Dimwits, indeed

On Sunday evening I called ISIS "violent dimwits", so I was pleased to have find some backing for the "dimwit" bit from someone who apparently was their captive:

They present themselves to the public as superheroes, but away from the camera are a bit pathetic in many ways: street kids drunk on ideology and power. In France we have a saying – stupid and evil. I found them more stupid than evil. That is not to understate the murderous potential of stupidity.

All of those beheaded last year were my cellmates, and my jailers would play childish games with us – mental torture – saying one day that we would be released and then two weeks later observing blithely, “Tomorrow we will kill one of you.” The first couple of times we believed them but after that we came to realise that for the most part they were bullshitters having fun with us.

They would play mock executions. Once they used chloroform with me. Another time it was a beheading scene. A bunch of French-speaking jihadis were shouting, “We’re going to cut your head off and put it on to your arse and upload it to YouTube.” They had a sword from an antique shop.

They were laughing and I played the game by screaming, but they just wanted fun. As soon as they left I turned to another of the French hostages and just laughed. It was so ridiculous.

As for their apocalyptic views:

They are totally indoctrinated, clinging to all manner of conspiracy theories, never acknowledging the contradictions.

Everything convinces them that they are on the right path and, specifically, that there is a kind of apocalyptic process under way that will lead to a confrontation between an army of Muslims from all over the world and others, the crusaders, the Romans. They see everything as moving us down that road. Consequently, everything is a blessing from Allah.

With their news and social media interest, they will be noting everything that follows their murderous assault on Paris, and my guess is that right now the chant among them will be “We are winning”. They will be heartened by every sign of overreaction, of division, of fear, of racism, of xenophobia; they will be drawn to any examples of ugliness on social media.

The writer, a Frenchman, then goes on to argue that France ought to back away from increased bombing, saying that it will only make matters worse.

And, indeed,  it would seem Tom Switzer feels the same way.  

But that's where I would disagree.   I have long suspected that Islamic State simply can't have a future as a successful economic state.  As Switzer writes:

It controls mainly desert in north-west Iraq and south-east Syria. Its gross domestic product is roughly the equivalent of Barbados or Eritrea. It has no navy, air force or ballistic missiles. Its army amounts to about 40,000 soldiers. It is not, contrary to what Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said, more menacing than Soviet communism during the Cold War. Underestimating terrorism is a mistake, but so too is endowing jihadists with far more capability than they have.

If bombing campaigns can be directed especially towards harming their ability to sell oil or trade in any way, I can only see that helping.   

 

And sorry, libertarians, but Switzer is also right when he concludes that a response to terrorism does involve "anti-terror laws that allow electronic surveillance to track terrorists at home and abroad."

 

In other articles that are a decent counter to the dimwit Right view (hello, Tony Abbott, most Republicans and Rupert Murdoch)  that it's the Greatest Crisis to Western Civilization Ever, I thought this one by Peter Beinart in The Atlantic was good.   Sure, we can expect terrorism to be attempted (or succeed) in the US and Australia because of our (limited) involvement in the Iraqi/Syrian problem.   While I certainly do not want an escalation of that, I can't find it in me to wish that all Western military involvement towards ending the territorial success of IS stop now.   

And finally, The Guardian linked to John Oliver's profane, funny, but accurate  explanation of why IS is doomed to fail.  It may be hard for the French to laugh yet, but mocking IS certainly seems an approach that they won't like.

(Oh, and good luck to the hackers who say they will up their cyberattacks on IS propaganda.  Why has it taken this long?   My only complaint, though is that IS dimwits act like they are in a movie, and I don't care for Anonymous hackers doing the same.)

Maybe not mindless, but still doomed to fail

Mindless terrorists? The truth about Isis is much worse | Scott Atran | Comment is free | The Guardian


There's parts of this column which are interesting, such as this:

There is a recruitment framework. The Grey Zone, a 10-page editorial in Isis’s online magazine Dabiq in early 2015, describes the twilight area occupied by most Muslims between good and evil, the caliphate and the infidel, which the “blessed operations of September 11” brought into relief. Quoting Bin Laden it said: “The world today is divided. Bush spoke the truth when he said, ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists’, with the actual ‘terrorist’ being the western crusaders.” Now, it said, “the time had come for another event to … bring division to the world and destroy the grey zone”. The attacks in Paris were the latest instalment of this
strategy, targeting Europe, as did the recent attacks in Turkey. There will be more, much more, to come.

And this sounds about right, when it comes to explaining the appeal of ISIS to disenchanted young men:

As I testified to the US Senate armed service committee and before the United Nations security council: what inspires the most uncompromisingly lethal actors in the world today is not so much the Qur’an or religious teachings. It’s a thrilling cause that promises glory and esteem. Jihad is an egalitarian, equal-opportunity employer: fraternal, fast-breaking, glorious, cool – and persuasive.

But overall, I think he's too pessimistic about how long it can last as a successful, on the ground, movement.

Inappropriate responses

Let's start with the soft Left:   of course some of them make soft headed, inappropriate, or nasty tweets after Islamic terrorism attacks.

But there's something deeply ironic about the likes of Sinclair Davidson and the increasingly dotty Rafe Champion (who has a recent post at Catallaxy with the catchy title: "Naming the enemy: The progressive left as a religion of hatred and division") getting outraged over a Lefty no body wishing Tim Wilson had been a victim in Paris, when their blog threads pretty routinely have comments after any terrorism attack recommending that Mecca be "nuked" as a means of solving all Islamic sourced problems.  Wishing the death of hundreds of thousands of anonymous residents of a city is not worthy of condemnation, apparently.  Being nasty towards a mate:  well, that's different.

Back to the Left again - talking about the situation in Libya and climate change is seen as some silly, opportunistic connection-making by many on the Right.  But as this Vox article makes clear in a very nuanced argument - it may be opportunist, and is capable of overstatement, but it's not wrong to see a likely climate change influenced drought and the subsequent massive displacement of its rural population as one factor that led to the Syrian civil war.  Nor is it silly to be concerned about climate change making the (already barely livable, it seems to me) Middle East an even worse tinderbox for trouble.  As Roberts notes in the article, the Pentagon has been workshopping that for years, already.

And so back to the Right - this time, of the libertarian bent.  I wondered whether wingnuts from America would be quickly having fantasies about how, only if there were people like carrying pistols everywhere in Paris, one of their fellow gun lovers could have done a John McClane and stopped it all.   And yes, of course they were.

Who within Australia would be joining in?   You might have guessed, but yes, David Leyonhjelm, who has form on this, was busy re-tweeting with approval pathetic things like this:

Not only a fantasy prone fixation on guns and how terrorism happens, but hard not to see it as involving an offensive bit of "blame the victim" political gamemanship.   A true jerk.

Update:  Henry Ergas is great at running around and shouting "Radical Islam! - Something must be done!" (see his column in The Australian today), but not so good at explaining what, exactly.  

Ultimately pointless terrorism

The "meta" tragedy of Paris is that it is part of a fight with a bunch of violent dimwits who are too stupid to realise their apocalyptic dreams of global Caliphate don't have a chance in hell of working in the long run.

As the New York Times wrote:

Al Qaeda, the Islamic State’s principal forebear, built its identity around spectacular terrorist attacks because its leaders saw themselves as insurgents seeking to overturn Arab governments that they deemed apostates. Al Qaeda wanted to bait the West into military actions that would destabilize Arab states. The Islamic State, in contrast, has increasingly styled itself a state and, in many ways, behaved like one.

The ideology and motivation behind the change may be opaque for years. Analysts suggest that the messianic and apocalyptic side of its jihadist ideology may have gotten the better of the pragmatic impulse that had previously appeared to guide the group’s expansion. Or, experts say, the Islamic State may be seeking to use large terrorist attacks the way a more conventional power might use an air force as a tool of its defense policy, to retaliate against enemy attacks and seek to deter them.

But, if so, its tactics may be shortsighted, causing redoubled Western attempts to crush the militant organization — even as the spreading Islamic State structure makes those efforts more challenging.

As for the question "why France?" right now, The Guardian noted that country's leading role recently in air attacks on IS that are of the type that may well make a long term difference:

The Isis claim of responsibility for Friday’s Paris attacks referred directly to French aircraft “striking Muslims in the lands of the caliphate”.

Earlier this week, French warplanes attacked oil and gas installations in the Deir ez-Zor area, describing this as part of an effort to destroy Isis infrastructure and undermine its financial resources. President François Hollande also announced the deployment to the Gulf of France’s only aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, to support operations against Isis in Syria and Iraq. French warplanes struck their first targets in Syria in late September.

On 8 October, France attacked an Isis training camp in Raqqa, capital of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate in north-eastern Syria. It was believed to house foreign fighters, including French nationals, but Hollande denied they were targeting a specific individual.

Le Monde reported that the target was Benghalem Salim, 35, responsible for the reception of French and francophones into Isis. Hollande repeated that about 600 French nationals were currently fighting in Syria and Iraq.

In all, France has carried out about 1,300 sorties in Iraq, with 271 airstrikes destroying more than 450 terrorist targets. Only a few strikes have been carried out in Syria. It is using six Rafale multi-role fighter jets stationed in the United Arab Emirates and six Mirage 2000 fighters deployed in Jordan.

Well, the immediate motivation for the attack is not as unclear as I initially thought.

But get real, IS.   Your arcane and violent medievalist world view has no hope of sustained success against the West, and your apocalyptic fantasies will come to nought, as have hundreds of previous examples of the religious who thought they were acting out the End Times.

If you didn't force millions of the more sensible to flee into Europe,  kill the innocent on the streets of Paris, or insist that the your centuries old feud with another branch of Islam still had to resolved with violence, you might have had a chance of running a desperately poor bit of desert in whatever stupidly repressive way you wanted.  But you've blown that chance.

More spooky action proof

NIST team proves 'spooky action at a distance' is really real

Just get on with it

Machine Being Built to Receive Messages from the Future : Discovery News

I don't know what prompted this recent short story on Ronald Mallett's long standing idea that he could build a machine to receive messages from the future for only $250,000.   Mallett has been talking about this for years.  I'm not exactly sure on what the hold up might be for such a project.   Some rich tech guy should surely be prepared to fund it. Or perhaps, as his Wiki entry explains, the criticisms of Mallett's idea are entirely valid.

Always look on the dark side

Why we shouldn’t be fooled by the fall in unemployment figure | The Australian

Adam Creighton is certainly looking on the dark side today.

I find him a confusing fellow.  He has the usual small government/libertarian fetish against the government paying for things to be done, and hence unless a government is busy downsizing continually and reducing taxes he assumes they are a failure.  On the other hand, in some column or other before, he seemed surprisingly sympathetic to Piketty's take on increasing inequality as being real and of concern.

Overall, I still don't think he is to be trusted.

More filtered flowers

Cool club

Australian life expectancy jumps to new highs | Australia news | The Guardian

Australians born now are expected to live longer than ever before.
Life expectancy for females at birth rose from 84.3 in 2013 to 84.4 last
year, while for males it jumped from 80.1 to 80.3, according to new
figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

There are only six other countries in the world where both men and
women have a life expectancy over 80 years, Beidar Cho from the ABS said
in a statement on Thursday.

Those countries are Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Iceland, Israel and Sweden.

“Australia has a higher life expectancy, at both the male and female
level, than many similar countries to ours such as New Zealand, the UK
and the US,” she said.

An alert

Although they have attractive packaging, and are from Canada, which I like to think has clean waters and nice fish, I do not care for Brunswick brand sardines at all.  (Too large, too smelly, needs salt.) 

That is all....

Busy

Update:  no reader has asked, but I tell you anyway:  created by putting a photo of a flower I had taken through some kaleidoscopic filter on an Android app, the name of which I currently forget.   I think the result is pleasingly psychedelic.

Still nuts

The fourth Republican presidential debate, explained - Vox

Amongst the other criticisms of this woeful bunch of Republican wannabe Presidents is this:

Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump have thus far all released
tax plans that are detailed enough to be assessed in terms of their
impact on Americans of different income levels. The plans all differ
slightly from one another, but they all have the same basic shape — huge
gains for the top one percent that dwarf what anyone else will get.

But the debate revealed that these are actually the
responsible, sober-minded plans in the field. Ben Carson continues to
insist that the government could be funded with a 15 percent flat tax — a
number that would yield a laughably inadequate level of revenue. Ted
Cruz and Rand Paul are all pitching plans centered around the
introduction of a Value Added Tax, a move that would likely raise
taxes for lower-income Americans (especially retirees) in order to
finance staggeringly large tax cuts for the wealthy. Carly Fiorina,
meanwhile, keeps insisting that she can deliver a three-page tax code
but can't quite seem to say what will be on the pages.

And Cruz wants to return to the gold standard.

Julia and the Old Gray Lady

Being Dishonest About Ugliness - The New York Times

How did Julia Baird get a gig doing opinion pieces for the New York Times?  At the risk of sounding bitchy, on the Drum she always seemed a pleasant enough person, but really rather dull as a host.  And this piece in the paper shares those qualities. 

The real lesson

...from this incident is probably more "it's likely to be counterproductive to use a public figure pretty widely regarded as a ****head (and a pretty aggro one at that especially when it comes to people he disagrees with on guns*) as your support person at an employer's disciplinary hearing."

Having said that, I would say it's a near certainty that the employee will win at the Fair Work Commission (which, incidentally, I didn't think libertarians had a lot of time for.)

*  Yes, we have a Senator who has said he agreed with the sentiment that John Howard "deserved to be shot" for his gun laws.

The Carson explanation

She's hardly my favourite writer, but I reckon Amanda Marcotte is right about Ben Carson:

His exaggerated tales of sin and redemption sound bizarre to most Americans, but they are par for the course in the evangelical circles that Carson is trying to win over...

Hammering messy real world experiences into trite fables about sin and redemption is standard operating procedure in conservative Christian circles. So is the exaggeration. Tales of your behavior before you were saved are embellished for maximum drama. What’s important is not the literal truth, but reinforcing fundamentalist notions that the world outside of the Jesus bubble is a depraved hellhole.

Take, for instance, Christine O’Donnell, the 2010 Republican candidate for Senate from Delaware. During her campaign, tape surfaced of her claiming she had been to a “Satanic altar” with “blood” on it during her days when she supposedly “dabbled into witchcraft”. The story was obvious nonsense and she tried to downplay its significance without coming right out and admitting what was likely true, which is that she had taken some silly incident from her youth and reformed it into a tale of Satanism and depravity with which to impress her fellow Christians.

Carson’s claim that he was a violent youth who renounced his sinful ways after praying has to be understood in this light. In Christian circles, the literal truth of such stories doesn’t matter nearly as much as their usefulness in spreading the word that Jesus is the cure for all your problems. A story about Jesus’s ability to save you from murder is just more memorable than, say, a tale of renouncing your habit of shoplifting.

A quote from a Gruen

I thought Nicholas' comment at his blog (arising out of that somewhat controversial paper about poor white Americans dying faster) was good:

Education is good, looking after those at the bottom of the ladder is good. Of course the left’s tendency to valorise ‘victims’ can go too far. I think it does and it’s a growing problem (#TriggerAlert you may not agree and this may trigger anxiety, depression and flashbacks to traumatic events in your childhood when you discovered you weren’t the only person in the world). But ethically it seems like so much less a crime than the right’s demonisation of those at the bottom and their valorisation of those at the top. Perhaps it’s also a practical mistake.

Yes, that last bit is about the ugly, poisonous influence of libertarian thought on the American Right that you see frequently at the Australian Tea Party blog Catallaxy.   I don't think the Right in America and Australia used to be like that.

More on the Lomborg deception

And Then There's Physics has his take on the Lomborg deceptive counsel of despair. 

I repeat my formula for Bill and Labor

I think it would be a trap for Labor to oppose any increase in the GST.   It also seems doubtful that they can do enough to increase revenue quickly enough (yes, Australia needs to both increase revenue and be more careful in spending) via superannuation tax concessions and welfare related changes (welfare restrictions not being Labor's strong point, exactly.)

I therefore repeat my common sense call:   compromise with a GST increase to 12.5% - it's sounds much better than 15% - and look at increasing its scope modestly.  Don't go overboard in compensation for the poor.   Also make changes to superannuation concessions.  Make changes to the negative gearing rules that ease in over a few years, don't try to do it in one big bang.

You might even get away with a modest carbon tax replacing Direct Action, but that is riskier, 'cos folks are too, too easily confused on this.  On the other hand, Labor has plenty of ammunition from Turnbull's own mouth as to how Direct Action can't work in the long run, and it is a hit to the budget bottom line.   (The problem is, of course, that just as Labor is too easily motivated to make a scare campaign of any GST increase, the Coalition is too easily motivated to do the same for any carbon pricing scheme.)

Electric powered death from the skies

Israel Is Already Selling Kamikaze Micro-Drones That Will Change Modern Warfare

I must go looking for a video of them in action.  Will add later if I find one...

Update:  here it is, the advertising blurb for this very futuristic weapon:



Update:  sorry, the video seems to have gone private since posting it here.   Maybe the company (or Israel) doesn't like the world to see how it operates?

And (some) people defend Lomborg

Indefensible Lomborg Analysis Misleads On Paris Climate Pledges, Ignores China | ThinkProgress

Pretty damning critique of Lomborgian analysis which was (as I guessed as soon as I saw Andrew Bolt promote it) simply designed to convince the gullible that the Paris conference is useless.

Fun physics

There's an essay on arXiv (Living in a Superposition) that is about a fun thought experiment.  Here's the abstract:

This essay considers a model quantum universe consisting of a very large box containing a screen with two slits and an observer (us) that can pass though the slits. We apply the modern quantum mechanics of closed systems to calculate the probabilities for alternative histories of how we move through the universe and what we see. After passing through the screen with the slits, the quantum state of the universe is a superposition of classically distinguishable histories. We are then living in a superposition. Some frequently asked questions about such situations are answered using this model. The model's relationship to more realistic quantum cosmologies is briefly discussed. 

Good question

What happened to passenger hovercraft? - BBC News

I did take the hovercraft service across the English channel in about 1986.   The article explains why they never caught on as widely as 1960's futurists may have expected.

The columnist with the common touch

I wonder what inspired Bolt to start telling us how well he has traveled?  I would have thought his occasional opera and art appreciation posts were distancing enough for most of his readership, but expanding it to "let's talk about the great places I have stayed" seems to be pushing it somewhat.

The next degree won't take as long

Here's a good, short post from And Then There's Physics explaining how the next degree of global average temperature increase won't take as long as the first:

Just a quick post to highlight that – according to the UK Met Office – 2015 is likely to be 1^oC above pre-industrial – well, 1^oC above the 1850 to 1900 average. If you think that we should have a target of staying below 2^oC, then this is something of a milestone; we’re halfway there. Or, are we?

Well, it depends on how you consider this. It’s taken us about 160 years to warm by about 1^oC. This is associated with emissions of about 550GtC (550 billion tonnes of carbon, or ~2000 billion tonnes of CO₂). Current emissions are around 10GtC/year. If we continue emitting as we are, we will double our cumulative emissions in about 50 years. If we continue to increase our emissions, it will be even sooner (H/T Aaron on Twitter). If we want to have a >66% chance of staying below 2^oC, then we have a carbon budget of only about 250GtC (850GtCO2) from 2015, which we could reach in only 25 years at current emissions.

So, we might be halfway to 2^oC in terms of temperature, but we’re much more than halfway there in terms of time.

The comments following are well worth reading, too.

[But, hey LDP, please continue to concentrate on how irritating it is to have to wear a bicycle helmet and not be able to vape nicotine while riding to the bar that's going to shut at the ridiculously early hour of 3 am.  We have to get our priorities right: I understand.]

The 2011 Australian floods revisited

The abstract from a paper to appear in GRL:

Extreme rainfall conditions in Australia during the 2010/11 La Niña resulted in devastating floods claiming 35 lives, causing billions of dollars in damages, and far-reaching impacts on global climate, including a significant drop in global sea-level and record terrestrial carbon uptake. Northeast Australian 2010/11 rainfall was 84% above-average, unusual even for a strong La Niña, and soil moisture conditions were unprecedented since 1950. Here we demonstrate that the warmer background state increased the likelihood of the extreme rainfall response. Using atmospheric general circulation model experiments with 2010/11 ocean conditions with and without long-term warming, we identify the mechanisms that increase the likelihood of extreme rainfall: additional ocean warming enhanced onshore moisture transport onto Australia and ascent and precipitation over the northeast. Our results highlight the role of long-term ocean warming for modifying rain-producing atmospheric circulation conditions, increasing the likelihood of extreme precipitation for Australia during future La Niña events.

Tax or not?

I see that David Leyonhjelm is again writing in praise of the Singaporean health system, which operates largely by requiring compulsory employee contributions to medical savings accounts.   (I see he was making the same argument back in 2014,  and it is also LDP official policy.)

Now this seems a bit odd to me - when it comes to arguing about whether we are a high or low taxing country, Leyonhjelm is happy to claim "the tax burden figure for Australia is artificially kept down by the exclusion of superannuation guarantee payments", which is extremely close to the Judith Sloan line that "we have a system of compulsory superannuation that must be regarded as a tax".   (Yes, the very special type of "tax" that goes into the taxpayer's own account, is largely untouched by the government, and is available for spending only by the taxpayer or their estate.)

Let's be a bit more consistent here, hey libertarians?   If you are for compulsory savings for medical care, but like to claim compulsory superannuation  should be treated as part of the "tax burden", then you're actually for a brand new tax, using your own peculiar (or opportunistic) categorisations.  On the other hand, if neither are a tax, stop pretending one of them is.

And as for comparing the health costs of the Singaporean system to that in Australia or other countries - goodness gracious me, I would bet there would health economists out there ecstatic at the idea of what they could do to stream line health services if they were doing it for one city state compared to providing coverage for an entire continent.

Update:  OK, so I guess Leyonhjelm might concede such a scheme is the same type of "tax" that compulsory superannuation is, but one which would be compensated for by the government (now with a reduced health spending burden) reducing income taxes.   Because he is, of course, fundamentally against ever increasing total taxes.  (Good luck with working out that transition with any fairness, though.  Let's face it, it ain't going to happen.)

Nonetheless, isn't it peculiar that the party that is all about personal responsibility and letting people act as grown ups actually agrees with Labor, which effectively says you can't rely on people to save for their retirement adequately and therefore compulsory super is required?

About time I commented on this

Yes, I keep forgetting to post about the peculiar phenomena of the adult colouring in book.   The Atlantic has a story up from a recent convert, and there was an article about it in the Sydney Morning Herald back in April, and another a few weeks ago asking the question:

Adult colouring books are all the rage, but are readers mindful or mindless?

Nearly all articles err on the generous side, and so would I, given their popularity.

The key to it (as the article from The Atlantic argues) is the involvement in a pattern:  it's a chair bound way to meditatively walk a maze, and that has a certain appeal to people like me with an aversion to sweating.

But in order to cross the boundary between mindful pattern building and more analytical thought, I think I'll work on creating my own version with patterns involving certain politicians heads, or media commentators.   Watch this space...

Update:  it's a rough first attempt, but I call it "The Leyonhjelm Mandala":

For satellite watchers

Google Play suggested it for me, and it would seem that, indeed, the Heavens-Above app on a GPS enabled smart phone or tablet makes spotting and identifying satellites, the ISS, and even Iridium flares, ridiculously simple. 

I've never gone out to watch for an Iridium flare, but I will now.

Gravity and spandex

This video has been up for a few years, but was just recommended on the Open Culture site.

Now, we've all seen this type of illustration for General Relativity before on various science shows, but it is worth watching for a couple of phenomena that this teacher helps explain with his stretchy set up.  Give it a few minutes and you will see:

 

I should also note that this month marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's lectures on his theory.  The New York Times gives a handy short history of how the theory subsequently progressed under the weight of 20th century politics.

About Kiribati

Before we drown we may die of thirst

I see that a couple of weeks back, Nature had a balanced article about climate change and its effects on the small Pacific Island nations.

Long time readers may recall that I have always backed away* from relying on the celebrity victim status (as it were) of these islands for communicating the seriousness of climate change, because it seemed to me that their continued existence, being barely above sea level anyway, was always in doubt.

I think, on the whole, this article vindicates that position.  The islands have several problems and indeed climate change will exacerbate them, but in the big picture, the seriousness of a metre or two of sea level increase on the vastly populated and developed regions of other countries is really the much more profound problem.  (As well as the regional effects on food production, handling more frequent flooding, and the possible vast changes in the ocean food chain.)

* Yes, that linked post was written back in 2006 when I was taking a "sitting on the fence" approach to climate change, before I became convinced that it (and ocean acidification) were indeed serious issues.

The paywall issue

I've never put a lot of effort into avoiding paywalls and page view limits:  I use "Google the headline" sometimes, but page view limits I've generally lived with.  Media organisations have to make money, after all.*

So given that there are some publications with page view limits I'm prepared to try to get around, and deleting history gets a bit tedious, I realised this week when I stumbled across something about the Tor network that this might be an easier way around the limit.

Turns out for those using android that there is simple Tor accessing app (Orbot) and an associated browser (Orweb.)  The browser is pretty terrible, though; but I have found a Tor version of Firefox too (Orfox), and it is much better.

Of course it won't work as fast as normal browsing, given the way Tor works.  But as far as I can tell, although you would not be wanting to trust this system on your phone or tablet to divulge state secrets, it seems to let you keep browsing past page view limits as long as you want. 

*  unless it's owned by Rupert Murdoch - but then again, I don't want to spend a lot of time wallowing in his right wing clubs anyway.  For those with fewer scruples, here's a fairly recent guide to getting around some paywall schemes, and here's another - even though I don't think incognito mode works well now.

That's quite a broken record

Adelaide's hottest October on record: Temperature 5 degrees hotter than the average, rainfall scarce - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Such is the worrying state of America

Egypt's pyramids for grain storage, not pharoahs' tombs, Ben Carson said in 1998 remarks - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The Atlantic notes that this idea is an old medieval one.   I find it remarkable that it could still be held by creationists today, since it suggests their ability to dismiss evidence extends to even being able to ignore the interior design of a building in front of their eyes.   What hope is there for convincing them they are wrong on the age of the universe, evolution, or climate change?

Please make him stop

The only good thing about Slate going behind a 5 article a month paywall (just clear your history and start again) is that it might stop you from reading another extremely silly bit of writing from the world's most irritating gay writer J. Bryan Lowder.  This one about how much he hates spooning.

Or perhaps you should read it (or, like me, just scan it and decide how embarrassingly bad it is within a couple of paragraphs) and then skip to the amusingly derisive comments.  Such as these (each is a separate comment):

This article is seriously making me reconsider being a Slate+ member. Yes, it is literally that bad of an article...

I can't tell whether this is satire or not.

I can imagine the Slate editorial meeting this morning. "Lowder! An editorial piece on my desk in fifteen minutes or else! I don't care what you write about as long as I see a text file in my inbox fifteen minutes from now, got it?"

 Not every idea one has needs to be shared, though I understand that idea is alien to millennials. And calling something like spooning "sexist" is why people stop taking accusations of sexism seriously.

Well, that was, um... ah...

 Seriously? This was green-lighted?

I finally realized what's going on:  Lowder hates Slate and everything it stands for and is trying to destroy it from the inside out.  He is SPOONING SLATE!  BRILLIANT!

Waves discussed

My son last night had a science question on his homework that asked how a change in frequency affects the speed of a wave.  I could remember the answer, but not a good way to explain it.   I thought there must be a decent Youtube video out there showing what happens, but on stuff like this, it can be surprisingly hard to find a good video for a high school level.

The best I could come up with, and it is pretty good, is from the Khan Academy talking about the speed of sound.  (It's the second in a series, but I don't think its essential to watch the first.  It also has more detail than necessary, but in the last 60 seconds, they deal with the frequency/speed issue pretty well.)

So, for all other parents with a similar problem, here it is:


    Speed of Sound:

Strange polling

Andrew Bolt is celebrating apparent skepticism showing up in the CSIRO polling story that I noted yesterday, yet if one reads more widely on the topic (he never does), there is reason to be somewhat skeptical of the CSIRO results.

This chart from ongoing polling (with a 1,000 person sample - which sounds reasonable) from the Lowy Institute, for example, indicates attitudes that hardly seem consistent with the CSIRO poll.

Odd that about 88% on this poll think there is a problem to be addressed in some form if (according to Bolt's reading of CSIRO) more than half of Australians aren't even sure there is a problem.

On the other hand, Essential polling from 2013 indicates that the CSIRO result may not be too far off the mark, but the "climate change is real and is caused by humans" has a clearer lead.

It's all a bit confusing.

I see that the CSIRO itself has studied the question of how the phrasing of questions on this topic affects outcomes. 


It is one of the trickier areas for polling.  

Private school problem

Brisbane readers in particular are likely noting with amazement the evidence to the Royal Commission into child abuse regarding what went on at Brisbane Grammar School in the 70's and 80's, including the former deputy headmaster denying he ever had any knowledge of anything amiss.  (Not only are former students saying this is wrong, but so are parents - a fact which seems to have been under-reported on the television summaries of the commission I have noticed.  UPDATE:sorry, I've confused evidence against the late headmaster with that against this deputy - but against him there was still evidence that he had questioned a student about his inappropriate relationship with Lynch.)

It seems the evidence of some ex-students is that, amongst the boys, knowledge of what the school's counsellor was doing in his locked door (hello, common sense warning sign) sessions with boys was pretty widespread.   But, somewhat oddly, there have been snippets on the radio of some ex students saying that (at the time) they appreciated his "caring" interest in them.  (I assume the fact that they are at the enquiry means they later appreciated that it was an incredible abuse of trust and authority.)

As with what went on at Knox Grammar in Sydney, it seems to me somewhat ironic that this sort of thing went on at a school where parents were paying extraordinary sums for the best of care and education for their kids.   Given that I was at a (rather working class area) state high school in the 1970's, it's extremely difficult to imagine that the same sort of thing could have happened there - for one thing, the State system never had any money for intensive on site counselling, and for another, it's kind of hard imagining the kind of guys going to a mixed gender State school thinking that what Lynch was doing was above board.   It seems to me that going to a top private school probably gave some of these boys a more ready acceptance of authority and belief that everyone there was really acting in their best interests.

I was sure I had made similar comments about abuse allegations at Knox, but can't find that post now.  In any event, it sort of goes to show an upside to State schools not being able to afford to pay staff to have too much time with students...

Update:  found my Knox post from earlier this year - only by scrolling through my blog.  Proof again that for some mysterious reason, Google is really bad at searching for keywords through its own hosted blogs.  (I had tried advanced search, and all...)

Update 2:   just noticed at the lunchtime news:  more terrible evidence at the royal commission, with the former deputy headmaster giving exactly the wrong response to an invitation to apologise to the former students.    Also, another student gave evidence that a teacher who is still at the school utterly rejected his approach for help when he was dazed and confused about getting abused by the counsellor for help with bullying and homesickness.   What spectacularly poor PR for the school.  

Sardines noted, again

As I wrote earlier this year, after a long break, I've started eating canned sardines again.   (Dieter's tip:  a whole can is surprisingly modest in calories, too.   A can on a couple of those corn or rice disk things can come in at about 200 calories - or one meal if you are doing the 5/2 diet and spread your 600 calories evenly over 3 meals.)

But I am upset with Aldi.   After languishing in the cupboard for many months, last week I found a can of "sardine sprats" from Germany via Aldi, and they were smoked and extremely delicious.  (Unlike your more routine sardines in oil, or tomato sauce.  Actually today I had a can from Portugal in a chilli sauce which was quite nice.  I generally don't care for the tomato sauce versions, though.) 

But, as with their smoked mussels from Germany, Aldi no longer stocks these sprats.   In fact, there are no German produced canned seafood there at all.  The nearest I found was something from Poland.  (Herring, I think.)  But most of their stuff is now either Thailand or from the extremely dubious food processing standards of China.  (I refuse to buy such Chinese products.)

I don't know where I could find smoked sprats like the German ones again.   Perhaps I need to visit a few more Mediterranean delis around South Brisbane/West End.    Perhaps a reader from Melbourne might locate some, and could arrange a parcel to Brisbane?  

Update:  hey, someone has already written "The Sardine Diet".  Dang.

Some surprising figures

According to the CSIRO, there are actually more Liberal voters who think climate change is natural than National Party voters:

That's odd - I would have guessed the percentages between those two parties would be reversed.  Maybe being on the land does help convince people climate change is real?   Or maybe not - I see that 18% of Nationals think it isn't happening at all, compared to 13% of Liberals.

But I'm not sure this should be taken too much to heart.  First, the weather people experience affects how they think about climate change, so level of concern fluctuates all the time.  And as the report notes, people's responses don't always make sense:

The CSIRO survey found some confusion among respondents. For instance, even those who thought global warming was not happening still attributed just over a third of climate change to human activity.
Those who thought there was no climate change counted friends and family as their most trusted source of information on the issue. University scientists were the most trusted source of respondents saying humans are to blame for global warming.
"Politicians were also rarely nominated as a basis for opinions, despite the strong associations that opinions had with voting behaviour," the report noted. "This aligns with recent research suggesting politicians and political parties might be more influential than [people] think."

Still, there's no doubt about it:  on the major scientific and political issue of the century, Green voters are by far the most sensible in recognizing the problem, followed by Labor.  And it would seem about half of the Liberals and Nationals are caught up in the culture/ideology war that prevents them making sensible judgement about this.  Sad.

Illicit drug history

I've long been skeptical of the simplified version of how and why some drugs became illegal that is given by some pro-drug reform advocates, especially when it comes from a libertarian perspective that broader society really has no right or interest in trying to modify private behaviour.   So it is with interest that I have stumbled across Points:  The Blog of the Alcohol and Drugs History Society.

I haven't gotten too far into it, so I am not sure whether I will end up skeptical of some of its writers' positions too, but it at least seems to indicate that they deal with the problem as a complex one.   Here is a brief extract from one post:

Ironically, when one digs into the history of marijuana and its connection to the jazz world in the early 20th century, it appears white men were primarily responsible for introducing black musicians and Harlemites to weed (or in the parlance of their day, gage, tea, muggles or reefer, among many other names). Italian-American Leon Roppolo, the clarinetist for the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, was said to have introduced marijuana to the Chicago jazz scene, in particular to Jewish saxophonist Mezz Mezzrow, who later became weed dealer to Louis Armstrong and much of Harlem. “Mezz” became another nickname for pot, according to the saxophonist, who also considered himself an “honorary Negro.”

Notably, Mezzrow’s autobiography, Really the Blues – which is so peppered with terminology from jazz and African American cultures that it includes a lengthy glossary – exemplifies Becker’s theory of how one becomes a marijuana user (or in 1930s slang, a viper). Becker argues that one must learn “how to be high” and is usually coached into weed usage through friends who are already active users. The first time Mezzrow smoked, he didn’t feel a thing, and was reprimanded. “You ain’t even smokin’ it right,” he was told. “You got to hold that muggle so that it barely touches your lips, see, then draw in air around it. Say tfff, tfff, only breathe in when you say it. Then don’t blow it out right away, you got to give the stuff a chance.”
After receiving this instruction and finishing his first joint correctly, Mezzrow returned to his bandstand. He recalled that “the first thing I noticed was I began to hear my saxophone as though it was inside my head…then I began to feel the vibrations of the reed much more pronounced against my lip, and my head buzzed like a loudspeaker…I felt I could go on playing for years without running out of ideas and energy…The people were going crazy over the subtle changes in our playing.” Mezz argued that “tea puts a musician in a real masterly sphere, and that’s why so many jazzmen have used it.”

Despite Mezz’s positive experiences with the drug, 1930s critics increasingly associated weed with black musical subcultures and pathological behavior.

Pteropods in the news, again

Abrupt onset and prolongation of aragonite undersaturation events in the Southern Ocean : Nature Climate Change : Nature Publishing Group: Ocean acidification may lead to seasonal aragonite undersaturation in surface waters of the Southern Ocean as early as 2030 (ref. 1). These conditions are harmful to key organisms such as pteropods, which contribute significantly to the pelagic foodweb and carbon export fluxes in this region. Although the severity of ocean acidification impacts is mainly determined by the duration, intensity and spatial extent of aragonite undersaturation events, little is known about the nature of these events, their evolving attributes and the timing of their onset in the Southern Ocean. Using an ensemble of ten Earth system models, we show that starting around 2030, aragonite undersaturation events will spread rapidly, affecting ~30% of Southern Ocean surface waters by 2060 and & greater than 70% by 2100, including the Patagonian Shelf. On their onset, the duration of these events will increase abruptly from 1 month to 6 months per year in less than 20 years in & greater than 75% of the area affected by end-of-century aragonite undersaturation. This is likely to decrease the ability of organisms to adapt to a quickly evolving environment. The rapid equatorward progression of surface aragonite undersaturation can be explained by the uptake of anthropogenic CO2, whereas climate-driven physical or biological changes will play a minor role.

 The Sydney Morning Herald report on this notes:

"What surprised us was really the abruptness at which this
under-saturation [of calcium carbonate-based aragonite] occurs in large
areas of the Southern Ocean," Axel Timmermann​, a co-author of the study
and oceanography professor at the University of Hawaii told Fairfax
Media. "It's actually quite scary."

Since the Southern Ocean is already close to the threshold for shell-formation, relatively
small changes in acidity levels will likely show up there first, Professor Timmermann said: "The background state is already very close to corrosiveness."

And of course, the "let's burn coal to make poor people rich and airconditioned into safety" crowd never address the point that their tactic will only accelerate potential food chain collapse in the oceans.

Sounds pretty reasonable, even if next to impossible given the nutty American political climate

Joseph Stiglitz on Fixing Economic Inequality - The Atlantic

Yeti tales from Bhutan

Why don't people see the yeti any more? - BBC News

I see that belief in the yeti is given as an explanation for low doorways into houses.  (Yeti can't bend down to get in, apparently.)

As always, I'm most fascinated by the foul smell said to be associated with all yeti/bigfoot creatures, especially as I knew a guy who got frightened by loud bush trampling sounds and a foul smell when he was camping once in state forest north of Brisbane.

The American white male mid-life crisis

Prospect has a lengthy article about a new paper showing a significant rise in white male (usually with low level of education) deaths in the US in the period 1999 - 2013.  Yeah, it is startling when you see this graph:

As Prospect says:

To conservatives, the white midlife mortality reversal in the United States may initially seem to confirm Murray’s argument about moral decay caused by the welfare state. But that interpretation runs into an obvious objection: Similar trends are not evident in the European countries that have even more generous systems of social protection than the United States does.

Although Case and Deaton are cautious about interpreting the data, they single out two possible causes of the mortality reversal. The first relates specifically to the timing of increased drug-related deaths: the introduction and ready availability of opioid prescription painkillers (such as Oxycontin) beginning in the late 1990s, followed by a shift to heroin, both directly linked to rising death rates among whites over the 1999-2013 period. But it is not clear, Case and Deaton point out, whether rising drug use is a response to an “epidemic of pain,” or whether the introduction and distribution of new prescription painkillers played an independent, causal role. One way or the other, however, Case and Deaton’s study puts in bold relief the sheer magnitude of the consequences of today’s drug plague.

A second potential cause highlighted by Case and Deaton (and possibly related to the first) is stress from economic change resulting from slower economic growth and rising inequality. “Many of the baby-boom generation,” they note, “are the first to find, in midlife, that they will not be better off than were their parents. Growth in real median earnings has been slow for this group, especially those with only a high school education.” But they also observe that some other rich countries have seen “even slower growth in median earnings than the United States, yet none have had the same mortality experience.”

 It seems so very clear that the American experience with prescription painkillers and addiction has been a real disaster, yet it still seems one that attracts inadequate attention.

The magazine thinks this says a lot about the American welfare system:

Here is where the stronger systems of social protection in other countries may play a role in both reducing inequality and cushioning people from the adverse social psychological consequences of wage stagnation. One key difference potentially affecting people in midlife, as Case and Deaton point out, is that the other rich countries have maintained defined-benefit pensions, while employers in the United States have shifted increasingly to defined-contribution pensions (such as 401(k) plans) that do not provide the same degree of security. As a result, many Americans with only a high-school education not only lack the skills in midlife to find good jobs or even to stay employed but also face the likelihood of destitution in old age.

These trends put new light on current debates about disability insurance and retirement policy. Contrary to those like Murray who attribute the growth in Social Security Disability Insurance to a decline in the work ethic, Case and Deaton’s data suggest that the increased number of beneficiaries reflects a real deterioration of health in middle age. Raising the Social Security retirement age may seem to be no problem for the educated and affluent who are in good health and do little physical labor, but delaying retirement poses a much bigger problem for workers who are experiencing increased burdens of pain and disability in midlife.

We'll be reading a lot more about this study, I bet...

And by the way:   I reckon it indicates nothing good for the practical consequences of more libertarian views on social and economic issues.

Forgotten proto-hippies

I for one had never heard of a English arty-hippy-magical youth movement from the 1920's called the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift (makes me think of "kibble"),  but The Guardian has remedied that.

It's a good read, with some amusing photos too.  (George Orwell dismissal of them as sex maniacs gets a mention, too, and I can't help but wonder if they somehow had a role in his idea for the Anti Sex League in 1984.)

Speaking of Orwell, I just found this from The Cambridge Introduction to George Orwell:

Don't think I knew of the CIA involvement before....

An Antarctic surprise

For an organisation that climate change deniers have claimed is part of the self serving conspiracy to convince the world that it is heating up probelmatically, NASA sure doesn't know how to hide research that they know said deniers are going to leap on with joy.

So the Antarctic land ice sheet might (for now) still be putting on weight overall, not loosing it?   As a researcher says, though, this does raise an interesting question about the tricky field of sea level rise:

"The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away," Zwally said. "But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for."

Anyhow, I'd be sure that there is more to come from Real Climate and others about this.  

Update:  here's a post at Hotwhopper that puts some perspective on this (including how it is a quite different different result from some other, recent work.)   It's all to do with the complexities of using satellites that measure different things, over different periods.  I would have guessed that the GRACE satellite that measures mass via changes in the gravity field would be the most reliable for working out the ice sheet balance, but this latest study (I think) doesn't use it. 

More about that passing Halloween asteroid

Radar images from those observations revealed asteroid 2015 TB145 true size (it's a bit larger than previously thought) and its speed. The asteroid is hurtling through space at a whopping 78,293 mph (126,000 km/h).

"This would generate a 6-mile-wide crater if it were to the Earth, something of this size and speed," asteroid impact expert Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, said in the Slooh webcast. He was also impressed by the early radar images of the 2015 TB145.

And it was only found a few weeks before its close fly by.  Link.

The modern blight of smoking

Meet the Melbourne oncologist now at the centre of Big Tobacco’s dartboard

Simon Chapman (the mortal enemy of Sinclair Davidson, incidentally - I suspect they are both in comic book costumes chasing each other around the city at night, such is the depth of their mutual disdain) has an interesting post up which references the way lung cancer really took off in the 20th century.  I remember Paul Johnson wrote about how the modern cigarette really sent smoking rates through the roof in the early 20th century, but I am curious as to the smoking rate in the earlier centuries.

Stick a fork in it

Well, it's amusing watching the hair pulling and shirt (and blouse) rending that is still going on at Catallaxy over the replacement of Tony Abbott with the popular (to normal people) Malcolm Turnbull.   I see that now that the obnoxious Jim Allen has joined in  with a post that spends a great deal of time complaining about the fact that a pro Turnbull challenge post was written by an anonymous contributor.  (Seriously, who cares?)  Earlier, Sinclair had called the Abbott whiners "unmanly" (?, given most male Abbott supporters there are ones who deride homosexuality routinely), leading to a complaint or 20 from some of his long standing supporters.   He in turn complained about getting sick of the criticism that he was stifling free speech on the topic, etc etc.

All highly amusing to see a site which, as far as I can tell, is unified only in its refusal to accept AGW, finding nothing else they can agree upon. 

The incredibly hard to please Kenny

Two decades of Media Watch abstinence | The Australian

I saw Media Watch last week and thought its position on Kenny was probably more than fair.   But according to Kenny, a media show cannot report on a media controversy (an allegation about Kenny which the show noted was hotly denied by Kenny) because it repeats an allegation.

The funny thing is, because of the Australian's paywall, a lot of people (like me) know nothing about what he wrote as a result of his visit to Nauru.

And his extremely politically partisan performance in commentary over the last decade would make every reasonable person question whether his reporting on this white hot issue was balanced, and give it a miss for that reason alone.

That said, I had forgotten that he had been a key figure in the Hindmarsh Island affair, which really was a left wing scandal.  But did he give up journalism for mere commentary and now wants to be seen as a journalist again?

Update:  Media Watch under Paul Barry also fully took Kenny's side in his big defamation complaint against the ABC, too.   (Even though I thought it wasn't really defamatory - just an unfunny joke in very poor taste.)  

Always had a soft spot for ELO

Jeff Lynne launches into new orbit with ELO's 'Alone in the Universe' - LA Times

I noticed an ELO video clip up on Vimeo yesterday, but didn't watch it all due to a stuttering connection.  So, the master of overproduction, Jeff Lynne, is still making music.   I suspect that even if one is not keen on his style, it's hard to positively dislike his music.  

Even Nature got into the Halloween spirit

Zombie physics: 6 baffling results that just won't die : Nature News & Comment

Don't look! - the most disturbing Halloween photo ever published...

(OK, that joke has probably already been done 200 times on twitter and the web before me, but still...)

The comments in The Guardian following this story (Rupert and Jerry Hall now "out" about their dating) are pretty funny.

For Halloween

I recently talked about re-discovering the greatness of The Shining (movie, not the book), and now I see via Open Culture a fascinating half hour documentary on its making.   (Not sure, but I think I have seen this years ago, perhaps on TV.)  It is extraordinary to be reminded that the interior of the hotel is in fact a gigantic set in England.  (And even the exterior in most shots is a mere facade.) 

I wonder if Kubrick, if he were making movies today, could ever warm to the remarkably life like digital sets that are now just standard fare.  I like those videos that show all the green screen use in film and TV. Here's the one for The Martian:



But I digress. Here's the doco on The Shining:

VIEW FROM THE OVERLOOK: Crafting The Shining (30 min) Directed by Gary Leva from Gary Leva on Vimeo.

Not a great idea

Labor promises to lower voting age to 16 or 17 if it wins next election | Australia news | The Guardian

Alan loves Putin

Vladimir Putin: Global Warming 'A Fraud' | The Daily Caller

Ha.  The former IPA anti-renewables mouthpiece Alan Moran turns up at Catallaxy again noting that Putin "appears to be one world statesman willing to call the scam [global warming] for what it is".  (See link above.)

Yes, of course, Alan.  The one world stateman most noted for conducting himself with so much self interest that he makes excuses for local invasions and passenger planes being shot out of the sky and who has a lot of fossil fuels to sell would be the one I would expect to be on your side.   No big surprise, and great company you keep.

More about that annoying company

Apple Doesn't Sell All the Phones. But It Makes All the Money | WIRED

Yes, people keep forgetting that Samsung usually sells many more phones than Apple.  But, with my $59 cheapo Sony Android in my pocket, I guess I am part of the reason why making monies from smartphones is so hard for Android using companies.  (I am thinking of upgrading to a Samsung, but not paying more than $180.)

Cod don't care for warmer water

Warming waters a major factor in the collapse of New England cod, study finds

When not to trust scientists

Forensic DNA evidence is not infallible : Nature News & Comment

Given that it infuriates me that a substantial slab of people do not believe that those who work in the physical sciences are competent when working out things like a temperature record, or the effects of a gas in an atmosphere, I suppose I give the impression much of the time that I never question scientists of any stripe.

But when it comes to the biomedical sciences:  yes, there are many examples of scientists leaping in when they should be more cautious.

And when they get caught up in a court case, they are particularly prone to giving up caution, presumably  because they think they are promoting a good outcome.

This article in Nature shows the danger:

The term 'touch DNA' conveys to a courtroom that biological material
found on an object is the result of direct contact. In fact, forensic
scientists have no way of knowing whether the DNA was left behind
through such primary, direct transfer. It could also have been deposited
by secondary transfer, through an intermediary. (If I shake your hand
then I could pass some of your skin cells onto something that I touch
next.)

Contamination from secondary DNA transfer was raised as a possible problem in Nature in 1997 (R. A. H. van Oorschot and M. K. Jones Nature 387, 767; 1997).
It is known to happen, but has largely been dismissed by legal experts
as being rare outside the conditions of a laboratory. Experiments done
in real-world conditions seemed to support this, and concluded that
secondary DNA transfer would have little impact on interpretation of the
genetic profile.

It is important to recognize that DNA amplification kits have become
much more sensitive than they were in the past. As a result, the types
of samples being analysed have expanded. Investigators no longer need to
identify and request analysis of body fluids such as blood, semen and
saliva. They can swab surfaces for otherwise invisible cells left
behind, on the handle of a weapon or on a windowsill, perhaps, and ask
labs to generate a DNA profile from them. The new kits can generate a
full genetic profile of a suspect from as little as 100 picograms
(trillionths of a gram) of DNA.

These subtleties are not usually explained in court. Instead, a jury is told
that there is a one-in-a-quadrillion chance that the evidence retrieved
from the crime scene did not come from a defendant. Naturally, the
jurors assume that the defendant must have been there.

Given  the power of modern forensic techniques to pull a DNA profile from a
smudge of cells, secondary DNA transfer is no longer a purely
theoretical risk. In California in 2013, a man called Lukis Anderson was
arrested, held for four months and charged with murder after his DNA
was found under the fingernails of a homicide victim.

Anderson had never met the victim and was severely intoxicated and in hospital
when the man was killed. The same paramedics who took Anderson to
hospital responded to the murder. Most likely, the paramedics were
covered in Anderson's DNA, which they then inadvertently transferred.
The charges were dropped.

Experiments in our labs, under the supervision of forensic anthropologist Krista Latham,
show how easily DNA can be transferred to an object.

We asked pairs of people to shake hands for two minutes and then each
individual handled a separate knife. In 85% of cases, the DNA of the
other person was transferred to the knife and profiled. In one-fifth of
the samples, the DNA analysis identified this other person as the main
or only contributor of DNA to the 'weapon' (C. M. Cale et al. J. Forensic Sci. http://doi.org/8j2; 2015).

How significant is the result of a single study? Other analyses have shown
that DNA transfer can be unpredictable and can depend on environmental
conditions. We need more research on when and how secondary transfer can
occur.

Republican hopelessness

So, Ohio Governor John Kasich recognizes the complete policy nuttiness of Trump and Carson:

"I've about had it with these people," Kasich said at the rally in Westerville, Ohio. "We got one candidate that says we ought to abolish Medicaid and Medicare. You ever heard of anything so crazy as that? Telling our people in this country who are seniors, who are about to be seniors that we're going to abolish Medicaid and Medicare?"
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has acknowledged that he would like to gut Medicare.
Kasich went on, saying, "We got one person saying we ought to have a 10 percent flat tax that will drive up the deficit in this country by trillions of dollars" and there's another challenger in the field who "says we ought to take 10 or 11 [million] people and pick them up — I don't know where we're going to go, their homes, their apartments — we're going to pick them up and scream at them to get out of our country. That's crazy. That is just crazy."
Donald Trump has expressed support for deporting immigrants living in the country illegally.
"We got people proposing health care reform that's going to leave, I believe, millions of people without adequate health insurance," Kasich says. "What has happened to our party? What has happened the conservative movement?"

But his own plans for tax and finances?  (my bold):

Mr. Kasich’s tax plan -- which would cut the top individual income-tax rate to 28% from 39.6% and provide more relief for lower-income people through the Earned Income Tax Credit -- is the latest offering in an array of tax cuts proposed by Republican presidential candidates.
Mr. Kasich’s proposal isn’t the largest or most radical reduction on the GOP table, but it is being offered as part of one of the most specific plans to eliminate the deficit. It is still short on many details about how the budget would be balanced but calls for drastic policy changes such as transferring responsibility for Medicaid, welfare and highway-construction funding to the states.

The old "we must cut taxes on the rich to make the budget balance" line, hey?  (And let other governments work out how to raise money for services and infrastructure.)

Sorry, he may be less nuts than the populist leaders (who no one expects to last), but his views still show all the deficiencies that have been plaguing the Republican Party for years.

And how's that Laffer endorsed Kansas going:

“These things take some time,” Brownback said not long ago when asked whether his king-size income tax cuts have had the desired effect.
The key, he said, is patience.
Arthur Laffer wants more time too. He’s the philosophical architect of the Kansas income tax cuts.
“You have to view this over 10 years,” Laffer said. “It will work in Kansas.”
But that’s one point of view. As Kansas struggles with higher sales taxes and slashed budgets, I wondered what economists who focus on this stuff would say.
It’s been nearly three years since the state slashed income tax rates and took scores of businesses off the tax rolls. To be exact, it’s been two years, nine months and 23 days.
How much time do we have to wait for the promised “shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy” that Brownback promised?
I randomly called half a dozen economists from around the country. They’re at major think tanks and major universities far from Kansas, and they don’t have any dog in the Kansas dispute. I asked this: Have the tax cuts had enough time to work?
Economists don’t agree on much, but they agreed on this, and they were unanimous: Yes, the tax cuts have had plenty of time. No question about it.

Ha!   Will Laffer still be around in 10 years to claim victory?

Update:  just noticed this from a live blog of the 3rd GOP presidential candidate debate:

Nobody is doing better on the debate stage tonight than Ted Cruz. He won the biggest applause of the night with his attack on the press, and now he gets an appeal to Ron Paul libertarian voters by professing himself in favor of a return to the gold standard and a call to audit the Federal Reserve.

 As I said, how utterly hopeless...

Update 2:  Vox has a good piece about Ted Cruz's attack.  The key points:

Cruz's attack on the moderators was smart politics — but it was almost precisely backwards. The questions in the CNBC debate, though relentlessly tough, were easily the most substantive of the debates so far. And the problem for Republicans is that substantive questions about their policy proposals end up sounding like hostile attacks — but that's because the policy proposals are ridiculous, not because the questions are actually unfair.

The Republican primary has thus far been a festival of outlandish policy. The candidates seem to be competing to craft the tax plan that gives the largest tax cut to the rich while blowing the biggest hole in the deficit (a competition that, as of tonight, Ted Cruz appears to be winning). And the problem is when you ask about those plans, simply stating the facts of the policies sounds like you're leveling a devastating attack....

 Cruz's strategy was smart, and he was arguably the debate's big winner. But it bespoke a deeper weakness. Republicans have boxed themselves into some truly bizarre policies — including a set of tax cuts that give so much money to the rich, and blow such huge holes in the deficit, that simply asking about them in any serious way seems like a vicious attack. Assailing the media is a good way to try to dodge those questions for a little while, but it won't work over the course of a long campaign.

When is a proof a proof?

The biggest mystery in mathematics: Shinichi Mochizuki and the impenetrable proof 

I don't often post about mathematics, but Peter Woit's blog had a link to this article in Nature about a lengthy proof that hardly anyone in the field can understand:

But almost everyone who tackled Mochizuki's proof found themselves floored. Some were bemused by the sweeping — almost messianic — language with which Mochizuki described some of his new theoretical instructions: he even called the field that he had created 'inter-universal geometry'. “Generally, mathematicians are very humble, not claiming that what they are doing is a revolution of the whole Universe,” says Oesterlé, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, who made little headway in checking the proof.

The reason is that Mochizuki's work is so far removed from anything that had gone before. He is attempting to reform mathematics from the ground up, starting from its foundations in the theory of sets (familiar to many as Venn diagrams). And most mathematicians have been reluctant to invest the time necessary to understand the work because they see no clear reward: it is not obvious how the theoretical machinery that Mochizuki has invented could be used to do calculations. “I tried to read some of them and then, at some stage, I gave up. I don't understand what he's doing,” says Faltings.

Fesenko has studied Mochizuki's work in detail over the past year, visited him at RIMS again in the autumn of 2014 and says that he has now verified the proof. (The other three  mathematicians who say they have corroborated it have also spent considerable time working alongside Mochizuki in Japan.) The overarching theme of inter-universal geometry, as Fesenko describes it, is that one must look at whole numbers in a different
light — leaving addition aside and seeing the multiplication structure as something malleable and deformable. Standard multiplication would then be just one particular case of a family of structures, just as a circle is a special case of an ellipse. Fesenko says that Mochizuki compares himself to the mathematical giant Grothendieck — and it is no
immodest claim. “We had mathematics before Mochizuki's work — and now we have mathematics after Mochizuki's work,” Fesenko says.

But so far, the few who have understood the work have struggled to explain it to anyone else. “Everybody who I'm aware of who's come close to this stuff is quite reasonable, but afterwards they become incapable of communicating it,” says one mathematician who did not want his name to be mentioned. The situation, he says, reminds him of the Monty Python skit about a writer who jots down the world's funniest joke. Anyone who reads it dies from laughing and can never relate it to anyone else.

 All rather odd.

A sad McDonalds story

The night time 'McRefugees' of Hong Kong - BBC News

Management never asks the sleeping customers to leave?

Ridley wrong

Countering libertarian arguments against science funding | Science | The Guardian

Matt Ridley ran a bank into the ground, chose to blame "regulation", and now is a major player in the lukewarmer field, associating with wrongologist economist Richard Tol.

His latest book is not a hit with the reviewer from (of course) The Guardian, but also not even the one at The Spectator.

He is, generally speaking, a bit of a pillock who is best ignored.  

Dumb and on the wrong side of morality

I see that the IPA, Sinclair Davidson and his blog are promoting heavily a new book by the zero credibility Ian Plimer that insists the only way to help the global poor is to burn more coal - lots more coal:

Catallaxy is full of hilarious hyperbole from its conservative cohort about how this communist Pope is trying to kill millions by arguing that increased CO2 is not the way to go.

But in all honesty - if an economist can't see through the complete and utter bulldust that an aging geologist has been specialising in for some years now, there's no reason to trust his or her judgement on anything.

Floods and climate change, continued

Just noticed a recent paper:

Severe flooding occurred in Thailand during the 2011 summer season, which resulted in more than 800 deaths and affected 13.6 million people. The unprecedented nature of this flood in the Chao Phraya River Basin (CPRB) was examined and compared with historical flood years. Climate diagnostics were conducted to understand the meteorological conditions and climate forcing that lead to the magnitude and duration of this flood. Neither the monsoon rainfall nor the tropical cyclone frequency anomalies alone was sufficient to cause the 2011 flooding event. Instead, a series of abnormal conditions collectively contributed to the intensity of the 2011 flood: anomalously high rainfall in the pre-monsoon season especially during March; record-high soil moisture content thorough the year; elevated sea level height in the Gulf of Thailand which constrained drainage, as well as other water management factors. In the context of climate change, the substantially increased pre-monsoon rainfall in CPRB after 1980 and the continual sea level rise in the river outlet have both played a role. The rainfall increase is associated with a strengthening of the pre-monsoon northeasterly winds that come from East Asia. Attribution analysis using the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 historical experiments pointed to the anthropogenic greenhouse gases as the main external climate forcing leading to the rainfall increase. Together, these findings suggest increasing odds for potential flooding similar to the 2011 flood intensity.