Andrew Bolt, nuclear expert

Interesting to note that in Japan, some investigation statements relating to the Fukushima nuclear disaster have been released by the government, from which we learn this:

Plant manager Masao Yoshida envisioned catastrophe for eastern Japan in the days following the outbreak of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, according to his testimony, one of 19 released by the government on Sept. 11....

In his testimony, Yoshida described the condition of the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima plant between the evening of March 14, 2011, and the next morning: “Despite the nuclear fuel being completely exposed, we’re unable to reduce pressure. Water can’t get in either.”

Yoshida recalled the severity of the situation. “If we continue to be unable to get water in, all of the nuclear fuel will melt and escape from the containment vessel, and radioactive substances from the fuel will spread to the outside,” he said.

Fearing a worst-case scenario at the time, Yoshida said, “What we envisioned was that the entire eastern part of Japan would be annihilated.”

In Australia, local nuclear expert Andrew Bolt was writing this:

No, there won’t be a nuclear explosion, “China syndrome” or “another Chernobyl”. The situation today is better than yesterday, and as each day goes by the chances of a big accident lesson. The nuclear fuel remains contained.

This scaremongering over the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex is extraordinary. 

So while the actual plant manager was freaking out about rendering a huge slab of his country uninhabitable, Andrew Bolt was writing "stop your stupid panicking, environmentalists." I think I know which person to trust more in terms of the seriousness of what was going on.

Why has the Right become so insistently dumb on matters relating to science, technology and risk?

Garden fly

Drink your lithium and be happy

Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium? - NYTimes.com

Here's a fascinating article about whether or not lithium in "natural" quantities in drinking water has a significant health benefit.

The scientific story of lithium’s role in normal development and health began unfolding in the 1970s. Studies at that time foundthat animals that consumed diets with minimal lithium had highermortality rates, as well as abnormalities of reproduction and behavior.

Researchers began to ask whether low levels of lithium might correlate with poor behavioral outcomes in humans. In 1990, a study was published looking at 27 Texas counties with a variety of lithium levels in their water. The authors discovered that people whose water had the least amount of lithium had significantly greater levels of suicide, homicide and rape than the people whose water had the higher levels of lithium. The group whose water had the highest lithium level had nearly 40 percent fewer suicides than that with the lowest lithium level.

Almost 20 years later, a Japanese study that looked at 18 municipalities with more than a million inhabitants over a five-year period confirmed the earlier study’s finding: Suicide rates were inversely correlated with the lithium content in the local water supply.

More recently, there have been corroborating studies in Greece and Austria.

Not all the research has come to the same conclusion.

Even allowing for that last sentence, why haven't I heard about this before?

Or maybe I have, but just don't have enough lithium in my diet.  (The article suggests it may help prevent dementia.) 

An innovative place to go looking for a new antibiotic...

Vaginal microbe yields novel antibiotic

Late movie review

I never got around to seeing Prometheus when it was at the cinema, and wasn't especially concerned because of the so-so reviews, but it turned up on commercial television last night and I did that rare thing that used to be common place - watch a Sunday night first release to free TV (I think) movie.

Well, what a complete and utter mess of a film.

It looks impressive for about the first 15 to 20 minutes or so, but my God does it go rapidly downhill in all respects after that.   As with Sunshine, this is a science fiction film in which it seems very big space ships are crewed by people who appear to be picked out of a hat, such that no one seems to know anyone else, everyone starts making stupid decisions and ignores anyone who says it's not a good idea, and the science of just about everything is dubious if not silly.  

It's a really awful script full of improbabilities, and the "big picture" of what's going on remains rather opaque all the way through.  Yet there is a sequel being made!   Why?

The only positive thing I can say is that it seemed surprisingly low on swearing.  But apart from that....

Update:   Unbelievably, I see from checking on Rottentomatoes that Prometheus got 73% approval rating; Sunshine, which I also disliked, got 75%.   But Oblivion, which I watched at home this last weekend on DVD (after seeing it at the cinema last year) got only 54%.    What gives?   Oblivion was about twice as enjoyable as those awful films. 

Technology news

Yessss!  Two months of insisting on staring at the glowing screens of the new Samsung Tab S every time I've been with anyone from my family anywhere near a shop that stocks them paid off!

I was given one (the smaller version) for my birthday last week, and it is awesome, especially if you're upgrading from one of the early Samsung Tab models, which now appears extremely underpowered as well as having a screen that looks like sandpaper.   (It never used to be a noticeably poor screen, but after looking at the ultrafine, colourful, better-than-real-life, screen that I've been using for a few days, I laugh at its primitive resolution.  [Insert mocking laugh.])

But apart from the screen, which I'll try to not mention another 5 times, what I thought on the old tablet was a slow wi-fi connection at the far end of the house turned out to just be slow processing speed.   The Tab S works likes lightning in comparison.

So, I'm very happy, and am currently on a new Tablet honeymoon that may see me posting less frequently.  The screen, the screen, the screen....I must look at it again...

In the garden

Photos taken with the camera in the new device, more about which later....

Priorities of a pathetic government

May this year:

...this government has slashed more than $450 million from key science agencies that have all suffered substantial losses, including:

• CSIRO -- $111.4 million
• Australian Research Council -- $74.9 million
• Cooperative Research Centres program -- $80 million
• Australian Institute of Marine Science -- $7.8 million
• Defence Science and Technology Organisation -- $120 million
• Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation -- $27.6 million
• Geoscience Australia -- $36 million

Today:

A controversial tourism facility at a Cadbury factory partly funded by taxpayer dollars looks set to go ahead, with the chocolate maker announcing the "globally relevant chocolate experience" should be signed off within weeks.

Tony Abbott promised a $16 million grant to the Hobart project during last year's federal election, however questions have since been raised about the generous pledge given the Coalition government's refusal to provide taxpayer assistance to fruit cannery SPC Ardmona.

No reason

The Julia show

There are quite a few humorous tweets going down about the Gillard appearance at the Union corruption royal commission, but this one is perhaps my favourite:

Senator Blofeld is a bit of a nut...

Libertarian Senator David Leyonhjelm, pictured here:

sorry, I meant here:

is in the news today for having appointed Helen Dale, famous for getting into heaps of trouble for pretending to have a family background that was useful for promoting her novel. Well, she does have umpteen law degrees, seems to do nothing useful with them, and her blog is a bore, so she's qualified, but listen to what Leyonhjelm says about the fraudulent episode in Dale's past:

“I was impressed that she extended a work of fiction into the authorship, which I thought was entirely appropriate,” Senator Leyonhjelm told The Australian. “I regarded the controversy at the time as both absurd and amusing.”

 He's a nut.

Update:  more "fraudulently passing yourself off as someone you're not for notoriety and financial gain is hilarious"  analysis from Senator L:

"I recall at the time thinking it was hilarious, it was a big joke and she kept up the fiction for quite a while. Then, when they realised she was pulling their leg they turned on her, which I thought was very unkind."

 Update 2:   I'll make a prediction:  she will not be in the job for more than a year or two.

Update 3:  David Crowe does some sort of sucking up today for having released the story early, or something like that?  

Yesterday we learned that Paul "magic water" Sheehan has been to a libertarian conference, and also seems to think Ms Dale is the bees knees?    He notes this about a paper she gave:

Dale's presentation focused on social changes caused by technology, not expensive social engineering. Among many examples was a correlation between the removal of lead from petrol, paint and cosmetics and a decline in crime.        Practising law, she saw government regulation and compulsion as frequently having both adverse and unintended consequences.

Well, I hope her paper then went on to note that it was government regulation that forced the move to unleaded petrol, as I have the distinct recollection that there was resistance to the policy from motoring associations and oil companies.   I would like to see what the IPA was saying about it at the time, although, to be honest, I don't know that was as intensely ideological then as it is now.

Update 4:   Hey, I find something good to say - sort of - about Helen Dale's views as a libertarian.   She wrote only late last year:

5. Libertarians in particular need to drop their widespread refusal to accept the reality of climate change. It makes us look like wingnuts and diverts attention from the larger number of greenies who spew pseudoscience on a daily basis. That said, don’t confuse real science with greenie catastrophizing. When Matt Ridley pointed out (a) that climate change is real, (b) it is currently having beneficial effects, and (c) is likely to continue to do so for some time, he got a bucket of turds dumped on his head by both sides. Don’t do that. 

So, on the "up" side she should be off side with everyone who posts at Catallaxy then, her very very very good friend (he keeps telling us) Sinclair Davidson, Judith Sloan (who takes every opportunity to ridicule scientists and bodies pushing for a serious response to climate change), Kates, Moran, etc etc.

On the downside - one of the main figures she should be skeptical of is Matt Ridley, but she appears not to be.

And more downside - she's still happy to take a job with a Senator for a party whose official policy is to sit on the fence and do nothing because, you know, it kinda hates government doing things anyway...

I've read Andrew Bolt's blog today so that you don't have to.....

Tony's persistent woman problem

Tony Abbott was long said to have a "woman problem", which I am sure Andrew Bolt and his  acolytes who have migrated to Catallaxy have ridiculed as a bit of Leftist smear and imaginings.   (Obviously, though, Abbott or his minders knew it was true, given the way they made his daughters stick by his side every single minute of the election campaign.)

Today's Essential poll (indicating a government pretty firmly stuck at 48/52 TPP with Labor in the lead) also notes about Abbott's approval:

52% of respondents disapprove of the job Tony Abbott is doing as Prime Minister – down 2% since the last time this question was asked in August – and 35% approve of the job Tony Abbott is doing (down 2%). This represents no change in net rating  at -17.

84% (up 4%) of Liberal/National voters approve of Tony Abbott’s performance, with 9% (down 3%)
disapproving. 87% of Labor voters and 79% of Greens voters disapprove of Tony Abbott’s performance.

By gender men were 42% approve/48% disapprove and women 29% approve/56% disapprove.

Well, I'm gobsmacked that 84% of LNP voters approve of him; but still, the main point is that Tony has a persistent woman problem.

Hydrogen power cycle into the future

Australia's first fuel cell bicycle

This sounds like really clever technology:

UNSW researchers have built an Australian-first bicycle that can take riders up to 125 kilometres on a single battery charge and $2 of hydrogen.

One kilogram of the standard metal hybride is capable of storing 100 litres of hydrogen, but Aguey-Zinsou and colleagues at the Material Energy Research Laboratory in nanoscale (MERLin) at UNSW are now developing borohydrides that could
store the same amount of hydrogen using just 50 grams of storage material.

Hydrogen for the Hy-Cycle can be produced with as little as 100 millilitres of water. The water is split into its elements – oxygen and hydrogen – and the fuel cell recombines the hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity.

However, Aguey-Zinsou envisions a future where riders could purchase
replacement canisters from a network of distribution points, rather than
needing to produce hydrogen.

But does it come in different colours*, and what will it cost?



*  Allusion to old what's her name**, on The Inventors

** Diana Fisher - it just came to me.

Pining for the 50's

Dear old Philippa Martyr, who I find quite an interesting character, busy pining for the 50's at Catallaxy in sympathy with the only 40-something year old man alive today who was actually born in 1910 (Currency Lad):

There may be Liberal Party branches somewhere in Australia that still believe in scones, the flag, children being seen and not heard, the Golden Rule, live and let live, the value of honest work, the economic power of lower taxes, and the therapeutic power of a nice cup of tea.

I just can’t think of any.

Of course, the scones and tea would be made by the stay at home housewives while their husbands are out building houses by sawing up asbestos laden sheets in their Jackie Howe singlets. 

How dare Parkinson defend himself!

The print version of Catallaxy (The Australian) is full of indignation that Martin Parkinson has defended the response of the Rudd/Swan government to the GFC (they, after all, were following his Department's advice which he has fully endorsed), after current cigar smoking Finance Minister Cormann was out launching some attack on Parkinson's policy from a little known, IPA aligned, economist from that power house of economics, Griffith University.

Did you see how much Groucho Ergas went on about this yesterday?  Is he paid by the word?  Today it's the turn of the least favourite economist in the land for giving key note addresses at what is meant to be a celebratory dinner, Judith "You're all Lazy Idiots!" Sloan.

I thought these economists who are outraged at Parkinson being so "political" might have asked themselves the question - who started this in the first place?   Parkinson is leaving his job early because of the sway of the cranky and deluded IPA/Boltardian Right - of which Sloan, Ergas and Davdison are the leading lights (lights with about the same utility as glow in the dark dinosaurs) - because he believes in climate change and has the belief shared by nearly every other economist not of the Catallaxy brand that Australia's successful passage through the GFC probably was in some significant part due to the stimulus policy.

Furthermore, Cormann is not content to wait til Parkinson leaves to be seen endorsing Makin's attack on his views, he's doing it now.

The politicisation of the matter is all of the Right's doing.


Update:  by the way, the IPA's Chris Berg is widely regarded as the most affable of the Institute's talking heads that still get given a ridiculous amount of time on the ABC to sprout their one eyed views.   But his entry into the commentary on the politics and economics of the GFC stimulus last week I think shows him up as just another Right wing economic lightweight who has drunk the IPA kool aid.  [Update:  see how he wasn't taking any strong position on this only 12 months ago?]

It also seems to me that he never talks about climate change.  The most he has said (that I recall) is (my paraphrase) that if you have to have a policy to tackle it, a carbon tax is the way to do it.   (Even Sinclair Davidson has said that in the past I think.)

But anyone who works for the IPA is forever tainted by the fact they make their money from an institute supported by at least one prominent billionaire miner which pays people to ridicule climate science and all policy directed towards reducing CO2.   Berg gets too easy a ride for appearing nice (certainly, he doesn't come across as an aggressive and unpleasant fellow like Roskam)  but he should be shamed for working for the IPA at all.   

Update 2:   the blogging head of the Insane Clown Posse that is Catallaxy (I'm trying out for a sort of Bernard Keane degree of sarcasm today)   Sinclair Davidson joins in the criticism of Parkinson, claiming that Makin's critique is obviously right, and again confirming that the government should be completely political in immediate sackings of public servant heads.

Is all of this angst because Judith isn't getting Parkinson's job?  (Reference to likely joke rumour that I don't believe.)

A warning from an unusual source

Scots, What the Heck? - NYTimes.com

Here's Paul Krugman warning the Scots about having its own government but not its own currency.

An unusual WWI story

World War I: Teenage girl Maud Butler cut hair, dressed as soldier and stowed away on troopship 
If I had read a novel in which this had happened, I would have thought it quite unrealistic...

What is going on at The Economist?

I was going to comment on The Economist's strangely enthusiastic investigation into prostitution, and endorsement of it as a career for those who chose it (not to mention complaining about it being "illiberal" to make it illegal) which appeared about a month ago, but I never got around to it.

Frankly, when economists start talking about things like the sale of bodies and sex, or illicit drugs, they can  work themselves up into enthusiasm for legalisation simply because of the money involved; but their discussions easily become an embarrassingly moral free zone.  Not that I am one to take a hard line stance on the question of legality for prostitution;  as with so many things, I tend to think that Australia gets the balance more right than many of the American States and without the sleaziness of some other countries, too.  But it's embarrassing to see an economics magazine downplay the exploitation inherent in such a large proportion of an "industry".   You certainly get the feeling that the number of women who were involved in compiling the story was nil.

And now we have even more cringeworthy  material appearing in the magazine:  a review of a book on slavery that sought to paint that enterprise as "not all bad".   This post at Boing Boing summarises the matter, and the Economist did withdraw the (anonymous) review and apologise.

Both of these stories indicate to me that something is amiss in the magazine's editorial decisions at the moment.

Update:  on the matter of the status of economics more generally, I thought that Harry Clarke's complaint about how the enthusiasm is now all for econometrics without tying it to theory was interesting.

It perhaps also explains why Piketty's work has been received with such enthusiasm - from what I can gather, it combined the novel compilation of figures with their analysis in terms of theory in a way not seen for some time.

Is it still under warranty?

And one other thing: quite a few people seem to have noticed on the web that Abbott seems to have had a cough or cold in interviews for months and months now. The opinion columnist with the biggest man-crush on Abbott in the world, Greg Sheridan, even questioned today whether Abbott is working himself too hard. Is his cough always a nerves thing? Or does he have some long lingering respiratory ailment? I don't think Mr Superfit is as fit as he used to be...

Schwepped up in history

In my post a few days ago about a book on gin, I noted an extract from the review which mentioned the fountain in the Grand Exhibition of 1851, and gave the impression that it might have flowed with Schweppes tonic water.  Well, that's how I read this sentence:

Tonic wasn’t far behind; at the Great Exhibition of 1851, a 27ft (8.2m) fountain flowed with Schweppes.

But looking at a few websites about the Exhibition, and the fountain, it's clear that, at most, it was mineral water.  (I'm still not sure if there was any carbonation in it.)  Schweppes paid to have the drinks concession, and it was a great success for them.

It's been interesting reading about the Exhibition, and the history of Schweppes, which was the original large scale carbonated water manufacturer.  I was never sure of the fate of the Crystal Palace - but it was relocated after the Exhibition and then burnt down in 1936.   (Good thing it didn't make the bombing raids of World War 2, I guess.)  The fountain went with it, although it is forever incorporated in the Schweppes logo. 

It seems in those days just about anything new was seized upon as being of great health benefit, and the alkaline water craze (hello Paul Sheehan) easily goes back to Erasmus Darwin (!):


Jacob did not stay long in Drury Lane and by 1794 he had moved to 8 Kings Street, Holborn. He soon moved the factory again to 11 Margaret Street, Cavendish Square, Westminster at Michaelmas in 1795. In this street, at various addresses, he remained until he retired. In Geneva Jacob had received the fullest support from the medical profession and the leading physicians. In England, it was Dr. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin who became their advocate. For the treatment of "Stone of the Bladder" he prescribe:

A dram of sal soda or of salt of tartar , dissolved in a pint of water, and well saturated with carbonic acid(fixed air), by means of Dr. Nooth’s glass apparatus, and drunk every day, or twice a day, is the most efficacious internal medicine yet discovered, which can easily be taken without any general injury to the constitution. An aerated alcaline of this water is sold under the name of factitious Seltzer water, by J. Schweppe, at no.8 Kings Street, Holborn, London : which I am told is better prepared than can be easily done in the usual glass vessels, probably by employing a greater pressure in wooden ones.

Erasmus Darwin was part of a group of philosophers and inventors who met regularly. In this circle were men such a Josiah Wedgewood the great potter, James Watt, Matthew Boulton (who made Watt’s first steam engine) and Dr.. William Withering. Boulton had been a regular drinker of Schweppes waters from as early as 1794. He told Erasmus Darwin about them and in a letter dated October 1794, he gives a fascinating insight into the waters being sold and the bottles used to contain the:

Mr. J Schweppe, preparer of mineral waters, is the person whom you have heard me speak of and who impregnates it so highly with fixable air as to exceed in appearance Champaign and all other bottled Liquors. He prepares it of three sorts. No 1 is for common drinking with your dinner. No. 2 is for Nephritick patients and No. 3 contains the most alkali and given only in more violent cases. It is contained in strong stone bottles and sold for 6s 6d per doz, including the bottles.

That's today's history.

The disgrace that is Graham Lloyd

The Australian Newspaper’s War On The Bureau of Meteorology � Graham Readfearn
We know that The Australian has been conducting a War on Climate Science for years, but it is still utterly gobsmacking that Graham Lloyd has been publicising the dog-returning-to-its-vomit stories of Marohasy, Jonova, Stockwell and others that the Australian temperature record has been deliberately (and without using the word itself, but clearly implying it continually - fraudulently) manipulated by the Bureau of Meteorology.

Graham Readfern's article above is a good summary.

The only conspiracy going on is in the paranoid imaginations of skeptics.  As Sou notes at Hotwhopper, wannabe King of Skeptics Anthony Watts appears close to breaking point recently.  He's long been a nasty, immature man when it comes to criticism.

And yet fools believe these people.

Wittiest comment of the day

There's an interview with Michael Palin up at the Guardian, because of the publication of the 3rd volume of his diaries.   From comments following, this was the wittiest response possible to a bore claiming he's a bore:

 Lest we forget:

 

Another recipe for my future reference...

Tonight's recipe - Spiced Shepherd's Pie with Pumpkin - found here,  was nice. The spice combination was not overpowering but went well with the mashed pumpkin.   The recipe is too low on the salt, though, and I just used frozen peas instead of silverbeet.  I baked the pumpkin instead of steaming, too, and then mashed it.
 

Ingredients – serves 4

• vegetable or olive oil, for cooking
• 1 onion, chopped
• 500g/18oz minced (ground) lamb
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon dried chilli flakes
• 400g/14oz can diced tomatoes
• 1/2 cup chicken stock (preferably salt reduced)
• 2 tbsp tomato paste
• 4 silverbeet leaves, stalks removed and leaves shredded
• 1kg butternut pumpkin, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup grated cheese
• black pepper, to season

Method:

• Heat a little oil in a non-stick frying pan and cook the onion over a medium heat for 3-5 minutes or until softened.
• Add the minced lamb to the pan and cook, stirring to break up lumps, until browned.
• Add the ground coriander, cumin, cinnamon and chilli flakes to the pan and cook for 2 minutes.
• Stir in the tomatoes, stock and tomato paste and simmer for 10 minutes.
• Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan forced/390F.
• Meanwhile, cook the pumpkin in a large pan of boiling water for approximately 8 minutes or until tender. Drain and then mash the pumpkin in the pan.
• Add the shredded silverbeet to the lamb, stir and cook for a further 5 minutes.
• Place the lamb in an ovenproof dish.
• Top with the mashed pumpkin and spread to cover the lamb.
• Sprinkle over the grated cheese and pepper.
• Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the cheese is golden and bubbly.

Why Saudi ridicule deserves to be ramped up

Readers may rightly note that I'm feeling particularly down on Saudi Arabia at the moment, and John Birmingham in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning helps explain why:

Where, then, are the battalions of those who should be concerned? The Saudi King warns that IS will be in Europe and America within months. The Saudi King, the closest thing we have to an absolute monarch outside of North Korea these days, has at his convenience an army of 75,000 men, including a 1000-strong tank armada which might even give Vladimir Putin a moment's pause if he found them sitting astride some patch of turf he might like to place within his possession. The Royal Saudi Air Force, deploying from bases somewhat closer to the Islamic State than Williamstown, boasts more than 300 combat aircraft, including F15E Strike Eagles and shiny new Eurofighter Typhoons, barely out of their bubblewrap.

And yet, in spite of King Saud's fit of the vapours about the threat of IS, there is no suggestion that these formidable war machines might do anything like deploy from those conveniently located Saudi air fields. No. His oil slaves will do that work. And many in his Kingdom will go on quietly supporting their Sunni brethren in IS.

So why are we going to another war? Surely not because the last one went so well?

What a country - again

I was Googling around looking for photos of the shopping mall at the Riyadh Kingdom Centre which featured in a post a couple of days ago [checking out the similarity of shopping malls in wildly disparate parts of the globe is an interest of mine - so sue me] when I stumbled across some 2012 news from Saudi Arabia   which I had missed:

I didn't realise that not only women suffer from not being to do things they've done in the West for, oh, like forever (such as being able to travel alone without being presumed to be a prostitute), but that the society also had such an intensely infantilising attitude towards single men too.   "No no no, you may be an adult but we know we cannot trust you to control your sexual urges when you are confronted with the alluring sight of a mall full of scenes like this:"

And yet, even the married men had gone all Stockholm Syndrome with talk like this:

So this is a society where young men cannot drink, cannot go to a cinema (apparently, they get one movie every 30 years, but there is a rumour that the government might be about to allow cinemas to be built).  Cannot (until recently) go to a mall because there might be a lot of women there. So what does the young man of Saudi Arabia do for entertainment?   Well, by the looks of this photo from the NYT in 2008 - go on a desert picnic with his best (male, of course) friend:

A thrilling day was had by all.

That NYT article's actually pretty interesting, by which I mean appalling, in the attitudes quoted by one of the young male subjects:

“One of the most important Arab traditions is honor,” Enad said. “If my sister goes in the street and someone assaults her, she won’t be able to protect herself. The nature of men is that men are more rational. Women are not rational. With one or two or three words, a man can get what he wants from a woman. If I call someone and a girl answers, I have to apologize. It’s a huge deal. It is a violation of the house.”

Enad is the alpha male, a 20-year-old police officer with an explosive temper and a fondness for teasing. Nader, 22, is soft-spoken, with a gentle smile and an inclination to follow rather than lead.

They are more than cousins; they are lifelong friends and confidants. That is often the case in Saudi Arabia, where families are frequently large and insular.

OK, so how do you sum up gender politics in this society:   women don't trust men; men don't trust men; men don't trust women; all men think women are stupidly pliable;  but - I don't know, I'm looking for an upside here - everyone likes camels?

Good to see someone keeping tally

From the Australian Financial Review today:

The Abbott government has broken more key promises than it has kept during the Coalition’s first year of power, an analysis by The Australian Financial Review has found.

The government has delivered on 13 promises and is making progress on 11 others – but has broken its word on 14 pre-election pledges.

Tony Abbott promised on the eve of last year’s election that there would be “no cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS”.

The Abbott government has since proposed changes in all of these areas – except the GST.

 And the reason why the government is on the nose - it breaks promises to everyone, on both the Left and Right, meaning that it keeps no one happy. 

Update:  Lenore Taylor's summary was longer than mine, but pretty good too.

Quite a serious First Dog today...

First Dog on the Moon on ... hierarchies of oppression - cartoon | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Et tu, Barrie

Report card: strong ambassador, dud budget - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)


Barrie Cassidy on Tony Abbott today:

Whether it be repairing a damaged relationship with Indonesia,
responding to the Malaysian air crashes, standing up to Russia, or
confronting the brutality of the Islamic State, Abbott has been
exemplary.

Nothing impresses me about Tony Abbott, including his rush to embrace security issues as something that might be his saving grace in the public eye (as he thinks happened to Howard.)

And let's be honest - there has been nothing particularly brave about any of his responses to security issues - not like Howard and his gun law reform.  Rather, they been boiler plate responses, and not always hitting the right mark, but sounding just a bit too incautious and hairy chested.  Also, his personal popularity rating has not increased since these events happened, so it seems to me the public is not entirely convinced as well.  (Although, I suspect, the more dangerous international situation may account for some votes going back to the Coalition in polling, regardless of its leader.)

So I beg to differ with Barrie, and the only good thing about his column is it again makes a mockery of Andrew Bolt's moronic repetition "the ABC is out of control" (because they don't agree with him on politics.)

Poor old Ludwig, revisited; and the lives of the artistic, generally

A couple of months back, I posted some extracts from a review of a biography of Beethoven about his often unhappy life.

There's another review out on a different biography, and this paragraph is blogworthy:

This physical suffering was intensified by his inability to find the partner he craved so fervently. Beethoven kept on falling in love with women whose higher social status placed them out of reach. After the final collapse of his relationship with Josephine, Countess von Deym, he fled to the country estate of another aristocratic lady, Countess Erdödy, and promptly disappeared. It was assumed that he had returned to Vienna, but after three days a servant found him hiding in a remote part of the palace gardens, apparently trying to starve himself to death. Prudish in his attitude to the sexual behaviour of others - he even disapproved of the 'lascivious' subject matter of Mozart's Don Giovanni - he resorted increasingly to prostitutes for his own gratification. 'I am always ready for it,' he told his friend Baron Zmeskall, 'the time I prefer most of all is at about half past three or four o'clock in the afternoon.' His attempt to express his need for a lasting human relationship by adopting and then micro-managing his nephew Karl ended in disaster, when the object of his affection first ran away and then tried to shoot himself.

So, there you have it:  you now know the timing of Beethoven's sexual appetite down to the half hour.

I have to also say that it surprises me, this frequency with which the use of prostitutes (or at least mistresses) features in the lives of the artistically successful.  I've said it before, but if you're married by age 30 and have a long and happy marriage in which you never sleep with anyone else, it seems you can just about guarantee that you will not be a literary or artistic success.    I'm trying to think of a possible exception to this rule:  the 20th century's most famous Catholic writers certainly don't fit the bill - Graham Greene particularly, but I think Evelyn Waugh is thought to have been a frequent customer of brothels during his overseas travels.  CS Lewis is thought by most to have had a weird mummy thing going on with his deceased mate's mother.   Possibly GK Chesterton (although he's not considered exactly top of the range in the artistic ranks)?

A quick check of some biographic details indicate he did enjoy happy domesticity,  and this (rather interesting) essay about him generally argues with direct autobiographical quotes that whatever temptations he considered himself prone to, he specifically denied they were homosexual.   But really - with his rotundity, you would not expect him to have easy access to sexual liaisons of any kind - prostitutes would have feared for their lives, most likely.

So there you go - maybe I have found a famous-ish author who didn't seem to do anything too untoward in his sex life, although his physical characteristics make it questionable whether it was even possible.   Further examples from readers are most welcome.

Update:  from an essay about attitudes to prostitution generally:   

Many great writers, composers and playwrights have regularly indulged, patronised, and befriended prostitutes, including Franz Kafka, Guy de Mauppausant, Georges Rouault, Toulouse Lautrec, Dennis Potter, Picasso, Paul Verlaine. 

 Dennis Potter seems a bit out of place in that list!

Hope it's not a fizzer

It's a James Ashby interview that looks like it will shed further light on who in the Liberals helped him bring his case, and who lied about it.

Update:  what a tease the 60 Minutes trailer for the interview is.    Another allegation of sexual harassment (but not by who - if it's poor old Slipper, people will probably say "old news, can't he be left alone?");  someone called a liar;  a claim that is "dynamite".    Twitter is full of rumour that Pyne ought to be worried, but we shall see.

Update 2:  fizzer.  Although I did miss, while going downstairs to see where X Factor was up to, the bit that was "dynamite".

Look, anyone with any sense knows Pyne has been deceptive about this from the get go, and that Abbott has lied in the past about his role in political intrigue (Hanson), and almost certainly knew more about the Slipper/Ashby matter than he will admit.   Brough comes across as a complete sleazebag.  Yet   Ashby also remains a person impossible to sympathise with because of the way he played politics too.  

It was all a nasty bit of political dirty work from a Coalition that was desperate to seize power if they could.   [And now that they have it, they're still failing to win hearts and minds.]

But we knew all of this already.

Everyone needs a hobby...

These Two Guys Studied Their Feces for a Year - The Atlantic

(Actually, it's quite an interesting science story about gut biome again.)  

Fast food every night, then?

In what's probably just another bit of Slate click baiting, this article with the heading Let’s Stop Idealizing the Home-Cooked Family Dinner is still a profoundly silly piece by Amanda Marcotte.

Yes, let's accept that working mothers can have a hard time juggling work and getting dinner ready every night.

But honest to God, the range of easily prepared meal components (by which I mean things like pasta or curry sauces in jars, meal "kits" in a box, pre-sliced or diced meats, even frozen vegetables) which, served up with a pile of steamed vegetables (just how hard is it to steam vegetables?) makes the modern cooking task for relatively healthy meals about twice as easy as it was 40 years ago.

And what does Marcotte or her quoted sociologists expect as an alternative?

Utopia

I've been watching most of Working Dog's new show Utopia on the ABC, and I have to say it has grown on me.

As a satire of how the public service works (well, perhaps the semi corporatised version of the public service?)  I think it does very well.  

Last night's "job performance review" co-plot rang very many bells with I saw in my exposure to the PS, although that was a couple of decades ago now.  (I doubt that it has changed much, though.)

I thought the episode on the Very Fast Train was also pretty good, in terms of how economically unjustifiable ideas can refuse to die.

But I did miss the first episode - and I am bit puzzled as to how the Rob Sitch character has ended up as the boss of an outfit in which he is perpetually unhappy and never gets his way....

A problem easily fixed?

Seeing Adam Creighton is against an increase in compulsory superannuation, I now feel pretty confident that some increase was in fact warranted.  And let's face it, the Coalition is not saying they are against an increase happening eventually, they've just delayed it.

But what I wanted to note was Creighton's argument in the Australian this morning that compulsory superannuation is a "failure" because it is failing to reduce dependency on the pension to a large enough degree.

Yet the reason he gives for this - the pension assets and income test being too generous - is surely one of the economically easiest things to change in future.   And what's more, isn't ensuring that more money is in super in the first place one of the key ways of ensuring that the tightening of the test is easier to politically and economically justify?

Surely you would have more chance of arguing for phased in reduction of government contribution to pension support if you can point to the increase in superannuation income that you're also ensuring for the future?

Update:   just wanted to make it clear again that I was saying that changing the assets/income test is economically easy - in the sense that it can be relatively clear where to set the line and what effect it will have on future government outlays - but not that it was necessarily politically easy.    However, it becomes politically easier if you can tell people their superannuation will be larger too.

And here's another thing - I've noticed small government types are pretty hot for the Singaporean system of health care which works to a large extent on forced contributions to health savings accounts.   (Someone on boring old Amanda Vanstone's Radio National show was talking up something similar the other day.)  

So why are they so against compulsory super savings in Australia?  Is it just because of Union involvement in industry super?

And really, whatever arguments are against compulsory superannuation (due to fees and questionable tax treatment for those who need it least), do small government economists really think people left alone make adequate savings for retirement? 

I hear a lot of whining, but don't hear much about alternatives....

The old Michael Ware is back on my TV

Seven years ago I noted how annoying I found former CNN war correspondent Michael Ware, an Australian given to talking in perpetual hyperventilating Steve Irwin style.

And he's on my TV right now, on The Drum, with Brisbane's Story Bridge in the background (he lives here?) and he's still the same, and still really irritating.

In other Arab news

While admitting that I like the idea of being in charge of an Australian version of the Saudi Arabian institution known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, I would have to run it better than this:

Saudi Arabia’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice on Tuesday removed four of its staff from the Riyadh office after it found them guilty of assaulting a British national and his Saudi wife....

Reports late on Friday said that the Briton was approached by the members of the Commission when he took a check-out at a supermarket reserved for women and families.

When they asked him about his presence in the special lane, he answered that he was with his wife and had the right to use it.

However, the Commission members felt frustrated by the answer and followed the couple until they reached their car outside the mall where they had a physical altercation.

Update:  a little bit of video of the guy being jumped on for being in the women's checkout lane can be seen at the Daily Mail here.

I'd hate to see what they do to someone who goes through the "12 items or less" lane with 13 things.

And by the way, the Daily Mail site has a picture of Riyadh, a city you don't often see much of:

What's the building that looks like the eye of a needle?  I'll have to check:  I see, it's Kingdom Centre, which has a shopping mall, hotel and apartments.   [And, being Saudi Arabia, public floggings in the courtyard on the hour for men caught looking sideways at women with accidentally exposed ankles.]

You can also go up to the "skybridge" at the top.  Photos at its website here. 

Update:   looking around at other local websites reporting this widely publicised story, I have to admit that most of the 40 comments at Arab News (most of which appear to be Saudis) are critical of the Virtue Police.   One comment details another incident, which I repeat for its comedy value (as long as you're not the victim):

There have been many such instances which either go unreported or no action is taken even after a complaint is lodged. A few years ago, the religious police raided a staff house belonging to a corporate in Olaya locality of Riyadh which housed a few Keralites among which one of them happened to be a friend. The religious police searched the entire flat and found a few pornographic CD's, all the flat members were locked up in the toilet from 10 PM to 4 AM and the entire duration was spent by the religious police examining the evidence thoroughly on a flat screen television. Fortunately the flat members were let out after the call for Fajr salah and the religious police left without saying a word.

Ms Popularity

Judith Sloan is having a hot run in the unpopularity stakes at the moment.  From The Australian:

JUDITH Sloan makes some false assertions about how one of my reporters does her job (“Paper’s slant against self-managed super is just so wrong”. 2/9). Sloan suggests she’s “pretty sure” the journalist did not ferret through the Australian Taxation Office website to get figures about self-managed super funds and that she was “probably fed them” by industry super funds.

After speaking to the reporter, and backed by my knowledge of how she works, I am more than pretty sure that Sloan is wrong. My reporter got the numbers from the ATO. She was not fed them by interested parties.

It is one thing to vigorously contest issues. It is another to make false claims about the professionalism of a journalist because you disagree with the angle of a story — all without checking your assertions.
Michael Stutchbury, editor-in-chief, The Australian Financial Review, Sydney, NSW

Well, this is confusing...

We seem to have a bit of a bizzaro world reversal going on in the reaction to the Abbott government putting substantial delay into an increase into compulsory superannuation contributions paid by employers.

The Australian website has been running as its headline article a David Crowe report that would not keep the Abbott government happy at all.  The subheading:

WORKERS will take a $20,000 hit to their retirement savings from a shock deal in the Senate to repeal the mining tax, with the Abbott government blaming Labor for forcing it to agree to the change. The losses could reach twice as much for young workers on high incomes, according to an exclusive analysis for The Australian that reveals the impact on millions of employees who will miss out on an increase in their superannuation over the next five years.

(Of course, the paper also contains a "You're Magnificent, Abbott!" piece by the ever obsequious Denis Shanahan about the very same deal.) 

But over at Fairfax, we have Peter Martin talking up the decision to not increase the tax contributions because it was clearly going to eat into salary growth too much.  With the headline "The Coalition helps the workers", the Martin article takes exactly the Abbott line on the issue.

It will be some time before I know what to think about this....

The El Nino that may or may not come

Stalled El Nino poised to resurge : Nature News & Comment

Certainly, no one expects a super strong El Nino now, but I am curious about what happened to the large body of subsurface warm water that they had been tracking across the Pacific earlier this year...

Just trying to be helpful

About this nude celebrity photos in the cloud being stolen business:   I think, given the ubiquity of youthful ownership of phones with cameras, that it's probably a fair assumption in the West that about 95% of males under 25 are already the subject of a nude picture (either of all of their body or part of it), and about 70% of females.   (The other gender difference being that, for men, the majority are likely self taken, but for women, more are taken by their boyfriend.)   It's become so rampant that it may as well be incorporated into some sort of coming of age ritual.  Perhaps at 21,  everyone could have a nude shot of their choice (personality dictating how rude the choice actually is) loaded up to the national  iNude service, with access available to anyone for a modest (ha! pun) fee - perhaps $1 per view, with nearly all of that going to the photo subject.  Of course, how to deal with those who then save and spread the pic to others for free is something I'm not sure how to deal with - I see that the Snapchat self erasing idea is pretty easy to evade.   But if we believe libertarians, if you make the cost of legitimate access cheap enough, people won't pirate.  (A likely story...)

Anyway, the point of the exercise is that if society is based on an assumption that everyone can or will be legitimately viewed nude, celebrities can stop fretting so much about their secret nude photos being stolen.  I guess that's assuming the photo they are worried about is a mere nude one.   If it is one involving sexual activity that they did not want taken or realised - well, the fact that you were already available nude on line might make the unfairness of further intimate releases so much clearer that they are less likely to be clicked on.  (And civil action against the person who released them more justified.) 

As the title says, just trying to be helpful...

Nuclear disasters last a long time...

Radioactive wild boar roaming the forests of Germany - Telegraph

 This rather surprising report states:

Twenty-eight years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, its effects are still
being felt as far away as Germany
– in the form of radioactive wild boars.

Wild boars still roam the forests of Germany, where they are hunted for their
meat, which is sold as a delicacy.

But in recent tests by the state government of Saxony, more than one in three
boars were found to give off such high levels of radiation that they are
unfit for human consumption.

 In a single year, 297 out of 752 boar tested in Saxony have been over the
limit, and there have been cases in Germany of boar testing dozens of times
over the limit.

Germany's radioactive boar problem is not expected to go away any time soon.
With the levels of contamination still showing in tests, experts predict it
could be around for another 50 years. 

Astounding hypocrisy

There are few things more annoying than libertarians who freely admit to flaunting the property rights of American film and TV producers by downloading pirated copies of whatever fantasy gory pornquest they currently enjoy, and then deride government attempts to stop them.

And the justification that they give - well, business always knows right, according to libertarians, except when it interferes with their TV viewing habits:

The IPA believes a better way to deal with online piracy in Australia would be to introduce a "fair use exception".

Mr Breheny said he was "concerned" and "alarmed" that the government was not placing more emphasis on the importance of innovation and technological advances, such as content streaming platforms, to resolve piracy issues over ineffective regulations. He said ultimately rights holders needed to take responsiblity by ensuring their content was accessible and affordable.

Yeah, an individual's right to own and do what they want with their property is really important to libertarians, and one of the few things they want government to do is to protect such rights, but their view on TV piracy  comes down to this:  "hey, studio/government, if you don't let us watch it for free, or at least make it cheap enough, of course we'll steal it anyway.  What d'ya expect?" 

 

Gin considered

Some amusingly odd bits from a review of a book about the history of gin:

All the horrors of 18th-century Gin Lane are here, including instances of child alcoholism. In an effort to stop the entire population of London reeling with gin, successive governments tried different restrictions. But the determined always found a way. Captain Dudley Bradstreet set up a secret distillery in Holborn in 1736; in the street outside the door he placed a wooden cat, with a leaden pipe concealed under its paw. Customers would approach and whisper “puss”; if they heard a “miaow” in reply, they would then whisper their order, put coins in the cat’s mouth and the gin would be funnelled through the pipe. 

Williams lavishes loving detail on the evolution of gin’s manufacture, as well as its slow Victorian ascent of the social scale. Tonic wasn’t far behind; at the Great Exhibition of 1851, a 27ft (8.2m) fountain flowed with Schweppes. The 20th century brought glamour: the swish cocktail bars of London’s smartest hotels and the advent of James Bond’s gin/vodka martini. The publicity-loving diabolist Aleister Crowley claimed to have invented a gin cocktail called the Kubla Khan number 2, which involved the addition of laudanum.

How were the chronic alcohol problems of urban England in the 18th and 19th centuries actually overcome,  I wonder?  Can't say that I know of the answer to that.  Surely it wasn't just the moral example of Queen Victoria?

Also, I didn't recall this:

Their 16th-century predecessors in Holland – gin, or “genever” as it was called there, was thought to have been invented medicinally by one Dr Franciscus Sylvius – would recognise the process now. So how did the beery British get a taste for it? Williams blames William of Orange, noting that the phrase “Dutch courage” is thought to have originated with soldiers taking slugs of gin in the Thirty Years War.

 Sounds like an entertaining book.

Update:  OIC - the "gin epidemic" was mainly a feature of the 18th century.  Interesting article all about it here.

And as for what happened with drinking in England in the 19th century, try this:

They offer evidence of how cost and access effect consumption:

"(T)he 18th-Century gin craze was linked to the government's encouragement of gin production and restriction of brandy imports; the rise in consumption in the 19th Century was associated with rising living standards."

However, that nose-dive in alcohol consumption you can see on the graph in 1914 was the result of "the most sustained attempt to come to grips with drink in British history":

"Measures included shorter opening hours, higher duties on beer, and significant reductions in both the production and strength of beer. The amount of beer consumed in 1918 was nearly half of the pre-war total, despite rising incomes, and arrests for drunkenness in England and Wales fell from 190,000 to 29,000 between 1913 and 1918."

The historians also point to important cultural effects. One observed a decline in drinking in the late 19th Century and suggested that this was due to "many counter-attractions for working-class consumers (music halls, football, cigarettes, and holidays)".

How Islamic State happened

BBC News - Islamic State: Where does jihadist group get its support?

Sounds like a decent explanation here of the political bungling in the Middle East led to money flowing to IS.


Incidentally - now that Saudi Arabia is scared of what they have (not entirely intentionally) helped create, when is someone in the West going to call on them to help solve the problem by putting their own military in the fight?

As if some Middle East Muslims didn't think they had enough reasons to fight already....

Saudis risk new Muslim division with proposal to move Mohamed’s tomb - Middle East - World - The Independent

The plans, brought to light by another Saudi academic who has exposed and criticised the destruction of holy places and artefacts in Mecca – the holiest site in the Muslim world – call for the destruction of chambers around the Prophet’s grave which are particularly venerated by Shia Muslims.

The 61-page document also calls for the removal of Mohamed’s remains to the nearby al-Baqi cemetery, where they would be interred anonymously.

There is no suggestion that any decision has been taken to act upon the plans. The Saudi government has in the past insisted that it treats any changes to Islam’s holiest sites with “the utmost seriousness”.

But such is the importance of the mosque to both Sunni and Shia Muslims that Dr Irfan al-Alawi warned that any attempt to carry out the work could spark unrest. It also runs the risk of inflaming sectarian tensions between the two branches of Islam, already running perilously high due to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

Hardline Saudi clerics have long preached that the country’s strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam – an offshoot of the Sunni tradition – prohibits the worship of any object or “saint”, a practice considered “shirq” or idolatrous.

Um, if no one is going to agree to a suggestion that would be like throwing a tanker full of Saudi oil  on an existing fire, why publicise it at all??

Update:   searching back on posts I made earlier on Islam, I was interested to re-read this one based on an interview in 2006 on ABC's Religion Report with a Catholic priest who had lived for decades in Pakistan.   He was warning then of a future intensification of the conflict between Sunni and Shia across the Middle East:

Robert McCulloch was back home in Australia recently for a few days break, and he agreed to come into the ABC studio to talk about what life is like for Christians in Pakistan. He arrived clutching his copy of Pope Benedict's new Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, which he'd been to busy to read prior to his holiday. He talks about being surrounded by pervasive bigotry that seeps into every aspect of Pakistani society, and living with a permanent state of threat.

Robert McCulloch: Yes I think the characteristic of the nation unfortunately is one of conflict, even though the President and Prime Minister have on occasion said that Islam is a religion of tolerance and peace, a dominant reality of the society is the conflict between the various sects or divisions or groupings of Muslims within Pakistan, in particular Sunni and Shia. And even amongst the various groupings within those two major groupings that you've got there, and the conflict, verbal, literary, even bombings which are taking place in the north of the country in Gilgit up in the northern areas, there's a warfare going on between Sunni and Shia and that's got ramifications in every aspect of the society pay-back, it seeps over into the society and makes it conflictual.

Stephen Crittenden: It's been suggested to me in fact that it might well be harder to be a Shi'ite in Pakistan perhaps than it is even to be a Christian.

Robert McCulloch: No, I wouldn't agree with that. I think Christians have their own problems, especially exacerbated by the blasphemy laws that we might want to talk about a little later, but leaving ourselves on that question of being a Shi'ite in Pakistan, or a Shia in Pakistan, I'd like to relate that a little bit to the wider global scene, at least in the Middle East, that the conflict that unfortunately has emerged between Israel and Lebanon, I believe has taken the focus off a major conflict that has been emerging in the Middle East and other areas over the past few years. And it's been the conflict between Sunni and Shia. I think it's becoming more and more evident in Iraq that it's a conflict in Islam. It's certainly an issue with the minority of Shia Muslims in Saudi Arabia that are as discriminated against as Christians.

Stephen Crittenden: And you say that actually may well be emerging as the big future conflict in the Middle East, the conflict between Shi'ites and Sunnis?

Robert McCulloch: I think so. Looking at the conflict that we actually have in Pakistan, that is spoken about and each year when Ramadan takes place, the celebrations or the commemorations held by the Shias, how is that going to be picked up by fundamentalist groups amongst the Sunnis? It's an area of questioning, major, major questioning. It's ultimately an issue that Muslims themselves I think need to address more carefully. We've got a major conflictual situation in Iraq, people are striving to solve it through violence, and if this is all the relationship can lead to, well there has to be a major question that a lot has to be done.

 That was 8 years ago now.  All his fears appear to have come true...

Good for the heart (but there's a catch)

Wine only protects against CVD in people who exercise

What?  You mean I can't just have a glass of wine each instead of getting exercise?  The world is so unfair...

Bad for the heart

Energy drinks cause heart problems

Really, should bars in dance clubs be allowed to serve these in alcoholic cocktails at all?  (I'm assuming they do that still, despite recent warnings about their danger if you have more than a couple in quick succession.)

Yet more need for that "How to Win Friends and Influence People" book

From the Australian's media diary:

Estranged party
IF you don’t like hearing a few home truths don’t invite this paper’s columnist Judith Sloan to your birthday party. South Australian captains of industry and business leaders were “stunned into silence” on Friday as Sloan delivered a speech at the 175th gala celebrations for Business SA. “It was akin to inviting someone to your birthday party to speak, only to have them tell everyone they’re fat and ugly,” Ish Davies, News Corporation’s regional director of South Australia, told Diary.

Guests at an event hosted by Sunrise’s David Koch were told “Australia can’t afford another Tasmania”. But the wake-up call left Davies feeling a bit uneasy. When he collected an award later that evening he used his acceptance speech to put some “clear distance between The Oz and The Advertiser”. He told the audience: “We’re from the same mothership but they’re estranged.” Our hard-hitting columnist left the venue before Davies took to the stage, but informed by Diary she was working for an “estranged” publication, Sloan said: “They just want to put their heads in the sand.”

Update:   Another report on the speech confirms it went over like a lead balloon:

Academic and media columnist Professor Judith Sloan chose one of the state’s most important occasions to deliver the worst keynote speech I’ve ever heard.

Sloan’s speech was the lowlight of an otherwise remarkable tribute to local enterprise as Business SA celebrated the 175th anniversary of the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry – the oldest such chamber in Australia.

The business community was ready to celebrate – but the applause turned to jeers as Sloan’s long speech failed to acknowledge any positives about the state’s future.

 I wonder - maybe the woeful reception it got was behind this weekend's rumour that she was on a short list to be Treasury Secretary.   (I go with it being a joke; but with this government, anything is possible.)

About data homogenisation

Good point raised about the effect of data homogenisation that the Bureau of Meteorology undertakes to try to get a more accurate long term temperature record:

Our data on extreme temperature trends show that the warming trend across the whole of Australia looks bigger when you don’t homogenise the data than when you do. For example, the adjusted data set (the lower image below) shows a cooling trend over parts of northwest Australia, which isn’t seen in the raw data.

Anyone who has credulously believed Marohasy, Jonova and their publicity agent Grahan Lloyd are fools.

Yet another fail

Plain packs don't drive smokers to buy cheap imports

Gee.  Just how comprehensively wrong can Davidson, Ergas, Sloan and Creighton get?

Mad doctors

After the remarkable story on TV last week about the cocaine addicted neurosurgeon who left prostitutes for dead but was able to continue operating at a private Sydney hospital, there was this story in the weekend magazine of the Sydney Morning Herald about another mad hospital doctor, although this one has been dead for 26 years.

It's a really amazing story of just how mentally disturbed a hospital doctor can (or could?) be and still work.