The double edged sword of the internet

Obama mobilizes rapid response on Web -- chicagotribune.com

Found via Instapundit, this is just a little bit creepy:

Much of Barack Obama's political success can be traced to a database listing contact information for millions of people, a tool that has proved invaluable in raising record sums of money and organizing a national volunteer network.

Now Obama's presidential campaign is increasingly using the list to beat back media messages it does not like, calling on supporters to flood radio and television stations when those opposed to him run anti-Obama ads or appear on talk shows.

It did so as recently as Monday night, when it orchestrated a massive stream of complaints on the phone lines of Tribune Co.-owned WGN-AM in Chicago when the radio station hosted author David Freddoso, who has written a controversial book about the Illinois Democrat.

Some posts about the Crash

Just for my benefit as well as yours, here are some useful pieces on the current financial crash:

Roger Altman in the Financial Times

John Gapper in the Financial Times (who believes AIG should not have been bailed out)

A New York Times column here.

What I want to know is this: if Australia's financial position is so much better, how come our dollar is dropping so much against the US dollar (and Japanese yen?)

Of interest

'Calm before storm' may foreshadow climatic tipping point

This study sounds very interesting, but it is still not at all clear what they think could constitute a sign of the climate "slowing down". (I would have thought that temperatures not rising as expected might have been an example, but that is not mentioned, so maybe it isn't?)

Backfire again

Palin's Yahoo! Account Hacked | The Trail | washingtonpost.com

I like this comment that follows the story:

"Now, American People, don't worry, us democrats will not invade YOUR privacy, just our enemies!"

Top threat down

Colbert Report's Threat Down this week was particularly good:

Anything but less sex

HIV rates climbing: new figures - Yahoo!7 News

The story covers not just HIV, but an increase in all STDs across Australia.

Most surprising is this:

Plans are afoot to introduce a radical plan to control syphilis by mass treating the highest-risk gay men regardless of whether they have contracted the infection.

"We think that's the best chance we have of taking the wind out of the outbreak," Prof Donovan said.

So, just give up on any concept of responsible sexual behaviour, and just treat any gay man who is having a new partner every week with antibiotics?

The report also notes this:

He said he was also concerned by a new trend of HIV infections arising among heterosexual businessmen and miners from WA, Queensland and the Northern Territory who travel to Papua New Guinea for work.

"Gay tourists also need to be more vigilant than ever as it has recently become very clear that in most Asian cities HIV epidemics among gay and bisexual men are now raging virtually unchecked," Mr Baxter said.

Most Asian cities, I note, are not Catholic, yet the condom message is not working so well. The magic power of the condom has been greatly exaggerated, it would seem.

Conspiracy of the day

Can icy fuel bring down an airliner? - tech - 16 September 2008 - New Scientist Tech

New Scientist seems to have opened up every story to comments. This'll be an interesting experiment.

Anyhow, see the link above for their short story on the reason for that odd malfunction of a B777 at Heathrow earlier this year. The investigation is blaming ice build up in the fuel system, but the circumstances still seem rather odd.

Of most interest is a comment that follows that suggests that Prime Minister Gordon Brown may be to blame (well, indirectly.) The idea that a PM could be so hapless as to cause a plane crash has such appeal that I sort of hope it is true.

PDS worse than BDS

Anne Lamott on grief, despair, and the 2008 presidential election | Salon Life

Gosh. So you thought during the election campaign of 2004 that the prospect of George W winning a second term was driving progressives crazy? It's really shaping up as nothing compared to the tearing of garments and wearing of sackcloth being threatened if McCain/Palin win. (I am not sure if a string of celebrities have started threatening to leave the country yet, but it will be bound to come if McCain continues to poll well.)

Also, as this attempt at humour linked above makes pretty clear, it's mainly because of the Palin element.

Enough with the "lies"

Outrage at McCain--a loser strategy. - By Mickey Kaus - Slate Magazine

Kaus' argument (about how Democrats who cry "liar liar" are pursuing a losing strategy) makes a lot of sense.

Ever since 9/11, many liberals (especially those like the Daily Kos crowd, but older politicians will also seize on it when it suits them) have started acting as if political discourse has never involved ambiguity, exaggeration and half truths. For them to label every statement of their opponent that is not shown to be 100% "true" as an outright "lie" just makes them look immature, naive, and (at least in the case of politicians who know better), insincere. Yet it is a tactic that they are finding very hard to abandon, despite the harm it is causing to their side.

Go Brendan...

By which I mean, "go away, Brendan". Brendan Nelson's success tomorrow in the Liberal leadership would just ensure another year of tension with the Coalition continuing to poll badly against a Prime Minister who is already widely acknowledged as (at least) being a disappointment. Everyone knows he is unelectable. It's just that Brendan hasn't got the message yet.

Stand up Liberals: re-read the polls tonight and don't bother with another "fair go" for Nelson.

Roger knows Whoopi

Roger L. Simon: Whoopi’s not dumb - she’s just a fake

Roger Simon has an interesting post up about Whoopi Goldberg and her recent "return to slavery" comment on The View.

Old time sex

The love lives of the ancient Romans - Times Online

This is an extract from Mary Beard's just published book on what Pompeii tells us about the lifestyle of ancient Romans. It's pretty interesting. She writes:

Power, status and good fortune were expressed in terms of the phallus. Hence the presence of phallic imagery in almost unimaginable varieties all round the town. This is one of the most puzzling, if not disconcerting, aspects of Pompeii for modern visitors. There are phalluses greeting you in doorways, phalluses above bread ovens, phalluses carved into the surface of the street and plenty more phalluses with bells on and wings.

Yes, I recall years ago seeing a ring in the British Museum with a little erect penis diagram on it. I wonder what passed for pornography in those days? Did teenage boys sneak into the kitchen to look at the ribald drawings on the pottery? Or were human copulation and erections of such common knowledge that there was no sense of it being inappropriate for young children's eyes?

Beard also writes:

For elite men, the basic message was that sexual penetration correlated with pleasure and power. Sexual partners might be of either sex. There was plenty of male-with-male sexual activity in the Roman world, but only the very faintest hints that “homosexuality” was seen as an exclusive sexual preference, let alone lifestyle choice.

It's odd to think that the Romans would find Oxford Street in Sydney hard to understand. And it's also probably fair to say that they would find the concept of "gay marriage" ludicrous, and not because of religion.

The Roman baths are discussed as well, and this part shows the old guys could see still cause and effect:

And it is not only the modern visitor who is drawn to reflect on quite how hygienic it all was. There was no chlorination to mitigate the effects of the urine and other less sterile bodily detritus. Nor was the water in the various pools constantly replaced, even if there was sometimes an attempt to introduce a steady flow of new water into them.

The Roman medical writer Celsus offers the sensible advice not to go to the baths with a fresh wound (“it normally leads to gangrene”) . The baths, in other words, may have been a place of wonder, pleasure and beauty for the humble Pompeian bather. They might also have killed him.

UPDATE: here's a way in which the position of women in the Roman empire wasn't bad, at least for the ancient world:

As the responsibilities of women became more significant to their husbands' prestige and political clout, so education for women became increasingly more common. Unlike Athens, it became acceptable in Rome for girls as well as boys to receive elemental education, to have read "improving" Roman and Greek authors and to be able to discuss political affairs. Boys then went on to higher studies, including rhetoric, the passport to political careers, while women married in their mid-teens. Throughout the Empire, however, a woman cherished her ability to read and write both as a mark of excellence and as a sign of her status.

The separation of women enforced by the Greeks had never been the Roman way; women were permitted to go out in public, attend lectures and meetings, dine with guests, and conduct their own affairs with some initiative. At the same time, as moral guardians of the health and virtue of Rome itself, their behavior was severely scrutinized for signs of intemperance, sexual laxity, or extravagant (and dangerous) display.

Sounds as if the women of Rome may have had more independence than many in present day Afghanistan or (arguably) Saudi Arabia. Nothing like progress, hey?

Unimportant information continuing

While I'm on a science fiction roll here, have I ever mentioned before that I quite like the movie version of Lost in Space? I watched it again over the weekend for the first time since I saw it at the cinema, and my original impressions are not revised: quite faithful in an updated way to the original opening episode of the TV show, impressive special effects (yes, OK, with the exception of the monkey, but it wasn't in shot all that often), huge expensive sets, and acting that was actually significantly better than that in many science fiction films. Besides which, I've always liked Mimi Rogers, William Hurt and Heather Graham. I even think Matt LeBlanc wasn't bad in his role. It was aimed more at a teen/young adult audience than the kiddie show that the TV series devolved into, but that didn't particularly bother me.

I don't understand why it got so many strongly hostile reviews.

It's well worth the dollar or two it would cost to hire at your local video store. Or just go buy it for $7 at Kmart.

It's not just you

Continuing with a run of trivial posts, on last night's episode of Dr Who, Rose finally was able to talk, instead of just turning up mysteriously and fading out again. Problem was, it seemed to me that she had a very distinct and somewhat distracting lisp, which I didn't recall from her full time appearances in previous series.

The good thing about the internet is that there is no trivia small enough not to have been noticed, especially when it comes to science fiction fandom. Yes, the lisp was definitely noticed around the world, and the explanation seems something of a mystery.

Idle, science fiction-y thoughts

Thinking about the LHC and world-wide catastrophe this week, as many people did, got me wondering about what really unexpected stuff might one look out for as a result of an experiment like this. The sort of thing that might use as a plot device in a Doctor Who episode, for example.

Obviously (well, from a Doctor Who story point of view), the LHC itself could vanish into an alternative dimension, leaving a large crater behind. The arrival of time travellers from the future could be quite on the cards, as it has been suggested in real life. How they arrive could be the novel factor (giant UFO over the facility; taking over the computer system; mind possession of the staff.)

Or it may be that a swap between alternative universe earths takes place. (Perhaps the physicists inside don't realise the swap, until they turn on the TV and notice something like President Gore.)

But here's an idea: the operation of the LHC has an effect on the other side of the world - at its antipodal point. This thought led me to look for resources on the 'net to easily find each antipodal point for anywhere on earth. Wikipedia lists several sites for this, and I quite like this one.

As you will see (assuming I am still holding anyone's interest here), the antipodal point for the LHC is in the Southern Ocean east of the south island of New Zealand. If there are any reports of underwater earthquakes, disappearing ships or UFOs in that areas, you read about it here first. (Possibly.)

Just talking about antipodes generally, it's disappointing to see that there are not all that many "land to land" points. China and parts of South East Asia joins up with various parts of South America, which is not something I would have expected by looking at a Mercator projection. A bullet through New Zealand would end up in Spain. So there: if ever masses of sheep start emerging out of mines in Spain, you know from where they are escaping.

Gun owning lesbian vote sewn up

The Corner on National Review Online

(by Palin, by the way.)

Launch attack! ....Sorry General, I meant "lunch "

Biden living up to his gaffe-prone reputation - International Herald Tribune

A handy list of Biden's gaffes is contained above.

Nukes for the moon

NASA Developing Fission Surface Power Technology

It makes sense, and one wonders if any advances in this field will eventually have earth bound applications:

A nuclear reactor used in space is much different than Earth-based systems. There are no large concrete cooling towers, and the reactor is about the size of an office trash can.

Somewhere I might be popular...

The withered middle-aged guy becomes a hot item in Japan's dating market

The Japan Times makes me feel better about my mid-middle age:

If you happen to be an over-45 male, looking a little tired, inclined to decline party invitations because you can't stand the hassle, comfortable in your own company and not really caring what other people think — so, the news is ALL good, at least in urban Japan. You are, or are extremely close to, what is known as a kareta oyaji (枯れたオヤジ, withered middle-age guy) — currently the underground popular label on the dating market. These days, young women have shifted their preference from the wakai (若い, young), kakkoii (格好いい, good-looking) and okanemochi (お金持ち, rich) — extremely rare for all these traits to co-exist in one man anyway — to the genki nai ojisan (元気無いおじさん, middle-age guy with no energy).

Woo-hoo, I'm hot in Japan!

Truth spectacularly stranger than fiction

Sex offender, 30, posed as schoolboy | NEWS.com.au

From the report:

A 30-YEAR-old sex offender who posed as a 12-year-old boy to enrol at schools in the US for two years has pleaded guilty to child porn and other charges....

He shaved and wore pancake makeup to help him appear younger, convincing teachers, students and administrators that he was a young boy named Casey.

He was caught in January 2007 after spending a day in the seventh grade at a school after school officials became suspicious about his paperwork.

Rodreick was arrested with three other men, who were posing as his cousin, uncle and grandfather.

They at least gets top marks for bizarre determination in pursuing a perversion. Hopefully, they'll get a top sentence as a reward too. (By the way, if I understand the report correctly, the school kids were not the ones in the pornography he had, so I am not making light of anything that happened to them.)

Painting to save the planet

The Great Beyond: Whiter roofs for a cooler planet

The idea has been around for some years, yet seems slow to take off. I didn't know this:

California has required flat-topped, commercial buildings to go white since 2005, and will require new and retrofitted buildings to use cool-color roofing starting in 2009. These shingles and coatings look like their high-absorbing counterparts, but reflect more of the sun’s rays.

Higgs history

They're about to turn on the Large Hadron Collider. Don't expect the Higgs boson to show up.

This Slate article is an interesting review of how the idea of the Higgs boson came about. Whether or not the LHC will find it is the big question. (Assuming, of course, it doesn't blow up first.)

Silly Obama

The Associated Press: McCain camp angry over Obama's 'lipstick' comment

I bet his minders smiled through gritted teeth as soon as they heard Obama wing it with this:

"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said to an outbreak of laughter, shouts and raucous applause from his audience, clearly drawing a connection to Palin's joke. "It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years."

Not feeling entirely relaxed yet: LHC issues update

Well, what do you know. Rainer Plaga, who (unknown to most journalists) has given reasons as to why he thinks the CERN safety review was flawed, has answered my email.

I didn't ask for permission to reprint it, but he says he is preparing a response to the Giddings/Mangano rebuttal of his concerns. He says he "needs time" to finish this. Let's hope he doesn't take too long.

He also thinks they are ignoring another important point he made in his paper, but I have go back and re-read it before I can explain.

I have read criticism at Cosmic Variance and elsewhere that Plaga is definitely not an expert in the field of black hole radiance and we don't need to take him too seriously. Certainly, his "home page" has little detail, and it seems he is not actively working in astrophysics. Still, I am interested in independent physicists reviewing safety issues.

Good news from North Korea?

No-show at anniversary parade raises questions over Kim Jong-Il's health | World news | guardian.co.uk

I wonder if anyone has any idea who will follow him?

When smears go wrong

FactCheck.org: Sliming Palin

The very handy FactCheck website says there have been massive emailings spreading rumours about Sarah Palin. One which tries to make her appear particularly hypocritical says that she dramatically reduced the funding for "special needs" children in Alaska.

Funnily enough, the exact opposite is the case:

According to an April 2008 article in Education Week, Palin signed legislation in March 2008 that would increase public school funding considerably, including special needs funding. It would increase spending on what Alaska calls "intensive needs" students (students with high-cost special requirements) from $26,900 per student in 2008 to $73,840 per student in 2011. That almost triples the per-student spending in three fiscal years.

I suspect someone at Daily Kos will say she only did that because she knew her own baby had special needs. But as Factcheck points out:

According to Eddy Jeans at the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, funding for special needs and intensive needs students has increased every year since Palin entered office, from a total of $203 million in 2006 to a projected $276 million in 2009.

Try again Democrats. You probably just helped give her more good publicity.

This is why Truthers are dangerous

9/11 rumors that harden into conventional wisdom - International Herald Tribune

In short, they encourage conspiracy belief in the Middle East, and that cannot possibly help achieve peace there.

I've said before, there should be greater attention given to taking the fight to the truthers.

End of the world delayed (an LHC update)

US LHC Blog - Turning Back Time

I have already pointed this out last weekend, but it is worth repeating, as I am getting quite a few extra visitors who are Googling for information about the LHC and black holes.

The activity at the LHC tomorrow is only to try to get a single beam right around the ring for the first time. There will be no collisions with other particles (well, unless the beam goes off course and smashes into something by accident. That would be big news, due to the delays it would cause in repairs.)

As LHC physicist Peter Steinberg explains above, even when the LHC gets two counter-rotating beams colliding (within a month or two) the first collisions will be at the lower energies that older particle colliders have already dealt with.

According to Peter, it will be a few months before it is cranked up to the higher levels of energy that are novel and could possibly create micro black holes or other particles. As he says, the death threats can be put on ice for a few months at least.

So: the world is definitely not ending tomorrow. You still have to pay your taxes.

As to my earlier post about the Rainer Plaga paper, I still have not received an email response from Dr Plaga. Given the heightened level of interest at the moment, it would give many people relief if he did acknowledge an error. If he doesn't accept that he made an error, then having some more independent physicists weigh in would help.

And here's something new to read about what the LHC might find: maybe not micro black holes, but "string balls", which may evaporate in a similar way to black holes anyway. The paper is about how to tell the difference.

I am curious as to whether there is any potential safety issue for them, if they don't behave quite as predicted. (Yes, I know, the same argument about stars and planets surviving cosmic rays would apply, but the same counter argument about the LHC creating slow moving objects would need to be considered.)

I also see there is a paper from August called "On the stability of black holes at LHC". It's a little hard to follow, but it would seem that they are arguing that it certain possibilities as to higher dimensions are true, the "behaviour" of the black holes created there may be "stable". I assume they mean that they won't disappear in a flash of Hawking Radiation, which has always been the main assumption of those doing the safety assessments on the LHC.

It's good that the LHC is not getting up to high energies just yet: it may allow sufficient time to get answers to these last minute concerns.

UPDATE: I have got a physicist to put into plain english the point that Mangano/Giddings were making in their rebuttal of Plaga:

Plaga is considering a warped extra dimensional scenario. In such models, there is a regime in which one is allowed to use the four dimensional quantities and laws, and a regime in which the phenomenology is described by the five dimensional laws (I describe this a little, in a simpler model, here). In their rebuttal, Giddings and Mangano point out that Plaga is applying four-dimensional formulae where they don’t apply, obtaining an incorrectly high result. This is perhaps the main clear problem.

Mind you, Mark Trodden likes to call all people who raise safety issues "crackpots", which gets up my nose for reasons I have explained before, but he has performed a useful service here.

Now, if we can also deal with the LHC and naked singularities, string balls, and time loops, I would be feeling better.

Truthers: what evidence?

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Conspiracy Files | The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 - The Third Tower

Four Corners last night did their bit to annoy Australian Troofers (I rarely deliberately misspell for ridicule, but they deserve it) by showing this BBC documentary about the collapse of WTC 7. Unfortunately, it would seem only the preview is available, and (if it is like the first section of the whole show) it may give the impression that the makers think the conspiracists have some good points.

Overall, though, the show did a pretty good debunking job. If anything, they were too soft on the obviously problematic psychology of truthers. They have incredibly little evidence (well, none actually) to support their ideas, yet having decided that there is a hidden truth, absolutely anything is taken as confirmation of the secret.

I find the slightly premature reporting (by the BBC, following Reuters, who followed someone else) of the collapse a particularly odd piece of "evidence" for them to latch onto. Assuming a conspiracy for a moment, why on earth would the people running it need to announce the collapse to the media at all? It's not as if they were not going to notice. Many witnesses say the building was creaking and deteriorating before their eyes: it's not as if a collapse was actually unexpected at the time the BBC ran the story. It is far from surprising that someone standing near a reporter somewhere in the city (who may not have been actually been within sight of the building) may have used the word "collapse" before it happened, and that reporter passed it on believing the building had already collapsed. Didn't troofers ever play "chinese whispers" at a party when they were kids?

So the BBC reporter's explanation makes complete sense. But the psychology of the troofers means they just can't accept that a mistake is the obvious explanation.

The literary life

High-pitched buzzing from the booksy girls and boys | The Spectator

Paul Johnson talks about the literary scene in London in the 1950's and beyond, and it makes for an entertaining column.

Meanwhile, on the demonic front

Something clever?: Is your computer possessed by a demon?

An evangelical from the US apparently put forward these propositions in a book in 2000:

• Demons can possess anything with a brain, including a chicken, a human being, or a computer.

That would account for some evil chickens I have encountered in my life.

• "Any PC built after 1985 has the storage capacity to house an evil spirit."

I suppose that means they can live in USB keys too.

Fascinating.

When wind turbines fail

Spinning to destruction: Michael Connellan on the dangers of unreliable wind turbines | Technology | The Guardian

Here's a good read on the engineering challenge of building wind turbines that don't fall apart, and how that challenge has sometimes not been met.

Novel writing all washed up

First Things - Revisiting the Novel

The post above, from the very readable First Things blog, is a complaint by someone about how he has lost interest in novels, and is finding it hard to get back into them. (He's doing that by reading Jane Austen, though, which certainly wouldn't be the approach I would try.) My weekend thoughts on To Kill a Mockingbird has also inspired me to get around to posting on this topic.

I too have developed something of a problem with finding engaging fiction in the last few years. I used to read a lot of science fiction up to about the end of the 1980's when, despite the apparent good news of the end of the Cold War in the real world, it seemed that science fiction went pretty deeply pessimistic and ugly. Old optimistic authors I used to like (Niven and Pournelle, for example) stopped producing really good work. Arthur C Clarke's prose style (never a strong point of his books anyway) became ever worse, and as for Heinlien's last rambling novels of the 1980's, the less said the better.

I still get a hankering to read science fiction from time to time, and not being aware of any current American authors to my taste, in the last couple of years I have tried a few British science fiction writers who seem to be well reviewed. Peter Hamilton can be good in parts, and I quite like his future technology ideas, but I feel he often badly needs more editing. Ken McLeod's underlying socialist politics is just too obvious. "Blindsight" by Peter Watts was another go at the "first contact"sub-genre that I felt pretty much went no where. (For some bizarre reason, he thought it a good idea to have a main character who is literally a vampire, which the novel treats as a real human sub-species.)

I am presently reading the first novel by Charles Stross (The Atrocity Archives), and while it is passable so far, it immediately struck me as being like a novel length treatment of ideas found in Heinlein's novella "Magic Inc". This is, I suppose, the fundamental problem for new science fiction: all the major themes were done by great novels within the first 50 or so years of the genre. It surely is a challenge to re-visit the sub-genres in a way that is fresh and worthwhile.

The thing I find common in these authors is the lack of readily likeable characters. Perhaps Peter Hamilton comes closest in this regard, but as I say, I think he has other faults.

Away from science fiction, I find the themes of most recent novels don't appeal. Probably due to my interest in religion generally, examinations of characters' lives from a purely secular point of view just seem somewhat lacking in significance to me. (This is a major fault in Australian film too: religion as something important to the characters is rarely present, or if it is, it is only ever portrayed in a negative light.) That there would be consideration of the "bigger picture" could be expected of the famous Catholic authors of the 20th century, but as First Things commented in June, those days seem long gone. I tried Shirley Hazzard recently, who seemed to be reviewed as if she had many of the qualities of older, mid 20th century fiction, but (as I have posted before) I actually found her style woeful, despite the high praise she generally receives.

As for the famous Catholic writers, by the 1990's I had read all of Waugh. However, I have only recently just read my first Graham Greene novel. (The Bomb Party, a short, less well regarded work.) It was pretty good, and I liked his style. I think I will be trying more. But it is kind of depressing that I have to be dipping back 60 years to find fiction that appeals.

So the point of this ramble is that it has occurred to me that, just as nearly everyone in their 40's starts thinking that popular music has peaked and is in decline, it seems to me that almost no good fiction has been written since around 1990.

Pity really.

Target probably too low then?

Firms hint at accepting 10pc Garnaut emission reductions | The Australian

A great movie

"To Kill a Mockingbird" was on TV today, being played as part of a Father's Day themed set of movies.

Its semi-melancholic remembrance of parental love still gets to me emotionally. (This is the first time I have re-watched it since having children, but it has always moved me.) Its effectiveness is all the more remarkable in light of the simplicity and the economy with which it was made: black and white film; a studio backlot set; direction and storytelling that is measured in pace but never flashy. I have always thought the score is particularly effective. (It was by Elmer Bernstein, who had a ridiculously long career in movie music.)

It is, of course, also an excellent example of the discretion with which older movies (and books) could deal with adult themes. If the film were being made today, in the "need to see everything" modern style of most movie storytelling, there would likely be flashbacks to illustrate the rape /seduction scene, rather than a simple reliance on the trial testimony.

Watching it made me check again whether Harper Lee is still alive. She is, and the Wikipedia entry for the book shows a photo of her receiving 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom less than a year ago. She has always sounded very modest, but she deserves to be extremely proud of the legacy of her one novel.

Geo-engineering re-visited

Global warming | A changing climate of opinion? | Economist.com

What I didn't get for father's day

The Eclipse 400 - zoom zoom ZOOM - The Red Ferret Journal

...a very cool looking private jet.

End of the world, or not, post

I'm getting mightily annoyed with the way the media, and particularly science journalists, are reporting the "end of the world" stories regarding the LHC. Not because they are being sensationalist (though a small fraction are), but because they are, more often than not, being overly dismissive while at the same time clearly ignorant of the detail of the debate.

For example, the science editor at The Times is Mark Henderson, who himself has no science background, and certainly looks very young. He wrote in The Times that:

Once again the cry has gone up that the accelerator could create a black hole that would devour the planet. Legal challenges have sought to halt it, and these have been more widely reported this week than the project itself.

Yet the claim is utterly ridiculous. ...

This isn't a story that's worthy of serious discussion, even as kooky fun. It might sound harmless, but it feeds stereotypes of crazy and reckless boffins who know everything about nothing and nothing about everything, and encourages the contemptible but widespread view that scientists are not to be trusted.

"Utterly ridiculous" ideas generally don't get responded to by detailed safety studies, Mark.

Henderson and his ilk seem to have missed this comment by Mangano, the physicist most credited with this year's safety review, reported earlier this year:

"If it were just crackpots, we could wave them away," the physicist said in an interview at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym, CERN. "But some are real physicists."

Mark and most other science journalists writing reassuring articles this week also seem to have missed the issue raised only in August by astrophysicist Rainer Plaga that there might be another mechanism (other than the earth being eaten by a black hole) by which micro black holes might be dangerous. Yes, Mangano and Giddings have responded to this claim, but isn't this a newsworthy addition to the current reporting?

Plaga's concerns are particularly newsworthy because, as I noted a few posts back, he seems well and truly within the mainstream of astrophysicists. He writes:

The luminosity of a mBH accreting at the Eddington limit with the parameters assumed above corresponds to 12 Mt TNT equivalent/sec[11], or the energy released in a major thermonuclear explosion per second. If such a mBH would accrete near the surface of Earth the damage they create would be much larger than deep in its interior. With the very small accretion timescale (≪ 1 second) that was found with the parameters in section 3, a mBH created with very small (thermal or subthermal) velocities in a collider would appear like a major nuclear explosion in the immediate vicinity of the collider.

I have asked nice physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, who has discussed the LHC safety issues before at length at her Backreaction blog, about this. Unfortunately, she has not seen Plaga's paper or Mangano's reaction, and is showing little interest in reading them any time soon. (I think she doesn't really believe any micro black holes are likely to be created, and that may well explain her lack of concern.)

Therefore I don't know who else to ask in the physics world as to whether the Mangano response is conclusive.

Well, in the interests of citizen science journalist, I have sent a short email to Plaga himself, asking if the Mangano/Giddings comments on his paper has caused him to change his mind.

I will let you know if I get a response.

UPDATE: No response yet, but I just wanted to clarify that, as explained here, on 10 September the LHC is only planning on getting the first beam circulating in one direction. There won't be any no particle collisions until they get another beam, going in the opposite direction, up and running. According to the Guardian:

"If the beam goes all the way round on the first go, that would be quite amazing. It's never happened in the history of particle colliders," said Cern's James Gillies. If the test is successful, scientists may try to send the beam around in the opposite direction, though first collisions are not expected until next month.

They expect to spend a few months getting to grips with the machine before putting it to work in earnest.

So, even in the worst case scenario, we all have at least another few weekends ahead of us. Drink up, be merry, ask questions, etc.

Colbert and Palin

One of the interesting things about watching Colbert Report is trying to work out at what point he (the person, not the character) might genuinely be agreeing with, or at least sympathetic to, a conservative position. I really get the feeling it happens from time to time, but it is just fleeting impressions, and it's hard to know the truth. (I certainly believe he is more mature about politics than Jon Stewart, and is capable of actually liking conservative figures.)

On the other hand, I do think that his episodes this week have been showing a liberal narkiness that is so strong, he is too clearly breaking out of character with too many of his jokes.

This makes today's forthcoming episode especially interesting, to see how he handles the extremely well received Palin speech. Colbert the character should be absolutely swooning. But just how much attack will Colbert the person manage to fit in, and will it come across as sour?

UPDATE: So, how did Colbert go? It's a bit of a mix really, with some jokes working well, and others failing. The first couple of minutes of the following clip are good, then the section about Guiliani fall flat. But, if nothing else, you should watch for the last section, featuring a 21 year old college blogger who had been promoting Sarah Palin. There's a very big laugh to be had there, but not from Stephen:

Dolphin wars

New Scientist Environment Blog: Dolphin serial killers?

It's being suggested that some dolphins are killing other dolphins as a culturally learned behaviour. Not so cute after all...

Wow

I caught nearly all of the Sarah Palin speech when it was replayed on CNN tonight. Whether or not she can survive the rough and tumble of live interviews and debates is yet to be seen, but (a little to my surprise) my reaction to her RNC speech was that it did feel like I was watching the historically important birth of a political star.

She is a political natural if ever there was one, yet at the same time has a very authentic feel about her whole personae, which is what I find just seems to be lacking in the Obama family, and in Hillary Clinton too. (Not to mention hair-do boy John Edwards.)

Reaction all over the place has been strong, with the notable and very, very bitchy exception of Andrew Sullivan, whose over-the-top pursuit of Palin from the start has caused him to lose any credibility he may have once had as a reasonable pundit.

Not a good look

Arctic Ice Shelf Breaks Away in Canada - Science - redOrbit

For other Arctic melt news, Brian at LP had a good post this week that is worth looking at, as it pulls in images from a few different sources to show the extent of ice melt, and the decreasing depth of what remains. (But note that some headlines of the last couple of days about the ice cap now being an island have been exaggerating.)

As for other bad news from the north, there was a short, but worrying, report earlier this week about methane release from the seabed near Siberia. I think we'll be hearing more about this soon.

Meanwhile, the sceptics at Marohasy are getting worked up about the revised "Hockey stick" graph of Mann. Most skeptical commenters there are well beyond any possibility of being convinced that they may be wrong. It's denialism as a matter of faith. Personally, I've never worried too much about the hockey stick controversy, after I decided that it's not a good idea for the sake of the oceans to let CO2 increase to heights unseen for thousands or millions of years, regardless of the air temperature outside.

I note that Marohasy skeptics rely a lot on information sourced at CO2 Science. I am not sure how much more the guys who run that site could do in website design to make their motive obvious. (It features a hummingbird at a flower which has flourished with all that yummy CO2.) Their brief is clearly is to make everyone embrace CO2 as the "feel good" gas.

It has quite the opposite effect on me: it makes it very hard to take them seriously, right from the first glance.

This'll be interesting

Mohammed novel to be published: author | theage.com.au

Another world

The Forbidden World: Books: The New Yorker

If you have an interest in stories about ex-priest heretics burned at the stake in Italy in 1600 (and who doesn't?) this book looks promising.

Black hole danger not gone??!!

0808.1415v1.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Bloody hell - I was curious as to why there had been another sudden burst of publicity against there being any danger from micro black holes potentially being created at the Large Hadron Collider.

Here's my guess: it's to counter this paper (linked above) called "On the potential catastrophic risk from metastable quantum-black holes produced at particle colliders" which it appeared at Arxiv on 10 August.

The author - R Plaga - is a mainstream, well published, astrophysicist, as far as I can tell.

Here's the Wikipedia entry on this recent controversy, which I had missed until today. Giddings and Mangano, who gave the LHC the "all clear" earlier this year, have responded to Plaga's paper.

I have no time to read up on this right now, but sheesh, I wish this was all sorted with more time before they flick the switch on the LHC.

It is also further vindication of my long held position that physicists at CERN had never previously done a really thorough consideration of all the possible dangers from the operation of the LHC.

UPDATE: this is really hard for a non-scientist to follow, but it would seem that Mangano point to what is almost a mathematical mistake in Plaga's paper. Not at all sure that I have understood the point, though, and I would like to know if Plaga acknowledges a mistake.

His argument is that, if certain models are right (which of itself is probably a very big "if,") micro black holes could represent a planetary danger even if stars clearly have survived naturally created ones over the millennia.

You know, one of the underlying concerns that worriers have had about the LHC is whether danger from such experiments is a plausible explanation for the Fermi Paradox. That's why I still do not feel relaxed and comfortable, when safety issues are still being proposed by credible figures just a month before the machine is switched on.

Bet he didn't see this coming

Bristol Palin's Boyfriend Going to GOP Convention - Republican National Convention

Get your high school girlfriend pregnant, and then have to appear at international media event. Nothing like pressure, hey.

Maybe this should be added to sex education classes under the category of possible consequences of unprotected sex.

Clean energy news

Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits - Series - NYTimes.com

This article is from last week, but it's an interesting look at the problems that the use of wind farms cause for the power grid in the US. It's not clear to me what sort of problem this may represent in Australia, as I think we have a pretty co-operative inter State grid system now, don't we?

I still don't like the idea of widespread use of windmills. I don't care what supporters say, the sight of tens of them on a horizon bothers me as an unnecessary visual intrusion on nature. Plans to put them all out of sight at sea seem a better prospect, and would avoid the bat killing issue which I assume would be a major problem in many parts of Australia. (Not to mention that flying foxes are believed to be spreading the deadly Hendra virus, so handling dead ones is not a good idea.)

As for solar energy, long time readers will remember that I like the look of the Infinia corporation's solar stirling engine. It still seems to be building up to big scale manufacturing, but the pace (as with many renewable energy ideas) seems very slow.

I see recently that another solar stirling power company (Stirling Energy Systems) has applied to build a full scale power station using 30,000 dishes in the California desert! It will be very interesting to see if this goes ahead, and can compete well with other forms of solar thermal.

One issue is that other types of solar thermal (the ones that heat fluid in a pipe) have a more direct way of getting some overnight energy storage (eg using melted salts, etc.) I am not sure if SES has an idea for overnight power.

Finally, how is the South African demonstration pebble bed reactor going? Still progressing, it seems, but again, there seems little sense of urgency about such projects.

Star Wars creeps closer

US army has laser guns in its sights - tech - 02 September 2008 - New Scientist Tech

Although not planned as anti-personnel weapons, the effects on people of a moving laser would presumably be pretty ugly.

The article is also noteworthy for use of the word "ruggedised".

Eyes keep closing

I'm feeling unusually tired tonight, and as a result all of the Sunday international newspapers just aren't holding my attention. In fact, this almost feels like "coming down with something" tired. I must go to bed. I hope I don't have a continuation of this morning's dream in which Obama was talking to me through a window while I was on the toilet. (He was telling me about what I could pick up on certain bands that I never use on the little radio with which I listen to the news.)

UPDATE: I feel OK this morning. But, forthcoming work crisis probably means no posting for a couple of days, or at least until I start having better dreams.

No wonder pandas are endangered

Video: Giant panda birth | Environment | guardian.co.uk

I saw the link to this video earlier this week, but didn't around to watching it 'til tonight.

It's truly startling, watching this (seemingly very rapid) birth, and the squealing, flopping Alien-esque character of the newborn cub. We all now know why they reproduce slowly: baby pandas freak out their mothers, and with some justification.

Of course, for funnier panda video, you can always re-visit the famous startled Panda sneeze clip. (It's like panda's just never get used to being parents.)

Weird

David Duchovny in sex addiction treatment |

It's either an elaborate publicity stunt for Californication, or the show has helped mess with his head.

Maybe if he had only done wholesome shows instead. Just like Bob Crane in the Donna Reed Show. (I like to point out the flaws in my own arguments sometimes.)

Nice man

That Mike Huckabee seems very likeable. Have a look at his appearance last night on Colbert Report:

In which we discuss fathers, sons, tobacco and God

Someone gave me (what I think is) a high quality cigar recently. It smells great, but I know that if I smoke it, I will be able to taste tobacco in my mouth for the next 48 hours, regardless of teeth-brushing and Listerine. Yes, non smokers have sensitive taste buds. (Or maybe that is more a function of cheaper cigars? The 10 or so that I probably had over my entire life were almost certainly lower quality.) I don't think I have ever tried a cigarette, as far as I can recall. Cigars are mainly smoked for mouth taste anyway, not for lung burning ingestion of nicotine. And they do go well with port. All I need to complete the picture is a smoking jacket, hey.

I don't like the long lingering after taste, but it's got to be smoked sometime. Or I could just let it sit near my desk for the next 12 months and smell it a few times a day. Nah, I don't think so.

I dare not let my 7 year old son see me smoking it: he seems strongly attracted to the idea of trying smoking, in a way I don't ever recall sharing, even though my father smoked well into his 50's. (Cause of death in his early 60's: lung cancer.) Yes, dammit, he is showing signs of an independent personality after all, despite my attempts at brainwashing by showing him Lewis & Martin movies and other popular entertainment from my childhood.

In other signs of independent thought, despite attending a Christian school, and church, he seems much more inherently skeptical of the concept of God than I ever was. I don't quite understand what part of a personality seems to predispose some people towards easy acceptance of religious belief, and others to be doubters from childhood. This was an interesting feature of Clive James' Unreliable Memoirs. Despite being an active member of a church as a teenager, and obviously being able to have an easy intellectual grasp of the Bible, it just seems that he was never capable of having it mean much to him.

I suspect that having one parent as a non-believer (and hence a stay-at-home while the kids go to church with the other parent) may simply be enough to cause children to never "get" religion; I suppose someone has done some research on that. Also in my son's case, it seems he has seen the obvious parallel between pretend Santa and (potentially) pretend God. We actually never spent a lot of time playing up Santa as a figure with our kids, yet obviously it was still enough for him to see the implications.

Unfortunately, there is probably not a scary nun left in Brisbane who could take over my son's indoctrination, like I had for the first couple of years in primary school. (Actually, despite being good at terror, she was pretty lousy at teaching anything; but I can remember how impressive some other nuns were in their free wheeling talks on religion for 30 minutes every day. Then again, maybe that was just me and everyone else in the class was bored.)

Anyway, the mind-molding project must be continued, even while I sneak outside one night to smoke that cigar. Maybe the smoke rising past my son's window will be interpreted as a ghost, and at least he'll believe in the supernatural.

Appleyard's take on the Convention

Thought Experiments : The Blog: Suicide of the Democrats

It's pretty funny, Bryan's take on how the Democrat Convention is going.

I'm very curious to hear Obama's opening line as he appears at his faux Greek temple, as I felt certain as soon as I heard Kerry's corny "reporting for duty" opener that he had lost the election then and there.

UPDATE: Tim Blair's take on a New York Time's strangely ambiguous assessment of Obama canonisation is terribly funny. (The New York Times quotes more than one supporter who says that Obama is in strong control of his emotions. I don't necessarily take that as a good thing in a leader with the fate of other's people's lives in his hands.)

Scientists worried

Scientists Unveil "Honolulu Declaration" To Address Ocean Acidification

Hey, ocean acidification skeptics, when we will get to see something like an Oregon Petition on this topic?

Innovative school policies

Mum shocked as school puts daughter, 14, on Pill

The mother, who knew nothing of the school's role in this, is quoted as follows:

"It is really hard to get your head around the fact that when your child goes on an excursion they need to have a permission slip signed by the parent, but the school is within its rights to take a child to the doctor to be put on the pill."

It's easy to see her point.

High quality Crabb

Headmaster to teach teachers a lesson - Opinion - smh.com.au

It's another Annabel Crabb column that is both insightful and funny:

The PM's closet is positively bristling with instruments of domination and punishment for organised labour - the retention of the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the introduction of a migrant fruitpicking army, and now the threat that substandard teachers will get the chop.

The fact that these are all John Howard's ideas must make the exercise even freakier, from the unions' point of view....

Kevin Rudd's diplomatic skills almost always compel him to opt for jargon instead of plain speech; he'll rarely settle for sacking someone when he can reassign their skills constructively in a fully benchmarked pilot separation scheme.

It's especially strange seeing Julia Gillard entirely supporting Rudd on the school rankings stuff, and criticising an Australian Education Union funded report. Who within the government is going to give the AEU comfort?

I see Andrew Bolt is full of praise for Rudd's intentions. But really, how is all of this planned discussion to implement an "education revolution" more than spin?

Small things amusing my small mind

VF Daily: vanityfair.com

See, I can't be the only middle aged man who, in idle moments in the shower, thinks about what could be a good "Macguffin" for one final outing for Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.

Vanity Fair had a competition for suggestions back in June, and their winner was quite triumphantly silly. You can also see all of the most popular suggestions in handy tabular form.

I'll have to find my old "Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World" books to see if I can come up with something else.

More reason to worry about birds

Crows never seem to forget a face - International Herald Tribune

Great. Those noisy, raucous crows that chase other birds out of the neighbourhood are surprisingly smart too. Let's hope they never decide to gang up on us.

Mum, stop vacuuming, you have to die now

Diary of terminally ill woman who chose euthanasia | Life and style | The Guardian

The Dutch really are different. This account of the last days of a terminally ill woman in the Netherlands who chooses voluntary euthanasia is amazing to read. This is how the day she dies begins:

Mum leaves and comes back again three times. After the last visit, I can hear she is hoisting the vacuum cleaner up to the attic. It is just after 6am.

It is the start of an increasingly mad day, during which Mum hoovers the whole house and does six loads of washing (one of which consists of a single white shirt). She scrapes all the woodwork on the outside of the house clear of moss and cleans the windows.

After breakfast, I find Dad fuming after Mum has given him grief for not ironing fast enough.

Martin, the kindly suicide doctor, comes around that evening and this is how it goes:

6.15pm: The doctor arrives shortly after the scene with the toilets. Mum greets him, then disappears upstairs, saying, "Best let me potter for a bit." Nobody sees her for another 20 minutes.

"Does it happen at all that people pull out at the last minute?" I ask.

"Yes," Martin says. "Quite often I go home again and a new appointment is made. But in many cases the patient passes away between visits."

When Mum comes back, listing things she has put in bags and boxes, Martin gently interrupts her: "Can I just ask you something? Is there still a lot you feel you need to do?"

"Yes," she says, "I mean no. I'm just nervous."

"I can always come back later if you are not ready," says the doctor.

Mum sits down and listens to the doctor. Then she takes a deep breath and says, "OK. I am ready."

At 7pm, with my father, brother and me around her bed as well as Martin, who has given her the injection, Mum goes to sleep.

If this doesn't make you feel at least a little uneasy about how euthanasia can work in practice, then you're probably Philip Nitschke.

In Futurama, the ubiquitous Suicide Booth features in more than one episode. I am sure there is a Dutch engineer working on developing one right now.

Arctic ice melt update

Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis

The NSIDC updates the current state of the summer ice melt up near the North Pole. As the graph shows, this year is not so far off 2007's record melt.

Bad news

Ahmadinejad appears to get a key nod - Los Angeles Times

Dangerous meats

Tainted deli meats in Canada kill 12

The pathogen: listeria monocytogenes. Pregnant women are warned against getting it, but I didn't realise it could kill so many of the general public.

It's effective enough to be a bio-terrorist agent, by the sounds.

Watch out for the falling flying foxes

Wind turbines make bat lungs explode - earth - 25 August 2008 - New Scientist Environment

I hate to think how many flying foxes might be taken out by a big wind farm anywhere near their habitat in Australia. (And they seem to be all down the east coast from North Queensland to at least Sydney.)

Cats will destroy the world

Pets eating into fish stocks�(ScienceAlert)

From the article:

Dr Giovanni Turchini, with colleague Professor Sena De Silva, has found that an estimated 2.48 million tonnes of forage fish—an increasingly limited biological resource—is used by the global cat food industry each year.

"That such a large amount of fish is used for the pet food industry is real eye opener," Dr Turchini said.

"What is also interesting is that, in Australia, pet cats are eating an estimated 13.7 kilograms of fish a year which far exceeds the Australian average per capita fish and seafood consumption of around 11 kilograms. Our pets seem to be eating better than their owners."

And they will look like this as the ocean's food chain collapses:


via videosift.com

Bob Carter - sensitive soul

Over at Real Climate, arch Australian AGW skeptic Bob Carter made this comment:

One of the reasons that RealClimate is discounted by some as a source of serious scientific comment is because of your continual allowance of unproductive ad hominem abuse.

We learn further down (comment 119) that what he was objecting to in the earlier comment (which RC later edited so we now can't see it) was the word "denialist". The bulk of comments to the thread are extremely moderate in tone, while making it clear that many challenge Dr Carter's views.

At Online Opinion earlier this year, in an article with the surly title "The IPCC: on the run at last", Bob wrote:

Given the occurrence also of record low winter temperatures and massive snowfalls across both hemispheres this year, IPCC members have now entered panic mode, the whites of their eyes being clearly visible as they seek to defend their now unsustainable hypothesis of dangerous, human-caused global warming.

He also uses the word "alarmists" many times, and says of the use of climate models:

Well, obviously, turn to virtual reality rather than real reality: PlayStation 4 here we come.

Yes, way to conduct a debate without ad hominem, Dr Carter.

Why pilots fly into the sea

Air and Space Magazine has an article about how pilots can get disoriented. All interesting, and relevant to the old Mackleman crash of 1986, I expect.

Hmm

Analyst warns of looming global climate wars - ABC News

My idea (the Carbon Wars, [TM]) is a little different, in that it's about warfare on other nation's greenhouse producing infrastructure. How come I never get interviewed?

Why would it help?

After glow of Games, what next for China? - International Herald Tribune

To continue my anti-Olympic theme, I just don't understand why anyone would think these Olympics ever had any hope of encouraging political change in China. Everyone already knew China could build modern looking stuff; you just have to see pictures of Shanghai's skyline to know that.

Instead, the staging of these Olympics has just confirmed to most Western eyes the repressive and heavy-handed nature of the Chinese form of government, but to many Chinese eyes it probably has encouraged a degree of pride that would hardly be an inducement to be more politically open.

Some disaster may have lead to hope of political reform, but games deemed to be even a moderate success were never going to have that result.

The smell of fear

Mammals Have a Nose for Danger (Literally) Discover Magazine

Kinda interesting, but has human research on this been done?

Is feeding your food poo really a good idea?

Green Central - Times Online - WBLG: Turning pigeon poo into food

Any bacteriologist is welcome to comment.

How to scare your 8 year old...

...have him (or her) watch Dr Who episodes written by Steven Moffat. (Last night's episode, the first part of "Silence in the Library" was by him, and was bound to creep out any child, as well as a fair few adults.)

Complicated climate

New Climate Record Shows Century-long Droughts In Eastern North America

A study of stalagmites in West Virginia apparently boosts the idea that solar variation has caused long droughts (century-long, even) in North America

The researchers, however, don't appear to be CO2 skeptics:

The climate record suggests that North America could face a major drought event again in 500 to 1,000 years, though Springer said that manmade global warming could offset the cycle.

“Global warming will leave things like this in the dust. The natural oscillations here are nothing like what we would expect to see with global warming,” he said.

Actually, I am not sure whether he necessarily means that the global warming offset will be a bad thing. Anyhow, it's all more evidence that nature was cruel even before civilisation came along, but that's still far from reason for humans to go about risking inducing their own climate problems.

Anti - Olympics wrap up

There's a certain "anything goes" attitude about Olympics closing ceremonies. From what I saw of last nights approach, there were a lot of glowing suits and people running around, a bit like Tron being re-enacted by a North Korean choreographed ant colony.

I didn't realise our Olympic diving gold medallist was gay until I heard him speak afterwards, which reminded me of the puzzle as to why gay men (often) sound gay. This issue was also brought up last week on the 7.30 Report by that gay American humorist who apparently is very famous, but who has managed to slip beneath my radar forever. I still can't remember his name. I have a vague recollection of reading of some research into this topic some years ago, but I forget what it said. I seem to be suffering gay amnesia today.

On the heterosexual side, The Times continued its tabloid descent by running an article that gave a first hand account about how lots of athletes have lots of sex after their events. Yes, sports and sex have always had a close affinity, which makes me rather cynical of the high minded "Olympic spirit" guff about it all being about peace and goodwill between nations.

I definitely have a "glass half empty" approach to watching sport: especially when some highly rated competitor fails spectacularly, I can't help but think "just how many years of your life did you spend wasting on practice for this event? Don't you feel a complete goose?" (Of course, they may be cheered up by knowing they have an orgy lined up later that night; but then again, according to The Times, it's mainly the winners who get to do that.)

To go further, if selflessness is considered something of an ideal by the major religions, isn't all this striving for personal bests and intensive observation of their bodies' performance pretty much the antithesis of that idea? There's a good argument to be made for the Pope to condemn the Olympics, and not just because of the free condoms.

I feel particularly sorry for child gymnasts, who seem to go through torture via adults seeking to achieve vicarious fame and fortune.

Kevin Rudd on Radio National this morning hinted that there could be more government funding for sport. This seems odd, given that there seems to have been quite a lot of commentary around this time about the ridiculous cost per medal of our efforts. One can only hope for some sort of scaling down of Olympic grandiosity, but it seems destined never to happen.

Keating's ramble

Template for peace is inclusion - Opinion - smh.com.au

Paul Keating has a ramble about international power politics. It appears very Fisk-able, but someone else will have to do it.

I note, though, that in all this talk of the future, there is no mention of environmental or energy problems as a major source of future conflict. Obviously, he hasn't heard about the forthcoming Carbon Wars (TM) yet. Hopelessly out of touch, he is.

Corrections not noted

A couple of weeks ago, Andrew Bolt and Jennifer Marohasy were quite happy to point readers towards an article by one Steven Goddard in which he questioned the accuracy of a graph put out by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre on the current extent of this year's Arctic ice melt. (The NSIDC says that this year's ice cover is only 10% more than 2007's melt, and as such is the second lowest on record; Goddard used some dubious methods to guess it was more like 30% greater than last year.)

I see now, via Real Climate, that Mr Goddard has had a chat with the NSIDC and has revised his opinion. To its credit, the original article now ends with this quote from Goddard:

"it is clear that the NSIDC graph is correct, and that 2008 Arctic ice is barely 10% above last year - just as NSIDC had stated."

I could go and add a comment at Jennifer and Andrew's blogs about this, but few people would realise it was there. Somehow, I doubt they will be noting the correction themselves any time soon. But of course, I would be more than happy to be surprised.

Impressive

Electric bikes charge the market�| The Japan Times Online

According to the Japan Times:

...Panasonic has also achieved what electric bike boffins thought was impossible — its Lithium ViVi RX-10S, due out in late September, will feature regenerative braking. If it sounds technical, that's because it is. But put simply, regenerative braking means every time you brake, you recharge the battery. Tests by Panasonic have shown the range can be extended to an astounding 182 km. And like Yamaha's PAS, it features a solar-powered rear light.

Actually, I am not sure that there are many people who really need a range of 182 km between overnight re-charges. (Which, according to the article, takes only about 2 hours for some lithium models now.) Still, if they could work out how I could stop being soaked (or struck by lightning) in summer storms, I could be tempted to use one of these to get to work.

Delicious irony

Harvest the fruit of Labor's conversion - Annabel Crabb - Opinion - smh.com.au

Annabel Crabb actually gives us an informative look at the history of the "guest worker scheme" which the Rudd government has decided to try. She reminds us that the Senate looked at the possibility during the Howard government. The irony of who within the Labor movement opposed and supported it is worth repeating in full:

The Australian Workers Union submission, by its then national secretary Bill Shorten, called it "the return of the Kanak culture".

"Any agreement with the Pacific Islands would create a precedent for a future influx of still cheaper labour beyond the Pacific Islands. This is a race to the bottom."

Michelle Bissett, an industrial officer who gave evidence for the Australian Council of Trade Unions, told the inquiry on August28, 2006, the ACTU did not support a Pacific guest worker scheme. "Systems such as those are, in our view, akin to slavery and are not supportable under any circumstances," she said.

Under any circumstances?

In Bissett's defence, I guess that in August 2006 the possibility of a Rudd-led Labor government introducing the self-same scheme would have seemed remote. Back then, the only audible Labor voice supporting a Pacific guest worker scheme was Bob Sercombe, who was the party's spokesman for the Pacific.

Sercombe's not around anymore; in a neat twist, he was supplanted in his Victorian seat of Maribyrnong by none other than Bill Shorten, who will be forced to vote in favour of "the return of the Kanak culture" because to do otherwise would be to banish himself from the kingdom of Kevin.

Love it.

Unattractive photos of the day

BBC NEWS | Health | Bodybuilder scarred from steroids

The article has a series of photos of a body builder left with massive scarring as a result of steroid-induced acne. What a mess.

Billy Bunter and a has-been

The Australian - Photo galleries and slideshows - Pacific Islands Leaders forum

Is there something about the Pacific Islands Leaders Forum shirt that is making Kevin Rudd look quite the porker? Or would he do well to emulate a certain PM who used to power walk daily?

In other Prime Ministerial news, I saw on the TV that Paul Keating attended the final performance of "Keating" this week. (I can't find a link though.) It was the 6th time he had been. Yes, 6th.

There goes that method of his avoiding relevance deprivation syndrome.

Not encouraging

Extreme Heat A Threat To World's Poor : NPR

The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that extreme temperatures will rise two or three times faster than average temperatures. So in Europe, peak highs could go from a sweltering 100 degrees up to 110 or 115 degrees. There's even a chance the mercury could hit Sahara-style highs of 120 degrees.

Temperatures in the 120s could also strike Australia and the American Midwest, according to the study, which used climate-change models developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

They're talking end of the century, by the way, so the fact that 2008 might have been relatively cool doesn't have much to do with it.

It's not going to be easy, you know

10pc target 'a huge ask' for power generators | The Australian

It's stories like this that make me think that emissions trading and global treaties alone have no hope at all of making the CO2 cuts that are needed to keep levels within 500 or so ppm.

It would seem that something like a "war" footing, that Monbiot and his ilk talk about, is the only thing that would work.

Quite right

The only moral man is one who backs Leslie | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Andrew Bolt is quite correct to point out Leslie Cannold's amusing assertion about men and abortion. I would add that her analogy (how would men feel if women argued against a right to vasectomy) is superficial at best. When she can point out to us the men's groups who actively campaign against women having tubal ligation, then she might have a point.

As I have noted here before, being a medical ethicist seems to involve making decisions on issues in your university years, and then never changing your mind for the rest of your life. Easy job really.

It won't keep troofers happy

9/11 building brought down by fire, not explosives, report says - International Herald Tribune

You can thank dogs for this

Technology Review: The Smell of Cancer

Fascinating story on developments in detecting cancer by smell. And you can thank dogs for the idea. (Your cat could probably smell it too, but probably just decided to let you die and have a nibble.)

It's all very complicated...

Science News / Carbon Caveat:

Adding carbon compounds to ocean water can sometimes affect microbe communities in ways that result in less stored carbon dioxide than has been assumed, a new study published online August 20 in Nature suggests. The oceans’ carbon storage is an important factor in predicting the severity of climate change.

It's all to do with nutrients, and the difference between water borne bacteria and phytoplankton. Clearly, there is a quite a lot that is not well understood about the oceans and CO2 interaction. Warming skeptics take this as a good thing, as it might be that the uncertainties work in favour of humans. Warming worriers take it as a bad thing, because it may be that things will work out worse than first thought.

But is it being an "alarmist" to say that, given the uncertainties, it is much safer to limit CO2 as a high priority so that we don't have to worry about the uncertainties? I think that position is just being a realist.

Too much information, possibly...

As I sit here typing, Fleet (phospho-soda buffered saline mixture) is starting to work its, um, magic inside me, in preparation for a colonoscopy tomorrow.

I've been through this before, so no problems are expected. Well, not beyond maybe a rogue polyp or two being burnt off. It's fun watching the video afterwards, and seeing the little puff of smoke. I wonder if they still use tape, or if it is burnt onto DVD yet. Posting a video of it here would be impressive, but I'm not going to go to any trouble.

Anyhow, see you tomorrow. Fleet is starting to insist I move to a small room for the next hour or so.

UPDATE: all finished. No problems. Photo coming, unless someone pays me money to not show it.

UPDATE 2: I see no money's been paid yet. I'm warning you, it's $500 or you get my colon. In colour.

UPDATE 3: you have been saved by the unexpected difficulty of doing a screen grab from a paused DVD video. But I haven't quite given up yet.

Animal mourning

New Scientist : Do animals understand death? Do humans?

This post about how animals appear to react to death is a good read, with this link in particular worth following for some interesting anecdotes. (Oddly, magpies feature again. I'm starting to worry about how smart birds are.)

Contrary geologists, and Jennifer is melting

RealClimate has a post up about why it is that geologists seem to be over-represented in the ranks of climate change skeptics.

Of particular interest is the fact that Bob Carter, Australia's own geologist skeptic, and frequent guest at Jennifer Marohasy's blog, has made an appearance in comments and been challenged to explain his position. So far, there is no response, but it will be interesting to watch.

Incidentally, Jennifer Marohasy's blog meltdown is progressing nicely. Graeme Bird is abusing people all over the place, and complaining about receiving harassing calls at home. A couple of commenters have come out in support of the "HIV does not cause AIDS" theory. I guess that's what you get when you chant "correlation does not necessarily mean causation" too much.

Jennifer herself seems to have decided that she can assert that no one has proved exactly how CO2 increases can really cause greenhouse warming at all, and invoked "Socratic Irony" as a motive behind some of her posts. This makes telling what she believes or doesn't believe a matter of complete mystery to the casual reader. But for that matter, Dr Steven Short (a geochemist) can be accused of the same gamesmanship, with wild swings in the tone of his posts over the last 6 months.

I have not, until recently, been a close follower of the blog, but it appears that in the space of a couple of weeks, it has lost any credibility that it once may have had.

Holy phallic peril!

Search Magazine - Praying for Ice

An "ice lingam" in Kashmir has not handled the hot summers well.

I see that the Wikipedia entry on lingams gives little emphasis on the usual Western interpretation that they represent Shiva's penis, but I don't know that it can really be denied that this was the origin of the symbol. It seems a little odd that (according to one authority cited in Wikipedia):

The lingam is the simplest and most ancient symbol of Shiva, especially of Parasiva, God beyond all forms and qualities.

Well, if you're going to pick a symbol of "God beyond all forms", why pick one that looks like a penis? Things get even more mystical with this explanation:

It is a symbol which points to an inference. When you see a big flood in a river, you infer that there had been heavy rains the previous day. When you see smoke, you infer that there is fire. This vast world of countless forms is a Linga of the omnipotent Lord. The Shiva-Linga is a symbol of Lord Shiva. When you look at the Linga, your mind is at once elevated and you begin to think of the Lord.

To be more precise, I start thinking of his penis. Maybe your average Hindu doesn't, but then again with temple decoration having large amounts of erotic content, I wouldn't be so sure.

According to the Search magazine article, a lingam is "obviously" phallic, but has other meanings:

Legend has it that the first lingam was formed one day when the goddess Parvati, former consort of Shiva, so missed her lover that she fell to her knees and clawed the ground with her hands. She cried until she had no more tears, and then came up with a handful of earth shaped by her closed palm. Her tears had turned the soil to clay and, when she placed the clump of dirt before her, she saw that she had made a figure three times as tall as it was wide, rounded by the curve of her thumb. It was only dirt, she realized, but it was also a symbol of all she wanted in life. It was a perfect depiction of her absent lover—never present but always on her mind—because it meant everything and nothing at once.

Geez, they sure know how to read a lot of meaning into a penis shape, these Hindus.

(Disclaimer: I suppose I could be accused of hypocrisy when I belong to a church that indeed has one aspect of its God with a specifically earthly form that includes a penis. Organ specific worship within the Catholic church has been pretty much limited to a heart, though, as far as I can recall.

Oh alright, maybe I am skirting over the Holy Prepuce here, but venerating what is believed to have actually been a part of your God is a little different from, say, worshipping donuts because they have the same shape as a detached foreskin.)

Some rat information

Science Show - 16August2008 - Black rats - brilliant adaptors

Interesting interview on last week's science show about rats. The expert, Ken Alpin, quite admires them, especially barbequed with a nice Vietnamese beer:

In the southern part of Vietnam there's a rat meat industry where rats are harvested out of rice fields on a huge scale; 10,000 tonnes a year of rat meat is collected, taken through to the big cities where it's processed in various ways and then sold in various products, some of which tourists are probably familiar with...I shouldn't be saying this, should I, I'll probably end up...

Robyn Williams: What do you mean? Street food that I might pick up somewhere could contain Rattus rattus?

Ken Aplin: There is one well known street in Ho Chi Minh City that specialises in rats on their menu, so you can go there and buy things that are clearly labelled as rat products. I've eaten rats in many different places. I prefer rat meat to most other meats. It's a fine meat, and they're very clean animals, despite their reputation for being filthy. Having now observed them much more closely than I could ever do before, I appreciate how hygienic and clean they actually are.

Gardasil and marketing

Cervical cancer vaccine is popular, but fails to cure doubts - International Herald Tribune

Some experts are rather cynical about the way Gardasil became the "must have" vaccine overnight. More a triumph of marketing than obvious good sense, they suggest.

Interesting read.

A quiet "yay"...

It is, after all, Brendan Nelson, but it is the right idea.

Modern pot

Back to the stoned age - Features, Health & Wellbeing - The Independent

So, a 38 year old who had quite a lot of cannabis in his youth tries it again and now finds it causes paranoia. His explanation:

....cannabis itself has evolved into something unrecognisable – skunk, which is now the market leader, accounting for 81 per cent of the marijuana sold on British streets, compared with just 20 per cent in 2002. It's around three times stronger than normal cannabis thanks to higher levels of the compound THC, which causes the psychotic symptoms, and lower levels of another compound called cannabidiol, which experts think protects users from the effects of THC.

The cannabis that fuelled the hippie generation's quest for world peace has been contorted by market forces and cross-pollination into a nervous, twitching grotesque. The latest government stance on marijuana is to suggest that it be reclassified from a class C drug to a class B drug, based largely on the fact that skunk is now so prevalent.

Bizarrely, given my past, I am now inclined to agree with them. What I took bore no similarity to the dope I used to enjoy

This will annoy the drug de-criminalisation crowd.

Smart bird

Magpies are no bird-brains, mirror test shows | Science | Reuters

It seems that magpies understand mirrors:

Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror, highlighting the mental skills of some birds and confounding the notion that self-awareness is the exclusive preserve of humans and a few higher mammals.

It had been thought only chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants shared the human ability to recognize their own bodies in a mirror.

But German scientists reported on Tuesday that magpies -- a species with a brain structure very different from mammals -- could also identify themselves.

Not smart enough to leave harmless humans walking under their nest alone, though.

Come back next month

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China 'yet to approve protests'

China has received a total of 77 applications to stage protests during the Olympic Games period - but none has been approved.

Beijing's public security bureau said 74 applications were "withdrawn", two were "suspended" and one was "vetoed".

What a farce.