Enough with dragons

I haven't been bothered to actually read the articles, but I take it from various headlines that some people have thought that Game of Thrones has been teetering on "jump the shark" territory in this penultimate season.   I also heard on the radio the other day that a big internet discussion had broken out as to whether an ice dragon should actually be able to breath fire, or ice instead.

This is what counts as entertainment in the adult world these days, hey? 

Yes, yes, that's very snootily elitist of me: someone who is happy enough to see what happens next in the fantasy-ish world of Star Wars.  (Mind you, if there is - what are we up to? 4th? - version of a planet destroying Death Star-ish mega device, I really might have to abandon that too).   But really, I've never been one for anything other than short term engagement with fantasy or dragons, and I don't get people taking seriously a very lengthy violent adult show in which such fantasy beasts play a key role. 

I will be glad to see the back of it in popular culture, just as I was glad to see Tolkien movies peter out in eventual recognition that they gone on too long.

Good

American murder

I wouldn't have thought that Houston would have a much higher murder rate than New York, but here you go (from a City Journal article about the flood and why Houston is not an easy place to evacuate)

Before Harvey hit, Houston had a murder rate of about 13 per 100,000 residents. That’s nowhere near as low as New York, with its own murder rate at fewer than four equivalent homicides, but it’s much better than New Orleans, with its homicide rate in 2004, the year before Katrina, of 59 murders per 100,000 people (and 45 today). Houston has also seen its population soar, from 1.6 million in 1980 to 2.3 million today. New Orleans, before Katrina, was shrinking, from 558,000 in 1980 to 455,000 in 2005: thriving municipalities have more civic unity and the necessary service infrastructure to respond to crisis than do cities in decline.

I see in an article from the Economist earlier this year there was this graphic:

And in Australia, we struggle to make it to 1.5 per 100,000 in a year, for murder and manslaughter combined.

Fake news triumphs again

Have you seen the tweets?   There is a very good chance - a virtual certainty in fact - that a significant number of Trump supporters actually believe that Trump is responding better to this hurricane than Obama did to Katrina, despite, well, Obama was not then the President.    (I also saw one that had a go at Michelle Obama for going shopping 3 days after Katrina - probably as a defence of the ridicule Melania got for wearing high heals on the way to Texas.)  

I think the internet might be causing the end of civilisation, but not by those "AI is going to kill us all" freaks who think Google might become conscious and decide to kill us off, but by more mundane method of Facebook and Twitter and its bots empowering the malicious and stupid humans of the world.  

Is this guy still the online editor at Quadrant?

Roger Franklin, apparent friend of Sinclair Davidson and ABC bombing fantasist, shows at Catallaxy (under his open secret identity) that chronological age is no barrier to chronic immaturity and gender attitudes approximately 120 years out of date .   For the sake of women everywhere, be warned:  this manly hot looker:

...would like to rub himself against you.  Here's his explanation of the problem of women in the news workplace

I love women. They are very pleasant to cuddle and rub against, and they have an astonishing ability to spot things that need cleaning and dusting long before the XY eye notices them. I like women in newsrooms as well. Alas, too much of the feminine sensibility screws news judgement. Women, you see, get excited about “issues”, rather than story-specific facts, and if you have enough women at the morning news conference, it is a sure bet they will validate the particular interest and inclination of the moment. Thus have we seen interminable stories about the battered wives of stock brokers and lawyers — there must be days when Rose Bay resembles a scene from the Rape of the Sabine Women — and very little exposure of the fact that, if you overlay a map of DV incidence atop one displaying Aboriginal population densities, they will be a near-perfect match.

Same with “gossip and trivia”. Newsroom women don’t like Trump, so any hint of a squib of a fact to advance that view will be highlighted.

Ah, you say, but what of newsroom men? Well here is where it should be noted that the news business trailblazed the practical application of gender fluidity. Stroll through a Fairfax or ABC newsroom and you’ll certainly see humans who stand up to pee, but mentally they are girls.

I hope this helps to explain Ben Cubby, Peter Hannam, Jonathan Green, Jon Faine…..

One strongly suspects he is a cranky old bachelor who sensible women won't touch with a barge pole.  He certainly deserves to be treated that way, at least.    Sensible women being in short (or no) supply at Catallaxy, they'll go "oh, ah, you're so naughty Roger" and give him a pass.

So, this is the quality of editors working in a conservative publications in Australia today.  It's a joke publication.

It's a gas

People at one of those things the English laughingly call a beach had a chemical gas haze of some kind come and ruin their day recently, and no one can tell what caused it.

Very odd.

It rains elsewhere, too

Yes, I had been meaning for some days to note the floods affecting Nepal, India and parts of Africa, which I think have been getting scant attention in the media.   The poor dying is not as newsworthy as the relatively rich in America having flooded houses.   But the Washington Post does have a reminder today about what is going on elsewhere, flood wise.    (I did recently post about record rainfall seeming to become a routine summer thing in Japan, though.)

One major consequence of more intense rainfall in some regions is the risk of landslides, and we have been seeing quite a few major ones lately.

Count me amused

Here are four panels from First Dog on the Moon's mocking of current Right wing hysteria of the Andrew Bolt/Sky News/Murdoch tabloid/Murdoch broadsheet/Catallaxy/desperate-to-improve-the-polls-anyway-they-can Coalition kind.  Actually, I'm not sure Dog could bear to read Catallaxy threads:  I think they would make his head explode in consternation.  [I can assure you, many of the things these characters are saying could have been lifted straight from Catallaxy, with the only modification the deletion of a few swear words.]

Anyway, you can view the whole thing at The Guardian.

A great post on climate change and that hurricane

I think David Roberts does a great job in this lengthy article at Vox, with plenty of links, that covers a great deal of nuanced ground regarding the issue of climate change and its contributions to floods and hurricanes.

I reckon Jason should read it on the mitigation/adaptation issue too.

The 2 conservative gays who subscribe to Quadrant might have just cancelled their subscriptions

Augusto Zimmerman, who I haven't heard of before but I see that he is an academic and has written for the IPA (never a good sign for sound judgement), has decided to take the conservative line on same sex marriage that I had noticed taken at Catallaxy recently - the homosexual community is disease ridden and largely mentally ill and violent, so of course they don't deserve same sex marriage.   (I don't think I'm exaggerating the gist of his argument at all.) 

He is upset that the AMA came out saying that same sex marriage is a health issue, and it's in the interests of children in same sex households that their parents be able to marry.

Now, I think the AMA is exaggerating here, and to be honest, there is a substantial element of victimhood in the same sex marriage campaign which I find objectionable.   I mean, there are many, many children of unmarried straight couples now who face no discrimination in schooling, at law, or socially because of their parents marital status, and it seems a bit obtuse to be making out that there is a particular concern of the children in gay relationships having issues just because their parents cannot "marry".

On the other hand, Augusto's listing of every possible study indicating health and social problems amongst homosexuals, many going back decades, is pretty ridiculous and gratuitously insulting to a substantial number of gay folk.

First, everyone can agree that acceptance of gay relationships has risen remarkably quickly in the West, and that going back 30 - 40 years ago discrimination (up to an including bashing or killed a suspected gay man just for looking at a bloke the wrong way) was widespread in the community.   Of course this was likely to contribute to mental health issues.   You have to give some allowance for that to have a lingering effect in social studies.

Secondly, I think it fair to say that sexuality studies have always had their limitations and problems, arising from matters such as how participants are selected and the fact that researchers are often reliant on self reporting of conditions.   This works on both sides, of course, with conservatives rightly criticising the way progressives sloppily use the "1 in 10" figure for the size of the gay population, although conservatives exaggerate in the other direction too.

Thirdly, right back to Kinsey, it's a field where the researchers often seem to know what they would like their study to show. 

In short, if people (rightly) think that there is a problem with psychology studies generally, they should be particularly cautious about sexuality studies and what they show.

As for the matter of promiscuity and disease:   of course there is a conservative case that too many homosexuals place hedonism above common sense when it comes to limiting the spread of a dire disease such as HIV.  And I would agree that it is pretty ridiculous to find patently absurd and dangerous fetish practices given a non judgemental nod ("as long as it is done cautiously and safely") by progressive health workers.  (I'm specifically thinking of something starting with the letter "f".)  I also don't think that many people really think that relentless promiscuity over a life time is great for mental health.  

But such concern is hardly a logical reason to say that gay men or women who are conservative in their sexual and relationship practices should not have marriage available to them because of what others sharing their sexuality may do.   You may as well say that straight men and women should not have married during World War 1 while so many of them were catching venereal disease when sent overseas.   (And I have made the point before that it is very remarkable that a dire disease like syphilis didn't stop men using prostitutes when there was no form of protection or cure for it at all.)

On the other hand, I think there is inadequate acknowledgement from the pro-SSM side that many gay men, in particular, just don't consider monogamy in the same way most heterosexual couples do, so that gay marriage is much more likely to be of the "open marriage" variety than in straight marriages.  Does that mean there is a reason for arguing marriage should not be available to homosexual couples?   Well, I think it plausibly does, but of course,  some will say that logically it shouldn't, given that we don't stop straight marriage because we know a certain percent don't care if their partner has an open or discrete affair.  

Anyway, my point is that I don't dismiss all conservative arguments against same sex marriage in their entirety - I've been clear that I don't support it myself, much to my daughter's annoyance. 

At the same time, conservatives like Augusto go completely over the top in listing all harmful behaviour and illness amongst homosexuals as reason why they shouldn't have same sex marriage, and it is embarrassing to be on the same side of the vote with someone as cavalier as him.

I think my preferred choice is just not to participate. 

A review of Japan's economic issues

Seems like a reasonable summary here at The Interpreter.  

Don't mean to sound rude, but...

....I am a bit surprised by the number of people in Houston caught out by a massive flood for which they actually seemed to have a fair bit of warning.   I get the impression that we seem to do precautionary evacuations a bit better than what we're seeing in Texas.

I mean, there would be quite the scandal in Australia if nursing home residents were shown like this:

even if they were all eventually rescued.

I'm reading that Houston is a flood prone city:  perhaps that makes the residents lazy about evacuation warnings?    But then, so is Brisbane, and while you had people caught out in the 2011 flash floods of the Lockyer Valley, I don't know that you had all that many people in Brisbane city needing rescue from their homes as they did have some hours warning.

Update:  Oh yeah, I forgot that I had linked  two years ago to Andy Revkin's lengthy piece about  how Texas and its famously relaxed zoning laws had led to lots of housing on flood plains.   Another case of "Yay for minimal regulations!" [sarc].

What a weird White House

Gee, that new-ish Axios site has proved great for quick, succinct and accurate reporting as to what's going on in the White House, hasn't it?

So, they are noting how Tillerson's "the President speaks for himself" quip on the weekend is certainly indicative of a limited future he has in the job, and Trump already doesn't like him.

In another post, they quote some very specific details from a White House meeting in which Trump bemoans that the globalists are opposing him on tariffs, with Trump saying:

"John, let me tell you why they didn't bring me any tariffs," he said. "I know there are some people in the room right now that are upset. I know there are some globalists in the room right now. And they don't want them, John, they don't want the tariffs. But I'm telling you, I want tariffs." 

Yet, as Allahpundit at Hot Air notes about Tillerson's obvious slight against Trump, it's hard to follow what's going on:

This hard jab at the boss underlines the strange timing of Trump ridding the White House of nationalists at a moment when he’s under fire for his Charlottesville reaction. The one man in the West Wing who loudly supported Trump’s comments afterward was … Steve Bannon, who was out of a job within the week. Sebastian Gorka, another big name among Trump’s nationalist base, left two days ago. The “globalists” are in ascendance — but the “globalists” are the ones most likely to take issue with Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” equivocating. We’re experiencing a weird moment where centrists like Tillerson and Gary Cohn keep dogging the president publicly for how he responded to Charlottesville and meanwhile it’s the populists like Bannon and Gorka who are being ushered out. If Trump flips out and starts canning people like Tillerson for insubordination, who’ll be left?

 In the meantime, as Houston goes under water, Trump's tweets sound hardly Presidential, with Vox's article on this entitled:

President Trump's response to Hurricane Harvey devastation: "Wow"

 An AP report more or less goes the same route:

Donald Trump’s tweets during the hurricane have left people baffled

 A stranger man so totally devoid of the gravitas of the role of President we will never see.   

Everyone's over the top

Gee, Guy Rundle lets Chris Uhlmann have it with both barrels for his "you have to do deals with the devil, sometimes" defence of our ASIS boss being photographed doing a stupid fist pump of support with the execrable Duterte.   

I think the photo was inappropriate (what, does Duterte start every meeting with "If you don't do the fist thing with me for my photographer, there will be no co-operation"?).   I also think Uhlmann's defence was pretty ridiculously soft on Duterte, who is only referred to in this way:

To confront those threats Australia needs the cooperation of all the region's leaders, even those many find objectionable....

This apparently means he is giving full throated support to the President's brutal policies. 

But then, I also think Rundle sounds a bit over the top too.  Unfortunately, I know so little about the Cambodia story (yeah, sorry, even though it was well and truly during my lifetime) that I am unsure whether his description of what happened is completely fair.

I still don't really care for Uhlmann, though  - I still suspect he is unconvinced of climate change as a serious issue, and was always soft on Abbott as an interviewer on 7.30 when he was hosting.   He is, at least,  right about Trump, so I have to give him credit for that, but it's such an obviously correct response to this gormless President it's not as if it is hard for him to hold that position.

Putin love would be tested

The Atlantic notes:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this week became the latest U.S. official to say Russia was supplying arms to the Afghan Taliban, calling it a violation of international norms. His remarks, which came just days after President Trump announced a new open-ended U.S. military commitment to Afghanistan, echo those of General John Nicholson, the head of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, and Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of the U.S. European Command. Russia, which has been critical of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, has vehemently denied the accusations. 

The article then goes on to quote experts explaining that this is an easy claim to make, and it almost certainly is true that Russian is starting to play footsie with the Taliban, but it is very hard to verify.

Still, I sort of want it to be true, so I can laugh at the Conservative Right's (and Jason Soon's) mancrushy defences of Putin.  

Heh...

This is how Alec Baldwin opens when he's spoofing Trump at his Phoenix rally:

“I'm going to give you the hits. Electoral map, ‘drain the swamp,’ ‘lock her up,’ all of them. But first, I want to talk about Charlottesville. As we know, there was a tragic victim that came out of Charlottesville: me."

I always wanted an antenna in my head

Haven't readers of science fiction always liked the idea of having an implanted antenna in their head?  Science makes it possibly closer:

Engineers have figured out how to make antennas for wireless communication 100 times smaller than their current size, an advance that could lead to tiny brain implants, micro–medical devices, or phones you can wear on your finger....

The team created two kinds of acoustic antennas. One has a circular membrane, which works for frequencies in the gigahertz range, including those for WiFi. The other has a rectangular membrane, suitable for megahertz frequencies used for TV and radio. Each is less than a millimeter across, and both can be manufactured together on a single chip. When researchers tested one of the antennas in a specially insulated room, they found that compared to a conventional ring antenna of the same size, it sent and received 2.5 gigahertz signals about 100,000 times more efficiently, they report today in Nature Communications.

“This work has brought the original concept one big step closer to reality,” says Y. Ethan Wang, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles, who helped develop the idea, but did not work on the new study. Rudy Diaz, an electrical engineer at Arizona State University in Tempe, likes the concept and execution, but he suspects that in a consumer device or inside the body the antennas will give off too much heat because of their high energy density. Wang notes that the acoustic antennas are tricky to manufacture, and in many cases larger conventional antennas will do just fine.

Still, Sun is pursuing practical applications. Tiny antennas could reduce the size of cellphones, shrink satellites, connect tiny objects to the so-called internet of things, or be swallowed or implanted for medical monitoring or personal identification. He’s shrinking kilohertz-frequency antennas—good for communicating through the ground or water—from cables thousands of meters long to palm-sized devices. Such antennas could link people on Earth’s surface to submarines or miners. With a neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, he’s also creating brain implants for reading or controlling neural activity—helpful for diagnosing and treating people with epilepsy, or eventually for building those sci-fi brain-computer interfaces.

Not good

Yes, having it heard it once, I would have to say that I agree with this Slate criticism of Taylor Swift's new song.  Wisely, it even covers the possibility that it is a send up of her media image:  

“Blank Space” worked as a light-hearted tribute to Swift’s tabloid reputation as a man-eating cyclone of drama; “Look What You Made Me Do” is neither fun nor funny enough to make for a satisfying meta riff on her reputation. The narrator sounds more bitter than self-aware and, given Swift’s history of well-placed disses, the story sounds too close to the truth.

And no, I don't actually follow her feuds at all - just as I know nothing about the Kardashian family except for sometimes seeing photos of the ridiculously disproportionate butt of one of them.  But Swift can write some terribly likeable songs, and one can only hope she avoids the self destruction that's so common with pop super-stardom.

Message to Jason

All of the unpopular ideas in that list are unpopular for pretty good reason.

What I find more productive is to look at fanciful ideas of the likes of libertarians - who, for pretty good reason, can be blamed as being behind the large scale destruction of cities and infrastructure later this century and next, all for current greed.

A pretty good unpopular idea, then:  confiscate their riches and use it for clean energy development, and consider sending them into exile in some God forsaken desert.

Here's a hint to JC

My sometimes reader JC hasn't turned up here in comments lately, but I note that he's expressing surprise at the possible rainfall dump from the current hurricane near Texas:

Harvey could be freaking huge with estimates of up to 30 inches of rain, which is unheard of… well rare anyway.

Yeah, well, there might be a reason for that, as I've been noting here for about 7 years or so:

Can you tell your Wingnut Misery Support Club mates, including the chronic whinger (and chronically lonely) Rabz, that this is what was expected under global warming?    (Johanna is right, by the way - he should stop talking and just leave the country if it depresses him so much.)   And, with another 1 degree rise, how bad do you think new flooding is going to get?