The continuing crisis...

Oh:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Monday that "millions" of migrants would soon head for Europe, drawing accusations from EU leaders that he is trying to pressure them into backing his incursions into Syria.

Turkey gave the green light to refugees and migrants on Friday to leave for the European Union and thousands have since massed at the Greek border, triggering fears of an influx like that which poisoned European politics in 2015.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel described Turkey's move as "unacceptable" and EU migration commissioner Margaritis Schinas said nobody could "blackmail or intimidate the EU".

But Turkey, which hosts roughly four million refugees, is trying to hold off another mass influx from Syria – where government forces backed by Russian air power are advancing into the last rebel stronghold of Idlib.

Man, that part of the globe is such a never ending mess.

What I've been watching...

*  In case you haven't noticed, season 3 of Babylon Berlin is up on Netflix (yay).  The first episode (the only one I have seen) was pretty good, even if the main crime looked a little overly theatrical in execution.   Also - the opening sequence would seem to indicate that the stock exchange in Berlin really did not take the stock market crash of 1929 at all well.   Was it a dream?   What was the end sequence about; that was a little confusing too.   Anyway, I'm happy to be watching again.

*  Another favourite, Occupied, continues to impress into its 3rd season too.   It reinforces my distrust of everything Russian - and I am curious as to whether Bente, or her daughter, is going to somehow end up in some Russian mafia prostitution ring.   Thinking about it, though, I guess every character is flawed, or does something ethically dubious, in one way or another.   But that's life.   Bente does seem particularly corruptible, though, boo.

*  I saw the Australian made, low budget time travel movie Predestination on the weekend.   It's  (loosely, I think) based on a Robert Heinlein short story, and it's quite a handsome looking film despite an obviously small budget.   (Made by German born twin brothers who grew up in Brisbane!  They have gone on to make bigger budget films, even if they are far from famous.)   I was getting tired and started having trouble staying awake near the end, but I understood  the silly time travel paradox that it showed.   I thought it wasn't bad, but perhaps needed a more compelling "hook" in the first act - waiting for the story to unfold without understanding where it was going lost my son's interest.   Anyway, a nice effort.  

No contact greetings

Yeah, I thought the "Wuhan foot bump" greeting video looked pretty cool, but it is only practical for people with no balance issues who are quick on their feet.   Old people at risk of a hip fracture just shouldn't try it.

I'm sure lots of people must have been saying it on social media, but the obvious replacement for the handshake greeting should be the Japanese bow.   (I see that someone suggested the Vulcan hand greeting, but not everyone can easily get their hand to do that quickly - including, if I recall correctly, Leonard Nimoy!)  

A propos of nothing...

This turned up on Youtube suggestions for me, and it was surprisingly interesting - how they make Tabasco sauce.  It is a huge enterprise, still family run, with production methods pretty much unchanged, and all from the same place in Louisiana since it was first made 150 years ago:


A bit of personal history: my first exposure to it was when I was perhaps 8, and my sister's then husband, from America, put a few drops of it into some tomato sauce which we were eating with some prawns. It couldn't have been much, because I thought it nice, even though (of course) as a child of 1960's Australia, I had no previous exposure to chilli in any form.

More Singapore love

And in Twitter comments following that:

Buttigieg and the 9 yr boy (not a scandal)

So, Pete Buttigieg has dropped out of the race.   As I have said, I never saw much of him and didn't work out why a lot of journalists and Democrat sympathisers I follow on Twitter found him so annoying.

I also had missed, until this weekend when I saw it on a Conan O'Brien sketch (which is sort of funny)....




that Democrats had set themselves up for conservative outrage by getting Pete to respond to a 9 year old boy who wanted help to "tell the world" he is gay.  

Maybe I haven't been following conservatives sites closely enough, but it's pretty remarkable that there wasn't some sort of meltdown about this.      

And, to be perfectly honest, it's not unreasonable to have misgivings about it.   Not so much  about Buttigieg's supportive response - he could hardly say anything other than what he did -  but more about the world view of modern liberal identity politics, wherein it is taken as a given that a 9 year old has a sufficient understanding of sexuality such that it is entirely natural that he or she should already have picked out a sexual identity.    

Now, I don't doubt that the following statements are true:

*  there are kids whose parents suspect from a young age will be gay when they grow up;
*  there are kids who know from a young age that they are "different";
*  there are people who work out that, in hindsight, some childhood feelings were consistent with their older sexual feeling;

and yet I still think it's only sensible for adults and parents to teach pre-pubescent kids to be cautious about thinking they fully understand themselves in the matter of sexual and emotional attraction and attachment before their body and life experience is even close to that of an adult yet.   

To my mind, people of any political persuasion should be able to live with something like this as a response:  

"We love you regardless of who you may want to love and be with; and we will support you if anyone gives you a hard time over your identity in future.   But as for deciding on a sexuality identity to tell "the world" right now:   to be honest, both your body and emotions should  be given a bit more time to develop before you say to everyone that you understand yourself in that aspect.  At this stage of your life, worry more about studying hard, treating other people well and just being a good person.   That's what important now."

PS:  I see that they are saying Buttigieg gave up because he was getting no traction with black voters whatsoever.   Given their relative conservatism regarding homosexuality, why on Earth did the people managing the campaign event think it would be helpful to highlight a 9 year old bringing up the topic? 

PPS:  I think I can even claim some support for my take on the matter from this article, written by gay science writer Jesse Bering in Scientific American back in 2010 (and which I had read before, but forgotten) on research into "prehomosexual" behaviour in children.  

"Filthy foreigners bring in disease" is very big at Sinclair Davidson's Catallaxy

Basically, I don't understand why, in order to maintain their reputation, RMIT doesn't tell Sinclair Davidson that he can't run a blog for appalling, racist conservatives and still work at a university that hosts a lot of foreign students.    

Look at these examples:  he doesn't expand on it in the post itself, but it is clear from the post title that Catholic conservative-in-denial CL thinks Trump is on a winner with corona virus because he will be able to play it as a case of "filthy foreigners bring in disease":

Good luck: Disease-o-crats campaign on open bug borders 

(I won't link - you can google it if you want.)

But even worse is this comment in a thread (which is fully supported by other regulars) by another crusty Catholic, who even has an Asian wife (probably Filipino - so she's OK, she's Catholic.)

The World Health Organisation is utterly useless. It is run by palookas like that Rudd sheila for Pete’s sake! … who cannot even spell “honest”, let alone know what it means. The executive board is 34 nations – they include Sudan, Djibouti, Tanzania, Zambia, Burkina Faso (say what?), probably Haiti and a whole lot of other failed tribes of no consequence – directing how the civilised world should keep is people healthy. Fabulous – they are barely literate, you can forget them....

The demanding unpleasant little Irish p00ve from Qantas will have been throwing his weight around Canberra on Week One protecting his airline’s cash flow and his massive pay packet, followed by a conga line of tourist associations, the retail traders representative, heads of commerce flogging insurance and bank loans, the English language schools and universities who rely on their Asian students for their very survival, and so on. Not one of these people has any interest in public health protection – its someone else’s problem. They will lie handsomely to safeguard their corner.

Further, we have a government and a bureaucracy that is still shipping in illegal Centrelinkers from North Africa, the Middle East and other primitive places, people who routinely have a bog in the street and who don’t bother bathing. When they spit everywhere and shove their dirty mitts into the bowl from which the reffo next to them takes his next mouthful – and contract a gutful of Corona Virus 123 by hundreds – these public servants will ship ’em in by the truckload to the same hospital wards as Australians, because diversity is our strength.

 Sinclair even appears in the comments thread, with apparent intention to mock the catastrophising of the fatality of the disease, but not to tell anyone that they are racist pigs.

Not good enough for RMIT, I would have hoped. 

Sounds a fair summary

PS:  I acknowledge that there is not likely to be any easy, face saving way for the US to get out of Afghanistan.   But it seems pretty clear that this attempt at such looks doomed from the start, and that Republicans supporting it reeks of political hypocrisy.   (Obama doing something similar would have been the end of American greatness and a shameful capitulation to the "real" terrorists.)

Worse than usual

I presume this photo from Trump's "we're getting out of Afghanistan, I'm terrific for that; and by the way, coronavirus is not a hoax after all" press conference has had some filtering:

but it's still true that he has been looking exceptionally tired at recent appearances, no doubt caused by the trip to India followed by flying to some completely unnecessary and self indulgent "maintain the cult" rallies.   In fact, given the huge rally he must have known the dangerous nationalist Modi had organised for him, does Trump ever go anywhere other than to places where he knows his elephantine ego will be massaged?  

Anyway, here's a shot from a video of the same presser:

As lots of people have been noticing, his right eye is much more squinty than his left eye over the last few days.  And he did sound tired.

I cannot fathom how his supporters (or those who make excuses for him, or just keep silent) can stomach the way he tries to turn every single topic into ridiculous self praise.  I also have some sympathy to the critics of media who point out that mainstream media reporting, by editing down his statements, are inadvertently constructing a greater coherence to his media performances than what you get from viewing longer stretches.

On a cheerier note, kinda:  the Colbert 8 minute piece he did with Elizabeth Warren earlier this week really shows her as very likeable.  She looks great for her age, too:



I really think a Sanders/ Warren ticket would stand a chance...  

Update:

Update 2:  Oh, he's back into dictator talk -

Update 3:  I thought this was a "funny cos it's true" take by some random person on the net:

Something about this makeup, demeanor and expression here looks terrible. He looks like he was pampered by a mortician.

  

Why Warren has the right idea

Another great piece at Vox by David Roberts, arguing that the sickness in American politics, caused by the American brand of conservatism, is a systemic one about which only Elizabeth Warren seems to have clearly thought about.

His summary of the problem is not new, but I like it nonetheless:

As I have recounted at great length in other posts, over the last several decades, conservatives have waged war on social and political trust, calling into question the fairness and independence of almost every major US institution from journalism to academia to science. They have created parallel institutions of their own, meant to support their factional interests. And they have relentlessly cast “libs” as an enemy within — an alien, hostile, and ultimately illegitimate force.

As a result, a large faction of the country has descended into paranoia and conspiracy theories, fighting intensely against the basic rules, norms, and post-war assumptions of American life. And because that faction has successfully rendered all political fights — even fights over basic facts — as vicious, zero-sum partisan struggles, another large faction of the country has simply tuned out, coming to regard politics and public life generally as corrupt and fruitless. Americans’ trust in their institutions and in one another is at record lows. 

This serves the right’s purposes. If all common identity is dissolved, all transpartisan facts and norms, then there is no longer any ability to communicate across factional lines. What remains is raw power struggle. That is the milieu in which an identitarian like Donald Trump feels at home; witness his purging of public servants he deems insufficiently loyal. 

But it works against the left’s purposes. The left needs for voters to believe that effective, responsive governance is possible — that we can, in fact, have nice things. The left needs social and political trust. Without them, collective action for collective benefit, the left’s stock in trade, becomes impossible. 

This is the left’s challenge in the US: how to break out of the doom loop and get on a trajectory of better governance and rising trust.

 As to the difficulty of addressing this, politically, you should go read the rest of the article.

COVID-19, explained

Someone just cut and pasted this on twitter, and I can't see whose account it is from.   Probably for the best:

American cuisine can be...excessive

Look, even though I can enjoy a good steak, a 250 to 300 g cut is plenty.   But the American way with meat can be pretty over the top and look distinctly unappealing.  And what is it with the meat on the rib?  Looks like it is charcoal:

I vote Gore

Talk about your trivial First World problems, but The Guardian has an article speculating on who a good replacement director should be for the next Indiana Jones film, now that Steven Spielberg has dropped out.

I don't know anything about most directors on the list, but I agree with the section on Gore Verbinski:  he is extremely talented with protracted action sequences, and I would love him to have a go at an Indiana Jones.

The success of the film, however, will be extremely dependent on its screenplay, and who it sets up to taking over the hat.   The idea flown in the last film obviously didn't pan out.  (Not that it was as bad a film as everyone makes out.)

I am not at all convinced that it is a good idea to be making another one at all.  Harrison Ford looks very old now, and films in which ageing actors are trying to appear too active often look a bit pathetic.   (There are many examples in recent years.) 

BUT I STILL SAY THIS:   the perfect last appearance for Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones would be for him to be one of the astronauts going into the Mothership at the end of Close Encounters.

A fruity observation

I usually notice what fruit and vegetables are good each season.   A couple of summers ago, I think it was, stone fruit seemed to have an exceptionally nice season.  After that, maybe a year or so ago, we seemed to have a flood of cheap but good quality pineapples.

This summer, I have often been impressed with - tomatoes.   I don't know who is growing them now, and how they have got them to develop better flavour and colour, but I reckon tomatoes have been really good, and often not very expensive, this summer.

Back to your more important reading, now.

Possible outcomes of COVID-19 taking off in the USA

While this guy bemoans (rightly) the politicisation of COVID-19 by Trump, he doesn't go on to note that it's possible that the result of the gullibility of believing Donald and his conspiracy mongering mates might be a reduction in the population of Donald Trump supporters (seeing the virus is most deadly in the older demographic):

As for a more, slightly paranoid, pondering about what might happen:

Update:   Trump calms a troubled nation:

Google and loneliness

I got given a couple of Google Home Minis (now called Google Nest Mini) for Christmas, and I have set one up in the bedroom, and one in the bathroom.  

I don't do all that much with them:  listening to radio streams is one useful thing (so I no longer need to use a portable radio in the bathroom to listen to the ABC while shaving in the morning);  asking it to find my mobile phone by making it ring is another useful feature, as is asking for the day's weather.   I've played guessing games, or quiz games, and asked it to play named songs from Spotify too.   I see that you can also buy screen "hubs" for the system too, as well as lights controlled by it.   Also a combined pack with a Googlecast for the TV with a mini speaker too, presumably to help make searching for content easier.

Despite the limited use to which I have put mine, using it has made me think that it must have considerable potential to help older people fight loneliness, and cope with technology in the easiest way possible.   Having a voice respond to a request is surely a more psychologically comforting thing than poking at a screen.  

I would guess that some psychology department somewhere is already doing a study along these lines:  perhaps setting up Google Minis in half of a retirement village and training the residents how to use it, and comparing their mood after 6 months to those residents who don't have access to the service?

I would not be surprised to find it has a positive influence.  

Guilt increasing

Yeah, I have been aware of this for some time (and although the figures are for America, I think it is similar here):

One in five pounds of beef sold come from Holstein or Jersey cows, which frequently are decommissioned dairy cows past their prime. Almost all of the meat from dairy cows is ground (it’s generally not marbled enough or muscled enough for steaks) and made into inexpensive hamburger for food service. So, it’s our consumption of milk and cheese that ultimately fuels the avalanche of burgers at fast-food restaurants.

I think young male calves from dairy production often face the same fate.

When buying cheap mince from Coles or Woolworths, it usually does cross my mind how it is from cows, which I like to think don't suffer much in the milk production phase of their life.  (Although they do get calves taken away from them.)

At least steak from adult cattle is from an animal that had a pretty good life.

While I enjoy a good steak, I can imagine a life in which I give up beef.   I can't bear the idea of giving up on cheese, though.  Which reminds me - why don't we hear more about the question to make "cow-free dairy products"?   The company is apparently selling (on a very small scale, by the sounds) an ice cream product, but it attracts very little attention.

Something good comes from an (almost) pandemic

France 24 reports:

China on Monday declared an immediate and “comprehensive” ban on the trade and consumption of wild animals, a practice believed responsible for the deadly coronavirus outbreak.

The country’s top legislative committee approved a proposal “prohibiting the illegal wildlife trade, abolishing the bad habit of overconsumption of wildlife, and effectively protecting the lives and health of the people,” state television reported.

Previous temporary bans have been put in place, including after the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus killed hundreds of people in China and Hong Kong in 2002-03 and was also traced to wild animal consumption.

That prohibition was short-lived, however, and conservationists have long accused China of tolerating a cruel trade in wild animals as exotic menu items or for use in traditional medicines whose efficacy is not confirmed by science.

Sounds as if the government might be serious about keeping this as a long term ban.  

Rules for Life (continued)

I mentioned my ever-so-slowly-compiling Rules for Life previously today, and TimT seems to have been missing them.   (My readers really are inattentive at times!)   Anyway, it did remind me that I had not added the important one about witchcraft.  So the update:

1.  Always carry a clean, ironed handkerchief in your pocket.  Always.
2.  Never buy into timeshare apartments or holiday schemes.
3.  If you have a choice, buy the washing machine with a 15 minute "fast wash" option.
4.  Always buy reverseable belts. (You know, usually black on one side and brown on the other.)
5.  The best souvenir when on a good holiday is a distinctive cup or mug, which is to be used semi-regularly on your return.
6.  If an activity hurts a lot and causes inflammation - stop doing it.  Permanently, if it keeps hurting.
7.  If a potential boyfriend or girlfriend says, with intended irony, that they know that they can be a bit of a creep (or difficult) at times - don't believe the irony.   Just don't get into a relationship of any kind with them.

and the new one I remembered today:

8.  Do not take holidays in countries where witchcraft or sorcery is still an offence on the books.   It basically means you can be arrested for looking the wrong way at someone.  

I'll have enough for a book any year now...

Update:  I think this one should be added, too:

9.  If you like mashed potato, buy and use a potato ricer.   No - just do it.  The uniformly smooth results for every future batch of mash will give you pleasure for the rest of your life.   

Misogynists upset with Coalition

Sinclair Davidson has an unsubtle view of politics in which he thinks the winning party should crush all Opposition under its heal and never concede to it on anything.   He was, for example, probably the only academic in the land who thought the asinine and highly partisan Bronwyn Bishop was a good Speaker in the House under the Abbott government:  a truly eye roll inducing attitude for an educated observer of Parliament at the time.

So, naturally, he is upset with this (somewhat surprisingly uniform, but pleasing) vote yesterday:

The Coalition government has supported Labor’s motion in the Senate to call for men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt to be stripped of her Order of Australia award over her comments on last week’s horrendous murder-suicide in Brisbane.

The successful motion puts more pressure on the Council for the Order of Australia to remove the AM Arndt received in the Australia Day honours.

The Senate motion was carried 55-2, with only One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts voting against it.

It said Arndt’s comments “are reckless and abhorrent”.

“The values that underpin Ms. Arndt’s views on this horrific family violence incident are not consistent with her retaining her Order of Australia,” it said.

And look at the misogynist commenters agreeing how "disgraceful" this vote was.

Seriously, a bunch of people who routinely speculate that the downfall of the West began with women getting the vote (I'd like to know how often they say this in front of their wives - those of them that have or still retain wives) should take a hard look at their own attitudes and realise why they are ignored by the politicians they vote for.

I bet Arndt is smarting over this, too.  If only she could be "driven too far" to drop out of public commentary and culture warring.

Another important woman in science I'm only just hearing about...

At Nature, a review of a biography about a woman astronomer (Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin) who was big in her field, but not famous in the public mind:

In 1925, Payne was the first person to be awarded a PhD in astronomy at Radcliffe College, at the time the women’s branch of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her thesis on stellar atmospheres is her greatest contribution: she related the line patterns in the observed spectra of stars to their physical conditions. She also discovered that hydrogen is the main component of stars, followed by helium. Her discoveries and expertise were eventually recognized with prizes and honours, culminating in a life-achievement lectureship from the American Astronomical Society.

The brilliance of Payne’s thesis was acknowledged by the most prominent US astronomers of the early twentieth century: her supervisor, Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory; and Henry Norris Russell at Princeton University in New Jersey. But both disagreed that hydrogen is the main component of stars. She based her theory on painstaking analysis of the large cache of stellar spectra in the Harvard collection. It was informed by the predictions of Indian physicist Meghnad Saha’s theory of ionization, which relates the observed spectrum of a stellar atmosphere (assuming it is a gas in thermal equilibrium) to its temperature, pressure and composition.

Her conclusion went against a view widely espoused by prominent astronomers, including Arthur Eddington: that stars are made up of essentially the same elements as Earth (silicon, carbon, iron and so on). In response to this criticism, and because she was anxious to get her results published, Payne downplayed her finding as a possible error. Russell was later credited with the discovery, having reached the same result by different means. Payne’s role stayed hidden from the wider scientific consciousness for several decades.

It doesn't sound like she was very likeable at a personal level, though:

I met Payne in the mid-1970s. I remember her as a stern, chain-smoking presence stalking the halls of the observatory: she scolded me for being late for a meeting (recently arrived from Italy, I regarded being precisely on time as impolite). After reading Moore’s well-researched book, I realized that she was a complex figure with whom I can empathize despite being two generations younger and from a different background. A committed scientist and mentor to a new generation, she successfully juggled career and family with a love of the arts and world travel.

Her autobiography (published privately as The Dyer’s Hand in 1979, and publicly as Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin in 1984), is worth a read for its personal view of her multifaceted life and her interaction with observatory colleagues, including the female ‘computers’ who processed astronomical data. I also recommend for its immediacy her 1968 interview for the American Institute of Physics oral-history programme, conducted by Harvard astronomer and historian Owen Gingerich (see go.nature.com/37nm0vr). It captures her essential briskness and rare ability to talk in complex and nuanced sentences.

I expect Graeme (who has argued, from God's knows what line of reasoning, that planets grow up to be stars, to argue in comments that Arthur Eddington was right all along.) 

Some observations

*  Last night's Foreign Correspondent, about Saudi Arabia's attempt to open up to foreign (well, Western) tourism actually showed the place to be of much more archaeological and geographic interest than I realised.  (Call me ignorant, but I didn't expect some of the mountain-y bits in the country.  I usually just imagine it as all sand dunes with a handful of cities.)   I still don't want to go there, though.   It's one of my Rules of Life:  do not holiday in countries where you can be charged with witchcraft.

*  I really think American pundits spend too much time trying to analyse the potential performance of Presidential candidates.   Polling is difficult in the country, with their voluntary voting and weird system of voter registration into categories that people may not follow on the day anyway;  international and domestic events are quite unpredictable;  and with any luck it would be Trump, who appears to get no sleep anymore and slurs regularly at rallies and speeches, who might have a health crisis before November.  Hence I am cynical about this study, indicating that Sanders can only do win  if he gets a surge of new young voters, and the way people like David Roberts are already certain that with Sanders, who they don't mind, is still bound to lose.

*  That Malaysian king seems pretty considerate, for a king:

By the way, Jason - do you follow that Erin Cook on Twitter?  She seems to combine smart, informed, on the ground commentary on South East Asia together with a fragile personal life in which she is always broke and emotionally just scrapping through.   

*  Oh, and here is some analysis of what is going on in Malaysia at CNA.  It includes this bit:

Professor James Chin, director of the Asia Institute Tasmania at the University of Tasmania, told CNA that Dr Mahathir’s decision to resign on Monday was purely tactical as he never wanted to hand over the baton to PKR’s president Anwar Ibrahim.

He said Dr Mahathir had agreed to the PH succession pact to hand over the premiership to Mr Anwar before the May 2018 polls because he needed the help of PKR, Democratic Action Party (DAP) and Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) to overthrow former prime minister Najib Razak and his Barisan Nasional coalition.

“Prior to the election, everybody got together because everybody wanted to get rid of Najib. You can’t really hold them to what they agreed on before the election because back in 2018, it was widely understood that Najib had damaged Malaysia because of the 1MDB (1Malaysia Development Berhad) corruption case,” he said.

Prof Chin said the bitter history between Dr Mahathir and Mr Anwar suggested that the succession would never have happened between them.

“The general consensus in Kuala Lumpur is that Anwar will not be prime minister this year or next year and will probably miss his chance to be prime minister in the future as well.

“As long as Mahathir is in charge, he will try to hand over the prime minister position to somebody else,” said Prof Chin.

More reason to admire Singapore

CNA may be the Singaporean government's PR outlet, but I still say that watching it always shows that there is much to admire in the whole technocratic/economic interventionalist/social-engineering-for-multicultural-harmony approach of the Singaporean government.   As I have said before, watch any Singaporean government (or even corporate) spokesperson or minister on CNA, and you can't help but be impressed with their apparent intelligence, reasonableness and the general tone of optimism.  

The latest example:  Singapore tourism is taking a hit already due to the COVID-19 problem, so the government has offered to increase payments for tourism workers to get training while their sector suffers.  Don't just lay them off, they are telling hotels, etc, but we pay for them getting additional or other training during this down time.    You can view the CNA video version of the story here.

For those who want more detail, and get a feeling of sad longing for the way the city state manages to show the way government should be, more details are here: 

To help mitigate the economic impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and Workforce Singapore (WSG), together with the Singapore Hotel Association (SHA) and the Food, Drinks and Allied Workers Union (FDAWU), have jointly announced various support measures for the tourism sector.

As part of the Stabilisation and Support Package announced by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat on 18 Feb during the Budget 2020 statement, these measures were introduced today by Mrs Josephine Teo, Minister for Manpower, and Mr Chee Hong Tat, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Trade and Industry and Ministry of Education, during a learning journey to Copthorne King’s Singapore. At the event, SHA and FDAWU had also signed an MOU to commit to working together to save jobs, build confidence and deepen capabilities of employees to prepare for recovery and growth. The MOU was facilitated by STB.

Such ground-up efforts and commitment from the employers and the union, together with the support measures rolled out by the various government agencies, make up the latest wave of relief measures to minimise potential retrenchment, upskill workers and redesign jobs to prepare the sector for when business demand returns. Businesses will also continue to receive support in defraying the costs involved in business transformation and job redesign, such as the Hotel Job Redesign Initiative and the Lean Enterprise Development Scheme.

Encouraging tourism sector to leverage downtime to reskill and upskill

To provide tourism companies with more support to upgrade the capabilities of their workers, STB will be enhancing the Training Industry Professionals in Tourism (TIP-iT) fund to fund up to 90% of training course fees and trainer fees, up from the previous cap of 50%. In addition, funding for absentee payroll will be increased from $4.50/hour to 90% of the worker’s hourly basic salary, capped at $10/hour.

In support of STB’s measures, SSG will also be providing time-limited, enhanced training support for the tourism sector. Employers in the tourism sector who send their workers for selected sector-specific training programmes in the next three months will receive: (i) enhanced Absentee Payroll (AP) support at 90% of hourly basic salary capped at $10 per hour, and (ii) enhanced course fee support at 90% of course fees. SSG will work through appointed training partners to ramp up training capacity for such programmes. Training programmes will include courses in digital marketing and SkillsFuture for Digital Workplace programmes.

 Gah.  That sounds such a reasonable thing to do.    And supported by government, unions and business.   I know that a tiny city state may find it easier to quickly come up with such proposals - they don't have to run it across a bunch of States like in Australia - but still, I find it impressive.

Some thoughts on COVID-19

*   COVID-19:  I have said very little about it, because I guessed there was a good chance that it would be SARS-like in its limited expansion.  Now that this seems a wrong guess, how dangerous is it compared to other famous pandemics?:

Fourteen percent of confirmed cases have been “severe,” involving serious pneumonia and shortness of breath. Another 5 percent of patients confirmed to have the disease developed respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multi-organ failure—what the agency calls “critical cases” potentially resulting in death. Roughly 2.3 percent of confirmed cases did result in death.  ....

The latest data from China stem from an analysis of nearly 45,000 confirmed cases, and on the whole suggest that the people most likely to develop severe forms of COVID-19 are those with pre-existing illnesses and the elderly.

While less than 1 percent of people who were otherwise healthy died from the disease, the fatality rate for people with cardiovascular disease was 10.5 percent. That figure was 7.3 percent for diabetes patients and around 6 percent for those with chronic respiratory disease, hypertension, or cancer.

While overall, 2.3 percent of known cases proved fatal—which many experts say is likely an overestimate of the mortality rate, given that many mild cases might go undiagnosed—patients 80 years or older were most at risk, with 14.8 percent of them dying. Deaths occurred in every age group except in children under the age of nine, and, generally speaking, “we see relatively few cases among children,” World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week.

This pattern of increasing severity with age differs from that of some other viral outbreaks, notably the 1918 flu pandemic, for which mortality was high in young children and in people between 20 and 40 years of age. However, it’s broadly consistent with records of the SARS and MERS coronavirus outbreaks, notes Lisa Gralinski, a virologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “If you’re over fifty or sixty and you have some other health issues and if you’re unlucky enough to be exposed to this virus, it could be very bad,” she says.

OK, I don't want to risk getting it, but still, this doesn't sound like it carries the same sort of demographic and economic issues as the Spanish flu.

* I feel very sorry for Japan and its Olympic organisers, and every person working for a business that has made specific plans assuming the event proceeds.

* Of course, the oddball nation of South Korea would have a specific issue related to its propensity for cultish, nutty religions:

Health authorities are also focusing resources on the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, founded in 1984 by charismatic pastor Lee Man-hee, whose followers, estimated at up to 240,000 worldwide, believe he is the messiah. Shincheonji is Korean for "new heaven and earth." Its critics say it's a cult.

Authorities are not sure how the disease was first transmitted to the group, but investigators have been looking into it. More than 9,000 Shincheonji members have been put under quarantine, and the government plans to test all of them for the virus.

Critics say the disease may have spread within the church quickly because of the way that it worships. "Shincheonji followers hold services sitting on the floor, without any chairs," packed together "like bean sprouts," says Shin Hyun-uk, director of the Guri Cult Counseling Center, an organization in Gyeonggi province that works to extract members from the church. Shin was a member of the Shincheonji group for 20 years, managing the church's Bible study instructors, until 2006.

"A bigger problem is that they shout out 'amen' after every sentence the pastor utters, pretty much every few seconds. And they do that at the top of their lungs," sending respiratory droplets flying everywhere, he adds. These droplets are believed to transmit the coronavirus.

He says that group members proselytize in secret, without revealing their identity. This is because many Koreans are wary of the group and its reputation. As a result, this makes it difficult for people who may have been targeted to know whether they've been in contact with a member of the sect. "Because Shincheonji members cannot reveal themselves, they make it impossible for others to be cautious and self-quarantine themselves."

What was I saying about Queensland police?

I don't generally like commenting on media reporting of criminal actions, including sentencing decisions, as the report will virtually be guaranteed of not painting a complete picture of all factors and all material put to the court.  But even so, this seems a very surprising situation:

A Queensland man has admitted to splashing petrol on his former partner and threatening to burn their house down, in a court case successfully prosecuted by the victim because the state’s police refused to bring domestic violence charges.

In 2017 police told the victim, Dani*, that there was a prima facie case against her former partner for threatening violence, but because there was “a low level of public interest” they would not bring a charge.

Dani then took the rare step of hiring a barrister and prosecuting the criminal case herself.

Her barrister, Clem van der Weegen, said the private prosecution and guilty plea should “deeply embarrass” the Queensland police.

At a hearing last year, a Queensland magistrate’s court was told that officers had refused to cooperate with the case and had declined to make written witness statements. They eventually supplied statements after Dani’s legal team complained directly to the police commissioner, Katarina Carroll.....

 The man had previously pleaded guilty to a property offence – wilful damage – that occurred on the same night, but was not charged in relation to his domestic violence.

At Dani’s urging, police conducted a “factual review” of the incident in 2017.

The officer who conducted the review recommended no domestic violence charges against her former partner....

So, the police thought, and still seem to be arguing, that because the guy was charged with property damage, they didn't have to worry about charging him with an assault type offence for getting petrol on her and threatening to set it alight?   Was he just saying the splash on her was an accident, and he wasn't going to light it until she got out of the house?  

As I said a few posts back, you have to wonder about the Queensland police...

Stoic sex and marriage, considered

As I warned last week, I wanted to write about the strange world of ancient Greek sexual ethics, and that of the Stoics in particular.  Why?   Because I would have assumed that Stoic attitude would be to suck it up and be indifferent as to whether you are having an active sex life or not.   And in fact it seems that later Stoics, particularly of the Roman variety, were pretty conservative on the topic.  But to my surprise, the original Stoics were about as "stoic" when it came to sex as Austin Powers.

So, let's start extracting from the book "The Making of Fornication:  Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity" by Kathy L Gaca.  (I'm not sure why so much of it is available via Google Books, but there is a lot):



OK.  That "sex as a means of training in reason and ethics" is a worry, but we'll get to that.  First of all, they thought eros was all about "the making of friends".  This sounds pretty laid back, and kind of modern:

Already, you can see, things are taking a turn for the weirdly ancient Greek worse when they agree with the practice of mentors getting it on with their students:

....yeah, so we have heard of this before, but at least Zeno didn't think it should be all older men wanting a "friendly" rub up against adolescent boys.  No, girls should expect to be talked into educational sex with their wiser ones too:

Am I the only person to find such a faux high-minded attitude aligning sex with virtue inadvertently funny?  Did parents mock their son if he wanted to change careers to become a professional "wise man" because they knew the job came with far more sex than being something more useful, such as local potter or baker?  "No Mum, I think it's really important, the development of virtue in our city."  "Yeah, sure, son"

Anyway, how did they think the adults should ideally act between themselves?  Here we get into the 1960's "free love" bit:

 

As is common in these radical revisions of how the world of sex and reproduction should be, the kids are to be raised communally too (and, by the sounds of it, not having a clue as to who their true parents may be):

Stupid Greek hippies!   And reminiscent of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh's free love ideas, too. 

Things get even worse when they argued that the importance of communality meant that incest prohibitions were silly:

OK, so I presumably have convinced everyone that early Stoicism was one of the early cases of highfalutin' philosophising getting in the way of common sense and biology.  But how did they get to think this way?

Well, remember I recently mocked the way tantric sex was a silly Indian/Asian fetishisation of the (alleged) enormous mystical power of semen?   The early Stoics were probably ahead of them:

I'll skip a bit, til we get to this key part, which apparently shows how a philosophy can make a disproportionately big deal out of a bit of, well, Temple porn:

I've read somewhere (maybe I will turn it up again for a link) that this mural or painting (in a temple to Hera at Argos, I think) puzzled most Greeks because their mythology didn't have a story of Zeus and Hera, um, interacting that way.    As such, it's meaning, and whether or not Chrysippus was even being serious in reading so much into it, was much debated at the time:

Chrysippus’ interpretation of the sexual union of Zeus and Hera belongs to

one of the most infamous pieces of ancient allegoresis. The extravagance of this

interpretation has even prompted some scholars to question the seriousness of

Chrysippus’ hermeneutical attempts. Thus, for example, A.A. Long in his semi-

nal paper has expressed some doubts as to whether Chrysippus’ was earnest in his

allegorical interpretation of the Samos (or Argos) mural.  Such an assessment, nev-

ertheless, does not sit well the testimonies that present Chrysippus’ interpretation

as a serious, albeit scandalizing, allegorical suggestion. Origen, who provides us

with the most important testimony here, insists that Chrysippus “misinterprets”

(παρερμηνεύει) the painting, but he clearly regards it as a serious hermeneutical

attempt. In a similar vein, Clemens Romanus3and Theophilus Antiochenus4con-

sider Chrysippus to be in earnest, even if they abominate the view he advocates.

I find it very odd, and amusing, that so much deep philosophical discussion could arise out of questioning the meaning of a piece of art.  Presumably, the guy who created it wasn't around to explain what he meant, so early Stoics just put their own spin on it.  

Anyway, I suppose I should add in that early Stoics weren't the only ones with extreme ideas on marriage - Plato in The Republic had the "guardians" of his ideal state actually run as a eugenic farm:

Socrates then discusses the requirement that all spouses and children be held in common. For guardians, sexual intercourse will only take place during certain fixed times of year, designated as festivals. Males and females will be made husband and wife at these festivals for roughly the duration of sexual intercourse. The pairings will be determined by lot. Some of these people, those who are most admirable and thus whom we most wish to reproduce, might have up to four or five spouses in a single one of these festivals. All the children produced by these mating festivals will be taken from their parents and reared together, so that no one knows which children descend from which adults. At no other time in the year is sex permitted. If guardians have sex at an undesignated time and a child results, the understanding is that this child must be killed.

To avoid rampant unintentional incest, guardians must consider every child born between seven and ten months after their copulation as their own. These children, in turn, must consider that same group of adults as their parents, and each other as brothers and sisters. Sexual relations between these groups is forbidden.

A great idea (I say sarcastically) that finally got to more-or-less be tried out by the Nazis:

In 1935, Himmler began a propaganda campaign inviting any unwed mother who fit the racial profile to give birth inside a Lebensborn home.

It was an ambitious pledge, as it sought to turn a centuries-old attitude about unwed mothers on its head. No longer was having a child out of wedlock a source of shame — instead, the Nazi regime would celebrate the birth of any Aryan child, regardless of its parents’ marital status....

Yet even the government’s open-arms approach to unwed mothers wasn’t enough to dramatically change the numbers. So Himmler took the Lebensborn program one step further.

He began arranging secret meetings in which “suitable” women could meet S.S. soldiers and, if both parties were amenable, create more babies for the Nazi party — with no offer of marriage on the table.

 Anyway, back to the Stoics.  As I said at the beginning, the later Roman Stoic philosophers, who are more influential now anyway under the current revival of interest in Stoicism, were right regular romantic conservatives compared to Zeno.   Here's Hierocles:

 “The whole of our race is naturally adapted to society … cities could not exist without a household; but the household of an unmarried man is truly imperfect … a life accompanied by wedlock is to be precedaneously chosen by the wise man; but a single life is not to be chosen, except particular circumstances require it … Nature herself, prior to the wise man incites us to this, who also exhorts the wise man to marry. For she not only made us gregarious, but likewise adapted to copulation, and proposed the procreation of children and stability of life, as the one and common work of wedlock … In the first place, indeed, because it produces a truly divine fruit, the procreation of children, since they will be assistants to us in all our actions … I also think that a married life is beautiful. For what other thing can be such an ornament to a family, as is the association of husband and wife? … For there is not anything so troublesome which will not be easily borne by a husband and wife when they are concordant, and are willing to endure it in common … but when we marry those whom we ought not, and, together with this, are ourselves entirely ignorant of life, and unprepared to take a wife in such a way as a free and ingenuous woman ought to be taken, then it happens that this association with her becomes difficult and intolerable.” (Fragment V, On Wedlock)

That's quite nice, and has quite the ring of common sense compared to proto-hippy Zeno.

And here is advice from Epictetus that lots of Christian parents would be very comfortable with:

 “As for sex, abstain as far as possible before marriage, and if you do go in for it, do nothing that is socially unacceptable. But don’t interfere with other people on account of their sex lives or criticize them, and don’t broadcast your own abstinence.”

 As the person who posted that quote writes: 

Basically, try to be responsible and mind your own business. Not a bad way to live.

There’s no reason to be a pleasure-hating moralist (that is its own passion, anyway). There’s not much to admire in the stories we hear from Greece and Rome about slaves and prostitution and pederasty either. Worse still are the hypocrites who say one thing and do another.

Epictetus’s formula is almost a perfect Aristotelian Mean: Don’t abstain and don’t overdo. Leave other people to their own choices. Keep your own choices private. And don’t think you’re better than anyone else—because you’re not.

 So, maybe the lesson of the whole post is this:  ignore most Greek philosophising on sex and marriage, and don't base theology on porn.

Movie review - 1917

Finally caught with it yesterday, and yes, it's a great film.  

Like Parasite, there is not much you can say about it without risking spoiling a little the pleasure that others may take from it on first viewing.   Let's just say that in both films, when unexpected things happen, they can come with quite a surprise/shock.  

I do think it was snubbed at the Oscars in terms of the number of awards it got - and while I would agree that there was more to contemplate after viewing Parasite (it was thematically more complex), I wasn't moved by that movie in the same way I was in parts of 1917.

So personally, I would have liked to see Parasite get best international film and screenplay, but 1917 best director and best film.   Sam Mendes is extremely talented.

One further comment:  I wonder how the film went over in Germany.  Did Sam once buy a really bad German car, or something?  He co-wrote the screenplay, and it contains nothing in the way of a sympathetic or humanising portrait of the German fighters, as you find in some World War One films.  (It is an easy war in which to show the common soldiers on both sides as victims of their bloody minded political and/or military leaders. But this film has none of that.)  That doesn't detract from the film - I just thought it a little unusual and interesting to note.

The most pleasing vegetable (and a Saturday night recipe)

I have shared this with my kids, who thought it an unusual confession.  Now for the world:

I find cooking sliced leeks in butter on the stovetop a fantastically pleasing experience. It's the combination of the bright and cheerful green/white colour with the gentle smell of onion that doesn't overpower the kitchen the way onions can.  I can't think of any other vegetable which gives the same aesthetic pleasure in its combination of sight and smell.

I know - doing garlic (especially with some chilli flakes) in a pan with olive oil can be pretty intensely pleasing too, from an olfactory point of view.  I even love the smell of virgin olive oil heating up by itself.  But you don't get any substantial aesthetic pleasure from the colour.  (Yes, I know, some olive oils have a nice colour - but it's not the same cheerful palate as leeks.)

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, I was very pleased with the result of more-or-less following this recipe last night:

Seared salmon with mashed potato and leeks

The ingredient list I modified a little, so I will write my version that worked well:

*  Enough potato for a generous serving of mash for four
*  One large leek (you want to get at least a cup when its sliced)
*  Butter (and a bit of olive oil)
*  Corn, fresh, sliced off the cob (I used one big cob's worth for 3 people last night - yes, I had left over potato - but I would say you probably want a cup and a bit for 4)
*  small amount of garlic (minced out of a jar is ok)
*   baby rocket (a couple of cups)
*  skin on salmon pieces

The great thing about mashed potato is the way they reheat so well in the microwave.   I did this yesterday - did the mash after lunch, went to a movie, came home and the rest of the cooking was very quick.


So:   make your mashed potatoes the way you like, but while the potatoes are cooking, cook the sliced leeks in a couple of tablespoons of butter (perhaps more, because I use a substantial amount of butter in mashed potato anyway.)   Mix the leeks into the mash and there you have it - mashed potato with a sweeter, more intense flavour than the blander variety.  Just plain mash with salmon is a bit dull, I think.

Cook the salmon fillets with some butter and a little olive oil.   Take them out,   perhaps drain off some of the butter/oil, put in the corn kernels and garlic, with a little bit more butter if you want, and they soften with a few minutes.  While waiting, mash on plate, salmon on top.  Throw rocket in with the corn, just to wilt them (only takes a minute), add a bit of salt, and onto the salmon and mash.

I still served a lemon wedge with the salmon.   I think its often a bit tricky finding the right side vegetables with pan fried salmon, as you want some moisture somewhere, and I can't be bothered doing a sauce.  This worked well.

You can thank me later.
 

The New Zealand problem

I see courtesy of Sinclair Davidson that there is some kind of ban filter working to prevent getting onto this blog in New Zealand.  At least on the network he was using.  The reason it's listed is apparently for "hate and racism"!

I would love to know whether it is because of things I quote from Catallaxy.

(By the way, Sinclair, I am pretty sure that after I had a go at you for not filtering "chinks" on your block list for comments, you started to do so.  Can I claim credit for controlling your blog from here?  I'll send other recommendations as I see fit.)  

Or is because I don't always delete Graeme Bird's anti-Semitic ramblings in comments fast enough.

Sinclair ought to at least tell us if Catallaxy suffered the same fate.  If people could get to that site from NZ, but not to mine, there would be something seriously wrong!

The predictably appalling Arndt

I was going to write a post about how the odd looking Queensland detective heading the Clarke murder investigation could not possibly stay in charge after making his utterly gormless comment which carried the extremely strong suggestion that, who knows?, maybe the mother could be the one who should be blamed for making her husband so distraught that it led to him killing her and their kids.

The statement was completely and utterly unjustifiable - one that only the stupid, usually divorced, misogynists of Catallaxy could endorse -  and I was pleased to see the guy step down voluntarily.   I don't want to be mean, as they sometimes have an awful job which I would not want to do myself; but this guy's inability to avoid saying there are "two sides" to such a enormously malevolent act seems to confirm that you don't have to be very sharp to be a police officer at any level, in Queensland in particular (although other States' forces give us a run for the money at times, too.)   

Anyway, I thought it was all over, but then Bettina "Not a Psychologist, I just like being introduced that way" Arndt fulfilled my prediction that she would come out and say something stupidly offensive:

And she was saying this after the media was reporting the guy had a DVO against him already at the time he killed his family!

Even worse, she doubles down after the guy voluntarily stood aside:

And worse still - she apparently claims in a grubby newsletter that someone who was "close to the family" rang her to spill the beans on "the background to Baxter's actions" - which she hopes will come out in a coroner's hearing. 

How despicable is this?   Leading her "men are the real victims here - even when they kill" loser followers in a un-sourced whisper campaign that, yeah, the dead mother was a real bitch??

I was looking at her website the other day, and one of the things that annoyed me was that, sometimes, there has been a tiny kernel of a worthwhile argument in some of her attitudes, but she blows her credibility so completely out of the water by her unhinged culture war against feminism attitude that she is now the last person to listen to any sex or relationship topic. 

She needs to retire from the public discourse.  That severe head tilt she shows on her social media profile pic  (something Tim Blair would mock if she were a Lefty figure) must be giving her a headache by now.

A good take on the "reocons"

From the Niskanen Centre, a rather good explanation of the people surrounding Trump: "Meet the Reocons".  The subheading:

On the American right, a growing group of intellectuals are using acute cultural fears to secure an illiberal future. It’s reactionary politics at its most explosive and unpredictable.

Another book to be written about how Trump created a departmental shambles

One of the more interesting things to read about the Roger Stone sentencing is this article at the Washington Post, explaining that the prosecutor appeared not to really be endorsing the revised sentencing submissions, and wouldn't confirm who had written them!

It really sounds like a Justice Department in complete internal disarray, all due (of course) to Trump and his enabler Barr.

While on the topic of Trump, I was trying to find live streaming of the Democrat debate on Youtube yesterday lunchtime, and there was none to be found.  (I think it was still on while I was looking, but maybe I was a little late.)   Instead, I ended up watching a little live streaming of Trump at a rally, and once again I find his cult status completely puzzling.

The 10 minutes I watched were mostly bragging about how his election night went, and how TV pundits couldn't believe it when he started to win.   It was a story he has presumably told scores of times before, and people behind him did not look all that engaged.  Finally, he moved onto "Democrats are the parties of high crime and late abortion, ripping the babies from the mother's womb", and the audience got a little animated again.  And he threw in some clearly dubious bragging about medical advances.   It seems, incidentally, that Trump cultists are really pleased that if they get a deadly illness, they can try some pre-approved drug.  The fact that the vast majority of new drugs never get approved (only 14% make it, apparently) would surely indicate that very few of them going to have a benefit from the drug, let alone be saved by it.   (Not all new drugs would be actual life saving ones in any event.)

My point is - it is extremely difficult to understand why his followers think it is worth going to his rallies.  He speeches are rambling, clearly vain, off the cuff efforts by someone who would be given a poor rating as a high school orator let alone as an adult, and the audience itself does not look highly engaged during the more repetitive sections.   He doesn't attempt theatrical drama and practised emotional high points, like Hitler.  Yet people still, presumably, get some emotional lift from being there.

Although I have never been to a cricket match in my life, I think it might be like the odd way you sometimes see a cricket crowd start to amuse themselves during tedious play, with Mexican waves, etc.   What they came to watch is not all that great at the moment anyway, but they all know they all like the same thing when it is great.  

And I am still inclined to believe that they are clinging together because they know they are on the losing side of long term social and economic change.   

Japanese architects still trying to kill people

This takes me back:   a decade ago I was mocking the way Japanese architect designed houses seemed to disproportionately feature stupid, unsafe stairways.  A reminder:

I’ve mentioned here before the fondness modern Japanese architects seem to have for precipitous stairways without rails, balcony levels with low walls, and generally anything that any sensible client would recognize as a death trap for them or their house guests.
Well, I think this distinctive set of apartments in Tokyo probably takes the cake.  Why bother waiting for the resident to slip off the edge of rail-less stairs when you can actually build large holes in the floor!
As I said in a comment at Dezeen, the next logical step is hidden, spring loaded trap doors in the floor, to keep clients on their toes.

Well, they are still at it, if this post at Dezeen is anything to go by:

A series of triangular and rectangular platforms create numerous floor levels inside this house in Osaka, Japan.

Designed by Tato Architects, House in Takatsuki is a three-storey building containing 16 different floor levels.

Imagine negotiating this.  I keep getting images of cartoon/slapstick characters falling down various ledges from top to bottom:

I particularly like the touch of the sharp cornered metal step in the last photo.  Perfectly suited to slicing open a calf.

It's really just nuts.

In Trump news

*  I see that some on Twitter are pointing out that the media should perhaps show some scepticism about the self-seving nature of the "I have considered resigning over the Trump tweets" story from Barr.   I think they are right:  it does have a air of "how can I ensure that I stay here, helping my dumb-ass boss whose heart is in the right place, while maintaining a semblance of independence to be recorded in the history books."  

*  Seems that Trump has decided to try to neuter the intelligence services by installing a complete flunky as their acting head (which apparently means the Senate can do nothing about it, even if they wanted to.)   What's that sound in Russia?  Putin popping champagne, no doubt.  

Someone else on Twitter, though, says that this will have a chance of backfiring, as Grenell''s direct, partisan interference is likely to result in lots of leaking against him.   But will that concern Trump cultists?  Probably not.