Talking to the cultural luvvies

End the culture wars and make way for a renaissance - Opinion - smh.com.au

Julia Gillard gave an address to someone last night (the SMH doesn't say who,) but the edited version of it reported above certainly indicates it was a vacuous effort at reminding the cultural luvvies (as if they needed it) that Labor is the one who really loves and supports them. Some extracts:

We need to get a real conversation going between our cultural producers and the public. This isn't just about elites; it involves all of us. It's time to end the culture wars.

Within TV what examples does she give? Not exactly hard to guess:

Another good start would be for our TV networks to take seriously their commitment to providing quality Australian content. Recent dramas such as Curtin and Bastard Boys show what can be achieved...

Presumably, it's the Whitlam career, the Hawke ascendency and a TV version of Keating: The Musical that she is hanging out for. (Personally, I would prefer to see a musical interpretation of the Latham Diaries, but I am not sure even Julia wants to see that.)

More pap follows:

This great Australian cultural renaissance could be one of the most important national investments we could make, because Australian culture is ideally suited to the challenges of today.

Kissy kissy arts/cultural community. We will give you more money; remember Keating?

Now to cover the aboriginal cultural lobby:

We should never forget Australia's indigenous culture is one of the longest-surviving cultures in the world and we should never forget to be proud of that fact. We can also learn from it. Climate change is giving us an urgent interest in doing so.

We need to develop a new respect for the reality of our harsh physical environment and adapt to its changes. Aborigines were never passive occupiers of the land. As we have, they moulded the land as it moulded them. But we're leaving far too big an ecological footprint and have much to learn from indigenous land management and ecological knowledge.

We should be proud, Kimosabe? Seems a bit of unwarranted cultural appropriation going on here.

As for what we can learn from Aboriginal land management, the lesson I take is: yes go ahead and mold the land, it's there to be turned from forest into grassland by regular CO2 producing burning, but if that is what you need to survive comfortably, then go ahead.

It's a feature of her side of politics that soft-headed thinking attempts to give moral credit to a pre-industrial society for only modifying the landscape to the extent that they could without bulldozers and dynamite. Oh, and for making it "sustainable" for 40,000 years. I trust that the extinct megafauna probably don't see it the same way as Julia.

Of course, some local Aboriginal knowledge may be ecologically useful, just like the knowledge of any non aboriginal who has had a family living in an area for, say, 100 years. It's just the suggestion that indigenous land management is "special" or more moral than what modern society does that irritates.

Julian ends by talking about the movie Happy Feet:

You might think I'm pulling a long bow in drawing conclusions from an animated film about a dancing penguin named Mumble. But Mumble is a man - or should I say, a penguin - for our times. He won't conform. Instead of singing like everyone else, he dances. And along the way he uncovers some important truths about the need to change our ways.

Australians are a bit like Mumble. In terms of world culture, we're unique: young, unusual, at times exotic and usually undermining authority. We can choose our path. We shouldn't feel we have to sing along in harmony with the rest of the world to have a positive effect on it. But we can dance like no one else. The last thing we need is culture warriors trying to force us to conform.

How exactly have the "cultural warriors" been trying to force conformity?? By suggesting the arts community should be more self sustaining and able to produce products that the public wants to see and read ? By pointing out that the bureaucratic systems for funding arts have in fact been producing material that conforms to a soft left view of the world ever since the cultural revival of the 1970's? By noting that historians who are directly relevant to things like High Court cases have made (at best) careless claims in some of their arguments?

Julia doesn't really dislike cultural conformity; she just wants it to conform to her view of the world.

Silly Julia.

Paint your way to a cooler planet

White Is the New Green - Science - RedOrbit

I think I may have seen this mentioned somewhere else; I am not sure. In any event, this article claims that, due to the cost of solar panels, you can do substantially more for global warming in the short term by painting your roof white. Here's the key paragraphs:

If, instead of a black solar panel absorbing light and producing electricity, you simply painted that square meter white, it would reflect back into outer space perhaps 50 of the 300 watts incident from the sun. So it would take about 25 days for the solar panel to catch up with the more efficient reflection of sunlight that the white-painted panel would provide in a single day.

This seems counterintuitive, of course, as solar panels are net-positive in reducing global warming. And, in many cases, you could install the black solar panel on an existing black building roof, so you wouldn't be "adding" yet another black, heat-absorbing surface [another "albedo-decreaser"] to the earth.

Except for the small issue of money. A 20%-efficient, 1-square-meter solar panel costs about $1,000. For $1,000, you can buy 40 cans of good quality white paint. Each can covers 2,000 square meters with a nice bright reflecting film. So for the same $1,000 investment you could buy one square meter of photovoltaic cells, or cover 2,000 square meters with white paint. It would take more than 2,000 times 25 days, or about a century, for the CO mitigation from $1,000 of solar panels to catch up with the albedo increase of a large painted roof!

So what's a conscientious environmentalist to do? Unquestionably, we need solar panels for electricity. You can't run a washing machine on white paint. But, for every dollar spent on solar panels, we should spend at least a dime on white paint for every roof, parking lot, and road in the country.

There is a mistake in the sentence between the highlighted ones. (The total area that can be covered with $1000 worth of paint is surely 2,000 m2, not 2,000 m2 per can.)

However, it is an interesting argument, to say the least.

There is almost certainly a Satanist amongst them too

The Corner on National Review Online

A very bizarre and amusing story via Mark Steyn at the link above. (Short version: an Episcopalian priest - female by the way - claims she is now a Muslim and a Christian. It appears not to be satire.)

This reminds me of a Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch which had its young, groovy, very non-judgemental vicar talking about how the church shouldn't have a "get behind me" attitude to Satanists, but more of a "come in old mate, let's sit down for a cup of tea and chat" approach. (I wonder how well I am remembering this after 25 years. Sadly, I can't find it on Youtube or elsewhere on the net.)

Kevin Rudd in death spiral

Heh heh heh. Just wanted to see someone write that headline, even if it's only a John Howard tragic like me.

But seriously folks, I have always thought Newspoll had the greatest credibility. I also seem to recall it has been said over the years that a major party has to be looking at getting over 40% of primary vote to have any chance of winning an election.

On this basis, Newspoll's results from earlier this year showing the Coalition at 35% primary vote were bad, as even allowing for a margin of error meant they would still be well below the magical 40%.

As today's results are back to 39%, and the effects of the budget are still kicking in, there is reason for guarded optimism about the coalition's prospects. Headed in the right direction again, at least.

I am also finding it a little amusing to hear Labor complaining when Howard adopts the essence of some of their policies. It's happening today with the broadband issue.

This is one of the neat things about democracy; everyone is allowed to take policy ideas and run with them. The public will let you know if it is good idea of not. No use complaining that the government is only adopting a policy for electoral benefit, or some such. That's what all parties do, and let's face it, it's better than a government refusing to adopt a good idea just because someone else thought of it.

Cereal humour

An amusing post from Bryan Appleyard about breakfast cereal.

For those readers with an intense interest in the details of my private life (hello, anyone there?) I have been perfectly happy with Uncle Toby's Sports Plus for a number of years now. Strangely enough, the Uncle Toby's website seems to be just one page with an email address, probably related to the business being taken over by Nestle last year. (That explains the change in packaging, I guess.)

I am sure you all feel better for knowing this.

This is funny

Wastes of ink

This weekend's Australian press seems to have reached some craptacular heights in wastes of space in 3 columns:

* Phillip Adams in the Australian tries satire of Howard yet again. (You can really, really tell some weeks that he dictates columns while driving between the Hunter Valley and Sydney. At least I think that's his excuse.) Does anyone at all find this funny, or even vaguely witty?

* Alan Ramsey in the SMH does a cut and paste that must rival in word count some of his previous personal bests at how to write a weekly column with an absolute minimum of your own words or thoughts. Has he no shame as to how much effort one must put in to get paid?

* And over at The Age, Tracee Hutchison tries being clever, or satiric, or something, about how the Left isn't loved anymore, and fails spectacularly at whatever her aim was.

It's goal, goal, goal for self inflicted injury to reputation for all three. Congratulations!

When 42 inches just isn't enough

Samsung launches 70 inch LCD TV

In the Al Gore mould - literally

I am probably not the first person to say this, but isn't it somewhat ironic that Michael Moore, in taking the US health system to task, is himself setting an extremely poor example of how to make a bad system even worse (namely, by not taking his obesity seriously.) Maybe it is the unshaved face, but to me he is looking more blimp-like than ever.

Of course, he can afford to pay for his quadruple by-pass, and his diabetes medication, but the fact remains if the American public as a whole took their own weight problems seriously, they would greatly lighten the load (now there's a pun) on the existing medical services.

Al Gore has also packed the pounds on in the last few years too. I would like to know if he is a big beef eater, 'cos some of his greenie supporters might have an issue with that.

Pandas don't like it

Carbon trading is 'emission impossible', says WWF - earth - 14 June 2007 - New Scientist Environment

This very brief snippet indicated that even the WWF is sceptical of carbon trading as currently done by Europe.

But, but, those Europeans are so green, aren't they? (Actually, they just like exporting their problems elsewhere.)

The Gaza mess

Comment is free: The sorrow and the pity

This article from the Guardian is worth reading. She points out that the proposed British academic's boycott of Israel has no objective, and given the mess in Gaza, no possible point to the exercise exists.

Of course, this is a red flag to the bulls who read the Guardian. One writes:

the boycutt of Israel only lacks clear objectives in your mind. The objective is ENOUGH! enough, enough, enough.
Israel has spent the past 40 years screwing up the population it occupies. Now, Palestinian armed factions have finally turned against each other. It's a wonder it didn't happen before considering the mess they live in. ENOUGH! Israeli apartheid. Enough funding one group against another. Enough starving the population of Gaza. Enough bombing. Enough enough enough.
is that clear enough for you?

Err, no not at all.

Meanwhile, over at Tigerhawk he had this interesting discussion of why Arab countries, to put it mildly, don't seem all that good at governing themselves. One comment makes this point:

I would most enjoy seeing the Eypptian military roll into Gaza, decimate the Hamas fanatics and re-assume control of the territory. This would be politically acceptable around the globe and could lead to the most satisfying solution. It would also give the US something for its investment in Egyptian aid -- finally. Nothing would silence the antiZionist euro-brigade more than a Gaza under Egyptian control.

The solution to many of the problems we read about are very near at hand. Egypt to Gaza will quiet a lot of noise. The West Bank will be eminently more manageable.

Initially this sounds like a semi-plausible idea. But, I assume this would not go over well with the radicals in Egypt, and then that country may fall into chaos.

So, no clear end in sight.

UPDATE: a good article in Slate about this, which lists the following problems with all possible solutions:

It's no wonder that everyone involved in this issue is now madly seeking "new ideas." A state in the West Bank only, leaving Gaza to its fate? (Would that state be viable, and who would take care of Gaza?) A three-state solution? (Why give Hamas a base from which it could cause trouble?) A return to the Jordanian-Egyptian solution? (Let them deal with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, respectively. There's one problem: They aren't interested.) An international force? (Hamas promised to treat such a force as an "occupying power." Any volunteers?) Start talking to Hamas? (This won't solve the internal Palestinian problems.) Keep fighting for Gaza? (Fatah seems to be losing its appetite for conflict, and, even with the support it has received from the West, doesn't have enough muscle to stay in the fight.)

Inner city living worth that much?

Yesterday I was walking around the city along a route which took me past a few relatively new high rise apartment blocks. Some of these have "for sale" signs near the entrance, and thus I found myself considering the price of inner city living.

For example, in a year-old block, there was a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment (on the 13th floor, I think) for sale for $460,000. It had two car parking bays too. 87m2 size, I think. Other two bedroom units with ensuites (which are much more common) and on higher floors were for sale for about $600,000.

I know also that "off the plan" contracts for Vision, a very tall high rise planned to be finished in 2011, are selling one bedroom apartments of 67m2 for around $430,000.

I live about 18 km from the city in a pleasant suburb, and am certain that a price in the same range as these units would get you a four bedroom house with a main bathroom, ensuite, and second toilet or bathroom downstairs, probably on around 600 - 700 m2 of land. Sure, it might be 15 -20 years old, but houses of that age are often still of pleasing appearance. During the middle of the day, it takes me about 25 minutes to get to the heart of the city. A house owner also does not pay $2,500 - $3,000 in body corporate levies per year.

It seems to me that inner city living is overvalued, even in Brisbane.

What will Labor say about this?

Taxation take is helping Howard battlers | News | The Australian

Presents quite a conundrum for Labor in deciding how to question this.

Why Kevin Rudd should not be Prime Minister

A snippet from Matt Price's column:

Although it’s no secret the Labor leader is something of an expert at yin and yang, he’s not bad at ping and pong either. Bloody competitive, though: “Not that I was counting but we won 21-16,” he bragged.

Hmmm. Such a minor thing, but still noted in my little black book of likely character defects of the man who would be PM.

Update: yes, as my commenter indicates, my post did not make it clear he was playing aged pensioners. And keeping careful track. Couldn't he have let them win?

Hitchens on Paris (so to speak)

The creepy populism surrounding Paris Hilton and Scooter Libby. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

Christopher Hitchens opens this column as follows:

There is a huge trapdoor waiting to open under anyone who is critical of so-called "popular culture" or (to redefine this subject) anyone who is uneasy about the systematic, massified cretinization of the major media. If you denounce the excess coverage, you are yourself adding to the excess. If you show even a slight knowledge of the topic, you betray an interest in something that you wish to denounce as unimportant or irrelevant.

True.

Mr 22%

Sperm - Sleek, Fast and Focused: The Cells That Make Dad Dad - New York Times

This light-hearted look at sperm cells explains why men have to make so many of them:

...the majority of sperm couldn’t fertilize an ovum if it were plunked down in front of them. “Only a perfectly normal sperm can penetrate an egg,” said Dr. Harry Fisch, a urologist at Columbia University Medical Center, “and the majority of sperm are abnormally shaped.” Some may have pinheads, others have two heads, some lack tails, a third don’t move at all. As a rule, Dr. Fisch said, a man is lucky if 15 percent of his sperm are serviceable. “One guy I saw had 22 percent,” he said, “but that’s rare.”

I didn't realise the figure was so low, even for fertile guys. Still, even with, say, 10% being effective, the article points out that the average ejaculation presents 150 million in total. So that's 15,000,000 good quality, potentially egg breaking, sperm each time.

Still sounds like very inefficient design.

The truth about the 1960's

The hippies were wrong: money can buy you love-TimesOnline

David Finklestein's column is an interesting take on the 1960's and the most important thing about it (namely, it was the start of the post war era of abundance.)

I see that he doesn't mention specifically the start of the change in sexual mores, and the role that better contraception played in that. But it's a good read in any case.

The presumptuous Gittins

Back-scratching at a national level - Opinion - smh.com.au

I don't read Ross Gittins regularly, but in the SMH today he makes some very snide and questionable claims about Howard and immigration:

There's a saying among journalists that news is anything someone doesn't want you to know. So let me tell you all about John Howard's immigration program. It's a key part of the Government's economic policy, but one it rarely talks about.

Why? Because Howard wants his Battlers to think he shares their dislike and distrust of foreigners, especially boat people. And it wouldn't help his image for people to know he's running the biggest immigration program we've ever had.

Well, Howard has certainly made a repeated point about the size of the "official" refugee program. And after the Hanson fizzle, I just don't see that the Australian public has much interest in the level of Asian immigration, unless it has a strong Muslim flavour. (An understandable consequence of 9/11 and the West's increased interest in what that religion is about.) If anything, I suspect the concern about Muslim immigration has probably made most people see other Asian immigrants as benign.

In fact, Gittins provides another reason why "battlers" might not have the same concerns that they used to about immigration generally. He points out that:

The emphasis on skill means that permanent immigrants are a lot younger than the population they're joining. More than half are aged 15 to 34, compared with 28 per cent of our population. Only 2 per cent of permanent immigrants are 65 or older, compared with 13 per cent of our population.

Younger people from non-English speaking backgrounds are naturally going to assimilate faster than older, non-skilled migrants. Pauline Hanson used to complain about street signage in some areas being in foreign language only; skilled migrants who come here to work don't need that.

Gittins also claims this:

The Battlers' eternal objection to immigrants - which I believe was a big part of the strong public support for our shameful treatment of people on the Tampa - is that "these people will take our jobs".

I reckon the jobs issue had next to nothing to do with public attitudes about the Tampa. It was about the method by which a bunch of claimed refugees sought to get into Australia when they were in no danger at their last "staging post", and they were displacing other refugees who went through a long process of formal assessment.

Anyway, today, at current unemployment levels, even the "battlers" are unlikely to be concerned about that.

The fact is that the immigration issues have moved on from the 1980's and 1990's concerns, yet Gittins seems to think that the "battlers", having decided that they don't like immigrants of any kind, are still stuck on that position. I think this is treating people as unthinking dills.

As to whether Howard uses immigration cynically: I suppose it is easy to claim this if you don't live areas of Sydney where the question of Muslim attitude to women is not a matter of frequent real life concern. I don't agree with everything the government suggests about how to go about making sure all immigrants accept the social standards of their new country, but I don't feel that Howard's motives in wanting to deal with this should be seem as being purely cynical either.

England follows Australia

Marriage works. Accept no substitutes-Comment-Columnists-Libby Purves-TimesOnline

It's surprising to realise that Britain is only now contemplating de facto couple property rights of the kind which are now standard in (I think) every Australian State. That is, if a couple lives together for a certain period, or if they have children, their rights to "matrimonial" property may be divided by the courts using very similar principles to those that would be used by the Family Court in a real marriage.

I share much of Libby Purves' views about these laws. As she says:

Divorce is now so accessible that anybody who wants the protections of marriage can get them – unless their cohabiting partner doesn’t agree, in which case, caveat emptor. You need not affront your Dawkins principles by going to church, or betray your anarchist instincts by entering a register office. You can now marry in a bingo hall or a Sea Life Centre. A licence costs only £63.50.

Some couples – I know and love many – jointly decide not to marry. Good luck to them. They don’t whimper for new laws; if they are wise they make legal arrangements about property ownership (like becoming tenants-in-common with appropriate shares) and ensure joint responsibility for children. If they are not wise, then by definition they are fools. You cannot frame every law to suit fools, even fools for love.

Women – who traditionally get the short end of the stick – should be aware that marriage is a safer basis for scaling down work to raise a family, and that if they eschew it or are denied it, then they had better make arrangements. Men, these days, should do the same. If you hippyishly reject marriage because “it’s just a piece of paper”, don’t expect the nanny state to provide you with an equally safe piece. There are limits to how far government should protect adults from one another’s rapacity or flakiness. You make your bed, you lie in it.

Well said.

Blue sect with sex on its mind

In God's name

It's rare that I would recommend anything from 60 Minutes, and now that I do they have no transcript or video on their site. Grrr.

Anyway, the story that caught my attention on last Sunday was about the Cooperite Christian sect of New Zealand, which was a new one for me. The link above will at least show you the form of dress that the women wear.

This is one creepy sect. The aging founder, Neville Cooper, is from Queensland, and has had umpteen kids from 3 wives. (He is currently on wife number 3, apparently, and the show did not make clear what happened to the first 2.)

According to WikiChristian, which also has very little information about them, there are now 400 members, many of them children because Neville believes all women should pump out as many children as possible. (OK, maybe Catholics of barely 50 years ago could be accused of having a similar teaching, but the young women Cooperites on the show indicated that they actively desired heaps of children - 10 or 12 seemed the bare minimum they wanted. Catholic women were not in the same league, and their desire to limit the number of children became clear in practice when the pill became available.)

The weird side of the cult is that it is both very conservative and adopts a puritan-like and uniform standard of dress (mostly blue, for some reason), but its leader seems to encourage a ridiculous amount of openness in sex within marriage. (His son claims that he frequently saw his parents having sex, who saw it as an educational thing to do for the children. He also says he was molested by his father at age 17. It sounded like it was some "hands on" teaching scenario, although the son did not elaborate.)

The son has since left the cult, but his wife went back, and she and their children will have nothing to do with him ever again.

It seems rare to have such a strange mix of a conservative, isolationist, Christian sect, combined with an emphasis on educating children on sex, and encouraging them to start as young as possible. (They marry as teenagers, and the report showed a newly married teenage couple snogging for the camera while being carried to the honeymoon room in a silly carriage with heart shaped windows, with children throwing flowers on the path in front of them. It was a very strange scene.)

I can't imagine that it will survive the death of Neville Cooper for long, as surely internal power struggles will ensue.

I would like to know more about their attitude to modern medicine and things like that, but there seems no way of finding out more.

Sorry if you missed it.

Fatwa frenzy

A fatwa free-for-all in the Islamic world - International Herald Tribune

The above article explains the problem with Fatwas.

It notes:

Technically, the fatwa is nonbinding and recipients are free to shop around for a better ruling. In a faith with no central doctrinal authority, there has been an explosion of places offering fatwas, from Web sites that respond to written queries, to satellite television shows that take phone calls, to radical and terrorist organizations that set up their own fatwa committees.

"There is chaos now," Megawer said. "The problem created is confusion in thought, confusion about what is right and what is wrong religiously."

In Egypt, there are two official institutions responsible for religious interpretation. The House of Fatwa, or Dar al-Ifta, which technically falls under the Ministry of Justice, and Al Azhar. All court sentences of death must be approved by Dar al-Ifta, for example.

I like the name "House of Fatwa". Is it anything like the House of Blues, I wonder?

Danger watch on CERN continues

I haven't posted anything new for a while that appears particularly relevant to the issue of whether the Large Hadron Collider will cause the premature end of the Earth, or indeed the universe.

However, I seem to have missed this odd one which first appeared a couple of years ago on arxiv, but has recently been revised.

Now, this appears to be one of the more "off the wall" papers on arxiv, as it is written by a Hungarian with some physics background who works in oncology at a hospital. (He may also have an interest in UFO's, if his email address is anything to go by.)

As far as I can make out, he thinks quark colour changes are relevant to the big bang, and he has a concern that the LHC could instigate the same thing. I think this means "end of the universe".

Despite the amateurish look of the paper, and although I do not know whether all the terms used are genuine or not, my guess is that it is just cogent enough to indicate he is not mad. In any event, I have never understood how arxiv papers are chosen.

The CERN answer to such theories of catastrophe from the LHC is to say that cosmic rays have been causing more energetic collisions in celestial bodies for billions of years, and the universe has not disappeared, so we can't do any worse on earth. I think this paper makes some reference to cosmic ray measurements being mistaken, and so might contain an answer to that.

Anyway, someone who can follow esoteric physics better than me should read it and tell me if he is mad, or not.

Murder he wrote

OpinionJournal - Five Best

This list of Theodore Dalrymple's "favorite books on the criminal mind" brought to my attention some mass murderers of whom I had not previously heard.

This one is very Alfred Hitchcock material (except it may be hard to fit in a blond female protagonist in a film about a homosexual killer):

The serial killer was a man called Dennis Nilsen, who used to pick up stray homosexuals in London, take them home, strangle them and then watch television with their corpses beside him on the sofa. As we doctors put it in our special, technical language, he was a bit odd.

But the story which interested me most was the one about the mad French Dr Petiot:

The Occupation during World War II gave him his opportunity to become one of the most prolific serial killers in French history. He offered Jews an escape to Argentina for 25,000 francs, but when they came to his house to deliver the money he killed them and incinerated them.

His story must have a following of sorts, because he has quite a lengthy Wikipedia article. It explains the murder method, and body disposal, as follows:

Petiot claimed that he could arrange a safe passage to Argentina or elsewhere in South America through Portugal. He also claimed that Argentinean officials demanded inoculations and injected his victims with cyanide. Then he took all their valuables and disposed of the bodies. People who trusted him to deliver them to safety were never seen alive again.

At first Petiot dumped the bodies in the Seine, but he later destroyed the bodies by submerging them in quicklime or by incinerating them. In 1941, Petiot bought a house at 21 rue le Sueur.

What Petiot failed to do was to keep a low profile. The Gestapo eventually found out about him and, by April 1943, they had heard all about his "route." Gestapo agent Robert Jodkum forced prisoner Yvan Dreyfus to approach the supposed network, but he simply vanished.

When he was found with many bodies and body parts in his house, the doctor claimed it was because he was a member of the French Resistance, and the victims were "enemies of France".

He was finally convicted in 1946 and:

On May 25, Petiot was beheaded, after a stay of a few days due to a problem in the release mechanism of the guillotine.

It would appear from the Wiki article that no one has every made a film of this story, which is pretty surprising. Given the jewish connection, I see it as Spielberg material.

Tipler again

He thinks physics proves Christianity | Inquirer | 06/10/2007

How pleasing. Bryan Appleyard has a review of Frank Tipler's "The Physics of Christianity" at the link above.

Not sure if I am back to regular blogging yet. There still seems to be just less around that I want to comment on lately.

Short-ish break needed

This June is shaping up as a very busy work month, and blogging is proving to be just too distracting. (In fact, it's the whole WWW that is the problem, but blogging compounds it by causing me to spend too much time just looking for something I think is worth bringing to readers' attention.)

Today I got to bag Phillip Adams and Paul Keating, mentioned Frank Tipler, particle physics, and my intense dislike of Big Brother. (Not for the first time I wonder whether this blog is just too eclectic for a large readership. Still, I like it that way.)

In any case, it's a pretty good spot to call a short break of uncertain duration to allow me to concentrate on work.

I think a week or two should do it. Don't forget me. I will still check this blog in the evenings to see if there any pleas from the multitude begging me to resume posting.

Money for nothing?

Why the rumored discovery of the Higgs boson is bad news for particle physics.

So, maybe the Higgs boson has been discovered already before the Europeans even get to turn on the Large Hadron Collider. That would be funny; sort of.

Reality TV run its course?

Bryan Appleyard hates reality TV about as much as I do. He makes this excellent point about those who think criticising Big Brother and its ilk is elitist criticism of popular taste:

...the pop-elitist defence is always the same – we’re giving the people what they want. This is, of course, ridiculous. It implies that, before Big Brother, viewers were sitting around thinking, “Hmmm, now what I’d really like is a show about a bunch of dysfunctional freaks stuck in a house for three months.”

The truth is that the show and its popularity are an invention of its makers. They choose to make it, they are not compliant servants of popular taste. They don’t like to hear this because it jerks them out of their cool, postmodern amoral-ity by dropping the moral buck right back on their desks. But let’s get real: you did it, you’re responsible.

From what little I notice of its coverage, the current Australian series of Big Brother is being seen as terribly dull. I would guess that it may have one last season to go before even its fans tire of the format completely.

The God will let it rain on South East Queensland again. (That is just my private theory.)

Tipler and his scientific Christianity

I mentioned in March that mathematical physicist Frank Tipler had a new book coming out called "The Physics of Christianity".

It's now published, and, as predicted, it comes in for some severe rubbishing from other scientist types. You can read about it on a post at Cosmic Variance here.

Some commenters still have some sympathy for Tipler, which is nice to see.

The love-in continues

Phillip Adams writes another love letter to Paul Keating today. A new addition to Keating: The Musical (which, according to Adams, ".. is a phenomenon, packing every venue it has played") should be it ending by Adams in drag playing the fat lady singing to Keating waving from a balcony, Evita style.

Does Keating actually ask for this? I heard Adams say on his radio show last week that Keating had rung him that day, not happy with the comparisons being made between him in 1996 and Howard today.

Barely a week later, and Adams has a column complaining on Keating's behalf how the great Paul is still adored by the public, yet not given the respect he deserves.

If Howard does win another election, I would hardly be surprised if Keating were found dead alone in his study, by the use of some antique French pistol, with his scrapbook of his achievements open in front of him on the last page. Not that I wish him ill; he just seems unhealthily obsessed with his place in history.

Yes, but how much will they cost?

40% efficient solar cells to be used for solar electricity

Sounds good, but as Wikipedia notes:

Solar cell efficiencies vary from 6% for amorphous silicon-based solar cells to 40.7% with multiple-junction research lab cells.^[2] Solar cell energy conversion efficiencies for commercially available mc-Si solar cells are around 14-16%. The highest efficiency cells have not always been the most economical — for example a 30% efficient multijunction cell based on exotic materials such as gallium arsenide or indium selenide and produced in low volume might well cost one hundred times as much as an 8% efficient amorphous silicon cell in mass production, while only delivering about four times the electrical power.

The reporting on new developments should therefore concentrate on the cost of new types of solar cells, not just energy conversion efficiencies.

Bad news in Iraq

14 U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq Over Weekend - New York Times

The range of the type of killings described in this report is what interests me:

In Mosul, a Christian priest was gunned down as he left his church after finishing Sunday services. In Baghdad, a director of the Iraqi Central Bank and his brother were shot to death in the dangerous neighborhood of Amel. Thirty-one corpses were found scattered about the capital, where sectarian murders have once again been on the rise.

Insurgents struck repeatedly in Diyala, the militant-dominated province that borders Baghdad, Iran and Kurdistan. A suicide car bomber parked at a crowded marketplace killed nine people in Balad Ruz. Insurgents set up a fake checkpoint near Baquba, the provincial capital, and raked a bus with gunfire, killing three. And south of Baquba, nine corpses were found handcuffed and shot.

It is hard to see why such sectarian killings would not escalate spectacularly in the event of rapid departure. But it is also easy to understand how US patience with the with the country cannot last for ever.

There's more pessimism in another NYT article by Edward Wong, and it is worth reading too. Interestingly, he notes that some Shia see the problem as follows:

The belief of the Shiites that they must consolidate power through force of arms is tethered to ever-present suspicions of an impending betrayal by the Americans. Though the Americans have helped institute the representative system of government that the Shiites now dominate, they have failed to eliminate memories of how the first President Bush allowed Saddam Hussein to slaughter rebelling Shiites in 1991. Shiite leaders are all too aware, as well, of America’s hostility toward Iran, the seat of Shiite power, and of its close alliances with Sunni Arab nations, especially Saudi Arabia.

Clooney and Grant considered

Is George Clooney the new Cary Grant? - Film - Entertainment - theage.com.au

While on the topic of Hollywood, this Age article (reprinted from The Guardian) is an interesting comparison between Clooney and Cary Grant. (And it looks cynically at what passes for Hollywood stardom these days.)

I can't say I have spent much time considering Grant's appeal before, but this seems true:

You see, North By Northwest is the kind of vehicle that enabled stars to exist. By the standards that function today - by the standards of Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck - it is a great film, an entertainment that turns into a moral tale.

Time and again, the apparently "easy-going" Grant found himself in stories in which his character had to make up or to change his mind. That was hardly accidental. It was the self-awareness of a man who was himself a constant worrier - and who had "lost" his mother in a quite remarkable way. One day she was there in Bristol; the next she was gone. It was more than 20 years before he learned the awful truth.

The article doesn't tell us what happened. Wikipedia to the rescue again:

An only child, he had a confused and unhappy childhood. His mother Elsie (who had apparently never overcome her depression after the death of a previous child in infancy), was placed by his father in a mental institution when Archie was ten. His father (who had a son with another woman) told him that she had gone away on a "long holiday", and it was only in his thirties that he found out she was still alive, and institutionalized.

Sad, hey. The whole Wikipedia entry about Grant is interesting. He had issues of all sorts, it seems.

Pirates III

I recently wrote about watching the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie at home, and being reasonably impressed. This inspired me to see "At World's End" last night at the cinema.

Unfortunately, while not a complete waste of time, it is the weakest of the three movies.

As many reviewers have complained, its main problem is with clumsy plot exposition. Books about screen writing invariably mention at some point how cinema is primarily a visual medium which should show the plot, not have the characters standing around explaining it. It's as if the screen writers for Pirates have just completely forgotten this by the third film. I find it puzzling that they could not see the deficiencies of the screenplay in this respect.

The whole Davy Jones/Calypso background seems a complete waste of time, and I would have thought that the use of flashback would have been much better. (And surely it is not hard to fit in flashback by use of some magical device in this type of movie.)

It's also ironic how in my post about the second movie, I noted the impressive naturalism of the special effects. I specifically mentioned my dislike of scenes where is clear that the number of things in a shot (ships, people, whatever) have just been multiplied by effects.

Well, "At World's End" does this several times, and also has what I complained about in the last Star Wars films: backgrounds which are clearly all one special effect.

Now, some of the effects are still often very impressive for their type. It struck me that it took some chutzpah for all involved (the screenwriters, the movie producers, director and special effects team) to even decide at the start that they could make the climatic battle work. (The sequence involves two ships fighting each other while both swirling around the mouth of a gigantic maelstrom, and it really is a triumph for a realistic rendering of such a fantasy ocean sequence.)

Like I said, it's not a complete waste of time, but it continues the tradition of the last few years of my wife and I going to see only about one movie a year at the cinema, and being a bit disappointed with it.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention three other things about the movie:

1. the way they get out of Davy Jones locker (which is sort of like purgatory, I suppose) seemed quite appropriate, and it was an impressive sequence.

2. The talk of the green flash interested me, because I am not sure that many people would have heard of it as a real phenomena. (It appears in astronomy and other books, but I doubt it gets a mention in anyone's school education.) It is the type of thing that I imagine would seem mystical to sailors of old, so I thought that was an intelligent bit of writing.

3. Keith Richard's face looks easily 50 years older than the rest of his body.

Suspicions correct

Abuse and incompetence in fight against global warming | Climate change | Guardian Unlimited Environment

Further evidence that a lot of what Europe is doing about global warming is being fraudulently handled.

Interesting...

Global warming | A stairway to heaven? | Economist.com

This article reports on a recent, and completely novel, suggestion for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. It involves lasers and radio waves beamed into the sky, and sounds highly speculative as to whether it would work.

Good to see new thinking, all the same.

Mark up one for global warming

Warmer world gets wetter �-�Satellite observations suggest climate models are wrong on rainfall.

From the above article:

Global warming will increase worldwide precipitation by three times the amount predicted by current climate models, according to a study based on two decades' worth of satellite observations.

The discrepancy between the models and the data might mean that the models are wrong. Or it might be that two decades is not long enough to test their predictions. But researchers believe that the work is a step towards understanding the thorny issue of how global temperatures affect rainfall.

Warmer air holds more water. Satellite observations and climate models agree that each rise of 1 °C in global temperatures increases the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere by about 6.5%.

But climate models project that global warming will also bring weaker winds, leading to less water evaporating from the ocean and counteracting the effect of warming. Models predict that worldwide precipitation — which must match the amount of evaporation — will increase by only 1-3% for each degree of future global warming.

The CSIRO predicts more drought for Australia as a result of global warming, but according to these researchers:

It is currently impossible to predict where additional precipitation will fall, says Wentz. Wet areas may get wetter, but drought-plagued regions might also get some relief.

While I am not a global warming sceptic, my hunch has long been that the CSIRO climatologists are over-confident of their models, and also appear to be amongst the most pessimistic in this field.

Any suggestion that Brisbane might get more rain as a result of global warming is very welcome at the moment.

Verily, the chicken will lie with the pig..and eat it

Food safety fears over animals fed to animals-Life & Style-Health-TimesOnline

The outbreak of mad cow disease convinced most people that it is not a good idea to grind up one normally vegetarian animal to feed it to another, but the Europeans are wanting to try it again, it seems:

Tests to allow the remains of animals to be reintroduced into farm feed for the first time since the BSE crisis are being carried out by European scientists, The Times has learnt.

The EU is spending €1.7 million (£1.15 million) on research which would allow the remains of pigs and chickens to be used as fodder...

The proposal comes from the European Economic and Social Committee, a statutory advisory committee to the EU. It follows pressure from farmers and food manufacturers concerned at the high cost of disposing of carcasses.

A minute from the committee says that pig meal should be allowed for chickens and that chicken remains should be fed to pigs.

Seems to me the problem could be solved by Europe having more carnivores to eat the carcasses. To buy a steak, a German should have to prove ownership of a dog, cat or (even better,) a lion.

China's problems, continued

Will Hutton: Calm down, the rise of China's power is being exaggerated

It's been a bit of a slow week for interesting stuff to post about.

This morning's article in The Australian gives some more reasons to worry about China.

I get the impression that there is one group of economists who are a bullish about China being able to handle its problems, and a smaller group who are much more pessimistic. The pessimists' case sound much more convincing to me.

Sex lives of the young and religious

Slate has an interesting article on a new book looking in detail on how religious belief affects sexual behaviour in young Americans.

Evangelical teenagers like to talk celibacy, but aren't good at doing it:

Teenagers who identify as "evangelical" or "born again" are highly likely to sound like the girl at the bar; 80 percent think sex should be saved for marriage. But thinking is not the same as doing. Evangelical teens are actually more likely to have lost their virginity than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. They tend to lose their virginity at a slightly younger age—16.3, compared with 16.7 for the other two faiths. And they are much more likely to have had three or more sexual partners by age 17: Regnerus reports that 13.7 percent of evangelicals have, compared with 8.9 percent for mainline Protestants.

One of the reasons that this group has more sex is given as this:

It also includes African-American Protestant teenagers, who are vastly more likely to be sexually active.

In the Economist article I mentioned yesterday, the incredibly high rate of children to black single mothers was discussed in some detail. I meant to mention then that this is something I don't really understand in light of the quasi-religiosity of the black community. (Even the single black mother with several children to different fathers quoted in The Economist mentioned how she hoped God would give her a partner. Maybe he would help more if she didn't sleep with every boyfriend she met.)

I just find the question of how black American culture got to where it is today very puzzling. (Not just on the issue of sex, but the whole hip hop and drug scene, and the attitude the men take towards women generally. I guess the Italian mafia were good at going to Catholic Church too, and that was another example of hypocritical behaviour I have never understood.)

But back to generic teenagers and sex. I don't really see what is wrong with pointing out from a very early age that if you have enough sex, even while trying to use contraception, the chances are that (sooner or later) you will end up with a baby. (Or at least a pregnancy to ruin your day.) If you don't want a baby yet, don't have sex. At least not with another person.

I should have been a sex education nun.

Marriage in America

Marriage in America | The frayed knot | Economist.com

This is a really interesting article about modern American marriage. Here's a key section that surprised me:

There is a widening gulf between how the best- and least-educated Americans approach marriage and child-rearing. Among the elite (excluding film stars), the nuclear family is holding up quite well. Only 4% of the children of mothers with college degrees are born out of wedlock. And the divorce rate among college-educated women has plummeted. Of those who first tied the knot between 1975 and 1979, 29% were divorced within ten years. Among those who first married between 1990 and 1994, only 16.5% were.

At the bottom of the education scale, the picture is reversed. Among high-school dropouts, the divorce rate rose from 38% for those who first married in 1975-79 to 46% for those who first married in 1990-94. Among those with a high school diploma but no college, it rose from 35% to 38%. And these figures are only part of the story. Many mothers avoid divorce by never marrying in the first place. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among women who drop out of high school is 15%. Among African-Americans, it is a staggering 67%.

I for one did not realise that middle class divorce had gone down so much. The article also mentions this:

...those who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce.

Many people will find this surprising. A survey of teenagers by the University of Michigan found that 64% of boys and 57% of girls agreed that “it is usually a good idea for a couple to live together before getting married in order to find out whether they really get along.” Research suggests otherwise. Two-thirds of American children born to co-habiting parents who later marry will see their parents split up by the time they are ten. Those born within wedlock face only half that risk.

I think that the higher divorce rate for couples who live together before marriage is also not well known in Australia. I strongly suspect you would get similar survey results in Australia, with most younger people seeing it as a worthwhile step to see if the couple really is "compatible". Sounds like a plausible theory; it's just that reality goes and does its own thing.

All of the article is well worth reading.

Bye bye Cindy

Sheehan 'resigns' as protest leader

I like this line:

She said the most devastating conclusion she had reached "was that Casey did indeed die for nothing ... killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think."

Err, yes, time to retire with tin foil hat firmly in place, Cindy.

She does have her followers though. The SFGate site asked a bunch of people what they thought of Sheehan's leadership. From Oakland, one woman responds:

Sheehan inspired people by speaking straight from the heart. Unfortunately, speaking truth to power didn't work against power gained and maintained through calculated deceit, aided by a spineless press. America's redemption, like 1930-40s Germany, may now require counter-propoganda as adept as the Bushies', or intervention from outside powers.

Wow. There are people so against against wars that they would prefer to, um, see one being fought on their own soil. Just nuts.

I also see that one Michael Ponce of Oakland says this about Cindy:

She brought the issue to our coward president. It's disgusting how the president of this country never met with her, especially when her son died for his war.

I assume he believes the plastic turkey too, as he clearly believes the hype over the reality. From Wikipedia (such a hard source to find):

Sheehan and other military families met with President George W. Bush in June of 2004 at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Washington, nearly three months after her son's death. In a June 24, 2004 interview with the Vacaville Reporter published soon after the meeting, she stated, "We haven't been happy with the way the war has been handled. The President has changed his reasons for being over there every time a reason is proven false or an objective reached." She also stated that President Bush was ". . .sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis … I know he's sorry and feels some pain for our loss. And I know he's a man of faith."^[4]

Yes, Cindy ran a 3 year campaign complaining how unfair it was that she couldn't meet the President....again.

Sounds fun, as long as it doesn't kill you

New Attraction Simulates Shuttle Launch at 17,500 MPH

Rudd's secret put to the test

As I more or less expected, the Mrs Kevin incident appears to have no detrimental effect on Kevin's popularity; quite the opposite it would appear.

One reason for this is, I suspect, that people are thinking that any criticism of Rudd's family is not nice, and they decide to punish the Liberals for it, despite the fact that it is the media coming up with the stories, not the government.

Secondly, surely everyone has noticed that when Rudd says "we'll take a battering in the polls" or "this is embarrassing", it doesn't hurt his polling at all. I think he has recognised and will keep using the magic formula. Maybe it is some sort of Jedi mind trick, or a pact with the devil, and the way for the public to be reassured that it isn't supernatural forces at work is to see it deliberately put to the test.

My challenge to Kevin is therefore to demonstrate that he can be unpopular by doing something really wrong. How about being caught on camera having sex one night with Julia Gillard on the grass under the flagpole on top of Parliament House? If all he does, while brushing grass off his suit, is to look sheepish and say "well I have to acknowledge this is very embarrassing, it will put a strain on my marriage and I expect to take a battering in the polls" and next week there's another 5% increase, then we will know there is something sinister about him.

Update: I wrote this before I read Matt Price in The Australian this morning. He makes a similar point:

At this rate, Rudd could be captured on video wearing leather bondage gear while snorting ice - and the punters would still find some excuse to look kindly on the Labor leader.

I bet in his heart Price wanted to use sex with Gillard as an example, but he has to get on with Rudd and his minders.

Waking up to a surprise

Man catches leopard in his bedroom | Jerusalem Post

A resident of the Ben Gurion Field School in the Negev caught a leopard on Monday morning after he woke up to find it chasing after his pet cat in his bedroom.

The man, Arthur Du Mosch, pounced on the leopard, holding it in a head lock before it was taken away.

Clad only in underwear and a T-shirt, he lunged at the leopard, grabbed it around the neck, then pinned it down for 20 minutes - until park rangers arrived on the scene.

Some points:

1. I didn't know they had leopards in Israel.

2. I didn't know they had people called "Arthur" in Israel.

3. Why would you bother pinning down an errant leopard in your bedroom for 20 minutes?

4. Who rang the park rangers, and didn't that person say to Arthur "Man, what are you doing, put it outside and let it go"? Or was Arthur clever enough to hold a leopard in a headlock and make a phone call at the same time?

Deep

Alex Byrne: Knowing Right and Wrong

Found via Arts & Letters Daily, above is a lengthy but (mostly) comprehensible discussion of meta-ethics. It's quite good, if that's the type of thing that interests you.

While I would like there to be a clearly logical and unassailable way to argue that all humans have an obligation to observe the application of a basic morality to their behaviour, I can't see that there is any way to get there via rationality alone, without the leap of faith into the belief that one's actions in life have consequences after life.

Jolly good news

ScienceDaily: Red Wine Protects The Prostate, Research Suggests

From the article:

Researchers have found that men who drink an average of four to seven glasses of red wine per week are only 52% as likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer as those who do not drink red wine...

...wine drinking was linked to a reduced risk of prostate cancer. And when white wine was compared with red, red had the most benefit. Even low amounts seemed to help, and for every additional glass of red wine per week, the relative risk declined by 6%.

I do drink much more white than red; but a conscious effort will be made this winter to redress that balance. (I think I pretty much hit the age where doctors start to have an unusual degree of interest in the prostate.)

Exit conseqences

Strife Foreseen in Iraq Exit, but Experts Split on Degree - New York Times

The New York Times asks lots of people within and outside of Iraq about how bad they think it would become if the US withdrew quickly. The answer seems to uniformly be: very bad indeed.

The only people who seem to be quoted as doubting this are Democrats.

As to the recent petition by the Parliament to get the US to set a deadline to leave is mentioned as follows:

A bare majority of Iraq’s 275-member Parliament recently signed a petition promoted by Mr. Sadr that called for a timetable for American troops to depart. Even so, the petition said the Americans should not leave until Iraqi security forces were ready to take over the job. “Pulling back to bases maybe makes sense,” said Mansour Abdul Mohsin Abboud, 66, a Shiite tribal sheik who lives in Najaf. “But leaving, withdrawing completely from Iraq, that means erasing Iraq from the map.”

Ken L at Road to Surfdom and his followers should read it: they scoff at any suggestion that you can trust what any journalist or American says about the situation in Iraq if forces withdraw.

Blue tongues

According to The Observer, Tony Blair "swears like the proverbial trooper", which is definitely not the image he has liked to portray to the public.

This made me think of Rudd, about whom there has been mention from time to time of his vigorous language in private.

But the perverse way the electorate is at the moment, he could appear on the 6 o'clock news with a string of expletives about the trouble Therese has caused him, and the public would say he's got the common man's touch after all, let's boost his approval ratings.

The saintly Rudds of The Age

The Age goes out of its way to put the best possible spin on Mrs Kevin's decision to pre-emptively sell the Australian arm of her business. From yesterday's story:

Taking full responsibility for the embarrassment she said her business interests had caused Mr Rudd, and emphasising that the decision to sell was entirely her own...,

Sure, Therese, sure. (And I can't really blame the reporter for that line, it will be in every report). But surely the journalist has to take full credit for this paragraph:

Admitting to feeling humbled by the dignity her work colleagues had demonstrated in the face of intense political pressure, Ms Rein repeated that she "fully accepted personal responsibility for any errors made by my company in handling the details of the employment arrangements for staff. I have also accepted full responsibility for rectifying any errors".

"Admitting" to feeling humbled? Did a journalist ask the question: "Don't you feel humbled by the dignity of your work colleagues?" Nope, surely this is just bad journalism.

For the touching human side of the decision, try this:

The couple sat together on the flight to Brisbane, their heads touching as they discussed the political dilemma before greeting the waiting media throng.

Then the drama of does she or doesn't she really want to do this:

Asked if her job or her husband came first, Ms Rein replied: "I am prepared to put Kevin first and my country first." However, at that stage she showed signs of wanting to fight to keep the business she started from scratch 18 years ago and built into an international enterprise. "I don't think that I have to make a decision between my husband and my career," she said. "I am immensely proud of what I have been doing for the last 18 years. I have loved doing that and I still love doing that. "But I think the Australian people may be concerned that there might be a conflict of interest. I don't want that to get in the way for them."

But to remove any doubt at all that it was her sole decision after all, the report ends with:

Last night neither Mr Rudd nor the Prime Minister were commenting on Ms Rein's decision.

I've seen ...[readers please insert own humourous analogy here - all I can come up with is nuclear centrifuges] with less spin than this.

More Humour

The Best Place in the Universe New Mexico, Earth

Have a look at these couple of short tourism ads for New Mexico. Quite amusing.

Humour

Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager

I see these date from 2006, but I seem to have missed the adventures of Darth Vader's loser brother Chad, who works in a supermarket. (I've only watched the first couple of episodes, but they are pretty good.)

Not rushing to comment

I like the way that when something embarrassing for Kevin Rudd comes up, the left leaning blogs certainly take their time to make any comment. Despite it dominating the news and ABC current affairs shows last night, nothing yet on LP, Road to Surfdom, or Blogocracy as at 10 am this morning. "Rapid fire commentary" indeed, Tim Dunlop. (While I am at it, I reckon Blogocracy would benefit from less bloat in each individual post. His non-corporate blog had a bit more life to it than this incarnation, and I still don't see what benefit it is to News Ltd to run it.)

The contrast is with anything of embarrassment to John Howard. That never gets left alone for long. I can see the questions from the blog commentators if the shoe was on the other foot: so it took 6 months for her company to realise the mistake? Shows how careless she is in running her company, and what little disregard it has for the workers...

Also, although the SMH website this morning gave the story a "headline" near the top, you really had to look much harder to spot it on The Age website, down under the "National" section.

As I understand it, Kevin Rudd's wife's fortune has effectively been made (or at least greatly enhanced?) from the Liberal government's change in policy on employment placement services, which was (if I recall correctly) strongly opposed by Labor at the time. The irony of this seems to have attracted remarkably little comment since the Rudd ascendancy.

Unusual brain chemistry

Endogenous cannabinoids linked to fetal brain damage imposed by maternal cannabis use

From the article:

A critical step in brain development is governed by endogenous cannabinoids, ‘the brain’s own marijuana’. ..... these endogenous molecules regulate how certain nerve cells recognize each other and form connections.

But this is not good news for babies with mothers that smoke:

Earlier studies have already found that children of marijuana-smoking mothers more frequently suffer from permanent cognitive deficits, concentration disorders, hyperactivity, and impaired social interactions than non-exposed children of the same age and social background.

On Palestinian victimhood

neo-neocon The Palestinians: when does a victim stop being a victim?

This is a good read from Neo-neocon. I found it particularly interesting how a journalist from 1961 was already pointing out how Palestinian refugees were being used as a pawn - by other Arabs.

It's a boy thing, and water for nuclear power

The Guardian reports that the British government is going to "push ahead with proposals to build a new generation of commerically built nuclear power stations". There's an interesting snippet at the end of the story:

When the Guardian last asked voters their opinion on the issue, in late 2005, 45% backed nuclear energy and 48% opposed it. The poll also shows that 62% of men think more nuclear power stations should be built against 27% of women.

That's a big difference. In Australia, the recent Newspoll, which mentioned nuclear power in the context of greenhouse gases, still showed a significant difference between the genders, as does this Morgan poll. Interestingly, both of these polls show that the strongest opposition by far is from women aged 35 to 49. What do these women have against nuclear power? Are they better informed than men, or just more easily scared? Is being a mother something to do with this?

As for nuclear power for Australia, one point I have been meaning to make is that the lack of water for convention coal power stations in South East Queensland is currently a serious issue. In discussions of nuclear power here, there has been frequent mention of a need for access to water, with the main suggestion being that they would need to be beside the sea.

However, it would seem to me that pebble bed reactors, which are occasionally mentioned as a potential new generation design for Australia, are unlikely to be very thristy. They are proposed to use helium turbine systems, not steam. They are also intended to run at high temperatures, which has the benefit of making them good for hydrogen production. (A detailed explanation of pebble bed is given in this paper.) I could be wrong, but this sounds to me like they won't need anywhere near as much water for cooling as steam based turbine systems. Some engineer type reader might care to confirm or correct this for me.

If pebble bed designs are not very thirsty, I would have thought that this feature would make them very attractive to our drought prone land. It would also mean that they can simply be located on current inland power station sites, regardless of current or projected future dam levels. This would surely help defuse the "not in my backyard" scare campaign that Labor has already started.

Saving water Japanese style

Brisbane's water supply dams are now at 18.62% capacity, and it's the start of winter when substantial rains are virtually unheard of until spring. Looking at the graph at that link, it would seem very likely that we will hit 10% before the end of the year. No one knows how the water quality is going to be as it gets lower. Already, if I leave the kid's bath water in the tub overnight (before pouring it down a grey water hose that is hanging out the window to a big tub below, for later bucketing over the garden,) there is a very brown residue left on the bath which never used to be there.

The government is aiming for an average daily consumption of 140 litres per person. My family is close to that, but none the less it does feel as if the city is on the verge of crisis, with many substantial sized garden plants dying all over the place, so one does feel the need to do more. We had a rainwater tank installed in January. It has not had more than about 15 cm of water in the bottom since then.

If the letters to the Courier Mail are anything to go by, many people are starting to take pride in how little water they can get away with using in a day.

Here's my boast. I think that even "low flow" shower heads use up to 9 litres of water a minute. They are urging people to limit showers to 4 minutes, so that's about 36 litres all up. But that doesn't count the litres wasted while waiting for the hot water to reach the shower, and this is an unavoidable problem in winter. I have used a bucket to check this, and it takes about 5-6 litres in my house to get the temperature right.

(You can save the cold water in a bucket for the garden, but frankly, we are finding that the greywater from the Top Loading Washing Machine That Refuses to Die and kid's bath is enough for keeping the garden alive.)

My solution is to adopt Japanese style bathing in the shower recess. This involves a 10 litre round plastic basin, a smaller bowl as a ladle, a plastic stool and a sponge, costing around $12 in total from Big W.

Typical Japanese bathing, either in the house or a public onsen, is done while sitting on a little stool and either using a little hand held shower or ladling water over the body. The bathrooms are designed as areas able to get completely wet, with drains in the floor. There are some good photos of a typical Japanese apartment bathroom here. In Brisbane, I have to do it in the shower recess, but I find I can fit in OK.

The advantages: in my house, for the first 10 litre basin fill, the combination of the first 4 litres of cold water and the next 6 of scalding water works out just right. You can stay clothed while this is done. Ten litres is plenty for the body. I then use another 10 litres for hair and final body rinse, and really I find that plenty. There is no water wastage at all. The only disadvantage: no nice steamy bathroom in which to dry yourself.

Anyway, I know that I am definitely using only 20 litres per day for bathing.

Send me a medal, someone?

Appreciating Disney

James Lileks' series on his recent family holiday to Disney World (the first part is here) is very enjoyable. His genuine, non-ironic, postive response to the place also feels very close to how I felt during my couple of visits there (without child or partner) in the 1980's. (He is perhaps a little underwhelmed by EPCOT, but he barely touched that park, by the sounds.)

As it happens, my childrens' first experience of Disneyland will likely be in Tokyo. I am not entirely sure how much I will enjoy it, but I have faith!

In other Disney posts, Boing Boing recently linked to an Orlando resident's post about the underground tunnel that encircles Disney World. I knew about its existence, but had not heard about how it works in detail before. Good reading.

Doctor Yes

Top sex change doctor faces damages claim | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

This is a story of special interest to Zoe Brain, I assume.

The overall story is that:

The General Medical Council (GMC) today declared that the UK's top expert on transsexualism inappropriately rushed patients into sex changing treatments.

Its inquiry into the consultant psychiatrist Dr Russell Reid found that he gave five patients hormones too soon and referred them for genital surgery without an adequate assessment of their health or proof that they were transsexuals.

This particular example of what Dr Reid did is remarkable, to say the least:

Dr Reid was found to have prescribed Patient D male hormones against the advice in a second opinion provided by another psychiatrist. The patient, who wanted to change sex in order to fulfil a delusion that she was turning into Jesus, only avoided surgery to remove both her breasts because she was sectioned and diagnosed with manic depression. She told the inquiry she was never transsexual and claimed she had been misdiagnosed by Dr Reid.

Dr Reid evidently thought the patient was always right, no matter how mad.

Antony goes to Cuba

Comment is free: Getting connected

What's Antony Lowenstein doing visiting and writing about Cuba? And why meet someone there at the Iranian embassy? He is our International Man of Mystery.

Anyway, I suppose it's nice to see him critical of a government other than Israel's.

How soft are our obstetricians?

Sarah Buckley: Mothers not just too posh to push | Opinion | The Australian

The article above disputes the idea that it is women wanting unwarranted caesareans which is pushing up the rates of such deliveries in Australia. Her figures indicate that there are few mothers asking for it without good reason.

However, last week, two obstetricians discussed the issue on Radio National (audio available here), and I was surprised to hear both of them say that there are cases where, despite explaining all of the risks and disadvantages in detail, some patients will still insist on a caesarean birth, and they felt that they had no choice but to provide that service.

This seems very strange to me. Why should any obstetrician comply with a request to provide an unwarranted medical procedure which is known to have worse health outcomes for both the mother (who at least can give her consent) and also the baby (who obviously can't.)

Isn't there some risk that, if the baby suffers a complication typically arising from caesarean birth, the father could sue the doctor on behalf of the baby for providing an unwarranted and more dangerous procedure? I could see this as a scenario especially where the father and mother are estranged either before or after the birth. Or do the doctors also seek the father binding waiver before the procedure?

I know that lots of people have unnecessary cosmetic surgery despite its risks, but as I say, there is only the need to consider one person's interests in those cases.

In the multiverse version of Earth where I am benevolent and wise ruler of Australia, obstetricians are just ordered to refuse the request for unnecessary caesareans, and doctors doing cosmetic surgery are sent to work on remote aboriginal outposts. (Oh, hang on, I have closed most of them too.) The producers of Big Brother were fed to the crocodiles long ago.

New meteor idea

Diamonds tell tale of comet that killed off the cavemen | Science | Guardian Unlimited

This is interesting:

Scientists will outline dramatic evidence this week that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, creating a hail of fireballs that set fire to most of the northern hemisphere.

Primitive Stone Age cultures were destroyed and populations of mammoths and other large land animals, such as the mastodon, were wiped out. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and Asia.

'This comet set off a shock wave that changed Earth profoundly,' said Arizona geophysicist Allen West. 'It was about 2km-3km in diameter and broke up just before impact, setting off a series of explosions, each the equivalent of an atomic bomb blast. The result would have been hell on Earth. Most of the northern hemisphere would have been left on fire.'

And politicians can be hard to convince that spending money on spotting dangerous objects in space is worthwhile.

Science and religion at work

Focus | Cosmic Variance

This is a couple of weeks old, but worth reading if you are interested in the culture wars.

China and Catholics

The Tablet

According to the Tablet:

Martin Wu Qinjing, Bishop of Zhouzhi, is being held by police and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA), according to the Rome-based AsiaNews. His faithful say he is undergoing "endless political sessions" and being pressured to give up his diocese. Two years ago Bishop Wu was consecrated bishop in the official Church but with Vatican approval.

According to the CCPA Bishop Wu's ordination was illegal because it contravened a regulation banning religious bodies from being controlled by "foreign influences". The bishop was taken from his church on 17 March. According to AsiaNews, the CCPA opposes Bishop Wu because it had a more compliant candidate who had done it various economic favours.

Funny how quasi Marxist China fears outside influence in its state approved version of the Catholic Church, when South America used to be hot bed of liberation theology and Marxism. (The lead story from the same edition of the Tablet is about an apparent softening of both sides in the Vatican's stand off with liberation theology in South America.)

Real cinema verite

Japundit - Camera on Conveyor

Go to the link for an oddly pleasing video taken from the sushi's point of view. It looks like a nice trick that a clever director might use in a movie.

A tyrant in the making

Fine young criminal | Books | Arts | Telegraph

This review of a new book "Young Stalin" gives a short taste of some key events in Stalin's early life.

It seems to me that the lead up to the Russian revolution was so full of drama and bad characters that it could work as source material for many, many movies. It has the benefit of not being overly familiar to Western audiences, and now that Russia is not communist, just how many people there would still be horrified to see an accurate portrayal of Stalin as a criminal thug?

Oh wait a minute: another review in The Telegraph makes a similar point:

In succeeding years he [Stalin] graduated from extortion to murder and armed robbery, using some 39 aliases, ranging from 'Joe Pox' to 'Oddball Osip', and employing several psychopathic associates, notably the baroquely vicious Simon 'Kamo' Ter-Petrossian.

Sebag Montefiore gives a brilliant account of the great 1907 Tiflis heist, when Stalin's gang held up a convoy delivering roubles: the resulting scenes of mayhem were worthy of the De Niro and Pacino film Heat, although here the bullets and bombs flew amidst armoured wagons and mounted Cossack guards. These robberies were essential to the funding of Lenin's exiled Bolshevik Party.

Over to you, screenwriters.

Market players: get in quick!

A simple algorithm based on fluctuations to play the market

I am not sure how seriously to take the above paper found on arxiv.org. This is its conclusion:

By analogy with the way motor enzymes trap favourable brownian fluctuations, we have built an algorithm which is able to make the best from out of equilibrium price fluctuations and to play the market. Testing its efficiency with genuine historical data, positive cumulative returns have been measured even in presence of a 0:1% transaction cost. Especially stupendous are the results dealing with the application of the algorithm to EMS currencies or with the Cac40 components.

The results of using the algorithm with Cac40:

Fig.(14) displays the stupendous results of the application of the MD3 algorithm to the components of the Cac40 between 2000/01/01 and 2006/05/12 ( 6:5 years). First, the optimal value of m does not depend on the time interval (out of sample). Second this optimal value is found to be close to 25 days, so to say one month since only workdays are taken into account. Finally but not the least, average yearly return up to 60% are obtained!

There is a catch, however:

The money which is captured by our algorithms comes from the irrational behavior of uninformed noisy traders. Therefore we really expect the present algorithms will become unprofitable as soon as our paper will be published, either because irrational traders will be taught a lesson or because the profitability of the algorithms will vanish with the number of users.

The thing is, this paper has only just been published, and maybe there aren't that many people who sit at home on a Saturday night reading arxiv.org papers. If I have alerted any market player to a way to make a killing in a short time, please sent me a cut of your profit!

Conflict on the high seas

It was surprising today to read a New Scientist article that says the Southern Oceans may not be absorbing much CO2 because they have become too windy:

Global warming has caused the Southern Ocean to become windier, churning up the waters so that they are unable to absorb CO₂ at the rate we produce it, the researchers say.

This is because only in March did I hear on The Science Show another researcher saying the exact opposite:

Around the poles, and particularly Antarctica, the winds are causing more mixing between water and atmosphere. The Antarctic polar current brings water from 3,000m depth to the surface. This water is low in CO2 and takes up the gas from the atmosphere.

More research needed to get to the bottom of this, evidently.

Come here, geekdom

I have noticed recently that my already low readership is usually even lower on Fridays. I figure it may have something to do with longer lunches and drinks after work. I also noticed that when I mentioned X Files actress Gillian Anderson in a previous post, several hits came here via several guys (well, I assume guys) who evidently search blogs for the very mention of her name.

So, in the interests of increasing a Friday's figures:

There is talk of a second X Files movie. Talk about a case of Rocky-itis. I didn't even like the first movie, although I loved the series for the first few years. I can't remember by which season the rot had set in.

Gillian has her own website/blog type thingee, which she seems to make an entry about once every 6 months.

She does take a good photo, though.

So crazy it might just work...nah!

Gizmodo UK : Windscraper Buildings Generate Power

From the article (which has a Youtube link too):

Architect, David Fisher, has envisioned a new tower that is one part wind turbine and one part skyscraper. The tower is based around a concrete center core, with each floor spinning like an individual wind turbine. When all of the turbines are harnessed together the tower will not only be able to power itself, but up to ten other similarly sized buildings, too.