Counting men

I've noticed in the last 6 months that some conservative Catholics in the blogosphere have taken to claiming that the CDC in the US thinks that only 2% of men engage in "same sex behaviour".   (And conclude from that "hardly anyone is gay - why is gay marriage needed?)

In fact, the 2011 study they rely on says this in the abstract:

Estimates of the proportion of men who engaged in same-sex behavior differed by recall period: past year = 2.9% (95%CI, 2.6–3.2); past five years = 3.9% (3.5–4.4); ever = 6.9% (5.1–8.6).

 Which, of course, indicates that the true percent of gay or bisexual men would likely be around 4 - 5%.

With that background, it was interesting to read this article in the New York Times  in which a guy with a PhD in economics looks at the different threads of evidence and agrees with a 5% figure for "men who are predominantly attracted to men".

The most interesting aspect of the article is, however, the evidence he looks at for those parts of America where it seems men are more likely to be "in the closet".   (It's centred in the Southern, evangelical States.)    I thought this part was an innovative bit of research, and a bit darkly amusing:

Additional evidence that suggests that many gay men in intolerant states are deeply in the closet comes from a surprising source: the Google searches of married women. It turns out that wives suspect their husbands of being gay rather frequently. In the United States, of all Google searches that begin “Is my husband...,” the most common word to follow is “gay.” “Gay” is 10 percent more common in such searches than the second-place word, “cheating.” It is 8 times more common than “an alcoholic” and 10 times more common than “depressed.” 

Searches questioning a husband’s sexuality are far more common in the least tolerant states. The states with the highest percentage of women asking this question are South Carolina and Louisiana. In fact, in 21 of the 25 states where this question is most frequently asked, support for gay marriage is lower than the national average.

 The other point that gays rights activists can rely on when talking about the relevance of numbers is this (I only thought to look this up on the weekend):

By 1933, German Jews were largely urban, middle class, prosperous in business, and well represented in the professions (especially medicine and law). They were culturally integrated but represented less than 1 percent of the total population.

PS:  I still don't support gay marriage, and would prefer it be dealt with by civil unions, perhaps even following the Tasmanian model which allow for other co-dependency relationships to be registered too.  But at least I don't argue dishonestly about it.

The Australian applauds itself

Given that The Australian has possibly the most annoying paywall system on the planet, as well as being essentially a print version of the Catallaxy blog on its opinion pages and its politics generally, I missed a truly remarkable editorial they ran last week, until I read about it on John Quiggin's blog.

This loonpond post contains the editorial in full as illustrated by First Dog on the Moon.  (You may notice it is also where I read the Tom Tomorrow cartoon featured in my last post.)

Although we don't know who wrote it, as Uncle Milton at JQ's blog noted:

The Oz’s piece, while anonymous, reads like it was written by Nick Cater. His writing has the air of painful frustration that the enemies of everything he holds near and dear refuse to go away.

I find Cater very annoying and shallow.  I have read reviews of his book indicating that he really spends a lot of time on environmentalism as a culture war dividing line.   I suppose it is, but only because the Right went stupidly anti-science about it.

Asians and Republicans

GOP starts a tough struggle to win back Asian American voters - latimes.com

The LA Times has an interesting article here on the way the Republicans lost the Asian vote.

Until they return from the Tea Party Right wing policies (and there is little sign of that at the moment), it is hard to see Asians returning to them.  Some extracts:

Asian Americans have shifted dramatically away from the Republican Party over the last two decades — more so than any other voting group. In 1992, Republican George H.W. Bush won 55% of the Asian American vote against Democrat Bill Clinton. Last year, President Obama won 73% against Republican Mitt Romney, a better showing than the president's 71% support among Latinos, according to exit polls....

The shift in Asian American political sentiments started during the Clinton years and owes much to the prosperity of his two terms as president, which enhanced the appeal of a Democratic Party that, from the civil rights movement on, had always seemed more welcoming to minorities.

Hastening the trend has been the rightward turn of the Republican Party.

Opinion surveys have found Asian Americans more willing than white voters to support tax hikes to reduce the federal deficit, more supportive of a large, activist government, friendlier toward immigrants in the country illegally and more favorably disposed to Obamacare than voters overall. All those positions clash with today's prevailing GOP sentiment.

The harsh Republican tone on immigration, directed mainly at people crossing illegally from Mexico, has been especially damaging.

And speaking of the last US Presidential election, I came across this last week and found it quite funny.  I hope the words are readable:

A good summary

Abbott team in government loses control of conversation | World news | theguardian.com

I thought the above article by Lenore Taylor in yesterday's Guardian was a pretty good summary of how the Coalition government is going.  (Short version:  not very well.)

I liked this bit in particular:

Similarly, there were many in the Coalition who sought to deflect attention from Guardian Australia’s spying stories by trying to start a fight they were itching to have anyway about the role and remit of the ABC.

Both Guardian Australia and the ABC took the decision that publication on the Indonesian spy story, with all requested redactions on actual national security grounds, was in the public interest. Abbott himself acknowledged that “plainly it was a story”. The prime minister and the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, asserted the ABC had made an “error of judgement” in partnering with Guardian Australia to run and “amplify” the story, something that has also been done by many other media organisations around the world. (It is unclear how the amplification would have been appreciably reduced had Guardian Australia run the story on its own and the ABC had then begun following it ten minutes later.)

Cheese in detail

It's Saturday night, and I'm reading an article that contains far more detail about the chemistry and biology of cheese than I really need to know, including this:

In Quicke’s vat, this arrangement has broken down and become curds and whey, on its way to cheddar. If milk is left alone, bacteria quickly start converting its lactose sugar into lactic acid that can eventually start this curdling. This is probably how cheese was first made, but modern needs for safe storage and maturing demand a different approach. Quicke’s minimally pasteurises its milk, and like most modern cheesemakers adds a starter culture including lactic acid bacteria such as Streptococcus, Lactococcus and Lactobacillus. They work hand-in-hand to control which bacteria reach the final cheese, by outcompeting less welcome species and making the environment too acidic for them. And rather than these bacteria doing the curdling, acid conditions help an enzyme preparation known as rennet to do it. Their ongoing acidity development also controls the resulting solid curd’s texture.

Traditional rennet, which Quicke’s uses, comes from soaking a milk-fed calf’s stomach in brine.

 Had some nice goats cheese at dinner tonight, as it happens.

UPDATE:   I was wondering last night how someone first worked out that calf's stomach contained something that was useful in making cheese.  Another site provides the likely answer:

There is a great deal of mythology surrounding the history of cheesemaking, because humans have been making it for a very long time, and the steps involved are actually fairly complicated. The stomachs of ruminants have historically been used to make bags and sacks, and food historians theorize that someone must have stored milk in one a bit too long, allowing it to curdle, and the curdled milk was then turned into a food product. Modern rennet is created through an extraction process that yields neat, dry tablets or a liquid that is very easy to work with.

 Traditional rennet was made by washing the stomach of a young ruminant after it has been slaughtered, and then salting it. The salted stomach is kept in dried form, with cooks snipping off small pieces and soaking them in water when they have a need for the extract. Some cheesemakers continue to make and use it in this way, but the vast majority use commercially processed rennet, which is made by creating a slurry and then subjecting it to a compound that will cause the enzymes to precipitate out.

Another episode of "It's all in the Gut"

Bacterium can reverse autism-like behaviour in mice

Doses of a human gut microbe helped to reverse behavioural problems in mice with autism-like symptoms, researchers report today in Cell¹. The treatment also reduced gastrointestinal problems in the animals that were similar to those that often accompany autism in humans.

Applying this to humans might be a little tricky, although I wonder if you could really do much harm by just trying introducing different bacteria until you find one that helps:

Although many anecdotal reports and small studies have suggested that ‘probiotic’ bacteria, such as those found in yoghurt, and antibiotics can help with the symptoms of autism, Cryan says more research needs to be done. Because there are a number of types of autism in humans, it will be important to look at how different symptoms might be affected by different microbes. Another question is whether the microbiomes of the mice — whose symptoms result from maternal infection — differ from those of mice that are genetically predisposed to autism-like symptoms, Cryan adds.

Here's the main point, though:

“I think there is now sufficient proof of concept where people can start to look at probiotic bacteria to improve brain function in humans,” says gastroenterologist Stephen Collins of McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. 

Maybe Freud should have worked with the Kellogg brothers.  (Although, now that I check, they had some freaky ideas about matters sexual such that they might have been a bad influence even on Sigmund.)

Back from the future

Hmmm.  It seems that Blogger's "Search this blog" function has changed to become even more wonky that it used to be - so that the side search box is not working at all now, but I can still use a box at the top left, even though it shows posts in full instead of the way it used to just list them.

Blogger has been a fantastic free service, but it has always puzzled me why they couldn't get this feature quite right.

Anyhoo, that's all by way of background of noting that I am sure I have posted before about my fondness for the idea that aliens are time travelling, very evolved, humans from the future.   Sure, it doesn't explain the whole anal probe meme, but I'm sure dogs, cats and apes get a bit confused as to what's gone on during some interactions with humans, too.

As far as I can recall, there hasn't been a popular science fiction book or movie on this theme, which seems an odd oversight.   I did give credit to Indian Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for presenting aliens as inter-dimensional travellers, though, as that is an idea that has somewhat displaced aliens as mere space travellers, and that's getting closer to the idea that they are future humans.   (I suppose one could argue that The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension far pre-dated Crystal Skull in running with inter-dimensional aliens, though.   Why does that movie - which I enjoyed at the time - never get repeated on TV, I wonder?) 

And all of these musings, which I have probably said all before at this very blog, are inspired by this post at the oddball corner of Huffington Post.  Apparently, the aliens as humans from the future goes back to some guy who allegedly had connections to Roswell:

We still really don't know what happened at Roswell, but there is an ancient alien/astronaut link that adds to the mystery. According to a renowned U.S. Navy Commander named George W. Hoover, the aliens may have been human beings from the future... us... come back to, well, interact with... us.

Allegedly, Hoover had top-secret clearance as part of his work as a Naval Intelligence Officer to view the Roswell debris and bodies during the 1950s...and he eventually told a very select group of people before his death of his beliefs. Those people included his own son, George Hoover, Jr. and later ufologist and researcher William J. Birnes, both of whom were made privy to what the elder Hoover knew before his death. Hoover stated during interviews that he believed the aliens were not extraterrestrial, but were extratemporal -- as in time travelers. In addition, he believed they were not really aliens at all... but humans of the future, with incredible abilities to use the power of consciousness to morph reality and travel through the landscape of time.

Mainly good news

US pregnancy rates continue to fall

The decrease in unwanted teenage pregnancies is welcome, although I suppose it may be the case that too many women are leaving having kids too late:

Pregnancy rates for teenagers also have reached historic lows that extend across all racial and ethnic groups. Between 1990 and 2009, the pregnancy rate fell 51 percent for white and black teenagers, and 40 percent for Hispanic teenagers.

The teen birth rate dropped 39 percent between 1991 and 2009, and the teen abortion rate decreased by half during the same period.

Overall, pregnancy rates have continued to decline for women younger than 30.

"The amount of knowledge that young women have about their birth control options is very different compared to a few decades ago," said Dr. Margaret Appleton, director of the division of obstetrics and gynecology at the Scott & White Clinic in College Station, Texas. "Birth control is more readily available to women, and they are more knowledgeable about it."

At the same time, pregnancy rates have steadily increased for women aged 30 to 44. The rate increased 16 percent between 1990 and 2009 for women aged 30 to 34, for example, and 35 percent for women aged 35 to 39.

 But in not so good news, it seems that there may be a link between IVF treatment and increased risk of dangerous melanoma.  

The not-so-noble Old West

It Didn’t Save Wild Bill

I can't find much of interest to post today, so try this:

While researching my second Western Mystery for kids, P.K. Pinkerton and the Petrified Man (AKA The Case of the Good-looking Corpse), I discovered a fascinating fact: very few gunfights played out like the iconic Western movie “showdown”. Two antagonists rarely faced each other like self-moderating duelists on Main Street, one honorably waiting for the other to “draw”. More often one man would “throw down” on another without warning, sometimes even shooting from behind through a window or door.

One night in 1876 in a Deadwood saloon, a famous gunfighter with silky golden locks was shot in the back of the head while playing poker. The shooter, a certain Jack McCall, fled. Hurdy girls screamed and other gamblers recoiled in horror. Wild Bill Hickok, already a legend in his own time, was dead. The reputed inventor of the “fast draw”, Hickok usually took a seat in a corner of a saloon or against wall, so nobody could sneak up on him. But on that fatal  night he sat with his back exposed. Perhaps he was feeling tired of life. He was an alcoholic who rubbed mercury on his skin to alleviate the symptoms of venereal disease. This poisonous treatment made him drool and start to lose his sight. According to Deadwood author Pete Dexter, it often took him twenty minutes to empty his bladder.

Opportunistic conservatives

Hobby Lobby and corporate personhood: The alarming conservative crusade to declare everything—except people—a legal “person.” 

A good article criticising the blatantly opportunistic and unreasonable push by Conservatives in the US to expand enforcement of their views by declaring things to be "persons".   This used to be a Lefty tactic to try to help environmentalism, but now the silly Right is trying to grab onto it.

As used by UFO's

BBC News - RF Safe-Stop shuts down car engines with radio pulse

Well, this is interesting.   There is a subset of UFO cases in which drivers claimed their car was stopped.

I am sure I have read of tests of what it would take to do this in terms of electromagnetisms, and it turned out to be very difficult to reproduce.  But then again, this was many years ago, when cars were far less reliant on electronics than they are now. 

Now, it can be done.   UFO implications are unclear.

An odd series of thoughts

Today I was thinking about the slightly silly suggestion that Amazon would soon have a swarm of robot drones zipping about some city delivering stuff to customers, and the first thing that came to mind was - why Amazon?   Don't they sell mostly books, and they're going increasingly digital?   In fact, I thought, in 100 years time, all human needs will be covered by digital delivery, with the possible exception of food and water.  [But even then, perhaps people will buy a lifetime supply of several tonnes of powdered protein and nutrients and have their 3D food printer arrange it into something different and tasty every night.   As for clothes, it will be so hot that everyone will be a nudist, but even if needed for a special occasion, the 3D printer can probably deal with that too.   Perhaps using some of the starches that can be used for food.  My semi-dystopian nude future is efficient, solar powered, and waste free.]  

As for human companionship, well, half of that is already over the internet, it seems, and it's a wonder there's not some groin clutching device available already that allows telepresence to deal with the baser instincts.  Some scientific team in Japan is probably already working on it as I write.

So, in my (already creepy) vision of digital isolation, what's left that flying drones would still need to carry?   Well, um, carrying on with the matter referred to in the last paragraph, they could play a role in reproduction.   Do I need to spell it out?   In fact, male "donations" can already be shipped directly to a person's home (check out this lesbian owned business's website) in the US, if not other countries; and the only innovation in my weird future is that it's delivered via a buzzing drone passing overhead.

 [In many respects, the present era of reproduction day is way, way stranger already than people imagined would ever be socially acceptable even when I was a child.   Exhibit 1:  Elton John and his partner having two kids and not knowing which is the father?  And this is covered in non judgemental fashion on the cover of celebrity magazines?   I'm having strange thoughts about airborne gametes here, making human society resemble coral spawning, but it's only a minor elevation of the oddity of the present day. ]

But going back to drones:  it's not a big stretch to imagine that frozen embryos might be delivered to your home this way in future.  [Where they can be raised in a RoboWomb with a clear plastic window that makes monitoring progress easy.   Spray on bacteria for when baby is decanted will be important, though.]

Isn't this a great explanation for the myth that babies are delivered by storks?:  it's a premonition of the future!

End transmission.

Slate praises Aldi

Aldi grocery store: best in America, related to Trader Joe’s.

Amusing to read someone in Slate praising Aldi stores.

I like them too.  I think it's the surprise element of what weird item they'll be selling on the centre tables this week that keeps me coming back.  (As well as the European products.)

More odd biology

BBC News - 'Memories' pass between generations

Experiments showed that a traumatic event could affect the DNA in sperm and alter the brains and behaviour of subsequent generations. 

A Nature Neuroscience study shows mice trained to avoid a smell passed their aversion on to their "grandchildren".

Experts said the results were important for phobia and anxiety research.

The animals were trained to fear a smell similar to cherry blossom.  The team at the Emory University School of Medicine, in the US, then looked at what was happening inside the sperm. 

They showed a section of DNA responsible for sensitivity to the cherry blossom scent was made more active in the mice's sperm.

Both the mice's offspring, and their offspring, were "extremely sensitive" to cherry blossom and would avoid the scent, despite never having experiencing it in their lives. 

Changes in brain structure were also found. 

"The experiences of a parent, even before conceiving, markedly influence both structure and function in the nervous system of subsequent generations," the report concluded.

Tony lies

Tony Abbott defends Gonski reversal, saying election pledge was misheard

Let's be clear here - Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne are breaking pre-election commitments regarding honouring the Gonski funding deals Labor negotiated with the States.   Where Tony Abbott is now lying is in his attempt to deny that the pre-election commitment was what it was.

Katherine Murphy in The Guardian does not go quite to the "l" word, although I don't see why she doesn't:

If you promised to match school funding dollar for dollar over the next four years – if you promised that every single school in Australia gets the same deal whether there is a Labor government or a Coalition government after 7 September – then that's what you promised.

You cannot subsequently put it down to some well-meaning person's hallucination, a mass delusion, as Abbott suggested on the Bolt Report on Sunday. "But Andrew, we are going to keep our promise. We are going to keep the promise that we actually made, not the promise that some people thought that we made or the promise that some people might have liked us to make. We're going to keep the promise that we actually made."

 But, of course, no one should be surprised by this.   As Bernard Keane wrote back in 2010, Abbott is simply very prone, even by the low standards we expect of politicians,  to resort to dishonesty when he is put under pressure (as well as being a policy flake who will "say anything" to get elected):

The other issue is that there is long-term context to Abbott’s remarks. In my follow-up piece today, I refer to John Howard’s remarkable capacity to backflip on beliefs he’d held for decades, but still be perceived by voters as a bloke who stood for what he believed in. I was going to include Abbott in that, as one who had learnt well from his mentor. But the difference is that while most of Howard’s back flips took place over a period of years, Abbott’s take place over weeks, as if by being younger and subject to an ever-faster media cycle, Abbott had accelerated the process. While he took several years to change his mind on parental leave, his reversal from dogged advocate of the Malcolm Turnbull ETS strategy to die-hard opponent happened over a matter of months, and his no-new-taxes promise barely last a few weeks.

But Abbott also has long-term form in struggling with the truth in interviews. In 1998, he — commendably — undertook a personal mission to destroy One Nation, partly by funding a disgruntled member, Terry Sharples, in legal action. Trouble was, he later denied to the ABC ever funding Sharples — a blatant lie he was sprung on in 2003. Then there was his curious denial of meeting George Pell during the 2004 election campaign, until Tony Jones jogged his memory and Abbott suddenly recalled that he’d met him the previous week.

Other Abbott credibility gaps haven’t been his fault — such as when his “rolled gold” Medicare safety net election promise was overruled by Cabinet (which would appear to disprove the idea that scripted remarks will always be honoured).

But the impression remains: when put on the spot by the media, Abbott makes stuff up to get himself out of trouble. Stuff that eventually gets found out.

 I will make my bet now:   history will judge Abbott poorly because of this.   What he could get away with as a Minister doing the dirty work of another leader is not going to extend to his time as the actual Prime Minister.

Tape still important

Monitor: Magnetic tape to the rescue | The Economist

I was surprised to learn of the importance still of magnetic tape for large scale data storage.  This article explains why, although there are quite a few objections to certain claims in the comments that follow. 

Paying in more ways than one

I see this evening that the French National Assembly (led by the Socialist Party) has "endorsed" a law to deal with prostitution by fining the customer, not the prostitute.  This apparently goes to a proper vote soon.

This is a curious and vexed area of public policy if ever there was one, and the idea of discouraging prostitution by fining the customer was first tried in Sweden.   It's odd, I suppose, how it's these two  "traditionally" sexually relaxed countries who are following this method of discouraging commercial sex.

This background article from the BCC notes that there is a fair amount of opposition in France on the grounds of sexual privacy:

The row has thrown into relief one of the intellectual faultlines in modern-day France, where there is a rumbling "fronde" or insurrection against the "politically correct".

Opponents see the signatories as right-wing reactionaries, malevolently usurping the cry of Liberty in order to defend their macho privileges.

But for the Salauds, the fight is against a nannyish and intolerant ruling class that has turned the feminist slogans of 40 years ago into a moralistic crusade.

"Today the left - which is supposed to be the cutting edge of progressivism - is dominated by an irrepressible urge to control and prohibit," wrote Causeur's editor Elisabeth Levy.

But the government can argue that it not about morality, but about the exploitation of women:

According to the French interior ministry, foreign prostitutes make up 80-90% of all sex workers in the country and most of those are the victims of trafficking rings.

And certainly, particular in Europe, legalising prostitution can draw extraordinarily large numbers of prostitutes to a country:

France's proposed crackdown contrasts sharply with the situation in Germany, where the stigma has been removed from prostitution.

As a result, there are now some 400,000 prostitutes in Germany, or 10 times the estimated number in France.

Sweden cracked down on clients with a similar law in 1999, since when street prostitution has reportedly fallen sharply in its largest cities. However, street prostitution in neighbouring Norway and Denmark increased.

The Netherlands legalised prostitution in 2000 but campaigners say the measure played into the hands of criminals and human traffickers.

 The Netherlands only legalised it in 2000?  Yes that appears right, but the government there has started cracking down on the industry as well, again with the main concern seeming to be the criminal organisations that bring women in for this role.

So a large part of the problem in Europe is not from the "home grown"prostitution (which is, I assume, mostly what you get in countries like Australia and America, and is probably always self limiting in the number of women who take up that "profession") but the exploitation of women from other, poorer, countries.

In those circumstances, I think a more aggressive approach to limiting it is the right thing to do, and the approach of making it potentially a very expensive thing for a man to do seems an effective way to discourage women to try it.  In Sweden:

But while a recent government-commissioned evaluation concluded the move had resulted in a 50% drop in the number of women working as prostitutes, the picture is by no means as simple as the figures would suggest.

A bit better result than in Germany, where The Economist notes:

Prostitution seems to have declined in Sweden (unless it has merely gone deep underground), whereas Germany has turned into a giant brothel and even a destination for European sex tourism. The best guess is that Germany has about 400,000 prostitutes catering to 1m men a day. Mocking the spirit of the 2001 law, exactly 44 of them, including four men, have registered for welfare benefits.

The details vary regionally, because the federal states and municipalities decide where and how brothels may operate. (Berlin is the only city without zoning restrictions.) In some places, streetwalkers line up along motorways with open-air booths nearby for quickies. In others, such as Saarbrücken, near the border with a stricter country like France, entrepreneurs are investing in mega-brothels that cater to cross-border demand.

The article says that there probably will be legal changes soon in Germany, but the politics are very odd:

 ... whereas progressive Swedes view their state as able to set positive goals, Germans (the Greens, especially) mistrust the state on questions of personal morality as a hypocritical and authoritarian threat to self-expression. Only this can explain why Swedes continue overwhelmingly to support their policy, and Germans theirs.

 So the Greens in Germany want to ensure prostitution remains legal and unfettered?  Not sure if that is how the Greens in Australia would think, but who knows.

Anyhow, I am not sure of the answers, but I do blame customers more than women for creating the industry, so my sympathies lie towards the Swedish/French approach.

Update:   The Guardian has an article about some disenchantment in Germany with its overly liberal approach to prostitution:

The tide seems to be turning when it comes to German public opinion as well. Last month the veteran feminist Alice Schwarzer published a book entitled Prostitution: A German Scandal. Emma, the feminist magazine started by Schwarzer in 1977, has also published a petition against the current law, signed by 90 celebrities from both the right and the left of the political spectrum.

They argue that Germany's experiment with liberalising prostitution has failed spectacularly, turning the country into "the bordello of Europe", with more and more brothels popping up near the border. The 2002 law was trying to make sex work a job like any other. But currently only 44 sex workers in Germany are registered with the national insurance scheme. Social workers say that most prostitutes cannot afford the luxury of putting aside money for a health insurance policy.

Schwarzer and her supporters have championed the legal situation in Sweden, where it is illegal to buy sexual services but not to sell them. She likens current attitudes to prostitution in Germany to those towards paedophilia in the 1970s: a wilful blindness towards an apparent injustice. "Prostitution, like paedophilia, is characterised not by equality, but drastic power imbalances," she recently wrote in Die Zeit.

Schwarzer is not without her critics. At the launch of her book last week, she was harangued by a group of pro-prostitution campaigners....

She accused Schwarzer of spreading ignorance and churning out misleading figures. Criminalising the clients of sex workers, as it is done in Sweden, she says, would only cement their victim status. "We are not victims, we are adventurous sex goddesses!" she said.

If only 44 sex workers are registered for the public health scheme, she argued, it is because 10 years of the new law haven't been enough to remove social stigma. Most sex workers lead a double life where they do more than one job, and even if they work full-time, they are more likely to register as a "performance artist".

Much uncertainty, but none of it good

Continued global warming after CO2 emissions stoppage : Nature Climate Change 

The depressing course of the recent meeting hoping to get some sort of international co-operation going on climate change seems to have led to less commentary on climate science blogs about the actual science.

This paper seems significant if you are looking on the long term scale, even if it is rather academic (in the sense that CO2 emissions are not going to stop any time soon):

 Recent studies have suggested that global mean surface temperature would remain approximately constant on multi-century timescales after CO₂ emissions^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9} are stopped. Here we use Earth system model simulations of such a stoppage to demonstrate that in some models, surface temperature may actually increase on multi-century timescales after an initial century-long decrease. This occurs in spite of a decline in radiative forcing that exceeds the decline in ocean heat uptake—a circumstance that would otherwise be expected to lead to a decline in global temperature. The reason is that the warming effect of decreasing ocean heat uptake together with feedback effects arising in response to the geographic structure of ocean heat uptake^{10, 11, 12} overcompensates the cooling effect of decreasing atmospheric CO₂ on multi-century timescales. Our study also reveals that equilibrium climate sensitivity estimates based on a widely used method of regressing the Earth’s energy imbalance against surface temperature change^{13, 14} are biased. Uncertainty in the magnitude of the feedback effects associated with the magnitude and geographic distribution of ocean heat uptake therefore contributes substantially to the uncertainty in allowable carbon emissions for a given multi-century warming target.

Biology is getting weird

Study shows moms may pass effects of stress to offspring via vaginal bacteria and placenta

I had a post up recently about how vaginal birth set up babies for the gut bacteria they need.  This study suggests that the bacteria affects the brain development as well. 

I presume someone has looked at the issue of increased rates of caesarian birth in Western countries and the rise in autism or other brain development conditions?

Unhappiness continues

About the only thing The Australian is good for these days is the occasional bit of insider gossip from Niki Savva about unhappiness within the Liberals about how Peta Credlin is running the PM's office:

Previously, my criticisms of the PMO have been rebutted by some as a vendetta against Abbott's chief of staff, Peta Credlin. Piffle. My interest is in sound government, especially after the debacles of the past few years.

Journalists or commentators acting as cheer squads for the Left or the Right help no one, least of all the participants, who then delude themselves that everything is going swimmingly, or that eventually, perhaps by osmosis, it will all come good.

The point I have made consistently is that no one person, no matter how talented, is capable of making all the decisions in a prime minister's office in a timely and judicious manner. They especially will be guaranteed to get them wrong if they make them in an echo chamber.

Unhappiness simmers inside the government, particularly over what ministers regard as the exercise of extreme micro-management. Backbenchers have had electorate staff vetoed and senior ministers have been denied the right to make their most critical appointment, that of their chief of staff.

Eric Abetz, the Employment Minister and leader of the government in the Senate, alluded to the problem in Senate estimates hearings last week. Abetz's friends, meanwhile, sense a wider strategy afoot to replace him as leader with the Attorney-General, George Brandis.

There is a sense generally that this government doesn't really know what to do.  And let's face it, apart from getting rid of carbon pricing and the mining tax, the rest of Abbott's election policy was pretty much to run other Labor policies.  

The similarities with what happened with Rudd in 2007 seem pretty striking, right down to quick unhappiness with how the PM let's his office be run.   As monty said elsewhere last night:

He’s actually acting a fair bit like Rudd. He’s spent years trying to beat his implacable enemy, but now that he’s installed behind the big desk, he doesn’t know what to do. Rudd didn’t have a policy platform to speak of after dethroning Gillard, and Abbott doesn’t seem to have any ideas either. Rudd spent too much time on media management whereas Abbott doesn’t spend enough time on it, but these are two sides of the same problem: a lack of substance, a lack of long term strategic and policy thinking.

Quite right...

Previously, my criticisms of the PMO have been rebutted by some as a vendetta against Abbott's chief of staff, Peta Credlin. Piffle. My interest is in sound government, especially after the debacles of the past few years.
Journalists or commentators acting as cheer squads for the Left or the Right help no one, least of all the participants, who then delude themselves that everything is going swimmingly, or that eventually, perhaps by osmosis, it will all come good.
The point I have made consistently is that no one person, no matter how talented, is capable of making all the decisions in a prime minister's office in a timely and judicious manner. They especially will be guaranteed to get them wrong if they make them in an echo chamber.
Unhappiness simmers inside the government, particularly over what ministers regard as the exercise of extreme micro-management. Backbenchers have had electorate staff vetoed and senior ministers have been denied the right to make their most critical appointment, that of their chief of staff.
Eric Abetz, the Employment Minister and leader of the government in the Senate, alluded to the problem in Senate estimates hearings last week. Abetz's friends, meanwhile, sense a wider strategy afoot to replace him as leader with the Attorney-General, George Brandis.
- See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/echo-chamber-needs-fresh-air/story-fnahw9xv-1226769963862#sthash.lNpvOzXH.dpuf

On Mexican religion

BBC News - The country where exorcisms are on the rise

An interesting article about how the Mexican Catholic Church is doing many more exorcisms, pretty much as a response to the incredible violence from the drug wars.

Then there is this:

In Bautista's view, the rising demand for exorcism is partly explained by the large numbers of Mexicans joining the cult of Saint Death, or Santa Muerte.

It is estimated that the cult, whose followers worship a skull in a wedding dress carrying a scythe, has some eight million followers in Mexico - and more among Mexican migrants in Central America, the US and Canada.

"It has also been adopted by the drug traffickers who ask her for help to avoid arrest and to make money," Bautista says. "In exchange they offer human sacrifices. And this has increased the violence in Mexico."

Another reason for the surge in exorcisms, he argues, is the decriminalisation of abortions in Mexico City, in 2007. Both the cult and abortion have given evil spirits a foothold in the country, he insists.

"Both things are closely related. There is an infestation of demons in Mexico because we have opened our doors to Death."

This would seem to be a photo of "Saint Death":

 

 I wonder if people put this image in their homes?

And about time, too

Evangelii Gaudium: Pope Francis vs libertarian economics.

One of the creepiest combinations on the right of US politics is the mix of Catholic conservatism on social issues with libertarianism on economic issues.   The US Bishops have not exactly been on board with the latter, but have been so keen to have the support of conservative Republican Catholics on matters such as abortion and (for goodness sake) the contraceptive mandate, they don't want to be seen to be too aggressively critical of their perceived allies on matters of economics and social justice.   If it weren't for this dynamic, there should have been sermons across the land condemning Ayn Rand when Paul Ryan's admiration for her was being discussed in the media.

Anyhow, it seems that at last we have a Pope prepared to do some straight talking on this issue, and it'll fun to watch how the American Right spins this:

....some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.

 While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules.

In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.

A financial reform open to such ethical considerations would require a vigorous change of approach on the part of political leaders. I urge them to face this challenge with determination and an eye to the future, while not ignoring, of course, the specifics of each case. Money must serve, not rule! The Pope loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the poor.

Still awful

I feel a need to make this observation:   after using it for (what?) a couple of months now, and giving yself time to try to used to it, there is still no doubt:  Slate's last re-design was the most awful news magazine re-design in internet history.

Digging up Oswald

Exhuming Lee Harvey Oswald: JFK’s killer’s corpse was raised based on a conspiracy theory.

OK, maybe one last anti-conspiracy post about the Kennedy assassination.

The Slate article above tells the story of a little remembered conspiracy theory: that the Oswald who shot Kennedy was not the Oswald who went to Russia.

I didn't realise, or didn't recall, that the idea was taken seriously enough that Oswald's body was dug up and examined to confirm it matched Marine dental records.   Amazing.

Odd Russian thoughts to sympathise with

Russian resurrection | TLS

Quite an interesting book review here on the work of Nikolai Fyodorov in Russia, who seems to be credited with starting a peculiarly Russian semi-mystical approach to the potential for science.   The article starts:

According to Tolstoy, Nikolai Fyodorov was a saint, whose programme for the universal resurrection of the dead was “not devoid of sense”. “It is amazing”, he told his sons’ tutor, how Fyodorov “believes in science and the unlimited capability of the human mind”. But what does it mean to believe in science, and what happens to science when it is so dependent on belief? Fyodorov’s legacy in Russia raises a number of questions, including how to explain his attraction and continued appeal for some of Russia’s best minds.

 He was born in 1829, and his key idea is described as follows:

“The common task” was the physical resurrection of the dead. All mankind, Fyodorov wrote, was under a moral obligation to identify and collect the dust of its ancestors; this was a duty every son owed to his forefathers, a duty constantly under threat from the blind forces of nature, by which Fyodorov meant the elemental forces outside and within man: not only the climate but also human sexuality. The hunt for these lost particles was to be an act of gigantic filial labour and “positive chastity”. Motivated by piety, sons and daughters were to devote themselves fully to scientific discoveries that would make the task of resurrection possible. These discoveries would entail not only bringing the dead back to life, but finding space for them to dwell. The deserts would have to be made fertile; other planets would need to be made habitable, and modes of transport to other worlds developed. In effect, Fyodorov was providing a scientific basis for religious myth, the way other nineteenth-century scholars traced the historical existence of Jesus Christ. 

Actually, this reminds me of the approach of Frank Tipler, in that he tries to justify his Christian God and resurrection via science.  And as I have argued before, Tipler's weakest idea was always to do with resurrection - he had to invoke the Many Worlds to get there, which seems extraordinarily untidy.

Fyodorov's idea seems more akin to what I have speculated about - whether the information stored written by a person (particularly on the internet) could ever form the basis in future for the resurrection of personalities.   OK, it's a silly idea, but no worse than some of Fyodorov's speculations:

It is easy to pick out passages that are both moving in their conviction and absurd in their flirtation with literalism: one can see his entire project as born of distrust of the symbolic order. The anthropocentrism occasionally takes striking turns, as when Fyodorov envisions an evolutionary process in which sexual attraction would be replaced by heightened consciousness, a transformation already signalled by the fact that higher animals, as opposed to plants, do not have sex organs on their heads: “If progress will continue in this direction, then the time will come when consciousness and activity will replace birth”. Fyodorov’s worldview betrays a distressing repugnance for physiological function and femininity: maternal attachment is bad because it betrays the past in its attention to the future, but a lack of maternal attachment (in mothers) is even worse. Women who want to act like men are a “teratological phenomenon”, perhaps because they parody the only positive form of femininity – “daughterliness” – as represented by Antigone or Cordelia. Fyodorov fought against decomposition but may have loved dust more than flesh, the way some of Dostoevsky’s heroes love mankind but have difficulties with man.

 Anyhow, his line of thought is said to be behind Russian "Cosmism" which has been influential in their science. I guess it would appeal to those who have to do science under an officially atheist regime. Here's the part that explains a bit about it:

The lineage of Russian Cosmism begins in the eighteenth century with a meteorologist and some metaphysical poets, moves through nineteenth-century speculative fiction, and then blossoms out in religious and spiritual thought of the fin de siècle. Young details the points of contiguity and difference between Fyodorov and some of his better-known contemporaries in Russian religious and spiritual thought: Vladimir Solovyov, Sergei Bulgakov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Pavel Florensky. He finds resonances with Fyodorov in the work of some of the leading figures in Soviet science – Tsiolkovsky; the geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, with his concept of the noosphere, a kind of ideal superstructure gradually superseding Earth’s original base; the polymath Alexander Chizhevsky, with his theory of the influence of sun spots on history; the botanist Vasily Kuprevich, with his campaign to extend longevity to the point of immortality. The result is a series of thumbnail sketches, linked by “a highly controversial and oxymoronic blend of activist speculation, futuristic traditionalism, religious science, exoteric esotericism, utopian pragmatism, idealistic materialism – higher magic partnered to higher mathematics”.

Uniting many of the Cosmists is an insistence on universal connectivity, on the fluidity of the border between organic and inorganic matter, and confidence in the ability of man to shape his own evolution.

I'm not sure if the "noosphere" of Vernadsky is like the "noosphere" of Teilhard de Chardin, whose ideas I find very appealing.  I'll have to look that up later.

All kind of interesting....

Who gives a toss?

I am surprised that anyone can get excited about the fact that a Governor General with a short time remaining in the job said she was pro Republican and for gay marriage.

Neither issue is going to be a matter she has anything to do with.  There is no prospect of a constitutional crisis in the next few months.  She has already offered to resign because of her Labor connections, and Abbott said it wasn't necessary.

Andrew Bolt has gone over the top about it, but then again, he seems determined to make himself the Human Headline continually full of puffed up outrage about his pet issues. 

Safe as cars

Man survives after car struck by lightning in Newcastle: video

If ever there was proof needed that the inside of a car is a pretty safe place to be during a thunderstorm, this must be it.

Still wouldn't like to be in one struck like this, though...

How not to regret

Last week, as I observed elsewhere on the internet, I immediately thought that Tony Abbott's response to the Indonesian phone tapping story was very peculiar when he started regretting the embarrassment "caused to" the President.   Why, I said, would we be suggesting that the President has anything to be embarrassed about - he has reason to be angry, not embarrassed.

I see from this weekend's press that my reaction was not alone:

Certainly, Abbott rankled Indonesia in the aftermath of the revelations by not only failing to provide an explanation or an apology, but the manner in which he conveyed his sentiments. Abbott said that the Australia's intelligence activities were to ''help our friends and our allies, not to harm them''.

This was no doubt an attempt to remind Indonesia about the crucial assistance the signals directorate provided in apprehending scores of terrorists. But, given he was responding to the furore over the surveillance of Yudhoyono, it was taken quite differently. As Marcus Mietzner, an analyst of Indonesian politics from the Australian National University, observed: ''To say 'we are spying on [Yudhoyono] for your own good' is outrageous.''

Then there was Abbott's well-intentioned expression of regret for the ''embarrassment'' suffered by Yudhoyono due to ''media reports'' of the spying.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa retorted it was Australia that should be embarrassed. Even so, Abbott repeated the comment in Parliament the next day. A few hours later, Indonesia announced the suspension of military and people-smuggling co-operation.

What I also find odd about this is that I have been assuming that Abbott has been careful to use words crafted for him by his Foreign Affairs specialists.   But if that is right, what is the explanation for the "tin ear" for diplomacy the words illustrate?   Has anyone important from that Department already left after the election?   Does Peta Credlin get to re-work suggestions they make?   Because I think it is pretty clear something has been going wrong here...
 

The Lewis legacy

It's good to see the 50th anniversary of CS Lewis' death is also being widely remembered, and his legacy analysed.

There's an very lengthy article about him up at the ABC.   The best part of it, I think, is it describes his revival in influence, after the somewhat silly cultural milieu of the 1960's:

Intellectual historians have noted that the cultural trends of this turbulent period reflected an assumption that the prevailing cultural trends represented permanent changes in western culture. Tom Wolfe's essay "The Great Relearning" (1987) captures the Promethean aspirations of this age, in which the past would be discarded as an encumbrance, and the future reconstructed from ground zero. Yet historians such as Adrian Hastings have suggested that this period merely witnessed a temporary change of cultural mood, which some were unwise enough to treat as a fixed and lasting change in the condition of humanity. Hastings remarked that the "dominant theological mood of that time in its hasty, slack, rather collective sweep reminds one a little painfully of a flight of lemmings," propelled forward by "a sheer surge of feeling that in the modern world God, religion, the transcendent, any reliability in the gospels, anything which had formed part of the old 'supernatualist' system, had suddenly become absurd." For Hastings, it was as if the bright new ideas of the 1960s were doomed to implode, incapable of sustaining serious reflection on the deeper questions of life.

He seems to have been right. In the 1970s, the disillusioned began to search again for meaning and existential depth. Lewis bounced back, securing a growing and appreciative readership which kept growing in the final decade of the twentieth century. The reasons for this reversal in Lewis's fortunes are not totally understood. However, there are a number of straws in the wind which help us understand this remarkable resurgence of someone who had been written off by many as a relic of the past. Let me note three.

In the first place, the cultural upheavals of the 1960s gradually gave way to a fresh engagement with some of the deeper questions that Lewis had championed, and to which he provided engaging and winsome answers. His relentless championing of the ongoing relevance and validity of the cultural heritage of the past offered stability in the midst of what many regarded as cultural chaos and anarchy. Lewis's rejection of what he termed "chronological snobbery" opened the way to a revalidation and reappropriation of the religious and cultural legacy of the past.

The rest of the essay is good too:  Rowan Williams has written very favourably of aspects of Lewis too.   (In some very convoluted language, I expect.)

Williams also made an appearance in an article in The Guardian about Lewis, which also mentions Pullman, who loathes Lewis.   [I certainly don't expect Pullman's legacy to count for much in 50 year's time though.   Is that too bitchy?  :) ]

The Guardian article does make the point that the Shadowlands movie with Anthony Hopkins was about as far from fact in characterisation as a movie based on a real person could possibly be.   The old (BBC?) telemovie version was infinitely better.  I would hope someone might be replaying that somewhere this weekend. 

 

A fight continued

For Philippa.  The rest of you can ignore it.

Old airships

That Time Jules Verne Caused a UFO Scare

When I was a child, my local Council library carried quite a few Jules Verne novels, and I used to enjoy reading them.   I bet their popularity amongst modern kids is pretty non-existant, which is a pity.  

Apart from talking about the peculiar plague of airship sightings that occurred before they existed outside of fiction, this article gives a very good background about the popularity of Verne in his day.   In Back to the Future 3, when Doc and his wife to be talk of their mutual admiration of the author, this was far more plausible than I realised.  

A good article.

"Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" used to be even more interesting 50,000 years ago

Mystery humans spiced up ancients’ sex lives 

I don't really try to keep up with human evolution news:  it seems to change too often on too little evidence.

But I do like to imagine what versions of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner could have been many years ago:

The results suggest that interbreeding went on between the members of several ancient human-like groups in Europe and Asia more than 30,000 years ago, including an as-yet-unknown human ancestor from Asia.

“What it begins to suggest is that we’re looking at a Lord of the Rings-type world — that there were many hominid populations,” says Mark Thomas, an evolutionary geneticist at University College London who was at the meeting but was not involved in the work.

The first published Neanderthal¹ and Denisovan² genome sequences revolutionized the study of ancient human history, not least because they showed that these groups bred with anatomically modern humans, contributing to the genetic diversity of many people alive today.

Anti conspiracy summary

John F. Kennedy conspiracy theories debunked: Why the magic bullet and grassy knoll don’t make sense.

I was impressed by the documentary on ABC last week (JFK The Lost Bullet) which really took apart the "magic bullet" theory, and featured a couple of witnesses who were there.

As I said in another post recently, the 1960's seems a long time ago now, and it feels odd to see people who are witnesses to the event who don't look so old.  

Slate features another witness story too which is interesting.

Oh, and here's a detailed and convincing rebuttal of the recently revived Secret Service shot Kennedy by Accident theory.

A different sort of philosophical enquiry

The FBI files on being and nothingness

The FBI under J Edgar Hoover must have been a fun place to work:

The FBI had been keeping an eye on Sartre from as early as 1945. Soon after, they began to investigate his contemporary, Albert Camus. On 7th February, 1946, John Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, wrote a letter to “Special Agent in Charge” at the New York field office, drawing his attention to one ALBERT CANUS, “reportedly the New York correspondent of Combat [who] has been filing inaccurate reports which are unfavorable to the public interest of this country.” Hoover gave orders “to conduct a preliminary investigation to ascertain his background, activities and affiliations in this country.” One of Hoover’s underlings had the guts to inform the director that “the subject’s true name is ALBERT CAMUS, not ALBERT CANUS” (diplomatically hypothesizing that “Canus” was probably an alias he had cunningly adopted).

The irony that emerges from the FBI files on Camus and Sartre, spanning several decades (and which, still partly redacted, I accessed thanks to the open-sesame of the Freedom of Information Act) is that the G-men, initially so anti-philosophical, find themselves reluctantly philosophizing. They become (in GK Chesterton’s phrase) philosophical policemen.
 

I hope this works...

Hola – free program lets you enjoy any website from any country [Freeware] | The Red Ferret Journal

...but I haven't tried it yet.

Update:   it works!   At last, Colbert is mine again.   (Don't spread this around too much, though.)

Some like it hot

Chilly lab mice skew cancer studies 

International guidelines call for laboratory mice to be kept at room temperature. Yet the rodents find that range — 20–26 °C — uncomfortably chilly, says immunologist Elizabeth Repasky of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. Mice, she notes, lose body heat more rapidly than humans, and, when given a choice, prefer to reside at a balmy 30 °C.

At stake might be more than just creature comforts. In a study published today by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences¹, Repasky and her colleagues report that in mice housed at room temperature, tumour growth was faster than in those housed at 30 °C, and immune responses to cancer were suppressed.

Sea level rise is complicated

Changing winds dampen Antarctic sea-level rise 

Working out the future of global sea level rise under AGW is very complicated, as this article shows.

Anti Randianism noted

Ayn Rand’s vision of idiocy: Understanding the real makers and takers - Salon.com

I love a good bit of anti-Randianism, and this article is quite a detailed attack. 

Argument for age of consent reform

Lowering the age of consent: U.K. public health advocate John Ashton wants to relax the age of consent to 15.

From Slate, an interesting article on this issue starts as follows:

 In 16th-century England, the age of consent was set at 10 years old in an effort to protect young girls from sexual abuse by adult men. In 1875, parliament raised the age of consent to 13; in 1885, it upped it to 16. Now, a leading public health advocate has proposed that the United Kingdom bring the age down again in light of the high proportion of British adolescents who are having sex—with one another—before they’re legally capable of granting consent.

Lowering the age of consent to 15 (where it stands in Sweden) or 14 (where it’s set in Germany and Italy) would “take these enormous pressures off children and young people” who feel they need to hide their sexual activity, said John Ashton, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health.

It makes quite a difference to realise the substantially lower age in some European countries hasn't caused their society to fall apart.

Update:  I would have thought that the most obvious necessary reform for this area would be the adoption of "Romeo and Juliet" style laws, which (as far as I can see from Wikipedia) has surprisingly been an innovation in some American states, including currently conservative ones.   

Krugman, Colebatch, and the big picture

Paul Krugman has an interesting column in which he seems somewhat persuaded by an argument that the world may have moved to a sort of permanent economic slump:

Again, the evidence suggests that we have become an economy whose normal state is one of mild depression, whose brief episodes of prosperity occur only thanks to bubbles and unsustainable borrowing. 

Why might this be happening? One answer could be slowing population growth. A growing population creates a demand for new houses, new office buildings, and so on; when growth slows, that demand drops off. America’s working-age population rose rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, as baby boomers grew up, and its work force rose even faster, as women moved into the labor market. That’s now all behind us. And you can see the effects: Even at the height of the housing bubble, we weren’t building nearly as many houses as in the 1970s. 

Another important factor may be persistent trade deficits, which emerged in the 1980s and since then have fluctuated but never gone away. 

Why does all of this matter? One answer is that central bankers need to stop talking about “exit strategies.” Easy money should, and probably will, be with us for a very long time. This, in turn, means we can forget all those scare stories about government debt, which run along the lines of “It may not be a problem now, but just wait until interest rates rise.” 

More broadly, if our economy has a persistent tendency toward depression, we’re going to be living under the looking-glass rules of depression economics — in which virtue is vice and prudence is folly, in which attempts to save more (including attempts to reduce budget deficits) make everyone worse off — for a long time. 

In other economics talk of note, Tim Colebatch gives the thumbs up to a new book by Garnaut about what Australia should be doing:

What to do? The first priority, Garnaut insists, is to try to bring the dollar down, a lot. It's not the only thing we have to do, but without that, all else is in vain. Newman's contrary view that the dollar is only a minor issue is silly, as his muddled comparison of Australian and US wages shows. In $A, our average manufacturing wage rose 11 per cent between 2009 and 2012. In $US, it rose 42 per cent. Three-quarters of that rise came from the rising dollar. We cannot restore our lost competitiveness without bringing it down.

Garnaut hopes that more interest rate cuts could do the trick. Experience suggests that's optimistic: in my view, the Reserve Bank needs to intervene in the markets to drive the dollar down, with the government helping by removing the $2 billion a year tax break to foreign owners of government bonds.

What about the budget? Garnaut's forecasts imply that, without action, the deficit could blow out horribly ahead - yet to cut spending and/or raise taxes would slow the economy further. He advocates doing both, trimming middle class welfare while closing tax breaks, but offsetting this (as Hockey plans to do) by a strong push to build productivity-enhancing infrastructure - chosen on economic merit, not for political reasons.

St Francis revisited

Here's an enjoyable article by Joan Acocella reviewing a couple of recent biographies of St Francis of Assisi, which gives a decent short history of his life.

I had not realised he had been such an immediate success.  But I had heard of his eccentricities before:

A corollary of Francis’s devotion to humility was his distrust of book learning. Almost proudly, it seems, he called himself “illiteratus.” He never owned a complete Bible. He never became a priest. To him, book learning smelled of wealth—only rich people had books at that time—and thus of arrogance. One medieval source records his response to a novice who asked for a psalter: “When you have a psalter, you will want a breviary; and when you will have a breviary, you will install yourself in a throne like a great prelate, and you will command your brother: ‘Bring me my breviary!’ ” He then took some ashes from the hearth and rubbed them into his body, all the while repeating, “I’m a breviary, I’m a breviary!” Over time, his hostility to scholarship encouraged some people—for example, members of religious orders devoted to education, such as the Dominicans—to regard the Franciscans as a bunch of oddballs and half-wits, which, no doubt, some of them were. Francis accepted into the community anyone who applied. There was no test, no waiting period.

The story about the psalter seems to represent Francis as a man of rigid principles. He was not. To every rule, he made exceptions, on the spot. No friar could ride a horse (a symbol of wealth), but if the friar was sick, all of a sudden a friar could ride a horse. No new entrant, in divesting himself of his goods, could give them to his family, but if it turned out that the man’s giving away his ox would impoverish the family, the ox stayed home. Francis believed in discipline—fasting, hair shirts—but he didn’t eat bugs, and he warned the friars that excessive fasting was harmful to “Brother Body.” Also, he occasionally advised his followers to find their own way to salvation. On his deathbed, he said to them, “I have done what was mine to do. May Christ teach you what is yours!” This is strange, since he had so clear a program for a Christian life. He may not have meant to be permissive, but he often was.

Which was certainly owing in part to another of his characteristics, attested to by everyone who knew him: an extreme natural sweetness. He was courteous, genial, extroverted—he was fun, a quality not always found in saints—and he laid it upon the brothers, as a duty, to be cheerful.

Read the whole thing.

Unusually preserved singers

English singer Petula Clark is back 'Downtown' - latimes.com

The 1960's now feels like a long, long time ago, and as with Shirley Bassey, it can be startling to realise a singer from that era is still alive and still working.

It turns out Petula Clark, aged 81, is still at it.  I haven't thought about her for a long, long time; but when thinking of "Downtown", I am inclined to join Gerald the Gorilla* and observe that the production on that album is amazing.  

Speaking on the big production values of the 1960's, I thought this recent article in The Guardian by Jimmy Webb about the making of Macathur Park with Richard Harris was interesting.  (When did Harris die?  2002?  Doesn't seem that long ago.)

I suppose I shouldn't be all that surprised that famous singer from the 1960's are still with us, given Paul McCartney and the Stones rarely being out of the news.   But it's the ones who you don't think of for ages who suddenly turn up still alive who cause the surprise.  


* yes, I know, he was talking of Johnny Mathis, who I see is still alive and aged 78.  (I am contractually obliged to mention this sketch at least once a year.)

Stoic revival

I see via Mary Beard's blog that the second "Live Like a Stoic Week" is soon upon us, and more detail can be learnt from the "Stoicism Today" website.

Well, I suppose it's just lucky that we don't have any academics into reviving Cynicism by following the example of Diogenes:

From Life of Diogenes: "Someone took him [Diogenes] into a magnificent house and warned him not to spit, whereupon, having cleared his throat, he spat into the man's face, being unable, he said, to find a meaner receptacle."

That was from the Wikipedia entry on unpopular house guest Diogenes.  I also learn from there the origin of the "cynic":

The term "Cynic" itself derives from the Greek word κυνικός, kynikos, "dog-like" and that from κύων, kyôn, "dog" (genitive: kynos).^[48] One explanation offered in ancient times for why the Cynics were called dogs was because Antisthenes taught in the Cynosarges gymnasium at Athens.^[49] The word Cynosarges means the place of the white dog. Later Cynics also sought to turn the word to their advantage, as a later commentator explained:

There are four reasons why the Cynics are so named. First because of the indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference and, like dogs, eat and make love in public, go barefoot, and sleep in tubs and at crossroads. The second reason is that the dog is a shameless animal, and they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a good guard, and they guard the tenets of their philosophy. The fourth reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those who are suited to philosophy, and receive them kindly, while those unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them.

 Maybe I had read that before, but forgotten.   

Big hail

Having suffered some house damage in a hail storm exactly one year ago, I certainly have a good idea how scary it would have been to be in the huge and damaging hail that hit the Sunshine Coast on the weekend.   

The biggest hail stones appear to be the of the type which are make up by smaller hail freezing together, but that still makes for a massive chunk of  ice falling out of the sky.  I think there was a report of one person injured directly by the hail; it's a wonder there weren't more.

Dubious theory noted

I seem to have missed "biocentrism," as coined by medical Professor Robert Lanza, but it got a run in The Indpendent the other day, in a somewhat confusing article which says Lanza thinks his theory means that there is definitely life after death.  It sounds rather like Hugh Everett's idea that he would continue living in another corner of the multiverse - but not quite.   (I don't know that anyone has put this "multiple versions of everyone" idea to much philosophical, theological or science fiction consideration yet.  It always seems to me that it must be good for some interesting conjecture about God and the meaning of the universe, and it's a topic I often find myself thinking about in the shower.  Never with any worthwhile result, however.) 

Reddit has an article on it which contains more criticism, and there is a Wikipedia entry too.

Doesn't seem all that promising to me...

Captain Shaky

I knew nothing really about the events portrayed in Captain Phillips, even though they only occurred in 2009, and this is an excellent way to have seen the movie yesterday.

It's a very solid film:  good acting, pretty good writing, and just a really interesting story.  But there are a couple of, not exactly reservations, but at least observations I would make:

a.  the US military obviously fully co-operated with the film, and it's no wonder, given they are the heroes of the piece.   But the movie does perhaps treat them as so superbly efficient that, on reflection,  they seem just about too good to be true.   I can't really call this a criticism of the film - the US military probably deserves some unreserved cinematic high praise at least once in a while - but it wouldn't have hurt to shown one military character being a bit more human.

b.  Given that I have spent the last decade or so concentrating more on children's movies than adult ones, this was the first film I have seen by Paul Greengrass.  David Stratton and others have long complained or at least noted this director's love of hand held camera, or "shaky cam", and I have finally seen what it is like.

It's self evident that the style works best for documentary style story telling, and this movie certainly fits the bill.   As I have already indicated, it didn't ruin the movie for me, but I have got to say, it must surely make a director's job a hell of a lot easier to do an entire movie in this fashion.  I mean, it's virtually a complete jettison of concern about careful composition of a shot:  the actors just need to be approximately where they should be, and the cameraman just has to get them approximately in shot.  I would also assume it makes shooting the film a hell of a lot faster.

But given its limitations, it would seem almost a cheat to me if Greengrass got a Director's award for the film, no matter how much critics liked it.     

Still, I recommend it.

Yet another possible solar/hydrogen "breakthrough"

Researchers create a low-cost, long-lasting water splitter made of silicon and nickel

New proposals for putting together solar power and hydrogen production from water seem to be cropping up all the time.   It would be good if one of them ever got to production scale.

I see this article suggests the hydrogen would be used in fuel cells to generate power overnight or when it is cloudy.   (Well, hot salt systems seem to work overnight anyway.)   I wonder if this is more efficient than just burning hydrogen under the salts to keep them hot?  

Some other article I read recently suggested that putting small nuclear reactors at solar power stations could work well too.  I can't find it right now, though...

Friends in high places

Gina Rinehart meets Coalition MPs in secret trip to Canberra

Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart, invited a small group of Coalition friends for drinks in her private hotel suite, after planning a secret flight to Canberra to visit the Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce.

Some of Mrs Rinehart's closest political friends, the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and Liberal Party senators Cory Bernardi and Michaelia Cash, were invited to join the billionaire for the intimate gathering on Wednesday night.

The iron ore magnate, who has vigorously supported Prime Minister Tony Abbott's plans to abolish the carbon and mining taxes, suggested the politicians meet for drinks in her Canberra hotel room to avoid media attention.

It is understood the reason for Mrs Rinehart's surprise trip to Canberra was so she could attend Parliament House to watch Mr Joyce's maiden speech on Thursday as the newly elected MP for New England.

It is understood Mrs Rinehart's secretary booked a room in the Hyatt Hotel and organised a private jet to fly from Sydney to Canberra late on Wednesday.

The billionaire had also planned to meet senators Bernardi and Cash and the Speaker, Ms Bishop, for lunch on Thursday after Mr Joyce's speech.

Yeah, well, that's a great look isn't it.  Not just swinging by to dine with old buddy Joyce, but to meet up with the new Speaker of the house, during a term in which several policies in which Gina is personally interested financially will be hotly contested.    

 

And Abbott's idea of government in secret (covered well on 7.30 last night) continues to attract only muted criticism from the Murdoch press.

 

Abbott is just showing himself as the most appalling hypocrite, even by the normally low standards of politicians.