Photo

The Phoenix spacecraft, recently arrived on Mars, has uncovered, below where its engines blew away the soil, what potentially looks like ice.

See more at Universe Today.

The next episode of In Our Time will be on Lysenkoism – a very interesting period of Soviet history where ideology ruled over science. It is probably a defining aspect of Ideology that where the ideology conflicts with facts/science/reason it the ideology that triumphs. Wikipedia summaries Lysenkoism as:

…a term given to the repressive political and social campaigns undertaken in science and agriculture by the powerful Stalinist director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Trofim Denisovich Lysenko and his followers, which began in the late 1920s and formally ended in 1964…Soviet mass-media presented Lysenko as a genius who had developed a new, revolutionary agricultural technique. During this period, Soviet propaganda often focused upon inspirational stories of peasants who, through their own canny ability and intelligence, came up with solutions to practical problems. Lysenko’s widespread popularity provided him a platform to denounce theoretical genetics and to promote his own agricultural practices. He was, in turn, supported by the Soviet propaganda machine, which overstated his successes and omitted mention of his failures.

Between 1934 and 1940, under Lysenko’s admonitions and with Stalin’s blessings, many geneticists were executed or sent to labor camps. In 1948, genetics was officially declared “a bourgeois pseudoscience”; all geneticists were fired from work (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued. Nikita Khrushchev, who fancied himself as an expert in agricultural science, also valued Lysenko as a great scientist, and the taboo on genetics continued (but all geneticists were released or rehabilitated posthumously). Only in the middle of the 1960s was it waived.

One interesting aspect is that Lysenko was a proponent of Lamarckism, an earlier (pre-darwinian) view of evolution that the acquired traits of an animal are passed on to offspring (so a giraffe stretches its neck to reach leaves and thus has offspring with longer necks, and the blacksmith has children with bigger muscles). You can see why a scientist holding this view would appeal to the Communist elite, by molding the modern Soviet Citizen into a model communist this trait can be passed onto children and the whole world made anew.

Should be a good program, and if you subscribe now, the podcast should turn up in your podcatcher (in my case iTunes) by early Thursday evening).

There have been press reports about Kevin Rudd working the public service too hard, but more to the point, is he working too hard (even if he has a valet)? My non-professional view of the media reporting is that he seems to exercise fairly tight control over his Ministers. It would seem that all policy announcements go through him first. But how sustainable it that in the long term, and does it stifle the adaptability and (for want of a better word) “reactability” of the Government? Time will tell.

The next year or two is going to be really interesting on greenhouse gas abatement policy. A key policy response proposed by economists has been carbon trading or a carbon tax (both of which increase the cost of energy and fuel), but generally this has not really been tried anywhere (at least not effectively). And yet the massive increase in petrol prices seen recently mimics just the sort of price increase under a carbon tax (and is in fact much higher – John Quiggin estimates 5-25 cents per litre for a carbon tax).

Because of the massive capital investment in many energy using technologies, cars houses, trains etc, there are always going to be vast differences in the short term and long term adjustments to higher prices (leaving the car at home and catching the train, versus moving closer to work).

We are currently seeing the short term adjustments to higher prices, the changes in behaviour we can make with the current capital on hand (ie not buying a new car).

In Melbourne public transport usage is up something like 20 percent.

Car usage, or at least fuel usage, is going down. See this article by Peter Martin.

With these short term adjustments it will be interesting to see whether the high fuel prices continue for a couple of years, and what adjustments we see from that.

I expect the sale of smaller cars, fewer trips, even more use of public transport, people moving closer to their work, or working closer to their homes and pressure for government to develop urban policies that fit in with the effect of higher oil prices.