Stem cell musings

You just won the stem-cell war. Don't lose your soul. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

Saletan is routinely an interesting writer on science and bioethics, and this column is no exception.

Useless research update

Belief and the brain's 'God spot' - Science, News - The Independent

Scientists searching for the neural "God spot", which is supposed to control religious belief, believe that there is not just one but several areas of the brain that form the biological foundations of religious belief....

"Religious belief and behaviour are a hallmark of human life, with no accepted animal equivalent, and found in all cultures," said Professor Jordan Grafman, from the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, near Washington. "Our results are unique in demonstrating that specific components of religious belief are mediated by well-known brain networks, and they support contemporary psychological theories that ground religious belief within evolutionary-adaptive cognitive functions."

Well, I am not entirely sure how one would ever be certain that there is "no accepted animal equivalent". We can be pretty confident that cats are atheists, but a good case could be made for dogs worshipping their owners.

But really, why does anyone really think that this research is worthwhile or beneficial? There are surely many psychiatric illnesses which are worth investigating very thoroughly with MRI and other probes; why waste time and money on research which is always going to be inconclusive and of no potential benefit?

You heard it here first (or elsewhere, maybe. And if it doesn't happen it wasn't mentioned here at all, OK?)

Famed pastor predicts imminent catastrophe

(Actually, there is another alleged prophesy I have been meaning to post about, and I will as soon as I can find it on the web again.)

More on Carbon Tax Vs Cap and trade

Technology Review: The Real Price of Obama's Cap-and-Trade Plan

Obama is planning on generating a lot of money from a cap and trade system. Sounds like building a budget on shaky foundations to me.

Anyhow, here's a good article listing succinctly the pros and cons of carbon tax vs cap and trade.

Remember, you saw it here first

There has been an unusual trend lately for Tim Blair, and now Andrew Bolt, to be posting the same videos that have appeared here months ago:

* Andrew Bolt today posts Youtube of dog with a ball throwing machine. Same video posted here in March 2008.

* On March 4, Tim Blair last week posts video of newscast in which a hamster is identified as a murder suspect. Same video had appeared here on 4 February 2009.

* Tim Blair posts the Youtube of the Mitchell & Webb "Bad Vicar" sketch on February 28, 2009. The same video was posted at Opinion Dominion on 11 April 2008.

At this rate, I figure that both Tim and Andrew are due to start believing in ocean acidification and the need to reduce CO2 by about May 2010.

Time for your bad ocean acidification news of the week

Proof on the Half Shell: A More Acid Ocean Corrodes Sea Life: Scientific American

The shells of tiny ocean animals known as foraminifera—specifically Globigerina bulloides—are shrinking as a result of the slowly acidifying waters of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. ...

The researchers found that modern G. bulloides could not build shells as large as the ones their ancestors formed as recently as century ago. In fact, modern shells were 35 percent smaller than in the relatively recent past—

Not encouraging.

Getting down to the nitty gritty

Moon base: Location, location, location | csmonitor.com

A pretty good article here speculating on the location and other practical details of a lunar outpost.

The lunar south pole still looks good:

The allure of Shackleton Crater is that it is relatively hospitable and practical. Explorers perched on its rim would experience a night of only 2 Earth days and 4 hours. The crater’s proximity to the moon’s day-night boundary – called the terminator – also makes it an ideal place to test technologies and find out what works and what doesn’t in both environments.

And here is a suggestion for another problem:

But habitats aren’t the only pieces of hardware that must be warmed. Robotic rovers and their batteries also need to survive. “We have a hard time keeping … trucks working in Siberia,” Dr. Ramachandran says. “We have no experience working at minus 150 degrees.”

The solution could be a “wadi” – a patch of lunar surface somewhat larger than a rover and covered with what is in effect a reflective tent. During the day, lenses would heat these strategically spaced wadis. As night nears, hardware would extend a reflective cover over the area – like tin foil over a turkey, shiny side down.

Sounds simple. But one of the main problems for humans is dealing with radiation for anyone needing to stay there for any length of time.

I don't know if this is being considered at all, but my idea is that building a covered framework over which a little bulldozer can gradually pile up a deep mound of dirt for cosmic ray protection might work. (The covering material itself could be airtight, or the whole interior could be sprayed with a sealant.) I would assume that the lower gravity means the framework can be considerably lighter than what you would need on earth.

This seems a lot simpler to me than the idea of baking lunar bricks in situ. You could be lucky and build such a shelter over a pre-existing little crater. Or maybe you just work on a low rise dome type structure. Maybe geodesic domes would work well?

I would be curious to know if this has been considered. Just send the cheque in the mail, NASA.

From the Jerusalem Post

My Word: In the holiday spirit | Columnists | Jerusalem Post:

In an op-ed in the Post on March 3, Michael Bar-Zohar noted that a survey published last month by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center indicates that 46.7 percent of the Palestinians believe that Hamas defeated Israel in the recent fighting in Gaza. On a visit to Egypt many years ago, I was taken aback to discover how many places marked the October 6 War 'victory.' I am not, however, surprised that Egypt - which did nothing to improve life in Gaza during the decades in which it was in control - does not want anything to do with its Palestinian brethren there even now. Let Israel open its border with Gaza, Egypt can't risk it, goes the common thinking in the Egyptian capital.

The terror attack in Cairo a week ago, in which a French schoolchild was killed, shows yet again that they do have reason to fear Islamization. Global jihad is, after all, global. But don't say it too loudly in London or Paris - you might offend the local Muslims.

Nothing like humility

Architect of desire: Frank Lloyd Wright's private life was even more unforgettable than his buildings

I recall from some documentary on him that FLW was an eccentric character with a convoluted love life that featured a gruesome axe murder, but I did not remember how much he liked himself:

When questioned about his vanity, Wright justified himself by saying: "Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility; I chose honest arrogance."

Heh.

Why not to believe in carbon capture & storage

Carbon capture and storage | Trouble in store | The Economist

Here's a detailed article from the Economist explaining the huge uncertainties and problems with carbon storage and capture. Some key points:

In 2005 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists that advises the United Nations on global warming, came up with a range of $14-91 for each tonne of emissions avoided through CCS. Last year, the IEA suggested that the price for the first big plants would be $40-90. McKinsey, a consultancy, has arrived at an estimate of €60-90, or $75-115.

Either way, that is more than the price of emissions in the European Union: about €10 a tonne. America does not have a carbon price at all yet. A bill defeated last year in the Senate would have yielded a carbon price as low as $30 in 2020, according to an official analysis. So CCS might not be financially worthwhile for years to come....

Omar Abbosh, of Accenture, a consultancy, says that carbon trading as practised in the EU and contemplated in America does not give enough certainty about future carbon prices to justify an investment in a CCS plant. Mr Paelinck of Alstom agrees: no board would risk spending €1 billion on one, he says, without generous subsidies.

The article indicates that the cost of individual CCS plants could be anything from $1 billion to $1.8 billion US dollars. (And that might be based on the fact that the USA apparently has a pre-built system of pipelines in their oil areas that could be used for transported the CO2. I assume Australia does not have anywhere near as extensive a system.)

And will it even work long term? Even small leaks would be a problem:

Carbon dioxide forms an acid when it dissolves in water. This acid can react with minerals to form carbonates, locking away the carbon in a relatively inert state. But it can also eat through the man-made seals or geological strata intended to keep it in place. A leakage rate of just 1% a year, Greenpeace points out, would lead to 63% of the carbon dioxide stored in any given reservoir being released within 100 years, almost entirely undoing the supposed environmental benefit.

That CCS is being promoted so heavily seems simply to be a triumph of an industry's self preservation instinct over common sense.

Turnbull worth reading

PM's cheap money shot | The Australian

Malcolm Turnbull's take on the origins of the economic crisis, and Rudd's silly summer essay on the topic, is pretty good.

Hooked on worms

Can Parasitic Hookworms Help In Treatment Of Multiple Sclerosis?

Get this for a cute acronym:

The WIRMS (Worms for Immune Regulation in MS) study ...

Some doctor probably sat up in bed and had a "eureka" moment when he thought of that.

Anyhow, the study itself is kind of interesting:

The £400,000, three-year project funded by the MS Society, aims to determine whether infection with a small and harmless number of the worms can lead to an improvement on the severity of MS over a 12 month period...

The 25 worms are microscopic and are introduced painlessly through a patch in the arm. They are then flushed out after nine months.

Given that cancers can be fought by the immune system too, is there any anti-cancer parasite out there to be found?

Watchmen not recommended

Geek boys everywhere who are into graphic novels seems to be all a-Twitter about the movie version of Watchmen, a movie with the odd distinction of featuring (amongst others) the first blue nude male superhero.

I'm no fan of the whole superhero genre, despite quite liking the last Spiderman. But Anthony Lane's review of Watchmen certainly puts me off any idea of seeing it (and is pretty funny.) Some highlights:

One lord of the genre is a glowering, hairy Englishman named Alan Moore, the coauthor of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “V for Vendetta.” Both of these have been turned into motion pictures; the first was merely an egregious waste of money, time, and talent, whereas the second was not quite as enjoyable as tripping over barbed wire and falling nose first into a nettle patch...

“Watchmen,” like “V for Vendetta,” harbors ambitions of political satire, and, to be fair, it should meet the needs of any leering nineteen-year-old who believes that America is ruled by the military-industrial complex, and whose deepest fear—deeper even than that of meeting a woman who requests intelligent conversation—is that the Warren Commission may have been right all along...

But here's the reason I won't see it:

The result is perfectly calibrated for its target group: nobody over twenty-five could take any joy from the savagery that is fleshed out onscreen, just as nobody under eighteen should be allowed to witness it. You want to see Rorschach swing a meat cleaver repeatedly into the skull of a pedophile, and two dogs wrestle over the leg bone of his young victim? Go ahead.

Thanks, but no thanks.

UPDATE: here's Dana Stevens in Slate on the violence in the movie:

Whenever a fight begins (and there's one about every 15 minutes in this 160-minute movie), brace yourself for an abundance of narratively pointless bone-crunching, finger-twisting, limb-sawing, and skull-hacking. These extreme sports are often filmed in Matrix-style slow motion, a technique that tends to grind the story to a halt. Like the money shots in porn movies, Snyder's action scenes are an end in themselves—gratifying if you like that sort of thing, gross if you don't.

Yet the movie is getting a 65% approval rating at Rottentomatoes. Do you ever get the feeling that reviewers (and the public at large,) have become just too immune to graphic movie violence?

UPDATE 2: The two Salon movie reviewers discuss the violence in this video. (One of them thinks highly of the movie, the other doesn't.) Whenever you get a reviewer talking of a violent sequence being "right on the edge" of what's acceptable to depict, (and that is from the guy who likes the movie,) it's almost certainly a sign that it is, in fact, highly objectionable and over that edge.

UPDATE 3: To my surprise, both David Stratton & Margaret Pomeranz on At the Movies liked it a lot, and hardly mentioned the violence. Oh well, just confirms my view that they are both fairly erratic reviewers. I can't say that I reliably find either of them align with my tastes.

GG gets noticed

Both Andrew Bolt and Michelle Grattan write about the, ahem, unusually high profile of Quentin Bryce as Governor-General.

Bolt finds her being far too political in her role, and I don't disagree.

You get the feeling from Michelle Grattan's column that even those with more left leaning sympathies may be feeling that Bryce's profile is higher than it should be.

She notes that (I shall paraphrase here), having already visited every country where an Australian is doing something useful, the GG has decided to visit countries where she'll have a hard time finding an Aussie outside of the consulate:

Africa? That's right. Less than a year into the job, Bryce this month embarks on a seven-nation tour of the continent, including Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique and Ethiopia (with stopovers, the total is nine countries).

It might seem an odd destination for an Australian governor-general so early in her term. But it is all part of the Rudd Government's Africa strategy. This has two drivers.

First, Africa is seen as an area neglected by Australia for many years (Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawke were Africanists — but that was a long time ago). Second — and very pertinently — the Government is lobbying intensively for a United Nations Security Council seat, and there are more than 50 African votes.

Bryce's African trip is tailored to the Government's foreign policy. In effect, she's an envoy at the highest level.

Sounds like a Rudd vanity project in reality.

Let's hope the Governor-General is offered some odd traditional tribal food that she must eat to be polite. (The Ethiopians will probably serve her a gigantic feast when they assume from her disturbingly thin frame that Australia must be suffering a famine too. Aren't steak and dairy products allowed on the menu at Yarralumla?) I'll be looking for the close up of her grimace at the official gallery, where's it's all Quentin all the time.

But seriously, is someone going to start questioning the travel costs for this Governor-General, and the utility of this trip in particular?

Pot meets kettle

The Age Blogs: Waste of Space: All Men Are Liars

Why on earth does Fairfax continue to run the Sam de Brito blog when he churns out nasty posts like this?

Lock him out

Rebel Catholic priest hopes for positive mediation - ABC News

The more he speaks, the more he appears to be an offensive goose who should be locked out of "his" church.

I refer to Peter Kennedy, sacked priest of St Mary's South Brisbane, whose idea of mediation is not only getting his own way, but punishing those who dared point out to the Church that he was no longer acting like a Catholic:

A mediation process involving solicitors for Father Kennedy is expected to begin next week.

Father Kennedy says he is hopeful of a positive outcome, but until it is finished, he is not going anywhere.

"The realistic outcome would be for me to be reinstated by the Archbishop as the administrator, the vigilantes who reported me to Rome be disciplined and I particularly and the community should be found not to be guilty of denying Catholic doctrine," he said.

Where are the flying monkeys when you need them?

How not to endear yourself to the French

Roger Cohen: One France is enough - International Herald Tribune

Roger Cohen worries that America is being turned into France MkII by Obama's policies (although he blames Bush for the initial problem):

I lived for about a decade, on and off, in France and later moved to the United States. Nobody in their right mind would give up the manifold sensual, aesthetic and gastronomic pleasures offered by French savoir-vivre for the unrelenting battlefield of American ambition were it not for one thing: possibility.

You know possibility when you breathe it. For an immigrant, it lies in the ease of American identity and the boundlessness of American horizons after the narrower confines of European nationhood and the stifling attentions of the European nanny state, which has often made it more attractive not to work than to work. High French unemployment was never much of a mystery.

Americans, at least in their imaginations, have always lived at the new frontier; French frontiers have not shifted much in centuries.

He should have just gone all the way and incorporated the phrase "cheese eating surrender monkeys".

On attitudes to drugs

Who are the addicts, the victims or their families? | Melanie Reid - Times Online

This article talks about a couple of notable drug cases in the UK at the moment, including an awful one in which a toddler died at the hands of a mother's heroin addicted boyfriend. Reid writes:

His mother sold her body for drugs while her son was dying from a fatal blow that ruptured his duodenum. The toddler, who had 40 injuries to his body, was then taken to a squalid drugs party, where he vomited brown liquid while, all around him, young addicts partied. They laughed at him being sick. Hours later he was dead. His killer was convicted on Tuesday.

Brandon was not on any at-risk register. Why should he have been, when social policy emphasises that drugs users be supported in their lifestyle, not told to wise up? From top to bottom in the existing system, that ethos rules.

Addicts are official victims. They are not regarded as people with a choice. The presumption, therefore, is on keeping their children at home with them, not removing them. Suggestions that contraception be a condition of receiving methadone for addicts caused an outcry in Scotland, with accusations about eugenics.

Which take precedence? The human rights of the infant born to the junkie, or the right of the junkie to have both lifestyle and children?

I bet that one of the practical problems with taking the child away would be that, as soon as it happened, the mother would claim she has broken up with the boyfriend, put herself on methadone, and then demand the child back. Or alternatively, if she takes a year to sort herself out, you have had the child bond with a foster family, only to be given back to the mother.

Perhaps what is needed is absolute rigidity in the rules: such as addiction to certain drugs as a mother of any children under 5 means you've lost the kid, permanently. Maybe you could allow contact rights in the future (once out of addiction), and always be kept informed as to how the kid is doing. But you don't ever get the child back.

Top post

Manne’s talking again about what bores him | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog

Top marks to Andrew Bolt for this post about Robert Manne's confusion as to whether or not he knows anything about economics.

Anti toilet paper

Christian Wolmar: Let's wipe out toilet paper | guardian.co.uk

Much explicit talk about wiping bottoms in this Guardian column.

Clearly, he needs to travel to Japan to really appreciate bidet technology.

Last Christmas, I saw a stall in a shopping centre promoting a Korean brand of bidet attachment to fit on top of an existing toilet. I don't think it was Hyundai, but I forget the name. Cost was around a $1000 I think.

Maybe environmentalists could argue that this is a good use for Kevin Rudd's "stimulus".

If they took off around the world, maybe it could mean a bidet led economic recovery from the decades of malaise in Japan (and now Korea.) Or perhaps Australia could establish its own bidet manufacturing plants, using all those left over car assembly line employees. (Suggested company slogan for a bidet start up: "Leading from the rear".)

Just trying to be helpful...

Labor not so good for aborigines

Without the will, the intervention is left without a way | The Australian

Paul Toohey reckons the improvements for Northern Territory aborigines have slowed and will continue to do so due to the Left's ideological opposition to the Howard intervention.

< esm >Gee, didn't see that coming. < dsm >*

* Engage/Disengage Sarcasm Mode

Cultural difference noted

Cash handout? Stupid, wasteful idea, Japanese say

From the report:

Prime Minister Taro Aso is touting a one-time cash handout of 12,000 yen as the centerpiece of a stimulus package to revive the world’s second-largest economy, mired in one of its worst slumps since World War II.

But polls show that most Japanese oppose the idea—though many confess they’ll take the money anyway.

They argue that most people will just save the money, not spend it. Others say it’s a shortsighted plan that exacerbates the government’s ballooning budget deficit.

(That's about $190 AUD by the way.)

A telephone poll indicates that 75% disapprove of the idea.

In Australia last month, 57% of people surveyed by Newspoll approved the stimulus package (including cash handouts of $900.) (Well, they thought it would be good for the economy, at least.)

Take now, pay later.

No questions please

Look, I'll only post this if everyone promises not to make any joke-y comment about why I was reading a CSIRO journal's review of the new edition of "The Joy of Sex". (It is indeed the second time I have mentioned that book.)

OK? You promised.

Anyhow, here's the most curious bit from the review:

As a long standing sex educator, researcher and therapist, I have learned new snippets from this book, including the use of ear lobe manipulation and the big toe as a tool for full sexual satisfaction and orgasm.

The review does not further elaborate.

I wonder if Julia Gillard knows about this?

Too much information, Rod

Thirteen, Alfie? I’d almost given up on sex by the age of 13 | The Spectator

What to make of Rod Liddle's column in the Spectator in which he recalls his youthful sex life which started at 12? He can't quite understand the uproar over "Alfie", although he does ignore the point that young Alfie may be 13, but looks about 9. If he looked older than his age, the tabloid photos would not have attracted half as much attention.

I did note a few months back that reading books such as Clive James' Unreliable Memoirs does at least remind one that young teenage sex did take place in the 40's and 50's as well as now.

Still, I can't help but be a little irritated by the confession of youthful illicit activities (whether they be sexual or related to drugs, alcohol, etc) by the middle aged and relatively successful in life.

I know that there are not many 12 year olds reading the Spectator or Clive James and thinking to themselves "well if they did it, I may as well too." But there's something hypocritical about public and humorous confession of behaviour which they would not have wanted their own child imitating that annoys me in any event.

Babies make us nicer

Basics - In a Helpless Baby, the Roots of Our Social Glue - NYTimes.com

A primatologist argues that:

...human babies are so outrageously dependent on their elders for such a long time that humanity would never have made it without a break from the great ape model of child-rearing. Chimpanzee and gorilla mothers are capable of rearing their offspring pretty much through their own powers, but human mothers are not.

The difference this makes, she argues, is that humans developed a comparatively good temperament. Sounds vaguely plausible, but the main reason I wanted to do a post about this is because of the odd hypothetical example she gives:

...our status as cooperative breeders, rather than our exceptionally complex brains, helps explain many aspects of our temperament. Our relative pacifism, for example, or the expectation that we can fly from New York to Los Angeles without fear of personal dismemberment. Chimpanzees are pretty smart, but were you to board an airplane filled with chimpanzees, you “would be lucky to disembark with all 10 fingers and toes still attached,” Dr. Hrdy writes.

So be warned: never fly Chimp Air, no matter how cheap the fare.

It gives me great pleasure...

Regular readers could guess how happy it would make me to see David Byrne appearing on Colbert Report. (The answer for irregular readers: very.)

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

David Byrne Pt. 1

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Joke of the Day
Stand-Up Comedy

(Honestly, it is really is a very relaxed and enjoyable interview of the Colbert variety.)

You can then watch Byrne performing the chair choreography song I like from his new CD.

Important stem cell news

It's good that the use of embryos for stem cell experiments or therapy may turn out to be unnecessary, although I still suspect that much of the promise of stem cell therapy as whole has been oversold.

Discover magazine explains more.

Wine wins one, loses one

Drinking wine lowers risk of Barrett's esophagus, precursor to esophageal cancer:

Drinking one glass of wine a day may lower the risk of Barrett's Esophagus by 56 percent... Barrett's Esophagus is a precursor to esophageal cancer, the nation's fastest growing cancer with an incidence rate that's jumped 500 percent in the last 30 years.

I find this a little surprising, given the bigger news of last week:

Low to moderate alcohol consumption among women is associated with a statistically significant increase in cancer risk and may account for nearly 13 percent of the cancers of the breast, liver, rectum, and upper aero-digestive tract combined...

Giant horse madness

Many Just Say Neigh to ‘Blue Mustang’ at Denver Airport - NYTimes.com

From the report:

A statue of a giant male horse — electric-eyed, cobalt blue and anatomically correct — was installed in February 2008 on the roadway approach to the terminal, and it is freaking more than a few people out.

What is it with artists and giant horses? As was recently noted here, England is to get an "angel" in the form of a giant horse statue.

Real horses are dangerous, but even as statues, they still manage to kill. As the NYT explains about that Denver blue horse:

Haters of this work say that “Blue Mustang,” as it is formally known, by the artist Luis Jiménez (killed in 2006 when a section of the 9,000-pound fiberglass statue fell on him during construction), is frightening, or cursed by its role in Mr. Jiménez’s death, or both.

I keep telling people that horses are evil, but do they listen?

The New York Times also notes this odd consequence of the horse:

... the controversy has also stirred up people in other ways. Conspiracies have floated around the Internet for years about secret bunkers or caverns beneath the terminals at the Denver airport. Symbols of Freemasonry are also said to abound on airport floors and walls.

“It’s brought out the conspiracy theorists who think there are aliens living under the airport,” said Patricia Calhoun, the editor of Westword, an alternative weekly paper in Denver

A story that features both evil horses and underground aliens: that's quite a rarity.

LP finally does St Mary's

I was wondering when Mark Bahnisch would make a comment on the renegade parish of St Mary's South Brisbane, given his Catholic background. Finally he has posted about it, and (surprisingly) in the comments section there is moderately voiced discussion between him and Currency Lad (amongst others) about the issues and matters liturgical.

I was a little surprised to see that the parish is not even to Mark's liberal tastes, and he also notes the peculiarity of why a priest such as Father Kennedy (who makes comments sounding as if he doesn't even believe in a "real" God anymore) wants to remain within the Catholic fold. This must be a sign that the parish is doomed.

UPDATE:

By the way, it would appear likely that Peter Kennedy, and [one suspects] many of those in the congregation at St Mary's, are non-realists when it comes to belief in God. Non-realism gets a decent explanation here. A key point from that link is this:

We should give up all ideas of a heavenly or supernatural world-beyond. Yet, despite our seeming scepticism, we insist that non-realist religion can work very well as religion, and can deliver eternal happiness.

Seems that for non realists, "eternal" gets a just as rubbery a definition as "God". It's basically a philosophy of re-defining away those elements of religion you can no longer believe in.

As I said once at CL's blog, the real fight within Christianity in the coming decades is going to be between adherents to realism and the growing band of non-realists.

Nothing like bad timing

While glancing through a (better than usual quality) table of half price books at a suburban bookshop yesterday, I found "Burn: the Epic Sory of Bushfire in Australia" by ABC favourite Paul Collins (better known for his commentary on religion.) It was published in 2006.

It must be annoying to find, just when your history book is suddenly all relevant, it's being flogged off on the cheap. Maybe there's a market for a revised edition now?

Anyhow, Paul Collins was interviewed on the ABC recently about his take on the recent events. It's an interesting read.

Do nothing til 2020?

Over at Unleashed, Alan Moran from the IPA has a reasonable article explaining some of the pros and cons of carbon tax Vs emissions trading scheme. (He leans towards a carbon tax.)

However, his controversial conclusion is this:

One key outcome of the Treasury modelling offers a particularly promising policy approach. This is the Treasury estimate of the costs of doing nothing to 2020 and then catching up with the 2050 target thereafter should the need and achievability of such action prove necessary. That cost is put at 0.3 per cent of GDP by 2050.

Even if this is not overstated, 0.3 per cent of GDP seems a reasonable insurance policy price to pay rather than imminently embarking on measures that will be in the White Paper's words, "the most significant structural reform of the economy since the 1980s". By 2020 we will be clearer on the need for emission reduction policies and will, presumably, have access to all the technological advances that Treasury claim will be forthcoming.

At one level, this makes sense, in that Australia's overall contribution to CO2 is so low anyway. But if the real global problem is turning around the carbon producing juggernauts of China and India, putting off a decision until 2020 is hardly going to encourage them to start taking faster action now.

Meanwhile, the global economic crisis should have the contradictory effects of reducing emissions for now, but also making it harder to fund the research and development needed to get really serious changes to energy production.

Life is complicated.

One seriously strange fish

This blog needs something interesting to look at again, and this is the best I can up with at the moment: a very weird looking fish with a transparent head and dopey looking eyes.

Links clean up and additions

This post is just to remind me of some of the websites I want to add to my blog. It's well overdue a bit of a clean out. I'll get around to editing the blog soon enough, and anyone who has any other suggestions to sites I might like, let me know.

My additions to come (more may be added when I remember then again): Backreaction (physics blog); Dezeen (architecture and design); Air and Space Magazine; Bravenewclimate; Watts Up with That; Modern Mechanix blog; Treehugger; Marohasy.

Big Hollywood.

Near miss noted

Crikey - Sky not falling, just passing quite close

An "intruder" asteroid was detected by Australian comet hunter Rob McNaught at an observatory on Siding Spring Mountain on Friday night and will have a close encounter with Earth at about 1am tomorrow.

The object, estimated to be around 35-60 metres at its widest, is similar in size to the dead comet shard that exploded with the force of a large hydrogen bomb over a then largely uninhabited region of central Siberia on 30 June 1908.

This time there will be no collision, but the object catalogued as 2009 DD45 will come as close as around 63,000 kilometres from the earth’s surface somewhere over the Pacific west of Tahiti.

Ready for your close up, Your Excellency?

Glenn Milne informed us on the weekend that Governor-General Quentin Bryce has, for reasons unknown, been requesting (and getting) briefings from government officials including the head of the Defence Force, the head of Foreign Affairs, and Treasury. This is not normal, apparently:

A spokeswoman confirmed the official briefings by three departmental heads was the first of its kind in the 107-year history of the office.

If I were the suspicious type who found this Governor-General kind of irritating (oh, wait a minute, that is me) I would say that it sounds something like a reverse palace coup in the planning. I suspect Bill Shorten (still dating the GG's daughter, I assume) may be installed as first Australian Emperor if the Labor Party loses the next election. (Remember you heard it here first, unless someone at Andrew Bolt's has already noted this.)

But even before this weekend's news, I had been meaning to point readers towards the gallery section of the Governor-General's website. I would be curious to know who selects the photos there, as it seems that under Quentin Bryce's reign there has been a significantly increased emphasis on having her appear, if at all possible, in every single photo. (There are very few exceptions.)

Now of course, any gallery of the activities of an GG is going to mainly feature scenes in which the he or she appears. But try this: go to the archives and compare, say, the 2007 photos of our last Governor-General to those of Quentin Bryce. Under Michael Jeffery, you will find quite a few photos of other people without the GG being in shot. (There are a couple of "Santa" photos too; if one ever appears while Quentin Bryce is there, I would be looking very closely at the eyes to check that it isn't her.)

Back to the current photo selections: the one from 9 November 2008 in particular (see a full-sized version here) makes it seem that there is a distinct emphasis now on Governor-General herself, rather than the office.

Not very endearing for this reader, at least.

Perfectly apt, really

Imagine ... Lennon's classic played on church bells

Apt because it is to be performed in an Anglican cathedral.

But he's getting really tired of eating crackers

Parrots teach man to speak again - Telegraph

Proof the internet is evil

Internet 'is causing poetry boom' - Telegraph

Opinion Dominion explains...

It's war: minister takes aim at defence | smh.com.au

Our Defence Minister thinks his department is "at times incompetent".

No doubt it is. The problem is that, at least as far as the uniform side of the fence is concerned, they expect people who may be quite good and competent at one job (flying a plane, being an engineer or battlefield tactician) to be sensible and competent in another role they never really intended taking on when they joined (management of personnel, running a quasi-judicial system for disciplinary breaches, conducting fair internal enquiries.)

Time and again, you can see a person who may have been quite good at his or her original job making a complete hash of the more generalist duties that certain positions may require. It's not for lack of attempted training and assessment; Defence spends an inordinate amount of time on management training, and assessment is continual. It's just that some people with good technical skills in some areas just don't seem to be able to engage common sense when it comes to other areas.

It's often truly puzzling as to how some really bad decisions can be made by uniform men or women who are clearly not dumb. Of course, this also means that Defence then has to spend an inordinate amount of time on internal review of such decisions.

I don't know the answer; maybe its inherent in having a relatively small defence force. But it is still discouraging.

Local food in Japan

This is a feature of Japanese towns and cities that I have often noticed as being quite different from most Western cities:

"Locally grown for local consumption" is a common practice in many cities in Japan. Small plots of urban land dedicated to farming can be found in cities of all sizes. Kunio Tsubota of the Kyushu University Asia Centre writes in Urban Agriculture in Asia: Lessons from Japanese Experience "The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) estimates that about 1.1 million hectares of farmland exist in "urban-like areas" and are producing ¥2.6 trillion worth of products."

Tsubota states that municipalities desire some farmland in urbanized areas because the land provides open areas necessary for emergencies, residents don’t want buildings constructed on green spaces, and that it’s more cost effective to grow crops than to convert urban farm plots into parks, and then maintain the parks.

One thing I have noticed, though, is that a lot of these Japanese urban farms may be right beside busy roads, and I wonder whether car and truck exhausts so close leaves a residue on fruit and veggies. (I guess it would just wash off anyway.)

There are parts (but getting smaller over the years) of some Brisbane suburbs which still contain small market farms. In fact, fruit and vegetables brought in some of the Vietnamese dominated shops, which I think get their stuff from such local farms, can be incredibly cheap compared to the supermarket. We usually get our pork from a "pork butcher" that seems to supply all the local restaurants too, and is always cheaper than the supermarket.

Urban farming therefore makes some sense, doesn't it? (As does living near asian migrant areas!)

Further to that Tarantino post...

A few posts back I had a link to a Guardian blog which embedded the ugly trailer for Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" (yes, that spelling is apparently correct.)

The trailer is also on Youtube, but this time it has the Motion Picture Association of America preview rating at the start, which says the preview is "Suitable for All Audiences".

Are they mad?

Probably as mad as Quentin Tarantino, who thought that Kill Bill was a film that would be quite fun for boys and girls above the age of 12.

Given that he displays an emotional age of a 13 year old boy (and an unpleasant one at that,) I shouldn't be surprised. (Look at how juvenile most of the comments following any Tarantino clip on Youtube are as well.)

That young men should be getting excited about such a splatter-fest film is not a good sign. The only positive thing is that critics have become cynical of Tarantino's endless repetition of his one trick oeuvre.

Mad grandmother

BBC NEWS | Americas | US fortune 'not solely for dogs'

Talking about the $8 billion estate of the late Leona Helmsley, the article notes:

Helmsley also left $12m to her pet dog, Trouble, while explicitly leaving out two of her grandchildren.

A Manhattan judge later reduced the trust fund for the nine-year-old Maltese to $2m and the grandchildren received $6m each.

How do you spend even $2 million on a dog? Diamond encrusted collars?

On David Cameron's loss

A lesson for us all in a short life, well lived | Libby Purves - Times Online

Libby Purves writes very well about this.

High speed skepticism

Expanding broadband to bail out economies - International Herald Tribune

This article notes:

In recent weeks, the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Finland have all included measures to expand broadband access and to bolster connection speeds in their planned economic stimulus packages. Australia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Japan and South Korea have announced separate broadband plans, according to a compilation by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development...

While analysts agree that investing in communications technologies makes economies more competitive, they are skeptical about whether the promised gains will materialize quickly enough to make the spending packages - ranging from €11 million, or $14 million, in Hungary to $7 billion in the United States - effective recession-busters.

Indeed. Count me as a skeptic when it comes to claims about how high speed internet to the likes of the back of Bourke is going to supercharge the Australian economy. According to the article:

...investments in telecommunications typically generate positive returns, said Olivier Pascal, an analyst at Analysys Mason, a consulting firm. Complex economic models show that every $1 spent on network improvements increases the gross domestic product by $1.30, he said. And that does not include the increases in productivity that such investments generate, he added.

He said that the same models showed that "allocating spending to telecoms will create far more jobs than giving it to, say, agriculture."

When I can download lunch, print it out at my desk and eat it, I'll be a little less skeptical.

Of course, I like high speed internet as much as the next time wasting internet junky, and it's nice to develop it for rural populations. It's the claimed benefits to the economy that I doubt, especially when it's just about ramping up speed to cities which already have relatively good speeds. At least one company in France has a similar view:

A top executive of Vivendi, which controls SFR, the owner of French fixed and mobile networks, said recently that faster connections would simply worsen the problem of online piracy, undermining Vivendi's music, movie and games businesses.

"Today, fiber serves no purpose," Philippe Capron, chief financial officer of Vivendi, was quoted as saying by a French business paper, La Tribune. "There is no new revenue stream and no supplemental service to offset the considerable investment. All that it does is to encourage the illegal downloading of films."

Let's hope so

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds: the worst film ever made?

Go to the link to see the trailer for a film which, with any luck, will be the last ever made by QT. As the Guardian's Paul McInnes says:

If this film isn't the work of a man who not only has nothing left to say, but is revelling in his ability to continue not saying it, then I don't know what is.

File under "what the hell are they thinking?"

Spider-Man musical set for 2010

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will include the story of the superhero's origins and will feature music and lyrics by U2 members Bono and The Edge.

This'll probably give Jason Soon nightmares.

Not happy Clive

Crikey - Hamilton: why we should stick to carbon trading regardless

Clive Hamilton's take on why Australia should forge ahead with an ETS is an interesting read. He does set out the differences in approach between it and a carbon tax pretty well.

Mind you, I still don't agree with his conclusion, which seems to be "yes I know, the ETS Rudd is giving us is useless anyway, but every other nation is going to use ETS so we have to use it too, regardless of its effectiveness."

There's also a surprising suggestion made:

A case could be made to modify the CPRS so that those who want to do more than respond to higher energy prices can do so. In fact, they can do that already, by clubbing together and buying emission permits that they simply retire so the aluminium smelters can’t get their hands on them.

Hamilton argues that the fluctuations in carbon price are something that just have to live with, because it is easier for politicians to handle:

Against this, a carbon tax fixes the price of pollution through the tax rate and leaves it to the market to decide the amount of pollution. Business has certainty but the environment pays for it. If Australia has a legally binding emissions cap, as we now do under the Kyoto Protocol and will have again under a Copenhagen agreement, then the government will be compelled to adjust the tax rate frequently and by large amounts as it tries to hit the target.

Imagine the politics of that, remembering that the GST rate is virtually cast in stone. Politically, it's infinitely easier to let the price fluctuate in the marketplace, with the peaks and troughs smoothed by business planners.

I don't know about that line "Business has certainty but the environment pays for it." As I noted recently, I am swayed by the argument that sufficient business certainty is exactly what is needed to drive investment in a relatively rapid change to cleaner technology.

UPDATE: as for the idea that people might help reduce actual emissions by buying up permits and taking them out of the hands of industry, Andrew Macintosh writes:

....the extent of abatement through such voluntary action is likely to be tiny.

The operating revenue of Australia’s four largest conservation organisations is around $60 million per annum. Let’s make the wildly optimistic assumption that all of this money is directed to buying and retiring permits, which will cost around $25 each and will equate to one tonne of CO2-e. This would reduce emissions by 2.4 million tonnes, or less than 0.5% of Australia’s annual total. This is hardly the type of rescue package the CPRS needs.

A contemplation on modern life - the forgotten hankerchief

Today I forgot to put a clean hankerchief in my pocket as I left the house.

When I was a child, I always had a kid-sized hankerchief in my pocket. It was used for my nose mainly, but were also pretty good at mopping up blood from skinned knees, blood noses, and lost baby teeth. When very young, if I was in need of taking a few coins to school, my mother used to tie them into the corner of the hankerchief, so they weren't jangling loose in my pocket. I used to like the idea that one could be used as a tourniquet if I was bitten by a snake or had a cut artery. They were, in short, very useful and quite comforting.

As a middle aged adult, I continue to find them useful. Now, tissues will be used during any heavy cold instead of carrying the phlegm in my pocket all day. However, when you have young children, a large kerchief in the pocket is still extremely useful for drying hands after visits to the toilet, mopping blood from their skinned knees, etc. Even when not with my own children, my habit on going to public toilets (especially if I am about to use my hands to eat) is to finish drying my hands with my hankerchief, and then use it to protect my now clean hand when opening the exit door. They remain a very useful thing to have where ever I am. I feel lost today due to my morning oversight.

It seems to me that somewhere between the 1960's and 2009, they fell out of fashion. I am reasonably sure that no children take them to school anymore. I doubt that many adults below the age of 40 use them much either. A couple of Christmas's ago, a nephew with 3 young children of his own saw me using my hankerchief to dry my kid's hands and said "that's a handy thing to have." Indeed.

The range of hankerchiefs available in shops now seems very small; the last time I looked, it seemed quite hard to find reasonable quality ones. They are either very cheap thin things, or quite expensive. The tissue has replaced it all, but really, I find them not even half as useful.

Why did the utility of the hankerchief get lost in the modern world? Or am I mistaken, and they are more popular than I know?

If, dear reader, you have a good hankerchief experience to share, please let me know. Their rightful place in the scheme of life needs to be restored, and the campaign may as well start here.

Now they listen to him

Peter Schiff - Radio National Breakfast - 25 February 2009

There's no transcript available, but you can listen to what Peter Schiff said this morning about the fundamental debt problem of the USA. It sounded quite convincing and quite scary.

I see from his Wikipedia entry that he has taken to talking like a survivalist lately, which is a bit of a worry. But I don't know that that affects the credibility of his diagnosis of the problem.

Back to ocean acidification, greenhouse gas, etc

Here's a round up of interesting stuff about greenhouse issues, all in one post so that readers who don't believe in it can skip right over!

* There's a study out on Great Barrier Reef coral which indicates ocean acidification (lowering of the ocean pH) has already been underway for some time. (Seems very technical work, and I wouldn't be surprised if other scientists argue about this.)

* It seems that at least some molluscs get heavier shells with more CO2 in the water, rather than lighter. This paper is based on some tank experiments, and is pretty noteworthy because it seems to show how little is properly understood about the biological processes in calcification.

The authors note, however, that heavier shell production (or just normal shell production) in some species seems to be at a price. (Like less muscle, reproductive changes.) It's still not a very encouraging sign that everything is OK under increased ocean acidification. (In fact, I seem to recall some article that was about a period in prehistory when molluscs ruled the oceans. Must go looking for that.)

* Ross Gittens writes this morning about the Rudd ETS and Penny Wong's recent counterattack on the idea that individual efforts to "reduce carbon footprint" don't change emissions overall. Ross says Rudd and Wong are being misleading in their claims:

It's true only in an arithmetic sense that anything we do "contributes directly" to Australia meeting its emissions target. Everything contributes to the bottom line of the sum. But, because the bottom line is controlled under the scheme, any helpful contribution we might make just leaves more scope for others to make unhelpful contributions.

When Wong says strong actions on our part help make it easier for governments to set lower emissions targets in future, the future she means is after 2020. As it stands, the only changes governments can make under the scheme are to the "trajectory" or path we travel to get to an unchanged destination level of emissions in 2020.

Why has the Government constructed its scheme in such a strange, off-putting way, which fact it has then wanted to conceal and obfuscate?

So, the point that individual actions to live more frugally leaves more room for industry to increase CO2 is correct.

(As I understand it, a carbon tax can't be really based on a set target, so there is a degree of guesswork involved in knowing where to set the tax so as to achieve a desired level of reduction. However, monitoring its progress should be a much simpler task, I would have thought; and you remove a lot of the "money for nothing" aspects of permit trading and derivatives markets that make me so sceptical of ETS as a concept.)

* I asked over at Harry Clarke's blog last night, but don't know the answer yet. Has anyone done any extensive work on how a carbon tax would work? ETS has been in favour for so long, I don't think there has ever been much in the way of discussion in the popular media about how you could make a carbon tax work.

My assumption had been that a carbon tax would mean each country concentrates on assessing it's own emissions, and the effect the tax is having on them. However, I suppose it is possible to have a system of credits involved too, and if credits could be gained for overseas offsets, you would have much of the same rorting possible as has been shown under the present European ETS.

Burning offsets

Just wanted to note that in a post in November 2006 I wrote that, although I considered action against carbon dioxide emissions was warranted, one of the things of which I remained very sceptical was:

Carbon offset schemes which involve growing trees, especially if they are in areas where bushfires are a distinct possibility.

As Andrew Bolt has noted, it would appear that at least some carbon offset plantings have been burnt in Victoria, with more under threat.

Wouldn't it make sense to do most of your planting in regions where bushfire is relatively rare - such as Queensland?

Great ideas in British education

Rod Liddle writes (but without links to the source of these stories, unfortunately) as follows:

+ Children at a junior school in Cambridgeshire were asked to write down as many rude and obscene words as they could think of, as part of some ill-conceived campaign against bullying. Parents weren’t too happy. One mother said she was disgusted “when my 10-year-old showed me an exercise book with words like c***sucker, d***head and fat arse rewarded with a tick from the teacher”.

Meanwhile, in a similarly fatuous attempt to combat Muslim extremism, pupils nationwide are to be asked to empathise with suicide bombers, to see the world as a nihilistic Islamic psychopath might see it.

Schools have long since given up on inculcating a sense of right and wrong in their pupils; the whole notion is outdated and, frankly, authoritarian. Which is something to be thankful for when a 12-year-old child screams “fat arse” at you and then detonates himself. At least he was able to empathise.

Rats in her underwear

We're the ones caught in the rat trap

Melanie Reid in The Times writes of an pretty "full on" rat infestation of their house:

The rats started stealing my clothes. One morning, I found my shirt jammed hard down a hole in the floor behind the washbasin in my bathroom. When I tugged it out it was shredded: the rats had been trying to drag it down to make a nest. They just miscalculated its size. Confronted with unassailable evidence, I did an audit of my underwear, and found half of it had disappeared. My husband, table-leg at the ready and a desperate look in his eye, swore that it wasn't him. Nightly, it seemed, the rats had been on forays to tug my discarded knickers and socks underground.

Kind of amusing, from a distance.

Green and glowing

Nuclear power? Yes please... - The Independent

Nuclear power is increasingly back in favour:

Britain must embrace nuclear power if it is to meet its commitments on climate change, four of the country’s leading environmentalists – who spent much of their lives opposing atomic energy – warn today...

The four leading environmentalists who are now lobbying in favour of nuclear power are Stephen Tindale, former director of Greenpeace; Lord Chris Smith of Finsbury, the chairman of the Environment Agency; Mark Lynas, author of the Royal Society’s science book of the year, and Chris Goodall, a Green Party activist and prospective parliamentary candidate.

Mr Tindale describes his conversion as follows:

“It was kind of like a religious conversion. Being anti-nuclear was an essential part of being an environmentalist for a long time but now that I’m talking to a number of environmentalists about this, it’s actually quite widespread this view that nuclear power is not ideal but it’s better than climate change,” he added.

Australia, meanwhile, with lots of uranium, twiddles its thumbs.

Come one, come all

ROME MUST GO – ST MARY’S STAYS - Workers Bush Telegraph

The Courier Mail claimed that having an "estimated" 1500 people turn up at Mass with Peter Kennedy last weekend "may have dealt a blow" to the Archbishop's plans to remove the priest from the parish.

Apart from mild curiosity about the accuracy of that count (and noting that not many of them hung around for the afternoon's "rally"), it's worth pointing out that Peter Kennedy has not been shy about drumming up support from all quarters.

Have a look at the post above that appeared last week on Worker's Bush Telegraph, a website that seems devoted to things like organising protests against Starbucks, unconditional support for Hamas, etc.

The post is not by Kennedy, but he takes the opportunity in comments to invite everyone to come last Sunday, and "to bring all your friends and neighbours." (Religious affiliation is clearly optional.)

The comments are actually worth reading for the contribution of John T, who appears to be a local activist type (probably aboriginal?) who has some major issues as to why many people attend St Marys. It's worth pasting a big slab of it here:

I cannot understand why radicals and intellectuals have totally bought into this bullshit that St. Mary’s does such good work with the poor and oppressed, a narrative repeated in tonights 7.30 report as a key element of the church.

On Saturdays and Sundays a travelling show comes into South Brisbane. Like ants, the St. Mary’s congregation come from all over south east Queensland to have a special experience with each other and then they return to their communities. Hardly any of them are locals who are likeley to run into the poor and oppressed at the shop or have them knocking on their door asking for a cup of sugar.

These outsiders administer the biggest welfare agency in Brisbane, not just South Brisbane, that deals with homelessness. Micah is a government funded organisation that operates within government policies and programs regarding homelessness. It is government outsourcing.

While the social workers are administering their programs, the St. Mary’s community remains insulated from the poor and oppressed including those of the South Brisbane community just as church goers in every other congregation in Brisbane do. St. Vinnies, run by amongst the most conservative catholics, operates on a direct engagement between congregation members in each parish and the welfare clients. The congregation actually gets to meet the people they are helping which is more than what occurs with the St. Mary’s mode.

St. Mary’s is just another West End illusion that people from outside West End come to experience, just like the coffees shops are for people from all over Brisbane come to be part of the West End experience.

Not every activist is so keen on the parish, then.

Keep Baz at bay

Will Hugh Jackman get Oscars call back?

Let's hope not.

For me, Hugh Jackman has a touch of the Mel Gibson's about him: a lot of people seem to like him, but for reasons I can't explain, I just don't care for anything he does.

Nearly everything about last night's Oscars seemed a little "off". The dance numbers were underwhelming, particularly the second one. (Jackman was too self-consciously ironic, and it seemed a huge waste of the number of dancers on stage.) But at least it brought with it some vindication when I found out that Baz Luhrmann was responsible. Keep that untalented bowerbird away from song and dance, please! (And movies too, while we are at it.)

For those of you who are, like me, obsessively keeping score on the number of bad reviews of Luhrmann's "Australia", (gee, I wonder why I don't have many readers) last weekend featured two new ones: in the Japan Times, and Greg Sheridan in the Australian. (The Japanese have a particular reason to take issue with the film, with its entirely fictional land invasion of an Australian island.)

The Luhrmann inspired tourism campaign is also copping recent criticism from the industry.

Can't he just take up painting or something?

Flying geeks denied

Journey's end for Flight Simulator

Here's an amusing take on Microsoft's announcement that they are (apparently) no longer going to be developing Flight Simulator beyond its present incarnation. I like this part:

Of course, what every simmer dreams about is being called on to land an actual plane in an emergency. A trembling stewardess announces over the public address that both flyers upfront are suffering debilitating convulsions from the in-flight catering and has anyone flown an Airbus before?

"Er, not really but ….." you splutter.

You are the last hope and with increasing confidence and cool, you inform ground-control that the myriad of dials and gauges you face, once the ailing captain has been hauled from his seat, are second-nature. Eventually, you plop the aircraft on the runway with a couple of harmless bounces, just for dramatic effect, and applause from the passenger-cabin rings in your ears.

I wonder: was the product used by the 9/11 hijackers in addition to their "real"training?

Is he a priest in any meaningful sense?

There was a remarkable article on Father Peter Kennedy, the sacked parish priest of St Mary's South Brisbane, in the Courier Mail Q Magazine on Saturday. (It looks like the website does not put up weekend articles until much later than they appear in print, so I will keep a look out for it. UPDATE: you should be able to read the article as a .pdf here.)

Essentially, Peter Kennedy appears to have been doubting his faith and/or the value of priesthood for much of the time he has been ordained, and in many respects sounds like a man on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Another interesting profile of both Kennedy and the Archbishop was in The Australian over the weekend. (This one, however, does not delve into Kennedy's history so much, and argues that he mainly became radicalised as a result of some controversy while he was a prison chaplain in the 1980's. I think his disenchantment with the Church and priesthood comes well before that, however.) The article does make a good point, though:

Kennedy insists that St Mary’s is a community church that is acting in the spirit of Vatican II in being driven by the congregation. He parts company with Bathersby in that he believes the role of the priest is to help guide the congregation, not dictate to it.

Yet here’s a contradiction: Kennedy insists that while St Mary’s is about the community rather than him, his presence there is vital. “This community will die when I leave,” he says. “After that, they will either appoint a priest who’ll toe the line and deliver exactly the Mass they want, which will mean a lot of people will leave, or it will be absorbed into another parish.”

I have come to the view that he is incredibly disingenuous in nearly everything he says. His talk this weekend was that he would not enter into negotiation with the Archbishop because it was up to his parish "community" to negotiate about it, and anyway he already knows his community wants him. (Never mind that his idea of "community" for St Marys obviously does not extend to the "community" of the entire Roman Catholic Church.)

It is also ridiculous to be taking such an attitude while at the same time threatening legal proceedings (in his own name, I presume) about unfair dismissal.

The Archbishop and Father Ken Howell are, I believe, being too kind in their response to this man who should have given up the priesthood as soon as he realised he was not really cut out for it in the 1960's or 70's. He would have been much happier being a social worker directly on the streets all of those years since then. I think it would be a serious mistake to let him co-celebrate mass with the new priest, even if "the community" were to allow it.

I am inclined to think (as Mild Colonial Boy suggested to my last post) that this will only be solved by physically closing the Church. Presumably, Kennedy and his mob will follow him to another premises, they can continue to think they are Catholic for all I care, and after 12 months the old building can be re-opened with another priest. The dispersal of much of the Kennedy emotionalism might ensure it can then be run without the current group staging a scene.

Why defend emissions trading?

An argument for emissions trading at John Quiggin

I don't understand why an economist on the left of politics like John Quiggin is still arguing for an emissions trading scheme as being preferable to a carbon tax.

Surely, the recent experience of financial markets ought to make anyone very cautious about a proposed new scheme which is welcomed by those who can see that there is money to be made in a potential novel market. I expected it would make Labor types especially skeptical.

In the post linked above, Professor Quiggin argues boldly that the recent collapse in the price of the European emissions permits is not a warning against using ETS:

Most commentators have seen this as a strike against emissions trading, but actually it’s a positive. The big concern about price uncertainty arises when we are very uncertain about the cost of reducing emissions. Under cost uncertainty, setting the emissions target too low could impose unexpectedly high costs on the economy.

What’s happening here is that we are uncertain about the rate of growth of the economy. An emissions target is countercyclical since it imposes a relatively high cost when the economy is strong, and a much smaller cost when the economy is weak. This is a Good Thing.

There are many comments following which contest that view, and I find some of them very convincing. TerjeP argues, for example:

If the focus of the carbon emission policy is to reduce carbon emissions by ushering in new energy technology then the key business sector that needs price certainty from a carbon tax is the renewable base load energy sector. They are after all the ones in need of new capital and who must persuade investors and bankers that things will work out as planned.....

However dealing with the volatile carbon price that an ETS would deliver makes investment in such unproven high risk commercialisation a far less certain venture.

And besides which: doesn't a hell of a lot depend on whether the US goes down the ETS path as well? If Obama actually goes for a carbon tax, wouldn't it be wise to follow?

UPDATE: How convenient. Penny Wong has column space in the Australian this morning in which she explains why an ETS is preferable to a carbon tax. Her key point:

Arguments around the merits of emissions reductions policies can be complex, but the core explanation for why emissions trading is superior to a carbon tax is simple. A carbon tax does not guarantee emissions reductions. A cap-and-trade scheme does.

Delivering a target is a key part of domestic and international efforts to reduce carbon pollution.

Cap and trade gives us certainty that targeted reductions will occur, whereas a carbon tax gives no guarantee over the quantity of reductions. Under a cap-and-trade scheme, the government issues permits for each tonne of carbon up to the total cap. Under a carbon tax, the government needs to estimate how emissions levels would respond to a carbon tax rate, introducing uncertainty about whether the target would be reached.

But Penny: that assumes that the ETS actually works. She claims:

Emissions trading gives businesses and the community more certainty.....While the carbon price will fluctuate under a cap-and-trade model, there is a capacity for firms to use market instruments to help manage movement in the carbon price.

Yes, market instruments have been working so well, lately. (Disengage sarcasm mode.)

More Wong claims:

Emissions trading opens up the prospect of sharing the burden of reducing emissions with other countries through linking the CPRS to schemes overseas. A carbon tax would take Australia out of this emerging international market.

But problems with the credibility of credits claimed for reductions in other countries has been one of the major issues of the European ETS, hasn't it? And wouldn't common sense suggest that there is always going to be an incentive for businesses engaged in quantifying the effects of overseas mitigation to be biased towards overstating the benefits of schemes? I mean, that keeps all potential customers happy.

I would have thought that one of the benefits of a carbon tax is that you can cut out that part of an ETS and just worry about accurately assessing what is going on in your own country.

Penny doesn't want to wait, though, and that's a worry:

Now is the time for getting on with the job not kicking around theories.

It's not the theories we want discussed, Penny; we're saying it's the practicalities that need to win out over theory.

Investigating methane

Bubbles of warming, beneath the ice - Los Angeles Times

The potential for trouble from methane and other carbon being released from thawing Arctic regions is given a bit of an overview in this article. Some disturbing thoughts:

The upper 3 meters -- about 10 feet -- of permafrost stores 1.9 trillion tons of carbon, more than double the amount in the atmosphere today, according to a recent study in the journal Bioscience.

"We are seeing thawing down to 5 meters," says geophysicist Vladimir Romanovsky of the University of Alaska. "A third to a half of permafrost is already within a degree to a degree and a half [Celsius] of thawing."

If only 1% of permafrost carbon were to be released each year, that could double the globe's annual carbon emissions, Romanovsky notes. "We are at a tipping point for positive feedback," he warns, referring to a process in which warming spurs emissions, which in turn generate more heat, in an uncontrollable cycle.

Re-appraising Lewis - again

Film - Hey, Laaaady! Jerry Lewis, the King of Comedy, Finally Gets Recognition From Oscar - NYTimes.com

Here's another article (this time from the other side of the Atlantic) re-appraising Jerry Lewis' career in light of his receiving an award for humanitarian work at this year's Oscars.

I am very curious as to how his acceptance speech will go.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one speculating how badly a Jerry Lewis acceptance speech may go at the Oscars. Will update further once I have seen the real thing.

UPDATE II: Lewis managed to be brief and sincerely appreciative. Congratulations.

Teaching sex

There's a fairly sensible article in The Times, written by a teacher with first hand experience, about the state of sex education in England today. (A certain babyfaced 13 year old father has caused a degree of national reflection on the topic.)

The writer does not sound all that intrinsically conservative, but she notes this oft-repeated concern that conservatives have about sex education:

The non-statutory curriculum for PSHE says, of the sex and relationship component, that “it helps [students] to understand human sexuality and the significance of marriage and stable relationships as key building blocks of community and society”.

Yet so much of PSHE ignores the latter half and focuses instead on how not to fall pregnant or catch a sexually transmitted infection. As one girl said to me recently: “Miss, they’ve been showing us how to put condoms on penises for years, but they never talk to us about relationships or how we choose.” Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.

The danger is that so much information is being blasted at these children on how not to conceive, where to go for help, the dangers of chlamydia, that the implied subtext is that it is all right to experiment with sex whenever you want. The curriculum does say that learning the advantages of delaying sexual activity should form part of the content, but how often is that touched upon?

Her experience when she does try to get a lesson taught in the school emphasising marriage or "stable relationships" is instructive:

I seized on the second part of the general statement about sex and relationships education (“to understand . . . the significance of marriage and stable relationships as key building blocks of community and society”) and designed a lesson on marriage. It was a good lesson. I taught it myself and it generated thoughtful conversation about responsibility and parenthood and such like. But one of the PSHE teachers came to me and refused to teach it.

She said it made her “uncomfortable” and was “not relevant”. I pointed out that “stable relationships” were to be emphasised as much as marriage; no one was to feel uncomfortable, that is the whole point of good PSHE. Still she refused. If parents don’t, and teachers won’t, teach children the basic tenets of moral responsibility, what chance do those children have?

The problem is, I suppose, that it is extremely difficult to teach the benefits of "stable relationships" (or, God forbid, "marriage") without experiencing it directly. How can teachers show kids that there is something better than the patterns of dysfunctional adult relationships they may be watching at home?

Meanwhile, in a report in the same newspaper, the government is issuing a leaflet which will do its whimpy best to discourage young parenthood"

The leaflet suggests that parents should start the “big talk” with children as young as possible, before they pick up “misinformation” from their peers in adolescence. The best way to raise the topic may be while performing mundane tasks such as “washing the car . . . washing up, watching TV, etc”, it says.

The main controversy about the leaflet is that it suggests parents should back off on the 'right and wrong' aspects of the discussion. This is justified by a psychologist as follows:

Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist, said educating older children and teenagers about sex had to be a process of negotiation. “We do not know what is right and wrong; right and wrong is relative, although your child does need clear guidelines,” she said.

Like that's going to help.

Add that one to the list of movies I just didn't get

So, I finally caught up with The Last Picture Show.

What a dreary, pointless story. As with much European cinema, the story is told competently, but at the end of it I think "why did they think this story was worth telling?"

It's also a severely underpopulated film, similar to most Australian movies, where there just doesn't seem to be enough people on the screen. I know it was meant to be a dying, dead end town, but really, art direction that made the streets look like an absolute ghost town just made it look unrealistic to my eye.

Critics love to hail the American movies of the early 1970's as some sort of artistic highlight of cinema: I reckon they were just mostly depressing, dark movies with few redeeming features.

UPDATE: just thought that is an appropriate place to list some other movies that I "just don't get". (This means I am forever puzzled by their critical and/or commercial success):

1. Forest Gump. Not offended by it; I would rate it as "harmless". But why was such a downer of a silly fairy tale a critical and box office success?

2. Rocky Horror Picture Show. Proof that one catchy song can sway hundreds of millions that they have had a good time during an entire 90 minutes. At least the sequel was a gold plated dud.

3. Pretty Woman. Proof that two attractive stars can make people forget that they are being sold a wildly improbable fairy tale which seems designed to make people feel better about prostitution as an industry or temporary career choice. Offensive.

A viewing recommendation

For a long time, SBS seems to have reserved Friday nights at 8.30 for World War II documentaries, and currently it is running a lengthy series called "Churchill's Bodyguard".

I haven't seen all of it, but what I have seen has been very interesting, and stuffed full of footage that I have either never seen, or only seen briefly, before.

As the title suggests, the series is based on the memoirs of Churchill's long serving bodyguard, so you get a very detailed and intimate view of Churchill's activities and character. (It seems virtually everyone who was close to Churchill has written about it: at a holiday unit some years ago I found an old book by his personal physician who followed him around during WWII as well.)

Last night's episode featured the long and dangerous trip Churchill made in secret to first visit Roosevelt on board a ship in Newfoundland.

It occurred to me while watching it that one of the things that makes WWII so fascinating is that the technology was just at the right level of development for providing drama. It allowed the sort of secret operations and trips that would be impossible today between the major powers. But the rush to develop and perfect new technologies also gave this war a large part of its dramatic character too. You just can't imagine such a scenario ever happening again.

It was also noted in last night's episode that Churchill appeared to believe that supernatural protection was being provided to him to "complete the mission".

(On the other hand, Hitler was lucky to survive as long as he did. Maybe he had infernal protection, and it was all a proxy war. Could be a movie in that!)

Circus denied

Rebel priest defies deadline

What the hell? I get no media circus to watch on the Sunday night news after all.

Father Howell has given up on the idea of trying to get into St Mary's church this weekend, and he and Archbishop Bathersby are going to let ousted priest Peter Kennedy run the show as always.

Howell is quoted as follows:

"I have been a priest for 25 years, and I will not engage in a situation whereby the celebration of the Mass becomes a place of conflict and division.

"I don't believe that anyone would attend this weekend's services with the intention of behaving violently. However, tensions are high, people are upset, and Father Kennedy has urged as many people as possible to attend the service in a spirit of protest."

Father Howell said he remained committed to taking up his position as administrator of St Mary's.

Catholic Archbishop John Bathesby has conceded to enter a mediation with the maverick cleric.

"I believe a sensible next step would be to have an experienced, independent and eminent mediator meet with the archdiocese and Father Kennedy to attempt to achieve a peaceful and dignified outcome to the current impasse. I would strongly urge Father Kennedy to participate in this process," Archbishop Bathersby said.

Hmpff. Kennedy has shown no inclination of budging in his (or "his community's") practices. As far as I can see, mediation will involve him telling the Archbishop that he is wrong.

A physical confrontation at the church is delayed, but I doubt it can be avoided indefinitely.

Next he should look up the meaning of "disingenuous"

As noted a few posts back, "rebel" priest Father Peter Kennedy, now finally officially relieved of his duties, went as far a calling the temporary replacement "a religious scab."

Kennedy is quoted today:

Fr Kennedy said he regretted calling Father Ken Howell, whom Archbishop Bathersby has appointed to take over St Mary's, a "religious scab".

"I looked up the word scab in the dictionary and certainly Ken doesn't fit that , so I apologise for that," he said.

LOL!

Father Ken Howell, meantime, is trying to shame the parish into letting him in by being very, very nice:

Fr Howell, who has invited Fr Kennedy to jointly celebrate all the masses at St Mary's this weekend, said he was disappointed by the remark.

However, he said he thought it was the comment of a man under pressure.

This is on top of comments that he doesn't see that there is a problem with the Gay and Lesbian Choir continuing to use the church.

It's an interesting tactic, but I doubt it is going to work.