Surge works (cross fingers)

Good news from Iraq. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine

Hitchens summarises some of the positive reporting coming out of Iraq at the moment. When both the New York Times and the BBC carry reports like this, you know it's not just wishful right wing thinking.

Of course, a city with 5 dead bodies a day still turning up, and 16 suicide bombings a month, it is not exactly ready to start taking tourists yet. But compared to where it was...

More research definitely needed

Ocean Plankton Reducing Greenhouse Gases By Using More Carbon Dioxide

This story on the possible role of plankton in helping the oceans absorb more CO2 contains this surprising statement:

The world oceans are by far the largest sink of anthropogenic CO₂ on our planet. Until now, they have swallowed almost half of the CO₂ emitted through the burning of fossil fuels. However, can the oceans continue to alleviate the steady rise in atmospheric CO₂ in the future? Current models for the development of the global climate system do not incorporate the reaction of marine organisms nor the processes that they influence.

I would have thought that such models would at least have made some guesstimates about this, but it doesn't sound like it.

The experiment this team showed that plankton did respond strongly to more CO2 dissolved in the ocean:

“We expected the organisms to show distinct reactions to changing CO₂ conditions. What really surprised us, however, was the dimension of this effect. Basically, we can now say that the biology in the oceans is significantly affecting the global climate system.”

The downside is that more plankton sinking and decaying into the ocean might cause less oxygen at greater depth.

Still, it is somewhat surprising how preliminary the experimental research on this important area seems to be.

Image

Howard and Costello in TV love fest - Federal Election 2007 News - theage.com.au

Michelle Gratton goes too far in her scathing assessment of Howard's and Costello's joint interview last night, saying they don't even "respect" each other. Despite Costello's frustration at waiting for the top job, I think it's pretty clear that have always managed to work together, and "respect" is surely a part of being able to do that.

I don't see her spending much time on the past relationship of Rudd, Swan and Gillard.

At News Limited, George Megalogenis makes some fair criticism of Rudd's playing to the young audience. George's commentary has always been pretty fair and balanced, I think.

John Laws seems to be sitting solidly on the fence about this election, but given his decreased ratings, I'm not sure that he is seen as all that influential now anyway. What's Alan Jones been rabbiting on about in Sydney, I wonder...

The Age meanwhile, tries to revive the Iraqi wheatboard scandal, with the dishonest headline "Downer "knew" about AWB kickbacks". You've got to read the story to see that this claim is based on a former Austrade director who feels certain (but seemingly without any direct knowledge) that there must have been cables to Downer about a meeting he went to. The current Austrade is quoted as simply denying there were any such cables about that meeting, and, well, that should be the end of that, shouldn't it? Not for the editors of The Age it isn't.

The only thing to look forward to if Rudd wins is that he is clearly not left enough for The Age, and will start coping criticism of that nature soon enough.

Unpleasant lives

Observer review: Bad Faith by Carmen Callil

I'm about a third of the way through this book, which is a very detailed biography of Louis Darquier, an appalling Frenchman who ended up working in the Vichy government as "Commissioner for Jewish Affairs" and was responsible for the deportation of thousands of French Jews to Auschwitz.

There are quite a few things in the book which I did not know about France and Europe between the wars. For example, as a small time wannabe politician and general rabble rouser in Paris in the mid 1930's, Darquier started making anti-Semitic statements, and immediately found himself the beneficiary of Nazi money.

I hadn't realised that the Nazis at that point in time were quite so obsessed with the "Jewish problem" that they were not only setting up for the "solution" in their own country, but were also going out of their way to support anti-Semitism anywhere it popped up in Europe.

Darquier seems to have turned into an anti-Semite in 1935, and it appears to have had the unexpected consequence of ending his financial problems. He and his wife had, for years before that, spent most of their time moving from hotel to hotel to avoid paying their huge bar and food bills, while he tried (unsuccessfully) to become a novelist and journalist. They sponged off his brother for financial support.

Then, put onto the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" by some French nationalist quasi-intellectuals of his acquaintance, his problems were solved. I do not quite understand why the thorough debunking the Protocols had received in the early 1920's in England just didn't catch on in Germany, or much of Europe.

The odd Australian connection to the story is that Darquier's wife was an Australian woman from Tasmania. She also became a hopeless drunk, a financial leech on her husband's family (even though they couldn't stand her) and a mother who completely abandoned her only daughter to a nanny in England, who often went unpaid for her efforts as well.

Oddly, even though it is very well written (save for one exaggeration I reckon she makes about Tasmania), and seems to have received plenty of favourable reviews in England and America, I found it for sale here in a 'remaindered' book shop for $10. Occasionally (very occasionally) you can come up with high quality reading in such shops.

If you enjoy true life stories of extremely unpleasant people, I can recommend this book.

The eternal entry ticket

Woman seen scattering ashes at Disneyland- Travel - LATimes.com

Odd story from last week I had missed.

Panpsychism discussed

Mind of a Rock - New York Times

A pretty good read from Jim Holt here about panpsychism, which he describes as the following hypothesis:

Perhaps, they say, mind is not limited to the brains of some animals. Perhaps it is ubiquitous, present in every bit of matter, all the way up to galaxies, all the way down to electrons and neutrinos, not excluding medium-size things like a glass of water or a potted plant. Moreover, it did not suddenly arise when some physical particles on a certain planet chanced to come into the right configuration; rather, there has been consciousness in the cosmos from the very beginning of time.

It's a cute idea, but I didn't think it had much current support. Not so, apparently:

The Australian philosopher David Chalmers and the Oxford physicist Roger Penrose have spoken on its behalf. In the recent book “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature,” the British philosopher Galen Strawson defends panpsychism against numerous critics.

I didn't think that Roger Penrose's controversial ideas on mind could quite be described this way.

Here's a review of another book defending it.

I know that Augustine rejected pantheism, but am not entirely sure whether panpsychism has ever really attracted that much attention by famous Christian theologians. (Maybe it has simply been dismissed as too improbable to consider.)

Kind of interesting, anyway.

Why change now?

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran eyes nuclear options abroad

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to discuss with Arab nations a plan to enrich uranium outside the region in a neutral country such as Switzerland.

He made the announcement in an interview for Dow Jones Newswires in Saudi Arabia where he is attending a petroleum exporters' summit.

Gulf Arab states recently proposed setting up a consortium to provide nuclear fuel to Iran and others.

Hadn't Russia offered to do this for Iran ages ago? What is causing Iran to suddenly find it something worth talking about?

Something to make Brisbane proud

Yes, Brisbane can come up with deadly and innovative weapons with the best of them:

Metal Storm reaches Navy test range

I either didn't realise, or had forgotten, that the Metal Storm company, which has been busy developing uber guns, is based in Brisbane. One of their systems is being tested by the US Navy now, as (from memory) one of its proposed uses would be for ships to spray a defensive curtain of metal against incoming missiles.

The Metal Storm website has lots and lots of information, with photos and videos of their systems, and indeed the company appears to be a very significant enterprise. Yet, according to the CEO's latest bulletin, despite all the international interest, they are disappointed in the current share price.

If only I had a stockbroker.

Cuckoo

Daddy dearest: Many men are finding out they are not the father after all

The paternity testing industry is finding itself much more popular:

Almost a quarter of paternity tests conducted by one of Australia's largest DNA laboratory companies show the man submitting a sample is not the father, compared to an estimated one in 10 "exclusions" 10 years ago.

The number of tests taken in Australia has doubled from 3000 in 2003 to more than 6000 last year.

As a result, at least one men's rights groups is suggesting compulsory paternity testing at birth. Just how many surprises this would reveal seems pretty unclear:

Some experts say the proportion of negative paternity tests reflects the fact that the men coming forward already have reasonable doubts, and that of the entire population, only 1 per cent of fathers are not the "real" parent.

The men's rights group are opposed by feminists who see this just as men seeking to punish their unfaithful partners. But the men's rights argument has this very plausible strand:

"People's lives are being ruined by this. It is not just the men, it's the children who grow up thinking one person is their father and then find out it's someone else.

"In the future, more and more health treatments are going to be based on genetic technology, so it is going to be even more important to know who your biological father is.

"Mandatory testing would get rid of all these problems."

Indeed, it seems the modern push to allow for re-union with fathers for those conceived with anonymous donor sperm has often cited the importance of a child being able to know their genetic inheritance.

The other thing to consider is that testing may mean that for every purported father happy with the result, there is likely to be a previously undisclosed father who is unhappy. Feminists can't really argue then that the men as a group are going to the winners of compulsory testing.

Of course, there would be some cases where a father accepts that a baby may not be his and his happy to treat it as his own anyway.

How about a compromise system then: compulsory testing unless both of the parents sign forms confirming they do not want it. By doing so, the father would accept financial responsibility for the child forever, regardless of whether later testing reveals he is not the father. The later testing would be available for the child's benefit in the event of separation.

In fact, in a post last year I had nearly forgotten about, I had suggested compulsory paternity testing at separation of the parents. This has some good arguments going for it too.

But if the priority is going to switch to children having a right to know their true genetic inheritance, then switching the system to one of testing at birth would be more important.

Every UFO should have one

Technology Review: Stopping Cars with Radiation

Anyone familiar with the history of UFO's (or even those who recall a key scene in Close Encounters,) will probably think of the possible flying saucer connection when they first see this story:

Researchers at Eureka Aerospace are turning a fictional concept from the movie 2 Fast 2 Furious into reality: they're creating an electromagnetic system that can quickly bring a vehicle to a stop. The system, which can be attached to an automobile or aircraft carrier, sends out pulses of microwave radiation to disable the microprocessors that control the central engine functions in a car. Such a device could be used by law enforcement to stop fleeing and noncooperative vehicles at security checkpoints, or as perimeter protection for military bases, communication centers, and oil platforms in the open seas.

The system has been tested on a variety of stationary vehicles and could be ready for deployment in automobiles within 18 months...

Unfortunately, though, it is not believed to be the ready explanation for UFO car stalling stories from the 1960's:

The radiated microwave energy will upset or damage the vehicle's electronic systems, particularly the microprocessors that control important engine functions, such as the ignition control, the fuel injector, and the fuel-pump control. However, electronic control modules were not built into most cars until 1972, hence the system will not work on automobiles made before that year.

As this article shows, car interference cases really kicked off in the 1950's, and in fact my strong impression is that such reports have become much less frequent since the late 70's despite Close Encounters' popularity. (Clearly, though, that movie may have been very influential at the subconscious level with respect to the popularity of alien abduction claims in the 1980's.)

The Condon Report notes that lab tests were done in the 60's to see if a strong magnetic field could stall a car, and the results indicated this was not a plausible explanation. However, whether tests were ever done on the effects of strong microwaves on the cars of the day is something I don't know. Maybe everyone is assuming it will only work on microprocessors in modern cars, but are we sure?

It will be the youngster's fault

Rudd's youth appeal trumps PM | The Australian

There's a lot of talk in The Australian this morning about how Kevin Rudd's appeal to the under 35's will be the main source of his likely triumph.

Yes, the demographic that values idealism more than practical results on the ground, and does not (for the most part) yet have children at school, or mortgages, is about to hand government to Kevin Rudd.

Oh well, you have to let youngsters learn by experience, I suppose, even if we know it will all end in tears.

What is going on at McDonald's?

I've noticed something at McDonald's. While I think they used to actually cook frozen hamburger on a grill, now in the cooking area all I can see is a sort of oven-like device full of slide in trays. It seems hamburger patties are being cooked or re-heated in this thing now.

As I suspect it is no more than a "warming" device, does this mean that the hamburger meat is now pre-cooked before it gets to the store?

Just curious. I can't say I have noticed a significant difference in quality of the hamburgers.

I admire the company for its re-branding as a healthier food outlet, as well as the much more attractive and "adult" look of many of their stores.

The new (possible) TOE

McCabism: An exceptionally simple theory of everything

Gordon McCabe clears up the situation with this new (yet to be tested, but possibly promising) theory of everything:

The diagram here represents the 240 roots of the Lie algebra of E8, each of which purportedly define a possible type of elementary particle. Every Lie algebra has a maximal commuting subalgebra, called the Cartan subalgebra. In each representation of a Lie algebra, the simultaneous eigenvectors of the elements from the Cartan subalgebra are called the weight vectors of the representation, and their simultaneous eigenvalues are called the weights of the representation. In the special case of the adjoint representation, (a representation of a Lie algebra upon itself), the weight vectors are called the root vectors, and the weights are called the roots. The roots uniquely determine a Lie algebra.

Err... yes, thanks Gordon for helping make that clear for the rest of us. (Or how about just telling us if it has any surprises regarding possible explanations for dark energy, dark matter, and the fate of the universe.)

UPDATE: if you want to see a physics blog where it is discussed in great detail, try this. Still hard (no, impossible) to fathom, of course.

UPDATE 2: hey, this is more like it. Go here and watch a lovely animation that gives a bit of a clearer overview as to what it is all about. It looks so pretty, I certainly hope it's true.

Three odd stories concerning women

1. Menstrual blood could be rich source of stem cells - New Scientist

Menstrual blood: it's not far behind paedophilia and child murder in the ranks of topics about which it is absolutely impossible to come up with any comment that could plausibly be called "witty". So, moving right along:

2. Apparently, some Australian women breastfeed their kids up to age 7. Very, very few I gather, but some. Mind you, I heard a caller to talkback radio today say that as a student teacher, she had seen women attend school for the purpose of breastfeeding their kid in grade 1! (She also claimed some women protracted breastfeeding as a tactic to help defeat an estranged husband's custody or visitation rights!) Can this be true? She sounded sane, but I have just never heard anything like this.

3. They are working on a new design for a female condom. The first version never caught on. This is how they plan to improve it:

The old design hung passively from the rubber ring, which could shift around and sometimes hurt; the new design has dots of adhesive foam that adhere to the vaginal walls, expanding with them during arousal.

Err, somehow I just can't imagine that the idea of having such a device stuck in place with adhesive foam is ever going to be an easy sell to women. In fact, I reckon the developers may as well just give up now.

More equity coming my way?

Room for prices to rise in Brisbane, Melbourne

The general manager of Australian Property Monitors, Michael McNamara, says median house prices in several property markets have levelled off in the $500,000 to $550,000 band.

A pattern seems to be emerging: when a city's median home price reaches about half-a-million it stays there.

"The cities with a median price up over the $500,000 mark just don't seem to have any more fuel left in the tank; they seem to be stagnating," McNamara says. He thinks that communities in the country's two most expensive property markets, Sydney and Perth, are approaching "peak debt".

The article says that Brisbane and Melbourne haven't reached that median price yet, but doesn't say what the median is for Brisbane.

But this article seems to give the answer:

According to APM’s analysis, Brisbane median house price lifted 2.4 per cent over the September quarter to reach $399,755. That worked out to an extremely solid 16.7 per cent rise for the year.

And further down:

Mr Matusik said the predicted November interest rate could put a serious dampener on housing demand in the River City.

“With an increase in supply and higher interest rates our modelling is that price rises will be slow in Brisbane at somewhere between 6 and 8 per cent growth in the next 12 months,” he said.

“But looking beyond that an acceleration of price growth is likely because of the lack of new stock.”

Hmm. Soon I will be able to borrow for a 42 inch LCD TV in every room. (Plasmas seem to be a bit passe now.)

Something I bet you didn't know

I spy no temples in Kyoto | The Japan Times Online

This story in the travel section of the Japan Times is pretty fascinating:

Maizuru is more than another beautiful seaside town; it's home to the closest Japanese Navy base to North Korea. There's a slight film-noir feel to this place. Until about seven years ago, the police box in front of Higashi Maizuru Station had a poster up asking people to report sightings of strange men in rubber rafts landing on the beach in the dead of night.... Even today, fisherman occasionally report seeing strange lights along the beaches or boats without lights at night running into the many coves around Maizuru harbor.

That's a part of Japan where they probably really take locking the front door seriously, for fear of ending up in North Korea.

But the main historical thing I didn't realise, and which I bet few Westerners know too, is this:

During World War II, about 570,000 Japanese soldiers were sent to the Soviet Union, of whom about 472,000 ended up in Siberian POW camps by the end of the war. Getting the soldiers back home would prove to be a lengthy undertaking.

The first repatriation ship arrived in Maizuru on Oct. 7, 1945, just two months after Japan's surrender, and the last one docked on Sept. 7, 1958. After 1950, Maizuru become the only port in Japan to receive repatriated soldiers, many of whom were physically and spiritually broken. Between 1945 and 1958, more than 664,000 soldiers who had been stranded in the Soviet Union and China, including most of the POWs in Siberia, arrived home via Maizuru.

It took 13 years for all the POWs to be returned from Siberia! What were Russia and China doing: trying to age all the soldiers out of fighting again? Fascinating.

Anything would be better than these

The last couple of evenings I happened to see A Current Affair on Channel 9. During this last year, I have also seen snippets of Channel 7's competition, Today Tonight.

It is absolutely absurd that the competing 6.30 pm "current affairs" programs have taken to doing many stories devoted to criticising programs on their competing television networks. This week, for 2 nights in a row, A Current Affair devoted lengthy stories to criticism of Channel 7's "National Bingo Night," or whatever it is called. (It's not a "real" game of bingo, which is hardly surprising given that it is pre-recorded months ago.)

Of course, Channel 7 has gone into this too. Instead of taking ABC' s "The Chaser's" (usually spot on) satire in its stride and ignoring it, Today Tonight has run many stories with pretty ludicrously over-the-top criticism of The Chaser, purely as attempted revenge.

And when Today Tonight yesterday got an injunction against The Chaser running a sketch this week, not only did (apparently) Today Tonight itself devote time to the story, but A Current Affair also had a segment about how the other two shows were fighting!

This is unbelievably puerile, bitchy and just really pathetic television.

There is no saving 6.30 pm current affairs. It has been appalling for, I don't know, 20 years or so, yet amazingly it has found a way to reach even lower standards and be even more irrelevant, as well as profoundly demeaning to all who make it.

Politics, politics

Saw some of Kevin Rudd's campaign launch. He seemed badly unprepared for use of the autocue. When used well, you're not constantly aware of its presence. With Kevin, and the strange angles the autocue seemed to be at, it was clear that he was always reading off them. He is probably tonight punishing some media lackey for this fault.

As to content: nothing to get excited about. Seems to making rather a fetish of computers and students, which seems a little odd in a year when laptops have become so cheap you could pick up a decent enough second-hand one for primary kids for less than $300. (A new one for $700, and that should last a good few years.) Just how many families can't afford that?

On advertising: I haven't been seeing a lot of commercial TV recently, but I still have the impression that Labor seems to have a bottomless bucket of money for advertising this campaign. Liberal ads seems few and far between. If business doesn't like the outcome of the election, it only has itself to blame for what appears to be poor support of the Coalition in terms of donations.

UPDATE: Annabel Crabbe has a typically witty and accurate take on the policy launch.

News Limited headlines and coverage today are so upbeat, it seems they have jumped ship to Labor completely. The End of Certainty indeed, Paul Kelly.

If the next Newspoll is as bad as this week's, I don't know that there would be any downside for the Coalition to come out much more aggressively against Rudd personally. It has always seemed that his control freak and "say whatever it takes" nature irritates journalists, yet they are generally party to helping him maintain this. I thought John Laws' little anecdote on Enough Rope about Kevin was typical:

JOHN LAWS: Yes I’ll tell you I noticed it, I noticed it the other day and it, it intrigued me. I was going to do an interview with Kevin Rudd and I was going to pre-record it at half past seven in the morning because he was going to Perth in an aeroplane or something. I said “Is that you Kevin?” He said “Yes, eh John how are you?” And I said “Good, how are you? I bet you’re a bit a tired.” He said “Oh”, he said “tired, you know it’s hard work.” And I said “Well I imagine it is but the end result if you achieve it surely will be worth the effort?” He said “Oh yes,” he said “but sometimes, you know, just so damn hard.” And then he stopped and obviously one of his people said to him “That’s being recorded” and there was a hesitation and he came back to me and said “Are, are you, are you, are we recording?” And I said “Yeah.” He said “But I was just talking to you.” And I said “Well that’s the idea of the interview.”

JOHN LAWS: And he said “Well my people’d rather you didn’t play that.” Now he’d behaved in quite a normal pleasant fashion.

ANDREW DENTON: Mm.

JOHN LAWS: I mean, I know him, I’ve had lunch with him on more than one occasion and I know his wife, had lunch with her, so it’s not as if we’re not good acquaintances. But he was terrified that he should appear to be natural, which really surprised me. I would have thought it would have done him a tremendous amount of good to sound like just a nor-normal every day bloke. And then when I said “Alright, well if you want to do it, we’ll start it again,” he sounded like a totally different man.

Yeah, OK, you can hardly condemn Rudd for wanting to sound upbeat in an interview, and yes of course I know all politicians manipulate image; but if many journalists are leery of the controlling aspects of his character, as I am sure they are, it's fair enough for the public to be as well.

UPDATE 2: it may well be a case of "any port in a storm" when I start quoting Kenneth Davidson with approval, but he makes some decent points against Rudd's computer and broadband fetish this morning:

If Rudd Labor was serious about an education revolution it would be based on the latest survey of internet usage by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which showed that 76 per cent of households with children under the age of 15 already had access to the internet.

Why subsidise the majority of parents for spending already undertaken without subsidy? If Rudd Labor wanted to extend student access to the internet, and improve overall school retention rates, it would have focused its $2.6 billion on poor primary and secondary schools, poor areas with a low computer-pupil ratio and internet access, and provide the money necessary to provide access supervision outside school hours.

The reason why a targeted approach to funding based on needs wasn't considered is because it wasn't a vote buyer.

As Annabel Crabbe (and I) sad before, the big bonus for Dads across the nation will be that the high speed porn access they already have will be subsidised by Labor.

A silly election post...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that this has been a dull election campaign.

I would like to see more fire and passion on the Coalition side, at least. All this stage management ruins most of the spontaneity, save for the odd yell from a cranky passing shopper.

It makes me nostalgic for the public political rallies of the past. The problem is, the unions are so well organised against Workchoices, they would be bound to be a noisy out-numbering presence at any publicised Coalition rally.

My fantasy suggestion: unannounced city rooftop appearances with loudspeakers by John Howard and some of his ministers, just like The Beatles in "Let it Be". Of course, it has to be a building only a few stories up, and near a public mall or square. There must be suitable venues...

The mind image I have of this amuses me a lot.

Why aren't I in charge of a campaign?

Drugs and insight

And then I became a junkie ...

This is a lengthy extract of a book by an English comedian about his drug addled days. (I assume he is over it all now.)

There's nothing new here, I suppose, except that there is a kind of endless fascination with hearing about how completely and utterly stuffed up most drug addicts have to make their lives before they come to the realisation that they have to change.