Young adult fiction eats itself

There's a long, interesting article at The Vulture about the silly, silly modern political correctness in social media campaigning about young adult novels that dare to have characters that say something offensive to current PC sensibilities.  

The article shows how one precious dill led an attack on a novel by selecting particular un-PC lines, and completely ignoring the bigger picture - that the novel is about a character recognising and coming out of intolerance.  But gullible followers of said dill use social media to join in the attack without even reading the book and understanding they are being mislead.   I like the way one agent comments:  

“None of us are willing to comment publicly for fear of being targeted and labeled racist or bigoted. But if children’s-book publishing is no longer allowed to feature an unlikable character, who grows as a person over the course of the story, then we’re going to have a pretty boring business.”

This is an area ripe and overdue for ridicule and satire, is it not?   But have the PC Left enough power to even prevent that?  I doubt it.

One thing I do know - you don't cure the madness of lefty, over precious social media crowds via a counter attack by mad, more than happy to offend, alt.right social media crowds.  If anything, that surely is counterproductive.   There is something very poisonous and corrosive about social media campaigning, no matter which side it is coming from.   Social scientists will be studying this for many years yet, I bet.

Fanciful thinking on elevators

So, architects, at least, are thinking about what could be done if elevators went away from steel cabled up and down things, to something more like the "go anywhere" deal on the Starship Enterprise.

All sounds very cool, but I would have thought that the destruction of the World Trade Centre, and recent London and Dubai fires, are making the idea of living or even working on (say) the 100th floor less attractive than ever.  Not sure that I had realised how high a building going up in Jeddah was going to be:

Today there is a 1,000-meter (167-story) building under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Even taller buildings are possible with today’s structural technology.

Cohen talks Taleb

I see that Nick Cohen gets stuck into Taleb's ridiculously aggressive, alt.right style behaviour towards Mary Beard, and it's a good read.

I am amused to see one twitter comment about it:

A load of old rubbish

Good title for a post about last night's depressing 4 Corners program on waste and recycling failures in Australia, no?

[By the way, that new ABC reporter continually reminds me of Daria.  She does come across as a tad over-earnest, if you ask me.]

But if you want to watch an episode full of men looking uncomfortable during interviews, you should watch it.   The guy from NSW EPA looked particularly guilty, if you ask me; and the other stellar shonky bit of government seemed to be the Gosford council.   And who knew that there are mountains of broken glass in warehouses around Australia, or that Ipswich, a town with an image problem even before last night,  had seemingly become the dumping ground for much of the rest of Australia's unwanted rubbish?

The odd story of the Rabbit God

It always seems to me that the historical Asian take on male homosexuality had a much higher emphasis on romanticism than much of the modern Western image of it:   if you ask me, it's not like a gay pride parade featuring drag queens, men and lesbians in leather, and many guys in speedos and feathers can be easily said to be emphasising romanticism over in-your-face eroticism/fetishism.  I think you still see this in Asian countries today, with oddities like straight Japanese women who are fans of young men in love manga and anime.

Further evidence of the importance of romance in Asian thoughts on homosexuality comes from this article that I stumbled across yesterday, from Taipei, where gay marriage had a sudden and unexpected legal endorsement recently.  There's a small Taoist temple there, to cater for gay men:

All religions address both spiritual needs and issues of here and now. New deities and even new religions often emerge to address needs or during times of social change. The founding of the Gay Rabbit God Temple in Taipei is one such example.

About five years ago (2005), a Taoist priest made spiritual contact with the Rabbit God and decided that should five same sex couples approach the temple for prayers or spiritual help, he will establish a temple dedicated to the Rabbit God.

Although at that time, they did not have specific programs for gay couples, five couples did indeed turn up. The priest took this as a sign and officially established the Rabbit Temple.

More on the background to this god, here:

The god isn't very well known, nor commonly worshipped, but he is based on an historical figure. According to the Tale of the Rabbit God that appears in the Zibuyu (子不語), a collection of supernatural stories written by Qing Dynasty scholar and poet Yuan Mei (袁枚, 1716-1798), Hu Tianbao (?#32993;天保) was an official in 18th-century, Qing Dynasty China. He fell in love with a handsome young imperial inspector of Fujian Province, but because of the inspector's higher status, Hu was afraid to reveal his feelings. After Hu was caught peeping at the inspector through a bathroom wall, he confessed his admiration for the inspector, who had him beaten to death. One month after his passing, the story goes, Hu appeared to a man from his hometown in a dream, claiming that the king of the underworld had appointed him the Rabbit God. As such, his duty was to govern the affairs of men who desire men. In the dream, he asked the man to erect a shrine to him.

As a priest, Lu often heard complaints from homosexual Taoist adherents that there was no god to answer their prayers. Believing one of his missions is to tend to the needs of people alienated from mainstream society, he set out to revive the forgotten deity.

 As his research suggests, Hu was an upper class historical figure who lived in Fujian from the late Ming Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty. However, according to Michael Szonyi, associate professor of Chinese history at the department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard, the Rabbit God is a pure invention of Yuan, the poet, since the image of the rabbit deity doesn't appear in any other sources from Fujian.

While some aspects of the story may be fabrications, the existence of the cult of Hu Tianbao in Fujian in the 18th century is well documented in official Qing records.

This priest reckons the Rabbit God is a particularly helpful one, if you treat him respectfully:

The Rabbit God is perceived to be an affable deity, Lu said, who is willing to assist his followers in every aspect of life. Since he works for Cheng Huang (城隍), the City God, he has both the erudition and social network in the spiritual world to solve any problem mortals have, according to Lu.

Homosexuals may have an edge in the spiritual world because, "Hu Tianbao is rather self-abased both because of the way he died and the somewhat belittling title of rabbit. So if you are willing to believe in him, he will be much more grateful and work harder than other deities," Lu said.

There are several methods of worshipping, asking for and receiving answers from this divine being, but sincerity is what counts most, Lu said. For this reason, followers should address the god as Ta Yeh (大爺), or master, rather than Rabbit God. Then, those with needs can write down their names, addresses, birthdays and prayers on pieces of paper money and burn them to make sure the messages are sent to heaven.

Well, I thought it was interesting, anyway.

Gay peace for our time

Isn't it odd how everyone (well, the media and conservatives) are waiting for Turnbull to emerge and make a "peace in our time" speech regarding same sex marriage.  I'd do a photoshop, if I had time.

I do feel a bit sorry for Malcolm - he is genuinely being wedged every which way, by conservatives in his party, Labor and the Greens, his own gay party members, and more moderate voices too (with the fairly silly idea of a postal plebiscite), all on an issue that the population at large doesn't rate as very important, but which the media is happy to devote plenty of attention to.    It must be very, very annoying.  

Dangerous sea creatures great and small

First, the large:

Six men are lucky to be alive after a whale threw their boat metres into the air in the Whitsundays.

The group was returning from a reef fishing trip on Saturday afternoon, when the large humpback breached underneath the 8.5-metre aluminium vessel, near Gloucester Island.
The impact of the collision with the whale and the water was so great that those on board were violently thrown around the boat, with two men knocked unconscious.

And then, the small - the Melbourne sea lice attack.   That really is a surprising story, but apparently sea lice can be particularly ferocious down there.   There will be few toddlers allowed to play in the water near Melbourne for a while, I imagine.

Dressed against global warming

Graham Lloyd's favourite "climate scientist" Jennifer Marohasy had this photo in The Australian last week, on top of one of Lloyd's dire pieces about the controversy of one thermometer which needs checking when it records very cold minimums:

It's a bit transparent, isn't it?:  she's trying to disprove global warming by showing how much she has to dress up on a really cold day.  And is that a dead animal around her neck?

She looks at a tad batty, if you ask me.

Monkey Kings

SBS Viceland (I still don't really understand that change) showed The Monkey King 2 last week, and it's still able to be watched on SBS on Demand.

This is at least the second Chinese film I have seen lately that features at some point a massive heavenly Buddha intervening on Earth.  It would seem that the government doesn't have a problem with such ideas being promulgated in cinema, which I suppose shows how technically communist states have moved on a bit.

I find something rather watchable about movies loosely based on the Monkey King story now.  I'm even tempted to read the book.    I knew someone once (an Australian but from an Asian family) whose secret ambition in life was to produce a movie that did proper justice to the book Journey to the West.  He evidently has not achieved that.

Update:  One thing about Buddhism - if a Catholic were to become one,  the Mahayana version is surely the type to which he or she should feel more affinity (given the Communion of Saints idea is not a million miles away from bodhisattvas being able to help):

Mahayana Buddhism agrees with Theravada Buddhism that the human problem is suffering; it holds the Four Noble Truths as fundamental. But whereas Theravada holds out the ideal of the individual striving alone on the Eight-fold Path towards nirvana, Mahayana adds helpers who provide shortcuts and assistance out of compassion for those who are suffering. These helpers are called bodhisattvas, and are beings who have worked towards enlightenment and nirvana. But rather than enter nirvana, once they are able, they turn around and bring their store of wisdom, power and merit to help others along the same path. This simple idea has a number of ramifications for the goal of humanity.

1) All human beings participate in the Buddha's nature; that is to say, all humans have the essence of Buddha within themselves. Thus the goal of Mahayana Buddhism is for everyone to realize their true Buddha nature. This goal is the same as attaining nirvana (the Theravadan goal), but it is focused on the Buddha and each person's imitation of the Buddha, rather than on the release from samsara.

2) The Buddha was a bodhisattva. In contrast to the Theravadan view, Mahayana holds that the Buddha (i.e., Gautama) did not just attain nirvana. At the point at which he could have extinguished his existence in samsara, he instead returned to this world and taught other people how to attain nirvana. If he had not, then humanity would not know how to attain it. It was Buddha's compassion for the suffering of humanity that motivated him to remain in this life and to teach and preach for forty more years. Thus, the Buddha used the merit, power and wisdom he gained while striving for enlightenment to help others. He was a bodhisattva.

3) Since humans should imitate the Buddha, the Mahayana ideal is to become a bodhisattva and help others. The Theravadan ideal of the arhat is seen as too selfish, too focused on the individual, and thus without benefit for humanity in general. By emphasizing that the goal is to be a bodhisattva, Mahayana shows that it cares about the rest of humanity as a whole, not just as individuals.

4) Once a person becomes a bodhisattva, then they have the ability to help people towards nirvana and enlightenment. They may create new paths to higher stages that can be accomplished by lay people as well as monks. In fact, many forms of Mahayana focus on the laity, almost to the exclusion of interest in the sangha. Pure Land is a good example of this. Amitabha Buddha (who was initially a monk, then a Bodhisattva, and finally attained Buddha-hood) created a "pure land"--a paradise--in the "west" (i.e., in the Buddha-fields). He vowed that anyone who would call on his name could enter this land. There they could remain, or they could strive towards enlightenment, which would be much closer.

Something wrong with Taleb

Mary Beard talks about being under attack from the alt.right, and Nassim Taleb's jumping into the fray, not on her side.

Look, I don't care how smart he might be in some areas - I think it is very clear from his twitter feed and many of essays that he has some serious personality issues.   He's a thin skinned jerk, in other words.

The Atlantic had a look at the matter, and questions Taleb's reliance on DNA evidence.

Yet more Dunkirk

I was interested to watch the 2017 documentary "Dunkirk:  The New Evidence" on SBS last night.

It's pretty good.   A couple of things relevant to the movie:

*  the town of Dunkirk was a lot more damaged in real life than the movie depicted;
*  the RAF was a lot more hated on the ground than even Nolan indicated - there was an interview with a veteran who still seemed to be resentful of them after all these years.  Yet the biggest point the documentary made was that the RAF was working hard both over the channel, and far behind enemy lines preventing a lot of German planes getting to the beach;  it was just that those stuck on the beach could not see what was going on high and skies and quite some distance from them.

I recommend it.   See SBS on Demand.

An optimistic take on education

In an endeavour to get a teenage son interested in what he might do in tertiary education and future employment, my wife and I dragged him along to two recent University open days in Brisbane: last Sunday, it was QUT (Gardens Point), and today it was the University of Queensland.

We sat in on a few talks at each, and wandered around marvelling (well, I did anyway) at the astounding amount of student friendly services (by way of food and other facilities) that are available at Universities like these today.

I am old enough that I actually went to QUT before it was officially a university - back in the late seventies, early eighties.  Facilities then included one cafeteria (of dodgy quality - I rarely ate there), a licensed club that I didn't actually join (I was pretty much only a weekend drinker, and I wasn't in the clique of students who immediately took up membership), and a cinema which I recall going to once, and having to leave before the movie finished to catch a train.  It was pretty basic.

The QUT campus is now dramatically different, and to my mind, extremely attractive.  Old Government House (which I seem to recall being under near continuous restoration back in my day) is still at its heart, and is now always open as a heritage site and a very attractive one at that. 

It now has some great looking buildings and student facilities around it (I should have taken photos,) and the entire campus, though small in area, is full of trees and green spaces to a much greater degree than it did 35 (gosh) years ago.

The University of Queensland is, by contrast, not as different from those days, by my reckoning.  Sure, it also has much better student facilities, but the look of the campus, which still has very large amounts of open space around it, has not changed to the same extent.

But apart from appearances, I have to say that the impression gained from each talk we attended was a very positive one of the tertiary sector.  Sure, I guess Universities don't care for their worst lecturers or academics to be talking to the public and potential students at these events, but I still came away with the feeling that there is a much greater degree of professionalism in how universities teach and manage themselves these days.

I also have continually had that feeling when interacting with my kids' State high school.   I went to a pretty ordinary one in a working class area, but I doubt it was all that unusual for the way it seemed some pretty disinterested teachers could still make a living putting in what seemed the bare minimum effort.

That's really not the impression I get now - nearly all teachers in the State school system do genuinely seem much more professional and more enthusiastic than in my youth.     

I won't say that I don't have some misgivings about modern education:  I'm sure I posted before about how it seems to me that maths education is too heavily "verbal" in primary school these days; and I also think that there is a tendency for high schools to chose too many "young adult" novels that don't have lasting qualities in english.

But by and large, I think the education system has improved a great deal over my life time, and all the kvetching about it from the Right (and sometimes the Left) seems very undeserved.

Another radio station mystery

Apart from the creepy shortwave numbers radio stations, BBC Future has a story about another mysterious radio signal from Russia:

In the middle of a Russian swampland, not far from the city of St Petersburg, is a rectangular iron gate. Beyond its rusted bars is a collection of radio towers, abandoned buildings and power lines bordered by a dry-stone wall. This sinister location is the focus of a mystery which stretches back to the height of the Cold War.

It is thought to be the headquarters of a radio station, “MDZhB”, that no-one has ever claimed to run. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades, it’s been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone. Every few seconds it’s joined by a second sound, like some ghostly ship sounding its foghorn. Then the drone continues.

Once or twice a week, a man or woman will read out some words in Russian, such as “dinghy” or “farming specialist”. And that’s it. Anyone, anywhere in the world can listen in, simply by tuning a radio to the frequency 4625 kHz.

A good read.

Well deserved jail for those eyebrows

That American case of the girl who texted her "boyfriend" to stop trying to back out of killing himself (it is truly an awful thing to read about) is going to jail, but not for long enough.   But I noticed one peculiar thing about her - what is up with those eyebrows?   (I half suspect they are an attempt at looking at least half crazy as a sentencing aid.)

Nazis and Ice

Well, I knew there was some Nazi interest in esoteric mystical or supernatural ideas, but I can't say that I have heard of World Ice Theory before.   All very odd.

Yes, he's as bad in private as in public

That is surely the key thing to take away from the leaked Trump phone call transcripts (as well as the fact that there must be very worried people within the government in order for the leak to happen at all).  As The Guardian writes:

Such documents should have been very closely held, accessible to only a few senior officials. Their publication reflects the intensity of the war inside the White House between rival factions – and a reminder that, for all his well-advertised toughness, the new chief of staff, John Kelly, is going to find it very hard to impose discipline on an institution that is dysfunctional from the top down.

It is quite possible that the leaker was motivated by anxiety about the national security implications of Trump’s erratic leadership – that the leak is a cry for help from inside the administration.

The transcripts of his conversations with Enrique Peña Nieto and Malcolm Turnbull show the president to be no more coherent in private than he is public: ill-informed – even about a major attack on US soil – and narcissistic to the point of absurdity.

Everything's fine

Watching members of the Cult of Trump is like a permanent run of that dog in a fire cartoon.  Here's a reliable tell:  if they refer to the Mueller investigation as the "Wussia" investigation, and claim it is dead, or a nothingburger, (or even - is going to backfire on the Democrats), they're pretty much a political idiot.  [Hi, JC.]

Axios is reporting today rumours that the investigation is going into Trump finances,  and there is a grand jury.   Over at Vox, the temporary FBI head had apparently warned a bunch of his people that they are potential witnesses. 

The Atlantic summarises all of this, and notes that the investigation is sure to run into 2018, possibly the following year too.

But yeah, sure:  there's nothing to the "Wussia" investigation.

But can he stop him watching Fox and Friends?

So, John Kelly recognizes the problem, but I have my doubts he can solve it:

When new White House chief of staff John Kelly huddled with senior staff on his first day at work, he outlined a key problem in President Donald Trump’s White House that he planned to fix: Bad information getting into the president’s hands.

Kelly told the staff that information needed to flow through him – whether on paper or in briefings –because the president would make better decisions if given good information.

I like this summary of Trump's bad sources:

In the West Wing, many of the president’s most controversial decisions have been attributed to bad information, partially because the president is easily swayed by the last person he talked to – or the last thing he read.

For example, he accused President Barack Obama of tapping his phone line in Trump Tower after seeing comments from a conservative talk show host and a Breitbart News article. He has often posted some of his most controversial tweets while watching Fox News and stewing. He has sometimes seemed to view television accounts of the news as fact more than information from people armed with classified information. He has made decisions about legal matters or major policy decisions while consulting with some aides – only to reverse them after talking to family members or friends, who he dials late at night.

He has been given information of dubious quality, from stories by GotNews.com, a blog written by a right-wing provocateur named Charles Johnson to segments from segments of debunked documentaries. He has, at times, listened to real estate friends about legislative strategy while ignoring Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

By limiting information, and making it go through proper channels, Kelly is “ensuring Trump doesn’t make his decisions based on some bullshit he watched at midnight or on Breitbart,” said Chris Whipple, who recently wrote a book on the chief-of-staff role.

I reckon all that will happen is that Hannity or someone like him will turn on Kelly, and tell Trump that he is giving Kelly too much control, and he'll be gone.

President in Fantasyland

Cattle would like you to read this article

Quite a surprising claim:

If Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef

With one dietary change, the U.S. could almost meet greenhouse-gas emission goals

...
Recently Harwatt and a team of scientists from Oregon State University, Bard College, and Loma Linda University calculated just what would happen if every American made one dietary change: substituting beans for beef. They found that if everyone were willing and able to do that—hypothetically—the U.S. could still come close to meeting its 2020 greenhouse-gas emission goals, pledged by President Barack Obama in 2009.

That is, even if nothing about our energy infrastructure or transportation system changed—and even if people kept eating chicken and pork and eggs and cheese—this one dietary change could achieve somewhere between 46 and 74 percent of the reductions needed to meet the target.

Ridiculous conspiracy belief, continued

I'm waiting for someone like Graham Readfearn to write a detailed post about the current Graham Lloyd crap articles in support of Jennifer Marohasy's and Jonova's paranoid conspiracy claims about the weather bureau fudging temperatures.

Lloyd is just the pits as an environment "journalist", and has been for years.   Look at the ridiculous way he frames the matter of one low temperature reading discrepancy noted by a "bush meteorologist": 

BoM strongly rejects any suggestion of manipulation.

Nonetheless, the handling of temperature data is a red-hot issue with claims and counterclaims dogging the world’s premier meteorological agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA in the US, and Britain’s Met Office.

Reports of the latest controversy at BoM have quickly and widely circulated around the world.

Yes, by Right wing culture warrior idiots who believe that deliberate conspiracy within weather bureaus and scientific organisations is a more credible explanation more than CO2 is causing temperature increases.

To disbelieve AGW now is just a special branch of conspiracy belief, and has been for some time.

And why can otherwise functioning people not recognize that they are being conned by a mere handful of contrarian amateurs into believing conspiracy? 

Update:  Nick Stokes made a comment at WUWT, where the foolish are hi-fiving each other about how this is another wound to the climate change  conspiracy:

The greatest Presidency, ever

From a Politico story about the full transcript of a recent WSJ interview with Trump, comes this snippet:

At one point, Trump seemed annoyed that one of The Wall Street Journal reporters in the room called the reaction to his July 24 Boy Scouts speech “mixed.”

“There was no mix there. That was a standing ovation from the time I walked out to the time I left, and for five minutes after I had already gone. There was no mix,” Trump said.

He added: “And I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful. So there was — there was no mix.”

The chief of the Boy Scouts subsequently apologized for the political nature of the speech.

At what point does chronic, pathological, ridiculous exaggeration become a sign of a serious disorder rendering someone unsafe for high office?   Because he's been doing this since day one ("biggest inauguration crowd, ever") and there is no sign it is letting up and that reality is sinking in.

Update:  I see someone on Twitter is saying that the Boy Scouts are saying no such phone call was even made.(! if true.)

Nurse!

Urgent sedation needed again for winner of the  Happiest Outback Entertainer of the Year award, who comments regularly at Catallaxy:

So, Tired of the winning yet?
Australia is going down.
What Australians put up with is way beyond what most people do in other countries.

[rant about how bad things are in some remote aboriginal communities - which is probably true, but  the next bit] -

Some people think we should have socialism good and hard to get it over and done with, so we can rebuild.
Looking at Australia, you must come to the conclusion that we will all be living in the violence and condition of socialist oppression that you see in remote aboriginal Australia.
There will be violence and misery on a grand scale, as has been occurring in aboriginal communities for years....

From the aboriginal experience and looking at everything from Marxist indoctrination and the level of totalitarian control already exercised on us, we won’t come back from even a full term of Malcom let alone Shorten.
The insanity and corruption are real and all logical thinking will be replaced by emotions of envy and entitlement.
Countries do come back from socialism.
But only after complete and utter devastation.

 Update:   the happy catastrophist is also discussing the prospect of same sex marriage with a foolish libertarian type who has turned up on Catallaxy to support it:

The gay activism which is Marxist hatred of the west using gays as a victim group, is quite noticeably bringing down our civilisation, which is it’s aim, and with which envy and entitlement (displayed in your first paragraph) is used.
Your blindness to this, due to emotion over maturity and any recognition of what gave rise to the civilisation that gave you so much, will definitely cause our civilisation to collapse, as is starting to happen.
We will then be replaced by a civilisation that will throw you off the top of the nearest building.
Or burn you alive.
You f.....ing entitled idiot.

 "..emotion over maturity..." - lolz, as the kids say.

Conservatives and same sex marriage

I find it hard to believe that the conservatives in the Coalition who are apparently chattering about a challenge to Turnbull's leadership if he allows a conscience vote on same sex marriage think they are on a winner here.

I've said before, I think a plebiscite is a good way to resolve a matter of unusual social and cultural consequence - yet I don't doubt that it will go in favour of gay marriage.   But having achieved it that way does give a clear societal endorsement to the change - and conservatives won't be able to claim it is just a result of elitist, out of touch, politicians (or judges) knowing what's right for society.  From that point of view, I think SSM activists should endorse the policy too.   And I think my view on this is reflected in public support for a plebiscite.

Having said that, all sensible people can see how it is going to pan out if a plebiscite is run at the next election, and as such, why should sensible people lose sleep if a government changes tactic and just says "lets vote on it now - the polling is clear on how a plebiscite will go, and has been for years - it can be a conscience vote, and we can stop talking about it and think about other issues."

Those who think it deserves to be an issue to bring down Turnbull just aren't sensible.   But they are likely to be completely unable to read the evidence on climate change, too, and make sensible responses to that as well.  They just love pushing hopeless causes against the evidence, for culture war reasons.  

I think a conservative push to oust Turnbull on this issue would just backfire on them in a spectacular way - confirming in the public's mind that the Liberals are a party at internal war with itself, just as the Rudd/Gillard wars harmed Labor.

Ethicists and pets

Boy, The Guardian (based as it is in a country renowned for its fondness of dogs) is asking for trouble when it runs a piece in which ethicists question the morality of pet ownership.

(Yes, there are many critical comments following.)

While there are lines in it which appear close to "peak Guardian", some points are valid enough.  In fact, it starts with someone noticing live baby rats on sale in a pet shop being available for snake food.   (I do think there is something inherently strange, cruel and unnecessary about keeping reptiles as pets if they can only be fed live mammalian food.)  Also, despite repeated discussion of the issue in the media, the breeding of dogs with inherent health problems just to match some pedigree "ideal" is pretty ridiculous.

So, I don't doubt that there are ethically questionable issues with some pets.  

But, as my wife said after we lost our first dog a couple of years ago, "dog people" have trouble being happy when they try living without a dog.   And there is no doubt that dogs can have a fantastically comfortable and mutually rewarding life with humans.

But (and I think I have read and perhaps blogged about this before),  attitudes to pet keeping haven't always been the same:

Widespread petkeeping is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the 19th century, most animals owned by households were working animals that lived alongside humans and were regarded unsentimentally. In 1698, for example, a Dorset farmer recorded in his diary: “My old dog Quon was killed and baked for his grease, which yielded 11lb.” However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, animals began to feature less in our increasingly urban environments and, as disposable income grew, pets became more desirable. Even as people began to dote on their pets, though, animal life was not attributed any intrinsic value. In Run, Spot, Run, Pierce reports that, in 1877, the city of New York rounded up 762 stray dogs and drowned them in the East River, shoving them into iron crates and lifting the crates by crane into the water. Veterinarian turned philosopher Bernard Rollin recalls pet owners in the 1960s putting their dog to sleep before going on holiday, reasoning that it was cheaper to get a new dog when they returned than to board the one they had.

Actually, I'm a tad skeptical of that last story.  It just doesn't ring that true - or at least, I would expect, would be a pretty rare attitude to find amongst pet dog owners of any era.  

Anyway, worth a read...

Update:   I asked my pet sheepskin at lunchtime what she thought of the article, and she wasn't impressed:

Mosquito reduction by bacteria

Nature reports on a clever, relatively natural, way to reduce mosquito populations.

There is a caution towards the end of the article against killing off mosquitoes everywhere - they are part of a food chain, after all.  

Getting confused by the number of generals

I'm starting to lose track of the reputation of the Generals Trump has appointed around him.

I thought initially that Kelly was the thoughtful, monk like one - but no, that is Mattis.  McMaster has apparently been shouted at by Trump, but apparently convinced him to stick to the Iran deal.  So maybe he's OK?

But Kelly - well, he apparently doesn't doubt intelligence on Russian meddling, and was critical of the Trump firing of Comey, but on the other hand has been using Trumpian style fear rhetoric about immigrants.

I have my doubts he is going to last, somehow...

Ice problems

This article explains how use of methamphetamine is bad for the health, generally.

Cult watch

Do economics students who go to RMIT realise that one of the lecturers has become a full blown cult member?  Steve Kates yesterday, making his undying confidence in Trump and all who surround him very clear:

You know, she may not even have wanted him at the birth. But if you are the kind of loon who thinks we should not be thankful that Trump is president because his Communications Director prioritises his work in the White House over attending the birth of his child then you should drop political commentary....

[After listing various international problem headlines]:

I have no idea how to solve any of this, but I do believe that there is no one I’d rather have thinking these issues through than Donald Trump.

Kates' family members should be thinking seriously about some intervention.

Amongst the fellow cultists at Catallaxy, I see that some are a little bit shaken by the 10 day reign of "The Mooch" .    Kates won't be:  it will all be for the greater good, somehow.

As for the "misanthrope mutual support club" vibe of Catallaxy threads, I see that it's time for confessions from one of the more depressive figures there:

Bizarrely, I think he makes a living as a travelling entertainer in country regions.   Farmers can be a miserable lot at times, maybe that's how it works.

I feel a bit guilty for doing this, as it does feel like mocking people who actually need help.   But  as I argued before, it's doing them harm, the way misanthropes and denialists of various shades are finding comfort in company at that blog.

Cannabis and impairment

One of the issues with legal use of cannabis is the unavailability of any test to reliably test for impairment (for driving, for example) after its use.  It's why some employers (airlines, railways, defence forces) will simply have a zero tolerance of its use.  

This story at NPR notes the problem it presents for policing in Colorado. 

Yet another unwanted movie review

Kong: Skull Island.  

Yes, yes:  reviewers were correct - it's like a cross between Apocalypse Now and ye olde King Kong, with a bit of additional spin (new, unexpected, giant creatures, for one; and Kong doesn't fall for the diminutive woman, thank heavens).   It looks pretty great - a lot of that interesting Vietnamese multi-island-just-off-the-coast scenery features, and the CGI is good.   The script is occasionally quite funny, and the direction is sometimes pretty noticeably clever.

But - it is still a "gigantic creature lives on an island surrounded by constant storm" scenario.   It does get a little gory towards the end.

It's officially:  OK. 

(Partly filmed in Queensland too, but you would never recognise it.)

Lots to worry about

*  North Korea:   how exactly does Trump think China can instantly stop North Korea from lobbing missiles towards the West?   Obama's policy adviser doesn't think it's easy peasy like that:

Ben Rhodes, who was a foreign policy adviser under President Barack Obama, contradicted Trump’s message, writing on Twitter that it “is not at all true” China has the ability to solve the North Korea issue quickly, and warned that the president’s message involves a “very dangerous and destabilizing approach.”

Maybe Trump should be talking more to Putin, too, about his attempts to subvert the US role in the region.

*  Islamic terrorism and aircraft:  it is a worry that there are Sydney based wannabe terrorists trying to come up with plans to take down an airliner.

I would assume this plan was detected via eavesdropping on internet and other communications.   Meanwhile, Australian IPA aligned libertarian  types, I saw last week, are against the government enforcing tech giants to provide a way to unencrypt stuff, because (hey, it's libertarians) - money!

* Both Italy and large parts of  Australia are very dry at the moment.  There is also recent concern about the loss of fertile land in Africa.

Comedy and the public service

I usually watch Utopia, but I've never been 100% sure whether to fully endorse it.  (Well, I did say I was enjoying it back in 2014.  Perhaps my doubts are growing.)

It does have good acting, I think - with the possible exception of Rob Sitch, who has a very limited range - and some lines can be sharp and amusing, if not lol funny.

But the problem with the show is that it's still mainly a satire of Public Service managerialism (and secondarily, of political obsession with spin), but it feels that the heights of faith in managerialism are well in the past, perhaps by two or three decades now.

The result is that I never am sure whether the satire is accurate, or dated.  Certainly, last week's episode, featuring the hoops that the female lead (I don't really remember any character's name) had to go through to get a promotion her boss had promised her struck me as relatively accurate from what I had heard of the public service from a friend in it - back in the 1980's.   (And by the way, the female actor who was the HR person inventing procedural roadblocks was really good in a well written role, I thought.) 

I'm not sure how anyone on the outside, who no longer knows anyone in the public service, finds out how the character of public service life has changed in recent decades.  But I hope it has...   

Back to Dunkirk

After watching Dunkirk, it's good to read some real life accounts about it.  This article at The Conversation is good.

Laffer, Krugman, comedy

I don't watch Full Frontal much, but happened to see it this week, and thought that this story (not by her) was the best bit.

It centres on the puzzling continuing grip of Arthur Laffer on Republican and IPA brains, and also features Paul Krugman.   Worth watching:

 

When even Melanie Phillips understands it's a case of the Right hyperventilating in ignorance...

Gee, it's one of those one in a hundred days on which a link found via a Catallaxy thread is actually worth reading.

The very conservative Melanie Phillips, who is a climate change denialist and therefore of routinely unreliable opinion on anything, is actually quite correct in her take on the Charlie Gard case.  The Right wing campaign, largely emanating from America, in support of the grief stricken parents of Charlie, was entirely ill conceived in virtually every respect.

Of course, the great majority of threadsters at Catallaxy sided with the American Right too, because ignorance and bad judgement loves company.  

Warning sign

In a remarkable series of leaked comments, all the incredible infighting in the Trump administration is set out by that Scaramucci character, whose opinion of Trump turned around even faster than an ex-IPA staffer grabbing a lucrative government job.

But perhaps the biggest sign that he's an annoying idiot - he refers to himself in the third person.

An unfortunate head

Peter Dutton's head, with the additional loss of hair in recent years, seems to have taken on a profound roundness, particularly in the top half:

I have kept feeling that it's reminding me of something, but couldn't put my finger on it.  I think it might be this:

In a dumbed down version, of course.

Coal for the poor

I've always thought that the argument beloved of climate change denialists that being anti coal was condemning the poor to stay poor was a bit of a crock.  Here, in a good article by David Roberts, is the explanation as to why:

The energy poor fall in two basic categories. Around 15 percent of them live in urban areas, in close physical proximity to power grids, but they aren’t reliably hooked up to those grids.

Both technical and political barriers prevent connection. Those households tend to be dispersed and consume very little energy, which means connecting them is a money loser for utilities. And in many poor countries, utilities are not under social pressure to provide universal access; indeed, they are often centers of patronage and corruption.

Building more coal plants and hooking them to those grids won’t help these households at all. Indeed, in countries like India where this is a serious problem, there is already excess coal capacity on the grid, so new plants are likely to sit idle.

Hooking these households to the grid requires better governance, better financing for the upfront costs of connection, and reform of electricity subsidies and tariffs.

The other 85 percent of energy-poor households are rural, distant from any centralized grid, mostly in Africa, India, and the rest of developing Asia. Putting more coal power on those centralized grids is obviously not going to help them.

EAS Sharma, former Indian minster of power, notes that some 6 million urban and 75 million rural Indian households lack electricity access. "These figures have not changed appreciably since 2001," he writes, "though around 95,000 MW of new largely coal-based electricity generation capacity was added during the intervening decade."

New coal plants are not targeted to areas with poor electricity access. Why would they be? Those households are poor! There’s no money there. Instead, coal gets built where there’s large-scale commercial or industrial demand.

Go read the whole thing, and email it to Sinclair Davidson, Henry Ergas et al ...

Scratch that off my potential holiday destinations

I thought Sri Lanka was supposed to have some nice enough parts, but they sure have their problems with the nasty dengue fever:

Sri Lanka celebrated its eradication of malaria last year. But now the country faces another mosquito-borne illness: dengue fever. It's also sometimes known as "breakbone fever" because of the severe pain it can cause.
A dengue outbreak has left some Sri Lankan hospitals so full that they're turning away patients, says Gerhard Tauscher, an operations manager with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. He is based in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.
More than 107,000 suspected cases of dengue have been reported so far this year, according to Sri Lanka's ministry of health.
That's almost twice the number of people diagnosed with dengue in Sri Lanka last year. The death toll from this outbreak is about 300 people, the IFRC says.

Electric highways

I didn't even know they were a thing:

Queensland will have a 2,000km network of electric vehicle charging stations that make up one of the world’s longest electric vehicle highways within six months.

The state government announced on Thursday it would build an 18-station network stretching along Queensland’s east coast from Cairns to Coolangatta and west to Toowoomba.

The stations, which recharge a vehicle in 30 minutes, will offer free power for at least a year in what the environment minister, Steven Miles, said was a bid to boost the number of electric cars on Queensland roads, currently about 700.

I had no idea electric cars were so well catered for in the US:

Queensland’s “electric highway” will span a comparable distance to the “west coast electric highway” in the US, which runs from California to Oregon and Washington state. However it is dwarfed by the Trans-Canada EV highway, which, at about 8,000km, is the world’s longest.

But the US in total now boasts 16,107 stations and 43,828 charging outlets, according to the US Department of Energy. Tesla drivers can reputedly make journeys of 20,000 km.

Flying over Dunkirk

I'm still thinking about Dunkirk - always the sign of a good movie.

One thing I did particularly like was the flying in the film.   (In fact, the portrayal of the relative intelligence of the 3 services indicated in the film pretty much matched my own biases, based on past experience.)

Here's an Air and Space article on the filming of the flying sequences.

No politics today

Instead:

*  I think this article at the Catholic Herald looking at the history of the 20th century splintering of the Anglican Church (and warning that the Catholic Church could well be heading towards the same path) was interesting.   I hadn't heard of these categories before:

For most of the 20^th Century this diversity was even viewed as its strength because, thanks to a shared pension board and the clever use of ambiguity in official statements, the three main factions with Anglicanism – which one wag labelled ‘high and crazy’, ‘broad and hazy’ and ‘low and lazy’ – were happy enough to rub along together despite their radically different set of beliefs. It seemed as if the Nicene Creed, a very loose application of the 39 articles and strong civic approval gave just enough common ground to hold the show together.

But the question as to how Catholicism is going to handle the same pressures is far from clear.   I can see how very liberal churches essentially lose their raison d'etre, and become more or less just purely Left wing social clubs; but I also see how the highly conservative Catholics are now extremely uncharitable and  unpleasant Right wing culture warriors who are amongst the worst examples of religious devotion.  It's hard to see how the Church is going to keep weaving a path between the two extremes...

*  Pop philosophy apparently is big in Germany at the moment.   Who knew?:

Philosophie Magazin now has a circulation of 100,000, proof that Eilenberger’s approach paid off. Indeed it would appear there is a new demand for ideas in Germany, one ripe for the plumbing. In 2017, philosophy in Germany is booming. Student enrollment in philosophy courses has increased by one-third over the past three years. Its leading practitioners are giving TED Talks and producing best-selling books, top-ranking TV shows, and festivals such as phil.cologne, which attracts more than 10,000 visitors to the German city each June.

*  I care little for poetry (by which I mean, I care not at all), but this book review talking about an apparently famous Polish one still seemed interesting.

*  And as for science - Nature explains how scientists are really fretting over what are appropriate P values for different disciplines.   Seems it took an awfully long time for this problem to be recognised.

What an utter shambles

To Reader JC:  as usual, your political judgement is guided by testosterone, gullibility and believing only Right wing spin on Clinton or Obama stories.  No one in their right mind thinks that Trump's threats to Sessions for doing an ethical thing, when Sessions was loyal from the start, makes moral or political sense.   Even that other regular blowhard at Catallaxy, Fisk, understands that.   As for going after Clinton when the FBI has already determined there is no point?   You actually want the American Presidency to look like a vengeful tin pot dictatorship that tries to jail its enemies, do you?   Yes, because "winning", or some such idiocy.

And as for those at that other blog who can't even see the inappropriateness of Trump giving a campaign speech to a boy scout jamboree - as I have said before, this is, in miniature, what it must have been like during the popular rise of Hitler - normal people not being able to make sense of the developing cult status around a weirdo figure.   (Actually, if anything, I suspect if I had shared the problems Germany faced, I would find the Hitlerian appeal easier to grasp - he probably worked ten times harder than Trump, for one thing.)   In any event, polling shows that he is not doing well with the population overall - which just make the pockets of undying devotion to him, like Kates and Catallaxy, just the stupidest places on the planet.

There has never been anything like the incredible infighting and leaks from within the White House from day one.   I see there are rumours that Tillerson wants to resign, and who could be surprised at that?    Environment and science positions are filled (when they are filled at all) by people who are antagonistic to both:

In the past  month, the last few scientists have exited the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) Science Division. The OSTP is staffed at approximately a third of the level it was during the Obama administration; President Trump has yet to name a head of the office. Last week, the State Department’s top science and technology adviser, Vaughan Turekian, resigned amid a swirl of rumors that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was planning on shuttering his entire science and tech operation. There have been a number of non-scientist appointments in posts with major scientific elements, including the appointment of Samuel Clovis to be undersecretary in charge of the Agriculture Department’s research, education and economic efforts. Clovis, who has virtually no science background, will oversee efforts on vital issues ranging from the spread of diseases to the effects of pesticides...

Speaking of the need for qualified scientists in top jobs, Arati Prabhakar, the former head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), put it succinctly when she told me, “These positions demand deep expertise and thoughtful leadership. Anything less risks the future.”
Of course, it is not just science under siege. More broadly the administration attacks facts and evidence wherever they do not suit their policy views. All evidence-based communities are under attack — the intelligence community, law enforcement, think tanks and journalists. Attacks come in all forms — disregard for data, ad hominem attacks on the messengers and their motives, deflections and false analogies.

Trump's downfall will ultimately be his narcissistic complete lack of loyalty to anyone other than his immediate family, as well as his utter unreliability on any issue and lack of judgement, due in large part to his most trusted source of facts being morning show sycophants on Fox News.  If smarmy suck up Steve Doocy said he thought a nuclear strike on North Korea was a good idea, Trump would be picking up the phone to the Pentagon. 

His departure can't come soon enough.

  

The NBN - works for me

I know there are lots of horror stories about people having technical troubles when moving over to the National Broadband Network, but (at great risk of jinxing it), my change over from ADSL to NBN whatever-it-is-I-dunno seems to have gone very smoothly.

My house did have Foxtel cabling already (put in by the previous owners, and used by us for a while, but we stopped with the stupidly priced Foxtel maybe 5 years ago.)  The NBN box just plugged into that cable, which sits besides the TV, and a broadband connection was made immediately.  The modem plugs into that.   I did have to ring the service provider to check where the password for the modem was, but I got onto someone immediately.  In fact, I rang them in total 3 times today, and each time spoke to someone immediately each time.   The company - Exetel.   So far, I am impressed.

As for the speed test - on ADSL, the best download was about 9 Mbps (with a truly erratic upload speed of 1 or 2 Mbps);  checking today on the NBN it was downloading at about 22 Mbps and uploading at a steady looking 5Mbps.  I had paid for the mid-range speed service with "up to" 25 Mbps speed.  So 22 is pretty good.  

What's more, for the ADSL service, I think I was paying $40 a month for it, with 150 Gb a month download limit (not that we were ever using all of that, even with four people in the house each with their mobile devices browsing the net), but I was also paying around $40 a month for the Telstra phone line and calls from it.

With the Exetel plan I'm paying $80 in total per month, but with more than twice the internet speed, unlimited download, free phone calls, and free phone calls to several overseas destinations (in Exetel's case, including Japan.)  

So, all in all, provided it continues to work properly, the NBN has been a valuable upgrade to my internet and telephone service.  

I feel I ought to be putting myself forward for some advertising endorsement for either Exetel, or the NBN.   Especially if they pay me!

Anyway, I will advise in future if the service goes bad.   Let's see.

Drinking to remember, not to forget

Do not tell any university student you know, because going out for drinks the night before an exam may become rather more popular, if they believe this result:

Drinking alcohol improves memory for information learned before the drinking episode began, new research suggests.

In the University of Exeter study, 88 social drinkers were given a word-learning task. Participants were then split in two groups at random and told either to drink as much as they liked (the average was four units) or not to drink at all.

The next day, they all did the same task again -- and those who had drunk alcohol remembered more of what they had learned.

The researchers are keen to stress that this limited positive effect should be considered alongside the well-established negative effects of excessive alcohol on memory and mental and physical health.

"Our research not only showed that those who drank alcohol did better when repeating the word-learning task, but that this effect was stronger among those who drank more," said Professor Celia Morgan, of the University of Exeter.

"The causes of this effect are not fully understood, but the leading explanation is that alcohol blocks the learning of new information and therefore the brain has more resources available to lay down other recently learned information into long-term memory.

Finally, we're at the "Trump Youth" stage

I find it hard to conceive of a man in America less likely to be a good role model for the Boy Scout movement than Donald Trump - and his biggest experience of the outdoors in his life seems restricted to being on golf courses. 

But there are lots of reports of what sounds like a bizarre campaign style speech being given to a Boy Scout Jamboree, and the (apparently easily manipulated) youth going rah! rah! for Obamacare repeal!

The sub-Hitler comparisons are obvious, and frankly, unavoidable.

Next up:  night time, fire torch lit rallies on the streets of some city or other, with copies of  the NYT and WAPO being thrown onto a bonfire.  Burn Fake News!  Burn Fake News!

Not just my imagination - intense rainfall is increasing in Japan

Floods and record rainfall in Japan in summer don't seem to attract all that much attention internationally, but my feeling was that "record rainfall" has become a near routine summer headline in the Japanese news.

And yes, Googling "record rainfall Japan" does seem to bring up on the first page stories headed that way from 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016 and now 2017.

The most recent cases -

*  15 were killed in floods earlier this month, and the damage looks large

*  Just a day or two ago, reports of rainfall in the Akita area (which I visited on my last trip) also used the word "record".  No one killed, but 12,000 told to evacuate and 500 houses flooded:

According to the Meteorological Agency, one part of the city of Akita had received a record 340 mm of rainfall during a 24-hour period that ended at 7 a.m. Sunday.

Record amounts of precipitation were also recorded in several other parts of the prefecture, with some areas breaking their monthly rainfall records for July, it said.

OK, and here is a report less than a day old, wherein the Japan Meteorological Agency, clearly a part of the Chinese/UN/socialist international conspiracy about climate change (sarc), confirms the impression:

The number of times it rains cats and dogs in Japan has jumped alarmingly in the last 10 years compared to when records of rain intensity began to be compiled.

The annual occurrences of a heavy downpour exceeding 50 millimeters in one hour has increased by a whopping 34 percent nationwide in the last decade compared with that in the 10 years from 1976, according to observation results by the Japan Meteorological Agency.

This means that repeats of the torrential rain that caused enormous damage to northern Kyushu at the start of this month are likely in the future.

Rainfall exceeding 50 mm per hour is often described in Japan as "rain falling like a waterfall," which signals a time when one should think about evacuation.

Most of drainage facilities in urban areas are designed based on that amount of rain, but when it exceeds 50 mm in an hour, water could gush into underground shopping complexes and other places.

The annual number of occurrences of heavy rainfall exceeding 50 mm per hour in the 10 years from 1976, when the agency started its observation, totaled 1,738. In the decade from 2007 it totaled 2,321, increasing 1.34 times, according to data collected by the agency’s Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System, known as AMeDAS.

TV noted

*  I've never watched Masterchef before, but I did have a look at it this year when they came to the Japan week episodes, given that I figured that the locations and food there could be particularly interesting.  

I have to say, the skills expected of the contestants seem a bit ridiculously over the top.  None of this home cooking by people who have had a few successful dinner parties of My Kitchen Rules.  And the personal drama and personality foibles are kept to a minimum too, unlike MKR, where their manipulation is key to the show.  The hosts are serious but personable, and presumably none comes close to the nuttiness of Pete Evans' private views on food and health.  

Yet despite this, I can't say that I warmed to the show.  The cooking and skills are too technical, and the tasks too daunting.  The show is not trashy and manipulative, as MKR routinely is, but it's not much fun, either. 

*  Ninja Warrior will finish its short season this week, but I am very puzzled as to the decisions made when putting this show together.    Each episode is too long, but even then, they make strange decisions as to which contestants to show and which to shorten.  

Often it seems a case of coming back from (one of the many) commercial breaks to be told that one or two guys have succeeded on the course, and you get to see them celebrating for 10 seconds, followed by showing the run of some person having a doomed run that ends half way through.  If I were one of the successful contestants, I'd be pretty annoyed about having my achievement barely acknowledged in the final show, after busting a gut like that.

If it's rating spectacularly well, why don't they make it into one hour episodes, say, 4 or 5 days a week, stretching the season out instead of a odd rush to finish, and show all of the successes.  It's the failures that you can afford to cut, I would have thought.  They could well do with fewer contestants too, I think...

Over mall-ed?

Time magazine talks about the death of American shopping malls, and someone quotes some figures about which I would love to know the Australian equivalent:

Some of the great mall die-off is what economists refer to as a market correction. "We are over-retailed," says Ronald Friedman, a partner at Marcum LLP, which researches consumer trends. There is an estimated 26 sq. ft. of retail for every person in the U.S., compared with about 2.5 sq. ft. per capita in Europe. Roughly 60% of Macy's stores slated to close are within 10 miles of another Macy's.

I've commented before that the shopping centre/mall nearest me seems to be having a sudden downturn in tenants, making their last expansion now look ill considered.   Certainly, my feeling is that centre owners in this country have become ridiculously greedy in terms of rent increases, and it seems they are hurting themselves in the long term by doing so.

But three of the largest suburban shopping centres in Brisbane - Indooroopilly, Chermside and (particularly) Garden City - always seem very busy.  They have large cinema complexes that I think help support their food outlets, at least.  

Update:  have a look at this Axios article too, about the plunge in a lot of commercial real estate valuations in the US, particularly in regional areas.  Here, I'll cut and paste part of it:

The shift to on-line shopping is now striking at the underlying value of malls, and commercial real estate as a whole.

• About $120 billion in U.S. commercial mortgages mature this year: Borrowers went delinquent on about $2.4 billion of it in June alone, according to Trepp, a real estate data provider, quoted by the WSJ.
• It was the largest rise in delinquencies in six years, according to Fitch, the rating agency. Fitch's silver lining: it's not as bad as it expected at the beginning of the year.
• Still, more defaults are coming: The credit industry expects delinquencies on such debt to escalate over the coming year, according to a new poll of portfolio managers, and to spread globally.

• Look at this number: In the FT, Blackstone executive Nadeem Meghji said the value of regional malls in smaller cities may be down 40% on average over the last two years.

Flying Harry

Having seen Harry Styles in Dunkirk yesterday gives me an excuse to post his pretty remarkable video for Sign of the Times.  (I saw this a few weeks ago and had meaning to post it here since then.)   As with Dunkirk, it looks in large part to have been made with "practical effects", and is all the better for it:

The Greenlight Zone

The video parody that appeared on Insiders yesterday was particularly funny:

A few Dunkirk comments

Saw Dunkirk today and was suitably impressed.

I tried not to "over review" myself about this movie before I saw it, but I did see enough from them to agree with these observations that have already been made:

*  it's very Nolan, with its use of different narrative time lines cut together;

*  If comparing it to the work of another director, Kubrick does come to mind, partly because of the very innovative score (as with Kubrick's crucial use of music in 2001), but also because of a certain emotional coolness that comes with how they both handle character.  I think in both directors there is always something of an awareness that the characters are mainly to serve a story, rather than to be an emotional anchor for the viewer.  (Some critics somewhere will have explained this clearer, but that will do for now.)   This is not necessarily a bad thing in a movie, although I would say it is entirely the reason I thought Full Metal Jacket was terrible.  It's more of an observation - a Kubrick movie can be fantastic and memorable regardless (2001, The Shining.)

* Perhaps the very best thing about it is that which attracted everyone's attention as soon as the first trailer appeared - the realism that comes with using real boats, ships and planes.  It looks for all the world like a film made with nearly no CGI effects, and it's a great reminder of how that be can be a fantastic thing in a movie. 

I was also pleased to read the Slate article about its historical accuracy after I saw it, and found that there is very little that is objectionable from a historical perspective.     (There was one minor detail that I found jarring, but I won't mention it here just in case it bothers someone reading who hasn't seen it yet.)

But, yeah, a pretty great film, and I hope it gets rewarded with generous box office success.

Lego movie worry

I thought the first Lego movie was enjoyable enough, without being as great as some people seemed to think.

But last night we watched the Lego Batman Movie, and things have taken a worrying turn for the worse.

Look, it's a funny concept: Lego Batman as a lonely jerk version of the modern brooding Batman, but I thought the execution was terrible. 

The main problem is that visually, the movie is just ridiculously "busy" and cluttered - virtually ever single shot ridiculously full of, well, things.   And as for the extremely rapid action and editing - I saw someone on Rottentomatoes say that it was like Fury Road for 5 year olds,  and that's a pretty good way of putting it.  Maybe the directors (different from the guys who did the first movie) thought they would appeal to the un-medicated ADHD audience, or something, but by half way through I was finding it tedious.   And despite one great idea in the second half (all of the various franchise villains in the Forbidden Zone), it does get less funny as it goes along.

I reckon the Lego team needs to sack whoever was involved in this project (which made $310 million internationally compared to $470 million for the first Lego movie) because I suspect this one mainly gave a headache to parents accompanying their kids to it, and they may well take some convincing to see the next one.

Whoops

Did a Glowing Sea Creature Help Push the U.S. Into the Vietnam War?

News from the war front

Your Saturday dose of paranoia from Catallaxy, where "struth" is one of the most overwrought inmates:

The insanity that we are seeing now will only become worse as those repeated left wing lies are gradually believed (from stolen generations to white privilege, to there being more than two sexes) and then they build on those.
It won’t end until there is a bloody revolution.
Right now, the defenders of the west (men , and mostly white) are being set up as the enemy.
Blah, blah de blah.
We all get this.
We get that they are using a captured institution to do this, the education system.
There is nothing for it except to fight.
The right must realise that this is going to get much worse, and end up with violence and death poured upon us.
You will be pulled from your houses kicking and screaming and will not be heard from again.
This shit doesn’t take a century to occur.
It will be you.
Especially cat commenters.

He's great company at dinner parties, I bet.

6,700 flights per day??

Science magazine has a short article this week on the geoengineering idea of spraying sulphur in the atmosphere to counter global warming.   But read this extract:

Gosh. Is that number of flights correct?

Floating power

This is an impressive photo, from a Time magazine story on China and renewables:

And how's this for the symbolism:

....the world’s largest floating solar farm on a lake formed on top of a collapsed and flooded coal mine just northwest of Anhui province’s Huainan city. A tapestry of 166,000 glistening panels bob and bask below an ochre sun, producing almost enough clean energy to power a large town, as fish break through the inky water all around.

Other photos in the story show that its construction is pretty low tech - the solar cells are on simple plastic floats.

I would have thought that this is a pretty good idea for water storage dams in Australia - I'm sure I've suggested this here years ago.  I don't think there is any substantial risk of polluting the water if some sink, is there?  Furthermore, in a hot area, the coverage might help reduce evaporation, I would have thought.

When am I going to see this on , say, the Wivenhoe dam near Brisbane?

Because sometimes, even stupid arguments have to be answered

It's one of the golden oldies by climate change denialists:  "The climate has always changed.   Nothing to see here - move on."

It has never made sense as an argument, and it can be taken as a reliable sign that any person promoting it has never tried to read about the issue seriously and it will be pointless arguing with them.  

But, just in case you know a denialist who is not beyond reason, and who you can forgive for not already realising how vapid the argument is,   Stefan at Real Climate has set out the detailed rebuttal.  

How women are murdered in America

Again from The Atlantic, some startling figures about women as murder victims in the US:

The CDC analyzed the murders of women in 18 states from 2003 to 2014, finding a total of 10,018 deaths. Of those, 55 percent were intimate partner violence-related, meaning they occurred at the hands of a former or current partner or the partner’s family or friends. In 93 percent of those cases, the culprit was a current or former romantic partner. The report also bucks the strangers-in-dark-alleys narrative common to televised crime dramas: Strangers perpetrated just 16 percent of all female homicides, fewer than acquaintances and just slightly more than parents.

About a third of the time, the couple had argued right before the homicide took place, and about 12 percent of the deaths were associated with jealousy. The majority of the victims were under the age of 40, and 15 percent were pregnant. About 54 percent were gun deaths.

Black women were most likely to die by homicide of any kind, at 4.4 deaths per 100,000 people, followed by Native American women, Hispanics, and finally whites and Asians. Data from earlier reports suggest a far smaller percentage of men—around 5 to 7 percent—were killed by intimate partners.

I'm pretty sure the way women become murder victims is not dissimilar in Australia.

Economics and babies (or lack thereof)

Quite a convincing argument put forward at The Atlantic that all of the "employment flexibility" beloved of the parts of the Right, and which has caused major changes to the way men (in particular) work in Japan, is behind that country's dramatic drop in marriage and making babies.

Update:  I think it's often fair enough to be cynical  of the way Australian unionists and Labor politicians talk about the importance of strongly enforced workplace laws so that workers can have a work/life balance, as well as penalty rates fairly compensating workers for time away from family on weekends, etc.   They can over-egg the argument.

On the other hand, if you look at a country where companies can get away with extraordinary pressure on workers, and implement policies that maximise profit, you can see the harm that removing all sense of employment fairness entails.