Oriental Yeti Baffles Scientists

Some hunters in remote central China have trapped a strange looking animal, the Daily Telegraph says. The article claims that scientists are baffled as to what it could possibly be, a combination of cat, bear or yeti? Who knows?

The odd thing is this creature is so baffling it's managing to baffle people who haven't even examined it yet. The article mentions that the animal has just been sent off to Beijing where its DNA will be analysed.

In the meantime, the locals (or indeed the Daily Telegraph) aren't waiting until the facts are in before they start speculating. Some think it's a bear, but it's not hairy. Perhaps it's a cat, it sounds like one. It has a tail like a kangaroo, maybe a Chinese bear got lonely one night, searched online on www.kangaroobrides.com.au and found a mate.*

The last claim reported by the article is that, according to local legend, there was a man who turned into a bear and that that is what the hunters have caught.

The article already calls the creature the 'Oriental Yeti'.

Those seem like strong, plausible and rigorously scientific hypotheses to me.

Or maybe it's just a poor cat whose hair was burnt off. In any case, perhaps the conjectures should wait, or at least be reined in, until someone without a need to increase his village's income from tourism can have a look at it.

Yours,
Charles

* Ok, so I may have exaggerated that last claim.
** Or perhaps that should be who.

1st Milestone

Posting a few things this morning, I realised I'd posted enough since I started a week ago (feels longer than that*) to have too many posts for the front page to handle on its own. That's right, this means readers now have to click on the 'older posts' link to see the first few posts.

"You're crazy Charles!" I hear you say, "It doesn't take many posts to make that happen." Of course you're all correct, it doesn't. It did, however, bring a smile to my crazy monkey face and I thought that warranted a mention.

:) <- A smile like this.

Yours,
Charles

* I have yet to make the calculation in monkey weeks.

Simon Singh and Libel Reform

This morning I received an email through the Sense About Science mailing list, relaying a message from Simon Singh. I thought I'd display it here as well, for those of you interested in the ongoing court case Simon Singh is having to go through to defend the statements he made about chiropractors in Trick or Treatment as being fair comment, rather than libel.

Message from Simon Singh : “A big step for me, a small step for libel reform, and what you can do to help today.”

Dear friends,

With apologies for cross posting,

Sorry for the silence, but it has been a ridiculously hectic (and happy) time since last week’s victory at the Court of Appeal. However, I urgently wanted to get in touch to update you on the status of my case, the latest news on libel reform and what you can do today to push libel reform up the political agenda.

BCA v Singh

April Fool’s Day 2010 was a day to remember. The Court of Appeal gave a ruling in my libel case with the British Chiropractic Association. The ruling strongly backs my arguments and puts me in a much stronger position when my trial eventually takes place. At last, after two years of defending my article and my right to free speech, I seem to have the upper hand and can breathe a small sigh of relief.

Moreover, the judges made it clear that they did not want to see scientists and science journalists being hauled through the High Court. In particular, they endorsed the view that a so-called comment defence should be adequate for scientific and other articles on matters of public interest. As well as the legal technicalities, the three wise, charming and handsome judges quoted Milton on the persecution of Galileo and directed that the High Court should not become an “Orwellian Ministry of Truth”.

Libel Reform Campaign

This is a small step forward for libel reform, but there is still a huge battle to be fought over the issues of costs, libel tourism, public interest defence, balancing the burden of proof, restricting the ability of powerful corporations to bully individuals (e.g., bloggers, journalists, scientists) and so on.

The General Election was called yesterday and the manifestos will be published in the next week, so we need one last push to persuade the major parties to commit to libel reform. Although we have already achieved a huge amount (from editorials in all last week’s broadsheets to the Commons Select Committee recommending libel reform), we must keep up the pressure!

Both the Labour and Conservative parties have made encouraging sounds about libel reform, but now is the time for them to make commitments in their manifestos.

What you can do today to pressure politicians

I have spent over a million minutes and £100,000 defending my article and my right to free speech, so I am asking you to spend just one minute and no money at all persuading others to sign the petition for libel reform at www.libelreform.org/sign

The last time I made this request, we doubled the number of signatories from 17,000 to 35,000. Can we now double the number from almost 50,000 to 100,000?!

You could ask parents, siblings, colleagues or friends to sign up. You could email everyone in your address book. You could blog about it, mention it to your Facebook friends and Twitter about it.

In fact, I have pasted some possible tweets at the end of this email – it would be great if you could twitter one, some or all of them.

You could forward all or part of this email to people or just steer them to www.libelreform.org/sign. Or you could persuade people that English libel law needs radical reform by using some of the reasons listed at the end of this email.

Remember, we welcome signatories from around the world because English libel law has a damaging impact globally.

Please, please, please apply maximum pressure to the politicians by encouraging as many new signatories as possible. Please do not take my victory last week as a sign that the battle is over. My case is still ongoing and the campaign for libel reform is only just starting.

Thanks for all your support – it has been incredibly important for the campaign and a real morale booster personally over the last two years.

Simon Singh

Ps. Please spread the word by sending out one, some or all of the following tweets

Pls RT English libel law silences debate, says UN Human Rights Committee. Sign up at www.libelreform.org & back #libelreform

Pls RT English libel costs 140x more than Europe. We can't afford to defend our words. Sign up at www.libelreform.org & back #libelreform

Pls RT Two ongoing libel cases involving health. The law should not crush scientific debate. Sign up at www.libelreform.org & back #libelreform

Pls RT London is notorious for attracting libel tourists who come to UK to silence critics. Sign up at www.libelreform.org & back #libelreform

PPs. Reasons why we need radical libel reform:

(a) English libel laws have been condemned by the UN Human Rights Committee.

(b) These laws gag scientists, bloggers and journalists who want to discuss matters of genuine public interest (including public health!).

(c) Our laws give rise to libel tourism, whereby the rich and the powerful (Saudi billionaires, Russian oligarchs and overseas corporations) come to London to sue writers because English libel laws are so hostile to responsible journalism. (Again, it is exactly because English libel laws have this global impact that we welcome signatories to the petition from around the world.)

(d) Vested interests can use their resources to bully and intimidate those who seek to question them. The cost of a libel trial in England is 100 times more expensive than the European average and typically runs to over £1 million.

(e) Two separate ongoing libel cases involve myself and Peter Wilmshurst, and we are both raising concerns about medical treatments. We face losing £1 million each. In future, why would anyone else raise similar concerns when our libel laws are so brutal and expensive? Our libel laws mean that serious health matters are not necessarily reported, which means that the public is put at risk.

PPPs. I know that I will leave people out of this list, but I owe a huge thanks to:

1. The 10,000 people who joined the Facebook group “For Simon Singh and Free Speech - Against the BCA Libel Claim”, particularly those who joined when the rest of the world ignored the issue of libel.

2. The 300 people who packed Penderel’s Oak in May 2009 and who helped launch the Keep Libel Laws Out of Science campaign, particularly the speakers: Nick Cohen, Dave Gorman, Evan Harris MP, Professor Brian Cox, Chris French, Tracey Brown (Sense About Science), Robert Dougans (Bryan Cave) and David Allen Green.

3. The 20,000 people who then joined the Keep Libel Laws Out of Science campaign.

4. Jack of Kent and every other blogger who ranted and raved about libel reform when the mainstream media was turning a blind eye.

5. Everyone in the mainstream media who is now covering the various libel cases and the issue of libel reform.
   

6. Sense About Science, Index on Censorship and English PEN, who formed the Coalition for Libel Reform. And thanks to everyone who has contributed pro bono to the campaign in terms of design, technical support, chivvying support for the EDM and more.

7. The 46,000 people (i.e. you) who have signed the petition for libel reform, particularly those who have cajoled others to sign up at www.libelreform.org/sign

8. All the big names who have spoken out in favour of libel reform, from Professor Richard Dawkins to Derren Brown, from the Astronomer Royal to the Poet Laureate, from the Amazing Randi to Ricky Gervais. Particular thanks go to Dara O Briain, Stephen Fry, Tim Minchin and Robin Ince, who have gone out of their way to step up to the plate when the campaign has needed them. Immense thanks also to the 100+ big names who were the first to sign the petition to keep libel out of science and highlighted the need for libel reform.
   

9. Everyone who has emailed and twittered and told me in person that I am not going crazy, and who reassured me that I am doing the right thing by defending my article.

10. Thanks to Nick Clegg, leader of the Lib Dems, for promising to put libel reform in his manifesto. And thanks in advance to Jack Straw (Justice Secretary) and Dominic Grieve (Shadow Justice Secretary), because I know that the Labour and Conservative parties are going to commit to libel law reform. I cannot believe that they will allow more scientists, serious journalists, bloggers, biographers, human rights activists and others to go through the same hell that I have had to endure for last two years.

Yours,
Charles

Stranded Ship Threatens Great Barrier Reef

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest system of reefs in the world. In fact, it is considered one of the seven wonders of the natural world*: unique, fragile and irreplaceable**.

In a strict no-go zone for certain kinds of ships, such as giant coal tankers, the fact that a ship managed to “take a shortcut”, get stranded and damaged, so that at any moment oil could leak out of its tanks, should be intensely embarrassing to our coast guard and navy. Admittedly, the reef encompasses some 344,400 square kilometres, which makes it difficult to survey and monitor. However, it is their job to protect our waters from any threat to Australia. A potential oil spill which would severely damage the Great Barrier Reef IS such a threat.

The captain of said ship is more concerned that his crew might be running out of food and water (as he will now be feeding the rescue crew) rather than any remorse about any damage his disregard for Australian maritime law might cause.

The fine the owners of the boat, Chinese owned Cosco***, face is a sum up to $1 million. The captain himself may be fined up to $250,000. These fines are ridiculously small considering the scale of this company, and how much it is costing rescue and salvage crews to deal with the situation. Then there is the small matter that the Great Barrier Reef itself couldn't be replaced for any amount of money. There is no doubt in my mind to how the Chinese would react to having someone accidentally almost destroy the Great Wall of China, or the Forbidden Palace.

Premier Anna Bligh has spoken out against the captain, for failing to understand the seriousness of the incident. Senator Bob Brown has requested a royal commission be launched to investigate further, since this seems to be far from an isolated incident; many foreign ships take such "shortcuts" through our protected waters. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has also mentioned that the laws may have to be changed. So at least the Government seems to be taking it seriously.

The Great Barrier Reef as we know it today took over 20,000 years to form. Not only that, but it has formed itself on top of the remains of coral reefs that themselves started forming 600,000 years ago. The time the captain's "short-cut" would have saved: one hour.

Yours,
Charles

* The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage values
** Well, it's replaceable if you don't mind waiting around a few million years.
*** This company is seriously huge!

15 Seconds of Fame

About 15 minutes ago, I was working on another post when I noticed someone had left a comment on my review of Bad Astronomy.

This was the first comment anyone had left, so I excitedly clicked to find out what it said. It was by Larian LeQuella* saying that he had found my blog by following a link from Dr Phil Plait's blog, Bad Astronomy.

Wow. It nearly blew my little monkey mind.

Fine, so he got the name of the blog a little wrong. No single barrel could possibly contain the personality that is this monkey**. I'm not about to complain though. Dr Plait could have called my blog Bob's Blog, and I would have seriously considered legally changing my name***.

Needless to say, my day's definitely been made.

Yours,
Charles

* His profile pic makes me want to find a monkey sized uniform and a couple of flags. I like it.
** I only have access to really really small barrels.
*** Not really.

Dealing with the Australian ISP Filter

A lot of people have talked about how to stop Stephen Conroy from being able to push his mandatory filter proposal through parliament. Interestingly, some people are already starting to talk about how to bypass it in the event of it going through.

Exit International is teaching people, particularly the elderly, how to bypass the filter by using proxy servers and virtual networks, so that they can access online information about Euthanasia. (Full article here)

The planned filter is already going to be a breach of our rights to freedom of speech*. Hopefully as people see how easily the planned filter will be to circumvent, more and more people will also see it as the complete waste of tax-payer money that it is.**

Yours,
Charles

* As Australians, we don't have a bill of rights, so our freedom of speech isn't as enshrined in law as it should be.
** $44 million to setup and $33 million every year thereafter.

Stem Cells Paving Way to Cure for HIV

It's a popular claim or rant of religious extremists that HIV or AIDS is God's punishment for a life of homosexuality, and sexual promiscuity in general. This, of course, ignores the fact that, if you look at the stats, AIDS rates look like they have a lot more to do with overall education and poverty levels than the percentage of the population that is homosexual. One such site is the CIA Factbook, in which African countries are up among the top in percentage of adults living with AIDS.

If AIDS was a homosexual phenomenon, you would expect a clear trend where rates of AIDS are higher in areas with more homosexuals (particularly homosexual men, since that's what homophobes are usually thinking about when they consider same-sex). In the US, looking at the statistics collected by the Avert website, it's impossible to see any such trend. There is a larger percentage of homosexuals living in San Francisco according to surveys (check here and particularly here) yet that is not where we see the highest rates of AIDS. In fact, one of the areas with quite high rates is Jackson, MS, or even in Texas.

This is all a side issue or rather prelude to the core of this post though.

As part of a patient with leukemia's treatment, doctors implanted him with healthy stem cells from a donor. Since the patient also had HIV, doctors chose a donor who had a natural resistance to the virus, to see whether this would confer the natural immunity to the patient. (See here for more details) Since the operation two years ago, he has shown no signs of HIV in his blood.

This is amazing news and may indeed turn out to be a cure for AIDS. It's early days yet and the operation itself is rather involved to be, at this stage, a lightly undertaken procedure, but it certainly should be cause for hope for the millions of people worldwide who are afflicted by the virus.

In summary, to those religious people who claimed or still think that AIDS is God's punishment upon homosexuals, or indeed, the world:

Humanity 1, God 0.

Yours,
Charles

Book Review - Bad Astronomy

When I bought a copy of Bad Astronomy, a book by Philip Plait (PhD), at TAM 2009, I'd already had the book on my to-buy and to-read list for at least a year. After buying it and getting it signed by Phil Plait himself, I returned home from TAM having every intention of reading it as soon as I got home, if not before (plane flights are long and even more boring when you're in the baggage compartment).

It sat on my bookshelf for almost another year until in March, I picked it up and decided I would finally carve out some time to read it. This time, I did, and I managed to read it in less than a week, or roughly 10 hours (So I’m a slow reader, you can stow it, I'm a monkey! It's amazing I can read at all.).

Phil Plait's style of writing is relaxed and witty. He easily exposes and explains a myriad of mistakes people make with regards to science and astronomy, like thinking NASA didn't send astronauts to the moon, to answering questions like why the sky is blue. I confess I accidentally found myself learning some basic astronomy and science, which, given my usual attention span when reading actual textbooks, is no mean feat.

In fact, I move that Bad Astronomy be a recommended text book at secondary schools everywhere, or even primary schools, for that matter. Scratch that. Everyone in the world should read this book. Phil Plait manages to break things down to an easily understandable level, so that people without a background in physics or astronomy* can grasp the core concepts.

The lesson to be learned here is not to let this book collect dust on your shelf. At least, not until after you’ve read it.

Yours,

Charles

* Like yours truly. Though I do have some knowledge of physics. After all, you don't live in trees without coming to some sort of understanding with gravity. She is a harsh mistress.

Senator Conroy Says the Internet Isn't Special

Senator Conroy's latest comment regarding the internet is to say that it is a communication platform like any other. According to the Sydney Morning Herald article:

"Why is the internet special?"* he asked, saying the net was "just a communication and distribution platform"

He goes on to say that the Internet should be censored just like books, films and so forth.

This only goes to show how ignorant Stephen Conroy is about the medium he is trying to create legislation for.

The internet is not a book, it is not a film, it's dynamic and constantly changing. Any particular site's content is likely to change on a regular basis, unlike a book, where the content of any particular edition will not change and is precisely known.

Senator Conroy also mentions that his filter is 100% accurate and that it will not underblock or overblock or have any impact on speeds.

Given that the internet has over a trillion pages and the filter as currently proposed will have pages listed only in the thousands, I would say it's a pretty safe bet that it will be underblocking. And we know from the leaked blacklist that it overblocks, since an australian dentist's website was found to be on the list. Note that the dentist was not told so he could do anything about it.

The idea that the filter will have no impact on speeds is shown to be a lie, since Senator Conroy has assured Australians that high-traffic sites will not be filtered. Sites like YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia will be exempt. If there was no impact on speed and performance, there would be no reason not to include sites, no matter how high the traffic.

Senator Conroy then mentions that the filter is necessary to protect children from child pornography. In his own words: "If we know there are 355 websites today that have child pornographic images on it, should we say well we're not going to do anything about it?"

There are a few reasons this is a particularly strange (I'm a polite monkey) thing to say. The main one is the fact that if the pictures are up on the web, this means the children actually in the photos have already been abused. How about instead of filtering these pictures, we try our hardest to make sure they never get taken in the first place?

Take note that in criminal law, knowing about a crime and covering up the evidence is known as being an accessory. If Senator Conroy is not careful, he could be taken to court. (355 is a very specific number, I wonder how Senator Conroy came up with it?)

Second, even if we should do something about the images up on the web, to protect other children or adults from accidentally seeing them, that does not mean that the mandatory ISP filter is the solution. To present it as a choice between being for (or at least apathetic towards) child pornography on the web and being for the mandatory filter, is to present a false dichotomy.

As we move further down the article, Conroy points out that Google already censors much more than the proposed filter plan will. First of all, Google can do what it likes, it's not a government agency. Second, Google has already decided it's tired of censoring websites for China and is pulling out, which shows that just because a company is doing something now, doesn't mean it's happy about it or will continue to do it in the future. Thirdly, just because Google (or anyone else) censors free expresssion, that doesn't make it a valid course of action.

What I am happy about is the way the SMH article closes with a statement from Senator Ludlam, which, quite frankly, I don't think I can improve on very much, so I'll just post it here:

"For $44 million, we're buying ourselves an initiative which will have no measurable impact whatsoever," Senator Ludlam said.

"In exchange, we establish the architecture for future governments to abuse the loose and undefined 'RC' category to add a creeping range of material to the list. Once this architecture is established, the idea that its scope won't be expanded by future governments is a gamble we don't believe we should take."

Yours,
Charles

* You may not think the Internet is special, Mr Conroy, but I think you are, in the mentally deficient way**.
** I apologise for comparing actually developmentally challenged people to Senator Conroy, it's unfair to them.

The Greens New Policy for Better Education

Earlier this week Senator Bob Brown announced the Greens new proposed policy to "increase the number of teachers and student support" and get rid of nationally funded chaplains, which were put in by the Howard government, which would be replaced by counsellors and community liaison officers.

A second part of their new policy would be to give scholarships to university students studying teaching so long as they agree to teach several years at public schools.

I don't have much to say about this except that the idea sounds like a very good one and makes me a very happy monkey indeed. You can read more details here and here.

The benefits this policy would provide would be far-reaching. Firstly, the removal of chaplains in favour of counsellors and community liason officers would mean public schools would return to being more religiously neutral, as they should be, given that everyone's money is going to pay for them, not just Christians. Second, having trained counsellors and community liason officers would mean that children at the schools would get much appreciated help if they need it, rather than whatever it is that the chaplains were supposed to do*. Finally, encouraging and helping university students become public school teachers would help improve education levels, which benefits everyone in society in so many ways that I hope are too obvious to bear mentioning**.

I sincerely hope that the Greens manage to get this proposal seriously considered by the current government, or indeed the future one, whether they themselves get voted in or not.

Yours,
Charles

* Best case, the same help counsellors would give. Worst case, made up fairy tales that cause harm and distract from real solutions.
** But here are some anyway, smarter population, meaning smarter politicians and public servants, a stronger economy, better research, etc...