Big numbers

Cosmic coincidence spotted : Nature News

The secret of the Universe is not 42, according to a new theory, but the unimaginably larger number 10¹²². Scott Funkhouser of the Military College of South Carolina (called The Citadel) in Charleston has shown how this number — which is bigger than the number of particles in the Universe — keeps popping up when several of the physical constants and parameters of the Universe are combined¹. This ‘coincidence’, he says, is surely significant, hinting at some common principle at work behind the scenes.

Seems odd that someone from a military college is making a name for himself in pointing out some big number co-incidences. Still, it's a good read.

Speed post 2

No time, no time.

1. a Howard adviser paints a quick picture of what it was like for his boss in the lead up to the election. He notes:

Try managing the equivocation of nervous colleagues who believe you should cut and run, when not so long ago they were begging you to stay. Try keeping your focus (and temper) while you and your family suffer cheap attacks fuelled by those ever-brave unnamed sources. Try maintaining your dignity while feral union activists wait outside hospitals and hotels to call you and your wife "Liberal c-ts" and tell you they wish you would die a "slow and painful death". All while your opponent coasts along, forgiven frequent errors of judgment, congratulated for the genius of his political flummery, by a largely uncritical media. Howard kept going where others would have faltered.

2. Contrast John Quiggan, a lefty who does indeed run an exceptionally polite blog, who said this recently:

Throughout the last few years of the Howard government, anyone who criticised the government, or suggested that Howard was not the best person to be Prime Minister of Australia, could be sure of being labelled a “Howard hater”....

This was always silly. Perhaps there were people motivated to oppose the government because of a personal animus against Howard rather than his actions and policies, but if so I never met any.

Yes, it would seem John needs to get out more.

3. Apparently, Peter Garrett was a bit hot under the collar in parliament yesterday, but I didn't see it on the TV news.

4. I didn't know that psychiatrists often had a very personal interest in mental illness:

Study after study has shown that psychiatrists have higher rates of mental illness than the general population.

Research published in 2001 revealed that 56% of female psychiatrists have a family history of mental illness, and just over 40% have experienced one themselves - almost twice the rate of other doctors. Undoubtedly as a consequence, psychiatrists have double the rate of suicide of the general population.

5. While on mental health, the Washington Post looks at Paranoia magazine. At last, I can publish my expose on the secret world of horses.

6. Now for the paranormal. Physicist Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance wants the American Association for the Advancement of Science to kick out the Parapsychological Association from its current affiliation membership.

Disheartened that some people would come to the defence of legitimate psi research, Sean follows up with a long post "proving" how (at the very least) telekinesis is not scientifically possible. More well argued rebuttal follows.

If ever a person deserved a mystifying experience that is not readily explicable in his scientific mindframe, it's him. It would seem, however, that if you refuse to believe that it is even possible, nothing strange ever happens to you. Of course, you could also be like me, an open-minded person, who nonetheless seems to be about as psychically inclined as a piece of wood.

To the vast international readership

Busy, busy. Blogging will be a bit more erratic this week.

Here's some almost random thoughts:

1. Try putting Cointreau in cream as you whip it. Delicious.

2. I am not sure how much I would pay to stay in a hotel which comprises of pre-fab shacks sitting on a frozen lake in the Arctic Circle, but if someone wants to pay me to visit it for a review, I'd go. (However, if I didn't get to see the Northern Lights, I would be very disappointed.) Go look at the photos as well as the article; they're really good.

3. Still seems a big puzzle as to what caused that 777 to crash. Sounds like the computers were not the problem, which was my hunch. Thus ends my alternative career as intuitive air crash investigator.

4. It's hardly worth getting excited about a 70% preferred PM rating when the alternative PM is Brendan Nelson.

5. It sounds like we will see someone being accidentally bitten by a deadly taipan on Foreign Correspondent tonight. Last week's story on Russian "democracy" was very interesting.

6. When toads ruled the earth.

Testing time?

Early Warning: PSA Testing Can Predict Advanced Prostate Cancer, Study Shows

My second prostate related post for the week. (It's my age that lends an interest in the topic.)

It seems from this story that a single PSA test, which (as I recall) is often of limited use in working out what to do about prostate cancer that is already there, may be very useful as a predictor for advanced cancer:

A single prostate specific antigen (PSA) test taken before the age of 50 can be used to predict advanced prostate cancer in men up to 25 years in advance of a diagnosis, according to a new study published by researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Lund University in Sweden. The findings should help physicians be able to identify men who would benefit from intensive prostate cancer screenings over their lifetime...

The results showed that the total PSA level was an accurate predictor of advanced cancer diagnosis in men later in life. The majority, 66 percent, of advanced cancers were seen in men whose PSA levels were in the top 20 percent (total PSA > 0.9 ng/ml). The average length of time from blood test to cancer diagnosis was 17 years.

Yet this article, which seems in need of editing, says next:

While this data does not have any immediate implications for general prostate cancer screening guidelines...

Why not? Sounds like a pretty useful thing to me.

Now that's porous

Technology Review: A Better Way to Capture Carbon

Very early days, but a new material shows promise for catching CO2 economically out of exhaust gases.

This sounds hard to be believe:

The new materials absorb carbon dioxide in part because they're extremely porous, which gives them a high surface area that can come into contact with carbon dioxide molecules. The most porous of the materials that Yaghi reports in Science contain nearly 2,000 square meters of surface area packed into one gram of material. One liter of one of Yaghi's materials can store all of the molecules of carbon dioxide that, at zero °C and at ambient pressure, would take up a volume of 82.6 liters.

Associated Press catches Fairfax disease

Danish youths set fires, attack police in 5th night of violence

The Associated Press points out that car torching in Copenhagen has been "mostly in immigrant neighbourhoods" and notes that "some observers" suggested that the reprinting of the Muhammad cartoons might have had something to do with it. Other than that, no mention of a certain religion.

To borrow a joke: probably Presbyterians, but who would know?

Even men in suits...

Susan Jacoby explains the point at which she decided to write her book "The Age of American Unreason":

....she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day's horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

"This is just like Pearl Harbor," one of the men said.

The other asked, "What is Pearl Harbor?"

"That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War," the first man replied.

At that moment, Jacoby said, "I decided to write this book."

Extending the intervention

Break the cycle of dysfunction | The Australian

The Australia puts a bit of a dampener on the "love in" week of reconciliation by running a lengthy article by a Cape York doctor who seemingly supports exactly the type of intervention that Howard started in the Northern Territory.

The doctor points out that aboriginal families in dysfunctional communities, as a start, simply need to be told what is right and wrong in their households (things like: feeding your kids once a day is bad, letting them watch and imitate porn is wrong.)

I still say that this is a harder thing for Labor governments, with their greater hand-wringing about cultural respect and equal rights, to effectively undertake than it is for conservatives.

Doctor, she's talking to ships

Running out of time to save our great bay - Opinion - theage.com.au

While reading Tracee's column this morning (which is just so easy to ridicule, I wonder if Tracee is offering it as a gift to Tim Blair during his recuperation), I kept being reminded of Spike Milligan in The Goon Show singing "I talk to the trees, that's why they put me away..."

(Oh, and it's a fine Blair column in the Telegraph today.)

UPDATE: "Doctor, he's talking to flowers."

Wow, two columnists from The Age are inviting psychiatric assessment today. Leunig is an apologising mood:

One day we must surely get down on our knees to every lizard and frog and orchid — and weep an apology.

Actually, I shouldn't be too harsh, he actually agrees with me on one point:

...I felt the wording of the apology, like the national anthem, was just a bit feeble. The spirit was there, but dulled by the cliched language of born-again motivational speeches. Mungo MacCallum lamented it was written by a platoon of public servants and not a poet...

New comedy

It seems to have taken a long time for the ABC to start showing the English sketch comedy show That Mitchell and Webb Look. (The series that has just started was shown in 2006 in the UK.)

I missed much of the first episode, but what I did see seemed pretty promising. There are heaps of sketches from it on Youtube, and this one seems a good example of their style:



They have a second series soon in England, hence an interview with both of them in The Times.

An unpleasant case

Gang-rape judge in new child sex furore | The Australian

When I quickly read parts of this story on the Web this morning, I had vague thoughts that the teacher's claim that he was engaging in sex with a boy as part of islander "men's business" sounded very, very unlikely; but then again Torres Strait is close to New Guinea where there is that tribe that has (or used to have?) male initiation rites of a kind that this teacher presumably claims to be emulating.

You see, I kind of assumed that the teacher in question must have been a Torres Strait Islander himself; or at least have some islander blood in him.

But I just saw the news print version of The Australian, and the accused has his photo plastered all over the page. He looks completely white!

Furthermore, I see that the child concerned came from the Island of Saibai, about 4 kilometres from PNG. The famous semen initiation tribe of New Guinea is the Sambian, who come from the Eastern Highlands.

The prosecution has already said it has elders from Saibai who will confirm there is no such ritual on that island.

Apparently, the teacher claims to have had a part aboriginal father. The prosecutor told the court (see the Australian's story above):

.... he was not raised in a traditional manner and that he should receive a custodial sentence to send a clear message to the community.

"It is stated in the defence material that he was born in Sydney where he was educated to grade 12. He then went on to receive a scholarship and teach in Wollongong and undertake postgraduate studies," she said.

"He has gone on to have an illustrious and distinguished career. He is an educated man, using what he claims to be part of Papua New Guinea and Torres Strait Islander culture, that is, men's business, to explain away his offending behaviour. I have been instructed that this is not part of the culture."

I would have thought the point is that, even if the boy was from a tribe that still had this initiation, there is surely no conceivable way that the judge should be able find that this could be used in mitigation by an essentially white teacher from Sydney who has had absolutely no tribal background .

But, now that I think of it, it may not be a waste of time to allow this guy months to try to find an anthropologist to give evidence supporting his claims. Because if he comes up completely empty handed, the judge can presumably take a very dim view of his using this excuse with the boy at the time of the offences.

Yet if does find an anthropologist to support him (sounds very unlikely), the judge should say exactly what I suggested above.

If she doesn't, the public outcry will surely be enormous.

It seems to me that there should be no "up side" to this for Mr Last, except for the fact that he is buying time before heading off to jail.

Geeky movie news

:: INDIANA JONES - OFFICIAL SITE ::

The first trailer for the new Indiana Jones is up.

And yes, Roswell has something to do with it. Cool.

France on side for once

France Presses Nuclear Agency on Iran - New York Times

President Nicolas Sarkozy and other senior French officials met here on Thursday with Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an effort to smooth over differences between France and the agency over Iran’s nuclear program.

France has taken a hard line against Iran, leading the way with the United States and Britain in pressing for new, tougher international sanctions against the country for flouting United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that it stop making nuclear fuel......

In a speech Wednesday night to France’s Jewish community, for example, Mr. Sarkozy called on Iran to “renounce military nuclear power” and “live up to its word.” He added that Iran’s uranium enrichment program “has no civilian use.”

Dr. ElBaradei, by contrast, has said repeatedly that there is no clear evidence to support the claim that Iran intends to make nuclear weapons.

Caring for your prostate

What's good for the heart may be good for the prostate

Men who eat a diet low in fat and red meat but high in vegetables and lean protein and who drink alcohol in moderation may not just be doing their hearts a favor. A new study shows that such a heart-healthy diet may also be good for the prostate.

Specifically, such a diet significantly decreases the risk of symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia, or BPH. The bothersome condition is associated with frequent and painful urination that affects about half of all men by the time they reach 50 and nearly all men by age 70.

About 1/2 of all men get prostate issues by the time they are 50? That's a much higher figure than I expected. The medical recommendation is pretty encouraging, though:

Doctors often recommend routine sexual activity to men with prostatitis because ejaculations help flush the prostate clean.

Logically, then, if I eat a meaty, high fat diet and drink to excess, I am more likely to have a doctor prescribe more sex. Hmmm....

The ultimate peak oil solution

Mine Titan!:

Titan's surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth:

Saturn’s orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new Cassini data. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes.

Interesting

Appeal upheld for youths 'intoxicated by terror' - Telegraph

From the report:

The country's top judge has dealt a significant blow to a key plank of the Government's anti-terrorism legislation after he overturned the convictions of five Muslim men jailed last year for downloading and sharing extremist terror-related material.

The Lord Chief Justice ruled that unless there was clear evidence of "terrorist intent" it was not illegal to read or study such literature....

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, "a person commits an offence if he possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism."

How do you obtain evidence for the 'reasonable suspicion', I wonder? In this case:

The students were arrested after Mr Raja, then a schoolboy in Ilford, ran away to meet the other four in Bradford. The teenager left a note for his parents saying he was going to fight abroad after getting to know the others via internet chatrooms.

But it would appear that the problem may simply be the way the jury was directed:

Directions given to the jury did not tell them "that they had to be satisfied that each appellant intended to use the relevant articles to incite his fellow planners to fight in Afghanistan".

That seems to be overstating what the jurors should have been told about the offence.

The interesting point may be whether possession of a large amount of terrorist material of itself can lead to a reasonable suspicion that it is being looked at for "commission preparation or instigation" of a terrorist act. The appeal court seems to be saying "no". Maybe that is technically correct, but when you take into account who is looking at it, I would have thought that the reasonable suspicion may be pretty readily made out.

But this is pretty funny from the defence lawyer:

Imran Khan, solicitor for Mr Zafar, said: "My client is over the moon. He says it is surreal and he cannot see why he has spent the last two years in prison for looking at material which he had no intention of using for terrorism.

"Young people should not be frightened of exploring their world. There will always be people out there with wrong intentions, but we must not criminalise people for simply looking at material, whether it is good or bad."

And I suppose a young Muslim's world is naturally all about terrorism? Actually, I think it is a pretty good idea to make them frightened of spending all of their time obsessed with that.

What was that about airplanes?

True scale of C0₂emissions from shipping revealed

From the Guardian:

The true scale of climate change emissions from shipping is almost three times higher than previously believed, according to a leaked UN study seen by the Guardian.

It calculates that annual emissions from the world's merchant fleet have already reached 1.12bn tonnes of CO₂, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of the main greenhouse gas.

The report suggests that shipping emissions - which are not taken into account by European targets for cutting global warming - will become one of the largest single sources of manmade CO₂after cars, housing, agriculture and industry. By comparison, the aviation industry, which has been under heavy pressure to clean up, is responsible for about 650m tonnes of CO₂emissions a year, just over half that from shipping.

Sheesh. I am not supposed to fly for holidays anymore, and now even a pleasure cruise is bad. But come to think of it, it would be kind of cool to see giant sailing ships being used for passengers and cargo again.

Indiana Jones can be viewed with clear conscience

Spielberg boycotts Beijing Olympics over Darfur - Beijing2008 - Sport

Commentators saw this coming, but Spielberg has dropped out of his artist adviser role with the Chinese Olympics.

Fair enough. They can always do those slightly creepy North Korean style mass displays instead.

Kevin should apologise...

...for not having a better speech writer. My lack of enthusiasm has not exactly been changed by soaring oratory.

The worst line:

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

Embracing possibilities of new solutions? How bland. I would have thought "prospects" would be the better word.

On the other hand, "mutual responsibility" gets a tick.

But on the third hand, a blanket statement of apology for separating children from parents, their community and "country" sits uncomfortably with the current situation in Cape York, where safeguarding children still often leaves no choice other than trying foster care hundreds of kilometres from the community.

One other point: I reckon the media coverage (and Labor politicians) have vastly overestimated public excitement and interest in this. Richard Flanagan wrote in The Guardian:

The national excitement around the event is palpable, with thousands heading to Canberra for it, and public screens being erected in most major cities for the live, national broadcast of the event.

All depends what circles you move in, I suppose, but I would say there is a much more palpable degree of cynicism about the hyping of the apology in any suburb that is not inner city.

UPDATE: when I referred to needing a better speech writer, I was actually only referring to the apology, not Rudd's supporting speech. Now that I've read it, I would grade it as "mostly harmless."

However, I expect he has set himself up for failure with his musings about what should be achieved next. In particular, this line had a definite touch of Hawke's "no child will live in poverty":

Let us resolve over the next five years to have every Indigenous four-year-old in a remote Aboriginal community enrolled in and attending a proper early childhood education centre or opportunity and engaged in proper preliteracy and prenumeracy programs.

I predict it will take some very heavy handed, paternalistic tactics, exactly of the kind Labor is less inclined to take than the Liberals, to get anywhere near achieving that goal.

Also, isn't it peculiar that the first "joint policy commission" is to look at aboriginal housing? Hasn't this been looked at many times already?

Anyone who has worked on aboriginal communities complains that the issue is not simply a question of providing the houses; it involves the more difficult issue of how to get the residents to look after them. Surely drug and alcohol abuse is a large part of that problem. It's all rather a chicken and egg dilemma, isn't it?

(For anyone interested, see my previous musings about a possible, somewhat counter-intuitive, housing approach.)

Ferris fad

World's largest ferris wheel debuts in Singapore | Lifestyle | Living | Reuters

Why are luxury ferris wheels such a fad all over the world at the moment? Can't some city come up with a more novel way to get a view, other than via observation decks or wheels?

(Give me time to think about it, but a giant corkscrew thing with glass pods slowly going up and down hasn't been done yet, has it?)