since about 1968, by my rough reckoning.

The rocketman deserves an entire post of his own, as it led me today to read up on the history and design of the equipment, and it was more interesting than I expected.

But for this post, some observations:

*   for the last two years, the family has enjoyed the auditorium 30 minute shows, which usually have an anachronistic aspect to them.  (In 2011, it was the "Sideshow Superstars", which was pleasantly grotesque in parts; and last year it was a stage hypnotist act,  a form of entertainment which I thought had died out by about 1990.)   This year it was a pretty standard "magic and illusion" act, by a young-ish performer whose comedy shtick seemed to be to play (or be - he was pretty convincing) the vain, sleazy jerk.   Yes, he even managed a "sometimes when they say 'no', they mean 'yes'" reference about women; a joke played without irony, and which did, to a modern audience's credibility, managed to get only a few groans in response.  The tricks were competently done, but were of a stock standard variety for a stage magician these days, and as such did not really contain any element of surprise, as you could tell from the somewhat muted audience reaction.

I therefore consider this year's auditorium show a failure.  I wonder what they'll dig up for next year.  The Kransky Sisters are (as part of the act, I am sure) from a Queensland country town, and may well have been in the local CWA.  I think they may be worth a try...

*  Now onto the troublesome topic of the evening "ring" entertainment.   This year they did do a large re-vamp,  which had its good points and not so good points.  First, having a so-so female pop star sing (or lip sync?) songs in the distant centre of a stadium, and then get driven around to sing from four perimeter "stages," quickly became pretty tedious.  The fact that some of the dance choreography involved much hip thrusting (and the pre-performance video of the singer was of an extraordinarily overt "I'm a sex kitten thinking about sex" variety), it seemed an appeal to a audience that was simply not there to see such content.

The rocketman bit was given some attempt at context by having a man in an Ironman costume come out for a drive by appearance; the logic seeming to be that although we can't make the dude in the costume fly, we can get someone else airborne for 10 seconds.  Meanwhile, Fake Ironman snuck over to another position where he later pretended to play heavy metal guitar during the fireworks display.   Kind of wacky; but Fake Ironman need not bother turning up again next year.  (Unlike the actual rocketman, who can come back any time as far as I'm concerned.)

The fireworks, flame, laser and water fountain show was actually pretty good and continued the trajectory of increasing complexity that has been evident for the last few years.  I'm not entirely sure how you get a job that involves designing such a show, but I like to imagine how strange some of the suggestions at the brainstorming session may have been when the final outcome includes Fake Ironman doing a bad heavy metal impression.

*  The showgrounds are undergoing major, major re-development, and the new convention centre at the heart of it was open for the first time and looked reasonably impressive in the upstairs area.   However, it seems a very "brave" decision to put food outlets on a newly carpetted convention hall floor.   Curry, wine, satay sauce, waffles with cream and syrupy fruit are all going to find their way onto the floor by the end of the week.   It's going to drive the cleaners berserk, I expect.

Or can someone in the know explain to me the secret to what seems to be a bit of a crazy decision as to how to use the convention room floor space?   Is the carpet of some special stain and oil resistant fabric that will solve this pretty obvious practical problem?  I don't think it was made of carpet squares that can be individually replaced, but I didn't get down on my hands and knees to examine it closely.

The convention centre is of much smaller area than the absolutely massive (and quite recently expanded) Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre at Southbank.  I love that place, and was told a couple of years ago by someone who has worked there for a long time that it is a very successful international convention centre; I hope the new one at the RNA showgrounds can find its niche in the market.

The Abbott powerbase react to the debate

I didn't see the political debate last night:  I was watching a jetpack rocketman doing a 10 second spin around the Brisbane showgrounds instead, which was much more exciting, I'm sure.  (My annual report on the Ekka will appear soon enough.)

But I see from having a quick look at Catallaxy that the sclerotic brains trust of the Abbott power base reacted like this:

The interesting Atlantic

My last post came from The Atlantic, which has a couple of other interesting articles up:

*  one showing a few cards from the time of the suffragette movement seeking to inspire fear that men would be completely emasculated.  The "suffragette madonna" gets particular attention:

That's quite an odd mind that came up with that, if you ask me.  (Although I have to say it strikes me as something the mysteriously 1950's Catholic re-incarnation of a man known as Currency Lad would approve of.)













As for this card:

you might have to click to enlarge it, but what is that thing coming out of the baby's mouth?  It looks strangely like it is connected to a computer mouse, but there is presumably another explanation.





*  The other article that caught my eye was one talking about the relatively high wages McDonald's employees get in Australia, compared to the US, at least if they are above teenage years.   Of course, the article does acknowledge that this also means that Australian outlets of the Golden Arches are full of teenage staff, who are (so I believe) worked in a particularly high pressure fashion to extract every bit of human output for the lavish $8 an hour they get paid.   Still, if you're an adult, you are much better off here working for McDonald's than in the US, and the article suggests (quite rightly) that perhaps consumers can tolerate marginally higher prices so that not every staff member in the store is expected to work for the equivalent of pocket money.

*  Wait, there's a third article that's fascinating - a summary of the pre-flight routine of astronaut Alan Shepherd, in which we learn something new - the Mercury astronauts had tiny tattoos to mark the spot for their electrodes (!)   There's a photo of Shepherd in his spacesuit too:

I always liked the slim fitting, silvery Mercury era spacesuits:  they are what a spacesuit should look like, much more so than the later, bulkier, white Apollo suits.

A fair bit of work has apparently been done on the tight, body hugging design for future suits that features in some science fiction (Jerry Pournelle used to feature it a fair bit in his books),  but unless they are silver, they just won't be as cool looking...

Unusual habits on the high seas

The Strange Sexual Quirk of Filipino Seafarers - Ryan Jacobs - The Atlantic

Actually, apart from the amateur attempts at body modification of which I had not heard before, the article gives a pretty interesting discussion about how Filipinos came to dominate seafaring. 

From the "only in Japan" files

'Sun Child' statue to symbolize Fukushima recovery at Aichi festival

NAGOYA—A giant child wearing a fluorescent yellow hazmat suit to guard against radiation arrived on Aug. 6 in one of the venues for Aichi Triennale 2013, a powerful symbol that conveys a message of hope for the future.

Contemporary artist Kenji Yanobe, 47, created the “Sun Child” statue hoping that the areas affected by the 2011 accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will recover from the disaster. The accident was triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

“This is a monument of recovery that makes people think about the coming future,” Yanobe said.

So, what does this "monument" look like:

Uhuh.

The old problem with tattoos

An interesting piece here on the history of tattoos in ancient Greece and Rome:

Tattoos today are decorative and voluntary, even if sometimes recklessly selected and deeply regretted later. But in ancient Greek and Rome tattoos were punitive, forcibly inflicted on slaves, prisoners of war, and wrong-doers. Tattooing captives was common in wartime. For example, in the fifth century BC Athens defeated the island of Samos and tattooed their Samian prisoners’ foreheads with Athens’ mascot the owl. Later, the Samians crushed the Athenians and tattooed their captives with the Samos emblem, a warship. In 413 BC, after Athens’ disastrous defeat at Syacuse, 7,000 Athenian soldiers were captured. Their foreheads were tattooed with the symbol of Syracuse, a horse, and they were sent as slave to work the quarries. Slaves were routinely tattooed and runaway slaves had sentences such as “Stop me, I’m a runaway” crudely gouged and inked into their faces.

These dehumanizing tattoos were not artistic or carefully applied: ink was simply poured into grooves carved in flesh with three iron needles bound together, with no thought of hygiene. There was copious bleeding; infection could be ugly. The indelible marks turned one’s body into a text recording forever one’s captivity, enslavement, or guilt. Naturally, there was a market for hiding or removing shameful tattoos, should one be lucky enough to escape a master or prison. Some opted for a painless approach: Grow long bangs to cover forehead tattoos. During the Roman era, pirates’ crews offered a haven for many criminals and runaway slaves. The dashing pirate scarf trick—tying a bandana around their foreheads—was invented to mask the tattoos of one’s old life.

Mormon underdaks

Here's a pretty non judgemental explanation of the Mormon "temple garments" - the much derided "magic underwear."

I've never looked this up in detail before.  Now I know.

The Libertarian* horoscope

Aynian:  a mooching loser will make your day a misery.  Kick them in the shins.

Collectivarian:  once again, you do something stupid to help drag humanity back to the dark ages.

Smokertarian:   a good day to enjoy your domination over the forces of nature by going through at least a pack of 30, and that's just after lunch. 

Roarkian:   two, possibly three, members of the opposite sex will want you to aggressively have your way with them.  Enjoy, you magnificent beast. 

Lootarian: just do us a favour and die in a train crash, won’t you?

....etc (further suggestions are welcome).

* yes, yes, we know about Ayn’s claims about the term.

Possibly significant physics news

Has LHCb spotted physics beyond the Standard Model? - physicsworld.com

 One of seven experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the LHCb experiment focuses on the physics of B-mesons – those particles containing the bottom (or beauty) quark – produced during proton collisions. One process of great interest is the decay of a B-meson into a kaon (K*) and two muons: B →  K*μ⁺μ^–. This is a relatively rare decay and according to the Standard Model it occurs only because of the subtle effects of heavier particles – W and Z bosons – that mediate the weak force. As a result, particles that are not described by the Standard Model may be contributing to the decay and so their effects could be measured by LHCb. Evidence that this decay happens in a manner that the Standard Model cannot explain could point the way to "new physics".

It'll be a while before they feel certain this is happening, though.

Let's catch up with Tony Abbott and his dynamic power base

Electric optimism

Electric Cars Are Doing Better Than Hybrids Did in Their First Three Years | MIT Technology Review

There's much to learn in the infographic at the above link.

Improbable idea for a webcam

Last night,  for no particular reason (other than a generic interest in krill,) I thought that I should post an image of the Southern crustacean.

It turns out I can do better than that.  For some reason known only to someone in Hobart, the Australian Antarctic Division of the Australian government's environment department has, since 2008, run a regularly updating video of its krill aquarium.  Yes, every 15 minutes, you can see a new short video of krill being krill. 

There might be odder webcams of bits of nature in captivity out there, but this one would have to rank pretty high in the peculiar stakes.

They do have big eyes, by the way.

Update:  for those readers who can't be bothered clicking on the link, here's a shot of what they were up to 10 minutes ago:

 

In slightly more interesting webcams from the Australian Antarctic Division, here's a shot from Macquarie Island this morning:

Gee.  It seems not very high above the high water mark, in a ocean known for rough weather, doesn't it?  If you look at the 48 hour time lapse video they make from the webcam, it looks even worse.

 

Good memories

Dolphins remember each other for decades 

I didn't know this about dolphin "names":

Between the ages of about 4 months and a year, every bottlenose dolphin settles on a whistle of its own that stays the same for the rest of the dolphin's life. In another recent study, published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences², Stephanie King and Vincent Janik, two marine-mammal biologists at the University of St Andrews, UK, have shown that dolphins use these whistles in the same way as humans use names: they voice their own whistles to identify themselves to others, and they mimic others’ whistles to call to them.

Tony had a dream

OK, maybe I have to confirm to readers that it's Gina*, and who knows, maybe it's her dream too...

* Gina is joining the club of rich Australians who are losing in court.  I thought this might cheer her up...

Why do it?

Sam Rockwell in talks for Poltergeist remake | Film | theguardian.com

It's always a puzzle as to why people want to do remakes of films which were critical and commercial successes at the time.  (At least if they are not based on earlier, "classic" stories or novels.)

So this seems a very strange proposal.

"Poltergeist" was an enormously enjoyable and witty fright flick; well directed, written and cast.   It played as emotionally real as well (remember the scene where the spirit of the girl passes through the mother, and her reaction?)

Why remake it?

What? Is Abbott doing the full Romney?

It was just mentioned on Lateline, as breaking news, that the ABC understands the Coalition will tomorrow announce a tax cut for companies, worth $5 billion (I think) over an unspecified period.

Well, if true, those Liberal Party operative trips to learn how to do politics with the Tea Party influenced GOP is going to backfire.

Because everyone knows, the way to deal with an ongoing government revenue problem (and government debt dis-arrs-ter)  is for it to, um, cut revenue.

Update:  So, I see the justification is expected to be:

a.   that it compensates big companies for the parental leave plan levy. (Responses noted in some comments at The Guardian:  "yeah, big companies like the banks are doing it so tough we must be very careful they never hurt"; and "so Abbott is effectively having the public fund it after all".)  

b.  part of the Henry Tax review proposed cutting the company tax rate.  But,  um, didn't he also expect a mining tax to usefully increase revenue for the government?

Update 2:  to be honest, to do the full Romney, a politician or economist has to have read Ayn Rand and say things that indicates he's thinking in terms of Moochers and Looters.   Abbott is (note dear readers:  I am giving him a compliment) almost certainly not silly enough to have read Rand, and his Australian variety of Catholicism helps ensure that he is happily free of the weird Randian influence that we see in US Catholic/libertarian Republicans.   Still, there's always a slim hope that at some point in the campaign he might make some comment about what a bunch of losers some of the electorate are, and then we award him "the full Romney". 

Update 3:  well, even with all the normal reservations (online polls are hardly scientific and can be scammed easily by partisan players, particularly during a campaign, and this is a Fairfax poll after all, etc etc) I would still guess that the response shown here on the issue indicates most people aren't overly impressed with the policy:

Update 4: so, the "we never saw a tax cut we didn't like - it helps ensure the teeny, tiny government we believe in on ideological grounds" crowd are noting Labor's not so long ago support of lowering the rate of company tax. But Wong handled this pretty well on radio this morning - Labor was saying they were "aiming for" this when they were also saying they could be back in surplus in a couple of years. That hasn't happened, and won't for a while yet, so they put off the company tax reductions too.

Isn't the problem for the Coalition that, as they like to run with simplistic economics arguments that governments have to control their budgets like households do, then that approach is going to come back to bite them when they try to go with Laffer curve, trickle down arguments for lowering taxes at a time when they are simultaneously saying there is a government debt crisis.

More evidence I'm not alone...

Slate has a article entitled Clint Eastwood made Mitt Romney's strategist vomit, and other tales. with some short extracts from a book about the 2012 US Presidential campaign. Given that I was scathing at the time of wingnutty people who thought that the Clint Eastwood "empty chair" performance was brilliant, I am happy to see that even as it was happening, it was freaking out Romney people (or, at least, one of them):

Stuart Stevens, watching in another room in the hall, was literally sickened. He walked out of the room and threw up.

- Balz on how Romney's ad guru watched the RNC Clint Eastwood speech.

Heh.

No one cares? Excellent...

Avatar sequels? Three? No one cares. Here's why.

I have seen about 10 minutes of Avatar while the kids were watching it on DVD.  The blue characters looked a bit cartoonish to me.  I had no interest in the story, which is just about a guy who goes blue, and  native, isn't it?  James Cameron is personally bizarrely brave (even thinking about sinking for hours into the black, crushing abyss in a one man submarine makes me feel claustrophobic) but I have never cared much for his films. 

So I was pleased to read this article which explains that the film hasn't had the same cultural longevity as its box office might suggest.  Good. 

It certainly gets around...

HPV linked to oesophageal cancer

The human papillomavirus (HPV) triples the risk of the most common form of oesophageal cancer, a study by researchers at the University of New South Wales has found.

There was other HPV and throat cancer news around recently that I didn't note.  Here it is:

One third of people diagnosed with throat cancer are infected with a form of the HPV virus, a study suggests.

HPV (human papillomavirus) is the major cause of cervical cancer, and the virus is known to spread through genital or oral contact....

Experts said this study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, which quantifies the link, showed "striking" results.

There are more than 100 types of HPV. Most people will be infected with HPV at some point, but in most the immune system will offer protection.

There are two HPV strains which are most likely to cause cancer - HPV-16 and HPV-18. 

HPV-16 is thought to be responsible for around 60% of cervical cancers, 80% of cancers in the anus and 60% of oral cancers.

Fake meat made to vaguely taste like meat

BBC News - What does a stem cell burger taste like?

Yes, well.  Regular readers would know I have a considerable degree of skepticism about fake meat grown from stem cells.   This article should indicate why.

I mean, how many other reports noted this:

The breadcrumbs, egg powder and seasoning that were added for flavour must certainly have helped with its taste. It was also coloured with beetroot and saffron - as the stem cell strands on their own are an unappetising pasty colour. 

And it was fried in a heap of butter.  That might have helped a bit with the flavour, don't you think?

The point is, because a slab of steak is a lot more than just muscle cells, I reckon the most you're ever going to get from it is going to be mince meat style products. They might be marginally better than other imitation versions of mince meat, but in terms of environmental and cost comparisons with other ways of making protein, you would really have to compare it to what you can make from the likes of soy or fungus.

I strongly suspect that it is always going to be cheaper and environmentally friendlier to extract protein from fungus (Quorn is the product that currently does this) and made it into imitation meat rather growing muscle cells and convert them into imitation meat.   (Basically, because I expect the growing medium for the former to be cheaper than what you would have to grown stem cells in.) 

I could be wrong, but this is my hunch.

A paralysed life

This is a really remarkable story, about a Brazilian man (and woman) who have only known life in hospital (with rather occasional outings.)  

You have to admire the resilience of some people.

"Let's be reasonable" Vs "It's a dis-arrs-ter!"

The media divide on economics commentary is shown in hilarious contrast in Fairfax Vs News Ltd papers today.

From Fairfax:  Tim Colebatch reinforces Michael Pascoe's line from yesterday with this:

We could try to put the budget back into surplus now, but to do so we would have to make at least $30 billion a year of spending cuts and/or tax rises. That amounts to taking 2 per cent out of an economy in which growth is running at only 2.25 per cent to start with.

What would happen if we did that? Very likely, Australia would go into recession. Unemployment would rise rapidly, output would fall. Welfare spending would rise, and revenue would fall, so we would be back in deficit, and would have to make even steeper budget cuts to get back into surplus. Europe provides plenty of examples of the consequences of this policy error.

Which would you choose? To get the budget back into surplus even if the economy goes backwards, or to keep the economy growing, even if the budget goes backwards?

It's important to get our priorities right. The budget deficit is the result of a weak economy, not the cause of it. One of Wayne Swan's worst mistakes as Treasurer was to lock himself into a commitment to deliver a surplus in 2012-13, and treat it as a test of good economic management - a test he then failed.

(Interestingly, further down, he says the carbon price is estimated by Toyota to only put $115 on the cost of a new car made here.)

And Peter Hartcher talks about Ken Henry's view that government is simply not facing up to the need to increase revenue in light of the future needs of an ageing population.

Meanwhile, at Murdoch's "The Australian"  (new masthead features the sub-heading "Labor - It's a dis-arrs-ter", some anonymous economist tells us we're heading into a recession we don't have to have, and cites all the usual Right wing suspects - we need a budget surplus, less regulation, more flexible IR laws, etc.  He complains that Treasury hasn't been giving independent and fearless advice about the problem:  presumably he hasn't caught up with what Ken Henry has been saying for some time.  And funny how he can be talking about Australia's cost competitiveness problems without mentioning the unexpectedly persistent high Australian dollar for the last few years.

Then Judith Sloan regales us with a tabloid "it's so unfair to hit the poor with higher tobacco taxes" (what's the bet Sloan was a smoker at one point in her life?  It's virtually a requirement to any participant at Catallaxy.)  And speaking of Catallaxy, Sinclair Davidson gets quoted in a lengthy article featuring a line up of economists, but only ones who are small government/less regulation advocates from way back, about how bad spending and unnecessary regulation under Labor has become.  

The disappearance of Fairfax would be a disaster for political discussion in Australia.

Pascoe on the economic situation

Joe Hockey's 'please explain' moment

Michael Pascoe really puts the boot into "Hockeynomics", with an analysis that will warm the heart of Labor:

The Hockeynomics contradictions were front and centre on Friday. You can either be appalled by the forecast rise in unemployment and give the impression you would reduce it, or you can be appalled by the larger deficit and give the impression you would reduce it – but you can't do both at the same time.

If you accept that the economy will grow more slowly this financial year, that there's a bit of a gap in the transition from the resources construction boom to the rest of the economy lifting its game, the very good news in Friday's economic statement was that the deficit is indeed being allowed to grow. After heading in opposite directions over the past year, fiscal and monetary policy are now aligned, both providing stimulus for a year when growth will be softer.

Just as the politics overshadowed the most important economics in the May budget, the higher deficit and unemployment rate grabbed the economic statement's headlines – they're the two simple issues that dominate the political screaming match.

Lost was the admission that the record fiscal contraction was even worse than published in May. The budget papers estimated 2012-13's public final demand (net state and federal government spending) would shrink by 0.5 per cent. The economic statement says it actually contracted by 1.5 per cent. The budget intended to keep public final demand flat this year. After the revised shortfall in revenue, the government is letting the “automatic stabilisers” do their stuff and public final demand is forecast to rise by 0.75 per cent this year and by 0.5 per cent next year before efforts to reduce the deficit kick in.

The new deficit forecast of $30.1 billion represents 1.9 per cent of gross domestic product, compared with the May prediction of an $18 billion deficit worth 1.1 per cent. Any business doing it tough should be grateful for that extra 0.8 percentage points, given that the economy is only expected to grow by 2.5 per cent. Yes, if a lunatic took control and immediately cut spending by $30 billion to balance the budget, GDP would theoretically grow by just 0.6 per cent at best – and actually by considerably less due to knock-on impact.
So if the forecast 6.25 per cent unemployment rate is displeasing, there's no point demanding an immediately smaller deficit.

Tony Abbott: "Everyone knows I'm a crook negotiator and I promise I won't try it again."

Abbott Won't Lead Minority Government

Kind of an odd way for Tony Abbott to kick off an election campaign, isn't it?, given that a hung parliament is certainly not out of the question given current polling.  Does he mean he would not join with a nut or two from Katter's party to form a minority government?  Probably not, is my guess.  

I also just saw Abbott on Sunrise.  He looked tired and a bit lethargic already, after about 15 hours of the  campaign.   He might be attempting to copy Kevin Rudds "no sleep is necessary" approach to life, but it doesn't suit him.

Update:  here's a shot from Sunrise, which is typical of how he looked during the interview:

 "Tired and worried" written all over it, if you ask me...

First election visual comment...

Nice view

The cheapo Samsung Tab 2 was never sold for great specifications on its camera, but it does make taking panorama shots easy, and it was a lovely afternoon at Mt Cootha today:

(Clicking it should enlarge it.)

I think there was an election called while I was in the sun.  This calls for some more photo app play... 

Taming the possum

(There's a new, smaller, shy possum visiting us now.)   

Europe was built on...milk

Nature has a lengthy, fascinating article up about archaeology and milk.  Apart from being a potential reality check for 10 year olds dreaming of that job after watching Indiana Jones movies, it explains  the importance of how (some) humans developed the ability to digest lactose, then spread out to Europe.  Here are some highlights:

During the most recent ice age, milk was essentially a toxin to adults because — unlike children — they could not produce the lactase enzyme required to break down lactose, the main sugar in milk. But as farming started to replace hunting and gathering in the Middle East around 11,000 years ago, cattle herders learned how to reduce lactose in dairy products to tolerable levels by fermenting milk to make cheese or yogurt. Several thousand years later, a genetic mutation spread through Europe that gave people the ability to produce lactase — and drink milk — throughout their lives. That adaptation opened up a rich new source of nutrition that could have sustained communities when harvests failed.

This two-step milk revolution may have been a prime factor in allowing bands of farmers and herders from the south to sweep through Europe and displace the hunter-gatherer cultures that had lived there for millennia. “They spread really rapidly into northern Europe from an archaeological point of view,” says Mark Thomas, a population geneticist at University College London. That wave of emigration left an enduring imprint on Europe, where, unlike in many regions of the world, most people can now tolerate milk. “It could be that a large proportion of Europeans are descended from the first lactase-persistent dairy farmers in Europe,” says Thomas.

This figure sounds surprisingly low:

Only 35% of the human population can digest lactose beyond the age of about seven or eight (ref. 2).

The effect of the genetic mutation which I happily share was possibly profound:

Most people who retain the ability to digest milk can trace their ancestry to Europe, where the trait seems to be linked to a single nucleotide in which the DNA base cytosine changed to thymine in a genomic region not far from the lactase gene. There are other pockets of lactase persistence in West Africa (see Nature 444, 994–996; 2006), the Middle East and south Asia that seem to be linked to separate mutations³ (see 'Lactase hotspots').

The single-nucleotide switch in Europe happened relatively recently. Thomas and his colleagues estimated the timing by looking at genetic variations in modern populations and running computer simulations of how the related genetic mutation might have spread through ancient populations⁴. They proposed that the trait of lactase persistence, dubbed the LP allele, emerged about 7,500 years ago in the broad, fertile plains of Hungary.

Once the LP allele appeared, it offered a major selective advantage. In a 2004 study⁵, researchers estimated that people with the mutation would have produced up to 19% more fertile offspring than those who lacked it. The researchers called that degree of selection “among the strongest yet seen for any gene in the genome”

Compounded over several hundred generations, that advantage could help a population to take over a continent. But only if “the population has a supply of fresh milk and is dairying”, says Thomas. “It's gene–culture co-evolution. They feed off of each other.”

I suggest everyone have a strawberry shake in honour of this research.  Unless you're lactose intolerant, of course...

Hydrogen and solar

Here's a comment I made for another blog, but I wanted it here so I have the links:

I have speculated for some time that using some capacity of solar thermal to split water into hydrogen might be helpful (although I gather it's not efficient to then use the hydrogen to heat the salts on a cloudy day.)  I see just now that a new technique is proposed for hydrogen production using solar thermal.  Unfortunately, moving hydrogen around is not so easy, I think, but using it in house scale fuel cells might be one way of helping with intermittent direct supply from the grid. 

Sunny Greenland

It's been warm in Greenland recently:

The Danish Meteorological Institute is reporting that on Tuesday, July 30, the mercury rose to 25.9 C (78.6 F) at a station in Greenland, the highest temperature measured in the Arctic country since records began in 1958.

The balmy reading was logged at the observing station Maniitsoq / Sugar Loaf, which is on Greenland’s southwest coast, the DMI reports. It exceeded the 25.5 C (77.9 F) reading taken at  Kangerlussuaq on July 27, 1990, in the same general area. Mantiitsoq is Greenland’s sixth-largest town, with a 2010 population of 2,784.

Mantiisoq doesn't look too bad, for a small town in Greenland.

If only Treasury had been worrying about the right things, like stagflation....

Well, the ABC collective (the Australian, Bolt and Catallaxy, for those who have forgotten) gets a boost today by Sinclair Davidson doing a summary of about 2 years of Catallaxy posts (well, except for the ones mentioning what will be mentioned below) in a long column at the Australian which, of course, is also extracted at some length at Andrew Bolt's blog.

Davidson is very big on "holding people to account".   He's forever making shock jock style calls for judges, parole boards, economists, politicians to be sacked or somehow publicly pilloried for matters about which he appears to have no particular experience or knowledge of how decisions were made.   (Mind you, it would not be surprising if the Victorian parole board is about the get a legitimate bollocking by someone - Callinan - who has a better idea of how the system works.)   His libertarian inspired views on economics contain the embarrassing and poisonous stain of Randian thought (he put up a video of a long talk to small government types he gave in New Zealand recently where, in response to a question at the end about use of language in economic debate, he confessed to personally thinking in terms of "moochers and looters".)    

Yet despite his fondness for punishment, he's the economist who, two years ago, started a column with this:

High inflation combined with a sluggish, or stagnant, economy is described as 'stagflation'. The last time the world saw anything like this was in the 1970s.

It is the consequence of pursuing Keynesian economic policy. It should come as no surprise that the return of Keynesianism during and after the Global Financial Crisis could see the return of stagflation.

 He turned up on (surprise!) Andrew Bolt with the same warning.

Look, I know its tough medicine, but Paul Krugman on inflation and the anti-Keynesians seems to have been right for, what, a decade or more now? 

Well, Sinclair should take his punishment and given himself a severe sacking.   

No wonder I need glasses...

Your eyes are half a billion years old

A browser recommendation

I have formerly recommended the Mercury browser for the iPad, because it has the equivalent of a scroll bar down the side, which helps overcome one of the most tedious aspects of most touch screen browsers - getting to the bottom of a long, long thread quickly without a lot of frenetic finger flicking.

Now that I mainly use a Samsung tablet, I haven't found the equivalent.  Until now.

The Maxthon browser not only lets you get to the top or bottom of a large site quickly, its method of flicking back quickly to a link you've just come from is the fastest and most pleasing thing I've seen in a tablet browser.  I think it might load a new site you are going to marginally slower than, say, Chrome; but this is more than compensated for by the way you are instantaneously back from whence you came.

I have only been using it a short time, but it has my endorsement already.   Maxthon (available for both Android and Apple too, I see.)

Hi everyone...have a look at my...

Some time ago, I noted English media reports about the spectacularly odd medical exhibitionist program Embarrassing Bodies.  When I wrote it, I didn't realise it was being shown late night on one of our networks. Since then, I have seen brief bits from it, but last night I got my longest burst of it while half browsing the internet.

This show causes me something close to the cognitive meltdown that awaited poor old HAL. First of all, you could say that the bedside manner of the doctors is exemplary, and (if last night's show is any guide) the patients appear pretty ordinary, normal folk off to get some free medical advice (and, I would hope, treatment.)  The medical explanations of their problems are often accompanied by clear and understandable graphics, and you can appreciate an educational aspect of the show.

But on the other hand, the show can be summarised like this (from last night's episode): "hey world, have a look in close up at my hairy butt while the doctor puts on a glove and tries to work out why I have poos so big they hurt me". Or - "Mum, Dad, everyone I know down my street - did you know I've been finding sex painful since childbirth, and the scar tissue near my vagina will be on telly tonight."

On the third hand, you can say that excessive prudery about nudity is cultural and a bit silly really, and everyone on the show has a (kind of) commendable maturity about it. But honestly, mere nudity is a bit different from having your vagina or testicles examined on TV. There's rarely any doubt about whose genitals are up on the screen too - there are plenty of long shots showing both faces and those bits on display.  And besides just the physical aspect - there is a difference between being open and not embarrassed about a bodily function with a doctor in his or her rooms, and the same on international television. 

How do these patients warn people they know that if they don't want to learn more than they care to know about them, they should not watch an upcoming episode? Do the producers kindly provide a standard warning email/telephone service that seeks to prevent parents/co-workers/neighbours from having nightmares (or, at least, strange conversations around the watercooler the next morning)?  "So, Raj, I didn't realise you actually shave down four inches below your neck so we wouldn't know your body is ape-like hairy."  (Yes, another story from last night's episode.)
 
And why do normal looking and sounding people go on the show at all? Is the NHS so hopeless that they can't get decent treatment except while naked on international television?   And, as I noted in my last bit of writing about the show, what is it about the British that have swung from having Mary Whitehouse as a prominent figure, to being the nation most willing to talk about their genitals and what they do with them on TV?  It's a blessing she's dead; shows like this and the other British series I think I mentioned before about the cheery souls being tested for VD at the clinic would have had her on medication.

The show is both (sort of) good, and so weird I can't stay with it for more than 20 minutes.

How to cyber defeat an enemy?

Don't touch that flash drive—you have no idea where it's been.

This Slate article starts:

If you found a pretty little USB stick on the ground, would you plug it in to see what’s there? No? OK, what do you think your parents, neighbors, and co-workers would do?

When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security ran a similar test in 2011, they discovered that 60 percent of those who found flash drives planted outside of government and contractor buildings plugged them right into their networked computers. Even worse, when the drives were outfitted with an official logo, the number jumped to 90 percent.

Well, maybe those people weren’t properly trained in cyber security, you might say. (Insert joke about incompetent government workers.) Alas, a recent study divulged that 78 percent of IT security professionals confessed to experimenting with unidentified flash drives. Of those surveyed, more than 68 percent had been personally responsible for a security breach at work or home, often as a result of the orphaned drives.

Gee.  Sounds like all you need to do to cyber defeat an enemy is to have agents with sacks full of virus infected USB drives discretely dropping them around government buildings.   And just around the neighbourhood generally, perhaps.

Or maybe you could use a drone to disperse them from the air....

Infrastructure confusion

Infrastructure: No longer a no-brainer | Club Troppo

Yesterday I was quoting Tim Colebatch saying Australia's level of infrastructure spending had long been too low; now someone is arguing our spending is now too high.

No wonder I find this topic confusing.

All I know is that, given the amount of money on tents both sides of politics seem to be intent on spending, my idea of a yurt led recovery no longer seems implausible.

Life in the bridge

I've always wanted to see what the residences inside the Indooroopilly Bridge looked like, and now it seems I will have a chance....

Germs recommended

I seem to have missed a 2011 story about this: Social amoebae travel with a posse, have amazingly complicated social lives

More detail: 

...scientists had discovered a single-celled organism that is a primitive farmer. The organism, a social amoeba called Dictyostelium discoideum, picks up edible bacteria, carries them to new locations and harvests them like crops.

And last night on SBS, the documentary "Pain, Pus and Poison" about how a treatment for syphilis was found, as well as the interesting story of how penicillin was rushed into production in World War II was great, if often gory, viewing.

Slate must be trolling for comments

Kids and dogs: If you’re having a baby, do not get a puppy. - Slate Magazine

Last week, it was inviting a flame war between Apple and Android users (that was kinda fun to read, actually.)  This week, it's an odd column by a women who says you shouldn't get a dog if you want kids, because you'll completely ignore the former when you have the latter.  Actually, both she, and her dog, sound a tad neurotic.

Never mind that billions of Earthlings find dogs and little kids make for a happy household. (Probably a healthier one too.)

Trolling for comments is the only explanation.

Infrastructure talk

Build it, and a stronger economy will follow

Well, that's interesting.  Tim Colebatch talks up infrastructure, and says that spending on it has been too low for about 30 years now.   He also notes that although the Coalition claims that they will make cost benefit analysis of projects a priority, they are already announcing funding for things which probably wouldn't pass that criteria.

But the column also makes mention of things which raise my doubts about how valid cost benefit analysis can sometimes be.  For example, cities used to be very keen on building urban railway lines well before there were people living along them.  Sure, everyone benefits from that maybe 80 years later, but you can't model that well at the time you're building it, can you?

Funnily enough, I see that Henry Ergas is said to have expertise at infrastructure economics.  I wouldn't trust him to have a valid opinion on things like my plan for a yurt led recovery for the Australian economy.*

*  A joke, Joyce.  Yurts aren't "infrastructure".

Just back from Rio, I guess

Sorry, the latest app on the tablet continues to amuse me with its easy method of mild ridicule.  

  

Update: A message across the innerwebs: IT: she seems very resistant to the charms of this blog. How far do I have to go in photoshopping type stuff to get her to visit?

A fan speaks...

An awful lot of claims without explanation

Henry Ergas' latest column in The Australian seems especially full of figures and claims (all about how disastrous Labor policies are) with no explanation or justification.

Maybe he thinks his Right wing fan club follows him enough to remember previous columns where he did explain figures?  In any event, this is a terrible way to write a column.  

Jason Soon, I think, used to hold him in high regard.  I wonder if he still does...

Global warming and floods, continued

Atmospheric Rivers Grow, Causing Worse Floods Ahead | Climate Central

For some parts of the world, "atmospheric rivers" carrying large amounts of water within narrow bands, are likely to get worse under AGW. 

Interesting.