Don't panic

The world is not falling apart: The trend lines reveal an increasingly peaceful period in history.

Steven Pinker sets out to prove that the world is not, despite current impressions, going to rack and ruin with violence.  He does a pretty good job, too.

As for Tony Abbott's "Merry Christmas" warning that terrorism was "likely" - I'm not sure that anyone believes anything he says about anything anyway.   Certainly, historically, it seems Islamic terrorists have chosen never to stage massive attacks during the Christmas season.  But now that I Google the topic, I see that the UK and US media gave some coverage at the start of December to concerns that al-Qaida was planning airline attacks before Christmas.  I don't recall reading that in the Australian media, which is odd, seeing Rupert has developed a large Islamic bee in his bonnet. 

Hey, I seem to have strayed somewhat from the cheery tone that I was aiming for.  Oh well, there's probably an asteroid with Canberra's name on it that Abbott's cuts to science means won't be detected, anyway.

And for the astute observer of this blog, perhaps you can tell from my Marvin-tinged tone, as well as the title, that I recently found that the BCC TV version of Hitchhikers Guide is on Youtube.  You can thank me later.

Cartoonist makes good

Probably it's because I wish I had talent with a pen, but this story of a young guy taking a risk and succeeding in (what I assume is) a very competitive field was really pleasing to watch on 7.30 recently.  

Bad advice, and a nice graphic

Hey, I haven't derided Senator Leyonhjelm for at least 4 hours, so it's time to do so again.  A sign of good politician is that he has a good sense of from whom to take advice.  Leyonhjelm doesn't display that talent:

Leyonhjelm, a self-described “libertarian”, is being advised Max Rheese – the former long-serving executive director of the Australian Environment Foundation – a spin off of the ultra-conservative think-tank, the Institute of Public Affairs.
The AEF describes itself as an “environmental NGO”, but it disputes the science of climate change. And it hates wind energy, urging all its supporters to attend the anti-wind rallies held last year in Canberra, which were hosted by conservative shock jock Alan Jones, the man who elicited the “wind farms are utterly offensive” comments from Treasurer Joe Hockey.
For a taste of what this environmental group thinks about climate science, see this speech in 2010 by then chairman Alex Stuart. One quote: “There is no link between man-made trace greenhouse gases and scenarios of climate catastrophe.” He labels such theories as “catastrophist” and are aimed at “reining in mankind.”

While we're on the topic of global warming, he's a nice graphic from Greg Laden:

But as Senator Leyonhjelm would say:

Good, detailed article on Antarctic sea ice

RealClimate: Clarity on Antarctic sea ice.

Of course, the people who most need educating on this probably won't read it.  

More about a book I didn't care for

My Brother Jack at 50 – the novel of a man whose whole life led up to it | Books | The Guardian

I recently mentioned this book in my post about David Malouf's Johnno.  It was a high school English assigned novel, if I recall correctly, and I didn't much care for it.  (I think the version produced for high school in the 1970's had one or two rude bits excised.) 

Nonetheless, it is somewhat interesting to read about the background of the author, and I didn't recall that the book was only published in 1964.  George Johnston and his wife had moved to the Greek island of Hydra in the 1950's, but certainly did not have a great life despite the book's success:

The wind-whipped Hydra winters are harsh, however. Johnston and Clift had
little money, often living on credit from local shopkeepers. By the time My Brother Jack was published, their marriage was deeply strained; tuberculosis and subsequent medical treatment had rendered Johnston impotent and infidelity was a constant undercurrent of their
relationship. Johnston left Hydra in 1964, a physical shadow of the strapping man who’d departed Australia in 1951. Despite his reputation as a journalist, and the moderate success he’d enjoyed as a novelist, MyBrother Jack was his make or break moment.

He knew that he didn’t have many writing years left. But the success, Johnston’s due, did finally come with the publication of My Brother Jack.

The Johnston-Clifts settled in Mosman, Sydney. Both continued to drink heavily, Clift especially so, although she managed to produce a popular newspaper column while Johnston wrote his famous sequel. This time he wrote no less evocatively about island life in Greece in Clean
Straw for Nothing, in the same way he’d conjured suburban Melbourne from Greece in My Brother Jack.

Clift died of a barbiturate overdose at 45 in 1969, just as Clean Straw for Nothing was about to be published and before it, too, won the Miles Franklin Award.

Johnston died a year later, at 58, before he could finish the third instalment of the Meredith trilogy, A Cartload of Clay. It was published posthumously in 1971.

The postscript was no happier. Shane Johnston committed suicide in 1974. In 1988 Johnston’s daughter by his first marriage, Gae, died of a drug overdose. Then Martin Johnston, an acclaimed poet, died of alcoholism at 42 in 1990. Only Hydra-born Jason Johnston survives.

Self defence

David Leyonhjelm's fall back position from every person being able to carry a pistol will help reduce gun violence (yeah, well, he's still in mourning about not being pat his guns for comfort) is that Australian should at least be able to carry items for self defence.

In this regard, the Wikipedia article on pepper spray is interesting.  I see that it has long been controversial in the States for its likely contribution to scores of deaths, and on the international scene, it is has very variable regulation.  It's not at all uncommon for it to be banned entirely, while other countries may allow it under licence, or for use only in protection against animals.

Tasers are of course controversial for their potential lethality too.  Wikipedia indicates that they are illegal for the public to have just about everywhere, except the Czech republic, and of course, many parts of the United States.

As for knives:  well, they can do a pretty good job at mass killing too, and I am not surprised that they are regulated and that police have concerns about certain groups having one in their possession.  I'm not entirely sure how one regulates so that the police can take one off a bunch of drunken youths in a nightclub area, but leave it with the young woman coming home from the office who thinks it will be useful in self defence.

And really, the dubious utility of allowing people to arm themselves is the big problem for all self defence.   First, the chances of involvement with violent crime for most people, in the course of a lifetime, in a country like Australia, is very very small. Worrying about being armed against attack in a normal day is, I would say, a touch paranoid for nearly all men.  (It's less so for women who are out at night, unfortunately, but statistically I would be sure the reality is far different from the perception.)  But for those who do have exposure to danger,  there is no certainty at all that having a non lethal form of self defence is going to be accessible or useful in the event of attack. 

And, of course, the number of cases in which self defence items are successfully deployed has to be considered in light of the number of times criminals may successful use them aggressively for their own purposes.  And that certainly happens with non lethal items as well as with guns - see these articles from the States in 1995 and just this year about the criminal use of pepper spray, for example.

In the big picture of what's better for society overall, I think most Australians are comfortable with what's illegal from a potential weapon point of view. 

Update:  even nice old Canada can have criminal problems with  pepper spray - where it appears popular for protection against bears - as appears from this report from earlier this year.  There are some surprising figures:

 CALGARY – Police say there’s an alarming increase in the use of pepper spray by local criminals.
In 2011, police recorded 88 incidents where pepper spray was used. A year later that number almost doubled to 161. Then, in 2013 there were 147 incident in the first nine months, which suggests an upward trend
The latest pepper spray incident was during a robbery at the Bay location at Market Mall on Wednesday.

Christmas physics

[1209.0881] A Potential Foundation for Emergent Space-Time

The abstract:

We present a novel derivation of both the Minkowski metric and Lorentz
transformations from the consistent quantification of a causally ordered set of
events with respect to an embedded observer. Unlike past derivations, which
have relied on assumptions such as the existence of a 4-dimensional manifold,
symmetries of space-time, or the constant speed of light, we demonstrate that
these now familiar mathematics can be derived as the unique means to
consistently quantify a network of events. This suggests that space-time need
not be physical, but instead the mathematics of space and time emerges as the
unique way in which an observer can consistently quantify events and their
relationships to one another. The result is a potential foundation for emergent
space-time. 

 But the introduction of the paper itself makes the point a bit clearer:

We demonstrate that concepts of space and time, and their precise relation to one another, can emerge as a representation of relations among causally-related events. While we take causality as a postulate, we have demonstrated in other work [22][23] that it is of benefit to push back further and consider the idea that directed particle particle interactions enable one to define a causal ordering among related events. The basic idea is that everything that is detected or measured is the direct result of something influencing something else. We focus on an intentionally simplistic, but fundamental, picture of  influence where we consider the process of influence to connect and order the act of influencing and the act of being influenced. We refer to each of these two acts with the generic term event, so that the event associated with the act of influencing causes the event associated with the act of being influenced.

Rather sounds like physicists working on a way of supporting Aquinas (or Sound of Music theology - "nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could".)  And - guess what - I see that the work was supported by a grant from the Templeton Foundation.

All rather interesting, anyway.

 

Maybe I should change hangover medicine this holiday season

Ibuprofen boosts some organisms’ life spans | Science/AAAS | News

I like the warning given at the end of the report:

 So far, researchers haven’t shown that any drug extends human life span.
To folks who are impatient, Miller cautions against extrapolating the
study’s results, especially because the side effects of long-term
ibuprofen use can include fatal stomach bleeding. “I think any person
who says, ‘Anything that works in yeast is something I want to take,’ is
asking for trouble.”

A good haircut today? Jawohl!

It was only a few months ago that I told the story of an incident at a post office in Brisbane in about 1979 in which the European man serving me was very sure, from the way I spoke, that I was from Europe, rather than from a house 300 metres down the road.  This happened just after I had returned from staying in youth hostels in New Zealand, where nearly no one picked that I was from Australia.

Fast forward 35 years, and yesterday I went to a new barber about 300 m from my house.  He had a European accent, and after my explanation of what was desired of the hair cut, he said "Are you from Munich?" 

As with the post office incident, the following conversation went something like this:
"Um, no, I'm from Brisbane."
"Really!  I could have sworn you were from Europe. The way you speak English.."
"Er, no.  Born in Brisbane.  Never even been to Germany."
"It just sounds like you learned English in Europe as a second language - I thought German, maybe French.."

And then I told him the post office story from 1979.

The barber, incidentally, was from Spain, and has only been living in Brisbane for a year or so, escaping the terrible economy of that country. So it certainly seems that to at least some European men, I sound very much like English is my second language.

I am not entirely sure what to make of that, but it is at least amusingly odd.  I told my family that it perhaps gives me a certain air of mystery and intrigue.  They aren't convinced.

Old and new (part 2)

OK, I know people will make the comparison about how ageing male singers don't cop the same style of assessment that comes the way of ageing females ones.  But, even while feeling a tad guilty posting this, I still think viewers should be cautious watching this second video.  It's not encouraging for those of us well on the path towards old age.  But few of us, at least, have the heights of youthful gorgeousness from which to descend that Debbie had:


Careful now:

Old and new (part 1)

So, last night I spent a bit of time with the Chromecast looking at music videos, and found that Barenaked Ladies had a new song out last year with an amusing clip.  The comparison of the band members in their younger and older versions is pretty remarkable, but they haven't done too bad in the ageing gracefully stakes:

First, the old:


Then the new:



They always seemed a very cheery bunch.

I'll never look at mince the same way again

Hey, I missed this very amusingly made video from They Might be Giants last year.  Better late than never:

Man, that's cutting...

I like savagely bad movie reviews, but this conclusion of Christopher Orr's thorough beating of, well, the entire Hobbit trilogy really,  gets very, very cutting at the end:

In my review of the second Hobbit installment, I suggested that Jackson had confirmed his standing as the new George Lucas. With this finale, he makes the comparison all the more depressingly concrete. It’s one thing for a director to produce movies worse than the ones he made earlier in his career. But it requires a rare gift—and thank goodness—to produce movies that actually make that earlier work itself look worse.

Heh...

Bolt and IPA connection missed

Well, it seems I am not reading the media closely enough, otherwise I would have given this evidence that, verily, the ABC (Australian/Bolt/Catallaxy) is a closely intertwined (some might say "incestuous") collective a run earlier in the year.

Turns out that Andrew Bolt's son James works for the IPA as Communications Co-ordinator.  

And didn't the Bolt family get upset with the Saturday Paper revealing this, even though James himself, looking rather like a Bolt, is on the IPA website.  As Ackland writes in that diary, there is a remarkable degree of hypocrisy in the Bolt family about public discussion of offspring.   What exactly did Mrs Bolt think the readers of the Saturday Paper were going to do with this somewhat amusing discovery that the Institute most rabidly arguing for legislative changes to an Act because of its use against Andrew Bolt had a Bolt offspring on staff, trying to make sure that its communications on the topic were effective?   Well, I assume that's part of a Communications Co-ordinator's job.

Of course, Labor and common soft left jobs like ABC journalism are chock full of professionally incestuous relationships.   It's just that you don't often hear of such an example where the family involvement in the line being run by the organisation is so direct.

And they didn't get it changed anyway.  How sad...

Merry Christmas, Julia (and bye bye Arthur)

Union royal commission finds no evidence of serious wrongdoing by Julia Gillard | Australia news | The Guardian

This was, of course, always an incredibly safe bet for anyone who had an ounce of common sense, for one simple reason:  if anyone had compelling evidence of Gillard's knowledge of the matter, it would have been used to hurt her politically long, long ago by someone within Labor, let alone the Coalition.

I have said before that it is scandalous that a Victorian police investigation was allowed to drag on for so long given its political sensitivities.  When is it going to announce that it is formally closed vis a vis the ex PM?

And, of course, Andrew Bolt's disgusting role in promoting all of the Michael Smith muck racking via the sleaziest of sleazy characters involved, and that of Pickering and Hedley Thomas, is a blot on the media landscape too.

Update:  I see that Arthur Sinodinos has quit, which is really the right thing to do.  It's unfortunate that one of the few politicians in the Abbott government who is widely liked, and considered moderate and sensible (well, until it came to how to make a quick buck for little work outside of politics) had to go, but them's the breaks.

Update 2:  Bolt and Smith are saying that Heydon's disbelief of Gillard's evidence that she paid for all of it is some sort of damning result against her.  Yeah:  they have to say that to attempt to save face.   In fact, to my mind, Heydon's sections about this read to me as the work of a somewhat eccentric judge.  I mean, have a read of this:

Gillard denied the claim, but the commission believed the account of her builder Athol James, who gave evidence that “she said Bruce was paying for it”.

The commission said there could be alternative explanations for Gillard’s testimony. The first was that she wanted it to be true that she had paid for all the renovations; the second was that she knew her testimony to be false.

It was very unlikely that Gillard’s testimony proceeded only from “some unconscious transmogrification of the truth proceeding from velleity”, the report says.

“She knew that Athol James’s testimony was inconsistent with the position she had developed over the years up to 2012.” The report adds it would be very hard for Gillard to make any concessions; “a cleaner solution was absolute denial”.

Seems to me to quite of bit of unnecessary "thinking out loud" there.

Also, even if one disbelieves Gillard on that question (that she paid for it all and Wilson paid nothing) - who knows what Wilson may have said about the source of the money?  We knew from the evidence that he was one to sometimes go on casino benders - and why could a winning night there not plausibly be the claimed the source of $5000?

There was never hope of proving that Gillard was knowingly receiving money Wilson fleeced from the company, which never pressed for charges against him anyway.   Well, not without the clearest of clear evidence from parties who she had discussed it with.   As I said at the start, if such evidence existed,  it would have been used against her years ago.

So instead the story got recycled as a smear campaign by Smith, Bolt and Thomas for, what, about 3 years now?

It was a disgraceful journalistic performance by all involved, motivated by revenge at her understandable fury that had resulted in the sacking of a lazy journalist (Milne) and an obnoxious one (Smith).

The only good thing to come out of this is that Smith is now even discredited on the Right due to his apparent infatuation with the attention seeking Kathy Jackson.  How's the Smith marriage holding up, I wonder?

Seedy space

Asteroid soil could fertilise farms in space - space - 16 December 2014 - New Scientist

Quite a bit of interesting stuff here about experiments to grow plants on the ISS.

Fuel cell potential

Japan Promotes Home Fuel Cell on Path to Hydrogen Society - Bloomberg

It seems to me that we never hear enough about the potential for fuel cells for domestic use.  Japan has been pretty advanced in this regard, and they are still working on them, as this article indicates.

Within Australia, I wonder what their potential is as an alternative to battery back up for solar?

I never notice anyone writing about that....

A great Lego science moment

How to Measure Planck’s Constant Using Lego | MIT Technology Review

Very cute in a science geek sort of way.

Sometimes a higher profile doesn't help

David Leyonhjelm certainly gained himself a lot of media coverage by claiming that the answer to the Lindt hostage situation would have been for Australia to be more like Texas.

Of course, no other politician in the land that I know of has come out to agree with him (OK, maybe some State upper house nobody from a Shooters Party has - but who cares?), and every column about him that allows comments has been overwhelmed with negative reaction.

So I have my doubts this was good media strategy on his part.

I also thought it's about time his twitter profile was adjusted:

More from the Creighton files

I see that Adam Creighton returns to the line I noticed appearing recently from the Say's Law obsessive Steve Kates at Catallaxy - that the depreciation of the Australian dollar is now, according to these anti-Keynesian, simplistic, government-must-tax-and-spend-less-obsessives, not such a good thing after all.  It hurts people's buying power, don't you know?  

I wrote about this once before, at some length, but it remains all a bit rich, doesn't it?   As I noted then, Sinclair Davidson in 2009 argued that the "price signal" of an increasing dollar meant that Australia had to cut costs or improve quality to keep its exports attractive. I wouldn't mind betting that Creighton and Kates would argue that business and government should still cut costs because that always makes things better, and lets the government return to budget surplus so as to enable the dollar to rise to improve the lot of people who want to holiday overseas and buy their sneakers on line instead of supporting a local shopkeeper.

Businesses and government running things efficiently is obviously a good thing economically.  But the assumption that the answer to everything is "cut costs, cut spending" has to reach a point of diminishing returns somewhere, but you won't hear it from this school of economists.  (Or, in the case of Judith Sloan, if they mention it once - as with her brief advocacy of increasing unemployment benefits - they never like to mention it again.)

And there is this continual thing I see now, repeated by Creighton today, that they really, really like the on line purchasing on the global market, and hate the idea of anything increasing the cost of that (such as trying to make sure too much GST is not avoided that way.)   They also really enjoy their overseas holidays.  (Creighton completely fails to mention the Australian tourism industry - yet it is surely one of the biggest parts of the economy that suffer under a high dollar.)

Now, it's true, I have had Labor voting relatives on a double income with no kids complain about how much tax they were paying under the Howard government, so I know self interest doesn't flow only on one side of politics.   Nonetheless, it is very, very difficult not to conclude that the motivating factor on the small government, CIS/IPA, libertarian side of politics is basically simple selfishness.  "It's my money, leave it alone!"  is what it so often comes down to.

Update:  OK, maybe I am being mean to Adam by already not acknowledging his advocacy for an inheritance tax.  His line is more "it's my money, leave it alone, until I'm dead."    And in any event, his advocacy of it was only on the basis that his taxes while alive are reduced, so I'm not sure that he deserves much credit for altruism for that line of argument.