About Syria, and Putin nude

This seems a fairly balanced take on the matter of Syria and the geopolitical mess in the region.

I still don't trust Putin, though.  

Meanwhile, there is much to be somewhat amused about in this report about the Abe/Putin "Onsen Summit" that's just starting.  Some extracts:

Sushi, sashimi and wagyu beef was set be on the menu — and, in what could be a poor diplomatic decision, Mr Abe also planned to serve puffer fish to the Russian President.
One person dies each year in Japan — on average — after eating puffer fish that has been incorrectly prepared. 

I wish Abe would send a gift pack of puffer fish to Trump.   Never know your luck... (Come on - be honest:  his boorish and dumb behaviour would have to make him streets ahead in the "President elect we most want to not to make it to the White House, and we don't care how" stakes, around the globe.)

And the bigger question:   does Putin care to nude up in the interests of better foreign relationships?:

But the big question being asked in Japan is — will the two men climb into a hot-tub together?
It is odd for Australians to think about the idea of two middle-aged, straight men getting nude and chatting about world affairs while sitting in a pool of really hot water (42 degrees Celsius) — but in Japan, it is not that odd.
In a business setting, it is considered a natural extension of a working relationship — stripping back the layers builds trust and familiarity.
Mr Putin and Mr Abe might take an onsen together if the first stage of their talks go smoothly.

What would cause a bigger incident would be if Putin tries to get into the tub with bathers on.   Could cause the outbreak of war, that faux pas.  

Listening is unimportant; it's the doing that counts

No one knows what is going to happen in Trumpland:  liberals who have spoken to him come out feeling vaguely optimist that he seemed interested in their views (Bill Gates, for goodness sake, is the latest, with a particularly careless comparison that made for some laughable headlines); but I really doubt there is any cause for optimism.   Because, as Jamelle Bouie notes at Slate:

You don’t have to look carefully to see the pattern in President-elect Donald Trump’s picks for his Cabinet. To run the government, he has picked men and women who disdain the missions of their assigned agencies, oppose public goods, or conflate their own interests with that of the public. It’s less a team for governing the country than a mechanism for dismantling its key institutions. And as a cadre of tycoons, billionaires, and generals, Trump’s executive branch is a rebuke to the idea that government needs expertise in governing.

And yet, there are signs of conflict already within his team.  How else to explain the walking away from the McCarthy-esque "have you now or have you ever believed in climate change" questionnaire to the Energy Department?  

Does it all depend on something like Ivanka's complaints to her father?   Is he a pushover for her tears?   (Is that sexist?   Let me know.)

It just shrieks of coming government chaos, if you ask me....

Russians are odd

Inspired by Jason's recent stated sympathy to a "Russian pivot" under Trump, I read this article in New Statesmen about Russian democracy. 

The first point is that it's pretty clear most Russians still don't think they are a fully fledged democracy at all:

 I suppose you could argue the trend there is positive, though.

The odder thing is the ease with which it appears you can find Russians who still yearn for the hard master:

Most people I spoke to have indeed picked the “distinct form of democracy”, arguing that “an American model is unsuitable” for Russia. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one could elaborate on the specifics of the desired model. One woman volunteered that “the ideal ruler for Russia would be someone like Peter the Great.” Once we have cleared that Russia under Peter was absolute monarchy, my respondent explained her reasoning: “Russia needs a strong leader, a disciplinarian. Russians cannot be ruled with a carrot, they understand only the stick.” In her view, Russians are too emotional and if they are granted too much freedom, they turn into loose cannons. She has a point. When Yeltsin, the most liberal head of state Russia has ever known, finally fuelled economic reforms, initialised by Gorbachev, the unprecedented market freedom has resulted in chaos, which culminated with Russia’s financial default in 1998.

The idea of a “strong ruler with wider powers” than would be implied by a Western constitution was echoed by others. “Russia needs a master,” said a mother of two who lives in Britain. “Russian people need clear directions and control, otherwise they’d just sit there like Brits on benefits, watching TV and complaining all the time.”

 And as to why Russians don't generally blame the top dog for their problems:

The special feature of the Russian mentality is that anyone but the tsar is to blame. Corruption, lawlessness, lack of social infrastructure and inequality are evident to all, but these are the problems associated with the “local imbeciles” and oligarchs, not the person presiding on the throne.

Which is, when you think about it, probably a 100% turnaround from the way most Australians think.  They are usually determined to blame everything on the current Prime Minister, regardless of the degree of control over certain events they may actually have.

The writer sums up how he thinks Russia got to where it is in this matter, and it sounds pretty convincing:

It is, of course, not at all surprising that no one could come up with an eloquent description of an ideal model of democracy, especially moulded for Russian mentality. Quite simply, Russia has no experience of it. From the absolute monarchy, Russia barely had a chance to get used to having a parliament (or Duma), when the Bolshevik revolution had erased all traces of it and kept it under locks for 70years. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia did the best it could to draw a new constitution, draft new laws and declare individual freedoms. Inevitably, there were teething issues, but instead of nurturing the nascent democracy, Russia’s current governing elite has been busy using its power over media to feed people an old tale about Russia’s unique path. “The Western model won’t work here”, the emphasised values of integrity, orthodoxy and “the national spirit” have once again conquered the Russian minds just like these ideas had been advocated by the tsar Nikolai I in the nineteenth century. New terms, such as a “governed democracy” and “sovereign democracy” have popped up to entertain the inquisitive minds. Other minds probably don’t even care. 
 

Don't get too excited

So, "repeal Section 18C" crowd are thrilled that some Japanese community group has apparently made a complaint to the Human Rights Commission about a statue on church land commemorating the "comfort women" of World War 2.

Given that the statue looks innocent enough, and commemorates suffering that no doubt happened, on some scale or other, the free speech culture warriors seem to think this is some proof that the law is an ass.

Which, really, doesn't make much sense.  Do they rush out to claim that defamation law is obviously stupid and wrong and needs to be repealed every time someone takes out a defamation action that most people feel is ill founded, and which subsequently fails?

They might also question who it is that is bringing the action.

Because, if one cares to look at their little used website, it appears pretty clear that the far from well known "Australia-Japan Community Network " seems to spend nearly all of its time complaining about how Koreans and Chinese keep unfairly going on and on about the comfort women issue and Japanese militaristic behaviour in the 20th century.

In fact, there is even a post suggesting that the Nanjing massacre was vastly exaggerated.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that this group (of very indeterminate size) is used as a vehicle for some Japanese who push a  nationalist pro-Japan line, of the kind you hear about as still trying to have some political influence in Japan.

Most of us in the West consider that branch of the political scene in Japan as pretty disreputable, for their failure to acknowledge history.

So, that gives a bit of context into the matter of why the complaint is being made at all.  Just because some grandstanding person attempts to make what I would call mischievous use of law (look at Leyonhjelm's silly recent complaint, too) doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad law: what it mainly suggests is that the HRC procedures need to be able to dismiss them quickly, unlike the situation with the recent QUT case.

So I'm on side with the Australian Council of Jewry on this.

Besides, all the nervous energy libertarians like Davidson, Wilson, Leyonhjelm and the whole IPA crew put into this issue helps keep them looking like the nutty obsessives they are.  Let's keep it that way.

Trump facing extinction

Cheery news for Christmas!

Earth is due for an “extinction-level” event from the sky, and even if we see it coming, we won’t be able to do anything about it, a NASA scientist said Monday.
Speaking at a meeting in San Francisco, Dr. Joseph Nuth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said large asteroids and comets, the type that could wipe out civilization, are extremely rare, but tend to hit “50 to 60 million years apart.” Given that a comet wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, one could argue that we’re slightly past “due.”
“The biggest problem, basically, is there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment,” he added.

What's worse, can you imagine Donald Trump as President announcing an asteroid was about to hit the planet?   None of the gravitas of movie Presidents.   It would be something like this (read it in your mind in Trump voice):

"They tell me it's serious.  Very, very serious, folks....  [muffled aside]   What's that?..oh, OK

 Well, gotta run, it's every man for himself..."

Old magazines for you

I would be extremely surprised if my mentioning this here led to any success, but I need to get rid of my old magazines from the 1980's to 1990's that I can no longer plausibly justify to my wife that I need to keep.

The star attractions:

*  Lots of Omni
*  A fair few Fortean Times
*  Quite a lot of Discover
*  Some Premiere 
*  Some other bits and pieces.

Anyone want them?   Free to a good home...

The Syria mess

I don't know why current events in Syria wouldn't give you at least pause to consider the wisdom of a "Russian pivot" by Trump, Jason.   Clearly, there were no great options when the Obama administration was working out how to respond to the Syria situation a couple of years ago. 

Dead on Arrival

That's a bit of a harsh pun for a title, but it seems sorta apt.

Went and saw the serious, adult type, science fiction movie Arrival last night; and I had deliberately not read any full reviews of it, just in case I came across a spoiler or two.

My verdict:  worth seeing, but underwhelming.  It looks pretty good, and the acting is fine; a very chilly sort of atmosphere pervades the whole film.

The key reveal towards the end, though, seems to be a silly extension of a reasonable idea re the effect of language, as far as I could tell.  There is room for debate, though, I suppose, over what exactly caused the crucial change in our lead character, and whether this was destined to happen to others, too.  While I don't demand that all films involving aliens explain all plot elements with crystal clarity, I think this one could have done with just a tad more exposition.

[Then again, any film that revolves around the importance of languages conceptually is perhaps not one for me:  I've always been a skeptic of the idea that preserving all language is extremely important because our cognitive and cultural horizons are always skrinking when a language is lost.  All arguments along those lines strike me as quasi scientific "just so" stories;  some languages may make some concepts easier to explain than others, but I just find it hard to believe that with any well developed language you can't find a way to get close enough to the meaning expressed in alternative human languages.   And, of course, I'm not talking about fondness any individual may have for preserving a language they grew up with; that's perfectly understandable.  Or people who want to be able to understand something from the past.   I'm talking about the more high minded arguments that seem to me to make a fetish out of  variety in languages.  It is, now that I think of it, perhaps a branch of identity politics - certainly, it is usually those on the Left of the politics who are most convinced about it. ]

But back to the movie.   My other complaints:  looks too often too much like the visual style of Tree of Life (and, thematically, you could also argue the films are pretty similar.)   And the script could have afforded some lightening in tone, just occasionally.   Yes, the unannounced arrival of aliens would be initially mind blowing; but once the planet hadn't been blown up after a few months, some people would surely start to make jokes about it.

As it happens, it was only after I got home that I realised the director was the same guy,  Denis Villeneuve, who made Sicario, the generally well received Mexican drug war film from a few years ago that I watched on Stan a couple of weeks ago.

For me, both films suffer very similar problems:   I thought Sicario was very well directed, looked great, and (like Arrival) does a good job at building up tension.  [And, as a minor observation, both films feature lovely shots of flight.  Villeneuve really seems to like filming flying things.]   But by the end of film, the script had never completely convinced me.   My major complaint - why did the female protagonist stay working for the cobbled together multi agency group so long after she had been convinced in the very first operation that they were really acting like cowboys, above the law?   That just seemed never to be plausibly explained in the script.

Anyway, this post is sounding more negative than I really intended.   Like I said at the start, it's worth seeing, and one of those films which are good at provoking discussion about its merits and faults.   But I don't think it's in any way a classic of science fiction. 
   

Message to Jason

Well, gee, Jason:  maybe the Guardian thinks it's newsworthy that a President-elect who broadcasts every damn thought that crosses his mind on Twitter is having share market consequences that he probably isn't even thinking about, and which can certainly annoy share market investors.

You do like to go on with this "leftie hypocrisy" line to a silly extent at times....

Update:  and besides, we all know that Trump will probably have a meeting with Defence, or someone from Lockheed, and then completely reverse his position - again.  The Guardian already says he has not previously criticised the F35 specifically, and even sounded vaguely supportive:

Trump has previously commented on the F-35, but never to criticize. In 2014 he quoted a follower’s criticism of the Affordable Care Act website, saying the US “could have bought 50 F35 fighters or 5 Aircraft Carriers but we got a worthless website”.  

The news is about the unpredictability of this fool President-elect, and the effects it is having.  

Krugman's right, again

I liked this Krugman column, which started by noting the theory (certainly correct, I reckon) that Trump gets "cred" with his working class voters because he likes fast food, and generally has dubious taste*:

What I see a lot, both in general political discourse and in my own inbox, is a tremendous sense of resentment against people like Hillary Clinton or, well, me, that isn’t about policy. It boils down, instead, to something along the lines of “You people think you’re better than us.” And it has a lot to do with the way people live.

If populism were simply about income inequality, someone like Trump should be deeply resented by the working class. He has gold toilets! But he gets a pass, partly — I think — because his tastes seem in line with those of non-college-educated whites. That is, he lives the way they imagine they would if they had a lot of money.

Compare that with affluent liberals — say, my neighbors on the Upper West Side. They aren’t nearly as rich as the plutocrats that will stuff the Trump cabinet. What’s more, they vote for things that will raise their taxes and cost of living, while improving the lives of the very people who disdain them. Objectively, they’re on white workers’ side.

But they don’t eat much fast food, because they believe it’s unhealthy and they’re watching their weight. They don’t watch much reality TV, and do listen to a lot of books on tape — or even read books the old-fashioned way. if they’re rich enough to have a second home, it’s a shabby-chic country place, not Mar-a-Lago. 

So there is a sense in which there’s a bigger cultural gulf between affluent liberals and the white working class than there is between Trumpkins and the WWC. Do the liberals sneer at the Joe Sixpacks? Actually, I’ve never heard it — the people I hang out with do understand that living the way they do takes a lot more money and time than hard-pressed Americans have, and aren’t especially judgmental about lifestyles. But it’s easy to see how the sense that liberals look down on regular folks might arise, and be fanned by right-wing media.

The question is, what do you do? Again, objectively those liberals are very much on workers’ side, while the characters who play on this perceived disdain are set to betray the white working class on a massive scale. Is there no way to get this across other than eating lots of burgers with fries?

* Not referring to fast food here - I like it once or twice a week as much as any Westie.

Skeptical Science on Trump and climate change

A good summary here of the weird things going on in Team Trump - how it seems his daughter is the key reason he met with Gore and DiCaprio, yet it is very clear from actual appointments that Trump is in no way backing down from dismantling the EPA as an effective force to battling greenhouse gases.  (Ivanka is friends with Chelsea Clinton too, isn't she?  which is probably the reason there was never any real chance Trump was serious about pursuing Hillary after the election.)

I get a bit tired of this, because, as many have noted, it seems Trumps just likes the showmanship of all this -  he gets a thrill out of running his current life as a reality TV show.   That cringe inducing photo of dinner with Romney;  the weird, incredibly self indulgent "thank you" tour; the tweeting; the "only I know the winners" quip.

The more the media laps it up, the more he probably likes it.  So once again, I kind of wish the media didn't follow him quite so closely. 

The Republicans and Russia

There's a very clear and understandable account by Peter Beinart at The Atlantic on how the Republicans came to be split on the matter of Russia.   How Trump and his pals react to the Republicans in the Senate who have approved an enquiry into Russian interference in the election will be interesting to watch.

Heisenberg and the Bomb

Quite a good discussion here of the question of why Germany did not get far in its development of an atomic bomb in World War 2.   In particular, did Heisenberg and his German physicist buddies deliberately prevent it by telling Speer that (to paraphrase), sure, they'd love to do it, but it's just too big a job for Germany.  (Mind you, considering the incredible scale of the Manhattan Project, perhaps this was no great stretch of the truth at the time.)

English school horrors - girls' own version

From an otherwise not very interesting TLS review of a book about life in girls' boarding schools in the mid 20th century (I don't exactly expect it to fly off the shelf), I was amused by this particular paragraph:

The louche prize, however, goes to Caroline (Lady) Cranbrook’s 1940s memories of a place called Wings: a grand house, and a drunken headmistress with a fag and crème de menthe ever at hand, encouraging the school sport of rugby (“Jump on me, girls, jump on me!”). She made them dance with her armless, First World War veteran father, whose stumps without prostheses they had to cling to. Biology in the old kitchen involved dissecting an aborted foal. So many teachers left that Cranbrook at fifteen taught two subjects herself and put the five-year-old boarders to bed. When inspectors came she was given make-up so that they would think she was a teacher. Eventually, with difficulty, she smuggled out a letter “betraying” the school. After Wings closed, rumours spread – one had the headmistress knocking out a girl’s tooth in assembly “because she didn’t like the way she was looking at her”.

The similarities are clear

Somethings are very obvious about the current state of the conservative/culture warrior Right when it gets government in Australia or the US:

*  they love surrounding themselves with the military.  I complained constantly about Tony Abbott and his ministers doing this, and now, of course, we see Trump actually embedding the recently retired/sacked military into key positions in government.  Funnily enough, both Abbott and Trump are a conservative's idea of "men's men", yet neither have performed any military service at all.   A bit of psychological over-compensation going on, perhaps?   Or just a love of appearing "tough" by surrounding themselves with professional fighters.

* Their prime rule of thumb for accepting advice:  "if it's inconvenient, don't believe it:  ignore it."   Look, Trump's been upset for 30 odd years that his hairspray changed in response to scientific advice (fully confirmed, of course) that different propellants were needed for the benefit of the ozone layer.  He still can't accept that this was correct advice.   (Yes, there is actually a fact check devoted to a 30 year hunch that his hairspray couldn't possibly affect the ozone layer.)

If this fact alone doesn't give you cause to worry about the judgement of the President elect, there's something wrong with your own judgement.

Trump has just re-affirmed that he can't, of course, accept that climate change is real.  No one believes that Tony Abbott was ever convinced either.

When it comes to economics, I see that the Turnbull government is carrying on the same Abbott initiated political re-alignment of Treasury to get the advice it wants.

As for energy policy, they choose to doubt the chief scientist rather than deal with the issue in detail.    
It is a great worry...

Vaping taken seriously

I had no idea that, in America at least, vaping nicotine "E-cigarettes" had become so popular with the young:

The report released Thursday by the U.S. surgeon general focuses on Americans under the age of 25, the cohort that has embraced e-cigarettes with the most enthusiasm. Teens and young adults are more likely to be using the vaping devices than people in any other age group. Indeed, among middle and high school students, e-cigarettes have become more popular than traditional cigarettes.

These trends are alarming to public health officials for several reasons. Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been warning for years that e-cigarettes have the potential to get kids hooked on nicotine, paving the way for them to “graduate” to regular smoking and setting themselves up for a lifetime of addiction. About 90% of adult smokers say they started smoking as teens.

Plus, mounting scientific evidence suggests the adolescent brain is uniquely vulnerable to the harmful effects of nicotine. Among other problems, nicotine exposure can lead to “reduced impulse control, deficits in attention and cognition, and mood disorders,” Dr. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general, wrote in a preface to the report.

And as for that age bracket using them to quite smoking actual cigarettes - seems not to be the case:

Among young adults 18 to 25, 55% of electronic cigarette users also smoke regular cigarettes, according to CDC data from 2013 and 2014. Although older smokers often use e-cigarettes to help them kick the habit, this is not a common practice for young adults, the report says.

Some heavy regulation, at the very least, would be well deserved.

What with the young brains of American growing up in a country where both marijuana and nicotine are sold, and promoted in capitalist fashion, I don't think this augurs well for the future of the country socially or economically.

The unreality bubble

Bill Maher said back on October 16 something which had been pretty obvious for a long time:

Maher said Trump voters live in "a reality of their own choosing."

"It's not even a race between ideologies anymore. It's not Republican and Democrat or conservative and liberal. It's reality versus alternative reality," he said.

It's this mindset that leads to unerring loyalty, Maher said, despite what he called Trump's predilection for "bold-faced, caught-on-tape lying."

"They don't care. They know, or they don't know, it doesn't matter to them. He's their guy," Maher said.

Hence, Russian involvement in aiding his election either won't be believed by them, or even if believed, won't matter.  Because the culture warrior conservative Right currently has the hots for "strongman"  quasi-dictatorial government, and an enormous crush on Putin.  (Seems their reasoning is a combination of "he knows what he wants and he gets his way; America used to be like that*", and "he don't put up with any nonsense from gays".)

Anyway, back to the objective evidence that Maher is absolutely correct.  Talking about a recent survey, Rachel Maddow went through the details: 

Rachel started the segment by pointing out that President Obama's overall approval rating is at 50%. However, while his favorability with Republicans is 9%, it is only 5% of Trump voters.

Rachel then pivoted to issue after issue where a large percentage of Trump voters were severely misinformed. They live in a virtually fact-free or made-up-fact environment.

The stock market under President Obama soared. The Dow Jones Industrial average went from 7,949.09 to 19,614.91, again, up 11,665.72. In other words, it more than doubled. 39% of Trump voters think the stock market went down under Obama.

Unemployment dropped from 7.8% to 4.6% during the Obama administration. Clinton, Johnson, Stein and other voters are well aware of that fact.

But not Donald Trump voters; 67% of them believe unemployment rose under President Obama.

Rachel continued.

• 40% of Trump voters believe that Donald Trump won the popular vote.
• 60% of Trump voters believe that millions voted illegally for Clinton.
• 73% of Trump voters believe that George Soros paid Trump protesters.
• 29% of Trump voters believe California vote should not be included in the popular vote.

Rachel's statement near the end of the segment was prescient.

"I think it shows that even after the election, what Trump voters believe about the world is distinctively different from what the rest of the country believe," Rachel said. "And from what is true. And this is an alternate reality that they are in, -- it is weird enough and specific enough that you can't say it just springs from broader a misunderstandings or from a broader ignorance on issues that afflicts the country. And this is a specific alternate reality that was created by the Trump movement for a political purpose. And it worked for that political purpose. And now as the Trump administration takes shape, they have to know that they are in power thanks to their voter base that has these false beliefs about the country. False beliefs about the country, false beliefs about the economy, false beliefs about the outgoing president, false beliefs about what California is. In terms of what happens next in our country, it seems important to know this incoming president basically created this fantasy life for his supporters."

* when actually, the runs on the board for "getting its way" have been decidedly mixed since 1945. 

Summing up 2016

I don't even like using the key word here*, but if it's to be taken as a wry way of summing up how so many of us feel about 2016 (and I think it is), this New Yorker cartoon is pretty funny:

* not that I think it's too crude, especially; but it falls into the category of words I just don't like the sound of, for unclear reasons - lesbian is another one.

Violence in (English) history

There are many remarkable things to note from this great TLS review of a book by one James Sharpe about violence in England.  For example:

He refers to a study of the court records of five counties and two cities (London and Bristol) for the period 1201–76, for example, which has produced a homicide rate of 20 per 100,000 population. The equivalent figure today is 1.15 per 100,000. On this reckoning, the southern counties of medieval England were more dangerous than Mexico today – and four times as dangerous as the United States.

One of the many virtues of Sharpe’s book is that he doesn’t leave it there. He looks into the likely victims of England’s murdering classes, which turns up another contrast with modernity (the murder rate dropped to about its present level around 200 years ago). This is that you were much more likely to be killed by a stranger in medieval England than by someone you knew, including a member of your own family. In fact, Sharpe quotes the results of research showing that “murders within the family occurred at about the same level as they do today in the UK and USA”. Perhaps the most dangerous place to bump into a stranger was Oxford. Going to university in the fourteenth century sounds like undertaking a tour of duty in a particularly hot war zone. In the 1340s, the homicide rate was apparently up around 120 – higher than Caracas or San Pedro, Honduras, currently the two most violent cities in the world not officially at war.

....Oxford was just a very volatile place, where around 6,000 inhabitants, among them about 1,500 undergraduates, didn’t get along very well. An armed population didn’t help either. Most men seem to have carried knives, with stabbing the cause of the majority of deaths. But as well as being much, much more violent than today’s Oxonians, the medieval version made use of the sort of weapons that few citizens keep now. Sharpe describes a riot in the High Street in 1298, where students and university servants fought. Edward of Hales, a shopkeeper, went to an upstairs window of his premises and shot an arrow into the crowd, fatally wounding a student, Fulk Nermit.  

Wait - "Fulk Nermit"?   What an odd name.  Anyway, back to the story:

Students themselves appear to have discovered new ways to fight each other, dividing “along geographical lines” between North and South Oxford. Having no affiliation, however, was no guarantee of safety. Sharpe mentions one student who was killed when he stepped into the street – and into the middle of a brawl – “to pass water at the wrong moment”.

The "popularity" of infanticide gets attention, too, in the Tudor to the Victorian period:

These centuries were clearly the high tide of the crime of infanticide, when rigid public morality over illegitimacy combined with a lack of contraception to make it an all too common last resort for some women. The absence of fathers from the stories Sharpe tells is in itself instructive: by allowing the mothers to bear illegitimately, they avoided culpability only in a technical sense. The result was that, even towards the end of this period, “young children were the most vulnerable of all groups in Victorian England”, with 20 per cent of victims of homicide being aged under twelve months.

 There's lots more of interest.  Go read it.

A good quote for the Christmas season

From the TLS:

....the fact that wine can bring great pleasure – and that it can cultivate a sense of community – has been something of a theme in Western philosophy. Plato argued that those over forty should get drunk “to renew their youth, and that, through forgetfulness of care, the temper of their souls may lose its hardness and become softer and more ductile”. Kant thought that when drunk “we forget and overlook the weaknesses of others . . .  people who are otherwise hard-hearted become, through intoxication, good-humoured, communicative and benign”.

For those who want to read a little bit more about Kant on drinking, you can read a short .pdf from a 1941 journal here.   

Rash of the day

Look at the distinctive rash a certain South Pacific fungus can cause.   Unusual...

Seriously?

Spotted on Twitter:

 Greg Jericho Retweeted

George Megalogenis ‏@GMegalogenis  1h1 hour ago

George Megalogenis Retweeted Lenore Taylor

A tale of two media empires: Fairfax pays 25.4% tax on taxable income of $91,856,465 News pays 0% tax on taxable income of $70,847,581

George Megalogenis added,

Lenore Taylor @lenoretaylor

Tax transparency: which companies paid the most and least tax in Australia? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng-interactive/2016/dec/09/tax-transparency-which-companies-paid-the-most-and-least-tax-in-australia?CMP=share_btn_tw …

7 replies .101 retweets41 likes

And guess which one it is whose newspapers run grossly oversimplified Right wing beat up stories about there being too many "leaners" when it comes to tax paid versus benefits received......

Yeah, I give up..Malcolm Turnbull is a coward

I've avoided commenting on the obvious disappointment of the performance of Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister.  

But yes, I think this week it has reached the point where I have to admit it:   he is a complete coward; a captive of the backwards looking, science denying, American poisonous-Right influenced, "conservative" wing of the Party.  Unwilling to call them out, and talking the same opportunistic political lines that Tony Abbott took regarding energy policy, rather than trying to convince the public of what past experience shows he almost certainly believes in his heart, he's showing himself up as the worst type of bluffing, insincere, politician who gives a bad name to politics.

And, of course, his evident lack of sincerity fails to convince the Conservative voters he seeks to placate, as well.

There is no future for the Coalition while it has this internal conflict, and Malcolm has proved himself incapable of taking his party with him.   "Sad", as someone would tweet....

A tax I hadn't heard of...

Beachcomber has a short post about a 19th century rumour, at least amongst the poor in one area, it seems, that Queen Victoria was about to order all children under 5 to be put to death, due to "scarcity of provisions."   He writes:

Scarcity of provisions was a factor even in the 19C in England: and Ireland was, in 1847, about to begin the most brutal experience in its history because of a lack of food. But where on earth would the rumour come from that Queen Victoria was going to get all King Herod on her subjects? Leaving aside the fact that 19C Britain would not have tolerated this and that Parliament not the Queen would have made this kind of a decision, the rumour is reminiscent, in a way, of some medieval gossip that give the state or the ‘crown’ exaggerated powers and interests in the private life of the peasantry. The classic example is the longstanding conviction among the French and some German peasants that the royal authorities wanted to tax sexual relations between men and women, including between husband and wife. This conviction and piffling ‘proofs’ led to periodic continental riots and rebellions.

Fair enough

Priests ‘should learn about climate change as part of their formation’

This should be upsetting to the Latin mass loving conservative Catholic clique, but one of the peculiar things about them is how Pope Benedict XVI, who they generally are quite fond of, was pretty much completely on side with climate change as a serious problem.   (Oh, that's right, the very silly man from the 50's, CL, used to cite some comment where Benedict mentioned abortion in the context of the "human environment", so as to argue that you didn't have to worry about climate change until you stopped all abortion.   Conservative Catholics can't walk and chew gum at the same time, you see.)

Horrible scenes from the Philippines

I don't know that I should link to this, really - too many of the photos (which, in terms of photographic quality, are so good they look like they are from a movie) are appalling and quite upsetting.

But I think the terrible actions of a "strong man" leader, democratically elected, are something that should be given publicity given the situation in America at the moment...

The American paranoia/conspiracy sickness

Of course, with a President elect who has traded in this stuff, don't expect it to get much better any time soon...

Pizzerias in Austin and New York Are Now Also Being Accused of Abetting Satanic Pedophilia

Sandy Hook Truther Arrested for Threatening to Kill Parent of Murdered Child

Trump Supporters Cheer Alleged PizzaGate Gunman

Should we take some comfort from the fact that Trump sacked his adviser's son for promoting this stuff?   Not much, when his Dad played up to it on Twitter as well (from my first link):

Michael G. Flynn, the son of Donald Trump's soon-to-be national security adviser, was reportedly removed from Trump's transition team Tuesday for having circulated Pizzagate tweets. But Flynn's father—Michael T. Flynn—has also promoted fake Hillary Clinton sex-abuse stories:

 Follow

General Flynn 

✔@GenFlynn

U decide - NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ! http://truepundit.com/breaking-bombshell-nypd-blows-whistle-on-new-hillary-emails-money-laundering-sex-crimes-with-children-child-exploitation-pay-to-play-perjury/ …

12:18 PM - 3 Nov 2016

 
•  9,1349,134 Retweets
 
•  8,1048,104 likes

The elder Flynn nonetheless continues to retain his position in Trump's inner circle.

Something's up

Just when the Pizzagate conspiracy was about to be blown wide open, I see that Australia's home for Pizzagate dissemination - Catallaxy - has been shut down by a lenghty Ozblogistan fault - allegedly.

I expect the Black helicopters are hovering over a few Catellaxians' houses right now.   I do not expect to ever hear from USSR SRR again.

If only they could take out the IPA while they're at it, I'd be quite happy.

Inaccurate, of course

The WAPO fact checks Trump's upset at the cost of getting replacement Air Force Ones.

As they say, he doesn't know what he doesn't know.

An honest economist

I like the way that Krugman sometimes makes it very clear that he, and other economists, don't really know exactly what is going on, or what policy prescriptions would work to fix a perceived problem.  It's a lot more honest than the "our problem?  it's Keynes, Keynes! I tell you!" line from certain other economists...

Brisbane needs a nap

Brisbane's lack of daylight saving means that it's hard enough to sleep in beyond about 5 am in summer anyway, what with bright sun and noisy morning birds.    (With sunrise at 4.45, the sky starts to brighten well before 4.30, and hence some birds start up that early too.)  

This sleep depriving system has been compounded by night time storms the last couple of nights.   Yesterday morning, the clouds meant it wasn't so light at 4.30, but the thunder woke everyone up anyway.  Last night, the storm came in around 1am and hung around til about 2.30, I think.   Actually, the thunder was not as loud where I live as in other parts of Brisbane (if Twitter is any guide, it was very bad nearer the inner city), but it was persistent and loud enough to prevent sleep.

This morning it is very steamy, and I bet another storm disruptive day or night is on its way.

If you are dealing with anyone in Brisbane today, just be aware they are probably sleep deprived...  

Not sure how this'll work out by the year 4000...

Caesarean births 'affecting human evolution'
Well, I'm quite fond of the idea that the alien greys are very evolved time travelling humans from the future, and they're pretty small and look like they'd pop out pretty easily.   Or, more likely, decanted, I suppose...

More arguing with Jason

Seems to me you're keener on the Trump call to Taiwan than even the Wall Street Journal, which notes that Trump's follow up Twitter attack on China isn't even accurate.  I'd say any "you're not dealing with a pushover anymore" beneficial signalling of the phone call has been promptly undone by Trump once again showing himself up as a blowhard who doesn't care about facts. 

Trump and the Generals

Here's a pretty balanced take on the matter of Trump's apparent fondness of getting Generals involved in his government, from the CSM.

As for the one who is definitely wanted by Trump at the moment - Mattis - I wouldn't have thought that a Marine leader who is likened by Trump to Patton (with a history of somewhat over the top motivational quips to his troops) would be a good choice.  Yet the New York Times has endorsed him in an opinion piece and editorially.  And Trump himself says that Mattis has told him that he is against torture, due to it not being effective.

So, maybe he would be OK?  I dunno, I sorta just don't really trust Marines, though, to be honest.  Their earnestness puts me off.  

Astronaut eye problems

In other Space.com news, I see that the reason astronauts can start having eye focus problems is due to spinal fluid floating around to where you don't really want it.

Quite a difficult problem to deal with, then.

Still working on this?

US Military Develops 'Multi-Object Kill Vehicle' to Blast Enemy Nukes

Seems a bit like we're re-visiting the 1980's, when Reagan lead enthusiasm for "Star Wars" technology meant Aviation Week and Space Technology was full every week with information about space based laser missile defence satellites under development.  (Although I think I have read since that much of this was deliberate propaganda inserted with the keen encouragement of the CIA, or some agency or other.) 

The Monday Trump

Apart from the point I noted a couple of posts ago (about how it seems quite possible Trump was manipulated by others into talking to Taiwan), two other items off the net further explain why Trump is such a worry in terms of international relations.

As William Saletan writes, Trump's "victory tour" shows Trump doing what we all know he does - he tells the audience in front of him what they want to hear - and it is now clear that this applies as much to foreign leaders as it does to adoring Trumpkins in front of him. He seems clueless about contradictory messages being out there for everyone to see. How on earth is that supposed to work successfully for international relations?

Stephen Colbert was very funny in his ridicule of this a few days ago, too.  Have a look at how he characterises the phone call with Pakistan (from the 2:10 mark, if you don't want to watch it all):



In other weekend Trump news, I see he's still broadcasting a specific message that he will punish companies by tariffs if they move jobs out of America. Now I'm no purist when it comes to potential government involvement to preserving certain industries and jobs, but even I can see that this is a silly approach.

When is Trumpkin drongo Steve Kates going to start worrying about this?

Pilot waves envisaged and discussed

Just found two recent, good videos illustrating and discussing pilot wave theory for quantum mechanics.  Well worth watching:

Message to J Soon

So you like the Trumpian approach to attacking a dead dictator and calling/taking a call from Taiwan because it annoys China?

I await your response then to his apparent praise of (or at least reluctance to criticise) "just go out and kill whoever it takes" Duterte; getting oddly enthusiastic about Pakistan; and the man crush he has on Putin...

In any event:  it's near impossible for everything to go wrong under any President; and some things that go right can be more by good fortune than good planning.  (Reagan and the collapse of Soviet communism is an example of that, I reckon.)   But with international diplomacy, Trump represents a dumb bull in a China shop that happens to be packed with nuclear weapons.  It'll be a long, long time before I stop worrying about what this "Being There" presidency is going to be like.

Update:   The New Yorker has a good article on the Taiwan call issue, indicating that it seems quite on the cards that Trump may have been played by Bolton and some of his other hangers on into taking the call.   As it says, this is not a great sign:

Trump has also shown himself to be highly exploitable on subjects that he does not grasp. He is surrounding himself with ideologically committed advisers who will seek to use those opportunities when they can. We should expect similar moments of exploitation to come on issues that Trump will regard as esoteric, such as the Middle East, health care, immigration, and entitlements.

For a piece I published in September, about what Trump’s first term could look like, I spoke to a former Republican White House official whom Trump has consulted, who told me, “Honestly, the problem with Donald is he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.” It turns out that is half of the problem; the other half is that he has surrounded himself with people who know how much he doesn’t know. Since Election Day, Trump has largely avoided receiving intelligence briefings, either because he doesn’t think it’s important that he receive them or because he just doesn’t care about them. George W. Bush, in the first months of 2001, ignored warnings about Osama bin Laden. Only in our darkest imaginings can we wonder what warnings Trump is ignoring now.

Grifting runs in the family

Certain technological issues are causing a slow down in my weekday blogging.

But I do note the following article from the New Yorker which indicates that shonky salesmanship, and a high degree of cluelessness about privilege, runs in the Trump family.  The material is from Ivanka Trump's own book:

When Ivanka was a kid, she got frustrated because she couldn’t set up a lemonade stand in Trump Tower. “We had no such advantages,” she writes, meaning, in this case, an ordinary home on an ordinary street. She and her brothers finally tried to sell lemonade at their summer place in Connecticut, but their neighborhood was so ritzy that there was no foot traffic. “As good fortune would have it, we had a bodyguard that summer,” she writes. They persuaded their bodyguard to buy lemonade, and then their driver, and then the maids, who “dug deep for their spare change.” The lesson, she says, is that the kids “made the best of a bad situation.” In another early business story, she and her brothers made fake Native American arrowheads, buried them in the woods, dug them up while playing with their friends, and sold the arrowheads to their friends for five dollars each.

And this:

For my money, though, the book’s most revealing remark arrives after Ivanka recalls a boxing match in Atlantic City, in which Mike Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks in ninety-one seconds. The crowd, having paid a lot of money and expecting more action, grew angry. Donald Trump got into the ring to calm them down, impressing his seven-year-old daughter. “That electric night in Atlantic City made me realize that it isn’t enough to win a transaction,” she writes, all these years later. “You have to be able to look the other guy in the eye and know that there is value in the deal on the other end, too—unless, of course, you’re a onetime seller and just going for the gold.”

Atomic irony

Scorsese's Silence and the Catholic connection to the atomic bomb

Yes, funny how the second atomic bomb fell on the most Christian (Catholic) of Japanese cities.  This post about the long lasting troubles of Nagasaki Catholics, and Scorsese's new film on the topic, is short but interesting.

Let's talk ironing

Steam irons are a bit of a pain.  They always seem to reach a point - it may take a couple of years or more, but they eventually get there - where they start randomly throwing the electrical safety switch on the power board, which means an annoying process of resetting the timer on many devices in the house.  I am told by an electrician that this is not an unusual problem.  

Which is where I am at with my latest iron.  I was very pleased with it, generally, until it started the old "throw the safety switch" trick, but I've found this electrical problem doesn't happen as long as it is used without water.  That is where the problem arises - water meeting internal heating element.

Which has led me back to trying spray on "ironing aid", a product I haven't used since I was attempting to iron when I was a much younger man living at home.

The popular Australian brand Fabulon is still around, but both Coles and Woolworths have a home brand which is about $1.50 a can and smells and feels exactly the same.   This strikes me as ridiculously cheap - and it's even made in Australia.

I had forgotten how smoothly it makes an iron glide.  In fact, it can be a bit annoying in that it makes shirts slide off the ironing board a bit too easily.   And, I recall from my childhood, if it gets on vinyl flooring, it makes it very slippery and dangerous underfoot.  But generally speaking, it is a pretty handy thing to use.

This also made me curious as to home based alternatives.   Lots of sites say you can make your own spray on starch using cornflower - which I find rather surprising, but in any event it is not the starching effect that I am really after.

So what makes the likes of Fabulon so slippery?   Dow Corning (and other sites) tell me that it is silicone emulsion:

Dow Corning® HV 495 Emulsion has demonstrated its effectiveness in ironing aid applications. Suitable for use in rinse-cycle fabric softeners and fabric conditioners and in spray starches and other spray-on ironing aids, Dow Corning HV 495 Emulsion:

• Provides lubricity to the treated fabric
• Reduces starting and sliding friction between the fabric and the iron
• Makes ironing easier, saving time, effort and electricity
• Adds softness without negatively impacting water absorbency

 I like the word "lubricity".  A good one to try to slip into conversation at a dinner party.  (Mind you, if you luck out and okra is on the menu, it would be very easy.) 

Big hangar

Dead zeppelins: Brazilian gravesite is airships' stairway to heaven | World news | The Guardian

So, there's still a Zepplin hangar standing in Brazil, near Rio.  Neat...

Still showing some promise

External brain stimulation goes deep : Nature News & Comment

How does the world deal with a "post truth" US President?

Trump makes baseless claim that he won the popular vote excluding 'millions' of 'illegal voters' | Business Insider

As fact checking sites have explained, this claim seems to have originated with one guy, who provided no evidence whatsoever; it then got attention at Infowars and the idiot Gateway Pundit's site; and now, if you can believe him, Trump believes it too.  Or, he is willing to use it if it suits his purposes.

I mean, seriously, what's worse? - a President who is dumb enough to be convinced by whatever appears on conspiracy sites; or a President so morally base in his "win at any cost" attitude that he will use conspiracy claims not caring if they are false, and knowing many of his followers will believe him, if they suit his purposes?  

Update:  Vox's commentary on this is worth reading, too.

For someone who used to work at Breitbart, seems relatively sensible

Ben Shapiro on Steve Bannon, the alt-right, and why the left needs to turn down the outrage.

I think he makes sense on the matter of Bannon and the alt.right generally.  Points out what a nut Milo is - that Bolt should have him as a guest just shows AB's poor judgement - again.

Wearing fur in the tropics

I was watching David Attenborough's Wild Singapore the other night and was surprised to learn about its (now) locally famous family of otters living in Marina Bay, right in the city.   

I had no idea that otters even lived in a warm climate.  Their fur always made me assume they were cold water creatures only.  But obviously I was wrong. In fact:

Otters are found on every single continent in the world except for Australia and Antarctica. They enjoy the freshwater but they are also known to live in the saltwater of the oceans as well.

There's even a species of otter to be found in the middle of Africa.

How did Australia manage to miss out on them??  Was there some ancient territorial war with platypus that our poison spurred local river inhabitant won?

Anyway, this site explains that the Singaporean otters were no where to be seen in the 1970's, but they've reappeared since the city cleaned up its waterways.

Another site says that if you count all of the know otter families around the island, there are perhaps 50 furry residents. 

The things you learn...