Saturday, April 25, 2015
Time to retire, Gerard
Gerard Henderson's weekly, self-indulgent bore sessions now appear (and not behind a paywall) at The Australian. This week he gets to re-visit such compelling issues as an ABC Chairman 40 years ago writing a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald in which he defended the airing of a documentary program about pederasty.
Henderson interprets the letter as being a call for sympathetic understanding of pederasty, but it's a bit of culture war cherry picking if ever there was one, given how the letter goes on to refer to uncivilised behaviour. How outrageous, says Gerard, that the current ABC Chairman refuses to apologise for this. If it had been a Catholic Bishop who had done this, how different things would be. (The implication - "everyone has to agree with how I read the letter.")
I think it's clear why Henderson raises this again this week: it's one of the near routine, and pathetic, attempts at a counterattack you see from the Right wing culture warriors any week in which someone from the Churches has come out badly in the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Abuse. In this case, a retired Catholic Bishop who apologises for taking 3 years to stop a pedophile priest from having contact with children, and then writing a character reference for him. Rather more dire, by a magnitude or three, than an academic head of the national broadcaster saying a documentary about pederasty was not intended to offend.
Gerard is scrapping the very bottom of the faux moral equivalence outrage barrel on this one. He really ought to retire, it's becoming so embarrassing some of the lines he chooses to pursue.
He also has a characteristic that Andrew Bolt and a host of other Right wing commentators now routinely display: they don't just spend time trying to explain why a particular take on a matter is wrong; they devote a huge amount of effort to complaining about how people - the media, celebrities, academics - don't agree with them.
It's boring and tedious, and I mainly put it down to a "chip on the shoulder" that they have developed about not being able to convince scientists, academia and sufficient politicians that climate change is a non-issue.
Henderson interprets the letter as being a call for sympathetic understanding of pederasty, but it's a bit of culture war cherry picking if ever there was one, given how the letter goes on to refer to uncivilised behaviour. How outrageous, says Gerard, that the current ABC Chairman refuses to apologise for this. If it had been a Catholic Bishop who had done this, how different things would be. (The implication - "everyone has to agree with how I read the letter.")
I think it's clear why Henderson raises this again this week: it's one of the near routine, and pathetic, attempts at a counterattack you see from the Right wing culture warriors any week in which someone from the Churches has come out badly in the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Abuse. In this case, a retired Catholic Bishop who apologises for taking 3 years to stop a pedophile priest from having contact with children, and then writing a character reference for him. Rather more dire, by a magnitude or three, than an academic head of the national broadcaster saying a documentary about pederasty was not intended to offend.
Gerard is scrapping the very bottom of the faux moral equivalence outrage barrel on this one. He really ought to retire, it's becoming so embarrassing some of the lines he chooses to pursue.
He also has a characteristic that Andrew Bolt and a host of other Right wing commentators now routinely display: they don't just spend time trying to explain why a particular take on a matter is wrong; they devote a huge amount of effort to complaining about how people - the media, celebrities, academics - don't agree with them.
It's boring and tedious, and I mainly put it down to a "chip on the shoulder" that they have developed about not being able to convince scientists, academia and sufficient politicians that climate change is a non-issue.
For ANZAC Day
I see that the Queensland State Library has been putting up some ANZAC Day material for the 100th anniversary, including some good, short videos. I liked this one:
Update: there's also a remarkably good set of World War 1 photos (including some from Gallipoli) up at The Atlantic.
The only reservation I have about them is the way black and white photos tend to make the past look more distant that it really is...
Update: there's also a remarkably good set of World War 1 photos (including some from Gallipoli) up at The Atlantic.
The only reservation I have about them is the way black and white photos tend to make the past look more distant that it really is...
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Nudes from the Brisbane Courier 1933
Update: Well, that put an end to the fun that Brisbane papers had been been following for a while. From the Sunday Mail on 31 March 1929:
Why am I searching old Brisbane papers for reference to nudists? Because I can....
Update 2: this cable news report from America turned up in several Queensland papers around 24 August 1931:
Quite the moral panic...
Update 3: whoever it was who was filing reports for the Australian Cable Service liked to keep the nation informed about the New York nudist threat. On 14 December 1931:
Update 4: Oh no! By 16 December, the arrested indoor nudists had had a win:
Update 5: Good Lord! There were serious nudist outbreaks happening in Sydney, as reported on 1 January 1932:
Update 6: By 16 August 1932, there were news reports which combined both Hitler's rise to power, and the German government crackdown on nudists and women wearing pajamas in restaurants. (I'm not sure, but there's a fair chance that might be the only time Hitler and PJ's ever made it into the same news story.):
The evil sausage
In case you are a visitor who never scrolls down to see if I have updated a post, you should at least look at the latest update to my fermented meat post just a few posts back. The religious history of the sausage gets a mention there...
Daly really wants super tax to bite
Labor’s superannuation tax policy needs more bite | Grattan Institute
John Daly, who impressed lots of people on Q&A recently, thinks the Labor changes to superannuation tax should be much, much tougher. I'm scared for Judith Sloan's bold button if she gets to read this - it will be overworked to oblivion.
John Daly, who impressed lots of people on Q&A recently, thinks the Labor changes to superannuation tax should be much, much tougher. I'm scared for Judith Sloan's bold button if she gets to read this - it will be overworked to oblivion.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Fermented meat and oxygen
I don't understand fermented meat products. Like, how they were invented.
And although it's not fermented meat, I recently found that beef jerky has fairly low calories, and eating some with salad makes for a pretty satisfying lunch when on a "fast " day on the 5:2 diet.
I also realised recently that I didn't know much about how the International Space Station maintains a healthy atmosphere. Some initial looking at websites indicates it's pretty complicated. This also made me realise that I don't know if NASA has any good idea as to the system to use on a Mars mission. Or, for that matter, if Mars One has any idea. Electrolysis of water is a key part of the ISS system; I guess having a Mars base near ice would be very handy, then, for a permanent base. Provided you can trust your equipment to never break down.
I need to do more reading...
Update: a site with the grand name "SoyInfo Centre [World's Most Complete Collection of Soy Information]" has a lengthy essay on the history of fermentation generally, with this somewhat interesting section:
But it still doesn't help with my fermented meat issue, in particular.
Update 2: turns out European fermented sausage is not so old:
From the 1995 book Fermented Meats.
Update the Third: Tim, I know you have a particular interest in fermentation, and did a post on a book all about it. Does it explain how fermented sausage making got started?
Update 4: Brilliant! From Meat Fermentation at the Crossroads of Innovation and Tradition - A Historical Outlook:
And I have learnt that there is a "Dry Salami Institute" (in San Francisco, of all places):
I also did not know of the Catholic controversy over sausages. I'm guessing the phallic shape has something to do with it:
And although it's not fermented meat, I recently found that beef jerky has fairly low calories, and eating some with salad makes for a pretty satisfying lunch when on a "fast " day on the 5:2 diet.
I also realised recently that I didn't know much about how the International Space Station maintains a healthy atmosphere. Some initial looking at websites indicates it's pretty complicated. This also made me realise that I don't know if NASA has any good idea as to the system to use on a Mars mission. Or, for that matter, if Mars One has any idea. Electrolysis of water is a key part of the ISS system; I guess having a Mars base near ice would be very handy, then, for a permanent base. Provided you can trust your equipment to never break down.
I need to do more reading...
Update: a site with the grand name "SoyInfo Centre [World's Most Complete Collection of Soy Information]" has a lengthy essay on the history of fermentation generally, with this somewhat interesting section:
The first solid evidence of the living nature of yeast appeared between 1837 and 1838 when three publications appeared by C. Cagniard de la Tour, T. Swann, and F. Kuetzing, each of whom independently concluded as a result of microscopic investigations that yeast was a living organism that reproduced by budding. The word "yeast," it should be noted, traces its origins back to the Sanskrit word meaning "boiling." It was perhaps because wine, beer, and bread were each basic foods in Europe, that most of the early studies on fermentation were done on yeasts, with which they were made. Soon bacteria were also discovered; the term was first used in English in the late 1840s, but it did not come into general use until the 1870s, and then largely in connection with the new germ theory of disease.Gee. It's easy to forget how something so spectacularly important to 20th century improvements to longevity was only being worked out in the late 19th century.
The view that fermentation was a process initiated by living organisms soon aroused fierce criticism from the finest chemists of the day, especially Justus von Liebig, J.J. Berzelius, and Friedrich Woehler. This view seemed to give new life to the waning mystical philosophy of vitalism, which they had worked so hard to defeat. Proponents of vitalism held that the functions of living organisms were due to a vital principal (life force, chi, ki, prana , etc.) distinct from physico-chemical forces, that the processes of life were not explicable by the laws of physics and chemistry alone, and that life was in some part self determining. As we shall soon see, the vitalists played a key role in debate on the nature of fermentation. A long battle ensued, and while it was gradually recognized that yeast was a living organism, its exact function in fermentations remained a matter of controversy. The chemists still maintained that fermentation was due to catalytic action or molecular vibrations.
The debate was finally brought to an end by the great French chemist Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) who, during the 1850s and 1860s, in a series of classic investigations, proved conclusively that fermentation was initiated by living organisms. In 1857 Pasteur showed that lactic acid fermentation is caused by living organisms. In 1860 he demonstrated that bacteria cause souring in milk, a process formerly thought to be merely a chemical change, and his work in identifying the role of microorganisms in food spoilage led to the process of pasteurization. In 1877, working to improve the French brewing industry, Pasteur published his famous paper on fermentation, Etudes sur la Biere , which was translated into English in 1879 as Studies on Fermentation . He defined fermentation (incorrectly) as "Life without air," but correctly showed specific types of microorganisms cause specific types of fermentations and specific end products. In 1877 the era of modern medical bacteriology began when Koch (a German physician; 1843-1910) and Pasteur showed that the anthrax bacillus caused the infectious disease anthrax. This epic discovery led in 1880 to Pasteur's general germ theory of infectious disease, which postulated for the first time that each such disease was caused by a specific microorganism. Koch also made the very significant discovery of a method for isolating microorganisms in pure culture.
But it still doesn't help with my fermented meat issue, in particular.
Update 2: turns out European fermented sausage is not so old:
From the 1995 book Fermented Meats.
Update the Third: Tim, I know you have a particular interest in fermentation, and did a post on a book all about it. Does it explain how fermented sausage making got started?
Update 4: Brilliant! From Meat Fermentation at the Crossroads of Innovation and Tradition - A Historical Outlook:
Slippery judicial slopes
The Democracy in America blog at The Economist has a post which is relatively sympathetic to the argument that the American voters should decide when they are ready for gay marriage, not the Supreme Court. In it, they note the slippery slope argument for polygamy as follows:
The states' arguments taste of rather weak tea, but the line-drawing point should give pause to even the liberal justices. In framing their view as one of "marriage equality", and in urging a shift from procreation to state-recognised intimacy as the basis of marriage, the challengers of the state bans open themselves up to worries about where this all ends. We don't have to revert to Rick Santorum's ridiculous comparison of homosexuality to "man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be" to imagine polygamists pressing for their day in court were the justices to affirm a new constitutional right to same-sex marriage. There may be much better policy arguments for a ban on polygamy than for prohibitions on gay marriage (and there certainly are strong state interests in maintaining age-of-consent laws) so the worry is not that handing gays and lesbians this new right will destroy marriage as we know it. But the issue will come up, and the justices need to find a way to expand the boundaries of marriage without erasing them.
This could account for some family fallout
Cannabis consumers show greater susceptibility to false memories
One of my impressions of the downside of recreational drug use is that it can lead to relationship breakdown - with parents and siblings - often in families that previously seemed happy.
If this research is correct, it could well give a partial expectation at least for the cannabis user.
One of my impressions of the downside of recreational drug use is that it can lead to relationship breakdown - with parents and siblings - often in families that previously seemed happy.
If this research is correct, it could well give a partial expectation at least for the cannabis user.
Down Mexico way
Why Douching Won't Die — The Atlantic
A rather odd article this, that mainly concentrates on the rise of douching in Mexico. As people in the comments following say, the article is a bit light on with what doctors actually know about the detriments it causes.
A rather odd article this, that mainly concentrates on the rise of douching in Mexico. As people in the comments following say, the article is a bit light on with what doctors actually know about the detriments it causes.
Reviewing reviews of Piketty
John Quiggin � Waiting for the fallout: Australia and return of the patrimonial society
Good post here by JQ talking about Piketty.
Good post here by JQ talking about Piketty.
Yay, a policy, and it seems to make sense
Shorten's superannuation policy to hit accounts over $1.5 million
I can't imagine this policy not being popular with the electorate. I just wonder whether it really goes far enough.
But I will have to wait until Judith Sloan breaks out the bold button until I can tell if it is a really good policy. (If she hates it, it probably is.)
Update: Hilarious, especially if the Coalition ends up doing something similar...
Update 2: Yes! Judith has bolded her objection to this outrageous attack on the cashed up retirees who manage to draw in more than $75,000 per year. That's less than average weekly earnings, she tells us. What she doesn't mention is that average receiver of average weekly earnings pay tax on it - about $16,000 worth.
I can't imagine this policy not being popular with the electorate. I just wonder whether it really goes far enough.
But I will have to wait until Judith Sloan breaks out the bold button until I can tell if it is a really good policy. (If she hates it, it probably is.)
Update: Hilarious, especially if the Coalition ends up doing something similar...
Update 2: Yes! Judith has bolded her objection to this outrageous attack on the cashed up retirees who manage to draw in more than $75,000 per year. That's less than average weekly earnings, she tells us. What she doesn't mention is that average receiver of average weekly earnings pay tax on it - about $16,000 worth.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Dark matter, cancer, dinosaurs and galaxies
Dark Matter’s Deep Reach - NYTimes.com
I had missed Bee Hossenfelder's suggestion, referred to in the open of this decent article on dark matter, that weakly interacting dark matter passing through humans might be capable of causing cancer. (But the effect would be way less than the risk from cosmic rays.) Another suggestion is that it may contribute to volcanism.
Both rather interesting suggestions. As is the one I read elsewhere today, that perhaps there is evidence for dark matter interacting with itself via a force only it feels.
I had missed Bee Hossenfelder's suggestion, referred to in the open of this decent article on dark matter, that weakly interacting dark matter passing through humans might be capable of causing cancer. (But the effect would be way less than the risk from cosmic rays.) Another suggestion is that it may contribute to volcanism.
Both rather interesting suggestions. As is the one I read elsewhere today, that perhaps there is evidence for dark matter interacting with itself via a force only it feels.
This would not be good...
Weather: Bangkok may set heat record today; relief by Thursday. | Bangkok Post: learning
Parts of Bangkok may be hit with temperatures of up to 41 degreesCan't be healthy for those in slums.....
Celsius today. High humidity could create additional problems for those
without access to air-conditioning. By Thursday, it will be much cooler,
however.
Somewhat depressing
Permafrost feedback update 2015: is it good or bad news?
Here's a good article summarising the present state of understanding of the risk from carbon leaking out of melting permafrost. Long story short - catastrophic bursts of methane are still considered unlikely (despite craters found in Siberia), but the long term issue of carbon leaking as permafrost melts is still serious - like adding another United States' worth of emissions.
Scenarios like this make me wonder whether research should be more about carbon sequestration - not from carbon capture from burning fossil fuels, which should stop anyway, but capture and sequestration from the atmosphere. The only serious method proposed for that is ocean fertilization, as far as I know. I'm not sure that it has been looked into in enough detail...
Here's a good article summarising the present state of understanding of the risk from carbon leaking out of melting permafrost. Long story short - catastrophic bursts of methane are still considered unlikely (despite craters found in Siberia), but the long term issue of carbon leaking as permafrost melts is still serious - like adding another United States' worth of emissions.
Scenarios like this make me wonder whether research should be more about carbon sequestration - not from carbon capture from burning fossil fuels, which should stop anyway, but capture and sequestration from the atmosphere. The only serious method proposed for that is ocean fertilization, as far as I know. I'm not sure that it has been looked into in enough detail...
An extraordinarily dubious exercise
Asylum seekers returned to Vietnam by Australian Navy had claims assessed at sea, UNHCR says
That headline doesn't quite gel with the body of the story, as it sounds as if the UNHCR does not know the details of the "screening" at all.
I also consider it rather likely that a boatload of Vietnamese on a boat may have better reason to be leaving their country than the average Muslim Middle Eastern refugee leaving Indonesia or Malaysia to get to Australia.
And I still think it is a scandalous matter the way this government uses "operational matters" to refuse to disclose details of what they have just done.
Why is the lazy media just shrugging their shoulders about that?
That headline doesn't quite gel with the body of the story, as it sounds as if the UNHCR does not know the details of the "screening" at all.
I also consider it rather likely that a boatload of Vietnamese on a boat may have better reason to be leaving their country than the average Muslim Middle Eastern refugee leaving Indonesia or Malaysia to get to Australia.
And I still think it is a scandalous matter the way this government uses "operational matters" to refuse to disclose details of what they have just done.
Why is the lazy media just shrugging their shoulders about that?
Monday, April 20, 2015
A complex matter
Serving All Your Heroin Needs - NYTimes.com
This was an interesting article about the new sales mechanism for heroin in the United States, and its relationship with the apparent over-prescription of opioid painkillers in that nation.
The opening paragraph sets the scene:
If people can't even safely self administer a high quality legal opioid, what do reformers suggest as an the answer to that problem if you allowed them to be legalised? A massive expansion of the type of supervised drug taking that is inherent in the methodone program? (In Australia, at least, the addict attends the pharmacy and has to drink their dose in front of staff.) Yet drug legalisation proponents are often libertarians who hate the nanny statism that would be part of that. And besides, not everyone can fit a daily visit to a clinic discretely into their work or domestic life...
This was an interesting article about the new sales mechanism for heroin in the United States, and its relationship with the apparent over-prescription of opioid painkillers in that nation.
The opening paragraph sets the scene:
FATAL heroin overdoses in America have almost tripled in three years.As I have commented before, this startling fact about the number of people who die in America via prescription opioids surely should make people somewhat skeptical of one of the key arguments for drug decriminalisation at least with regard to heroin - that it is not so much the drug that kills, but the poor and variable quality of the black market version that people are forced to buy.
More than 8,250 people a year now die from heroin. At the same time,
roughly double that number are dying from prescription opioid
painkillers, which are molecularly similar. Heroin has become the
fallback dope when an addict can’t afford, or find, pills. Total
overdose deaths, most often from pills and heroin, now surpass traffic
fatalities.
If people can't even safely self administer a high quality legal opioid, what do reformers suggest as an the answer to that problem if you allowed them to be legalised? A massive expansion of the type of supervised drug taking that is inherent in the methodone program? (In Australia, at least, the addict attends the pharmacy and has to drink their dose in front of staff.) Yet drug legalisation proponents are often libertarians who hate the nanny statism that would be part of that. And besides, not everyone can fit a daily visit to a clinic discretely into their work or domestic life...
Something useful out of the muck
It's extraordinary how the ratbaggery of marginalised Right wing opinion know as Catallaxy is intensifying over the years. Alan Moran too much of an anti-Islamic extremist for the IPA? No problem - let him continue his clean energy jihad at Catallaxy; and by the way, he's now an expert on Darling River water flows too - one of the most intensely scrutinised Australian environmental issues in which I thought there was a consensus amongst virtually every interested party in the land, except for shrill, climate change denial funded, independent researcher Jennifer Marohasy; oh, and Moran too. (Actually, if I recall correctly, Judith Sloan has commented on it dismissively in the past too. "Climate change - as if" is her considered position on anything related to the issue.)
Sinclair Davidson, quite possibly the only academic in the land who couldn't see how calling an aboriginal man an ape could be racist, also can't see the tackiness problem with Woolworths alluding to their advertising slogan in an ANZAC poster. Even Andrew Bolt could see that one.
Judith Sloan discovered the bold function about a year ago and now can't stop shouting at everyone in every post. She's an expert on caesarean birth rates too, apparently.
And yet, shouting, sarcastic Judith has done some useful - shown in comments that Catallaxy favourite (well, except when it comes to gay marriage and the conservatives) David Leyonhjelm made up a policy suggestion in ignorance of the background. Who could be surprised - it was about clean energy, something the Bald One thinks is completely unnecessary.
The details are here: Leyonhjelm had a suggestion published in the AFR as to how to "fix" the RET:
Quite a "whoopsie".
So thanks Judith! Can you give me a big, bold, shouty call out?
Sinclair Davidson, quite possibly the only academic in the land who couldn't see how calling an aboriginal man an ape could be racist, also can't see the tackiness problem with Woolworths alluding to their advertising slogan in an ANZAC poster. Even Andrew Bolt could see that one.
Judith Sloan discovered the bold function about a year ago and now can't stop shouting at everyone in every post. She's an expert on caesarean birth rates too, apparently.
And yet, shouting, sarcastic Judith has done some useful - shown in comments that Catallaxy favourite (well, except when it comes to gay marriage and the conservatives) David Leyonhjelm made up a policy suggestion in ignorance of the background. Who could be surprised - it was about clean energy, something the Bald One thinks is completely unnecessary.
The details are here: Leyonhjelm had a suggestion published in the AFR as to how to "fix" the RET:
With this problem looming and negotiations between the Government and Opposition stalled, late last year I developed a detailed reform package for the RET. Since most opposition to reform is based on cuts to the 41,000 GWh large scale target, my plan is to maintain this but to recognise established hydro generation in the calculations – essentially Snowy Hydro and Hydro Tasmania – which together produce about 15,000 GWh.But as Judith notes in comments:
David, I don’t think this is going to work. Hydro is defined as renewable (see Section 17 of the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 and is already counted in the 16 to 17K of MWh being produced from renewables currently. It is already being counted.And then Leyonhjelm admits:
After this was published I was informed that “old” hydro had been counted when the original target was established under Labor. I was told the total electricity market was estimated at 300,000 GWh in 2020, of which 20% is 60,000. Deduct 15,000 for existing hydro leaves the target of 45,000. Of this, 4,000 was allowed for small scale solar (ie roof top panels) and 41,000 for large scale (mainly wind). It is reduction in the latter target that is now the subject of dispute.
Adding back old hydro (without attracting Renewable Energy Certificates) would bring us close to 20% renewable anyway (as we won’t be anywhere near 300,000 by 2020) so the case is still arguable, but I acknowledge it would be double counting.
Quite a "whoopsie".
So thanks Judith! Can you give me a big, bold, shouty call out?
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