Donald and "disgusting"

Two Women Say Donald Trump Touched Them Inappropriately - The New York Times: In a phone interview on Tuesday night, a highly agitated Mr. Trump denied every one of the women’s claims.

“None of this ever took place,” said Mr. Trump, who began shouting at the Times reporter who was questioning him. He said that The Times was making up the allegations to hurt him and that he would sue the news organization if it reported them.

“You are a disgusting human being,” he told the reporter as she questioned him about the women’s claims.

Asked whether he had ever done any of the kissing or groping that he had described on the recording, Mr. Trump was once again insistent: “I don’t do it. I don’t do it. It was locker room talk.”

There are, one strongly suspects, many more stories to come of unwelcome groping/kissing by Trump, and I wonder whether he'll find a new way to react other than by calling the reporter "a disgusting human being".

This seems to be his favourite insult, and in particular, he seems to use "disgusting" in contexts few other people would.  I take it as a sign of a pretty limited vocabulary, and it's hard to imagine him being good with words in diplomatically important encounters. 

Update:  Trump can't even take his own advice:

More on Penrose

I had missed that Peter Woit had favourably reviewed Roger Penrose's new book a few weeks ago.   Go have a read.

(It's interesting, the discussion about Penrose's issues with inflation.  I always had the feeling that this seemed to be a solution that was widely accepted before the mechanics of how it could happen were even guessed at, which seems to be a somewhat backwards way to work compared to most of physics.  Well, at least for a phenomena that isn't actually being observed but is being inferred. Was my hunch right?)

Watching for new craters

Seems the Moon still gets hit by meteors quite often:

Meteorites have punched at least 222 impact craters into the Moon's surface in the past 7 years. That’s 33% more than researchers expected, and suggests that future lunar astronauts may need to hunker down against incoming space rocks....

Although most of the craters dotting the Moon's surface formed millions of years ago, space rocks and debris continue to create fresh pockmarks. In 2011, a team led by Ingrid Daubar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, compared some of the first pictures taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which launched in 2009, with decades-old images taken by the Apollo astronauts. The scientists spotted five fresh impact craters in the LRO images. Then, on two separate occasions in 2013, other astronomers using telescopes on Earth spotted bright flashes on the Moon; LRO later flew over those locations and photographed the freshly formed craters^{2, 3}.

LRO has taken about a million high-resolution images of the lunar surface, but only a fraction cover the same portion of terrain under the same lighting conditions at two different times. Speyerer’s team used a computer program to automatically analyse 14,092 of these paired images, looking for changes between the two. The 222 newfound craters are distributed randomly across the lunar surface, and range between 2 and 43 metres in diameter.

Why the Note 7 won't kill Samsung

Before I get onto this topic, has anyone else noticed that suddenly, at JB Hi Fi, the only tablets on sale are Samsung's and Apple's?  (And both of those companies have a small range now.)   Are other manufacturers giving up on tablets?   (I don't know that any other company had screens as good as the big two anyway, but I still liked looking at what other companies offered.)   Are large "phablets" killing the tablet market?

Back to the Note 7 explody phone:  the Note range was not that important to Samsung, anyway:

While the Note stylus is important to many users, it has still been a niche product. The last Note5 (there was no Note6) generated only 5% of all of Samsung's sales, Moorhead said. The Galaxy line of phones, including the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are from two to three times more popular, according to various accounts.

"The Note line has been very small for Samsung," he said. He and other analysts said it would be hard to see problems from the Note line affecting other lines.

"Samsung has many smartphone models globally and none have experienced the same problem," Burden said.

As to whether Apple or Huawei would benefit from the Note7 disaster, analysts were uniformly convinced there will be little boost to competitors.

Part of the reason is that Samsung already controls the largest share of the smartphone market globally, at 22% in the second quarter, according to IDC. Apple had 12% and Huawei had 9%.

"No way will Samsung lose its ranking over this problem," Moorhead said. "They are just so large."

I knew someone would have posted this theory before I could...

I had independently thought of this last week (honest), but kept forgetting to post about it. Anyway, I guessed it would have occurred to others - for all I know, someone on Reddit probably came up with it months ago.

It's the theory that anxiety about Trump has caused the killer clown panic:

The explanation for October's clown sighting hysteria is staring us in the face | Mary Valle | Opinion | The Guardian: I think this “clown epidemic” is a form of real-time trauma play. Right now, in this nation, on this planet, a bona fide human-like sociopath is very close to grabbing the One Ring of Power. Or the Former One Ring of Power that is Still Pretty Powerful.
'I'm a gentleman': Trump menaces Clinton with imposing presence and brash insults
Read more

China may be the Coke of today and we may just be the Pepsi, which may partially explain the second-rate, rinky-dink two-bit hustler who has fooled millions of people into thinking he somehow cares about them, courting steelworkers as he loads his buildings with Chinese steel, pretending to care about small business owners while notoriously stiffing them for decades.

Somewhere in their heads they must understand that they are not acting in their best interest, and this gigantic killer clown is using their despair and hopelessness against them by masterfully pulling their anger strings, turning them, too into ugly, disjointed residents of his angry uncanny valley.

Yes, it's a Jungian explanation, I suppose; in the same way he thought that UFOs were a sort of psychic projection of societal anxieties.   

About one of the rape allegations

As this article explains, the evidence that Juanita Broadderick offers for her allegation that Hillary Clinton intimidated her after her alleged rape by Bill is extremely thin and improbable.   Apart from the matter of having to infer a double meaning into words, it also assumes that Bill would have told Hillary that he had just raped (or at the very least, slept with) Broadderick, and that Hillary's reaction would be to meet her a couple of weeks later and thank her for not making a complaint.   How likely is that?  

Update:  Homer in comments referred me to a Slate article about this, and it does indeed confirm the wild improbability of Hillary even knowing that Bill had done anything, consensual or nonconsensual, with Broadderick (assuming, for the sake of argument, that a sexual encounter did happen):

As I’ve written before, everything we know about the Clintons’ marriage tells us that Bill took pains to hide his affairs from his wife. In A Woman in Charge, Hillary’s biographer Carl Bernstein describes how Bill initially refused to settle a lawsuit with Paula Jones—setting off the events that led to impeachment—because he feared admitting a sexual encounter to Hillary. “Bill didn’t dare acknowledge to his wife that something had transpired with Jones, so he rolled the dice and risked his presidency on the outcome—just as he would when he denied for months that he had had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky,” Bernstein writes.

If Trump really does insist on going nuclear on the Broaddrick charges at Sunday night’s debate, I hope Hillary sticks closely to what she’s been accused of—greeting a woman who would later call her husband a rapist in what that woman interpreted as a menacing tone of voice. When you examine every accusation of Hillary as an “attacker” of women, it ends up looking equally flimsy. Claims that Hillary Clinton smeared Monica Lewinsky rest on the fact that, after learning of her husband’s dalliance, she called her a “narcissistic loony toon” in a private letter to a close friend. Some on the right think Trump should hit Clinton for representing, as a young lawyer, a poor man charged with raping a 12-year-old named Kathy Shelton. But the judge in the case had appointed her, and as the prosecutor in the case has recounted, she accepted only reluctantly. Bill Clinton’s history with women is hard to defend. Hillary Clinton’s history is not. And her own history is all she should be accountable for Sunday night.

Disaster crowded out by the Donald

North Carolina’s record floods: “You have got to see it to believe all the devastation that has occurred.” - Vox

Yeah, it's getting some media attention, but if I lived in the middle of the North Carolina disaster area, I think I would feel a little peeved about how the Trump stories are sort of crowding out the degree of media attention it would otherwise get.

So there may have been arsenic in the old lace?

I guess lace isn't often coloured, but if it was....

This comes under the category of "things I feel I've read a bit about before, but it didn't stick much in my memory". 

At the Atlantic, there's an interview with the author of a new book which discusses the rather disastrous popularity of arsenic in the Victorian period - with it widely used in popular dyes for wallpapers and cloth of all kinds.  (And also, strangely, foods!)   An extract:

Factory workers were getting sick—and many died—because they were working with green arsenic dye. It was fashionable to wear these artificial green wreaths of plants and flowers in your hair that were dyed with arsenic. In wallpaper factories, workers were becoming really unwell, especially when they were working with flock papers, or papers with small fiber particles that stick to the surface. The workers would dye these tiny, tiny pieces of wool or cotton in green, and while doing so would inhale them and the particles would stick to their lungs. The manufacturing process created a lot of dust from the dye—the dust had arsenic in it—and this created major problems for the factory workers as the dust would stick to their eyes and skin. If there were abrasions on their skin, the arsenic could get directly into their blood stream and poison them that way as well....

Before legislation was passed, bakers used arsenic green as a popular food coloring. Sometimes, a baker was given flour or sugar with arsenic in it unknowingly, but other times it was used as a bulking agent. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of things that were put into Victorian foods as bulking agents. It wasn’t just arsenic, there were lots of weird things. Flour was expensive, so they would resort to adding other things.

There was an orphanage in Boston and all these small children were getting really, really sick and they didn’t know why. It turned out that the nurses were wearing blue uniforms dyed with arsenic and they were cradling the children, who in turn were inhaling the dye particles.

That’s another thing, too: Green was a color that was always seen as the culprit, simply because it was so desirable at the time, but many other colors used arsenic as well. When the National Archives did testing on the William Morris wallpapers, all of the colors used arsenic to some extent. These colors were exceptionally beautiful, and up until this point, it was not something they could achieve without the use of arsenic.

All a bit sad

Ross Cameron goes on Sky to defend Donald Trump comments in video

I had forgotten, too, until I read this other account of his silly TV act, that in his politician days, he used to be prominently Christian.    Then his philandering sex life was disclosed, and that was that.

This performance seems to me to all be part of the unfortunate aspect of right wing cable TV commentary - as with Bolt, they feel they have to throw a bit of theatre and drama into it.  With Bolt, it's  a matter of ratcheting up the "smug" quotient to "11", and lately having the likes of comedy-drama queens (and actually kinda increasingly sad figures) Ann Coulter and Milo on as guests.   All very unfortunate for the former relatively respectable face of conservative political commentary.

Trump duped - what a surprise

Dear Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I Am Not Sidney Blumenthal

An interesting article here a Newsweek writer.

Seems worth knowing

Common high blood pressure meds affect mood disorders

First it was the contraceptive pill coming under renewed scrutiny for depression - now it's (some) blood pressure medication.

Perhaps people should try regular beetroot juice first?

My guess about the debate

I've still not seen video reports on the Presidential debate, but I note that sources as diverse as monty, Douthat, and the completely-in-the-tank-for-Trump Powerline blog gave the debate narrowly for Trump.   (There are other Trump supporters who, of course, gave it totally to Trump, as you would expect from the alt-right - see Scott Adams - and their dimwitted followers.) 

So, I assume, in one sense it would seem that Trump did better than expected - although, obviously, it was about the lowest bar possible that he had to climb over to look more knowledgeable than in the first debate.

But - and here I'll actually cite Adams with semi-approval (even a weirdo can say something useful once in a while):  after the first debate, he said that Hillary won it on debating technique, but he thought that on the matter of how it made the audience feel, which he said was more important, he gave it to Trump.  (Of course!)

Well, if he's right on the matter of feely perceptions, I can't but get the impression that Trumps strange, intimidating looks and pacing behind Clinton, as well the threat to re-investigate and jail her, were exactly the opposite of what was needed to undo with women the damage caused by the weekend tape.  (Adams, of course, being in love with Trump, cannot see this is a result of using his own criteria.) 

I therefore would guess that the debate will have next to no positive polling effect for Trump.  We'll know in about a week's time.

Space dementia in the news, again

Mars-bound astronauts face chronic dementia risk from galactic cosmic ray exposure | EurekAlert! Science News

I wonder whether active electro-magnetic shielding is still being investigated as a possible response?  (I read something about that many years ago.)   I assume it would involve lots of power, though.    

Let's check in on the delusional deplorables (Australian sub-branch)

It seems that the threadsters at the home for Australian Trumpkins (you know where I mean by now) are cock-a-hoop*  that Trump didn't entirely self-immolate at today's debate.  (Which I haven't watched - just been reading 'net reactions.)

The fact that we're only formerly seen wannabe dictators threatening opponents with special investigations and jail - and that this is not a good look in a democracy - hasn't sunk into their thick heads yet; probably never will.

Anyway, amongst the tidal surge of ridiculousness I was reading, I thought that this spin on Trump and his very curious debate sniff was the funniest by far:

The Donald stood like a General, with his sniffs adding to the serious disdain in his expression at everything Hillary said.

Lulz. 

*  perhaps not an expression that's it wise to use when mentioning Trump.**

** OK, or Bill.

The man is completely untrustworthy

Donald Trump Says Central Park Five Are Guilty, Despite DNA Evidence - NBC News

Paul Krugman tweeted on the weekend that this should be an even worse scandal regarding Trump's character and judgement, but it has been crowded out by the sensationalism of being able to hear his crude sexism from his own mouth. 

Update:  The Atlantic has a short article on the same story, ending with this:

Trump’s stances on social issues, domestic policy, and foreign affairs are often mercurial at best. His disdain towards basic constitutional protections is a rare point of constancy.

The thing is, not admitting he was wrong is more important to him than everything else.

Reviewed in Nature

The Nature website has reviews of four books of interest at the moment:

* the one about Nazi drug addiction, which is getting a bit of publicity - but the review indicates its not that good, really.

*  one co-authored by Michael Mann, about climate change denialism.   Not a topic that really needs dwelling on at the moment, given the crisis in conservative politics in America, perhaps.

*  one taking a big picture approach to how physics has evolved.  Sounds OK.

* the one I am most interested in, by Roger Penrose, in which he criticises some paths modern physics has taken.

Penrose is now 85, so is in great danger of breaching my "he's too old to pay attention to" rule of thumb.  But I don't think he's ever said anything completely silly yet, even though his views on a quantum role in biology and consciousness views are controversial.   Here's part of the review:

Penrose claims that even well-confirmed theories, such as quantum mechanics, are 'oversold' with respect to their presumptive stability. Quantum physics has had an impressive record of predictive success, ranging from quantum chemistry to elementary particle physics. But it faces a deep conceptual problem. Whereas quantum mechanics has a perfect internal consistency when it describes a system that evolves without being measured, the way in which it represents measurements is not coherently embedded in that description. To Penrose, this indicates that the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics have not yet been found and will rely on the elusive full integration of gravity into quantum physics. He argues that the success of quantum mechanics tends to make physicists insensitive to the theory's conceptual problem and generates an unjustified degree of faith in its basic principles as a solid foundation of physics.

Another source of undue trust in a theory, Penrose asserts, is the physics community's tendency to follow fashion — that is, to settle on one strategy of dealing with a problem before severely testing the theory's empirical predictions. Penrose views string theory (a theory of quantum gravity) as the pre-eminent example.

Behold! Stupidity (and worse)

What a fantastic gloat-fest of a weekend, with the Party-breaking quandary for the GOP of how to finally deal with its poisonous orange candidate, all because its leadership couldn't earlier find the gumption to just outright tell a large slab of its base that they were just being nuts.  And that being largely due to a decade of participating in the Fox News, Breitbart, right wing radio echo chamber that encouraged its base to believe conspiracy and nonsense.   (All with the added irony that, for all of those years, Fox News had serious sexual harassment built into its leadership, too.)

At least I can muster a modicum of respect for commentators like Jonah Goldberg, who has let fly with this:

Donald Trump is a fundamentally dishonorable and dishonest person — and has been his whole adult life. The evidence has been in front of those willing to see it all along. And there’s more to find. And there’s more in the Clinton stockpile.

Character is destiny. The man in the video is Donald Trump. Sure, it’s bawdy Trump. It’s “locker room Trump.” And I’m no prude about dirty talk in private. But that isn’t all that’s going on. This isn’t just bad language or objectifying women with your buddies. It’s a married man who is bragging about trying to bed a married woman. It’s an insecure, morally ugly man-child who thinks boasting about how he can get away with groping women “because you’re a star” impresses people. He’s a grotesque — as a businessman and a man, full stop.

If you can see that, but still think Hillary Clinton would be worse. Fine. Just be prepared for an endless stream of more embarrassments in your name. And, for my friends in the media and in politics, if you minimize, dismiss, or celebrate his grotesqueness out of partisan zeal, just keep in mind that some people, including your children, might think you mean it. Or, they might know you don’t mean it. Which means they now know you lie for a living.

And if you can’t see what a hot mess Donald Trump is yet, I doubt you ever will and I wonder what fresh Hell will allow the realization to penetrate your consciousness. Either way, this video is not an aberration. It is not a special circumstance. It’s him. There’s no pivot in him. There’s no “presidential” switch to flip. He’s Donald Trump all the way down. And he will humiliate and debase his defenders so long as they feel the need to defend this indefensible man.

(Mind you, Goldberg was trying on the "it's all Obama's fault that we've ended up with support for Trump" line earlier this year - I would in no way say he's always a reliable commentator.)

But for peak stupidity and offensiveness, where else to go in Australia but to Catallaxy?  First, the "it's not so bad, is it? And it's all his in past" ridiculousness:

Hard to believe the gullibility, no?  But then again, she doesn't believe in climate change because her husband told her so.  She hasn't picked up on the difference between money and reliable smarts, yet.  No wonder she supports Trump.

Mind you, the resident expert on Aquinas and groupie of the unreadable Edward Feser wasn't sure it was that big a deal either.  Yes, a theological brain the size of a planet, and yet no common sense:

What?  Aquinas mustn't have written anything about the importance of character in a leader, obviously...

Then there's the obnoxiousness of old cohenite, who tells us more about the type of man he is than he probably should:

Yeah, "go hard, Trump" is some pretty popular advice thereabouts.  And one commentator, frequently bordering on needing institutionalisation, by the sounds, takes it to the next level:

Just stupid, paranoid, nuts.

Update:   And here's Republican supporting Drudge making his contribution to right wing respect for women:

Letterman has it right

I see that Trump is in the news this morning for a tape showing what a complete and utter sordid boor he is.  How's that playing for you, Evangelicals?  (Of course, who knows how Bill Clinton has talked about sexual conquests before - although I don't think that being being a powerful philandering man necessarily means you have to be a braggart with other men about it.)

Anyway, at the NYT, there's an interview with David Letterman, who (apparently, I didn't recall) had Trump on his show often.   He has a sensible take on Trump:

I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time, and I always thought he was exactly what New York City needed to have: the big blowhard billionaire. “By God, I’m Donald Trump, and I date models, and I put up buildings, and everything is gold.” Nobody took him seriously, and people loved him when he would come on the show. I would make fun of his hair, I would call him a slumlord, I would make fun of his ties. And he could just take a punch like nothing. He was the perfect guest.

So now, he decides he’s running for president. And right out of the box, he goes after immigrants and how they’re drug dealers and they’re rapists. And everybody swallows hard. And they think, oh, well, somebody will take him aside and say, “Don, don’t do that.” But it didn’t happen. And then, I can remember him doing an impression, behind a podium, of a reporter for The New York Times who has a congenital disorder. And then I thought, if this was somebody else — if this was a member of your family or a next-door neighbor, a guy at work — you would immediately distance yourself from that person. And that’s what I thought would happen. Because if you can do that in a national forum, that says to me that you are a damaged human being. If you can do that, and not apologize, you’re a person to be shunned.

I kept telling people he will absolutely not get elected. And then David Brooks said he’ll get the nomination and he will be crushed in the general election. And I thought: Yeah, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. I stand by that. The thing about Trumpy was, I think people just were amused enough about him to keep him afloat in the polls, because nobody wanted the circus to pull up and leave town.

Update:  Hotair acknowledges how bad this is for Trump:

A curious finding

Study Finds Students Of All Races Prefer Teachers Of Color : NPR Ed : NPR

Not sure I would take this report very seriously

Tech billionaires convinced we live in the Matrix are secretly funding scientists to help break us out of it | The Independent

All sounds like a report that should be in the National Enquirer rather than The Independent, but I haven't had time to follow the links.  I do think Elon Musk is a bit nutty, though...

Yeah, sure

3D printing and how it can revolutionise Australia’s remote communities | Guardian Sustainable Business | The Guardian

I reckon 3D printing's prospects for long term importance are about as good as 3D TV's.  

Spinning in all directions

Just a quick note to observe that both sides are still spinning what happened in the South Australian power blackout in their own directions.   Chris Uhlmann is taking a "hey, don't attack the messenger" approach, feeling semi justified by the interim report, when the real problem is that he was obviously leaping in to help promote network issues caused by wind power well before anything much was know about what precisely happened.

And we know from way back that he's something of a climate change skeptic and therefore not to be trusted on anything (my handy rule of thumb for everything!)   He was a bland and soft interviewer of Abbott and the Coalition when he was host of 7.30 - I don't know how his Labor wife puts up with him.

Katherine Murphy meantime seems to also be feeling justified by the interim report, but in the opposite way.

I suspect that, at the end of the day, part of the problem here will be different "causation" tests being applied by each side when discussing the outcome.  Everyone should perhaps read up on this in preparation for the final report.

Update:  and here is some credible sounding technical analysis (even if it is from a pro renewables source) of what the report includes that suggests that Uhlmann's take is wrong.

A libertarian experiment

I see via JS that Johannesburg has an avowedly libertarian mayor. How odd that libertarians should turn up in Africa.  Have Randians started a missionary outreach system, like the Mormons?  (He does sound to me much like a Randian style libertarian.)  I sense trouble coming - or a "success" that improves the lot of some at an unacceptable cost to others.

Still not sure why I should be worried about this...

Yahoo secretly monitored emails on behalf of the US government – report | Technology | The Guardian

Looking more carefully at "sexless" Japan

There's nothing weird about 'sexless' Japan | The Japan Times

Some pretty good points made here.

The problem with India

India heading for a shortage of women - 04/10/2016

Sad but interesting story on 7.30 last night about gender selecting abortion in India having the inevitable result of men not being able to find wives.  Has the government ever tried simply banning dowries?  I see there has been some move along these lines, but I don't quite understand it.

Well, that's odd

Music, fashion, drama: Indonesians 'falling in love' with South Korea - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Article includes photo of young Indonesians trying to look Korean.

Eat your curry

Mellow yellow? The mood and cognitive effects of curcumin from turmeric

I don't know - if this were so good, I'd expect more Indian Einsteins.

You can stop listening to him now...

James Lovelock: ‘Before the end of this century, robots will have taken over’ | Environment | The Guardian

I keep saying I'll probably regret my continued warnings that there really is a threshold age at which you can pretty much stop paying attention to the opinions of the aged (whether or not they seem to have all of their faculties).   The only thing that will save me is the hope that by the time I'm 85, it'll be the new 65, or something like that.

But seriously, when you read the silliness of James Lovelock's suggestions in the interview, perhaps you'll see my point.

Marriage considered

Fairy tale of marriage – TheTLS

There are quite a few things I didn't realise mentioned in this review of 4 books about marriage in the US.

The odd way American slaves were treated with respect to marriage after emancipation, for one:

Before the Civil War, slave marriages had no legal effect and
afforded participants no legal protections. One result was that other
forms of intimate relationships developed alongside traditional
marriage. When slavery ended and former slaves were finally permitted to
marry, these other relationships were declared illegal; marriage law
quickly became an important way for states to reassert control over
their former slaves. Adultery, bigamy and fornication statutes were used
to justify the arrest and incarceration, generally accompanied by
forced labour through convict-leasing programmes, of many African
American men.

The denial of marriage rights during slavery had also been one of the
most significant ways in which society told African Americans they were
less than human. Yet securing the right to marry, which all African
Americans had by 1866, did not free them from state control over their
intimate lives – instead, marriage often became a requirement. After the
war, many states passed laws automatically marrying freed men and women
living together on the date of the law’s enactment. Other states gave
such couples a set number of months to formalize their marriages or face
criminal prosecution. Even the federal government forced couples to
marry, telling them that they would be denied aid if they refused. The
pressure on couples was tremendous and most, but not all, gave in – some
states used the law as an opportunity to punish those who did not.

Also - that adultery as a criminal offence is still on so many American State's books.  

 

An amusing image from Douthat

Trump and the Intellectuals - The New York Times: What remains is this question: Can Donald Trump actually execute the basic duties of the presidency? Is there any way that his administration won’t be a flaming train wreck from the start? Is there any possibility that he’ll be levelheaded in a crisis — be it another 9/11 or financial meltdown, or any of the lesser-but-still-severe challenges that presidents reliably face?

I think we have seen enough from his campaign — up to and including his wretchedly stupid conduct since the first debate — to answer confidently, “No.” Trump’s zest for self-sabotage, his wild swings, his inability to delegate or take advice, are not mere flaws; they are defining characteristics. The burdens of the presidency will leave him permanently maddened, perpetually undone.

Even if that undoing doesn’t lead to economic or geopolitical calamity (yes, Virginia, there are worse things than the Iraq War), which cause or idea associated with Trumpism is likely to emerge stronger after a four-year train wreck? Not populism or immigration restrictionism. Not evangelical Christianity. Not economic conservatism. They’ll all be lashed to the mast of a burning ship whose captain is angrily tweeting from the poop deck.

Something to not look forward to...

Doll Therapy For Alzheimer's: Calming Or Condescending? : Shots - Health News : NPR

I find it hard to believe that anyone would criticise something so innocent that works to calm some dementia patients.

Hidden wealth

How Tax Havens Make Us Poor | Dissent Magazine

I don't normally hang around the "Dissent" website, but Peter Whiteford, who has a great twitter feed, linked to this review.

Makes me feel nostalgic

The rise and fall of the UFO : A view From the Bridge

A bit sad, really, the decline of the UFO.  It was pretty interesting reading about them in the 70's and 80's.  Not sure when I would have read my last "serious" book about them - probably in the late 1990's or early 2000's, I would think.

All class

So, Trump does a bit of his improvisational work in front of a rally, including saying he doubts Hillary has been faithful to Bill, and imitates her near collapse on 9/11. 

You would have to be pretty thick and/or pretty obnoxious yourself to consider him to have the maturity and temperament to lead a country as important as America.  Hence, the only place I see his Australian defenders are at Catallaxy, in threads but also in posts by Steve Kates.   To his credit, laissez faire blogmeister Sinclair Davidson is not on Team Trump;  but it looks like he might need a tranquillizer gun with which to get Kates from believing and posting about every bit of Trump paranoia circulating on the 'net.  

Thoughts on The Godfather

There aren't that many "classic" movies on Stan, unfortunately, but I noticed that The Godfather films are all there, and viewed the first one, for the first time in my life, last night.   (I was 12 when it came out, and just never got around to viewing it as an adult.)

I have to say, I don't quite understand the very high regard in which it is held.

The first hour or so is good; very good in fact.  The whole opening sequence at the wedding is engaging and a nice way to introduce the characters.   The initial start of the Mafia wars is handled well, but after that, it started to lose me: 

*   I didn't like the sudden leaps forward in time in the second half with inadequate explanation of how the characters got there (emotionally, not physically).  Biggest case in point - Michael reappearing in the US after disappearing for (I think) two years, and immediately asking Kay to marry him.  Nothing about why or how quickly she accepts this - and Michael is obviously not the same guy she was in love with at the start of the movie.

*  Which bring me to Al Pacino's acting - for a movie about his character's descent into the banality of the Mafia's brand of corporate evil (where murder is nothing personal - just "business"), we really don't get much insight into why he takes the path.  His acting after his character has taken the first step (with the murder in the restaurant) is really just somewhat static, unemotional staring for the most part.  (The character seems a lot more unengaged in life than his father.)  The problem may well be with the script - I assume the novel gives more insight into his inner emotions, but the movie sure doesn't.

*  This may be considered an unfair comparison, but the movie suffered in my mind when it reminded me of The Untouchables, which I do hold in very high regard as a thrilling, well written and great looking gangster movie with a serious moral question at its heart.

There is one other positive thing that struck me about The Godfather after it finished - the complete lack of any serious swearing.   It was made in 1972 and got an R rating at the time, I think:  I'm sure they could have fitted some in, and it would presumably have been authentic to the period.   But it is one of the clearest examples around of a movie which can feel completely authentic with a complete lack of swearing.   Especially compared to the tedious use of swearing that became commonplace in subsequent (especially Martin Scorsese directed) gangster movies.

Anyway, with my overall somewhat underwhelmed response, I see that I am not entirely alone - if you Google the topic, you find quite a few people asking the question "Am I the only person who doesn't think The Godfather was all that great?"   Don't get me wrong - the movie didn't annoy me in the way other over-rated movies have done.  (I should make a list one day.)  But it does seem puzzling to me that no critic seems to have noted the above points as inadequacies in the finished product.   [Update:  here's one article that is harsher on the movie than I am, but it basically agrees with the points I make about the incomplete explanation of key characters and their motives.]

Finally, some trivia from the internet age:

* the translated lyrics to the obviously risque song at the wedding can be found here;

* I hadn't heard this before - but Wikipedia tells me that the horses head was a real one.  I thought it looked pretty convincing.  Yuck. 

A journalist's lucky day

The Time I Found Donald Trump’s Tax Records in My Mailbox - The New York Times

Journalism is a funny professional - the average practitioner is (with some justification, if anyone has been on the receiving end of an erroneous report) usually viewed with low regard, but we all know we have to have them.  And while their day to day routine is probably rarely worth writing about, when we get to read a story like this one, it does make it sound like a "once in a lifetime" scoop may make it all worthwhile.   

Eating and drinking

As we all know, the endorsement of products and establishments by this blog is a YUGE bonus for them (in the Trumpian sense of "I've paid a YUGE amount of taxes over the years"), but I do it gratis (in the Trumpian sense of "his businesses have for decades received the benefit of government infrastructure gratis.")

So, this weekend leads me to make the following endorsements:

*  Toro Bravo - the tapas/steak restaurant/bar on Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley.   This was the second time we've eaten there, and I reckon it's pretty great for its tapas or paella.  (We haven't had steak there, but suburban pub steaks are probably just as good and in many cases likely to be a bit less expensive.   But perhaps I should head in on the "2 for one" Tuesdays and try the steak, then I'll know.)  

*  a few years back, when I started singing the praises of craft beer, I did agree with a Slate article that too many went overboard with intense hops.  Yet I think my palate has subsequently adjusted.  I had previously avoided James Squires Hop Thief for the obvious reason that naming it after hops was a pretty good sign that I may not like it.   But I recently did, and I was wrong - it's good.

I also am tending to find some of the less hopped James Squires a bit bland now.  And while some people might dispute that this mass manufacturer (who, I am happy to see, is marching on tap into mainstream bars everywhere) is really a "craft" beer maker, you know what I mean - who cares as long as the beer maker has taken up the variety of flavours that smaller craft breweries got us used to.

*  The Ploughman's Lunch at the Pig and Whistle, West End:  Although I see there is a Pig and Whistle Tavern down in Victoria, as far as I can tell, the Pig and Whistle Pubs are a Brisbane only chain that share a franchise like set menu.   I wish they wouldn't be so much into trying to be sports bars, but there is usually a quieter area you can find,  and they're not bad for the occasional visit, although my wife and I think the food menu has for too many items become a bit expensive.  (It may also just be my age not keeping up with inflation - we even complain about the cost of feeding a family of four with anything above the basics at McDonalds now.)   Anyhow, I've decided that their Ploughman's Lunch at $29 for a good sized platter that makes for the right amount for lunch for 2 is pretty good value, and the warm herbed olives were especially nice.

*  Domino's Chefs Best range:  have I endorsed these before?   As with all pizza, avoid the "all meat" choices, but apart from those, this range continues to impress, with the new Lamb Tzatziki being my current recommendation.  Very nice

So, no wind turbine was damaged?

I was concerned that the attack on the SA "let's blame renewables" story would suffer embarrassment if it later was revealed that in fact some of the State's turbines were damaged in the storms.  But so far, no word on that.  As I suggested the other day, it's kind of impressive if pylon toppling storms don't cause turbine damage, isn't it?  (Yeah, I know - the pylons may have been far from any turbines.  What I would like to see is the electricity authorities putting up a map of where all the damage happened to the grid during the storms - not just from wind, but also lightning.)  

The hard questions

Elon Musk plans to colonize Mars. We have many questions. - Vox

Sorry to be such a Mars skeptic (or sceptic, to keep Homer happy.)  But billionaires dreams can just run too far ahead of practical reality.

Lessons for today

Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer

Found at Jason Soon's tweets, a really interesting article about a brilliant but cranky statistician who chose to spend his retirement arguing against the medical establishment regarding their acceptance of the smoking/lung cancer causal link.

Two things about the story I wanted to note:

1.  I had never heard this before - one of the changes which researchers thought might have accounted for the rapid increase in lung cancer in Britain mid last century was something a bit hard to believe they ever took seriously - a rapid increase in road tarring. (!):

What was the cause? Theories abounded. More people than ever were living in large, polluted cities. Cars filled the nation’s causeways, belching noxious fumes. Those causeways were increasingly being covered in tar. Advances in X-ray technology allowed for more accurate diagnoses. And, of course, more and more people were smoking cigarettes.

Which of these factors was to blame? All of them? None of them? British society had changed so dramatically and in so many ways since the First World War, it was impossible to identify a
single cause. As Fisher would say, there were just too many confounding variables....

At the beginning of the study, Doll had his own theory.  “I personally thought it was tarring of the roads,” Doll said. But as the results began to come in, a different pattern emerged. “I gave up smoking two-thirds of the way though the study."

 (By the way, Doll is one of the researchers who confirmed the link with tobacco;  Fisher is the name of the statistic who went to his death disputing it was proved.) 

2.  The similarity with modern climate change contrarianism is clear and obvious.  A science consensus emerges and is widely publicised - a mere handful of credible scientists (well, I assume Fisher might have had some supporters) spend the end of their careers arguing that everybody else is wrong; it's not proved; it could be something else no one else has conclusively ruled out, etc.   Then cranky contrarians die, and everybody else gets on with what was always correct. 

The only pity here is that what's at stake for climate change is climate affecting billions.  At least Fisher was only harming himself and those who were silly enough to follow his arguments.

Just nuts

I Score the First Debate | Scott Adams' Blog

Hey, I haven't checked in on how nutty, nutty (or uber troll - it still seems possible to me that he's only pretending to be a Trump loving fruit loop) Scott Adams rated the first Presidential debate.

Let's see - second paragraph, scores Hillary the winner "on points".   Sounds not mad; but wait, debate scores don't matter - he's going to look at how they made people feel.  Uh oh.

Here's how he assesses Clinton:

Clinton looked (to my eyes) as if she was drugged, tired, sick, or
generally unhealthy, even though she was mentally alert and spoke well.
But her eyes were telling a different story. She had the look of someone
whose doctors had engineered 90 minutes of alertness for her just for
the event.... Clinton’s smile seemed forced, artificial, and frankly creepy.

Trump, on the other hand:

 Trump was defensive, and debated poorly at points, but he did not look crazy....

Speak for yourself, Adams.

And how does losing the debate work for Trump:  it makes him the winner, of course:

But Trump needed to solve exactly one problem: Look less scary. Trump
needed to counter Clinton’s successful branding of him as having a bad
temperament to the point of being dangerous to the country. Trump
accomplished exactly that…by…losing the debate....

Clinton won the debate last night. And while she was doing it, Trump won
the election. He had one thing to accomplish – being less scary – and
he did it.

Good Lord.  I don't think I have ever read a nuttier commentator on politics than the contorting delusionist that Trump love has turned Adams into.

Update:  hey look!   A couple of days later, and Slate has a lengthy article looking at the decline of Adams.

The comments are interesting too:  quite a few people agree with me - he used to come across as eccentric but relatively mild mannered and somewhat interesting.  Then, when I wasn't paying attention to him for a couple of years, he had an alt.right style conversion.  And some people (also like me) wonder if it it is a gigantic joke he is playing on readers - but it's gone on too long for that explanation, surely.

Also as I suspected - he is now divorced.   As people in comments write:

Professor Stagflation and his Home for Peculiar Adults makes another premature call

Who knew that electricity wind turbines could cause this amount of damage?:

Nick Xenophon, apparently.  [That's sarcasm.]  He normally seems to me to be more sensible, but yesterday he rushed in to make some "we're obviously doing renewable energy wrong" announcement as a result of the South Australian state wide blackout before having any idea what might have been the real cause of the problem.   (Something like 22 cases of pylons being bent - and lots and lots of lightning - has something to do with it.)

This in turn was too much of a temptation for Professor Davidson Stagflation, who posted an endorsement of Xenophon's comments at Catallaxy, the Home for Peculiar Adults.  (Apparently, the new Tim Burton film of similar name is pretty good.)  This, of course, lead to a pile on of nearly a couple of hundred peculiar, not to mention not very bright, adults, all also certain that turbines had something to do with this.

Now, I should caution:   I haven't heard anything about whether any of the State's wind turbines were damaged in the storms.  (It would be a little surprising if they escaped completely unscathed, to be honest.)

But if the electricity market folk are saying that this blackout would have happened regardless of the source of electricity, and there are twenty or so cases of pylons being bent like pretzels, I suspect we can believe them. 

Oh - and congratulations to commenter Brian at Catallaxy - who at 12.18 am, after the relentless pile on of know-it-alls about renewable energy had been mocking the State, finally said "err, actually it might not have had much to do with that, after all." I think he was the one voice of moderation in the thread.

Update:   Chris Uhlmann, who is the ABC's resident renewables/climate skeptic, also gets a low grade for pumping up the issue of "instability" in the SA grid (because of wind power) before the full extent of physical damage was known.   Come the revolution, he'd be the only ABC journalist I'd want sent to Siberia. 

Not your typical breakdown

Marilyn: ‘I sat in a room for 20 years, taking crack and watching the Alien films’ | Music | The Guardian

I have the vaguest memory of the minor pop celebrity Marilyn in the 1980's (although I hasten to point out I didn't even care for Culture Club and Boy George's music, let alone this guy's.) But, there's no doubt, his account of what he did for 20 years following a nervous breakdown is so odd you'd find it hard to believe in a movie:

He retreated to his mother’s house in Hertfordshire and stayed there for 20 years, “without going out, unless it was to the hospital or a dealer, or a doctor. But in general I just sat in a room for 20 years. I didn’t want contact with people. The phone would ring and I just wouldn’t pick it up. The curtains were always drawn, I didn’t know whether it was night or day.”

What did he do all day? “You know the Alien movies? I had the box set of that. I had my laptop and my drug paraphernalia was all set up around me. And I’d watch the first Alien film, then the second, then the third, fourth, fifth. And when it got to the end of the fifth one, I’d put the first one back on again. So that was it. Over and over again. It was, like, my life has gone out of control, but I can control this, this tiny little bubble of behaviour: that was my safety, sitting in front of this computer screen with what I’m watching, and I know all the dialogue
and I know what’s going to happen. I could control how I felt. ‘Oh, I’m bit tired, let me have some crack. Oh, I’m a bit depressed, let’s have some heroin. I need to go to sleep, I’ll take a downer.’ I just wanted to die, but I couldn’t do that, I think because I was brought up a
Catholic, with that idea that if you kill yourself you go to purgatory. I kept thinking, ‘Well, it’ll be just my ****ing luck, I’ll kill myself and wake up in exactly the situation I’m trying to get away from and it’ll be for eternity.’ At least I know this is going to end at some point.”

 He's OK now, though, so all's well that ends well; or something like that, I guess....

Update:  I see from comments at The Guardian (not as witty as I hoped in this case) that many are skeptical about how a one (minor) hit wonder had enough money to fund a 20 year drug habit.  Quite true.  It could all be a tall story. 

Read Hot Air grinding its teeth

Trump on Miss Universe: No, really, she gained a massive amount of weight - Hot Air Hot Air

Yes - it is hard to see how Trumpkins can possibly believe that their man is a brilliant media tactician when he, completely unnecessarily, revisits losing points and helps confirm that he is easily baited.

Also interesting to see the comments following this showing that a large number of this blog's readers thought Trump was terrible in the debate.  Of course, some of his supporters weigh in with fat Latino jokes, too. 

Vague dreams

Elon Musk Unveils His Plan For Colonizing Mars : The Two-Way : NPR

Let's see how his car business pans out, before anyone gets too excited that this guy's Mars dreams will do any better.

When will a billionaire do something really useful for off planet colonization - like sponsor some Moon exploration that is specifically about locating any large reserves of ice?

Clearly, Clinton won

I see that Right wing blogs from Catallaxy to Powerline have up posts either outright lamenting Trump's debate performance, or giving him luke warm praise for not self immolating completely (and claiming that it won't swing any voters anyway.)    This is most definitely conclusive evidence that Clinton came out the winner. 

Mind you, I can't wait for Catallaxy's nuttiest economist, Steve Kates, to weigh in on it.   I'm going for "A narrow win by Trump, who had to face the most biased moderation in Presidential debate history" as his line.   Or I could be wrong: he might have discerned through the haze of Trump love that clouds his mind that his hero stuffed it up, and he's on medication before he can write a post admitting it.

And by the way:  this column just up at The Atlantic is very obviously right - Trump has a clear cruel streak, evident repeatedly in this campaign by his bizarre personal taunting of not only people who he opposes, but even those who have capitulated and endorsed him.   

Yay for Australian tech

Australian technology runs world’s largest single-dish radio telescope in China – Astronomy Now

This new telescope looks pretty awesome.  And I wouldn't mind betting that some Hollywood type is thinking how it could be used as a location in the next James Bond or Mission Impossible film (helping guarantee Chinese box office, too.)   But - they had better use it in a way that makes at least some sense.  Not like the travesty of GoldenEye. 

New stuff for fillings

Professor unveils first data on new dental fillings that will repair tooth decay

Climate sensitivity fight

The Snyder Sensitivity Situation � RealClimate

An important post up at Real Climate disputing a high figure for possible climate sensitivity which is in at least the PR for a new paleo climate paper.  Jim Hanson appears in comments too.

This doesn't exactly fit in with the denier theory that climate scientists make stuff up to enhance research grants and their careers generally.  Would they admit that?  Hardly...

Great moment in social science

And this was before Pokeman Go, which almost certainly could form the basis for another silly essay...

The Democrat voting libertarian

Will the Left Survive the Millennials? - The New York Times

Oh yeah, I noticed this last week and forgot to pass it on.  Lionel Shriver has her say on the Brisbane Writer's Festival speech, and while most of it is OK, it is mainly of interest because she says she's been a life long "Democratic" voter. 

Doesn't this help confirm what I said when I posted about her column in which she said she identified as a Libertarian?   If you support gun control, think health care like the NHS works well, believe in climate change and have always voted Democrat, you're pretty far from being in the same tent as a libertarian.  If you ask me...

Ailes's long history

I didn't realise that former Fox News sleazemaster Roger Ailes had such a long history of supplying "zingers" to Republican Presidential candidates, until I saw this segment from Samantha Bee's show last night:



(I still don't care that much for her high strung comedy persona on this show, but you can learn things from anyone.) 

Let's get curious

How curiosity can save you from political tribalism – Mind Hacks

I hope that, if nothing else, this blog shows I'm curious about many things, with the exception of 98% of sports, poetry, and...well, I don't know, I'm at least a little interested in most other things.  So, by this criteria, I should not be very tribal when it comes to politics, and I don't think I am.

It's hard to summarise the study, and I'm not even entirely sure how reliable it is, but I like the conclusion.  So go read it.

Spotted wearing the Pauline Spring Collection today at Parliament House...

Well,  you tell me where the views of Bolt and Hanson haven't merged.   (I feel this needs a word or thought bubble somewhere to make it better, but am having trouble with what he should say.  Suggestions welcome...)

Old man writes nonsense

Adam Walinsky, Donald Trump, and the Kennedy Brothers' Dream of Peace - The Atlantic

What a great Fisking [haven't had the chance to use that word for a long time] of a patently silly piece by a former Robert Kennedy speechwriter, Adam Walinsky, who thinks Trump is the President for Peace.  

In fact, who could trust Trump on anything that requires calm consideration that's not to be outweighed by testosterone driven* one-upmanship?   How contradictory can one candidate get - to be promising that Iranians boats which harass US Navy ships would be blown out of the water; that ISIS has to be crushed, immediately, with overwhelming force [I hope you're all hearing this in your head in Trump's ridiculous voice]; that America must spend more money on its military; and yet he'll be slower to get involved in international conflicts that aren't really in America's interest?   But if they do - he'll keep the oil.  What is he meant to be, the Reluctant Imperialist? 

Despite the occasional fanciful and deluded pundit like Walinsky, it is clear that Trump's base wants him to be aggro with other countries, and they would not be adverse to the big stick being swung every now and again.  Given how he repeatedly plays up to his base - he so much wants to give the audience what it wants - how could anyone really think he would resist mititary adventurism when it's a matter of saving national face? 


And anyway,  how old must Walinsky be?  Speechwriting in 1964, he must be pushing 80, if not older.  Has he said other silly things lately?  I mean, he writes sentences well enough, but what else does he argue?

It would seem, from this site, that he thinks there is probably something being hidden about JFK's assassination; uh-oh, he's written for the Washington Times too - criticising Baltimore's politicians for not getting behind their police (hmmm).  He's worked for a long time as a consultant to police departments, it seems, urging large increases in police numbers.

Seems to me he hasn't been very reliable for quite a long time...



*What a transparent bit of theatre it was when Dr Oz noted with seeming awe Trump's testosterone level.  Never have we seen a candidate run so blatantly on the importance of his being a real man, a virile man, who looks Presidential, with stamina, and a penis that pleases da ladies.   As Colbert said recently, it's like we've reverted to a system where the hairiest guy who can lift the heaviest rock gets to be village chief.

Self interest and economics

More Virtuous Than We Think : Democracy Journal

Here's an extract from an interesting review:

To be clear, most policymakers probably recognize that people behave
from diverse motives. But standard economic analysis indicates that
policy should normally be based solely on the self-interest assumption.
Bowles’ second assertion is that policies based on the assumption that
people are motivated primarily or entirely by selfish motives often work
poorly and sometimes backfire. Worse, such policies may actually
promote selfishness and amorality.

Put more positively, public and
private policies often work much better if they are designed with the
recognition that people act in part from self-interest and in part from
“social preferences,” which include “altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic
pleasure in helping others, aversion to inequity, ethical commitments,
and other motives that induce people to help people more than is
consistent with maximizing their own wealth or material payoff.”
Furthermore, incentive-based policies may strengthen or weaken these
motivations. Simply put, public policy can promote or erode civic
virtue.

Planes should soon be harder to lose

Satellite tracking could prevent airliner disappearances, developers say ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

I hope something like this is taken up.  The cost of lengthy ocean searches would reduce dramatically if it is.