Weekend photo 1

The explanation:  I was having a beer at the Pig N Whistle yesterday, and spotted Thor at the bar.  Dr Strange was also there, but I didn't get a pic.

By way of further explanation:  the Supernova nerdfest was on at the Convention Centre next door.

An important point to remember

The electoral college system means that Trump actually won by the barest of margins.  As the Washington Post explains:

A tale of two movies

The election of Trump has made talking about movies seem like unimportant trivia; but I said in my 10,000th post that I wanted to write about two I saw last weekend.  And I should try to distract myself.  So here goes:

1.  Interstellar.

Look, I admit - with Matthew McConaughey (an actor I have never liked) in the lead, there was every chance I wouldn't like it.

But I was completely unprepared for the awfulness of this movie in every respect:

a.   (and this is where the main blame has to go) The Worst Script Ever Written For What Was Meant to be Serious, Adult Science Fiction.   I can just imagine the actors saying to their agent "Christopher Nolan?  Big budget outer space adventure?  Sign me up!", and then despairing when they actually read the lines they were supposed to deliver.

The dialogue was terrible, undeliverable in an convincing fashion by any actor - but with McConaughey doing his Texas drawl turn, it was unbearable.

And look, I'm no cynic about "love talk" in movies, and emotional scenes - I'm a Spielberg fan after all, and the endings of Ghost, ET and even Shakespeare in Love  reduced me to tears;  but the whole relationship stuff in this movie just rang false from beginning to end.

b.   apart from the lines, and clunky exposition (seriously, the old pencil through folded paper explanation for a wormhole just before they are about to enter the wormwhole?  Is Nolan surrounded only by Yes men?)  the whole concept of the story was so derivative and underwhelming.  It's a cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr Who, but with none of the awe of the former and none of the emotional resonance of at least some of the Tennant episodes of the latter. 

c.  good direction?   I couldn't detect anything special.  Good visual effects?:  I was much more impressed with Gravity than anything in this.  Good music?:  it was continually invasive and preaching a seriousness that the story itself was failing to hit.

d.  Improbabilities in the story?  Well, I want to make the point that I am not really even emphasising these - I don't usually engage in hypothetical logic challenges to movies - such as why didn't they send in more probes instead of humans; and the whole "by his bootstraps" paradox of time travel.  That didn't matter to me - the movie was still bad enough on every other level that I am utterly surprised how it got any good reviews at all.

Jason Soon - didn't you make a positive comment about this movie?   It's off to the cinema re-education camp for you if you did.

2.   Dr Strange

Great fun.

As I expected, Cumberbatch and Swinton are just terrific.

I wanted to note in particular that I find Swinton almost mesmerising, at least in this type of role.  (I haven't really seen her in any lengthy part where she plays a normal woman - but as with her White Witch in the first Narnia movie, there is just something about her elocution and the features of her smooth, alabaster face that means I can't take my eyes off her for a second.) 

The script is very witty, the visuals are impressive (yes, Jason, even if Nolan first did folding cities first - he didn't do them in such an exciting fashion), and I liked how one oft-repeated effect - the portal with the residual fire sparks that would fall to the ground - was rather like how you would expect old fashioned magic to look - a bit different from the normal glowing rocks and holographic style effects.

As with Guardians of the Galaxy, parts of the movie had that retro 70's science fiction book cover palate about them, and I also liked the cleverness of the final battle being the reverse of (what I take to be) the typical ending of a Marvel movie.

The movie started very strongly in America, and around the world, although I wonder if depression at the Trump election might cause a bigger drop off in box office this week end than would otherwise happen?

And God knows, if the nation ever needed a real time bending superhero, it is now. 

In an attempt to cheer me up: rat tickling, revisited

What fun to be a rat-tickle researcher, hey?  As reported at NPR:

That's a part of the brain that processes touch, and when Ishiyama tickled the rats, it caused neurons in that region to fire. The rats also seemed to giggle hysterically, emitting rapid-fire, ultrasonic squeaks. Earlier research has shown rats naturally emit those squeaks during frisky social interaction, such as when they are playing with other rats.

Next, Ishiyama pretend-tickled the rats by moving his hand around the cage in a playful manner. Rather than withdraw, the rats sought more contact. Again, he saw the neurons in the somatosensory cortex firing, even though the rats weren't being touched. This suggested to him that anticipation of tickling could trigger the region of the brain that responds to touch — even without the physical stimulus.

Finally, Ishiyama stimulated the somatosensory cortex directly, by sending an electrical signal directly into the brain. The rats squeaked the same way, suggesting that this region really is the tickling epicenter of a rat's brain.

Actually, given that the research involved electrodes being stuck in their brains, I'm not sure if I should feel sorry for the rats.  Now I'm feeling depressed again...

Excuse me while I talk to monty, again...

Monty, has this convinced you yet that you can only talk to unpleasant fools for so long before it makes you foolish for engaging with them - at least if the engagement is on the basis that you think you have any hope of changing their minds?

Look, I know you like to see some good in everyone, and there (nearly always) is.   But when pointing out their wilful foolishness is met with mere rudeness, disdain and a repetition of tribalism, there is no point.  It is no accident that any Left leaning or even centrist commenter gave up on the site years ago. 

I could go on and do yet another summary of how the blog is deeply offensive, if not dangerous, from the top down.  But you and my handful of long time readers have heard it all before.

What prompts me to write this time is that I reckon the reaction to Trump at the place should be seen as a reason why no right minded person can in good faith engage with them further.  There is, to my mind, simply no way to usefully engage with fools who, for mere tribalist reasons, are willing to overlook the character, behaviour and proposed policies of Trump.   This is unforgivable foolishness of a magnitude I could not formerly imagine - particularly coming from anyone (as many at the blog do) who professes a Christian faith.

We know the American Right was divided over Trump, and we have to give credit to those columnists who are now likely just as gobsmacked as you and I.  But the threads of Catallaxy are full of non-serious tribalists - long fooled on climate change; gullible on economics; sexist if not misogynistic; bigoted.   They are not for turning - or engaging with - if they cannot see the danger and foolishness of Trump and his policies.

Attack them by all means in other ways - but the one on one engagement - forget it, I reckon.

A Creighton fail

Global banks back in the firing line

Adam Creighton tries here to explain an important thing US Republicans are likely to do - reform banking regulations - but I honestly think he does a really poor and jumbled job of it.  

A genuine worry

It's really quite painful watching passionate, intelligent liberals on American TV, such as Stephen Colbert, trying to process how such an offensive man as Trump could win enough support to get over the line.  (Although remember, he did not win the popular vote: especially if you take the third party vote into account, a substantial majority of those who did vote were against Trump:

Nationally, third-party candidates did relatively well in this election. With most of the ballots now counted, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson gained over 3% of the popular vote, and the Green party’s Jill Stein got 1%. Altogether, candidates who did not represent either of the two main parties got around 4.9% of the popular vote (in 2012, third-party candidates only managed 1.7%, and in 2008, 1.4%).

It’s easy to see why people point the finger at third-party votes. In Michigan, where the election was so close that the Associated Press still hasn’t called the result, Trump is ahead by about 12,000 votes. That’s significantly less than the 242,867 votes that went to third-party candidates in Michigan. It’s a similar story elsewhere: third-party candidates won more total votes than the Trump’s margin of victory in Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. Without those states, Trump would not have won the presidency.)

Anyway, I was watching this lengthy clip from Colbert's first post election show, and its clear he is emotionally upset about it all.  While there are many laughs to be had (I particularly like God's cameo near the end), watching it made me feel more anxious and depressed in sympathy with Colbert, even if, by confirming that the whole of the country hasn't gone nuts, it shouldn't:

I'm not the only one who blames Fox News

Simon Wren-Lewis writes:

mainly macro: Trump: Misleading the People: 

The story is in fact told better than I ever could by Bruce Bartlett, who worked in the Reagan White House and for George HW Bush, so I’ll just summarise it here. The story starts under Reagan, who provided pressure to withdraw the Fairness Doctrine, which was similar to what keeps UK broadcasters from being partisan. Initially that allowed the rise of talk radio, and then Fox News. Gradually being partisan at Fox meant misinforming its viewers, such that Fox viewers are clearly less well informed than viewers of other news providers. One analysis suggested over half of the facts stated on Fox are untrue: UK readers may well remember them reporting that Birmingham was a no-go area for non-Muslims.

But why is this causal, rather than simply being a mirror on the rightward drift of the Republican base? The first point is that there is clear evidence that watching Fox news is more likely to make you vote Republican. The second is that, like the tabloids in the UK, this propaganda machine can turn on party leaders and keep them from moving left. The third is that it is also a machine for keeping the base angry and fired up and believing that nothing could be worse than voting for a Democrat. It is Fox News that stops Republican voters seeing that they are voting for a demagogue, conceals that he lies openly all the time, incites hatred against other religions and ethnic groups, and makes its viewers believe that Clinton deserves to be locked up. Just as UKIP (and perhaps now the Conservative party) is the political wing of the tabloids, so Trump is a creature of Fox news.

Also worth remembering...

....don't bother, they're heeeeere

I knew a columnist would soon enough write along the lines of "if, like an arrogant teenager, the American GOP voting public thinks they know what's best, sometimes it's better to let them learn for themselves that they don't."  And here is that column from the Washington Post.

Of course, the thing that freaks out parents, half of Americans, and about 80% of the rest of the globe, is how much grief said teenager will cause everyone  in the process.

For a solid dose of pessimism, of course we can drop in on Andrew Sullivan, whose column "The Republic Repeals Itself" is as depressed as you would expect, but even he points out the obvious:

The only sliver of hope is that his promises cannot be kept. He cannot bring millions of jobs back if he triggers a trade war. He cannot build a massive new wall across the entire southern border and get Mexico to pay for it. He cannot deport millions of illegal immigrants, without massive new funding from Congress and major civil unrest. He cannot “destroy ISIS”; his very election will empower it in ways its leaders could not possibly have hoped for. He cannot both cut taxes on the rich, fund a massive new infrastructure program, boost military spending, protect entitlements, and not tip the U.S. into levels of debt even Paul Krugman might blanch at. At some point, a few timid souls in the GOP may mention the concepts of individual liberty or due process or small government or balanced budgets. At some point even his supporters may worry or balk, and his support may fade.

Actually, given that you can never tell what a bullshit artist like Trump is really thinking, and that the reality of the difficulty of governing is about to hit him like a bus (I thought he even had a look of worry on his face in his victory speech - his Ritchie Rich son* looked definitely regretful), I fully expect disappointment amongst his supporters to start building very quickly.   This is usually the case with politicians who are light on policy, but big on "hope and change".  (Yes, OK, Obama pretty much fitted that category, but did manage to be a competent and a good president.  But he was, at least, a politician who knew the ropes.   There is obviously no real reason to expect that the Hollywood scenario of an accidental president turning out to be great in the role and beloved of the people could happen with this buffoon.)

Perhaps the biggest worry, apart from Generals having to wrestle the nuclear codes out of his tiny fingers when an Islamic President mean-tweets him, is the likely clownish quality of the advisers and administrators he surrounds himself with.   But, I guess, as with Boris Johnson in the UK, give clowns actual responsibility and at least some of them have to change their rhetoric fast.  

And at the end of the day (gee, how am I managing to be quasi optimistic?) what everyone has to keep reminding themselves - both the doomsayers and the gloaters - is that in terms of popular vote, pretty much exactly half of the country rejected Trump.    Which doesn't seem to me to say much for fool Scott Adams - if being a "master persuader" means just influencing the small percent of the voting public that ever moves from one side to the other, it doesn't seem to be such an awe inspiring thing at all.  (Oh, and Scott, your young girlfriend is going to dump you soon enough, and you can go back to the comfort of your money and 4chan pals.)

* Didn't Trump indicate he would be in charge of cyber-security in his administration?
 

Sounds about right

There’s no way around it: Donald Trump is going to be a disaster for the planet - Vox

The article does, in fact, contain a note of (highly qualified) optimism at the end.

The truth is, Democrats have absolutely no reason for holding back on calling out all politicians (and their followers) who deny AGW as absolute gullible fools being led up the path to destruction by a mere handful of contrarians.  I mean, Clinton tried the tactic this election of "not scaring the horses" by not mentioning it, and look how that panned out.  

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft...

I'm too scared to look over at the threads at Catallaxy - they'll be so high on the red cordial they won't come down for a month.   Of course, they'll own whatever the hell happens under what (I presume) is going to be a Trump presidency.  (You would have thought the dire Prime Ministership of Tony Abbott would have taught them a lesson in being careful what you wish for - and Trump is a bull in a china shop several orders of magnitude larger than Tone.)

Anyhow, there is still the possibility that Trump will not make it to the Presidency.  First, the count is not finished, but hardly anyone is expecting the rest to go well for Hillary.  If he does win, Mexico may invade Washington successfully just to replace him, and all other nations would cheer them on.  Or perhaps Trump will announce he will not take up the job if he'll just get an Emmy for The Apprentice.   The Academy would give him a whole two hour show if he was serious.

And any aliens watching the planet for the last 50 years will no doubt feel this is the right time to intervene.  I would welcome our new overlords as being more predictable than Trump and his nutty, dangerous advisers.

Will they ever learn?

Some good advice to Republicans in Congress from Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post:

Tuesday evening (we hope) we will have a definitive president-elect, most likely Hillary Clinton. Republicans, especially members of Congress, should take a deep breath. Their Clinton derangement syndrome, only partially justified by her ethical malfeasance, has gotten out of control, blinding even the most thoughtful Republicans. Republican activists and party leaders will have plenty to answer for after the Donald Trump campaign ends. So, if I may suggest, Republicans should zip it for a while.

If Clinton wins Tuesday, the GOP would have lost a third presidential election in a row, this one in large part because of their hate-filled, irrational and extreme rhetoric and aversion to reality. They may well lose the Senate majority as well. Frankly, millions of Americans, including frustrated Republicans (whether they grudgingly voted for Trump or abandoned the GOP to vote for Clinton or a third party), don’t really want to hear Republican blather on about impeachment. They don’t want lectures from nativists and fabulists such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity about, well, anything. They don’t want to hear that the GOP is now on a search-and-destroy mission to make certain we have a failed president.

Here’s a novel approach: Root for the president’s success, even if it is Hillary Clinton. We are a country at war and with deep problems; wishing her failure means wishing our country and free people misfortune. Extend her the benefit of the doubt. Look for areas of agreement. Don’t dictate the terms of debate. Keep a civil tongue. Tell their own rabble-rousers to pipe down for just a few months.

Yes, when you think back over it, did they learn nothing from the failure of their pursuit of Bill Clinton over his (rather sordid) sex life?   Or from watching the Obama birthers fail?   Both of these targets are now in overall good standing with the American public (if you ignore conspiracy nutters, at least), yet you get the feeling many Republicans will happily try to pursue Hillary Clinton over matters which are, again, essentially nothing to do with good governance.  

Election prediction

I've been playing with the Washington Post electoral college "do it yourself" map, and my guess on the election outcome would be either 308 or 323 to Clinton, depending on North Carolina.  As Monty seems to be predicting 307 to Clinton, I'll take the high road and go for 323.

Update:   Well, I got the last election right!

America - where witchcraft still matters to politics

If ever there was a "jumps the shark" moment in this election campaign, it was last weekend when the Washington Post felt it had to address the absurdity of Right wing culture warrior hero Drudge promoting the idea that Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman goes to occult dinners to drink blood and other unmentionables.    Tweets from concerned Americans (concerned about "spirit cooking") remain a sight to behold:

Yes, America - the nation that put men on the Moon - still has a significant block of people worried that witches could take over the White House.   Is there any Western nation with that level of contradiction? 

As it happens, I had been going to post about witches and politics for another reason.   Before Halloween, I was reading this good article from last year about two books looking again at the Salem witch hunt, and it put me in mind of Trump's campaign against Hillary because of one of the theories about how Salem could have happened:

In Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (1974)—now considered a classic of interpretive social history—Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum uncovered a long-standing fissure inside the Salem community that closely aligned with opposing sides in the trials. The accused came largely from the families of well-off, market-minded, centrally positioned farmers and merchants, their accusers from poorer, tradition-bound folk living in the town’s interior. The trials, then, can be seen as a backlash phenomenon, a struggle to ward off deep-rooted social change—nothing less, in fact, than the onset of modern capitalism and the values it advanced.

Substitute "globalisation" for "modern capitalism", and you have a strong parallel to why the simple minded, "blue collar billionaire's" followers are prepared to treat Hillary like a witch, with many of them now also believing it of her literally. 

The best of anti-Trump

Over the last week, before the Clinton polling losses appeared to stabilise, there was a lot of passionate, if not panicky, anti-Trump writing to be found.  Here are three pieces I liked:

*  Andrew Sullivan (not my favourite writer, generally speaking) did do a good job at calling Trump out as an awful and dangerous proto-fascist, as I think more in the media should be prepared to say.  Have a read of this:

This is what we now know. Donald Trump is the first candidate for president who seems to have little understanding of or reverence for constitutional democracy and presents himself as a future strongman. This begins with his character — if that word could possibly be ascribed to his disturbed, unstable, and uncontrollable psyche. He has revealed himself incapable of treating other people as anything but instruments to his will. He seems to have no close friends, because he can tolerate no equals. He never appears to laugh, because that would cede a recognition to another’s fleeting power over him. He treats his wives and his children as mere extensions of his power, and those who have resisted the patriarch have been exiled, humiliated, or bought off.

His relationship to men — from his school days to the primary campaign — is rooted entirely in dominance and mastery, through bullying, intimidation, and, if necessary, humiliation. His relationship to women is entirely a function of his relationship to men: Women are solely a means to demonstrate his superiority in the alpha-male struggle. Women are to be pursued, captured, used, assaulted, or merely displayed to other men as an indication of his superiority. His response to any difficult relationship is to end it, usually by firing or humiliating or ruining someone. His core, motivating idea is the punishment or mockery of the weak and reverence for the strong. He cannot apologize or accept responsibility for failure. He has long treated the truth as entirely instrumental to his momentary personal interests. Setbacks of any kind can only be assuaged by vindictive, manic revenge.

He has no concept of a non-zero-sum engagement, in which a deal can be beneficial for both sides. A win-win scenario is intolerable to him, because mastery of others is the only moment when he is psychically at peace. (This is one reason why he cannot understand the entire idea of free trade or, indeed, NATO, or the separation of powers.) In any conflict, he cannot ever back down; he must continue to up the ante until the danger to everyone around him is so great as to demand their surrender. From his feckless business deals and billion-dollar debts to his utter indifference to the damage he has done to those institutions unfortunate enough to engage him, he has shown no concern for the interests of other human beings. Just ask the countless people he has casually fired, or the political party he has effectively destroyed. He has violated and eroded the core norms that make liberal democracy possible — because such norms were designed precisely to guard against the kind of tyrannical impulses and pathological narcissism he personifies.

Wow, hey?   Vicious but, I think, very accurate.

*  Adam Gopnik:  always a great writer, follows a very similar path:

The truth is that Trump’s “positions” on specific issues are more or less a matter of chance and whim and impulse (Of course women should be punished for having abortions! Ten minutes later: no, they shouldn’t) while his actual ideology, the song he sings every day, the one those listeners and followers gleefully vibrate to, is one anthem, and it is the sound of the authoritarian and anti-democratic impulses Americans have rejected since the founding of this country. Call them what you will—populist authoritarianism or extreme-right-wing ethno-nationalism—the active agents within a Trump speech and energizing a Trump rally are always the same: the worship of power in its most brutal and authoritarian forms (thus his admiration for Vladimir Putin and for the Chinese Communists who assaulted the protesters at Tiananmen Square); the reduction of all relations to dominance contests; the contempt for rational argument; the perpetual unashamed storm of lies; the appeal to hysterically exaggerated fears of outsiders; and, above all, the relentless sense of ethnic grievance that can be remedied only by acts of annihilating revenge. His is the ideology not of democratic patriotism but of a narrow nationalism alone—the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history. He will “level the playing field” with the terrorist spectre of ISIS by forcing soldiers to commit war crimes; he will not merely kill our enemies but annihilate their families. His platform is resentment and his program is revenge, and that is an ideology with many faces and one name. This is fascism with an American face.

*   And, at a more technical level, the detailed explanation by Matthew Yglesais of the Clinton email issue, the low level security risk of which the media has never really tried to properly explain, is really good.  It starts:

Because Clinton herself apologized for it and because it does not appear to be in any way important, Clinton allies, surrogates, and co-partisans have largely not familiarized themselves with the details of the matter, instead saying vaguely that it was an error of judgment and she apologized and America has bigger fish to fry.

This has had the effect of further inscribing and reinscribing the notion that Clinton did something wrong, meaning that every bit of micro-news that puts the scandal back on cable amounts to reminding people of something bad that Clinton did. In total, network newscasts have, remarkably, dedicated more airtime to coverage of Clinton’s emails than to all policy issues combined.

This is unfortunate because emailgate, like so many Clinton pseudo-scandals before it, is bullshit. The real scandal here is the way a story that was at best of modest significance came to dominate the US presidential election — overwhelming stories of much more importance, giving the American people a completely skewed impression of one of the two nominees, and creating space for the FBI to intervene in the election in favor of its apparently preferred candidate in a dangerous way.

Yes, this is the .....

Or, for the non English reader:

I think this justifies a little introspective.

Why do I do this?  Obviously, back when I started this in 2005, it seemed that blogging could be an important and entertaining aspect of the internet landscape, but that hope has all but gone, with most people moving into the short sugar hit of Twitter to get an opinion out with minimal effort or analysis, or diverting into Facebook if they want to spend all day talking about themselves.   All a bit of a pity, I reckon.

I've long since moved into treating the blog as a sort of open diary of thoughts and events, but one that avoids oversharing with respect to my own family and circumstances - I don't see great dignity in that.   If anyone out there wants to follow what I'm interested in, that's fine;  but it's not as if I'm really trying to satisfy anyone but myself.    (And a good thing too, given my very modest long term hit-rate!)

It also serves a useful function as a list of handy bookmarks that is always accessible; and for noting things I may want to find again in future, such as the odd recipe I like.   

And here's the thing - I never know whether I should say this here, but I can pick any old archive page on this blog, and nearly always be pleased with what I find.   The range of topics covered; reviewing the ways in which my opinion has subtly changed over the years; predictions that turned out very accurate (see Rudd, K, amongst others); reminders of trips taken; the odd good photo; and finding links to stories and articles that I still find interesting, esoteric and/or well written -  I think (he says immodestly) this is a great little corner of the internet.  And I find I want to keep recording opinions and material on it, in the way I have for 11 years now.

As for its utility, apart from pleasing its author, I do have vague hopes that sometimes I may link to something hard to find that some Googling reader finds very useful and important.  I also wonder whether my kids (and wife) will find it interesting to read in future, either in my declining years or after I'm gone.  At the moment, they know about it, but rarely care to read it.  (Do writers' families ever spend much time reading the writer's work?)  While I will always want to avoid Facebook style disclosure, I hope they find some of my personality, and love for them, to be discernable in a future reading.

And so, onwards with the blog.   I saw both Interstellar and Dr Strange on the weekend - I really want to write about them! 

Friday American follies

I'm pretty busy, but a few things to observe:

*  The Christian Science Monitor notes that not only Kansas has been playing with Laffer-ite tax cutting experiments, but so have Wisconsin and North Carolina:

But with a deadlocked Congress barely able to pass a budget, let alone rewrite the tax code, Republican-led states such as Wisconsin, Kansas, and North Carolina have taken the lead – all sharply reducing taxes on individuals and businesses in pursuit of growth and jobs.
The results have ranged from poor to middling, suggesting that the most oft-cited success story – Texas – is more the result of the state’s energy economy than its fiscal policy.

As I have repeatedly noted, the Kansas experiment has had terrible outcomes,  but even in Wisconsin the policy has been at the cost of the education sector.   Seems a long term losing proposition to me...

*  The Guardian ran an article about concerns in America that cannabis legalisation is leading to corporate "Big Marijuana" that will push use just as recklessly as Big Tobacco.   My position - yes, it's hard to see how the American system of light regulation of this product will not lead to an unwanted increase in use by younger people, with long term detrimental consequences for educational outcomes and the economy.  Americans have this way of swinging from one extreme to another - the overly punitive drug laws were bad in their own way, too, for people simply using and not trading.  But legalisation with limited input into what's sold is an unnecessary extreme in the other direction. 

*  Just how depressed should one be at the state of America when Trump can even stand a chance of being elected?   One is tempted to despair at the gullibility of humans, but I guess the modern atheist would say it has always been thus.   Given the long history of bad ideas that people have proved capable of believing, I'm not sure that you can argue that they are dumber than they used to be, despite how obvious a conclusion that sometimes appears.   I still think the current blame ultimately has to come down to the awful, propaganda enabling effect of Right wing media and the information bubble it creates; and to a large extent, you have to blame Rupert Murdoch for his morally bankrupt willingnessly to make money this way.   People may not be fools, but their gullibility at the hands of information manipulators can certainly make them act very foolishly indeed.

 

Epidemics where you don't expect them

Official: Fourth-largest city in Russia has HIV epidemic

This Russian city has a population of 1.5 million (which means, I guess, that Russian cities must be pretty small on average, if it's the fourth largest) and has 1.8% of its population with HIV.  It's to do with drugs and (heterosexual) sex:

While the majority of new infections are acquired through intravenous
drug use, heterosexual sex is rising as a source of transmission and
accounts for just over 40 percent of new cases.

HIV infections in Russia are concentrated in large manufacturing
cities in southern Siberia and along drug trafficking routes that begin
in Central Asia and extend to Europe. Russia's Sverdlovsk Region, of
which Yekaterinburg is the capital, is the region most heavily infected
with HIV in Russia, according to Savinova.

Cease all time travelling now!

The US election has been reminding me lately about the classic Ray Bradbury time travel short story "A Sound of Thunder," wherein a time traveller inadvertently (by treading on a butterfly while dinosaur hunting) causes the world's time line to swap to a tyrant being elected.

I think this is a semi-plausible explanation of how a dangerously ignorant, conspiracy mongering doofus with the worst child-like personality traits can be edging close to becoming President.*

I'm not sure which organisation may be conducting time travel experiments at the moment (I wouldn't put it past CERN at the LHC, though), but they have to call a halt till after the election.



* I still don't believe he will win, though.  I would still put that at "high confidence," too.

PS:  I did Google to see if anyone else has been drawing a connection between this short story and this election - surprisingly, there seems to not be many, but there was one link to a person who wrote about this in August.   It's really hard these days to be the first with an idea!

Questioning "broken windows" policing

How A Theory Of Crime And Policing Was Born, And Went Terribly Wrong : NPR

The consensus seems to be that it probably did contribute somewhat to less crime, but not as much as early proponents claimed it did.   I hadn't heard of this research before

In Chicago, the researchers Robert Sampson and Stephen Raudenbush analyzed what makes people perceive social disorder. They found that if two neighborhoods had exactly the same amount of graffiti and litter and loitering, people saw more disorder, more broken windows, in neighborhoods with more African-Americans.

Hardly surprising

Hostility toward women is one of the strongest predictors of Trump support - Vox

You see in the Australian blogosphere, too.

Fair warning

There will soon be reason to dance in the streets, and/or shower me with money and thanks.  {Pay attention to the money part, in particular, kind readers.*}

I've noticed that I am getting very close to making my 10,000th published post....

*  I would like to think that a bit of information, from somewhere on this blog, that someone has been led to by Google has, for some reason, proved to be very useful and important to that person, somehow.  No one has ever left a comment to that effect, but who knows.  Of course, it might also take another 10,000 years for that to happen, too....

A click too far

It's remarkable how making just one extra click can dissuade me from checking in on the details of what Andrew Bolt, or Tim Blair, are complaining or writing about.

Since News Ltd (or News Corp, or whatever - I keep forgetting what it exactly is now) changed their blogs so that you just got a headline and one sentence, I find I just usually can't be bothered clicking further to read more.   I mean, I've disagreed with them about 8 times out of 10 (9.8 times out of 10 if we're talking Bolt alone) on most issues over many years now, and particularly dislike the puffed up, multi-media, Fox News lite act that Andrew Bolt has become, but at least I used to be able to get annoyed with them with just one click from my blog.  Now I can't, and I can't be bothered with the further click to confirm my annoyance.

I would be very surprised if their click rate hasn't tanked, as I've noticed some at Catallaxy saying a similar thing. 

This'll set off the Latin mass Catholics

In Show Of Unity, Pope Francis Marks 500th Anniversary Of Protestant Reformation : The Two-Way : NPR

Sargent gets it

Greg Sargent, in the Washington Post, ends a post about the ridiculous and offensive (to reasonable people) way Trump is trying to play the latest email news with this:

...it’s remarkable that at this point, the political world just shrugs when one of the two major party nominees suggests that there is no legitimate way that our institutions can clear his political opponent of criminality. Either she is a criminal, or the FBI is corrupt to its core. That’s Trump’s actual argument, and it sometimes seems as if barely anyone raises an eyebrow anymore when he makes it.

As many have observed, Trump has broken the media's outrage meter by the relentless weight of outrageous statements.

The vast Right wing conspiracy network (for real)

Alex Jones, America’s most famous conspiracy theorist, explained - Vox

Took me a couple of days to get back and read this article, but it's a good explanation of how nutjob Alex Jones was granted credibility by the likes of Drudge and hairspray conspiracist Donald Trump.

Why can't God talk to Donald Trump?

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte Promises God He'll Stop Swearing : The Two-Way : NPR

Ouija, again, and the dead walk in Mexico

Gee, everyone's doing stories on Ouija boards this year.  Is it because of that movie, which looks a bit silly to me?  Anyway, there is good anecdote or two from the article in The Guardian:

As the board’s popularity, and profit, increased, most of the early investors sought to highlight their role in the creation of the Ouija board. But Helen Peters wanted nothing more to do with it after the board caused serious damage to her family.

When some civil war family heirlooms went missing from Peters’ home, Peters asked the Ouija board who had taken them. According to Peters’ grandson, the board indicated a member of the family. “Half the family believed it and half the family said ‘bullshit’, including Helen,” said Murch. The event created a conflict that was never resolved, and tore the family apart.

After the fight, Peters sold all of her stock in the company. “Until her dying day, she’s telling everyone: don’t play the Ouija board because it lies,” Murch said.

I'm also rather surprised to read that Mexico City did not have an actual Day of the Dead parade until the James Bond Spectre movie invented it.  But now they do.  How very odd.

More Halloween fun

Found via Happy Catholic, who I don't drop in on very often, but she really is happy, all the time, and always puts up lovely artwork.  (She also demonstrates that Catholics aren't afraid of Halloween.  My daughter has a couple of friends of unclear Christian denomination who go to "Light Parties" on Halloween instead of doing the more traditional dress up.)   This is funny:

In time for Halloween

Vox has a good article up all about Ouija boards, and the ideomotor effect that makes them work.  Well, most of the time [insert ghostly, mad laugh].

Here are a couple of parts that I found particularly interesting: 

Before Ouija boards were invented, spiritualists and other would-be ghost communicators used makeshift devices called “talking boards” that served a similar purpose. Talking boards first became popular in mid-19th-century America, when millions of people suddenly gained an interest in talking to the dead following the tremendous loss of life in the Civil War. The popularity of talking boards, and their use as a tool to exploit grieving war families, meant scientists actually started studying the ideomotor effect in the mid-century, well before Ouija boards and planchettes were patented in 1890.

I don't think I heard of "talking boards" before, but the internet knows all, and here's a very comprehensive (if not particularly well designed) website called The Museum of Talking Boards. 

And here's another bit of information that's rather curious:

The effect might also make the Ouija board an effective tool to help you tap into your own subconscious. In one study published in 2012, scientists found that using the Ouija board allowed subjects to recall factual information with more accuracy than if they weren’t using the board. Participants were instructed to answer a series of yes/no questions and to rate whether they were confident in their answers or merely guessing. Later, they were subjected to another round of questions, but used a Ouija board to indicate “yes” or “no,” once again rating their confidence level in their answers. In cases where participants believed they didn’t know an answer, they were able to give more correct answers, more often, when using the Ouija board than when they believed they were only guessing on their own.

The researchers behind that study have gone on to speculate that using the Ouija board as a technique to unlock subconscious knowledge could lead to insights about the early onset of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Well, I did post once before about ouija, and the subconscious, but it's worth following that last link for some further information.

 

The transmission of a simple mistake

One Man Was Wrongly Blamed For Bringing AIDS to America - The Atlantic

The details are really surprising for their simplicity, and for illustrating how a "good" but mistaken story gets spread and takes a long, long time to correct.  Ed Yong explains that, when first investigating the rise of AIDS in the US, the researchers found this:

One of those 40 cases was a Canadian flight attendant named Gaëtan Dugas. Having had sex with patients from both California and New York, he seemed to connect the epidemic from coast to coast. As the 57th AIDS patient to reach the CDC team’s attention, Dugas was originally billed as Case 057. But since he came from outside California, and wasn’t even a
U.S. resident, the investigators started referring to him offhandedly as the “Out-of-California patient”—or “Patient O” for short.

That was an unfortunate move. “When the study got written up and was circulated beyond the immediate team to other people within the CDC, that ambiguous oval got interpreted by some as a zero,” says Richard McKay, a medical historian at the University of Cambridge, who recently tracked down the details of the case. By the time the CDC study was published in 1984, Patient O had become Patient 0. In the paper’s sole diagram, Dugas sits at the center, like the spider in a web of disease.

Labels have power. As “Patient Zero,” with its connotations of ground zero, Dugas came across as not just the center of that particular AIDS cluster, but as the source of the entire U.S. epidemic. The CDC team did their best to naysay this misconception, but it gained steam globally in 1987, after the journalist Randy Shilts published his bestselling book And The Band Played On. Shilts identified Dugas by name, and while he never specifically claimed that the man was the source of the U.S. AIDS epidemic, reviewers and media commentators weren’t so restrained.

The idea fit with the prejudices of the day: Here was a modern Typhoid Mary, whose homosexuality and irresponsible promiscuity had brought a plague to American shores.
“Whether it’s explicit or not, there’s always a focus on the potential moral failings of the first recognized individual,” says McKay. But the concept of Patient Zero has been weakening for years, with several lines of evidence showing that HIV—the virus behind AIDS—likely arrived in the U.S. well before Dugas was ever infected.


Now, a new study exonerates Dugas once and for all. It combines McKay’s historical detective work with genetic evidence compiled by Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. He sequenced the complete genomes of HIV taken from U.S. samples collected in the late 1970s, and showed that Dugas could not possibly have been the first AIDS patient in the U.S. Indeed, the disease likely entered the country from Haiti in 1971, flying under the radar for a decade before anyone realized what was happening.

Let's check in on the brains trust

Yesterday, a bizarre and awful killing happened in public in Brisbane.  The police were very quick to say it appeared to be a random event.  Over at the Australian right wing's brains trust, a long time Catholic commentator (of Irish ancestry, if I recall correctly, but I stand to be corrected) was to be found speculating:

Today: 

The lawyer for the man accused of killing a Brisbane bus driver on Friday morning has described his client as 'numb' during his appearance in court on Saturday morning.
Anthony O'Donohue, 48, did not apply for bail when he briefly appeared in the Brisbane Arrest Court...

And from another report:

Outside court, Adam Magill described the matter as "very heinous" and said he did not expect his client to apply for bail.
"His major concern as far as I'm concerned at this point in time is his mental health, that needs to be assessed," he said.

Now, I guess Muslim outreach could be converting white, middle aged, Irish sounding men, but the photo showing the guy doesn't really indicate any religious dress:

Has the blog made any comment about this today?  Not that I can see.

Dictator talk

I am again struck by the danger to democracy and the separation of powers that Trump represents in his continual proclamations that HC is a criminal, and that the FBI should remedy its "mistake":

 “Hillary Clinton’s corruption is on a scale we have never seen before. We must not let her take her criminal scheme into the Oval Office," he said.

He continued: "I have great respect for the fact that the FBI and the DOJ are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made. This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understand. It is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected."

I am again gobsmacked by how the Right wing commentary in the US (and here) just goes along with this, with not a hint of  reservation that this is how dictators run things - telling their investigators and courts the outcome they want with respect to their political opponents. 

This is all in the context of a "re-opening" of an investigation that may not be a real "re-opening" of anything significant at all, regardless of what ageing reporters may think. 

Again - the public has no idea of the mess that security classifications represent;  there has been no evidence of anything of significance coming to foreign power's attention due to HC's use of a private server (I think it safe to assume that would have been disclosed by now, if it happened);  and Right wing pundits are playing on people's ignorance.  It's no mistake that Trump does best with the lowest educated, and younger alt.right revolting culture war losing wannabe warriors.

Evil clowns really exist

Of course I'm repeating myself, but I am truly gobsmacked at the US national harm that Trump is leading by his continued talking up of Clinton as being a criminal who would destroy America.   He's a big mouth idiot who pays no regard to the danger he is encouraging when his ratbag, heavily armed, "patriot" followers feel endorsed by his rhetoric.

More MOND wars

I see via Bee's blog that there's a further fight going on about whether a recent paper shows MOND to be on its last legs, or not.  

Amusingly, the abstract from (MOND creator) Milgrom's counter-attack begins:

Keller and Wadsley (2016) have smugly suggested, recently, that the end of MOND may be in view.

It seems that Bee also thinks that Keller and Wadsley won't hold up. 

Meanwhile, its fun to watch astrophysicists fighting.

A bit of pointless cruelty

In Bioethics, Unlike Game of Thrones, Decapitation Doesn't Always Mean Death - The Atlantic

Within this article, we read of a silly, gruesome experiment from the 1990's, when I would have thought we were past the worst of pointless animal experimentation:

Yet some bioethicists attack this equation of death and decapitation. Prominent among these critics are Franklin Miller, at the National Institutes of Health, and Robert Truog, at Harvard University. In denying decapitation as a definition of death, they cite a 1995 experiment
that was so gruesome, it would make Edgar Allan Poe shudder. In the investigation, a sheep about to give birth to a lamb was beheaded. Its headless body was then connected to a breathing machine, with a tube going down its severed neck. Thirty minutes later, a caesarian section operation was performed and the headless body gave birth to a now-motherless baby lamb. To Miller and Truog, “there is no ambiguity here: the sheep remained alive during the experiment.” Therefore, they conclude, “decapitated animals are not necessarily dead.”

This was challenged on common sense grounds:

This critique was subsequently challenged by John Lizza, a philosophy professor at Kutztown University. “Any criterion for determining death that would count artificially sustained decapitated human bodies among the living ‘we’ is mistaken,” he argues.

The Trump personality under scrutiny

What Drives Donald Trump? Fear of Losing Status, Tapes Show - The New York Times

Well, it's all pretty much what I expected, and confirmation that he's temperamentally completely unsuited to the job of President.

As people in comments say, what's also disturbing is that there is such a significant slab of the American public that would vote for him.

The Nagasaki mission

Fat Boy Blusters - Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Don't recall reading before about how accident prone the flight that ended up dropping the bomb on Nagasaki had been...

Al Trump

I recently re-watched The Untouchables for the first time in many years, and one thing that struck me was the way de Niro's Al Capone was very Trump-like with his finger pointing and hand gestures.  Such as:

Compare:

And the classic:

It remains a great movie, by the way.  I want to write more about it, and soon will...

This is exactly right

Obama Was Right About Republican Extremism All Along | New Republic

The truly stupid on the Right of politics, here and the US, don't comprehend this yet; probably never will.

Some pretty specific rules here

Vatican bans Catholics from keeping ashes of loved ones at home | World news | The Guardian

Well, there goes my plan to have my ashes thrown into the airconditioning intake during a board meeting of the IPA...

But seriously, I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea that it's good to have a place to visit the remains of a loved one, even if it is only in ash form, rather than throwing them in the sea or scattering them around the place.   Mind you, some societies can take wanting to commune physically with the deceased a bit too far:  the Washington Post recently had a photo essay up about some Indonesia tribe that digs up their deceased every few years, re-dresses then, and then puts then away again.  This was the most remarkable photo:

Still got all his hair, too...

A good attack on Ridley and his "lukewarming is just being reasonable" position

The middle ground | …and Then There's Physics

Strange success

Yes, the reviews are now coming in, and the vast majority seem to like Dr Strange.

Good.

What the American (and Australian) Right must accept to regain credibility

I reckon there are perhaps three key things that a re-aligned American (and Australia) Right must accept to be credible again, and they are all related:

a.  that climate change is real, and a very serious long term economic and humanitarian issue that needs addressing by all governments, but especially by the US as a leading industrial and research nation. Accepting science is not being a socialist - the very nature of the problem means a globalist approach is necessary;

b.  that the idea that government must be minimal government (except when it comes to Defence - where the Right always wants more) has had its day:  driven not only by the need for clear government policy and intervention regarding climate change, but also by credible economic research, and simple common sense comparisons internationally, that government has a key and important role in a wide variety of areas important for maintaining a society's overall well being*;

c.  that provision of adequate government services and infrastructure requires realistic levels of government income, and globally, the world has been "gamed" by a race to the bottom by the richest corporations and individuals who now pay tax at levels that would have been thought laughable last century.  The Right must abandon the obsession with insisting that the only way to advance a nation's economy is to cut taxes. 


* I wonder how much blame can be borne by Rand and/or Milton Friedman for the persistence of  this Republican view?  On the latter, as Paul Krugman wrote in 2007, he was a good and important economist, when it came to his specialised field, but on matters of the size of government and regulation, it was pretty much just ideology:

In the decades ahead, this single-mindedness would become Friedman’s trademark. Again and again, he called for market solutions to problems—education, health care, the illegal drug trade—that almost everyone else thought required extensive government intervention. Some of his ideas have received widespread acceptance, like replacing rigid rules on pollution with a system of pollution permits that companies are free to buy and sell. Some, like school vouchers, are broadly supported by the conservative movement but haven’t gotten far politically. And some of his proposals, like eliminating licensing procedures for doctors and abolishing the Food and Drug Administration, are considered outlandish even by most conservatives.

The lesson the Right needs to learn:  "single mindedness" has had its day.  Pragmatism, common sense and recognition of complexity should all trump ideology.

Trump and the expected Republican break up

I thought this piece in the Washington Post, about the Republican Party's problems (and widely anticipated break up/re-alignment after losing at the election) being more than just about Trump, was pretty convincing. I'll make another post about the Right wing's necessary re-alignments.  (Although long time readers can probably guess one of them!)

Right wing cartooning

The best service cartoonist Bill Leak has provided to national politics is indicating that it (sometimes, at least) takes a really decent knock on the head/brain injury to convert a person into a permanent right wing ideologue.   That lesson hasn't been learnt well enough at Catallaxy, I see, where the controversial Bill Leak aboriginal cartoon (and self serving sequel) is now up as a banner.  (Even before this, the blog was one of the last places in Australia to go for moderate and intelligent commentary on race issues.) 

As it happens, I can see both sides of the Bill Leak cartoon - I certainly understand many aborigines finding it offensive; but I can also see that it fits within the type of graphic commentary whereby cartoonists frequently treat their targets with an unfair broad brush.

Leak's sequel makes his original offensiveness to large numbers of aboriginal fathers worse - indicating that he makes no acknowledgement that he doing anything other than "telling the truth", and that he thinks he was being funny.   If he had somehow acknowledged that he knew you can't accuse all aborigines as alcoholic, hopeless parents, he might have earned some sympathy.  But, no.

Hence, while I would have thought a complaint about the first cartoon under 18C Racial Discrimination Act should have been dismissed, taking both cartoons together makes it appear to me much more likely that he may be found to be in breach of the Act.  Am I concerned about that?   Not really - the Australian, if it was a decent newspaper of any standing, should not have run the cartoon in the first place; or, at the very least, offered an apology for offence caused once the complaints started coming in.  (Did they do that editorially?  I wouldn't know.) 

But then again, nor do I think that Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommanase did his position much good by inviting complaints about the cartoon.  While publicising the role of his organisation is one thing, doing it in such a specific context is unlikely to do more than re-invigorate the culture warriors in the Coalition and media, who have nothing better to do with their time other than hound Gillian Triggs and her organisation to death, and agitate on behalf of the likes of Andrew Bolt.

The HRC needs to have a high profile complaint (such as the current QUT student matter) fail in order to confirm in the public mind that they and its judges do take a hard headed approach to matters and aren't there for frivolous or ill founded complaints.  I strongly suspect that this is what will happen in the QUT case, and a decision on that cannot come soon enough.  The commission also then needs to review itself from a point of view of procedural fairness.

I will see this movie

Doctor Strange: 5 things to know about Marvel’s best-looking movie yet - Vox

Despite my complaints about Hollywood spending way too much time on comic book movies, I'll see this one because:

a.  everyone likes Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton, don't they? Count me in, too.

b.  articles talking about it seem to suggest there are quite a few jokes to be had.  Marvel needs humour to be bearable;

c.   movies that are noteworthy for unusual visual effects still have some appeal.  Merely well done disaster scenarios, whether on a city or planet-wide scale, don't hold any interest, but this movie sounds more innovative than that. 

Excuse me while I do some food blogging

Here's some boring food/family blogging for you:   on a Saturday or Sunday night, every few weeks, we have a "snack night" - a platter of food and bread that we all help ourselves too.

I'm not sure how commonly realised this is, but all meals that combine large elements of red and green foods will always be good.  For a platter we enjoy, the key ingredients tend to be:

a.  a wood platter.   Remember, wood platters make all food taste better.  They just do.

b.  oven roasted capsicum (peel off the burnt skin, season and and pour some good olive oil over it.)  This is a really, really popular food in our house.

c.  for green:  in spring - Australian asparagus.  Always tastes better than South American.   Fried in a bit of butter and olive oil is perfect.  Otherwise, just green  beans, either pan fried with a bit of garlic, or steamed in the microwave with a bit of garlic infused olive oil on them afterwards.  Have you tried Cobram Estate's garlic infused olive oil?   It's really great and convenient:

d.  Possible additional red:  ripe tomatoes.  Possibly served with cold mozzarella, or a bit of crumbed feta, olive oil and basil leaves if you have some.  Red and green on the one plate works well.

e.  Possible additional green:  avocado, just mashed up with lemon and salt and pepper.

f.   Further vegetable:  olives.   Whatever type you like.

g.  Other possible vegetables:  carrot sticks or celery, with which to each the semi-guacamoled avocado or (if you really need it) a dip from the supermarket.  I like beetroot dip.  Home made hummus is easy enough, too, as long as you have some tahini around.

g.  Protein:  smoked fish.   A whole smoked trout, which costs all of $10 or so, with the skin peeled off but otherwise just laid out on the platter for people to attack, does the trick.   Of course, smoked salmon, either of the cold or hot smoked variety, works fine too.  The trout laid out with the head and tail still on looks good, though.

h.  Protein:  brie or another soft gooey cheese.

g.  Bread:  whatever you like, but makes some garlic butter and grill half of it on a stove top griddle for those who like yet more garlic flavour and a crisper base for cheese.

h.  White wine.  May as well make it a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.  Goes well with the smoked fish.

Some of these meals are the most enjoyable we share at home.  And are not very expensive, given the pleasure derived from this tasty range of foods.

Alt.right losers

Donald Trump’s Alt-Right Supporters: Internet Abuse Must End | National Review

A remarkable account by David French of the intense abuse he and his family have had to endure for his opposing Trump.

The wedding gift registry includes Lego and Chupa Chups

Pictures of two Egyptian children engaged to be married trigger outrage — once again - The Washington Post

I'm tempted to post the garish photo of the "happy" couple, but it's not their fault, so why should I join in the pile on.  (Mind you, I'm not suggesting the pile on against the family is not deserved.)

Anyway, the article notes this:

The engagement of Omar and Gharam “will only lead to an early marriage in which the girl will be deprived of equal chances to education, growth, and will isolate her from social spheres,” he said.

But if history is any indication, it’s unlikely the complaints will stop Egypt’s child marriages, a practice that is also prevalent in many nations in the Middle East, Asia and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Dar al-Ifta, Egypt’s highest Islamic authority, has repeatedly urged state institutions to make concerted efforts to stop marriages among minors.

But that has either had little effect in many areas or has spawned efforts to manipulate the law. In Egypt’s rural areas, families marry off their children but usually delay the official registration of the marriage until the couples reach the lawful age of matrimony to avoid legal punishment. As a consequence, any children born of the marriage will not be issued birth certificates or be recognized until then, legal experts say.

Omar’s father, faced with the backlash of his decision, told local newspapers that he "is a free man and did nothing wrong."

He defended the engagement, saying that "Omar has always loved Gharam so much that he used to say he will marry her when they grow up.” He added that both children acted “beyond their years” and developed “strong feelings for each other” through Facebook and other social media and “wanted to get engaged.”

That’s why, Omar’s father said, he decided to announce their engagement now "before any other man asks for her hand in marriage when she is older".

"They will get married when they reach the legal age," he insisted.

This wasn’t the first child marriage in the province this year. In June, a 10-year-old bride in a pink dress sat next to her 12-year-old groom, celebrating their wedding.

Probably an instrument error...

Either stars are strange, or there are 234 aliens trying to contact us

I saw a report about this last week and forgot to post about it.   A couple of astronomers think they may have found an alien signal, but it seemingly is coming from so many stars, it's very suspicious.  

What happened in America in 2013? (And in the past)

There's been some surprising (or not so surprising - depending on where you stand on the pessimism/optimism scale, I suppose) figures out regarding increasing rates of STDs in the US:

So, what happened in 2013?  Everyone suspects Grindr, but then I see it has been around since 2009, and The Guardian was giving it publicity in 2010.  If it was that app, it took a while to hit the STD rates.

The Atlantic had an article about syphilis's re-emergence last year, which also mentions Grindr, but it notes (as does the previous article) that there is no well researched basis for blaming it.   (How hard can it be to research this?   Why can't STD clinics ask that patients answer a short questionnaire on their use of such apps, or the internet, to find partners?) 

As for other reasons:  how about the loss of fear of HIV amongst Western men?   Surely it counts for something; but it astounds me that even if they are going to risk that, men will still take a punt on a disease that looks absolutely horrible, and  can hardly be hidden from friends and loved ones, at least it if gets to the secondary stage.  (You can Google images of the rash yourself.)

But having said that, there still seems something odd about 2013, and it seems no one knows what.

To get back to something resembling optimism again, how do current rates of STD's compare to those in past decades?   It would seem good figures are available for the US since the 1940's, and one thing that is surprising about them is the huge surge in one STD that, I assume, was a result of the 1960's sexual revolution:

As for syphilis, here's the more recent rate trend:

But go back further, and you realise just what a serious problem it was mid 20th century:

Now, that last graph is total cases, not cases per 100,000.  Here's what we really need for a graph comparison:

But, these graphs are confusing if they are including congenital syphilis, and you are only interested in the number of adults catching it. 

You can avoid that by looking at this table - where it is plain that primary and secondary syphilis had a peak 1940's rate in the USA of nearly 71 per 100,000. 

The rate today (not that I am making excuses for it!) is 7.5.  Pretty close to a tenth of the 1940's peak rate. 

Yeah, so while I can understand why the CDC is dismayed that it is on the way up after nearly disappearing, it's remarkable to realise the extent of problem it presented in the past...

He knows nothing

That's a Sgt Schultz reference, by the way, and specifically made only in relation to the curious matter of Sinclair Davidson's invitations to talk internationally about his research that disputes the efficacy of tobacco plain packaging.

Look, it's good that he spoke to this Canadian journalist at all, but TimT - what on earth is wrong with a journo pressing Sinclair on the matter of whether tobacco company money is behind his appearances at such meetings?   I don't think her questions were disrespectful in tone at all, and if a journalist wants to put challenges to his research for comment, what's wrong with that?   If anything, I wish she had been more aggressive.

Because, let's face it, Sinclair shows a distinct lack of curiosity as to whether tobacco funding is involved, indirectly:

J: Was the tobacco industry involved in the visit in any way?
SD: Not to my knowledge.
J: The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies said that their event was held in partnership with Crestview Strategy, a lobbying firm that represents one of Canada’s biggest tobacco companies, so I would like to have some clarity around the involvement of the tobacco industry.
SD: I can’t help you there – I hadn’t heard of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies before I spoke there, nor have I heard of them since. I also spoke at the Economic Club of Canada meeting in Toronto and Convenience Store meetings in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. I have no knowledge as to how the meetings were organised. Beyond ensuring that each venue had a powerpoint projector I had no interest in the organisation of the meetings.

....I have had contact with people in Canada (obviously – at the talks I gave), the UK, and parts of Europe opposed to plain packaging. These people work in media, think tanks, and consumer rights organisations.

J: Can you confirm whether the institute currently receives any funding?
SD: I don’t know if the IPA currently receives funding from the tobacco industry – I have never been told that it does.

Here's the question that she should have asked as a follow up:

"Would it bother you if you knew that tobacco industry funding was behind the meetings you addressed, or, for that matter, part funding the IPA and its long campaign again plain packaging?"

Now, I presume his answer would be "no, not particularly.  I oppose plain packaging on libertarian grounds, and as such it matters little to me who funds the message."

And I can think of a couple of follow up questions from that.

But why does Sinclair even seemingly reject this proposition (in italics, which are mine)?:

As it turns out I had a long discussion with Garfield Mahood in Toronto during the Q&A session of my talk at the Economic Club and also again after the session. He put to me the same questions with the same underlying premise that somehow I am corrupt, or on the take, or that my motives are base, or that I am inadvertently benefiting the tobacco industry, etc. etc. that you have put to me. Mind you, he was very quick to back away from stating that premise when I asked him if that is what he was implying. In the end he seemed happy to accept that I am an academic doing research and publishing results, and my motive to come to Canada was to visit my relatives.

Oh come on.   How could he plausibly not be at least inadvertently benefiting the tobacco industry by not only doing this research, but going to meetings where they want to hear his "plain packaging hasn't worked" message?   Especially if he shows no interest in knowing whether there is tobacco funding in the background?

Seems to be an obvious over-reach there.