In some optimistic, "we can do it" clean energy news...

*  NPR has an article about how Alaska actually has a lot of experience at running successful mini grids to buffer power outages (not always with clean energy, but still.)   One thing I was surprised to read in it was the successful use of flywheel technology to buffer demand:

In 2007, the utility set a goal of 95 percent renewable power. It built a handful of wind turbines, plus a bank of batteries to supplement the community's hydro power. That worked for a while. But then came a new challenge: the Kodiak port wanted to replace its old diesel-powered crane with a giant electric one.

The 340-foot tall shipping crane would be a massive power hog. Demand would spike every time it lifted a container off a cargo ship. When Rick Kniaziowski, the terminal manager for the shipping company Matson, first asked about getting it, the head of the local utility said no.

"His eyes got really big," Kniaziowski says. He was told, "Everyone's TVs are going to brown out, and they're either going to hate you or they're going to hate us.'"

But the utility looked around for a solution, and it found a European company, ABB, that offered a new kind of energy storage: flywheels.

There are two here now. From the outside, they look like a couple of white trailers behind a chain-link fence. But inside, they're cutting edge sci fi. In the corner of each trailer is a "six and a half ton of spinning mass," says KEA's Richcreek. "It's in a frictionless vacuum chamber hovered by magnets."

Here's how it works: When there's excess power on the grid, it spins the flywheel. The flywheel stores that energy as motion, and then pumps it back out the second a big surge is needed. When the crane isn't operating, the flywheels respond to fluctuations in wind power, working with the batteries to stabilize the grid. Kodiak is one of the first places in the world to use flywheels this way.

 *  The BBC has a short video up about the benefits of floating solar power.   I want someone to push my idea that part of the Snowy Hydro 2 project be powered by floating solar panels on the upper dams, powering the pumps that will bring water uphill for later release.   Send me the money now for this great idea!

*  Over at MIT, they are working on very high temperature ceramic pump components, with the idea being that super heated metals (rather than lower temperature molten salts) can be used to store excess renewable energy.

*  In the US, they are finding that improvements in wind turbine efficiency are so good it makes sense to refurbish some wind farms well ahead of their original estimated 30 year life.

It's all too complicated

I have a confession to make:   I feel I don't understand Australian energy issues enough to be able to write about them.

I didn't really get my brain around the Finkel proposal for a Clean Energy Target and how it was meant to work.   The main sign that it probably wasn't a bad idea was the fact that Tony Abbott, Alan Moran, Judith Sloan - all ideologically motivated climate science deniers - didn't like it.   But the problem is, the well intentioned environmentalists have come up with not great ideas before (emissions trading schemes instead of simpler and transparent carbon taxes), so energy policy just has this aspect that you can't always trust anyone to have the best idea.

Even today, with a vague sounding Turnbull energy plan, we have the mismatched pairing of Tony Abbott (poisonous shallow policy windvane) thinking it a win, as well as Peter Martin (moderate relatively reliable economics journalist).  But Greg Jericho - who I think would agree with Martin's takes about 90% of the time, tweets with apparent approval a Renew Economy post that is scathing of the policy.

I need more time for more commentary before I feel I can have a strong opinion.

In other TV viewing

I watched the first episode of the ABC's new attempt at a movie (and now TV) review show - Screen Time.

I have issues with it.

The main one is that, while I know any review/arts show on ABC or SBS is not going to have any reviewer who is  not of the left/liberal persuasion,  you at least had the feeling with Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton that they did not always see eye to eye on certain things such as acceptable levels of violence in film, and sometimes on feminist or other issues too. 

But this panel, perhaps because they are all so close in age, give no real sign at all of ever disagreeing seriously on anything.  There was perfect unanimity, for example, that shows depicting women talking frankly about sex (going back to Sex and the City, but also as reflected in Girls, and a recent show I haven't seen) were all great, groundbreaking stuff that was always refreshing and so well written, etc etc.  No one tried to slip in the (truthful and common) critique that Sex and the City was produced by a gay man and routinely felt more like listening to a circle of gay men talking sex than realistic mature women.  Sure they have the Pakistani male comedian on too, but he appears as liberal as they come.  Sort of a version of Waleed Aly - someone who viewers might ostensibly think by virtue of cultural background might occasionally express a conservative-ish view, but who can be safely relied upon never to do so and upset the happy panel vibe.   

Benjamin Law is on the panel too - a guy who can talk intelligently when he's not continuing his tweets about poo and gay sex, but whose own talent as a sitcom writer is, in my opinion, vastly overrated in a similar way as is virtually all comedy done by gay people working at the ABC and SBS.  The problem is, I think his views are going to be forever predictable.

I also really had a problem with the clips they showed from TV and movies in a time slot between 8 and 8.30 pm.   One from Girls in which a guy masturbating was made exceptionally clear, with the organ itself just barely out of shot?   A ridiculous pool sex scene from Showgirls?    Why did this think this was a good time slot to be showing these?

So, yeah, I did have a problem with the format, the people involved, and the selection of clips used.   

I don't think it is going to work.

Uh oh

I was half watching the Australian Story on Monday night about boxer Jeff Horn and his hard won fight with Pacquiao in Brisbane a few months back.  

First, I didn't realise until I saw more video of the fight that Horn did look so close to collapsing in whatever round it was.  Didn't realise there was so much blood flowing either.

But - the main thing of note was the concern his wife and family has that he doesn't cause himself brain damage by sticking around the ring for too long.   And then, Horn himself said something like "some nights I find I can't remember what I did during the day, and I worry is it just because I am so busy?"   He said he has "had himself checked out" and he is fine,  but really, it seemed to me that he and his family do indeed have something to worry about. 

It was not disclosed how much he made from the fight, but really, I think it would be a good idea if he went back to teaching...

Wrong accusation not corrected

I find it hard to believe that any politician or public servant takes Sinclair Davidson seriously any more (well, maybe public servants never did), when he makes an accusation that they have done something wrong, he is quickly corrected about facts in comments, and then never puts an update in the post to alert readers that, yeah, he wasn't aware of something that negates his original claim.

This is yesterday's example.  

But there remain posts on the blog from years ago that were clear cases of plagiarism by a "guest" poster, and that has never been the subject of an update in the post itself. 

It's a strange way to run a blog if you want to be known as someone careful about facts,  or integrity in publishing plagiarism.

PS:  still waiting for stagflation to arrive, 6 years on, too.

China lends money

In The Atlantic, an article about China's rise as an international infrastructure developer:

Now it’s China’s turn. The scale and scope of the Belt and Road initiative is staggering. Estimates vary, but over $300 billion have already been spent, and China plans to spend $1 trillion more in the next decade or so. According to the CIA, 92 countries counted China as their largest exports or imports partner in 2015, far more than the United States at 57. What’s most astounding is the speed with which China achieved this. While the country was the world’s largest recipient of World Bank and Asian Development Bank loans in the 1980s and 90s, in recent years, China alone loaned more to developing countries than did the World Bank....

Most of its funding will come in the form of loans, not grants, and Chinese state-owned enterprises will also be encouraged to invest. This means, for example, that if Pakistan can’t pay back its loans, China could own many of its coal mines, oil pipelines, and power plants, and thus have enormous leverage over the Pakistani government. In the meantime, China has the rights to operate the Gwadar port for 40 years.

Doesn't it seem to Americans that "America First" protectionism in terms of trade under Trump is only going to help China in its task of achieving world economic dominance?

Kimmy continues

I'm still watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (first series) on Netflix, and found last night's viewed episode "Kimmy Rides a Bike" particularly funny.

It is definitely an oddball show, and one where the unrealistic silliness of some (most?) of the jokes sometimes doesn't work, but at other times, it does to hilarious effect. 

This episode I refer to features heavy satire of incompetent lawyers (based on the OJ Simpson case); gulliby religious mid-Americans; and the Soul Cycle fitness chain which (as far as I know) has not yet extended its tentacles to Australia (correction: not very far, at least).   The over the top unveiling of the true nature of the cycling guru was so, I don't know, audaciously silly I am still thinking about it today...

The case for Titan (which doesn't convince me)

At NPR, a planetary scientist writes about the advantages of colonising Titan rather than Mars (or the Moon.) 

But the one clear benefit - a thick atmosphere that means protection on the surface from space radiation, and no need for a pressure suit as such - seems to me to overly offset by the freezing atmosphere which keeps water ice frozen solid and makes lakes full of frozen methane.   (Also - it's a long, long trip.)

Until you have great constant thrust rocket engines, I just can't see the value of talking about colonisation of such a distant part of the solar system.

And, as I have argued many times before, if the Moon turns out to have enough ice near the poles or elsewhere, and you have to wear a space suit on either Mars or the Moon on the surface, you may as well live on the closer neighbour, especially if there are convenient lava tubes in which to build underground. 

Oddly, the one thing the Trump administration and I agree on is a desire for a Moon base.    But the wishes are like those we have seen made by Presidents over many decades since Apollo:  all rather pie in the sky unless Congress pays for it and NASA is given a clear direction that isn't about to be overturned by the next administration.  Slate had an article recently against the idea, and that is the first sign that it won't happen.  Not yet, anyway.

The new political correctness attacked by an insider

A bisexual female philosopher complains about the atmosphere in US academia at the NYT:

...it is with some trepidation that I admit that the current political climate in academia confuses me. The more I read about trigger warnings, safe spaces and petitions to retract scholarly articles, the more my head spins. On top of that confusion, I harbor a fear of expressing views that will offend other progressives, scholars and teachers who may also be fighting oppression. And I fear being subject to public shaming on social media, and receiving private hate mail (I still am, after my response in May to the controversy over Rebecca Tuvel’s article in the journal Hypatia). In short, I find myself in an educational environment in which outrage, censoring and public shaming has begun to replace critique, disagreement and debate.

She partly blames social media:

 Although social media can be effective for organizing, and for forming communities (on both the left and the right), it is also often fueled by emotional reaction rather than thoughtful response. Life is flattened to fit the screen, and cute cat videos play next to photographs of the latest atrocity. Social media works by leveling and ripping bits of life from their contexts as a form of entertainment or news — the more outrageous, the better. As consumers, we engage in the virtual performance of pathos and moral virtue with our likes, crying or angry Emojis, and the circulation of outrage or sympathy through sharing petitions or calls for donations.

Not a good sign...

....when your likely new Right wing Chancellor of Austria:

keeps reminding you of the main character in American Psycho

Sure the lapels are narrower, but apart from that, the look is very similar.   (And he's 31.   That ridiculous nerd Caleb Bond will be working on a fashion maker over as a result of this.   His mini Piers Akerman with acne look is not going to cut it.)

A great explanation of Fox & Friends

Just read this in Slate.  It's both amusing and accurate:

These are remarkably stupid times. For a glimpse of why, consider the daily patter of Fox & Friends—or, rather, consider that I am even asking you to consider Fox & Friends. The show is by now known for being terrible television, something that is neither entertaining nor informative, that is best watched as the coffee brews and then forgotten as soon as the cup is empty. Or at least that once was the case. Since its 1998 premiere, Fox & Friends has largely existed, in ostensibly amiable morning-show form, to flatter the resentments of the network’s core fan base of elderly cranks who resent the existence of other channels. But one of those cranks is now president, and, consequently, Fox & Friends is having a moment.....

The hosts are a supergroup of sorts, and their signature tune is reactionary resentment. Fox & Friends is always hearkening back to the good old days. “Remember when the name of the Redskins was the biggest controversy in the NFL? Those were the good old days,” said Kilmeade on Thursday. “Remember when ESPN used to have sports on it? Those were the good old days,” said Doocy on Tuesday. “Twenty years ago, or maybe it was 30 years ago, when Johnny Carson was there at the Tonight Show, you couldn’t really tell his politics, because he just was an equal-opportunity joker about all that stuff,” said Doocy on Monday morning, in response to Jimmy Kimmel’s recent political opining on his own late-night show. “Things have changed,” agreed Earhardt.

Fox & Friends is bad in all of the ways that most morning television is bad—excessively perky and smarmy and dumb—while adding its own special authoritarian twist. There are workout segments and cooking segments and music segments, interspersed randomly with deranged political commentary and militaristic iconography.

In other Tesla news...

No one seems 100% sure of what to make of Tesla firing several hundred employees last week, but it is good to keep in mind it actually employs 33,000 in total, and 10,000 or so at its main factory.   That's more than I would have guessed.

Anyway, yesterday in Brisbane, I was driving behind a Tesla with the Queensland number plate NCC 1701, which amused me.

If you don't understand why, I'm a bit ahead of you in middle aged* nerd quotient. 

*  I'm working on the basis that anything between 40 and 60 is now the new middle aged. 

Alcoholic news

I enjoyed a schooner of very nice alcoholic ginger beer at a craft brewery on the weekend.   Very spicy.  Not overly sweet, although my wife begged to differ.    The brewery?  Aether at Milton.   (Didn't get around to their beer beer, but the meat heavy menu wasn't bad, too.)

I occasionally enjoy a sweeter alcoholic drink, but different brands of apple cider tend to be rather similar, I find.   I did enjoy a cherry pear cider from Tasmania a couple of months back, though.  Did I post about that?  No matter, it was this:

Back to craft beers, though:   also at Milton, the Newstead brewery (which had its original outlet at Teneriffe) has a much nicer bar and cafe now just opposite Suncorp Stadium.  Went there for the first time a fortnight ago, and again last weekend.  Their antipasto platter and chips and pizza were all very nice, as were the three different beers I tried.    A very pleasant craft beer place.    

Handy infomation

My son is approaching legal drinking age, although the level of interest in actually drinking is not very clear.   In any event, I should get him to read this soon.  (I didn't really know the detail about the slowness of breathing):

Still, there are a few simple ways to spot when someone’s blood alcohol level has entered the dangerous territory of alcohol poisoning.

UVA has developed the acronym ‘PUBS’ to help its students remember the signs someone may be dangerously drunk. Call 911 right away if someone is:

• Puking while passed out
• Unresponsive to stimulation (pinch or shaking)
• Breathing (slow, shallow or no breathing)
• Skin (blue, cold or clammy)

If a drunk person is asleep and breathing normally, something called the ‘Bacchus’ move is a way to help them stay safe and keep their airway clear. Using their own left arm as a pillow, roll the person onto their left side and drop their right knee forward to help stabilise them. Check often to make sure they’re breathing normally and regularly. The Mayo Clinic suggests a gap of more than 10 seconds between breaths is a sign of alcohol poisoning.

The Big Bang Theory gets it right

Peter Woit over at Not Even Wrong notes that a recent episode of Big Bang Theory gets the current worrying dead end-ish state of physics right.  For example:

SHELDON: What? Look. (sighs) Not all science pans out. You know, we’ve been hoping supersymmetry was true for decades, and finally, we built the Large Hadron Collider, which is supposed to prove it by finding these new particles, and it-it hasn’t. And maybe supersymmetry, our last big idea, is simply wrong.
LEONARD: Well, that sounds awful. Now I get why everyone hates me.

Penny later comes in:

PENNY: So you guys are upset because the collider thing disproved your theories?
LEONARD: It’s worse than that. It hasn’t found anything in years, so we don’t know if we’re right, we don’t know if we’re wrong. We don’t know where to go next…
PENNY: Come on. You guys are physicists. Okay? You’re always gonna be physicists. And sure, sometimes, the physics is hard, but isn’t that what makes it boring?

It's impressive to have a comedy that is accurate about something like that...

Weasel words confirmed

I said the NRA was using weasel words in its announcement that it thought bump stocks should "be subject to additional regulations".  This is confirmed:

The NRA came out against Sen. Dianne Feinstein's bill, which would make it illegal for companies and individuals to buy the firearm accessory, and Rep. Carlos Curbelo's bipartisan bill, which would ban bump stocks. "We oppose the gun-control legislation ... These bills are intentionally overreaching and would ban commonly owned firearm accessories," the NRA said. But "the ATF should review bump-fire stocks to ensure they comply with federal law."

The NRA is saying the ATF should do something it already determined it cannot do:  

But the ATF did finish a classification review of a bump stock, also known as a slide fire, in January 2010. It concluded that the device was a firearm part, not a machine gun, and therefore it was not regulated under the Gun Control Act or the National Firearms Act. 

The NRA is just playing games, as it always does.

Only interested in culture wars

Man, haven't the wingnut blogs gone into ecstatic overdrive about Weinstein.   It's given them (what they think) is valid cover to avoid talking about Trump's economic nonsense/BS from the Hannity interview (see previous post), his weirdly personal and vindictive take on aid to Puerto Rico (what is his problem with that place?), and the obvious fact that it is an open secret in Washington that large numbers of Republicans think Trump is nuts and unstable and needs constant "minding" by people who aren't impulsive and as wilfully ignorant as the current leader of the free world. 

It is, of course, just a sign of the sickness in Right wing politics that point scoring is more important than sensible policy or the very worrying situation of internal warfare within the Right.  

Anyway, I liked this Slate bit about Trump's stupid statement on Hannity:

I sometimes wonder if it’s worth cataloging the vapid things Trump says about the economy. On the one hand, he’s the president. It should matter if he thinks the national debt goes down when the stock market goes up, even in a vague, philosophical sort of way (and to be clear, it does not). On the other hand, anybody reading a center-left website like Slate.com knows that America’s guy in the Oval Office is terminally uninterested in fact or data, except insofar as a number paints his presidency in flattering terms. Remember how the unemployment rate was a fiction, until it wasn’t anymore? This is a man who can only view history and current events as fragments of light endlessly refracted through the prism of his ego. He draws logical connections where none apparently exist, living according to an almost premodern perspective that by merely mouthing an idea, however inarticulate, he makes it real. Maybe this is his power—maybe he really is the übermensch, breaking the chains of our middle-class morality, including the idea that what we say should have some grounding in the world around us, hoisting our politics into the realm of pure myth. 

Or maybe this was just word salad, a confused and careless man following his own babble to its own nonsense conclusion, “in a sense.” Thus sprach POTUS.

 Where is cult follower Kates's explanation of what Trump meant?

Update:  there have been a few article around like this one lately, pointing out that this doesn't actually make sense:

The article notes:

While it’s unclear what media Trump is consuming if he hasn’t seen wall-to-wall, practically deafening coverage of stock-market gains, he is correct that we are in the midst of a historic, if inexplicable, rally, and that unemployment is at a multi-year low. Unfortunately, he either doesn’t understand or is powerless to stop himself from seeking adulation for the very things that experts say point to an economy that doesn’t need a giant, deficit-funded stimulus in the form of big, yuge tax cuts. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s Maya MacGuineas told NPR, “If we have a tax cut right now at a time when the economy doesn’t need stimulus and our debt is at near record levels, that will do a lot of damage for the economy and it will be a huge missed opportunity.”

It's a living

I noted with some interest a skeptical take on the matter of lab grown meat having the potential that certain Silicon Valley types think it has, but I don't think it's all that good a piece.

But what I will point out is the title of the author:

Orson Catts:  Director of SymbioticA;The Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts, Professor in Contestable Design, University of Western Australia

His article is at The Conversation, but his job suggests "peak Guardian".

Betel juice

A detailed report at the BBC about the problem of rampant betel nut chewing in Papua New Guinea and its terrible health consequences:

Papua New Guinea has the highest rate of oral cancers in the world. According to the World Health Organisation, nearly one in every 500 new cases of mouth and oropharynx cancer is in Papua New Guinea and it is the nation's biggest cancer killer. 

A parent says:

"When my children were just six or seven they already knew how to chew," the mother-of-four continues. "I tried stopping them, they were too young. But they grew up with betel nut. We have to educate the children to not chew."

Long term exposure to the mixture dramatically increases risk.

"If a child started chewing betel nut at a very early age, he would be likely to get cancer before reaching the age of 30," said Dr Paki Molumi, surgeon at the ear, nose and throat department at Port Moresby General Hospital. 

I also imagine that is one of the worst forms of cancer from which to die, and PNG one of the worst countries in which to suffer from it.  The article confirms that:

This in a country with limited and healthcare facilities, frequent drug shortages and few oncologists. At Papua New Guinea's only specialist cancer centre, radiotherapy treatments were put on hold after its only radiation specialist resigned last year. 

"Most patients come to the hospital very late. Our health system is fragile and cancer services are not fully functional, so the survival rates are low."

With the popularity of betel nut on the rise, the future burden of cancer treatment on the national health system is a ticking time bomb.

I had no idea its use was a health problem to that degree.

There's also a tie in with another PNG-centric disease, tuberculosis:

"The government has to stop people chewing because it makes so much rubbish. Everyone spits everywhere and it makes the place dirty - it's unhygienic."

One of the motivating factors behind the ban [in Port Moresby only] was to clean up the capital from this residue. The spitting of pathogenic saliva increases the spread of disease. In a country with one of the highest infection rates of tuberculosis in the world, this habit poses huge contamination risks.

What a country...

Oh, Good Lord

Come on, Trump quasi apologists, defend his level of understanding expressed in this:

Clearly, a moron

Am slightly curious to see how followers of the Cult of Trump will explain away this.  (Well, not really.  Their Moron in Chief has already told them it is "fake news", and they have brain washed themselves thoroughly enough by only believing what their inner circle of fellow cult members repeat that they will believe it.)

It's been clear from day one that normal people in the world of politics and government worry a lot about Trump and his capacity for the job.   The big question has always been - how long will key Republicans keep pretending that it's all under control, no need to worry, he's actually on top of things, etc.

Anyway, I liked the sub heading to Kaplan's commentary on the Trump Goes Nuclear story:

Only this president could think 4,000 nukes aren’t enough.  

From the body of the report:

All presidents are ignorant of certain issues when they come into office. Most are aware of their shortcomings and take care to study up on what they need to know. The uniqueness of Trump is that he has almost no self-awareness, deals with his flaws by projecting them onto others, and seems allergic to study. He has asked for his daily briefing to contain no more than three subjects, with no more than one page devoted to each, and containing only the consensus judgment with no space for dissenting views within the intelligence community. Presidents have easy access to the most highly classified information and, if they want, the most knowledgeable experts, in or out of government, on any subject. Yet Trump learns most of what he knows from Fox News and Breitbart.

Seems entirely accurate.

Allahpundit at Hot Air, no Trump fan, has nonetheless defended his right to be completely ignorant on the matter of the international nuclear arsenal and to put stupid ideas at meetings.  

If only we could all be so comfortable with having idiots completely ignorant of key things under their control in control of the US. 

To their credit, in another story, Hot Air does call out as rubbish the Trump tweet about "challenging" NBC's licence for running the story.    Again, true Cult of Trump followers, who have convinced themselves via conspiracy think that criticism of Trump is all just "the Establishment" undermining Trump by lies, so as to enable the coming Socialist Takeover of the World, will find a way to defend the idea.   They are incapable of believing their Glorious Leader really is a dangerous moron.   I'll go over to Catallaxy shortly to see if there are some examples there.

I've said before - Presidents don't have to be the smartest person in the room, but they should have good instincts, know who to take advice from, and have at least a basic level of understanding of key things both as they stand, and from history.

Just how many times does it need to be demonstrated that Trump does not even come up to that standard?

Lesson not learned

A good, pretty detailed explanation at the New York Times about how the Kansas experiment in tax  was a complete failure, yet the Republicans at a Federal level want to try the same thing.   (Not just a tax cut, but to do with the pass-through exemption.)

How can they not have learnt the lesson? 

Never been stupider, I keep saying - and with plenty of evidence.

Bannon BS noted

Men dancing

Seeing that most straight men who happen to see male ballet dancers perform are probably already thinking at one point or another "that looks pretty gay", is it such a big step to have ballets developed to show "two men fall in love"?   Maybe not, but one would have to bet that an art form that is surely already female heavy in audience is not going to do anything to change that by going into gay stories.   (I've never been to a ballet:  it's an artform I "get" in much the same way as I get poetry - pretty much not at all.)

Dance generally is a funny medium regarding this male sexuality thing.   I've probably mentioned this before, but for some reason, I've often felt that Australian male dance performance on Australian TV looked particularly, well, not exactly straight - but is it just a thing about Australian choreography rather than the dancers themselves?   I think that it is not generally noticeable in American movie or TV choreography.   It's a subtle thing, and a bit curious, as I would assume that dancing as a career in both countries attracts a somewhat higher than average number of gay men (as does many parts of show business.)  But look at the dancing in something like La La Land - you virtually never get a gay vibe at all.  Is it partly to do with more black men, with their annoyingly natural grace in dance movement, being in American dance? 

Just one of life's puzzles.

Oh, is that all?

Axios extracts the thoughts of Anne Applebaum on the matter of "what Putin wants":

...a concise description of what Vladimir Putin's Russia aims to achieve by interfering in elections in Germany and throughout the West this week on NPR's Fresh Air:

• "It wants to end the European Union, which it sees as something that thwarts its ability to do corrupt deals, and do bilateral deals in Europe.
• "It wants to end NATO, because it wants the United States and its influence out of Europe.
• "More generally it seeks to undermine and dislodge liberal democracy wherever it can, partly for practical reasons because Russian companies do business using corrupt methods and it would be more useful to them to do business in states where rule of law isn't so respected and they can bribe people…
• "But I think they also seek to undermine democracy for a bigger reason — namely that democracy rhetoric, or the ideals of rule of law, and freedom of speech and freedom of decision, these are ideals that are undermining for the current Russian regime. It's an oligarchic, corrupt dictatorship, so what it fears the most is people on the streets calling for democracy. So the extent to which it can undermine its neighbors, and undermine their democracies, it's good for them. Then they can point and say, 'look, democracy is a disaster, it doesn't work for the United States, it doesn't work for Germany, so why should you want it either?'"

And Jason - going to give a big "meh" in response?

The tantrum White House

I thought this was a pretty good look at all the reporting of Trump's tantrum problem. 

Cult followers will not have a problem with it, of course.  They just view their glorious leader as righteously angry.

Hollywood's a weird town...

You know Terry Crews - the muscle bound, very likeable, black actor who plays Sergeant Terry on Brooklyn Nine-Nine?   He's tweeted out a story of being openly groped by a "high level Hollywood executive" at a function only last year!   He wanted to floor the guy, but knew it would be bad PR, so just left (with his wife.)    He therefore finds it stressful reading about Weinstein's behaviour.

How remarkable.  First tweet about it is here.

A look at Mexico City

Given my general interest in Mexico, I was happy to watch World's Busiest Cities - Mexico City last night on the ABC.

I had not realised how many of the suburbs were more or less completely "owner built" - but by owners whose only qualification as builders was watching and helping their neighbours build their homes!    And God knows how such structures went in the recent earthquake.

It seems many suburbs have to rely on trucked in water, too.   It looks like such a ramshackle place to live, yet the ties of family and community always seem appealingly strong. 

The government is undertaking some grand improvement schemes for infrastructure, though: most notably a very large, deep sewer line.  Would have been a scary place to be during the recent earthquake, too.

The other thing that surprises me whenever I watch any documentary about Mexico is how the place genuinely does seem infested by roaming mariachi bands, which also seem to genuinely spend most of their time repeating the 2 or 3 greatest hits of Mexican music.  Don't the residents get sick of that!

Anyway, well worth watching...

Harassment on the rocks

Well, just to show that it's not only Hollywood that's had a problem with sexual harassment over the last couple of decades, Science has details of some harassment claims from Antarctica, going back about 20 years, though:

The first complainant, Jane Willenbring, now an associate professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, part of the University of California, San Diego, alleges that Marchant repeatedly shoved her down a steep slope, pelted her with rocks while she was urinating in the field, called her a “slut” and a “whore,” and urged her to have sex with his brother, who was also on the trip.

The article notes that other women complained about him too;  but he also has his defenders.

The details are pretty strange.  I'll leave the reader to read more for themselves about the sexual taunts, but this just sounds like very childish bullying:

In another instance, Willenbring alleges in the complaint, Marchant declared it was “training time.” Excited that he might be about to teach her something, Willenbring allowed him to pour volcanic ash, which includes tiny shards of glass, into her hand. She had been troubled by ice blindness, caused by excessive ultraviolet light exposure, which sensitizes the eyes. She says she leaned in to observe, and Marchant blew the ash into her eyes. “He knew that glass shards hitting my already sensitive eyes would be really painful—and it was,” she writes.

Lewis, a glacial geologist who worked at North Dakota State University in Fargo until he emigrated to Canada last year, corroborates this anecdote in a written letter to BU. He writes that after Marchant blew ash in Willenbring’s eyes, she “yelled and cursed in pain. While she was doubled over, [Marchant] looked back at the other members of the field party and gave us a comical expression that I interpreted as meaning ‘oops, that went a little too far.’” Lewis’s letter also says that he saw Marchant grab and push Willenbring at least twice.

Controversy, please

I see that, for some reason, SBS ran two stories on Helen Dale launching her new book.  (Both sourced from AAP?)   One is about a Brisbane book store cancelling a book signing on slightly odd sounding grounds, and the other a more general one about how "hoax author braces for new controversy".

Given that the novel, which I gather from a piece about it in The Australian that appeared on the weekend, is an alternative history featuring Jesus and a Roman empire with technology (sort of Roman steampunk-ish, I think), it's a bit hard to imagine just why any controversy from such an eccentric sounding work can be expected. The article notes:

But Dale hopes readers take seriously her suggestion that in today's world Jesus, along with Islam's prophet Mohammed, would be viewed as terrorists under contemporary anti-terror laws, which she believes undermine civil liberties.

Actually, I think quite a lot of people wouldn't be too concerned about a modern Mohammed getting caught up in terrorist laws.  Apart from partaking in on the ground battles, he really had it in for critical poets, and was hardly one for free speech himself, to put it mildly.   Quite a different kettle of fish from Jesus's one bit of aggro in the Temple.


As I have mentioned before, alternative history fiction is a rather niche market (it certainly doesn't interest me, generally), and I just have this sneaking suspicion that Ms Dale would quite like some controversy, if it would help sales.   I find it hard to believe it will have a big market without it.

Still, I await reaction (from other than her odd, small, but strangely intense fan base) with interest.

When being half right is worse than being completely wrong

I remember years ago that I once posted a link at Catallaxy, in response to the increasingly foolish Rafe Champion, showing from part of one of the IPCC reports that it had always been acknowledged that there would be benefits to some parts of the globe from global warming, at least up to a point.   I think he pretty much ignored it.

It has thus long been a furphy from climate change fake skeptics that scientific and economic research into climate change has always ignored benefits.  The latest dimwit to grab that ball and run with it is Tony Abbott - to no one's surprise.   People knew he was lying opportunistically about believing in climate change when he was PM; the net effect of his speech is just further confirmation. 

However, there is a sense in which you can say Abbott is half right.    Journalists and others who are completely dismissive of global warming potentially having net benefits (at least, up to a certain level of warming) are wrong. 

But - he and the others in the cultural warrior/go for growth set make a much bigger mistake - they act as if either:

a. global warming will magically stop before the net detriments start to clearly outweigh the net benefits (ignoring, for the moment, the difficulty of accurately working that out equation with any precision - given that, for example, thousands of people with flooded homes in one part of the world may not feel all that cheered by the fact that some Russian farmers had a better crop of beetroot because of global warming); or

b. that stopping emissions and stopping further warming can done in an instant - when it clearly cannot.

Hence, the "catastrophists" may be making a misinterpretation of the what climate scientists and economists have said, but even so, it is not one that makes a change to sensible policy for the future benefit of the world.

Tony Abbott, Matt Ridley and all of their set of disingenuous twits, on the other hand, do want to set the world on the path of climate change destruction based on their mistakes and flim flam.

Their mistake is much, much more serious.

When self medication fails

Who knows, it may have flaws of some kind, but still, this study puts a bit of a hole in the argument that cannabis users (or at least, those with mental illness) just relax and chill out as a result of using it:

The research by Dr. Alexandre Dumais (MD, PhD, FRCPC, psychiatrist at the Institut Philippe Pinel) and Dr. Stéphane Potvin (PhD, professor at the Université de Montréal), which studied 1,136 patients (from 18 to 40 years of age) with mental illnesses who had been seen five times during the year after discharge, took into account substance use and the onset of violent behaviour.

Previous research has already shown that a cannabis use disorder is associated with violent behaviour. According to this new study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, users who reported at each follow-up visit that they continued to smoke cannabis presented an increased risk (+144%) of violent behaviour.

These results also confirm the detrimental role of chronic cannabis use in patients with mental illness. According to the principal researcher Alexandre Dumais (MD, PhD, FRCPC): "an interesting feature of our results is that the association between persistent cannabis use and violence is stronger than that associated with alcohol or cocaine."

Persistent cannabis use should therefore be considered as an indicator of future violent behaviour in patients who leave a psychiatric hospital for follow-up in an outpatient clinic, although the researcher points out that this behaviour tends to fade with time.

"This decrease could be explained by better adherence to treatment (the patient becomes more involved in their treatment over time) and by better support from their entourage. Even though we observed that violent behaviour tended to decrease during follow-up periods, the association remained statistically significant," noted Dr. Dumais.

Don't let Freud near this

It was posted on Youtube in July, but I just found it via The Anomalist:



Japanese advertising executives do have a certain talent for making me want to watch an ad for its eccentricity quotient, at least.

Believe it when I see it

What's Nature.com going on about seasteading for?   They write:

But the Seasteading Institute and the new for-profit spin-off, Blue Frontiers, have racked up some real-world achievements in the past year. They signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of French Polynesia in January that lays the groundwork for the construction of their prototype. And they gained momentum from a conference of interested parties in Tahiti in May, which hundreds of people attended. The project's focus has shifted from building a libertarian oasis to hosting experiments in governance styles and showcasing a smorgasbord of sustainable technologies for, among other things, desalination, renewable energy and floating food-production. The shift has brought some gravitas to the undertaking, and some ecologists have taken interest in the possibilities of full-time floating laboratories.

They do go on to express grounds for skepticism,  but honestly, unless you're a scientist who wants to do human embryo or head transplant research out of reach of all ethics restrictions (and frankly, that's not something that should be welcomed),  I can't see any reason to believe that research on an isolated lab has any greater chance of ground breaking advancement than in your conventional labs. 

Message to monty

Those who do bother engaging with you show no goodwill, use cringeworthy attempts at dismissive humour instead of genuine debate or rebuttal, live in political/cultural fantasy worlds that are so ingrained they'll never be broken out of them, and often suffer psychological issues ranging from obvious immaturity to (I'm pretty sure) actual personality defects.  It is pointless trying to score points against people like that.

All points made before, but after watching some exchanges you have, I just feel compelled to make them again.

How principled of him

The Atlantic has an article up about Brexit regret, noting many things of interest.  

I note this claim re Murdoch:

“There’s no point in vilifying Bregretters,” Mike Galsworthy, a scientist who founded the prominent anti-Brexit groups Scientists for EU and Healthier in the EU, told me. “Bregretters do have to accept some responsibility for this mess we’re now in, but blame also clearly lies both with Cameron for calling a referendum in the first place, and the 40-year dominance of euroskeptic media,” including Brexit-friendly outlets like The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, and, from Rupert Murdoch’s media portfolio, The Sun and The Sunday Times. “When Murdoch was asked why he was so anti-Europe he said: ‘That’s easy—when I go to Downing Street they do as I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice,’” Galsworthy told me.  These outlets are rife with Euromyths. (Perhaps the most legendary example is the bendy banana euromyth, which claimed that EU regulators banned imports into Britain of bananas that were bent out of shape. This turned out to be false—EU regulations simply stated that the pricing of bananas should be different according to their shape—but it may have had an impact on some people’s decisions to vote Leave, like the infamous Banana Lady.)

Sure, businessmen are often motivated by power and money;  but what's pretty sickening about Rupert is that to get his power, he trades in direct manipulation of the public.  

Zero G woes

Hey, there's a great extract out (in the Fairfax weekend magazine) from a book by astronaut Scott Kelly explaining how sick he felt after returning from a year on the International Space Station.   (As well as a bit of an account of his morning routine while in space.)  For example:

I had been on the station for a week, and was getting better at knowing where I was when I first woke up. If I had a headache, I knew it was because I had drifted too far from the vent blowing clean air at my face. I was often still disoriented about how my body was positioned: I would wake up convinced that I was upside down, because in the dark and without gravity, my inner ear took a random guess as to how my body was positioned in the small space. When I turned on a light, I had a sort of visual illusion that the room was rotating rapidly as it reoriented itself around me, though I knew it was actually my brain readjusting in response to new sensory input.

The light in my crew quarters took a minute to warm up to full brightness. The space was just barely big enough for me and my sleeping bag, two laptops, some clothes, toiletries, photos of Amiko and my daughters, a few paperback books. I looked at my schedule for today. I clicked through new emails, stretched and yawned, then fished around in my toiletries bag, attached to the wall down by my left knee, for my toothpaste and toothbrush. I brushed, still in my sleeping bag, then swallowed the toothpaste and chased it with a sip of water out of a bag with a straw. There wasn't really a good way to spit in space.

It really doesn't make anything other than a short time in zero G sound much fun.

Sex in the news

*  Harvey Weinstein is surely a spectacular creep who sounds lucky to have avoided jail for indecent acts, but when anyone from the Right says "will he be treated by liberals like they treated Bill O'Reilly?  Hypocrites!"  it's at least right to note a couple of key differences:   Weinstein doesn't make a wealthy living out of telling America nightly (and in umpteen books) how conservatives values were being trashed in the nation and needed to be reinstated; and (unlike O'Reilly) he doesn't claim the women are all lying.   Still, yeah:  Democrats should be running away at a rapid pace from his money.

*  While just Googling for a link for the Weinstein story, I saw a link to this one about an American College that had a forthright practical suggestion as to how male students could avoid sexual assault problems.    The weirdest, dumbest thing is to see that whoever made that slide didn't think it would get back to Disney that they were using one of their characters to promote masturbation. 

*  This interview at Vox is with a guy who has made a documentary explaining that the internet, and tech heads who establish and run porn sites that provide copious free scenes out of other company's porn are making it extremely hard for the porn actors to make any sort of living out it anymore:

So a lot of people are making a lot less money and are working much, much longer hours to make that money. That’s happening a lot. Whereas the people in charge of PornHub are making so much money they don’t know what to do with it.

These tech people who’ve never set foot on a porn set in their lives, these optimizers and algorithm people and AB testers, these “respectable people” — they’re the ones who seem to be causing the most trouble [in] the lives of porn performers. 

I saw time and time again, people [in the porn industry] would have to move from pretty nice houses to much smaller houses. Porn performers have to go into escorting to pay the rent. More and more producers are going out of business. So in many ways it’s decimating the San Fernando Valley, but the tech people are doing very well....

Alexander Bisley

One of PornHub’s tech guys, exploiting performers’ work, boasted to you: “I’m not a piece of garbage, peddling smut.”

Jon Ronson

When I ask him about the people whose lives were being decimated as a result of the business practices, he went, “Ugh, okay. Their livelihood.” He talked like a tech utopian, somebody who thinks the tech world can do no wrong. A lot of tech people go out of their way to not think about the negative consequences. You shouldn’t not think about those insidious consequences.

Well, it's hard to know what to make of this.   I mean, on the one hand, who really wants to encourage anyone to get into the porn industry as a performer/producer?   Looking at it that way, the more unattractive it can be in remuneration, the less one would hope anyone ever thinks about getting into it.   On the other hand - surely it's wrong to dis-encourage something by more-or-less stealing income from them.  

The interview does explain one thing I never really understood before:

The volume of streaming sites and sharing methods makes it hard for porn companies, often strapped for resources, to fight piracy.

How Comey got it right

Trump has had a spectacularly bad week, what with the weird, weird optics of things like the Puerto Rico paper towel throwing, his utterly tone deaf attempts at a pep talk to officials there, the self promotion evident in his tweeted videos of his visit to Las Vegas, and his now disclosed fury at Tillerson not denying calling him a moron. 

It's been so obviously bad to all but cult followers like Steve Kates (honestly, how can any economics student at RMIT take him seriously?) that I haven't been bothered posting about each individual incident.

However, I thought this story from CNN about what was happening earlier this year when the FBI and intelligence agencies were looking into the Steele dossier was very instructive - it shows how government officials can reliably predict that Trump will be defensive and seek revenge if they present anything to him that he thinks hurts his image:

In the weeks before the US intelligence community published a January report detailing Russian meddling efforts in the 2016 election, top officials at the FBI, CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence discussed including parts of the Steele dossier in the official intelligence document, sources tell CNN.

The debate came in part because the FBI was concerned about being alone in shouldering the responsibility of briefing the incoming President about the allegations. FBI officials hopes that including the dossier allegations in the intelligence report would show the entire intelligence community speaking in one voice.

Then-FBI Director James Comey expressed concerns to his counterparts that if the FBI alone presented the dossier allegations, then the President-elect would view the information as an attempt by the FBI to hold leverage over him.

But the intelligence community had bigger concerns, sources tell CNN. The classified version of the report would be disseminated beyond then-President Barack Obama and the President-elect to other officials including members of Congress. And if that report included the dossier allegations, the intelligence community would have to say which parts it had corroborated and how. That would compromise sources and methods, including information shared by foreign intelligence services, intelligence officials believed.

In the end, the decision was made that the FBI and Comey personally would brief the incoming President on the allegations. That briefing occurred January 6 in a one-on-one conversation following a broader intelligence briefing on Russian meddling provided to then-President-elect Trump and his key staff.

Trump later told The New York Times in July that he took Comey's briefing on the dossier to be an attempt to hold it as leverage over the new President.

"In my opinion, he shared it so that I would think he had it out there," Trump said.

Exactly what Comey feared had come to pass.

Any intensely defensive, narcissistic ego at the top makes for extremely dysfunctional government - and to some extent I am put in mind of Kevin Rudd's nightmare of a government for the Ministers and public servants who had to work for him.  

A case could probably be made that Trump is like what you would get if you started with Rudd, but dropped the intelligence by 80% and cranked up the sexism and racism by 200%.    (OK, perhaps drop the empathy down 70%, too.) 

Before I stop posting only about gun control, I must recommend ....

...this chapter of the book Fantasyland: How American Went Haywire which has been published at Slate.

It's a pretty balanced, terrifically written condemnation of how paranoia and fantasy has led to the present state of gun control in the US.

Weasel words

Surely I can't be the only person who immediately thought that "should be the subject of additional regulations" (the NRA talking about bump stocks) is a very weasel word way of expressing support for what might ultimately amount to nothing much?    The "additional regulation" most people are looking for is a complete ban - why not say that?

At the same time, they also make it clear that they are still pushing for the national right to carry concealed weapons.   Yeah, way to make a country feel safe for a tourist...

On the matter of the typical Right wing arguments on gun control which I have been interested in discussing this week, Jason Wilson at The Guardian does a great round up of the matter (quoting things from the Right wing media this week.)  This one made me laugh:

Breitbart offered a defense of “bump stock” devices – which effectively convert semi-automatic weapons into machine guns – disguised as an explainer. One of the “key facts” they offered was that banning them would be a “typical leftist war on the poor”.

 Update:  the WAPO notes the NRA's gall in trying to blame the Obama administration for not banning them:

 Expect to hear plenty of this talking point: that this was something the Obama administration allowed. The NRA is basically saying that it had nothing to do with these modifications in the first place, and it's actually Obama's fault. But the BATFE — more commonly known as ATF — actually decided that it couldn't regulate bump stocks because they were firearm parts and not firearms themselves.

Yes, and I bet the NRA was really, really concerned about that finding at the time!

Deserves recognition

I have been mentioning Diane Feinstein and her prescience in warning about rapid fire bump stocks, but I didn't realise she has a long history of trying to do the right thing in US gun control:

The California senator Dianne Feinstein, who authored the now expired 1994 ban on assault weapons, has pushed for nationwide legislation banning the sale of bump stocks and related devices. In 2013, in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut, which claimed the lives of twenty schoolchildren and six adults, Feinstein proposed a prohibition on the accessories. Congress rejected it. On Wednesday afternoon, Feinstein again reintroduced a bill that would outlaw bump stocks and accessories designed to mimic a machine gun’s rate of fire.

Meanwhile, I see that, predictably, Tim Blair and other excuse makers for the American gun culture are mighty impressed with the article by Leah Libresco in which she claims that gun control policies she formally believed in crumbled away when she examined the evidence.

Her article, which I first saw in the Washington Post, was in fact more about her changing attitude to risk and regulation than anything objective about gun control.    Ironically, a statistical examination of gun deaths which leads to dismissing ideas intended to limit the carnage from a small subset of  gun fatalies seems to me quite akin to commentators telling the Right that statistically they have little to worry about from Muslim terrorism - and Tim Blair just loves to hear that line, doesn't he?

What common sense suggests, rather, is that you take practical steps that are proportionate and  reasonable in response to the possibility of similar attacks being repeated, regardless of the improbable statistics of any one person being killed that way.  I have no problem at all, for example, with pedestrian malls next to roads having bollards limiting vehicle access, given the spate of those attacks.   Similarly, increased airline security is an obvious response to 9/11 and we all feel safer for it.

No, her article (and she would know this) works as a salve to the "too hard to do anything" brigade, who should rightly be viewed with disgust.   Interestingly (I had never heard of her before) she is also known for moving from atheism to Catholicism as a result of going to university.  I don't know what brand of Catholic she is, but I would have to suspect it might be on the conservative side, given the wingnutty alignment they tend to have here and in the US. 

Update:   German Lopez wrote a good article The Research is Clear:  Gun Control Saves Lives, disputing  Libresco's claims about studies.  



  

The spectacular straw man

Ben Shapiro deploys the straw man against Jimmy Kimmel daring to speak out on gun control:

On Fox & Friends, Ben Shapiro denounced celebrities who have argued for gun control in the wake of the shooting, including Jimmy Kimmel. “I would never try to ban Jimmy Kimmel from talking on television—he should stop trying to ban me from owning a firearm,” he said. “[W]hen they say things like, ‘A little bit of common sense gun control would stop of all of this,’ that’s just a chimera; it’s not true. They’re making things up because this is all about the moral disapproval of people who own guns.”

No, you moron - Kimmel (and others) talking about gun control never, never claim ‘A little bit of common sense gun control would stop of all of this.’  

What Kimmel said was that it shouldn't be possible for a killer with guns to be able to kill and maim so many so quickly - a statement which allows for plenty of common sense discussion about sensible gun regulation as potentially making future gun attacks have less of a body count.  

Republicans never used to be this stupid - but Republican pundits certainly are.   But I should be careful, really, about how broadly I do cast aspersions, because polling asking the right questions at the right time can certainly indicate that Republican voters are open to tighter regulation.  Just over a year ago:  

A new CBS News poll of 1,001 random adults found that 57 percent of Americans now favor a nationwide ban on assault weapons, up from 44 percent in the last CBS poll on the issue from December 2015. In this week's poll, 38 percent of respondents oppose a ban, down from the 50 percent who opposed it in December. When split by political party, 78 percent of Democrats support an assault weapons ban, and only 18 percent oppose it. For Republicans, half of the respondents oppose the ban while about 45 percent are in favor of it. Independents are split on the issue, with about 47 percent supporting the ban and 45 percent opposing it. 

In the same poll, nearly 9 out of 10 Americans supported background checks as part of gun sales, with 89 percent backing a policy of universal background checks. This high number crossed party lines, with 97 percent of Democrats, 92 percent of Republicans, and 82 percent of independents backing universal background check policies. A large majority of gun owners, 82 percent, agree with these background checks as well.

 The true enemy of common sense are the Republican politicians, the NRA (foul, foul creatures), and the Right wing media punditry of Fox News and the wingnut crazies.

The tiniest sliver of light?

Hot Air has a couple of contributors who have already come out in support of Diane Feinstein's proposed bill to ban the bump stock device that appears to have been used (or intended to be used?) by the Las Vegas killer.

The article says some Republicans are asking why they weren't already banned.  God knows why they would, since as I noted yesterday, Feinstein was suggesting a ban years ago when they first got publicity.  How credible will it be for Republicans to run the line that it was Democrats' fault that it went nowhere?  

Of course, I am not going to hold my breath about this:  American gun lovers' paranoia will come to the fore with its usual BS arguments that there is no point in doing anything ever, because slippery slope and all that.   Like this, in the CSM:

Larry Pratt, emeritus director of Gun Owners of America in Springfield, Va., notes that the Las Vegas mass shooting “is a very unusual situation in many ways, because the bump-stock, this is the first time anybody has ever heard of it being used this way, so to say [banning the device] will solve our crime problems is a bit much.”

In his view, such a push would fit into what he sees as a familiar pattern, where gun control advocates ask for small concessions and then increase their demands – a slippery slope toward more regulations. “I’m not interested in the details about, ‘Oh, this is a particularly vulnerable point and we ought to address it’; no, what they are looking for is any way they can get momentum,” says Mr. Pratt.

“This whole thing with bump-fire stocks, I think it’s funny,” says Wickerham, because they are not a quality add-on. 

“But if this place turns into California [with its strict gun control laws],” he says, “I’m not going to complain; I’ll just leave.”

This whole shooting has the Right scrambling around to try to find the right narrative - first, they had to desperately hope that the killer was a Muslim, or a mad Lefty, because, you know, talking about gun regulation can be avoided if you can just bleat on about how it's all an ideology's fault. 

So instead (thus far) they've had to fall back onto the "pure evil" or "just insane" lines, with the shoulder shrug that you can't do much about that.   On the mental health matter, The Atlantic has an article today making important points:

While improving access to mental-health care might help lots of suffering Americans, researchers who study mass shootings doubt it would do much to curb tragedies like these. According to their work, the sorts of individuals who commit mass murder often are either not mentally ill or do not recognize themselves as such. Because they blame the outside world for their problems, mass murderers would likely resist therapies that ask them to look inside themselves or to change their behavior.

The connection between mental illness and mass shootings is weak, at best, because while mentally ill people can sometimes be a danger to themselves or others, very little violence is actually caused by mentally ill people. When the assailants are mentally ill, the anecdotes tend to overshadow the statistics. Both Jared Loughner, who shot and severely injured Representative Gabrielle Giffords, and the Aurora, Colorado, shooter James Holmes, for example, had histories of mood disorders. But a study of convicted murderers in Indiana found that just 18 percent had a serious mental-illness diagnosis. Killers with severe mental illnesses, in that study, were actually less likely to target strangers or use guns as their weapon, and they were no more likely than the mentally healthy to have killed multiple people....

As Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox has written, in a database of indiscriminate mass shootings—defined as those with four or more victims—compiled by the Stanford Geospatial Center, just 15 percent of the assailants had a psychotic disorder, and 11 percent had paranoid schizophrenia. (Other studies have come to a higher estimate, suggesting about 23 percent of mass killers are mentally ill.)

Certainly, getting those 15 or 23 percent into treatment might chip away at their pathological thinking—and thus their potential future acts of violence. But as Fox argues, linking psychopathic killers with the mental-health system is no easy task. After studying mass shooters for decades, he’s concluded that the killers have more mundane motivations: revenge, money, power, a sense of loyalty, and a desire to foment terror.

The wingnutty Right can't run credibly with the "if only someone in the crowd had a gun" line for this killing - although some are desperate enough to try it.  I'm sure I heard of a woman saying something along the lines of "if only another guest in a nearby room had a gun"    [And, obviously, could work out what was going on and knew how to break down a door.]   Truly, gun nutters like that just live in a fantasy land - and the rest of society pays for it.  

As for Australian wingnutty reactions - they've all been on their usual lines at Catallaxy, and it's a bit boring to repeat them.   Except for sad sack Tom, who seems to be a ex journo with a huge grudge against the industry as it presently is, made this declaration on Monday:

The second US Civil War is now underway.

 As I say, paranoia and the wingnutty Right go hand in hand.

Update:  just how dumb do most of these House Republicans sound?   

About bump stocks

It would appear likely that "bump stocks" were used to allow the rapid, virtually automatic, gun fire at Las Vegas.

There's a good article about them that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2013.   And yes, a Democrat Senator warned about their danger.  You can watch a video of them in action here.

They are legal in the US.

But someone can kill 50 people in a car, so what's the point of doing anything, hey?

Update:  or - Freedom!   Having a device that's purely designed to achieve rapid fire with limited accuracy is just a bit of fun, and who wants to interfere with fun?  As this guy says at the end of an article at The Guardian:

“I got my fun out of it but the novelty kind of wore off,” Rich said. “It’s definitely not reliable as a self-defense method or anything else.”

He said on Monday night that he expected the devices would face intense scrutiny, and that some politicians would call to ban them, which he said would be regrettable.

“I don’t want to see anything banned because of the actions of one person,” he said. “That just doesn’t jive with my principles of freedom.”

Libertarians are the pits...

Update 2:  Here's another prediction - if testing of the guns used in the Las Vegas killings show that the bump stock ones weren't actually used, the argument will be "well, he didn't use them so why ban them?"   

The nonsense against common sense is unleashed again

This is by far the most frustrating thing after every mass shooting in the US - watching the nonsense arguments getting a run again by the gun lobby, and the Right generally (both conservatives and libertarians.)

In fact, it gets boring even posting about them, but honestly, as I keep saying, we've never seen the Right stupider - both conservative and libertarian.

Here's the arguments we're seeing, again:

*  if any of the guns were illegal - well, it's all about enforcing current laws better then, isn't it - there's nothing wrong with current laws and nothing should be changed about them.

*  if all of the guns were legal and nothing was missed on background checks - well, there was no way of stopping this man or [implied but not often stated]  anything at all about how many he killed and how quickly,  and hence there's nothing wrong with current laws and nothing should be changed about them.

*  people can kill scores at once by using trucks, cars or explosives - therefore what's the point in doing anything about gun laws?   [I find this just about the stupidest of all stupid arguments - why not just say "Everyone dies - what's the point of ever legislating to make anything in life safer - you're just delaying the inevitable?"] 

*  if the guy had mental health issues - then it's all about controlling the mentally ill better, because [again, implied but not often stated]  legal gun owners are never OK at the time they buy and then go nuts - the mentally ill are just obvious and if we can stop them getting guns we'll be OK  

*  most gun deaths in the US are not mass shootings, therefore there's nothing wrong with current laws and nothing should be changed about them.  [Even a casualty count of more than 500 isn't beating that one.  Perhaps a single incident of 1,000 might do the trick?]

*  a particular change to gun laws not directly related to the means of this most recent killing spree (say, correcting the loop hole on background checks on those who buy at gun shows) would not have stopped this most recent incident, so what's the point of pursuing such a law change now?    

The answer is a given - "there's no point in changing gun laws (unless it's to relax them, because gun owners are the Righteous protectors of the nation and their families)", and the arguments deployed don't need to make sense, as long as they end up at the same point.

The good thing about Jimmy Kimmel's emotional plea was not that it was not just a "do something" argument - it specifically noted that it's not just a case of the NRA and Republicans wanting to keep things as they are - they actively work to make access to guns easier, even with law changes which a majority of Democrats and Republican's don't actually support - and it should be scandalous. 

Gopnik goes there

Yes, I think any normal person hearing Trumps tweet of "warmest condolences" to the families of victims of the Las Vegas shooting must have thought "that's a very peculiar way of wording a condolence message".   Gopnik thinks it tells us something about Trump's personality:

President Trump, deprived from birth by some genetic accident of all natural human empathy—one should listen to a recently recovered tape of Trump, speaking to Howard Stern, in which he is actually boasting of his indifference to a man he thought was dying—speaks empathy as a foreign language and makes the kinds of mistakes we all make in a second language that we have barely mastered, placing adjectives in places that no native speaker ever would. Who sends warmest anything to the families of murder victims? Vice-President Mike Pence, who is not a sociopath, merely a Republican, knew that the right language is the language of bafflement, talking about “senseless violence” and the rest.

Pretty harsh, but I suspect it may be right.   He certainly doesn't seem to have the normal range of emotions.

Automatic fire

A pretty stunning revelation here about the number of automatic weapons held legally by Americans, all courtesy of the nutjobs of the NRA, largely:

New fully automatic weapons were banned completely for civilians—except manufacturers and gun dealers—the following year [1986] by an amendment to the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act, also known as McClure-Volkmer. That law didn't solve the problem of semi-automatic conversions. And the bill as a whole contained pro-gun measures that won it support from the NRA, even though the organization denounced the automatic weapons amendment. In fact, then–NRA lobbying chief Wayne LaPierre was quoted in an article in the NRA newspaper Monitor as saying that repealing the automatic weapons ban would be “a top priority.” As detailed by the Violence Policy Center’s Josh Sugarmann in the Huffington Post in 2013, that article announced that an evidently short-lived organization, the National Firearms Association, had been created specifically to repeal the machine gun ban and to “educate the public about automatic firearms.”

Machine guns made prior to the cutoff date in 1986 remain legal but highly expensive—typically running in the five figures—and are tracked closely and individually by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. According to the NRA, the state of Nevada, where the shooting occurred and where Paddock reportedly lived, does not impose any further restrictions on legally owned machine guns. There are reportedly around 193,000 pre-cutoff machine guns in legal ownership nationwide, and special events around the country offer gun enthusiasts space to celebrate and fire these weapons. In August 2016, the Atlantic’s John B. Fischer reported on the Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot. “For two days in June, hundreds of people traveled to Wyandotte, Oklahoma, for the opportunity to fire nearly every species of automatic weapon from the past century,” he wrote. “There were UZIs and M16s, Barrett .50-caliber rifles, WWII-era belt-fed Brownings, and even a Minigun—a giant, chair-mounted cylindrical device powered by a car battery.”

Gun owners who want weapons capable of fully automatic fire can’t legally modify the internal components of their semi-automatic rifles to accomplish this. But they can buy legal accessories like the Slide Fire or the GatCrank that help shooters mimic automatic fire without altering a semi-automatic gun’s internal mechanisms.

Update:  Wired has an article talking about how easy it is to convert a semi automatic to a fully automatic.   I'm not sure that it's all that good an idea to publicise that at this ti,me, except that I suppose anyone who wants to do it already knows.

Movies, noted

*  To my surprise (come on, it's not as if Ridley Scott movie sequels have been riding high lately), the new Blade Runner movie has received really good reviews.   I wrote here recently that watching a DVD of one of the narrator-less versions really made me wonder about the original being overrated, but nonetheless, I'll probably go watch it next weekend.

* Now for a movie review you don't need - the 2006 widely acclaimed Pan's Labyrinth by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro .    Just saw it on Netflix this past weekend, and I have to say I don't really get the critical enthusiasm.   Yeah, sure, while somewhat visually imaginative and well made, I had too many reservations.   For one thing, the violent cruelty of (and even towards) the stepfather felt too gratuitously graphic.   But the main problem was that I didn't feel the story had any narrative push to it - things happened, but there was no feeling of building towards a climate.   (There was no reason, for example, to see why the girl was given - or imagined - the quest like tasks with a time limited urgency.)   I also didn't really feel convinced about the girl's character being portrayed consistently, with a rather key "breaking of the rules" during one fantasy quest not being foreshadowed or explained satisfactorily.   The movie has an interesting, if not novel, premise,  but it just isn't fleshed out well enough.   There is next to no interplay between the fantasy sequences and what is happening in reality, and that is what I think the movie really lacked.    

*  Also watched 1978 cheapo disaster flick Avalanche being given the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 treatment on Netflix.   What on Earth were Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow thinking?   Evidently desperate for money that year, it would seem, even though Hudson had gone through the 1970's consistently earning money on the long running TV detective show McMillan & Wife.   (I remember little about that, except that I think it had one or two funny characters in it.)    Hudson looks chubbier than I ever remember him in this movie, too.   I see that he would have been about 53 at the time (I would have guess a bit older than that), and within 6 years of the film, he would be diagnosed with AIDS and die shortly thereafter.    Anyway, the MST3K episode featuring it did make me laugh, a lot.  (Mind you, most episodes do.   Why isn't it confirmed as coming back for another season??)