10 meters of water!

Science magazine has an interesting article:

Moon safe for long-term human exploration, first surface radiation measurements show

 But I am not sure the details are as encouraging as the headline.  It's about how some recent dosimeters on recent moonlanders have given a more accurate idea as to the amount of radiation astronauts would be exposed to while staying there:

The device measured hourly radiation rates and found that astronauts would be exposed to roughly 200 times the radiation levels as people on Earth, they report today in Science Advances. The dosimeter’s placement inside the Chang’e 4 probe provides partial shielding, much as an astronaut’s spacesuit would to their body, so the findings are quite applicable to human explorers, Wimmer-Schweingruber says.

The measured dose is about five to 10 times what passengers on an intercontinental flight from New York City to Frankfurt, Germany, receive when the plane is above parts of the protective atmosphere, Wimmer-Schweingruber says. Though high for Earth-based standards, radiation is one of the known dangers of spaceflight. NASA is legally prohibited from increasing the risk of its astronauts dying from cancer by more than 3%, and these levels remain below that.

What’s more, the researchers calculated that Moon bases covered with at least 50 centimeters of lunar soil would be sufficient to protect them. A deeper chamber shielded with about 10 meters of water would be enough to protect against occasional solar storms, which can cause radiation levels to spike dramatically. (Between the Apollo 16 and 17 missions, the Sun flared up in a way that could have caused radiation sickness, vomiting, and possibly death had astronauts been unprotected in space at the time.) Such a chamber would need to be reachable within 30 minutes, the amount of advanced warning time that is now possible with monitoring satellites.

Why the heck are they talking about 10 m of water on the moon, as if that's what would be readily available to use for your emergency shelter?   It's going to be a long, long time before there's that much of it available for colonists.

If I recall correctly, Gerard O'Neill's work on L5 colonies used to argue that your would need about 2 to 3 meters of moon dirt packed around one of his gigantic space colonies to provide adequate radiation protection.   Is that the same effect as 10 m of water?  I don't know.   I want to know how much dirt moon stations are going to need to bury their shelters under for an emergency shelter.

Oh - and let's not forget - this need for radiation shielding is one of the key reasons why they may as well be looking at old lava tubes as a place to building a station.   Although, the other thing is, I don't know that there are any near the South pole, which I think is where they think the ice may be?

 

 

More than a hint of hypocrisy

Re the Victorian situation with the decision to use private security for COVID hotel quarantine:  am I the only person who detects strong hypocrisy whenever a Liberal opposition goes nuts about a Labor government using private contractors who turn out to be of dubious quality?   Wasn't the "the public service is coddled and inefficient and we should privatise services for greater efficiency and value for money" political party always keener to use private contractors for the last, um, four decades or so?  

It was the exact same thing with the Rudd insulation program.   The crap, profiteering private sector was the one that caused some deaths, and the true lesson should have been "if you want a job done properly, don't rush it out into the private sector".   (Mind you, I know the insulation job could not have been done by public servants.  But still.)

More about Victoria, Adam Creighton continues his hyperventilation:

Ooh, I like the "evil eyes of Dan" photo the AFR is running with.  I bet Adam wished it was being used in The Australian.  But maybe it is?

Adam presumably is still dismissing entirely the reports of long term effects of the virus.  This report from the BBC explains why India should be worried:

Mr Ketkar is not alone in this - tens of thousands of people have been reporting post-Covid health complications from across the world. Thrombosis is common - it has been found in 30% of seriously ill coronavirus patients, according to experts. 

 

These problems have been generally described as "long Covid" or "long-haul Covid". 

 

Awareness around post-Covid care is crucial, but it is not the focus in India, which is still struggling to control the spread of the virus. It has the world's second-highest caseload and has been averaging 90,000 cases daily in recent weeks.

 Lots of experts warning about the long term effects of Covid are quoted.   

But no, Adam hates the idea of people being told to wear masks outside, so that's what's important.

Things seem not to be going so well for the Trump campaign...

There's the NYT story about his tax fiddling, which apparently includes this:

Between 2010 and 2018, Trump wrote off about $26 million in mysterious "consulting fees," helping to reduce his family's tax bill. At least some of those fees appear to have been paid to his daughter Ivanka Trump, despite her being a top Trump Organization executive, according to the Times.

And this:

President Donald Trump spent more than $US70,000 to style his hair when he was on “The Apprentice,” and he wrote off the costs as a business expense, The New York Times reported Sunday. 

and this:

Additionally, nine Trump entities paid nearly $US100,000 to Ivanka Trump’s hair and makeup artist, according to The Times report. 

And the NYT promises more stories to come.

Trump is sounding desperate with "Biden should be drug tested before the debate".   

Polling seems to be sticking pretty solidly in Biden's favour.

And meanwhile, his recently sacked campaign manager is suicidal.   

I find it hard to imagine Biden doing so badly in the first debate so as to undo all of this bad PR.

But I guess you never know...

Okra recipe (and a beef curry)

Just for future reference:   cooked okra this way on Saturday, to go with a basic beef curry* (using the easy homemade mix of curry powder I referenced before) and it was nice.    

*  onion, three fresh tomatoes, 500g of cubed beef, that curry powder (couple of tablespoons it makes), some water, some curry leaves, a little bit of cream at the end.  (Yoghurt's probably better, but had none.)

Mexican movies and sense of place

I really liked the much praised Mexican movie Roma from a couple of years ago, and in my comments about it here, I noted the very distinctive and convincing (for want of a better phrase) sense of place it achieved (in its case, Mexico City in 1971.)  

Last night I watched another Mexican movie on Netflix I'm No Longer Here, and again I was blown away by the direction and sense of place it gave.   

Set only a decade or so ago, it cuts between the poor parts of the Mexican city Monterrey and a pretty seedy  looking Queens area in New York.  I had never heard of Monterrey before, but it's a distintive looking city because of the mountains surrounding it, and here it is on the map:

 

 

It is an arthouse-ish flim, which as I described in my Roma post, means you should expect more a "slice of life" story than much of a narrative arc. 

But it's so interesting.  I had not heard of cumbia music as such, but it is a key feature of the film, which indicates that there are youthful dance gangs in Monterrey who do not do much more than hassle their fellow school students for money to buy cumbia music and get into weirdly distinctive fashion.  For a kind of gang, the one in the film seems quite innocent.  But gang related conflict and violence still happens in the movie, and our hero has to move out of country and try and find his way living in Queens.  

 Here, the background to the setting is better explained at the start of this review:

With flashy dance moves and even flashier hairstyles, the Cholombiano street culture of Monterrey, Mexico exists at a cultural crossroads. Patterns of migration and commerce have brought together this subculture’s preferred genre of Colombian cumbia, the laggy mixes of Mexico City’s sonidero DJ style and the oversized garments of West Coast cholo fashion into this northeastern Mexican city.

It is in Monterrey where sounds and culture which have captivated the rest of Latin America have risen up from. The Avanzada Regia movement which took over Monterrey during the mid 90s laid out a blueprint for electronica, alternative rock and hip hop in Spanish to spread into the Spanish-speaking mainstream, at home and abroad. The corrido tumbado movement, currently setting Mexican regional stations ablaze, might riff closer to Sinaloa and Sonora-style folk ballads, but draws its core from German polka and Texano influence hailing from Monterrey over a century ago.

But unlike the many popular sounds and trends which spawned in this city, the cholombiano way of life remained contained in the city’s marginalized communities. In Ya No Estoy Aquí (I’m No Longer Here) we are treated to an exploration of place and belonging through the experience of Ulises Samperio (Juan Daniel Garcia), a cholombiano displaced from the his home in the middle of an intensifying turf war triggered by the Mexican war on drugs of the 2010s.

Monterrey as a centre of cumbia music in Mexico is was also discussed in this Vice article from 2018 (which also gives the impression that the city as a whole is pretty seedy.)  As for the style of dancing to it, my son perceptively noted that its sort of similar to what Cab Calloway does on stage sometimes.     

Anyway, I think the most remarkable thing about the film is the direction - there is not a lot of camera movement, but instead it's nearly all exquisitely composed shots in which the action happens (sometimes with the actors or objects moving in and out of the framing.)    I love a fancy moving camera as much as anyone, but this shows how fantastic a movie can look with a stationary camera most to the time, but with great care for composition of every single shot.  

Once again, a movie set in Mexico has made me strongly wish that I could visit there - if only it felt safe enough.  I'm drawn to Asia enough that I like to joke that it's probably because I must have been East Asian in a past life; but if that's true, I am starting to assume there must be a Mexican re-incarnation in there as well.

 

On a personal, dental note

I think I should probably be embarrassed to admit this, but it seems I took the risk and it worked out OK.

Today I had my first dental check up in, I am pretty sure, about 20-something years.

I don't know why - I had some older amalgam filings replaced in the last bit of dental work around my mid 30's.  And that was replaced with the white stuff instead of the old amalgam.  

Since then, I got married and had kids and am pretty sure never got around to going back to the dentist.  Maybe 7 or so years ago I bought a cheap dental pick from (I think) Daiso and use it occasionally to held remove the tartar (stupid word that) which can build up behind my lower front teeth, regardless of morning and evening brushing and evening flossing.  (I asked a dentist what that was about - why do I only get it there - and was told it is because it is near salivary glands that produce a lot of calcium ions to repair enamel.  That made me stop worrying that I was a failure at brushing, and perhaps my saliva is just particularly calcium rich.)   

Anyway, I had a couple of minor issues I wanted to get checked and finally went back to a "new" dentist today.  I didn't like the old one much.  He got very cranky with me once when I was late for an appointment.

The result - I made a full confession to the dentist, but she didn't find any cavities or problems.  X rays show no hidden problem.   She did take a long time to give my teeth a proper clean though, and I sort of promised not to leave it another 20 years so that the next clean could be quicker.   

But I do feel somewhat vindicated that my 20 year hunch that my teeth were, by and large, not getting any problems, seems to have been correct.

[Actually, I seem to recall that my father had an enormously long gap in seeking dentistry too, and when he finally did there was not much wrong.    I think flossing had been "in" for a good couple of decades but he never did it.   Is there something about the middle aged mouth that means more youthful propensity to decay stops or slows down?   In my father's case, it could have been pretty regular evening alcohol consumption, perhaps.   He was very big on drinking port (or sherry) nearly every evening.  Does that work like a bacteria killing mouthwash?]

  

Allahpundit is worried

He's always been against Trump, but he's really starting to panic about the state of the nation post election.  He's making this comment following Trump refusing to give a commitment to a "peaceful" transfer of power yesterday:

My earnest advice to anyone who’s not bound to stay put here in the U.S. because of family or employment ties from which they simply can’t extricate themselves is to think seriously about leaving. And I don’t mean “think seriously of leaving if Trump wins.” I mean think seriously of leaving, period. Because even if he loses by 250 electoral votes, more than 60 million people will have watched him say stuff like this for months, insisting repeatedly that any defeat can only be explained by cheating, and will vote. for. him. anyway.

There’s no coming all the way back from that, even though Trump will eventually leave the political scene one way or another. Anyone who’s willing to look the other way at what he says here is willing to look the other way at much worse, and that’s an enormous population. That’s the reason to leave.

By tomorrow, the right’s anti-anti-Trump faction will have long forgotten this clip, assuming they noted it at all. They’ll be right back to the task of confirming Amy Coney Barrett followed by a glorious November victory in which Trump will once again get millions fewer votes than his opponent and then govern as if his approval rating is 80 percent.

Speaking of which, he explained earlier today why it’s so important for him to have a ninth justice on the Court before November. Interestingly, this wasn’t a concern for the GOP in 2016, when they preferred an eight-person Court to one with Merrick Garland in Scalia’s seat. Trump wants a full house this time, though, for a specific reason:  [clip of Trump]

He wants his nominee to be the fifth vote for him in invalidating contested ballots that might give Biden the presidency. He made the same point yesterday in another gaggle with reporters. Why any fan of Amy Coney Barrett would want her placed in that horrendous situation, knowing what it would do to public perceptions of her and of the Supreme Court if she cast that vote — or if she refused to cast it — I can’t imagine.

If it does happen, with Trump’s eleventh-hour bizarro-Garland appointee becoming the deciding vote that assures him a second term, we’ll be in a new era in American history. I’m not trying to be dramatic in saying that. It just is what it is. The country will be ungovernable.

 

 

Dumb, dishonest, or just unable to process information due to - whatever?

That's the puzzle about Trump supporters, isn't it?   And still not resolved after 4 years.

For example, here's the headlines to Wall Street Journal reporting on the Republican's failed "gotcha" report on Joe Biden:

 

Hunter Biden’s Ukraine Work Raised Concerns With Obama Officials, GOP-Led Probe Confirms

Findings don’t support Trump’s accusation that Joe Biden sought to remove a prosecutor to protect a gas firm whose board Hunter Biden served on

Um, yes:  every "fake news" liberal commentator on the matter had already acknowledged years ago that it wasn't a great look for Hunter Biden to be on the board.    But obviously, the mere potential for family related conflict of interest doesn't mean there was actually one, and as the press had reported umpteen times before, there was no evidence that Biden's actions were motivated at protecting his son, and in fact, put the company in question at greater risk of actual investigation.   This is confirmed in the second part of the headline.

But at Sinclair Davidson's Home for Ageing Fools:

It's like (well, it's the fact that) there is no point in trying to reason with them.  They can't process information if it doesn't fit a preconceived conclusion.

Dumber though

 

An extraordinary fool

 

Not that I want it to happen, but it's a bit surprising it isn't happening...

I have to walk a fine line here:  political violence is never to be encouraged, but I do wonder about this a lot lately...

Left wing political radicals (of "the revolution is just around the corner" kind) in the US used to be seen a real threat in terms of targeting Right wing politicians for assassination, and the wealthy for kidnap and ransom.    Now, no one on the Left seems to be on the radar as possibly thinking about doing things that would make a real political difference in the US - targeting conservative Supreme Court judges, for example, or (of course) Trump himself or McConnell.   It's a similar thing for environmentalism - I often get the feeling that radicals in the late 60's and into the 70's, if they knew about global warming and corporate and political reluctance to do anything about it, would have been willing to risk death in blowing up an oil pipeline, or a coal field train track.  

Did the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and the obvious economic (shall we say) under-performance of Cuba or other socialist regimes in countries around there deflate the whole idea of success for radical Left wing revolution so much that they just lost all motivation towards highly targeted political violence?     Was it the military draft that radicalised them so much, and without it, Lefties can't get as motivated to threaten violence now?  Or is it that it became obvious that threats of direct violence against politicians never worked in the big picture?   (And yes I know:  trashing businesses, targeting police buildings, and street violence is a form of violence.  But it's not the same as very targeted kidnappings, threats to kill or bomb that used to seem to be the radical Left's idea of how to influence things.) 

These days, it's obvious that the risk of some kind of very serious political violence is more real from the Right in the US.  It's quite the turnaround.  And worrying because it attracts bigger numbers of armed, semi-organised nuts than the radical Left ever had,  spinning out on their own fantasy of how the world is and how it should.  

Yet, observers on the Right are so self-gaslite they think that it's the Left that is the "real danger" to political and social stability in the US.   

The other "funny" thing is that the blatant authoritarian and anti-democratic statements of Trump and Barr - seeking to encourage a fake crisis of election results credibility amongst their followers - means that Left wing threat of violence, if aimed at preserving democracy, would actually be more rational than ever.    Let's face it, if Trump was shot, everyone would condemn it, while about 60% of the US population would say under their breath "well, you know, if ever a President provoked an assassination attempt, it was him."

Some speculation

 I agree with this:

and I hope he does.  I reckon all Democrats should be saying repeatedly that it is nuts and any politician expressly any sympathy to such a dangerous fantasy of violent revenge against imaginary crimes is a danger to the nation.  

But - I bet if Biden did put out this challenge, Trump would respond with some mealy mouthed "I don't know.  I don't know if any of it is true or not; but who knows? There might be an element of truth in there somewhere.  And I see more danger from rioting in the streets by anarchists." And his cult followers would praise him for being an open minded and fair President who has his priorities right.   

It's hard to find a likeable cult

About that Siberian cult leader who's been around a long time but has only now been arrested:

Torop, who lost his job as a traffic officer in 1989, claimed he experienced an “awakening” as the Soviet regime began to collapse. In 1991 he founded a movement now known as the Church of the Last Testament.

Several thousand followers live in a series of remote hamlets in the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia. Converts to the cult have included professionals from across Russia as well as pilgrims from abroad.

“I am not God. And it is a mistake to see Jesus as God. But I am the living word of God the father. Everything that God wants to say, he says through me,” Vissarion told the Guardian in 2002.

Russian media reported that in the original ideology of the cult, Vissarion claimed Jesus was watching over people from an orbit close to Earth, and the Virgin Mary was “running Russia”, but later he declared himself to be Jesus.

His commune mixes a selection of rites drawn from Orthodox Christianity with environmental edicts and a series of other rules. Veganism is enforced and monetary exchange is banned inside the commune. Followers wear austere clothing and count years starting from 1961, the year of Vissarion’s birth, while Christmas has been replaced by a feast day on 14 January, his birthday.

 Well, I do like the idea of Jesus watching us from orbit - that's all a bit Philip K Dick-ish.   I don't care for the veganism, though.   I wonder where they stand on sex - cults are either rabidly against it and suggesting men lob off bits of their body, or excessively for it, it seems.   

Anyway, I think we can all agree - Russia has a history of being a weird place when it comes to religion.

 

Well, I thought it was funny

 

Sweden has a space corporation?

 This seems odd:  

China will lose access to two important and strategic space satellite-tracking stations in Australia, with their Swedish owners citing the "complexity" of doing business with Beijing.

The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), owned by the Swedish Government, operates 11 satellite-tracking facilities around the world, including the Dongara and Yatharagga stations south of Geraldton in Western Australia.

The Dongara station is primarily used by US government agencies such as NASA.

 The Swedish government has built a satellite tracking facility in Australia that is used by NASA?   Why isn't Australia building them on Australian soil?

SETI still plugging away

Science magazine had an article a couple of weeks ago:  How big money is powering a massive hunt for alien intelligence.

 Some extracts:

SETI researchers are used to negative results, but they are trying harder than ever to turn that record around. Breakthrough Listen, the $100 million, 10-year, privately funded SETI effort Siemion leads, is lifting a field that has for decades relied on sporadic philanthropic handouts. Prior to Breakthrough Listen, SETI was “creeping along” with a few dozen hours of telescope time a year, Siemion says; now it gets thousands. It’s like “sitting in a Formula 1 racing car,” he says. The new funds have also been “a huge catalyst” for training scientists in SETI, says Jason Wright, director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, which opened this year. “They really are nurturing a community.”

Breakthrough Listen is bolstering radio surveys, which are the mainstay of SETI. But the money is also spurring other searches, in case aliens opt for other kinds of messages—laser flashes, for example—or none at all, revealing themselves only through passive “technosignatures.” And because the data gathered by Breakthrough Listen are posted in a public archive, astronomers are combing through it for nonliving phenomena: mysterious deep-space pulses called fast radio bursts and proposed dark matter particles called axions. “There are untapped possibilities here,” says axion searcher Matthew Lawson of Stockholm University.

Breakthrough Listen set out ambitious goals.  It would survey 1 million of the closest stars to Earth and 100 nearby galaxies using two of the world’s most sensitive steerable telescopes, the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Buying up about 20% and 25% of the time on those telescopes, Breakthrough Listen promised to cover 10 times more sky than previous surveys and five times more of the radio spectrum, and gather data 100 times faster. 

 There's a lot more in the article, which is a good read.

Some good news for a change

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s record of losing legal battles remained unblemished this week when the Connecticut Supreme Court denied three separate motions in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Sandy Hook families.

The link to the story is here.

If ever a media figure deserves suing out of a job, it's him.

Comedy's a funny thing

I see that Schitt's Creek is winning Emmies, and it is widely praised by ABC types.  I have also seen warnings that the first episode is not a good guide to the rest of the series.   

I dunno - I have only seen small bits of it and I don't know from what season, but it didn't grab me.   It seems, shall we say, a sort of laboured sitcom writing which I don't care for.

Another widely praised show that feels that way to me - Parks and Recreation.    I guess it seems good natured, but the dialogue and characters just a bit too forced.

I have also re-watched a couple of Seinfeld episodes recently.   It really did become bad in its lack of connection to reality in the last season or two, and the laugh track seems extremely excessive by current standards.    

And OMG, Friends has started on Netflix and is up the top of the popular list already.  Seriously?   I always maintained it was a vastly over-rated show held up by basically likeable actors but so-so writing.  There were some occasional bits I liked enough to watch it semi-regularly, but I really am puzzled by how it has maintained its popularity.

I am sounding like a grump who is generally down on all popular sitcoms:  but I have given lots of praise to recent shows like Brooklyn Nine Nine and The Good Place, and I went through a list of older shows in a post in 2005.   (Gosh, I have been blogging for a long time.)   I just find it interesting trying to work out why I don't like some comedy sitcom writing, and what does work for me.

Update:   Oh!  I am not alone on Schitt's Creek failure to impress after all.  A "lefty" Australian cartoonist has given it her best shot, and still doesn't care for it:

I'm sorry to say, but as explained at length in a comment I make below, it seems to be yet another illustration of how a sitcom with a prominent gay character gets over-praised.

Yes, just glossed over

While America spins into increasing political turmoil, I choose to talk about....tiny houses

I must have mentioned before that I am a bit of a sucker for looking at tiny houses, mostly on Youtube now.  That New Zealand guys's Living Big in a Tiny House is a deserved success:  he's likeable, always positive, and been all over the world highlighting all types of tiny house.

I can imagine that, as a single man in my 20's, or during the early period of marriage, I could have happily lived in such a very small space.  (My wife was certainly used to living in what we would consider to be pretty much a micro apartment before she met me.)   There is also a lot of talk about how older single women, post divorce and (more likely than men) left with little money could do well in very small residences too.   Assuming you could get over zoning laws that prevent these residences being on their own tiny lot of land, I think it is sort of obvious that they could meet a part of housing market if they could be done well. 

But, let's go through the things that bother me in nearly every single tiny home I see:

*   why do I seem to be the only person in the world who keeps thinking:  "yeah, it's cute and all, but it's a box with windows and doors with no eves.  In wet weather you have to keep every door and window shut??"   Not to mention getting soaked while getting to or from a car.   Look at this as a typical example:

That Youtube channel does feature a lot of New Zealand tiny homes, and admittedly, when it's wet there it's probably not particularly hot and closing windows might not make you feel like you're your in a hot steam box, like it does in Brisbane in summer, when we get most of our rain.   But honestly, isn't any deck more useful covered, even in a cooler climate?

*  Loft bedrooms in which an adult cannot stand up.   That would wear thin pretty fast, I reckon.  My mind even strayed to wondering if some tiny home bedrooms limit couple's sex positions.  

*  Stairs with no rails, in spaces where if you fell off them you would hit your head on a kitchen bench.  Like this:

Years ago, I used to note death trap stairs in fancy schmancy Japanese architectural houses;  now I am continually amazed that adults who buy or build a tiny house can't imagine the risk in walking down stairs like that in darkness, ill health, or while even slightly drunk.  It's not that it's impossible to have a rail on a narrow stairway, for God's sake:

Isn't it just bleedingly obvious that this is ten times safer than that in the previous photo??

*  Permanent versus relocatable homes.   In Big Living, the host is, perhaps 90% of the time, showing people who have found someone else's land on which to park their (movable) tiny home.  (Usually, I assume, for a small occupation fee, although that is never discussed.)   Tiny homes built on trailers are, let's face it, pretty much just a fancy caravan, and Councils have never liked people using their land to live in caravans as the only residence.   For tiny houses to really make a difference, I reckon you have to get away from the permanently trailered ones, and get more into the idea that they are viable actual permanent homes on their blocks of land, without the ongoing bother of body corporate levies for strata title, too.   Sure, I have no problem with them being prebuilt units that are easily re-locatable, but leaving a "house" on a wheeled trailer permanently just isn't the same as a house sitting on the ground (or perhaps more likely, on stumps.)

When I Google the topic, I see that there has been a fair amount of discussion about town planning changes that may be necessary to allow the growth of tiny homes as permanent residences.  See this American article as an example.   

In this context, I have found some discussion of "pocket neighbourhoods", which are planned developments with small residences but usually sharing a common garden or other facilities.  From a Forbes article about them:

Pocket neighborhoods make up small clusters of houses in urban, suburban, or rural settings in which small-footprint homes are arranged around a shared common area. The closeness that is created in these communities encourages interaction among neighbors and is perfect for people who seek a stronger sense of community than is found in a conventional neighborhood. They want a more caring supportive, safer, and connected place to live.

This sounds nice, but is it really that different from what can be offered in a well planned strata title development in Australia?   I suppose it is, if there is a sense of ownership of (say) the shared garden.   Strata title can develop nice, free standing, small house settings with communal parkland, but it's always got pretty expensive body corporate levies - I suppose in part because no one wants wants to put in their own effort to maintain a communal facility, so they pay people to do it.   I would be curious to know how "pocket neighbourhoods" deal with this - I presume it is up to the owners to take more direct control of things like a communal garden, but what do you do if one or two owners couldn't care less about (or are simply unable to make) a contribution to it's upkeep?

 As for the shared garden ownership:  if you put part of the garden on each lot title, you have the issue of a crank owner wanted to keep the rest of the community off their patch.  Although I suppose you could deal with that just by everyone having an easement over every else's patch?   Or maybe, I don't know, you could have communal ownership via a "court company".   This is an idea that pre-dated strata title, and there are still subdivisions in Brisbane that work this way:   the central access road to each lot on the subdivision is owned by a "court company", and everyone who buys in that "court" gets a share in the court company when they buy the lot.  All the court company has to do is collect money to resurface the road when needed, and perhaps pay for public liability insurance.   But the court company doesn't have to deal with all the other stuff your body corporate has to worry about - enforcing by-laws, having an AGM, paying for a management company to look after it, etc.   I suspect the cost of running such a system is substantially less than that under a strata title system.  

Anyway, how small are non-strata lots allowed to be in (say) Brisbane?  As far as I can tell, just doing a quick Google, a small house lot can be 180 - 300m2, although I suspect most are at the higher end of that range.  What's the average floor area for a tiny house?    

Most of the trailer built ones seem to be a maximum of 8 m long by about 2.5 wide (see this company's, for example)  Let's be generous and call that 24 m2.  A single car carport is about 3 by 6 m, so another 18m2.  If you are not going to have a tiny home on wheels, you can go crazy with floor space, but according to Wikipedia, anything under 37m2 in floor area is considered a tiny house.  So, for a rough tiny house footprint, let's go with 30m2 of "house", plus 18m2 carport, plus covered outdoor area of (say) 8m2:  56m2 in total.  

So you should be able to fit three tiny households on the smallest residential lot in Brisbane, and have a few square metres of dirt for yard for each.  Of course, without some extremely careful planning, you might still be able to hear every conversation the neighbours are having in their bed at night, but people do live in some pretty quarters in existing caravan parks and seem to survive.

Speaking of caravan parks, when I Google "subdivision for tiny houses" I get links to articles like this one: 14 Liveable Tiny House Communities, but honestly, most of them just look like up market trailer parks.   And we do have mobile home parks in Australia already which have small, demountable houses sited permanently on rented lots.   My Mum used to live in one on the Gold Coast, and it was pretty nice.   But can't we work this out without the ongoing cost of rental?   My mother could afford it on the pension, but it didn't leave a lot of money left over for anything else.

So, that's what I want to know more about - successful town planning that allows for outright ownership of very small lots, perhaps with communal yards/gardens (and that avoids the cost of body corporate levies as far as possible).   

I'll come back to the topic later....

If I had my way, I'd tax them out of existence

We obviously have too many large vehicles being driven in the suburbs of Australia, too, and they drive me nuts when they can't do a tight turn in a shopping centre car park because of their turning circle.

Ergas at his most pretentious

I got to Henry Ergas' column in the Australian today via his twitter link to it, and what a special bit of irrelevant pretentiousness it is.   

Most of it is about a Greek play,and attacks Palaszczuk and Andrews for their handling of COVID-19, with hyperbole thrown in:

There is, for sure, a chance that they will succeed; the gods, who in Greek tragedy could always be counted on to mete out harsh justice, having long left the scene, little stands between us and the ancients’ presumption, amply justified by every page of political history, that some agents of government will use all the scope they have to entrench their position — including by acting brutally and immorally — unless they are prevented from doing so.

With the crisis removing many of those constraints, our democracy appears to have slipped closer to the edge of the precipice than one might have thought possible.

Not for the first time I say:  what a tedious wanker.   

He finally gets around to some modern political philosophising:

Judith Shklar, the Harvard professor whose lectures on ­Antigone and political obligation were recently published post­humously, captured them brilliantly. The liberalism we inherited from the 19th century, she wrote, was a “liberalism of hope” — the hope, most of all, that one could create the basis for human flourishing.

But these dark times, which offer so much room for manipulation and deceit, demand a renewed emphasis on the “liberalism of fear” that instead of concentrating on how to bring about the greatest good, focuses on averting the greatest ills.

Rather than striving for the utopian perfectibility of mankind, the liberalism of fear seeks to limit the damage, so that we can feel free because the government does not, indeed cannot, terrorise us — be it by handcuffing pregnant women for organising innocent protests or by denying to grieving families the solace of farewelling the dead.

I'm not even sure I can make sense of that last paragraph - but whatever.

The main point is one I have been repeating for years - twits on the Right like Ergas are too interested in culture wars to be able to actually recognise real and serious threat warnings from scientists, be it climate change or dangerous pandemics.  They discount "the greatest ills" because they would rather believe cranks and "do nothing" advocates because they imagine that scientists and politicians who take them seriously are only doing so in order to increase the role of government.  

And as for "danger to democracy" - I hardly notice much of what Ergas writes, but I have only ever seen him defend Donald Trump, which makes his claims of democracy under threat from 2 Australian Premiers all the more ludicrous.

 

Tip for those of us with ageing eyes

First, by way of background:   my eyesight is such that for most purposes I don't need to use reading glasses, although I do have a set that I occasionally use.   I like reading without glasses so much that when I had a cataract operation a couple of years back, I asked for the lens replacement to be a close focus one rather than the more commonly requested distance focus.  My reasoning is that I have been using glasses for distance for about 40 years, and find not having to use glasses in bed and at the computer to be useful. Unfortunately, the result with the new lens was not perfect, there's a bit of "ghosting" around letters.  Apparently, it is difficult for the pre-operation measurements of what an eye needs to be super precise.  However, my left eye, despite having the start of a cataract as well, still does close focus well enough that my brain seems to favour it when reading and working on the computer, and I can get away without glasses.  But super small print on products at the supermarket can still be a problem, and when you are counting calories for diet purposes, it can be annoying not being to read them properly.

 Now that I have bored everyone with the preamble, this is my tip I just realised:  instead of carrying around reading glasses all the time, there's a good chance your mobile phone camera can act as a de facto magnifier instead.   I just tried it with the "macro" lens on my camera, and it worked fine.

You can get magnifying glass apps for phones as well - but with these new phones with their super close focussing, you don't really need them. 

Maybe everyone else already though of this?   I don't think I have ever seen another shopper using their phone close to a label though...

All true

 

I would add:  you can imagine how the Right wing sites would have absolutely freaked out if Obama had done a similar thing in dividing up the parts of America on a life and death issue.   They freak out over imaginary slights from Google, for God's sake.

Will anyone retract their Rowling twitter pile on, I wonder?

So, Nick Cohen has actually read JK Rowling's new book, and is emphatic that the "she's an appalling transphobic" social media pile on against her is based on a completely misleading line in The Telegraph's review.

I think Cohen is a reliable writer - I strongly suspect he would be correct.

I have seen many Australian twitter people (journalists and opinion writers) join in with the "tsk, tsk, why does Rowling do this?" line.   Assuming Cohen is vindicated by other reviewers, I wonder if any of the twitter mob will ever retract, and allow for nuance in how people with sound credentials on the Left are allowed to think about this particular phenomena.

The madness on the American Right regarding the culture wars and politics is certainly the greatest danger to that country and the entire planet;  but it is extraordinary to watch the much smaller scale madness that is identity politics (at least in the West) taking the line that feminists with qualms about how transgenderism is best recognised and understood is turned into "you want us dead because you don't agree with us."  

Still sounds strong

I forgot to mention - I heard former politician and all round know-it-all Barry Jones on Radio National breakfast this morning, talking about the successful ozone layer protection action taken by governments in the 1990's.   He still has a strong voice, and obviously has all of his marbles too.

"How old must he be?" I thought, because he's one of those men who seemingly from a young age could pass for someone substantially older than his actual age.   He'll soon be 88, I see.   

I'm not sure that I would say he was very likeable as a politician/public intellectual - he seems a bit too much of an eccentric loner for that -  but he has always impressed as an earnest hard worker not inclined to extremes in politics, and I sort of admire him for that.    

Update:  here's an interesting and very recent article on Jones in the SMH.  I didn't realise he had been revising his dictionary of biography ever since his first draft in his 20's (!)

A zombie song

Just so you know that my days are not entirely devoted to fretting about Trump and conspiracy belief taking over the United States, on Saturday I listened to Spotify for the first time in months, and it chose a 2006 song for me which I might have heard before, but I'm not sure:  Re: Your Brains.   It's a very amusing lyric with a nice melody, and as such has a definite They Might be Giants vibe about it.  (No doubt, this is why Spotify knew I might like it.)  Reading about the songwriter/performer Jonathan Coulton, I see he is from Brooklyn and does indeed know TMBG (he's played with at least one of the Johns). 

It also seems that Coulton is/was very big in the nerd/gamer world, writing some songs used in some very popular games (which I have not played.)   Seems I should listen to some of his old stuff.

Anyway, I take it he doesn't do proper videos, but lets lots of people make their own.  This one, with deaf signing for the lyrics, struck me as pretty fun to watch:

Kim does something responsible

I don't really know a thing about her, but this is a surprising bit of socially responsible action on her part:

Kim Kardashian West announced that she will join two dozen celebrities in temporarily freezing their Instagram and Facebook accounts on Wednesday because the platforms "continue to allow the spreading of hate, propaganda and misinformation — created by groups to sow division and split America apart."

Why it matters: The announcement from such a high-profile user is likely to be a PR disaster for Instagram and Facebook, as well as a boost to the #StopHateForProfit campaign. Kardashian West is the seventh-most followed account on Instagram with 188 million followers. She currently has 30 million followers on Facebook.

 

They would prefer a dictatorship over a democracy, as long as the dictator said he was against abortion

Let's face it - it's the conservative Catholic inability to accept any moral ambiguity at all in terms of any abortion ever that leads them to prefer an authoritarian who treats the actually born like dirt, and who thinks it's cool that he's trusted by other murderous dictators, over a liberal Catholic candidate.  

It's pretty much the case that they would prefer a religious dictator (as long as the religion bans all abortion) over a democratically elected liberal.   (Not that I think many are actually dumb enough to consider Trump is actually religious - but they will take whatever scum they can, as long as he says - or lies - that he agrees with them on the matter of abortion.)

Agreed

Max Boot in the Washington Post points out the hysteria on the Right about America if Trump loses:

“The battle for the survival of the United States of America is upon us,” proclaims a hysterical cover story in Commentary. “The dissenters are being silenced. The buildings are burning, and the demands are ever growing.” We are living, the author argues, in “France in 1789, Russia in 1917, and China in 1949.” Derek Chauvin, the police officer whose brutality sparked nationwide protests, is “our own Gavrilo Princip,” the assassin who triggered World War I. This is “an American version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.”

In the Wall Street Journal, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, similarly suggests this is yet another Flight 93 moment. She compares the ideology of al-Qaeda to the “Wokeism” of progressives: “Islamists shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Death to America’; the Woke chant ‘Black lives matter’ and ‘I can’t breathe.’ Islamists pray to Mecca; the Woke take the knee. Both like burning the American flag.”....

Give me a break. And get a grip.

I’ve been criticizing “political correctness” for more than 30 years, ever since I was a student columnist at the University of California at Berkeley. Its excesses continue to irk me. But they are insignificant compared with the threat posed to our country by Trump and the malign forces that he has unleashed.

More than 90 percent of racial justice protests have been peaceful. The far right, not the far left, is responsible for almost all domestic terrorism. A recent study found that right-wing extremists perpetrated nearly two-thirds of attacks and plots in 2019, and 90 percent in the first four months of 2020.

Joe Biden has been clear in condemning violence whether of the left or right. As he said: “Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple.” Trump, by contrast, employs racist and violent language to mobilize White voters. He won’t even condemn a supporter accused of killing two people in Kenosha, Wis. Trump warns of “anarchy” if Biden wins, but he is the one promoting lawlessness and disorder.

 

 

President Dunning Kruger Peale

When considering Trump's pronouncements on COVID-19 "just going away" and now this on climate change, people seem to be forgetting that he had a close connection to the original "Power of Positive Thinking" spin merchant Norman Vincent Pearle.  As NPR wrote in 2017:

KEITH: That is the voice of Norman Vincent Peale, the author of the best-selling book "The Power Of Positive Thinking," first published in 1952. In the late 1960s, he had a regular radio segment, which is where this audio comes from. He was also the longtime pastor at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which Trump attended with his family growing up. Peale even officiated Trump's first wedding.

TRUMP: Norman Vincent Peale - the great Norman Vincent Peale - was my pastor. "The Power Of Positive Thinking" - everybody's heard of Norman Vincent Peale. He was so great.

KEITH: That was Trump in July of 2015 at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit, talking about where he got his religious grounding.

TRUMP: I still remember his sermons. It was unbelievable. And what he would do is he'd bring real-life situations - modern-day situations - into the sermon. And you could listen to him all day long. 

 It is, of course, magical thinking, which is the last thing you want in a politician who has to deal with problems which are about more than mere psychology.

The extraordinarily shallow Trump

Fred Kaplan at Slate has an article about the new Woodward book on Trump which you should read in full.  I suppose it would be funny if it weren't so horrifying that, I dunno, 20% - 30% of Americans genuinely think he's a brilliant and charming fellow:  

When Woodward asks what it was like to meet Kim at their first summit in Singapore, Trump responds, “It was the most cameras I think I’ve seen, more cameras than any human being in history,” even more than he’d seen at the Academy Awards.

He then gives Woodward a poster-size copy of a photo of Trump and Kim shaking hands at the border separating North and South Korea. “This is me and him,” he tells Woodward, all excited. “That’s the line, right? Then I walked over the line. Pretty cool.” He goes on to brag that Kim “tells me everything. … He killed his uncle and put the body right in the steps where the senators walked out. And the head was cut, sitting on the chest. … Nancy Pelosi said, ‘Oh, let’s impeach him.’ You think that’s tough? This is tough.”

What a fanboy. No wonder Kim and every other dictator on earth plays the American president like such a wondrously easy mark.

At one point, when talking about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump tells Woodward, “It’s funny, the relations I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know? Explain that to me someday, OK?” Woodward writes: “That might not be difficult, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.”

Throughout the book, Woodward proclaims shock (though one wonders why) at how shallow Trump is. Asked about his strategy for dealing with the plethora of crises hitting him, Trump replies, “I don’t have a strategy,” except to “do a good job.” Trump says he knew that he and Kim would get along instantly, in the same way that “you meet a woman, in one second you know whether or not it’s all going to happen.”

Over and over, Trump plasters his pathological insecurity on marquee display. “I don’t think Obama’s smart,” he says, adding, “Hey look, I went to the best schools, I did great. … You know, they talk about the elite … they have nice houses. No, I have much better than them, I have better everything than them, including education.” His uncle, as he has said many times, was a brilliant MIT professor who knew about nuclear weapons—“so I understand that stuff,” the president says. “You know, genetically.”

 

 

How does democracy recover from the internet/right wing media led intensification of conspiracy?

Politico writes:

MIAMI — George Soros directs a “deep state” global conspiracy network. A Joe Biden win would put America in control of “Jews and Blacks.” The Democratic nominee has a pedophilia problem.

Wild disinformation like this is inundating Spanish-speaking residents of South Florida ahead of Election Day, clogging their WhatsApp chats, Facebook feeds and even radio airwaves at a saturation level that threatens to shape the outcome in the nation’s biggest and most closely contested swing state. 

The sheer volume of conspiracy theories — including QAnon — and deceptive claims are already playing a role in stunting Biden’s growth with Latino voters, who make up about 17 percent of the state’s electorate.

“The onslaught has had an effect,” said Eduardo Gamarra, a pollster and director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at Florida International University.

“It’s difficult to measure the effect exactly, but the polling sort of shows it and in focus groups it shows up, with people deeply questioning the Democrats, and referring to the ‘deep state’ in particular — that there’s a real conspiracy against the president from the inside,” he said. “There’s a strain in our political culture that’s accustomed to conspiracy theories, a culture that’s accustomed to coup d'etats.”

And  David Roberts tweets:

And he further notes:

I wonder, though:  does Rupert Murdoch have the ability to dampen down QAnon?   As I understand it, Fox News pretty much ignores it, and while it's happy to hype hysteria over THE LEFT WANTS TO KILL US ALL to its mostly elderly audience, promoting the idea that children are being detained underground by devil worshipping Democrats seems just a stretch too far for the network.

But what would happen if the Murdoch family put out the message to its opinion "stars" along the lines "this is getting out of control - people have to believe our conspiracies, but a sensible democracy can't work if people live in complete and utter fantasy land" and told them to actively promote the line that believing QAnon is nuts and has disproved by false predictions so many times that you can't believe a word of it?  Who knows, perhaps they could sell it as a Democrat led conspiracy so extreme as to hurt Trump because it is so nuts?    

I tend to think that a united front from Fox News to attack QAnon at least could not hurt - perhaps giving Republicans cover to come out and call it out themselves.  

 

A complete disgrace and danger to the country

 

Denis did well

It seems quite a few weeks since I watched a movie on Netflix which I could strongly recommend, but last night was a good one:  the 2013 Denis Villeneuve directed Prisoners.

 I had never noticed it before, and as I consider Villeneuve a director who can make great looking movies which are nonetheless narratively unsatisfying, I wasn't in a hurry to watch it.  (It also stars Hugh Jackman, an actor who I generally struggle to like.)  \

But it's really good - well directed, well acted, and long but quite engaging all the way.  Given that it's about a neighbourhood child abduction, and the father (played by Jackman) is a conservative Christian who goes a bit nuts thinking he knows what's really going on, I thought it carried some surprising ressonance to the social milieu which has led to the current QAnon conspiracy craze spinning out of control in the US, and even Australia.  As Jack the Insider recently wrote:

The State of Victoria is in lockdown, not to reduce the infectious spread of the pandemic but because armed forces are secretly battling for control of the tunnels; an underground network used by the deep state to transport abducted children. Scott Morrison is with the deep state. Andrews was, too, before his arrest.

It is not yet safe to go to the tunnels. But be patient. The Great Awakening is upon us.

Welcome to the latest news from QAnon, the conspiracy theory that has millions of followers in the US and thousands in Australia.

Don't get me wrong:  Prisoners does have a mystery which is resolved by the end and it's unusual but not completely ludicrous, like QAnon.

And speaking of Villeneuve, yes, I have watched the trailer for Dune, a book which I have never read, and I didn't even see the David Lynch movie because of so-so reviews; but this upcoming version looks very stylish and probably worth seeing. 

A troublesome sect

How come I've never heard of the long running documentary series Unreported World?   It's apparently on Channel 4 in England, has been around for 20 years, and at least lately, posts new content on Youtube weekly.  It's the English Foreign Correspondent, by the looks, and probably preceded it? 

Anyway, I only learnt of it because a recent episode popped up on my Samsung Youtube app recommendations, Google knowing (of course) that I watch a lot of Asian content.

Here's the episode, about a money hungry Buddhist sect/cult the Dhammakaya Foundation in Thailand, which at least has the coolest, UFO looking temple thingy I have ever seen (this is a screenshot from the start of the video):

 

 

Looks like the start of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 version, and if the flying saucer had a Nazi reception committee.)

 

Here's the video itself:

Surprised I hadn't heard about it before. 

Sharing a date

Yeah, birthdays count for nothing, except it is my 60th today and that one does give even more of a feeling than your 50th that on life's ride you're up and over that initial roller coaster hump, and only have the moderate twists and bumps to continue with until it comes to an abrupt stop.   Not the cheeriest of metaphors, but truth be told, I don't care for roller coasters much anyway.  😊

Anyway, it's good to be alive and well and around to watch things unfold.

I see that a couple of years ago I had a look at famous people who shared my birth date, and noted a couple of low level celebrities.   Looking at a much, much longer list of famous birthdays, and I note the following:

* DH Lawrence: (I've known that one for a long time, but have never read him and have no great interest to start now, either.  I just realised I know virtually nothing about his life, but he has quite a long Wiki entry, so I might read that later.)

* Oh!  Brian DePalma, the director, is 80 today.   I will go to my grave defending The Untouchables as a great gangster film with actually more serious moral content than most of Scorsese's work, and with the most thrilling shoot out sequence ever; so yeah, he's welcome to share my date.

* Ferdinand Marcos would be 103 today if he was still alive:  good to know I share a date with at least one Right wing dictator.   

* Here's a name anyone who has ever owned a pre-digital camera who have read at least once:  Carl Zeiss ("German scientific instrument and lens maker").

* Minamoto no Yoriie, Japanese shogun.  Born 1182.  Never heard of him, but I've taken to telling my kids I must have been Asian in a prior life (it's why I watch so much Asian content on Youtube and Netflix, obviously); and perhaps he is my specific previous incarnation.   No, wait, he was a bit of a dud:

Yoriie showed when still very young great interest in military arts like fencing, and horse-riding. After his father's death in 1199, the 17-year-old became head of the Minamoto clan and was appointed sei-i taishōgun in 1202.^[2] He was, however, criticized for his abandonment of his father's policies, and his mother forbade him from any involvement political activity.^[2] On June 30, 1203 (Shōji 1, 12th day of the 4th month) his remaining powers were formally taken from him and assumed by a council of 13 elders, headed by his grandfather Hōjō Tokimasa.^[2] He ordained as a Buddhist monk. Yoriie, in turn, plotted with the Hiki to subjugate the Hōjō clan; however, he failed, was put under house arrest and forced to abdicate, and was eventually assassinated on July 17, 1204 in Izu.^[2] Yoriie was succeeded by his younger brother Sanetomo, the last of the Seiwa Genji line to rule, at least nominally, over Kamakura. 

All a bit Game of Thrones-ish.  

* Who to end on?   Perhaps a homeopathic murderer?:  Hawley Harvey Crippen [Dr Crippen], American homeopath and first killer to be caught with the aid of wireless telegraphy, born in Coldwater, Michigan (d. 1910).  He has a lengthy Wiki entry too.  All quite famous, it seems, and I think I have heard of the name.   More fun reading.

Anyway, on with life....

My dieting tips

"So, how's the current bout of 5/2 dieting going?" is a question none of my readers ever ask - so I will tell you anyway.

Been going good.   It's great to feel the pants getting looser and wondering if I will have to buy a smaller belt.   I seem to still be losing about 500 - 600g a week.   Not precisely sure where I started, but BMI is now a solid 26 instead of what I think was a verging on 27.

And I have decided it's easier than ever, because I am finding this routine for the 600 cal days is not boring me yet:

Breakfast - cup of coffee (with a small amount of milk) and a banana

Mid-morning - cup of tea (with small amount of milk)

Lunch - Cup of Soup (about 110 cal or less)

Sometime after lunch - 50 g of beef jerky (which is remarkably low on calories, but satisfying)

Dinner - one of the Cole's or Woolies pre made single serve salads.  These are pretty good now, and very convenient.  Usually they are around 250 cal.

 My daily total calories might be a little over 600 cal, but I doubt it ever reaches 700.  Still works.

So my big tips:   beef jerky and supermarket pre-made, individual salads.

Gravity not causing quantum collapse?

Interesting story at Science about an experiment indicating that an idea promoted by Roger Penrose (gravity is what causes quantum collapse) has passed a test.   (Although the ageing Penrose still thinks it is an inconclusive test.)

Excuse me while I swoon over Julia pointing out something useful to know

I happened to see Julia Gillard on the ABC breakfast show today, speaking in her role as Chair of Beyond Blue.

She said that suicide figures for Victoria (of course, the worst affected Australian state with COVID) for 2020 up to August were now available and there had been no increase in numbers over the previous year.   Still, they are worried about the potential for an increase, and hence have produced a video with an suicide prevention message (8 people who once felt suicidal, but came out of it OK.)

This "no increase in suicide numbers despite COVID lockdowns for 7 months" message is not something I had heard of before.   Instead, we get Right wing hysterics like Creighton going on and on about how this is going to devastate people, sending the message that it's reasonable to feel desperate because everything's going to Hell and yes, if you have lost your job your life is ruined, and for no reason.   (Mind you, even that Ian Hickie and the AMA have been talking about increased suicide risk - which is fair enough as a warning to government to try to bring in an adequate response, but I would have thought does run the risk in its reporting of encouraging a sense of inevitability in the vulnerable.) 

So, the positive message of no increased suicides so far should be given more prominence, I reckon.

And, by the way:  OMG, Gillard plays the role of useful ex Prime Minister with such exquisite grace, humour and intelligence, doesn't she?   I sort of swoon over her reasonableness on all appearances she makes.   Compare her performance to a snippet of Tony Abbott last night on Mad as Hell, making a weird "joke" about virgins during a press appearance in England about the lost cause of Brexit - he is still making people like me grind their teeth over what a complete embarrassment he is.      

 Update:  I see that the "no increase" message did appear in the news (at least, on the ABC, the Guardian and The Age - all of which might still be considered Left leaning sites, although not sure about the Age anymore) at the end of August - not sure that I saw it given much prominence on TV news, though.   Certainly, at the start of August, there seems a flurry of "suicides will increase" stories on sites like 7 News. 

Thanks, social media

Another appalling story of malicious rumour mongering on social media in India:

Wild rumours about coronavirus are fuelling opposition to testing in the northern Indian state of Punjab, reports BBC Punjabi's Arvind Chhabra. 

 

"Human organs are being smuggled," Sonia Kaur, who lives in a village in Punjab's Sangrur district, tells the BBC. "Not just the villagers but the whole world is scared of this. Social media is full of such news."

 

Ms Kaur says she has heard of people's organs being harvested under the guise of diagnosing and treating coronavirus. She is echoing the fears of countless others in rural Punjab who are sceptical of the virus.

 

Rumours are flying fast in Punjab that the virus is a hoax, that people who don't have Covid-19 are being taken away to care centres, where they are being killed for their organs, and that bodies are being swapped to allay suspicion. 

 

A mix of fear, anxiety and easy access to social media, especially WhatsApp, has hastened the spread of these baseless rumours in the form of messages and doctored videos. 

 

This has led to protests and even attacks against health workers. Ms Kaur's village was one of several in Sangrur that did not allow health workers to collect samples for testing - crowds pelted them with stones, screaming "Go back, we don't want to be tested", until they left.

One would hope that the Indian government is running some sort of attempt at educating school kids, at least, not to believe rumours on the internet.   Educating old adults in rural areas may well be impossible, I guess...

 

Almost makes you wish bad problems were even worse

This may be kind of obvious, but I haven't noticed too many people saying it:  the problem in a social sense with both COVID 19 and climate change is that both problems work in ways which are very real and very disrupting, but leave a significant proportion of the population being able to claim no personal and immediate effect, despite what scientists and other experts tell them.

This enables the intense politicisation of the response, and a lack of social cohesion.

I mean, if you get a big enough problem - your country at risk of invasion during a war as a perfect example - people will put up with enormous privation and social disruption for years at a time.   Not only that, but some people find the social cohesion from a massive joint response can make the whole thing almost a positive experience.   (I think the ageing scientist James Lovelock says that about his World War 2 years.  By the way, he's 101 now.  Can't be with us much longer.)  

The social difficulty you get is when a problem is real and bad, but not quite bad or immediate enough to shut up the politically and ideologically motivated contrarians from engaging in arguments with cherry picked "evidence" and large slabs of denial of expert evidence. 

You want to feel depressed about the future of cheap overseas travel?

Then read this commentary at CNA:  

Does COVID-19 spell the end of long-haul budget airline flights?