Monday, November 13, 2017

Can't we just start over again?

News this morning that, as usual, One Nation (seems the party motto should be:  "You don't have to be nuts to run for us; but if you're running for us, you're nuts") is cracking up due to internal conflict just helps confirm in my mind that the public likely thinks this Parliament is such an enormous mess it really needs an election to sort it out. 

First, what went on in One Nation, from the Australian, so I probably can't link to it:
One Nation’s newest senator Fraser Anning has defected within hours of being sworn-in, causing a major upset for Pauline Hanson who now has just three votes in the chamber.

Senator Anning’s shock move follows weeks of internal party tensions and revelations Senator Hanson had wanted him to resign to allow for the return of Malcolm Roberts.

A long-time supporter and friend of Senator Hanson’s, Senator Anning replaced Mr Roberts as a Queensland One Nation MP after the High Court found last month that the latter was ineligible to sit in parliament because he was a dual British citizen when he nominated.

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm, who with Australian Conservatives senator Cory Bernardi escorted Senator Anning into the upper house this morning for his swearing in, said he was aware Senator Anning had been “under pressure to resign” to make way for Mr Roberts.

If Senator Anning had resigned, he would have created a casual vacancy that could have been filled by Mr Roberts.
Secondly:   Turnbull is copping the fallout of the citizenship issue, and I suspect it's because sounding aggro about it when you already are not polling well is not a great look.

He would, it seems clear, lose any election held now, and perhaps by a reasonably wide margin; but if he is interested in how history may view him more favourably, as a PM who selflessly let the public sort out the mess via a new election with candidates who are all unequivocally entitled to be there, a trip to the Governor General to call one would be the way to do it.

Weekend events

Good and not so good news from the weekend:

*   we've had an Emile Henry ceramic tagine - one of these -


for a couple of years, and while they are not cheap, I realised yesterday (when I finally got around to cooking in it - instead of my wife) that they are a real pleasure to use.    It fries off like a nonstick surface, and I'm not sure why (very even heat conduction?) but there was very little heat sticking of stuff on the bottom even when it has been on the gas burner for 50 minutes without stirring.  (I didn't really mean to not stir for that long, but anyway...)

The recipe for a Moroccan style lamb tagine worked out really well too, based on a Jamie Oliver version on a Tefal website.  I adjusted a bit and record it here for my future reference:

About 400 - 500 g lamb shoulder diced
One teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, cumin and coriander
One big onion - red, brown, I doubt it matters much (diced of course)
Couple of garlic cloves sliced
A fresh red chilli sliced
Tablespoon of honey
Can of tomatoes
Can of chick peas
About 30 g of dried apricots (it's only about 4 or 5 whole dried ones)
40 g of black olives
Vegetables - I used a carrot and a capsicum, both cut into big chunks, but his recipe used eggplant.  Whatever.  I think anything is going to work.
Italian parsley (I didn't have any, but Jamie's recipe involves some cooked in it, and some on top as garnish)

Method:  lamb gets mixed with the spices and honey (and some salt and pepper), then fried off in some olive oil to brown in the tagine  Add onion,  chilli and other vegetables and cook off for another 10 or 15 mins or so.  Add tomatoes, a tomato tin full of water, the chickpeas (including some of the liquid from it - I used perhaps half.) and tear up the apricots and throw them in, with the olives too.  Check salt level and add a bit more (probably).

Simmer covered for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Served with couscous with roasted flaked almonds and some finely cut up dried apricot and lemon juice through it.

It was really nice.  But then again, everything cooked in this thing seems to come out nice.  Maybe tagines share the magical powers of wood serving platters, which make all food taste better.   They just do, OK?

Update:   out of curiosity, I had a look at a "products review" website for this brand of ceramic tagine, and found quite a few people complaining that it suddenly cracked and was thereby rendered useless.   Hope ours doesn't suffer that fate.

*   I've praised Mark Dapin as a magazine features writer before, and his article in Good Weekend on Saturday was particularly interesting.   He meets up with an old university friend who has finally revealed his sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest/teacher as a teenager.

It's really remarkable,  the way the stories of the life ruining effect of teenage sexual abuse are so often so similar: the subsequent drug or alcohol abuse, depression and relationship problems, etc.   Mark's friend's explanation of the ambiguities of the emotions at the time adds another aspect I hadn't really realised - as a smart, sensitive teen, he actually liked being groomed, as it involved making him feel special and warranting the attention of someone intellectually sophisticated and part of the adult world.   That makes sense, I guess, although not every abuse victim is groomed in exactly that way, of course.  And it doesn't stop it from causing decades of later turmoil, perhaps with that irreconcilable ambiguity and conflict of emotions being the thing at the heart of why it is so often so psychologically damaging.   I think it's an interestingly complicated issue, this matter of how exactly it is that such experiences have such long lasting, detrimental psychological effects, and I wonder if  abuse victims might be particularly suited to the one of the schools of psychoanalytical "talking therapies".   

*  Watched Korean zombie movie Train to Busan on Saturday night.    The zombies are definitely in the World War Z style of more-or-less instant conversion as soon as bitten, which is kinda silly even in the fictional universes where zombies exist, I reckon.   But I got over that and enjoyed World War Z more than I expected, but enjoyed Train less than I expected.   Too much traumatised child at the end; and one thing bothered me - modern trains don't go so dark inside when going through tunnels.  That was a plot contrivance that was not realistic, if you ask me.   (Yes, here I am, being pedantic over realism in an "instant zombie" movie.)

South Korean ways of living seem so, so similar to those in Japan don't they?   I found it interesting from that point of view.

* I seem to have one eye ageing unusually rapidly - so much so that it already is developing a cataract, and quite quickly too.   Will be booking in to see a specialist ASAP, as the hazing effect of the cataract is already noticeable and there is no point in getting new glasses until that is fixed.   The optometrist asked if I had ever injured that eye, as the type of cataract at my age is more often from injury; but no, I don't recall ever getting punched in that eye, or any other injury.  Just one of life's mysteries.

I've also learnt that looking at images of cataract surgery makes it look remarkably unpleasant, for something done so routinely (and in day surgery.)




Friday, November 10, 2017

Where is the dark matter?

Well, it really is a bit of a depressing time to be a research physicist, it seems.  From Nature News:
Physicists are growing ever more frustrated in their hunt for dark matter — the massive but hard-to-detect substance that is thought to comprise 85% of the material Universe. Teams working with the world’s most sensitive dark-matter detectors report that they have failed to find the particles, and that the ongoing drought has challenged theorists’ prevailing views.

The latest results from an experiment called XENON1T at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, published on 30 October1, continue a dry spell stretching back 30 years in the quest to nab dark-matter particles. An attempt by a Chinese team to detect the elusive stuff, the results of which were published on the same day2, also came up empty-handed. Ongoing attempts by space-based telescopes, as well as at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, have also not spotted any hints of dark-matter particles.

The findings have left researchers struggling for answers. “We do not understand how the Universe works at a deeper and more profound level than most of us care to admit,” says Stacy McGaugh, an astrophysicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
The article explains some of the details of the searches, then gets to this point:
Future generations of detectors based on the same principle as XENON1T are already in the works, and will be needed if physicists are to finally close the window on WIMPs. But the particles’ continuing no-show is making theorists more open-minded and has allowed other theories to gain prominence, says Hooper. Perhaps dark matter consists of exotic axion particles, which are akin to strange, massive photons. Theorists are also looking at whether dark matter might not interact with known particles at all, but exist in a “hidden sector”, he says.
 The "upside down world" of Stranger Things, perhaps?

(There's always  MOND theories of gravity, but they have their problems too, apparently.)

Something I didn't see coming...

No pun intended in that post heading:  it really is surprising, isn't it?, this outpouring of people prepared to speak out now about the bad, unwanted, sexual conduct of Hollywood and media stars, the most recent being a high profile comedian and a Senate candidate.   (I have never seen Louis CK apart from briefly on some chat shows - I have no idea whether his comedy would appeal to me or not, although I have always suspected the latter - and now I feel I don't have to spend time checking.)

I trust Steven Spielberg never gets caught up in this.

Speaking of possibly the last nice guy in Hollywood who never put the hard word on a starlet (I'm hoping!), the trailer is out for his new, hurriedly made movie.   I haven't watched it with the sound on yet, so I don't know what I think:

 

Thursday, November 09, 2017

This man teaches at a tertiary institution..

I see that Steve Kates says he gave a "presentation" on the first anniversary of Trump's election.    Not sure where, but I presume it looked something like this:




And here's a pic Steve's wife took of him before he left to go give his little talk:



He's put his speaking notes up at you-know-where, and I'll extract some highlights:
Who are the enemies he is dealing with and what are the central issues?

fanatical and ignorant opposition
• SJW are far left anti-capitalist, anti-free institutions
• the left in the US and across the world is no longer about provisioning the welfare state but is out and out communist and totalitarian
• Antifa is representative of the mindset
I wonder if he was stocking up on canned beans and bottled water for the collapse of civilisation last weekend went Antifa brought down the United States?

Anyway, here's more of his insights:
far-far left media
• malevolent, ignorant and totalitarian at heart
• utterly oppositional in everything they say or write
• stand for nothing other than a series of empty clichés
• tweet-storms is Trump’s modern means to outflank the media
 Yes, Kates genuinely believes Trump tweeting is a clever thing for him to do to "outflank" the malevolent, ignorant, media.   Paranoid much.

And finally:
personal qualities
• tough minded and clear headed
• understands business and the operation of a market economy
• a strong believer in education and learning
• has a high regard for the study of history
I keep saying he's an out and out cultist - and a nasty one who thinks those who disagree with him on politics are e-vil.



Aren't they just a tad embarrassed?

I see that via Hot Air that there was much right wing mocking of USA Today putting up an infographic about the AR15 showing that, amongst other various modifications (a 100 round drum magazine, for God's sake), there were also other rare ones, such as a chainsaw bayonet.

Allahpundit himself thought this was all very funny.   But he then ends the post with the realisation (and a Youtube video that confirms it) - the chainsaw bayonet really exists.  

Kingdom revisited

I think this is a scene from Helen Dale's Kingdom of the Wicked:


[Actually, I saw that movie, with my father, surprisingly, at the cinema when it came out in 1973.  He didn't mind it, too, despite its somewhat hippy vibe.]

More taxes

Robert J Samuelson in the Washington Post:
The truth is that we can’t afford any tax reduction. We need higher, not lower, taxes. What we should be debating is the nature of new taxes (my choice: a carbon tax), how quickly (or slowly) they should be introduced and how much prudent spending cuts could shrink the magnitude of tax increases.

To put this slightly differently: Americans are under-taxed. We are under-taxed not in some principled and philosophical sense that there is an ideal level of taxation that we haven’t yet reached. We are under-taxed in a pragmatic and expedient way. For half a century, we haven’t covered our spending with revenue from taxes.

Of course, there are times when borrowing (that is, budget deficits) is unavoidable and desirable. Wars. Economic downturns. National emergencies. But our addiction to debt extends well beyond these exceptions. We have run deficits with strong economies and weak, with low inflation and high, and with favorable and unfavorable productivity gains.

Since 1961 — and I admit to having reported this fact before — federal budgets have been in surplus in only five years. And these surpluses have invariably coincided with long economic booms that swelled government tax revenue: 1969, following the long boom of the 1960s; and 1998 through 2001, reflecting the “tech boom” of the 1990s.
We resist the discipline of balancing the budget, which is inherently unpopular. It’s what Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute calls “take-away politics.” Some programs would be cut; some taxes would be raised. Americans like big government. They just don’t like paying for it.

Borrowing is easier. It’s largely invisible to most Americans, creating the illusion of “something for nothing.” This liberates Republicans to peddle more tax cuts. Their tax cut would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years. A more realistic figure is $2.1 trillion, claims the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Democrats are little better. They advocate more entitlement spending, despite CBO’s estimate of $10 trillion in deficits under existing policies over the next decade.

This blog needs a photo

Seems to me there are too many words without enough graphic relief here lately.

So here, found via Reddit's Earth Porn thread, an unusual landscape in Peru:


There's an article in Forbes about this place.  

Makes the "coloured sands" on the beach north of Noosa in Queensland look inadequate...

Update:  I see from this travel site that these mountains have become a tourist destination only in the last couple of years, and the guy writing the post says to be very aware of photoshoped photos,  and that it is a terrible place to visit.    He sounds traumatised by his experience, just about.


Wednesday, November 08, 2017

Not all gun nuts...

This thing about assault weapon bans in the US:   regardless of how functionally it may be difficult to define an assault weapon, I reckon if it were any country other than America, no one would complain about a government that took a completely visual, somewhat arbitrary approach and had a committee that looked at photos of semi automatics and said "yes, that one looks so much like a military weapon - it's banned from future sale.  This one - functionally the same, but looks like a hunting rifle - can be sold with max magazine of 10".   Or for that matter, had the ability to ban gun makers from advertising weapons in such a way that their look appears military. 

Oh boo hoo, it would interfere with gun manufacturers right to make money by selling guns on the basis that they'll let the owner look like a pretend soldier.   I mean, look at some of the advertising, it's absurd.

And it's good to be reminded that some Americans with a military background think so too:
One of President Donald Trump’s nominees for a top Pentagon job just said he thinks it’s “insane” that civilians can buy assault rifles — just like the shooter in Sutherland Springs, Texas, was able to do.

“I’d also like to, and I may get in trouble with other members of the committee, just say how insane it is that in the United States of America a civilian can go out and buy a semiautomatic assault rifle like an AR-15,” Dr. Dean Winslow, the nominee for the Department of Defense’s top health affairs job, said during his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee today....

Trump’s feelings go against those of some senior retired generals. In 2013, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal — who commanded America’s elite troops worldwide and troops in Afghanistan — came out in support of gun control. "I think serious action is necessary," he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe in 2013. 

"Sometimes we talk about very limited actions on the edges and I just don't think that's enough,” he continued. “The number of people in America killed by firearms is extraordinary compared to other nations. And I don’t think we’re a bloodthirsty culture, and so I think we need to look at everything we can do to safeguard our people.”



Kingdom not come?

 I have been trying to follow the success or otherwise of Helen Dale's recently published alternative history (Jesus as terrorist in technologically advanced Roman world) novel "Kingdom of the Wicked".    Must be about a month since her Australian book tour, duly attended by her libertarian,  and not so libertarian, pals (Mark Barnisch seems to be under her spell, when he's not busy tweeting like a teenager about having meals and drinks on his returns to Brisbane); and she got some free publicity in the media too.

I have not yet been able to find any mainstream media review, which I find a little curious.   But maybe they have a backlog of reviews to get done and it's coming.

On Amazon, there was an initial review by someone who said he read it quickly, and liked it, but it did contain qualifications, such as it being very lewd in parts (a nice, old fashioned word that makes me think the reviewer is over 60), and this:
The names and titles are also a bit cumbersome to someone not especially familiar with the language. That said, even without the glossary, most meanings are evident from context. Finally, the story is quite complex, and readers with attention issues will probably have trouble enjoying the story if they are unable to follow it.
That was the only review for the first few weeks, but now one has appeared by Katy Barnett - the legal academic, long term friend and co-blogger of Dale.  Unsurprisingly, it also gives the book 5 stars, and while it does admit that she was a "beta reader" of the book from the start, her review contains some curious qualifications too:
It follows that this is not an *easy* read, although it is compelling. If you are likely to be offended by the idea that Jesus could be arrested as a terrorist, or by sexually explicit or violent scenes, this is probably not the book for you. However, if you are interested in law, history, questions of morality and in being challenged, you will enjoy this book. My husband found the names and concepts confusing, but I did not have any problems as I am a lawyer and a history graduate.
Look, I think it's telling if the two 5 star reviews - one by an enthusiastic friend who has encouraged the author from day one - both have to warn people that it's not an easy story to follow, and having two degrees is an advantage to understand it!   This does not augur well for the general reception of the book, it you ask me. 

It's a wonder Sinclair Davidson hasn't gushed about the novel yet, given he seems to consider Dale to be a literary goddess and all round genius.   A David Leyonhjelm piece at Catallaxy in which he spoke about the book went over like a lead balloon in that conservative dungeon (Jesus as terrorist doesn't play well with them - not that I can really blame them for their skepticism about that).  But at least it gave forum to some anti Dale visitors, one of whom obviously doesn't follow the recent career path of her and Leyonhjelm closely:
I went to uni with Helen and knowing she was your staff member has just lost the last shred of respect I had for you.
BTW Helen claimed to have a lot of ‘degrees’ and expertise in things back in those days too. 
Anyhow, I await a review to appear somewhere other than Amazon to see whether my impressions from the first two are widely shared...

Update:  just after I post that, I notice that young economist Mark Koyama has said the book is "highly recommended".     We'll see...

The hypocrisy

Yeah, so Trump (and a bunch of Republicans) want to talk about mental health being the problem, not the country being full of semi automatic guns available for the mentally unwell to buy (background checks from private sellers are not necessary in more than half of the States).

What was that early thing Trump did that eased up on the mentally unwell not getting onto the national system?  This:
President Donald Trump quietly signed a bill into law Tuesday rolling back an Obama-era regulation that made it harder for people with mental illnesses to purchase a gun.

The rule, which was finalized in December, added people receiving Social Security checks for mental illnesses and people deemed unfit to handle their own financial affairs to the national background check database.

Had the rule fully taken effect, the Obama administration predicted it would have added about 75,000 names to that database.

President Barack Obama recommended the now-nullified regulation in a 2013 memo following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which left 20 first graders and six others dead. The measure sought to block some people with severe mental health problems from buying guns....

Trump signed the bill into law without a photo op or fanfare. The president welcomed cameras into the oval office Tuesday for the signing of other executive orders and bills. News that the president signed the bill was tucked at the bottom of a White House email alerting press to other legislation signed by the president.

The National Rifle Association “applauded” Trump’s action. Chris Cox, NRA-ILA executive director, said the move “marks a new era for law-abiding gun owners, as we now have a president who respects and supports our arms.”

Just one random thought today

You know how awesome I think smartphones are?   No?, well, they are incredible pieces of technology and everyone should say that aloud to their family over dinner at least once a week - I try to.   (I don't like incredible technology going unappreciated.)

On a "not quite as stunning as a mobile phone, but why don't more people think about this" note:   why aren't people more amazed at how far the remote garage door opener on their keyring can send a signal to the opener?   I mean, gosh, look at the tiny battery that's powering the thing, but when I'm walking the dog I am often approaching the house from the front from quite a distance (there's a park there), and it's very surprising how far the tiny, tiny energy of the radio "ping" can be picked up at the garage.   I've just checked using Google Maps (right click where you want to measure from, and chose "measure distance"):   70 m!

And it does this heaps of times before the battery dies, and you pick up a new one that comes from China on Ebay for 9 bucks or something.

All amazing...


Tuesday, November 07, 2017

Cat amongst the physicists

Oh - Backreaction has a post up about Popper and particle physics and how it's all gone wrong.

Good read, even if she has an unreasonable dislike of phys.org as a website!

More thoughts random

*  I'm pretty busy this week, but I get the impression from Twitter and scanning the press that the Texas church shooting is not causing as much national grief in the US as from other mass shootings because:

a. American Conservatives have the idea that it's sort of holy to be shot during Church, and
b.American Progressives have the idea that it was probably a bunch of white folk who all supported the gun accessibility that led to their deaths,  so meh.

I could be wrong...

The Atlantic notes how Google publicises fake news and hoaxes after mass shootings.  Yes, finally, the world realises after the election of Trump, we have a misinformation problem.  

Honestly, I'm starting to feel at least half sympathetic to  the Chinese solution to misuse of the internet.   And if Alex Jones were locked up in jail until he promised to stop making absurd inflammatory claims - I for one would not shed a tear.   

*  I see that poor old Tom at Catallaxy thought it was a dead cert that the Texas killer was antifa.  Yet he thinks he knows so much more than the "leftard" media.  Gullible means never having to say you're stupid.

* I also see some pretty strong snark from Sinclair Davidson in a comment to a Steve Kates post about free trade and Trump.   It's time the whole blog was shut down, really. 

*  Oh, Tom at Catallaxy writes:  
JC, big slabs of the FBI are still Deep State never-Trumpers appointed under Obambi. FFS, Mueller as FBI director was the Clinton bagman who buried the investigation of Uranium One.
Everything I’ve seen in the past month tells me the FBI’s investigation of the Las Vegas shooter is a sham.
Uhuh.  Internet, paranoia, wingnuts.  It's a dangerous combination.  Good thing Tom keeps himself locked away in a shed and gets up at 3 am every day to find right wing cartoons for his fanclub.   What a life...




Monday, November 06, 2017

Random thoughts

*   Who invented crispbread, and it is old or new?   This crossed my mind as I enjoyed some from Germany on the weekend.   Wikipedia indicates that it's a Nordic thing, either 500 or 1500 years old (the article is confusing),  but the oddest thing is this:
It was made as round wafers with a hole in the middle so the bread could be stored on sticks under the roof.[4]
Why under the roof??

*  Steven Kates is like the perfect example of my rule of thumb:  do not trust anyone's judgement if they used to be a rabid Left/Right winger and subsequently became a rabid Right/Left winger.   His cult membership of the Church of Trump now leads him to see nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all, with a President insisting that his Justice Department must prosecute his former political opponent (the chants of "lock her up" during the campaign - and after - presumably don't bother him at all).   He is completely gullible to anything he hears via Fox News or Breitbart, clearly does not look deeply into issues, and has no qualms if the US ends up a tinpot dictatorship, as long as it is Trump's.

Slate runs an opinion piece by someone arguing that the gay community condemning Spacey for using his "gay" disclosure when he apologised for what might have happened (OK - what almost certainly did happen) many years ago to the 14 years old who (unwisely) went alone to his party are actually feeding an unwarranted "gay pedophile" panic that used to just be confined to the heterosexual side.   That's a brave opinion, but I suspect it is more or less right, although complicated by the fact that further disclosures have indicated that Kevin has had appalling workplace gay sexual harassment history anyway, so he is far from deserving sympathy for anything.   But in the big picture, while there are probably figures out there somewhere, as I have said before, I suspect that the normalisation of the gay lifestyle in the West has probably lessened the amount of predatory behaviour towards youth, not increased it.   But, who knows, it could be a wrong guess.  (I mean, it sure could be argued that the sexual revolution obviously did nothing to decrease workplace sexual harassment in at least Hollywood through the 70's, 80's and 90's.   But is media a business especially prone to power plays in sex?)

*  Texas would probably be the State most likely to resist gun law changes regardless of the number of mass shootings that happen there.   It's sad and tragic, but I am sure there will be some sentiment around to the effect "well, what did you expect?"    And wingnuts will freak out about how insensitive it is to say such a thing.   The NRA will come out with a proposal for a new scheme for no sales tax for Churches buying guns for self protection, or some such thing...

Update:  what did I say about Texas?:
Asked by Fox News what can be done to stop the insanity and carnage that is happening time and time again in multiple shootings, Paxton  [Texas Attorney General] replied:
“This is going to happen again.”
I wish some law would fix all of this.”
“All I can say is in Texas at least we have the opportunity to have conceal carry,” he explained. “And so … there’s always the opportunity that gunman will be taken out before he has the opportunity to kill very many people.”
I see that it is reported that a local armed resident did fire at the guy - after he walked out of the Church leaving bodies everywhere.   Yeah, that helps:

Texas officials just held a press conference about the deadliest mass shooting in the state, and revealed that a local resident fired back at the shooter who killed 26 people at a small town church ... and then gave chase before the gunman was found dead.
A rep for the Texas Department of Public Safety gave a blow-by-blow account of what went down Sunday morning in Sutherland Springs, TX where a gunman opened fire at the First Baptist Church.
He says the gunman, reportedly ID'd as Devin Kelley, was dressed in all black tactical gear when he opened fire on the church -- using an AR assault-style rifle -- from the outside and then continued inside. When he walked out again, a local resident engaged him with his own rifle, causing the gunman to flee.



Sunday, November 05, 2017

Thor viewed

Not being a fan of the more serious Marvel movies, I haven't seen the first two Thor movies.  (Well, I once  caught a bit of the first one on TV, and it seemed dull to me.) But Marvel comedy can be a lot of fun, and so it was off to see Thor: Ragnarok yesterday with my son.

We both liked it a lot.

The most surprising thing, really, is that the studio let director Taika Waititi have his way so completely in the use of his very distinctive voice, accent and humour in the character Korg.   I see from this article that Korg didn't actually have that much to do in the original script, but his role kept getting larger.  He is, without doubt, the funniest single thing in the movie.   (Funnier than the Goldblum role, actually.)

I liked the movie's visual style too.  It's not that I'm a fan of trippy fantasy art of the type sometimes found on surfer dudes vans in the 1970's (I think more than one review has referenced that style), but when it's done well in cinema, as it is here, it can be distinctive and memorable.  (The dreamy, short remembrance of the Valkyries on flying horses fighting Hela is perhaps a highlight of impressive CGI.)   And for all of the comedy, it did have some heart towards the end, rather in the same way the first Guardians of the Galaxy felt surprisingly serious in its opening with the death of Peter's mother.

So yes, a pleasing film that will be a major hit for all of the right reasons.

It also goes to show that you can film CGI heavy films anywhere - in this case,  the Gold Coast and Brisbane.  It is remarkable how little physical set needs to get built (see this article), but I  also wonder at the end of these movies about how much each special effects artist gets paid - hundreds scroll by, and even with a one or two hundred million dollar budget, it must get split up into pretty small fractions. 

As for the way Marvel has been not afraid to go into comedy, whereas DC Comics movies have such a dark reputation, I was amused by this in Christopher Orr's review:
...we now have Thor: Ragnarok, which is perfectly acceptable as an action movie but moderately inspired as a comedy. (This may well be the future of the entire superhero genre—see also: Spider-Man: Homecoming—which means that DC Comics and Warner Bros. will probably catch on in about five years.)
Having seen the shorts yesterday for the coming Justice League movie, it looks dour and only with the slightest laughs, as usual.   I have no interest in seeing it at all...

Friday, November 03, 2017

Trolleys and embryos

I see via And Then There's Physics, which led me to Michael Tobis's blog, which linked to another blog called Scary Mommy, which noted in a series of tweets in October by a science fiction writer called Patrick Tomlinson, that he had posed a trolley problem scenario with the alternatives being saving a 5 year old child or a vat of 1,000 frozen embryos.   (It's not exactly the same as the classic "trolley", since it just a question of which you save from the burning fertility clinic, given that you can't carry both.   It removes the issue of taking a positive action - throwing someone off the bridge, or hitting the switch to divert the train from one track to another - that will lead to the sure killing.)  The point is to show anti-abortionists that, at heart, they surely can't perceive embryos as every bit as worthy of "life" preservation as a person already living as an independent human.

I just mention this because I first thought "hey I came up with that idea maybe 4 or 5 years ago."  I noted here in 2015 that I had put the argument up at Catallaxy perhaps a couple of years previously.

But then I went back and noted that Tomlinson said he has been using the argument for about 10 years.  Oh well.  Another case of originality fail.

I still think it's a great argument.  

I don't like abortion, instinctively.  But I can clearly see that the religious argument that it is a case of life from fertilization that warrants the same protection as all human life makes no intuitive sense, too. 

Modern humans have been around a while

I don't find this topic all that interesting (it's a tad too complicated and rubbery, and I'm under no obligation to find every branch of science interesting, am I?), but a new paper in Science suggests an age range for modern humans that means they were stumbling around the place before building much for quite a long time:
Southern Africa is consistently placed as a potential region for the evolution of Homo sapiens. We present genome sequences, up to 13x coverage, from seven ancient individuals from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The remains of three Stone Age hunter-gatherers (about 2000 years old) were genetically similar to current-day southern San groups, and those of four Iron Age farmers (300 to 500 years old) were genetically similar to present-day Bantu-language speakers. We estimate that all modern-day Khoe-San groups have been influenced by 9 to 30% genetic admixture from East Africans/Eurasians. Using traditional and new approaches, we estimate the first modern human population divergence time to between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago. This estimate increases the deepest divergence among modern humans, coinciding with anatomical developments of archaic humans into modern humans, as represented in the local fossil record.
I see from various websites that the previous estimate was a mere 200,000 years, so this pushes it back somewhat. 

So, this is how the world ends?

Geez, I don't like sound of this:

Mail-Order CRISPR Kits Allow Absolutely Anyone to Hack DNA

Experts debate what amateur scientists could accomplish with the powerful DNA editing tool—and whether its ready availability is cause for concern
It's from Scientific American, and ends with an unknown number of DNA hacking scientists saying it's nothing to be to be too worried about: 
Finally, what about the nightmare scenario: Is CRISPR so easy to use that we need to worry about biohackers—either accidentally or intentionally—creating dangerous pathogens? Carroll and others think that the danger of putting CRISPR in the hands of the average person is relatively low. “People have imagined scenarios where scientists could use CRISPR to generate a virulent pathogen, ” he says. “How big is the risk? It’s not zero, but it’s fairly small.” Gersbach agrees. “Right now, it’s difficult to imagine how it’d be dangerous in a real way,” he explains, “If you want to do harm, there are much easier and simpler ways than using this highly sophisticated genetic editing technique.”
Scientists in fields like this have an incentive to downplay risk, so if they actually use words like "relatively low", it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence...