The family church

Some really interesting figures here at Vox about what's happening to religious belief in America.  Surprisingly, the Mormons are holding numbers, despite their conservatism on matters sexual:

One-quarter of Americans are religiously unaffiliated today, a roughly fourfold increase from a couple of decades earlier. Christian denominations around the country are contending with massive defections. White Christian groups have experienced the most dramatic losses over the past decade. Today, white evangelical Protestants account for 15 percent of the adult population, down from nearly one-quarter a decade earlier. By contrast, Mormons have held steady at roughly 2 percent of the US population for the past several years. And perhaps as importantly, Mormons are far younger than members of white Christian traditions.

At one time, sociologists and religion scholars argued that theologically conservative churches, which demanded more of their members, were successful because they ultimately provided more rewarding religious and spiritual experiences. This theory has since fallen out of favor as the tide of disaffiliation appears to be washing over conservative and liberal denominations alike. The Southern Baptist Convention, the heart of conservative Protestantism, has sustained 12 straight years of membership loses. Since 2007, the denomination has shed 1.2 million members.

But more than the rules, rituals, and rigorous theology, the success of the Mormon Church may have to do with their unrelenting focus on the family. Few religious communities have made the development and maintenance of traditional family structures such a central priority. Eighty-one percent of Mormons say being a good parent is one of their central life goals. Nearly three-quarters say having a good marriage is one of their most important priorities in life, and a majority of Mormons — including nearly equal numbers of men and women — believe that the most satisfying type of marriage is one in which the husband provides and the wife stays home.

 Actually, though, the article points out that the LDS Church can actively encourage an early sex life - as long as it is within marriage:

Recognizing the centrality of family, the LDS Church has not been shy about encouraging young Mormons to start families early. In 2005, the LDS Church leadership was actively encouraging college students to start families even before they graduated. More recently church elder M. Russell Ballard urged Brigham Young University students to not let educational goals lead them to postpone marriage. “You can accomplish both with hard work, sacrifice, and planning,” he said. “In fact, with a companion’s support, you can be more successful.” It’s a message that resonates with many Mormon college students. 

 The younger members are pressing somewhat for a more sympathetic approach to homosexuality, though:

In 2016, the LDS Church launched a website called Mormon and Gay featuring firsthand accounts of Mormons who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Importantly, the church remains opposed to same-sex marriage, but church leaders have adopted much more inclusive language when discussing LGBTQ members of the church. “It shows the church is taking a step in the direction of understanding and empathy,” Monson says.

Not a sign of a healthy, happy society

Axios posted this graph of American deaths by drugs, suicide and alcohol:

An obvious lesson:  clearly, apparent strong economic growth does not alone tell the full story of the state of well being of the American society.  

Trumponomics

The Washington Post notes:

Tax revenue for October 2018 through January 2019 fell $19 billion, or 2 percent, Treasury said. It noted a major reduction in corporate tax payments over the first four months of the fiscal year, falling close to 25 percent, or $17 billion.

As part of the 2017 tax cut law, the tax rate paid by corporations was lowered from 35 percent to 21 percent.

Spending, meanwhile, increased 9 percent over the same period.

The biggest increases were for defense military programs, which saw a 12 percent increase, and Medicare, which saw a 16 percent increase.

The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the deficit this year will reach close to $900 billion, because the government spends so much more money than it brings in through revenue....

During the tax cut debate in 2017, the White House promised that slashing tax rates would end up creating more revenue because it would allow the economy to grow at a faster clip. Economic growth did pick up in 2018, but Democrats have said the growth will be short-lived. So far, the growth has not come close to the levels needed to offset the $1.5 trillion in tax reductions that were part of the legislation.

The federal government is now more than $22 trillion in debt, largely representing an accumulation of all the money it has borrowed to finance programs in past years. A deficit is the one-year gap between spending and revenue, and the debt is the total amount of money owed by the government.

The cycle of abuse?

Slate seems to have become rather more "sex tabloid" in the last 12 months, if you ask me.  The site really highlights some weird personal sex advice questions - I don't why, it brings the quality of the place down.

However, there is still a lot of good stuff there.  Like this article about the widely believed "cycle of abuse", particularly in relation to childhood sexual abuse.   As Daniel Engber writes, the research on this isn't really very strong, often showing some relationship, but it's no where near as strong as the public likes to imagine:

Psychologist and criminologist Cathy Spatz Widom was the first to make some progress through the bramble. In 1989, she published data on the cycle of abuse with a novel methodology. Instead of looking retrospectively at criminals and delinquents, she started by picking out a group of victims of abuse, then following up throughout their lives to figure out what happened. She began her work by identifying more than 900 victims of abuse and neglect whose cases had been registered in the court system of an unnamed Midwestern city between 1967 and 1971. Then she set up a control group, matching up those victims as best as she could with people of the same age, race, and sex who attended the same schools and lived in the same neighborhoods. Finally, she pulled any official records of their delinquency, detention, or adult criminal activity across the next 20 years.

Using this much more powerful and better-controlled design, Widom was able to confirm that victims of childhood abuse are indeed at greater risk of becoming criminals. Perhaps more importantly, she showed that mere neglect—even in the absence of any violent physical abuse—was a noteworthy predictor of later criminal behavior. 

She kept following her subjects, who are now well into middle age, and also gathered information from their children. In 2015, Widom published several decades’ worth of further data. One of her papers in particular focused on the question of whether someone’s experience of childhood abuse can predict their sexual offending later on. While 4.5 percent of the people in the control group had been arrested for a sex crime, nearly twice as many—8.3 percent—of the people who had been victims of abuse or neglect went on to perpetrate such a crime. So there was a link, but the details didn’t fit the expected pattern of “monkey see, monkey do.” The people in Widom’s study who were abused as children in specifically sexual ways did not, in fact, appear more likely to get arrested for a sex crime later on; instead, it was the ones who were either neglected or physically abused who ended up at higher risk. 

That may have been a quirk of Widom’s data set. Among both groups who had been arrested for a sex crime, almost all of them—84 percent—were men. Yet her study included just two dozen male victims of childhood sexual abuse, of whom three went on to be sexual offenders. It may be that this sample was too small for a true effect to show up in her statistical tests.

There's more, and even a large Australian study gets a special mention:

A similar study, published in 2016, looked at records of childhood sexual abuse and sexual offending in a group of more than 38,000 Australian men. Among those who had been molested, just 3 percent went on to commit a sexual offense. That rate was much higher than what was found among the total population (0.8 percent), suggesting a cycle of abuse. But being victimized by other forms of childhood mistreatment was also associated with committing sexual crimes, and there were no clear signs of a special one-to-one relationship in which sexually molested children grew up to be sexual molesters. 

But really—it’s complicated. A paper published two weeks ago combined and analyzed findings from 142 different studies of intergenerational transmission of maltreatment. The study’s authors, led by the University of Calgary’s Sheri Madigan, concluded that there is indeed evidence for a “modest association” between someone suffering abuse and then perpetrating it, and that specific forms of abuse may be passed down in this way.

I think it very likely that part of the reason the cycle is so widely believed is because it is so often used as part of a plea in mitigation for men convicted of sexual abuse.   It is, after all, one of the very few claims a convicted sex offender can make towards showing that it is not just their own volition that was behind the crime, but a psychological issue that was not entirely their fault.

American chicken

David Frum has a good column up talking about the odd importance of American chicken processing to the Brexit vote.

Are Australian meat chickens similarly bathed in chlorine (or whatever it is)? 

It's kind of remarkable how American food and food processing has a kind of poor reputation for all sorts of reasons - e coli outbreaks on salad veges seem so common; but then chicken meat seems to have the opposite issue with too much chemical treatment.

An odd time to be talking Catholic virgins

Well, I continue to be annoyed/appalled that both pro and anti "Pell is innocent" forces continue to wage what seem to be PR wars.  I saw some of 4 Corners last night, and am baffled as to why no one there doesn't think that they will look vindictive if he is successful on appeal, and if nothing comes of the civil action either.   This is especially the case when we know the hung jury verdict of the first trial.

Of course, I am equally upset with the pro-Pell side slandering the accuser in the case too - as they are doing with wild abandon at Catallaxy.  

Anyway,  for some odd reason (perhaps to convince us that Catholics are too obsessed with sex), the ABC website has a story up about an Australian "consecrated virgin".   I wrote about these when I first heard about them last year - and everything I say in that post still seems appropriate.

More miscellaneous observations not worthy of their own post

*   I now know where I can buy a piece of vacuum sealed wagyu steak in Brisbane that sells for - wait for it - $229.99 a kilo.   Ask in comments if you want to know.   (Wildly unlikely anyone will, but hey...)

*   Yeah, this "Curious Kids" item in The Conversation deals with something that has puzzled me more and more over the years (as we have seen more and more video from the depths):  how come in these deepest of deep sea dives, where the submarine would be crushed like an aluminium can unless it was built to super-strength standards, you see pretty normal looking, non-armour plated fish and crustaceans doodling around?   How do their puny bodies operate under such pressure?    Seems the answer goes down to the midi-chlorian cellular level, but not in entirely understood ways.  Huh.

*  The Guardian has a piece on a traditional "third sex" kind of role in the Philippines  (similar to that seen in many other cultures):

Bakla is a Tagalog word that denotes the Filipino practice of male cross-dressing, denoting a man that has “feminine” mannerisms, dresses as a “sexy” woman, or identifies as a woman. It is an identity built on performative cultural practice more so than sexuality. Often considered a Filipino third gender, bakla can be either homosexual or heterosexual, and are regarded as one of the most visible LGBTQIA+ cultures in Asia – an intersectional celebration of Asian and queer cultures. 

The bakla were renowned as community leaders, seen as the traditional rulers who transcended the duality between man and woman. Many early reports from Spanish colonising parties referenced the mystical entities that were “more man than man, and more woman than woman”. Even today, many bakla in the Philippines retain high status as entertainers and media personalities.

When I was eight years old, on my first and only trip to the Philippines, I met my older cousin Norman. He had shoulder-length hair, wore lipstick and eyeliner, and would walk around in heels. His father affectionately called him malambut (Tagalog for “soft”); his siblings called him bading, but he told me he was bakla. He wasn’t an outsider; he was part of the family – my family – and being an eight-year-old who liked to sing karaoke and play dress-up, I didn’t give it a second thought. But on returning to Australia, I told all my friends about Norman and they scoffed – the early seed of masculinity training at play – and when I asked my parents what the word meant, my mum replied, “it just means … bakla”. It didn’t translate directly to English.

Later, I learned that many people problematically mistranslate bakla to “gay” in English. As an identity not tied to sex, the word does not correspond directly to western nomenclature for LGBTQIA+ identities, sitting somewhere between gay, trans and queer. As Filipinos moved to countries such as Australia and the United States, the bakla were mislabelled as part of western gay culture and quickly (physically) sexualised. Even worse, the word can sometimes be heard in Australian playgrounds, used in a derogatory way. When I was younger, we were banned from calling each other “gay”, so the boys accused each other of being “bakla” instead. It was quite confusing to my ears when hearing the word used in a negative way, its meaning truly lost in migration.

I've never made a study of this whole, third sex, cross dressing thing that pops up in various indigenous cultures, but it's curious how it turns up in some but not others.   (Also the different status levels that they hold in different cultures.)   It's funny how the modern equivalent is just making it big in the entertainment industry.   Would Bowie (and glam rockers generally) at their campiest height count as bakla? 

Now easier than ever to get into the country you never wanted to visit in the first place

From Gulf News:

Saudi Arabia’s cabinet has approved electronic visas for foreign visitors to attend sporting events and concerts, local media reported, as the world’s top oil exporter tries to diversify its economy and open up its society.

According to officials, the Saudi Arabia Visa application will only take a few minutes to complete online and there will be no need to go to an embassy or consulate.

Once the application is approved, it will be sent to the applicant by email.

This new move symbolises a change for the kingdom, which was known to be one of the most difficult countries to enter.

Further down the report:

As part of Prince Mohammad’s agenda, the kingdom has ended a nearly 40-year ban on cinemas, allowed music concerts, including performances by Western pop stars, and organised international sporting events. There are a number of tourist attractions being developed in Saudi Arabia, including Amaala and Al Ula.

I'd be rather curious as to which concert acts would ever be inclined to do a show in that country.  Madonna's farewell tour, perhaps?

Weekend update

*  My son cut his finger near the tip, deep and bloody enough to warrant a visit to the doctor.  No stitch, but gee, fingertips bleed easily.  It made me realise I've never cut myself bad enough to warrant a doctor's trip.  I wonder what percent of people get through life with no cut warranting a medical visit.

* I noticed that ABC radio host Richard Glover made a tweet about being a victim of sexual abuse (he was commenting about the George Pell matter.)   Given that he talks about his own life a lot in his books and columns, I was surprised I hadn't heard him claim that before, and Googling the topic I see that I missed that he had published an autobiography in 2013 which apparently dealt with it, but was mainly about his highly eccentric parents.  (I have a vague feeling I had heard him talking about his mother before.)  Anyway, I listened to an interview he did with Richard Fidler in which he talked about it, including briefly about a period of sexual abuse which occurred not as a child, but at 19.   He did have a unusual early life, yet he has had only one long term partner and two sons who he has written affectionately about for many years.   His life story is really one of resilience, then, as he makes plain in the interview.   Quite interesting, really.  

* Speaking of ABC radio personalities, it was hard not to be moved by the Good Weekend article about Red Symons and the difficult life issues he has recently faced.   (His son dying, after battling cancer on and off since he was 4;  his own medical crisis; losing his job for unclear reasons; and a marriage breakup - although that last one appears to have been of his own doing.)    

* Can't everyone stop talking about the Pell conviction until the appeal is heard?  4 Corners is going back to the topic again tonight, although I gather it may be more about the nature of the investigation and the Church's role, rather than on the details of the Pell cases.   Still, I think everyone should drop the topic until an appeal is heard.  

* Not this weekend, but the one previous, I heard a fair bit of a BBC radio documentary about the quite high success of machine learning to detect susceptibility to suicide attempts.   Here it is - "Predicting Suicide".   I see that this topic got some attention late last year, but I missed it.  I must find a good written article about it.

*  Crying "SOCIALISM!":   I continue to be dismayed that Right wing punditry and politicians in the US has convinced their "base" that any policy that would formally just have been called a centrist one favoured in successful, capitalist, social democracies as  PART OF THE TYRANNY OF SOCIALISM.   I think it's a mistake for young Democrats to deal with this misuse of the term by saying "well, if that's socialism, count me in!"    No, don't concede to the sloppy (or ridiculous) re-definitions of the pathetic excuses that now pass for Conservative intellectuals.   Here's an article that is a little helpful in that regard, from WAPO:   Five Myths About Socialism.   The only thing is, I don't think it really goes in hard enough, and still gets too tied up in definitions.  Someone in comments takes the line I am more inclined to argue:

The truth is it doesn’t matter whether socialism is good or bad for democracy because nobody in Washington with any kind of a voice is advocating actual socialism - ie government ownership of the means of production.  So most of this article is fluff.

I think it’s a huge error for AOC, Sanders and the rest to not use the true term for what they are advocating, which is social democracy, not true socialism.

Social democracy is characterized by a strong social safety net and a mixed economy in which both private and public actors operate, (with more or less government regulation of the market to avoid monopolies or price gouging, employment protections, and sometimes employee slots on boards of directors)  with private operators producing consumer goods, and public actors generally producing public goods such as education, public transportation, a functioning energy grid,  and management of the healthcare sector.  There are many examples of stable Western societies which practice social democracy in many different formats.  Even the United States for all one side’s religious worship of the god Market, is still  a mixed economy with free public education up to a point, some government-managed healthcare (Medicare) and a few oddball public operators like the Tennessee Valley Authority. Or state universities.

The key here is the term “democracy”.  As a matter of fact, there is no inherent conflict between socialism as such and democracy - the British had both for much of the 60s until they decided they wanted to try something else, which happened without revolution.  The reverse tends to be true:  dictators who gain power take control of the commanding heights of the economy and claim that what they are doing is socialism, when in fact it is theft.

But “socialism” has been such a bogeyman in this country for so long that it’s politically dumb to try to repurpose the term, inaccurately, to describe social democracy.  

Or this:

Why not begin the discussion with the generally accepted definition of socialism found in most dictionaries and economics books?

so·cial·ism - /ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/Submit noun -- A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

I lived in Sweden for over three years, a country that many people would consider socialist. It's not. Over 95% of businesses are privately owned in Sweden.

Sweden is a capitalist country with high individual taxes to pay for social programs. It's easier to start a business in Sweden than it is in the US. And business taxes are very low there, also. The government encourages the growth of private business.

Individual tax rates are high, topping out at 54%. Those high taxes are used to support excellent schools, excellent medical care and a social safety net which are values that the public supports.

And now for something completely different

From the BBC:   The 'caravans of love' visiting Spain's empty villages

It starts:

Spain is ground-zero for rural depopulation within the European Union. Over decades, millions have migrated to the cities to find jobs. Those left behind in villages are often elderly - or they are single men working in agriculture. So, how does a lonely Spanish shepherd find love?  

The possible answer:

Then Antonio heard about the Caravan of Women - or Caravan of Love, as it is sometimes known.
This is a commercial initiative bringing coach-loads of single women from Madrid to meet unattached men in the countryside at organised dinner-dances. Manolo Gozalo has been co-ordinating these excursions with his partner, Venecia Alcantara, since 1996.

I'm not surprised no one wants to live in rural Spain - from what I can gather on shows where chefs or other folk travel through the country, its centre looks pretty dry and featureless.   

In Australia, meanwhile, I guess we're more known for a movie about a group of drag queens travelling across the interior.   (I've never watched it - Australian movies are cringeworthy at the best of times, and intense campiness is a frequent reason why.) 

Psychic debunking discussed

For some reason, I've come across a few different places discussing the debunking of psychics:

* the New York Times Magazine section has a feature article describing the ways groups have "stung" celebrity psychics, mainly by setting up detailed, fake Facebook accounts and then "registering" as audience members at psychic shows.  All very interesting, and well worth cleaning your cache to read!

*  Michael Prescott looked at an old 1995 book by James Randi and finds it underwhelming.  (I've always been a bit leery of Randi, even though he's probably right 95% of the time.)

*  John Oliver has also devoted a large part of his show to debunking psychics.  Unfortunately, HBO geoblocks it to Australia, but I have found a low res version of the episode that someone has put up.  Haven't watched it yet, but he is always pretty good (I just wish he swore less):

When showmanship fails...

My cynicism about the value of high profile QCs known for combative style continues to gather supporting evidence.

Robert Richter has made a comment during his plea in mitigation which sounds spectacularly counterproductive to his goal:   

Richter’s renowned defence style was on full display, as he tried to argue with Kidd that there were “no aggravating circumstances” to one of Pell’s offences.

It was “no more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating”, Richter said.

Kidd responded: “It must be clear to you by now I’m struggling with that submission. Looking at your points here – so what?”

More detail on his style during the trial:

In the aftermath of the verdict, Richter, one of the most well-known and expensive defence barristers in Melbourne, will be asking himself what went wrong. It was, by all accounts, his case to lose.

The answer may be in part that his courtroom style – at times confrontational and theatrical – is more palatable to jurors hearing cases involving criminal underworld figures than those considering harrowing crimes of child sexual abuse. His closing address was unwieldy. It lasted two days and referenced US television shows, Darth Vader and the Queen. There was even a PowerPoint presentation.

Richter closed by warning the jurors that if they convicted Pell: “You can’t can’t come back and say, ‘Oops, I’m sorry, I made a mistake.’” It may have appeared condescending.

By contrast the crown prosecutor Mark Gibson’s closing address took about one day, and was delivered with no theatrics. At times, it was almost dry. He took the jurors to direct quotes given by witnesses throughout the trial. He walked them step-by-step through what the victim said had happened. He told jurors they should find the victim was believable, an honest historian, describing as best he could horrific events that happened to him as a 13-year-old through the eyes of a man now in his 30s.

 And over at The Age's live blog of how today's sentencing hearing was going: 

George Pell has looked increasingly dejected as his defence lawyer's arguments have continued.

Pell has spent considerable amounts of time with his eyes closed, often taking off his glasses and running them across his head.

He seems tired and somewhat exasperated.

It would seem that some lawyers thought at the start that Richter was wrong for this sort of case:

 One lawyer I speak to suggests that Richter was a poor choice for the defence: he is said to be too old and too theatrical. (A former Supreme Court judge tells me Richter has a tendency to "talk a lot of bullshit".) He might even be too … male. Perhaps a woman would have been a more sympathetic option?

I think that view has been vindicated.

About The Alienist (again)

I haven't finished all of The Alienist on Netflix yet, and am still enjoying it enough, but I have realised what its style, which is often delivering what feels like a mini history lesson on New York in 1895, was reminding me of.

It's exactly the style of most of Michael Crichton's books:  not so great on characterisation; some rather stilted dialogue at times; but chock full of what is clearly the results of lots of scene setting research by the author.   That was a lot of the pleasure of his books, learning some new esoteric stuff in fictional form.   I would presume the book the show is based on must read similarly to Crichton.

One of the key things in the show is Teddy Roosevelt as a young-ish New York Police Commissioner - a job I never knew he had.  (Although, truth be told, I know next to nothing about him.)   This article gives a short account of his time in that job, and it sounds as if it was indeed fraught with conflict with the old guard in the police force, as it is in the TV show.

The ridiculous American health care system

Go read how a woman in Florida, bitten by a stray cat, got charged $48,512 by the hospital that gave her an anti-rabies injection.   (She didn't even see a doctor, and was 2 hours in the ER.)

And this was no clerical error!  Her insurance is paying for most of it - but still, it's absurd.

Defamation possibility?

Not for the first time, I have to wonder why Sinclair Davidson lets his ratbag site Catallaxy run comments that are clearly defamatory - or, shall we, at risk of being found defamatory.  The latest ones are from CL against the complainant in the Pell case.  At this stage of the court process (an appeal underway), and even if there is much commentary in the media about how many people are "surprised" at the second jury's verdict, is it really wise to be calling the complainant a outright liar on your website?  Although his name is suppressed, presumably his family and some colleagues know who he is, so obviously such claim can hurt his reputation.

And if any appeal does succeed, an acquittal does not necessarily mean something couldn't be found to have happened if you were applying a lower standard of proof than the old "beyond reasonable doubt" used at a criminal trial.   The fact that our criminal law is more about what can be proved to a certain standard, and not technically about whether it likely happened or not, surely means it's never a good idea to be accusing the complainant (even on a successful appeal) of being a liar.

Digital distraction

Vox has a good article in which a large number of psychologist types from the US talk about their views of what digital technologies are doing to our brains.  As the preamble says:

With so many of us now constantly tethered to digital technology via our smartphones, computers, tablets, and even watches, there is a huge experiment underway that we didn’t exactly sign up for.

Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, even Vox (if we’re being completely honest) are competing for our attention, and they’re doing so savvily, knowing the psychological buttons to push to keep us coming back for more. It’s now common for American kids to get a smartphone by age 10. That’s a distraction device they carry in their pockets all the time. 

The more adapted to the attention economy we become, the more we fear it could be hurting us. In Silicon Valley, we’re told more parents are limiting their kids’ screen time and even writing no-screen clauses into their contracts with nannies. Which makes us wonder: Do they know something we don’t? 

If it’s true that constant digital distractions are changing our cognitive functions for the worse — leaving many of us more scatterbrained, more prone to lapses in memory, and more anxious — it means we’re living through a profound transformation of human cognition. Or could it be that we’re overreacting, like people in the past who panicked about new technologies such as the printing press or the radio? 

To find out, we decided to ask experts: How is our constant use of digital technologies affecting our brain health?

I certainly worry about the shortening of attention spans - my own included.   At least I can make it through a 2 hour movie still without needing to look at my phone - it drives me nuts if I see my son in particular pick up his phone in the middle of a Netflix show I thought he was fully engaged in.  We do at least still tell each other off if the family is at the dinner table (at home) together and one picks up their phone - unless it is to find the answer to a specific question being asked.  

On the other hand, it's impossible not to feel that the online life leads to information that you wouldn't otherwise have received.   It is quite the two edged sword, given that I blame it for the woeful misinformation and fraud that has kept climate change denialism and other anti-evidence attitudes alive. 

The satellite phone in your pocket

This reminds me of my greatest pet James Bond peeve - the stupid "you need a gigantic antenna to contact your killer satellite" ending of Goldeneye. 

Mind you, this is almost as hard to believe: 

Last month I wrote about Ubiquitilink, which promised, through undisclosed means, it was on the verge of providing a sort of global satellite-based roaming service. But how, I asked? (Wait, they told me.) Turns out our phones are capable of a lot more than we think: they can reach satellites acting as cell towers in orbit just fine, and the company just proved it.

Utilizing a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, Ubiquitilink claimed during a briefing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that pretty much any phone from the last decade should be able to text and do other low-bandwidth tasks from anywhere, even in the middle of the ocean or deep in the Himalayas. Literally (though eventually) anywhere and any time.

Surely not, I hear you saying. My phone, that can barely get a signal on some blocks of my neighborhood, or in that one corner of the living room, can’t possibly send and receive data from space… can it?

“That’s the great thing — everybody’s instinct indicates that’s the case,” said Ubiquitilink founder Charles Miller. “But if you look at the fundamentals of the RF [radio frequency] link, it’s easier than you think.”

The issue, he explained, isn’t really that the phone lacks power. The limits of reception and wireless networks are defined much more by architecture and geology than plain physics. When an RF transmitter, even a small one, has a clear shot straight up, it can travel very far indeed.

 OK, it's not exactly that you'll be speaking to Mum via satellite - continue reading the article for more details of what the system will be good for - but I'm still very impressed that my mobile phone can (in theory, and maybe soon in practice) hook up directly with a passing satellite.

Seeing the favourite band

On a last minute whim on Thursday night, only having realised a couple of nights prior that my favourite band were again going to be back in Brisbane, and having only recently started listening to them again, I went into this cool venue in the city (for the first time):

to see if any tickets were still available for They Might Be Giants.

There were!

So I joined the (no doubt somewhat older than usual) crowd in this venue (the Johns are both late
50's) waiting for the two set show to start:

And I was not disappointed. 

I've seen them twice before, but age has made these guys more likeable than ever, if you ask me.

There story is pretty remarkable for the music industry - having met in high school, going on to busking in Brooklyn as young adults, breaking into the college music scene and then just never stopping (they appear to be particular darlings of Hollywood with their songs turning up quite often  on television shows over the years; most recently with their famous version of Istanbul in the first episode of Umbrella Academy).   So 40-odd years of song writing, playing and touring together and there appears to never have been any drama between them.   They chat and make jokes on stage like they are genuinely each other's best friend.   Here they are (in blurry phone camera mode) doing their acoustic bit:

The show comprised songs from the 80's for the first set (meaning lots of live versions of songs from the first album - which I still listen to), and the second set was mainly songs from the teens.  (Recent ones, but a good selection of the better ones that recently convinced me they still had it in them.) 

The second night (Friday) they were doing another show with songs from the 90's and noughts - I think I've read they've written 600 or more songs, and done some covers too, so there is no shortage of material.

They seem to tour with some band members who have been with them a long time now - it was all good, charming fun with an appreciative audience.

Thinking about it, perhaps their long-lived success springs from them having just the right amount of fame and fans - if a music act grows too big, the fame and money surrounding the enterprise must almost inevitably cause strains and unhappiness.    TMBG, however, seem to continue to sell at least enough new music to continue touring every year (at least through America) at small-ish rock venues that are on a manageable scale and doesn't give any of them too big a head.   Sort of ideal, as long as they enjoy touring, at least:  but it feels as if they do.

Long may they live.

The Cardinal

As overseas sources had already indicated, it turns out Cardinal George Pell was convicted on one of the trials of child sex abuse.

I have never followed the story behind these charges all that closely, but the circumstances of this particular charge did always sound somewhat implausible to me.   The suggestion today seems to be that the defence team's decision to not have Pell give evidence worked strongly against him in the mind of the jury.  It does seem a surprising decision - I would not have expected that emphatic denials that anything like that happened could go too far wrong, even for someone who tends to sound a bit pompous.  OK, delete "a bit" - just "pompous".

My suspicion has long been that "star" barristers are not as effective as people like to think they are.  I see from the reports that Robert Richter QC used a Powerpoint presentation at trial:  people are so sick of that format, maybe that hurt the defence case!:

Richter used a PowerPoint presentation in the retrial during his closing address to the jurors, something he did not do in the first. One of the slides read: “Only a madman would attempt to rape two boys in the priests’ sacristy immediately after Sunday solemn mass.” 

Anyway, surely it isn't wise for anyone to be carrying on too much about this matter until it has gone to appeal - either Andrew Bolt in support of, or David Marr against, the Cardinal?   Just let the appeal process makes its path towards a clearer, final outcome is before us, hey?  

Update:  Frank Brennan details the reasons he was very surprised at the verdict.   Those like Marr who are acting like this is the end of the matter and that Pell is forever condemned are the ones at the most risk of looking foolish at the end of the day.

Something to get around to...

Don’t have time to exercise? Here’s a regimen everyone can squeeze in

Fox News jerks

As with Bill O'Reilly, when you get to listen how they carry on in private, Fox News hosts who like to present as "Mr Reasonable" on their shows turn out to be thin skinned, sweary jerks in private. 

I have never seen much of Tucker Carlson, but his face and style has always struck me as more irritating than Bill O'Reilly, for some reason.

But basically, seems you have to be a jerk in private to get your own show there.  (Would love to hear some tapes of Hannity's behind the scenes behaviour - it would be hard to believe there are no embarrassing ones.  I wonder why they have never come out?   Perhaps people fear his power too much?)

When the Nazis rallied in New York

NPR has an article up about the 1939 Madison Square Garden "Pro America Rally" which was really just a Nazi rally.  While having heard of it before, I'm not sure I had seen photos of what it looked like:

and this:

The speeches were quite something:

At Madison Square Garden, the rally opened with the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. The mood was jubilant. Attendees wore Nazi armbands, waved American flags and held aloft posters with slogans like "Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America." There were storm troopers in the aisles, their uniforms almost identical to those of Nazi Germany. "It looked like any political rally — only with a Nazi twist," said Arnie Bernstein, author of Swastika Nation.

The speeches were explicitly anti-Semitic, and tirades against "job-taking Jewish refugees" were met with thunderous applause. "They demanded a white gentile America. They denounced Roosevelt as 'Rosenfeld,' to say that Roosevelt was in the pocket of rich Jews," said Sarah Churchwell, author of Behold, America. In equal measure to the xenophobia, the speeches were loaded with American boosterism.

 There's a short doco in the article too which I haven't watched yet.  Seems like a bit of pretty forgotten history to me.

Update:  here's the 7 min video about it, well worth watching:

Field of Vision - A Night at the Garden from Field of Vision on Vimeo.

Climate change and slow moving weather

Over the last year or so, floods have been caused both in the US and Australia (if not elsewhere?) by slow moving weather systems.  On the radio this morning, I heard someone talking about the cyclone that hit Airlie Beach in March 2017, and it reminded me that it had taken a long time to pass over the town.

At the Conversation, there's an article explaining that there is a plausible link with climate change warming:

There does seem to be a plausible link between human-induced warming, slowing of jet streams, blocking highs, and extreme weather around the world. The recent Tasman Sea blocking high can be added to that list, along with other blocking highs that caused unprecedented wildfires in California and an extreme heatwave in Europe last year.

There is also a trend for the slowing of the forward speed (as opposed to wind speed) of tropical cyclones around the world. One recent study showed the average forward speeds of tropical cyclones fell by 10% worldwide between 1949 and 2016. Meanwhile, over the same period, the forward speed of tropical cyclones dropped by 22% over land in the Australian region.

Climate change is expected to weaken the world’s circulatory winds due to greater warming in high latitudes compared with the tropics, causing a slowing of the speed at which tropical cyclones move forward.

Interesting.

Suicide and mental illness

I had missed that Jesse Bering, who has written extensively for Scientific American and other  publications on homosexuality (he's gay himself) has a book out on suicide.  

There are many articles around about it, but I thought this recent column at Slate was pretty good.  The subtitle explains its main theme:

We’ve gotten too used to discussing suicide as a fleeting, temporary side effect of mental illness. We might better serve people in need if we could acknowledge the messier reality.

I think he makes his case out well. 

While I would say I have never felt the slightest bit like I could be susceptible to suicidal thoughts, I do find the topic of how and why some people do very interesting.   I also want my kids to think about it too - as I presume understanding the topic at a young age might empower them to recognize what is going on in their own head if ever they do start to feel that way?   Well, I hope that's a correct assumption.   Not that it really matters, because I have recommended both of my teenagers to read at least this short, clear article about how depression feels, but of course both react with suspicion as to why I am recommending it to them and won't read it anyway.    

About Fargo, season 3

I'm nearing the end of Fargo, season 3, on Netflix.

While it is, of course, watchable with the usual fine production values of the show, I really think this one has "jumped the shark" in that it is both way too uneven in tone, and too low in credibility, to be given too high a rating.

Even allowing for the Coen Brothers' oeuvre of deriving humour from very eccentric characters, this season seems to be indulging in eccentricity too much for its own sake.   The character of Varga, in particular, has been given features which don't seem to be there for any real reason;  but at the same time, you have to admire the actor David Thewlis for his talent at bringing to life such an intensely unpleasant, menacing character. 

The story itself is too meandering; too basically incredible.  It is often funnier than Season 2, because it is so over-the-top, but overall I think the former season was significantly better, even with the UFO.

Has no reader watched this show?

Meanwhile, in an alternative universe, Pt 2....

dover_beach (along with CL) is a long time, conservative Catholic at Catallaxy, who argues using a massive, near impenetrable fog of words, in much the same way as Feser, who he admires.  He obsesses continually about abortion, but will not support contraception as a means of reducing it.   He also clearly thinks the ends justifies the means when it comes to torturing and "disappearing" people to counter socialism.

Conservative Catholics, with their culture war based support of Trump, have really become the paranoid, conspiracy believing, parodies of formerly respectable Conservative intellectualism, and are the pits.

Meanwhile, in an alternative universe...

What I've been watching

Posting has been slow recently, but here are a few things I enjoyed and recommend, if it's available for viewing on a streaming service near you:

*  Secret Life of the Hospital:   a British one hour doco going behind the scenes of a large hospital, looking at the places other medical interest shows (real life or fictional) don't usually bother with.  I really like hospitals (and airports) for their complexity and high level of organisation, hence it was actually pretty fascinating to see how they deal with laundry (there must be a lot of money made by companies that manufacture such specialised, enormous machines) and sterilising both surgical instruments and entire wards (I liked the fumigating robot).   But the most fascinating thing of all was seeing how incredibly rough and ready a bone graft onto a spine looks.   It's basically ground up hip sockets from people who have had hip replacements (put through something that looks exactly like a hand turned meat mincer), and then the ground up bone is just poured over the titanium plates screwed into the spine and patted down.   That's what it looked like, anyway.   I am amazed at how the body recovers from surgery which can look so indelicate.  (The exposed spin looks particularly horrible - reminiscent of a split pig on a hook.)

*  Foreign Correspondent on Indonesian soccer:   who knew that, even at the completely "dry" venues (the drink on sale is iced tea) in Indonesia, soccer rioting is a continual, massive problem.   What is it about the game that causes loony, violent dedication amongst fans, anywhere in the world?   Is it the working class origins?  But of course the fans everywhere are of all levels of wealth now.  I would have guessed before seeing this show that if European venues catered to only completely sober fans, the crowd behaviour would always be good.  But no, it seems its just something about how gangs and tribalism coalesces around the game that seems to the problem.

* Umbrella Academy:   a new Netflix superhero show has started, with good reviews from the States, and we (son and me) watched the first episode last night.   I quite liked it, and will continue watching, but with a couple of reservations.  First, I find something annoying about mopey, po-faced Ellen Page.  Hard to explain what - I just tire of her looking unhappy in everything.   Second, the "conflicted family coming together for a funeral" feels remarkably thematically similar to Haunting of Hill House - even down to one sibling having written a book about her experiences and thereby annoying at least one other family member.   But it is stylishly made, I did like most of the acting, and I quite liked the set up (Armageddon is only 8 days away.) 

Americans and their orifices

Along with vaginal douching - a practice that, as far as I know, is a peculiarly American (and sort of stupid) idea - it would seem that using neti pots to rinse out noses is a fad that has taken off in the US and not (again, as far as I know) in any equivalent Western country.  Why do Americans take to the idea of washing out their internals so much? 

I suppose I should add "colonic irrigation" to the list.  Or did that start in Europe?   Neti pots are from India.  Even if washing out intestines started elsewhere, Americans always seem keen to pick up the idea that a good rinse out of any old orifice must be good for you.

A Trump "intellectual"

Hey, I last mentioned the "Flight 93 election" meme because rich but kinda dumb Peter Thiel quoted it with approval as a "powerful metaphor".

I was amused to read a recent article (found via a David Frum tweet - man, he tweets a lot, and often with good stuff) talking about the lack of intellectual seriousness of Michael Anton, the author of the essay that established the meme.

Singapore to Malacca and back

So, more about the Christmas holiday.

My wife had suggested a side trip to Malacca when planning this holiday.   Malacca?  I knew of the Malacca Straits, but didn't know there was a town of that name, and that it was getting well known as a tourist destination.  (It has a World Heritage listing since 2008.)

We booked a bus from Singapore, which should in theory take only about 3 hours to make the trip across the causeway and up the good quality freeway towards the West Coast of Malaysia.  In practice, however, given the crush of vehicles and people trying to get through immigration (especially in the Christmas period) it took us pretty much 5 to 6 hours in each direction.

On the way up, we were stuck in a long line of vehicles to get into immigration control; on the way back, the bus got into the building OK, only to have the humans stuck in a ridiculously inefficient processing line run by the Singaporeans.

About the Singaporean re-entry:  I suspect their computer system was having some sort of breakdown.   After waiting in a slow moving line for perhaps 20 minutes, I was one of the people whisked away upstairs when the downstairs immigration officer said her computer would not "scan" my passport.  While waiting for the escort to take you upstairs, no one in the line behind you would be processed.  In the upstairs room, it was a case of sitting with 20 or so others, all perhaps slightly anxious as to why they were the ones singled out, and waiting 20 minutes before getting to desk where after a few simple questions were asked, my thumbs scanned, and after another 10 minute wait, escorted back downstairs, where I found my wife was just reaching the counter from the line she had been standing in!   Our bus had long left, but we found another from the same company which let us on to complete the trip.    My wife was sufficiently annoyed to say if we visit Malacca again, we should do it via Kuala Lumpur.   (I think that the situation must have been unusual, however, because the Singaporean minister responsible did turn up on the TV news apologising for delays, saying many staff were off sick and those that were working were doing extremely long hours, etc.)

Back to Malacca itself.  Here's the centre of the historic town, with (still operating) Church from 1753, beside the old governor's complex, which is now a museum:

A short history of the place:  tiny fishing village on a river; Islamic Sultanate and the start of lots of trade;  Portuguese arrive and pretend to be nice, then give up and take it by force;  Dutch for some reason take it over next; Dutch hand it over to Britain as part of some deal with what's going on in Europe;  Britain concentrates more on establishing Singapore as the regional trade centre; Malaysia created and Bob's your Iman. So to speak.

So, yeah, a lot of history in a pretty small package.

The town has a smallish river which has pleasant pathways and cafes beside it.  It's one of many towns or cities that some have tried to label "Venice of the East" (see the complete list at Wikipedia.)

Note the pub on the other side of the river:  it's (from memory) 150 years old and, more importantly, has clean toilets:

 

 

Taking a boat ride on the river is one of the mandatory tourist things to do, and it is pleasant, especially of an evening.

The other famous district is the adjacent Jonker Street, which is busy during the day and has lots of shops that reminded me quite a bit of Georgetown on Penang, which I had visited in the 1980's:

Hmm - it looks a bit shabbier in photos than it feels in real life.  It has night markets on Fridays which are supposed to be especially good, but we did something else that night, explained below.

The place is pretty keen to explain its history, with one of the venues being this imitation of a Portuguese trading ship, beside the river (housing a museum inside):

 

 There's the remains of old buildings and churches:



and, like Singapore, land being reclaimed from the ocean for development:

We stayed at the Hilton Double Tree, which we knew was going to be a little out of the centre of town, and the view of the area around it wasn't all that inspiring:




The rooms were large and comfortable, with that rather silly idea of a glass shower wall with a blind that must be lowered to ensure privacy.   The big screen TV was a generous size for a hotel.  But the airconditioning at night was impossible to get right - the room always got too warm, perhaps because the aircon was motion sensored as an economy thing?   Also - the curse of the modern hotel:  no sheets, just doonas with covers they clean.   I wish I could back in time and track down whoever it was who popularised that as a washing saving for hotels.  

But, man, did it do a good breakfast buffet.   I had probably the best beef rendang I've ever had (yes, for breakfast), but also get a chicken's foot and dim sum too.

In fact, the best thing about Malacca was the food.  Cheap, tasty and the distinctive sort of mash up of cuisines known an nyonya.

We ate fish in a tamarind sauce and some sort of prawns at Big Nyonya - it was all delicious - for (I think) $40 for four.

Surprisingly, there are still ethnic Portuguese (well, with a fair bit of intermarriage, apparently) living there, and on the Friday night, instead of going to Jonker Street, we went to the Portuguese settlement, where the hawker style outdoor eating has a mini Christ the Redeemer to greet you:

 

The place was lively: there were fireworks being sold and let off by kids (and me) over the water; the food tasty and cheap (we had stingray!), and just a great, distinctive atmosphere, especially within Malaysia.

When you walk out through the surrounding houses at Christmas, many are lit up in very Christian style:




This part of town is pretty close to the Doubletree Hilton, but the shambolic and dangerous state of footpaths throughout the town makes the night walk a pretty scary one - you have to be very, very alert to not tripping over something and falling into one of the smelly, tropical deep drains that pass for gutters. These drains certainly lend a distinctive aroma to the Asian tropics - I remembered them from Georgetown in the 1980's too.  You get the occasional whiff of ripeness from Singaporean drains, but nothing like the intensity you can find from many of them in Malaysia.  (My son was particularly impressed with a wide one which was bubbling from something.  Methane production, perhaps?)

Here's the view to the Portuguese settlement from the building next the Hilton, which has a viewing platform and bar at the top - see where the jetty is? - the food place is just behind that.



As for my impression of Malaysia generally though:   I'm not entirely sure they have the hang of this tourism thing.  Staff at the Hilton were nice, but in quite a few instances, seemed a tad incompetent.  It took two guys about 15 minutes to work out how to make a Singapore Sling at the bar the staff were not allowed to call a bar.  (Seriously, it look exactly like any well stocked hotel bar in the world.)  I should mention that my wife and I were the only people in the bar, so the 15 min did seem rather excessive, even with the free peanuts.   Also, the hotel reception was on the 12th floor, but curiously, on the ground floor, if the concierge was busy, there was not a simple sign indicting you had to catch the life to find your way to the hotel.

The worst thing about Malaysia by far:   the awful state of most public toilets, or at least the stalls, given the use of hoses in lieu of toilet paper.  These devises mean that toilets are just ridiculously wet all the time; I felt really sorry for women who have no choice other than try to keep clothes from brushing on the dank floors.

I see from Googling the topic "are Malaysian toilets the worst in the world" that many people think they are.  (Although I strongly suspect that India and China might take the gold - or brown? - medal for that.)   It may be more a case of "the worst maintained, wettest flushing public toilets in the world", but in any event, if the country wants a better tourist image, this would be a good place to start.

Funnily enough, in Malaysia as in Singapore, I found ethnic Chinese seemed to be cheerier.  Quite a lot of Malay people carry a vague air of unhappiness, it seemed to me.  The taxi drivers were OK, but the cars were pretty old.  I even tried talking to one driver about the world's surprise at Mahathir's election, only to find out that he said it all happened due to a corrupt payment of money, and he hated all politicians!

Although I loved the Hilton's breakfast buffet, and we also had one very good evening meal there too, I would recommend people stay in one of the other hotels within more comfortable walking distance to the old centre of town.  (There was a shuttle bus that left the Hilton on the hour, but catching it back to the hotel turned out to be very hit or miss.  And finding a taxi proved tricky too.   If it wasn't so hot and humid, walking the couple of km back to the hotel would not be such an issue, but in the daytime, it certainly is.)

There is plenty of choice in hotels.   But I did notice a fancy looking, small hotel while on the river boat - the 1825 Gallery Hotel - and I wouldn't mind staying there next time.

As with Singapore, the heat out in the middle of the day means you get to see less per day than you might expect.   There is quite a lot I didn't get to see in the 2 full days were there, and I wouldn't mind going back.

I didn't for a ride on one of the garish, tourist trishaw things, which the town is also renowned for:

So, maybe I do that if I go back.  (The Malay tourists still looked a bit unhappy to me while they took the ride.) 

And finally, just a photo of a pretty lotus, taken in Jonker Street, I think:

I might update this later, if I think of things I have forgotten...

Updates:  

*  The most overrated and undeservedly popular dish in all of Asian is to be found here with a slight variation (the rice comes in balls) - Hainese chicken rice.    A close relative of Singaporean chicken rice, there is a (not very fancy) restaurant (perhaps one of a chain?) which features photos of celebrities and politicians eating there - God knows why.    I do not understand why this dish has any fame at all - overly simple,  sure it's edible but it just has no special merit to my taste buds whatsoever.   Eat other stuff.

Floods and economics considered

The recent monsoonal rainfall event in North Queensland has certainly been devastating to the cattle industry:

The latest estimate is that 500,000 cattle have perished in the floods. That is a death toll of biblical proportions.

At a value of $1000 a head, that’s $500 million worth of livestock gone.

But this is about more than the dollars.

Many of these cattle have been kept alive by desperate farmers who have battled seven years of drought — drought that continues despite one dump of rain. They have spent thousands of dollars on fodder they can no longer remember once growing themselves.

The toll on those farmers is enormous. Unthinkable even.

Agforce chief executive Michael Guerin rightly described it as a “massive humanitarian crisis”.
“The loss of hundreds of thousands of cattle after five, six, seven years of drought is a debilitating blow, not just to individual farmers, but to rural communities,” said Mr Guerin, whose organisation is the state farming association.

Looking to the future, the CSIRO openly admits that it is very difficult to be sure of the long term rainfall effects of climate change in Australia.   I thought they generally expected North Australia to get wetter, but Southern Australia to dry out, but the Climate Change in Australia website says this about the Monsoonal North:

Providing confident rainfall projections for the Monsoonal North cluster is difficult because global climate models offer diverse results, and models have shortcomings in resolving some tropical processes. Natural climate variability is projected to remain the major driver of rainfall changes in the next few decades.

By late in the century, rainfall projections have low confidence. Potential summer rainfall changes are approximately -15 to +10 per cent under an intermediate emission scenario (RCP4.5) and approximately -25 to +20 per cent under a high scenario (RCP8.5). Per cent changes are much larger in winter in some models, but these changes are less reliable because average winter rainfall is very low.

Impact assessment in this region should consider the risk of both a drier and wetter climate.

They do, however, expect extreme rainfall events to increase:

Despite uncertainty in future projections of total rainfall for the Monsoonal North cluster, an understanding of the physical processes that cause extreme rainfall, coupled with modelled projections, indicate with high confidence a future increase in the intensity of extreme rainfall events. However, the magnitude of the increases cannot be confidently projected.

Drought will continue to be a feature of the regional climate variability, but projected changes are uncertain.

In terms of risk, let me muse this:   the problem is surely with the frequency with which extremes occur - if a flood of this kind that formerly happened only once in (say) 100 - 300 years starts to occur 2 to 3 times within a lifetime (say, every 20 - 30 years), you can readily imagine that certain agricultural enterprises will just abandon that form of land use due to the "wipeouts" coming at such a rate that it becomes too much of a risk, even if you can get some good years out of it in the intervening years.

This is why I am completely sceptical of economic predictions of the effect of climate change:  even if you make guesses on whether certain regions become generally wetter or drier (and therefore more or less potentially agriculturally productive), the confounding factor is in the details of the frequency of wet or dry disasters within the big picture.  

There's no way of confidently predicting that at the moment, so how can you deal with it in economic models?

Mars One on the way out

I was dismissing the Mars One project as an obvious bit of PR flim flam back in 2015, and I see that it is finally looking as if it is on its last legs.  Although there is a mystery investor who may be stepping in, apparently.

I wouldn't put it past being Peter Theil - he's nutty and rich enough.