The holiday photos post

The Christmas break was surprisingly enjoyable this year, considering some of it was spent in a dome tent in a camping ground which was both teeth-rattlingly close to the Pacific Highway, and under the flightpath to the Gold Coast Airport. (It was the best that could be arranged at short notice, but fortunately I like watching planes on approach.)

[By the way, has there ever been a more annoyingly complicated tent design devised than the now strangely popular dome style? To fully secure the thing in all its variations seems to take an extraordinary number of pegs. At least it didn't leak. Much.]

Anyhow, apart from time at the local beach and in the shopping centres to escape the midday heat, we had a nice day trip from our just-over-the-border location to view Byron Bay: a first time for me, despite it only being a couple of hundred km from Brisbane.

It was a beautiful day, and the views from the cape are great. Here's the view south:


And north:

The lighthouse itself:



A view showing the lighthouse keeper's quarters (part of which you can actually stay overnight in, although I was told you have to book a long way ahead):

However, be warned. Normal holiday traffic in Byron Bay is every bit as bad as they say. The one road into town slowed down to about 10 - 20 kph from about 8km out. Nice place to visit for a day: not sure I want to stay longer.

On another day, we made a short trip up to Springbrook in the Gold Coast hinterland. Purling Brook Falls is an under-appreciated, easy to access waterfall (the photo is not great, but you get the idea. If you squint, you might be able to make out the viewing platform up and to the left of the top of the falls. They are pretty high.):


Here's my favourite shot: an unusual looking bug (a type of dragonfly perhaps?) found on the path near the falls:


Lovely.

Another first: eating at a Nepalese restaurant, the Kathmandu Kitchen at Kingscliff. It is just the right kind of restaurant- a BYO with main meals in a very acceptable price range, friendly family service, and delicious food. Very highly recommended.

Must spend some more time on the far north coast of New South Wales, even though I still say that as soon as you cross the border, the ocean feels colder. (I know a former Novocastrian who agrees with me.)

Death by mochi - 2009 edition: now with additional death statistics!

Time for the annual Opinion Dominion New Year's post about the number of Japanese folk who have started the year in the most unfortunate way:

Tokyo Fire Department officials said Thursday that five elderly people had died and at least eight others had been hospitalized after choking on mochi rice cakes in the metropolitan area on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Is posting on this every year starting to test the limits of oddball funny? Oh well. I figure if it's good enough for the national Japanese press to report it, it's good enough to be repeated here. (It's not like I keep a chart on the wall, you know.) Other people do this too: here you can read of deaths reported from other parts of Japan.

If you are relatively new to this blog, you can read the reason why so many people choke on it in my earlier post here.

Actually, while Googling around the topic, I turned up this surprising figure from an article in October 2008:

The choking death last week of a schoolboy in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, has spotlighted a little-known fact in Japan: More than 4,000 people choke to death on food every year....

According to data compiled by the health ministry, 4,407 people died by choking in 2006. By age, about 85 percent were over 65. Only one that year was in the 10-to-14 age group.

By type of food, "mochi" pounded rice was the top culprit, followed by rice, bread and "okayu" rice porridge.

And you thought that fugu was the most dangerous thing to eat in Japan. (According to Wikipedia, it now only causes a handful of deaths per year, although many more hospitalizations than that.)

Update: sorry, but I see that the links to the Japan Today source for the 2009 stories do not work anymore, and only take you to the current day's page. Not sure I can fix that.

Como el cerdo desnudo dice ...

Merry Christmas, readers

10 odd things about this blog

1. It's persistently unpopular. (Well, I think that's odd.*)

2. In any event, the fact that I still blog and Tim Dunlop doesn't gives me uncharitable pleasure. (He was a bore, yet got paid for it!**)

3. Low visitor numbers let me see where regular readers are from. Maybe this has been mentioned before, but there is a very regular repeat visitor who seems to come from or via Bowral in New South Wales. This person is perhaps the most faithful daily visitor, although Tim from Melbourne might drop in more often in any one day. More exotically, there is another visitor - less frequent lately, but still here sometimes - from South Africa. I have still no idea who either of these people are. There are very, very few visitors from the continent of South America. This is obviously the great untapped potential for readership there. Hola! (and Ola!) ¡Tendré una cera brasileña masculina en su honor!***

4. It is remarkable the number of people who come here via the search "Julia Gillard's ear lobes". There are many more ear lobe observers in the nation than I would have suspected.

5. "Old time sex" also seems to be a perennial favourite search term. Is it old time people who search for old time sex?

6. There's also a search or two per week for "A lonely cow weeps at dawn" since it was mentioned here. Listing the title of porn movies is obviously a way to increase hits.

7. I realised, when Club Troppo invited people to nominate their own posts for consideration as "Best Blog Posts" of 2008, I don't do essays. The entry I nearly self nominated was only about 600 words long. Funny, it feels to me like I am writing more than I do.

8. Why wasn't this horsey post from 2007 nominated for an award? It's a personal favourite.

9. I like my travelogue-ish posts, and am often pleased with the photos accompanying them, but (almost) no one ever comments. (Well, I did get one comment earlier this year, but it was deleted for containing the word "schlong".)

10. No one has ever donated a cent. I am thinking of announcing that I am in fact transgender and in need of the operation, as that worked for at least one other blogger. Don't tell the Pope, though.

* Too eclectic for its own good, is my theory. It also manages to have a broadband annoyance factor: those on the right who are climate skeptics (ie, about 95% of them, it seems) no doubt tire of posts on CO2 and ocean acidification; and those on the left probably don't enjoy semi-regular bagging of Islam, China, and gay rights.

** Add "unnecessary catty comments" to the list of reasons why people don't visit.

*** I will have a men's brazilian wax in your honour!

Colebatch criticism continues

One little word undoes the PM's claims on greenhouse gases | theage.com.au

Tim Colebatch argues that the major faults of the current European ETS are repeated in Kevin Rudd's proposed scheme.

Worth reading.

Ghosts of Everest

Voices in the air -- Windsor 337: a2667 -- BMJ

Here's a an interesting first hand account from the British Medical Journal of spectral assistance being provided to a an exhausted climber on Mt Everest. It's not an unusual story, apparently.

As with my recent post about bereavement "ghosts", the author of the article knows that the scientific explanation is the brain playing tricks because of the unusual stress it is under. (Indeed, the deprivation of oxygen aspect of the Everest stories can be seen as being the same explanation for death bed visions - where a person close to death starts chatting to an unseen, deceased, relative in the room. These are at their most suggestive of the supernatural when the "visitor" is of a relative who has recently died, yet the dying person had not been told.)

All very inconclusive, of course, but interesting nonetheless.

Greenhouse stuff

Paul Sheehan has a column in the SMH today about Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme which about right.

I would add this, being my thoughts since I wrote my initial rambling post:

* regardless of the issue of the variable target, which greatly offends many for being too soft, and about which I am still undecided, the more fundamental problem is the design of the scheme itself. If the scheme is badly flawed, the targets it aims for are not that relevant anyway;

* I remain sceptical of all ETS's, for the reasons which have been given a lot of publicity in the international press lately (see my various posts on this). However, it would seem the only hope of international sentiment moving away from using ETS as the concept would be if Obama's advisers were strongly against it, and the US started to push for carbon tax instead. Who knows if that will happen?;

* Kevin Rudd seems to have come up with the worst of all possible worlds: a target idea which keeps no one happy (well, except for some of the polluters); an ETS; and an ETS that seems to repeat the mistakes already identified in existing schemes.

* Few are saying it, but I think it confirms Malcolm Turnbull's earlier criticism about Rudd's early start up date for an ETS: it is better to get it right and have a scheme that starts a year later, than to rush into one which is fatally flawed.

In other greenhouse commentary: Andrew Bolt cited David Evans again on Saturday about the alleged absence of a "hot spot" in the atmosphere being strong evidence against greenhouse gases as the cause of global warming.

Club Troppo's Nicholas Gruen knows Evans personally, and managed to get him to agree to taking part in a debate in comments to a Troppo post.

It worked very well, and I have to say (not to my surprise) Dr Evans does not look like the winner, not by a long shot. (The comment by "Rex Ringshot" seemed particularly valuable, and showed that non-scientists can write helpful explanation.)

Did Andrew Bolt follow the argument, I wonder?

Wind farms and truth in advertising

Promoters overstated the environmental benefit of wind farms - Telegraph

The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) has agreed to scale down its calculation for the amount of harmful carbon dioxide emission that can be eliminated by using wind turbines to generate electricity instead of burning fossil fuels such as coal or gas.

The problem was the BWEA liked to use a figure based on older, dirtier coal fired plants; but as British coal power is much cleaner now, the BWEA is being forced to revise its claims.

The most interesting part, though, is the ridiculous number of turbines needed to make big inroads into renewable targets:

Hundreds of wind farms are being planned across the country, adding to the 198 onshore and offshore farms - a total of 2,389 turbines - already in operation. Another 40 farms are currently under construction.

Experts have previously calculated that to help achieve the Government's aim of saving around 200 million tons of CO2 emissions by 2020 - through generating 15 per cent of the country's electricity from wind power - would require 50,000 wind turbines.

But the new figure for carbon displacement means that twice as many turbines would now be needed to save the same amount of CO2 emissions.

Ho ho ho..Merry Christmas (sarcasm mode)

Gaza: Hamas to end cease-fire with Israel - Los Angeles Times

A funny post

Marina Hyde: Nicole blows it with the Aborigines | Life and style | The Guardian

The wonderful Rex (the Runt)

I'm not sure if he has ever made an appearance on Australian TV before, but I've only recently discovered the very eccentric but very amusing Rex the Runt on ABC2. It's an Aardman claymation production, but much "edgier" than Wallace & Grommit.

Many, if not all, episodes are on Youtube, or you can find them via the official website. Here's a sample for your consideration:



It makes me happy, but why didn't I know about this show before??

In case you hadn't noticed...

... the meeting of the American Geophysical Union is on at the moment, and this Nature blog: In The Field: American Geophysical Union Archives has heaps of interesting posts about the various talks and papers being presented.

There appears to be nothing substantial in the way of global warming scepticism there (sorry my band of conservative greenhouse skeptic readers). But here are some of the more interesting posts:

* the main protagonists in the "hockey stick" controversy were together still disagreeing. (I personally am of the view that it was not that important an issue anyway.)

* here's another confirmation that Arctic ice is not just melting more in recent summers, it's getting thinner too.

* what are the odds of really abrupt climate changes? There's some relatively good news in there (Atlantic ocean circulation that keep England warm isn't expected to stop this century, and massive amounts of methane from underground may also stay in place for that long.) But, they now think ocean level rises will be faster and higher than IPCC last reported.

Even so, I don't tend to get too worked up about this (rising sea levels) as an issue, although I suppose I should if a metre in a century is possible. Certainly, it hasn't started yet, and engineering at least has a chance of addressing it in many areas. It's not as if the large rises be detected as soon as they start happening, and they will take many years to be fully realised.

My hunch is also to not be so sure on the methane issue. It seems poorly understood.

* here's a novel suggestion for climate geo-engineering that sounds much more "do-able" than most other ideas. (It's about getting rid of high altitude clouds.)

British character cycles

Paul Johnson writes about what he observed of people's stoic behaviour during the great depression in England, and it ties in well with this recent essay by Theodore Dalrymple concerning the modern change in British character.

Dalrymple describes it this way:

Gradually, but overwhelmingly, the culture and character of British restraint have changed into the exact opposite. Extravagance of gesture, vehemence of expression, vainglorious boastfulness, self-exposure, and absence of inhibition are what we tend to admire now—and the old modesty is scorned. It is as if the population became convinced of Blake’s fatuous dictum that it is better to strangle a baby in the cradle than to let a desire remain unacted upon.

Certainly, many Britons under the age of 30 or even 40 now embrace a kind of sub-psychotherapeutic theory that desires, if not unleashed, will fester within and eventually manifest themselves in dangerous ways. To control oneself for the sake of the social order, let alone for dignity or decorum (a word that would either mean nothing to the British these days, or provoke peals of laughter), is thus both personally and socially harmful.

While he doesn't really examine in detail the reasons behind this change of national character, he does make the interesting claim that the British have acted that way before:

Before the English and British became known for self-restraint and an ironic detachment from life, they had a reputation for high emotionalism and an inability to control their passions. The German poet Heinrich Heine, among others, detested them as violent and vulgar. It was only during the reign of William IV—“Silly Billy,” the king before Victoria—that they transformed into something approaching the restrained people whom I encountered as a child and sometimes as a doctor.

As always, he is an interesting, if rather gloomy, writer.

Just a naughty "manager"

Russia rewriting Josef Stalin's legacy -- chicagotribune.com

Good grief. I knew Stalin was still considered a folk hero by many older Russians who miss the days of communism, but I didn't realise his image was being rehabilitated with the help of the State. According to the story:

In Russian classrooms, history teachers are guided by a new, government-approved textbook, Alexander Filippov's "Modern History of Russia: 1945-2006," which hails Stalin as an efficient manager who had to resort to extreme measures to modernize the lumbering Soviet agrarian economy.

There were, writes Filippov, "rational reasons behind the use of violence in order to ensure maximum efficiency."

A museum commemorating Stalin as a national hero opened in 2006 in the southern city of Volgograd. The following year, a 40-episode television drama broadcast on a state-controlled network whitewashed Stalin's crimes and portrayed him as Russia's savior.

Putin apparently told history teachers "We can't allow anyone to impose a sense of guilt on us."

What a dangerous ideologue he is.

Something to look out for

Intimate Persuasion: Television: The New Yorker

William Shatner has a half hour chat show on US cable TV at the moment. The link is to a short review of it, and this is the key line:

....as it happens, Shatner’s intense weirdness makes things compelling.

Sounds reasonable to me...

Let's Buy Pakistan's Nukes - WSJ.com

Made me laugh

Thought Experiments : The Blog: The Confession of Supremely Wisegood

This post at Bryan The Orchard Farmer's blog made me laugh.

While you're there, you can read his much more serious post on torture in America, and the good set of comments which follow. (Oddly, Bryan seems to quite like American political columnists who are into "bi scenes" and have fixations on political pregnancy conspiracies.)

The mongrel holiday

It’s a Narnia Christmas - NYTimes.com

This blog has been decidedly un-cheery lately, so here's a nice essay about Narnia and what it shares with the modern feast of Christmas.

OK, back to gloom soon...

The Economist talks China

Asia's wounded giants | Suddenly vulnerable | The Economist

This is from last week, but worth noting:

Yet in China, too, the present downturn is jangling nerves. The country is a statistical haze, but the trade figures for last month—with exports 2% lower than in November 2007 and imports 18% down—were shocking. Power generation, generally a reliable number, fell by 7%. Even though the World Bank and other forecasters still expect China’s GDP to grow by 7.5% in 2009, that is below the 8% level regarded, almost superstitiously, as essential if huge social dislocation is to be avoided. Just this month a senior party researcher gave warning of what he called, in party-speak, “a reactive situation of mass-scale social turmoil”. Indeed, demonstrations and protests, always common in China, are proliferating, as laid-off factory-workers join dispossessed farmers, environmental campaigners and victims of police harassment in taking to the streets.

Well, I guess the "glass half full" way of looking at massive social disruption in China is that at least they should stop burning so much coal. (Of course, burning towns and villages might counter that somewhat.)

Things, I fear, are going to get very ugly in 2009.