The blockbuster not doing so well at the box office...

Suggestions for lines for Peta to be saying welcome.

I think it's Twitter worthy as it is, though.

Update:  that was a hint to someone, anyone, with a Twitter account to post it to auspol.  :-)

BTW, I haven't seen the movie yet. Next weekend.

Update 2:   I have previously been critical of politicians who call a broken promise a lie.  (And yes, I don't give credit to Labor when they do that to Abbott either.)

But just on the radio this morning, I heard Abbott repeat what is a clear lie from 2011 when giving his press conference with (his only) international buddy on climate change, Stephen Harper:

“We should do what we reasonably can to limit emissions and avoid man-made climate change but we shouldn’t clobber the economy, and that’s why I’ve always been against a carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme, because it harms our economy without necessarily helping the environment.”

This is a lie.   As Bernard Keane noted in 2011, Abbott tried to "un-lie" (my word, not Bernard's) the same claim he made back then by a later qualification:

 Oddly, despite the media attention, most missed Mr Abbott’s particularly risible remark. It wasn’t merely that Abbott claimed he had never supported a carbon tax or an ETS — a claim so demonstrably untrue even The Australian mentioned it. He belatedly qualified that by adding the caveat “as leader” hours later, the worst recovery since Basil Fawlty, learning his American guest enjoyed the works of Harold Robbins, pretended to be lambasting someone else. “Oh Harold Robbins. I was talking about… Harold Robinson.”

 Years later, and he's back with the same claim, with no qualification.

For all of the gigantic (and undeserved) kerfuffle from the public about Gillard (allegedly) breaking a promise when her general sympathy to the idea of carbon pricing was well known, Tony Abbott with his "say anything" approach to climate change and a host of other issues is truly the one who has earned the "liar" title.

Weekend update

*  I am happy to report that the chicken recipe as noted last week is quite nice.  But can someone explain to me why, for as long as I can remember, baking chicken always takes about 1 1/2 to 2 times longer than recipes suggest?

*  I didn't even want to go to the Lifeline Bookfest which is on again this long weekend at the Convention centre.  (I have probably 10 books from previous years' visits awaiting my attention.)  But my wife wanted to go, and while there, I remembered that I wouldn't mind reading a biography of Einstein.   Located! (And it was the only bio I saw about him in the whole place.)  Cost $6.  Also got a couple of short Graham Greenes I hadn't heard about before.   A successful visit.

*  Had a couple of nice craft beers at the Hoo Ha Bar yesterday afternoon.   A nice, comfy bar close to Southbank which one could imagine being happy at every Saturday afternoon.   (And the craft beer movement is a fantastic thing that I trust will never end.  Why did it take so long to happen, though, I wonder?)

*  Long weekends are good, aren't they?  They avoid that neither-here-nor-there feeling of a Sunday afternoon in a normal workweek.  I have never got the hang of Sunday afternoons.  Maybe it's because I used to do homework at that time when I was a student if there wasn't anything else on that weekend, but even as an adult it goes something like this:  Saturdays are a welcome break, and good for shopping and either eating out (if you are single or in childless coupledom) or cooking something that take more time; Sunday mornings are relaxing for a special breakfast and a political review on TV, followed by a relaxed lunch; but Sunday afternoons are just too close to Monday to feel entirely comfortable with them.

* I have not yet seen Edge of Tomorrow.  I might, tomorrow.  (Or maybe next weekend when daughter is on a sleep over.)

Always the same answer

Well, if you ask me, Adam Creighton's latest column is a complete schemozzle, and illustrates again why his type of analysis is best ignored:  it doesn't matter what the problem is, the answer is always going to be less taxes, less bureaucracy, and less welfare bludgers.  Oh, and suppress wages in the meantime too.  

Antarctic sea ice noted

What is the paradox of increasing Antarctic sea ice really telling us?

Not a bad look at the question of why Antarctic sea ice has been increasing, while Arctic sea ice (in summer) has been dramatically decreasing.

By the way, the Arctic is well into melt season, and tracking at pretty low levels.  (I would paste a pic here, but the NSIDC site is currently down.)

A cultural change

Back on the Colorado marijuana experiment, it's interesting to read this:

In Colorado, reviews of pot are fast eclipsing fuddy duddy reviews of wine, restaurants, cigars and pretty much everything else. 

Since January, the Denver Post has been running a culture-of-cannabis website called The Cannabist. It reviews every conceivable variety of pot (recreational marijuana is legal in the state) but also pot’s accouterments, including pipes, vapor pens, cuisine prepared with pot and outdoor activities made more enjoyable by being high. 

Ricardo Baca, 37, the Post’s marijuana editor and founder of The Cannabist, tells ABC News the site has been a huge hit (no pun intended) since its January debut. He declines to quote numbers for how much traffic it has gotten, but says, “We launched three or four days before recreational sales of marijuana started in Colorado, and we came out of the gate strong. The traffic has been unreal.”

This suggests that legalisation of the product will have a significant cultural effect towards encouraging teenage use of it, which is exactly what you do not want.  

Ironically, I read elsewhere that the legalisation law requires that the first slice of government profit from it has to go to school funding.   Yet my prediction (which will take some time to see if it comes true) is that the major concern about the social effect of legalisation will come from its effects on teenage education (and teenage health effects generally).     We will see.

A question

The oddest political story around at the moment, apart from the Bolt/Jones/Turnbull fight, is the one wherein the ABC is saying that "leading Liberals" told them that the Nationals had been gamed on the matter of the petrol excise increase.

Who in the Liberal Party has the motivation to be causing such trouble for the Coalition at the moment?  (I find it hard to believe it would be Turnbull himself; and besides which, the ABC has always indicated it was not a single source.)

What was I saying about early evidence?

Here's a rule of thumb:  any reporter who uses "nanny state" in his writing deserves to be a blogger, not a serious journalist; and chances are they're aligned with libertarianism and/or the IPA.

Christian Kerr falls into that category with his report today under the shock! horror! headline "Labor's plain packaging fails as cigarette sales rise."  Apparently, industry figures (gee, no room for manipulation there, I guess, Christian?)  indicate a .3 percent rise in tobacco sales in the first full year of plain packaging.

0.3!   A catastrophe.

Libertarian types, of course, might be rather loathe to consider a few factors here:

a.   industry manipulation of their sales or sales figures.  No, this industry has always been scrupulously honest, hey?

b.   (I don't know if this is possible, I would have to check, but then I'm sure Kerr hasn't) stockpiling of cigarettes to avoid price rises;

c.   even, possibly, a genuine smoker led rebellion against "nanny statism", but one which is so small that the true way plain packaging was expected to work will not be deterred for long.

I always understood that the point of plain packaging was mainly to deter teenagers from starting.  I would not dismiss the possibility that, for a very, very small number of dumb teenagers (being inspired by parents in the IPA, probably), might take up smoking so as laugh in the face of "nanny statism".    But for every one of them, how many teenage girls will be subtly put off by the ugly packaging?

Time will tell, but it was never reasonable to expect that huge numbers of smokers would immediately be butting out because of this change.

As for the Australian - I don't remember looking up before whether Rupert was a smoker, but I see he certainly has had tobacco connections in the past:

Media magnate Rupert Murdoch joined the Board of Directors of Philip Morris in August 1989 and he continued to serve on their board into the 1990s. [1][2] The relationship appeared to serve PM well. A 1985 PM internal report shows that information that could negatively affect the tobacco industry was routinely withheld from Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide:

As regards the media, we plan to build similar relationships to those we now have with Murdoch's News Limited with other newspaper proprietors. Murdoch's papers rarely publish anti-smoking articles these days. To sum up, then, on using our natural allies. We have made a start; we have proved that it can be done; we have found that they can be a very effective force; and we intend to do more in the future.

Update:  Stephen Koukoulas says some Bureau of Stats figures paint a completely different picture of substantial dropping consumption.  There may be nothing to explain at all, apart from tobacco company spin, and The Australian's shameful shilling for them.

Update 2:   of course, I knew Sinclair Davidson would be gobbling up this tobacco company promoted news without the slightest hint of skepticism, just like an ex smoker from a think tank with known past, if not current, ties to the tobacco industry, would.   In fact, as a long time reader of Catallaxy, my expectation from the various self disclosures there is that something approaching 95% of its thread participants are ex or current smokers.    The evidence from there suggests smoking is more harmful to cognition than people recognise.  

And another thought - if (as someone suggests in that thread) the figures are right, and explained by smokers moving to cheaper brands and therefore smoking slightly more - a .3% on average increase in smoking by existing smokers is not going to matter one pinch in the public health issue. 

What is much more important is the effect on total number of smokers - particularly new, young smokers taking it up.   And that could only be answered by survey information, over time.

Is that so hard for an economist to work out?

Update 3:  in a pretty desperate attempt to save his argument in light of the Koukoulas cited ABS figures, I see that SD has gone to the monthly quarterly figures to declare that plain packaging still led to higher consumption, and arguing that consumption only dropped off after the excise increase.

Seems to me this doesn't rebut my stockpiling possible explanation, and how with any certainly can you say the excise increase must be the sole reason for the drop off?

But let's not let considering all possible factors get in the way of simplistic story fed to us by tobacco companies, hey?  

Update 4:  don't believe me, just read The Guardian.

Learning about Leo

Last night, in my post about Einstein, I noted that I was not familiar with Leó Szilárd, who apparently wrote the letter that Einstein signed that convinced Roosevelt to get going with developing the atomic bomb.   The letter has its own Wikipedia entry, and here's the key part of the fascinating story:

On July 12, 1939, Szilárd and Wigner drove in Wigner's car to Peconic Bay on Long Island, where Einstein was staying.^[9] When they explained about the possibility of atomic bombs, Einstein replied: Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht (I had not thought of that).^[10] Szilárd dictated a letter in German to the Belgian Ambassador to the United States. Wigner wrote it down, and Einstein signed it. At Wigner's suggestion, they also prepared a letter for the State Department explaining what they were doing and why, giving it two weeks to respond if it had any objections.^[9]

This still left the problem of getting government support for uranium research. Another friend of Szilárd's, the Austrian economist Gustav Stolper, suggested approaching Alexander Sachs, who had access to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sachs told Szilárd that he had already spoken to the President about uranium, but that Fermi and Pegram had reported that the prospects for building an atomic bomb were remote. He told Szilárd that he would deliver the letter, but suggested that it come from someone more prestigious. For Szilárd, Einstein was again the obvious choice.^[6] Sachs and Szilárd drafted a letter riddled with spelling errors and mailed it to Einstein.^[11]

Szilárd set out for Long Island again on August 2. Wigner was unavailable, so this time Szilárd co-opted another Hungarian physicist, Edward Teller to do the driving. Einstein dictated the letter in German. On returning to Columbia University, Szilárd dictated the letter in English to a young departmental stenographer, Janet Coatesworth. She later recalled that when Szilárd mentioned extremely powerful bombs, she "was sure she was working for a nut".^[12] Ending the letter with "Yours truly, Albert Einstein" did nothing to alter this impression. Both the letter and a longer explanatory letter were then posted to Einstein....

The letter was signed by Einstein and posted back to Szilárd, who received it on August 9.^[12] Szilárd gave both the short and long letters, along with a letter of his own, to Sachs on August 15. Sachs asked the White House staff for an appointment to see the President, but before one could be set up, the administration became embroiled in a crisis due to Germany's invasion of Poland, which started World War II.^[14] Sachs delayed his appointment until October so that the President would give the letter due attention, securing an appointment on October 11. On that date he met with the President, the President's secretary, Brigadier General Edwin "Pa" Watson, and two ordnance experts, Army Lieutenant Colonel Keith F. Adamson and Navy Commander Gilbert C. Hoover. Roosevelt summed up the conversation as: "Alex, what you are after is to see that the Nazis don't blow us up."^[15]

But back to Leo.

His own Wikipedia entry is pretty good, and I feel I should know his name, given he held the patent (with Fermi) for the nuclear reactor!   (He had also developed a type of refrigerator with Einstein in the 1920's, and the linear accelerator.  Quite a significant scientist.) 

The most interesting part in the Wiki entry, though, is about Leo's attempt to get the US to merely demonstrate the atomic bomb in the hopes it would convince the Japanese to surrender:

As the war continued, Szilárd became increasingly dismayed that scientists were losing control over their research to the military, and argued many times with General Leslie Groves, military director of the project. His resentment towards the U.S. government was exacerbated by his failure to prevent the destructive use of the atomic bomb through having a test explosion that could be witnessed by Japanese observers who would then have the opportunity to surrender and spare lives...

He drafted the Szilárd petition advocating demonstration of the atomic bomb.

And from that last link (another Wikipedia entry):

The Szilárd petition, drafted by scientist Leó Szilárd, was signed by 70 scientists working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois. It was circulated in July 1945 and asked President Harry S. Truman to consider an observed demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb first, before using it against people. However, the petition never made it through the chain of command to President Truman. It also was not declassified and made public until 1961.

In reaction to the petition, General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, sought evidence of unlawful behavior against Szilárd.^[2] Most of the signers lost their jobs in weapons work. 

Leo was hoping to get to Roosevelt via his wife, but the timing was unfortunate. Here's the short version:

Using another letter from Einstein, Szilard scheduled a meeting with Eleanor Roosevelt for May 8. He planned to give her information that would caution President Roosevelt about the danger of a nuclear arms race if the a-bomb was used before an international control agreement could be discussed with the Soviets. But on April 12, President Roosevelt died. 

An attempt to meet with President Truman led instead to a May 28, 1945 meeting with James Byrnes, who would soon become Sec. of State. But Byrnes thoroughly disagreed with Szilard's views.

For the longer version, straight from a 1960 interview with Szilárd, go here.

The other interesting thing in the interview is that he disputes the argument that America could not afford to put on a mere demonstration because it only had two atomic bombs:

Q Did you have any knowledge of Secretary of War Stimson's concern at this time on the question of using the bomb?
A I knew that Mr. Stimson was a thoughtful man who gave the bomb serious consideration. He was one of the most thoughtful members of the Truman cabinet. However, I certainly have to take exception to the article Stimson wrote after Hiroshima in "Harper's Magazine." He wrote that a "demonstration" of the A-bomb was impossible because we had only two bombs. Had we staged a "demonstration" both bombs might have been duds and then we would have lost face.

Now, this argument is clearly invalid. It is quite true that at the time of Hiroshima we had only two bombs, but it would not have been necessary to wait for very long before we would have had several more.

 It's not explained how long, but it's nonetheless interesting that Leo strongly disputes this argument.

So Leo certainly sounds like an interesting, somewhat controversial character.   Maybe good material for a movie, but then again he was not exactly matinee idol material.  Here is he with Einstein in 1946, looking a bit like Jackie Gleason to me:

(And who knew Albert liked such long pipes.)

Here is Leo at some unspecified older age:

Note exactly Tom Hanks material.

After the war he got into biological research, although it's not clear how significant that work was, except that he managed to treat his own bladder cancer with radiation successfully.

Another slightly peculiar thing about him from this chronology of his life:  he appears to have met his future wife in 1930 (when he was 32), but didn't marry her 1951 (aged 53.)   No kids, I assume.

Here's a very old web page (not updated since 2000 apparently - it really takes you back to how the internet used to look)  with many more links to further material about him.

The post about him at Restricted Data: the Nuclear Secrecy Blog (which looks like a good site generally) starts:

Leo Szilard is one of the most fascinating characters of the nuclear age. He was colorful, principled, clever, and often genuinely ahead of his time. And he always shows up early in the story.

That sounds about right.

Nietzsche should've kept away from the cannabis

Heh.  This post contains a nice thematic mix from several recent blog posts.

I don't even remember why I looked up the topic of whether or not Nietzsche died of neurosyphilis.  OK, yes I do:  it was because I Googled whether Beethoven had died a virgin (the jury's out on that), but someone's list of famous virgins contained Nietzsche too.   (It suggested he got his syphilis medically - something I had never heard before, but I haven't tracked down who came up with that idea.)

Anyhow, it turns out that there has been a substantial body of doubt about whether N really did have the dreaded disease at all, and you can read on line a pretty good argument made out in 2003 by Leonard Sax in the Journal of Medical Biography as to why he did not.   (It's a .pdf).

Given that the Wikipedia entry for N contains not only the common belief that he caught syphilis from a female prostitute, but also an alternative theory that he was gay and caught it in a male brothel in Genoa, it's pretty clear that is very broad uncertainty indeed as to what went on in Friedrich's sex life, if anything.

The Sax article is particularly interesting because it notes that there are examples of  bizarre thoughts going on in Nietzsche's head, suggestive of mental issues, going right back to adolescence. 

Not only that, but I also get to drag in my personal jihad against cannabis from this part of the paper, regarding N's sisters attempt to rehabilitate the image of her brother:

Mobius’ book came as a shock to Elisabeth. [He had re-stated the belief that N died of syphilis.]  She set about the task of writing a definitive biography of her brother herself, to refute Mobius’ ‘‘vile insinuations’’. Her subsequent biography portrayed her brother as a saint. She included letters and testimonials from Nietzsche’s closest friends to the effect that he had always been chaste. Elisabeth suggested that the trigger for Nietzsche’s collapse was a mysterious ‘‘Javanese tea’’, which she claimed to have identified as Cannabis indica. Subsequent scholarship showed that Elisabeth’s suggestion was fantasy. There is no mention of ‘‘Javanese tea’’ or any variety of cannabis in any authenticated letter to or from Nietzsche. Elisabeth herself never mentioned it until the publication of Mobius’ book in 1902.

What is this "cannabis indica"?   Well, the Hash Museum of Amsterdam website (not a regular cyberhaunt of mine, but I figured it was more likely to be reliable than the scores of pothead sites that came up) confirms that it is closely related to cannabis sativa and certainly contains lots of cannabinoids and is used to get high.

OK, so it turns out no one believes Elisabeth was right; but as I say, biographers can't even decide if he was a virgin or male brothel customer.

I therefore choose to believe what suits my biases:  Nietzsche may well have gone mad due to using cannabis.  Take that, Jason Soon... hahahaha.

Update:  first version spelt his name about 4 different ways.  I think I have finally got it right.  Who can trust a philosopher whose name is so hard to remember, anyway?

Why bother?

I'm waiting to find someone who knows something about Indonesia to explain why Yudhoyono would even bother meeting with Tony Abbott, given that he's on the way out.  (SBY, that is.  Not Tony, as much as I wish Andrew Bolt was right that Malcolm Turnbull was about to stage some sort of bloody Game of Thrones style coup while Tone's away.) 

The Jakarta Post reports that the meeting didn't mean much:

While praising his host President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as a great statesman and a true friend of his country, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has apparently chosen to wait for the new Indonesian president before reaching substantial agreements on such sensitive issues as intelligence gathering and boat people, which have rocked relations between the two countries since Abbott’s election last year.

 Maybe  SBY was just happy to be meeting anyone, because the Post also reports:

With his final term winding down, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has three times this week chastised Cabinet ministers and military generals for getting involved in the presidential campaign and neglecting their duties.

In a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, coinciding with the start of the 30-day presidential campaign period, Yudhoyono reiterated a statement he made on Tuesday that his ministers should take leave or resign if participating in campaign activities would prevent them from performing their main duties.

On Wednesday, Yudhoyono went even further by saying that according to his own “observation and judgment” some of his ministers were no longer focused on doing their jobs.

Still victim mongering

I see that Right wing victim mongering on behalf of Chris Kenny continues apace.

Maybe I can set it out more clearly for them:

a. people who thought Chris Kenny was a ****head before the Chaser skit still think he's a ****head;

b. pretty much everyone who didn't think he was a ****head before the skit still don't think he is; except for those who thought his taking defamation action for an obvious photoshop that would convince no one that he had sex with dogs was an out of proportion response;

c. if you start defamation action, you keep the original story alive for much, much longer than would otherwise have occurred, and when it is not a matter of proving that the original story was a lie, why bother if the story hasn't made anyone change their opinion of you?

Now, leave me alone while I further work on the very special photoshops of Sinclair Davidson I keep encrypted on the hard drive.

PS:  may I remind readers, who might have just read poor old (wait a minute - he's younger than me) Sinclair's complaint that SBS replayed the offensive image, that (as I pointed on months ago) Andrew Bolt's blog has a permanent post up showing the image in all its "glory".

Has Sinclair ever suggested to Andrew, one of his biggest fans, that this might be just a little counterproductive to Kenny's complaint that he didn't want that to be the image that permanently appears on Google search for his kids to see?

In fact, the SBS brief replay of it will not affect Google search results at all; unlike his News Ltd pal's effort.

But SBS is public broadcasting and Bolt is a glorious part of private enterprise, or something .....

And just to be sure that no one misunderstands my position:   I don't like the Chaser team - they've been past their prime for many a year; they lack sensible self censorship and are part of the downwards spiral of what is acceptable in crudity on Australian TV comedy.

I didn't even think the Kenny skit made much sense as a joke.

The skit was offensive, just as much for the language as the image.  I have no problem with anyone (including Kenny) complaining about ABC standards in letting it on.

But it was not defamatory, anymore than would a photoshop of  an obviously fake nude Gina Rinehart in many different positions with Rupert Murdoch on a Hawaiian beach while being served drinks by Davidson in a mankini.  (I believe they were actually all in swimsuits at the time.)

And just as a public figure like Julia Gillard had to put up with Pickering doing cartoons of her nude and with a strap on at hand (and let me note that Bolt was happy to link to Pickering's blog  at least once, and in Catallaxy threads there were direct links to the Gillard cartoons), the best way to deal with it would have been to not grace it with more attention.  

Leaping on early evidence

Pro marijuana reformers are happy to be citing reduced crime figures for Colorado as a positive.

Of course, such early figures count for next to nothing.  The figures could mean anything, including that increasing the amount of time potential criminals are stoned saps away their motivation for getting out of the house. 

Anti regulation types will always claim dubious, early figures support them.   Look at Sinclair Davidson and the smoking lobby, who have been grabbing anything at all after plain package labelling came into effect to declare it a failure.   All sensible people would assume that it would take time for the effect to filter through, but that doesn't bother the ideologically motivated of the world.

As for full on marijuana legalisation, as in Colorado, the real test of it will be years away, on the effect that it has on things like the rate at which teenagers use it; academic performance in its high schools and colleges; and rates of early on set schizophrenia.  The economy of the State could also, conceivably, be effected.   I mean, it's not like Nimbin is the economic powerhouse of Australia. 

But no one is going to know the true effect of this experiment for quite a while yet.

(And as a side note - the Maureen Dowd story does again show that the State simply did not properly think through the consequences of legalising the sale of edible marijuana.)

Warm weather

Every few days I Google around for record temperatures.  During May, apart from Australia being unusually warm, there were large parts of the Western side of the States getting unusually hot for the time of year, plus Japan and China.  I see today that Moscow is hot for the time of year.

I would be surprised if the averaged global temperature for the month is not significantly up. But I could be wrong...

Update:  a good discussion of where we are with the current El Nino situation is here.    It is, apparently, arguably, already a kind of weak El Nino, but it will be months before we know where it's really going.

Good economic figures hurt the Coalition's credibility

I am not sure that Labor, or journalists, are making these points as clearly as they should, since they seem to me to represent an entirely reasonable interpretation of the situation:

a.   clearly, the new Coalition government has not yet implemented anything of significance in terms of its effect on the performance of the economy;

b.   any good figures for the economy which have come out since the election eat into the credibility of the Coalition argument that the economy was suffering from Labor mismanagement.  In particular, it eats into (or rather, destroys) the credibility of the argument that the carbon tax or mining tax was having a harmful effect;

c.   the one clear thing which it seems may well harm the economy - consumer confidence - has taken a battering because of the announced Coalition's budget.  That is undeniable, there is no other explanation.

Gun nuts fighting gun nuts

Assault-rifle-toting Texans get NRA to back down on 'weird' claims - CSMonitor.com

By way of further background to this example of severe American weirdness, try this Mother Jones article. 

Who knew that a lot of Texans thought the Taliban looked cool?

Einstein summarised

I enjoyed this article about Einstein and his fame.  I've never read a biography of him; perhaps it's time I did.

I didn't know that he really did make serious money from his fame, although he did lose some of it through his first marriage break up too.  Some extracts:

In college, Einstein had fallen in love, against his family’s wishes, with a fellow physics student named Mileva Marić. They had two sons (Hans, a future engineer, and Eduard, who died in an asylum) and packed plenty of Sturm und Drang into just a few years. It didn’t help that, whenever a domestic storm kicked up, Einstein buried himself in his equations and ignored the problem.

Einstein eventually divorced Marić, and married Elsa, his cousin and a mother of two girls, in 1919. And although his domestic life quieted down, the price was not cheap. For one thing, Einstein now had two families to support. Furthermore, in a desperate gambit to rid himself of Marić in 1918, he’d agreed to give her—for he expected to win it soon—the cash bonus that accompanied the Nobel Prize. (The sum turned out to be nearly fifty times his annual salary, with which Marić bought three houses.) To compound the problem, Marić and their sons moved to expensive Switzerland while Einstein remained in Germany, where inflation was laying waste to the economy: In 1923 alone, the price of bread rose from 700 marks per loaf to one billion marks. Fame allowed Einstein to hoist himself out of this financial hole. He requested fees as high as $15,000, almost $200,000 today, for a talk. Some institutions balked; others happily paid what they could for the honor of a visit.

 Also of interest - I don't recall the name of Leo Szilard, who apparently actually came up with the core idea for an atomic bomb:

Despite his pacifism, he also supported U.S. involvement in World War II. He donated $11.5 million from the sale of a handwritten copy of his 1905 paper on special relativity to the war effort. His celebrity also changed the course of the war. A less famous colleague of Einstein’s realized in the late 1930s that uranium could be harnessed into an atomic weapon. Having no pull himself, Leó Szilárd turned to Einstein to alert President Franklin Roosevelt, who soon initiated the Manhattan Project. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein regretted even his peripheral involvement in the project. For once, he refused to talk to reporters.

 The magazine this article appears in looks generally pretty interesting -  Humanities - The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Peta causing more problems

Hard not to snigger:

The deputy leader of the Nationals was asked about the power Peta Credlin wields while being interviewed by Channel Ten’s The Project on Tuesday evening.

“Peta has a strong role,” he said. “You have to be to be the chief of staff to the prime minister. You wouldn't expect to be a wallflower and she’s not.”

He said Credlin answered the “fallacy” that there are no strong women involved in running the country. “Peta Credlin … certainly ticks all those boxes. And I’m on good information from her husband that she is definitely a woman.”

He did apologise abruptly when (as far as I could tell) no one laughed.

Creighton again

Readers will have noticed my dislike of Oz journalist Adam Creighton for his spin-riffic economics analysis.  Here's a tweet from him today, confirming my disdain:

Tolstoy's Meaning of Life

I quite liked this lengthy summary of Tolstoy's (late) mid life Meaning of Life spiritual crisis.   In a general sense, I pretty much agree with his take on things, although my dislike of physical exercise makes me somewhat less inclined to be impressed with the spirituality of peasants labouring in the fields.

Tolstoy missed out on the modern quantum and cosmological mysteries of science which provide another way that people can legitimately get ideas about how the finite and infinite may interact.   (Although, I would have to admit, that biological science with its attack on free will works in the opposite direction - towards encouraging dismay about whether humans are even in control of themselves.)   

All change sides

It's a really weird political situation at the moment, isn't it?

As we can see in matters of science (climate change) and economics (rabid anti-Keynesianism and massive over simplification about debt and taxes), large slabs of the Right have gone all "ideology over evidence", which was something that the Left formerly specialised in.

We can clearly add to this list "self pitying victimhood" as shown by Andrew "I lost a court case and I risk losing another one if I don't do better research - you need to change the law" Bolt; Gerard "why won't the ABC put on a conservative host?*" Henderson; and Chris "people might really think I would have sex with a dog!" Kenny. 

In fact, all of the Coalition moaning about the ABC is victim mentality.

Sure, sure:  when it comes to sexuality, the Left has victim claiming status for that still firmly aligned with them.

But to a very large extent, the Right wants to feel sorry for itself:  probably because (as they have just realised) they are not all that intrinsically popular.  People do actually want centrism. ** It must be the ABC's fault, then, for not hosting a conservative show.

To be fair, as much as I hate doing so with him, Tony Abbott looked positively embarrassed about Andrew Bolt getting upset on his behalf last Sunday about Abbott's wife getting stupid criticism from Tim Mathieson.  (Yes, I did watch Bolt for the first ten minutes because Abbott was there from the opening.)  So I don't actually think that Abbott is so much into this victimhood thing - but it is obvious that a huge slab of his strongest supporters are.

Update:  I forgot to add to this "victimhood" business on the Right the way they demand that every single Left sympathetic voice in the land join in condemnation of sexism, even when it is made by someone on the Right (like Clive Palmer).   Not enough that the Leader makes a quick and unqualified attack on Palmer - every single person who ever agreed that Gillard faced sexist attacks is now supposed to find a media outlet to say "Oh, and it is also wrong against Credlin".   Give me a break, and get a life.


* I don't know if Henderson reads Catallaxy, but it is widely acknowledged, even in that collection of Boltheads, that the one prominent Right wing show on TV is often pretty awful due to his poor broadcast media skills.   Henderson himself is clearly not capable of the job, and in fact I have no knowledge of any likely conservative figure who has an obviously appealing media presence.  This fact is resolutely ignored by those calling for a "conservative" show.

** thanks to monty for indicating this was an interesting post.

Another malaria post

Wow.  Ed Darrell, who blogs at Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, seems to really be the man to take the fight to the Right on the matter of the denigration of Rachel Carson and the deeply entrenched meme that DDT was banned everywhere, undeservedly, and that this caused the death of millions from malaria.

The malaria cure

Here's a rather fascinating story from medical history:  for a couple of decades in the first half of the 20th century, deliberately infecting poor sufferers of neurosyphilis with malaria was actually a reputable and (it seems) pretty widespread treatment.  The fever seemed to help quite a few recover enough to leave asylums, although that article notes that there was little in the way of detailed follow up. 

And the problem of neurosyphilis was a major one:

Many patients were involuntarily institutionalized in epidemic numbers: in the early 20th century, neurosyphilis was responsible for 5 to 10% of all psychiatric admissions.

I don't think I have ever heard of this treatment before. 

Good grief

Self-driving cars: A solution for Saudi women? | GulfNews.com

From the article:

Will women in Saudi Arabia be able to take advantage of Google’s new self-driving cars to move around?

The questions has popped up in the minds of those who believe that women who cannot legally have a driving licence can soon use the cars without breaking traffic rules or social taboos, since they will be riding and not driving....

A Saudi scholar recently argued that allowing women to drive meant changing the whole social structure.

“If we allow women to drive, then we will have to drop the concept that women need a mahram (an adult male relative) with them as they travel,” Habeeb Al Mutairi said.

“And if a woman is allowed to travel freely, then she will need a hotel to stay in. In such a case, we have to abolish the decision that women cannot stay alone in hotels. This, in turn, means that we should allow women to take up positions in hotels and accommodation facilities in
order to serve [other] women.

"We will also need to set up special women’s section in all traffic police stations and in all workshops to help women drivers who have flat tyres or mechanical problems with their cars,” he said.

Oddballs

I noted recently the enthusiasm amongst commenters at Catallaxy for "hard man" Scott Morrison.  Real Prime Minister material, quite of few of them reckon.

Turns out that polling indicates that they are in a "elite" (actually, the opposite of "elite", whatever word that is) of 1% of the public who agree with them:

Soldier on, brave fantasists of Catallaxy. 

Not sure it's happening here

David Appell puts up a map of tropical cyclones from a study which says there is a long term poleward shift in where their maximum intensity happens.

I'm not sure that this is happening around my part of Australia, though.  I have been saying for years (and friends of my era agree) that it seemed not uncommon in my childhood for small cyclones to drift down towards Brisbane and some would reach the stretch of coast between the Sunshine Coast and Bundaberg.   That seems to have stopped as of about the 1980's.  Still, I guess that is a different thing from where the maximum intensity occurs.   Some BOM person needs to explain to me what has been going on around Queensland since I was a child.

OK, perhaps they already have:

Trends in tropical cyclone activity in the Australian region (south of equator; 105-160°E) show that the total number of cyclones has decreased in recent decades. However, the number of stronger cyclones (minimum central pressure less than 970 hPa) has not declined. 

This overall decrease may partly be due to an improved discrimination between tropical cyclones and sub-cyclone intensity tropical lows. Tropical cyclone numbers in the Australian region are influenced by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon and the decrease in total cyclone numbers may be associated with an increased frequency of El Niño events. A number of long-term trends and oscillations have been observed in other parts of the world, extending over many decades. It is difficult to sort these natural trends from those that may result from global warming.

Potential changes in tropical cyclone occurrence and intensity are discussed in detail in the 2007 report, Climate Change in Australia Technical Report - Chapter 5: Regional climate change projections (8.9MB) See: Chapter 5.9.1 Severe weather: Tropical cyclones. There have been three recent studies producing projections for tropical cyclone changes in the Australian region. Two suggest that there will be no significant change in tropical cyclone numbers off the east coast of Australia to the middle of the 21st century. The third study, based on the CSIRO simulations, shows a significant decrease in tropical cyclone numbers for the Australian region especially off the coastline of Western Australia. The simulations also show more long-lived eastern Australian tropical cyclones although one study showed a decrease in long-lived cyclones off the Western Australian coast.
Each of the above studies finds a marked increase in the severe Category 3-5 storms. Some also reported a poleward extension of tropical cyclone tracks.

Projected changes in tropical cyclone characteristics are inherently tied to changes in large-scale teleconnection patterns such as ENSO, changes in sea surface temperature and changes in deep convection. As global climate models improve, their simulation of tropical cyclones is expected to improve, thus providing greater certainty in projections of tropical cyclone changes in a warmer world.

Yet more bacteria found where they weren't expected

Gee, it seems like every week there's a story about bacteria being found in parts of the body where they weren't expected.  (It was the placenta last week.)

This week - it's the healthy male urogenital tract:

Much like the vaginal microbiome differs among women and changes over time, the penis is home to a variety of bacteria that vary with a man’s age, sexual activities, and whether he is circumcised, among other things. And it’s not just the skin that envelops the male sexual organ that’s inhabited by microbes: researchers continue to identify bacteria that dwell within the urogenital tract, a site once considered sterile in the absence of infection.

David Nelson, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Indiana University in Bloomington, was investigating Chlamydia infections when he and his colleagues found evidence to suggest that the sexually transmitted pathogens in the urogenital tract were obtaining metabolites from other microbes. “There was a signature in the chlamydial genome that suggested this organism might be interacting with other microorganisms,” said Nelson. “That’s what initially piqued our interest. And when we went in and started to look, we found that there were a lot more [microbes] than we would have anticipated being there.”

The researchers found that some men pass urine containing a variety of lactobacilli and streptococci species, whereas others have more anaerobes, like Prevotella and Fusobacterium. In terms of overall composition, “we see a lot of parallels to the gut,” said Nelson, noting that there doesn’t seem to be a standout formula for a “healthy” urogenital tract. Commensal microbes within the urethra could make a man more susceptible to infection by supporting colonization by pathogens like Chlamydia, whereas bacteria that consume the environment’s nutrients could help prevent it. “We just don’t know at this point,” said Nelson.

I would presume that men who partake of a particular activity without condoms might generally have a larger number of bacteria to be found there, for obvious reasons. 

Amusing article about cranky academic

Slavoj Zizek calls students stupid and boring. Stop worshiping this man!

What Clive Palmer should have said

Yes, Clive Palmer was in error in claiming Tony Abbott wanted the PPL for Peta Credlin, because she is already covered by a generous public service leave plan (not to mention that it was extremely tacky because Credlin had gone public about her attempts to use IVF - unsuccessfully - to have a baby.)

No, what he should have said is that Abbott is wanting to look after his daughters.  (Or at least those of them, like Frances, who are in the private sector.) 

I've always thought that this was the most likely explanation for Abbott's weird adoption of this pet policy. 

Confirmation that ocean acidification is a scary experiment without precedent

Modern ocean acidification is outpacing ancient upheaval, study suggests

 I'm sure we've seen this conclusion about the comparative rate of ocean acidification from previous studies, but still:

Some 56 million years ago, a massive pulse of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere sent global temperatures soaring. In the oceans, carbonate sediments dissolved, some
organisms went extinct and others evolved.

Scientists have long suspected that ocean acidification played a part in the crisis—similar to today, as manmade CO2 combines with seawater to change its chemistry. Now, for the first time, scientists have quantified the extent of surface acidification from those ancient days, and the news is not good: the oceans are on track to acidify at least as much as they did then, only at a much faster rate.

In a study published in the latest issue of Paleoceanography, the scientists estimate that surface ocean acidity increased by about 100 percent in a few thousand years or more, and stayed that way for the next 70,000 years. In this radically changed environment, some creatures died out while others adapted and evolved. The study is the first to use the chemical composition of fossils to reconstruct surface ocean acidity at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of intense warming on land and throughout the oceans due to high CO2.

"This could be the closest geological analog to modern ocean acidification," said study coauthor Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "As massive as it was, it still happened about 10 times more slowly than what we are doing today."

 And the oceans do not fix themselves quickly:

The study confirms that the acidified conditions lasted for 70,000 years or more,
consistent with previous model-based estimates.

"It didn't bounce back right away," said Timothy Bralower, a researcher at Penn State who was not involved in the study. "It took tens of thousands of years to recover."

Krugman on the history of inequality

That Old-Time Inequality Denial - NYTimes.com

 This short, sharp post by Krugman on the Piketty/Giles controversy is well worth reading in full.  Heck, it's short, so let's just cut and paste it (please forgive me Paul):

Brad DeLong links to the now extensive list of pieces debunking the FT’s attempted
debunking of Thomas Piketty, and pronounces himself puzzled:

I still do not understand what Chris Giles of the Financial Times thinks he is doing here…

OK, I don’t know what Giles thought he was doing — but I do know what he was actually doing, and it’s the same old same old. Ever since it became obvious that inequality was rising — way back in the 1980s — there has been a fairly substantial industry on the right of inequality denial. This denial didn’t rely on any one argument, nor did it involve consistent objections. Instead, it involved throwing many different arguments against the wall, hoping that something would stick. Inequality isn’t rising; it is rising, but it’s offset by social mobility; it’s cancelled by greater aid to the poor (which we’re trying to destroy, but never mind that); anyway, inequality is good. All these arguments have been made at the same time; none of them ever gets abandoned in the face of evidence — they just keep coming back.

Look at my old article from 1992:  every single bogus argument I identified there is still being made today. And we know perfectly well why: it’s all about defending the 1 percent from the threat of higher taxes and other actions that might limit top incomes.

What’s new in the latest round is the venue. Traditionally, inequality denial has been carried out on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and like-minded venues. Seeing it expand
to the Financial Times is something new, and is a sign that the FT may be suffering from creeping Murdochization.

It's interesting to note his complaint that the right wing arguments against worrying about equality involved throwing up everything and seeing if anything would stick.

What other matter has been dealt with by the Right (particularly the American Right) in a similar way?   Climate change, of course.  (See the Skeptical Science list of 155 failed arguments against climate change and its effects.)

Yet, hilariously, the same Right wing which is attacking Piketty slapped themselves on the back last week about how they thought that Giles had shown that Piketty was "cherry picking" and fabricating his way to a position - just like those damn climate change scientists at the IPCC!  (See the country's wingnuttiest of all economists Steve Kates on that.)

Of course, they had gone off completely prematurely about Giles (see here for details) just as they did with the meaning of the "Climategate" emails, and the current atmospheric temperature record of the last decade or two.   And anyone with common sense could see that they were grasping at these things without thinking about it in any depth at all.

They continually claim that ideological motivation in others is overriding proper analysis, while being blind to their own ideological blinkers causing the outright error of refusing to believe detailed, repeat scientific analysis.

We live in very frustrating times.

There's much to be said for not being an artistic prodigy

As I always say, those of us who have no particular artistic talent at least have the consolation that we don't share the personal foibles that so often seem to accompany artistic prodigies.

I don't think I have ever read much about Beethoven's personal life before, but this review of a new book that concentrates on it indicates he was (yet another) eccentric and difficult artistic genius.  Some extracts:

In truth, Beethoven thrived as a strong-willed but socially adept virtuoso pianist and composer for his first 25 years or so. As he developed hearing problems in his late 20s, however, and moved toward the realization that the malady was irreversible, he began to turn inward. As he descended into deafness in his 30s and 40s, he grew increasingly mercurial, irritable, and paranoid. At times, he appeared to be fully irrational. He wrote emotional confessionals and fought with members of his family. He flirted with numerous women but was unable to sustain a lasting relationship. He moved restlessly from dwelling to dwelling, changing residences in Vienna more than 30 times in 35 years. A smart dresser in his youth, he appeared increasingly unkempt and disheveled. In his final decade, he became so dissipated that he was once mistaken for a vagabond and thrown into jail. By any measure, Beethoven’s personal life was bizarre....

The Beethovenian paradox of “crisis and creativity”—to use the phrase coined by Solomon—has been well described in the past. But no one before Suchet has focused quite so intensely, and so eagerly, on the crisis part—and the composer’s melodramatic highs and lows: stopping the orchestra during an already overly long performance and insisting that the players start again from the beginning; refusing to bow before passing royalty when walking in the park with Goethe; receiving a distinguished visitor with an unemptied chamber pot under the piano. Such stories, well known to historians, are too good to make up.

The review also touches on a huge fight over guardianship of a nephew Karl (with poor Karl attempting suicide at the age of 20), fights with his patron, and more.  But seeing this blog always likes to note gastrointestinal problems of the famous (well, Hitler in particular), it's interesting to note that Beethoven was also a sufferer:

Suchet also presents ongoing reports regarding Beethoven’s gastrointestinal issues, which run through the book like an idée fixe. These begin with a description of the stomach pains and diarrhea that Beethoven experienced before his first concert at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1794, followed by periodic updates on his irritable bowel syndrome, bad digestion, irregularity, acute constipation, colic, distended stomach, and more. While these disorders have been noted elsewhere, they are presented in unusual detail here, so much so that one begins to wonder whether the book might have been more aptly titled The Inner Beethoven. This may be more information about Beethoven’s bodily functions than we want to know.

Yet another candidate for an episode of the TV series concept I'm trying to sell to HBO about time travelling doctors delivering fecal transplants!   (Oddly, they're not returning my emails.)

Gun fantasies of the NRA

Of course, the NRA is continuing to run a "good guy with a gun" line about how the answer to mass shootings is to arm everyone.   I had not heard of this look at recent American mass shooting before, though:

Last year Mike Bloomberg's group issued a comprehensive study of mass shootings covering 2009 through 2013. Using a combination of law enforcement and media reports, the researchers were able to identify 43 mass shootings, using the FBI's definition of "mass shooting" as any incident in which at least four persons were killed by someone using a gun. Of these shootings, 40 percent arose out of domestic disputes, and at least 6 of the 17 shooters had been named in previous domestic assaults. In only 10 percent of the shootings was there evidence of prior contact between the perpetrator and a mental health professional, although friends and relatives of other shooters expressed some awareness that mental health issues might have precipitated the attacks.

Now let's get down to Colion's real nitty-gritty, the issue of multiple shootings in gun-free zones. The report states that, at maximum, one-third of these shootings took place in what might have been considered gun-free zones. But other than four school shootings, the Aurora movie theater and Fort Hood (the report was released before the Navy Yard shooting), it's not clear that any of the other 37 mass shootings took place in specific gun-free zones, although the researchers probably assumed that the two multiple shootings in Chicago and one in DC also took place in gun-free zones. And how many of the 43 multiple shootings ended with a "good guy" pulling out a gun? None. In every incident except one, the shooter either shot himself or was arrested by the police. The bystanders who subdued Jared Loughner after he shot Representative Giffords were unarmed. The recent Santa Barbara shootings took place in off-campus locations where anyone was legally able to carry a gun.

High intensity rain and English floods expected to increase

BBC News - Climate change to boost summer flash floods, says study

And once again, I see, Andrew Bolt demonstrates that he cannot get his brain around the concept that you can have a climate change which means (for some parts of the world) generally drier summers, interspersed with more intense rain and therefore sudden floods.  

The BBC article notes that this is indeed the expectation for at least part of England:

Both models found that summers in the future would be drier overall.
However, when it came to intense downpours, defined as more than 28mm per hour, the higher resolution model saw a significant increase.

Piketty: the response

I see that Piketty has made a detailed response to the Financial Times claims of errors, and it seems to have gone over well with most side line commentators.   Giles himself is still muttering.

Of most interest to me, though, has been that FT has really copped quite a pasting from many of its readers in comments for the way it handled this.  (See the comments to the two links above.)  Clearly, the opinion of a large number of their readers is that they really exaggerated the criticisms made by Giles in a very unwarranted fashion.

The fear of Piketty continues amongst the Right wing economists, though, with Steve Kates bloviating at Catallaxy about how Piketty "is an economic illiterate" over the weekend.

I also see that one response to Piketty that is being increasingly used as a fall back by free market types is to say "so what if he's right?  What does inequality matter anyway now that even the poor can afford a big screen TV?"  In fact, it was JC from Catallaxy (a very comfortably rich trader, who did a stint on Wall Street some years ago)  who brought to my attention this piece at Barrons which argues that position strenuously.  Who knew that a rich man would come out swinging for the position "inequality - it's always great!"?

In fact, I thought there had been a very large amount of economic commentary on the matter of inequality over the last few years that had most economists acknowledging problems for an economy if inequality gets too out of control.  As the readers of Catallaxy are notoriously disdainful of The Economist, perhaps they had missed it?   I suggest they go to the website and do a search.

As it happens, someone in comments to that Barrons article points out the author has come out with some surprising opinion in the past:

 Boudreaux argued in October 2009 that insider trading “is impossible to police and helpful to markets and "investors....Far from being so injurious to the economy that its practice must be criminalized, insiders buying and selling stocks based on their knowledge play a critical role in keeping asset prices honest—in keeping prices from lying to the public about corporate realities.

In a January 2013 article for the Wall Street Journal, Boudreaux and Mark Perry argued that the “progressive trope ... that America's middle class has stagnated economically since the 1970s” is “spectacularly wrong"".

But apart from the economics reasons for not wanting it, there has been much commentary regarding the social effects of inequality, and most reviews point out that Piketty spends a fair of time talking about these  in a historical context by reference to the stories of Austen and others.   Yet I see that Graham Young, the long time operator of Online Opinion (and at least formerly a part of the Liberal Party) make this recent criticism of the book:

I’m a third of the way through Piketty’s book and so far he hasn’t made a very good case at all – lots of graphs and correlations, but no reason to suppose that any particular level of inequality brings good or bad results. Perhaps he brings this together in the next two-thirds, but at this stage I’m not too worried if we have the same level of inequality as we had in the 20s.

 I responded in the thread:

You want an economist to tell you precisely when a certain level of inequality becomes problematic?
I would have thought that the matter is a question answered by an application of morality and common sense, not by a graph.

And I made that comment before reading this blog entry in The Economist which basically said the same thing, although I can't find the link right now.

It's pretty clear that Piketty is all the talk of the town because inequality was already a hot topic, and his work has provided something like a physicist's Grand Unified Theory about it, based on new and valuable data collection and interpretation.

But some ideologically committed people (many of them quite well off, of course) don't want to hear about it. 

Magnets and brains

Opposites attract and help repel depression

Magnetic stimulation is providing relief from severe depression after
only three treatments, providing an alternative to electroconvulsive
therapy for seriously ill patients.

The finding by researchers at The Alfred hospital means the
treatment can now be offered to patients needing rapidly effective
treatment, for example those who are suicidal or refusing to eat or
drink.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation involves applying a strong
magnetic field to particular areas of the brain, causing neurons to fire
and strengthening connections with other areas of the brain.

I'm not sure if they have any clear idea why it works, but it seems a big advance.

Urban rats discussed

How Portland Lives With, Not Against, Its Rats - Merilee D. Karr - The Atlantic

The article is mainly of interest for its discussion of rat behaviour when they are are not overcrowded.  (As contrasted with when they live in cities with heaps of food.)