Various thoughts

*  Christian Porter:   still a political problem for PM Smirko.   Labor is right to be calling for the independent inquiry which was the obvious thing that Smirko should have set up as soon as this started.   I suspect Smirko, who has shockingly bad judgement in this sort of thing, is going to try to tough it out as something not needing further consideration.  (And Fran Kelly on Radio National this morning did a bad devil's advocate style interview with Labor's Mark Dreyfus which set up the arguments you can see Smirko trying on.  He was probably taking notes.)

*  That Friend's reunion interview, which I have no interest in, has at least had the benefit of causing quite a lot of people on Twitter coming out as saying they never thought the show was very good, and many hated it.   I am not alone.  (I didn't hate it, but it was only intermittently amusing; certainly not worth watching at all in later seasons.   A show vastly overrated is the correct assessment.) 

*  Brisbane has had an unusually cold run of nights and mornings for this time of year.  Days are still OK, by and large.

  

The unnatural device

Only a week ago, I posted a Tom Scott video about the invention of the microwave oven, and it was soon followed by our home one breaking down.  

It's quite old, so time for a new one.

What we now have is one which has no rotating platform.  I didn't even know these were made for domestic use, although I think I may have seen one in a shop once.  

It's a little disconcerting, not getting that visual signal of operation.  But it seems to be working fine.  The salesman said they heat more evenly, but I haven't used it enough yet to tell.

And by the way, why do microwave manufacturers persist in putting in recipes in the user manual?  No one tries to cook an actual meal in them, ever, do they?  Sure, steam the veggies and heat the rice, defrost the meat - but actually cook the meat in a main meal?  No....

The portal is open

I have lifted moderation for Graeme to explain everything about UFOs, in the post made earlier this week.  He is inviting questions...

Only in your staff room, and your next dinner party

"Massive news"...

American mass shootings a bit "meh" now

It seems America has become so familiar with mass shootings - particularly workplace ones by disgruntled employees - that they just don't register in the news cycle much anymore:

A transit system employee in San Jose opened fire Wednesday morning at a light-rail facility, killing at least eight people before shooting himself, officials said.

This seems to have barely caused a ripple on Twitter, for example.

Unless it's got kids involved - or shoppers, I suppose, because mall shootings have a special ordinary folk suddenly gotta run and hide drama about them, I suppose - mass shootings have become news "meh".

Local germs

A somewhat interesting finding:

Cities have their own distinct microbial fingerprints 

When Chris Mason’s daughter was a toddler, he watched, intrigued, as she touched surfaces on the New York City subway. Then, one day, she licked a pole. “There was a clear microbial exchange,” says Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine. “I desperately wanted to know what had happened.”

So he started swabbing the subway, sampling the microbial world that coexists with people in our transit systems. After his 2015 study revealed a wealth of previously unknown species in New York City, other researchers contacted him to contribute. Now, Mason and dozens of collaborators have released their study of subways, buses, elevated trains, and trams in 60 cities worldwide, from Baltimore to Bogotá, Colombia, to Seoul, South Korea. They identified thousands of new viruses and bacteria, and found that each city has a unique microbial “fingerprint.”...

The researchers also found a set of 31 species present in 97% of the samples; these formed what they called a “core” urban microbiome. A further 1145 species were present in more than 70% of samples. Samples taken from surfaces that people touch—like railings—were more likely to have bacteria associated with human skin, compared with surfaces like windows. Other common species in the mix were bacteria often found in soil, water, air, and dust.

But the researchers also found species that were less widespread. Those gave each city a unique microbiome—and helped the researchers predict, with 88% accuracy, which city random samples came from, they report today in Cell.

 

 

The new relativism

I'm not sure that Ross Douthat does all that great a job of explaining it clearly enough without the jargon, but I think his basic point is (probably) sound enough:  

The impulse to establish legitimacy and order informs a lot of action on the left these days. The idea that the left is relativistic belongs to an era when progressives were primarily defining themselves against white heteronormative Christian patriarchy, with Foucauldian acid as a solvent for the old regime. Nobody watching today’s progressivism at work would call it relativistic: Instead, the goal is increasingly to find new rules, new hierarchies, new moral categories to govern the post-Christian, post-patriarchal, post-cis-het world.

To this end, the categories of identity politics, originally embraced as liberative contrasts to older strictures, are increasingly used to structure a moral order of their own: to define who defers to whom, who can make sexual advances to whom and when, who speaks for which group, who gets special respect and who gets special scrutiny, what vocabulary is enlightened and which words are newly suspect, and what kind of guild rules and bureaucratic norms preside.

Meanwhile, conservatives, the emergent regime’s designated enemies, find themselves drawn to ideas that offer what Shullenberger calls a “systematic critique of the institutional structures by which modern power operates” — even when those ideas belong to their old relativist and postmodernist enemies.

This is a temptation I wish the right were better able to resist. Having conservatives turn Foucauldian to own the libs doesn’t seem worth the ironies — however rich and telling they may be.

Yes, the French philosopher was undoubtedly a certain kind of genius; yes, as Shullenberger writes, “his critiques of institutions expose the limits of our dominant modes of politics,” including the mode that’s ascendant on the left. But the older conservative critique of relativism’s corrosive spirit is still largely correct. Which is why, even when it lands telling blows against progressive power, much of what seems postmodern about the Trump-era right also seems wicked, deceitful, even devilish.

In the end, one can reject the new progressivism, oppose the church of intersectionality — and still have a healthy fear of what might happen if you use the devil’s tools to pull it down.

I have commented  before on how the Trumpian Right are those who have most clearly provided a home -  unconsciously, perhaps? - to postmodernism's "truth is a social construct" by their acceptance of his lying and bullshitting.

In which I invite G Bird to opine in comments

I have not let through any Graeme Bird comments for quite a while now, but he can't take a hint and is still making appearances in moderation, calling me a Jewish c.. etc.   Do you really wonder, Graeme, why no one lets you comment for long on blogs?

But with my renewed interest in UFOs, and the particular evidence of the strangely acting "tic tac" thing over the ocean in 2004 that has impressed me so much (again, not the videos, but the pilots' accounts of what they saw), I am here to announce that I will let any comment that Graeme might like to make (on this post only) about what he thinks is going on.

Of course, any reference to Jews, or swearing, will mean the comment does not appear at all.

And by the way, I found myself in pretty much complete agreement with the commentary in this guy's video about the matter, which came out 8 months ago, but I only saw it recently:

Update: that'd be right. Just when you give him permission to comment on one matter, he doesn't. Not yet, anyway.

Weighing up edible animal suffering

An article at Vox argues that giving up beef, but at the cost of eating more chicken, results in a net increase in animal suffering.   Meat bred chickens have a much worse life than your average beef cattle, and it takes huge numbers of them to match how much meat you get off one cow.  In fact, I am a bit surprised by these figures:

Cows are big, so raising one produces about 500 pounds of beef — and at the rate at which the average American eats beef, it takes about 8.5 years for one person to eat one cow. But chickens are much smaller, producing only a few pounds of meat per bird, with the average American eating about one whole chicken every two weeks. To put it another way, each year we eat about 23 chickens and just over one-tenth of one cow (and about a third of one pig).

I would have thought Americans (and Australians) eat a lot more of a pig in a year than that.   And one cow takes 8 years for one person to eat?   I just checked on my calculator - that's only about 500 g per week.   I guess that's possibly right, but it sounds on the low side to me.  (Wait - the calculation is based on per capita consumption - so taking into account those who eat no beef, I guess that means that those who do would take less than 8 years to get through a cow.)

Anyway - the ethics of working this out is all pretty slippery.   How upset should we be that millions of unwanted day old rooster chicks are sent through a meat grinder due to the egg industry?    I mean, they haven't lived long, and presumably not much has gone on in their brains...but they're sort of cute too and it feels - I don't know, wastefully wrong? - to bred something to only want to kill it on birth.   Is the small scale level of an individual suffering compounded when it's happening every day in the tens of thousands?*   (Fortunately, technology may put an end to the practice soon, anyway.)

At least there is one thing I feel pretty confident about - I am never going to be worried about bivalves and crustaceans and animal suffering.   Probably any fish too - although I don't want to think about octopuses too much!

 

* Again, my calculator tells me that if estimated of 12 million killed every year in Australia is correct, that's 32,000 every day.  :(

Analysing crime (and mental health) is complicated

In other things with counter-intuitive results:

A new study, published in Lancet Psychiatry, examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicide rates. After reviewing data from 21 countries, the researchers found no significant increase in suicide risk since the beginning of the pandemic, despite initial concerns that rates would increase. They urge vigilance and attendance to the long-term effects of the pandemic on mental health....

They attribute the lack of increase in suicide rates to several factors, including concerns being raised early on about the potential negative impacts of stay-at-home orders and school and business shutdowns on mental health. While self-reported experiences of depression, anxiety, and suicidal thinking increased during the time period examined, it did not appear to affect overall suicide rates in the countries included in the study.

An additional factor is the increased emphasis and accessibility of mental health treatment and services made available by some countries during the pandemic, which may have buffered against some of the damaging effects of the pandemic.

The researchers also highlight the role of community as being a potential protective factor. For example, communities made have made an effort to support individuals at-risk for mental health or other concerns, or households may have developed closer, stronger relationships through increased time together. An overall sense of togetherness as communities as a whole weathered the pandemic may have also protected against a rise in suicidality.

 On the other hand, in news that has given Adam Creighton an erection:

 

 

Natural signs from God

Hey, this is an interesting short item at The Conversation about how medieval smart Christians  understood that lunar and solar eclipses were natural, although they could read into them a sign from God.  

Good stuff. 

China and paper tigers

I find myself sympathetic to this take on China by David Frum:  the West is over-estimating its strength, and in a way that may be harmful to our own interests.  (He is basically repeating the argument made by another guy, but it sounds pretty convincing to me.  And I watch CGTN propaganda!)

Silly people

I would have thought climbers would have been more sensible about this:

A coronavirus outbreak on Mount Everest has infected at least 100 climbers and support staff, a mountaineering guide said, giving the first comprehensive estimate amid official Nepalese denials that the disease has spread to the world’s highest peak.

Lukas Furtenbach of Austria, who last week halted his Everest expedition due to virus fears, said on Saturday one of his foreign guides and six Nepali Sherpa guides had tested positive.

And as for "ultra marathons" as a sport - it seems to me these attract disastrous consequences for participants far too often.  Ordinary marathons are a dubious enough exercise in pointless exertion, if you ask me.  Making them more extreme is just silly.

 

 

Frozen rodents and James Lovelock

Well, this Tom Scott video, which features a short interview with the (still sharp) James Lovelock (age 101) was very interesting:

 

Did I know before this that rock-solid frozen rodents were capable of revival?  I think I had read about this, many years ago, although I don't think I knew Lovelock had been involved.  (If you asked me, I would have assumed it was research done in the United States).   It does certainly explain why science fiction from the 1960's on thought that this was a prospect for humans too.

As for James Lovelock - as I have noted before, we can safely ignore his opinions on climate change now, but he is still a remarkable and pretty charming man.

Military people and UFOs with unusual motion

If you have watched the 60 Minutes interview I linked to a few posts ago, or one of the other interviews David Fravor has given elsewhere, you will recall that both he and the other pilot who saw the object were puzzled by its erratic motion when it low above the ocean.

This reminded me of other, classic, UFO sightings where the object moved in a very odd fashion.  Do many people know about the way some have been described as having a 'falling leaf" motion as they descend?   Here's a classic account, for a book by David Clarke:

 Very odd.  Daylight sightings leave less room for misinterpretation of lights.

Still have a hunch that large scale flow batteries are going to be a significant thing in future

Here's the abstract from a Science paper out yesterday:

Aqueous redox flow batteries could provide viable grid-scale electrochemical energy storage for renewable energy because of their high-power performance, scalability, and safe operation (1, 2). Redox-active organic molecules serve as the energy storage materials (2, 3), but only very few organic molecules, such as viologen (4, 5) and anthraquinone molecules (6), have demonstrated promising energy storage performance (2). Efforts continue to develop other families of organic molecules for flow battery applications that would have dense charge capacities and be chemically robust. On page 836 of this issue, Feng et al. (7) report a class of ingeniously designed 9-fluorenone (FL) molecules as high-performance, potentially low-cost organic anode electrolytes (anolytes) in aqueous organic redox flow batteries (see the figure, top). These FL anolytes not only display exceptional energy storage performance but also exhibit an unprecedented two-electron storage mechanism.

A joke that was waiting to be made

 

There's some kind of deep irony going here...

...when its Right wing places like the Wall Street Journal and Sinclair Davidson at Catallaxy decrying the effect of Left wing "woke" ideology on education standards, while it's the very same outlets which are full of readers who think they got a proper education before modern teachers ruined everything, but are also anti-Covid vaxxers and climate change deniers (or "do nothing" proponents.)   

Which is not to say that there isn't a valid argument to be made over the way education seems particularly prone to certain fads and fashions and ideologically motivated arguments.   But, seriously, look in your own backyard first, critics.

 

Some local pushback on the Big Lie

Allahpundit's post about the Republican election officials who have had enough of the "audit" in Arizona is a good read.

No, it's not really a bus, either...

Lots and lots of people on Twitter have said this in response to a tweet which seemed a little too excited about a Chinese thing:

But honestly, and at risk of being labelled a Tankie, I don't think it's right to call it an articulated bus.

The technology was discussed in an article at The Conversation a few years ago:

Trackless trams are neither a tram nor a bus, though they have rubber wheels and run on streets. The high-speed rail innovations have transformed a bus into something with all the best features of light rail and none of its worst features.

It replaces the noise and emissions of buses with electric traction from batteries recharged at stations in 30 seconds or at the end of the line in 10 minutes. That could just be an electric bus, but the ART is much more than that. It has all the speed (70kph), capacity and ride quality of light rail with its autonomous optical guidance system, train-like bogies with double axles and special hydraulics and tyres. 

It can slide into the station with millimetre accuracy and enable smooth disability access. It passed the ride quality test when I saw kids running up and down while it was going at 70kph – you never see this on a bus due to the sway.  

The autonomous features mean it is programmed, optically guided with GPS and LIDAR technologies, into moving very precisely along an invisible track. If an accident happens in the right of way a “driver” can override the steering and go around. It can also be driven to a normal bus depot for overnight storage and deep battery recharge.

As the article notes, Sydney might have been a lot better off with this system running down George Street (although I didn't realise how extensive the light rail in Sydney was until my last visit.)