"Dude" lead leads nowhere

A bizarre turn on the investigative trail | Salon.com

I don't really know why Salon journalist Mark Benjamin let this story be published. It is a little amusing, but mainly at his expense.

In short, he attempts to follow a lead about a war crime in Iraq from an ex-Marine who sounds, right from the start, very unlike an ex-Marine.

Despite all the warning signs that this guy was not the genuine deal, the reporter goes on a snowy trip only to find a paranoid young guy sitting in a chalet with his stoner friends in a haze of pot smoke. The interview ends abruptly when the CIA is mentioned. It is never clearly established whether he was really a Marine at all (despite some apparent early confirmation of it from other sources.)

I would not have been particularly happy about paying for the trip if I were Mark Benjamin's editor.

Googling a death

How does Google News work? It seems surprisingly slow sometimes.

This morning I heard that Heath Ledger had died on the ABC radio news at 8 am. At 8.30, I checked both the Australian and US Google news sites and it wasn't there yet. The News.com story would indicate it was posted at about 7.45 my time.

One gets used to Google search being so powerful that it seems a big let down for Google News to not have linked to major stories within 10 minutes.

As for Heath: Sounds like yet another case where too much success too young has proved problematic. As for how he was as an actor: you know, I don't think I have ever seen all of any movie or TV show he has been in.

He had a reputation for being difficult with the media, and that may explain some of the less than sympathetic comments being expressed at the News.com site.

Woohoo

Saudi allow women to stay in hotels without a male guardian - International Herald Tribune:

The daily Al-Watan, which is deemed close to the Saudi government, reported Monday that the ministry issued a circular to hotels asking them to accept lone women — as long as their information is sent to a local police station.

And elsewhere it is reported that by the end of the year, women will be allowed to drive a car. But not everyone there is ready to accept it, according to this letter to the editor quoted in The Telegraph:

"Allowing women to drive will only bring sin," a letter to Al-Watan newspaper declared last year. "The evils it would bring - mixing between the genders, temptations, and tarnishing the reputation of devout Muslim women - outweigh the benefits."

Overfishing

Until All the Fish Are Gone - New York Times

An interesting editorial in the NYT on the international problem of overfishing.

Incidentally, in Australia the Lifestyle Channel has started showing Rick Stein's latest series, in which he is travelling around the Mediterranean. (As always, it works very well as foodie travelogue.) His occasional trips on a fishing boat certainly indicate that the Europeans have just about fished the Mediterranean empty.

Why didn't the ABC or SBS pick up this series shown on the BBC?

Stupid

Reclaim the streets now! | Libby Purves - Times Online

Libby Purves (quite rightly) gets very, very upset with how Britain's Home Secretary (a woman) answered questions about safety on the streets. The comments are so startling wrong-headed, she deserves every criticism she gets:

The revelation occurred in an interview. The Home Secretary was droning peacefully on about how “people are safer in terms of crime than ten years ago” (ignoring, as they always do, the fact that much street crime goes unreported because there's no point, and that the drop in crime figures has more to do with car alarms than policing).

Then the canny reporter asked whether she personally, would feel safe walking alone in Hackney at night? And the minister said “No. Why would I do that?” OK then, Kensington or Chelsea: would she walk alone at night there? “No,” replied the Home Secretary again, adding the appalling line: “But I never would have done, at any point in my life. I just don't think it's a thing that people do. I wouldn't walk around at midnight. I'm fortunate that I don't have to.”

Boing, splat! She said it; and worse, she has no idea why it is dreadful. In a desperate attempt to spin her clear, an aide revealed that his boss bravely bought a kebab in Peckham recently.

Investigative hacks discovered that this was at 5pm, and with a protection officer. Later the Home Secretary said yes, she would walk around in her own constituency (expressing terror of one's voters is never politically helpful) but added: “You don't walk in areas you don't know, in any circumstances”; and that her task is to “persuade” people that they are safe.

No. The task is to make them safe. On any street, any time

Darkest Africa

BBC NEWS | Africa | I ate children's hearts, ex-rebel says

Milton Blahyi, a former feared rebel commander in Liberia's brutal civil war, has admitted to taking part in human sacrifices as part of traditional ceremonies intended to ensure victory in battle.

He said the sacrifices "included the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart, which was divided into pieces for us to eat."

There had been numerous rumours of human sacrifices during the 1979-93 conflict but this is the first time anyone has admitted publically to the practice.

He's now an Evangelist preacher. I assume that even Dawkins would approve of that as an improvement.

Lane on the monster that ate New York

Monstrous Times: The Current Cinema: The New Yorker

Anthony Lane writes a witty review of Cloverfield, and although he seems to have found it somewhat silly fun, the whole concept of the movie (Blair Witch meets Godzilla, as several other critics have said) leaves me cold.

JJ Abrams is over-rated as a creative force, I reckon.

Slow medical research

Coffee can double risk of miscarriage - health - 21 January 2008 - New Scientist

The suggestion is that even 2 cups of coffee a day can increase the risk of miscarriage.

Seems to have taken medical research a hell of a long time to pin this down as really a risk factor after all.

Helping the Japanese

The West as cruel to animals as the Japanese - Opinion - theage.com.au

It doesn't really matter whether Peter Singer is right or not (and he probably is at least right to suggest that many people would find some factory farms to be cruel;) the point is more that by raising this now he is only going to serve the purposes of the Japanese whaling lobby.

Singer also doesn't give enough importance to the difference the type of animal makes to the issue of whether killing it is ever justifiable. It's pretty clear that whales are a hell of a lot smarter than kangaroos, isn't it?, and no species of kangaroo is threatened by culling. To draw a comparison is disingenuous.

Counting on the gullibility of men

Fancy an on-screen romance with a cherry on top? | The Japan Times Online

Read that article if you want to know about the modern way to separate the more gullible Japanese man from his money.

Good luck to Tim Blair

I've been remiss in not earlier sending good wishes to Tim Blair, but I particularly wanted to say that I think he did a considerable public service by describing the course of symptoms he went through in the lead up to the diagnosis of bowel cancer. The fact that he seems to have had very generalised pains for some time before it settled in a specific area was not something I would have expected from bowel cancer.

His theory as to how it is men ignore gradually increasing warning signs seemed plausible, and it should work as a good warning to any men who have the same thought processes.

(As for me, call me a big hypochondriac girlie man if you want, but there's no way that even one sleep interrupted night caused by a novel type of pain would not result in a GP visit.)

A handful of Melbourne photos

Now that Kevin Rudd has lost his sideburns (it's been many a decade since a Prime Ministerial hair fashion has received such universal condemnation,) I don't have much to post about except to put up more photos from Melbourne:

The place: Werribee Open Range Zoo:


It is a good quality zoo, where you don't have to feel guilty about most of the animals being too cooped up. The new hippo enclosure is fun for the kids, but you have to be lucky and be there before they disappear underwater for protracted periods:


When you finish the zoo, make sure you drop into the adjacent (and free) Victorian State Rose garden:


I try to grow roses in Brisbane, but it is a never ending battle against black spot and other humidity-loving diseases. While my wife loved Melbourne's roses, they also made her depressed about ours at home.

Back to the city. Who doesn't try taking this photo from the inside of Melbourne Central shopping centre? Still, came out quite well, I think:


Of course, food is what Melbourne does best (fish and chips excepted, of course.)


Fortunately, both my kids love spaghetti bolognese, and every cafe in Melbourne by law has to have it on the menu. (I may be exaggerating.)

(By the way, since when did restaurant touts start pestering passers-by on Lygon Street? An unwelcome addition.)

The docklands area of Melbourne is looking good, and getting the Williamstown ferry on a nice day is a good way to see part of it:


Cue corny travelogue music as we prepare to leave Melbourne with a nice sunset shot:


But finally, I admit I am particularly happy with this shot of the silly sculpture "Cow up a tree":

Flakey Melbourne

Give small children small fish: doctor

I found it a little surprising to read a couple of weeks ago that, even in Australia, parents should not feed too much large fish to their very young children, due to the risk they will get too much mercury.

Do big fish everywhere in the world have too much mercury in them? If so, how long has this been the case? Furthermore, even some not so huge sized fish can be a problem:

The NSW Food Authority's chief scientist, Dr Lisa Szabo, said there were only six types of fish parents needed to worry about - shark, broadbill, swordfish, marlin, orange roughy and catfish.

"In part it's because they're bigger," Dr Szabo told reporters.

"But they're also longer lived and they're predatory fish, which means that they eat a lot of small fish so that's why they tend to accumulate the mercury."

Orange roughy is an interesting, ugly fish, as being a member of the slimehead family would tend to indicate. (Oh the cruel taunting that must go on in fish schools. Ha ha.) But, as it lives in deep cold water, which I generally assume is far from mercury producing shores, I did not expect it to have a mercury problem. Still, if you live for a hundred years before someone eats you, I guess there is a lot of time to accumulate bad things in your flesh.

Anyway, this is all by way of long introduction to a minor anecdote about a problem with Melbourne, or perhaps it is with Victorians generally.

I have said for decades that, despite the fact that I really don't like its weather (particularly its winters which are grey, wet and seem to take forever to leave, and yet never have the hope of the prettiness of snow,) Melbourne is the best place in Australia to eat. My theory is that this was historically prompted not only by foreign immigrants, but also by the fact that the weather means there is nothing else to do for 8 months of the year other than to stay indoors.

However, there is one area where Melbourne is still disastrously backward in the matter of food: the suburban fish and chip shop.

While staying at Williamstown recently, my wife noticed a pretty new looking fish and chip shop that had lots of customers, and had a great position across the road from the water. She suggested we eat from there. Before we went into the shop, I told her that maybe it would be OK, but I knew from past experience that Melbournians had a peculiar feature in that they assumed fish and chip shops need only sell flake (shark).

In contrast, the Brisbane fish and chip shops of my childhood sold everything but flake - whiting, flathead, snapper, sea perch (a.k.a. orange roughy, incidentally.) Flake only started appearing in Brisbane as an option in (I would guess) the 1980's.

Maybe Melbourne has changed, I said to my wife. Surely it has caught up with the times and sells something other than the strangely textured gummy shark, which I think most Brisbane people still quite rightly disdain. (I think from childhood holidays in Sydney that it wasn't very popular there either.)

But no, the very fancy looking, popular fish and chip shop in question sold only flake, and I don't think it was because they had run out of other fish either.

We walked up the road to another fish and chip takeaway, a much less fancy looking one, and its extensive fish menu was flake and something sold as whiting (although the latter turned out to be something suspiciously large and not exactly of whiting shape.)

Although my sample of shops was admittedly small, I still feel confident in saying that Melbourne for some mysterious reason is still the worst city in Australia to eat take away fish and chips.

(Why did they ever accept small shark as the default choice for takeaway fish in the first place? Anyone know the history of that?)

Flying a 777 this weekend?

What pilots are saying about the BA 777 accident

This website indicates that some pilots speculate that fuel contamination is behind the Heathrow 777 crash this week.

However, the initial accident report says this is what happened:

Initial indications from the interviews and flight recorder analyses show the flight and approach to have progressed normally until the aircraft was established on late finals for Runway 27L.

At approximately 600ft and 3km (two miles) from touch down, the Autothrottle demanded an increase in thrust from the two engines but the engines did not respond.

Following further demands for increased thrust from the autothrottle, and subsequently the flight crew moving the throttle levers, the engines similarly failed to respond.

I wouldn't have thought that a fuel contamination would lead to this problem in both engines at exactly the same time.

Its sounds more like a problem with the avionics (if that is the right word for the electronics involved in control of the engines.) And if I am right at this guess, I wouldn't want to be flying in a 777 right at this moment.

I love making guesses in fields I know next to nothing about.

UPDATE: this article in The Times lists the possible causes, and yes, a computer/software problem is one of them.

Sentencing for rape

'Stinky rapist' gets 15 years | The Courier-Mail

I generally don't like to get involved in the populist debates about the appropriateness of certain sentences for certain convictions. The reason is that you can't rely on media reports to give a full picture of comments made in court by the judge or the barristers.

Having said that, there are some cases that do raise my eyebrows as to whether the sentence really could be adequate. The Aurukun child rape case was one, and now this Brisbane rape case is another.

Basically, the media story indicates that this was the creepiest, most pre-meditated form of rape possible. (Complete stranger - later found to have hepatitis - enters woman's house, ties her up, and forces her into shower afterwards in attempt to cover his tracks.) The jury took 40 minutes to find him guilty.

He got 15 years jail, of which 80% must be served. The newspaper report says he has "a violent history of offending", showed no remorse, and his prospects of rehabilitation are low.
As rape carries a maximum of life imprisonment in Queensland, the question is: just how much worse can a "straight forward" rape possibly be in order to justify a life sentence? To my mind, this case must be very close to deserving a life sentence.

Permit system

Back to a system that permits social rot | The Australian

Nicolas Rothwell criticises the decision to re-instate a "permit system" for entry on Northern Territory aboriginal communities.

I suspect he is right, and Labor's sensitivities to listening to all aboriginal voices is actually a prescription for lessening strong action to change communities.

Meanwhile, in the Souther Ocean

A tale of two ships | Environment | The Guardian

This article provides an informative background to the rivalry between Greenpeace and the Sea Shepherd.

How low can it go?

Teen brat just loves the world's attention | NEWS.com.au

While I am reluctant to add my tiny bit to the publicity surrounding teenager "Corey" [I predict new parents will avoid giving their baby boys that name for a good few years now,] it is astounding to think that the makers of Big Brother could contemplate this:

While Corey was too young to be a housemate, he was being earmarked by Big Brother producers last night for a role somewhere in the franchise, Ten sources said yesterday.

"His fame and notoriety hasn't escaped the executive producers of Big Brother ... he would deliver the Ten demographic in droves," the source said.

Of course, the source could just be a publicist who sees this as a way to get some attention to a dying franchise, but I wouldn't put it past them.

Stick to the $10 limit

Study: $90 wine tastes better than the same wine at $10

This was a very fascinating study on the how expectations influence perceptions:

Researchers ...have directly seen that the sensation of pleasantness that people experience when tasting wine is linked directly to its price. And that's true even when, unbeknownst to the test subjects, it's exactly the same Cabernet Sauvignon with a dramatically different price tag.

Specifically, the researchers found that with the higher priced wines, more blood and oxygen is sent to a part of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, whose activity reflects pleasure. Brain scanning using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) showed evidence for the researchers' hypothesis that "changes in the price of a product can influence neural computations associated with experienced pleasantness," they said.

You see, people should just take my approach and make it a personal challenge to find the best wines you can at no more than $10 a bottle. (For many years, De Borteli's Sacred Hill range has usually been the most reliably pleasing sub-$10 wine, although you have to move between varieties from year to year. The Jacobs Creek sparkling range - often on special at $8 a bottle - is also consistently good.)

The report about the American study notes even this strange effect:

"Even more intriguingly, changing the price at which an energy drink is purchased can influence the ability to solve puzzles."

Very odd, hey?

Arabs got the blues

The Arabs | Between fitna, fawda and the deep blue sea | Economist.com

This is a pretty interesting review of the various reasons the Arab nations are all pretty depressed at the moment.

Here are a few points from the article that I don't think are so widely known:

* In Egypt, fewer than one in ten voters bothered to turn out for recent polls.

* Sex out of wedlock remains taboo, yet the cost of lavish weddings, hefty dowry payments and the bridal requirement of a furnished, paid-for home have pushed the average age of marriage in many Arab countries into the 30s.

* Religious texts still out-sell every other form of literature in most Arab countries.

* An oft-quoted statistic from the reports is that the amount of literature translated into Spanish in a single year exceeds the entire corpus of what has been translated into Arabic in 1,000 years.

UPDATE: this is a fascinating article on how Egypt tries to iron out inequality by massive government subsidies for bread (amongst other things,) and how it goes wildly wrong. Here's the key paragraph, but go read the whole thing:

So the bread subsidy continues, costing Cairo about $3.5 billion a year. Over all, the government spends more on subsidies, including gasoline, than it spends on health and education. But it is not just the cost that plagues the government. The bread subsidy fuels the kind of rampant corruption that undermines faith in government, discourages investment and reinforces the country's every-man-for-himself ethos, say government officials and political experts, not to speak of bakers and their customers.

Government piggy bank to save us?

Rudd Government vows to cut fat - National - theage.com.au

According to the new Federal government:

THE budget surplus needs to be bigger and the Rudd Government's first budget will tighten fiscal policy "significantly", Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has warned, as he searches for fat around departments to cut.

Mr Tanner said the present inflationary pressure meant the budget situation needed to be stabilised. "Spending has accelerated too quickly," he said.

The surplus needed to increase as a proportion of GDP to put downward pressure on interest rates, he said.

"The projected surplus is a fraction over 1% of GDP. A surplus of 1% is good, but not necessarily good enough", he said. "There is a clear need for a significant tightening."

I have limited understanding of economics, but my intuition is that there is something very wrong about the very idea of using a budget surplus to control inflation.

It also places Labor in a very peculiar political position. It liked to accuse the Howard government of being "big taxing", and skimping on spending on infrastructure. Now Labor will keep the same taxes Howard would have, but just let them sit in the government piggy bank, and (presumably) still limit the spending on infrastructure and the public service. (How ironic too that I heard that there will be cuts to the Foreign Affairs department. I would have thought having more public servants posted overseas might help our economy if it meant they spent their salary in another country!)

Certainly, I have a problem with the idea, currently all the rage with many Left of Rudd, that the tax cuts should be abolished because they provide too much stimulus to the economy. As Harry Clarke points out, it's simply going to replace bracket creep anyone, which surely is only fair.

Has any other country ever been in a similar position to this and successfully used budget surplus increase to limit inflation?

Some economist comment needed, and I don't mean John Quiggan.

And: for God's sake, what does Kevin Rudd think he is doing with the length of his sideburns? Is he a secret Elvis fan?

UPDATE: I suppose that the good thing about economics is that you can hold any opinion and expect that there will be an economist somewhere who will support you. This article from The Australian indicates that there is indeed reason to be sceptical about an increased budget surplus helping significantly with inflation, but it would seem most economists think it at least won't do any harm.

Visiting Israel

Digging the Bible. - By David Plotz - Slate Magazine

Here's a nice travel piece by David Plotz, which explains why Israel would be such an interesting destination for people interested in the Bible. History everywhere.

Anything but self control

Cue the gluttony - Los Angeles Times

This article talks about the idea from the US that "environmental cues" make people eat more, and become obese:

Several recent studies, papers and a popular weight-loss book argue that eating is an automatic behavior triggered by environmental cues that most people are unaware of -- or simply can't ignore. Think of the buttery smell of movie theater popcorn, the sight of glazed doughnuts glistening in the office conference room or the simple habit of picking up a whipped-cream-laden latte on the way to work.

Accepting this "don't blame me" notion may not only ease the guilt and self-loathing that often accompanies obesity, say the researchers behind the theory, but also help people achieve a healthier weight.

To make Americans eat less and eat more healthily, they contend, the environment itself needs to be changed -- with laws regulating portion size, labeling or the places where food can be sold or eaten. That would be much easier, the researchers add, than overcoming human nature. The theory that our society -- not us -- is to blame for our overall expanding waist size is garnering support from health and nutrition experts.

Now look - no doubt "supersizing" meals is one of the unhealthiest ideas American fast food ever came up with; but the idea of laws to limit portion size is surely the most inappropriate thing anyone has ever suggested legislating about.

A requiem for the sitcom

I've written before about how sitcoms over the last, I don't know, 5 years or so, seem to have just fizzled out to a sad death. (When did "Malcolm in the Middle" end? It was the last one I could whole-hearted recommend.)

AA Gill in The Times is in despair of British sitcoms in particular; although I would say it has been moribund for perhaps 15 or 20 years. (OK, perhaps one small, short, silly exception: The IT Crowd.) What Gill says of British sitcoms applies to the US ones too, in my opinion:

I don’t believe in golden ages, on TV or anywhere else, and I am constantly telling people that if they’re not seeing the best television of their lives at the moment, it’s only because they’re not looking in the right places. I honestly believe every aspect of television is better than it’s ever been – except for the sitcom, which is far worse than it was 20 years ago, 10 years ago, last year and probably last Wednesday. It seems to be an artistic form, like weaving corn dollies and plate-spinning to music, that has reached a point where nobody can remember what its point is supposed to be. Sitcoms used to be about anger and hubris and the small man standing against the slings and arrows of life. The difference between British and American sitcoms was that ours were all about failure and theirs about success – they’d bake a cake, our lot would fall into a cake.

Now the situation has gone missing. It’s just about pushing comedians into rooms. The comedy lacks structure or tension or even interest. They’re not about life, they’re about the tired conventions of sitcom, so every scene, every exhausted setup and wan punch line, has been handed down until it’s ragged and sticky with overuse. The sitcom has become the Oxfam shop of telly.

Even Kevin has not saved us

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | A senseless belligerence

Waleed Aly goes to town in this Guardian piece about the treatment of Dr Haneef and David Hicks, and claims that the new Labor government is probably not going to be all that different despite its "softer" rhetoric.

But this comment (by "Phorein") caught my eye, as one of the finest examples of over-the-top condemnation of Australia I have recently seen:

Unfortunately for Australia, those who have been living down there for a long while know first hand that this article does describe a sad reality: that of a country which has progressively become a totalitarian society based on surveillance and hatred. Yes, it's a regime, because there is no political debate, because the political elites go hand-in-hand with a clique that utterly dominates the mass-mediad, and because most gullible and holier-than-you "Aussies" are happy to be sheep.

I love condemnations of Australia by Guardian readers. It just wouldn't be as much fun to read without them.

Kid's holiday movies

The kids and I have seen 2 holiday season movies so far.

First, the power of TV advertising convinced both son and daughter that they must see Alvin and the Chipmunks. My observations: at first, I thought the lead actor (Jason Lee) just seemed particularly bad at pretending that the computer generated characters are really there when he talks to them; but then I noticed that he also seemed to be seeing through the human actors when they were in a scene. He just seems not quite "there" in his acting.

For a kids film, it is perhaps surprising to note that it tackles the issues of corporate greed, exploitation of artists, and men over 30 who still have a 20 year old's aversion to commitment to having a family. And let's face it, when the average age of the target audience will be about 5, expectations should be low. But even so, it's not a movie that will stick in anyone's mind for more than 10 minutes after leaving the cinema, even if the chipmunks first song in the movie (a rendition of "Funky Town") drew spontaneous applause from an easily pleased audience I saw it with.

It also raises the most incredibly inconsequential question ever: was that Paris Hilton in a black wig doing an uncredited appearance as the French maid? Even Yahoo answers does not know for sure.

Secondly: The Water Horse - Legend of the Deep. This is more like it. The poster heavily promotes that it is a Walden Media production, the same company that is making the Narnia series, and with good reason. It shares with "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" a very similar tone of basic seriousness, as well as great production values, solid acting and good script.

Yes, it is a little derivative in certain respects, and it certainly helps if you are not too familiar with the geography of Scotland. My (5 year old) girl found it a bit too scary in parts, but I would expect that most children (particularly boys) from about 7 to 12 should be really impressed.

Indeed, overall, I liked it a quite a lot, especially as I tend to give bonus points to any intelligently made family movie that can touch the adult audience as well as please the kids.

(It seems to be underperforming at the box office in the States, but everyone involved should be pleased with the product.)

Next on the list: the well reviewed "Enchanted". That should keep my daughter happier.

Oratory and politics

Is Eloquence Overrated? - New York Times

In light of the good reviews Obama gets for some of his speeches (personally, I am not so convinced; it seems to me the deep, smoker's voice would get him half way to acclaim even if he were reading a McDonald's menu), this is an interesting article on the value of politic oratory.

There is an actual connection to the Kennedy speeches too.

Greenaway warning

The Renaissance Man | The Japan Times Online

It had escaped my attention until now, but that director of unbearably pretentious arthouse films, Peter Greenaway, had a new film released late last year.

The Japan Times says it opens this way:

The opening scene of "Nightwatching" sees the painter [Rembrandt] stripped, beaten and screaming, questioning the meaning of art and life. It's a classic Greenaway treatment, for in his films, philosophizing and gore come hand-in-hand.

This has been a public service announcement to any man with a girlfriend interested in arthouse film.

Annabel on copyright

Talk to the hand if you want to use Hewitt's gesture - Opinion - smh.com.au

Annabel Crabb writes amusingly on sport and copyright this morning.

Curry ends political career?

Abe: I flushed career down toilet | The Daily Telegraph

Former Japanese PM Abe has gone into a lot of detail about suffering from ulcerative colitis since he was 17, and how it led to his resignation.

"To mention an indelicate matter, I rushed to the lavatory after having keen abdominal pains and saw the basin all red with tremendous bleeding," he said.

"Bleeding causes slight anaemia. More than anything else, though, you feel depressed as you see fresh blood every time you go to the toilet."

Abe said the illness usually made him "feel the need to relieve my bowels every 30 minutes".

Now that would make cabinet meetings a challenge...

But the heading for this post comes from this part of the story:

Abe said his health deteriorated in late August, when his stomach was upset by local food during his tour of India, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Sounds like it may be the first time a curry or chilli dish has led to a Prime Minister's resignation.

For Indiana Jones fans

Keys to the Kingdom: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com

Vanity Fair has a long article on the upcoming Indiana Jones movie. And a long interview with Spielberg.

The main article notes that the new movie is set in the 1950's, and apart from featuring crystal skulls, Lucas himself suggests that story has more of a science fiction heart than a supernatural one. (There has been speculation that part of the movie is set in the alleged home of recovered UFOs - Area 51.)

This ties in with my long standing idea for Indiana Jones to be tied in with Close Encounters.

If this turns out to be the basis for the movie, I should write to Spielberg and ask for a royalty cheque. (I cannot recall clearly whether I actually posted this idea somewhere years ago in my very early days of using the internet. Let's hope so!)

Of interest

Late Night Live - 10 January 2008 - The Kennedy Brothers

Today I heard most of this repeat broadcast of Phillip Adams talking to David Talbot about his book on the Kennedy brothers.

I'm not entirely sure how much to trust the founder of Salon.com, but some of the information was new to me. For example, I hadn't heard before that a couple of people report that Lyndon Johnson, on Air Force One immediately after JFK's assassination, made a couple of comments to the effect that he feared it was a military coup.

Talbot also says that Robert Kennedy privately believed there was a conspiracy involved, but was waiting to get elected President before he could get to the bottom of it.

Pretty interesting.

But not here...

BBC NEWS | New nuclear plants get go-ahead

Colour me skeptical

Crean vows to act on trade deficit - National - theage.com.au

More Rudd government talk, but with considerable vagueness about the actual cure:

After 68 successive months of trade deficits, Mr Crean said that to get the trade balance back in the black, Australia needed faster growth in exports of services, and sophisticated manufactured goods, which had flagged in the past decade. "It's about investing more in infrastructure and skills, it's about innovation, and it's about having an integrated trade and industry policy approach."

Surely much of this is to do with the globalisation of the manufacture of sophisticated goods, which presumably was not that much of an issue the last time Labor was in power. I can't see it matters how much you skill up the Australian work force in the next 5 years; China is still going to be a cheaper place to make the same stuff, surely.

This will get Lambert going

Iraqi war death toll slashed by three quarters - health - 09 January 2008 - New Scientist

A much larger survey in Iraq than the notorious Lancet one estimates the loss of life at more like 150,000, not 600,000.

Tim Lambert is bound to get agitated over this, but it sounds like his unswerving defence of the Lancet study is now going to get harder.

The Boxing Day incident

The Dilbert Blog: There’s a Name for It

This Boxing Day post at Scott Adams' blog is well worth reading for a laugh.

Super soaker saves the world?

Solar Cells with 60% Efficiency?

Nuclear Engineer Lonnie Johnson, best known for his invention of the super soaker squirt gun, has recently designed a new type of solar energy technology that he says can achieve a conversion efficiency rate of more than 60 percent.

The super soaker had an "inventor"?

Williamstown, Melbourne

On the recent trip to Melbourne, apartment accommodation at a reasonable price was a bit hard to find in the city, and the family and I ended up staying at the old port area Williamstown.

In the late 1980's, I had lived in Melbourne for about 9 months, and although I was not particularly happy with my job and personal circumstances at that time, I was always impressed by Williamstown and rented an apartment there. It has a real English village atmosphere, with small pubs on many corners (some now shut, but many still operating,) gardens with lots of roses and lavender in front of the many century-old cottages, lots of tree lined streets, and a historic waterfront area that is full of sidewalk dining and bars. Some of the facades of the old commercial buildings could do with a bit of sprucing up, but the slightly worn aspect of the area I find part of its appeal.

You can either catch a train or ferry and be in the middle of Melbourne in well under the hour either way (about 30 minutes on the train.) By car it is a very easy drive up and over the Westgate bridge and you are in the middle of town.

On a nice sunny day, the waterside park at Nelson Place is surely one of the nicest places you could be in Melbourne; but if you stay in the area for a couple of days you can also enjoy the simple charm of an evening walk through the streets admiring the houses and their gardens, and stumbling on the occasional building of particular historic significance. You'll likely also likely find yourself near a small pub in which to take refreshment mid-way.

The photos that follow don't do it complete justice: I don't want to include any with the kids here. But if you are visiting Melbourne in nice weather, do yourself a favour and at least have one long day wandering around Williamstown.


Museum minesweeper HMAS Castlemaine (normally open only on weekends, though)


Williamstown marina.


Waterside precinct.


Old hotel (not sure what it is now)


The Williamstown timeball, built in 1852. Its use explained here.



An impressive house.

Bad haiku

As inspired by real life events in Melbourne:

Hat on, Austin gripped,
Hey, that pie was nearly free
More beers next time Tim.

Why I will never bother reading her

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

This passage, from a Time Literary Supplement review of a book about Stein & Toklas, is pretty amusing:

But just how “incomprehensible” is a work like The Making of Americans, Stein’s monumental, and largely unread, chef d’oeuvre? The sympathetic reader, the one who does not send the book windmilling across the room after finishing the first page, has two options. The first – which appears, incidentally, to have been the preferred tactic of Stein’s immediate circle – is simply to go with the flow of words, to luxuriate in a language unchecked by the stuffy conventions of realism or, for that matter, grammar. To use a trope Stein herself favoured, the words become the bold brushstrokes of a thoroughly modernist aesthetic, conveying moods, impressions and suggestions of form in place of narrative coherence or clear ideas. (While acolytes like Bernard Faÿ adored such airy expressionism, Picasso was apparently less indulgent – he was unable to sit through a reading of Stein’s “word portrait” of him, professing to its author that he couldn’t abide abstractions.)

Icky

eMJA: What’s hanging around your neck? Pathogenic bacteria on identity badges and lanyards

After previous studies finding harmful germs on doctors and nurses' neckties, stethoscopes and pens, an Australian study has been done to test ID cards and the lanyards that health care workers often keep them on.

The results were not good, especially for lanyards:

A total of 27 lanyards [out of 71 tested] were identified with pathogenic bacteria, compared with 18 badges. Analysing lanyards and badges as a combined group, seven had methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, 29 had methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA), four had Enterococcus spp and five had aerobic gram-negative bacilli. Lanyards were found to be contaminated with 10 times the median bacterial load per area sampled compared with identity badges. There were no significant differences between nurses and doctors in total median bacterial counts on items carried, but doctors had 4.41 times the risk of carrying MSSA on lanyards

The same edition of the Journal carries a fairly cranky sounding editorial that complains that we don't really need more studies showing where germs in hospitals can be found:

The United Kingdom has just mandated a “bare below the elbows” dress code in its hospitals.5 This means no more coats or even wristwatches, despite a lack of evidence that these items play a major role in transmitting MRSA. The UK Prime Minister has called for better cleaning of wards, in the belief that this is the key to controlling MRSA.5 While there is some merit in these proposals, they are focusing on elements that are minor compared with the most important one — how best to stop MRSA spreading via hands....

We don’t need more environmental-type studies without clinical endpoints. We need studies in which we intervene and show that the interventions reduce the number of people infected with MRSA.

Flaws will be found

Circumcision Doesn't Reduce Sexual Satisfaction And Performance, Says Study Of 4,500 Men

At last, a study that confirms what all sensible people guessed: circumcision is no big deal as far as change in sexual enjoyment for men is concerned.

You can safely bet, however, that the weird cult of the anti-circumcision movements on the Web will find flaws with the study.

Two Japanese stories

Here's a couple of Japan Times articles I didn't get to mention over the last couple of weeks.

First, there is a good article on the brief rise, and dramatic fall, of Christianity in Japan from 1549.

I have a book on the topic which I have never finished. One point the Japan Times article leaves out is that (according to the book) one difficulty in converting the Japanese was due to their distress at the idea that the souls of their deceased ancestors were condemned to Hell forever because they had been unlucky enough to not have heard about Christ before they died.

Anyway, the Japan Times article is a good read. It's interesting to note that one aspect of Japanese culture made the persecution of Christians that much easier:

As persecution intensified, the Jesuits were nonplussed by a Japanese trait they had not previously noticed. "They race to martyrdom," observed Father Organtino, "as if to a festival." The Christian view of suicide as sinful made few inroads against the traditional Japanese view of it as glorious.

The other JT article of note is one that details everything you ever wanted to know about Mt Fuji. This part in particular was new to me:

Fuji is said to be privately owned. Is that really true?

Surprisingly, yes, as far as the peak above the eighth station is concerned.

Fujisan Hongu Sengentaisha, a Shizuoka-based Shinto shrine, possesses an ancient document stating it was granted the parcel in 1609 by samurai warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu, who established the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603.

In 1957, the shrine sued for possession of the tract, citing a 1947 law returning state-held land to Shinto shrines that had previously held it.

In 1974, the Supreme Court upheld the claim, but transfer of the property rights wouldn't occur until 2004. Some national roads and the former meteorological observatory stayed under government jurisdiction.

HIV updates

Over the last week or so, the New York Times had 2 interesting articles about HIV.

One was an opinion piece by AIDS specialist Daniel Halperin, who worries that the large funding provided for HIV treatment in some African countries with relatively low rates of infection would be much better spent on basic health measures such as the provision of clean water. He writes:

As the United States Agency for International Development’s H.I.V. prevention adviser in southern Africa in 2005 and 2006, I visited villages in poor countries like Lesotho, where clinics could not afford to stock basic medicines but often maintained an inventory of expensive AIDS drugs and sophisticated monitoring equipment for their H.I.V. patients. H.I.V.-infected children are offered exemplary treatment, while children suffering from much simpler-to-treat diseases are left untreated, sometimes to die.

It seems to be basically the same point Lomborg has repeatedly made regarding getting priorities right.

The other article goes into detail about the medical complications that ageing HIV sufferers are increasingly facing. The outlook sounds pretty depressing, as they don't even understand what may be causing what illnesses. As I have said before, I would hope that HIV warnings to the young are including details of how the disease and its treatment compromise health in a major way, even if is not the immediate death threat that it used to be.

One foot on the floor, please

Guardian Unlimited: Why movie sex is better off faking it

This post at the Guardian's film blog was inspired by the (apparently) very real looking sex in Ang Lee's new film. The post makes this good argument against the increasingly common appearance of real sex acts in art house "R" rated cinema:

Sex changes in the presence of a camera, because it's no longer the business of the two people involved, but all about the third party - the viewer. What's always been dishonest about the likes of 9 Songs and The Brown Bunny is the slippery appeal to the audience that the sex is somehow scaling new heights of raw and fearless truth - when, in fact, it's just another performance sold as a non-performance, like everything else you see in a film. It's just that, rather than the strange, hairless, sheeny creatures of actual porn, you've got Tony Leung or Chloe Sevigny demonstrating their commitment to their craft. Not only is it all completely bogus, the results are usually far from erotic .... more importantly, they're not even dramatically potent.

In fact, the post reminds me of a general modern misapprehension about sex, perhaps particularly held by women, I suspect, that it is more revealing of true character than other day to day aspects of behaviour.

It is understandable that sex, particularly at the start of a relationship, can have a strong effect on each lover's perception of the other. But what I am questioning is the view held at an intellectual level that sex reveals "true" character.

The fact that the world's worst dictators, and probably a fair proportion of its worst criminals and murderers, have been married or in long standing sexual relationships, would suggest otherwise, wouldn't it? And surely everyone knows someone who ends up with a partner who is of bad or dubious character when not in bed with his or her partner.

There is every reason to suspect that the sex may be fogging the judgement of the partner, not enlightening it.

But do you need to have sex depicted explicitly in a film to realise this is true? Nah. Do you need to see an actor's genitals to understand the motivating role of sex in a character's life? Not at all.

I go further than the author of the post: story telling in modern cinema could be greatly improved if we went back to the almost non-depiction of the actual sex that existed in the cinema of (say) the 50's. Adults still understood when couples were lovers, without having to see them naked. The passionate kiss in the surf made the lust clear enough, didn't it? The sight of the train going into the tunnel at the end of North by Northwest was both funny and about sex. (Although that's not a trick you can repeat more than once, I suppose!) Adults knew that Black Narcissus was largely about repressed sexuality, and hardly a naked nun was to be seen.

The abandonment of the need for any degree of subtlety has worked against the interests of better story telling, and has lead now to the distracting stuff about whose breasts or penis are actually able to be spotted in the latest film.

Is there any spot on the censorship board coming up soon?

First Weird Science post of 2008!

Is time slowing down? - fundamentals - 21 December 2007 - New Scientist

This story, the bulk of which is unfortunately still behind the paywall, appeared in the Christmas edition of New Scientist, and seems to have attracted scant attention. It's certainly a novel idea, though.

Anyone with even a vague interest in astronomy knows that astronomers now believe the universe is currently expanding at an accelerating pace, and the nature of the "dark energy" behind this is the current major puzzle of physics and cosmology.

But, what if it is all an illusion, caused by Time itself slowing down?

What a great idea. Unfortunately, if true, it means that in billions of years the universe freezes.

Ha! And here you thought time stood still when you had to sit through a couple of Merchant Ivory films with your former girlfriend. It was just the universe preparing you for the real deal.

Update: here's a post from the nicely named "Daily Galaxy" blog which summarises what was in the New Scientist article.

I feel sleepy already

Comment is free: Blogging the Qur'an

The Guardian is going to spend a year "blogging the Koran". This opening explanation of what they are going to do acknowledges that it is a difficult book to read.

This came to mind when I recently watched Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for the first time, which led me to re-read the story in the Bible. (I am not sure whether I had ever read this section from beginning to end before.) It's a good story, and made me think about the simple pleasure of narrative that is to be found in many parts of the Old Testament.

As far as I know, there is no extended story telling in the Koran. Certainly, you come up pretty empty handed when you type in "great stories from the Koran" in Google.

Anyway, the first column in The Guardian about their experiment is of cultural interest at least.

It seems a curious feature, however, that good education results in the east asian cultures is sometimes thought to be due to large role of rote learning and increased use of memory that their language requires. However, the common exercise of children memorising an entire book in Muslim cultures does not have the reputation of having the same result.

Weirdest anniversary gift ever...

Comment is free: The virginity dialogues

From the above:

Other coping mechanisms [for Egypt's "sexual counter-revolution"] include non-penetrative sex and the increasingly common practice among the wealthier classes of pre-marital hymen restoration. According to Seif el-Dawla, this has reached the point where some middle-class Egyptian couples celebrate their wedding anniversaries by re-bridging the wife's "maidenhead", a practice that is also joining boob jobs as a gift of choice for some "discerning" western spouses.

Normal transmissions to be resumed soon

I'm back from holiday travels, only to face work with reduced staff for another week.

There's lots of stuff I can post about, but probably can't for another 12 hours or so...

Holiday Greetings - back in 2008

My posting came to a halt faster than I expected.

I'll be off for a week or two. Here's a cartoon hurriedly done before my wife yells at me for not packing: