Pirates No 5

I went with the family yesterday to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 5, and can report that, as predicted, I had an enjoyable time.

The movie is, of course, not perfect or groundbreaking, and I have two criticisms:  I don't think the screenplay was as witty or as well thought out as it should have been.  (I don't know that the witch accusation against the young heroine was ever explained, for example; and having re-watched it recently, I thought that Stranger Tides' script was probably sharper and funnier.)    I also find it a tad distracting when films are made in Australia that I spend much time noticing the Australian-ness of the support actors.  (And, in fact, I think both young leads are Australian too, aren't they?)

That said, it looks pretty great (I think it looks a more expensive production than the last one) and I am still in general awe as to the special effects imagination that has gone into this series.  (It's just ridiculous how realistic they can make sailing ships in fantastical environments look - although nothing has ever matched the ships fighting as they swirl towards destruction at the climate of At World's End.)

If you like Depp as Jack Sparrow I think you'll still like him here; it moves quite quickly and the action is (with one or two minor quibbles) well executed.

And, look, I have to confess to this, as it may give a true indication of a what a Pirates tragic I must be:  my face literally started twitching when the vital reunion that ends the film took place.  Yes, I told my family it emotionally affected me - they couldn't believe it either.  But I think we all agreed, we would sign up for a number 6. 

The London attack

I guess I can't let it pass without saying something, so here we go:

*  as you would expect, the reactionary Right is bouncing off the walls:  I do believe I saw someone at Catallaxy suggesting internment for Muslims already here yesterday. (!)   Andrew Bolt is of course doing his best Pauline Hanson impersonation,  and I guess she will get some polling boost from this, especially from the backwoods of Queensland, where they've almost certainly never been within a 1,000 km of a Muslim, but they know they wouldn't like any of them if they did meet them.

*  The level of fearful reaction is, of course, aided entirely by modern media's saturation coverage.  I'm not saying that the media is wrong to provide long coverage - I watch it myself for longer than it warrants - but of course it can inadvertently encourage wannabe terrorists that if they do something similar, they can create a lot of consternation and fear throughout the entire West.  (And the worst at confirming that to them are the likes of Andrew Bolt and the reactionary Right.)

*  What's the bet that this will again turn out to be "home grown" terrorists?   Which would make the proposed Muslim immigration ban rather irrelevant (possibly harmful) in the short term, and as for the long term - well, I think it fair to say that the geo-political circumstances that lead to terrorist movements targetting the West generally don't last more than about 30 years, do they?  (People really need to remember the 1970's more often.)   Particularly with the defeat of IS, one would hope (and one could be completely wrong) that the radicalised arm of Islam will be beaten back into its shell for a while; hopefully permanently.

*  That all said, of course such low tech attacks are shocking and evil.   I thought that Theresa May's response sounded pretty good, really.  

*  We don't really hear much lately about the success of the West's efforts to target IS and radical Islam on the internet.   You certainly don't see much in the way of IS PR videos repeated in the media any more, but have they made the more secretive communications more difficult as well?

*  I would have thought that Trump's tweets would actually hinder him further in his proposed Muslim immigration ban.   But we all know he's so dumb that he won't give up his phone to advisers who know he is hurting his cause on twitter.  

*  I like in particular how the US Ambassador has contradicted Trump on the matter of the London mayor, who is a favourite target of the American Right for daring to be Muslim.  

* Speaking of Trump and his rushes to judgement - I could almost forgive him for assuming that the deadly Manila casino resort attack last week was Muslim inspired, given the trouble with Muslims in parts of that country, but he really shouldn't have said it out loud.   Here it is, fully confirmed - the attacker was in fact a guy, a former public servant, with a big gambling debt. (!)

Free and unwise publicity for drugs

Is it really a good idea for the media to be talking about the "safe" recreational use of illicit drugs?  In this case, hallucinogenic drugs?

The Guardian has something of a history of doing that, and its readers will often joke in comments threads about their fun times with all sorts of drugs.   But this weekend, the Fairfax Weekend magazine has a story by a young man who talks about cancelling a planned trip with LSD with mates,  and the general  tone is to suggest that its use by smart young people can be pretty normal and fun if done carefully enough.

I doubt that this is a good idea.

It's true - the writer does talk about bad trips, and how he got into one by taking cannabis and LSD together;  but there is no getting around that the overall effect on young people reading the article could be to think that it can be a fun drug to take, and why not give it a try.  

It's also true, I reckon, that LSD is having something of a sympathetic come back, with even Nature reporting a couple of studies indicating that its use is "not linked" with psychosis - although I have to say that, to me, these sound like dubious types of studies.

And as I made it clear in comments to my recent post about Cary Grant's use of it (under proper medical supervision) that I wouldn't fundamentally have a problem with medical use if it is well assessed as safe and likely being of value to people with serious depression or other mental illness that is not responding to other drugs.

Call me cautious (I say "sensible"), but I don't see any wisdom in using the drug recreationally, given the Russian roulette game it seems to be as to whether a particular trip will be terrifying instead of ecstatic.  And besides, isn't it just common sense that any chemical which is obviously playing with your brain chemistry in a really powerful way for 12 hours or so, and which (if you use it enough) can cause flashbacks for weeks or months after, is not a healthy thing.  Too unnatural - too much interference with a system which, left alone, should be enough to keep you happy and balanced.

So what about natural hallucinogens?  Going back to The Guardian, they recently gave prominence (as they would) to a survey which indicated that magic mushrooms were the type of drug leading to the least number of emergency hospital admissions.

But look at the headline they use "Study finds mushrooms are the safest recreational drug".

Of course, if you do have to go to hospital for eating the wrong type of mushroom, it can be very, very serious:  the Washington Post has a story today about 14 people struck down after eating "death cap" mushrooms in California in December (yes, including 4 young men who thought they were magic mushrooms.)  Every autumn in Canberra there are people sickened or killed from eating them, too, although I think most people who do eat them mistake them for normal, edible wild mushrooms.  It's a sad fact that they apparently taste pretty great.   What a design fault. *

So eating wild mushrooms for hallucinogenic effect is not without its lethal risks, and it seems it is still a case of Russian roulette when it comes to whether the trip will be bad, or not:

More than one in 10 said the bad trip put themselves or others in physical danger, including from violent behavior, and 2.7 percent received medical help. There were also mental consequences: “Three cases appeared associated with onset of enduring psychotic symptoms and three cases with attempted suicide.” However, despite all of that, “84 percent of respondents reported having benefited from the experience, with 76 percent reporting increased well-being or life satisfaction.”

Again, call me an old fuddy duddy, but a one in ten risk of a really bad experience, possibly with very long effects, is not good odds for recreational drug use; and as such,  a headline such as appeared in The Guardian that indicates an element of safety in taking mushrooms is not a wise thing.

When you think about it, what's tolerated in terms of the implicit downplaying of safety concerns with use of certain illicit drugs would not likely be tolerated in regards to some legal drugs.   Can you imagine the reception that The Guardian would get if it ran a story that drink driving laws were too tough now - the increased risk of driving with a .08BAC is not so bad as to warrant the highly inconvenient level (to people's enjoyment of a night out) of .05BAC?  I don't think that would fly.  (OK, I know - drink driving represents a danger to others as much as to the drunk driver himself.  Not a perfect, comparison, but still...)

So, yes, I am bit sick of this type of reporting, and wish the media would stop doing it.

*  It just occurred to me - does Japan have the same problem, because there is quite a culture there for people going out and picking wild vegetables of various types, and mushrooms are a widely loved food.  I see that, yes, it does:

 The incidence of mushroom poisoning was studied statistically from 2001 to 2010 in Japan. The total incident of mushroom poisoning was 569 cases, which involved 1,920 patients and 10 deaths. The average incident was 56.9 cases per year, involving 192 patients and 1 death. On regional differences, the mushroom poisoning was more frequent in the northeastern part of Japan. The rate of total incidents for each type of poisoning, which were classified according to symptoms caused, 54.6% in the type of gastro-intestinal disorder, 11.6% in the type of neurological symptoms, and 2.4% in the type of intracellular disorder (violent vomiting, diarrhea and dehydration and hepato-nephrosis, or rhabdomyolysis, or erroneous perception, etc.), respectively. Two species of poisonous mushrooms with gastro-intestinal disorder, Lampteromyces japonicus and Rhodophyllus rhodopolius caused the majority (52%) of all poisonings in Japan.

Just use your common sense...

Curious as to what permanent Trump sycophant and excuse maker Scott Adams had said about the decision to pull out of the Paris Accord, I visited his blog and found that (of course!) he wasn't concerned, and had put up this short explanation of his take on climate change:

Disclosure: My current view on climate science is that the climate scientists are probably right on the basic science, and their climate models are probably directionally right too. But no one has created a credible economic model around climate change. Until you have a long-term economic model that you can trust, you have no way to know what to do about climate change or when to do it. The climate science models don’t tell you any of that. They aren’t designed for that. If you want to make rational decisions about climate change economic risks, you need credible long-term economic models, not climate models.
On a related note, there’s no such thing as a credible long-term economic model. It isn’t a thing.

Well, oddly enough, over the years, I have run some posts expressing similar-ish doubts about economic modelling related to climate change:  you can read some here, here, here, here, here and here.

But the problem with the economic uncertainty and difficulty in modelling it is that the increasingly held  view is that the models may have underestimated the cost of climate change, not over estimated it. 

He seems incapable of understanding the argument that uncertainty is not your friend - it doesn't mean "do nothing", at least when it's on a matter where the parameters of possible change are known.  He seems to accept the broad parameters (or so he says), but then uses the technicality of the uncertainty as to when economic benefits of some global warming will be overcome by the economic negatives to say we can never decide to do anything!

It is clearly a nonsense position to take, and exhibits no common sense.   Does he really think it's a good idea to set in place sea level rises of several metres over the next hundred to two hundred years?  Does he think the idea of New York as New Venice is cool?   Does he think that vastly changed rain patterns and heat waves making current large population areas very difficult to live in may not be a costly and unfortunate result?   Does he have a clue about the uncertain ecological consequences of ocean acidification, more algal blooms and low oxygen in the oceans?   And no, you can't use the notion of "wait and see, and then we'll decide if we have to take action".   It's not that kind of problem - you can't reverse it with a wave of the wand, and geo-engineering is likely to invite its own problems.

Yeah, just shrug you ignorant shoulders, Scott; but you make no common sense.

Poets make pretty crook scientists

Clive James is apparently a wiz at languages, and his intellectual life has always been in the humanities.

His lengthy piece decrying climate change "alarmists", run in The Australian today with much prominence, is plainly, to anyone who has read widely on the subject, as worthless and utterly unreliable and out of date as a poet's analysis of the current state of a field of science could possibly be.  (It really feels like it was written 8 or 9 years ago, at the height of the question of the what the "pause" meant - not that serious scientists ever thought it meant that rising global temperatures had magically stopped.) 

There's a reason we don't rely on poets to instruct us on whether vaccines are good public policy, or what form of cancer treatment to take, or if Einstein could really be right because his ideas don't make much intuitive sense.   Fortunately, most know their limits. 

I don't wish James ill - he's been a very funny man in his day - but it is true that such ill formed views are literally dying out.

Rich vampires already exist

Vanity Fair notes:

Jesse Karmazin agrees. His start-up, Ambrosia, is charging about $8,000 a pop for blood transfusions from people under 25, Karmazin said at Code Conference on Wednesday. Ambrosia, which buys its blood from blood banks, now has about 100 paying customers. Some are Silicon Valley technologists, like Thiel, though Karmazin stressed that tech types aren’t Ambrosia’s only clients, and that anyone over 35 is eligible for its transfusions.

Karmazin was inspired to found Ambrosia after seeing studies researchers had done involving sewing mice together with their veins conjoined. Some aspects of aging, one 2013 study found, could be reversed when older mice get blood from younger ones, but other researchers haven’t been able to replicate these results, and the benefits of parabiosis in humans remains unclear. “I think the animal and retrospective data is compelling, and I want this treatment to be available to people,” Karmazin told the MIT Technology Review

According to the article, Ambrosia says that Thiel is not one of their customers, but there are rumours that he has his own source of young blood.

So, how's Prof Davidson's Catallaxy blog taking the Paris Accord news?

Of course, they are popping champagne corks, but the nuttiness and offensiveness of some - who view accepting the reality of climate change as somehow affecting their masculinity - is on full display.

Stand tall, Professor Davidson.  

Update:  In examining the Paris decision,  David Roberts at Vox re-visits his tribalist/cosmopolitan dichotomy explanation for Trump, and at the end of this section, the "masculinity  must dominate again" aspect gets a mention:

Trump is a tribalist

The hallmark of tribalism (a term I prefer to “nationalism,” as it gets at the deeper roots) is that it views the world in zero-sum terms — if one tribe benefits, it is at another tribe’s expense. As has been much remarked (see my post on Trump’s mindset), this describes Trump to a tee. He views all interactions, both personal and international, in terms of dominance and submission.

Tribalism has also entirely subsumed the US conservative movement. The intellectual core has all but rotted; what remains are older, rural and suburban white men and their wives, angry that their tribe is being demoted from its hegemonic position. At a barely beneath-the-surface level, Trumpism is about restoring old hierarchies: the powerful over the powerless, whites over minorities, men over women.

 Clearly, you can see how this is so true, when you read the many examples at Catallaxy.

Rain on the move?

From Climate Central:

A new study ....suggests that Earth’s rain belts could be pushed northward as the Northern Hemisphere heats up faster than the Southern Hemisphere. That shift would happen in concert with the longstanding expectation for already wet areas to see more rain and for dry ones to become more arid.

The study, detailed Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, “adds to the large body of evidence that climate change is going to mess with the large-scale motions of air and water in the atmosphere. And this matters, because those patterns largely determine where it's rainy or arid, broadly speaking,” NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel, who wasn’t involved with the study, said in an email.

These changes in rain distribution could have implications for future water resources, particularly in areas where water supplies are already stressed, such as the western U.S. and parts of Africa.

...which regions are wet and dry are also determined by the locations of the Earth’s main rain belts. The positions of those rain belts, in turn, are tied to that of the so-called thermal equator (the ring around the planet’s middle where surface temperatures are highest). And the location of that equator is impacted by the balance of temperatures between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Because the Northern Hemisphere has more landmass, it is heating up faster than the Southern Hemisphere, and, as some climate models have suggested, this could push the thermal equator northward, and along with it those key rain belts.

Makes some sense, and intuitively, one of the most serious potential consequences of climate change.
 

Look at my tatts

Good grief - given my aversion to tattooing, especially when on prominent display on women - I am less than pleased to see a tattoo promoting article on The Conversation by a female academic at RMIT.   (What an academy...)  

Even though she writes:

My interest in tattooing stems from my upbringing. Living in Aotearoa, from roughly the ages of eight to 28, meant that I was exposed to Maori and Pacific Islands tattooing attitudes.

I don't think she has a tribal reason herself for getting tattooed - and the tattoos of her own that she puts in the article are not of a tribal design.   She further gives the "high brow" justification for the practice:

If I see my tattoos as permanent records of rites of passage and power over adversity, ancient women and their societies may have been doing the same - but with a more restricted range of motif options. The limited range of motifs would have been due to both social conventions, the skill of the tattooist, and the tools used to create the tattoo.

Just because women got it done 2000 years ago in Greece or Egypt, I see no particular reason why this should encourage women to get kitchy art permanently fixed to their body now.  (And I maintain - the great majority of tattooing done in the West is kitch art.)

Anyway, each to their own, as they say;  just that I'll keep complaining about it, too, until fashions change.   (I still suspect it will, someday, somehow....) 

Psychological issues

The thing that immediately struck me, on listening to extracts of Trump's "we're leaving the Paris Accord" speech this morning, were the references to other countries "laughing at" the US because they knew the US was being hurt by the deal.  (And he threw in a snide reference to Germany, or Europe, in particular.)     

I was going to say that this is a case of psychological projection - but it's not quite that, I suppose.   It's whatever the term is for psychological deflection - mistaking laughter at him personally, for all of his obvious personal and intellectual shortcomings, as being directed at the country as a whole.  

And as such, it is example of what makes him so unsuited to making decisions on diplomatic and military matters (yes, including the nuclear codes) - you can imagine him mistaking a slight meant to be directed to him as deserving response on behalf of the whole country (because he will think that the country is the intended victim, not him personally.)

Given that Bannon is seem as a key person behind the Paris decision, you can well imagine him having some similar psychological issues too.   (He has been married and divorced 3 times - a bit of an obvious warning sign regarding personality.  He's also looks remarkably old and unwell, for his physical age.  Is he sensitive on that front?)

Apart from the intrigue of what drives the tiny mind of the President,  everyone will be making the obvious point in response to his claimed reasons for withdrawing.  As the Washington Post puts it:

“As of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the nonbinding Paris accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country,” Trump said — a phrase seeming to contain a logical contradiction. If the agreement is nonbinding, then what burdens can it impose?

And that contradiction gets to the heart of why Trump seemed, on Thursday, not to be arguing against the Paris agreement itself, but rather, against the Obama administration’s pledge under that agreement, in which the United States would cut by the year 2020 its emissions by 26 to 28 percent below their 2005 levels.

But the agreement does not require a particular level of emissions cuts for a particular country; rather, the United States and any other nation can choose its own level of emissions reductions.

“It seems very unnecessary to have to withdraw from the Paris agreement if the concern is focused on the U.S. emissions target and financial contributions,” said Sue Biniaz, who served at the State Department as the United States’ lead climate change lawyer from 1989 until earlier this year. “The U.S. can unilaterally change its emissions target under the agreement — it doesn’t have to ‘renegotiate’ it — and financial contributions are voluntary.”

 As I expected, the attempted explanation of Trump is in part meant to placate his daughter - he didn't take the chance to deny climate change, and he leaves open the possibility of "renegotiation" - of a deal that doesn't bind the country to a particular target anyway.  

It's all nonsense, and the world will laugh - or grimace - again at the President.

Old news, but I like the sarcasm

While wandering the interwebs, just found this pleasantly sarcastic note at Crikey, from February this year:

“Some exciting Friday afternoon news,” IPA long-term inmate and senior fellow Chris Berg writes. The passionate free-marketeer and advocate of low taxes and small government will be taking up a postdoctoral position at … RMIT, the publicly funded university. Your low taxes at work. The old workingmen’s college is a hotbed of free-marketeers, with Catallaxy-blog aficionadi Sinclair Davidson and Steven Kates both having spent years there. How selfless of these men to deny themselves the bracing challenges of the free market, and teach the evils of government funding in an institution that receives about $550 million of its billion-dollar budget from government sources. How interesting it would be to see them offer their sevices in the market, and see how many would pay. Don’t worry, no chance of that. You’ll be working to support free-market advocacy for many years to come. Exciting Monday morning news! — Guy Rundle

 

Update on unemployment

I did note a week or so ago that Adam Creighton seems determined to be a contrarian (and of the kind who would appeal to dumb populist politicians) when it comes to matter of unemployment figures; even when a fellow "small government" traveller like Judith Sloan has long been dismissive of the argument.

Well, for more detail as to why Adam's argument is (largely) crap, Greg Jericho has done a sterling job of explaining it all here. 

Long term lead

Interesting to see that glaciologists looking at lead levels in the European environment, at least, have now realised that lead mining and smelting has been polluting the place above natural levels for a very long time:

When the Black Death swept across Europe in the 14th century, it not only killed millions, it also brought lead smelting, among many other commercial activities, to a halt. That cessation is reflected in a new analysis of historical and ice core data, which researchers say provides evidence that the natural level of lead in the air is essentially zero, contrary to common assumptions.
"These new data show that human activity has polluted European air almost uninterruptedly for the last [about] 2,000 years," the study's authors say. "Only a devastating collapse in population and economic activity caused by pandemic disease reduced atmospheric pollution to what can now more accurately be termed background or natural levels."

Why I am not too worried

As much as I want there to be serious, proper and appropriate government policy directed to urgently work towards reducing greenhouse gases, I am tending towards the sanguine on the matter of Trump (possibly) saying the US will pull out of the Paris Accord, for the following reasons:

a.   while there are those who are ecstatic at the prospect of Trump confirming withdrawal,  it has been clear for years now that you either have to be dumb, old or a libertarian (or a combination of all three) to not believe the science and that political policy addressing climate change is appropriate and necessary.   Thus, they may celebrate it as a great victory, but quite frankly, they don't have the smarts to see the writing on the wall that the war is already lost.

b.   It's not just me who can see that - it's the rest of the world.   Thus, I am feeling reasonably confident that there is insufficient political support in any other important country to pull out, just because the most obviously intellectually challenged US President we have seen in decades and his coterie of ageing fundamentalist supporters (either in religion or ideology) have decided they can pretend the problem doesn't exist.   I suspect they will wait out the passing of this presidency and old guard Republican leadership.

c.   Trump has personal reasons for hedging on this decision - he wants to keep Ivanka and her husband on side.  (And there are other advisers around him who would just as soon stay in anyway.)   Thus, the suspicion already is that if he confirms withdrawal, he will do so in such a way as to not offend his daughter and those other advisers - more than likely, I would guess, by claiming that he is happy to see CO2 reductions, but he just doesn't believe the Paris accord is relevant to achieving that.  And, as we know with the example of Texas, where the Republican leadership would make you suspect it would be a bad place for renewable energy, yet wind power has done very well, sometimes the outcomes in clean energy don't match the political rhetorical in the way you might expect.  In other words, it's not out of the question that actions by corporations  and State governments in the US will continue to make reasonable progress towards green energy regardless of the Federal government saying "we don't care".

d.   There are some (well, at least one!) suggesting that it's actually better for the world for the US to pull out of the agreement rather than stay in and pretend it is following it.  See the argument put up by Luke Kemp, which appeared at The Conversation, and also got noted at the Washington Post.

Anyway, we shall see...

Update:  it's worth looking at the graph in this piece by David Roberts, showing that the US had a tough road to meet its commitments anyway.  The uncertainty is, I guess,  the degree to which Trumpian loosening of regulations (happening even without leaving Paris) will be taken advantage of by industry to maintain current emissions (or increase them).

No news from Laika :(

I'm a bit worried about Laika Studios, as there is still no announcement of its next release.

Kubo and the Two Strings badly underperformed for them at the box office despite (the somewhat too ecstatic) reviews.  (I blame using Matthew McConaughey for a voice.  He can ruin anything.)  But just as it was opened, company owner Travis Knight announced that it was the last of their "kids" films anyway.  He said the next film was going to be very different, still intended for families, but tonally a break from their first four films.  

Well, that makes me very curious, but despite his saying that they would probably announce it last year, a visit to the company website is still silent on the matter.

I still think that Paranorman, closely followed by Coraline, were the studio's best films.   But the artwork and craftmanship in all of them is something to behold.

No, doctors weren't amazed

I suspected as much:

Why This Viral Video of a Newborn Baby 'Walking' Is Totally Normal

Roger Moore's ghost

No, no:  I've had no spectral visitors offering Bondian double entendres.  But I just noticed this story, apparently told by Moore a long time ago, about a ghost he had visit him twice when staying at a hotel early in his career.

The story is interesting (if not a tall tale) for a couple of reasons.  First, it initially sounds like it might be a case of sleep paralysis, which often does involve the perception of a phantom figure in the room, sometimes near or on the bed, causing the paralysis.  But then he says he was sitting "bolt upright" in bed - and I don't think that's consistent with your normal "woke up and couldn't move" case of sleep paralysis.

Secondly, it is surely pretty rare to see the same apparition twice.

So, I wonder if it was true...

(And, by the way, isn't that a terribly designed website the story is on.)

Blockchain, cryptocurrency and unintended consequences

Yes, I think I count as an intuitive skeptic of Bitcoin and blockchain generally.  (If something's beloved of techno libertarians, it should be automatically suspect, in my books.)

But here's the sort of article that puts some justification into my intuition:

Cryptocurrency Might be a Path to Authoritarianism

Extreme libertarians built blockchain to decentralize government and corporate power. It could consolidate their control instead.

Of personal interest

I've been noticing certain unwanted age related changes to my skin in the last couple of years:  I'm getting small lumps and brownish patches that never used to be there and would just as soon do without.  So, who knows, a good all purpose aged skin repairing chemical might tempt me to use it:

New work from the University of Maryland suggests that a common, inexpensive and safe chemical could slow the aging of human skin. The researchers found evidence that the chemical—an antioxidant called methylene blue—could slow or reverse several well-known signs of aging when tested in cultured human skin cells and simulated skin tissue.

The study was published online in the journal Scientific Reports on May 30, 2017. "Our work suggests that methylene blue could be a powerful antioxidant for use in skin care products," said Kan Cao, senior author on the study and an associate professor of cell biology and molecular genetics at UMD. "The effects we are seeing are not temporary. Methylene blue appears to make fundamental, long-term changes to skin cells."

The Trumpian path

Matthew Yglesias, one of the most trenchant critics of Trump, has written a lengthy piece at Vox about Trump as "bullshitter" - an analysis that is not exactly news (to put it mildly), but he does go into it at more depth.  In particular, he notes how it fits in with how authoritarianism  works, and ends with this:

The upshot is a conservative movement and a Republican Party that, if Trump persists in office, will be remade along Trumpian lines with integrity deprecated and bullshit running rampant. It’s clear that the owners and top talent at commercial conservative media are perfectly content with that outcome, and the question facing the party’s politicians is whether they are, too. 

The common thread of the Trumposphere is that there doesn’t need to be any common thread. One day Comey went soft on Clinton; the next day he was fired for being too hard on her; the day after that, it wasn’t about Clinton at all. The loyalist is just supposed to go along with whatever the line of the day is. 

This is the authoritarian spirit in miniature, assembling a party and a movement that is bound to no principles and not even committed to following its own rhetoric from one day to the next. A “terrific” health plan that will “cover everyone” can transform into a bill to slash the Medicaid rolls by 14 million in the blink of an eye and nobody is supposed to notice or care. Anything could happen at any moment, all of it powered by bullshit.

Quite right, I think.   And funnily enough, we have people claiming to be libertarians who are excuse makers in chief for Trump, despite this creepy and obvious "truth means nothing" approach to governing.   The effects of the silly, post modernism movement (which similarly eroded the utility of "truth" in science and policy) still causes them offence,  but when it comes to Trump, it seems to be a case of "meh".

Update:  see this Salon article on libertarians and Trump, too.

Public transport and land value

There's an article up at The Conversation looking at the question of what effect the Gold Coast light rail had on land values.   It seems it's a tricky issue to work out and there could be quite a lot of "rubbery figures" involved.

The idea that public transport could be part paid for by greater taxes on surrounding land that benefits from it just strikes me as an idea too difficult to implement with enough certainty and fairness.  

As for whether people actually like the Gold Coast light rail system or not - some of the comments indicate that some are still dead set against it for more-or-less aesthetic reasons.   I find that rather odd.  I thought it looked modern and efficient last I saw it:  public transport just annoys some people, I reckon. 

Lab meat delayed

I've always been a skeptic of lab grown meat, and this update from Discover indicates that the idea of growing muscle cells into something resembling meat is in fact making slow progress.

I say that the enthusiastic reception of the (apparently) very meat like "impossible burger" (because it contains a blood taste resembling compound, but derived from plants) is going to do away with the interest in lab grown mince anyway.  And as for slabs of fake steak grown in a lab - I don't think they have any idea how to get it texturally like meat, yet.

The Lindt Cafe seige

I watched some of the Four Corners report on the outcome of the Lindt seige inquest last night, and have a few observations:

*  it is clear that there were some inexcusable mistakes made by the police in terms of lines of communication.  I found it gobsmacking that a hostage could ring the negotiator direct number and have it ring out 4 times, because of  a slow changeover happening, for example, or that a text message passed on by a relative did not make it to the upper level of the police operation.

*  the police inability to get things done quickly - getting lights turned out in the mall, which was agitating Monis - seemed kind of incompetent of either the police, or the Council.

* the reason Manis executed the manager remained unclear.  It seemed Manis was reassuring the remaining hostages that they would be OK if they just co-operated, but he made Troy kneel in an "execution" position anyway, then waited and shot him anyway.  Did he want to precipitate the police finally storming the cafe?

*  that said, and not taking away any of the grief of the families of the victims, it is still surely the case that a very early police storming of the cafe would probably have resulted in more accidental deaths from stray bullet fragments than what occurred (one.)   In a broad sense, waiting was responsible.  Once he fired a shot towards escaping hostages, it probably wasn't, and the police seem to accept that now.   But it remains quite on the cards that even entry then might have accidentally killed more.  

Australian Right wing civility crisis, continues

Now that Roger Franklin's long term incivility problem in his job at Quadrant has been opened up for wider public scrutiny by not only the ABC, but also (apparently) The Australian, and Right wing commentators (Paul Murray, Chris Kenny, Nick Cater) are putting a lot of distance between themselves and him, that long term exemplar of Right wing incivility, the Catallaxy blog, continues to be in uproar in defence of Franklin, save for about 1% of commenters.  

Sinclair Davidson, who seems to be a close friend of Franklin (and people at Catallaxy sometimes comment on the incestuous world of Labor politics!) is making a (pretty typical for him) hash of the defence of Franklin's comment:

Roger asked, what I thought, a perfectly good question:

What if that blast had detonated in an Ultimo TV studio? Unlike those young girls in Manchester, their lives snuffed out before they could begin, none of the panel’s likely casualties would have represented the slightest reduction in humanity’s intelligence, decency, empathy or honesty.

True – an early version, quickly retracted, was a bit more intemperate but the question remains valid.

This is just an inane line to take on the matter:   there was no "valid question" - it was a rhetorical device which Franklin answers himself - by saying explicitly that the world would have been better for it. 

Look, the simple fact of the matter is that Davidson is just about the last person to show sensible judgement when it comes to matters of civility, as he has been at the very forefront of providing for Australian Right wing reactionary "conservatives" a outlet for their voice, and he doesn't care what offence they cause, even on a blog in which he can delete offensiveness.

He rarely exercises that power, plays favourites, and is willing to continually ignore plainly defamatory or offensive material - with the Left being its main target.   

I complained about this here, back in early 2013, and stopped my commenting there because of his ridiculous and partisan tolerance of incivility, defamation*, and outright plagiarism (for which he accepted the poster's apology, and then left the patently plagiarised post - from an American site - up on the blog.)

In the current kerfuffle, he has noted that people have (I don't know how recently) tried to get him into trouble at RMIT because of the blog.   That wasn't me, but I do find it pretty remarkable that RMIT would not be concerned about their reputation when one of its key staff has the power to police defamation and offensiveness on a blog, and routinely chooses not to exercise it. 

It would not concern me at all if there were media exposure to the blog and its threads - he used to get his head on the ABC as an economic and quasi political commentator quite often, I think viewers deserve to know that he runs a blog that positively hurts the cause of civil political debate in the country.

It's an echo chamber of the worst kind, reinforcing culture warriors and climate change deniers that they are not alone and can be as obnoxious as they like, thus coarsening public political discourse.   You can actually see the place dumbing down and coarsening thread participants over the years, as those who expect civility in argument and would put up counter views have all abandoned the place.   

Franklin deserves to lose his job at Quadrant;  I reckon more might be achieved if Catallaxy enforced civility on its own pages, but that would require a change of its hopeless leadership.

* unless it's a friend

Blasphemy and Islam

Hey, if you can get past the "please register to read" pester screen (I did, eventually), there's a really good article up at Foreign Policy "The Islamic World Has a Blasphemy Problem". 

As the article notes (various extracts follow):

Blasphemy charges have steadily risen in the last decade in Indonesia and have a near 100 percent conviction rate. Meanwhile, across the Muslim world, there has been an uptick in blasphemy charges and prosecutions in recent years. Blasphemy has been spiritedly revived in Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011. In 2001, there was only one blasphemy trial in Pakistan, but now there are dozens each year. There has been a steady drip of attacks and murders of bloggers and writers in Bangladesh in the last five years, along with a deadly mass protest in 2013 demanding the death penalty for blasphemy....

The use of the charge ranges from the nominal to the horrifying. Since 2016, the Egyptian poet Fatima Naoot has been serving a three-year prison sentence for criticizing the slaughter of animals during Eid al-Fitr on Facebook. A Malaysian man was charged with blasphemy for posing questions to his religion teachers. Even the mere accusation of blasphemy poses the threat of violence: In 2015, an Afghan woman was beaten and murdered by a mob in Kabul after arguing with a mullah, and last month, a Pakistani university student was killed by a mob over allegations, later discredited, of posting blasphemous content on social media....

“As far back as the 1750s, the Saudi polity really was based on religion and specifically Wahhabism [the puritanical, literalist strain of Islam founded in 18th-century Arabia],” said Kamran Bokhari, a senior analyst at Geopolitical Futures. Due to a pact between the Saudi royal family and the preacher Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in 1744, Wahhabism is effectively the state religion of Saudi Arabia. “Wahhabism is, truly, all about blasphemy. What is true Islam and what is not,” Bokhari said. “Really, to them, most Muslims who don’t subscribe to their exacting views are committing blasphemy in some way or another.”

Modern Islamic countries, meanwhile, have accrued their blasphemy laws not as a medieval inheritance but through one of two major routes: as leftovers of European colonialism or as products of the 20th-century “Arabization” of the Muslim world in the model of the Gulf states.

It goes on to point out that, ironically, British colonialism introduced blasphemy laws in India and Malaysia to help with interfaith stability. 

Anyway, it's a good read, if somewhat depressing for the lack of any grounds for optimism that its political use will not stop in Muslim countries any time soon.

Weekend update

*  Watched the recent M Night Shyamalan written and directed movie Split.   Like nearly every review said, James McAvoy is very good in his multiple personality role, and the movie is pretty pleasingly directed for the first 2/3 at least.   Not much of it feels very real, though.   (The psychiatrist/psychologist acts well, but the way her character behaves seemed sort of naive for a smart woman.)

But the main conceit of the film that comes to the fore in the last third is pretty silly and vaguely explained - probably because it is impossible to make it highly plausible.   (It seems a bit X Men, a bit Altered States.)   I'm not convinced it's really a return to form for this much criticised director - perhaps because I wasn't actually that impressed with his first couple of hits anyway.

For a more terrifying experience of claustrophobia and characters going mad, I would recommend 10 Cloverfield Lane over this.

*  Cooked a recipe for Indian Butter Prawns that I found on the net.   It involves a lot of butter and cream, and has probably taken 6 months off my life, but it was pretty tasty and basically quick (once you finish de-heading and de-veining 800 g of prawns, anyway.)

*  Had a family issue to deal with - may make posting slow for a day...

All perfectly normal, in Bizzaro World

Come on, Trump supporters, or even quasi apologists.   How does this sound in any way, well, not weird?   Was it because they were already worried that the authorities were investigating links and communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians?   Maybe - but then what did they want to discuss with the Russians in such secrecy that they didn't want any other part of the US government to possibly learn about it?  And Kushner is supposed to be one of the liberal advisers around Trump:

Jared Kushner and Russia's ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Donald Trump's transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to US officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergei Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on December 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by US officials.

 Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser.

OK, so is this a lie from the Russians to try to hurt Trump?   Seems unlikely, given the White House is declining to comment.  Is it just unbridled paranoia about the "deep state" trying to stop Trump getting on better with the Russians?  There might be something to that if it were just Flynn asking the Russians to do it - he's as mad as a cut snake.  But again, Kushner is tied up with the proposal? 

It's just very, very strange...

And as for pathetic attempts at false equivalence go, there's a spectacularly silly one from poor old perpetual hand waver CL at Catallaxy:

Last I knew, the US was not supposed to be under permanent threat of full out nuclear attack by a crazy Russian leader who had promised that he would bury capitalism...

I tried to have a Trump free Friday, but I give up...

I can't resist posting these GIFs which are doing the rounds.  What a great impression Donald has been making:

So Macron actually had to try to fight off the Trump handshake?  Talk about Trump making himself look like a weird, old bully.     

Arab science, again

 I'm sure I've said here before that Saudi Arabia, which should have had squillions to spend on good science or technology research, seems to have universities which instead spend an inordinate amount of time investigating arcane matters such as the wonders of camel milk, all because"Islam". 

Here's a story in a similar vein -  an article from Arab News commending the use of sticks for cleaning your teeth:

RIYADH: Using miswak, the twig used by a majority of people in Muslim countries to brush their teeth, is alien to most people in the West. Although it might sound outdated to use twigs from different trees to clean one’s mouth and teeth, studies conducted on miswak have proved otherwise, inferring that the miswak is better than toothpaste for preventing mouth and dental diseases.

The miswak, referred to at times as a chewing stick, is also an alternative form of medicine, according to some research findings. The twig’s usage has been highly recommended in Islam, and Muslims across the world practice it. In Saudi Arabia, the use of sticks or twigs from the Salvadora persica trees, known as arak in Arabic, are common....

 According to research conducted by the Riyadh-based King Saud University (KSU), a total of 19 natural substances were found in miswak that benefit dental health. According to research, the miswak contains a number of natural antiseptics that kill harmful micro-organisms in the mouth, tannic acids that protect gums from disease, and aromatic oils that increase salivation.

I don't know if Mo ever mentioned teeth cleaning, but the religion has specific views on all sort of hygiene matters, so who knows.   Mind you, they were ahead of the trend when it comes to hair shaving in regions Westerners never used to worry about.

Not a happy thought, but useful

This article about what people can expect to experience when with a dying person makes not for the happiest reading, but it is worth knowing anyway.

A couple of points:  have I told this story before?  My late mother used to say she had her own experience of the dying still hearing conversations, even if they seem unconscious.  Her first husband was killed in a military accident (crushed under an aircraft's wheels, I believe.)   She was with him in hospital, when he was apparently unconscious, and a doctor in the room told her he thought her husband was not going to make it.   Her poor husband then opened his eyes, looked shocked, and went downhill from there pretty fast. 

Secondly;  the article refers to the "death bed lucidity" stories about those who have dementia.  I have read about this before, and it is, surely, a rather odd thing to explain....

Mind beyond physics?

Here's some physics for your Friday:

Scientists Are About to Perform an Experiment to See if The Human Mind Is Bound by Physics

This is a bit hard to follow, and it involves quantum nonlocality and a Bell's Test - the exact implications of which are still being hotly contested, when you read arXiv.  Anyway, this is the key part:

Now, Lucien Hardy, a theoretical physicist from the Perimeter Institute in Canada, is suggesting that the measurements between A and B could be controlled by something that may potentially be separate from the material world: the human mind.

His idea is derived from what French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes called the mind-matter duality, "[where] the mind is outside of regular physics and intervenes on the physical world," as Hardy explained.

To do this, Hardy proposed a version of the Bell test involving 100 humans, each hooked up to EEG headsets that would read their brain activity. These devices would be used to switch the settings on the measuring devices for A and B, set at 100 kilometres apart.
"The radical possibility we wish to investigate is that, when humans are used to decide the settings (rather than various types of random number generators), we might then expect to see a violation of quantum theory in agreement with the relevant Bell inequality," Hardy wrote in a paper published online earlier this month.

If the correlation between the measurements don't match previous Bell tests, then there could be a violation of quantum theory that suggests A and B are being controlled by factors outside the realm of standard physics.

"[If] you only saw a violation of quantum theory when you had systems that might be regarded as conscious, humans or other animals, that would certainly be exciting. I can't imagine a more striking experimental result in physics than that," Hardy said.

While we're on a theme

I seem to be having a very "gay" Friday, so here's another homosexual snippet.

Turns out that Peter Ackroyd, the prolific British author who I don't think I've ever got around to reading, is gay and has written a gay history of London.   He claims it has always been a queer city:

I don't think I learned that much new from reading an article about it in The Guardian, but I do note this:

Unlike many chroniclers of gay culture, Ackroyd doesn’t neglect lesbianism: we are gleefully taken on a tour of the dildo shops of the Georgian city – it’s said that one establishment in Leicester Fields sold nothing else – and behind the closed doors of cigarillo smoke-filled Edwardian clubs such as the Cave of Harmony and the Orange Tree.

In 2017, 50 years after some forms of homosexuality were tentatively legalised, it’s hard to think of anything that has undergone greater upheavals than gay culture. But in Ackroyd’s view, things haven’t really changed that much.

“The manifestations alter, but the essence remains the same. There are still drag bars, there are still travesti acts, there are still pick-up places in parks, there are still men-only clubs. As a percentage of the population, there were as many gay bars in 18th-century London as there are today.”

Policing homosexuality in Indonesia

This article, in the Jakarta Post, notes that there is a lot more going on in regional parts of Indonesia regarding policing of homosexuality than we hear about here:

Behind the protests and actions and debate on blasphemy law, the wars on homosexuality and/or LGBT still continues. Indonesian police raided a “gay sex party” in Surabaya, East Java, arrested 14 men, and forced them to undergo HIV tests, which violated their rights to privacy. They face charges of infringing the 2008 Pornography Law and the 2008 Electronic Information and Transaction Law (ITE), prohibiting the distribution of pornographic and/or indecent material. The police found and confiscated condoms, mobile phones, and a flash drive containing porn videos, reports said....

While homosexuality remains illegal here, the loose, malleable, and subjective definition of pornography of the 2008 Pornography Law so far has been a powerful weapon to outlaw homosexuality practices and interfere in individual private spaces. Last year a male couple in Manado, North Sulawesi, was arrested after a photo of them kissing was uploaded on Facebook and went viral. Similar with the recent gay arrests in Surabaya, this couple was at risk of being charged under the Pornography Law and the cyberlaw.

The writer notes that the problem is how too much decentralised democracy has played out in the nation with patches of fundamentalist Islam:

Daily power dynamics and contestations among political actors mark constant ideological struggles to define the contours of the regime. Indonesia’s transition to democracy has also led the previously suppressed fundamentalist Islamic political groups to flourish openly and exert their power, with many cities and regencies adopting “moral-based regulations” or sharia-inspired bylaws.

The scholar Kathryn Robinson in Masculinity, Sexuality, and Islam ( 2015 ) asserts that political Islam actors exploit decentralization to enact sharia-based regulations. With their greater political   power, politicians of any hue see them as potential supporters and constituents for their own interests. Hence, this shift has also changed the way of regulating and policing people, particularly those who do not conform to the formal norms of the state and of the majority. If in the previous regime, state-centered power and surveillance was inevitable, the current regime of controls are deployed and reverberates throughout dispersed policies, creating new modes of policing.

Damn...

It's increasingly looking like direct-current stimulation isn't all that it's early proponents thought it would be:

Transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) -- a non-invasive technique for applying electric current to areas of the brain -- may be growing in popularity, but new research suggests that it probably does not add any meaningful benefit to cognitive training.

It does sound like a fairly limited experiment, though...

Same sex marriage in Asia

The Japan Times has an article about the unexpected court ruling from Taiwan regarding same sex marriage.    In looking at how it may affect other Asian nations, I was surprised to read this:

In Vietnam, which is seen as socially progressive on LGBT issues and where a vibrant gay scene flourishes online and in some big cities, hopes for marriage reform have stalled.

Why would Vietnam be "socially progressive" on this?

As far as mainland China is concerned, the report notes: 

Homosexuality was officially decriminalised in 1997 but only taken off the list of psychiatric disorders four years later.

“Taiwan and mainland China have the same roots and culture so it suggests that Chinese society could also accept the idea of gay marriage,” said Li Yinhe, a renowned Chinese sexologist who has pressed Beijing policymakers on the issue.

There have been small signs of progress. While a Chinese court last year ruled against two men seeking to marry, the fact the case even made it into the judicial system was seen by many as an achievement.

I still say that the gender imbalance in China is likely to influence attitudes, in the long term, towards gay relationships. 

Update:  here's a 2015 article from the ABC noting the surprising tolerance to gay rights activities being shown by the government in Vietnam.  I hadn't noticed this at the time. 

Magic poop

Amused to read this in the Japan Times:

Learning more than 1,000 kanji during six years of grade school isn’t an easy task. But it can be fun if all the characters are associated with a word they love — poop.

A workbook series that features a heavy dose of the word “unko,” poop in Japanese, has quickly sold over a million copies since its release in March. The series’ main selling point is that it engages children by using the word “poop” in every single example on how a kanji is used in a sentence.

“Adults would raise their eyebrows, but for children, the word ‘poop’ is magical and makes things fun,” said Yusaku Furuya, 40, the author of the books.

You need to see the picture to understand more:

Looking for signs of cognitive decline in Trump

Here's a lengthy article from STAT, which examines changes in Trump's speaking style as an indicator of cognitive decline.

Let's just say, it doesn't look good....

Ironing the ocean in the news again

Nature notes that there is talk again from a somewhat oddly secretive Canadian foundation of conducting an iron fertilising experiment in the ocean - but this time, the justification being to boost fisheries.

The situation with these experiments is summed up as follows:

Researchers worldwide have conducted 13 major iron-fertilization experiments in the open ocean since 1990. All have sought to test whether stimulating phytoplankton growth can increase the amount of carbon dioxide that the organisms pull out of the atmosphere and deposit in the deep ocean when they die. Determining how much carbon is sequestered during such experiments has proved difficult, however, and scientists have raised concerns about potential adverse effects, such as toxic algal blooms. In 2008, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity put in place a moratorium on all ocean-fertilization projects apart from small ones in coastal waters. Five years later, the London Convention on ocean pollution adopted rules for evaluating such studies.

Because Oceaneos’s planned experiment would take place in Chilean waters, it is allowed under those rules. Riedijk says that the foundation will voluntarily follow international protocols for such studies; it is unclear whether that will allay fears that the group is promoting an unproven technology, rather than conducting basic research....

Whether it would help fisheries is a very moot point:

In the meantime, scientists say that it will be difficult to get solid data from the Oceaneos foundation’s planned experiment. The geology off the Chilean coast, and the patterns of currents there, create a mosaic of low- and high-iron waters. Anchovies, horse mackerel and other fish move freely between these areas.

And adding iron could shift the location and timing of phytoplankton blooms to favour fast-growing species, says Adrian Marchetti, a biological oceanographer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One of those, the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia, produces domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can kill mammals and birds. Oceaneos’s experiment will probably increase plankton growth in low-iron waters, Marchetti says, “but it’s not to say that that is actually good for the higher levels of the food chain”.

Turmoil in Wingnut land

The Australian conservative/Right commentariat did find themselves in somewhat of a quandary yesterday when one of their members was so annoyed with a Q&A panel that he openly, implicitly, wished (it was hard to read it any other way) that they had been the ones killed by Muslim terrorists, not the people at Manchester.

Wishing death on people you disagree with in Australia is not considered by sensible folk to be within acceptable political commentary or discourse.   But Roger Franklin was attacking the ABC and all who sail within her, so it was too much of a temptation for the likes of Bolt, Blair and Sinclair Davidson to not endorse it, or go "ha, ha, that was witty satire, wasn't it."   

Yet, another group of the Right side commentariat had their misgivings from the start - Chris Kenny, to his credit, was (I think) first off the ranks.   But even Franklin, or someone at Quadrant, had a rethink and had edited it (with no acknowledgement) to remove the "if there was any justice" part aspect of it, so as to make sound less of a lament that Q&A wasn't bombed.  

By late in the day, and following universal condemnation from real journalists and commentators across the land,  there were more breaks in the ranks, so we ended up with Nick Cater criticising it, and Keith Windschuttle apologising "without reservation" to the ABC and saying that the article would be removed from the Quadrant website.  Paul Murray on Sky apparently attacked it too.   IBy the evening, Bolt had semi recanted, and today, he has even (again, silently) removed all reference to the Quadrant comment piece from his post. 

And despite Windschuttle's apology  and promise it would go from the site, some were saying that this morning it was still there.   Hey, Quadrant, who's running the place, anyway?  (Well, checking just now, I think it has gone.  Took their time.  Were Franklin and Windschuttle having fisticuffs in whose ever basement it operates from?)

And so here is my final wrap up of how it panned out:

*  kudos to the one old Catallaxy regular (well, apart from monty) who came out with a straight condemnation that it was a stupid thing for Franklin to have said - CL.    But any praise for a rare outburst of common sense has to tempered by the fact that he is one of the worst with hyperbole about how to deal with Islamic terrorism, as I am sure he has wished for the nuking of Mecca more than once.

*  I had been meaning to note yesterday that Franklin had made it very clear that he hates Krauss with a passion partly because he was a "warmist" who "dares call himself a man of science" (I think that were the exact words:  I can't check any more.)  As I ended my piece yesterday, wingnuts have no perspective of risk because they cannot conceive that they are wrong on the matter of the biggest environmental risk the entire planet faces.  Hence, any terrorist attack, no matter the number of victims and whether it was by a lone (Islamic inspired) mutter or not will be cause for saying that Western civilisation is about to collapse, yet the actual threat to long term civilisation is laughed at.   Is the problem with their anger that, at some level, they can perceive that they are wrong on climate change, as their movement is diminishing as their handful of ageing contrarian scientists die off and the world does, indeed, continue to warm? 

* Sinclair Davidson's rapidly diminishing circle of Right wingers he can trust diminished further when he complained that he probably wouldn't watch Paul Murray again after he also jumped ship and condemned Franklin.   I'm not sure - hasn't he mentioned avoiding watching the ABC before?  If this continues, he'll soon be down to just watching Bolt and reading comics the rest of the night. 

* For all of that, the fact that the ABC called in security to advise about it was a bit over the top in its own way.   Regardless of that, their hot anger at someone saying something as stupid and offensive as Franklin's original post was entirely justified.

Update:   now Catallaxy readers (average age - 85 - mentally if not chronologically) are perturbed that Andrew Bolt said this on the radio:

“I think a lot of people are making mileage out of this in order to get the ABC off the hook. I think the reaction, the ABC posting extra security. I mean, give me a break. As if the Quadrant audience would get their zimmer frames out of the cupboard and shuffle off and go and do … come on, give me a break.” – Andrew Bolt

 Ha ha.

Oh Look - The Addams Family meets the Pope

OK, the glowing Orb of Destiny, or whatever it was, was pretty hilarious, but at least it wasn't of Trump's own doing.

But isn't this just the weirdest photo ever of a political family meeting a Pontiff?

I mean, who the heck advised Ivanka that it was a good idea to look like she was going to her belated first communion, except in black?   What are she and Melania mourning?   The death of credibility of Donald?  (Actually, it died decades ago.)

And I also see that Melania again declined Donald's hand.   If this goes on, I'm half expecting her to give him a big shove in the back at the top of some staircase or other any day now.

The optics (and reality) of American politics has never been weirder....

Update:  it's being said that Melania, at least, is complying with Vatican protocol:

“Per Vatican protocol, women who have an audience with the Pope are required to wear long sleeves, formal black clothing, and a veil to cover the head,” Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s spokeswomen told CNN.

However, the Associated Press said it wasn’t necessarily a rule that was hard and fast and many women have met the Pope without a veil. But as a practising Catholic, Melania chose to wear one.

Some have also noted the striking similarity in her choice of garb at the Vatican to another first lady — style icon Jackie Kennedy.

 I still say Ivanka looks ridiculous.

Just a hemisphere away

It's taking a long time for Slate to notice that Australian breakfast TV is not English breakfast TV:

Tom Cruise told the hosts of U.K. TV show Sunrise on Tuesday that he was making a sequel to his 1986 fighter jet/beach volleyball extravaganza Top Gun, and expected filming to start “probably in the next year,” Deadline reports.

 David Koch will probably not be too impressed.

As for Top Gun:  as much as I have enjoyed Cruise's movies since then, that was really was one of his cheesiest, despite some cool flying.   It will be interesting to see what sort of tone would be brought to a new version.  

Body count doesn't matter

Well, we all know Trump loves a "hard man" politician, and is ill informed on virtually any topic, but seriously, he put it this puerile way to Duterte?:

"I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I wanted to tell you that."

Links for a Wednesday

*  I noted the other day how someone in comments at the NYT had made the point that Right wingers talking about "elite consensus" on social and economic policies were kidding themselves if they didn't recognize that the public in the US (and here, I bet) do actually lean Left on a range of issues.  Here's an article at Vox that makes the point in more detail: "What right-wing populism?  Polls reveal that its Liberalism that's surging"

*  With the departure of Ailes and O'Reilly, is Fox News morphing into something vaguely resembling a responsible news network?   They have retracted the despicable wingnut hand wave story about the murder of Seth Rich, but can they pull Hannity himself into line?  God knows the network could only be improved if he left, as well as those awful, awful breakfast hosts.

* I don't have a link for this, but on some clips on TV of Trump's latest day in the Middle East, I thought his face looked blank and very tired.   I also would love to know how he took the Melania hand swipe.  I wouldn't mind betting that his minders have tried to keep any internet item about it out of his field of view, because with his personality, it is hard to imagine he wouldn't be upset about the publicity it has achieved.

* What a surprise.  Sinclair Davidson has popped up in London to talk about the "failure" of plain packaging of tobacco.   For my sins, I've watched most of his little video at Catallaxy.   Some observations:   just as with climate change denial, he seeks to discredit anti tobacco campaigners as having their own "industry", and being in it for the money.  This is his very first line, in fact.   Well, would be good to know if anyone ever pays SD to travel somewhere for his talks.    Secondly, any actual valid criticism he may uncover about slippery use of stats and figures in assessments of plain packaging are somewhat undercut when he starts later uncritically quoting KPMG studies funded by tobacco and worthy of their own detail scrutiny.   Thirdly, I don't think he ever mentions the way many researchers thought plain packaging would have its best impact - by making buying cigarettes less attractive to youth.   (Because if you can stop young people starting, you have won half the battle.)  Nor does he address the common sense question that such an effect might take some years to turn up clearly in survey or other evidence.

I trust that he will next be parachuted into the Philippines to deal with Duterte's new laws.

* Roger Franklin's stupid and offensive rant against anyone on the ABC quoting figures about Muslim terrorism has gone down a treat is Sinclair's poisonous toilet of a blog, as you would expect.   Tim Blair urges his readers to read it too.   (Blair has become increasingly petty - especially when it comes to the ABC - and stupid over the years.)   Perhaps Right wingnuts would be better served by considering what you can actually do when, as I pretty much expected, the suicide bomber turns out to be a person born in the country.   Sure, they could argue for a complete ban on Muslim migrants, many of whom are escaping Middle East crises in which the West has played a role, but what do they want to do to current, native, children of migrants who are at risk of being radicalised by the internet or a local crazy imam?   Round them all up in detention camps for the next 40 years?   Or just nuke Saudi Arabia, the sources of modern radicalising schools of Islam?    (You do hear calls for that at Catallaxy after virtually every Islamic inspired attack.)    And if they do want to nuke the problem away, what do they think of Trump making nice with the Saudis again?

Come on wingnuts:  your cloud of rage at everything Muslim achieves nothing.   Make some serious proposals and think about their consequences instead of raging at politicians who actually have to deal with the problem in a serious, meaningful way.

When anger overwhelms decency

Whatever credibility Quadrant used to have an outlet for thoughtful conservative intellectuals has long been gone, but Roger Franklin plummets into new depths of Right wing reactionary anger and, frankly, stupidity, today. 

While virtually no one is expecting the suicide bomber at Manchester to not have been motivated by radical Islam, Roger is beside himself with rage that last night, on the ABC, left leaning quasi intellectuals were opining that the risk of harm for the average citizen in countries like the US and Australia from Islamic terrorism, especially by foreign terrorists,  is actually very small.

Now, if these comments had been made after the Manchester bombing, Franklin might have had some emotional excuse, at least, for anger at insensitivity at what would have been seen as  downplaying the public distress at such a terrible terrorist attack.   [And by writing this post, I am certainly not trying to make any excuse either - this is surely the most unforgivable attack because of the age and innocence of the victims.  It is, by all standards, horrifying.]

But this is not what happened.   Roger can't  see through his anger that the comments remain essentially true, and were not made in any context where they could be taken as insensitive. 

Furthermore, everyone, Left or Right, understands that radical Islam is a terrible problem and causes great evil.   Fuming about it alone doesn't solve, in particular, the problem of self radicalised, Western born terrorists.  All nations already spend a lot of effort in trying to trace and prevent it.  No one on the Left thinks that is a wasted effort.

Franklin's disgust reaches absurd and offensive heights with his ending:

Life isn’t fair and death less so. Had there been a shred of justice, that blast would have detonated in an Ultimo TV studio. Unlike those young girls in Manchester, their lives snuffed out before they could begin, none of the panel’s likely casualties would have represented the slightest reduction in humanity’s intelligence, decency, empathy or honesty.

Mind you, as Krauss felt his body being penetrated by the Prophet’s shrapnel of nuts, bolts and nails, those goitered eyes might in their last glimmering have caught a glimpse of vindication.

Yeah, nice one Roger.   You're just another example why such a large part of the conservative Right has become so untrustworthy in thinking about risk.  

Update:    It took a day, and scores of real journalists and members of the public condemning Franklin,  but Quadrant (although not specifically Franklin) has apologised.  From the paywalled Australian:

Quadrant magazine today “unreservedly apologised” to ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie for an online article that suggested it would have been better off if the Manchester terrorist had bombed the public broadcaster’s Sydney headquarters. 

The magazine’s editor in chief, Keith Windshuttle, responded to Ms Guthrie late today in a letter agreeing the “intemperate wording” in the article was a “serious error of judgment and should not have been published”.

The article will be withdraw from the magazine’s website, he said.

“Even though I do not share all of the interpretations expressed in your letter, I accept your assurance about the offence it caused you and your staff. You have my unreserved apology for any concerns it might have given you,” Mr Windshuttle wrote.

Earlier, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield blasted Quadrant for its “sick and unhinged” comments about the ABC after contained in the article.

 The now amusing thing about this, if one reads the Catallaxy threads, is that the many wingnutters ecstatic with Franklin's offensiveness have been pledging subscriptions to Quadrant all day, and now have had the rug pulled out from under them. 

Sinclair Davidson - who pathetically joined in with the defence of Franklin, suggests its because the magazine couldn't afford a legal fight with the government funded ABC.   What tosh.

No, simple decency required the apology, but ageing, angry ant culture warriors are too blind to see that.

Pirates noted, again

It feels like I shouldn't be talking entertainment trivia, with news of what sounds like one of those entirely pointless home grown Islamic terrorist attacks in Manchester (at least with the IRA attacks, you could see the aim they were trying to achieve), but I will anyway.

I am a very soft touch when it comes to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.   I re-watched the last one on TV last weekend for the first time since I saw it at the cinema, and found myself laughing and enjoying it more than expected.  I did give it a decent enough review when it came out, and now I see that No 5 - Dead Men Tell No Tales is getting a similar bag of not so great reviews as did Stranger Tides.

No matter.  I will be off to see it, perhaps with both (now well into teenage) kids in tow again (maybe even my wife),  and I have the feeling I will enjoy it.   This guy, who (like me) defends the original trilogy against the increasingly poor reviews it gathered, gave it a positive enough review.

But unemployment is really worse

I see that Adam Creighton continues his quest for contrarianism (just for the sake of contrarianism, I suspect) by bringing up that golden oldie that unemployment is really much worse than official statistics claim.

Now, I'm going to make hell freeze over by quoting her in rebuttal, but didn't Judith Sloan, of all people, adequately deal this never ending populist claim 6 years ago?