Pick someone else for your defence

Legislating against lies is a half-baked idea

I was surprised to see from a Laurie Oakes column that high profile barrister (and continual Howard government critic) Julian Burnside had said something as stupid as this:

Prominent barrister Julian Burnside will have a lot of people cheering his latest idea. "I suggest we introduce a law that makes it an offence for politicians to lie," he told the Future Conference in Melbourne...

As Laurie says:

A major problem with this is defining just what constitutes a lie.

Burnside, for example, says: "The big turnaround on climate change in the past six months is just the best demonstration that they (the government) have been lying up to now."

Patent nonsense. The government's changed attitude may simply demonstrate that politicians are capable of being persuaded to change their minds by logical argument and an accumulation of evidence.

Burnside's slipshod use of the word "lie" is just typical of the Left in the last 10 years, especially when it comes to the question of the justification for the invasion of Iraq.

The rockets keep coming

Hamas threatens to fire more Kassams | Jerusalem Post

18 Israelis are injured (one seriously) as a result of more rockets coming from Gaza onto Sderot. One theory for the attack is revenge for a Palestinian killed near the security fence. Another theory:

Defense officials, however, said the attack was most likely connected to the ongoing internal clashes between Fatah and Hamas inside Gaza that killed at least 15 Palestinians Tuesday.

According to the officials, the Hamas attack was an attempt to draw attention away from their slaying of eight Fatah security officers earlier in the day and was meant to provoke Israel into invading Gaza, a move that would end the internal fighting and unite Fatah and Hamas against their common Israeli enemy.

Sound plausible, and if true would confirm that Palestinians are the neighbours from hell. (So to speak - not speaking literally, you know.)

And I thought real estate agents were bad here

Los Angeles Times: LA Land Blog

It would appear from the above article that real estates agents in the US usually make a 6% commission.

That seems extraordinarily high compared to Queensland - where there is a statutory limit of 5% for the first $18,000, and 2.5% of the balance purchase price. In theory it is supposed to be negotiable, but in reality very few agents will do it for less.

A successful agent in the US must have quite an income. Good agents here don't do so bad.

Intriguing idea

A Two-Time Universe? Physicist Explores How Second Dimension of Time Could Unify Physics Laws

Hey, I don't understand what it really means, but this is the first time I have ever heard that anyone is working on the unification of the laws of physics by proposing an additional (hidden) dimension of time. (Unseen extra dimensions of space are part and parcel of string theory, but it works on one dimension of time.)

I will have to wait for some popular science journal to give a more detailed explanation.

Green mush not so good

Research says boiling broccoli ruins its anti-cancer properties

In this study, the scientist types bought a bunch of vegetables:

...(broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower and green cabbage) from a local store and transported them to the laboratory within 30 minutes of purchasing. The effect of cooking on the glucosinolate content of vegetables was then studied by investigating the effects of cooking by boiling, steaming, microwave cooking and stir-fry.

Boiling appeared to have a serious impact on the retention of those important glucosinolate within the vegetables. The loss of total glucosinolate content after boiling for 30 minutes was: broccoli 77%, Brussel sprouts 58%, cauliflower 75% and green cabbage 65%.

I think I have spotted a flaw in the research: who boils broccoli for 30 minutes anyway? Only people who don't have teeth to eat their dinner, I suspect.

Anyway, the other methods of cooking investigated resulted in a much more of the anti-cancer compounds being left in. No surprises there.

Good news or not - you decide

Global Warming - North Atlantic Current - Scientists Back Off Theory of a Colder Europe in a Warming World - New York Times

The headline there says it all - but here's more detail from the article:

Mainstream climatologists who have feared that global warming could have the paradoxical effect of cooling northwestern Europe or even plunging it into a small ice age have stopped worrying about that particular disaster, although it retains a vivid hold on the public imagination...

Not only is northern Europe warming, but every major climate model produced by scientists worldwide in recent years has also shown that the warming will almost certainly continue.

“The concern had previously been that we were close to a threshold where the Atlantic circulation system would stop,” said Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We now believe we are much farther from that threshold, thanks to improved modeling and ocean measurements. The Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current are more stable than previously thought.”

I sort of liked the irony of global warming causing Europe to turn to ice. But now I will just have to settle for wine production in Scotland and Norway, or some such.

Hitchens profiled

Profiles: He Knew He Was Right: The New Yorker

I don't know if it was available on their website before now, but for whatever reason I had not previously read this very lengthy profile of Christopher Hitchens from the New Yorker last year. It's a fascinating read.

He turned up talking to Phillip Adams on Late Night Live last week, and they appear to still be friends, which surprised me somewhat. Maybe a mutual dislike of the concept of God is enough to paper over the differences.

About Geoengineering

Climate Feedback: Sunshades

Nature has a blog about climate change now; I must add it to my blogroll.

The link above is to an entry about geoengineering, and its politics. It also has a link to a full Nature feature on the topic. I don't know how long that will be available: News@Nature stories disappear really quickly.

Magnetic field leaving?

Space weather | Look down, look up, look out! | Economist.com

It's a little worrying that the earth seems to be on the way to losing its magnetic protection from solar and other radiation for an unknown period of time:

Just when the magnetic field will flip is impossible to predict from what is known at the moment; the best guess is that there are still several centuries to go. Nor is it clear how long its protective shield will be down. (The record in the rocks is little help, since a geological eyeblink represents many human lifetimes.)

As it has happened many times since life evolved, it's not as if it is going to sterilise the planet. But the possible effects of it on human life seem not to be well understood.

Reason to worry

Atomic Agency Concludes Iran Is Stepping Up Nuclear Work - New York Times

From the article:

Inspectors are concerned that Iran has declined to answer a series of questions, posed more than a year ago, about information the agency received from a Pakistani nuclear engineer, Abdul Qadeer Khan. Of particular interest is a document that shows how to design the collision of two nuclear spheres — something suitable only for producing a weapon....

“They are at the stage where they are doing one cascade a week,” said one diplomat familiar with the analysis of Iran’s activities, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the information. A “cascade” has 164 centrifuges, and experts say that at this pace, Iran could have 3,000 centrifuges operating by June — enough to make one bomb’s worth of material every year. Tehran may, the diplomat said, be able to build an additional 5,000 centrifuges by the end of the year, for a total of 8,000.

Hairpiece Theatre Company presents...

I didn't see all that much of Bastard Boys. In what I did see, I found myself continually distracted by watching the attempts at re-creating Corrigan, Combet and (most of all) Kelty's hair styles. Maybe this could only have been avoided by something radical, like doing the equivalent of a "modern dress" version of Shakespeare. Yes, a "modern hair" version of the dispute.

In my other commentary (based on seeing only about a third of the show, so that I can annoy people by criticising something I haven't fully seen):

* Michael Duffy's criticism that Corrigan was shown as a loner was pretty correct. There barely seemed to be office staff around him, let alone advisers. Yet I heard the makers say he did co-operate with the writers with a 5 hour interview. He apparently hasn't seen or commented on the final product.

* It seemed, as a drama, too "bitty" and episodic, without a good dramatic structure. It jumped between snippets of court room advocacy, some (fictionalised) personal bits of fluff irrelevant to the story overall, and some parts that didn't really add anything significant. (I had forgotten about Corrigan's brother's involvement, but really, it still didn't feel important to the story overall.)

* Interestingly, Phillip Adams reports that Bill Kelty was not interviewed by the makers and is very upset about the way his role was portrayed. I heard on the radio that Greg Combet, on the other hand, told the makers that it was "just like being there."

* The whole thing suffered from Australian drama's usual small scale: most of the time the waterfront blockade looked like it was manned by about 20 -30 blokes. (I assume it was more like hundreds.) Is there some problem with getting extras to appear for free in this country? Films and TV here so often looks like it needs more busy-ness in the background just to look real.

* I remain very dubious about this whole type of exercise: letting dramatists illustrate recent history. I would much prefer to see a decent, detailed documentary attempted if the protagonists are still around.

Washing the world's buttocks

Toto hoping Americans will warm to bidet-toilet | The Japan Times Online

Toto, the Japanese company that makes its most popular bidet-toilet, plans to expand into the American market. According to the article:

Toto's bidet-toilet first gained public attention with a landmark TV commercial in 1982, which carried a promotion phrase: "Buttocks, too, want to be washed."

Somehow, I think the US advertising agencies are going to have to come up with something better than that.

By co-incidence, I recently noticed an advertisement in a Brisbane newspaper for a Hyundai brand toilet bidet. I have found this Bidet Shop website about them. The copy seems not exactly written by a native English speaker, and one claim in particular is new to me:

With the push of a button the HYUNDAI Bidet toilet seat will gently clean you and depending on which model you require, will perform many other functions, a few being dry and massage, that will leave you thinking "why didn't I have a HYUNDAI Bidet years ago."

What exactly does the Hyundai toilet bidet massage??

The Bidet Shop website also gets, well, more than a little carried away with its "health issues" page. (I don't think I can link directly to that page, you have to use the navigation button on the left of their main page). Believe me, it is well worth visiting, to read stuff like this:

In more than a few ads for bidets, doctors claim the device may even prevent colon cancer, but we have found no study so far that substantiates that. Despite the lack of hard data, it seems reasonable that just the thought of a device that might prevent surgeons from one day removing a substantial portion of your rectum would create a frenzied run on bidets.

It is accompanied by a photo of surgery, presumably of someone having their rectum removed because they failed to buy a toilet bidet.

How could an ad agency improve on that?

Offset scams

Carbon offset cash-in questioned - New Scientist Environment

From the article:

The market in carbon offsets, which allows companies to invest in renewable energy as a way of mitigating their own greenhouse gas emissions - almost doubled in 2006 to $5 billion, the World Bank said on 2 May. According to a recent report in the London-based Financial Times, some of that money is going to oil companies that are simply pumping CO2 into oilfields to extract more oil. They would have done this anyway, so profits from selling the credits go straight into company coffers, with no benefit to new carbon-saving schemes.

A busy life, and a movie review of sorts

Less frequent posting lately is largely due to very busy work and home life. I am not sure why, but there also just seem to be fewer stories around at the moment which I feel inspired to comment on. I don't think I have had a significant break in blogging since I was on holiday a year ago; maybe that is part of the problem.

Anyway, when I feel like this for a few days, usually it's suddenly followed by a day with a half dozen stories that I want to comment on. Life is like that.

A free ticket that had to be used led me to see Spiderman 3 over the weekend. I am no fan of superhero films generally, but like David Stratton, I think the Spiderman franchise is the best of the genre. Toby Maguire is a large part of this: he does have a degree of charisma which is not evident in most of today's young Hollywood actors. (As I have said before, in the 1980's there seemed to be a pool of reliable, likeable actors who generally chose material that was worth seeing. When that group aged out of their prime by the mid 1990's, the group of younger stars following them just didn't seem to have any similar charm.) Kirsten Dunst does alright in her role too, but I must admit there is something about her face that makes it entirely forgettable for me from movie to movie.

Spiderman 3 is enjoyable. The story bounces around a bit (there is plenty of criticism that it tries to fit in too many characters and plot lines,) but it is never dull, and the way it all comes together by the end was pretty satisfying. It's not afraid to be a little silly, and the theme about not getting consumed by revenge was dealt with in a way which felt more convincing than it did in, say, any Star Wars movie after The Empire Strikes Back. That George Lucas didn't like it is sour grapes. His last three movies show how bad he is at making characters feel real. (He didn't even write or direct the pinnacle of the Star Wars series - Empire Strikes Back.) There is no such problem with the protagonist of the Spiderman series.

The movie is effectively the end of a trilogy, and it is a little hard to see where Spiderman 4 is going to go, especially in terms of the Mary-Jane relationship. I think the next movie is going to have to leave that right out, as to continue dwelling on its difficulties would be mean. I assume that superhero-dom will not allow for married domesticity, even though it could interest me.

Holidays in New Guinea off the agenda

Human sacrifice cult battles with police - Telegraph

From the article:

Commander Augustine Wampe, of Morobe police, said a helicopter carrying a mobile squad of anti-riot officers had been dispatched to the area following reports of murders in which victims were beheaded and their heads impaled on stakes.

Some of the heads were then allegedly paraded around a village. “The reported activities of the people point to cult activity,” Cdr Wampe told The National newspaper.

Watch out

Oral sex can cause throat cancer - 09 May 2007 - New Scientist

From the article:

The new findings should encourage people to consistently use condoms during oral sex as this could protect against HPV, the team says.

That's going to go over well with groups such as American teens, for whom this activity presumably carries the benefit of requiring no contraception. Gay men won't like it either, and I think it is safe to assume that this is one warning that will have little effect on behaviour.

How to annoy Andrew Bolt

News Corp carbon neutral by 2010 | NEWS.com.au Business

Andrew has already noted this.

Scary justice in Japan

Coerced confessions: Justice derailed in Japan - International Herald Tribune

Do try and avoid being a suspect in Japan.

Everything you never wanted in kid's TV

Palestinian TV uses Mickey Mouse to promote resistance | Guardian Unlimited

Short budget comment

Costello provides vision beyond the pork-barrelling - Editorial - Opinion

If even The Age has an editorial with a heading like that approving of the Budget, it can't be a bad one.