Local problems with CO2 sequestration

Inside Business - 13/07/2008: Coal capture could be problematic

See the link for a short but interesting story on plans (and the initial pilot project) for CO2 sequestration in Australia.

Apparently, the current cost problem is more in the CO2 capture technology, not the storage.

I'll take their word for it, but I still assume that a major cost in the future will be getting the CO2 to the sequestration site. In this article they talk of using the Moomba area, which already has pipe in place which could be used for transporting the CO2. But for other areas, surely the transport costs are going to be huge.

I see that the trial Otway project will pump 100,000 tonnes of CO2 into the ground. Sounds quite a lot, but how much CO2 does Australian power generation generate each year? According to this BBC site: 205,000,000 tonnes. So the total Otway project (I am not sure over what period it runs) will remove about .048% of annual emissions.

See why I remain deeply sceptical about this as a concept?

UPDATE: here's a generally sceptical look at CO2 sequestration from the 7.30 Report earlier this year. (I missed it at the time.) I see that the 200 millions tonnes a year figure seems correct, but it will rise to perhaps 300 million by 2030. (!)

It just seems a hopeless task. Surely you would be better off giving high priority to decommissioning coal powered stations and replacing them with, well, virtually anything. (Natural gas as an interim, it emits much less. Then nuclear and solar.)

UPDATE 2: apparently, the government (and Martin Ferguson in particular) is a believer in sequestration. All to be revealed tomorrow, perhaps.

I also wonder how hard the government is looking at the possibility of using "algae reactors" to scrub CO2 from power stations? Here's an article from a 2006 CSIRO publication in which an American company argues that it has many advantages over sequestration.

The company is GreenFuel Technologies, and its FAQ section is worth reading. They estimate that, for an average American coal fired power station, you would need 3400 hectares of algal farms to get a 40% reduction in CO2. Sounds a hell of a lot, doesn't it? (A square kilometre is 100 hectares.) But then solar farms are not exactly small either. Maybe I would be aiming for less than 40% reduction....

Still, sequestration is not a walk in the park either, and at least algal farms have a potential product at the end which may help offset the cost. (It is also less energy intensive. You have to remember with CO2 sequestration, you have to use more energy just to get the CO2 out of the exhaust.)

UPDATE 3: Greenpeace put out a paper in May 2008 detailing why it is against sequestration. In the section on Australia, it says:

In Australia, CCS would lead, at best, to a 9% emissions reduction in 2030 and a cumulative emissions reduction from 2005 to 2030 of only 2.4%.[88] This is partly due to the lack of suitable storage locations. For example, in the Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong area of New South Wales and at Port Augusta in South Australia, which together produce about 39% of Australia’s current net CO2 emissions from electricity generation, there are no identified storage sites within 500 km of the coal-fired power stations.[89] In comparison, a modest improvement in energy efficiency could – at zero or even negative cost – decrease emissions in 2030 by about the same amount, and cumulative emissions by twice as much.[90]

Well, they might just have a point.

Henderson and the Pope

The sorry sport of Pope bashing - Opinion - smh.com.au

Gerard Henderson's take on the current round of Catholic bashing is spot on.

Joe's pain

Admit it, you're as bored as I am | Classical and opera | guardian.co.uk Music

Joe Queenan writes a very funny column that confirms all my suspicions about what passes for modern classical music and opera. (The stuff that seems to appear once and is rarely heard of again.)

His contention: it is not popular because it is generally awful. Queenan says he has tried, really tried, to get into it, but failed:

When I was 18, I bought a record called The New Music. It featured Kontra-Punkte by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima by Krzysztof Penderecki. I was incredibly proud of myself for giving this music a try, even though the Stockhausen sounded like a cat running up and down the piano, and the Penderecki was that reliable old post-Schoenberg standby: belligerent bees buzzing in the basement. I did not really like these pieces, but I would put them on the turntable every few months to see if the bizarre might one day morph into the familiar. I've been doing that for 40 years now, and both compositions continue to sound harsh, unpleasant, gloomy, post-nuclear. It is not the composers' fault that they wrote uncompromising music that was a direct response to the violence and stupidity of the 20th century; but it is not my fault that I would rather listen to Bach. That's my way of responding to the violence and stupidity of the 20th century, and the 21st century as well.

Queenan writes that this year when he did see an audience respond reasonably well to a new composition, the explanation is that:

...nothing thrills a classical music crowd more than a new piece of music that doesn't make them physically ill.

Quite the wit, is Joe.

Slow down

The Urge to End It - Understanding Suicide - NYTimes.com

I missed this last weekend, and found it via the always interesting Mind Hacks blog.

It's a fascinating article on suicide, and what can be done to decrease the rate.

The key point is that anything which slows down the process by which the victim intends killing him or herself helps drive down the rate. Even putting drugs in a blister pack instead of a bottle helps, as do bridge barriers, laws requiring guns to be stored unloaded in locked cabinets, etc.

A great read.

The Pope should visit more often...

Channel Ten evicts Big Brother

It's a miracle, I say. Can the burning of the Big Brother house begin now?

Scoop

I get all my relationship advice from the Times of India. How could you not, when they quote:

...Rita Gangwani, image enhancer and personality architect...

So now we know where Kevin Rudd got his makeover advice from.

Tony Snow

Sad to see former White House press secretary Tony Snow has died. I thought he came across as very natural and likeable in his Colbert Report appearance earlier this year. (You get the feeling that Colbert genuinely likes him too, I think.)

Pebble bed updates

Pebble bed nuclear reactors have been getting a bit of attention lately:

* The Economist mentioned the South African plans for them in a favourable fashion in mid-June.

* China's version gets coverage here, and here.

* In South Africa, it seems there is some criticism about the amount of government money being put into the project, the cost of the program, and licensing delays with approval for the first demonstration reactor. It looks like they don't expect to start building until 2010 and then have it running by 2015. (Even so, I expect that around that time Australia will still be scratching around for safe places to pump CO2 into the ground at less than exorbitant expense.)

Brideshead Revised

It's hard to see why anyone would think Brideshead Revisited should be made into a film, given the great success of the TV series in the 1980's. It's hard to imagine a more faithful adaption of a novel into another medium, and the intensely Catholic themes of grace and redemption (it is a book all about religion) came through entirely intact.

If the preview is anything to go by, the forthcoming movie version looks like an absolute travesty. If you know the book or the series, go and have a look. You will see what I mean. (The whole style of the preview even seems wrong, almost laughable, for this type of movie. It seems to be hyping up the drama in what comes across as a very Hollywood way.)

Interestingly, Andrew Davies (the screenwriter) was quoted in The Independent in 2002 as saying that he wanted the movie to concentrate more on the religious tensions in the book. That was a rather odd comment, given that the series seemed to be made by tearing out the pages of the novel and having the cast read the lines.

Fast forward to 2008, and The Independent has a lengthy article about the new movie, pointing out the clear changes to the story evident from the preview, and explains that Davies is now credited as only one of the writers. I wonder if he in fact might now want to disown his involvement.

That Independent article also presents an amusing vignette of Waugh at the time he wrote it. As most readers who have made it this far into this post probably know, he was, to put it mildly, a man with many character flaws, despite his religiosity and renown as an author with a very dry wit. Pretty fascinating all the same:

For most of 1943, Waugh was sunk in gloom. He was fed up with army life. After serving in Crete with the Special Services Brigade, he had spent a year waiting to be given a company to command. None was forthcoming. It was agreed among the senior officers that the author-turned-soldier was spectacularly ill-equipped to command ordinary soldiers, because of his "total incapacity for establishing any sort of human relations with his men". He was, all agreed, a 24-carat, card-carrying shit. His rudeness, his dislike of the working classes, his fondness for bullying and horror of social contact with strangers made him, in the words of his commanding officer, Lord Lovat, "a total misfit".

For a year, he'd hung out in a London office,drinking gallons of wine with friends. In July, his father Arthur died. Evelyn's wife and children remained in Combe Florey, Somerset and rarely contacted him. "I should like to feel," he wrote to his wife Laura, "that, once or twice a week, you felt enough interest in me to write and say so... If by any chance the children should die, do come to London. I miss you."

Then he received the final kiss-off. He was advised to resign from the Commandos "for the Brigade's good". It wasn't just rejection and bereavement that brought him low; it was the condition of England at this point of the war, and the predictions of its aftermath. "Everyone I meet is despondent about the future," he confided to his diary. Wherever he looked, life was grotty, grey, sloppy, utterly lacking in style, grace and chic. By the year's end his nerve had broken. He asked the army for leave, and travelled to Chagford in Devon. In that frame of mind , at the beginning of February 1944, he began to write Brideshead.

Listen to the Church, Kevin

Health levy plan to 'hurt poorest': Catholic Church | The Australian

Well, they took their own sweet time coming out to criticise it, but the Catholic Church's health wing finally makes a detailed criticism of Labor's ideological attack on health insurance. Good.

International notes

* A good essay about how American films have given up portraying realistic heroes. (The writer doesn't count superheroes, which is fair enough.) Much of what he says makes sense. It's a reflection of the Western Zeitgeist, I suppose, but you also have to worry a bit about whether Hollywood leads as much as it reflects.

* Everyone knows it is coming, and the early signs are already there. It's the question of what to do with the huge number of Chinese males who are going to be left single with a lot of aggression left to burn. Some extracts:

In the 2020s, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher Zheng Zhenzhen, estimates in a People's Daily interview that 10 percent of Chinese men will be unable to find wives, which could have a huge impact on Chinese society....

Over the past decade, as the boys hit adolescence, the country's youth crime rate more than doubled. In December, Chinese Society of Juvenile Delinquency Research Deputy Secretary General Liu Guiming told a Beijing seminar that today's teens were committing crimes "without specific motives, often without forethought."...

Chinese authorities did not show much subtlety in its posters for the one child policy, apparently:

....the government is adopting a softer tone in its propaganda. The red characters painted on village walls throughout the countryside have evolved from the 1980s slogan YOU BEAT IT OUT! YOU CAN MAKE IT FALL OUT! YOU CAN ABORT IT! BUT YOU CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO IT! Now they read: IMPLEMENT FAMILY PLANNING FOR THE GOOD OF ALL CITIZENS. And, recently, the government added BOYS AND GIRLS ARE BOTH TREASURES. In 2003, it unveiled the Care For Girls program, which gives stipends to parents of girls in some provinces.

* Over in India, skin whitening products for women are big business, but a recent soap-opera style advertisement is annoying people. You can watch and read about it at The Independent.

* Still at The Independent, this article makes beavers sound so endearing I think we should try introducing them to Australia. (I guess they don't like the taste of eucalyptus trees, though.)

* Israeli schools are trying out the Bible in comic version, to encourage students who find the old Hebrew a bit of a problem. The example in the article looks a little in the style of Tintin to me.

* And finally, in Las Vegas, Michael Jackson looks even more pathetic on a shopping trip, if that's possible.

Good Germans

My current burst of off-blog activity will soon be at an end. Here's another recommendation to fill in the time.

Last Friday, I saw an episode of a German documentary series The Wehrmacht, entitled "The Resistance". It was a quick history of the resistance within the German army in WWII, and was pretty fascinating viewing.

The episode is up on Youtube in several parts, and it's well worth watching if (like me) you are only vaguely aware of the conspiracies to kill Hitler . (There are stories of smaller acts of heroism too, which are always encouraging to hear.)

The last episode in the series, which is about the German's disasterous decision to continue fighting a losing battle, is on SBS TV tomorrow night (Friday) at 8.30.

Architecture porn

Dezeen � Blog Archive � Casa 11 Mujeres by Mathias Klotz

I'm somewhat distracted at the moment, but in the meantime, have a look at a very appealing cliff-top house near the sea in Chile.

(I must admit, though, as soon as I see extensive use of glass near the ocean, there's a voice from the boring, practical corner of my mind whispering "endless cleaning".)

Free TV

Sharp Unveils Solar-Powered TV

I'm not sure just how many of the 1.6 billion people who live off the grid can afford to buy a TV, solar cell and battery combo so that can watch the TV signal that their remote area probably doesn't have anyway, but it will be a cool item for the ostentatiously Green to have in the city.

Notes of minor interest

School holidays: it must be family-friendly movie time. We went and saw Kung Fu Panda yesterday. It's good but not great. The animation itself is often lovely, but the fights are a bit too frenetic for my taste. It all seems to be over in a flash. Of Dreamworks animation, I would rate the first Shrek and Madagascar as better.

Speaking of Madagascar, they showed a trailer for a sequel that I had forgotten was coming. Here's hoping it can overcome the inevitable challenge of loss of novelty. (The penguins seem to have a lot of screen time in the preview, which is a good sign.)

The cinema also showed the shorts for Mamma Mia. It's amazing how long flakey, vacuous Euro pop can last, isn't it? I didn't rush out to see the stage show, so the movie is the first time I knew what the plot was about. Something about "free spirited" mother with adult daughter whose father could have been any one of 3 different men. The kids in the audience seemed to like the music, but this plot line may be a little hard to explain to any under 10 year old who still has a firm connection in his or her mind between marriage and having babies. Still, Tony Abbott could be accused of causing the same difficulty a couple of years ago, I suppose.

No matter how strong the reviews might be, it's not going to revive the romantic musical as an art form.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the cinema also showed the preview for The Love Guru. It made the film look fairly innocuous, and raised some laughs, so let's hope parents actually read reviews and know how badly it has performed in the States before they send their kids off to see it.

More on acidification

Acidifying oceans add urgency to CO2 cuts

This report notes an article on ocean acidification that is to appear in the July 4 issue of Science (although I can't see mention of it yet on the Science website.)

As I suspected, it's bad news for you oyster and mussel lovers out there who expect to be around in 50 year's time. But the worrying thing is, it is extremely difficult to be certain how it will affect the oceans and the planet overall:

"We know that ocean acidification will damage corals and other organisms, but there's just no experimental data on how most species might be affected," says Caldeira. "Most experiments have been done in the lab with just a few individuals. While the results are alarming, it's nearly impossible to predict how this unprecedented acidification will affect entire ecosystems." Reduced calcification will surely hurt shellfish such as oysters and mussels, with big effects on commercial fisheries. Other organisms may flourish in the new conditions, but this may include undesirable "weedy" species or disease organisms.

Though most of the scientific and public focus has been on the climate impacts of human carbon emissions, ocean acidification is as imminent and potentially severe a crisis, the authors argue.

"We need to consider ocean chemistry effects, and not just the climate effects, of CO2 emissions. That means we need to work much harder to decrease CO2 emissions," says Caldeira. "While a doubling of atmospheric CO2 may seem a realistic target for climate goals, such a level may mean the end of coral reefs and other valuable marine resources."

While on the topic, I note that Jennifer Marohasy recently posted 2 photos from diver Bob Halstead showing an area in New Guinea which has (apparently) volcanic CO2 bubbling up through the sea floor.

As with the recent Nature study of a similar site in Italy, the photo indicates that sea grass really loves those conditions. Halstead also says there is a "healthy reef" metres away. But it's impossible to take that as proof that corals will happily survive acidified oceans unless you have proper measurements of the pH in the area. Indeed, we don't even know for sure that the gas is all CO2.)

I think we can take it as a sign that sea grass will do well enough in future, but just how ecologically healthy is it to have sea grasses booming in areas where they previously have not been? Especially if they replace areas that are have been extensively coral for tens of thousands of years?

I also see that the ocean acidification sceptics in the comments following that post are relying solely on Dr Floor Anthoni as their source. As I have noted before, the good doctor does not claim to have any qualification in science or biology, and appears to be pretty much an enthusiatic amateur when it comes to marine ecology and chemistry. That's not to say that amateurs can't do good science, but if you are promoting theories that are somewhat outside the mainstream, the lack of a qualification even close to the field (the qualification is in computers and electronics in Dr Anthoni's case) is not exactly adding to your credibility.

Dr Anthoni appears to have irritated many scientists in the past with claims relating to fisheries, etc. To his credit, he appears to at least be open about the disputes he has had, and you can read the exchanges on his own website.

Still, it gives me no comfort if he is the primary source of the ocean acidification sceptic's arguments.

Kerry and Kevin sitting in a tree...

Why on earth is Kerry O'Brien still delivering such velvet-gloved handling of Kevin Rudd? Have a look at the transcript of last night's interview, mainly about the COAG meeting and its decisions relating to the Murray-Darling. The short version goes like this:

O'Brien: Mr Rudd, scientists say there is an immediate crisis in the Murray, has COAG actually addressed that?

Rudd: [waffle, waffle, waffle, asks himself and answers 4 questions ] Yes. Sort of. It'll take a year or two, but yes.

O'Brien: So, are you really, really sure you can promise us that that's true?

Rudd: well, I can't make it rain, but [asks himself 3 questions, waffle waffle waffle] yes. In a year or so.

O'Brien: Please forgive me, I'm now going to ask a really long question. [Short version: do you think emissions trading will be a really big issue for you?]

Rudd: we were elected to make tough decisions, [waffle waffle waffle] yes, more or less.

It seems to me that O'Brien's questions indicate that he knew there were grounds to specifically attack the COAG meeting for in fact refusing to do the immediate thing that the scientists demanded, but he refuses to put tough questions directly to Rudd. (Read the reports from Fairfax, News Ltd and the ABC that complain about the COAG result here, here, here, here and here.) Instead, O'Brien's questions are all open-ended invitations to Rudd to answer in any way he pleases. Mild scepticism would seem to be the strongest emotion O'Brien can bring himself to display in his interviews with our PM.

O'Brien has always treated Rudd this way, and I want to know why. Has Rudd's staff got some dirt on him or something? I find it truly puzzling.

Go Japan

Farming Solar Energy in Space: Scientific American

According to the article, the Japanese are looking into space based solar power:

...by 2030 the agency [JAXA, Japan's equivalent to NASA] aims to put into geostationary orbit a solar-power generator that will transmit one gigawatt of energy to Earth, equivalent to the output of a large nuclear power plant. The energy would be sent to the surface in microwave or laser form, where it would be converted into electricity for commercial power grids or stored in the form of hydrogen.

Well, can't accuse them of not being ambitious.

Hard Friends to please

I see via Andrew Bolt that ABC is doing much, much better than it was 10 years ago. Of course, this turnaround did just not happen since Rudd was elected. It happened under the Howard government, who the Friends of the ABC thought was starving it to death and beating it into ideological submission.

Friends sometimes just don't know what is good for them.

Recent hits

Exploding asteroid theory strengthened by new evidence located in Ohio, Indiana

So, maybe an asteroid hit Canada about 13,000 years ago, causing a wee bit of upset to the climate in the process. Interesting theory.

On a similar topic, to commemorate its100 year anniversary, Australia's Duncan Steel wrote an article at Nature about the various theories that have been offered over the years regarding the Tunguska event. Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall, but Jerry Pournelle's email page seems to have copied it all out. Good reading.

Recommended reading

A few recent articles of interest:

* The New York Times magazine looked at the demographic crisis of Europe (and some other countries). So you thought Mark Steyn was exaggerating? How about this:

Around the time that President Kennedy went to Germany and gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, Europe represented 12.5 percent of the world’s population. Today it is 7.2 percent, and if current trends continue, by 2050 only 5 percent of the world will be European.

And bear in mind the age of that 5% too:

....in 2025, 42 percent of the people living in India will be 24 or younger, while only 22 percent of Spain’s population will be in that age group.

The article offers explanations for the low birth rate of most European countries, and the relatively high birthrate of the US, but they still don't get around to quite explaining Germany. Worth reading anyway.

* The Atlantic Monthly has an interesting article about how GM is putting all its eggs in one electric car basket. I wouldn't be buying shares in the company at the moment.

* While your at the website, have a read about the Price Tower, a 19 story high rise building Frank Lloyd Wright designed in Oklahoma. It doesn't look much from the outside, but the article makes it sound like it's worth a visit. The writer knows how to use redundant information for amusing effect:

Wright, who is best known for his low Prairie-style buildings, had a complicated relationship with tall buildings, calling one an “incongruous mantrap of monstrous dimensions.” Yet late in life he created drawings for a 528-story skyscraper featuring atomic-powered elevators with five cabs strung vertically in each shaft. (It was never built.)

* Still in the US, the Observer's Ruth Fowler takes a long, cross country trip on Amtrak and enjoys it quite a lot. (Her article reminded me of a few long train trips I took in Australia as a teenager/young adult. It is a social way to travel, and it's a pity that it is no longer all that economically attractive.) Fowler makes me laugh with this account:

Amtrak employees themselves assume key roles in this peculiarly theatrical mode of travel. En route to Montana I was woken in the morning by a lady trilling over the intercom: 'I'm singing in the rain. Just siiinging in the rain! I'm brewing COFFEE! Mmmm, coffee! Rich, robust, strong, masculine, earthy coffee! Can you smell it? It wants you. This coffee wants you. I'm in the lounge car. Ask for Miss Olivia. I'm waiting for you with my enormous coffee pot. MM-mmm!'

* Bryan Appleyard has been in fine form lately, having spent a lot of time recently in America with some unusual consequences (a passion for cowboy boots, for one.) Some recent posts of his which are particularly enjoyable: all about religion and excretion; an assessment of Bill Gates as he departs Microsoft; a certain problem with people sometimes not getting Bryan's tone.

Just go read him regularly.

Fixing Firefox 3

If, like many, you have been surprised by the horribly ugly and strangely behaving drop-down address bar in Firefox 3 (the "awesome bar", apparently), there is an add on that at least stops it pulling unvisited bookmarks into it. (If I want to use a bookmark, I just go to the bookmarks tab.)

It's Hide Unvisited 3, and it appears to work well enough.

Actually, I now see there is another add on which apparently gives you back something very close to the old bar. Maybe I should try that too.

Meanwhile, work and stuff continues to bother me.

The future is green

Alternative energy: Microbe economics | Business | guardian.co.uk

I'm still busy, but in the meantime you can read about the potentially bright future of algae.

Did you know there is a National Algae Association? No, nor did I.

The only thing that worries me about the idea of huge vats of algae being grown for fuel and (potentially) food is that it's a little too reminiscent of Soylent Green. Let's hope they never decide that adding the occasional body is a good fertilizer for it.

Random notes

* Saw Q&A last night. Tim Blair comes across as more restrained than on his blog. Greg Hunt has a truly ghastly way of smiling, and the hair style doesn't help. He badly needs a face coach, or something. Bill Shorten, on the other hand, really seemed very likeable in the more relaxed setting. I thought in the election campaign that he could be a bit dull and inflexible in one-on-one interviews, but on last night's evidence, you can really see the public warming to him as human personality and a pretty centrist sounding laborite. Much more likeable than robotic Rudd.

* Michelle Grattan has been very, very kind to Rudd in most of her assessments of this new government, so when she says he's not gone so well in the Asian diplomacy stakes, you can believe it.

* Some Labor figures are starting to talk nuclear. I suspect the swing will happen before the next election, and the Liberals will not (if they are sensible) disagree. The only problem then may be Greens in the Senate, if something legislative is needed to establish the industry.

* In the Lefty blogosphere, good to see the insults fly in comments at Club Troppo, especially when one of the targets is my vote for the most irritating blogger who keeps getting noticed: Ken Lovell.

And as many people at noticed, Kim at LP seems to have had a brain meltdown this week too. She is best ignored in 99% of cases, anyway.

Raiders of the Lost haemorrhoids

Well, the opinion sale is going slower than expected, so here's something to keep you entertained.

There's an article in Biblical Archaeology Review that is entitled "Did Captured Ark Afflict Philistines with E.D.?". The "E.D." referred to there is erectile dysfunction.

Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall, but it would seem that the general gist is that the Bible says the Philistines suffered "tumours" after they took the Ark of the Covenant from the Jews, and some translations have interpreted this to mean haemorrhoids. But apparently this article suggests that the effect on the Philistines might more appropriately be interpreted as erectile dysfunction. God really knows how to punish those manly rampaging Philistines!

Someone comments about the story appear in this forum, and the guy makes the useful suggestion that the general idea of tumors, painful swellings or erectile dysfunction being caught from standing too close to the Ark might mean it was radioactive! This is an oddly appealing theory.

I note, however, that it didn't seem to work on Indiana Jones.

Now, get back to work.

UPDATE: here's a better explanation of the argument in the article:

The short version: 1 Samuel 5-6 recounts how the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites in battle. They took it back to Ashdod and put it in front of a statue of Dagon. The next day they found Dagon toppled. They propped it back up, but this kept happening. The hand of the LORD was heavy on the Ashdodites, and he afflicted them with [or in their] ‘opalim.

The meaning of ‘opalim is uncertain. It has traditionally been taken as hemorrhoids. The KJV renders emerods; most modern translations are squeamish about this and euphemize this as tumors or sores. The root ‘ophel is used for the upper city of ancient Jerusalem, and conveys the sense of a hill, a height or a rise, and thus a swelling. It’s kind of hard to imagine what the five golden hemorrhoids would have looked like.

But there is a theory that the ‘opalim were not hemorrhoids, but rather penises. This is driven by archaeological discovery of cultic situlae in the shape of penises, which were actually a common cultic representation in Philistia. (The print version of the article has lots of pictures.) The sense of something that rises would fit.

Someone in the comments following suggests that in fact the affliction might have been priapism!
That would be, I suppose, a particularly ironic curse for God to send upon the Philistines.

Crazy opinion sale on now!

It's End of Financial Year madness here at the Opinion Emporium! All opinions on sale at never to be repeated prices! Send money quickly for an opinion on any topic, and you'll be proud to print out my personalised response 300 times and glue each copy to your lounge room floor for that unique look that your friends are guaranteed to notice.

Need a fresh opinion next year? No problem. New opinions always available, but never at these never-to-be-repeated prices!

Hurry, opinion sale must end 30 June!

Meanwhile, posting will be light here while I deal with the influx of orders. Don't miss out: order your opinion now!

A Colbert moment

This segment from tonight's Colbert Report seemed particularly funny:

Mini black hole safety report finally here

Backreaction: Black Holes at the LHC - The CERN Safety report

The above post at Backreaction tells us about the CERN safety report which was finally released last Friday.

I haven't had time to read it yet, but apparently, as expected, it uses the example of long lived neutron stars as the major argument as to why micro black holes could not be a danger to the earth.

This may well end up marking the official end of my concerns about this as a issue, but I should read it first. (And one immediate issue I can think of is whether you can really use the cosmological argument as a close enough analogue to the way many black holes could be created in close proximity in a short space of time at the LHC.)

For any of you who think that it has been a waste of time worrying about it in the first place, you should read what actual working physicist Bee says in her comments on the above post:

I think it is good they wrote this report and from a legal point of view I can understand that some people found the issue was not appropriately addressed. CERN should have taken these concerns more seriously earlier then it wouldn't have come so far. In this particular situation I find the argument about the black hole scenario ridiculous, but that's because it's a topic I happen to have worked on and know something about. If I consider experiments in other fields where I couldn't tell exactly what the story is, I certainly would appreciate a similar report. The new CERN report I find extremely clearly written and I hope this will suffice and be the end of this catastrophe scenario.

This is a completely different attitude, and a very welcome one, from that expressed by most physicists when lay people started asking questions. (I'm looking at you, the guys at Cosmic Variance.)

Success for fish lovers everywhere

Barrier Reef 'no-take' zones see leap in fish numbers - New Scientist Environment

The large no fish zones which the Howard government introduced appear to be working, at least for delicious coral trout.

Good to see Howard's environmental policies working. Three cheers for conservative governments! Hip hip..

Toxoplasma research

Indiana U scientists uncover potential key to better drugs to fight toxoplasmosis parasite

I know I am probably the only Australian blogger who obsesses about toxoplasma gondii and its evil cat hosts, but someone has to do it.

Anyway, there is research going on that might lead to a vaccine. Good. The mind bending parasite might be defeated yet.

Fiddling

As you can see, a process of fiddling with my template has begun. I think I can go back to the old one if I want to.

I don't like HTML.

Blowhard

Ferguson 'an effective blowtorch', says Caltex boss

This would have to be one of the most unusually phrased compliments a politician has ever received:

However Caltex chief Des King has defended the Minister, saying Mr Ferguson may have made his case behind closed doors.

"I met with [Mr Ferguson] personally many times, and he can be a very effective blowtorch," he said.

Christian China?

Late Night Live - 19June2008 - John Micklethwait: The Economist and globalisation

While we're gazing into the future, I only caught a bit at the end of the interview that you can hear at the above link.

John Mickethwait said that he had been in China recently, and the home church movement was massive. He expects that by (I think) the middle of this century, China could have the largest number of Christians of any nation.

I think I am recalling the details correctly. Phillip Adams was surprised at this suggestion, as was I.

Dooming men to unhappiness

Indian girl-boy ratios at 'all-time low': British charity

This article talks about the continuing massive disproportion of boys to girls in India. (All due to gender selection in abortions.)

It's hard to imagine that in 20 years time the current crop of boys are going to sanguine about this, when there will clearly be huge numbers of them simply incapable of finding a wife (or even girlfriend.)

The things you can buy on the internet today...

Ready, steady, grow: athletes turn to Viagra - Times Online

Athletes may be using Viagra as an on field performance enhancing drug:

Experts believe that Viagra, which dilates blood vessels, could help in events requiring explosive power, such as sprinting. Others suggest it could help endurance – not so much marathon sex sessions as marathon running – particularly at high altitude or in polluted conditions, such as those expected at the Beijing Olympics. The drug is believed to aid the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to muscles.

How close in time to the race do they have to take it? And has there yet been a case where a guy who has taken it has had problems with the unintended side effect? It's not actually banned right now, by the way.

The article also notes:

Meanwhile, British officials are taking action to prevent athletes fooling dope testers by using false penises when giving urine samples. The penises, and untainted urine, are widely available on the internet.

Ah, the old false penis full of clean urine in the underpants trick. How to fight this:

Doping control officers have been given strict guidelines that athletes must be observed and their bodies visible from the stomach to the knees when they produce urine specimens.

I assume that paruresis can be a career threatening condition for athletes.

For those curious about the "readily available" fake urine test penis kits, you might be amused by the comments about the new and improved "Whizzinator" here, but the photo of the product makes it NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK. Here's a section:

By implementing a hidden internal check-valve, the act of urination is so realistic that even a direct observer will not be able to detect that it is in-fact simulated. There is no fumbling around with obvious switches or clamps. This eliminates a big problem associated with the original Whizzinator which has an on/off switch that is very audible and very obvious!

Hydrogen car scepticism

Technology Review: Blogs: The Last Car You Would Ever Buy--Literally

Sounds like some pretty good arguments being put in that post about why hydrogen fuelled cars of any variety are not a good idea.

Chick lit from Saudi Arabia

Sex and the Saudi girl - Times Online

Here's an interesting story on a 25 year Saudi author who has written Arabic version of "chick lit". This section is a little surprising:

When her book hits the shelves in Britain this week, western readers will get a peek at what’s going on behind the veils and under the burqas. Disappointingly, the scenes are not too dissimilar to a western hen party: bitching, belly dancing and gossiping about men. The atmosphere seems far from warm and sisterly. Girls obsess about bodies and eye each others’ “front bumpers” and “back bumpers” with envy.

You’d think that one advantage of being forced to cover up in public would be a freedom from a looks-fixated culture. Yet these women want nose jobs, they want liposuction, they want gym-honed booties and are highly competitive with it. In modern Riyadh it seems that hell isn’t other people, hell is other women.

“Women want to look good for themselves, not just for men,” says Alsanea. “All women show off to one another and like wearing designer clothes. I’m not showing a whole new world. In a lot of respects Saudi women are just like everyone else.”

The glowing pony, and other physics news

'Abundant health from radioactive waste' - physicsworld.com

Physics World notes a recent paper prompting radiation hormesis (the idea, supported by at least some studies, that exposure to just the right low levels of radiation is actually good for you.)

The paper comes up with some novel suggestions:

In his paper, Luckey goes so far as to suggest that schools be built "in used nuclear power plants", and children be given sculptures that are impregnated with nuclear waste to boost their exposure to radiation (and their health). He does caution, "However, children should not ride [sculptures of] radioactive ponies for more than a few minutes every day".

Yet another reason to go nuclear!

Also on the Physics World blog, they have an update on the suspiciously under-reported recent Japanese demonstration of what might be a form of cold fusion, and an article pointing out that Canada is building another couple of nuclear reactors.

We seem to be slipping well behind the technology stakes when even Canada has more of a nuclear industry than us.

Bad review news

Wow. Mike Myer's new movie, The Love Guru, is getting some really savage reviews. Dana Stevens at Slate has a pretty good opening paragraph:

There are good movies. There are bad movies. There are movies so bad they're good (though, strangely, not the reverse). And once in a while there is a movie so bad that it takes you to a place beyond good and evil and abandons you there, shivering and alone. Watching The Love Guru (Paramount Pictures) is a spiritual experience of a sort, but not the sort that its creator and star, Mike Myers, intended. This tale of a guru who brings joy to all who meet him is the most joy-draining 88 minutes I've ever spent outside a hospital waiting room. In the course of those long minutes, Myers leads you on a journey deep inside himself, to the source from whence his comedy springs—and it's about as much fun as a tour of someone's large intestine.

The Happening has received reviews nearly as bad. How does M Night Shyamalan keep getting funding for his films (and big movie stars to appear in them?)

Both he and Myers show what can happen when creative control is centred for too long in one person.

Conservatives go Prius

Roger L. Simon: I did the Prius thing

Conservative climate change agnostic Roger Simon got himself a Prius recently. When you read the comments, you'll see that the car seems to have quite a following amongst his conservative-ish readers.

I'm a little surprised: more than one says that they have found best fuel efficiency on long highway drives. I thought that was were they were known to be at their worst, but these are actual drivers who have the experience.

I see that the Toyota Australian website claims a Prius gets 4.4L/100km.

Tim Blair recently was talking up the diesel sipping Hyundai he took for a spin, but you would have to take into account that diesel is more expensive here than unleaded. In terms of cost, I suspect the Prius may still come out on top for a similar trip.

Nice one, Phil

Two women found guilty over euthanasia | NEWS.com.au

So, a couple of women who supplied a fatal dose of Nembutal to a man who had moderate-to-advanced Alzheimer's disease have been found guilty of manslaughter.

(How could it be manslaughter instead of murder, I wonder. The jury found that it was an unintended death?)

Anyhow, the main point of the post is the hysterical and irresponsible comments of Dr Philip Nitschke, who as usual (seems you just can't keep him away from someone who wants to die,) was involved in this:

Dr Nitschke said his organisation, Exit International, would now change the way it advises people with Alzheimer's.

"Any sign of Alzheimer's disease and you're going to lose any option for anyone to help you, and anyone who does dare to help you had better look carefully behind their shoulders because they could be facing a murder charge," he said.

"Many people said this person knew what he was doing. I thought he knew what he was doing. Yet they base it on the medical evidence that he had lost his ability to make a decision, that he had lost his ability to say whether he could die or not.

"We'll be advising people not to (declare they have Alzheimer's).

"Don't go to your doctor. Don't have the tests done. And if you do have the tests done that show that you're starting to lose mental capacity, make sure it is not recorded."

Just how irresponsible can you get? He's a doctor, telling people not to see a doctor if they are worried that they might have early signs of Alzheimer's. No mediation for those who might benefit from it, then. All because they want to reserve their ability to top themselves later with less risk of legal complications.

His enthusiasm for euthansia trumps best medical practice, clearly.

Mile high club

Mile-high tower wars: How tall is too tall? - Features, Art & Architecture - The Independent

An interesting article here about a 1.6 km high skyscraper to be built at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

According to the article, it will cost $5 billion. I would have thought it could be more than that.

Such projects raise mixed emotions in me. I like anything high tech, and this building is so far ahead of anything else, it'll be fascinating just to see if they can make it work.

On the other hand, it's hard to believe anyone wants to live that high above the ground, especially in Saudi Arabia, which is not exactly on most people's "must see" list of destinations.
It seems to have "white elephant" written all over it.

A promising Pixar

Introducing WALL-E, a silent movie star - Times Online

Early impressions of the latest Pixar are very positive, according to this article.

Not a bad summer season of films it seems, especially for those who like entertainment you can take the whole family to.

Attack of the cutes

Just so that this blog can't be accused of being too depressing lately, here's an attack of the cutes (and I don't even like cats):



(The second half is funnier than the first half.)

Deep sea CO2

There have been a few articles in The Guardian about sending CO2 to the deep ocean. It has certain advantages over pumping it underground, and the fate of such CO2 is more complicated than I realised:

First, in order to ensure that the injected CO2 has adequate time to mix throughout the deep sea, injection should be at depths greater than 3,500 metres - that is, the depth below which "liquid" CO2 becomes more dense than sea water.

Experiments conducted by Peter Brewer, of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, not only confirm that this is the case but also demonstrate that the CO2 injected rapidly reacts with sea water to form a solid clathrate, which is more dense than both liquid CO2 and sea water. Hence, the injected CO2 would end up on the sea floor as a slush. This would gradually dissolve, releasing the CO2 to the surrounding sea water, where it would react with the dissolved carbonate and borate ions to become chemically bound in the form of bicarbonate ion. As the concentration of carbonate and borate ions is small, the neutralisation would take place gradually as the CO2-rich sea water mixed into the surroundings.

But how much can you fit in the Pacific Ocean?:

Broecker says 480bn tonnes of carbon dioxide could be safely dumped directly into the waters of the deep Pacific, equivalent to the carbon pollution from about 16 years of the world's current fossil fuel use.

Not that much, really. And some say that it would increase the acidity of the deep ocean, which as we all know, may not be a great idea.

Just go back to nuclear sounds a much better option.

You should read this

Regular readers know that I keep referring to the worrying theory that the great mass extinctions in earth's pre-history are connected with high atmospheric CO2, and its effect on ocean chemistry. The Scientific American article which first brought this to my attention said that the great extinctions seemed to be associated with CO2 levels of just under 1000 ppm. That's a fair way from where we are now, but still within sight of a century or so of current CO2 increases.

However, there's now a paper here, found via the Ocean Acidification blog, which suggests that maybe the "unifying theory" for mass extinctions is a CO2 level that specifically interferes with the operation of a particular enzyme. The biology is a little complicated, but the big concern with this theory is that severe trouble for the ocean environment may actually start at only 560ppm CO2. That could easily be reached by the middle of this century.

It's not too hard to read the full paper (in .pdf format), and it is well worth the effort. The implications for the future are set out towards the end. I'll put it here in full, and break it up a bit to make it easier to read:

Over the next century, if anthropogenic CO2 emissions proceed at the rates predicted by the IPCC scenarios (IPCC, 2001), then the identified pCO2 threshold concentration of 560 ppmv may be exceeded as early as 2050 (Fig. 3). Whilst the direct climatic impacts of this overshoot remain difficult to quantify with certainty, simple extrapolation of the central tenets of the urease hypothesis suggests that there is little doubt regarding the disruption and mass mortality that it will initiate within organisms that are heavily reliant upon the urease enzyme.

Previous mass extinction events appear to have guided the evolutionary process away from urease-dependence in higher vertebrate animals, but the threat remains for the lower invertebrates and plant communities. Importantly, these at-risk ecosystem elements are fundamental to: (i) the productive food chains, (ii) the essential habitat, and (iii) the stable climate cycles, upon which the higher vertebrate animals (including humans) rely for their survival.

Of particular note is the potential for a collapse in ocean productivity to initiate rapid greenhouse warming (Rampino and Caldeira, 2005). In this case, the cessation of marine biological export of 25 organic carbon from the surface would cause an increase in surface-ocean dissolved inorganic carbon, some of which would leak into the atmosphere to increase atmospheric pCO2. Modelling results suggest that a cessation of productivity today would result in a rapid doubling of pCO2 (Rampino and Caldiera, 2005). It is therefore a plausible scenario that a collapse of ocean productivity occurring at 560 ppm could trigger a rapid “post-apocalyptic” rise in pCO2 levels beyond 1000 ppm – leading to rapid global warming of 3–6C.

Recovery of atmospheric pCO2 from such a perturbation would be governed by the time scale of equilibrium of the ocean chemistry 5 with the carbonate system (c 104 years) (Archer et al., 1997). Post-apocalyptic greenhouse spikes of similar duration have been associated with previous mass extinctions (Retallack, 2005), and may be responsible for triggering additional climate change dependent kill responses (Elewa, 2008).

Clearly, the urease hypothesis forewarns of the global imperative that atmospheric pCO2 levels are stabilised well below 560 ppmv. This will require the development of technologies and solutions that are presently unavailable – thus demanding our immediate attention and resources.

Now, this is clearly presented by the author as a hypothesis, and it is called a "discussion paper". The author is a researcher from the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, but his exact qualifications are not clear. However, it certainly sounds like an idea worthy of some pretty intense investigation.

It is consistent with my position that arguing about whether the earth is currently warming or cooling is irrelevant to the issue of whether keeping CO2 levels down is a good idea.

What's more, the climate change sceptics are still largely silent on the issue of ocean changes as a result of high CO2. (Pointing out that corals have re-established in nuclear test lagoons is hardly relevant.) I don't think they can find any credible scientist who has compelling arguments as to why such concerns are not worthy of being taken seriously. Correct me if I am wrong, Jennifer Marohasy. (I note that she ran with suggestions earlier this year that the cooling temperature would see the alarmists start to run with ocean acidification instead. This is not an answer to the actual concerns, however.)

On the gay front

Widespread reporting today of one study indicating similarities between gay brains and those of the opposite sex. One part that surprised me:

The researchers said that the study cannot say whether the differences in brain shape are inherited or due to to exposure to hormones such as testosterone in the womb and if they are responsible for sexual orientation.

But this is something they plan to look at in a further study of newborn babies to see if it can help predict future sexual orientation.

Would such a study be ethical? Are PET scans completely without risk, and just how important is it for science to pin down when such brain changes (if this study is correct) are formed?

As other people have argued before, it's not even certain that it is helpful for the gay lobby to encourage a belief that it is innate. On the one hand, they can argue against discrimination because it is not something they can choose (a cultural idea that has widespread currency already in the West;) on the other hand, it can still be taken that they are, in a sense, a biological mistake. If it is clear that babies are born that way, would a course of the right hormones be able to "cure" them?

And how would such studies also make sense of the (apparent) widespread bisexuality of Ancient Greece? The question of what exactly was going on in Greece, and a couple of other ancient civilisations, is perhaps a little difficult to be sure of from this point in time; but still, given that their neighbours at the time even thought they were strange indicates that they probably were.

On a related matter, the New York Times last week ran an article on how gay marriage is panning out in Massachusetts. I think it has been found in all places allowing it that there is an initial rush to the registry by couples who have been together for years anyway, followed by rapidly dwindling numbers. In Massachusetts:

Of the more than 10,500 same-sex couples married here since May 17, 2004, 6,121 wed in the first six months. There were 2,060 weddings in 2005; 1,442 in 2006; and 867 in the first eight months of 2007, the most recent data show.

More figures of interest:

The Census Bureau recorded 23,655 same-sex households in Massachusetts in 2006.

Nearly two-thirds of the weddings have been lesbian marriages, including one between two women named Melissa McCarthy. And while nearly half of straight people marrying are under 30, more same-sex married couples of both sexes are older — nearly a third are in their 40s.

So it sounds like about half of gay couples living together there are married now, but with the diminishing numbers who are getting married annually, will that really continue to be the case?

As for the view of the meaning of marriage that some gay males have:

Eric Erbelding and his husband, Michael Peck, both 44, see each other only every other weekend because Mr. Peck works in Pittsburgh. So, Mr. Erbelding said, “Our rule is you can play around because, you know, you have to be practical.”

Mr. Erbelding, a decorative painter in Boston, said: “I think men view sex very differently than women. Men are pigs, they know that each other are pigs, so they can operate accordingly. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Still, Mr. Erbelding said, most married gay couples he knows are “for the most part monogamous, but for maybe a casual three-way.”

Well, I'm glad we overturned millennia of humanity's understanding of marriage so that some gay men who want to continue to openly play the field can still get the financial benefits of having a favourite boyfriend. (Yes, I know, we don't criticise heterosexual marriage as an institution because some - very, very, few I suspect- enter into "open" marriages. But if such attitudes are widespread amongst married gay men, I think it does mean they don't treat marriage seriously, and it weakens the case as to why they should be accommodated.)

It also makes a bit of a joke of the "conservative case" for gay marriage, which I have heard Justice Michael Kirby (amongst others) argue. Let them marry, they say, and it will encourage monogamous relationships and stable families and that is a good thing as far as conservatives are concerned.

Sounds nice in principle, but really, it doesn't realistically take into account nature. As a rule, men (both gay and straight) find sex without commitment easy, and evolutionary biology plausibly explains why. Even with modern young women willing to have purely recreational sex, it still carries more risk of emotional or procreative complications compared to 2 men who meet purely for sex. Making gay marriage available is not somehow going to suddenly make the great majority of them think that they would be better off getting into monogamous relationships any time soon.

Gay women, on the other hand, still seem to have the nesting instinct even when their partner is another woman. Not much of a surprise there. They didn't need any encouragement to "settle down".

But worse than all of this, as far as I am concerned, is the procreative interests of gay couples. That lesbians use artificial insemination to have babies seems to me far more offensive to the conservative viewpoint than the nature of the relationship between the adults. That argument, however, seems to be lost in the West, at least for now.

UPDATE: a reasonably well argued conservative commentary on the topic is at American Spectator.

Something to wonder about

Sewage disaster leaves over 700 gallons of human feces in Kingston woman’s home

I only post about this because of this part of the report:

"This was completely flooded with feces and water and pee, and of course I smelled it. When I came in and I called the city guys and it’s estimated at 786.24 gallons of human feces got backed up into my house," Riley says.

Well, just lucky it wasn't 786.45 gallons. (Why on earth is that figure so precise?)

More religion

Bush 'may convert to Catholicism' - The Independent

Tony Blair and now George W? How interesting.

Meanwhile, Liberal Anglicans are doing their best to stop their church resembling anything even vaguely unified by holding a prominent "marriage" of two gay priests. Despite the priest who led the ceremony denying that it was provocative, it was liturgically as close as a marriage service as possible. According to The Times:

Had it not been two men standing at the altar, any observer would have taken the service for a traditional wedding. The service – at the Church of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London – began: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God . . . to join together these men in a holy covenant of love and fidelity.” After a confession of sin “through our own deliberate fault”, the congregation heard a lesson from 1 Samuel 18, a Bible passage about the love between David and Jonathan.

Dr Lord was asked: “David, wilt thou take this man as thy partner, in the sight of God? Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?’” to which he responded: “I will.”

They also pledged to love each other physically, as in the traditional Anglican marriage service, stating: “With this ring I thee bind, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

Oh no, that's not provocative at all!

What fun the Lambeth conference will be this year. Rowan Williams may as well be looking at how to formally end the worldwide communion right now.

Prince Caspian

For those readers who have been dying to know what I thought of Prince Caspian (cue crickets chirping), here it is.

Reviews for Prince Caspian fall into 3 broad categories:

1. The irreligious who can't stand CS Lewis' use of fantasy as an allegory for Christianity, and therefore cannot bear any of the Narnia films due to their quasi-proselytising nature.

2. The irreligious who feel that Prince Caspian works as adventure and is more enjoyable than The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe because it's allegorical content is considerably diminished compared to the first movie. A lot of Australian reviews I have read fall into this category.

3. Those who who admire CS Lewis and his aims, and are therefore a little disappointed that the movie does seem to soft peddle the serious side.

I'm not entirely sure that I have read any review that clearly falls into category 3, but that was my reaction. I suspect that (apart from the appalling timing of releasing it a week before Indiana Jones in the States) there are probably significant numbers of American Christians who share the view, and this is a partial explanation for why it seems destined to make barely half of what the first movie made. (Still, as far as I can tell, it won't lose money.)

On the positive side: it looks fantastic, and the use of computer effects is kept to a level where it is not making you think "look at those 50,000 combatants who are obviously all CGI". (I'm looking at you, "Lord of the Rings".)

The story also has the benefit of real humans playing real characters (contrast, again, LOTR) and the acting is fine. Also, Andrew Adamson is really a talented director.

On the downside, Aslan comes and dispenses wisdom and assistance only a couple of times. It's been so long since I read the book (if I did at all; I can't even recall clearly which I have read beyond three titles,) that I am not entirely sure if it is the same there. Certainly many reviewers have noted that the book is perhaps the least interesting of the Narnia series.

I certainly don't want to put anyone off seeing it: it is a fine movie; just one that feels a little lacking if, like me, you loved the first one. (By the way, you can always tell a movie has impressed people when a fair few stay in the cinema watching the credits. That did happen at the screening I went to.)

Of course, one of the most disgraceful things is that Sex and the City beat it at the Australia box office on opening weekend. Can't the Pope issue some sort of condemnation of that film? If we lived in Old Testament times, I would expect God to demand the human sacrifice of Sarah Jessica Parker (on an altar erected in front of some fashion house in New York, the contents of which would form the funeral pyre for her body) as a condition of letting the rest of humanity survive. And that would sound perfectly reasonable to me.

Aussie fuel cells

I've mentioned before that in Japan they are using natural gas fuel cells for household electricity.

On Saturday Extra on Radio National this weekend, they were talking about an Austalian company which is developing them too. There is no transcript available, but you can listen to it on streaming audio here. (It starts about half way through that segment.)

The link to the company itself is here. I don't think it is not mentioned on their site, but was in the interview, that it is CSIRO research which the company is trying to commercialise.

We won't be seeing them anytime soon in Australia, however. According to the interview, they are being commercialised for the European, Japanese and North American markets. This is because the cost of electricity here is such that they are not yet cost effective.

Just what the world has been waiting for...

...robots that make smells:

Pomi (Penguin Robot for Multimodal Interaction) can see, hear, touch and emit smells as well as making faces, Friday's Korea Times reported. It was developed by the state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) which plans to put Pomi to commercial use. The institute said Pomi's software, which imitates human expressions of emotion, will be available on the market by the end of next month. The robot can move its lips, eyebrows and even pupils freely to make faces and can emit two kinds of fragrances to match its emotions.

Let's all pray that the Korean's never design a kimchi eating penguin robot that can "emit" smells.

The strength of a weed

Health - Life & Style Home - theage.com.au

The link is to a story about very thorough sounding research in the US which shows that marijuana is indeed much stronger than it used to be in its THC levels:

The latest analysis from the University of Mississippi's Potency Monitoring Project tracked the average amount of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in samples seized by law enforcement agencies from 1975 through 2007.

It found that the average amount of THC reached 9.6 per cent in 2007, compared with 8.75 per cent the previous year.

The 9.6 per cent level represents more than a doubling of marijuana potency since 1983, when it averaged just under four per cent.

I note that it is talking averages too, so presumably a significant amount in use is above that level.

Last year, The Guardian reported that tests in the UK indicated the average there was 14% (with a small number of samples at 20%).

I'm not sure if similar research is done in Australia. Will have to look around some other time.

Analysing Japan

Pajamas Media : What’s the Matter with Japan?

This commentary on the social problems within Japan (viewed in light of the recent Akihabara killings) is spot on.

A key thing that they have to change is the cultural attitude to mental illness and depression. I may have mentioned before, but an Australian friend who lives in Japan (and until recently worked in an administrative position in an english language school) told me that they always did whatever they could to avoid their foreign teachers being taken by police to a psychiatric hospital, because once in there was no telling when they would ever get out. Involuntary admission to a Japan psych ward is something to really fear, apparently.

Even non-psychiatric medicine can expect patients to be stoic to an extent that we haven't seen in the West for many years. A few years ago I was told by a Japanese specialist who performed stomach endoscopies that they were done without any anaesthesia, and as a result were very unpleasant for the patient. (He said he would take a lot of convincing to ever undergo one himself, as he knew how awful they were. I don't know that your gag reflex ever properly stops while you've got a tube down your throat into your stomach.)

As it happens, I had a stomach endoscopy once in Australia in the early 1990's, and knew nothing about it until I woke up. He could not really explain why Japan did not believe in anaesthesia for this procedure. I am sure that he knew that this was not just a peculiarity of the hospital he worked in.

One thing I did not know is that, according to the article, Japan's relatively generous medical insurance schemes do not cover psychiatric treatment.

Amazing, hey?

Real life ocean acidification

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Natural lab shows sea's acid path

Here's a very interesting recent report on some science being done in ocean areas near Italy that already are more acidic due to volcanic CO2 bubbling through the sea.

As expected, the news does not look good for corals, sea urchins, sea snails, and mussels. (I assume that oysters, although they don't get a mention, would also not fare well .) One thing that does well appear to do well is seagrass. I suppose that might mean that one winner out of ocean acidification might be dugong/manatees. I don't know whether they taste any good, though.

Here's the abstract in Nature, but the article itself is behind a paywall. Grrr.

It's also interesting to note the recent stories about the surprising number of bacteria found to be living in the earth's crust under the oceans. The exact role of these in carbon cycling is unknown, but would seem to be potentially very significant. Kind of hard to study bacteria that live best under great pressure, though.

I assume that bottom living bacteria would be very significant to the feared production of poisonous gas if the ocean becomes warm and acidic enough. All a worry.

UPDATE: I hope the tone of my post didn't sound too dismissive of concerns about this.

The Nature paper attracted attention in The Times and The Telegraph. Here's what one of the scientists said in the latter:

Dr Hall-Spencer said: "What we saw was very dramatic and shocking.

"All the predictions made in lab experiments about acidity causing the disappearance of species is coming true.

"When we looked in the field it was already happening.

I must admit I though a lot of the claims being made about species disappearing amounted to scaremongering but now I have seen it with my own eyes.

"Our field studies provide a window on the future of the oceans in a high CO2 world. We show the dramatic ecological consequences of ocean acidification including the removal of corals, snails and sea urchins and the proliferation of invasive alien algae."

"Our observations verify concerns, based on laboratory experiments and model predictions, that marine food webs will be severely disrupted and major ecological tipping points are likely if human CO2 emissions continue unabated."

Also, I note that, although there was a lengthy Sydney Morning Herald story on ocean acidification on 7 June, it did not mention this paper. In fact, I can't see from Google that it has been reported anywhere in the Australian media. Sort of odd, isn't it, given the implications for the Great Barrier Reef?

Why Israel must survive...

Because it seems to be the only Middle East nation with a sense of humour.

This Time blog link explains all:

Iranian Prez stars in Israeli TV Ad - The Middle East Blog - TIME

But oddly, one of the comments about the post thinks that the fact that Israel TV carries a parody about Ahmadinejad threatening nuclear destruction means that "it shows how the "threat" from Iran has been so indoctrinated into Israeli culture that it is accepted as common and undisputed fact."

I would have thought the opposite is more likely; if the population really fears immediate destruction, they presumably wouldn't find the ad funny. (That's not to say they don't fear a nuclear threat in the future.)

Anyway, as I am sure I have said before, can those who make excuses for Iran having nuclear weapons ever point to any Israeli leader talking about the imminent disappearance of one of their neighbours?

As for the ad itself, here's the Youtube link.

Stand on the scales, please

To Save Fuel, Airlines Find No Speck Too Small - NYTimes.com

This article explains what steps the airlines are taking to try and economise on fuel. Some of it I find hard to believe:

Up in the cockpit, Delta is studying whether it is feasible to divide the heavy pilot manuals required on each flight between the captain and first officer, so pilots are not toting duplicate sets of five or six books that each weigh about a pound and a half.

On the other hand if this is true:

“Every 25 pounds we remove, we save $440,000 a year,” Mr. McGraw said...

airlines in countries with significant populations of the obese must be really suffering! Why shouldn't airlines be offering cash back offers for passengers under the national average weight if they are willing to stand on the luggage scales before boarding?

UPDATE: at the risk of referring to the Colbert Report just a little too much, he covered this possibility in last night's show (which I saw after my post):



Also on that episode, he had an interview with a guy who has a book out on the 1950's "comic panic" in America. I had referred to this recently when talking about the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis movie "Artists and Models". If the topic interests you, the interview is both interesting and funny. (You can find it at Colbert Report website yourself.)

A Wednesday compilation

* The amazing adventures of Kevin Rudd: Last week, Labor figures were saying "no, no, no, the Japanese don't think we have snubbed them." This week, the PM being questioned at length about this in Japan (by Japanese journalists) makes that argument just a little hard to sustain. And is it really a good idea to come across as a smart arse by saying "well, you didn't visit us either."?

Andrew Bolt has covered well the silliness of giving money to Toyota to do what they were going to anyway. I expect the next question time in Parliament will go on about this at length, and rightly so.

* Crab scam: Also in Japan, the fraud is of a fairly esoteric nature. Read about the great Japanese crab scammers here.

* A new way of saying "when Hell freezes over": "when Tim Blair becomes a hypermiler": Wired has an article about "hypermilers" (being people who have become obsessed with driving in such a way as to get maximum fuel economy from their cars.) Some of the methods are just nuts:

Fulton routinely gets 55 mpg from his 1997 Toyota Paseo, a car the EPA rates at 29 mpg. He started hypermiling about 18 months ago when he landed a new job 37 miles from home and got tired of burning so much gas. He mastered "pulse and glide" -- turning off the engine and coasting while driving. "This technique alone dramatically increased my mileage from 38 mpg to 47 mpg on my first tank," he says. "I was blown away."

Well, let's just sit back and wait for the first manslaughter conviction for a hypermiler who couldn't use his power steering to help avoid a deadly collision.

* Indiana Jones and the Green Left Weekly: Just what you were waiting for: a socialist left critique of Indiana Jones! The reviewer complains:

The indigenous people who help Indy in his exploits are sympathetically portrayed, but those who resist are seen as ignorant and superstitious. And some really nasty racism rears its ugly head.

An audience survey of the most popular scenes in Raiders revealed that most people’s favourite scene was when Indy guns down a sword-wielding Egyptian man with a pistol in a crowded square. What if the situation was reversed and a sword-wielding white man was gunned by an Arab? Would it still be the public’s favourite scene? I don’t think so.

That's what I like about the po-faced Left: the way they attempt to crush the simple enjoyment out of life. (It is also analysis like this that made the first Austin Powers movie very funny. You know - the part where suddenly the movie veers into looking at the effect on the bad guys' families after they're killed.)

Monday compilation

Here are some stories that caught my attention recently:

* How unlucky can you be? To be born albino is pretty unlucky. But to be born albino in certain parts of Africa is taking things to a whole new level. A pretty amazing story in The New York Times explains that albino people s are being killed in sub-Saharan Africa because of magic:

....recently in Tanzania...at least 19 albinos, including children, have been killed and mutilated in the past year, victims of what Tanzanian officials say is a growing criminal trade in albino body parts.

Many people in Tanzania — and across Africa, for that matter — believe albinos have magical powers. They stand out, often the lone white face in a black crowd, a result of a genetic condition that impairs normal skin pigmentation and strikes about 1 in 3,000 people here. Tanzanian officials say witch doctors are now marketing albino skin, bones and hair as ingredients in potions that are promised to make people rich....

In early May, Vumilia Makoye, 17, was eating dinner with her family in their hut in western Tanzania when two men showed up with long knives....

When Vumilia’s mother, Jeme, saw the men with knives, she tried to barricade the door of their hut. But the men overpowered her and burst in.“They cut my daughter quickly,” she said, making hacking motions with her hands.

The men sawed off Vumilia’s legs above the knee and ran away with the stumps. Vumilia died.

Darkest Africa indeed.

* God gets challenged again: Theodicy gets another discussion in this book review in the New Yorker. Interesting, even if nothing especially new in it.

* I always wanted to live in a dome: It turns out that Buckminster Fuller, famed for coming up with the geodesic dome (and some much sillier designs for all sorts of stuff) was quite the eccentric. Read all about him in a very entertaining article in the New Yorker. Here are some of my favourite sections:

With no job and a new baby to support, Fuller became depressed. One day, he was walking by Lake Michigan, thinking about, in his words, “Buckminster Fuller—life or death,” when he found himself suspended several feet above the ground, surrounded by sparkling light. Time seemed to stand still, and a voice spoke to him. “You do not have the right to eliminate yourself,” it said. “You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe.”...

Castro-like, Fuller could lecture for ten hours at a stretch. (A friend of mine who took an architecture course from Fuller at Yale recalls that classes lasted from nine o’clock in the morning until five in the evening, and that Fuller talked basically the entire time.) Audiences were enraptured and also, it seems, mystified. “It was great! What did he say?” became the standard joke....

Fuller championed, and for many years adhered to, a dietary regimen that consisted exclusively of prunes, tea, steak, and Jell-O. (!!!!!!)

One idea that he came up with was for the "Dymaxion Bathroom—a single unit that came with a built-in tub, toilet, and sink". In fact, I believe this how bathrooms for apartments for Japan are made. Japanese bathing style requires that the entire small bathroom can get wet, so for apartments they are like sealed plastic units that come prefabricated to incorporate into the building.

Once you read the article, have a look at the slide show taken from an exhibition that inspired the New Yorker article.

* Justifying affairs: Across the Atlantic, and Zoe Williams in The Guardian takes a sarcastic look at a book entitled "When Good People Have Affairs". Her favourite of the 17 motivations listed therein: breaking out into selfhood.

On Colbert Report tonight, there's a slightly amusing interview with an writer who has also written about why people have affairs. I suspect that (towards the end) Colbert's personal conservative-ish views are on display here (which is fine by me, of course):



* Books for husbands to buy their wives: Back to the New York Times, and there's a review of two books by couples who tried to help their marriages by having sex every day. What's not to like about that idea?