Is wind-farm bat kill an urban myth?

Who knows why I got interested? I don’t read James Delingpole, because frankly the guy’s a dill. On the spectrum of “dills who are climate deniers”, his name appears near the “you’re a dill for even wondering what this dill says” end of the scale.

But for some reason I did, and therefore for some reason I came across his obsession about bats being killed by their “lungs imploding” because of air pressure around wind farms.

OK, at first glance, the Mythbusters would start at “plausible”. Barotrauma – the scientific term, which you use if you’re not apparently writing for an audience of idiots who’ll switch off even if you provide the definition in the third par – can happen even to mammals as big as humans, if (for example) we break the rules when diving.

Delingpole avoids the scientific term, either because (a) his science would fit in a matchbox without removing the matches, or (b) he’s a cynical dead shit who’s trying to snow-job readers who don’t do science. Take your pick

Bats are smaller than people, wind farms generate pressure differences, QED bats flying through wind turbine turbulence could die from barotrauma. Or, in the condescending “I know more than you but let’s use small words For the Dummies” tone of Delingpole, their “lungs implode”.

I wish I didn’t obsess about such things, I really do, but after a bit of a trawl through the scholarship, on a Saturday night why-do-I-do-this: it’s probably not true.

The whole “wind turbines kill bats through barotrauma” thing seems to arise from just one paper – this one: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982208007513

Now, there are some problems with the paper that seems to form the entire scholarly basis for Deligpole’s obsession about barotrauma killing bats around wind farms.

The first is entirely my own work: the number of bats the author says was killed in a single night (188 victims): because by the time the research reached Scientific American, the timeline had stretched to “between July and September”. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=wind-turbines-kill-bats

Hmm.

That’s significantly more dead bats than any other research identified. For example, this http://asmjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1644/10-MAMM-A-404.1 article in Europe said bats are being killed at “unprecedented rates” when the number – without a timeframe in the abstract, and I don’t get paid for this blog, so I didn’t buy the article – yielded a sample of 39 dead bats.

Yes, species, geography and season will impact the numbers, but going from 188 bats in one night, to 188 bats over some months, to 39 dead bats over any unspecified time-frame being “unprecedented” – that should give rise to questions, at least.

Here’s another contradictory number: http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.3161/150811010X537846 - which says wind farms in the area of the study kill 20 bats each year.

Now to the substance of the issue.

From – as far as I can find – one paper originating the idea of barotrauma, from which all else have followed, Delingpole has formed an urban mythology that wind farms make bats implode.

Bullshit.

This study - http://vet.sagepub.com/content/49/2/362.short - gives barotrauma as a very minor cause of death, comparing dead bats around turbines to dead bats in cities. It also notes that freezing specimens will give misleading results, because frozen cells (for example in the lungs) look a lot like pre-mortem barotrauma.

Bats die because, like birds, they fly into large structures (their sonar, after all, is attuned not to a skyscraper, but to hunting insects).

The foundation of “bat barotrauma” comes from one, single, and as far as I can tell, un-replicated study.

But we all know about cherry-picking the science, don’t we?

Don’t let me spoil your Christmas

I know I’m not alone in thinking this, but because I’m an arsehole, I’ll be the one to say it instead of grabbing a rivet-gun and a fixed grin and setting one to my face with the other (“Why so serious?”).

From last month until sometime in January, this country will start demanding that I make Christmas lists, plan Christmas menus, book Christmas holiday destinations, and buy more stuff.

Of course, the last three words, “buy more stuff” are the point. Anyone saying I'm a spoiler will do so on the basis of my spend, my product recommendations (none), or my attitude to parties.

So on behalf of all the people too polite to say it, I implore anyone who reads:

Think of those for whom the Christmas present will be a loved one who lives long enough after Christmas (and maybe, if fate decrees, past New Year) so that the twinned holiday is not spoiled for those that bury them.

Think of those who fear that their cancer might not give them Christmas lunch with the family, because they were in ICU after some emergency or other. On that score, think of those whose Christmas will be devoted to keeping someone alive on behalf of their family…

Think of those whose resources are exhausted by care: lucky to live in Australia, where chronic disease doesn’t turn into six-figure debt, care is still expensive. So think of those that won’t have “present money” left in the family budget, because they know the awful blow of January 1 (when they have to pay full-rate for prescriptions) is just around the corner.

Think of those that fall outside: who lack the disease or circumstances to come to the attention of a “famous” charity. For whom there are no pink ribbons or Movembers, neither Christmas soup kitchens nor wish-trees, the ones the bikies don’t ride for to cleanse their image of a year of gunplay and meth labs, who won’t get attention from attention-seeking shits called “celebrities” who arrive with cameras but no help.

Think of those whose Christmas will be one of apologies and comb-overs, patch-ups and promises, whose children knew stoicism before they knew Santa Clause.

Think of those for whom December 25 means work, because unlike you they’re not in the “knowledge sector”, don’t get six-figure salaries, and can’t eat on New Year if they don’t work on Christmas.

It won’t spoil your Christmas to think of them now. If you keep it until December, you may suffer a pang amid the wrapping paper. And we wouldn't want that, would we?

Pro tip: don’t live Tweet product launches

Hello, you may consider this my resignation from a bunch of casual acquaintanceships that probably should matter more but don’t, and from a bunch of publishers I don’t work for (excepting News and Fairfax, both of which would rather eat soap than pay me for anything) (suits me fine).

Some people might decide not to speak to me after this. My personal record among journalists is someone who is now an editor, who declined even polite greetings for about 10 years after I made fun of him in a 1997 press conference.

As I write this a bunch of technology journalists are live-tweeting a product promotion. I won’t mention the product, because that would be to buy into the idea that one of the world’s largest companies needs my help to sell products.

It’s a phone; phones already outnumber humans in Australia. That means very few people actually “need” a new one, if that word is given any reasonable definition.

Carriers need people to want new phones, it’s true. But I recognise no obligation as a journalist to join in the great game of making people think they need something they don’t need. Ditto the journalist’s relationship with a vendor, which should be one of caution bordering on trepidation (from the vendor’s point of view at least).

And as for Tweeting about b-list celebrities’ presence at the launch of a phone … Jesus T Christ and his Travelling Flea Circus.

The tech press aspires to Seriousness. It’s something that makes them sweetly vulnerable: roll out the chance to be pleasant to a CEO, and nine out of ten IT journalists get that kind of shimmery-in-the-belly thing that’s like being in love.

It’s a fucking phone, people. The reason the celebrity is there is that the product is as boring as bat shit, and the reason they’re not A-list celebrities is that the product isn’t from Apple (imagine: princess whats-her-name of Denmark in a nightclubby Apple product launch. The hypegasm would last for years).

Two worsts arise out of this.

One: someone’s going to go over the live Tweets from the product launch while reading the stories tomorrow. Is that going to be a good look? What if the “someone” happens to be the ABC’s Media Watch? (The tech press lives in constant terror of the day MW pays it serious attention).

Two: the same will apply to the product reviews. Someone who’s visited the launch party dressed as a premature orgasm will have zero credibility as a product reviewer (I have sworn off product reviews forever: the experience at twelve months never, never, never matches what you can accomplish in a few days reviewing the product).

I can’t tell you how it ended. Except for the few who think their immortal prose on Twitter is so irresistible that they won’t hashtag their posts (and therefore evade the mute), I gave up on the whole servile display of “ohh, shiny!”

But we had journalists here who consider themselves “serious”, and who will occasionally act it – happy to turn up, for example, at a lawsuit’s directions hearing even though nothing’s going to happen – re-drafting their public image as utterly enthralled by the combination of a bit of plastic in a rectangle and another bit of plastic on legs.

Pfui.

The new wowser is the enemy of pain relief for the sick

My next blog post was going to be about love, but it’s been pre-empted by the unreasonable, hateful, despicable hostility the healthy show towards the sick.

Because some people abuse pain relief medications, doctors want them banned. Or further restricted. Or something. And the ABC’s 730 program is more comfortable with talking to some well-heeled doctors than actually getting out where the pain is.

You utter deadshits: you’ve picked up a story driven by someone’s media unit, wrapped it up so it looks like “journalism”, and haven’t even been ARSED to ask any public medium – even the slack option of asking on Twitter, for fuck’s sake – whether there’s another angle.

If anyone wants to give 730 a Tabasco enema, I’ll provide the Tabasco, the hose, and a bike pump. Slack, insensitive journalism conducted from the New Wowser that Australian press have adopted as “normal”. Arsehats.

Let me provide a little background. Ms T is known to some of you personally; for the rest, “Ms T” will suffice for her name. She suffers a serious, chronic immune system condition that’s required surgery – three times this year, including a 14-inch monster wound in the belly – and has tumours as a side-effect.

Pain relief is a fact of life where we live – and due to factors that make me rage helplessly, access to “pain management specialists” is severely rationed, which you may interpret as meaning “they promised many times to visit, and never made it because someone with a badge and an affiliation appropriated their time on behalf of a More Important Patient” (“You might say that, I couldn’t possibly comment").

And she doesn’t have an interest in this: Ms T can’t take any of the medications mentioned in the 730 episode. Anything with anti-inflammatory properties is, always and forever, off her list. Nurofen: no-go. Asprin: no-go. Paracetamol: ditto.

Catch that, if you’re used to popping some Panadol: there are people in the world for whom it’s banned. Even for a simple headache.

Back to 730: Yes: some people abuse legal pain relief. So: some busybody thinks this Must Be Stopped. Do you understand, even to the least degree, where that ends?

First: access to pain specialists. In some hospitals in Australia the waiting list runs to years. You might die waiting for a specialist to decide what pain relief regime is appropriate for you.

In the meantime, you’re stuck with whatever people are permitted to prescribe for you. Codeine might get prescribed if you’re allowed it; if you’re not, you’re left with the various forms of natural or synthetic opium.

Yes: painkillers are addictive. Ask Ms T, as I just did (to get permission to tell the truth in this post). Should her life outlast her pain, there will be a very bad period getting off the painkillers: so it goes.

But the mindless, knee-jerk, “ban it! It might be addictive!” attitude from New Wowsers?

If they don’t know what chronic pain is like – I don’t actually know first-hand – I’d be happy to provide lessons.

But what’s it like actually getting treatment for severe chronic pain? It’s another layer of pain. As I said, “pain management” teams in hospitals are hard to access. GPs have to jump through hoops to prescribe something effective – and the rules don’t take into account people who are banned from asprin or paracetamol. We’re about to encounter a new rule that will make it harder to get the pain relief that Ms T needs – especially because everyone from the top specialist to the lowly GP agrees (as we do) that she’s addicted to the painkillers.

So no: we don’t see how the “junkie angle” in a tabloid-style report from the ABC’s 730 adds one fucking iota of new, useful information to the debate. And a new outbreak of the new-wowser will only make lives miserable.

Australian journalists could learn from India

Oh, it’s probably too late anyhow. As Mark Colvin has pointed out, we’re all on the road to hell anyway.

A while back, I was at an event in Sydney addressed by the boss of Tata.

He impressed me as being kind of cynically democratic: the very best way to make a shed-load of money is to make something everyone wants, and do it cheap so they can afford it. Which doesn’t make him an angel, but it’s at least more in line with how I see the world than “how can we rip people off with nothing more than a meaningless brand and a shoe just like every other shoe?”

Anyhow. Tata fielded some fairly strong questions from the local press after his speech. For some reason, one of the more revoltingly obsequious local journalists, whose name can remain anonymous because I don’t remember names, saw fit to apologise.

Amid cringes from other journalists present, Tata was amused. What he said was, approximately, “Impolite? Ha! You should come to Bangalore. I’ve had journalists lay hands on me to stop me leaving a press conference. Your people are the picture of propriety.”

That’s about right, really. Australian journalists can’t bear to be impolite to a CEO, unless he’s already a bleeding corpse. We don’t want to get blood on our own “At Lowes!” pinstripes.

In Vietnam, America honed the skills of media control: that access could be granted or withheld to reward or punish journalists who did or did not depart from the official line. Corporate America, quick up the uptake, systemised and perfected the technique.

“If you’re good, we’ll give you access to the CEO” – which, by the way, created a deeply unhealthy symbiosis. CEO-flattery inflated CEO income; journalists inflate the CEO’s importance to protect their access; the CEO’s profile puffs his income. The brain donors that infest the “business pages” play along with this, even if the CEO is in charge of outfits like FirePower. It’s almost always left to someone else to point out the Emperor’s nakedness (there’s a parallel here with the way sports journalists defended Lance what-me-worry Armstrong).

Australia imitated the American “journalists are nice to CEOs” so well that it took an Indian chairman to tell us that questions some of the lapdogs considered rude were nothing, compared to physical assault.

You see: journalists are easily flattered. The notion of being important still matters, even in a world where the media is happy to outsource its own leg-work to freebie amateurs under the sacred “Internet-savvy” banner of “crowdsourcing”.

But someone apologized.

This is Australia, people. Home to egalatarianism, the Eureka Stockade, and “G’day ya old bastard!” Since when were some cheap tricks of media relations sufficient to turn journalists into forelock-tugging, supine, boot-licking cheerleaders?

I should remark that I have been criticised for being rude to someone’s “honoured guest.” A minor politician giving a speech, and lacking the intellectual capacity to bridge the gap between ideology and fact, copped a roasting from me and one or two others.

The boot-licking brown-tongues, I can personally attest, are so devoted to their hostage status and servility that they consider “you can’t be serious!” to be not only a deadly insult, but a disgrace to journalism.

Whereas I merely consider them to be spineless shills whose only concern is how they can corner their next overseas junket.

If life ever gives me the chance to ply my trade in another country, I might try India. And since we’ve got the Asian Century coming, how about Australia learn from India, in this, instead of trying to teach India’s journalists to become supine shills?

CEOs should not invite journalists. They should fear them.

What’s the scientific method got to do with it?

Here’s a myth that needs busting: a lack of understanding of the “scientific method” is what gives rise to journalists doing a bad job of reporting on science.

What tosh.

There are many things that lead to bad science journalism, but journalists having the presumption to write about science they don’t understand is not one of them. If you insisted that only a physicist could write a story about physics, to pick a discipline, then the physics wouldn’t get reported.

“Physics”, you see, isn’t a thing. It’s lots of things. Thinking of physics as if it were a uniform monolith is what someone says if they don't understand science. It's about as smart as thinking "Asia" describes everywhere from Afghanistan to Java, India to North Korea. 

So which part of physics would I need to study to earn the right to write about it? Should I follow Brian May into astrophysics, only to exclude myself from the really cool stuff that happens in high-energy particle physics? Should I abandon the quantum zoo entirely but read up on atomic fusion?

I think you get the picture. A great many scientific endeavours need nearly-mutant intelligence just to get in the lift and decide which button to press.

Yes, you have to report facts – and woe betide the journalist who doesn’t try to find out whether they’re being offered facts or moonshine.

But: it’s actually not that hard. Here are a few random thoughts.

1. Accord the journals the one thing they’ve got going for them: scientific review. Be VERY wary of someone offering to “let you in” on something “even before it’s gone to the journals”.

2. Most “maverick scientists” are kooks. Journalists love the “successful maverick” narrative, so much that they overlook fifty cranks for one scientist, something I’ll discuss in more detail later.

3. You can’t “balance” facts. I’ve heard people ask “so why aren’t there any ‘Relativity sceptics’ or ‘quantum physics’ sceptics?” There are, but they’re ignored. With no well-heeled lobbyists to back them, they get no airtime, that’s all (look up "iron sun theory" for an example).

4. Talk to scientists. Not just the ones on the press release, and not just about the current story. Find scientists who like talking about their field, buy them coffee, and listen. You’ll get so much more than any university media office has to offer.

About mavericks

The reason someone like Barry Chapman – Google helicobacter pilori - is “news” is because he’s the exception, not the rule. Yes, he was a maverick who tested an unconventional theory and won, more power to him. 

For every Barry Chapman, there are dozens of unpublished, unrecorded, anonymous kooks with a pet theory that will Change the World of Science As We Know it. And they are, and remain, kooks.

What made Barry Chapman a headline-grabber was novelty. Most of the time, the maverick is a kook with a barrow to push (“cold fusion” anyone?). And, by the way: Chapman’s experiment demonstrating helicobacter pilori­ may have been unconventional (he self-infected), but once demonstrated, his work was accepted.

Journalists like the maverick because it fits a narrative and a mindset. The narrative is the great story, the scoop, “I was the one who told the world about magic water and saved thousands of lives”. But it’s also a mindset: the individualist set against a monolithic culture – which is how a great many journalists (I don’t exclude myself) like to imagine themselves. Regardless of our political opinions, at a personal level journalists tend to be individualistic. The maverick-is-always-right is appealing.

(Oh, and by the way: Galileo is a dumb example. He wasn’t fighting against a scientific consensus. His opponents were political power and superstition. A climate scientist looks a lot more like Galileo than a coal industry sock-puppet, from that angle.)

The awful truth

The main reason there’s so much bad science writing is because, sorry to say, there’s so much bad science on offer. The reason I stick to the hard sciences – apart from their appeal to my inner geek – is that I feel comfortable on my feet, and able to trust the consensus. So I favour physics, astronomy, climate science, biology, as being demonstrable and trustworthy.

Also, there are far fewer financial interests trying to piss in the pool. I rarely write a medical breakthrough story, because I know I’m inadequate to untangle whether or not there are interests behind it that I can’t see. The same goes for pharmaceuticals. I do trust myself to play “spot the backer” in genetic research, partly because I know some geneticists.

Pharmaceutical science is probably the most polluted: every study has a drug to sell. It’s probably responsible, on a purely numerical basis, for more bad science journalism than any other single discipline, climate change included.

However, this wouldn’t be improved by a journalist having first-year science and an understanding of the scientific method – because a new drug for a freshly-minted psychological disorder is going to be backed by papers that already got past the peer-review committees. If they – presumably real scientists – didn’t ditch the publication, merely giving someone a BA Comms with a sub-major in Science Communication won’t help. Really.

I’ve probably tried your concentration enough this evening. There are other things to be said about “good science writing”, but they’re about “journalistic method” rather than scientific method. Perhaps another day.

Chemotherapy: shit happens. Often

I blog this with my wife’s permission.

She doesn’t suffer from cancer. In at least one way, it’s worse: because the least a cancer diagnosis will give you is a timeline. “If you last five years…”

An aside: someone I liked very well nearly made it to the five years. Not quite. He was a large, fair red-head who worked as a roadie for Jands Concert Productions in the 1980s. He was so strong that when Bruce Springsteen toured here for “Born in the USA” – I am not making this up – the tame Teamsters on the tour complained. This kid, “Young Shane” as I normally called him, would blithely man-handle hundred-kilogram loudspeakers past their strictly-maintained hand-off cordons. (One man in the truck; one man on the ramp; one man to collect; one man to take the speaker to the stage area. He didn’t care. He could, as he demonstrated to me on a $50 bet, dead-lift the speaker). Shane had his last skin cancer examination three months short of the magic mark, and died within six. Shit happens.

Ms T doesn’t have cancer – except as a side-effect of her treatments. However, because her disease is one of the immune system, there’s a creepy commonality of treatment.

Her immune system wants to destroy her large arteries. Since some bits of the vascular system are very important – you can make do sans an arm or leg, but the carotid, aorta, celiac or renal aren’t negotiable – she cops seriously heavy drugs to kill the immune system and keep the arteries open.

Some of the drugs are exactly the same as some cancer patients. Cyclphosphamide, for example, is “gold standard” for vasculitis – and is also used for various lymphatic cancers.

That’s the current chemo Ms T is getting. It’s working just fine in some ways, but – may I emphasise this is with her permission and blessing – the pink-ribboners, the popularisers of cancer, the story-tellers, the fundraisers – neglect to break the big taboo.

You. Might. Shit. Yourself.

This, in her opinion, far outweighs the weight loss, hair loss, or breakfast loss. It’s the loss of the emblem of maturity, of self-control, of humanity. The sudden change of clothes, the endless washing-machine rinses, the utter humiliation – and it’s on the public taboo-list.

Lost your hair? Someone has a groovy fund-raising bandana (as long as you have a fund-raiser-friendly disease that has a bandana to sell). Lost weight? There are even people to advocate pot to revive your appetite (I approve, by the way, but that’s not in this discussion). When the treatment stops, your lost muscle-mass will return, especially if you sign on with the right shouty boot-camp group led by a sloping-forehead paid more per hour than you can hope to earn if you’re among the chronically-ill.

Lost continence? Go buy a pack of Depend, and for pity’s sake, don’t talk about it.

If you talk about shitting yourself as a side-effect of medication, even if it only ever happens in the privacy of your own home (or, about four days out from an infusion, the privacy of your bed), you’ll spoil the narrative. The “plucky” narrative. The “you can win this” narrative. The narrative that glorifies dignity over actually surviving.

The narrative says: If you’re clean, we can glorify your dead body with eulogies, we can re-invent your wonderful struggle against impossible odds, we can elevate your loves to Olympus. But nobody every made a god or goddess out of shit.

And for us, the mortals who, for love and nothing else, live with the real side-effects of chemotherapy – from the highs of temporary remission through the frights of incidental cancers, down to the lows of incontinence – there are no laurels. There’s only the business of dropping clothing into the washer for a pre-wash rinse.

I would do it ten times over, my love. Because it’s you. Love will survive.

That, at least, I promise.

A recipe, as a change of pace

I’ve been a bit serious lately, so here I offer a recipe that Ms T and I concocted last night.

First, I should mention that there’s almost always home-made flatbread dough in the freezer. It’s dead easy to make – yeast, water, salt, a little olive oil, and enough flour to make it into a dough – and it’s a great standby if there’s leftovers on a leg of lamb to deal with.

So, there was some dough in the freezer, and there were a few garlic-and-rosemary sausages in the fridge. Three aren’t enough sausages for a family that includes two teenage boys.

We squeezed out the mince from the sausages. That got browned off very lightly in a saucepan with a little oil, some capsicum, onion, garlic and diced tomato. Then the sausage was mixed in with the dough, and rolled out into rounds about a handspan across, and about 5mm thick.

These get cooked in the electric frypan – a light spray with olive oil and a fairly high heat.

While I was doing that, Ms T prepped some accompaniments – home-made hummus (easy, really), fried haloumi, baba ganoush and a green salad.

The boys went nuts for it. Which is always a nice endorsement.

Me and Cory Doctrow

Lesson: don’t argue with the famous on Twitter.

Honestly, I didn’t think there was that much of an argument. I made one remark, just one, and for my apparently poor judgement, got a minor torrent of rebuttal.

Well, Cory: fuck you sideways. It’s like this: publicly, you champion free speech, but only if the speech that’s free is that which is endless echo-chamber we-love-you-famous-person fandom?

Fuck you with a Tabasco dildo.

Dude, I am a nobody. A five-star, number-twenty-seven champion nobody. There is absolutely nothing I can gain, monetary-wise, fame-wise, anything­-wise that I can get out a public spat with you. You win, instantly and before we get to a starting line that’s as rigged as is I were hopping on my K-Mart pushbike with Lance no-doping Armstrong next to me.

(Actually, I would lose in a cycling race with anybody. I can’t turn right without falling over, due to a dodgy ear. I walk the bike around sharp right-hand corners. But anyhow…)

You put a stupid idea up on Twitter: that drones would be a worthwhile instrument for a break-and-enter house burglar. And I said:

“Umm, no break-in technology will compete until it's cheaper than a brick applied to a window. #SpecialSubjectTheBleedingObvious”

@doctorow: “You get more time to search and harvest if the front window isn't smashed. Risk minimization is worth something to crims”

Me: “You're thinking like a hacker. A burglar only needs "undetectable" for enough time to find sellable stuff and get out.”

@doctorow: “Huge difference between a break-in that can be detected externally and a "silent" one”

Me: “So smash the back window. You're talking organised and intelligent. When did that last fit the profile of a burglar?”

After that, a bit of a storm arrived in my in-box, and I just can’t be arsed to relate the whole thing, except that apparently it offends the Sainted Cory to be accused of being a “futurist”.

But what gets me is two things.

One: You, dude, are rich and famous. I am not: I’m a working journalist with no particular claims, who thought one thing you said was a bit silly. I’m not going to damp the enthusiasm your fans obviously pour on your head. Why so serious? Why take one dissenting voice so personally that you have to back the shit-truck up to my doorstep?

Two: One of the few things I know about you – apart from Boing Boing – is that you believe in freedom of speech. So – again – why send the shit-truck over to a piss-poor nobody who spoke?

I yielded in the Twitter debate, because I like to sleep. But honestly, I would like to know: what’s the psychology behind someone of success and fame, drilling guns onto a nobody, merely for the crime of dissent?

PS, Cory. I’ve been burgled eight times. Every instance was fast, opportunistic, and based on a brick. If I found one person among the losers and junkies who stole CDs, cash, cigarettes, a hammer,  household electronics and, once, a two-year-outdated jar of caviar that probably landed them in hospital, who had either the capacity or contacts to use advanced technology in a break-in, I’d eat Clive Palmer’s used underwear. As a sci-fi story premise, “drones for burglars” sucks hairy donkey’s balls. And it’s derivative of Philip K Dick’s “The Unreconstructed M”. Now you know, and I know, and they know.

Stories about my father

I hope the Internet never forgets, because I’ve decided to set down some second-hand World War II tales before they’re lost. My father’s dead, and my memory won’t last forever.

In WW II he served in the navy – an Australian who, because we had more volunteers than ships, was seconded to the Brits. Specifically, he served on a British destroyer called the Quiberon.

Look, if you want accurate history, there are plenty. If I ever get an engagement or date wrong, I apologise. I’m recording stories: there is no warranty that my father told the truth or remembered things accurately. Some things, I would imagine, he would embellish to make them funnier or more dramatic.

But his dreams didn’t lie. I don’t know his dreams from the inside (who could?), but I can tell you this: some of the things he dreamed were the sounds of sonar.

On the Quiberon, one of my father’s postings was as an ASDIC operator – early sonar: in his memory, the acronym stood for Anti-Submarine Detection, Interdiction and Combat. Wikipedia disagrees; it doesn’t matter.

Even as late as the 1970s, my father’s Sunday afternoon doze on a particular chair would invariably be accompanied by a sound uncannily similar to what movie producers presented to the world as “sonar sounds” in war movies. Except he made the sounds, in his sleep, in his mouth.

I’m genuinely, seriously, one-hundred-percent not kidding. Dreaming on a soft chair on a Sunday afternoon, his mouth would make sonar sounds.

How do I know that it counted as “nightmare” instead of dream?

Well, one hint is that war isn’t a dream.

Another hint was that my father was extremely reluctant to discuss himself, ASDIC, and combat. I suppose, from a long perspective, that his instinct must have been protective. I had no shortage or “war movies” in my childhood – but I seem to have been shielded from “war reality”. Battle of Britain, Tora Tora Tora, Saving Private Ryan – yes, I saw those, and plenty of others.

But this: I was twenty-nine when my father died. There was, at that age, only one tale he would tell of life of a sonar operator: that the Quiberon, on his signals in the ear-phones, spent three days racing around the Pacific Ocean in pursuit of what turned out to be a whale. He was mortified: what if the depth-charge that killed the whale had turned out to be the one the ship needed to save itself?

And he felt bad about the whale. As a story, it was hilarious: “We picked up the echo and followed it for three days. When it finally stood still for a while, we fired the depth charges, and what floated to the surface was whale meat.”

The sonar nightmares lasted as long as his brain did.

And the point of this story?

Only to tell the story. Dad knew his objective: find enemy submarines, locate them, and help the gunners in charge of depth-charges to kill them. Did he feel it?

Certainly: I remember his recounting of meeting Japanese tourists in Katoomba in the 1980s:

“They asked me how to find Echo Point, and I told them. And they said ‘thank you’ and bowed. Don’t they know I might have killed their grandfather?”

That is one of the few times I can remember him crying.

An advertisement for an editor I would never employ

This isn’t a suicide note, except I suppose as far as MSN is concerned. What the hell. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do. The original job ad is http://mumbrella.com.au/jobs?job_id=33341 here. It’s below, with my commentary in italics.

Digital news producer/journalist – Sydney

The MSN.com (US) News team has an opening for a savvy and seasoned editor based in Sydney. [RC: The author hasn’t heard of Jay Rosen’s opinion of “savvy”, it seems. This idiotic characteristic is in the lead: someone with a spoonful of brains might actually be looking for “capable”.]

The successful candidate will work with other US editors [“Other” US editors? Hang on, this is a Sydney position. We’re still Australia, when I last checked.] in creating and, then, leading editorial decision making and execution on what is expected to become one of the largest news sites in the world. [The entire sentence, sorry paragraph, descends into a mishmash. Rewrite.]

The position includes day-to-day editorial programming, including decisions on which content to surface [“surface” as a verb. I am flexible about language, but this is an abomination. It means “what we’re going to publish”, so why not say so? This usage merely suggests “inflation by flatulence”] for the MSN audience. Overnight [“overnight” - you didn't mention THAT before. Whose night? Oh, I get it: the entirity of the role is to deliver gimcrack stories for American insomniacs] editors are expected to have superb news judgment, understand and enact our news philosophy and work independently doing daily word, picture and video editing primarily from wire services. [“Primarily from wire services”, ie, no actual journalism, taken from what is frequently the world’s greatest source of urban myth, the newswire.]

Our team will work to successfully deliver high quality news experiences [not “high quality news”, because that needs money and work. We just want you to be savvy. You know. Pick the RIGHT story to surface. Get the hit magnet going. Paris Hilton, Nude, and Windows 8 together in a headline, please] using both data and previous journalism knowledge [If you can parse this last clause, you’re either a genius or a complete sucker for jargon. “Data journalism”,  for example, means “research, basic numeracy, and a knack for “infographics”, one of the many ways in which “savvy” becomes a debasement of information.]

MSN News will uniquely [“uniquely”? when your stuff is “primarily wire sources”? Does this mean I can spice up the wire story with the use of the word “fuck” to make it unique?] focus on what the wider web audience [it’s called the “World Wide Web”, cretin. If it’s available, it has a “wider” audience] [By the way: how about some style consistency? – Web either has a capital, or it does not.] is looking for in its news consumption and deliver against those needs [maybe it’s just me, but expressing “desires we don’t even know we have” as “needs” is just stupid]. We work in a fast-paced, 24-7-365 publishing environment [ie, “life”, except you won’t have one because we’ll spring meaningless conference calls on you at 2am], and candidates should be versatile in both tasks performed and topic expertise [ie, equal ignorance in every possible subject]. This is a full-time Microsoft position.

Candidates must be seasoned writers/editors with at least three years of experience in a daily publishing environment, and at least two years working in Web-based publishing. They should possess strong communication and partnering skills [I think this means “don’t piss off advertisers”. Or perhaps “sleep with selected contacts”], and be able to work effectively across groups, to work under pressure and to manage strict deadlines [journalists who can’t manage deadlines and pressure are called “taxi drivers”]. Candidates must be detail-oriented [I am, which is why this entire advertisement falls somewhere between “travesty” and “atrocity”, with a gentle nod towards “utter arsehat”], highly organized, self-motivated and resourceful. They must also have a thorough understanding of Web publishing — including Web behaviour, Web culture and what does and doesn’t work from a consumer point of view — as well as a passion for Web publishing. Strong news judgment and knowledge of US current events/popular culture is essential [If I ever understand US popular culture, I will kill myself. I presume that the most abhorrent usages in this advertisements accurately reflect US popular culture; you understand why I object. I hope.]. This position requires a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism or equivalent in a related field. [Bachelor in Churnalism Rewrites from Unreliable Wires. Which university?]

This role will take its lead from the MSN News US Weekend/Overnight Editor.

Sydney 2000

[Presumably the postcode, not the year. I don’t think we’d verbed “surface” by 2000.]

And of course, the advertisers want someone “seasoned” on three years’ experience: in other words: someone who will pick SEO-friendly drivel and work at Mechanical Turk rates. But when you burn out, you’ll get to apply for jobs that say “previous experience as an editor”.

This is what love looks like

It’s also what “strong” looks like.

I’ve met any number of “hard men” in my time. I’ve known someone who could win an argument with the now-dead, once-infamous basher Tim Bristow (really).

But the real lesson of “tough” is this: you’re only tough if your character will survive the worst that life can throw at you. Intact. Without guns or fists.

I didn’t know my aunt, Hazel, very well. My father was itinerant for much of his working life, moving between cities or towns. His elder sister, my aunt, had a different life. For most of my life (I can’t speak for hers), she lived in one place – Kiama – married to a former railwayman turned butcher. I only found out about their early life – the “life in a tent” of the railways in an older Australia – at her funeral.

What I mostly knew of her was an extravagant ebullience that beggars description. She greeted you like a pirate’s cockatoo might yell: loudly. With a huge smile and wide arms. And a greeting that could have split glass. Even my father, who had known her all his life (she was older) could still flinch at her greetings when they were both alive.

It was always worth it, to survive her voice: her talk, her stories, laughter and hugs made up for ringing ears.

But this story isn’t actually about Hazel, it’s about her husband, John. Who I knew even less than she.

My familial affliction seems to be Alzheimer’s. My grandmother suffered it. My father died of it, and eventually, his elder sister, Hazel, died of it. I suppose I’m in danger: please kill me when the time comes.

(Most people probably don’t realise that there are mechanisms by which Alzheimer’s can be the agent of death. I know, from my father, what happened: his brain lost control of his immune system, and he died of pneumonia. I don’t know the final cause of my aunt’s death.)

But this is about her husband, John.

He had it worse than my mother: his wife’s affliction lasted years longer. Through all that, he was her primary carer – until, I presume but don’t know, caring became too much and she went to a nursing home.

The last time I saw him was at her funeral. He was no longer the tall-and-craggy that I recalled from childhood, but the crags remained. So did a lopsided smile. And he still talked about his wife with the kind of boundless love that survives even the intolerable burden of caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s.

And he lasted only a handful of weeks after she.

He didn’t look like a dying man at his wife’s funeral: he looked, if I may be both cruel and honest, like a man fulfilled. He’d committed himself to her; the fact that she became a burden didn’t dim his commitment.

But without her, and with his burdens removed, it seems that something changed: “now I can die.” Happy? I can’t know.

It pleases my fancy to imagine that caring for her – the shell that once held his beloved wife – held such power as to hold off death.

And it pleases my fancy that whatever hope of an afterlife as he had, might include the hope that the wife he would find there might be one that remembered him, and still loved him.

What I know, however, is this. Buffeted by what must have been miserable beyond my understanding, he was so tough, such a “hard man”, that his nature remained intact.

Violence, the fist, the gunplay are the props of the miserable and weak. The character that can stand in the face of the storm, and say “you will not change me, or my life, or my worth, or my love”?

This is the hard man: someone who takes the bomb, and is exactly the same after as before.

That’s what “strong” looks like. It’s also what love looks like. I hope I can be such a man.

Dear Linux: after twenty years, it’s time to stop sucking

My wish was to install the latest iteration of my GIS package, the inestimable Grass-GIS, and take a look.

My intention was to do so in a virtual machine, so that I don’t risk breaking anything on my production setup.

My conclusion: fifteen years after I first installed a flavour of Linux, from an installation and get-started point of view, it still sucks. Like a Hoover. Like a planetary-scale Hoover – think of something that the Vogons might install on a sky-obscuring spaceship to scoop up the leftover bits of a planet they’ve just blown up.

That kind of Hoover.

Before anyone accuses me of being a newbie or Linux-hater, I say this. My first install was a Red Hat in the late 1990s. Since then I’ve variously used Mandriva, Debian, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu and Puppy Linux. I’ve also compiled code from source on Mac OSX. Not only that: because Linux is the very best underlying platform for Grass-GIS, at least in my experience, I will continue doing so.

In spite of its chronic, hostile, passive-aggressive, "if you don't love every tweak you're not really one of our people" time-wasting.

I write this on a Linux box that’s currently screen-sharing an iMac using vncviewer (mostly because the lame laptop running Linux is lacking in disk space, and I don’t feel like laying out dollars on a new one).

Even though it sucks.

I may have missed a disto or two in that list, because I don’t commit to memory the installs that have failed to boot.

The very simplest thing – the first hurdle – is to get a machine that can actually do something after it boots. Every disto I’ve mentioned will boot. Then it will put you through a complex and dispiriting set of initiation ceremonies before it will actually let you do anything.

Take, for example, the most basic requirement: you have a computer, now you need to install software. To do that, you’ll probably need a compile/make kit – or you’ll need to be able to download and install binaries using a package manager.

Let’s look at a virgin install, completed today, of Debian. From the ISO.

No compiler. So I have to download and install a compiler – apt-get instal build-essential should do. Here’s what Debian had to say:

Media change: please insert the disc labeled
‘Debian GNU/Linux [skipping the rest of the label]
in the drive /media/cdrom/’ and press enter

Did I mention I was running this under a VM? I think so. Does that hint, just a teeny, tiny, itsy-bitsy bit, that I installed Debian from an ISO sitting in a convenient location on my machine? That I didn’t burn a CD?

Anyhow: I’ve installed the damn operating system. This is not the world of Windows or Mac, where you have to prove that you came by a legitimate license key, before you start. This is the free-as-in-speech world of GNU/Linux.

What brain-dead, bound-by-habit, inflexible deadbeat demands that the presence of a valid-and-correct CD ROM be made a dependency to install software that’s so important, it’s right there in the name?

Get this, distribution designers: there’s this great, big, cheap, fat network called “The Internet” out there. I can download most of your trivial sub-megabit libraries and packages in seconds, even you’re fattest fat-dumb-happy bloatware in-memory-of-your-training-on-Visual-Basic will download in a reasonable time.

But no. Because you’re a complete and utter idiot, a moron without hope of education, a solipsistic twit without a shred of imagination, you decide that installing software requires the original CD in the appropriate drive.

Why in heaven’s name should I write your precious free distribution of an operating system to a CD or DVD and, just like it were a Windows or OSX install, pack it away somewhere precious so that it never comes to harm. Why?

And Debian isn’t the only offender – not by a long chalk. To be blunt, the people packaging up Linux distributions are idiots with a user hostility that explains why it doesn’t to anywhere.

OK. But I’m pigheaded. So I can download and install subversion, perhaps?

Not without libsvn1. Will that install?

No, because we’re now in dependency hell.

Oh, I’ll start again in the morning, scratch the VM, and get it working.

But if you want to know why Linux is bouncing along the bottom of the market like a dead cat on a bit of elastic, this is why: because eye-candy ranks ahead of usability. I don’t want a shiny new desktop. I want to get a distribution that’s ready for what I want from the get-go. You know: ready to install software.

Isn’t that what computers are meant to do?

What if it's the citizens that are right?

Wake up, Australia! You don’t understand the real story about that Julia Gillard speech in parliament this week.

First the turn of events: Julia Gillard spiflicates Tony Abbott in parliament; public applauds; international journalists applaud; local commentators complain that we’re both mistaken; bloggers respond; local commentators repeat their complaint.

For example, there’s this, from Fairfax’s Lenore Taylor, in which ordinary punters cheering for Gillard are accused of neglecting the context (that context, we’re reliably informed by everybody, is that Gillard made the speech in the context of defending the indefensible Peter Slipper).

It’s a patronising attitude, because it oversimplifies the audience, pretending that I (for example) cannot cheer the speech while being uncomfortable with its context – or that I should not.

How can I hold this apparent contradiction without bursting?

Easy: because the other piece of context that matters is Tony Abbott’s use of the phrase “died of shame”. It was tasteless, provocative, deliberate and inexcusable. Ms Gillard may have had her material prepared – but Tony Abbott provided the moment.

I can’t be the only person who’s sick to death of the double-standard under which journalists make excuses for Tony Abbott’s behavior – which incidentally creates the double-bind that Ms Gillard finally broke out of this week.

Abbott says whatever enters his brain, regardless of context; why, then, is it either fair or reasonable to criticize Ms Gillard’s response to him on the basis of the context? Mr Abbott has debased both the political and factual debate in this country; but his critics are apparently bound by courtesy and propriety, the rules of which are known only to the commentariat. 

The "it's just Tony" thing - "Boys will be boys, but the PM must hold herself to a higher standard" - is part of the problem - part of the misogyny.

The people are right. The commentators are wrong.

Misrepresenting Antarctic ice and climate change

Tim Lambert over at the Deltoid blog would probably be better at this, but he’s been quiet lately and I have a few minutes to spare, while I wait for a university to answer my call.

The Australian, courtesy of Graham Lloyd, is running with the old “what about Antarctic sea ice? Huh? Huh?” line, here. As is noted all over the world, at a time when Arctic sea ice has shrunk dramatically, there has been an increase in the sea ice down around the Antarctic.

And because there are still people in the world who want to muddy the climate change waters, the Antarctic is now becoming the poster-child for the denialist mentality.

So I guess I may as well spend a few minutes on the issue. I’m not going to refute The Australian point-by-point, but here are details to keep in mind when skeptics roll out the “Antarctic sea ice growing” argument.

      1. Most of the Antarctic’s ice is on land, not sea – and the land ice extent is shrinking, because the southern land ice loss is greater than the sea ice gain (source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm).

2    2. Sea ice formation in the Antarctic is being influenced by factors like the ozone hole (which reduces atmospheric temperatures), water freshness (rising, which makes it easier to freeze), winds and so on.

3
3    3. While the extent (ie, the area in square kilometers) of Antarctic sea ice is growing, some research suggests it might be getting thinner (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012JC008141.shtml) - so the change in the overall volume of sea ice is much less well understood.

4    4. The Southern Ocean is still warming (http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Deep-Ocean-Warming.aspx).

That should do for now, I suppose …

Why don’t journalists tell “important” stories?

Because – as if you didn’t already know this – people don’t read them.

I mean this.

People. Don’t. Read. Important. Stories.

The entire Internet knows damn well the meaning of the expression “linkbait”: it means posting a story solely for attracting readers so your ads will do well. “Nude Paris Hilton in iPhone Phishing Scandal” will do nicely or, to be more contemporary headline-wise, you could try Patentology’s “Smartphone Wars, Gangam Style”.

Why do people do this? Because it works. It makes money.

Bluntly, even more than television – which may from time to time be ruled by a proprietor who cares about quality – the Internet’s perverse reward is this: write about high-rating trivia, make money. Write about something that actually matters, lose money.

I can’t reveal the Web server statistics from over at The Register, where I generate some of my income. But relativities will do nicely if you remember that the numbers I’m going to give you have to be multiplied by some number of thousands to approach reality – and no, I’m not going to tell you.

Here are three stories I filed today, not in any particular order:

eBay frets as right to resell comes under scrutiny

(Synopsis: the US Supreme Court may give copyright holders control over people who sell stuff second-hand)

Home-grown drone finds ‘missing’ hiker

(Synopsis: Amateurs build a UAV that wins a prize by locating a dummy, representing a missing bushwalker, without human help)

Deep-sea worm recalls Star Wars favourite

(Synopsis: an interesting Acorn Worm at the bottom of the Atlantic bears a superficial resemblance to Yoda, if you have imagination and the right angle on the photograph)

Now: I have my own opinions, as you will have yours, on the relative “importance” of these stories. For my money, the right to sell things you own – not just books, it could be a designer dishwasher or a computer – is pretty fundamental to the notion of privat property, and should trump the list.

So what’s the relative ranking of the three stories?

Yoda worm – 6 hits per unit

Resale rights – 1.8 hits per unit

UAVs saving lives – 1.5 hits per unit

That’s right, folks. The “linkbait” Yoda-worm story out-rated two “important” stories by three-to-four times as many readers. Multiply it by the right number of thousands – no, I’m still not revealing that – and you have serious money involved.

(Yoda was so popular it was Number One during Monday in Australia time – but I can see any number of stories rising with a bullet as England wakes.)

The painful fact is, people, that the Internet offers a perverse reward: the right linkbait will beat the important story nine rolls out of ten.

One of the reasons I write for El Reg is that I still have license to write stories that I think may be important, even when those stories don’t set the wallets jangling. I strongly suspect that few journalists get to make those decisions for themselves, especially when there’s an Apple launch in the offing.

I’m lucky.

PS: neither is 2GB a victim

Oh, for pity’s sake.

The Macquarie Radio Network has taken a commercial decision to suspend advertising on Alan Jones’ program – and this is a freedom-of-speech issue? Mumbrella, the cheerleader of advertising, thinks so (http://mumbrella.com.au/if-you-force-alan-jones-off-the-air-of-course-its-censorship-120589).

Spare me.

Here’s the cluestick: I have an absolute right to spend my money as I wish. I do not have to decide that I need to tailor my spending somehow to avoid “censoring” any radio shock-jock at all.

Moreover: I have an absolute right to say “If Mercedes gives money to Alan Jones, then I won’t give my money to Mercedes” – I choose the least likely scenario, because the only Mercedes I’ll ever afford would have a 1960s compliance date, and Mercedes wouldn’t get any money from me anyhow.

Further: I have an absolute right to say that I’d like other people to express a similar opinion.

But no: in a lame Twitter defence of its position, Mumbrella directed me to the Change.org petition to have Jones pulled from the air. This, Mumbrella claims, is censorship.

Morons.

That’s not censorship: that’s a citizen expressing an opinion, and inviting others to endorse that opinion. In other words, since Mumbrella’s intellect seems to lie on the left-hand side of the Bell curve: it’s an expression of freedom of speech.

And Macquarie Radio is still free to ignore that expression, should it so desire.

You see: the only decisions in this example are, on the one side, personal; and on the other side, commercial. The personal decisions are “Do I seek signatures to the petition?”,  “Do I sign the petition?”, and “Do we publish the results?”

The commercial decision is “Are there enough angry people to damage our brand? Do we continue lending our commercial endorsement to this program?”

Neither rank as censorship, because neither rob Alan Jones of his right to express his opinions. He can take them to the Domain, should he choose; write them in letters to editors, post them on a blog, on Facebook, on Twitter. He could buy his own radio license and – within the bounds of regulations that MRN is subject to – broadcast them unfettered. He can accept speakers’ fees, publish his opinions in books, whatever.

Then, as now, I have a perfect right to ignore him – and a perfect right to ignore those who want his audience and don’t care what he says. My right to choose where I spend my money cannot be fettered by the commercial interests of Jones’ advertisers.

Without sponsors, all he lacks is privilege. And privilege is not a question of free speech.

Spare me: Woolworths’ Simon Berger is not a victim of the left, nor of Twitter

Disclaimer: I am, via the self-administered superannuation fund, a Woolworths shareholder.

Even so: here’s the unofficial (for now) News Limited line on his resignation, courtesy (if that’s the right word) (I’m open to alternatives) of News’ Chris Kenny, via Twitter:

“Simon Berger is a good man...and worked hard for Woolies. I'm shopping at Coles #auspol Companies shouldn't be bullied by twitter kids”

For those who need the background, it’s at the end of the post.

“Twitter kids” are irrelevant here: what was at issue, almost immediately, were judgment, credibility, and capacity to continue in a role.

Among other things, Simon Berger’s job description included “government relations”. In the case of Woolworths (as with Coles), “government relations” can be described as “ensuring that the government doesn’t decide to fragment a cozy duopoly that can freely fleece both ends of the supply chain, suppliers and consumers alike”.

As Australian bowler Bill O’Reilly said when asked to “tell the truth” about his relationship with Don Bradman – in a quote later appropriated by, and frequently attributed to, Gough Whitlam: “You don’t piss on statues.”

That’s what Berger did: he pissed on a statue. For a person holding his position, the decision to provide a “chaff bag” as an auction item for a Liberal Party university fundraiser was an atrocious lapse of judgment and taste.

His involvement was witless – and it’s the witlessness, rather than the politics, that probably cost Berger his job at Woolworths. In the kind of blokey “hur, hur” mentality that infects and infests politics in Australia, Simon Berger thought that that pissing on the Prime Minister was a Good Idea.

There are only two reasons for someone holding the job title “government relations”. One is that they’re supremely good at what they do. The other is that they have accumulated a killer phone book.

If a government relations manager does something to ensure that about 80 percent of his phone book won’t answer his calls, he is a liability. By donating the “Woolworths chaff bag”, Simon Berger became that liability.

Not only would the entire Labor side of politics put him on the “do not call” list, anybody on the Liberal/National side who was either (a) horrified by what he did, or (b) terrified of being associated with him – would decline his calls.

Only a tiny handful of L/NP politicians would happily align themselves with the auctioned chaff bag – and Woolworths must know this.

The background, in case you live in a cave: Alan Jones smeared the Prime Minister Julia Gillard with the atrocious claim that her father “died of shame”, in a speech given to a bunch of booze-and-bonk university Liberals. The same skanky fund-raiser was partly supported by the donation of a jacket made out of a “chaff bag”, courtesy Simon Berger. This, in turn, referenced an early insult from the creepy Jones, that the PM should be drowned at sea in a chaff bag. 

Update: @HenryInnis is offended by what I say. I'll put it more simply, for the children: if your job is public relations, Rule One is don't upset your audience. Whatever context the Liberal Students want to try to apply, post-facto, to Simon Berger's auction item - it was bound to upset his audience. That's not a matter of politics. Its a matter of intellect and judgment. As I already said.

A star screaming through space around a black hole

I like science, and write about it for The Register, but there’s not always room for everything that gets my attention. So from time to time, I’m going to throw science stuff here as well.

And this looks like a pretty cool place to start: a star orbiting black hole near the middle of the Milky Way that completes its orbit far quicker than Pluto orbits the Sun.

While Pluto needs nearly 250 years to complete a circuit of the Sun, this star (S0-102) is whipping around the black hole it orbits in just over 11 years.

This is exciting to astronomers, because most stars’ orbits are too slow for us to hope for a complete observation. The solar system takes more than 200 million years to circuit the Milky Way, for example.

By comparison, astronomers will be able to see this star complete two orbits in just 23 years.

So what? you might ask.

While Einstein’s theory of general relativity is very robust, some of its predictions are difficult to test: you need data, and some of that data is hard to come by. For example, it predicts that a star in a black hole’s gravity well will be red-shifted; and that its orbit, pulled out of an elliptical orbit, will over time form the kind of flower-shape you might get out of a Spirograph.

Neither of these predictions, however, can be tested if it takes hundreds of years to gather the data.

That’s why instruments like the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT (http://www.tmt.org/), are on the hunt for stars with high-speed orbits.

Pretty cool, I think!

Independent Australia: pro-NBN works better with accuracy

A period of some hours over at Independent Australia isn't sufficient to get a comment moderated, so my comment is here.

I'm pro-NBN, but I like to defend it with facts. So while it's good to see Independent Australia chiming in on the debate, here, there are some points I'd like to correct.

1. "Turnbull’s go to line that “[NBN Co] has only had about 5,000 connected”. Having studied the business plan, I see nowhere that Turnbull could possibly have gotten this figure from".

It didn't come from the business plan. Mike Quigley used a similar number here.

"In terms of activations, we now have close to 5½ thousand premises connected to the NBN across the country."

This was in February and is presumably obsolete, and anyhow included satellite (which is even worse for the fibre case).

My guess is that a statement like this has become part of Turnbull's armoury - even if it is now out-of-date.

2. "...the bandwidth falloff for VDSL2 Profile 8 (more than likely what will be deployed to keep costs down & deliver service to 1kilometre) not even making it to 80Mbps at the DSLAM (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer, i.e. Exchange Equipment)."

That probably needs a re-write. The DSLAM is where the bandwidth is delivered from. So it's hard to discern the point that's being made.

3. "...a minimum of two pairs (bonded) are required to run the service, and one pair to run a telephone line." (my emphasis)

The phone line runs on one of the pairs, just as it can with ADSL: the lowest frequencies are reserved for voice (described as USO services in the standards documents). The broadband signal starts above 100 kHz.

4. "The requirements for lead-ins is that two pairs be installed to the first socket in the premises, the Telstra/Optus networks are both designed with this in mind, leaving little room for two pairs to be taken up by a VDSL2 service."

Optus doesn't run a twisted pair copper network. Its broadband services are delivered over HFC, or over Telstra copper - as are its fixed line voice services.

5. "there would have to be, at the least, a new copper pair for every premises connected to the network."

That depends. Many houses have two pairs installed, not because they were needed: merely because years ago, that's what Telstra did, just in case one failed. What we don't know - among the many things we don't know about the copper network - is how many houses have two usable pairs installed.

So what's the point to me correcting this?

The NBN is a political debate - which means that technical errors get exploited to make a political point. It's not a good idea to put weapons in the hands of your opponent.