Musings

Can we please stop acting like school kids?

2010-11-07T22:35:00.000-08:00

I'm getting thoroughly sick and tired of the dumbing-down of debates these days. I was reading an article about a "chatbot" a programmer has created to counter arguments made by people using Twitter to talk about climate change. Basically, the chatbot looks for a few hundred set phrases and then returns a selected set phrase to basically tell the tweeter he or she is an idiot whose arguments are stupid.

Quite apart from the extreme arrogance of this person, who cannot admit the possibility he may be wrong in any respect, what this does is lower the debate to the school yard bully level of: "You don't agree with me, and therefore you are stupid and so are your arguments."

If he was a scientist I would give up altogether, but he's a computer programmer who apparently believes he knows more than any scientist who happens to have a different view to the prevailing theory.

What annoys me even more is the so-called journalist who reduces the profession to the level of mudslinging with the title: "Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense" and saying things like: "...it answers twitter users who aren't even aware of their own ignorance."

Is this how low journalism can sink or can it go even lower?

New kid starting school - at 102 years of age!

2010-04-17T21:10:00.000-07:00

An amazing Chinese lady, Ma Xiuxian, has always wanted to go to school. She sacrificed her hopes for those of her children, but now at 102, she proudly sits with the five year olds in their first year of school. Good for her! I love these kinds of stories, and well remember the lady who began playing piano when she was 99, and played in her first concert at 100. They're an inspiration.

Here's the story: www.minsterfm.com/news/review.php?article=173312

The power of television

2010-03-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

A French documentary has been made, demonstrating the power of television. They set up a fake game show in which contestants were persuaded byt the 'game' host to inflict electric shocks on other people. The producer, Christophe Nick, said that it shows that when a person is alone facing someone who is abusing their power, they become 'completely malleable and obedient', even to the point of torturing other people, who are howling with pain.

The fake show had 69 unwitting contestants, and 81 percent went on to torture other people as part of the pilot game show they thought they were taking part in. Each contestant put questions to 'victims' (played by actors, but this was not known by the contestants), and punished them with electric shocks if they got wrong answers. Only 19% stopped the game before the voltage maximum of 420V was reached.

The timing of the documentary coincides with a nazi war crime trial in Israel. If ordinary people in a TV show with nothing to lose can torture other people until they scream just because a TV game show host tells them to, what would they have been capable of in Nazi Germany?

It says a lot about the power of television. And none of it good

Gunns pulp mill

2010-03-15T17:19:00.000-07:00

GetUp has a new campaign to try to stop the pulp mill in Tasmania, which will destroy big sections of the old growth forest, and which will destroy the habitat for several endangered species, including the already severely threatened Tasmanian Devil.

This has to be stopped.

Go to the GetUp website: https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/NoPulpMill&id=961

Or watch this video and do what Bob says:

Richard Dawkins in Australia

2010-03-08T20:08:00.000-08:00

I saw Richard Dawkins on Q & A yesterday, which is unusual for me as I don't usually watch TV. I was having a rare 'veg-out' evening. That is, an evening in, where I did nothing at all, but just sat like a zombie watching the lobotomy box.

Well, not such a lobotomy box when Richard D is on. I like him. He's one of the few sane and intelligent people around these days, and it's like a breath of fresh air hearing someone who cares about truth, honesty and evidence. I've read his books The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, and will get hold of The Greatest Show on Earth. I like the way he writes.

The other people on the show were just there to fill up the seats as far as I was concerned, but I was absolutely staggered by Steve Fielding, who is a Senator, and who believes the Earth is only 10,000 years old. This means that all of geology is wrong, all of paleontology is wrong, large chunks of physics, chemistry, biology, are all wrong. But a book put together almost two thousand years ago by people who thought the Earth was flat and the sky was a dome with pin-pricks in it so you could see the lights of heaven shining through them at night -- oh no, that's not wrong.

Sometimes I find it really hard to believe we are living in the 21st century.

John Trevor Edwards, firefighter

2010-02-27T03:58:00.000-08:00

Take a look at this picture of my uncle, John Trevor Edwards.

Like all the other firefighters, both here and around the world, my uncle is what some would call a hero. He would laugh at that, and would say he just does what he was trained to do. He might even say he loves it. But the fact remains that he puts his life on the line to save others, and if he and his fellow firefighters didn't do that, then who would protect us from fire?

According to my dictionary, one of the definitions of hero is "an object of extreme admiration". Well, that makes my uncle John a hero in my book. I'm in awe of what he does, and I would like to thank him and all his mates and fellow firefighters around the world for their selfless service to others.

I take my hat off to you all.

Washington Post violinist experiment

2010-02-25T18:46:00.000-08:00

I just heard of a Washington post experiment in which a nondescript-looking man busked in a Washington DC subway station. Almost nobody among the thousands who passed stopped to listen for more than a few seconds. In total he earned $32 during the 45 minute session, in which he played six Bach pieces. The only ones who took any real notice of the man were young children. When he finished playing, nobody applauded, and nobody even noticed.

Nobody knew, but the man was classical violinist of world renown, Joshua Bell, who only two days before had filled a Boston theatre at $100 a ticket. Nobody knew either that he was playing a genuine 18th century Stradivarius violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

I'm sure he'd get a better deal in Europe and also here, but still the majority would pass him by without noticing or recognizing the beauty and talent. It begs the question: just how much beauty are we missing in the world as we busily drift through it with our eyes and minds closed to it?

Read the full Washington Post article here. Its author won a Pulitzer prize for it.

Mr Bean in Avatar

2010-02-15T23:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't seen this film. Perhaps if I'd known Mr Bean was in it, I would have gone.

I've no idea where the picture came from originally. It's doing the round of emails etc., but it's so good I couldn't help myself! Whoever made it is quite brilliant.

k.d. lang has a new fan - hallelujah

2010-02-15T02:10:00.000-08:00

I don't usually watch TV but I did see the Olympic opening ceremony at my parents' place, and was totally knocked out by k.d. lang's version of hallelujah. What a voice! What a wonderful, beautiful woman, what emotion and strength and how courageous she is to be true to herself in front of billions of people. I could turn gay for her!

I've seen several versions of this song now, and I love them all, but I think the one at the olympics was best. Second best was the 2006 version in front of Leonard Cohen. See it here if the link above doesn't work. Watch right to the end when she and Leonard Cohen exchange hugs. He's clearly moved. And how could he not be, with such a beautiful song, sung so exquisitely.

Come on Firefox - support HTML5

2010-02-03T19:47:00.000-08:00

I much prefer Firefox to IE or any other browser I've tried, but it's getting annoying that Firefox doesn't yet support HTML5. Why? Because I love YouTube, and so many of them are now in HTML5 and I have to go over to that awful Internet Explorer to view them.

So come on Firefox, how about updating so I can view something other than this when I go to YouTube:

Asthma gets worse in swimming pools

2010-02-01T18:28:00.000-08:00

I have asthma and I like to swim in the local pool, which unlike my local beach has no great white sharks, or at least none I know of. But is all that chlorine making my asthma worse? Sometimes I think it is and stop going for a while.

I know they have to put chlorine in the water because it kills bacteria, but there are a couple of side-effects. One is the chlorine fumes, and the other is the by-products released when the chlorine reacts with sweat and other unmentionable fluids likely to be in the pool. The question is does this make asthma worse? A recent study by scientists in Belgium, published in Pediatrics, says it does. They studied 847 teenage students swimming in unchlorinated and chlorinated pools, and found allergy sensitive teens using the chlorinated pools (indoor or outdoor) were up to almost 15 times more likely to have asthma and 3.5 times more likely to have hay fever. Those who weren't allergy sensitive weren't affected.

There are other ways of sanitising pools, using copper or silver ion-based sanitiser, and so maybe these should be adopted. Otherwise, people like me are faced with a choice of hazards: the tiny chance of being eaten, or the bigger chance of having worse asthma.

OR:

(Photos from morguefile.com)

I think I'll still go to the pool, even if my asthma does get worse.

I just went out and saw the stars

2010-01-19T04:03:00.000-08:00

From my back garden I can see a billion stars, with the Milky Way directly overhead. Many of what look like stars are really galaxies, themselves containing a billion stars.

The image is from the European Space Agency via Wikipedia.
It is listed as the LH 95 star forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The image was taken using the Hubble Space Telescope.

The thing is, religious people tell us we're the centre of the Universe and that we're made in the image of the invisible sky god, and this is all for our benefit.

So all these stars are there... what... so we have something pretty to look at at night?

Hmmm.

The death of common sense

2010-01-14T16:34:00.000-08:00

Someone sent me a great email this morning about the death of common sense. Apparently it was published as an obituary in the London Times, although I haven't been able to locate the original and I've searched Times Online. I don't know who owns the copyright or whether it's in the public domain, but it's been quoted on blogs all over the Web. It's so good, I just can't help repeating it here myself. It says it all really:

****

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
knowing when to come in out of the rain
why the early bird gets the worm
life isn't always fair
maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (frankly, adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned, but overbearing regulations were set in place.

Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate and teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by:
his parents, Truth and Trust
his wife, Discretion
his daughter, Responsibility
his son, Reason

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers:
I Know My Rights
I Want It Now
Someone Else Is To Blame
I'm A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.
If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

Haiti earthquake

2010-01-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

The earthquake in Haiti is appalling, with the death toll in the tens of thousands. It's unimaginable for me, sitting here in my safe little study, even though I live very close to an earthquake fault (there has been no earthquake here since the 1950s). I can't imagine the world crashing around my head like that, or the concept of everyone you know being affected in some way, and almost every family having lost someone. Whole families must have been wiped out. It's the worst disaster since the 2004 tsunami, and equally tragic.

Money doesn't fix people's broken lives, but it can help the survivors with shelter, food and so on. I've found a few places to donate:

American Red Cross
Doctors without Borders
Plan International

If we all help to the extent that we can, it will make a difference.

Global warming continues, but it's raining at last!

2010-01-11T15:08:00.000-08:00

People in Europe might be doubting the reality of global warming right now with their big freeze, but it's very real to us. Now, after several days of stinking hot weather over 40 degrees, we finally have a day of 20 degrees and rain (the first this year).

Growing up in England, I never could have imagined that a rainy day would be considered glorious weather, but here in South Australia, it's just great to see some rain, and to be able to open up the house to let the breeze flow through. I'm also looking forward to being able to sleep tonight.

Meanwhile, in England, where I grew up, they seem to be having a repeat of the big freeze of 1963. Since it's happened before, you can't put it down to anthropogenic global warming, but warming increases the water vapour content, and it has to come down somewhere, either as flooding rains or as snow. More on global warming later, but I'll leave that for another day.

Denmark a nation of barbarians?

2009-12-28T16:50:00.000-08:00

I always thought Denmark was a civilised country, but this morning I got an email about the barbaric and senseless slaughter of dolphins in the Feroe Islands. You can read about it here. In order to prove they're real men and no longer boys, every year teenage males mindlessly butcher hundreds of dolphins by hacking at them with butcher's hooks and then leaving them to bleed to death.

No civilised country would allow such barbarism to continue. Killing them for food is one thing (and it isn't sustainable and dolphin and whale meat is so full of toxins it's no good to eat anyway), but killing animals to prove you're a man? I'm so glad I'm a woman. These people are just sickening, and so is Denmark for allowing it to happen.

I did have a hankering to go to Denmark one day, but it's just dropped off my list of places I want to visit. I'll never go there, unless they stop this mindless butchery.

Sign the petitions here:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/denmark-end-whale-dolphin-salughter.html
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/22/stop-the-slaughter-of-calderon-dolphins-indenmark
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/199433000
and help to end this insanity.

Copenhagen farce and global warming newspeak

2009-12-22T03:21:00.000-08:00

Well, sorry, but I think the whole Copenhagen thing is a bit of a farce. This "we're signing off on two degrees" bit is utter nonsense. The climate is changing, and our activities (and overpopulation) is adding to and accelerating the warming, but there are underlying changes going on that have nothing whatever to do with us. We could cut our greenhouse gas emissions to zero, stop clearing and burning forests, and there'd still be global warming, as there has been since the lowest temperatures of the last glaciation. We can't stop global warming at two degrees, or anything else, we can only reduce our impact.

I could be seen as perhaps a little cynical here, but I think politicians love global warming because it makes people afraid -- and frightened people are easy to control and manipulate. There's also the fact that a politician with no plan is not electable, whereas a pollie who's signing and ratifying Kyoto, going to Copenhagen, signing off on two degrees and all the rest of it is electable because she/he at least has a plan.

What makes Copenhagen even more of a farce is that we are actually living in an Ice Age, at very low temperatures and CO2 impoverishment. We tend to think that 100 years is a long time, and 500,000 years is unimaginable, but the Earth has been around for about 4,000 million years, and for most of that the global average temperature has been 22 degrees, and the CO2 has been at 2000ppm. The peat bogs in Alaska and Siberia are the remains of temperate forests. Greenland was called that because it was green in the medieval warm period. The climate changes all the time. And incidentally, the climate on Mars and Pluto is also going through global warming. The idea that a bunch of pollies jetting over to Copenhagen for a couple of days can stop it is just silly nonsense, as is the silly idea that it's hotter now than it ever has been before.d3ev4

I hate it when the language is hijacked. CO2 is a gas upon which all life on earth depends. There is no such thing as "carbon pollution". It's all so much -- NEWSPEAK. Global warming becomes climate change. CO2 becomes carbon pollution, climate change becomes dangerous climate change, and then suddenly the planet (which has lasted 4,000 million years) is "in danger". Balderdash.

Just a few references:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050128223438.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/chill.html
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/temperature.html#1.35Myr
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

On Vladimir Putin

2009-12-08T16:06:00.000-08:00

I keep having dreams about Vladimir Putin! Why? I don't know. He's not bad looking I suppose, but I think he's cold and probably ruthless, being ex-KGB and all that. But I've had a few dreams that are centred on Vladimir Putin lately, and it's a tad worrying.

Like last night, I dreamt I was at the theatre and the play I'd directed was on and I was helping out in front of house. In comes Vladimir, who wants to see the play, but wants a private box. We have no private boxes, so I take him on a tour and scour around looking for one. We find one underground (previously unknown orchestra pit?), and it has a series of mirrors like a giant periscope without the cover, so he can see the stage. I leave him to it, and he's happy.

What the hell was that all about? Why are my dreams centred on Vladimir Putin, and how can I get him out of them?

I reckon an Ice Age is coming

2009-12-07T14:53:00.000-08:00

I seem to be on my own here, but I reckon the real danger we're facing is an imminent glaciation, colloquially known as an Ice Age.

I was struck recently, when watching An Inconvenient Truth again, that when he shows the big graph of data from the ice core samples there's a definite pattern:

1. Ice, for a long time, say around 100,000 years or so.
2. Global warming for around 11,000 years or so.
3. Towards the end of the global warming period the temperature increase goes exponential -- the graph is almost vertical.
4. The accelerating temperature increase is followed by a glaciation.

Now, I'm no climate scientist, but it seems to me that what's happening now is exactly the same as has happened before, over and over again, just before the ice returns. It was nothing to do with us before this time, so why do we suppose it is now? Of course we may be adding to the "problem", but it seems likely the underlying cause is not anthropogenic.

I've also been checking out some geology sites, and it seems that for stretches of hundreds of millions of years at a time the global average temperature is 22 degrees, and the CO2 is 2000ppm. Right now it's 13.8 and about 380 ppm. We're living in a cold, CO2 impoverished time!

The whole debate about climate change seems to be predicated on the idea that the temperature has been "right" and is now going "wrong". But geologists tell us that's nonsense, and so is the idea that the planet is in peril. The debate is also characterised by an alarming hijacking of language. Skeptics are called "deniers" or brainless idiots. Carbon dioxide, a gas on which all life depends, has become carbon pollution, as though it's some nasty gas we need to urgently get rid of. Doesn't more CO2 = more plants? Isn't the real problem overpopulation?

Global warming will cause a lot of problems, but nowhere near as many as a return of the ice.

Pork meat grown in the lab

2009-12-06T16:18:00.000-08:00

Pork meat grown in the laboratory

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists from Eindhoven University in The Netherlands have for the first time grown pork meat in the laboratory by extracting cells from a live pig and growing them in a petri dish.

This article is an interesting one. I'm a person that loves the taste of meat, but I detest animal cruelty, which is why I rarely eat pork, and when I do I make sure it's free range. Would something like this be a solution to my dilemma? Or is it as nasty an idea as genetically modified crops smothered in pesticides, picked early, stored for months and then sprayed with something to make it look ripe?

I was at first in two minds about it, but I think I'm coming out on the pro side. Using the meat of one pig to make the volume of meat you would have to kill a million pigs for has got to be a great idea. There is no obscenity worse than 'factory farming' of live animals, and 'factory culture' of meat would cut down the suffering of animals enormously.

Man Roasts and Eats Pet Dog

2009-08-17T05:06:00.000-07:00

A Tongan man in New Zealand was caught roasting his pet dog after killing him and then skinning him and preparing him for tea. Read all about it here.

There's a loophole in the law that means that he will get away with this because it is not against the law in New Zealand to humanely kill a dog. What happens to the body is neither here nor there.

So what are we to make of this? I have a couple of pet dogs (Charlie and Libby) who sleep in my room, and in the morning when I wake up, they come on the bed and snuggle up while I think about getting up. They are my friends. I could not imagine killing and eating them. But then I have chooks, and I have at times had roosters, and I have killed and eaten them. I've eaten lamb, although lambs are gorgeous. I've eaten beef, and yet cows are incredibly beautiful animals. I understand pigs are at least as intelligent as dogs.

Charlie

I'm not advocating killing and eating dogs, but there is something of a double standard here isn't there? If I think it's okay to kill and eat a beautiful animal like a cow, but a Hindu thinks a cow is sacred -- who is right? If an Icelander thinks it's ok to kill and eat a beautiful animal like a whale, but we in the west thinks a whale is sacred -- who is right? If a Tongan thinks it's ok to kill and eat a beautiful animal like a dog, but we think a dog is sacred -- who is right?

Libby and Chooks

Is vegetarianism any better? After all, if you drink milk, eat cheese and eggs, you are contributing to the killing of calves and chickens. You can't have one without the other. Maybe moral omnivorism is the best option after all.

Now I'm going to give my dogs a big hug.

Man gored by bull at Pamplona

2009-07-11T02:49:00.000-07:00

All the bulls in Pamplona end up being terrified and then stabbed to death with swords in a bullring, and in Spain this is apparently what passes for entertainment. This is the number one reason I will never go to Spain until they stop the bull fights and bull runs. They're barbarians in my book. Now one of the barbarians has been gored to death. Sorry, but I can feel no sympathy whatever. He wanted a cheap thrill at the expense of a terrified bull that had no hope of surviving the day.

The show must go on, say the officials at Pamplona. Why? Because the holy dollar plays the tune, and the Pamplona bull run draws tourists. Why not throw Christians to the lions then? That would draw tourists too, just as it did in ancient Rome. There are plenty of sick, and sickening, people in the world drawn to all forms of cruelty.

Instead, maybe they ought to add up the dollars of the tourists who will never go to Pamplona (or anywhere else in Spain) precisely because there is this stupid bull run and barbaric bull fights. Barbarity has no place in the 21st century as far as I can see, and maybe it's about time the Spaniards figured that one out.

So much crap about Michael Jackson

2009-07-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

There is so much crap and lousy journalism on the Internet. Nobody seems to check their facts, and the same rubbish gets repeated over and over again.

Take this for example: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=59905602

This is CNN reporting on Michael Jackson's last FULL DRESS rehearsal. Absolute claptrap! Any fool (except the CNN idiot presenting it, apparently) can see that this was no dress rehearsal. Were the dancers really going on in tee shirts and baggy track pants? Was Michael to be wearing a plain pair of trousers and jacket with no sequins in sight? Rubbish. If this was a dress rehearsal I'm an alien from Jupiter. Don't they know what a full dress rehearsal is? A full dress rehearsal is one in which they are dressed in the costumes they will be wearing. Quite a simple concept, I would have thought, but too technical for CNN.

Just for fun, do a search for "Michael Jackson full dress rehearsal" and see how many sites have blindly repeated this nonsense.

Any fool can also see from the video that all those other stories of Michael being a walking skeleton at death's door, unable to walk let alone dance etc etc etc were also a complete load of crap.

Beethoven

2009-06-20T06:08:00.000-07:00

How could anyone write the Moonlight Sonata? Beethoven was a genius beyond compare. I'm working on all three movements, and they are all completely different. The first is deep, emotional, sensitive. The second is scientific, complex and rich. The third is crazy. I'm loving it.

I played the first movement in a school concert in May and it went okay but not great. I got nervous because my hands were cold and sweaty, and I didn't play it anywhere near as well as I usually do. Still. I played it and it went well.

I love the piano! I'm just longing for the day I can afford a baby grand!

Piano exam went well

2008-07-08T23:02:00.000-07:00

I did my 6th grade piano exam on Monday down at the conservatorium of music in Adelaide. I think it went well. I didn't make any major stuff-ups, but he did manage to flumox me on one of the theory questions. My mind just went totally blank!

Now I'm on to grade 7, and there's some stunning music to learn: Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Debussy's Clair de Lune, Garner's 'Misty', and Mozart's Alla Turka, to name just a few. I'm also still practicing duets with Karen, and we have a concert coming up in August.

It feels good to have the exam over and to have confidence I've done well.