Today's Trump madness

Even Ed Morrissey, one of the more conservative columnists at Hot Air, is embarrassed with Trump's use of "treason":

It’s incredible that we have to explain this to adults, but what Trump describes here bears absolutely no resemblance to treason — not even in a moral sense, let alone the legal sense over which Trump rants. Article III Section 3 of the Constitution establishes the only legal definition of treason:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

In other words, it requires a declaration of war (which we haven’t had since World War II) and explicit aid to the enemy named by it. Bzzzzt! Thank you for playing! Nor is what Schiff did treason in a moral sense; he’s attacking Trump, not the United States of America. We do not have lese majeste laws in the US; one is allowed to criticize the president, even unfairly, even dishonestly, without it being a case of treason....

If Barack Obama had accused Republicans pushing the birther conspiracy theory of treason and called for their arrest, his critics would have screamed for Obama’s impeachment. If Trump wants to make a case that Schiff’s dishonest about him abusing his office, then just stick to that. It would be a lot easier to defend Trump against allegations of abusing the powers of his office if Trump wasn’t going all Red Queen in demanding Schiff’s arrest for a non-existent crime. Just sayin’. 

The New York Times notes this:

WASHINGTON — President Trump was repeatedly warned by his own staff that the Ukraine conspiracy theory that he and his lawyer were pursuing was “completely debunked” long before the president pressed Ukraine this summer to investigate his Democratic rivals, a former top adviser said on Sunday.

Thomas P. Bossert, who served as Mr. Trump’s first homeland security adviser, said he told the president there was no basis to the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, intervened in the 2016 election and did so on behalf of the Democrats. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Bossert said he was “deeply disturbed” that Mr. Trump nonetheless tried to get Ukraine’s president to produce damaging information about Democrats.

And in Australia, of course our jellyback and sycophantic PM would say this in response to a phone call from Trump:

"The Australian Government has always been ready to assist and cooperate with efforts that help shed further light on the matters under investigation," a Federal Government spokesperson told the ABC.

"The PM confirmed this readiness once again in conversation with the President."

 And of course, lots of Australians would be thinking "so that's why the reception in Washington looked rather over the top."

I'd love to know the questions Barr will put to our government:  "So, this Alexander Downer - come on, level with us, is he some sort of spy?"

In further examples of Barr debasing the role of AG:

Finally, I was amused by the sarcasm in this:

Sounds cool

The Guardian notes:

Sweden’s navy HQ is returning to a vast underground cold war fortress designed to withstand a nuclear attack, in what has been seen as a defensive move against a resurgent Russia.

After a 25-year absence, the navy will once again be commanded from beneath billions of tonnes of granite as the country strives to build up its defences in response to the perceived threat from Moscow.

The top secret naval base on Muskö, about 25 miles (40km) from Stockholm, resembles a cross between Tracy Island from Thunderbirds and the film set of You Only Live Twice, where James Bond grappled with arch villain Ernst Blofeld in his headquarters beneath a volcano.

Completed in 1969, it boasts cavernous underground docks that can shelter warships, with miles of tunnels, offices and a hospital.

Yes, he is panicking

I find it pretty telling that the Trump cultists are still running with "nothing to see here" regarding impeachment, despite the fact that the Trump tweet rate is at "panic stations" levels, indicating that even their Dear Leader knows he is in trouble. 

I haven't checked for myself, but someone on Twitter said a short time ago that he's re-tweeted 50 or 60 times today or yesterday, including the one that mentions "civil war" - always a great look in a President!

I wonder - maybe one way of knowing something is truly "up" would be by news of a meeting between some high level Republicans and Lachlan or Rupert Murdoch.   Because their whole problem is the bind of how they dump Trump without losing all of his cult followers, and the key to his cult is to be found at Fox News.

Update:   I keep feeling a bit torn about whether to describe Trump cultists as incredibly dumb, incredibly blind, or both.  I mean, a lot of these people hold down jobs - academics or professionals some of them - so is it a case of cult blindness just makes you seem dumb?   Were Germans who hated Hitler having this discussion amongst themselves in the 1930's?

Update 2:  For Steve Kates, there is no reason to expend charity, given his routine, hyperbolic condemnations of all of those who do not agree with him:  

What does get me down is that there is not more disgust in America such that not only will PDT with certainty win the election, but the Republicans will also sweep the House and pick up another half dozen in the Senate. If the Dems represent somewhere near the middle of where political sentiment now is, the West is truly lost and we will all in good time end up with political controls on our lives similar to those in China.

As for our diseased and addled media, anyone at the ABC, to take just one example, who thinks there is a case for any Democrat candidate to win against PDT is a terrifying example of political inanity, with zero morality and less judgement.

Dumb and nasty. 

Update 3:  David Von Drehle writes on the importance of Fox News in any move on Trump:

With impeachment gathering steam, the fate of President Trump is in the hands of a single institution. Not the Senate, though that’s the body established by the Constitution to make the ultimate decision to remove a president. I’m thinking of Fox News....

As it happens, Trump’s crisis finds Fox News at a turning point. With the sale of his company’s movie arm to Disney, founder Rupert Murdoch has cashed out a large part of his empire while anointing his eldest son, Lachlan, the chief executive of the media business. The death of Roger Ailes, accused sexual harasser and Fox News visionary, opens the way to fresh thinking — which the channel sorely needs, given its median audience age of about 65 .

Amid this flux, it is intriguing that Fox News added a veteran politician to its rather compact board of directors earlier this year and placed him in charge of nominating future board members. Paul D. Ryan, former House speaker, has as much reason as any conservative Republican in America to nurse a gigantic grudge against the president. To have him advising the new Fox News leadership on strategy and future directions cannot bode well for the aging star of the Donald Trump Show.

Von Drehle goes on to argue that Paul Ryan has every reason to seek revenge on Trump, and as such, his role at Fox is bad news (for the President.)

Not exactly "corruption"

Lots of writers who think Trump is good for impeachment for his dealings with Ukraine nonetheless admit that the Hunter Biden "jobs for the boys" story is not a great one for Joe Biden either.

This article at The Atlantic:   Hunter Biden’s Perfectly Legal, Socially Acceptable Corruption talks about how this is happening all the time on both sides of politics probably takes it too far with using "corruption" in the headline, though.

I guess that one of the problems of dealing with it, though, is that there is also a legitimate case for saying that the children of political figures should not be unduly punished by having certain jobs that they may legitimately be well qualified to hold off limits only because of what their parent does.  (Not that I am saying Hunter fits into that category.)   I don't know how you could stop the children of politicians benefiting from the perception that they are influential with their parent.

The internal Fox wars still hot

An interesting post at Hot Air by Allahpundit - Chris Wallace from Fox has thrown petrol on the fire between between the two camps at his network. Here's the key part of it:

According to Wallace, diGenova is working with Giuliani on the Biden business with Ukraine. The guy whom Tucker invited on as some sort of dispassionate legal analyst to counter Napolitano turns out to be a secret participant in the matter that’s being analyzed, Trump’s interactions with Zelensky and his government. I didn’t see the first Tucker segment with diGenova but you can watch the second here. He’s introduced merely as a former U.S. Attorney, and Carlson prefaces their conversation by noting that legal opinion is split on the point about a “thing of value” that Napolitano had made. In other words, diGenova was presented to the audience as nothing more or less than a seasoned lawyer whose acumen led him to a different opinion than Judge Nap’s. Tucker even laughed at one point at Shep’s claim that diGenova is a “partisan.”

Now here comes Wallace to imply that the entire segment was basically a fraud, with diGenova concealing a glaring conflict of interest....

Did Tucker know and conceal the information? Presumably he was in the dark, but he’s a buddy of Trump’s and has been known to talk foreign policy with him by phone. Did Trump ever idly mention to him that Rudy *and Joe diGenova* are working on the Ukraine thing? Also: Did Fox executives know of diGenova’s role? If so, why did they conceal the conflict of interest? If not, will there be any sanction against diGenova for not disclosing his involvement in the Ukraine stuff before appearing on a segment to comment on it?

Relatedly, who greenlit this on-air revelation by Wallace? It’s to Fox’s credit that they allowed it to be reported knowing the questions it would raise about diGenova’s segments this week and his role on the network going forward, but I’m surprised that they allowed it to be done in such a showy way. They could have relegated it to a story on the Fox News website and then quietly warned Tucker not to have him back on, or at least to be forthright about disclosing his role in the Ukraine matter next time.
 

Late movie review - Spotlight

It's on Netflix, and I've been meaning to watch it for a while.

It's very competently made, and I think Mark Ruffalo is the stand out actor in it.

But I was surprised that the story did not have more examples of actual obstructionism from the Catholic establishment.  My son said he was expecting thugs for the church to come around and threaten one of the journalists.  I didn't trust the white haired editor (or whatever he was) - I thought it would turn out he had actively suppressed previous stories.  But even that theory came to naught.   As Peter Bradshaw said in his review:

We keep hearing about how the church is going to come after reporters who dare to challenge its authority – but this never really happens, and there is none of the paranoia of a picture like Alan J Pakula’s All the President’s Men (1976) or Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999).

So, yes, worth watching, interesting and competent, but a bit lacking in the level of intrigue and emotional impact.  So I would put it down as over-praised (93% on Metacritic.)   

An interesting idea has more credibility than I expected

From Gizmodo:

What If Planet Nine Is A Bowling Ball-Size Black Hole?

“Primordial black holes” are a class of proposed objects that formed as a result of the chaotic early days of the universe. Like any other black hole, they would be incredibly dense regions where gravity warps space so much that light cannot escape.

But these would weigh far less than stars, since they weren’t formed out of stars like the black holes we’ve actually observed — they would have formed out of places of leftover extra density in the rapidly expanding early universe. (And no, they wouldn’t contribute significantly to dark matter, the mysterious stuff that seems to comprise the lion’s share of the universe’s mass.)

Unwin and his collaborator Jakub Scholtz, a junior research fellow at the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology at Durham University, proposed that perhaps a primordial black hole whizzed by, interacted with the solar system’s other members, and became trapped in an orbit.

I asked Uniwn and Scholtz whether such an object would evaporate from tiny physical effects called Hawking radiation; they said that no, even a five-Earth-mass black hole would last for a very long time, far longer than the age of the universe.

If the planet really were a primordial black hole, rather than a planet-sized mass of regular matter, then it would be no use trying to find it with typical planet-searching means.

A figure in the paper, shared above, demonstrates that a five-Earth-mass black hole could fit in the palm of your hand (yes, this encounter would kill you), and a 10-Earth-mass black hole would be the size of a bowling ball.

 I didn't realise Hawking radiation would work so slowly.

More Boris Johnson

Um, wouldn't this be enough to sink most politicians, let alone Prime Ministers?:

The woman allegedly granted thousands of pounds in public funding by Boris Johnson reportedly told friends they were having an affair at the time.

Former model turned technology entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri allegedly received £126,000 in public money and had privileged access to three foreign trade missions led by the prime minister during his time as London mayor.

The Sunday Times has now reported that Ms Acuri confided to four friends that they had been having an affair during his time in City Hall. The paper said that David Enrich, now finance editor of The New York Times, claimed he had been told of the affair by two of her friends when he was working for another newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, in 2013.

His account was said by the Sunday Times to corroborate that of other sources who had spoken to Ms Arcuri.

Yet more in the ongoing series: outstanding brilliance of Boris Johnson still undetectable

Come on, Tim and Jason - my couple of not completely nutty readers who like Boris Johnson.  Surely you can't defend his UN speech as not embarrassing, can you?:

Bredan O'Neill an even bigger idiot than I thought

I'll explain it this way:   I've always disliked Brendan O'Neill's polemic style, and as a result, I haven't even paid all that much attention to his actual arguments.  And besides, Andrew Bolt likes him, so what are the chances I would?

But I see overnight that O'Neill has joined the stupid group known as "populist Right wingers who whine about the Left being dangerous thugs, while actually being the ones calling for violence."  He was on the BBC saying that Brexiteers "should" riot, being quick to qualify it by noting that such riots should not involve breaking shop windows.  (I don't think he went on to explain the exact details of the Marxist libertarian concept of "appropriate rioting".)

My Twitter feed then goes on to show me that O'Neill has over the last year been making some readily ridiculed claims that Ireland is not really that big a fan of the EU, when polling actually shows up to 90% in favour of staying.  The bemused reaction of fellow panelists (especially comedian Andrew Maxwell) is fun to watch (it's the second clip at this link.)  

More violent Brexit wankery dreams are to be found from Delingpole at Breitbart:

The more the minority Remainer Establishment carries on with its trickery, its cheating, its lies, its double-dealing, its canting, its hypocrisy, and its shenanigans, the more the majority of us will loathe it with every fibre of our beings.

We’re all too angry and determined now to accept anything but total victory.

And when we do finally crush our enemies, see them driven before us and hear the lamentation of their women, well, I doubt many of us are going to be able to spare one tear of pity. Rarely in history have bastards so totally had it coming to them!

The funny thing is, Delingpole is, physically, a scrawny human who says he has an illness that many suspect is hypochondria.   He would be the last man you would expect to be able to fight off anyone in the street.   As with many on the wingnut populist Right, it's easy to interpret the fantasies of violent victory over their enemies as psychological compensation for physical inadequacies.  (A point I've made about Catallaxy frequently too.)

Along those lines, apparently, Brexiteers don't like being told this:

We find that voting Leave is associated with older age, white ethnicity, low educational attainment, infrequent use of smartphones and the internet, receiving benefits, adverse health and low life satisfaction.

but they're not good with facing up to facts.  Such as the simple one - people voted for Brexit without understanding the complexities of achieving it, and the damage a "no deal" Brexit would cause.

Before baby formula

Science magazine notes that it's now thought that these are 3,000 year old baby bottles, from Germany:

 The carbon isotopes inside two of the vessels suggested they held milk from ruminants, such as cows, sheep, or goats. The other once held milk from another type of mammal, perhaps pigs or humans. That means babies were drinking animal milk from bottles at least 3000 years ago, the team reports today in Nature. It wouldn’t have met babies’ nutritional needs the way breast milk or modern formula does, but it could have been used as a supplementary food during weaning.

Or, I suppose, they could just be for putting milk in your ancient tea?

Anyway, the one on the right looks a bit like a fat kangaroo, no?

Send it to J Soon as well

Here's the sketch, which I think is brilliant in concept, but perhaps could have been a bit funnier in execution:

Yes of course - a court saying the Parliament has to meet is a dark era for democracy

Gawd, Brendan O'Neill is an annoying twerp given to histrionics over everything, but I think he might have reached a new peak of ridiculousness in his Spiked editorial about the Supreme Court telling the PM that he just can't close down Parliament:

Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a vile assault on the democratic order. In finding that Boris Johnson’s proroguing of parliament was unlawful, and that parliament is not prorogued, the 11 justices have made an explicitly political decision in favour of the Remainer elite....

This was a decisively political act by 11 unelected judges who have taken sides against the government of the day, and this opens up a new, dark era in British political life.  What we have seen emerge via this judgement is a borderline tyrannical layer in British politics....

This judgement is a disaster for law and for politics.

Is it the Marxist in him, or the libertarian, who hates the idea of governments having to work within the confines of the judicial arm of government?   And who hates the idea of a Parliament meeting?
 

Trump cultist watch

*  Everyone is surprised about how quickly the whistleblower complaint was released, and it certainly once again indicates that, unbeknown to Trump, he does in fact have people around him all the time who are appalled by his behaviour.   His Narcissistic Personalty Disorder prevents him from recognising it.  Most of the Trump cultists (and all round idiots - it's a Venn set diagram that is completely overlapping) who advise him were probably incapable of seeing how the doctored memo of the call could be seen as being damaging - although Axios has an article saying that there was at least some debate within some at the White House as to whether releasing it would help or hinder.   Anyway, once again I say that, whenever Trump is gone, there are going to be some ripsnorting insider accounts of outrageous and stupid things he has said and done while President.

* Australian Trump Cult central - Catallaxy - had the ridiculous CL write a post that started:

The Ukrainian impeachment hoax is over and Donald Trump won. What was that – about 48 hours?

all before the details of the whistleblower complaint were known, and on what he seems to think was an "unredacted transcript".

Of course, they being cultists, the whistleblower complaint will have no influence.  Nor will Trump being on a recording - speaking to a bunch of diplomats (!) - hinting that the "spy" who has caused him trouble really deserves execution.   They will laugh it off, because they are not only stupid, they're stupidly dangerous.   (Once again, I am at least pleased to see that the only conservative blogger I can trust to be at least on the right page re Trump - Allahpundit at Hot Air - is pretty appalled.)

As I have written before, this presidency has given us a good feel of what it must have been like being a reasonable person in the 1930's watching the rise of Hitler, progressing from:

"Oh, that loudmouth with the silly moustache?   No way people will buy into his over-the-top act.  Germans are pretty sensible, aren't they?" to "Oh my God, when will people realise the mistake they've made giving him power - they keep excusing him no matter what he says or does."

*  Hey this is pretty hilarious:   Vanity Fair claims that the Trump State Media that is Fox News is having an internal crisis as to how to drop support of Trump without losing their audience completely:

Trump’s final bulwark is liable to be his first one: Fox News. Fox controls the flow of information—what facts are, whether allegations are to be believed—to huge swaths of his base. And Republican senators, who will ultimately decide whether the president remains in office, are in turn exquisitely sensitive to the opinions of Trump’s base. But even before the whistle-blower’s revelations, Fox was having something of a Trump identity crisis, and that bulwark has been wavering. In recent weeks, Trump has bashed Fox News on Twitter, taking particular issue lately with its polling, which, like other reputable polls, has shown the president under significant water. Meanwhile, Trump’s biggest booster seems to be having doubts of his own. This morning, Sean Hannity told friends the whistle-blower’s allegations are “really bad,” a person briefed on Hannity’s conversations told me. (Hannity did not respond to a request for comment). And according to four sources, Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch is already thinking about how to position the network for a post-Trump future. A person close to Lachlan told me that Fox News has been the highest rated cable network for seventeen years, and “the success has never depended on any one administration.” (A Fox Corp spokesperson declined to comment.)

Inside Fox News, tensions over Trump are becoming harder to contain as a long-running cold war between the network’s news and opinion sides turns hot.

 They built a cult and don't know how to end it.

Update:   Some people around Trump blame it on Rudy Giuliani, and he's furious and sounds as if he's going to have a breakdown:

Giuliani unleashed a rant about the Bidens, Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Barack Obama, the media, and the “deep state.” He has spoken freely about all these topics since the moment he became a surrogate in Trump’s 2016 campaign. Giuliani has aired far-right conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s health on national television. He has discussed his convictions about alleged Biden-family corruption with Trump in the White House residence. Still, until the Ukraine scandal broke, Trump’s allies were almost uniformly supportive of Giuliani to reporters, and current and former administration officials would often praise him for his loyalty.

Not until the back-to-back release of the summary of the Trump-Zelensky call and the full whistle-blower complaint did the mood change among this group.

This morning, a former senior White House official told me this “entire thing,” referring to the Ukraine scandal, was “Rudy putting shit in Trump’s head.” A senior House Republican aide bashed Giuliani, telling me he was a “moron.” Both individuals spoke on condition of anonymity in order to be candid.

“They’re a bunch of cowards,” Giuliani told me in response. “I didn’t do anything wrong. The president knows they’re a bunch of cowards.”...

“It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I’m not. And I will be the hero! These morons—when this is over, I will be the hero,” Giuliani told me.

“I’m not acting as a lawyer. I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government,” he continued, sounding out of breath. “Anything I did should be praised.”

 
Heh.

The funny is, some at Catallaxy agree that Giuliani is poison, but they don't realise they are victims of his conspiracy mongering too.   

The hypersonic filler story that will never die

Just saw this on news.co.au:

I have a theory that this story sits in media companies' hard drives, with an automatic "run this ever 6 months".  It is just the most persistent "coming soon to transform your world" story that will quite possibly never come - a bit like fusion power, but on higher rotation.

More on the Biden story

A journalist who wrote about the Biden story in 2015 complains:

I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down.

Trump and Fox News just have to say "black is white" and the low information dimwits of the Right nod along without reading another thing about it.

As for Biden "bragging" about what he did - yes, he did, and with no reference to his son at all.   I would have thought sensible people would have wondered - if this is so obviously corrupt and self serving, why would he brag about it?

The reporting is that the prosecutor was sacked (at several country's request) for not investigating corruption actively enough - the sacked prosecutor then claimed he was actively investigating Biden's company, but other journalists say this is self serving and wrong: nothing was happening.

And a new investigation has been started but is progressing slowly.   And what is the "corruption" alleged against the son anyway?  Making money from a sleazy company due to family connections - yeah, right, I can why that would upset Trump supporters (sarcasm.)

Update:  As David Graham explains:

To summarize, Biden threatened to withhold aid if the prosecutor wasn’t fired, and he was. Importantly, Biden was not freelancing, but was acting as a representative of President Barack Obama. There’s no evidence that Biden was helping his son. Shokin’s former deputy, who quit in frustration over his boss’s intransigence, told Bloomberg in May that the U.S. wasn’t pushing to drop probes of Burisma. “There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky,” he said. “It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.”

In effect, Biden’s pressure to install a tougher prosecutor probably made it more likely, not less, that Burisma would be in the cross hairs. But since then, the Ukrainian government has not produced any evidence of wrongdoing by Burisma, and the current prosecutor general said in May there was none. A Ukrainian interior-minister official told the Daily Beast that though Ukraine has no evidence that either Biden broke the law, the government would investigate further if the U.S. formally requested it. Hunter Biden has left Burisma’s board.

Joe Biden says he did not discuss Burisma substantively with his son, though Hunter Biden told The New Yorker it came up briefly once: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’” Given Hunter Biden’s checkered past, and the political difficulty that he has caused his father, it’s doubtful he really knew what he was doing.

Hunter Biden seems to have been trading on his father’s famous name to make a buck—a common but distasteful practice familiar from Billy Carter to Roger Clinton, and indeed up to the Trump children today. He’s not exempt from criticism for this behavior, but that isn’t the same as producing evidence that Joe Biden did anything untoward, something that no one has done so far. It’s still possible that more information will emerge that will implicate Biden in trying to assist his son, but Trump has already rhetorically convicted him without any such evidence.

But as I say, the gullible, Fox News zone that the Trump supporting Right lives in just believe anything they are told from the special information bubble they live in.

We've already forgotten about Trump and the electric chair

As Dave Roberts tweeted:

And with that, the idiotic Trump defending Right has already gaslight itself that, indeed, there is a Biden scandal that is plain to see.     

In all my life, I have just never seen a political side that is stupider.  The culture wars and internet has just made them gullible, gurgling idiots.  

Including you, JC.   How are those lungs holding out?

Free will returns

Well, at least in terms of the famous Libet experiment that many interpreted as being a neurological proof that free will is illusory.  This recent article in The Atlantic reckons it's been debunked, although it sounds like some are still arguing about it.

I never found it terribly convincing in the first place.

No otter way

How come we don't have otters in Australia?   If they are in waters as diverse as those off California, and Singapore, how come up they never ended up near Brisbane?

Anyway, I wonder this because of a short report in Science:

Stranded or orphaned baby sea otters have been given a new lease on life—and a mission: restoring damaged ecosystems along the California coast.

Sea otters are a keystone species in their native coastal environments. They prey on small herbivorous sea creatures like sea urchins, which can lead to more kelp and healthier seagrass in an area. But after being hunted for their fur to near extinction in the 19th and 20th centuries, otter populations along the California coast are still struggling. Restoring populations is not as simple as bringing in new otters, though. The animals often have strong ties to their homes, and some relocated otters have made journeys of more than 100 kilometers to return to their birthplaces.

To solve this problem, scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California created the sea otter surrogacy program in 2002. So far, they have rescued 37 stranded or orphaned otters, many of which were suffering from dehydration or hypothermia. The researchers placed the pups with surrogate mothers—captive female otters at the aquarium—until they fully recovered. When the pups were 6 months to 1 year old (the typical age an otter is weaned), the researchers released them into Elkhorn Slough (shown above), a tidal wetland about 1.5 hours south of San Francisco, California. Because the orphaned otters were very young when they were rescued, they did not have strong ties to their home ranges and most thrived in the new environment, the researchers report today in Oryx–The International Journal of Conservation.

Outstanding cleverness of Boris Johnson still undetectable

Some news, hey?   Parliament going to go ahead despite Johnson shutting it down.  Perhaps all conservatives who voted for him should just stay away and let the rest govern.   

At least Johnson's not a climate change denier, so I can't criticise him as being completely stupid.  But he jumped the wrong way on Brexit, and now can't admit it.  All rather Abbott-like, except with Abbott it was climate change which was the "if I play this the right way, I could be PM" cynical power play.  Both risen way above their level of political competency, and Johnson looking good to go down in history as just as embarrassing a PM as Abbott.

UK vaping illness spotted

I see via the BBC that in fact there has been one report of respiratory illness in the UK that seems associated with vaping, last year.  I am surprised we haven't heard about this before:

A young female vaper presented with insidious onset cough, progressive dyspnoea on exertion, fever, night sweats and was in respiratory failure when admitted to hospital. Clinical examination was unremarkable. Haematological tests revealed only thrombocytopenia, which was long standing, and her biochemical and inflammatory markers were normal. Chest radiograph and high-resolution CT showed diffuse ground-glass infiltrates with reticulation. She was initially treated with empirical steroids and there was improvement in her oxygenation, which facilitated further tests. Since the bronchoscopy and high-volume lavage was unyielding, a video-assisted thoracoscopicsurgical biopsy was done later and was suggestive of lipoid pneumonia. The only source of lipid was the vegetable glycerine found in e-cigarette (EC). Despite our advice to quit vaping, she continued to use EC with different flavours and there is not much improvement in her clinical and spirometric parameters.

Still vaping, JC?

Update:  Helen Dale, vaper, is still busy tweeting articles supporting the habit (as being better than smoking, etc.)    I like the way that article at the link relies heavily on (what would surely have to be) a rubbery figure by the suspiciously pro-vaping PHE that it's 95% safer that smoking cigarettes.   Maybe it is:  until it nearly kills you after a short time of use (if you are unlucky).   Risk assessment is a funny thing - people do factor in the "but something might go suddenly wrong" in their feelings about both legal and illegal activities.   Isn't that why lots of us will never be overcome with an urge to take a pill offered as a "safe" illicit but fun drug?   It makes me not so interested in skydiving, too.   (That and a general dislike of the falling sensation.)  

The other thing about it is that the pro-activists are now talking as if there is no other way to quit or reduce smoking.   Just like transexuals who used to just tuck it away, but now can't live without having it lobbed off,  pro-vape advocates seem to talk as if nicotine patches and gum are just now completely inadequate for those trying to get off smoking.

I wonder if companies that made nicotine patches are running ads now pushing their safety?   Seems a good idea to me.   

Toilet trouble

An eye catching headline at the BBC:

'Toilet trouble' for Narendra Modi and Bill Gates

Modi had promised (and claims) big success in providing toilets in India, but the true situation is a bit unclear:

While it's true that the number of toilets has increased significantly, a BBC investigation found that many of them are not working or aren't being used for various reasons, from lack of running water to poor maintenance to deeply ingrained cultural habits. Recent research found that people in some parts of northern India preferred to defecate in the open because they found it more "comfortable" or thought it to be "part of a wholesome, healthy virtuous life".

Another common problem is that the government offers subsidies for the poor to build a toilet in their home. But since the subsidy is paid out in instalments over more than a year, many poor households wait for months for the construction to be complete.

"Many beneficiaries have started construction but not competed it," says Siraz Hirani from the Mahila Housing Sewa Trust, a non-profit group that also works to improve sanitation. As a senior programme manager, Mr Hirani has worked closely with rural and urban governments to implement the Clean India scheme.

His other big worry is that the subsidy does not account for the cost of laying a sewer, which has often meant that people in rural areas end up building soak pits for drainage. This, he fears, will eventually lead to ground water and soil pollution in coastal areas where the water table is higher.

Mr Hirani says open defecation has "significantly reduced", but the "biggest challenge is how do we sustain this?"

About Greta

Careful readers may have noticed that I have only once made a comment about Greta Thunberg.  I now make the following observations:

*  I like her cultured accent.  It sounds like she's been in training to marry into royalty.

*  More seriously:  if you asked me before she got onto the world stage if I would think it a good idea that a young person with autism/Aspergers become a global spokesperson for the environment, I would have said "no".   But let's face it, ageing, ignorant denialists and conservatives generally dismiss all "progressive" concerns by attacking any articulate spokesperson no matter whether they appear "normal" or not.  Look at the treatment of David Hogg and other students who survived the Florida school shooting.   A very large part of modern conversativism wallows in its own stupidity and is nasty to boot.

* So, I have no particular concerns about Greta.   She has taken on the role with, I think, a large degree of dignity.   Does she exaggerate the situation re climate change?   To be honest, I haven't analysed much of what she has said, but in a broad brush sense at least, I think most mainstream scientists feel she is on point.

* As expected, the attacks on her by conservatives are extreme, completely uncharitable, and (of course) based on complete denial of mainstream science and culture war positioning (which is all conservatives have now days).

* There is an uprise in environmental activism that is wildly exaggerating:  parts of the Extinction Rebellion movement for one.   But people who follow mainstream climate scientists know that the worst exaggerations made by that group are actively disputed by the big guns.   It's a bit of a puzzle to know how to respond to them - I find street disruptions that they have been conducting to be counterproductive - but they are fighting against idiots and the politically self interested, and I think the problem is no one knows how to effectively counter idiots.     As I have suggested before, people who seriously think that current political inaction is going to kill billions in the future should probably be planning on physically attacking infrastructure that allows the burning of fossil fuels, not inconveniencing someone who needs to get to a hospital.   If they become environmental terrorists (who take care not to kill people), I would think more highly of them.

Update:  a very reasonable (if too kind to malign conservatives) take on Greta appears here in The Atlantic. 

Update 2:  dear ageing morons of Catallaxy - why so surprised that she is angry?:

You are willfully stupid and will soon be dead, leaving your legacy of 30 years of delay in serious  action to limit the harm of climate change to teenagers like her.   In all likelihood, the economic consequences will be large, not to mention the humanitarian and general environmental harms.  But you'll have enjoyed all the benefits of fossil fuel consumption with none of the long term consequences.  She has every reason to be angry of your influence, and to not understand that only confirms your continued stupidity.  

Update 3:. Oh look, a young American conservative who believes in climate change (what a lonely life he must lead) weighs in:

Update 4:   Oh look, another example of Greta being "histrionic":

Update 5?:

Growth questionned

Gee, this might do in Jason's head.   A guy who techno-optimist Bill Gates apparently likes says economists just have to give up on the idea that economic growth has to keep happening.

An extract:

You debunk overly rosy projections by techno-optimists, who say we can solve all our problems with smarter computers, and economists, who promise endless capitalist growth. In many countries, the downside of material growth now seems greater than the upside, which leads to what you call “anthropogenic insults to ecosystems”. Is that a fair summary?
Yes, I think so. Without a biosphere in a good shape, there is no life on the planet. It’s very simple. That’s all you need to know. The economists will tell you we can decouple growth from material consumption, but that is total nonsense. The options are quite clear from the historical evidence. If you don’t manage decline, then you succumb to it and you are gone. The best hope is that you find some way to manage it. We are in a better position to do that now than we were 50 or 100 years ago, because our knowledge is much vaster. If we sit down, we can come up with something. It won’t be painless, but we can come up with ways to minimise that pain.

So we need to change our expectations of GDP growth?
Yes, the simple fact is that however you define happiness, we know – and we have known this for ages – that the amount of GDP is not going to improve your satisfaction with life, equanimity and sense of wellbeing. Look at Japan. They are pretty rich but they are among the unhappiest people on the planet. Then who is always in the top 10 of the happiest people? It is the Philippines, which is much poorer and smitten by typhoons, yet many times more happy than their neighbours in Japan. Once you reach a certain point, the benefits of GDP growth start to level off in terms of mortality, nutrition and education.

Is that point the golden mean? Is that what we should be aiming for rather than pushing until growth becomes malign, cancerous, obese and environmentally destructive?
Exactly. That would be nice. We could halve our energy and material consumption and this would put us back around the level of the 1960s. We could cut down without losing anything important. Life wasn’t horrible in 1960s or 70s Europe. People from Copenhagen would no longer be able to fly to Singapore for a three-day visit, but so what? Not much is going to happen to their lives. People don’t realise how much slack in the system we have.

 I'm not sure about this, but I do wonder about it at times.

PS:   What bothers me about techno-optimists who go on about nuclear is that they are too pessimistic about different ways of utilising increasing amounts of renewables wisely.  Too pessimistic about large and small scale storage; too insistent that unless you keep the ability to use energy in exactly the way we do now, it'll be some sort of crisis.   I mean, unexpected brown outs are inconvenient, but the way they carry on if even a single brown out happens in summer now due to generation issues is over the top.    This guy makes a lot of sense - we can probably readily adjust to energy conservation if we accept it as necessary; and not all countries need to use energy in exactly the same way we do.

Seeing a future whereby clean energy allows a similar, even if somewhat more modest, lifestyle to what we enjoy now is a form of techno-optimism;  decrying renewables as never being able to supply enough power for a modern industrial nation is a form of techno-pessimism, really.


 

No Biden corruption

Not getting as much airing as it should, in my opinion, is the fact that it is not true that the Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine.

The Intercept discusses it here.

And here is the Washington Post on it.  

Both articles are from May 2019.

Many people on Twitter are furious that the New York Times in particular is playing this for Trump just like they did Hillary's emails.   They are helping normalise Trumpian rumour mongering, even when there is plenty of evidence already that it is not true.

As has been written thousands of times, the problem is that a lot of journalism does not know how to respond to being played by a bullshitter like Trump.

Update:  Max Boot's column on this is good too.

Update 2:  and read this thread on Twitter.  

A brief Spotify note

It may just be the era the music is primarily from, but I really like the selection of songs in the Power Pop playlist on Spotify.  

More modern comedy I didn't like

Watched the 2012 movie version of 21 Jump Street last night.   (Another cheap hire on Google.  I must stop doing that.)  Can't say I cared for it. 

I didn't read much about it at the time, except that I knew it was pretty well reviewed going by Rotten Tomatoes.  I didn't care for the (more than I expected) amount of swearing, but I'm most surprised it didn't attract more commentary for being way, way too much like a homophobic teenage boy's idea of a screenplay.   I know the main characters were meant to be immature, but you can only claim to be ironically getting humour from immature straight characters talking about sex acts between men up to a certain point.    And it's disingenuous, because you know actual homophobes will find it particularly hilarious.

I have found an article at Vanity Fair that shared my take on this aspect.  (And OK, I did read this before I wrote the paragraph above):

As I hope you can intuit, I’m being ironically homophobic—as, to be very charitable, the filmmakers behind 21 Jump Street may also be. That would be an improvement over Don Draper–era jokes about limp-wristed hairdressers, I suppose, but irony can serve as a flimsy cover-up, too. It’s an easy hall pass to wave, like the way some people think saying “just kidding!” puts the burden of offense on anyone they’ve just insulted. You also have to calculate who’s laughing at a joke and why, who’s in on it and who’s left outside.

I also see that the sequel dwells more on this type of humour, and that before its release, Jonah Hill got into trouble by being caught yelling "Faggot" at some photographers bothering him.  He apologised, and said he was a gay rights activist from way back.   He may well be, but I think he's pretty dumb in that case.  From what I read, one of the characters in the sequel makes a speech about how you shouldn't use that sort of language about gays.   Which indicates real life irony as far as Hill is concerned.

As I say, why didn't this bother more reviewers?

Update:  just to show that I am not exactly squeemish about "penis" in comedy per se - I thought this recent bit on Conan was pretty funny:

I try to be charitable, but...

....Steve Kates just couldn't be more stupidly un-self aware if he tried. 

Here's the shorter version of what he's been writing for years "Why won't they engage in good faith dialogue, those moronic Lefties who want to kill everything good in the world and crush us under their totalitarian heal?  They need to dialogue, so as to learn how I understand both economics (buy my book) and the science of climate change perfectly, and they don't have a clue."

The point I was trying to make yesterday is that it is all very well to be speaking among ourselves on our side of the fence but useless if we cannot force these climate totalitarians to engage in a dialogue.....There is, of course, nothing that these ignoramuses say that we are unaware of. They, on the other hand, are unaware of every bit of the counter-arguments that have been made on our side. They are certainly unaware of the massive evidence proving that they are almost certainly wrong.

When a person is so clueless as to what the "massive evidence" actually says about climate change, and is always claiming evil ulterior motives on those who he does not agree with, why would anyone try to "dialogue" with him?   It's why no one bothers engaging on the topic on the science side at his Catallaxy outlet anymore.  They are, as with their contrarian scientist heros, nearly all old obnoxious cranks who'll be dead within 20 years anyway.  Unfortunately, we can't wait that long to get into serious CO2 reduction, though.

And it's fair enough that The Conversation won't let denialists engage in comments debate anymore.  It's pointless and just as bad as it would be to allow nutty anti-vaxers free rein on the site.

Jason, it must be a residual bit of your libertarian past that the Conversation policy annoys you - and citing Ian Plimer, for God's sake.  He has zero credibility on the topic; always has.  Freeman Dyson has next to no credibility on this topic - which is one well out of his field of expertise, too.

Stop being such a sucker for thinking people with high IQ and success in one field are worth paying attention to in fields outside of their expertise.  They very often aren't.

 

Saturday pics: West End

The Saturday West End markets are good for food:

There is also a great Greek deli nearby, with good olives, and catering size stuff:

Twenty ltrs of mayo, anyone?

And who would still be using Clive of India curry powder, let alone 3 kg of it:

It was the only curry powder of 1960s Australia, but I thought no one missed the bland yellow curried sausages, prawns and devilled eggs it made....

Why the Ukrainian matter matters

There's a good explanation by Fred Kaplan at Slate as to why the question of what Trump said to the Ukrainian President is a big deal:

Federal bribery statutes prohibit any U.S. official from expressing a “specific intent to give or receive something of value in exchange for an official act.” Courts have ruled that soliciting an attack on a political opponent constitutes asking for “something of value.”

He goes on to explain the complicated system for intelligence whistleblowing, and the clearly authoritarian way the Trump administration is seeking to circumvent it.

What an utter disgrace the Republicans are.

Seems unfair...

Alcohol-producing gut bacteria could cause liver damage even in people who don't drink

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the build-up of fat in the liver due to factors other than alcohol. It affects about a quarter of the adult population globally, but its cause remains unknown. Now, researchers have linked NAFLD to gut bacteria that produce a large amount of alcohol in the body, finding these bacteria in over 60% of non-alcoholic fatty liver patients. Their findings, publishing September 19 in the journal Cell Metabolism, could help develop a screening method for early diagnosis and treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver.

"We were surprised that bacteria can produce so much alcohol," says lead author Jing Yuan at Capital Institute of Pediatrics. "When the body is overloaded and can't break down the alcohol produced by these bacteria, you can develop fatty liver disease even if you don't drink."

I guess the ultimate irony would be if drinking alcohol killed some of these unhealthy alcohol making bacteria.

A science fiction film to look forward to?

I tend to be dubious of the merits of Brad Pitt as an actor - he has a touch of the Matthew McConaughey's about him, in that I can't fully explain why I react against him the way I do - but this Ad Astra film is getting a lot of positive reviews, so I think I should see it.  Quality science fiction in films deserves support.  (Except if it involves Matthew McConaughey, and has such an awful screenplay as Interstellar.)

(I don't dislike all Pitt movies, by the way;  but there is something about him that causes me to resist crediting him as a likeable actor.) 

Yet more flash floods

Big flash floods in Texas, I see.   

Seems that some areas are having record breaking periods of intense rainfall, but the details are not yet 100% clear.

Certainly seems to be a dramatic event, consistent with increased intensity of rain and associated flash flooding being the one of the clearest recurring (and expensive) disasters that everyone is coming to accept as being from climate change.

Interesting comments on vaping

Once more, I head to my preferred UK medical journal, The Sun, (ha ha) because it runs interesting sceptical comments about vaping from UK's retiring Chief Medical Officer:

In an interview this month with Civil Service World, Professor Davies asked: “Is this a ticking time bomb? Will they turn out to have long term consequences?”

Public Health England published a report in 2015 suggesting that vaping could be 95 per cent less harmful than normal cigarettes.

The report stated: “There is no evidence that e-cigarettes (EC) are undermining the long-term decline in cigarette smoking among adults and youth, and may in fact be contributing to it."

Professor Davies conceded evidence has accumulated to suggest that e-cigarettes may help as a smoking cessation tool, but did not believe the evidence is 'hard' yet.

She added: "Meanwhile they're not regulated. So when you buy them, you don't know that you're getting what it says on the packet.

"I do - and will continue to - worry, because we don't know what the effects are of long-term use, or about the effect on people who may be upping their nicotine addiction by using them as well as smoking."

She added: “What you have to remember is that evidence is a social construct. So there’s hard evidence, from randomised control trials and meta-analysis. But then there’s other evidence.

"Policy based just on hard evidence leaves out all sorts of things that haven’t been tested but which maybe should be tried.

“The other thing, which is always difficult to explain to the public and to non-scientists, is that science kind of flip flops a bit to get to a final answer."

Not sure about that "unregulated" comment - I thought Public Health England says they are heavily regulated there? - but the Professor's comments about "science kind of flip flops a bit to get to a final answer" reminds me very much of how the views of marijuana and the risk of psychosis developed over 20 or 30 years.

China has pork reserves?

Is it just me, or does anyone else find the idea of a Strategic Pork Reserve kinda funny?:

China to tap pork reserves as swine fever hits industry

China is set to release pork supplies from its central reserves as it moves to tackle soaring prices and shortages caused by an outbreak of swine fever. A state-backed body will auction 10,000 tonnes of frozen pork from its strategic reserves on Thursday.

I suppose Australian democracy could be in trouble if there was a sausage shortage before an election, so I think the National Party needs to fly a National Snag Reserve.   

Cancel culture

As explained by the Washington Post, "cancel culture" is in large part a result of the nature of social media:

Stand-up comedy, just like other art forms, has traditionally enjoyed an unspoken pact with the audience: Comedians can say pretty much whatever they want, and people in the crowd can feel however they want about the jokes. In live comedy, the power dynamics tend to favor the comedian who has the stage, spotlight and microphone. If a couple of people in the audience are deeply offended, the comic may never know about it.

But the Internet changed this relationship. The audience can do more than heckle a live performance; they can talk back, at length, and get a lot of people to listen.

I have also noticed some people on Twitter pointing out that people so upset with it tend to only think of the attacks run by those on the Left, not about those run by the wingnuts of the Right:

(I see someone in the thread says Chapelle mentioned Kaepernick in his special.  I wonder how briefly?)

Go Will

Everyone's favourite former Libertarian should be Will Wilkinson, who has a great column in the New York Times noting how the Right wing response to a mere proposal of an assault weapon buy back by a guy wildly unlikely to become President (to threaten violence against the police and civil war against the State) is the illiberal and undemocratic scream of an ageing minority fearful of losing control because of democracy:

Nearly every Republican policy priority lacks majority support. New restrictions on abortion are unpopular. Slashing legal immigration levels is unpopular. The president’s single major legislative achievement, tax cuts for corporations and high earners, is unpopular. 

Public support for enhanced background checks stands at an astonishing 90 percent, and 60 percent (and more) support a ban on assault weapon sales. Yet Republican legislatures block modest, popular gun control measures at every turn. The security of the minority’s self-ascribed right to make the rules has become their platform’s major plank, because unpopular rules don’t stand a chance without it. Float a rule that threatens their grip on power, no matter how popular, and it’s “my AR is waiting for you, Robert Francis.”

They’ll tell you their thinly veiled threats are really about defending their constitutional rights. Don’t believe it. The conservative Supreme Court majority’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller found an individual right to own guns for self-protection, but no civilian needs a weapon capable of shooting 26 people in 32 seconds to ward off burglars. The Second Amendment doesn’t grant the right to own one any more than it grants the right to own a surface-to-air missile.  

They’ll tell you their foreboding “predictions” of lethal resistance are really about preserving the means to protect the republic against an overweening, rights-stomping state. Don’t believe that, either. It’s really about the imagined peril of a multicultural majority running the show. Many countries that do more to protect their citizens against gun violence are more, not less, free than we are. According to the libertarian Cato Institute, 16 countries enjoy a higher level of overall freedom than the United States, and most of them ban or severely restrict ownership of assault weapons. The freedom to have your head blown off in an Applebee’s, to flee in terror from the bang of a backfiring engine, might not be freedom at all.

I’m not too proud to admit that in my misspent libertarian youth, I embraced the idea that a well-armed populace is a bulwark against tyranny. I imagined us a vast Switzerland, hived with rifles to defend our inviolable rights against … Michael Dukakis? What I slowly came to see is that freedom is inseparable from political disagreement and that holding to a trove of weapons as your last line of defense in a losing debate makes normal ideological opposition look like nascent tyranny and readies you to suppress it.

So it’s no surprise that the most authoritarian American president in living memory, elected by a paltry minority, is not threatened in the least by citizen militias bristling with military firepower. He knows they’re on his side.

Democrats don’t want to grind the rights of Republicans underfoot. They want to feel safe and think it should be harder for unhinged lunatics to turn Walmarts into abattoirs. But when minority-rule radicals hear determined talk of mandatory assault rifle buybacks, they start to feel surrounded. They hear the hammers clicking back, imagine themselves in the majority’s cross hairs.

That’s why they’re unmoved by the mounting heap of slaughtered innocents, by schoolkids missing recess to rehearse being hunted. It’s a sacrifice they’re willing to let other Americans make, because they think democracy’s coming for their power, and they’re right.

Put them in the military..or something

I watched last night's Foreign Correspondent on the issue of illicit drug testing at European music festivals, and it was a pretty good way to get me feeling old and cranky with youff of today.

Actually, the editorial line taken by the show was more moderate and balanced than I expected, especially given that it was done by someone from JJJ who has reported on music festival drug deaths for a few years.  Yes, while it generally did paint the testing services in a positive light, they did balance it with at least one guy who ran tests acknowledging that those who have concerns that it virtually endorses illicit drug use do have a point.

It was sort of funny, though, that it featured a recent English festival at which the organisation which had previously done the free on site testing pulled back their involvement this year to only giving drug counselling.   (There was one fake looking scene where a couple said "yeah, we'll still go get counselling at least", and afterwards the dissolute woman said she had learnt for the first time that she should not mix alcohol with her ketamine taking - seriously?  I thought.   She looked a very experienced user.)   Yet no one at the end of the festival had been too badly endangered by their drug use anyway.   Kind of makes you wonder about the efficacy of the testing part of it, then.

But the worst thing about it was the "so this is what decadent youth of today think is having a good time?   Standing in a field in the sun, drinking and using illicit drugs to dance stupidly for three days straight?"   The people on screen, especially the English youth, playing up to the camera, all looked so distinctly uninspiring to my "I must be getting old" eyes.   Sure, I guess most of them actually hold down jobs, but I just have trouble handling the idea that people want to be off their face for so long at these events.

I mean, at least people at Woodstock had something they felt they were legitimately rebelling against - and the free love bits were just all part and parcel of wanting the world to change to something non-violent and less materialist.

Today's music festival scene, on the other hand, just looks like so much self indulgent hedonism that has emerged from youth having too much money, spare time and no interest in changing the world at all - it's given them an ugly tattoo or ten and enough cheap drugs, as well as a free ambulance tent if they have taken too much unknown substance and have started hallucinating, after all.

In my parent's day, the response was all "they should do some national service, that would straighten them out."    I'm still not at the stage of wanting that - although I am getting awfully close!

PS:  I am not at all sure why, but I find (for want of a better description) young yobbo behaviour when done with an English accent particularly annoying.    Is it the sense that it is a sadly fallen culture, compared to the stoicism of only (say) 80 years ago?

Unbelievable, and good

I've watched the first two episodes of the well reviewed Netflix true crime series Unbelievable - and it is really good.

This review in The Guardian is accurate, I think.   I like the way it describes the second episode as being better than mere "competence porn" - because, yes, you cannot help but feel that the first two episodes are virtually written to be police training films.  (The first episode is the grating, but quite distressingly plausible, example of everything detectives could possibly do wrong in questioning a rape victim; the second episode shows a virtually perfect example of how it should be done.)

But look, the acting is really good, so far, and it is not sensationalist despite the weirdness of the crimes.

Well worth watching.

A scandal to come?

Heh.  I see that Helen Dale, who vapes to get her nicotine hit, has re-tweeted a tweet of reassurance from Public Health England that they are not backing down from their (unusually strong) support of vaping:

No situation?   I'm not at all sure that there are any cases of young people developing life threatening lung problems within a year of smoking, are there?  


I'm sure I have commented on this before:   England's health authorities seem to have been completely persuaded unusually quickly that vaping is a pretty good thing, at least for smokers.   They don't seem to have any of the concerns of the equivalent US bodies, which have always been much more dubious.  True, there may be regulatory differences that account for some of this - such as tighter regulation in the UK of vaping liquids, and far fewer English youth getting hooked on nicotine this way.  But I still have my strong suspicions about something being not quite right about how strongly PHE has decided to endorse this nicotine delivery method.

It has a whiff of - something: perhaps money buying influence, and/or one or two key strong personalities within a health bureaucracy deciding a line and pushing it onto others.

There are hints of academic resistance - earlier this year, before the current spate of problems in the US, there was this headline in The Sun (OK, I know, not my preferred journal of health news): 

A LEADING scientist has accused health bosses of purposely "ignoring" the dangers of vaping.

Professor Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says that he has "serious concerns" about the safety of e-cigs.

 And a couple of doctors writing to the BMJ in 2018 expressed similar scepticism about the PHE endorsement:

We understand that such conflict, existing as it does among tobacco experts, reflects a wider uncertainty surrounding the long term health risks of e-cigarettes. That PHE, whose purpose is “to protect and improve the nation’s health,”5 should sanction e-cigarette use citing an embryonic and inconclusive evidence base, is astonishing.

There was a whole article  in an American journal looking at how the American and English appraisals of vaping could come to such different conclusions:   The E-Cigarette Debate - What Counts as Evidence.

I reckon that all it will take for the UK media to leap into strenuous criticism of the PHE approach will be one or two British youth developing the sort of serious lung issues we have seen in the US.  The tabloids, which love that sort of story, will give it plenty of coverage.

Perhaps there will then be a proper and thorough political or journalistic investigation as to how the PHE came to its conclusions, and I would not be at all surprised if there is an element of scandal to be discovered.

Let's see.  I've made my prediction:  will I be vindicated?

Italians and their pets

I thought England would still be the European country most besotted with dogs, but according to this diary entry at the Catholic Herald, Italians now prefer pooches to bambini:

A growing number of Italians are now opting for pets rather than children. Back in 2014, Pope Francis was already sufficiently worried about this new trend, and warned Italians to keep their devotion for their children rather than pets. It looks like no one was listening. The passeggiata, the traditional evening walk which used to be a chance to show off babies in prams and toddlers on their new tricycles, is now given over to strutting dog owners, and pooches nestling like a baby in a kangaroo pouch.

The land that was once synonymous with a large brood now has one of the lowest birthrates in the world (1.35), but boasts a one-to-one ratio of pets per person – more than any other European country. Italians spent more than €2 billion (£1.8 billion, $2.2 billion) on pet food in 2017, and more than €72 million (£65 million, $80 million) on “accessories” in the same year. When I say “accessories”, I mean rhinestone-studded collars and sheepskin-lined miniature four-poster beds.

The African divide

Reversing the usual formula for Western people talking about how their family and friends took their "hey I'm gay" news, Time magazine notes this about the coming out of a famous gospel singer from Rwanda:

...the reaction he has received, from family and friends to strangers, has been mostly “horrible,” underscoring the intolerance faced by LGBT people in many parts of Africa.

The articles goes on to note that although Rwanda does not make gay sexual activity a crime, it is far from socially accepted:

Some of Nabonibo’s best friends who spoke to the AP said they were too embarrassed even to talk about him. They requested anonymity for their own privacy. “This is crazy. I don’t understand why he thinks this is normal,” said one friend, shaking his head.

Another friend, a man who attends the same church as Nabonibo, said he was in a state of “agony” since the rest of his family knows he used to hang out with Nabonibo. Now he has blocked Nabonibo from all phone contact, saying he wants to “keep safe.”

There has been a similar reaction on social media, with many Rwandans questioning Nabonibo’s intentions and others condemning him. One wondered on Twitter: “How can a gospel singer be gay?”

The article also notes that in many countries on that continent, legislation is in reverse from the Western, liberalising trend:

In 2017, Chad enacted legislation criminalizing same-sex relations for the first time in the country’s history. In May, a court in Kenya ruled against overturning a colonial-era law criminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults. Activists there who had challenged the law in court said they faced discrimination and threats to their dignity.

And in neighboring Uganda, a government minister in charge of ethics is threatening to introduce another version of an anti-gay law passed in 2014, and subsequently voided by the country’s constitutional court, that provided for jail terms of up to life for those convicted of engaging in gay sex. The original version of that bill, first introduced in 2009, had included the death penalty for what it called aggravated acts of homosexuality.

It's pretty remarkable, really:  living in the West, it is easy to imagine that everyone around the globe is moving in same liberalising direction on such matters.

It also points to the huge problem it may be if the Catholic Church hopes to increasingly provide conservative African priests to Western parishes.   It's going to go over like a lead balloon.