Victorian medicine remembered

From the London Review of Books, a review of this:  The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine.

Go read the whole thing, but here are some highlights: 

Even the worst corner of the worst slum couldn’t compete with hospital wards and dissection rooms for filth. Berlioz trained as a doctor and recalled a visit to the ‘terrible charnel-house’ of a Paris dissecting room. ‘The fragments of limbs, the grinning heads and gaping skulls, the bloody quagmire underfoot and the atrocious smell it gave off’ made him feel ‘terrible revulsion’. Sparrows squabbled over morsels of lung; a rat gnawed at a vertebra. Berlioz jumped out of the window and ran home to take sanctuary in music. Surgeons took pride in aprons so dirty they could have stood up on their own; Robert Liston, who pioneered the use of anaesthesia, stored his instruments up his sleeve between surgeries to keep them warm. The mortality rate among medical students – who were liable to let the knife slip – was high: the surgeon John Abernethy concluded his lectures with a resigned ‘God help you all.’ When John Phillips Potter nicked his knuckle anatomising – at the dead man’s request – the circus performer the ‘Gnome Fly’, he swiftly succumbed to pyaemia, a kind of blood poisoning caused by the spread of pus-forming organisms which cause abscesses. The pus drained from his body could be measured by the pint.

 The Great Stink played a role in advancing the state of medical science:

... one of the strongest challenges to the anti-contagionist theory came not from a paper in the Lancet, but from the Great Stink of 1858. The Thames, by this stage little more than a sewer conveying effluent to the North Sea, began to emit a stench which, according to Faraday, could be observed ‘rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface’. Londoners fled; there was a proposal that the Houses of Parliament be evacuated. And yet there were no epidemics that year, contrary to the expectations of proponents of the miasma theory.

 And then Lister got the idea of cleaning wounds with carbolic acid by a bit of luck:

Lister’s greatest advance was prompted by a newspaper report. In Carlisle, sewage engineers gagging at the smell of liquid waste spread over nearby fields had addressed the problem by covering it with carbolic acid, a substance used with indiscriminate enthusiasm for tasks including preserving ships’ timbers and preventing body odour. But a curious side-effect was observed: an outbreak of cattle plague in the carbolic-soaked fields was halted, the plague-causing parasites having been eradicated. Lister, who had abandoned his trials with potassium permanganate, quickly obtained a sample of carbolic acid. Shortly afterwards, treating a child whose leg had been shattered by a cart, he faced a choice: whether to amputate to forestall the inevitable gangrene, or to test his theory that carbolic acid could prevent infection. With the arrogance necessary to the practice of medicine, Lister decided to put carbolic acid to the test. Some weeks later the boy walked out of the hospital.

He then went on to treat Queen Victoria:

In a broadside reminiscent of those levelled at Darwin, one opponent castigated Lister for portraying nature as ‘some murderous hag whose fiendish machinations must be counteracted’. Nonetheless, when Queen Victoria could no longer bear the pain caused by an abscess under her arm, it was Lister who was summoned to Balmoral, accompanied by a copper pumping mechanism known as a ‘donkey engine’, which sprayed a fine mist of carbolic acid (including, to the horror of onlookers, into the queen’s face). The abscess and the surgical instruments were soaked in antiseptic; the pus was drained; the wound healed well; and Lister – with what one imagines to have been a rare flash of humour – declared himself ‘the only man who has ever stuck a knife into the queen’.

Moral philosophy of the Aztecs (just ignore the human sacrifice bits)

I'm not entirely sure whether there is much to be gained from the study of a human sacrificing society's moral philosophy, but this intermittently interesting article at Aeon indicates that Aztec moral reasoning wasn't all that far from your ancient Greek ideas.   Take this:

At its core, Aztec virtue ethics has three main elements. One is a conception of the good life as the ‘rooted’ or worthwhile life. Second is the idea of right action as the mean or middle way. Third and final is the belief that virtue is a quality that’s fostered socially.

 The difference with Greek virtue ethics is said to be this: 

While Plato and Aristotle were concerned with character-centred virtue ethics, the Aztec approach is perhaps better described as socially-centred virtue ethics. If the Aztecs were right, then ‘Western’ philosophers have been too focused on individuals, too reliant on assessments of character, and too optimistic about the individual’s ability to correct her own vices. Instead, according to the Aztecs, we should look around to our family and friends, as well as our ordinary rituals or routines, if we hope to lead a better, more worthwhile existence.

This distinction bears on an important question: just how bad are good people allowed to be? Must good people be moral saints, or can ordinary folk be good if we have the right kind of support? This matters for fallible creatures, like me, who try to be good but often run into problems. Yet it also matters for questions of inclusivity. If being good requires exceptional traits, such as practical intelligence, then many people would be excluded – such as those with cognitive disabilities. That does not seem right. One of the advantages of the Aztec view, then, is that it avoids this outcome by casting virtue as a cooperative, rather than an individual, endeavour.

The article goes on about moderation as being important, and the "aptness" of behaviour, which sounds fairly practical and sensible, except when taken too far (my bold):

Our actions are virtuous, then, when they are aptly expressed. This aptness of expression turns on the circumstances (eg, how formally we should dress), our social position (eg, male or female, commoner or noble), our social role (eg, warrior or physician), and whether we are performing a rite of a specific sort. A memorable example of this last kind concerns drunkenness. Public drunkenness was severely punished in Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire; for nobles, the penalty was death. But the elderly at a wedding were not only permitted, but expected to become drunk.

Anyhow, it's interesting how he doesn't address the elephant (being a still beating, ripped out human heart in this case) in the room.

Maturity level in the negative

Here's a reaction at Catallaxy to the news that a judge with Army Reserve experience has been investigating SAS members about some long standing war crime allegations:

Just when you think you might have seen peak school boy immaturity from that convalescent home for the Perpetually Angry Rightwing Culture Warrior (who really wish they could just get out and shoot a few people, like the SAS get to do), you're proven wrong.

Stand proud again, Sinclair Davidson, for the service you provide in ensuring that cohenite and his angry, like-minded kin need never feel alone.  

Gina and and her minions

Damn.  Isn't it annoying when you get to a paywalled article once via someone's Tweet, but find you can't a second time, even on a different device?

Anyhoo, was fascinated to read a Courier Mail story this morning about this:

Daughter's bid to involve Barnaby Joyce in bitter court battle an attempt to embarrass former deputy PM, Gina Rinehart says

Bianca Rinehart seems to want clearly disclosed in her ongoing court fight with her Mum the amount of donations Gina has made to Barnaby Joyce and the IPA.

The report  mentioned Gina's donations to the IPA and some other body (was it their fake environmental lobby group?  not sure)  of around $5 million, which is not small change for a lobby group that shows revenue in 2016/2017 of $6.10 million, and cash freaking reserves of $3.83 million.

(Doesn't stop them panhandling regularly for yet more donations.   Defending the right of billionaires to make yet more money by mining the coal that's destined to flood scores of cities both rich and poor doesn't come cheap, obviously.)  

She is, of course, an Honorary Life Member - more like puppet master, by the sounds.

The only puzzle about her involvement at the IPA is the Alan Moran scandal.   He got sacked from the IPA in 2014 for some anti Muslim tweet, but continues to write his completely untrustworthy analyses of energy policy (wherein renewable is bad, always bad) at Catallaxy (and the AFR, I think.)

Anyway, Alan's shtick is surely right up Gina's alley (perhaps I should re-phrase that), so I wonder if she was upset at his IPA sacking?   Did she try to stop it?  Or did he cross her in some other fashion?   Because I've always found his departure a bit odd - I mean, really, how much Muslim support do you  think the IPA would have?   


 

Yet more Nietzsche summarised

Over at the TLS, yet another summary of what Nietzsche was on about.

I like to read these to reinforce my continual surprise as to why people respond to his pessimism and ambiguities which are obviously dangerous for their ready application by those who want to refute a morality based on a common sense view of decency.  [And, quite frankly, his complaint that morality - whether based on Christianity or utilitarianism, according to this article - is "inhospitable to the realization of human excellence" and/or "makes man ridiculous and contemptible" is just nonsense of the kind that barely separates him from Ayn Rand, and I have trouble understanding why people continue bothering to study him.]

Anyhow, I was interested in this section, talking about the philosophical background he was coming from, and in particular, a writer who was obviously very influential in Germany in the mid 1850's, but of whom I had never heard:

Nietzsche’s classical training had educated him about ancient philosophy; the Presocratic philosophers (with their simple naturalistic world view) were his favourites, while his disagreements with Socrates and Plato persisted throughout his corpus. But it was only by accident that he discovered contemporary German philosophy in 1865 and 1866 through Arthur Schopenhauer and, a year later, the neo-Kantian Friedrich Lange. Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (which was first published in 1818, but only came to prominence decades later, contributing to the eclipse of G. W. F. Hegel in German philosophy) set Nietzsche’s central existentialist issue: how can life, given that it involves continual, senseless suffering, possibly be justified? Schopenhauer offered a “nihilistic” verdict:  we would be better off dead. Nietzsche wanted to resist that conclusion, to “affirm” life, as he would often put it, to the point that we would happily will its “eternal recurrence” (in one of his famous formulations) including all its suffering.

Lange, by contrast, was both a neo-Kantian – part of the “back to Kant” revival in German philosophy after Hegel’s eclipse – and a friend of the “materialist” turn in German intellectual life, the other major reaction against Hegelian idealism after 1831. The latter, though familiar to philosophers today primarily by way of Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx, actually received its major impetus from the dramatic developments in physiology that began in Germany in the 1830s.  Materialism exploded on the German intellectual scene of the 1850s in such volumes as Ludwig Büchner’s Force and Matter, a publishing sensation which went through multiple editions and became a bestseller with its message that “the researches and discoveries of modern times can no longer allow us to doubt that man, with all he has and possesses, be it mental or corporeal, is a natural product like all other organic beings”. (Think of Büchner as the Richard Dawkins of the nineteenth century: a popularizer of some genuine discoveries, while also an unnuanced ideologue.)  Nietzsche, who first learned of these “German Materialists” from Lange, wrote in a letter of 1866, “Kant, Schopenhauer, this book by Lange – I don’t need anything else”.

More on working in America

Last month I wrote about a chat I had with an Australian who had some first hand knowledge of American work conditions, and how there's good reason for full employment to not result in everyone feeling good about their situation.  (Mind you, they also seems to have lowered their expectations as to what "doing OK" means, too.)   Here's some more grist for that argument:

*  an article at The Guardian noting the high injury rate in American pig meat processing plants:

Records compiled by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) reveal that, on average, there are at least 17 “severe” incidents a month in US meat plants. These injuries are classified as those involving “hospitalisations, amputations or loss of an eye”.

Amputations happen on average twice a week, according to the data. There were 270 incidents in a 31-month period spanning 2015 to 2017, according to the OSHA figures. Most of the incidents involved the amputation of fingers or fingertips, but there were recordings of lost hands, arms or toes. During the period there were a total of 550 serious injuries which cover 22 of the 50 states so the true total for the USA would be substantially higher.

Obviously, with their love of pork, there must be many who work in this industry, but that still sounds like a high rate of serious accidents.   It would be good to see some international comparisons.  (Except from China - I would assume that their records, if they were ever available, would be appalling.)

*  in the Washington Post,  an article with the self explanatory title:

Is it great to be a worker in the U.S.? Not compared with the rest of the developed world. 

is worth a read.  It's about a lengthy OECD report that does some comparisons.   This is a key finding:

In particular, the report shows the United States’s unemployed and at-risk workers are getting very little support from the government, and their employed peers are set back by a particularly weak collective-bargaining system.

Those factors have contributed to the United States having a higher level of income inequality and a larger share of low-income residents than almost any other advanced nation. Only Spain and Greece, whose economies have been ravaged by the euro-zone crisis, have more households earning less than half the nation’s median income — an indicator that unusually large numbers of people either are poor or close to being poor.

It's also interesting to read about how temporary American jobs can be:

Joblessness may be low in the United States and employers may be hungry for new hires, but it’s also strikingly easy to lose a job here. An average of 1 in 5 employees lose or leave their jobs each year, and 23.3 percent of workers ages 15 to 64 had been in their job for a year or less in 2016 — higher than all but a handful of countries in the study.

If people are moving to better jobs, labor-market churn can be a healthy sign. But decade-old OECD research found an unusually large amount of job turnover in the United States is due to firing and layoffs, and Labor Department figures show the rate of layoffs and firings hasn’t changed significantly since the research was conducted.

Now, sure, getting rid of an employee in Australia can be ridiculously difficult, but once again, America sets itself out as ridiculously uninterested in fairness for the worker:

The United States and Mexico are the only countries in the entire study that don't require any advance notice for individual firings. The U.S. ranks at the bottom for employee protection even when mass layoffs are taken into consideration as well, despite the 1988 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act's requirement that employers give notice 60 days before major plant closings or layoffs.

So, yeah:  full employment in the US can, understandably, make people not feel as happy as it does in other countries.

No report?

Lots of women on Twitter are calling this Guardian journalist's piece about being attacked by men (strangers on the street) not once, but twice, in her young lifetime a "powerful piece".

I'm nervous to express dissent because, basically, I sympathise with its main point about women who have been sexually attacked being unfairly asked why they put themselves in harm's way by being on the street, alone. 

But... I just can't get my head around how a young woman, not long out of high school, could be raped by a stranger outside and not report it to the police due to being "ashamed" of having put themselves in danger within 10 minutes of their flat.    She does say "violated" and the post rape description sounds like it was digital, but I could be wrong.   Perhaps that kinda, sorta, explains how she could rationalise not reporting it?

OK, no not really.    Let's face it, it's still absolutely nuts to just go on knowing that there's some man in the neighbourhood willing to attack and push to the ground random women on the street/in the local park at night and not report it to the police.

So, yeah, of course I'm sorry for her having been attacked.   But her reaction to the first one, I just can't see that as doing anything other than hurting the "power" of her piece. 

Testosterone is an up-seller's best friend

Isn't it odd that anyone even thought of doing this study?   Testosterone (allegedly) makes men do this:

....testosterone, the male sex hormone, increases men's preference for status goods compared to goods of similar perceived quality but seen as lower in status.

The paper, "Single-Dose Testosterone Administration Increases Men's Preference for Status Goods," is published in Nature Communications. The research reveals that consumption of status goods (e.g., luxury products or experiences) is partly driven by biological motives. The results are the first to demonstrate that testosterone causally influences rank-related consumer preferences and that the effect is driven by consumers' aspiration to gain status rather than power or a general inclination for high quality goods....

To gain more insights on the role of testosterone on social rank and status associated behavior, a study was conducted involving 243 men of similar age and socio-economic background. Randomly, half of them received a single dose of testosterone that mimicked a testosterone spike that could occur in an everyday situation causing an increased testosterone level; the other half received a placebo treatment. All subjects then participated in two tasks.

In the first one, they were asked to choose between pairs of brands. The pairs were composed of brands that were all pretested to have polarised social rank associations but did not differ in perceived quality. That is, one brand was seen to lift its owner much higher in the social hierarchy (e.g., Calvin Klein) than the other (e.g., Levi's). For each pair, participants were asked "which brand do you prefer and to what extent?", on 10-point scale anchored with each brand. The findings reveal that men who received the testosterone doses showed a higher preference for the status (positional) goods associated with higher social rank (such as a luxury brand). This suggests a causal link between testosterone and rank-related consumer preferences.

The second task meant to investigate the effect of testosterone on the two distinct routes to high social rank—status and power. While status refers to the respect in the eyes of others, power comes from one's control of a valued resources. The research team used six different product categories from coffee machines to luxury cars and created three different framings for each product category, with a similar wording but emphasising the target product in terms of its status benefits, power benefits or high quality.

For example, the mock ads variously described a Mont Blanc pen as "the internationally recognised symbol among the influential" (status), "mightier than the sword" (power) "an instrument of persistence and durability" (quality), says David Dubois.

The researchers then asked participants how much they liked the product description and the product itself. Here testosterone did not increase liking when the product was perceived as a quality product or a power enhancing one but only when it was described as conveying status. These results establish a causal link between testosterone and increase of preference for status-enhancing goods.

I say again - that's really weird.  And sort of funny.  

Unbearable indeed

I finally got around to looking up the details behind the recent headline about some town in Oman recording a record high minimum temperature.   It really is pretty amazing:

The small fishing village of Quriyat located in Oman's northeast coast has just set a new world temperature record. Last week the temperature remained above 108.7 ^oF (42.6 ^oC) for 51 straight hours, making it the highest low temperature observed on Earth's surface.

Despite being in a desert environment, Quriyat's is also a very humid place as the water temperatures off the sea of Oman are usually very warm this time of year, with values reaching 93 ^oF (34 ^oC). So imagine a night in Quriyat with such high temperatures and such a humid environment. Unbearable!

So, a 42 degree night in a town surrounded by water of 34 degrees!  It's a wonder the fish caught aren't already poached.   

Update:   there's a lot of water which (at the surface) is between 30 - 35 degrees.   Here's the global temps for 4 July:

I don't know who runs that site - it seems to have no information about that at all.  Odd. 

Speaking of mobile phones...

Wow.   I wonder how many relationships might end as a result of this:

Accidentally texting a photo to the wrong person can be mortifying. But when your phone spontaneously texts your photos to random contacts without your knowledge, that’s downright freaky, especially if you have private or sensitive pictures in your camera roll. 

According to Samsung users posting on Reddit and official Samsung forums, this is exactly what is happening to them. In one instance, a Reddit user said that his Galaxy S9+ sent his entire photo gallery to his girlfriend in the middle of the night. Another user said that both his and his wife’s phones spontaneously sent photos to each other. 

It appears that the photos are being sent through the default Samsung Messages app, and some users have reported that there is no trace in their Messages app that the files have been sent at all—instead, people are finding out that their phones have sent the photos after the recipient replies to their unintentional message. 

Initial reports indicate that the bug has affected Galaxy S9/S9+ and Note 8 phones, but it is still unclear how many users or models may be impacted.  A Samsung spokesperson told the Verge that the company is “aware of the reports” and that it is “looking into” the problem.

A series in desperate need of a science adviser

My son and I (more at my insistence and facing his reluctance) have been ploughing through Netflix's Lost in Space.   Just one more episode to go.

I still like its looks, and the actors are fine, all with the possible exception of the regularly grimacing face of Parker Posey as Dr Smith.  (I'm still not convinced by her acting, or the role as written - it has taken far, far too long to get to the bottom of what's going on with her, and I find it hard to credit how Maureen could feel a friendship with her in the early stages.)    The show has moved too slowly, generally speaking.

But the main, screaming out problem with it is the obvious lack of any attempt at all to make key parts of it even vaguely scientifically plausible.   I mean, the Jupiter spaceships run on methane, which seems to be in liquid form but doesn't seem to be pressurised or cold in one episode?  And which they can cook up from alien dried poop in a waste converter in sufficient quantity within a few hours to get off the planet???

Not to mention the misuse of Hawking Radiation as a dangerous thing in and of itself.

I know, in my first post on the show (in comments following) I defended the loose use of science as not being important - but as the series has gone on, and sciencey/technological aspects have become more important to the plot, yes it has started to bug me more and more.   It's like the writers have a little knowledge of science (they know that black holes make Hawking radiation, for example), but then use the concept in completely unscientific way.   Same with the methane - it's a potential fuel for a rocket engine, but there's no talk of LOX as a oxidiser (as all spacefaring rocketships need), and you have alien creatures that eat and swim in it, with no obvious place on their planet where they would have developed their love of it.    And yes, the writers obviously know that you can get methane from a sewerage system, but the idea that concentrated alien poo will make thousands of gallons of the liquidified gas in a "waste converter" within a few hours - that's ridiculous. 

They just keep doing this - taking a tiny bit of real science, then blowing it up in an completely unrealistic way.

I see that the show has been renewed for a second season.   Please, I beg of you writers:  start using science consultants, and give them power to demand changes to make it at least vaguely more accurate.

Update:   Actually, I'm wondering if what happens is something like this:

Writers to science consultant:   well, we want the planet or its sun to be in danger and they have to leave quickly.  What's a good scenario for that?

Science consultant:   maybe a black hole close to the sun - so close that the daylight brightness means they don't notice it with the naked eye

Writer:  Cool.   How might they detect it?

Science consultant:   The right instruments could see the sun's gas swirling into the black hole - and maybe some subtle orbit changes?

Writer:   don't black holes make Hawking radiation?

Science consultant:  yes, but, I reckon that's not so -

Writer:  OK, thanks.

Script:   Maureen hears warning "Danger - Hawking radiation"

Science consultant watching show:   tears hair.

  

Hello Moto

I see there's a new Motorola phone out - Moto G6 - and it has a great review at CNET.

Readers who care, who really really care, about keeping track of my life, will remember that I bought a Moto G5 Plus last year, and I consider it extraordinarily good.   (It counts as a "budget" phone, and as such I don't expect its camera to be as good as a high end Samsung or IPhone that may cost 3 times as much;  but as a phone and internet device it is great.   My wife also has one, and the only problem it has ever had - a sudden apparent battery drain problem - turned out to be the fault of the Hotmail app, and disappeared when that was deleted and she went back to using Gmail.   I use the Yahoo app for mail, and I never have had a problem.)  

Anyhow, here's the favourable words for the new phone:

How do you follow up last year's wonderful budget-friendly Moto G5 Plus? Well, you could start with the outside. Add a second rear camera for portrait mode photos. Trade that Micro-USB port for a USB-C. Get rid of the 16:9 screen ratio and go tall with a trendy 18:9 display that shows more vertically. Say bye to the metallic back side and hello to a glass back with curved edges, specifically Gorilla Glass 3.

The overall result would be a phone that looks decidedly 2018, but with pretty much everything we loved about last year's Moto G5 Plus. And that's exactly what the Moto G6 is.
Last year's Moto G5 Plus hit a sweet spot between features, design, performance and price. The Moto G6 hits most of those, but just misses with a shorter battery life than last year's Motos.

Honestly, Motorola has cornered the market for value for money in mobile phones, I reckon.

But - it is weird how the same model in different countries will have different features.  (You have to be particularly careful with NFC it seems.  I actually have NFC on my Moto G5 Plus, but I have been a bit too lazy to start using it for credit card payments.  Must get around to that one day soon...)

A tourism opening

Probably part of China's revenge on Trump's stupid trade war?:

• China has warned citizens travelling to the US of “frequent” shootings, expensive medical care, and the risks associated with running into border patrol agents.
• The Chinese Embassy in Washington issued a notice warning travellers that “shootings, robberies, and theft are frequent,” and urged citizens to remain calm and hold onto evidence if they feel they are being discriminated against by border agents.
• Last year the US saw a drop in foreign tourism, which at the time was dubbed the “Trump Slump.” 

Well, surely there's an opening for the Australian tourism push in China then:  a ad featuring our low "homicide by gun" rate, perhaps, and the inside of some our nicer public hospitals. 

Pity that the (mainland) Chinese tourist does not have the best reputation for manners, though.   (They are not that popular in Japan in particular, I believe, where the issue of manners really rubs the Politest Nation on Earth the wrong way.)

And speaking of manners, I recently went to a Japanese jazz/bosso nova singer's concert that featured a Chinese heavy audience.   (At the concert hall in QPAC - so a formal, seated venue.)    The young Chinese guy next to us kept pulling out his phone and doing something on it.  (He wasn't taking photos or video, which was banned, but the continual fumbling for his phone and the dull glow of his screen was really distracting.    At interval, I asked the attendants if we could possibly move, and they indicated better seats we could go to.   The show starts up again, and I discover that the (caucasian) woman and her boyfriend/partner (they seemed to be late 20's, early 30's)  next to me were talking to each other more or less continuously during the songs!    I let it go for one or two songs, hoping they would shut up, then when they started up again I leaned over and said tersely "excuse me, you're not in your living room".   They both apologised, with her saying (in a perfectly normal voice) "I'm sorry, it's because I'm deaf."   ??   So, they stay relatively quiet during the next song, then the guy leans over and starts interrogating me as to how I came to be sitting in the seats.   Turns out  it was a corporate row, or something, and he had decided after initially apologising that he didn't like me telling him to shut up because (I guess) he considered it was his company's seat and how dare an interloper point out his rudeness.   They then resumed talking during songs.

So, there you go.  The mainland Chinese do not have the market cornered for public inconsideration.

So, RMIT libertarian types have been busy promoting Xi Jinping's favourite technology....

Well, isn't this ironic (in the wrong sense of the word - which is well overdue for a populist change of meaning.)

Berg, Davidson and Potts, the trio of libertarian/IPA economists have been busy writing boring articles to give them something to talk about at the international blockchain conferences they've been attending, and all the time it would appear that Xi Jinping has decided that yeah, blockchain is a great idea for government control.  From Axios:

China had a short, whirlwind relationship with Bitcoin before unceremoniously dumping it last September. Now, President Xi Jinping calls the underlying blockchain technology a "breakthrough."

What's going on: Xi is differentiating between cryptocurrencies and blockchain. In his view, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could fuel financial risk and even jeopardize Communist Party authority. But in blockchain, he sees something he cherishes — even greater government control.

How it works:

• Blockchain technology uses a network of computers to create a record of any string of events, from financial transactions to the origin of an oyster. Every time the thing being tracked changes hands, it's publicly recorded, so its legitimacy can be verified while eliminating human intermediaries.
• Cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin being the most prominent — are digital monies that live on the blockchain.
• Those distrustful of governments are drawn to blockchain for its anonymity. But if only a few can enter transactions, blockchain could increase government power.

I've read stuff before about warnings that cryptocurrencies and blockchain may end up being quite attractive to authoritarian regimes:  see this article in The Atlantic, which I may have posted about before:

In certain circles, the technology has been hailed for its potential to usher in a new era of services that are less reliant on intermediaries like businesses and nation-states. But its boosters often overlook that the opposite is equally possible: Blockchain could further consolidate the centralized power of corporations and governments instead.

Even without Xi taking away anonymity as a feature of blockchain, some were warning that Bitcoin wasn't exactly the anonymity dream of libertarians after all.  

Or am I being unfair - are Berg and all writing stuff about how to defeat authoritarian applications of blockchain?    I don't really see how it is possible anyway - can't governments just legislate their control of entries onto key blockchain uses?   If so, what is the whole point of Berg, Potts and Davidson's excitement?

Defamation please

You all know I can't stand David Leyonhjelm - when it comes to women, he's a chronically immature throwback to the 1970's (see this evidence, as I think that was the decade I heard this "joke") and a one note politician who certainly never got into Parliament on the strength of his personality.  

Amongst his other faults, it would seem that he doesn't take the advice of lawyers, unlike Sky News, which has been full of (late) apology for his appearance on the also chronically immature "Outsiders" program.  

I have no idea why he thought it a good idea to go on 7.30 last night - is he that desperate for publicity that he doesn't care how big a loser he looks when he can't explain the exact words that prompted his stupid rejoinder?  

I don't care for Sarah Hansen-Young as a politician either, but I do hope a defamation case comes out of this, because I suspect Leyonhjelm is silly and arrogant enough to either defend himself, or hire some jackass young law graduate whose only recommendation will be having joined the LDP and commented at Catallaxy.

It would be entertaining, if nothing else.

Unwanted review - Shutter Island

I've always been of the view that Martin Scorsese is over rated, and while there's nothing wrong with his directorial style, I find it more workmanlike than particularly inspiring.   (OK, there is usually a bit of noticeable flair here and there, but he doesn't give me the near constant pleasure that I find in the best works of Spielberg, Hitchcock or even Brian de Palma when he was at the top of his game.)

The point is, I don't rush to see any of his movies, although I often do see them eventually.

Hence, I only watched 2010's Shutter Island on Netflix on the weekend.

It's not a bad movie, but an oddly old fashioned one, particularly thematically in how it deals with psychiatry.   The book it was based on is only from 2003, but it feels it could be much older.   It reminded me a bit of Hitchcock's Spellbound, at least in terms of the way it treats "talking therapy" with a seriousness which we're not exactly used to seeing in the modern era of pharmo-psychology.  (Actually, now that I re-read the plot of Hitchcock's movie, which I have only seen once perhaps 30 years ago, it has other similarities too.)

There are some aspects which hurt its credibility.   As one bad review says:

He stuffs the film with heavy-handed art direction and piles on a ludicrously ominous soundtrack. The soundtrack is a constant reminder of the movie's importance and only highlights its unimportance.

Yeah, there is one early sequence in which the score is just completely over the top.   It's impossible not to notice it, and I can't understand why Scorsese let it stand. (Interestingly, I see that there was no original music used at all - it was all bits and pieces of existing works selected.   And here I thought I could perhaps gives Hans Zimmer a blast for being overbearing again.)

The art direction bothered me too, in both extremes - the opulence of the psychiatrist's home in the mental asylum,  and the dungeon like quality of the old asylum.   I mean, the plot is essentially a bit B grade trashy (nothing wrong with that, per se), but having so much that seems OTT in art direction kept making me think that it's a bit ridiculous that they spent so much money on it.

As to final scene and what it means - my son, to his credit (unless he had already read this on line - I should double check) picked up on the intended meaning immediately, before I had thought of it.  But this article, full of spoiler of course, indicates that he was correct.

My final verdict:  I wouldn't say don't watch it, but go in with low expectations and you may end up satisfied enough.

Update:   in retrospect, it could be argued that my complaint about the art direction is unfair, given the explanation of the entire situation that comes close to the end of the film.   (This is hard to discuss without doing a big spoiler).    But we are never shown the difference between reality and delusion, and it would not have been hard to do so.   Physically, everything about the place looks the same, making the art direction problem still feel like a problem.

Guru worth watching

If my blog search bar is reliable (and it generally isn't, so don't blame me if this is wrong), the last time I mentioned the Hoodoo Gurus was in 2009.  (!)

I've always had a soft spot for that band, despite my distinct lack of a general long haired rock sensibility.   For guitar heavy rock, I always thought they were pretty tuneful, and often wittily eccentric with lyrics.   In fact, they are one of the few classic Australian rock bands I have seen live in their heyday: in Newcastle circa 1986, I reckon.   Yeah, they were loud.

All of this is by way of preamble to saying how much I liked Julia Zamiro's Home Delivery episode with Dave Faulkner on the ABC last night.    I don't think I have ever heard him interviewed before, let alone talking in detail about his childhood.   As I would have hoped, he presented as intelligent and hard working in developing his musical career.  His father's story was interesting and touching too.

And I still have this conviction, despite making allowances for people sometimes just inexplicably taking a dislike to some TV personalities,  that if a person doesn't find Julia a warm, empathetic, charming interviewer, there's something a bit wrong with them.

Bored with the chef

I've been meaning to write this for some years.  Now with news that his very fancy and expensive looking Sydney restaurant Jade Temple, which I happened to walk past on a brief visit to Sydney last August, is closing, I am inspired to say it.

Neil Perry has become boring.

Not that I've eaten at any establishment that has anything to do with him.  It's just from my reading his recipes.

It seems that he has had the recipe page  in Fairfax's Good Weekend for many years, even decades?, and it has occurred to me, in the last couple of years, that his recipes just never sound interesting anymore.   I used to find them interesting and enticing, even though I can't remember if I ever closely followed one.   These days, a lot of them seem too simple to me, or contain an oddball ingredient that I would have to go searching for in some special shop.   I no longer ever read one and think "that sounds nice, I'd like to give that a go."  

He might be a nice guy in real life - I wouldn't know.   I do know he has a terribly dull TV presence - he was on that disastrously short lived instant restaurant show on Channel 7 in 2015.  But I am really not sure how he manages to still be considered a success.

I wonder whether I'm on my own in this feeling about him...

Or, it might be an alien spaceship after all?

There's an abstract up at Nature about that interstellar visitor of last year, with the tantalising title:

Non-gravitational acceleration in the trajectory of 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua')
 
Here's the key part:

Here we report the detection, at 30σ significance, of non-gravitational acceleration in the motion of ‘Oumuamua. We analyse imaging data from extensive observations by ground-based and orbiting facilities. This analysis rules out systematic biases and shows that all astrometric data can be described once a non-gravitational component representing a heliocentric radial acceleration proportional to r⁻² or r⁻¹ (where r is the heliocentric distance) is included in the model. After ruling out solar-radiation pressure, drag- and friction-like forces, interaction with solar wind for a highly magnetized object, and geometric effects originating from ‘Oumuamua potentially being composed of several spatially separated bodies or having a pronounced offset between its photocentre and centre of mass, we find comet-like outgassing to be a physically viable explanation, provided that ‘Oumuamua has thermal properties similar to comets.

I know it's a long shot, but I guess it still leaves it open that it was an alien spaceship venting or trying to accelerate?

You actually don't have to have uranium in your drinking water

When I first saw the story on ABC's 7.30, I assumed that the reason no action had been taken to remove uranium out of bore water used in some remote aboriginal communities might have been because it's really hard to filter it out.   (Would have to be a pretty fine filter, I figured.)   In fact I thought that it sounds like a good reason to propose closing down certain remote settlements, if you can't even get reliable water at them.

And then I Googled the topic and found that getting uranium out of ground water is far from an uncommon problem in the West, and this, from an American local government health department:

Point of use devices are installed directly at the tap and are used to reduce contaminants at that location. Several technologies are available that are effective in removing uranium. For most households, a single point of use treatment system on the drinking water tap will be sufficient to provide safe water for drinking. Point of use reverse osmosis (RO) and distillation treatment will remove many different contaminants from your drinking water, including uranium and radium.

Reverse osmosis is a process that filters most impurities from water by passing it through a fine membrane. Contaminants such as uranium are left behind on the membrane while treated water passes through. You may need to install a pre-filter before the reverse osmosis system. The World Health Organization reports that reverse osmosis treatment will remove 90-99 percent of uranium. Point of use RO systems are available from a variety of different sources, and WUPHD recommends that you purchase a unit which is “NSF certified for radium 226/228 reduction”. (NSF does not offer a uranium certification.) For more information, please visit the NSF website.

A reverse osmosis system typically costs around $300 and you can save money by doing the installation yourself. A point of use RO system will typically produce about 7 to 14 gallons a day of drinkable water. This amount of production should meet the cooking and drinking needs of a typical household. To fix a uranium or radium problem, it is necessary only to treat the water you drink because uranium gets into the body through ingestion. It is safe to take baths using untreated water because uranium or radium is not absorbed through your skin.

 Um, that doesn't sound like it's a difficult problem to fix at all.

What on earth is the reason Australian governments are saying it's years away before it can be done here?   

Great health system, America

At Vox:

A baby was treated with a nap and a bottle of formula. His parents received an $18,000 bill.

I just don't like stand up comedy

I've explained before, but I've never been a fan of stand up comedy of the modern era.   I don't mind Seinfeld, as most of what he does is not intensely about himself.  But comedians who base their shtick on a sort of public self analysis - that's never held much appeal.   Or put it this way - I can enjoy some of that from some comedians in small doses.  For example, I've recently watched parts of Netflix specials by 3 female comedians I quite like:  Kitty Flanergan, Judith Lucy and Chelsea Peretti (the awful Gina in Brooklyn Nine Nine - I didn't know she was a stand up comic as well as an actor until this special)  All of them do a very similar style of self deprecation, with a fair amount of content about how awful a lot of their boyfriends or dates have been.   I find I can take it for a while - maybe 45 minutes, before I start losing interest.   And it's not  because I think their jokes about men are bad.    Kitty Flanergan, in particular, is about as cheery as you can expect a female comedian to be.  And although she makes jokes about men, she's pretty even handed with her attitude towards women too. 

Part of it is that I don't like the crudeness and language of much modern stand up, but even if I come across one with pretty clean language, I still usually can't help but feel a bit bored with the style.

Anyway, why am I talking about this?   It's because of the international praise being heaped upon Hannah Gadsby's "Nanette" on Netflix.    I started watching it, but apparently I stopped before it became more serious.  I had a fair idea where it was going, but still, in fairness I should go back to finish it.

My reaction to the first 30 minutes or so that I did watch:   I thought it was interesting that she, as a high profile lesbian, was complaining about the pressure other lesbians' identity politics has put upon her.   (She says at one point that it's not like she spends much of each day doing things that are specifically lesbian.   But having started with a lot of lesbian content early on, she had the problem of being accused of not being lesbian enough in her later shows.)    I thought this was a refreshing thing to hear from a LGBT comic. 

But the rest of the material - she makes the point early on that she is going to be giving up comedy because of the self deprecation involved, which she realised wasn't healthy.   Again, I think this is pretty refreshing.    But...I still have a bit of a sympathy problem for her taking 10 years to realise this. 

Actually, in the Chelsea Peretti special I watched most of, she does some weird cut away stuff that seems to be about the same point - that's she's aware that the nature of this style of comedy is not great for self esteem.    So it's not as if Gadsby is the first to realise it.

I have to admit, I have never found Gadsby's comic persona, such as on that Adam Hills' show, very likeable.   I don't understand the popularity she has in certain circles.   And yes, I guess while watching her I am often trying to self analyse why I don't like her, wondering how much of it is a reaction to her lesbianism.   (I have to admit, I find difficulty feeling empathy with butch lesbianism at the best of times.)   But I think there is more to it than that.   I think maybe I have always had a bit of sense that she was too sensitive (or smart?) to be doing comedy.

Anyway, I guess I have to go watch the last part of it, but I have my doubts I am going to find it life changing as some people claim.

And besides, I just don't like stand up...

The germs, the germs; and the bags

Does anyone with common sense really believe that people are going to be keeling over with salmonella due to their filthy, filthy re-useable carry bags?

If ever there was a study worth being sceptical about, it's the one Andrew Bolt and a bunch of no common sense Right wing plastic lovers are citing from the US about what happened when San Francisco moved away from disposable plastic bags.  Here's a pretty thorough debunking of that study.   (There are others around the place too.)   Yes, if you thought it sounded suss, it was indeed, very very suss.

You know what this reminds me of?  The ridiculously elaborate instructions that wingnuts used to circulate about how extremely careful to be when cleaning up a shattered compact fluoro bulbs.   The elaborate instructions always read like urban myth material, and was faintly ridiculous when no wingnut used to be in a blind panic about what would happen if a full length fluoro tube broke.  As it happens, the compact fluro was only an interim step to the LED, which are pretty brilliant and save many people lots of money.  

It's obvious what they do - when they don't like an environment protecting law due to the minor inconvenience it causes, they gullibly promote any alleged safety hazard of the law.  

As for the grocery bag issue itself:   I note that those sceptical of its benefits keep citing a Productivity Commission report from 2006 - 12 years ago, and presumably based on information from some years further back.   And I think a guy involved in that still thinks the ban is ridiculous.

But hey, don't Right wing folk even take into account changing circumstances?

There's been a hell of lot of emphasis since 2006 on the problem of plastics in the oceans.   There was even a Senate report about this in 2016, with submissions (which I haven't yet read) by the likes of the CSIRO.*   

I strongly suspect that the decrease in use of super thin grocery bags is justifiable in the interests of ocean and river pollution, but not for land pollution.   And if people start buying more bin liners and thicker plastic bags because of that, well, I suspect they will not end up on beaches and oceans at the same rate as thin grocery bags.   I reckon most people already buy bin liners anyway, and that use of grocery bags for rubbish is just doubling up.

So, yes, I can live with it.

Maybe a few wingnuts will think they've caught the runs from reusing a bag, and that'll be a plus.

* Update:  here's a 2017 report about plastics in the oceans, with some comments from Australian academics.   Yes, we're far from the worst plastic polluting countries, but doing something with little inconvenience helps, I can't see the problem.   

You too can have a body like this

There's a more interesting than I expected article at The Guardian about those Men's  Health "transform your body " covers, where former flabby dudes end up looking, what's the word?, "chung"?    Well, that's how one guy puts it:

After a month spent learning muay thai in Thailand, Tom Usher, 30, felt himself change. “I wasn’t scared of anyone,” he muses. “When you look chung physically, you feel chung – and that confidence translates into how you act around women, but also men.

I think I'll using that word around my kids, and see what reaction I get.

Pancakes and the cosmos

A very short post to note that whenever I am cooking pancakes, as I frequently do on Sunday mornings for breakfast, and flip them and watch it start to puff up, I always think about the expanding universe.  This happens so routinely that perhaps my thoughts are now along the lines of "here we go again, I can't stop myself thinking about the expanding universe." 

That is all.

Update:  no it's not.   Could it be that some novel scientific thought is trying to tunnel its way into my consciousness through this process?   The only thing I can think of is this:  the pancake is expanding due to the heat energy of the frying pan it's sitting on.  Is our universe's expansion similarly powered by a dark energy seeping into it from an adjacent hot universe?  Of course, someone else would already have thought of this:  wait, yes, I see someone asked the question on Quora.    At least I don't think it's been given much attention as a concept.

Tax cuts not paying for themselves

Amidst all the news about the Supreme Court decisions and the civility wars, Jennifer Rubin writes about a more important long term story:

The Congressional Budget Office is out with its 2018 long-term budget outlook, and the bottom line is not pretty. CBO finds:

At 78 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), federal debt held by the public is now at its highest level since shortly after World War II. If current laws generally remained unchanged, CBO projects, growing budget deficits would boost that debt sharply over the next 30 years; it would approach 100 percent of GDP by the end of the next decade and 152 percent by 2048. That amount would be the highest in the nation’s history by far. Moreover, if lawmakers changed current law to maintain certain policies now in place—preventing a significant increase in individual income taxes in 2026, for example—the result would be even larger increases in debt. The prospect of large and growing debt poses substantial risks for the nation and presents policymakers with significant challenges.

 We know why the debt is increasing — Congress is spending more on big entitlement items while slashing revenue. Those Republicans who insisted the tax cuts would pay for themselves should hang their heads in shame. And as “as members of the baby-boom generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) age and as life expectancy continues to rise, the percentage of the population age 65 or older will grow sharply, boosting the number of beneficiaries of those programs,” the CBO says. Rising health-care costs have increased spending on Medicare and other health-care programs. Interest on the ever-growing debt is skyrocketing while revenue is “roughly flat over the next few years relative to GDP,” according to the report. Unless Congress is prepared to see massive tax hikes in 2026, the gap between entitlements and revenue will continue to grow.

 And just a reminder as to how Australia compares, have a look at this from Statista:

I'm not sure if this factors in the recent tax cuts, or not.  (I suspect not)

In any case, it seems we are in a much better overall public debt position that the US.   Which makes you wonder (well, not really - he belongs to a cult and so is beyond reason) how Steve Kates and his Catallaxy homies whine about Australian debt all the time, but aren't in a panic about the forecast US debt.

Selfish Right defined

Spotted at Catallaxy, the same obnoxious ageing writer for Quadrant who came to attention for his bombing the ABC fantasies shows us what a selfish jerk he is:

Is he serious?   Because, um, it's not like the next person to have the misfortune to use his cabin would mind the fact that after two days of illicit smoking it's going to stink like hell.  

Restaurants and civility

I'm of two minds about the matter of the Red Hen rejection of the awful Sarah Sanders' group.

I am sympathetic to the views of David Roberts and others that establishment media like the Washington Post editorialising that this is a unwarranted breakdown of civility is rich hypocrisy when she works for a President who not only trashed civility and the norms of American democracy during the campaign, but continues to encourage his cult base to an authoritarian mindset.   The media has allowed the normalisation of Trump's mindset that is so obviously dangerous to nation's politics that getting uptight about a restaurant's rejection of one of the key Trump enablers is to have a distorted set of priorities.  

Zack Beauchamp runs a similar argument, but based more on Trump's trashing of the very concept of truth as the danger.   Here's his argument:

Incivility in the Trump era isn’t about rude tweets. It’s about lies. 

To understand what Sanders’s defenders are getting wrong about the dinner incident, let’s get straight on the difference between “incivility” in politics and simple rudeness. Our guide here will be John Rawls, by all accounts the greatest American political philosopher of the 20th century.

A major topic of Rawls’s work was the problem of political disagreement: How is it possible to have a democracy, a government allegedly for and by the people, when people disagree so much among themselves? Rawls attempted to answer this question in one of his major works, an extremely long tome titled Political Liberalism. 

The core of his answer, to simplify it dramatically, is that democracy depends on a certain set of principles that almost everyone agrees with. These are principles that only “reasonable” people (not Nazis, for example) can accept — ideas like “all citizens deserve to be treated equally” and “it’s wrong to imprison people on the basis of faith.”

For this system to work, Rawls argued, public debate must be free and open for people to clearly explain how their policy convictions can be justified according to the shared beliefs at the heart of a democratic society. Rawls called the obligation to adhere to these rules of discourse “the duty of civility”: If citizens in general, and politicians especially, hide and obfuscate their arguments, then people’s ability to give their informed consent to the administration disappears.

Our foremost political philosopher, in short, didn’t see “civility” in politics as identical to politeness in everyday conversation. Rather, political civility is about treating members of the opposition like reasonable people. It seems more “civil,” in this view, to honestly state disagreements with individuals, even impolitely, than to try to trick them.

Rawls never really engaged with the possibility that a democratic government might make dishonesty one of its core political principles. But as my colleague Matt Yglesias has argued at length, that is what President Donald Trump has done — using a complete disregard for the truth as a tactic for advancing his agenda and keeping his base loyal. 

The sheer breadth of this assault is jaw-dropping; according to the Toronto Star’s database of Trump lies, since becoming president Trump has made at least 1,726 verifiably false statements, a clip of more than three a day. The New York Times compared Trump’s record to Obama’s, and found a huge discrepancy: “In his first 10 months, Trump told nearly six times as many falsehoods as Obama did during his entire presidency.”

Sarah Sanders’s job as White House press secretary makes her especially complicit in this agenda.

Because the president lies constantly, a major part of her job is defending those lies — either covering for them, deflecting them, or lying herself to cover for them. Merely doing her job makes Sanders (because of her boss’s uniquely hostile approach to the truth) uncivil according to Rawls’s terms. 

The Trump administration is attacking the very heart of a democratic political system. And Sanders, by aggressively repeating and defending Trump’s lies, is a vital part of this machine.

On the other hand:   it seems a given that in private, most Republican politicians know that Trump is an idiot and is terrible for the nation long term, but they are too cowered to argue with his base that they are wrong.

If the hope for the nation is for a Republican revolt against their nominal leader, encouraging a mass uprising of harassment of all Trump administration figures regardless of whether they are engaged in private life or not may well make dealing with the idiot base harder, not easier.

I mean, look - the base already thinks that the Left must be destroyed for the sake of civilisation - and that's just from watching the news, let alone seeing a protest on the street that inconveniences them.

It's a bit of a conundrum really - are Trump supporters so self deluded that telling them in public that they are offensive, self deluded nuts will make their condition worse?    They are dangerous too, what with their love of guns and desire amongst a significant number to see actual civil war as a way of winning the culture war that they have really already lost.

I don't know.    Certainly I don't want to see riots - they routinely play into the hands of the Right.

But I do hate the normalisation of Trump rhetoric too. 

I'll have to think about it some more....

Update:  from David Corn:




 

Noted for the record

For those who follow climate science, you would already know that the dishonest Pat Michaels and Ryan Maue article in Murdoch's Wall Street Journal last week repeated a deception that Michaels had tried before regarding James Hansen's 1988 modelling, which turns out to have been pretty accurate.

A decent enough explanation appears now at The Guardian.  But there are lots of others around, including at Real Climate, although I think The Guardian's article puts it nice and succinctly.  

Once again, it is a case of lazy culture war climate change deniers not realising they are being conned, because they live in an information bubble.  (I wouldn't be surprised if the WSJ does allow a rebuttal to appear in it sometime soon - but deniers won't read it even if it's there.)

There have been some good twitter threads about the topic from climate scientists.  I don't know of this Ryan Maue, but he appears a real piece of work.   One  of the prominent people arguing with him is Jerry Taylor, who is president of the Niskanen Centre, the quasi-libertarians who actually believe in climate change as a serious issue.   (I think I've argued before, they don't sound all that libertarian to me.)  His twitter account is worth following.  It contains entries like this:

Transgender wars, continued

There is nothing, really nothing, like the wrath of transgender people/advocates against reporting or commentary on people who once thought they were the other gender, but later changed their minds.

Last week I  noted an article at The Altantic that reported sensitively on the matter of transgender kids and de-transitioners, and since then it has run not one, but two articles by transgender folk (and even a de-transitioner) unhappy with the original article.

I hate to say it (well, not really - it just seems an appropriately polite thing to say), but it's transparent what's going on here:  it's crucial to most transgender folk's self understanding that they can't be wrong about their self understanding, and so no matter how carefully or sensitively or accurately it's reported, they cannot bear hearing about people who now count a past self understanding on their "true" gender identity as mistaken.  

Yeah, well, sorry, but it happens, and it obviously presents a challenge to parents.   

Men are terrible after all

Well, I can understand a woman thinking that if it turns out that it's actually men who give women the unfortunate disease of bacterial vaginosis (which I've posted about twice before):

A Monash University trial is seeking to prove that, unlike other vaginal infections, bacterial vaginosis is actually a sexually-transmitted disease, which can be carried by men, as well as women.

A 2006 Monash study found 50 per cent of women who undergo treatment – an oral or topical antibiotic – for bacterial vaginosis have a recurrence within six months.

"When we looked at the associated factors with bacterial vaginosis coming back, women who were exposed to an ongoing, regular sexual partner had twice the risk," says Dr Catriona Bradshaw, who has been researching the condition for 15 years.

Subsequent studies by the team also suggest this high recurrence rate could be because the infection is sexually transmitted: the biggest risk factor for developing bacterial vaginosis is exposure to a new sexual partner, and a 2008 study of university students found the infection was unable to be detected in women who had never been sexually active.

Bacterial vaginosis is experienced by roughly one in 10 Australian women. It occurs when the vagina's healthy bacteria, known as lactobacilli, are replaced by a variety of different bacteria, resulting in a watery, white discharge and a fishy odour.

Which makes me wonder - if it's a case of bacteria on the penis being re-introduced and outcompeting a woman's normal  healthy bacteria, might not there be a higher risk of it with an uncircumcised penis?

Well, seems my guess is right.  A 2015 article:

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is a common vaginal bacterial imbalance associated with risk for HIV and poor gynecologic and obstetric outcomes. Male circumcision reduces BV-associated bacteria on the penis and decreases BV in female partners, but the link between penile microbiota and female partner BV is not well understood. We tested the hypothesis that having a female partner with BV increases BV-associated bacteria in uncircumcised men.

Short answer:  it does.

So, for all of the hyperventilating that goes on about circumcision as a cruel practice on boys, women actually do have an incentive to support it.
 
 In fact, Googling on this topic indicates that some have been saying for years that BV should be considered a sexually transmitted disease.  So I'm not sure that the Monash study is all that innovative.  

Western suburbs

I found myself with 45 minutes to kill on the weekend in one of the bushy Western suburbs of Brisbane.   I went for a walk and found :

A pair of tawny frogmouths:

A swimming hole:

And some houses with really, really big front yards:

All within about 30 min drive to the CBD, at least if it is not rush hour.   Nice.

This is sheer idiocy

Andrew Bolt (and Steve Kates) extract some Mark Latham commentary from The Spectator with approval:

Mark Latham says Donald Trump is now the hope of Western civilisation:

Trump believes in the supremacy of the individual, in judging people on merit, by their work ethic and creativity, rather than race, gender and sexuality. These are the essential elements of civilisational leadership. Trump stands for the freedom of the citizen in the nation state. That is, the right to free speech, to meritocracy, to national pride and a freestanding national culture. The key political divide is no longer between Left and Right; it’s between civilisational and non-civilisational leaders. Trump is on the right side of history, with domestic ascendancy seemingly assured. He now needs to turn his mind to an even greater challenge, promulgating a Trump doctrine: a new brand of American global leadership based on the defence of Western civilisation.

It's getting to the stage of when I hear "Western civilisation" I want to reach for my (imaginary) revolver.  (Now that I mention it, didn't the Nazis come out of the one of the national hearts of "Western Civilisation"?)

Young socialists

There's been much knicker knotting going on from the Right wing commentators about a CIS survey done with millenials to see what they think of socialism vs capitalism.  Quite a lot of young folk (58%) said they view it (socialism) favourably.   Quelle horreur.  

But wait a minute - survey results depend an awful lot on how questions are asked, and in this case, there may be an obvious problem:  did it take any care to explain in any way the meaning of the term "socialism"? 

The need to be careful with the definition comes at a time when it is those on the Right - particularly the American Right - who abuse the term in a rubbery, self serving way.  You know - single payer health care (like our much beloved Medicare) is evil, outright socialism according to many Republicans (and tantamount to setting up hospitals as death camps).    You might say that we don't have quite the same level of wingnutty branding of any government support as socialism in the Australian electorate, despite Catallaxy's ratbags and Pauline Hanson.   But we do still the complication of having someone like Barnaby Joyce musing that maybe it's fair to call him an  "agrarian socialist"!   

Even without having heard Barnaby Joyce's self labelling, if millenials think "socialism" is just government helping when it could or should, and they know National Party politicians spend a lot of time asking for help for drought or flood relief, they're not exactly showing themselves up as wannabe communists for saying they think well of socialism.

Looking at the CIS report, I can see no evidence of an attempt at an explanation of the terminology of "socialism" versus "capitalism", which should set off immediate alarm bells.   

Other parts of the survey might give more grounds for concern, such as the relatively low awareness of the big political leaders of communism in the 20th century.   Yes, school teaching of the history of the 20th century could do with improvement.  It's also clear that millenials don't have sound knowledge of levels of government spending on education or wage growth - but I would say that a large part of that ignorance comes from politician's spin at election time, rather than a fault of the education system.  But for God's sake, the beneficiaries of misleading spin can just as much be the Right as the Left - look no further than Trump for that.

As for the question of whether respondents agreed that "capitalism has failed and the government should exercise more economic control" - well, it's really a broad brush loaded question.  Anyone, save for libertarians with an allergy to government per se, can probably think of an area where private sector involvement doesn't seem to be helping much - the electricity supply, or the multitude of choice for internet or health insurance which makes comparisons of products very complicated, and prices are still increasing despite apparent the competition.   It's easy to slip into hyperbole (politicians lead by example) and go with "capitalism has failed" on the slimmest of gut feelings about a few minor irritants of the current system.   Or it may well be a case that if asked those questions separately, you would get some people disagreeing that "capitalism has failed" but still agreeing that the government should be more involved in some parts of the economy.   The joining of those two statements really stuffs up the interpretation of the results.  

So, long story short:   it's a lousily constructed survey that means very, very little.

CIS can do better than that, surely. 

Update:   John Quiggin wrote something very similar on the weekend:

In ordinary usage, “socialism” means something like “social democracy with a spine”, as I’ve argued here**. That’s primarily due to the fact that any serious social democratic policy is invariably labelled as “socialist” by the political right. In ordinary usage, the term associated with Stalin and Mao is “communist”, and if Switzer & Jacobs wanted to find out how millennials felt about communism they should have asked them.

Que

Transgender wars

I finally got around to looking at the The Atlantic's recent long, long article about children who believe they are transgender, and the vexed issue of treating them for it with puberty blockers and even (in some cases) surgery while still a minor.  It deals with "de-transitioners" who have changed their mind after surgery, and opens with a story of a teenager who was confident of the source of her mental problems (she was a boy in a girl's body) but then pretty snapped out of it (before taking medication or going down the surgery path.)     It's a very nuanced, careful and respectful article. 

But, predictably, the world of identity politics armed with social media, being what it is, has apparently been full of outrage over it.  I only know this because Bernard Kean linked to an article by a pothead Trokskyist lesbian (pretty much her self description, and as such someone I would not generally care to follow) who says this about the article:

The piece, which was written by science reporter Jesse Singal, was thorough, nuanced, impeccably researched and fact-checked, and it caused an immediate firestorm. On Twitter, Roxane Gay said it was a travesty. Lena Dunham called it dangerous. Nicole Cliffe, a woman who has literally never spoken to the author in her life, said that Singal is “obsessed” with trans women. She also called him creepy.

“Mad” doesn’t quite capture my response to these tweets. I was enraged, particularly at Cliffe, a writer who should know better than to smear someone she’d never met to her 81,000 followers. Unlike Cliffe, I’ve actually met Singal, and he is not “obsessed” with trans women. He reports on social science, including the science (or lack thereof) of gender. He was, quite literally, doing his job, and, if you follow Singal on Twitter, you’ll quickly find that if he’s obsessed about anything, it’s basketball, not trans women. The irresponsibility of Cliffe’s tweet, which has more than 4,000 likes and 1,000 retweets, was astounding—but it shouldn’t have been. This is how Twitter works: You repeat something, no one bothers to fact check, and all of a sudden, it’s treated as fact. Jesse Singal is obsessed with trans women. I read it on Twitter, therefore it’s true.

So, yeah, social media is bad for the Left too.  But the effect it's having there is nothing the serious and bizarre rise of the Cult of Trump it has caused on the Right (well, at least by 50%, I would say.)

Alcoholic rats

A good article by Ed Yong about new rat research on alcoholism.  Seems to me it took them long enough to come to up with the experiment in which rodents had the choice of alcohol and something different.

Kates in a Deep State of panic

Look, it's hard to come up with new words to describe the inanity of Steven Kate's world view:  let's just settle on LOL ridiculous for this post today about the "Australian Deep State", inspired by an article written by Gareth Evans. 

Even though Evans (questionably, in my view) in the article gives credit to Trump for at least having the Singapore summit, Kates still finds reason to panic:

And what is his sage advice: to restructure our foreign policy so that it is, “as he has argued for some time”:

“Less America. More Asia. More Self Reliance.”

Moronus maximus duplicitus!!! What a sell-out to our enemies. And he finishes by telling us that there is about to be a meeting at the university that has self-declared itself unwilling to defend Western Civilisation, that there will be an “ANU Leadership Forum” involving the AFR, Business Council, academics and the public service – that is, a meeting of socialists and their crony-capitalist beneficiaries – to discuss our foreign policy future.

Or in other words, it is a meeting of the Australian Deep State, who should not be trusted by so much as an inch. You should, of course, be wary of the Libs, but you should be far far more wary of the ALP. It makes me sick to read such idiocies and fills me with fear as well.

Hey, Sinclair Davidson:  you do know you're hosting a blog for the mentally disturbed Right wing catastrophists of the land, who routinely report breaking contact with former friends and relatives due to whipping themselves into a frenzy of panic based on imagined conspiracies?  

Don't you feel just a little bit guilty hosting a place where they sit around reinforcing each other's increasingly nutty social isolation?  

Sort of a Hindmarsh Island in reverse?

This is one of those cases where groups associated with both sides of the political spectrum come out looking bad - Big Mining and aboriginal politics:

A north Queensland Indigenous organisation kept secret more than $2m in payments by the Adani mining company, federal court documents show.

Guardian Australia has obtained court documents that show the Kyburra Munda Yalga Aboriginal Corporation did not account for payments by Adani, then paid its own directors up to $1,000 a day cash-in-hand to conduct now-invalidated cultural heritage assessments for the Indian mining company.

The federal court last month delivered a ruling that may void the assessments, which are required to protect sacred sites from development.

It ruled that another Indigenous business, Juru Enterprises Limited, was the proper “nominated body” to represent traditional owners on a land-use agreement with Adani.

The impact of the decision could be wide-ranging. Traditional owners from near Bowen say they are “hugely worried” Adani has conducted work at its Abbot Point port based on improper or conflicted advice from the cultural assessment surveys.

Juru Enterprises could now demand Adani “redesign or reconfigure” any plans or works near sacred sites.

The court case has also exposed how Adani funding was central to alleged rorts conducted by Kyburra board members. Guardian Australia has seen letters, minutes of meetings, police reports, auditors reports and sworn affidavits that detail how Kyburra kept money paid by Adani off the books and then funnelled it to directors through “fees” and “loans”.

Kyburra declared only $50,000 total income in consecutive years: 2014/2015 and 2015/16. About $2m was paid to the organisation by Adani in 2014 and 2015, including an estimated $800,000 for cultural assessments. But none of it showed up in Kyburra’s annual financial statements.