Can I just say...

...I don't understand British politics.  The Conservatives didn't really want Brexit, did they? - or at least the PM didn't want it.   But when it narrowly lost, they tossed the towel in and are acting as if a not quite 2% majority decision (in a country with non compulsory voting) is an overwhelming clear endorsement of "leave".   Now with a new leader seemingly wanting to be styled Thatcher 2, it's off to an unnecessary election to (seemingly) just rub it into the face of Labour that they've got a useless leader at the moment.   (As to how and why he is so poorly regarded - I don't really know.)  And as for high profile Conservative Boris Johnson - I don't think he has risen above the poor expectations that most people had of him in the Foreign Secretary role. 

Amusingly, I see that one economist writing at The Conversation claims that the election is being held now out of concern for a worsening economic outlook for Britain, yet people in comments were quick to point out that he was only predicting 6 weeks ago that the Budget and economic outlook meant there would not be an early election. 

Anyway, the Wikipedia entry on it fills in a bit of detail - including the way the country has swung from one side to the other over the decades about whether it wanted to be in the EU, or not.

I find it hard to believe that all of the energy that needs to be devoted to replacing current arrangements is not going to be a waste of time and effort compared to simply staying in and trying to make bones of contention better. 

The American conservative brand has a bit of a PR problem

What with Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes gone from Fox News in circumstances which sound like, if you saw it in a movie, you would find hard to believe (and along those lines, let's not forget Sean Hannity pointing a gun at a co-host), and a President who cheated on a wife and thought barging into women's dressing rooms was fun, it does seem as if American conservatives have a real image problem.   But do they care?   Probably not - culture wars, you know, means you can excuse anything as long as it is not the other side.

Update:   Good grief - look at this story - O'Reilly's replacement couldn't be bothered apologising to a spokeswoman for an appallingly sexist attitude shown by his brother in an email accidentally sent to her.

Back to normal

I noted a rare moment of agreement with a position taken by one S Davidson the other day.

Of course it wouldn't last.  The Last Blog in the World You Would Want to Consult on Issues of Racism (or economics, or climate change, or renewable energy) has its owner, one Sinclair Davidson, and most of the commenters, making the completely hyperbolic claim that the ALP is racist for questioning whether a black Kenyan Senator was technically eligible to take the seat vacated by her party mate.

Does he (and his team of decrepit minions) have any evidence at all to back up race as a motivation?   Of course not.  It's just a silly game being hypocritically played by people who dislike it when Lefties call them homophobic for arguing against gay marriage, for example.   And by a economist with apparent  cluelessness about "ape" being able to be used as a racist taunt.

 

A bit of over-reach

I'm referring to the headline:

Mark Zuckerberg just signed the death warrant for the smartphone

Having read the article, put me in the "not convinced" column.

(For one thing, the "screen door effect" when you try on VR googles seems not the easiest thing to overcome.  Certainly, I expect it's going to be quite a while still before watching a TV show via a VR device is going to be as clear as watching it on, say,  a 60 inch Ultra High Definition TV a few meters in front of you.  Or, I could be completely wrong...)

Not a case of "Always look on the bright side.."

This BBC article How Western Civilisation Could Collapse is not bad, I think.

This section is of particular interest:

According to Joseph Tainter, a professor of environment and society at Utah State University and author of The Collapse of Complex Societies, one of the most important lessons from Rome’s fall is that complexity has a cost. As stated in the laws of thermodynamics, it takes energy to maintain any system in a complex, ordered state – and human society is no exception. By the 3rd Century, Rome was increasingly adding new things – an army double the size, a cavalry, subdivided provinces that each needed their own bureaucracies, courts and defences – just to maintain its status quo and keep from sliding backwards. Eventually, it could no longer afford to prop up those heightened complexities. It was fiscal weakness, not war, that did the Empire in.

So far, modern Western societies have largely been able to postpone similar precipitators of collapse through fossil fuels and industrial technologies – think hydraulic fracturing coming along in 2008, just in time to offset soaring oil prices. Tainter suspects this will not always be the case, however. “Imagine the costs if we have to build a seawall around Manhattan, just to protect against storms and rising tides,” he says. Eventually, investment in complexity as a problem-solving strategy reaches a point of diminishing returns, leading to fiscal weakness and vulnerability to collapse. That is, he says “unless we find a way to pay for the complexity, as our ancestors did when they increasingly ran societies on fossil fuels.”

Also paralleling Rome, Homer-Dixon predicts that Western societies’ collapse will be preceded by a retraction of people and resources back to their core homelands. As poorer nations continue to disintegrate amid conflicts and natural disasters, enormous waves of migrants will stream out of failing regions, seeking refuge in more stable states. Western societies will respond with restrictions and even bans on immigration; multi-billion dollar walls and border-patrolling drones and troops; heightened security on who and what gets in; and more authoritarian, populist styles of governing. “It’s almost an immunological attempt by countries to sustain a periphery and push pressure back,” Homer-Dixon says.

Meanwhile, a widening gap between rich and poor within those already vulnerable Western nations will push society toward further instability from the inside. “By 2050, the US and UK will have evolved into two-class societies where a small elite lives a good life and there is declining well-being for the majority,” Randers says. “What will collapse is equity.”

The black culture question

I see that a Slate column by Jamelle Bouie, criticising a recent bit of  conservative commentary by Andrew Sullivan in which he raised the the success of Asian Americans as a way of questioning the "social justice brigade's" take on why Black Americans are not so successful, is interesting and has attracted more than 4,000 comments.

The truth is, it's a topic I don't really know enough about to be confident of a strong opinion.  I mean, on the one hand, yes, sure, it does seem that Asian Americans reap the reward of hard work, close knit families and high emphasis on education; and it sure seems obvious that in a cultural sense, it's a lot better path than the single parenthood and drug and gangster culture that seems to have become such a norm in at least some American inner cities.  On the other hand, I guess self selection of Asian migrants already with a good education is a thing too; and do you remember that D'Souza clip that obnoxious Right wingers loved when he attacked the college student?  (My goodness, I saw even Nassim Taleb twitter linked to it recently - confirming he's a pretty obnoxious blowhard himself.)   Well, that college student raised a perfectly legitimate point - that blacks were facing clear governmental financial discrimination in the post World War 2 period, and shouldn't we expect that would have long on going consequences?  But then to swing around again - how long do you have to keep trying to compensate for the wrongs of the past before you should expect it to be having a clear effect?  And in any event, is our picture of American society really accurate?   After all, it seems its the struggling white Americans with low education who are killing themselves off now.  If the poorly educated rural white folk are getting desperate and depressed over the way the economy is treating them for the last 20 years, do we have much reason to argue that inner city black folk should just pull themselves up and get on with it despite a much, much lengthy history of being at the losing end of economic treatment? 

All a complicated issue, no doubt.

A foolish column

I was just about to write that I thought Adam Creighton's column in The Australian yesterday, in which he claims that he would vote for Le Pen if he were French, was very foolish.  Then I discovered that even Sinclair Davidson would seem to agree with my assessment.  (!)

Creighton seems to be taking the Peter Thiel line that things need a gigantic shake up, and hey! may as well let the ethnic/race baiting, fact challenged contender do it because who cares about their actual policies?   (As someone else on the net has suggested, maybe this means he would be a Pauline Hanson voter in Australia, using the same logic.)

Creighton even seems to indicate he doesn't care for a lot of what Le Pen would do, or if he does agree, he devotes no time to the question of how many people would get hurt in the process of her blowing things up (figuratively).

I'm routinely not impressed by Adam, but when the stars are aligned such that even Sinclair Davidson doesn't agree with him on this,  I'll take that as a sign I must be right.


 

To Redcliffe

What a nice Easter Sunday. Brisbane has finally left the sweltering summer, nights are cooler and sunrise is at a more reasonable hour, along with days of 26 or 27 degrees.  Lovely.

Yesterday we also took advantage of favourable tides and headed to Redcliffe to fish and have a look around.   I was recently told that they had opened a fishing platform at the mouth of the Pine River, on the Redcliffe end of the now demolished Hornibrook Highway (a long, extremely lumpy, bridge that connected Sandgate/Brighton to the peninsula.)

What a good job they've done with it, too.  Lots of shade, seats, two tables for cleaning fish, a sizeable car park, and two robo toilets of the type that self clean, play music while inside, dispense toilet paper and hand soap, and open automatically after ten minutes.   I think the platform has been open for a couple of years now, but these hi tech toilets are in good condition.  Do people respect the effort robo toilets put in?

And then there was the fishing.  Lots of little  bream and other species meant lots of bites and lots of fish caught, but all released.  Other people there, though, had caught bigger fish, so it didn't feel a waste.  Good fun.

Then we drove around to the Redcliffe jetty and the shopping area that fronts it.   Yes, Redcliffe is starting to look upmarket.   Sure, I think the area still has its fair share of car hoons and very cheap housing away from the water, but there is no doubt the gentrification is proceeding at a faster pace than I had realised.

As a particular example, we went looking for an afternoon beer, and went into the very old Ambassador Hotel.  I see from the website that it calls its front bar "working class", which is actually code for "has not been upgraded for 50 years."  It's really unattractive, but what's worse is the old, old fashioned selection of beer on tap - your basic XXXX and Carlton beer, not even a token nod to the craft beer movement by way of a James Squire.   It was like a bar teleported from 1970.

So, we had noticed a fancier place (the understatement of the decade) a block up the road, and went there.   Here's what it looks like: 

They had live music, James Squires in several varieties, an outside area with views of the bay, and looked liked it belonged more in the middle of the Gold Coast (or Noosa) rather than old Redcliffe.  It seems to be an apartment hotel.  (I've since checked - it is.  Called Mon Komo, it's managed by the Oaks chain, although it looks like it's also part residential. I don't think it's long been open.   One suspects it will at least corner the higher end wedding reception market for anywhere close to Redcliffe.)    Remarkably pleasant.

Friday, good

I've always felt it's best to let Good Friday be one of quiet contemplation, and simple food, at home - going out and camping or having fun of some type just doesn't fit in with the theme of the day.

So I had a particularly quiet day yesterday, and found on the shelf a book I bought at a remainder  place a few years ago and never got around to reading - Murder at Golgotha, by Ian Wilson.

Wilson is a historian (originally from England, but living in Brisbane for a long time now) who has written many historical books on Christian topics - most notably, he remains a defender of the authenticity of the Turin Shroud (yes, despite the carbon dating results.)

You may think his position on that hurts his credibility greatly, but I really find he still has a disarming writing style the makes him quite persuasive.   (I'm a bit of a fence sitter on the Shroud, as it happens.  I think it more likely a forgery, but there are quite a few oddities about it that really make me wonder about the extraordinary care that was taken in its creation to reflect what a real crucified body would look like.)

Anyway, Murder at Golgotha is an easy to read account of the Easter story, in which Wilson picks out the Gospel details which he finds most convincing, and the reasons why.  (He feels John gives the most authentic version, actually.)  He also spends quite a bit of time discrediting Mel Gibson's The Passion of the The Christ, a movie which I have only seen a bit of, but it was enough to make me think it was rather ludicrous in its depiction of the violence.

I learnt a thing or two, and it actually made it very easy to visualise the events in a more or less authentic fashion, in contrast to movies and art.

I thereby had an entirely appropriate Good Friday.  Wilson hasn't written anything for a while, and he would be in his 70's now.  I think he may actually live on my side of town, and he is a Catholic.   Would be nice to see him in a Church and say "hi, enjoyed your work..."  

Revolutionary fiction

Tariq Ali, who I hadn't heard of for quite a while, had an interesting piece in the Guardian recently, about the literature that influenced Lenin.

Apparently, it was a near unreadable utopian novel by one Chernyshevsky which influenced him most.  I guess its terrible reputation as literature is a reason I don't think it counts as a famous book these days.  Just goes to show the writing doesn't have to be good to be disastrously influential.   From the article:

The writer who had perhaps the strongest impact on Lenin – on, indeed, an entire generation of radicals and revolutionaries – was Nikolay Chernyshevsky. Chernyshevsky was the son of a priest, as well as a materialist philosopher and socialist. His utopian novel What Is to Be Done? was written in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg, where he had been incarcerated because of his political beliefs. What Is to Be Done? became the bible of a new generation. The fact that it had been smuggled out of prison gave it an added aura. This was the book that radicalised Lenin, long before he encountered Marx (with whom Chernyshevsky had exchanged letters). As a homage to the old radical populist, Lenin titled his first major political work, written and published in 1902, What Is to Be Done?

The enormous success of Chernyshevsky’s novel greatly irritated the established novelists, Turgenev in particular, who attacked the book viciously. This bile was countered with a burning lash of nettles from the radical critics Dobrolyubov (regarded by students as “our Diderot”) and Pisarev. Turgenev was livid. Encountering Chernyshevsky at a public event, he shouted: “You’re a snake and that Dobrolyubov is a rattlesnake.”

What of the novel that was the subject of so much controversy? Over the last 50 years I have made three attempts to read every single page, and all three attempts have failed. It is not a classic of Russian literature. It was of its time and played a crucial role in the post-terrorist phase of the Russian intelligentsia. It is undoubtedly very radical on every front, especially gender equality and relations between men and women, but also on how to struggle, how to delineate the enemy and how to live by certain rules.

Vladimir Nabokov loathed Chernyshevsky but found it impossible to ignore him. In his last Russian novel, The Gift, he devoted 50 pages to belittling and mocking the writer and his circle, but admitted that there “was quite definitively a smack of class arrogance about the attitudes of contemporary well-born writers towards the plebeian Chernyshevsky” and, in private, that “Tolstoy and Turgenev called him the ‘bed-bug stinking gentleman’ … and jeered at him in all kinds of ways”.

Their jeers were partly born of jealousy, since the subject of their snobbery was extremely popular with the young, and born also, in the case of Turgenev, of a deep and ingrained political hostility to a writer who wanted a revolution to destroy the landed estates and distribute the land to the peasants.

Lenin used to get cross with young Bolsheviks visiting him in exile, during the inter-revolutionary years between 1905 and 1917, when they teased him about Chernyshevsky’s book and told him it was unreadable. They were too young to appreciate its depth and vision, he retorted. They should wait till they were 40. Then they would understand that Chernyshevsky’s philosophy was based on simple facts: we were descended from the apes and not Adam and Eve; life was a short-lived biological process, hence the need to bring happiness to every individual. This was not possible in a world dominated by greed, hatred, war, egoism and class. That was why a social revolution was necessary.

Well, I can't say that I had realised that a radical change in gender relations was so closely tied from the earliest days of  Russian revolutionary thought. I see the book is downloadable (all 488 pages of it!) in English translation here.   I've a quick scan - it does seem incredibly turgid, and to mainly be about relationships.   Amazing what people read before TV/movies/the internet....  

Mark it in your calendar

It seems the ageing Japanese Emperor would like to abdicate, and it looks like the government will let it happen, but not until December 2018:

The Japanese government is planning to hold a ceremony for Emperor Akihito’s envisioned abdication in December 2018, in what would be the nation’s first such ceremony in around 200 years, government sources said Wednesday.

The last time Japan held a ceremony for an emperor’s abdication was 1817, when Emperor Kokaku relinquished the Chrysanthemum throne. The government will consider how to materialize the plan by studying documents describing ceremonial manners for abdications in the past.

The abdication ceremony is planned to be held aside from a series of enthronement ceremonies for Crown Prince Naruhito. It may be treated as a state act that requires Diet approval for conducting, the sources said.

Mind you, I wonder whether one reason for the delay is the amount of time it would seem to take to prepare for the enthronement ceremony of his son.   The Wikipedia entry indicates there is a lot of perfection involved:

First, two special rice paddies are chosen and purified by elaborate Shinto purification rites. The families of the farmers who are to cultivate the rice in these paddies must be in perfect health. Once the rice is grown and harvested, it is stored in a special Shinto shrine as its goshintai (御神体), the embodiment of a kami or divine force. Each kernel must be whole and unbroken, and is individually polished before it is boiled. Some sake is also brewed from this rice.

Individually polished rice??

Wikipedia links to a NYT report on the enthronement of Akihito in 1990 (I really had forgotten that Hirohito had lived so long after WW2.)  It's interesting to see that some Left wingers in the country went as far as firebombing some Shinto shrines in protest that the ceremony seemed to be affirming the old idea that it made the Emperor a living Shinto god.  I wonder if the same controversy will happen again, or if Left wingers are less radical now than before.

And, of course, there is the fascinating question of whether the ceremony also implies some symbolic sexual congress with the Sun goddess:

Many articles, for instance, have put forth various theories of scholars about the function of a matted bed and coverlet in the inner sanctum. Some experts have suggested that the Emperor lies on the bed and transforms himself into a god or in some fashion communes, perhaps in a symbolically sexual way, with the spirit of the sun goddess.

In response to these theories, the ritualists of the Imperial Household Agency have said that the bed is used as a resting place for the sun goddess but that the Emperor never touches it.

Expect some similar coverage next year, then...

Increasing evidence the US did elect a 12 year old

Seriously, I keep saying that the way Trump speaks reminds me of a primary school kid, but it's also the content.  What adult goes into a diversion about how nice the cake was?  And as for the way this Fox News interviewer acts - she sounds like a high school journalist asking her bestie how that really important first date went.

The Quartz article headline has it right:
  
All the giggly, giddy weirdness of Trump and Fox Business News in one clip

As for what Xi Jinping really thinks of Trump - he's a tad concerned about Trump conducting foreign policy by Twitter, apparently.  As we all should be...

Update:  Furthermore, how do you square Trump's tweet about going it alone on North Korea if China doesn't help with what he said to the WSJ?:

Apparently, Trump came into his first meeting with the Chinese leader, in early April, convinced that China could simply eliminate the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear program. Xi then patiently explained Chinese-Korean history to Trump — who then promptly changed his mind.

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president told the Journal. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. ... But it’s not what you would think.”

It's like his incredible statement about  how "nobody knew health care could be so complicated."

A use for dragon blood

The BBC reports:

Komodo dragon blood contains an important compound which scientists think could offer a new treatment for infected wounds.

The reptile's saliva harbours many different types of bacteria, which somehow do not affect the dragon.

Scientists at George Mason University in the US created a synthetic compound based on a molecule in dragon blood that had antimicrobial activity.

They found it promoted the healing of infected wounds in mice.

Serial killers I had missed

I don't go out of my way to read of gruesome crimes, but I am a bit surprised that until yesterday, I don't recall reading about the "Bloody Benders", who bear the title "America's First Serial Killers".

A straight forward telling of their story, from 1870's Kansas, may be found here.  Wikipedia has a fairly detailed entry, too.  

What is particularly interesting, I think, is the link with Spiritualism, as well as the very "Sweeney Todd" aspect of victims being dumped into a cellar via a trap door in the floor.

As a medium, family member Kate was apparently giving out some rather unusual advice from the Spirit world.  From the book Psychological Consequences of the Civil War:

I have to say, if your medium is giving out advice like that, I don't think it's wise to accept an invitation to dinner at home.

Anyway, it seems to me that this would be great source material for a film - especially given that it is not clear as to what happened to the family.  Lots of room for speculation to be built into a screenplay "based on real events".

Is this why the American white working class is dying more?

From the New Yorker:

Case and Deaton published a second paper last month, in which they emphasized that the epidemic they had described was concentrated among white people without any college education. But they also searched for a source for what they had called despair. They wondered if a decline in income might explain the phenomenon, but that idea turned out not to fit the data so well. They noticed that another long-running pattern fit more precisely—a decline in what economists call returns to experience.

The return to experience is a way to describe what you get in return for aging. It describes the increase in wages that workers normally see throughout their careers. The return to experience tends to be higher for more skilled jobs: a doctor might expect the line between what she earns in her first year and what she earns in her fifties to rise in a satisfyingly steady upward trajectory; a coal miner might find it depressingly flat. But even workers with less education and skills grow more efficient the longer they hold a job, and so paying them more makes sense. Unions, in arguing for pay that rises with seniority, invoke a belief in the return to experience. It comes close to measuring what we might otherwise call wisdom.

“This decline in the return to experience closely matches the decline in attachment to the labor force,” Case and Deaton wrote. “Our data are consistent with a model in which the decline in real wages led to a reduction in labor force participation, with cascading effects on marriage, health, and mortality from deaths of despair.”

Runaway slaves

I think the Washington Post must have thought that this goes a bit with the Trump zeitgiest for hunting down illegal immigrants - but it is an interesting look at the advertisements that slave owners of America (including future presidents) would run in the papers offering rewards for returning runaway slaves.

[I think a satirist here could do a good one for Centrist Left looking for the recovery of Mark Latham.]

How boring

I meant to post last week about the incredibly bland and boring sounding menu at Trump's meeting with Xi Jinping:

Caesar Salad with homemade focaccia croutons, parmigiano-reggiano

Dinner options:

Pan-seared Dover Sole with champagne sauce
Herb-roasted new potatoes
Haricots verts, Thumbelina Carrots

OR

Dry Aged Prime New York Strip Steak
Whipped Potatoes
Roasted Root Vegetables

Dessert options:

Chocolate cake with vanilla sauce and dark chocolate sorbet

OR

Trio of Sorbet (Lemon, Mango, and Raspberry)

Wine options:

2014 Chalk Hill Chardonnay from the Sonoma Coast
2014 Girard Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley

Now look, I presume that the menu was given the "tick" by the Chinese embassy, as I'm sure even Trump wants to avoid something like anaphylactic shock causing an international crisis;  but even so, if this is meant to an example of what fine American dining can achieve (or a Trump high class joint), it's failed miserably.   Put a bit of effort in, can you, Donald?  (Mind you, some Trumpkin idiot has probably justified this as an example of Trump playing 4D chess  with Xi's mind.)

John Clarke

Yes, it was sad to read of John Clarke's sudden death yesterday.   I suppose I didn't really care for the comic persona of his younger days,  but it was impossible not to admire the cleverness and wit of his work with Bryan Dawe, as well as the sardonic acting in The Games.  In fact, I had only watched his last Dawe interview last week, and wondered why they were no longer highlighted as much by the ABC.  They were still pretty great together.

I heard an interview with him not so long ago on Radio National, and he sounded genuinely intelligent and thoughtful -  a fact which many people who knew him have confirmed.  I also think it fair to say that there was almost a type of gentleness to his humour, even though it was satire - which is no doubt why there will be virtually no ill will directed towards him.  (Although I see some Right wing commenters at Tim Blair's have leapt in to make it clear he was not funny because he was a "Leftist".  God help them if ever they try watching post Trump election Colbert.) 

Another, completely unskeptical, take on wannabe transgender children in the US press

I can't be the only person who would read this article and think that it shows zero skepticism regarding the complete swing in attitude towards this issue.   It is obviously a difficult issue for parents to deal with, but it is also obviously prone to great swings in medical fashion, too, as are all cases of how to respond to very unusual thoughts that can lodge in some people's heads. 

Update:  the latest post at 4th Wave Now notes the unintended consequence of puberty blocking for boys who want to be girls is that they don't grow enough, um, genital material in order for surgeons to later do the desired reconstruction of it into ersatz female genitalia.

True, even if satire

From the New Yorker:

Nation Desperately Hopes Real Reason for Bannon’s Exit Will Not Involve Sex Tape

The thing about Bannon is that, although people on the Left and libertarian-ish Right (hello, Jason) may agree that his anti-Globalist position is correct as far as short term military interventions are concerned (he was against the Syrian bombing last week, apparently), the way he is enamoured with a nutty book that seems to describe both global and national crisis in this present period actually indicates that his motivation for non intervention is founded in nonsense.   And that's not a good thing.   You do want appropriate US interventions, sometimes, rather than a view that some sort of global destruction is inevitable and will lead to the rise of a reinvigorated US.   See this article in the New York Times which is the basis for this comment.

And besides, his anti-Globalist views on economics and trade have extremely little support from economists or experts of any variety.

It would therefore be a mistake to regret his departure, just because he might have made an appropriate call for caution on the one issue.

Keeps the single men off the street, I guess

The BBC notes:

China will become the snooker superpower within the next decade, according to the sport's supremo Barry Hearn.

World number five Shaun Murphy says Ding is the most highly recognised sports person in China "by a mile".
"He's bigger than Ronnie is back in the UK, than Davis was, than Stephen Hendry was, than Alex Higgins was; he's bigger than them all," Murphy said.
"The fans in China are fanatical about him. They camp out at hotel lobbies for him, he and his wife have to go out for meals in secret. He is an A-list celebrity in China."
China's supposed takeover of a sport so long dominated by the UK and Ireland has been predicted for years, but it is only recently that it is truly beginning to back up Ding's breakthrough.

I wonder if they're taking on darts and drinking warm beer, too?

The obvious concern

Now, one has to admit that if Hillary were president, she would have authorised a similar attack on Syria (she said so herself.)  And several Democrats have said they think the attack was proportionate and OK.

So why should people who would have preferred her be criticising Trump?  Well, obviously:

1.  the massive, massive hypocrisy.   And the suspicion, which Republicans would have been pushing hard if the shoe had been on the other foot, that Assad may have been encouraged to use chemical weapons due the signalling from Tillerson and Trump only a day or two prior that they no longer had removing him as any part of their goal.

But, better late to do the right thing late than not to do it at all?   That's one argument, but it doesn't get around:

2.  the almost instantaneous change that some televised images, and some extremely rapid assessment of responsibility, brought in Trump.  Let's face it, despite the same (or stronger) support  Democrats may have given Hillary if it had been her attack, the history of US intelligence used to justify Middle East attacks does indicate grounds for caution, to put it mildly.  (Although, admittedly, thorough, quick and independent investigation of anything in that hell hole of a country is probably extremely difficult.)   In other words, if it had been Clinton's authorisation, in the same time frame, people should have had the same concern as well.

But by far, the worst and most dangerous concern in this is:

3.  Trump is getting swooning media praise for the attack, and we have never seen a President so obsessed  with media "reviews" of his performance. There is every reason to expect this will make Trump trigger happy in future, and it is somewhat dismaying that even mainstream American media does not recognize that before editorialising on the issue.

Of course, Fox News (and Mark Steyn) were busy giving him a tongue bath about it the morning after - that should be warning enough.  But there was praise on CNN and other outlets - who can doubt that he would be lapping it up?

Some commentary on American sites is expressing concern:

In Slate: Elites Are Giddy Over Trump’s Airstrike in Syria, and That’s Terrifying

Ezra Klein writes, with obvious truth:  Trump’s foreign policy is dangerously impulsive

This, above all else, is what is worrying about Trump on foreign policy: He is unpredictable and driven by whims. He is unmoored from any coherent philosophy of America’s role in the world, and no one — perhaps not even him — truly knows what he’ll do in the event of a crisis.

Obama’s policy on Syria was perpetually paralyzed by fear of escalation. Trump’s policy on Syria is volatile precisely because he doesn’t seem to have thought through questions of escalation. This is a foreign policy based on intuition and emotion, and there is danger in that.

(As for what constant and confusing contrarian Nassim Taleb thinks about it - I think he is indicating semi approval, as a "sending a message" to Assad, but also China and Russia!  I think that is nonsense, myself.  Russia did get a message: "Vlad, you'd better get your planes and pilots off that airfield, some cruise missiles will be there in an hour.  And don't tell Assad, promise?")

Finally, I warned before that it was silly to think that defence manufacturers were doing anything other than seeing their long term financial benefit on the rise when they were buttering up Trump by saying "yes, he's forced us to reconsider the cost of program X, and we'll do it cheaper for him."   They know that this gullible and easily manipulated President is like manna from heaven for them...

Alt Rights in turmoil

Vox notes:

Some of Trump’s biggest supporters are furious about his strikes in Syria

A brief history of instant coffee

An entertaining and educational article at NPR about instant coffee, and how important it was in World War 1 (and 2).

Included is this detail, about coffee in the American Civil War.  (I have posted before on that topic, so I knew it was an important provision then, but this additional detail is pretty amusing.):

"Some Union soldiers got rifles with a mechanical grinder with a hand crank built into the buttstock," he told NPR. "They'd fill a hallowed space within the carbine's stock with coffee beans, grind it up, dump it out and cook coffee that way."

Fast forward, and the article even explains the (likely) reason it got the name "Joe":

In 1943, just before his death, Washington sold the company. (In 1961, the George Washington coffee brand was discontinued.) By then, World War II was raging, and American GIs were calling their coffee by a different name: Joe.

One legend behind the origins of the new moniker is that it referred to Josephus Daniels, secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1921 under Woodrow Wilson, who banned alcohol onboard ships, making coffee the strongest drink in the mess. Snopes, though, fact-checked that claim and called it false.

Yet "Joe" very likely does originate in the military. "The American soldier became so closely identified with his coffee that G.I. Joe gave his name to the brew," according to Pendergrast.

Oddly, it had never occurred to me before to look up how the "Joe" moniker had arisen...

A joke suited to Twitter

Gee, the NYT is getting very disrepectful in the way it talks about the President:

The Mucus-Shooting Worm-Snail That Turned Up in the Florida Keys

Oh, that's encouraging...

One of favourite climate blogs talks about a new paper with some startling implications:

Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years

Other summaries of the paper are to be found here:

We are heading for the warmest climate in half a billion years, says new study

and

The Climate Could Hit a State Unseen in 50 Million Years  

How's Taleb feeling?

From Axios this morning:

On what Trump will consider:

Defense Secretary James Mattis will present President Trump with plans prepared by U.S. Central Command for a "saturation strike" on Syrian military targets tonight at Mar-a-Lago, per The Intercept.

• What that means: The U.S. would launch dozens of Tomahawk missiles at Syrian military targets to overwhelm their Russian-bolstered defense systems and cripple Syrian air capability against rebel forces, military sources told the Intercept.
• The big risk: The saturation strike would almost certainly result in Russian deaths, which is the "sticking point" for Mattis. The risk of Russian casualties — plus the location of Syrian air defenses in densely populated areas — were big reasons why the Obama administration never went forward with such a plan.

On what Hillary Clinton said yesterday:

 On striking Assad: "We should take out his air fields, and prevent his ability to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them."

The Trump version sounds bigger than the Clinton version, but I guess it's hard to tell.

So - big difference, hey?   And with Trump, you get the added "advantage" of attempts to destroy Obamacare with nothing to replace it; a crippling of anti pollution measures; tax and infrastructure plans designed to blow out the budget; increased defence spending for a force which Taleb thought might be used less; and talk of "going it alone" against North Korea when everyone knows that's impossible.  

Yeah, great political judgement there, Taleb...

Wrong image

Heh:

A picture depicting Vladimir Putin in full makeup has been banned in Russia.

The picture is cited on the Russian justice ministry’s list of banned “extremist” materials – a list that is 4,074 entries long. No 4,071 states that the poster, depicting Putin with painted eyes and lips, implies “the supposed nonstandard sexual orientation of the president of the Russian Federation”.
It’s unclear exactly which image the ministry is talking about – but it is believed to be similar to one used on signs during protests against Russia’s anti-gay laws. It turns out there are quite a lot of photoshopped images in circulation that depict Putin in drag.

The headline is a bit deceptive though, as it seems the make up photo was caught up amongst many banned from one poster, and lots of makeup images still circulate:

Photoshopping makeup on to images of Putin has been common since Russia passed a law banning gay “propaganda” in 2013.

According to the Moscow Times, the ban came as a result of a verdict by a regional court in May 2016. A man named AV Tsvetkov uploaded the image alongside others that portrayed Putin and the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, in Nazi uniforms. Court documents say he also shared racist images. The court banned about a dozen of the pictures he uploaded between June 2013 and October 2014. As well as this, his Vkontakte profile was deleted.

American paranoia in practice

Last night I stumbled across a Channel 4 documentary from 2014 called America's Fugitive Family, and if you want to learn about a bizarre situation in the middle of Texas, it's on ABC's iView.

Basically, it's the story of a nutty, god fearing, gun loving family that (14 years ago) locked itself up in a country compound after the patriarch feared an assault charge would result in an order that he hand in his guns.   They wrote to the police warning them not to try to take him in or they would be shot up; the police said "yeah, OK", and have left them there.  (Waco had just happened - they weren't inclined to see a repeat on a smaller scale.)

So, this hillbilly like family have lived with no electricity and never venture off the compound.  It seems some sympathisers sometimes visit, and maybe they get some provisions that way (it wasn't clear) but they live mainly on beans, rice and chicken and sheep they raise themselves.  

The creepiest thing, of course, was seeing the teenage (and older) kids with Stockholm syndrome, claiming they knew they were safe there and so they never wanted to leave.  At least one of the kids (the young boy) seemed to have a intellectual disability - he smiled a lot but thought one times ten was "eleven".  (I wonder if it was a nutritional problem, actually.)

The aging matriarch was glad they did not go to public school, because they teach them sex education from kindergarten and "how to be a homo".  (Funnily enough, similar fears are routinely expressed at Catallaxy.)

It was a fascinating documentary, which all ended in an entirely to be expected outbreak of paranoia against the film maker. 

Recommended.

Many truths told

Richard Cooke is getting much Twitter love for an article in The Monthly noting the state of the Right in Australia.  Right wing magazines, and even Catallaxy(!)* get a mention:

A generation ago, the right side of the Australian intelligentsia could field Geoffrey Blainey, Les Murray, Simon Leys and John Hirst, among others. Now aged or deceased, such writers have no obvious rivals or replacements. Local conservatives write few serious books; when they do their themes are often crabbed, narrow and repetitive. To find evidence of this barrenness and philistinism you only have to open a local copy of the Spectator, unfortunately still trapped in the same covers as its British counterpart. It’s quite a juxtaposition.

Read an issue back to front, and British biographers, authors and wry columnists give way to a parochial collection of geriatric former lawyers and think-tank spooks, writing endless variations on the same article about section 18C. Tanveer Ahmed, a former televised bingo referee and serial plagiarist fired from his prior journalistic positions for repeated indiscretions, has reinvented himself as what Edward Said called “a witness for the Western prosecution”. Daisy Cousens, now best known for an unusually erotic obituary of Bill Leak, was a sometime tennis reporter and self-described feminist who changed her spots to join the pseudo-alt-right. Chancers and careerists have a natural home in the Australian right-wing media: it’s the only place that will take them.

But what are these people really joining in on? Sometimes it’s hard to know. Simple, indeed remedial, tests of ideological consistency are being flunked. Catallaxy Files, which bills itself as “Australia’s leading libertarian and centre-right blog”, is suddenly rammed with pro-Trump posters and commenters enthused about his trade tariffs and border wall. These should be anathema to any libertarian, but the prospect of unalloyed racism is so intoxicating that these foundation principles are abandoned under the flimsiest pretext.

And more:

Conservatives should share the same set of misgivings about nuclear energy that makes them oppose renewables. After all, it is vastly expensive (in fact, now significantly more costly than renewables), requires enormous subsidy and tends to cost overruns. Citizens who think wind turbines are making them sick are unlikely to be less agitated by the presence of neighbourhood waste dumps. Yet somehow nuclear power enjoys significant support both inside the Coalition and the right-wing commentariat, even among those who do not believe in climate change. The primary point of difference seems to be not merely ideological but talismanic: renewable energy is effeminate, while nuclear power is masculine and robust, and has the welcome by-product of making environmentalists and left-wingers upset.

That last consideration cannot be underestimated. George Orwell said that Jonathan Swift was “driven into a sort of perverse Toryism by the follies of the progressive party of the moment”. Really, the local right has become a kind of anti-left. Instead of anti-Trump, Australian conservatives are anti-anti-Trump, saving their bile for protesters and the emotional, and are so excited by the prospect of their opponents’ humiliation they don’t know quite what to do with themselves.

*  It's proof that I'm not the only person who reads Catallaxy only in order to be appalled.   I might note a hilarious thing that happened this morning - Sinclair Davidson chose to delete one, presumably defamatory, line out of regular angry sad sack Tom's comment about Nikki Savva (widely despised for being a Turnbull supporter).   I reckon that's a deletion rate of about one defamatory line per 10,000 in the comments threads, but whatever.  Subsequently, regular commenter struth, wondering what Tom said, notes

...considering Tom’s usual level headed commenting style compared to someone like the political violence endorsing Monty,

I don't think he was trying to be funny, with that bit about "usual level headed commenting style".   

The practical problem

Time has a good article about why America (read:  Trump) just can't go it alone on North Korea.  This has all been known for a long time, but it is worth repeating:

Experts say an attack against North Korea could destroy much of its nuclear-enrichment and missile-testing facilities. However, the South Korean capital — just 30 miles from the DMZ, whose environs are home to half of the 50 million national population — would face a devastating retaliation. There are also 28,000 American troops stationed in South Korea and 50,000 in Japan. “North Korea’s heavy artillery and rocketry cannot be destroyed in time to save Seoul from a fire bath,” says Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Moreover, following the poisoning of Kim Jong Nam — half-brother of Kim Jong Un — with VX nerve at Kuala Lumpur Airport in February, one cannot rule out biological warfare being used by the North Koreans. Even with Japanese approval, which is still a very slight possibility, these very real risks are why the military option has always been a last resort — and why unilateral action could never be simply that.

“There’s literally no such thing as ‘going it alone’ on the Korean peninsular; you cannot do it,” says Cathcart. “It betrays an ignorance of the whole situation.”

 It also explains that the replacement for the last South Korean President is likely to be a liberal who wants to go back to attempts to engage with North Korea.

And, oddly, although China seemed to be taking steps to economically isolate the country,  Russia is ramping up economic support.  

Taleb and the "don't believe everything you read about Syria" line

I see via Jason Soon that Nassim Taleb is taking the "idiot journalists may well be being conned by anti-Assad propaganda" line regarding the apparent gas attack. 

Taleb, who strikes me as one of the strangest and unpredictable blowhards around, should be due for a turnaround of his own shrug-of-the-shoulders attitude to the Trump Presidency, then.  Here he was before the election:

Not only is a Donald Trump presidency very possible, it's also not all that much to worry about, scholar and author Nassim Taleb told CNBC's "Power Lunch."

Taleb said Trump is not as "scary" as people make him out to be.

"In the end, Trump is a real estate salesman," Taleb said. "When you elect real estate salespeople to the presidency, they're going to try deliver something."


Because of that, Trump probably won't do anything apocalyptic, Taleb said.

Um, people with common sense (something which Taleb seems to spend a lot of time complaining that other academics don't have) would have suspected long before Taleb may realise it that Trump's many years of idiotic promotion of conspiracy always meant that he was going to be an extremely gullible President when it comes to propaganda (and I say that without conceding anything about the Syrian gas attack.) 

How could Taleb not recognize that?

More anti-Trump

Jonah Goldberg in National Review:

...my National Review colleague (well, boss) Rich Lowry penned a widely discussed piece for Politico, “The Crisis of Trumpism,” in which he argued that Trump’s basic problem is that he has no idea what he wants to do or how to get it done. “No officeholder in Washington,” Lowry writes, “seems to understand President Donald Trump’s populism or have a cogent theory of how to effect it in practice, including the president himself.”...

Trump brings the same glandular, impulsive style to meetings and interviews as he does to social media. He blurts out ideas or claims that send staff scrambling to see them implemented or defended. His management style is Hobbesian. Rivalries are encouraged. Senior aides panic at the thought of not being part of his movable entourage. He cares more about saving face and “counterpunching” his critics than he does about getting policy victories.

 

In short, the problem is Trump’s personality. His presidency doesn’t suffer from a failure of ideas, but a failure of character. 

 

 For the last two years, when asked how I thought the Trump administration would go, I’ve replied, “Character is destiny.” This wasn’t necessarily a prediction of a divorce or sexual scandal, but rather an acknowledgment of the fact that, under normal circumstances, people don’t change. And septuagenarian billionaires who’ve won so many spins of the roulette wheel of life are even less likely to change.

How can anyone take Trump seriously?

I've said it before - Trump talking off the cuff doesn't even reach the eloquence of a smart primary school student:

TRUMP: It crossed a lot of lines for me when you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was. That crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines. Thank you very much.

but more seriously, his ridiculous insistence that everything is always someone else's fault is at the forefront again, in hyper-hypocritical fashion:

Here's what Trump said:

Today’s chemical attack in Syria against innocent people, including women and children, is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world. These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution. President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing. The United States stands with our allies across the globe to condemn this intolerable attack.

First off, the statement reads like something that you would put out in the heat of the campaign. Half of it is devoted to what the past administration did and didn't do. Certainly the Obama administration took heat — and most would say deservedly so — for not holding to its “red line” policy on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons. But two full sentences — out of four?

Second is the fact that Trump himself in 2013 urged Obama not to enforce that red line. To wit:

But even more conspicuous than that, the statement takes a harsh tone toward the Obama administration without saying what the Trump administration will do differently. The applicable Trump policy here, in fact, appears even less stringent than Obama's was: It's leaving Assad in power in the name of fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) first.

As recently as last week, both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley both signaled that Assad would be left alone.

“Are we going to sit there and focus on getting him out? No,” Haley said.
 

That's better

Tonight, after a visit to the dog salon:

Stargazing at the ABC

I caught most of the much hyped (on the ABC) show Stargazing Live last night, and found it all a bit odd.

I liked that it was Siding Spring observatory, which I had only re-visited a few years ago;  I don't mind that Julia Zamiro was the co-host (I just find her extremely likeable on anything she does); and I did learn a thing or two.  (One thing is something I am embarrassed to say I had not already worked out for myself.)

But, it was a bit, I don't know, trying too hard to drum up enthusiasm for an audience that probably wasn't there in the first place.   I could understand if it was an educational show that schools were forced to show in science class, but the sort of people who didn't know some of the very basic stuff were almost certainly not watching it anyway.   And Brian Cox seemed a bit oddly uncomfortable, although it seemed at one point the producers told him to throw away the script, which he did, and it was perhaps for the better.   The worst participant was Josh Thomas in a pre-recorded piece in which he giggled his way pretty inanely, and pointlessly, at historical items at the Sydney Observatory.  (His fans already have me marked as the enemy for writing about the mystery of his non-Brisbane accent, and not caring for his dramady show, so I may as well double down.)

What I did enjoy more was the casual, unscripted, half hour after the main show on ABC 2, where a relaxed panel of highly qualified people (and Julia Zamiro) drank "space beer" and answered questions about the universe and astronomy.   It was like sitting in a group someone like me would love to talk to in a pub.

I'll be watching at least that part again tonight.

So, so easily distracted

The American Right has become ridiculously easily distracted.   I mean, you see it in everything from obsession about a throwaway line like "hide the decline", to pointless pursuit of Hilary Clinton over Benghazi, and now all Trump has to do is say that its terrible that Rice asked to know who legally tapped Russians were talking to on his team (when there was already an investigation going on), and it's meant to be the biggest political spying scandal since Watergate. 

Here's some reality based writing on the topic.  Fred Kaplan at Slate:

I asked retired Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, whether it’s unlawful or even unusual for someone in Rice’s position to ask the NSA to unmask the names of Americans caught up in intercepts. He replied, in an email, “Absolutely lawful. Even somewhat routine.”

He added, “The request to unmask would not be automatically granted. NSA would adjudicate that, although I’m certain a request from the national security adviser would carry great weight.”

Hayden also said, “There are very plausible, legitimate reasons why she would request such information.” Though he didn’t elaborate on what those reasons might have been, the pertinent regulations specify that unmasking might be requested, and allowed, if the names in question are pertinent to foreign intelligence.

When Rice made her request, there were ongoing investigations of Russia’s involvement in the election, of the role Trump advisers might have played in this involvement, and of efforts by some of these advisers to undermine U.S. foreign policy, specifically on sanctions toward Russia.

It’s worth noting that we don’t know—or at least no news story about the incident has reported—whether the NSA granted Rice’s request and gave her the unmasked names. Even if she did, Hayden emphasized in his email, “the identities would be unmasked only for her”—and not for any other official who received the transcript.

“To summarize,” Hayden wrote in his email, “on its face, not even close to a smoking gun.”

And Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post:

The Trump obsession with “unmasking” names is a blatant attempt to distract and obviously irrelevant. It’s not even helpful to Trump’s case. There are many legitimate reasons for unmasking, and nothing suggests requesting information about the identities of those Russia was trying to assist was illegal or improper. Ironically, by focusing on unmasking, the Trump spinners just remind us that there was an extensive, serious investigation underway because of  a comprehensive Russian effort to manipulate American voters and because of unprecedented connections between one candidate’s team and Russia. McMullin exclaims: “If you are going to establish a secret channel with a hostile foreign power, you shouldn’t expect to have your name kept secret!”

It’s hardly out of the ordinary for a White House official like Rice, with high security clearances, to request unmasking. In Tuesday’s Washington Post, Glenn Kessler quotes Michael Doran, a former NSC aide under President George W. Bush, as saying, “I did it a couple of times.”

Another former NSC official, who asked not to be named, told me, “There is a well-established, well-used process for requesting that such information be revealed. You have to have a reason beyond simple curiosity that is tied to some legitimate national-security or law-enforcement purpose.” The intelligence agencies, the ex-official added by email, “take this requirement VERY seriously.” Though this ex-official knows nothing about the situation with Rice, he said that, since she was doing transition work with Trump’s team at the time, it would have been “highly relevant to know whether these people were talking with the Russian government as well.”

Listen, if you were the national security adviser and learned of this extensive Russian campaign of active measures, knew about all sorts of connections between Russia and one campaign, and found out associates of one candidate were picked up in monitored conversations with Russian agents, wouldn’t you demand to know the names of those involved? Any national security adviser who didn’t would be accused of burying his or her head in the sand. Nothing regarding alleged unmasking that we have heard or seen so far bolsters Trump’s “wiretapping” claim or suggests that anyone in the Obama administration did something illegal or wrong, nor does it tell us who revealed that Flynn was one of the people picked up in surveillance of Russians. What it does confirm is that there was so much evidence of a Russian disinformation scheme and of questionable connections between Trump associates and Russians that it warranted a substantial intelligence investigation.

The Trump spin squad appears so desperate to create confusion — Trump now reverts to airing old campaign canards about Hillary Clinton — that it has confused itself about what is helpful and what is not.

The thing is, though, the confusion is lapped up by dimwitted Trumpkins - I'm sorry, but there is no way of avoiding not calling them out as easily fooled.    They are already primed to believe in conspiracy nonsense - on everything from climate change, Obama is a Muslim from Kenya, Hillary being on her death bed, to massive fraudulent votes.   They are putty in the small, orange hands of their hero.

And the Republican Party  as a whole has to take the blame for this terrible situation.

Update:  The Vox explainer on this is very good, too.

Inelegant

At home, last night:

What an upsetting accident

Accidents that kill families happen every day, but the way some happen, they really make it terrible to imagine the heartbreak:  Police recover three bodies from Tweed River at Tumbulgum

Hi monty...

I see you've been trying to engage with Catallaxians re the Trump/Russia matter.

I know I've said it before, but I just like repeating myself:  you're dealing with a group that includes outright nuts, the emotionally fragile, those with obvious personality defects, the chronically immature, and those so gullible that they believe any Right wing spin on any topic.

To the extent that they fight within themselves, it is more a matter of stupid fighting stupid:  there is no prospect that out of that, a correct answer will be victorious.  

Sure, you can go on goading them, but it just seems so pointless to me....

Badgers get around

I assumed, when I read the headline:

A badger can bury a cow by itself: Study observes previously unknown caching behavior 

that the cow burying badger in question was in England.

But no - it was in Utah.

Just as I was surprised recently to learn that there are tropical water otters (in Singapore, in particular), I had no idea that badgers roamed North America.

I have clear inadequacies in my knowledge of mammal distribution...

Frost fairs examined more closely

That's interesting - the Thames River "frost fairs", when the river froze and all those cheery Londoners rushed out to have fun on it - is not as accurate an indicator of the Little Ice Age as you might imagine.  

Bad review

Sabine Hossenfeld really did not like a new book by Brian Cox, who is about to turn up on ABC with a live stargazing show tonight.  (I am curious about how they are going to deal with the possibility of clouds - but I will try to remember to watch it.)

Furry litigants

Prairie dogs win major victory in court

Stiglitz, Krugman..

The always readable Stiglitz and Krugman have items of interest up:

1. JS has an article in the Guardian entitled Putin's illiberal stagnation in Russia offers a valuable lesson

I liked the sarcasm (well, I think it is intended as such) in the last line:

They sell their system of “illiberal democracy” on the basis of pragmatism, not some universal theory of history. These leaders claim they are simply more effective at getting things done.

That is certainly true when it comes to stirring nationalist sentiment and stifling dissent. They have been less effective, however, in nurturing long-term economic growth. Once one of the world’s two superpowers, Russia’s GDP is now about 40% of Germany’s and just over 50% of France’s. Life expectancy at birth ranks 153rd in the world, just behind Honduras and Kazakhstan.

In terms of per capita income, Russia ranks 73rd (in terms of purchasing power parity) – well below the Soviet Union’s former satellites in central and eastern Europe. The country has deindustrialised: the vast majority of its exports now come from natural resources. It has not evolved into a “normal” market economy, but rather into a peculiar form of crony-state capitalism.

Yes, Russia still punches above its weight in some areas, such as nuclear weapons.

Can't say I know about the corruption scandal he refers to here:

Fifteen years ago, when I wrote Globalization and its Discontents, I argued that this “shock therapy” approach to economic reform was a dismal failure. But defenders of that doctrine cautioned patience: one could make such judgments only with a longer-run perspective.

Today, more than 25 years since the onset of transition, those earlier results have been confirmed, and those who argued that private property rights, once created, would give rise to broader demands for the rule of law have been proven wrong. Russia and many of the other transition countries are lagging further behind the advanced economies than ever. GDP in some transition countries is below its level at the beginning of the transition.

Many in Russia believe the US Treasury pushed Washington consensus policies to weaken their country. The deep corruption of the Harvard University team chosen to “help” Russia in its transition, described in a detailed account published in 2006 by Institutional Investor, reinforced these beliefs.

The only thing I would comment on about this, though, is that it is curious that there seems to be one huge exception to crony capitalism not working - South Korea.   Mind you, it seems a very peculiar, somewhat turbulent country in a couple of respects (political and religious), and maybe its success won't continue indefinitely.  Or maybe it just shows that if you capture a huge market share in TVs and phones you'll always do well...

2.  Paul Krugman writes about Trump wimping out on his trade rhetoric, and recounts one incident I might have missed on TV:

So on Friday the White House scheduled a ceremony in which Mr. Trump would sign two new executive orders on trade. The goal, presumably, was to counteract the growing impression that his bombast on trade was sound and fury signifying nothing.

Unfortunately, the executive orders in question were, to use the technical term, nothingburgers. One called for a report on the causes of the trade deficit; wait, they’re just starting to study the issue? The other addressed some minor issues of tariff collection, and its content apparently duplicated an act President Obama already signed last year.

Not surprisingly, reporters at the event questioned the president, not about trade, but about Michael Flynn and the Russia connection. Mr. Trump then walked out of the room — without signing the orders. (Vice President Mike Pence gathered them up, and the White House claims that they were signed later.)

Cyphers and codes of early America

A good, short article at The Atlantic, talking about methods used or invented by the Founding Fathers (and by Thomas Jefferson in particular) to encode communications.

I had heard about this before - I think it might get a mention at Monticello, his plantation home, which I was lucky enough to visit in the 1980's.

They don't muck around

China Uighurs: Xinjiang ban on long beards and veils

I'm guessing that this may make Trumpkins feel somewhat conflicted.  It's the country they're not supposed to like being extraordinarily tough on a religion they like to see under tight control.   If their man Putin had done it, well, that would be OK.

Sunshine Coast noted

Just had the first weekend at the beach since I don't know when.  (We had a Christmas stay at Noosa in December 2015 - but we might have gone to the beach after that?)

This time - Maroochydore.

I still quite like the place - some early memories are of beach holidays there in a great smelling canvas tent along the strip of camping that seemed to run from Alexandra Headlands right up to Maroochydore - but maybe the camping grounds weren't quite that long?   By the way, do other people love the smell of canvas?  I always have, but if you have not enjoyed camping in childhood, do you still like it as an adult?

It also makes me feel a bit old to be able to tell my teenage kids that when I was a child, you could walk right up to Pincushion Island - the rocky outcrop on the other side of the river you can see here:

But now that I check, it was only in the 1990's that the river mouth moved from the north of that spot to the present south side.  So it's not so ancient a change after all.

Anyway, despite somewhat dirty looking beach water due to the recent heavy rainfall water coming out of the Maroochy and Mooloolah Rivers,  we managed an enjoyable surf swim at Alexandra Headlands on Saturday;  fished in the fish empty Maroochy River that day too, and then fished in the much more productive Noosa River at Noosaville on Sunday.   Caught a couple of whiting that were at least nearly legal size to keep - next time I've got to have one of those measures from a tackle shop so we can feel certain of legality and actually keep them.  They are an attractive fish, whiting...  

The Noosa River was a bit brown too, but it runs through more sand than does the Maroochy River, so it always looks cleaner than the latter, even after rain.  It remains my favourite river in the country.

As for your basic, and very cheap, pub food for lunch, you can't go past the Irish pub at Noosa Junction, which for some reason is called the Sogo Bar.   (There is another Irish pub up the hill, which I have never been to, but I see Sogo is a much bigger favourite on Google reviews.)  If you're just after a $12 burger and chips, or a $10-12 9 inch pizza for one, or a "breakfast burger" available all day with an egg, heaps of crispy bacon and some bbq sauce for $7.50, it will suit you perfectly.  I always feel it should be very popular with backpackers, but I never see them there at lunch.

As regular readers can tell, I do love the Sunshine Coast and Noosaville in particular.  The only reason for not wanting to live there permanently, in retirement (which seems very far off, given that the 50's are the new 40's), is that I did live there for a couple of years in the 1990's, and you can just get too used to beauty and beaches such that you can't be bothered walking down to the beach because you know it will still be there the next day.   I really like the effect of only being there for short stays, and reminding yourself each time how much you like it.

Suffering on the Right

Gee, the Australian culture war fighting Right is having a bad time of it:  the only cartoonist in the land sympathetic to their gripes and obsessions died;  their anti-PC for the sake of being anti PC little cable show has gone down the drain after Mark Latham got the sack; and (in news only noticed by them), the Federal government didn't get the change they wanted to s18C Racial Discrimination Act.  (I can safely say that, due the cyclone, absolutely no one in Queensland was paying attention to that little sideshow.) 

The only thing they have to hold onto is the Trump presidency which, try as they might to pretend otherwise, is a complete shambles of Right wing infighting, lies and distortion.   (They don't see it that way, but they are dimwitted and it will get through to them, eventually.)

I suppose they still have Andrew Bolt to cling to, too.  If ever he disappears in a scandal of some kind or other, we'd have to put them on suicide watch....

Disaster coverage

Has anyone else noticed how coverage of cyclones seems to go now?

The media sends up a heap of people to a scattered area where a cyclone may hit, and they stand in front of the cameras waiting for the wind to pick up and buildings to start getting blown away around them.

When that doesn't happen on screen, and yet they keep coverage going on for hours on end, trying to talk up how bad it is when there is no real destruction behind them, you start to get people elsewhere in the country doubting that it is all that bad.  (Particularly Right wing culture warriors who want to counter any suggestion of climate change having made any bad weather worse.)

Then, the next day, you start to get some images of damaged buildings, but not too many, because the roads are blocked or flooded, so the TV crews can't get around much anyway.  Again, some viewers are starting to think "not so bad".

Then, by day 3 or 4, when you actually do start getting some more detailed images of ruined resorts, homes, and commercial premises, you get the feeling that people are sick of the coverage and don't care much about they're seeing anyway.

The people around the Whitsunday area have been without power for days now, and I saw, but only on Twitter, that many electricity pylons had been bent over in the cyclone, presumably meaning that some areas will have no power for quite a while yet.   Coverage also indicated that a huge storm downpour in the area caused a lot of flood damage the first or second night after the cyclone.

Daydream Island looks extremely smashed up; Hamilton Island less so, but in both cases, there has actually not been that much video evidence.  We don't even know what some of the other islands look like.

The few locals I have seen interviewed do seem to have considered it to have the worst experience they have had, especially given that the cyclone seemed to be very slow moving, causing them many hours of distressing high wind and rain.

It's been said that there had been damage of a lot of buildings at the inland town of Collinsville, but I don't think I have seen any news video of that at all.

My point is - the way television coverage of cyclones work now, it seems to give a very misleading impression of what has gone on.   Less live coverage of the type we have just seen would actually help correct that.

One other point:   I get the impression, from watching people in the area talking about lack of information, and how they can't communicate because mobile phones can't be charged, that some have sort of forgotten about listening to the local radio station during emergencies (and having plenty of batteries for their AM radio.)  Maybe that's not fair, but I just had the feeling that people are so used to using the internet for information, they seem to now feel there is no other way to get messages if they can't access it.

Not your average UFO sighting

I see, via The Anomalist, that a mainstream maritime worker forum/information site has run a report of a UFO arising out of the Gulf of Mexico:

A crew member of an offshore supply vessel in the Gulf of Mexico claims he saw a UFO ‘fives times’ the size of his vessel and UFO trackers are now looking for more witnesses to come forward with any information possibly related to the sighting.
The UFO sighting reportedly occurred on Tuesday in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 80 miles southeast of New Orleans.

The sighting was submitted to the National UFO Reporting Center, which apparently tracks UFO sightings and data, by the chief engineer of an OSV working the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday afternoon. According to the eyewitness report:

“Close to 7:00 pm on March 21st, just before dusk, myself and 4 of the crew members aboard our vessel saw a craft that appeared to be five times our 240 ft vessel in length. My line of sight was about 1/4 mile from our vessel. There was a rig behind the craft about a 1/2 mile. i used this to help gauge size of craft. Sighting was approximately 80 miles SE of New Orleans, Louisiana.

The scene lasted about 40 seconds. The craft rose up out of the water (Gulf of Mexico) about 40 feet, no water was dripping from the craft. Within a split second the craft disappeared at a 30 degree angle into the sky. Speed appeared to faster than speed of a light turning on in a room. Within seconds it had disappeared completely.
I can say for sure that the craft was dark colored, oval in shape and made no sound whatsoever.

The NUFORC has even highlighted the sighting as being of particular interest among the 246 reports of UFOs received in March alone. And after speaking with the witness by phone, the NUFORC said the report seems legit and has urged more witnesses to come forward. 

“We spoke via telephone with this witness, and he seemed to us to be unusually sober-minded,” NUFORC wrote in a note added to the original report. “We suspect that he is a very capable, and very reliable, witness. He estimates that upwards of perhaps 50 people, who were aboard nearby vessels, may have witnessed the event, as well. We would urge those other witnesses to submit reports of what they had witnessed.”

Hate to say it, but if no one else comes forward to back this guy up, you would have to put it down to something mental going on...

We need to talk about Mark

It generally doesn't pay to reward belligerent right wing media culture warriors with the attention they desire, but Mark Latham seems to be on some sort of bender of offensive jerk behaviour at the moment, although this article reminds me that it has been building for some time.  

Oh, and before finishing this post, I see news has broken that Sky News has sacked him.

Good.  He's been capable at times, probably years ago now, of decent commentary on certain topics, but he's decided to make a name for himself by being an offensive loud mouth on the culture wars and feminism/gender politics in particular.  Overcompensating for the loss of a testicle, perhaps? (to go for a quasi Freudian explanation...)


Update:   an amusing tweet about his career: