Making babies: highly questionable research

Is there any greater sign of the modern over-enlarged sense of entitlement than the ART ("assisted reproduction technology") business? [Yes, I know, I was lucky enough not to have go looking into that to have kids of my own, but high abortion rates means that it's not for a lack of embryos in the West that there is a shortage of babies born. Indeed, despite the problems inherent in international adoption, I would still prefer to see more of that than kids left in the pathetic orphanages that exist in some countries.]

There have been quite a few stories of interest about ART this lately, and some really bad reporting. This will be a long post.

First: Let's oversell "Two Mums is good". It was widely reported, as in this example from the Sydney Morning Herald short report, with the jolly title "Two Mums Better than Dad":

"..researchers found children born to and raised by lesbian couples were better off socially, academically and more competent than their peers."

All complete with happy photo of (impliedly) happy lesbian family, although as they are not identified, for all I know they could be a couple of Fairfax reporters who posed with the bosses' toddler.

Anyhow, the study was based on following 154 pregnant (from artificial insemination) lesbian women from the 1980's and comparing them to heterosexual families. Beginning to suspect this study might have some flaws? Your suspicions would be right. As economist blogger David Friedman notes, one obvious way it might be unreliable would be if the two groups of parents were not closely matched for other factors that may very well be relevant to having a "better off" child:

The two groups might differ in important ways other than their sexual preferences. Most obviously, since the lesbian parents had conceived via artificial insemination, their pregnancies were all planned and all desired. If the comparison group contained a significant number of children from unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, that might explain why more of them had behavioral problems. One could imagine a variety of other possible explanations as well—and the news stories did not provide enough information to confirm or reject them.

He then reads the paper and reports:

The two groups were not closely matched, due to data limitations, a problem that the authors noted. They differed strikingly in geographic location, since the lesbian couples were all recruited in the Boston, D.C., and San Francisco meteropolitan areas, while the data on children of heterosexual couples, coming from another researcher's work, was based on a wider distribution of locations. They were not matched racially—14% of the heterosexual couples were black, 3% of the lesbian couples were. They were not matched socio-economically—on average, the heterosexual couples were of higher SES than the lesbian couples.

As someone commented in the Sydney Morning Herald guessed:

This study may be more about the socio-economic than about gender! In that regard it simply confirms what we already know: advantaged parents are able to raise advantaged children. It is not that "2 mums better than dad". Rather, it is that "2 advantaged parents are better than 2 less advantaged ones".

David Friedman then finds another startling problem with the research:

Questionaires went, at various points in the study, to both mothers and children. But the conclusion about how well adjusted the children were was based entirely on the reports of ther mothers. A more accurate, if less punchy, headline would have read: "Lesbian Mothers Think Better of Their Kids than Heterosexual Mothers Do."

Friedman is not out to criticise the authors, as the inadequacies are there to see in the paper. It certainly seems to me, though, that the authors are not above overselling their report to the media, such as when they are quoted as follows:

"Our findings show that adolescents who have been raised since birth in planned lesbian families demonstrate healthy psychological adjustment and thus provide no justification for restricting access to reproductive technologies or child custody on the basis of the sexual orientation of the parents."

Hmm. Does that sound just a tad like they have the view that they have a message to sell? Their funding did come from lesbian friendly foundations. What a surprise.

I don't think many people expect lesbian couples to be atrocious at parenting; at the same time, this is a bit of peer reviewed research that proves nothing and is being oversold by its authors.

Second: Let's not report a survey that indicates some kids are not so happy about not knowing their Dad:

OK, OK, this is not a peer reviewed bit of research and it comes out of a conservative foundation and was partly conducted by a person with a personal interest in the issue. But it got a run in Slate, which was kind of brave of them, as it would clearly upset many liberals because, you know, everyone is entitled to get knocked up via an anonymous sperm donor and who are we to question whether that's a wise thing to do?

The report is a survey which compared attitudes between 3 groups: "18- to 45-year-olds includes 485 who were conceived via sperm donation, 562 adopted as infants, and 563 raised by their biological parents." Some of the findings:

Regardless of socioeconomic status, donor offspring are twice as likely as those raised by biological parents to report problems with the law before age 25. They are more than twice as likely to report having struggled with substance abuse. And they are about 1.5 times as likely to report depression or other mental health problems.

As a group, the donor offspring in our study are suffering more than those who were adopted: hurting more, feeling more confused, and feeling more isolated from their families. (And our study found that the adoptees on average are struggling more than those raised by their biological parents.) The donor offspring are more likely than the adopted to have struggled with addiction and delinquency and, similar to the adopted, a significant number have confronted depression or other mental illness. Nearly half of donor offspring, and more than half of adoptees, agree, "It is better to adopt than to use donated sperm or eggs to have a child."

Of course, there may well be biases in the selection of the subjects here (although I haven't read anyone pointing out precisely how yet), and it's not "peer reviewed", but is it all that surprising that some adults from anonymous sperm donation would worry about things like whether someone they meet might actually be their half sibling? This is particularly so in America, which for some reason is still allowing anonymous donors to remain anonymous all their life. (This has been changed in Australia and much of Europe, with the result that very few men are now willing to be sperm donors. In Australia, the donor can't even be paid!)

Everyone knows that adopted kids, as adults, often feel that the fact of their adoption is an important issue about their life, hence all the shows and stories about the desire to re-unite with their biological parents. It makes many of them feel more complete.

So it should be no surprise at all that many sperm donor kids should feel the same way.

I reckon there is likely to be more truth and accuracy in this study than the lesbian parent one.

Of course, if you are going to allow companies to provide this service, the anonymity should be illegal. It is cruel to deliberately create a kid with this uncertainty in its future.

Yet, of course, it wasn't mentioned in the media much at all.

Third: just how many defects does ART create in babies?

There was some reporting of a new study that at first sounds like it should be a big worry for those considering IVF:

Slightly more than 4% of babies born via assisted reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) may have major birth defects, such as heart and urogenital tract malformations, according to a new study...

The major birth defects seen in babies born via IVF and/or ICSI included heart defects and malformations of the urogenital tract, such as hypospadias (an abnormality in the position of the opening of the urethra in boys). In the study, 110 children had genetic disorders, including six children with Beckwith-Weidemann syndrome, which is marked by body overgrowth, and may increase risk of certain cancers. Five children also had bilateral retinoblastoma (cancer of the eye's retina).

Children born via assisted reproductive technology had a five times higher rate for minor birth defects such as angiomas (a benign tumor of small blood vessels causing a red growth on the skin). Angiomas were twice as common in girls as in boys, the study found.

But:

U.S. experts are quick to point out that these risks are not much different from what would be expected in the general population. And the risks are much lower than what has been found in some other studies of babies born as a result of fertility treatments.

This research came from surveys in France, and the lead authors Geralidine Viot (see above link) is quoted as saying:

"our results are not so different from the general population and I consider them rather reassuring as some previously reported studies showed increased risk of major malformations around 9% to 11%," she says.

Wait a minute: why is so much discrepancy between the rate of defects in these studies? Just how hard is it to record defects from babies from IVF?

And what's going on here: in the report of this study from The Independent, we read:

The study, the largest of its kind, found evidence of a higher-than-expected rate of serious congenital abnormalities.

Research leader Geraldine Viot said: "We found a major congenital malformation in 4.24pc of the children, compared with the 2-3pc that we had expected from previous published studies.

"This higher rate was due in part to an excess of heart diseases and malformations of the uro-genital system. This was much more common in boys.

Those comments regarding what they expected from previous studies doesn't seem to match the earlier quote, where she was relieved that their rate was half that of previous studies.

There's some explaining that needs to be done about all this. There are studies from Australia indicating defect rates "twice" that of naturally conceived children, and an American report from 2 years ago that found:

The CDC reports that certain birth defects -- including heart wall problems and cleft lip/palate -- may be two to four times more common among babies conceived with assisted reproductive technology (ART) than babies conceived naturally.

They are also keen to note:

The study doesn't prove that ART was to blame for the birth defects.

"Subfertile women might have a higher risk of having a child with a birth defect regardless of whether infertility treatments are used," write Reefhuis and colleagues.

So it may not be the ART process itself that "causes" it, instead it may be the decision to use ART to get a baby with a higher risk of a major defect when your natural infertility would have prevented it. Well, I hope that IVF clinics make this subtle "it's not us, it's you" distinction known to their clients.

In fact, it seems to me ART doctors are dead keen to downplay the significance of increased rates of defects. For example, this is from the Melbourne Herald Sun report on the recent French study:

Dr John McBain, Melbourne IVF director and head of reproductive services at the Royal Women's Hospital, said the definition of "major" congenital abnormalities was contentious, and included conditions such as clicky hips and club feet.

He said it was difficult to compare the health of children conceived naturally and through ART.

"The children born from assisted conception have more rigorous physical examinations," he said.

This is self interested excuse making, if you ask me.

And funnily enough, when you go to the glossy IVF Australia website and search it for terms such as "birth defects", "congenital defects" or "birth abnormalities", you score nothing that talks about increased rates of these for IVF babies. (That's not to say that they don't give appropriate information to those who contact them, but I would be curious as to how they explain the risks, given the apparent conflict between results of studies over the last decade.)

I remain very cynical about virtually all aspects of "Assisted Reproductive Technologies", but it's a good little earner I'm sure.

A jelly education

Jelly clinic: how to deliver a quiver | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

This article from The Guardian, by a couple of authors flogging their book about jelly, does make some interesting points:

Jelly is the ultimate party food, an animal-based dessert that predates Christ and was eaten by Henry VIII for both the first and second course of his 1521 Garter Banquet.

Jelly predates Christ? Given the lack of refrigeration, how did they get them to set? Or is this just a Brisbane-centric lack of understanding, as I guess in many countries leaving it out overnight may well be enough. What about this claim:

Slap a jelly on your dinner table and guests will be hypnotized by its lewd wobbling and your kitchen prowess.

Easily hypnotised, those English.

I like the start of the next paragraph:

The origins of jelly are shrouded in mystery..

Wait a minute. This article has already referred to "before Christ" and "mystery." Clearly, this is material for the next Dan Brown novel. The secret of the origin of jelly is almost certainly being covered up in the foundations of the Temple in Jerusalem. I can see an important plot revelation already: you know those bits of paper being stuck in the Wailing Wall? - they're jelly recipes! You heard it here first.

The article then explains more history:

With sugar wildly expensive, sweet jelly became a potent status symbol. It remained at the centre of the tables of the rich and powerful well into the early 20th century. Ingredients, moulds, ice for refrigeration and the labour to clarify weird gelling agents like hartshorn and the swim bladders of sturgeon were all expensive.

I think this is something to share with the kids with great gusto when they are next served jelly: "You're eating like a King or a millionaire, you know!" "Bill Gates has swimming pools filled with jelly, it always impresses his guests."

A final important point:

Yes, jellying today is ridiculously simple. But you must respect the jelly.

We always stand to attention and salute while the bagpipes play during the ceremonial Presentation of the Jelly at our house.

Time for the annual "why are there so many movie sequels this summer" post

Film - An Old Pairing - Summer and Movie Sequels - NYTimes.com

AO Scott talks a lot about how many sequels there are coming out this year, but I get a distinct sense of deja vu while reading it. Doesn't an article like this appear in one of the major American media publications every summer?

Which is a pity because: oh my God why are there so many sequels to movies that don't deserve sequels coming out this year?

Of the bunch, perhaps I will see Toy Story 3, but even then I am not holding my breath; even though I loved the first Toy Story and am generally a pretty big fan of Pixar, I found Toy Story 2 very forgettable.

There is one sequel worth waiting for this year, and that's Voyage of the Dawn Treader. But it's a Christmas release, so it at least its not coming out with all the summer sequel dreck.

By the way, the first trailer for VDT comes out with Toy Story 3, and will be released on the web this Thursday. Yes, the fact that I know that is evidence of my Narnia fanboydom, I guess

All praise the Mockingbird

BBC News - Why is To Kill A Mockingbird so popular?

As this year is its 50th anniversary of publication, maybe there will be more articles like this around.

The only thing I find odd is this:

On the eve of its 50th birthday, To Kill A Mockingbird still has a generation of schoolchildren transfixed, while regularly figuring high on lists of the country's "favourite books".

A poll for World Book Day placed it fifth, behind Pride and Prejudice but ahead of the Bible. A similar BBC one puts it sixth.

I can only assume that more women answer World Book Day polls than men.

Parasites as friends

How the parasitic worm has turned

I've mentioned before the apparent benefits of having a good dose of intestinal worms for your immune system. The story has been turning up in various forms for a few years now, but it's apparently discussed recently in a Science article:

Professor Roberts, whose work is published in Science, explains: "It is like a three-legged stool - the microbes, worms and immune system regulate each other.

"The worms have been with us throughout our evolution and their presence, along with bacteria, in the ecosystem of the gut is important in the development of a functional immune system."

Professor Grencis adds: "If you look at the incidence of parasitic worm infection and compare it to the incidence of auto-immune disease and allergy, where the body's immune system over-reacts and causes damage, they have little overlap. Clean places in the West, where parasites are eradicated, see problems caused by overactive immune systems. In the developing world, there is more parasitic worm infection but less auto-immune and allergic problems.

"We are not suggesting that people deliberately infect themselves with parasitic worms but we are saying that these larger pathogens make things that help our immune system. We have evolved with both the bugs and the worms and there are consequences of that interaction, so they are important to the development of our immune system."

I don't know: it seems he is suggesting that catching them is a good idea. Here's more:

Intestinal roundworm parasites are one of the most common types of infection worldwide, although in humans increased hygiene has reduced infection in many countries. High level infections by these parasites can cause disease, but the natural situation is the presence of relatively low levels of infection. The team's work suggests that in addition to bacterial microflora, the natural state of affairs of our intestines may well be the presence of larger organisms, the parasitic roundworms, and that complex and subtle interactions between these different types of organism have evolved to provide an efficient and beneficial ecosystem for all concerned.

There's no mention of how you might get the benefits of a gut full of worms without actually having a gut full of worms, but I am sure someone must be thinking about it.

Colebatch on debt

Fiscal time bomb yet to explode

The quite spectacular looking fireball re-entry of the Japanese Hayabusa space probe can be viewed on this Youtube:

Leave Kanty alone!!

I think I might have read this a few months ago when it came out, but forgot to post about it.  Philosophy Professor Eric Schwitzgebel did a post listing Kant’s most peculiar and'/or odious views.   (I knew about his view of masturbation as being worse than suicide, but the Professor extends the list, and indeed one of the comments also throws in racism.)

Of course, there might be some excuse making to be found in the state of science was at the time.   Still, despite my general high regard for him, Kant did have some spectacularly odd views.  It also turns out that one writer has suggested that Kant wrote under the influence of a “massive left prefrontal tumor” which biologically prevented him from having proper empathy for people when he wrote his major works.

Somehow, I think that’s an unlikely scenario.  Reason can lead philosophers to all sorts of spurious and silly conclusions, as shown in my recent posts about the idea that people (even with the most “normal” lives) should logically think it would be better if people didn’t exist.  In that case, maybe it is excessive empathy that is leading to the result, but the conclusion is just as silly as anything Kant wrote.

Another Chinese problem

An increase in the use of prostitutes (and the number of bisexual men) is being blamed for some pretty startlingly bad figures on the recent rise in syphilis in China:

Syphilis was almost wiped out in China 50 years ago, but has increased 10-fold over the past decade to emerge as one of the country's top five infectious diseases, the China Daily said, quoting the ministry of health.

The rate of mother-to-child transmissions jumped alarmingly to 57 cases per 100,000 newborns between 2003 and 2008, from a previous seven cases per 100,000, it said.

What's the rate in Australia, I wonder? This site paints a very mixed picture:

The rates of syphilis in Australia are about 10/100 000, nearly double that in New South Wales, and up to 140/100 000 in the Northern Territory, with a national indigenous rate of 300/100 000.  Despite remaining fairly stable in the heterosexual community, syphilis rates continue to rise in homosexually active men.  Other groups in Australia at risk of syphilis include rural and remote indigenous communities and those from overseas. Most infections are detected in the late latent phase, when the patient is asymptomatic, having passed the early infectious stages unrecognised and undiagnosed. 

The total rate in China, according to this graph that was in the New England Journal of Medicine article that is that basis of this story, indicates a rate of about 20 per 100,000.   So, in fact, the national rate is not all that huge, although I see that some Shanghai is a particularly bad place for it.  But the sharp rise in congenital cases is remarkably steep.  According to the NEJM:

…more than half of pregnant women with syphilis have a spontaneous abortion or stillbirth; and babies with congenital syphilis may have serious, irreversible sequelae with rates of death in infancy of more than 50%

That’s pretty sad.

Crowe stories

A rude awakening

The Sydney Morning Herald has run a story from The Telegraph by the author of a new book on the now (as I understand it) existing-in-name-only Dreamworks studio.  It's all pretty interesting, but as we all love a "Russell Crowe is a vain, preening idiot" story, it's mainly worth reading the bits near the beginning about him, such as this:

While filming [Gladiator] in Morocco, he walked off the set twice. For ''fun'', he challenged crew members to foot races only to lose and then complain for days that he couldn't ''run in the sand in sandals''. Years before the actor would become famous for the kind of short-tempered fuse that launched airborne telephones in the direction of hotel receptionists, his diva antics were already at a remarkably impressive level: upset that his assistants' pay wasn't high enough, he placed an angry call to Gladiator  producer Branko Lustig at 3am. Lustig, in turn, called Spielberg in Los Angeles: ''Steven, I'm leaving. Russell wants to kill me.'

But by far the most detailed first hand account of, shall we say, Crowe's personality "issues" was by Jack Marx in 2006, and happily it is still available at Fairfax.

Why bother existing, revisited

I could put this as an update to my post a few days ago about philosophers (and others) who think it's not such a bad idea for people to just, you know, go away from the universe, but who's going to notice if I do that?

Hence, I'll point out here that the ridiculously productive blogger James Lilek has also visited the story, with pretty much the same reaction that I had, but expressed in wittier form:

You have to love this: let’s say everyone agreed not to have children. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? The obvious answer is “yes; no children” but since the childless future with no humans at all, just birds and fish and bugs, doesn’t mean any human suffering, then the net amount of suffering is reduced, and we can all have a party. This is also an argument for smothering everyone under 15 so they don’t suffer broken hearts and angsty 20s, which happen to everyone. But don’t worry; he’s just asking questions.

It's all worth reading.

Depends how you define "disaster", I suppose

This is, of course, a very fair and reasonable blog, and although it has long decided that the world ought to be working hard to urgently limit CO2 reductions, it's not above pointing out some of the confusions and exaggerations which occur on my side of the argument.

Hence, regular readers might recall that in January this year, I noted that papers talking about the effect of loss of glaciers in the Himalayas on water flow in Indian and Chinese rivers seemed to be using some pretty confusing figures which were hard to reconcile.

Well, my confusion was justified, it seems. Nature reports on a new paper which tries to put the issue of glaciers and water flow in that area more into perspective. It starts with the heading "Global warming impact on Asia's rivers overblown", which appears to be part of environmental journalists new campaign not to be caught exaggerating again, even when the thing they are reporting on is quite seriously bad. Here are some extracts:

Although global warming is expected to shrink glaciers in the Himalayas and other high mountains in Central Asia, the declining ice will have less overall impact on the region's water supplies than previously believed, a study concludes.

It's an important finding, says Richard Armstrong, a climatologist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, who notes that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had previously predicted dire restrictions on water supplies in Asia. "There clearly were some misunderstandings," he says.

Yes, well, OK, but while the current study did find that the importance of glacier meltwater is not so important for some rivers, it's still pretty important for others:

The researchers behind the latest study began by calculating the importance of meltwater in the overall hydrology of five rivers: the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the Yellow River and the Yangtze in China¹. The authors found that meltwater is most important to the Indus, with a contribution roughly 1.5 times that from lowland rains. In the Brahmaputra, meltwater flow is equivalent to only one-quarter of the volume supplied by lowland rainfall, and, in the other rivers, it forms no more than one-tenth of the input.

Furthermore, the study found that in the Indus and Ganges basins, glacial ice contributes only about 40% of the total meltwater, with the rest coming from seasonal snows. In the other three rivers its contribution is even lower.

OK, so with some model's predicted changes to rainfall/snow, what effect might AGW have?:

Climate change will therefore have two effects, Immerzeel says. One will be to reduce the contribution of glaciers to total run-off. The other will be to change weather patterns, including rain and snowfall. Combining these and looking at averages from five climate models, Immerzeel and colleagues concluded that the change in upstream water inputs will range from a decrease of 19.6% for the Brahmaputra to a 9.5% increase for the Yellow River. The latter, he notes, is due to increased winter rains. "The Yellow River depends only marginally on meltwater," he says, "and, on average, the models project an increase in winter precipitation in the Yellow River basin."

What this means, Armstrong says, is that river flows are dominated by seasonal rains. "The glaciers are tiny, compared with the monsoon," he says.

All sounding relatively comforting, kind of, until you hit the next paragraph:

Nevertheless, the study concludes that climate change will reduce water supplies enough that by 2050, declines in irrigation water are likely to reduce the number of people the region's agriculture can support by about 60 million — 4.5% of the region's present population.

So the previous over-estimation of how many in India may be badly effected by AGW within 40 years is downgraded to a mere three times as many as the population of Australia.

How very comforting for them.

Of course, precise predictions of changes to rainfall is one of the rubberiest areas of climate science at the moment, but still, it would seem a fair bet that one of the worst hit areas from human induced climate change will be the relatively helpless poorer people in parts of Asia.

Mysterious programming

I see that in 2008, I mentioned how enjoyable I was finding the BBC's current incarnation of Robin Hood. (One suspects it gives much more pleasure than Russell Crowe's movie version.) It's one of those rare programs that is sufficiently sophisticated for adults, yet is enjoyable for the younger family members too.

After the traumatic ending of series 2 (it really was a surprise, and quite moving, and if you have no intention of watching it, you can find out what happened here), I was aware that a third series was in production and was on the look out for it on Australian TV.

Well, sad to say, ABC has decided to run it on ABC2, which I don't always think to check on Saturday night, and as a result I've come in late to this series 3.

I still think it's a good show, although it's probably right that it ends with this series. It's hard to see where else it could go.

Free speech in Kuwait

Kuwaiti activist's detention extended until June 21

A Kuwaiti court on Monday extended the detention of Kuwaiti lawyer
and columnist Mohammad Al Jasem until June 21.

The court said that it would hear the testimony of an investigation
officer on the case that has divided the Kuwaiti society and sparked
international calls for the release of the 54-year-old detainee.

Al Jasem, charged with damaging national interests, told the court
that his detention was illegal and his team of lawyers called for his
immediate release, according to Kuwaiti media.


The court kept the defendant in police custody, but agreed to have him
examined by a medical team to assess his health condition. His family
said that he had had heart problems in the past.

The public prosecutor last month imposed a gag on the coverage of the
trial of Al Jasem who last November was detained for 12 days in a
separate case initiated by the Kuwaiti prime minister who accused him of
slander.

I assume America, which took more than a little effort to help this place, is making representations.

Helen's legacy

Gosh, it's been a slow news week as far as I'm concerned. There just hasn't been anything much that I have deemed blogworthy.

But, Colbert's handling of the Helen Thomas resignation amused me:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Helen Thomas's Reputation
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

I also thought that the next segment on Colbert, in which he dealt with the Israeli "aid flotilla", was pretty remarkable in that it managed to be funny without being offensive, and even featured the Israeli ambassador to the US in one of Colbert's interviews which manage to amuse but let some real information and commentary in too.

Reversable eunuchs

BBC NEWS | Europe | 'I was chemically castrated'

In light of Poland introducing compulsory chemical castration for some sex offenders, the BBC has this interview with a Canadian sex offender who found his voluntary undergoing of the procedure quite helpful.

Interestingly, he talks about how, now that he is out of jail but still undergoing the chemical castration, he has a girlfriend, and he's trying to work out how to tell her about his background. (His plan is to stop the treatment at some point.)

Talk about delicate topics to bring up over your dinner date!

MRI videos

I forget what I was looking for when I found these, and they have been around for some time.

But - here a few videos about MRIs that interested me:

* here's a staged demonstration of the powerful magnets in them;

* here's what appears to be the un-staged consequences of forgetting about the powerful magnets;

* here is the latest in Japanese MRI's (it's silly, but I still find it pretty funny.)

Philosopher thinks himself out of existence

Should This Be the Last Generation? - NYTimes.com

This is kind of amusing. Peter Singer looks at the big question of whether it is better to exist or not exist, and notes one recent ultra pessimistic book:

Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.”

Singer sounds quite sympathetic to the arguments, but in the end outs himself as an optimist after all. That's a shame in the way; I would find it quite funny if he joined a philosophical movement that seemed to want to apologise for drawing breath, and causing a new icky human life form to trod the earth.

Reasons he drinks

It's interesting to read Christopher Hitchens explaining in detail his drinking routine, and his very cheery view of the habit.

An odd connection

Gut bacteria may contribute to autism - health - 07 June 2010 - New Scientist

Children with autism appear to have a characteristic chemical signature in their urine which might form the basis of an early diagnostic test for the condition.

The finding also adds weight the hypothesis that substances released by gut bacteria are contributing to the onset of the condition.

The researcher is keen to point out that this has nothing to do with the discredited idea that vaccination causes autism.

More research is coming:

The next step is to confirm the results in a much larger group of age-matched children, as well as following high-risk children from birth in order to identify whether there are markers that precede the development of autistic symptoms.

Colebatch on the mining tax

Rudd In Fight Over 40% Mining Tax

Once again, a good, clear column by Tim Colebatch on the fight over a mining tax.

Meanwhile, Niki Savva makes a suggestion for Tony Abbott that makes a lot of sense to me: don't just resist all mining taxes; take up the miner's suggestion that they could afford to pay more tax and work out a deal with them.

But would Abbott be smart enough to do this?

Angry elephants

AFP: Elephants and humans clash over resources in Bangladesh

The wild Asian elephant wrapped its trunk around Parul Chambu Gong's husband and dragged him, kicking and screaming, into the forest.

His badly damaged corpse was recovered some hours later, and the father-of-five joined the list of an increasing number of Bangladeshis killed by wild elephants each year.

There aren't too many of them in Bangladesh, but those who get angry at being shoo-ed away from crops can be mean:

"I've seen an elephant snatch a torch from a man with its trunk while we were driving away a herd, and throw the flame on a house setting it on fire," said Luise, 51.

I guess it's just lucky that it's hard for an elephant to hold a box of matches with feet like that

Sunday at the Dominion

Yesterday went as follows:

* Breakfast: I make pancakes, of the instant "shake" variety. I used to like these, but after making my own from scratch quite a few times, I find I don't care for them anymore. I think it may be the real vanilla essence in the home made ones that makes a lot of difference, but I am not sure. Following my wife's advice, buttermilk does seem to make much nicer result too.

* Attend family church service at the kids school. Is it too curmudgeonly to say that I find the efforts of my kids' teachers to find ways to get their class involved in the once a year family service downright awful? I mean, yesterday's effort involved a little play (performed by four10 year olds) about the importance of "respect", in which a couple of parents made the family's elderly grandfather eat his dinner from a wood bowl in the corner of the room so that he didn't mess up the table with spilt food. I can't quite remember now how it was that the kindly child in the story convinced the parents they were wrong and let the grand-dad come back to the table for meals; somehow he shamed them into it.

Is this a scenario that is in any way likely to resonate with the middle class family kids in attendance? Who writes these stories? Hasn't someone written a book of better mini-plays for 10 year olds to perform in church services?

Furthermore, as I know some of the parents attending are not even Christian, let alone church going, does the church really have to use graphics (on their screens that show the words to the songs) which are all of "Jesus is my friend and likes to give me hugs" variety? Does this church only use these graphics for family services, or all the time?

(It is, I should hasten to add, not a Catholic church, although I admit the local Catholic church I am familiar with likes to use some of the same pop-ish "Jesus I really, really love you" songs too.)

Of course, you can't really say there is anything wrong with praise and worship per se in the Christian context. I suppose you could, if you are protestant, easily ridicule the Catholic veneration of the Eucharist which, incidentally, you don't see much anymore. But that Catholic style of worship had a certain, I guess, gravitas about it which seems much more appropriate to a God who is powerful and beyond complete human comprehension, rather than the singing of the equivalent of love songs to the guy next door.

* Lunch at McDonalds: happily, the kids generally prefer Subway as fast food now, which is definitely a healthier option, but the urge for McDonalds still arises sometimes. I see the fiddling with the menu is continuing apace, but I do think the Chicken Deluxe burgers are now pretty good. I'm still not convinced by the Grand Angus at all.

* Possibly succeeded in attempt to teach my mother about how to use Youtube. It was, of course, in the context of an 86 year old woman whose only interest in the internet is keeping up with the latest Colin Firth news. She wanted to see him accept his best actor award from the Venice Film Festival, even he only spoke in Italian. She was one of the hundred or so people who went and saw A Single Man in Brisbane, fully aware that it was about a depressed gay man, which is not the type of film she would normally seek out. But if Colin appeared in the equivalent of "Shortbus", she would be there to see it.

* Scared the kids. Showed them the first and end bits of The Twilight Zone movie. The middle is hardly worth bothering with, but the updated version of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet - my God it's fantastic. It's the perfect scary mini-movie, suspenseful and frightening without involving blood or loss of limbs at all. (I have no stomach for too much violence in horror.) Add a touch of unexpected humour, and it's perfect. Directed by George Miller I see. (I had forgotten that.)

That was followed by watching a couple of episodes of the original Twilight Zone. My wife had hired this at the library for me and the kids - which just goes to show that she is a good match for me. A couple of things I noticed:

- the two episodes I saw were written by Rod Serling himself and I was struck by their literary quality. The dialogue was quite dense and (to my mind) of a quality more akin to going to the theatre than watching the more "realistic" dialogue of today's TV dramas. (Not that I watch much of that to know, I guess.) It did make me feel a little as if the whole world has dumbed down quite a bit since I was a child.

- Rod Serling was really a deeply unattractive looking man.

* Dinner: my wife prepared a nabe cooked at the table with gyoza dumplings for the protein. A family sharing a meal at the table is good, but I think sitting around and participating in the cooking in front of you is even better. Some sake (Australian Go-Shu brand is fine) helps every Japanese style family meal too.

* Watched Dr Who: I actually thought last night's episode was pretty good, but it's the first of a two part-er, so we'll see how it pans out next week.

Update: it has occurred to me that a Twilight Zone style story may work well in church service requiring a morality mini-play put on by 10 year olds. Some kid in a suit could come out at the start with a fake cigarette and heavily made eyebrows to introduce the story, and then tell us the lesson at the end. I would be the one laughing loudly at the back of the congregation, while everyone else just gets confused.

Pardon?

I think Kevin Rudd swears in ways I don't even understand:

Meanwhile, there has been no official word yet from China after backroom comments Mr Rudd made during last year's Copenhagen climate change conference were reported in an essay by the Herald journalist David Marr. ''Those Chinese f---ers are trying to ratf--k us,'' Mr Rudd reportedly told a group of journalists and officials during a background briefing.

While our socially inept Opposition Leader doesn't know when to stop talking politics at an Italian Day function:

At this point, many in the 500-strong audience became agitated, murmuring among themselves that their guest was using the event to play politics.

Mr Abbott kept trying to make his point, but much of the last part of his speech was almost lost as crowd members yelled at him to keep politics out of the event. One man stood up, telling the Opposition Leader: ''I'm sorry Tony, this is not a political forum.''

This is the most depressing election choice in the history of Australian politics.

Those confusing glaciers

Glaciers' wane not all down to humans : Nature News

Hey, this isn't posted at Watts Up With That yet, but it's bound to be.  Some study is saying that maybe only half of glacier melt in 20th century was due to climate variations other than AGW:

"This doesn't question the actuality, and the seriousness, of man-made climate change in any way," says Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, who led the study. "But what we do see is that current glacier retreat might be equally due to natural climate variations as it is to anthropogenic greenhouse warming."

Good video of "UFO" rocket

UFO talk rockets around Gold Coast Local Gold Coast News | goldcoast.com.au | Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

The big, glowing, spiralling thing seen in the early morning sky yesterday all over the east coast of Australia was, of course, a rocket stage in orbit and the best video I have seen of it is embedded at the link above.

Everyone seems to agree it was the privately owned Falcon 9, but why it was letting out such a large cloud of gas I haven't seen explained yet.

Who hates the leaders

George Megalogenis has some interesting commentary on the personal approval ratings of
Rudd and Abbott:

The price of the Opposition Leader’s plus 8 rating among men aged 35 to 49 is consistently poor numbers across all other groups: younger and older men, and all women.

His problem is, officially, with women.

Abbott turns off women of all ages at roughly the same rate - minus 10 - unlike Rudd, who has the young on his side.

Abbott is also in the red with men aged 18 to 34, where his net rating is minus 6. This is possibly the most interesting distinction of all because this is the group where Rudd has residual respect, notwithstanding his reversal on climate change.

Perhaps young people see through Abbott’s tough-guy pose, while adults and seniors see through Rudd’s pretence of having a personal connection to middle Australia.

As to why Abbott is more popular with middle aged men:

The Opposition Leader is increasingly popular with men aged 35 to 49, a sign that the triathlons have impressed blokes confronting midlife crises.

Well, that's kind of embarrassing for my own gender and age cohort.

Of interest to defence forces everywhere

Moving repeatedly in childhood linked with poorer quality-of-life years later

I'm not surprised by this study indicating that frequent moves in childhood is, generally speaking, not good for kids. I personally would have hated moving while I was at primary school especially.

It must be a very major problem for defence forces everywhere as to how to deal with this. (Well, maybe not so much if you are from a relatively small country like Britain, where a weekend commute is nothing like travelling from one end of Australia to another.)

I guess there is no easy solution, unless you go for a gay armed force again, as in the general vicinity of ancient Greece (apparently.)

The really good stuff

Fromage fort: The cheese that tried to kill me - Salon.com

This paragraph, from an entertaining column by Francis Lam about cheese in France, contains a very amusing anecdote:

I have to say first that, of course, it's just stupidly easy to get your hands on socks-knocking-off-good cheese in France. On my very first day here, my friend Julia and I went down the street and randomly came home with a wedge of Brie from Melun so good, so soft and so sticky and so rich and woodsy and creamy that I caught her talking to it the next day. "Hey, Brie," she purred after getting home from work. "I've been thinking about you, baby. You been thinking about me?" (No, really. That happened.)

All of the article is good; you should read it.

A good interview

You don't always learn all that much about Colbert's guests' ideas, as the emphasis is more on jokes than information. But tonight's interview with Lisa Miller, whose book on the history of heaven has been the subject of a couple of posts here recently, gave her enough time to explain her book's key points, and was quite funny as well:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Lisa Miller
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

That's the trouble with politics today - not enough eunuchs!

Tadpoles, eunuchs and testosterone deprivation - Science Show - 22 May 2010

A couple of weeks ago there was a somewhat interesting interview on The Science Show with Richard Wassursug, who, as a result of having to be "chemically castrated" himself because of prostate cancer, has developed a big interest in eunuchs.

For example, as to the role of eunuchs in history:

What I found from actually studying eunuchs in history is they were not wimps, as our modern presumption is, these were the most powerful people in government. From one end of Asia to another, for the last 3,500 years, the most stable governments were run by castrated people, and we actually know why. This is unpublished, but with a colleague we've been studying people who wish to be castrated, a very strange group of people, we ran what's called the big five personality test, and we now know what it actually means to have no balls, and it isn't what most people think. The major personality change appears to be in agreeability, which may sound to a macho male like somebody who just obligingly agrees with everybody, but if you actually look at the roles that eunuchs played in history, they had to be great negotiators, they had to be empathetic and listen to both sides of an argument in order to maintain a stable government. That skill is enhanced by getting off testosterone.

In the Australian context, it's hard to imagine Kevin Rudd being oversupplied with testosterone; I think his problems are more just a personality defect.

But Tony Abbott: his testicles have already led to one embarrassing incident, and his exercise obsession has a whiff of overly macho male competitiveness about it. He's the one who would do better as a eunuch, I'm sure.

Update: by co-incidence, I was just at the BBC website, and for some reason this item from 2005, which indicates how castration can be achieved at home, even without instruments, is currently in its "most popular shared story" column:

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage when Geoffrey Jones, 37, rejected her advances at the end of a house party, Liverpool Crown Court heard.

She pulled off his left testicle and tried to swallow it, before spitting it out. A friend handed it back to Mr Jones saying: "That's yours."

By the light of the moon

Japanese firm wants to transform the Moon into a giant solar power plant

The Shimizu Corporation, a Japanese construction firm, has recently proposed a plan to harness solar energy on a larger scale than almost any previously proposed concept. Their ambitious plan involves building a belt of solar cells around the Moon’s 6,800-mile (11,000-kilometer) equator, converting the electricity to powerful microwaves and lasers to be beamed at Earth, and finally converting the beams back to electricity at terrestrial power stations. The Luna Ring concept, the company says, could meet the entire world's energy needs.

Someone there must be looking for free publicity.  I like the first comment:

Pfffft I say Dyson Sphere or bust!

Temperature watch

Temperatures reach record high in Pakistan | World news | The Guardian

Mohenjo-daro, a ruined city in what is now Pakistan that contains the last traces of a 4,000-year-old civilisation that flourished on the banks of the river Indus, today entered the modern history books after government meteorologists recorded a temperature of 53.7C (129F). Only Al 'Aziziyah, in Libya (57.8C in 1922), Death valley in California (56.7 in 1913) and Tirat Zvi in Israel (53.9 in 1942) are thought to have been hotter.

Temperatures in the nearest town, Larkana, have been only slightly lower in the last week, with 53C recorded last Wednesday. As the temperatures peaked, four people died, including a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder and an elderly woman. Dozens are said to have fainted.

The extreme heat was exacerbated by chronic power cuts which have prevented people from using air-conditioning. The electricity has cut out for eight hours each day as part of a severe load-shedding regime that has caused riots in other parts of Pakistan where cities are experiencing a severe heatwave with temperatures of between 43C and 47C.

This article does go on to talk about how hot 2010 is shaping up to be globally, and ends on a cautious note about how some think this is part of "long-term climate change". (Note: journalists still seem too spooked to talk too clearly of AGW.)

It must be small, furry animal news week

Pet rats may harbour deadly fever

There's a warning from an Australian doctor here that some pet rat owners are catching a rare disease from their pets.

It's called "rat bite fever", but as far as I was aware, your "normal" hand raised pet rat pretty rarely bites. (I see from the comments at this site, thought, that it definitely happens.)

Still, the good doctor mentions a case of a Western Australian girl who got an infection but denied having been bitten by her rat. She did clean its cage, though, and perhaps got it that way.

Certainly, good hygiene around pet rats is important, and I would say that rat owners who let them (ugh) lick their teeth (Youtube gives many examples) are simply nuts. But I suspect the danger of a normally clean person catching something from a pet rat is probably no worse than catching toxoplasma from a cat.

In other small, furry animal news

Squirrels show softer side by adopting orphans, study finds

As squirrels rarely interact, they learn who their nearby relatives are by hearing their unique calls, he said. If they fail to hear a relative's calls for a few days, they may investigate. "We suspect that, if they find pups on the territory, they remember that their neighbour was a relative and carry the pups back to their nest. This would be quite intelligent behaviour for a squirrel."

It doesn't happen often though, it seems. I wonder if the much maligned grey squirrels of England do the same thing? It would be good for their PR.

From the "a propos of nothing" files...

Agents portrayed Hitler as gay Jewish eunuch

I think everyone knows that British propaganda in WW2 used to help spread the belief that Hitler was short at least one testicle, but I hadn't realised that they were quite this creative until I stumbled across this 1994 article in The Independent:

Special Operations in London sent out to Gibraltar for distribution in Morocco boxed sets of gramophone records in Arabic making lewd suggestions about Hitler's anatomy....

A po-faced official on the staff of Lord Gort, the Governor of Gibraltar, says side one 'records the story of an Arab caravan journeying to Marrakech'. He bemoans the stagnation of trade in Morocco, and blames Hitler and the fact that British ships are detained in Moroccan ports. But by side two the official is becoming upset. 'It states that Hitler cannot marry and that he hates both Jews and Arabs with a 'fiery hatred' and explains the reason.

'Hitler is a bastard - presumably of Jewish blood - and his original name was Schicklegruber. Some 30 years ago he was but a humble house-painter when one day he was painting the ceiling of a synagogue and fell and damaged one of his testicles]'

The doctor, trained by an Arab, is a former violinist used to giving encores, so when he is applauded for taking off the first testicle, he repeats the performance.

That last bit sounds more like an attempt at humour, really. But Adolf Schicklegruber, I like that.

It's also hard not to be amused by the next part of the article:

The second story has Hitler being visited in his bedroom by Mrs Goebbels, who is shocked to find the Fuhrer has gone to the front to have sex with his generals. The official says in his report to Lord Gort that the Arabs would be likely to be impressed rather than shocked by such behaviour.

Local warming

Hundreds die in Indian heatwave | World news | The Guardian

Record temperatures in northern India have claimed hundreds of lives in what is believed to be the hottest summer in the country since records began in the late 1800s.

The death toll is expected to rise with experts forecasting temperatures approaching 50C (122F) in coming weeks. More than 100 people are reported to have died in the state of Gujarat where the mercury topped at 48.5C last week. At least 90 died in Maharashtra, 35 in Rajasthan and 34 in Bihar.

Interestingly, The Guardian does not specifically mention global warming in the context of this story. I assume that is all part of the new sort journalistic reticence to raise AGW, just at the time global tempertures are in fact on the rise?

Hard to change

The science of a healthy marriage - Times Online

There's not much I particularly wanted to refer people in this article by the writer of a new book on the science of marriage. But this paragraph (about an American study on infidelity in marriage) amused me:

Overall, cheating rates were extraordinarily low—only 11 per cent of respondents reported infidelity. But the scientists also found that cheating was associated with some specific risk factors: being a man; thinking about sex several times a day; having a high number of sexual partners; living in the city; being in a long relationship; living together without marriage; having lived together before marriage and being unhappy.

Possibly important

Failure of Bell's Theorem and the Local Causality of the Entangled Photons

Physicist Joy Christian has had a string of papers recently at arXiv (well, I see now that he has been putting his position in print for a few years) in which he argues that "quantum non-locality" is actually an illusion.

His argument is hard to follow (even by other physicists, it seems) but he talk of an topological error and (to quote from an earlier abstract):

When topologies are correctly identified, local-realistic completion of any arbitrary entangled state is always guaranteed in our framework. This vindicates EPR, and entails that quantum entanglement is best understood as an illusion.

To put it another way, as the paper linked to at the top of this article says:

One of the first steps we often take towards measuring a physical quantity is to set up a Cartesian coordinate system {x, y, z} in the Euclidean space E3. This amounts to modeling the Euclidean space as a 3-fold product of the real line, IR3. This procedure has become so familiar to us that in practice we often identify E3 with its Cartesian model, and simply think of IR3 as the Euclidean space.

As we shall see, however, this seemingly innocuous act of convenience comes with a very heavy price: It is largely responsible for the illusions of “quantum non-locality.” Once a coordinate-free geometric model of the Euclidean space is used, the correlations observed in the EPR-type experiments involving photon pairs ... are easily understood, in a strictly local-realistic terms.

Well, it's not clear to me what this means, but my hunch is that if he might be onto something.

There's not too much about him on the web, but there is a bit of a bio here (and proof that he is a "he", not a she.)

Getting rid of quantum non-locality sounds a good way to make the world more aligned with common sense, but maybe Christian's ideas have their own form of counter-intuitiveness as well. (If only I could understand his explanation of the topological issue.)

One disc to rule them all

Japanese team discovers 'super disc' material

A Japanese research team has found a material that could be used to make a low-price super disc with data storage capacity thousands of times greater than a DVD, the lead scientist said Monday.

And the material is a form of titanium oxide, which has this advantage:

Titanium oxide's market price is about one-hundredth of the rare element -- germanium-antimony-tellurium -- that is currently used in rewritable Blu-ray discs and DVDs, Ohkoshi said.

"You don't have to worry about procuring rare metals. Titanium oxide is cheap and safe, already being used in many products ranging from face powder to white paint," the professor said.

Very clever, those Japanese. Now if only they would get out of the lab and have children...

My ovaries are safe, then

Drinking tea may reduce ovarian cancer risk

It's research from Queensland too. Yay.

Mercury still rising

Experts fear Taiji mercury tests are fatally flawed | The Japan Times Online

The Japan Times keeps up its (I think) single handed media attack on the issue of the mercury poisoning in Japan from eating dolphin.

This latest update questions whether the health of those found with high levels of mercury really has been assessed properly, and includes comments from more experts (including one from pilot whale eating Faroe Islands!) saying that it's crazy for the government to let them keep eating it.

For those interested...

in manufactured chicken sandwiches, I have updated my story about them a few posts back.

Funny 'cos it's true...

As a person who still works in Wordperfect, never uses IE if I can avoid it, and thinks Irfanview is the best image viewer, I understand entirely.

Inconsistent from the start

Abbott no Captain Courageous

Lenore Taylor gives a lists of the ways in which Tony Abbott has been inconsistent in policy since he became leader. She doesn't mention how many positions he had on the ETS in the half year before he became leader, but his flexible views are still on display now:

To audiences such as the listeners of climate sceptic and 2GB host
Alan Jones he says things like ''in the end, this whole thing … should
be a question of fact, not faith - and we can discover whether the
planet is warming or not by measurement and it seems that,
notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man-made CO2 emissions over
the last decade, the world's warming has stopped''.

To the environmental business leaders on Thursday he had a
differently nuanced argument: ''I am confident, based on the science we
have, that mankind does make a difference to climate, almost certainly
the impact of humans on the planet extends to climate.''

There are changes in the last few months that even I hadn't noticed, such as the "Green Army" being downsized from 15,000 to 1,000. It's a corny idea in the first place. There is the hint that he will still try to introduce a bigger "baby bonus" as an election promise.

As Taylor notes, it's only the "ham-fistedness" that has suddenly swept over the Rudd government that has stopped more media concentration on this. But it seems to me a very cogent case she makes for Abbott's unsuitability for top office.

And in other commentary: Michelle Grattan rips into Rudd for the decision to run an expensive ad campaign for his mining tax changes:

TO SAY the government is hypocritical is an understatement. After all Kevin Rudd's sanctimonious statements about getting the politics out of taxpayer-funded advertising, we have Labor's $38 million campaign to sell a new tax.

It's back to John Howard and the GST campaign, ''Unchain My Heart''. Politicians with their backs against the wall can't resist dipping into the public honey pot to help get across their message.

Still, you have to wonder about Rudd's reasoning. Maybe the government is simply desperate - the miners' onslaught has bitten more than expected. Otherwise, it is hard to explain why the PM, already under attack for backflips and broken promises, would further trash his reputation.

Yet the advertising was planned only days after the tax was announced. Maybe the government thinks we won't remember what Rudd said three years ago.

Once again the PM is victim of his own hyperbole. In 2007, he condemned partisan government advertising as a ''cancer on democracy''.

The government doesn't just look hypocritical, but dodgy too.

What an appalling choice between hopeless, awful leadership we have coming up in the next election.

Not enough rats

This blog has been lacking something lately: cute rats:

The well travelled chicken sandwich

It's close to lunch time.

Yesterday, I purchased a pre-packaged "herb chicken" sandwich from Coles supermarket. (They are quite nice.) But I noticed on the packet that it appears to have been made by a company in Victoria.

This seems an extraordinarily long distance for a chicken sandwich to have travelled before it reached my stomach. No wonder Australian CO2 emissions are so high, when our chicken sandwiches have to travel a thousand kilometres before consumption.

This is, of course, something about which we should take action. Local chicken sandwich manufacturing could just be the thing for small pockets of high unemployment. But then, how much CO2 can you really save if the chicken sandwich meat industry is all based in Victoria, and the filling has to travel from there until it makes it to the (local) chicken sandwich factory?

Chickens are raised everywhere though. Surely we don't ship chickens from Brisbane to Victoria to be turned into chicken sandwiches which then travel back to Brisbane?

These are all very vital questions, I am sure you will agree. Write to your local politician and demand a Royal Commission into the Chicken Sandwich Industry of Australia.

Meanwhile, I will try to remember the website of the Victorian company, as soon as I buy my new sandwich today, and report here further.

UPDATE: Relax everyone. The sandwich making company involved has got 'fresh operations' sites in each capital city, including Brisbane. It appears quite possible that my sandwich came from Slacks Creek, a suburb of Brisbane, not Melbourne. (Although the website is not entirely clear on the point.)

According to their website, Australian Convenience Foods makes 14,000,000 sandwiches a year. Some of their range is sold to shops frozen. (I don't think herb chicken is, but I can't find it on the website at all.) I am feeling hungry now.

I have also learned of a new product in their range of stuff you microwave at a convenience shop if you're really desperate:

...we have launched a new burger, ready go eat Double Cheese Burger. It offers high satiety, and is a welcome addition for tradesmen and male teenagers looking for a substantial hot snack or meal.

Well, at least they're very honest about the target market. And "high satiety" is a phrase I look forward to using at the next dinner party I'm invited to.

Playing with God(s)

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti: What happens when three men who identify as Jesus are forced to live together?

I have no idea why this story has a run in Slate now, but it's an account of a fascinating experiment, as follows:

In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach was gripped by an eccentric plan. He gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see if their beliefs would change. The early meetings were stormy. "You oughta worship me, I'll tell you that!" one of the Christs yelled.

As Slate explains, the experiment did not really help any of the three "Christs", and even Rokeach later regretted the unethical nature of what he did.

I'm not so sure he should feel so bad. In the 21st century, we've had years of Big Brother: unethical psychological torture for public entertainment.

Local hero

It's well worth watching this video for a bit of ordinary heroics. It's noteworthy for how little attention the episode, in which he could well have just saved a young life, gets from the other people in the shopping centre.

This is the end....surely

Sex and the City 2 Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes

As I expected, the movie is attracting aggressively bad, and somewhat funny, reviews.

For example, the Salon review notes this about the marriage of "Carrie" and "Big":

Big yearns to lie on the $12,000 leather couch, get fat on takeout food and watch the Weather Channel on his new flat-screen TV -- the character seems to have bypassed his 50s and gone straight to supper-at-Denny's age since the first SATC film -- but through various forms of time-honored feminine coercion Carrie extorts diamond jewelry out of him and drags him to restaurants and red-carpet premieres night after night. Oh, the suffering! They're like the wounded couple in Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage," except with millions and millions of dollars and no souls. When Carrie asks Big, "Am I just a bitch wife who nags you?" I could hear all the straight men in the theater -- all four of us -- being physically prevented from responding.

And that's one of the milder passages from becomes an increasingly savage review.

Surely it's the end of the "franchise".

Conspiracies continue

U.S. Is a Top Villain in Pakistan’s Conspiracy Talk - NYTimes.com

Conspiracy theory is a national sport in Pakistan, where the main players — the United States, India and Israel — change positions depending on the ebb and flow of history. Since 2001, the United States has taken center stage, looming so large in Pakistan’s collective imagination that it sometimes seems to be responsible for everything that goes wrong here.

“When the water stops running from the tap, people blame America,” said Shaista Sirajuddin, an English professor in Lahore....

“People want simple explanations, like evil America, Zionist-Hindu alliance,” said a Pakistani diplomat, who asked not to be named because of the delicate nature of the topic. “It’s gone really deep into the national psyche now.”

One of those pundits is Zaid Hamid, a fast-talking, right-wing television personality who rose to fame on one of Pakistan’s 90 new private television channels.

He uses Google searches to support his theory that India, Israel and the United States — through their intelligence agencies and the company formerly known as Blackwater — are conspiring to destroy Pakistan.

Creator of many worlds

CultureLab: The many-worlds physicist couldn't cope with this one

I've mentioned a fascinating fact about Hugh Everett III here before, and now there is a full biography out about him, his theory, and his sad personal life. Sounds like I should read it.

Be the first to find that hidden alien presence

Moon Zoo

That's my plan, anyway.

Parasite of the day

Dangerous lung worms found in people who eat raw crayfish

I'm not sure why Americans would be eating raw crayfish in the first place (sushi-mi, maybe?), but it can cause a serious parasite infection.

The half-inch, oval-shaped parasitic worms at the root of the infection primarily travel from the intestine to the lungs. They also can migrate to the brain, causing severe headaches or vision problems, or under the skin, appearing as small, moving nodules.

Some of the patients had been in and out of the hospital for months as physicians tried to diagnose their mysterious illness and treat their symptoms, which also included a buildup of fluid around the lungs and around the heart. One patient even had his gallbladder removed, to no avail.

It also happens in Asia:

Paragonimiasis is far more common in East Asia, where many thousands of cases are diagnosed annually in people who consume raw or undercooked crab that contain Paragonimus westermani, a cousin to the parasite in North American crayfish.

Travellers beware, I guess.

The main question

Crop circle season arrives with a mathematical message - This Britain, UK - The Independent

I find it hard to believe that there is anything mysterious behind crop circles, but the big question to my mind remains: why does it seem that crop circle makers are never (or rarely) caught in the act?

Doesn't seem fair

I fought the squirrel… and the squirrel won | Science | The Guardian

According to this brief article, which indicates squirrels in England can be just as invasive as rats in Australia:

Woods says that more and more people are buying traps from him. "However, it's illegal to re-release squirrels into the wild. So if you use a live trap, you need to kill the squirrel yourself and the only legal ways of doing that are shooting it with an air rifle, or putting it in a sack and hitting it on the head."

What's wrong with release? Although grey squirrels are an invasive species there, I thought scientists now thought they weren't causing much harm.

And I see that pro-grey squirrel activists now have their own website. How nice.

Psychiatric disorder of the day

People who are certain they stink, and the psychiatrists who sense this may be a disorder

We've all known of people who have bad body odour but don't know it. It turns out there are people with the opposite problem; they only think they smell:

Patients with the proposed diagnosis of "olfactory reference disorder" (sometimes referred to as a "syndrome") are certain beyond doubt that they stink, when in fact they smell no worse than is average for a 21st century American. According to Dr. Katharine Phillips, director of Rhode Island Hospital's Body Image Program, four in 10 people who likely have the disorder have sought out medical treatments for what they believe to be bad breath, foul body odor, stinky feet or residual fecal or urine smell. Their worry preoccupies them for between three and eight hours a day, on average, and impels patients to shower for hours, consume bars of soap or gallons of mouthwash in a single day -- even to drink perfume in an effort to eradicate the imagined smell.

A slight majority -- 60% -- of sufferers appear to be women, Phillips told her colleagues, and most began to suspect that they emitted foul odors at around 15 to 16 years of age.

Clearly, this is not something author Lionel Shriver suffers from. (See her mention of how her dislike of clothes washing leads her to wear the same clothes for a week, despite her cycling everywhere.) Call me weird, but my description of her as "quite the oddball" at another blog yesterday, when she says in the same interview that she is "eccentric" and thought of as "peculiar," seems entirely apt.

Worth a look

Nitro PDF Reader out to blow away Adobe

This appears to be little more than a PR blurb for some new .pdf software, but it does sound worth a look:

Nitro not only lets people read paperwork scanned in Portable Document Format (PDF) but lets it be annotated, filled-in, or otherwise altered and then saved as files.

Adobe's widely used free reader lets people see and print digitized documents but not tinker with them, a restriction that can foil efforts such as filling in emailed or online PDF forms.

One thing I really hate about the .pdf forms that government websites sometimes provide is how, if you need to put in more words than the box allows, it just keeps reducing the size of the font until it's unreadable. Maybe use of Nitro allows a way around this?

UPDATE: here's the link to the Nitro reader site. It does look pretty good and innovative, but I haven't tried it yet.

Martin Gardner - a belief ignored

The Great Beyond: RIP Martin Gardner

So Martin Gardner, who is well known and respected in skeptic circles, has died at the age of 95.

Apart from his long running maths columns in Scientific American, he is best known for his work “discrediting scientific fraud and quackery”. This means, for example, that he is getting favourable and sympathetic comments from rabid atheist PZ Myers and his followers.

Yet, few people are noting in detail that, despite his generally skeptical take on life, Gardner never became an atheist, and wrote an entire book in which he justified his "philosophical theism."

The book is "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener", and I do have a yellowing copy on my bookshelf. As someone who wrote a review at Amazon explains:

Gardner is a "fideist," meaning that he acknowledges the impossibility of demonstrating rationally the existence of God and related issues, but insisting that faith is an appropriate mechanism for getting around these difficulties. Gardner is never heavy-handed or preachy in his positions, and he gives the arguments against him a fair hearing.

That's a position I basically agree with, and as such I did find it a very good read. Gardner did not go so far as to believe in Christianity, but his position is one that I think any thoughtful Christian could call a very reasonable "fall-back" position.

What I find a little curious, though, is how in atheist circles, like PZ Myers' blog, this aspect of Gardner seems to be being ignored, or at least downplayed. I don't really see why Gardner's views, and his deep faith in "faith", so to speak, should not be the subject of the same ridicule that Catholics and other Christians have faced from Myers. Maybe he just hasn't read the book.

In fact, I am a little curious as to whether Gardner in his later years, was starting to get a bit indignant about the aggression of the "new atheism".

Someone else has already noted that the New York Times obituary paints his religious belief quite misleadingly, if you have read his "Whys.." book. I suspect it is one of his least read, but most deserving, works.

Strangest consequence of 9/11

9/11 attacks linked to loss of male babies | e! Science News

This is a very surprising story:

The stress caused by psychological shock from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, felt even by people with no direct link to the event, may have led to an increased number of male children being miscarried in the US. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Public Health found that the fetal death rate for boys spiked in September 2001, and that significantly fewer boys than expected were born in December of that year...

Bruckner and his colleagues used data from the National Vital Statistics System, which compiles fetal death data from all fifty states of the US, from January 1996 to December 2002 to calculate how many male fetal losses would be expected in a 'normal' September. They found that in September 2001, this figure was significantly exceeded. Speaking about the reasons for this, Bruckner said, "Across many species, stressful times reportedly reduce the male birth rate. This is commonly thought to reflect some mechanism conserved by natural selection to improve the mother's overall reproductive success."

A good comment

A woman writes a really long piece in the Guardian about how much she hated the first Sex and the City movie, even though she loved the series. She thinks the second movie looks even worse, going by the trailer.

This is a topic of mild interest to me, given that I still find it hard to believe that so many women felt that a show about gay men played by women was deep and meaningful. But my favourite comment following the article is this:

At college I wrote essays about the cultural significance of shows like Friends and Frasier, even Dawson's effing Creek.

Then I became an adult.

Read a book, love.

UPDATE: well, yeah, I should be reading a book, but if David Edelstein's take is anything to go by, I will have the pleasure of reading many bad reviews and bitchy comments soon:

The film is an epic eyesore. It’s as if they set out to make a movie that said, “You’re right! We are hideous!” It begins with the nightmarish manic gaiety of Mamma Mia!, with strenuous lockjawed smiles that make you think you’re watching stroke victims. Then Liza Minnelli shows up to perform a gay marriage. Heralded (and hooted at) as the embodiment of camp unreality, she looks more human—nervous but happy to belong somewhere—than the four leads....

Amy Odell, of nymag.com’s The Cut, accompanied me to the screening and was kind enough to whisper that a particular dress of Carrie’s cost 50 grand. But what’s the point of spending that much when the cinematographer, John Thomas, lights Sarah Jessica Parker to bring out the leatheriness of her skin? How did he manage to mummify the lovely Cynthia Nixon? Kim Cattrall, fresh off her witty, subtle work in The Ghost Writer, is costumed to look like a cross between (late) Mae West and (dead) Bea Arthur. Kristin Davis gets by (just) pulling little-girl faces, probably for the last time.