Hanging by a thread

String theory is claptrap. By Gregg Easterbrook - Slate Magazine

This is a good review of one of two recent books that point out the trouble with string theory. Namely, it can hardly be called science at all until it comes up with some plausible way to test it. Perhaps the killer quote is this:

Today if a professor at Princeton claims there are 11 unobservable dimensions about which he can speak with great confidence despite an utter lack of supporting evidence, that professor is praised for incredible sophistication. If another person in the same place asserted there exists one unobservable dimension, the plane of the spirit, he would be hooted down as a superstitious crank.

The book in question is by Lee Smolin, a physicist of considerable standing. The other book out is by Peter Woit, who runs the "Not Even Wrong" blog (see my blogroll.) His blog is dedicated to deriding string theory, and I think he does a pretty good job. I suspect Smolin's book might be the better read, though.

Not Even Wrong is definitely the site to go to if you want evidence against the idea that scientists are idealists who are above career politics and catfighting. Some posts are particularly funny, such as this one about the fight with Lubos Motl (a pro-string theory scientist) over Amazon reviews of the anti string theory books.

Can't we get a movie out of this?

Spears fly over 'cannibal' expedition - National - theage.com.au

The pathetic behaviour of our rival low brow evening current affairs programs would surely make a good comedy movie. Sure, the genre was covered well on TV by "Frontline" in the 1990's, but this latest story of (alleged) dirty tactics makes me think there must be scope for a full length movie in this.

Some ideas:

* journalists from the opposing shows start a secret relationship; (probably been done well before, but I can't think where)

* the ex-spouses of opposing journalists start a relationship and sabotage their ex's shows;

* as a sub plot: youngish network head with interest in a fringe religion tries to get current affairs show to give the religion good PR.

Mind you, movie treatments of television shows often feel very unauthentic in the way they show a TV studio. It's a hard genre to do well. I've always liked "Broadcast News" though.

Shuttle sightings

Human Space Flight (HSF) - Sightings

The link above is to the list of shuttle/space station sightings for Brisbane over the next few days. Monday night at 6.19 should be a particularly long and good view.

About time

Robson and crew arrested in Indonesia - TV & Radio - Entertainment - smh.com.au

It couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch of quasi-journos.

The report says:

The head of the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, Imron Cotan, confirmed five Australian journalists were being held in the Papuan capital and would be deported as soon as possible.

Can't the Australia government to send a top priority two word cable the Indonesians: "No hurry"?

Christians: Embrace uranium

The Religion Report - 13September2006 - Ian Hore-Lacy

Hmm, how did this happen? A book that criticises the "irresponsible romanticism" that is the basis of much of the Green (and Christian) environmentalist movements gets a fair hearing by Stephen Crittenden on his "Religion Report" show.

From the transcript above, the author comments:

The basic motivation of the book is to really challenge some of the Green Christian stuff which has been written over the last 15 years and suggest that a Christian approach should not only respect God's handiwork in creation, that is to focus on Green and aesthetic aspects, but also encompass a practical understanding of the earth's resources, which are no less his handiwork, and that's an important point. And furthermore of course, those resources are needed to give all the six billion inhabitants a standard of living comparable with ours. And Christians seem to just lose sight of that whole second aspect altogether, and that has increasingly worried me....
'
Stephen Crittenden: Your book's full of wonderful pithy sentences like the following: 'Nuclear energy is a fascinating area for Christian reflection.' How is it a fascinating area for Christian reflection?

Ian Hore-Lacy: Well because it's a resource which is timely. It's a resource which requires a particular technology which has been developed over the last 50 years, and which is now available when we actually need it quite badly to replace fossil fuels, both for the reasons we've mentioned in respect to oil, and similarly with gas, and also because of concerns about global warming. And so when these concerns are at a peak, here is the technology that is available. And what's more it isn't a very abundant resource, not simply in the amount of uranium you can quantify right now, and divide by the annual rate of usage right now, that gives you a fairly false or misleading sort of answer, but also because with another step in technology, which is fairly well proven, we can get about 50 or 60 times as much energy out of that resource. Now you can't do that with any fossil fuels.

Just like the miracle with the loaves and fishes, isn't it?

[Previous line not intended to sound sarcastic; more designed to annoy Christian greenies.]

No prayers please

Canada: Orthodox Jew forced off plane | Jerusalem Post

I missed this story from last week, about an Orthdox Jewish man asked to leave an Air Canada aircraft for praying quietly and "lurching back and forth":

The action didn't seem to bother anyone, Faguy said, but a flight attendant approached the man and told him his praying was making other passengers nervous.

"The attendant actually recognized out loud that he wasn't a Muslim and that she was sorry for the situation but they had to ask him to leave," Faguy said.

Some left leaning commentators got all uptight about recent incidents where Muslim passengers were off loaded from aircraft. (You know, "poor Muslims being singled out" etc.)

This incident is evidence to show that concerns about behaviour on aircraft is non-sectarian after all.

Albrechtsen on the effect of 9/11

Janet Albrechtsen: Human rights not sacrosanct | News | The Australian

The first part of this column is particularly good, where Albrechtsen notes how no one complains about anti domestic violence advertising being targetted to men, because it reflects reality. Yet some complain that all anti terrorism action seems to be directed againt Muslims.

Lawrence Wright on the Master Plan

The New Yorker: Fact

Lawrence Wright was the author of the book reviewed in Salon and mentioned in my last post.

In the New Yorker he has a long article about Al Qaeda and its plans. Good reading.

Support from Salon

The road to 9/11 and beyond | Salon Books

When you dig past the weekly articles expressing the writers' ongoing horror of all things Bush, you occasionally find within a Salon article that a bit of support for the President somehow slips through.

For example, there is this week a review of a new book on the background to the 9/11 attacks which contains this line:

Today, from Bush and Cheney speeches to the nation's Op-Ed pages, we continue to be bombarded with declarations about whether the al-Qaida faithful hate America for its freedoms or for its policies. Wright's work reveals that the answer, clearly, is both.

Well, that seems close enough to count as support for the Bush "they hate us for our freedoms" speech of 20 September 2001. How nice of Salon.

You should read the review to see why the author argues this. It is interesting.

Hitchens on fear

Remembering Ari Fleischer's reign of terror. By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

Christopher Hitchens' latest Slate piece destroys a relatively small bit of ongoing anti-Bush administration mythology. Still, this type of lazy and careless journalism that this case highlights seems so common now. All rather reminiscent of the non plastic turkey.

Hitchens was on Lateline last night, but I missed most of it. Quite a pity, given this extract posted over at Tim Blair.

And to round up all recent things Hitchens (he has been busy), there was this one at Opinion Journal if anyone missed it.

Meteor boom in New Zealand

Readers report: Sonic boom in Christchurch - 12 Sep 2006 - National News

Reports are just coming in about a meteor over New Zealand causing a very loud "boom". First hand reports are at the link above.

No word yet on whether part of it hit the ground.

Funny Price

Matt Price: All sides cop a flegging | News | The Australian

Matt Price's column on the Queensland election is really very funny. The funniest line (out of many) is this one about weird independent Bob Katter:

To steal from Winston Churchill, the ex-Nat turned Queensland independent is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma swallowed by a joke covered in bananas sprinkled with peanuts dipped in ethanol.

If this is a bit puzzling to an overseas reader, well, you have to know a bit about Queensland to understand.

About that Senate report

Power Line: Smiling Phases

I expect Hitchens will eventually write on this topic too, as he has already talked a lot about al Qaeda figures in Iraq. I'm sure there must a lot more on the internet about this, but I have not yet gone looking for it.

Christopher Hitchens on the anniversary

Never again: America's new mantra - World - smh.com.au

Worth reading.

He was also interviewed on Radio National this morning. From the parts I heard, his points were generally along the lines contained in the article above. It should be available here later today.

Devils Tower has a birthday

'Close Encounters' rock prepares for centennial - United States - North America

So, the alien landing site celebrates 100 years as a National Monument. Congratulations.

North of Brisbane, Mt Coonowrin in the Glasshouse Mountains could substitute as a less symmetrical landing beacon. Just a little bit of blasting might create a nice flat top to give it added appeal.

A brief guide to EMP

How to survive global warming. By David Shenk - Slate Magazine

From Slate's odd, and barely useful, guide on how to survive various disasters, the entry about electro magnetic pulse is at least a bit informative in a general way.

I would also like to remind any new readers that I have previously discussed the possible use of EMP attack on Iranian nuclear facilities (not necessarily via nuclear weapons, but using the mooted "e bombs".)

The Queensland election

John Quiggin - The end of the Nats

Oddly enough, this short post by John Quiggin is about the only thing I care to link to about the Queensland State election on Saturday.

It is hard to imagine how a worse run campaign could have been run by the conservatives. Springborg has never appealed to me, but then again no Nationals leader has for decades now. His campaign was also interrupted by family tragedy (his father-in-law's suicide.) I doubt that the vote would have been any different had this not happened, though.

Bruce Flegg for the Liberals clearly needed an intensive week long course on media management, and a new haircut. He came across as a goofy looking, charmless, grumpy character, with nothing very specific to say about how to fix the Health portfolio. I had heard him sometimes before he was elected leader, and I thought he came across OK. I just don't know how he let it fall apart so quickly once the election was called.

Both should be replaced, and quickly.

There has been a lack of charisma on display in the State conservative parties for so long that it seems to have become self perpetuating. I mean, what new blood wants to get involved with such a bunch of losers?

Apart from that, they seemed to have no money for advertisements, and to be pretty much policy free. (The only thing I can remember is a vague aim to have no stamp duty within 5 years. This certainly did not sound financially very sound, and even if it was done and did result in a flood of investment and people to Queensland, voters probably wondered where the water to build the new suburbs would come from.)

Ah well, I suppose the one good thing is that uniform Labor State governments helps the Liberals keep power in Canberra.

Pamela Bone on 9/11

Pamela Bone: The folly of blaming ourselves | News | The Australian

There will be many good columns on the anniversary of 9/11. Pamela Bone's one in The Australian today is fairly short but good.

Terry Lane and I agree on Australian cinema?

Sunny Steve cut through the dismals - Opinion - theage.com.au

Most of time, I read Terry Lane because there is an excellent chance that he will say something I strongly disagree with, and the flaws in his arguments are sometimes easily picked. (Especially when he writes an entire column based on a made up story.)

This week his Age column is a kind of defence of Steve Irwin, but is most notable because of his take on the state of Australian cinema:

All this is by way of putting it on record that the Lanes will not be parting with any more of their hard-earned to watch dismal Australian films. We endured the grim masterpiece Somersault. We were depressed by Look Both Ways and were shocked by the parched, unrelieved violence of The Proposition. We left half-way through the incredibly ugly Jindabyne. We didn't find a lot to laugh at in Kenny with its relentless portrayal of human nature. And we had to tie ourselves to the seat to see Last Train to Freo to the end.

We passed on the several celluloid entertainments to do with drug addiction and teenage suicide. It is all enough to make you leave the cinema desperate for the sunny optimism of Steve Irwin.

Barry Jones once observed that the characters in Australian films are typically regressive - they never make things happen, things happen to them. When was the last time that you saw a local film in which the principal characters seized control of their lives and made some good things happen and finished the film ahead of where they started? Is this how our creative elites who control the disbursement of production money see us? Is a happy ending anathema to the funding wallahs?

Gosh, even lefty atheists can dislike Australian film on the same grounds as I do. This is indeed surprising, because, I have tended to blame lefty atheists as they seem to be the only people making Australian cinema.

It has long seemed to me that modern Australia movies (since its 1970's revival) have always reflected the strong secular materialist view of the world of the arts community in this country, with any religious aspect of life either treated with disdain (such as showing clerics as being hypocrites) or, more commonly, being ignored entirely.

Of course, Phillip Adams takes great pride in his role in establishing the modern Australian cinema, and indeed it seems like everyone in the cinema community shares his (and Lane's) strident atheism, or at least a high degree of cynicism towards religion.

For me, this has always meant that an air of shallowness pervades the whole body of Australian cinema. The only supernaturalism that occasionally gets a look in might be of the aboriginal variety. For me (and, I expect, most Australians), this does not have much resonance.

It's not that many Hollywood movies have ever been overtly religious in theme. However, they are still capable of having characters who take religion seriously, and are not held up for ridicule or written as dislikeable because of it. Ghost stories or supernatural comedies can be made there; never here. What's worse, gruesome nihilistic earth-bound horror is the new genre some young Australian fim makers are getting into.

Hollywood today is not exactly a hot bed for conservative religion, but there is a sense in which I think that Hollywood cinema still treats the "big themes" of life, death and meaning in much greater depth. (Even an agnostic like Woody Allen dealt with it well in a small scale film like "Crimes and Misdemeanors") I expect that this is probably to do with the predominantly Jewish background of the American industry, even if most are now either non religious Jews, or follow the most liberal parts of Judaism.

Of course, as a nation the United States is so much more religious than Australia, so one might argue that naturally there will be writers and movie makers there who are interested in such material. None the less, it still surprises me how consistently Australian films have had this dogged lack of interest in whether there is something beyond the materialist world.

I don't have time to set out the many examples from Australian cinema that could illustrate this, but I assume that someone else has noticed this too.

Slate's Weisberg gives Bush credit

We haven't been attacked since 9/11. Does Bush deserve the credit? By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine

Surprisingly, for a Slate article, the answer pretty much is "yes". As you might expect, I don't agree with everything in it, but the basic arguments seem sound.