The future is squid

The most interesting thing in last week's episode of Last Chance to See was the close up look at the Humboldt squid. I had read something about these appearing in larger numbers lately, but don't recall ever seeing them on TV before:



The guy in that video claimed he knew a fisherman who, while swimming between boats, had been seriously attacked by a swarm of them. According to Wikipedia (who knows with what accuracy), they aren't really that big danger to humans:

Although Humboldt squid have a reputation of being aggressive, the only reports of aggression towards humans have occurred when reflective diving gear or flashing lights have been present as a provocation. Roger Uzun, a veteran scuba diver and amateur underwater videographer who swam with a swarm of the animals for about 20 minutes, said they seemed to be more curious than aggressive.^[5] In reality, there is very likely little danger to humans.

Yet further down in the same article:

Recent footage of shoals of these animals demonstrates a tendency to meet unfamiliar objects aggressively. Having risen to depths of 130–200 metres (430–660 ft) below the surface to feed (up from their typical 700 metre (2,300 ft) diving depth, beyond the range of human diving), they have attacked deep-sea cameras and rendered them inoperable. Reports of recreational scuba divers being attacked by Humboldt Squid have been confirmed.

And more:

There are numerous accounts of the squid attacking fishermen and divers in the area.

Finally, the Wiki entry ends on this slightly worrying note for those who would like their children to be able to swim in the ocean without the risk of attack by swarms of aggressive squid:

A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that by the end of this century ocean acidification will lower the Humboldt squid's metabolic rate by 31% and activity levels by 45%. This will lead the squid to have to retreat to shallower waters where it can uptake oxygen at higher levels.^[24]

Catching malaria for good

Quite a surprise to read on the BBC about volunteers who are letting themselves catch malaria in the lab in order to test a new vaccine:

US army medic Joseph Civitello admits that becoming deliberately infected with malaria - one of the world's deadliest diseases - is "definitely nuts".

But without such volunteers, it would be almost impossible to test a new vaccine aimed at protecting the military overseas and preventing some of the estimated 300 million cases of malaria that occur every year.

First Sgt Civitello is part of the world's first clinical trial of a vaccine against Plasmodium vivax - the most widespread strain of malaria.

It's not as deadly as Plasmodium falciparum, which is endemic in Africa and kills millions of people, but it can resurface years after infection and still make its victims extremely ill.

"It was weird because I did this knowing I was going to get sick," says Sgt Civitello.

And the compensation for this: not much, by the sounds:

Volunteers in the world's first Plasmodium vivax malaria vaccine trial are given several thousand dollars in compensation. They say the money is an incentive, but most take part because they want to further medical science.

A well deserved thanks for service to humanity, Sgt Civitello.

"I have better things to do than make sense"

I can’t help but post again about the erratic Judith Curry.

As I noted before, she’s off to Washington soon to give evidence at a congressional hearing at the invitation of Republicans. So what does she do at her blog? Put up a post inviting her blog readership (who in a previous post, self identified as, I would guess, about 90% sceptics) to tell her what they think is known with confidence. [She doesn't say that this is related to her upcoming testimony, but it's kind of peculiar timing.]

One commenter asks the obvious:

Dr Curry, rather than setting an exam question for your pupils here, how would *you* answer the following? [Being the confidence question]

Curry makes no response.

When another, more sympathetic commenter asks her to respond to the criticisms other climate change blogs have made of her, she responds that “it’s coming” (as it has been for weeks), and adds this:

At this point I have no time to read stuff at RC or anywhere else for that matter. I frankly have better and more important things to do than deal with the little tempests created elsewhere in the climate blogosphere…

Yes, like asking skeptics to guide her in her testimony? And it's some freaking "little tempest". It's virtually the rest of the mainstream climate science scientific community telling her she is making major mistakes in many of her criticisms of the IPCC reports and process, and she does not respond in any detail.

CO2 up, temperature up

A study of what happened with increasing CO2 and higher temperatures 40 million years ago indicates that the CO2 came first, not vice versa:

“We found a close correspondence between carbon dioxide levels and sea surface temperature over the whole period, suggesting that increased amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere played a major role in global warming during the MECO,” said Bohaty.

The researchers consider it likely that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the MECO resulted in increased global temperatures, rather than vice versa, arguing that the increase in carbon dioxide played the lead role.

“The change in carbon dioxide 40 million years ago was too large to have been the result of temperature change and associated feedbacks,” said co-lead author Peter Bijl of Utrecht University. “Such a large change in carbon dioxide certainly provides a plausible explanation for the changes in Earth’s temperature.”

And what conclusion do they reach about climate sensitivity:

The authors conclude that the climate sensitivity during the MECO led to a 2- to 5-degree C increase per doubling of atmospheric CO2.

Which is pretty much the range the IPCC expects.

Why electricity is going up

Michael Stutchbury gives an account of why electricity prices have been going up, and why a carbon tax would not add to that process as much as people think. Here’s a key section:

Sims's key point is a carbon price won't lift household electricity bills as much as typically figured. A modest carbon price has been estimated to push up wholesale prices by 60 per cent or so, translating into a 24 per cent or so rise in household retail bills.

But a carbon price world shouldn't be contrasted with the old status quo world. Instead, it should be compared with the actual alternative of carbon price uncertainty and the high-cost renewable schemes that are driving electricity bills higher anyway.

A carbon price could actually ease pressure on household electricity bills, assuming we're serious about hitting our target of cutting emissions by 30 per cent on business-as-usual levels by 2020. "A carbon price will see electricity prices increase by less than they would by pursuing a given greenhouse gas reduction target by the current greenhouse schemes," Sims told the committee.

This of course requires the Greens to accept that expensive renewables should no longer be mandated because they cost more than a carbon price to do the same emissions-reduction job. This extends to Gillard's own expensive $400 million "cash for clunkers" scheme which, like the Coalition's greenhouse direct action, shifts the problem on to the budget.

I was also interested to note this earlier part:

The recent surge is mostly driven by "network costs", which will account for two-thirds of the rise in regulated NSW power prices in the five years to 2012-13.

These distribution costs are rising in line with increasing peak demand, such as on hot days, and reflect our vigorous population growth and modern prosperity. Three out of every four Brisbane homes have air conditioners, compared with one in four only a dozen years ago.

More, bad, ocean news

I've made the observation before that, even if CO2 do-nothings are correct in saying that increased CO2 will lead to more ocean algae (which is basically fish food so what are ya worrying about?), not all algal blooms are good. Toxic algal blooms happen near populated coastlines where lots of nutrients from run off and sewerage fertilized the water, but what of the deeper ocean water?

This article says that the dangerous type of algae are indeed away from the coast, and it appears it is encouraged by the limited iron fertilization experiments that have taken place to date:

They joined Ken Bruland, professor of ocean Sciences at UCSC, on a research cruise to study iron chemistry in oceanic waters of the Gulf of Alaska. During this expedition, they collected water samples and found the algae and its toxin in nearly all of the natural oceanic environments throughout the region. This prompted them to examine older, stored samples from other sites around the Pacific, and again they found the toxin in most samples.

Then, with the help of Kenneth Coale, director of Moss Landing Marine laboratories and principal investigator on several cruises that conducted classic iron enrichment experiments in the Pacific, they retrieved samples and found both Pseudo-nitzschia and substantial amounts of toxin. Their findings show that iron enrichment indeed promotes high levels of toxins in the open sea, sometimes as high as those in coastal regions, where deaths of seabirds and mammals occur. The authors of this PNAS paper also noted that iron enrichments can occur naturally, suggesting that the high levels of toxins may also have occurred when iron was added by wind-blown dust and other climate and geological processes.

OK, so it probably happens naturally too. That's not to say it's such a good idea to cause more widespread toxic waters than what we see already.

And in other worrying news, another study suggests that elkhorn coral has its reproductive success greatly limited by ocean acidification. It's not that coral reefs will ever start fizzing due to an acid ocean, but as they are worn down by mechanical action, warm water bleaching and other damaging factors, they may not grow back.

Thugee investigation

I ended up watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom again last night on TV (I can’t help it – has there ever been a better directed and edited action/comedy movie ?  That’s a rhetorical question, the answer is “no”.  There’s something clever or witty that I like about every 8 seconds of its running time.)

Anyhow, it got me thinking: amongst the many topics in history I don’t know all that much about,  thugee in Indian is high amongst them.  Of course, I doubt that they were into magical heart removal or voodoo dolls, but how exactly they did kill, and whether or not they were that closely connected with Kali worship; well that’s all a bit of an unknown to this blogger. 

The Wikipedia article gives a bit of a general overview, but I felt it wasn’t the best example of that site’s work.  (Although it does get marks for mentioning Temple of Doom, which it probably does on the wise presumption that people like me would have their interest piqued by the movie.)  It does seem there has been a bit of historical revisionism going on about what exactly thugee was really all about.

A bit further down on the Google list showed a link to a book about it.  This link was to one of those download sites that seem to be all about hoping people will pay for the “fast” download for a (likely?) pirate copy of a movie or book.  I don’t think I have ever successfully used one of those sites before; the slow free download usually takes forever and I have given up when seeing the hopeless speed. 

But last night I did try it, and got a pretty fast free download.  I then tried to do it direct to the iPad, using Goodreader (one of the limitations of an iPad is that you can’t directly save .pdf or other web files directly from the browser.  You have to use an App such as Goodreader.)   That didn’t work, but I eventually got the book into my iPad via my computer and iTunes.

So, now I have a free .pdf of a book on my iPad which I actually want to read, or at least skim.  I will report further on any thugee discoveries as they come.

Dawn Treader is coming

The Narnia films have been very, very good. The third one, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is being released on 9 December, and yet I fear it is receiving inadequate publicity.

People in Brisbane who were able to visit one of the film locations (as my family did) have a particular reason to look forward to seeing it.

Really, Walden Media do very high quality films generally, and as it appears that the success of this film will determine whether or not the series comes to an end, all readers are hereby commanded to go see it.

Here's my bit to help promote it:

Putting the last election in perspective

The Economist has a chart that shows how, compared to Europe, Australians were complete wusses when it came to worrying about how long it took to form a government after the last federal election.

Curry in Washington

So, I see that Judith Curry has been invited (by the Republicans - so guess what purpose they hope her to fulfill) to a congressional hearing in Washington to talk about uncertainty in climate change. Seems to me they may do better to question uncertainty in Curry.

There hasn't been talk of this at James Annan's or Michael Tobis's blogs yet; they have been left waiting for Judith to explain how she didn't get her "Italian flag" comments on uncertainty very wrong. (I'm not sure how many times she has promised a direct answer is coming, but it's been quite a few.)

But Bart Verheggen has a useful suggestion to her on what she should concentrate on:

Facts and framing: Both are important

When it comes to science communication, the facts are the baseline from which one absolutely cannot stray; but at the same time, we have to be aware that people respond most strongly to the frame.

Uncertainty and risk

Remember that the political attack is also largely scientific in nature, at least in terms of its framing. It exaggerates uncertainty about particular scientific studies (…) in order to distract from the big picture.

So any scientist walking into this context had better be ready for one obvious trap: Being lured into talking about uncertainty to the detriment of what we actually know.

This is in sharp contrast to what Judith Curry is pushing for: Framing the issues in terms of uncertainty and stressing what we don’t know. I am in firm agreement with Chris Mooney here. Judith’s strategy is a dead end in terms of increasing the public’s knowledge about climate change.

Conversations about uncertainty invoke a frame which in the public mind is easily confused with doubt. Non-scientists have a very different perception of uncertainty than scientists. Framing what we know and don’t know in terms of risk is much more useful in getting the message across, because it leaves less room for misinterpretation (there is less of a gap in how this term is understood, whereas “uncertain” to a layperson means “I don’t know”).

You should read all of his post: it's very good.

Who knows, Curry could surprise us all and not leave everyone totally confused as to what her position is. But if her blog is anything to go by, she'll prefer to inconclusively waffle and be happy that she's muddied the waters further.

Update: A lengthy, detailed critique of Curry has turned up on Climate Progress. It's pretty devastating, and confirms even further how it is completely impossible to tell what she believes. It's not as if her apparent conversion to an "uncertainty is everything" view of climate change is actually backed up in her blog or elsewhere with detailed analysis and a critical reappraisal of her previous statements. It just seems to be "the vibe" which she wants to promote.

As Romm says towards the end of the post:

Curry is not the one who brings “uncertainty” into the discussion of climate science. Well, let me rephrase that. Curry is a confusionist who brings uncertainty into any discussion, but it is a canard of Curry-esque proportions to assert that scientists have not clearly explained the nature and extent of these uncertainties. They have bent over backwards to do so.

Interesting job vacancy

Bishops in America are sponsoring a two-day conference on exorcism in response to a growing interest in the rite and because of a shortage of trained exorcists nationwide.

The Conference on the Liturgical and Pastoral Practice of Exorcism, on November 12-13, will be attended by 56 bishops and 66 priests.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance, said he knew of perhaps five or six exorcists in the United States. They are overwhelmed with requests to perform the rite, he said.

“There’s this small group of priests who say they get requests from all over the continental US,” Bishop Paprocki said.

As seen in the Catholic Herald.

Toying with the Pad

By virtue of a salesman who signed me up on something else, I recently acquired an iPad. I was sceptical of just how good or useful these could be, but I have to admit, it is a much more charming device than I expected.

The first and most obvious benefit I had overlooked was browsing the internet in bed. Of course you could do this with a netbook too, but it’s the touch screen navigation that really makes it simple and enjoyable. They could certainly do with a browser that has a scroll bar down the side, but I assume it will come.

Apps for the iPad are, especially in the free category, very much like fast food: enjoyable enough for a short time but not really satisfying for long time use. Clearly, you can do some good things with some of the art/drawing programs. (I paid for Sketchbook Pro, but haven’t really learned how to use it well yet.) And occasionally, a free game proves both entertaining and educational: the kids and I are really enjoying Doodle Hangman at the moment. (The animation is quite amusing.) There is also a certain pleasure in hunting for free (or cheap) app bargains when they go on sale or become free.

But it may turn out that the best reason for an iPad for many people would be cheap magazine subscriptions. I haven’t signed up for any yet, but the Zinio service promises subscriptions that are very cheap compared to receiving the paper copy. The Australian Zinio website is here. It would appear, for example, that I can get Fortean Times, an enjoyable read which (when I last saw it in a newsagent, which was some time ago) was costing nearly $12, for a tad over $4 an issue.

Science, the weekly AAAS publication, costs only $100 for a year! Zinio says the cover price would be $512. This seems well worth looking into.

I'm not really convinced that the iPad is so good to read entire novels. Perhaps an e-reader will always be better for that. But you don't usually sit down to read a magazine at one long session. You pick it up when you have time, read an article, get interrupted, and come back to it later. So for this use, and with the benefit of nice colour, the iPad does seem ideal.

"How to waste time" by Judith and Roger

One thing her blog is certainly indicating is that Judith Curry likes the sound of her own voice.

A couple of weeks ago, elsewhere on the internet, I expressed the view that Curry may well end up just being just another, policy delaying, time waster. After all, as I noted here a couple of months ago, Roger Pielke Snr, a climate scientist widely appreciated by do-nothing climate skeptics for his continual complaint that other climate scientists weren't looking at land use and uncertainty in local effects of climate change in enough detail, came out and said at Skeptical Science:

“In terms of CO2, we do not even need to discuss global warming to be concerned by uncontrolled increases in its atmospheric concentration. We see directly from observations of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 that humans are increasing its levels. If global warming were not occurring at all, we should still be concerned.”

Yes, well, thanks then Roger, for your ongoing contribution to policy paralysis by letting your complaints be used as implicit support for those who want nothing done about CO2 and successfully agitate politically for same.

Today, Judith Curry gives a strong indication that she may be heading down the same path. In her post about why it is worth engaging skeptics, she says she thinks the AGU (American Geophysical Union) is dealing with the climate change as a scientific/policy issue in a good way. (As opposed to other science groups who says are getting too politically involved.)

So, a reader points her to the AGU's 2007 position statement on climate change, which starts with "The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and warming" and near the end says:

"If this 2 degrees of warming is to be avoided then our net annual emissions of CO2 must be reduced by more than 50% this century. With such projections there are many sources of scientific uncertainty, but none are known that could make the impact of climate change inconsequential. "

It goes on to note that there could be "surprises" that cause more disruptions than predicted by models.

So what does Judith say about this statement which sounds about as supportive of the IPCC position as you can get?:

This is a good and appropriate statement, I don’t have any problem with it.

What on earth is she on about, then? Is she making sense to anyone?

Judith, if you're going to finally come to a position, argued with facts and logic, that there is inadequate certainty in climate science for firm policy to be decided now, spit it out. (I'm sure earlier on in one of your blog comments you indicated this is where you would be heading.)

But if the blog is just a reason to bloviate about how you feel climate scientists have hurt their own case by becoming too political and need to talk nicer to skeptics, yet at the end of the day you agree that there is a need for quite urgent action to reduce CO2 emissions, then just say that now.

Otherwise, you're just a time waster encouraging social and political inaction.

Tick alert

There is a surprising number of people turning up at hospital in the Sunshine Coast hinterland (Nambour Hospital?) with tick bites at the moment:

"We have had through our emergency department, maybe at least 15 to 20 in the last week or so through the doors.

"This season is very unusual in the fact that the bites are very serious and that people are developing very significant allergic reactions, in fact life-threatening allergic reactions to the tick bites.

"The main symptoms are rash, feeling grossly unwell, sometimes asthma and sometimes diarrhoea and vomiting."

Biofuel worry

If this report is anything to go by, European environmental groups have definitely developed cold feet about biofuels being a good idea:

European plans to promote biofuels will drive farmers to convert 69,000 square km of wild land into fields and plantations, depriving the poor of food and accelerating climate change, a report warned on Monday.

The impact equates to an area the size of the Republic of Ireland.

As a result, the extra biofuels that Europe will use over the next decade will generate between 81 and 167 percent more carbon dioxide than fossil fuels, says the report.

Ocean acidification updated – not much to celebrate

A news blog in Nature has some bad news:

Thanks to rising carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels, some Arctic waters are already experiencing pH dips that could be harmful to sea life. What’s more, this acidification seems to be happening more rapidly than models have predicted.

This sobering conclusion was reached by researchers who met on Wednesday to discuss ocean acidification at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver. “Models are probably underestimating at least by a few years the impact of ocean acidification in the Arctic,” says Jeremy Mathis, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. “We don’t know what the organisms’ responses are yet, but the conditions are already there to potentially be disruptive to the ecosystems.”

Marine organisms from plankton to crabs are dependent on carbonate ions in the ocean to build their skeletons and shells. But as CO₂ dissolves in the water it lowers the pH, which shrinks the pool of such ions available for animals to use.

One important source of carbonate ions is aragonite, a particularly soluble form of calcium carbonate. Seawater is usually saturated with aragonite. However a recent study in Biogeosciences estimated that by 2016, according to the IPCC’s mid-range emissions projections, aragonite will fall below this level in some Arctic waters for at least one month a year. By the end of the century, it predicts that the entire Arctic Ocean could be under-saturated with respect to aragonite.

“But we don’t have to wait until 2016,” says Mathis. “We’re already seeing places in the Arctic where these under-saturations are happening now.” High latitude waters in the Arctic and Antarctic are particularly sensitive to pH changes, as cold waters absorb more gas than warm waters.

Researchers at the symposium were particularly concerned about pteropods – tiny sea snails that are highly sensitive to acidification. Pteropods make up about half the diet of juvenile pink salmon living in Gulf of Alaska. And they could be affected at pH levels very close to those that the region is already experiencing. “It’s not going to take a great deal of CO₂ intrusion in high latitude seas to get to a point where the water could become corrosive to some marine calcifying organisms,” says Mathis.

As for the pteropods, decreasing pH is not good for them, but nor is increasing termperatures. A recent study reports:

We conclude that pre-winter juveniles will be negatively affected by both rising temperature and pCO₂ which may result in a possible abundance decline of the overwintering population, the basis for next year's reproduction.

Also, another recent study estimating pH changes in the Meditteranean reports:

For the first time, the level of acidification is estimated for the Mediterranean Sea. Our results indicate that for the year 2001 all waters (even the deepest) have been acidified by values ranging from -0.14 to -0.05 pH unit since the beginning of the industrial era, which is clearly higher than elsewhere in the open ocean.

And down around Australia, for those who love their Sydney rock oysters, a study suggests that they may be replaced by the bigger Pacific oyster due to increasing CO2 in the oceans. Pay attention, rock oyster lovers.

The only “upside” are some studies arguing that some coastal phytoplankton that are already used to large swings in water pH may not suffer as CO2 increases. It doesn’t tell us much about the wider ocean, though.

The effect of abuse

Although it’s easy to imagine how much childhood sexual abuse must play havoc with the victim’s emotional development, I must admit I didn’t realise that it is even related to later onset of psychosis:

A team of Monash University researchers has released the findings of a study, which indicates child sexual abuse may be a trigger for the onset of psychotic illness later in life….

Previous studies established that abused children were more likely to develop depression, anxiety, substance abuse, borderline personality disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal behavior, according to background information in the article.

The authors found that "the possibility of a link between childhood sexual abuse and later psychotic disorders, however, remains unresolved despite the claims of some that a causal link has been established to schizophrenia."

The research data from police and medical examinations of sexual abuse cases was compared to a statewide register of psychiatric cases. Rates of psychiatric disorders among 2,759 individuals who had been sexually abused when younger than age 16 were compared with those among 4,938 individuals in a comparison group drawn from electoral records.

Over a 30-year period, individuals who had experienced childhood sexual abuse had double the rate of those in the comparison group of psychosis overall (2.8 per cent vs. 1.4 per cent) and schizophrenia disorders (1.9 per cent vs. 0.7 per cent).

The authors concluded that "the risks of subsequently developing a schizophrenic syndrome were greatest in victims subjected to penetrative abuse in the peripubertal and postpubertal years from 12 to 16 years and among those abused by more than one perpetrator."

A Curry made of nothing

Those who have an interest in climate change debates would know all about Judith Curry, a climate scientist who, after the "Climategate" emails, made something of a name for herself by talking about wanting to "build bridges" between climate skeptics and mainstream climate scientists.

As it turns out, Judith's idea of building bridges has culminated in her creating her own blog in which she talks about the IPCC "consensus" position being a "dogma", refers to the "high priests" of the movement, and to waffling on about being sure that the IPCC has not dealt with uncertainty appropriately, while simultaneously admitting that she's not an expert on risk, statistics and uncertainty, and inviting others to help her work out her position.

As many people have pointed out, while she takes umbrage at the fact that the "climategate" emails showed that scientists in question responded to the attacks upon their work and integrity by talking amongst themselves with disdain about the likes of McIntyre and others, she seems distinctly uninterested in acknowledging that it is indisputable that McIntyre, Anthony Watts and other "stars" of the skeptic world have consistently made highly personal attacks and run blogs absolutely brimming with comments that allege conspiracy, bad faith, fraud, and duplicity against climate scientists, as well as letting long disproved ideas continually reappear.

What's more, she has a pattern of making big claims and then running away from them; often simply failing to back them up, and saying that her claim was not really that important anyway to her bigger argument. The best summary of this (with links to follow if you have an interest) has been put up at James Annan's blog.

Why she has decided to take the position she has is anyone's guess. Someone at her blog claimed she has simply become addicted to getting attention, and I think there is almost certainly an element of truth in that. Some of her comments seem to indicate an element of jealously about some other scientist's careers progression. One thing for certain is that she seems to lack insight: she has recently posted about a "feedback loop" that allegedly keeps climate scientists on the "consensus" side from looking at their own claims carefully, yet she seems to be oblivious to her own personal "feedback loop" of broad brush, un-detailed criticisms of her fellow climate scientists, leading to people questioning her bona fides, which leads to her escalating indignation at how people want to label her a "heretic" etc.

But in the end it doesn't matter much. As I like pointing out to skeptics who get excited when some physicist or other says he thinks climate change is not a problem, it's not exactly hard to find scientists, engineers and academics who hold silly opinions, particularly when it is in a field outside their day to day work experience. The 9/11 Truther movement is the best example of that. Have a look at this site, for example.

In any event, like the Truther movement, Curry seems to be about hot air with no substance behind it, and it's all of her own misguided creation.

Update: a post at Rabbett's which sums this up too.

Update 2: see my more recent post about Judith's wild ride here.

Inserting the sheep

Inspired by a comment at another blog: "Come to think of it, I don’t recall ever seeing a sheep in any depiction of the US, either."

Geoengineering considered (again)

The Economist has a good article on some new-ish ideas for geo-engineering the climate.

Of course, at this stage, whether any of them would really work well enough, and with acceptable side effects, is anyone’s guess.  I suppose, however, that I cautiously adopt the article’s view, and agree that some experimentation may as well be tried now:

Polluting the stratosphere. Liming the oceans. Locking Greenland’s glaciers to its icy mountains. It is easy to see why sceptics balk at geoengineering. And if viewed as a substitute for curbing greenhouse-gas emissions, a cover for business-as-usual into the indefinite future, then it might indeed prove a Faustian bargain. But that is probably the wrong way of looking at it. Better to use it as a means of smoothing the path to a low-carbon world. Most of the researchers working in the area of stratospheric hazing, for example, think that its best use might be reducing the peak temperatures the Earth would otherwise face at a time in the future when greenhouse-gas emissions have started falling but atmospheric levels are still going up.

Close up comet

This isn't the first time a spacecraft has taken a close up photo of the heart of a comet, but I don't recall previous ones showing such a clearly defined core. Lovely shot here of Hartley 2. Oh, wait, Bad Astronomy has a much better set of photos. Way cool.

The freshwater sharks of Brisbane

Brisbane residents who pay attention to the news are probably aware by now that the city’s river, even in its upper reaches, often has bull sharks of potentially dangerous size in it.

In fact, if you go to College’s Crossing, which is close to Ipswich and has a large picnic area on a stretch of the river with clean, fresh water full of swimmers in summer, there are shark warning signs permanently up.  (Brisbane gets its drinking water from just beside this spot, so the water is definitely 100% fresh.  For some reason I don’t understand, it’s only a relatively short distance further down from College’s Crossing that the river suddenly takes on its brown murky quality which is then maintained all the way to the mouth.)

The reason I’m talking about this is because a large bull shark appears to have been spotted this week up near College’s Crossing, which (according to this report) is 90km from the river mouth.   It also says that before the Mt Crosby weir was built, they had been recorded as far inland as Lowood.   That’s a long, long way further inland.

It’s also been reported recently that bull sharks jumping out of the river in the inner  city stretch is not an unusual sight for the ferry captains:

“The warmer the water, the more times you will see them jumping,” he said. As the sun gets up, that's when you will see them jumping.

“About two years ago the river was a little bit cleaner than usual and everybody was seeing them. You ask any City Cat master, they'll say the same thing. They see them jumping all the time.”

As well, their aerials show the sharks are also more active underwater as the river at this time of year.

Sharks found upstream are normally less than 1.5m long and pose little threat to people.

However, dog owners have been warned to keep their pets out of the river at dusk and dawn, when sharks are most active.

There have been numerous reports of dogs being taken from the river's edge and even instances of more ambitious sharks taking on larger prey.

In 2005, Ipswich locals were shocked after a bull shark attacked a race horse being put through its paces in the Brisbane River at Kholo.

So, how does this shark manage to live in fresh water? I see there was a story on ABC's Catalyst show in 2003 explaining this.  Here are some extracts from the transcript:

Richard Pillans: We’re about 85km from the mouth of the Brisbane River, we’ve got fresh water for at least 20 km downstream of us, and there are sharks in here, there’s a lot of sharks in here, and it is really unusual and most people in Brisbane don’t realise they’re basically in their backyard all the way through the Brisbane River. Almost all sharks will die in fresh water, but what’s really unique about the bull shark is that it’s equally at home in both salt water and fresh water. ...

The team think that there are four key organs involved - the liver, the kidney, the rectal gland and the gills. The liver of the bull shark is extra large, it’s the animal’s salt factory. It produces salt in the form of urea.

A/Prof Craig Franklin: Urea production and the liver is the major site so it has to be pretty big. If the shark is in salt water this salt is then stored in the kidney. As it swims upstream into fresh water, excess salt is excreted in the urine.

Neil: They will retain less urea in fresh water than sea water, so there’s a clear change between the two.

Narration: The shark also regulates salt levels using the rectal gland and the gills. Pure salt can be taken in or excreted through the gills depending on the outside water.

Richard Pillans: Different in structure between the two.

Narration: Incredibly they think the very structure of gills would gradually change as the shark swims from fresh to salt water.

Thus concludes today’s nature lesson.

More cautionary tales

Time for a perennial favourite topic: don't do it kids, something bad will happen.

[Hey, if a blogger who calls himself socially conservative can't try and point out that for humans, sex is, despite all its obvious fun aspects, actually a pretty serious thing with consequences, who can?] So here's the latest round up:

* Do I have to?

A "birds and the bees" talk with your kids isn't complete without a discussion of oral sex, according to a new study that found a connection between oral sex and old-fashioned intercourse. The three-year survey found that teens who had oral sex by the end of ninth grade were at the highest risk of having sexual intercourse during high school. These teens had a 25-percent chance of having intercourse by the end of ninth grade and a 50-percent chance by the end of 11th grade.

Well, I guess it's no great surprise that a teenager heavily into one form of foreplay is likely to soon try everything else, but still, explaining all varieties of sex (apart from the one that leads to babies) is a task that probably has only become a parental obligation in recent decades.

* Over-sharing again

I see that irritating writer-blogger Sam de Brito once again over-shared by telling us about how he caught genital herpes when he was in his 20's. (He's previously told us about catching crab lice from a backpacker in the same decade.)

The piece is all a bit of a two edged sword. On the one hand, you can take it as a cautionary tale for safe sex. On the other, he has a doctor talking about how people are rather hypocritical about this disease, with the aim of helping overcome the shame of having caught it.

The net effect: nothing in the article is likely to make people change behaviour, I reckon, which just reduces it to something else icky I wish de Brito hadn't shared with us. It does, however, have some interesting figures in it, regarding the percentage of people who have both forms of herpes.

* Oral not harmless, part 2

There's also been a fair bit of publicity lately about how another study (this one from Sweden - which is appropriate I guess given their libertine reputation) showing a correlation between high rises in oral cancers with increased rates of oral sex:

"This kind of cancer traditionally affects males who have been smoking and drinking all their life, and now in their mid-60s they are getting head and neck cancer," he said. "However, HPV cancer we are seeing in younger patients who have never smoked."

Strangely, though, this is noted:

Similarly high rates have also been seen in Europe, where a new Swedish study has shown a strong correlation between oral cancers and oral sex. Oddly, the rising rates have not been seen yet in the Southern Hemisphere in Australia and New Zealand.

The cause is thought to be the human papilloma virus, for which we now have the vaccine which I think few teenage Australia girls are not having.

This should improve things gradually for head and throat cancer too, I guess, but still if you're in your 20's or 30's and acting like Sam de Brito, you're not going to be getting the benefit of that.

* Start dating older women

If you're 13, probably best to avoid sex with your 10 year old girlfriend. (The article at the link notes that even this is not the youngest recorded age for pregnancy.) Ick.

* Now to contradict myself

Slate recently had an interesting slide show which contrasted the European approach to teenage sex education to that in America. It made some interesting claims:

Dr. Amy Schalet conducted in-depth interviews with teens and parents about adolescent sexual mores in both countries. She found that in the United States, teen sexuality is dramatized as an "overpowering force." Parents commonly talk about their kids' hormones "raging out of control." If teen sexuality is destined to be reckless and dangerous, then fear is the only hope of controlling it.

Europeans, such as the Dutch, by contrast:

...view teen sexuality as being "right." The Dutch use the phrase "being ready" to talk about how their teens will know they are prepared to have sex. They spend less time and effort trying to prevent young people from becoming sexually active, and more on educating them to be responsible when they do.

As I noted from another article some time ago, the Dutch teenagers generally start sex later, despite all the openness about how its done and precautions, etc. Yet, that earlier article noted that there are likely other cultural reasons going on to explain the low rate of teenage pregnancy, apart from the intense sex education.

It's interesting to contrast this with, say, alcohol use. It seems now that most experts here think the well meaning middle class parent who lets their 16 year old take some alcohol to a party on the basis that they should be allowed to do openly something they will do anyway, are in fact doing the wrong thing. Yet, the gradual introduction of alcohol with family dining in some European countries seems to work OK.

In the Australian context, I remain similarly skeptical of parents who allow (say) their 16 year old to have their girlfriend or boyfriend stay over for sex, on the basis that it's better that it's done there than in the back of a car or park.

Anyhow, the right balance in how to approach sex education seems as tricky as ever.

The potato correction

In March 2008, I noted a comment in a book review in The Guardian that a person could live indefinitely on potatoes alone.

According to this article, about a man who is going to eat only potatoes for 2 months, that's not quite right:

Much research has been conducted on potatoes, and the conclusion drawn by every medical doctor and nutritionist on the planet is that you have to be nuts to think you can live off of potatoes.

To Voigt's credit, his lighthearted stunt will educate the public about many healthy aspects of the potato: a decent and inexpensive source of vitamin C, vitamin B₆, potassium, magnesium and, with the skin left on, dietary fiber.

Also, low-carb advocates are harsher on the potato than science allows them to be. Some potato varieties, prepared correctly, can be as healthy as the much-lauded whole grains. [7 Diet Tricks That Work]

Voigt didn't enter this diet blindly. He told LiveScience he first consulted with a doctor and dietician to confirm he could go 60 days on just potatoes. You need healthy kidneys to process the excess potassium delivered by 20 potatoes a day. You also need a store of nutrients potatoes lack, such as vitamin A for proper vision, or else exit this diet blindly.

(If you're wondering why a man would eat potatoes only for 2 months, it's because he's executive director of the Washington State Potato Commission. I guess this part of the job wasn't mentioned in his salary package.)

Seeing this blog has an inordinate amount of international influence (ha), I just thought I should note this.

Just read a book

New Scientist reports that the latest airplane bomb scare may stop plans for in flight wi-fi and mobile phone use:

In-flight Wi-Fi "gives a bomber lots of options for contacting a device on an aircraft", Alford says. Even if ordinary cellphone connections are blocked, it would allow a voice-over-internet connection to reach a handset.

"If it were to be possible to transmit directly from the ground to a plane over the sea, that would be scary," says Alford's colleague, company founder Sidney Alford. "Or if a passenger could use a cellphone to transmit to the hold of the aeroplane he is in, he could become a very effective suicide bomber."

Manufacturers of the technologies will not welcome this fresh security concern, having finally gained airworthiness approval for their in-flight cellphone and Wi-Fi systems by proving that their microwave transmissions do not interfere with avionics.

Oh dear, how sad. (Actually, I couldn't care less. There should be more spaces in the world where mobile phones can't reach.)

LHC discussed

The New York Times has a good article about the Large Hadron Collider. 

Here’s a key part:

But for all the euphoria in Geneva these days, the collider is still operating under the cloud of Sept. 19, 2008. That is when the electrical connection between two of the collider’s powerful superconducting electromagnets exploded, turning one sector of the collider ring into a car wreck and shutting down the newly inaugurated machine for more than a year.

As a result, the machine is operating at only half power, at 3.5 trillion electron volts per proton instead of the 7 trillion electron volts for which it was designed, so as not to blow out the delicate splices. At the end of 2011, all the CERN accelerators will shut down for 15 months, so that the suspect splices — some 10,000 of them — can be strengthened and an unknown number of magnets that have mysteriously lost the ability to handle the high currents and produce the high fields needed to run the collider at close to full strength can be “retrained.” ….

The collider will start up again in 2013 with proton energies of 6.5 trillion electron volts, but it is not likely to reach full power until 2014, if ever.

The smart one writes

Malcolm Turnbull sounds smart and well informed in his column in the SMH today in which he talks about his support for a private member’s motion to stop the patenting of genes. 

Tony Abbott meanwhile was at the Melbourne Cup forgetting the name of the race favourite:

TONY ABBOTT, OPPOSITION LEADER: The Thing Is is plainly going to be the sentimental favourite.

So You Think, Tony?

Suspicion correct

Recently, when the issue of how much water the Murray-Darling system needs (and how much less will be available for irrigation) was the hot topic, Australians were also hearing a claim that the country had already become a “net importer”of food. 

I heard it on a right wing radio show (Michael Smith on 4BC in Brisbane, who, as with all right wing radio jokes jocks also swallows any climate science skeptic argument without a second thought.)  

I immediately thought that this claim could not be right.  And I was correct.

As Ross Gittins says: 

This is all nonsense. Australia? A net importer of food? Yeah, sure. If you fell for it, your bulldust detector has seriously failed you in the media space.

He then explains how this silly claim came to be calculated.   The true situation is as follows:

According to figures compiled by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in calendar 2009 we had total food exports of $25.4 billion and imports of $11 billion, leaving us with a surplus of $14.4 billion. Even if we ignore unprocessed and look only at processed food, we still had a trade surplus of $5.8 billion.

Why did it take so long for the media to note this correction? 

Colebatch on Indonesia

We don’t often read all that much about Indonesia in our press, unless its related to Muslim terrorism.

Colebatch’s article in The Age today gives a good catch up picture.

Wait a minute, I’m thinking

The Guardian has an opinion piece entitled Is climate science disinformation a crime against humanity?

It ends with:

The corporations that have funded the sowing of doubt on this issue are clearly doing this because they see greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategies as adversely affecting their financial interests.

This might be understood as a new type of crime against humanity. Scepticism in science is not bad, but sceptics must play by the rules of science including publishing their conclusions in peer-reviewed scientific journals and not make claims that are not substantiated by the peer-reviewed literature. The need for responsible scepticism is particularly urgent if misinformation from sceptics could lead to great harm.

We not have a word for this type of crime yet, but the international community should find a way of classifying extraordinarily irresponsible scientific claims that could lead to mass suffering as some type of crime against humanity.

I can see certain problems with the concept, but then again it could mean most participants at the Catallaxy blog in a Gulag while me and my side take a year or so to decide whether prosecutions are sustainable.    I therefore see a certain merit.  

Fry-ing feminists

Stephen Fry was in the English press last weekend due to some rather incautious (to put it mildly) comments he made regarding women and sex, part of which includes:

"I feel sorry for straight men. The only reason women will have sex with them is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want," he said. "Of course, a lot of women will deny this and say, 'Oh no, but I love sex, I love it!' But do they go around having it the way that gay men do?"

Fry says that heterosexual "beats" don't exist for this very reason.

One journalist feminist retorts with some sense, but also some silliness:

Women are just as capable as men are of enjoying sex. We don't go cruising or cottaging on Hampstead Heath because we don't need to. Cottaging on Hampstead Heath is presumably a hangover from the days when, sadly, [homosexuality] was illegal… Women have other ways to get our thrills, and we can go and get them in bars or clubs. Having said which, we probably also do it in parks sometimes too. It's just that we don't call it cottaging. I'm sure I've done it in parks in my time.

Well, surely both of them are over-selling their arguments. It's very silly of Fry to suggest (he now says it was out of context anyway) that all women view sex as a "price to pay" for having relationships. On the other hand, I'm sure the number of women who have met a man in a park and had sex with them in the bushes within 10 minutes is vanishingly small. (Although if you look at women who are silly enough to be impressed by, say, rugby players, the sex-in-the-toilet scenario they sometimes engage in is as close to gay men's behaviour as you can get. But, now that I think about it, there is a good chance that is more about bragging rights than their own sexual gratification, so in that sense it's not like men in the bushes after all.)

The simple truth lies in the middle (and of course I'm speaking in generalities here, but that doesn't mean it's inaccurate): yes, women enjoy sex, and yes, men are much more readily capable than women of separating sex from emotions.

The irony is that feminists think they are scoring a hit if women feel freer to act like men, when it would align more with the psychology of most women to concentrate on encouraging men to have more regard to the emotional and physical consequences of the act.

Re: Salmon

Nature has a story about a theory that a large patch of iron fertilized ocean caused by a volcanic eruption may have resulted in this year's big Canadian salmon run:

Parsons' suggestion relies on a study in Geophysical Research Letters by Roberta Hamme of the University of Victoria, British Columbia¹. The paper links the 7-8 August 2008 eruption of the Kasatochi volcano in the Aleutian Islands to a huge phyotoplankton bloom later that month. The eruption wasn't particularly large, but a storm spread its ash over a wide area. The resulting bloom was the biggest in 12 years of records, covering 1.5-2 million square kilometres of ocean. "We'd never seen anything like that," says Hamme.

Others are very skeptical that this is a very plausible explanation. All interesting, nonetheless.

Never too busy...

...to rubbish Tony Abbott.

Last week, we had this excruciating display of self inflicted gormlessness:



I mean, what was his initial refusal to back Hockey's plan, which had been discussed in Shadow Cabinet, all about?

But today I see that Tone's real agenda over the last few weeks has been to get fit for a half Iron Man event, despite a calf injury:

While the Opposition Leader has been carrying a sore calf muscle for a few weeks, it didn't stop him from swimming 1.9km, cycling 90km and running 21km in yesterday's Half Ironman race at Port Macquarie, midway between Sydney and Brisbane.

Cheered on by wife Margie, who planted a congratulatory kiss on his cheek as he crossed the finish line, Mr Abbott completed the course in six hours, 43 minutes and 42 seconds....

He did, however, express some pride in his time of two hours and 38 minutes for the 21km running leg, given that he has been struggling with a calf muscle twinge for the past few weeks, which hampered his training.

If only he devoted the same amount of effort to looking and sounding like a credible alternative PM. (Oh yes, he's apparently already conned a significant number of voters in that regard, just as did a certain K Rudd for an inordinate length of time.)

In praise of Sheldon

I only started watching The Big Bang Theory a few months ago in re-runs,but I have to say, I find much of it very funny. There's not much doubt that for most viewers the comedic core of the show is Sheldon, who Slate noted last year is (presumably, even though the writers deny it is deliberate) the first sitcom character with Aspergers Syndrome.

Despite the frequent sexual elements and jokes, I would say that the two funniest episodes I have seen concentrated on Sheldon and hence were pretty asexual. The first one was the story of how Leonard first came to move in with Sheldon, (The Staircase Implementation).

The second was on TV last night, featuring Sheldon deciding to stay safe in his bedroom until the singularity arrives and he can upload himself into a robot. In the meantime, he creates a tele-presence robot version of himself, which he get Leonard to drive to work. This sequence is currently on Youtube, and brought tears to my eyes.

Live long and prosper, Sheldon.

UPDATE: I am happy to see, from this recent LA Times episode review of the current season, that Sheldon's "girlfriend" Amy is still around. She has also been amusing me greatly in the couple of episodes I have seen in which she makes an appearance.

Slum life this is

The first of Kevin McCloud's 2 part doco "Slumming It," in which he spends a fortnight living with families in the middle of Mumbai's biggest slum, was great TV on the ABC last night. One minute appalled by the open sewer drains (full of mystery chemical sludge as well as excrement,) the visiting rats in the bedroom at night and the terrible working conditions in the mini industries in the slum, the next minute McCloud is marvelling at the apparent general happiness of the community and the high degree of social interaction of all age groups in such a place. (Well, the latter is kind of hard to avoid with things like 21 people sharing a tiny house. He also notes often that it is a million people living in about one square mile.)

As an architect, McCloud is interested in how the built environment works in a place like this. (He notes that many planners, and Prince Charles, have taken to saying that it has lessons to teach the West.) Yet the one factor he hasn't mentioned is the obvious high degree of religiosity of the people there, and the role that the degree of fatalism in the Hindu religion almost certainly has on the perception of the residents.

I also thought the show should be watched by the libertarian inclined as an object lesson in the limitations of self regulation of society. The industries there are completely unregulated and untaxed; a perfect little Randian experiment, I would have thought. And yes, the slum does show the inherent innovation and capitalist tendencies in self organised human societies. But it also shows that capitalism, at least in a culture such as India's, can be very slow to self correct for the abuses and poor treatment of its workers.

You can catch the show on the ABC’s iView still.

Salmon mystery

The BBC has a detailed story about the surprising strong return of sockeye salmon to their spawning rivers in Canada this year.  Last year only a million came back; this year, 34 million!

The problem is no one understands what is going on.

Islamic news

*  There’s always someone in the family who has an unusual conversion.  Tony Blair’s sister in law has had a conversion experience in Iran:

She decided to become a Muslim six weeks ago after visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom.

"It was a Tuesday evening and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy," she said in an interview today.

When she returned to Britain, she decided to convert immediately.

I could be wrong, but sudden conversions to this religion seem pretty rare,  unless you’re in an Indonesian prison.   Seeing she’s a TV journalist, I would have been more amused if she had started to insist on an on screen burqa instead of just a hijab.

*  There are two stories about men in legal trouble in the Middle East for using the internet for sexual purposes.   An Egyptian Imam in Dubai is alleged to have sent rude pictures of himself to women via Blackberry (and was the victim of a “sting” by a male policeman posing as a woman).   In Saudi Arabia a man who was making money by “renting” on line rooms in which women would strip is facing arrest.

I am curious:  just how large are the cyberpolice departments in these middle east countries?   If there are going to try to stop every man who sends a rude pic of himself from his mobile phone, they will be the biggest employment field in the region.   And if these countries don’t block overseas sites, when will they realise there is no holding back the tide?

Suffer, snow bunnies

Look, if people grow up in a snowy country, skiing is an unobjectionable past time.  But in Australia, where (if you live outside of Sydney or Melbourne at least) you can just about have 7 days in London (or, at the very least, a week in Tokyo)  for the same price as a long weekend on the skifields, it’s always struck me as an elitist hobby.  And besides, the couple of times I did try to stand up and move on skis, I fell over a lot.

So, being the jealous, nasty person that I am, if the Grammar school kids all end up with osteoarthritis, I’ll just snigger in the background. 

Not your average Parisian evening…

There was a story in the SMH yesterday which is notable for the fine sense of understatement in the final line.   First, I’ll edit the events (tragic as they are):

A baby was killed and several more people seriously injured when a family of 11 threw themselves from a third-floor flat to flee a man they mistook for the devil, French investigators said….

Among the injured they found an entirely naked man of African origin with a knife wound in his hand and two children, a baby and a two-year-old girl. The baby died later after receiving hospital treatment in Paris.

The assistant prosecutor from Versailles, Odile Faivre, told reporters the incident began in the early hours when a group of 13 people were watching television in an apartment and the naked man heard the baby cry.

"The man got up to prepare a bottle for the baby when his wife, seeing him, screamed 'It's the devil, it's the devil'," Faivre explained.

In the confusion following this apparent case of mistaken identity, the naked man's sister-in-law stabbed him in the hand and he was ejected through the front door of the flat. When he attempted to get back in, panic erupted.

"The other occupants of the flat fled by jumping out of the window," Faivre said. According to police, one man jumped with the two-year-old in his arms and crawled two blocks away to hide in bushes, screaming: "I had to defend myself."

And the final line:

"A number of points remain to be cleared up," Faivre said.

Things of note

I’m going to be pretty busy this week, and really should try to impose a ban on myself using the internet. But such attempts usually fail, so you may as well keep checking in and seeing what turns up here.

This morning, I recommend the following:

* quite a good, long article in The Guardian on daily life in the nearly completed International Space Station. (They don’t dwell on the toilet, but you already know all about that from my earlier posts.)

* yet another tragic case of erotic autoasphyxiation actually ends up teaching medical science something new.

* GQ, of all magazines, has a long article on suicide chat rooms, and the coming trial of a guy charged with encouraging suicides. All very chilling, although the article also claims that some suicide chat rooms have positive effects and can help talk people out of it. But surely you would have to look at the net effect. Actually, I see Mind Hacks links to another story (this one from the BBC) about suicide chat rooms, but I haven’t listened to it yet.

Irresistible

Lunar greenhouse to nowhere

At the University of Arizona, they're figuring out designs for hydroponic, easily transported greenhouse systems for growing vegetables on the moon.

What a pity there's no way of actually getting them there for the foreseeable future. Maybe they should sell them to the Chinese.

More on Morals

There's a short interview with Sam Harris at New Scientist, in which he's talking about his new book in which he argues that morality should simply be based on science. The interview includes this quote:

I happen to think that the scientific study of morality is the lever that, if pulled hard enough, will completely dislodge religion from the firmament of our concerns.

Why, yes, Sam, the first round of science's attempt to inform ideas of morality went just swimmingly well in the 20th century, didn't it?

Suicidal thoughts

No, no, I'm not having them personally, but if you are interested in a very detailed examination of the characteristics of the way people think or feel when they are susceptible to suicide, you could do much worse than read this long column by Jesse Bering* in Scientific American.

* For once, he is not talking about sex and its variations, and I wish he would avoid the topic more often.

You knew you were going to read this

Psychology Today notes that there is soon to be published evidence of people having a small, but apparently consistent, ability to be influenced by the future. The experiments sound quite interesting:

For example, we all know that rehearsing a set of words makes them easier to recall in the future, but what if the rehearsal occurs after the recall? In one of the studies, college students were given a list of words and after reading the list, were given a surprise recall test to see how many words they remembered. Next, a computer randomly selected some of the words on the list as practice words and the participants were asked to retype them several times. The results of the study showed that the students were better at recalling the words on the surprise recall test that they were later given, at random, to practice. According to Bem, practicing the words after the test somehow allowed the participants to "reach back in time to facilitate recall."

In another study, Bem examined whether the well-known priming effect could also be reversed. In a typical priming study, people are shown a photo and they have to quickly indicate if the photo represents a negative or positive image. If the photo is of a cuddly kitten, you press the "positive" button and if the photo is of maggots on rotting meat, you press the "negative" button. A wealth of research has examined how subliminal priming can speed up your ability to categorize these photos. Subliminal priming occurs when a word is flashed on the computer screen so quickly that your conscious brain doesn't recognize what you saw, but your nonconscious brain does. So you just see a flash, and if I asked you to tell me what you saw, you wouldn't be able to. But deep down, your nonconscious brain saw the word and processed it. In priming studies, we consistently find that people who are primed with a word consistent with the valence of the photo will categorize it quicker. So if I quickly flash the word "happy" before the kitten picture, you will click the "positive" button even quicker, but if I instead flash the word "ugly" before it, you will take longer to respond. This is because priming you with the word "happy" gets your mind ready to see happy things.

In Bem's retroactive priming study, he simply reversed the time sequence on this effect by flashing the primed word after the person categorized the photo. So I show you the kitten picture, you pick whether it is positive or negative, and then I randomly choose to prime you with a good or bad word. The results showed that people were quicker at categorizing photos when it was followed by a consistent prime. So not only will you categorize the kitten quicker when it is preceded by a good word, you will also categorize it quicker when it is followed by a good word. It was as if, while participants were categorizing the photo, their brain knew what word was coming next and this facilitated their decision.

There are other types of experiments as well. I see now that the actual paper is available, but at the moment I don't have time to read it.

The effect was apparently small but statistically significant and consistent, and also showed that some people showed stronger future influence than others.

Well, this is all pretty fascinating, isn't it? It would be great if this type of experiment can be repeated and holds up over time in different labs. Until now, I think it's fair to say that Ganzfeld experiments have been held up as the most convincing proof of a psi effect, as they have been repeated in many different labs and generally been considered to show small but positive results. (A good detailed history of this type of experiment, and the controversy over whether they really are showing a psi effect or not, is given in this Wikipedia article.)

However, as the examples that Dean Radin has been providing at his website lately show, there is always an element of interpretation involved in scoring the "hits". (In fact, in this example Radin gives of someone trying to guess the correct photo, what I find surprising is that all 4 photos seem to have elements the woman is "receiving", even though the "sender" only sees the target.) But clearly, it would be great to get away from experiments that involve interpretation of what constitutes a "hit" in proving a psi effect.

Of course, we are yet to hear the skeptic take on the new Bem studies, and I guess we do have to wait to see if other psychologist can replicate them, but they sound rather promising.

The origins of morality considered

There's a good article in the New York Times at the moment by Frans de Waal about the evolution of morals as a mammalian thing. He maintains a certain respect for religious views on morality too, however.

There are many things that could be said about this topic, but I don't have the time right now.

It did come to mind when I was watching the second episode of Last Chance to See on Sunday night, when they were showing two orphan chimps being introduced to a new chimp group. You can watch the clip here. The evolutionary aspect of human bonding and how touching we find it is illustrated well.

Can the sensible one come back now, please?

Has anyone else noticed how, while Tony Abbott has been doing things like travelling the world, shooting off  guns and his mouth, and changing his opinions more often than a Japanese astronaut changes his underwear,  Malcolm Turnbull has been doing things like, well, making sense. 

Yesterday it was his proposal to force the government into the proper investigation into the financial viability of the National Broadband Network.  Today, it’s an article emphasising the importance of spending money to get irrigation in the Murray – Darling system water efficient.

On the latter, I’ll admit it’s an issue I have not followed in detail, and it does appear to be both a scientifically and politically complicated one.  As far as I can tell, the Coalition is saying that Labor pulled back spending on water efficiency and is now wanting to concentrate purely on water buy back, but I could have that wrong.

During the angry scenes of rural meetings last week where the idea of 30% water allocations was going over like a lead balloon, the thought did occur to me that if we are talking of inefficient irrigation still existing on many of those farms, is it possible to still get the same yields with the lower allocation being compensated with increased efficiency in delivery?   Has the relevant body had Israel involved in how to grow stuff with minimal water?

Probably all this has been taken into account, but there’s no harm in asking.

Local hero

Maybe he’s had some media attention here before – but if so I’ve missed it.

In any event,  here’s the great story (in the Christian Science Monitor) of an old guy who has almost certainly saved a great many people from committing suicide at The Gap in Sydney. 

Even when he has failed, it hasn’t deterred him from continuing to approach people he fears are about  to jump and invite them in for a cup of tea.   He’s a real hero for many, many families, I am sure.

Give up, climate change skeptics! Kirk is against you.

Important news from Climate Progress.  (Even more important than 2010 being the hottest year on record so far, and the long list of countries that last link provides which have broken high temperature records this year.)

William Shatner is an environmentalist!  And he does ads for Sierra Club which sound rational and credible.

You know your on the losing side when Cap’n Kirk is against you.

Stellar mysteries

Two unusual stories of stars were in the news last week:

1.  a pulsar discovered that doesn’t seem to have the right type of surface magnetic field for the way pulsars are normally meant to work.   This means there is a bit of work to be done to see how this type of pulsar gets its power.  (My comment:  first alien artefact found?)

2. the Milky Way seems to have kinks in its arms, making it a bit more like a pinwheel than your usual Andromeda galaxy, curvy armed, classic shape.  Other galaxies that look like this have been seen before, so this is not considered completely weird, apparently.

But – how does any galaxy get angles in arms like that?  I would have thought that nature (and gravity in particular) loves circles and curves.   Odd.