The first episode of the new series of Doctor Who was screened in Australia last night, and the preview of coming episode showed our old friends the Cybermen. As my son observed, they’re the least satisfactory of the Doctor’s enemies because they are just second-rate Daleks. Today, I opened my copy of the London Review of Books, to find the exact same observation from Jenny Turner, reviewing Kim Newman who objects to the cliched, but apparently universally true, observation, that children watched the series from ‘behind the sofa‘. Support for Rupert Sheldrake, or just evidence that the series reliably produces the same responses in lots of viewers.

Also in my mailbox, after a return from travel was an issue of the Scientific American with the front page headling Do Stem Cells Cause Cancer ? (answer, apparently, yes). My immediate thought was to wonder how long this will take to turn up as a talking point in the Republican alternate universe.

Over at Larvatus Prodeo, Tigtog, Kim and Mark are running a comments challenge to raise funds for Darfur similar to the tsunami fundraiser held here last year (I got the idea from Michele Agnew who got it from somewhere else in the blogosphere). So go over and leave a comment. Obviously, the best sort of comment is one announcing a donation of your own, or joining the LPers in cash for comments.

Among the many other worthy causes, there’s still time to help with the Yogyakarta earthquake.

And while I’m on the topic, let’s hear it for Bill Gates, who’s taking a backseat at Microsoft in order to devote more time to giving his money away. There’s something to be said for billionaires; taken as a group they seem a lot more attractive than the merely rich.

With a bit of welcome rain (well, drizzle, but every little helps) Brisbane is, unusually, both cold and humid today. As a result, after a fairly intense training session at karate today, my son informed me that I was, literally, giving off steam.

The Darfur appeal ends today, and generous readers have contributed $400, which I’ll match. The target is $500, so I’m hoping someone will pony up part or all of the last $100 before 6pm today, when I’ll close off. To follow the tragedy in Sudan, visit Passion of the Present. There seems to be no end to the war, and no easy solution (though the world could surely do better than it has done) but we can at least help to stop people starving.

With today (6/6/6) bearing the number of the beast, my thoughts went back to the most recent scary date 1/1/00 when we were promised TEOTWAWKI thanks to the famous Y2K bug.

Oddly enough, although we seem to be overwhelmed with alleged sceptics on other topics, only a handful of people challenged the desirability of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to fix a problem which was not, on the face of it, any more serious than dozens of other bugs in computer systems. Admittedly not all the money was wasted, since lots of new computers were bought. But a lot of valuable equipment was prematurely scrapped and a vast amount of effort was devoted to compliance, when a far cheaper “fix on failure” approach would have sufficed for all but the most mission-critical of systems.

As far as I know, there was no proper peer-reviewed assessment of the seriousness of the problems published in the computer science literature. Most of the running was made by consultants with an axe to grind, and their scaremongering was endorsed by committees where no-one had any incentive to point out the nudity of the emperor.

Why was there so little scepticism on this issue? An obvious explanation is that no powerful interests were threatened and some, such as consultants and computer companies, stood to gain. I don’t think this is the whole story, and I tried to analyse the process here, but there’s no doubt that a reallocation of scepticism could have done us a lot of good here.

Among the many terrible things happening in the world at the moment, the situation in Darfur remains among the grimmest. The various rebel groups, the government and the pro-government militias are all more interested in power than in helping their people, and the world’s governments aren’t doing much better. The latest news is that food rations for the World Food Program were cut in half in May, though they’ve been partially restored since then, with Australia among the donors. Medecins Sans Frontieres has details.

There doesn’t seem to be any way of contributing directly, but readers might email Alexander Downer a.downer.mp@aph.gov.au to urge a further expansion of emergency food aid. In the mean time, I’m appealing for donations to Medecins Sans Frontieres, who are doing important work in Darfur and other places. Usual deal: I’ll match all donations up to a total of $500. Readers can either report donations, or join me in matching others. I’ll run this until Saturday morning.

I’ll also remind people of the Yogyakarta earthquake appeal. THe ACICIS student appeal details are here. CARE Australia is also running an appeal.

I’ve been asked to post this appeal for help with the Yogyakarta earthquake from a group of international students* located in Java and therefore in a position to provide immediate assistance, which they are currently doing at their own expense.

* The writer of the letter is a friend of one of my postdoctoral fellows, Nanni Concu, so there’s no need to worry about the bona fides of the appeal.
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From Rachel Aspden’s New Statesman review of Alain de Botton’s latest (which I saw republished in the ReView section of the Fin)

None of this [pretentiousess] would matter so much were de Botton not selling the promise of taste. The Architecture of Happiness is being advertised on the Tube with a poster of flying-duck plaques – middle-class shorthand for “naff” – asking: “Is this your idea of good taste?” … If this is happiness, I’ll take the flying ducks any time.

Reading this in the kitchen, I naturally glanced up at the wall, which is adorned by a classic flight of flying ducks. I acquired them in my youth in a spirit of irony, but that has long since transmuted into genuine affection (if indeed, the irony was ever genuine). They used to be accompanied by a koala, masked and caped as a flying supermarsupial, but the wall wasn’t a safe place for such a unique item, and we’ve never found another.

So is it OK to like flying ducks? Or is this the crime against the holy spirit of Good Taste that can never be forgiven?

While everyone was focused on the Beaconsfield miners, three Torres Strait fisherman, lost at sea for three weeks, were living on rainwater and raw squid. They saved their mobile phone batteries until they were back in range, then sent a text message and were rescued yesterday. The search for them had been abandoned after five days. I didn’t even notice the story, which barely registered with the national news, but my wife, who follows Queensland regional news pretty closely, picked it up, and pointed out the obvious contrasts.

It will be interesting to see whether the current affairs shows rush up to Torres Strait with open chequebooks to get the exclusive on this one.