The non-existant fraud

A good Allahpundit post at Hot Air.   (The comments usually indicate he is despised by most of the site's readership.  He is too reasonable for them.):

 I can’t believe we’re more than a year removed from the election and efforts are still ongoing to convince people that a candidate who lost the popular vote in his first national run, never had 50 percent job approval as president, got impeached, helmed the country during a pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and was regarded as a boorish loose cannon even by his admirers might have legitimately lost to a well-known generic Democrat.

And not by a lot. By a few thousand votes in some states. Yet it seems unfathomable to some that it could have happened, starting with the man who lost.

The AP assigned at least eight reporters and many months of research across hundreds of local election offices to this impressive but totally futile project. They went district by district across Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia to see how many cases of potential voter fraud had been identified by local authorities in each. Were there enough suspect votes to account for Biden’s margin in any of them? Answer: Not remotely. “The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.”

Won’t matter. The point of the gassy conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines is that devotees realize piecemeal fraud could never happen to a large enough degree to flip a state unless it’s “Florida 2000” close, which none of the states won by Biden were. There has to be some unified field theory of massive under-the-radar vote-rigging in which ballots are switched en masse by the thousands or millions to explain those margins. That’s why all conspiracy roads ultimately lead back to Dominion and Smartmatic. Maggie Haberman is right, though, that the AP analysis is useful in one respect. It challenges the suspicion that laws that were relaxed during the pandemic to make voting by mail easier meaningfully increased the amount of fraud at the polls. They didn’t.

Even poor old JC from Catallaxy, and who continues to appear at fascist Cathollaxy (where he seems to think most of the other commentators are idiots, but he still hangs out there) believes that the election fraud was real. 

I wonder if Sinclair Davidson, who seemed half convinced by dubious statistical mathturbation claims that the election count must have been fraudulent, still believes that.   Since the downfall of Catallaxy, I don't know what he believes any more.   I should check his twitter, I suppose, but I seem to recall it's a pretty dull read, and mostly talks blockchain crap.

A surprising eye innovation

The New York Times explains:

An eye drop that improves close-range vision could make misplaced reading glasses less of an inconvenience for many of the 128 million Americans who suffer from age-related deficits in near vision. Vuity, which became available by prescription on Thursday, is a once-a-day treatment that can help users see up close without affecting their long-range vision.

“For anybody who doesn’t want to fiddle with reading glasses, this might be a really helpful alternative,” said Dr. Scott M. MacRae, an ophthalmologist at the University of Rochester’s Center for Visual Science. Dr. MacRae was not involved in the clinical trials for the drug, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in late October.

But the way it works sounds, well, a little dubious:

Vuity improves near vision by constricting the size of the pupil. “It makes the pupil small, creating what we call a pinhole effect,” that way reducing the amount of peripheral light that passes through the eye that can make it hard to focus, said Dr. Stephen Orlin, an ophthalmologist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

Won't that mean it's harder to see in the dark?   Yes it does:

Although the clinical trials did not report any serious side effects, 14.9 percent of subjects who took Vuity reported mild headaches, compared with 7 percent of subjects who took placebo drops. Up to 5 percent of subjects taking Vuity reported other side effects such as eye redness, blurred vision, eye pain, visual impairment, eye irritation and an increased production of tears.

Because the eye drops reduce pupil size, they also make it harder to see in the dark, so they are not recommended for people who drive at night or need to see well in low light for other reasons, Dr. Waring said.

I think I'll pass.

 

 

 

Too stupid to know to call an ambulance

Not that I care about Sex and the City or its current sequel series at all (in fact, I pretty much consider it a blight on humanity that this set of characters ever existed), but I have been amused to read about how a fictional death could lead to much discussion about how dumb it makes the key character appear.

Read this amusing take on the matter (with expert opinion from a cardiologist) in The Vulture.

An unusual success story in criminology?

 

He makes a good point

 My personal aversion to exercise makes it hard to take sides on this one...:)

Local religion news

I want to know more about this:

This article explores how local Chinese authorities employed various strategies to promote the Patriarch of Sanping’s cult in post-Mao China from 1979 to 2015. It argues that the cult of the Patriarch of Sanping became an invented tradition for expanded religious tourism in Pinghe County in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province. Local state agents employed various placemaking strategies to promote Sanping Monastery and endorse the deity’s efficacy, creating an opportunity for resources to be channeled from other parts of China, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities to develop Pinghe County. This study shows that, on the one hand, local state agents have propagated miracle tales to entice devotees to visit and make donations to this monastery while, on the other hand, they have courted scholars, journalists, and tour guides to generate attention and interest in the cult. Overall, this article demonstrates how local government placemaking and marketing strategies have contributed to the transformation of a Buddhist master from a local deity to a popular god in contemporary China.

That's the abstract to an article in Critical Asian Studies: The making of a local deity: the Patriarch of Sanping’s cult in post-Mao China, 1979–2015.

Will see if I can access later.

That's some last line

In a Guardian story about a young-ish Catholic Spanish bishop who has given it all away to marry an "erotic novelist", the report ends on this note:

Novell, who has a degree in agricultural engineering and who was ordained in 1997, is now reported to be working for a company that extracts and sells pig semen.

A tea cup reading fortune teller of young Novell would have had quite the interpretation challenge. 

Update:  today I learned that tea cup/tea leaf/coffee grounds reading has a fancy name - tasseography.

Weekend stuff

*  Ate a very delicious yiros (lamb and haloumi) that made me think that is the best thing you can have at Greek cafe.  (But don't get me wrong; Greek food remains a basically uninteresting cuisine.)

*  Found out that Kmart can print photos on mugs immediately, if they are not busy (normally a next day service), and they cost $6.   That seems ridiculously cheap.

*  I didn't realise that Kentucky had a Democrat governor until watching the news of the amazingly damaging tornadoes.  Of course, wingnuts are working themselves into a lather over any suggestion climate change has anything to do with it - and I remember some years ago Roy Spencer getting indignant that increased atmospheric temperature should mean less (from memory) shear winds (or something?), so he was upset that anyone was suggesting that big summer tornadoes were due to it.   Others who make a career out of claiming climate scientists are exaggerating risk (Pielke Jnr) like to point out that the IPCC has said clearly that no trend is yet detectable.   But obviously, that doesn't rule out a connection to an unusual event like the weekend's - just we don't know for sure yet.

Yes a sad day

He did distinctive country rock and pop-ish work after the Monkees too, writing both memorable  break up songs (Different Drum) and great love songs.  Of the latter, I have always been very fond of Harmony Constant, and thought it would be a tearful/joyous song for anyone leaving behind a partner they love.

Here's a link to it.

It has begun...

I for one welcome our new furry overlords:

A man attacked by a pack of otters in a Singapore park has said that he thought he was going to die during the ordeal.

Graham George Spencer, a British citizen living in Singapore, said he was chased, pinned down and bitten “26 times in 10 seconds” by a family of otters while out for an early morning walk in the botanic gardens.

Spencer told The Straits Times he was approaching the gardens’ entrance on 30 November when he spotted about 20 otters crossing a path in front of him.

The animals were moving quietly but “went crazy” after another man ran towards them, Spencer told the paper. The runner was able to avoid the animals but Spencer was not as lucky.

He said they lunged at him, biting his ankles, legs and buttocks and causing him to fall over.

“I actually thought I was going to die – they were going to kill me,” he added.

Spencer’s friend, who was about “15 paces” away from him, ran up screaming in a bid to scare away the otters.

“I was bitten 26 times in 10 seconds. If it wasn’t for my friend, I don’t think I’d still be here. I’d be dead,” he told local outlet Today.

I'm trying to find a way to fit an insult to the British into this post too, without sounding too mean.  It's not coming to me, so far.

 

Just ludicrous

 

As someone else pointed out, this Rev's speech sounds very much like the satirical one Dan Ackroyd delivers to the rioting mob in 1941, which I get to mention twice in a week.  

 

To be honest, it would be incredibly funny if someone managed to torch the second tree - hundreds of millions of people would consider him (or her) a comedy troll hero. 

Sympathy (and sports terrorism) called for

I don't know why, but the start of the cricket season this year has given me a more heightened resentment than usual about the way it tramples over everything else - whole radio and TV channels previously full of potentially interesting programming overrun for days at a time by stuff I not only have no interest in, but I positively resent because of the way it pushes my mental landscape out of the way.   

Oh well.  I can always entertain myself by imagining revenge.   Throwing bottles of glycophosphate from a helicopter came to mind this morning....   

Update:  OK, here's how to keep me happier - special cricket channels that start operating during cricket matches (or cricket season), and leave the rest of the networks alone.    That way, everyone who wants cricket in their ear for 24 hours a day can get it, and I can pretend it doesn't exist as normal programming continues.

 

A good question

I think there's a lot that sounds right in this David Brooks article in The Atlantic:

What Happened to American Conservatism?

 He seems to annoy a lot on the Left in America, but I don't mind him.

Bleaching history

This morning, while using bleach to clean a sink, I realised I knew nothing about the history of this very useful, cheap product.   This article reminds us that making fabrics white used to be a very laborious process:

Humans have been whitening fabrics for centuries; ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans bleached materials. As early as 300 B.C. , soda ash, prepared from burned seaweed, was used to clean and whiten cloth. During the Middle Ages, the Dutch perfected the bleaching of fabrics in a process called crofting, whereby fabrics were spread out in large fields for maximum sunlight exposure. Textile mills as far away as Scotland shipped their material to the Netherlands for this bleaching. The practice quickly spread throughout Europe, and bleaching fields were documented in Great Britain as early as 1322. In 1728 a bleaching company using Dutch methods went into business in Galloway, Scotland. In this process, the fabrics were soaked in a lye solution for several days, then "bucked," or washed clean. The fabrics were then spread out on the grass for weeks at a time. This process was repeated five or six times until the desired whiteness was achieved. Next, the fabric was treated with sour milk or buttermilk, and again bucked and crofted. This method was lengthy and tedious, and it monopolized large tracts of land that could have been used for farming.

Late in the 18th century, scientists discovered a chemical that had the same effect as crofting, but yielded much quicker results. In 1774, Swedish chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele discovered the chemical element chlorine, a highly irritating, green-yellowish gaseous halogen. In 1785, the French scientist Claude Berthollet found that chlorine was an excellent whitening agent in fabrics. Some mill operators attempted to expose their fabrics to chlorine gas, but the process was so cumbersome and the fumes so strong that these attempts were soon abandoned. 

Another site goes into more detail about how the Dutch cornered the whitening market:

The whitening process with this lye method is a bit tricky. Additionally, it is cumbersome because it consumes several hours. Furthermore, it warrants extra care as it is pretty strong.

The Dutch are attributed for the modification they brought about in this sphere in the 11th and 12th century AD. During this time, they emerged as experts on the science of laundering in the entire European community. To soften the harsh effects, they seasoned lye with sour milk. They never let anybody know about their secret and, as a result, the process remained a mystery for many years.

Till the mid-18th century, the Dutch dominated and maintained their supremacy in the bleaching trade. Thus, all brown linen, manufactured at the time principally in Scotland, was shipped to Holland for the purpose of bleaching.

The entire course of action, from its despatch to return was a long process - it took about seven to eight months. 

As for the modern form of liquid household bleach, it wasn't a thing til the start of the 20th century:

 It wasn't until 1913 that a company named "The Electro-Alkaline Co", started to make a sodium hypochlorite bleach by chlorinating a solution of caustic soda, also known as sodium hydroxide (Mulrooney, 2013).

And here's the history of that company (the Clorox company as it became):

Clorox was founded in 1913 as the Electro-Alkaline Company by five Oakland, California-area businessmen, only one of whom had any knowledge of chemistry. Their objective was to convert brine from ocean water into sodium hypochlorite bleach using an electrolytic process considered to be technologically advanced for its time. Each partner invested $100 in the new venture, and in August 1913 they purchased a plant site. The company's first product, Clorox liquid bleach, was packaged in five-gallon returnable containers and delivered by horse-drawn wagon to local breweries, dairies, and laundries for cleaning and disinfecting their facilities. Labels for the new product identified it as being "made by electricity."

An initial stock issue of 750 shares at $100 each provided $75,000 in start-up capital. The company struggled through its early years and often depended upon personal loans from its directors to pay expenses. 

In 1916 a less concentrated liquid bleach product--5 percent sodium hypochlorite instead of 21 percent--for household use was developed and sold in amber glass pint bottles. William C. R. Murray, the company's general manager, came up with the idea of producing and promoting household bleach. Murray's wife, Annie, gave away samples of the formula to customers of the family's Oakland-based grocery store. Its value as a laundry aid, stain remover, deodorant, and disinfectant was also promoted by door-to-door salespeople who demonstrated how a solution of Clorox bleach and water could whiten an ink-stained piece of fabric. Orders were collected on the spot and then given to local grocers who purchased the necessary inventory from the company to fulfill them. Small and local at the time, Clorox was not affected by World War I. 

That 21% sodium hypochlorite formulation must have been pretty powerful stuff, given how quickly your ordinary 4 to 5% solution can white spot your clothes if it gets on them undiluted.  I can imagine  a 21% formula dissolving a hole in your pants immediately.  (Not to mention what it might have done to your skin.)

Anyway, now I know more.

The medical news that will launch about 1,000 late night chat show jokes

Viagra could be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease, study finds

Researchers then used a database of claims from more than 7 million people in the US to examine the relationship between sildenafil and Alzheimer’s disease outcomes by comparing sildenafil users to non-users.

They found sildenafil users were 69% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than non-sildenafil users after six years of follow-up. To further explore the drug’s potential effect on Alzheimer’s disease, researchers developed a lab model that showed that sildenafil increased brain cell growth and targeted tau proteins, offering insights into how it might influence disease-related brain changes. The findings were published in Nature Aging.

Cheng cautioned that the study does not demonstrate a causal relationship between sildenafil and Alzhemer’s disease. Randomised clinical trials involving both sexes with a placebo control were needed to determine sildenafil’s efficacy, he said.

 

Still with us

I wondered recently if biologist and writer E.O. Wilson was still with us (I spotted an unread book of his at home, above my sock draw), and I see from this interview at Vox that he is.  Looks pretty sharp for 92, too.   

Positive reviews noted

It's not that I hold West Side Story in any particular high regard as a musical (although, truth be told, I have never watched all of the original movie - in fact, maybe only 15 mins or so?), but I am still thrilled when Spielberg gets a lot of love, and proves again that he worth 20 (at least) Tarantino's.

His movie, which doesn't start here until Boxing Day, is getting very good reviews from both American and British critics  (even The Guardian, usually a bit Lefty cynical of him, I reckon).  A score of 95 on Rottentomatoes, and 86 on the more reliable Metacritic.

In anticipation of my liking it too, I would say that the USO dance hall sequence in the much (and unfairly) maligned 1941 made me think as far back as 1979 that he would be fantastic at making a dance heavy musical. Here it is on Youtube:

 It's not a great quality upload (don't try to watch it full screen), but it still gives you an idea of how it was put together.  Apart from the camera movement and composition of shots, I like how it's not over-editted to the point where you can't admire the choreography and timing as an extended event - the main fault of most modern dance movies being in the choppy, rapid fire editing which ends up making a dance look like a hundred individual 1 second scenes stuck together in the cutting room.  

(Triva point:  I think I might have seen 1941 twice at the cinema - I liked it that much.  It remains a guilty pleasure.)

 

The longest wait

Bad news for my planned first opera outing (taken with an over-the-top, take-no-prisoners approach) to the Ring Cycle in Brisbane.

It's been delayed to - the end of 2023!

It was supposed to be at the end of 2020.   That's time enough for a whole new pandemic to start!

Still busy, but Morrison has appalling judgement

As Michelle Grattan writes:

Labor’s Chris Bowen made a very pertinent contribution on Monday to the debate over whether the Liberals should run Gladys Berejiklian, the subject of an ICAC investigation, in the Sydney seat of Warringah.

What would the Liberals and the media be saying if it were a Labor figure in a similar position? Bowen asked.

Of course we know the answer. They’d be outraged and they’d be justified.

The push within the Liberal party, backed by Scott Morrison, for Berejiklian to stand is a case of the “whatever it takes” brand of politics....

Morrison said Berejiklian was “put in a position of actually having to stand down and there was no finding of anything. Now I don’t call that justice.”

Without saying it explicitly he creates the impression the ICAC forced her to quit her job. In fact, she chose to resign, judging that just standing aside while the inquiry was on was politically untenable.

Steggall on Monday pushed back strongly against Morrison, saying the words he’d used in parliament were “outrageous”. “We should be seeing leadership to raise trust, call for more accountability, not undermine accountability.”....

Does Morrison really think it was okay for Berejiklian not to disclose her closeness to Maguire, who was well known as an urger of the first degree?

That certainly wasn’t the view of former NSW premier Mike Baird, a good friend of Berejiklian, who said in evidence at the ICAC “certainly I think [the relationship] should have been disclosed”. Baird is another high profile figure the Liberals have pursued to stand in Warringah, but without success.

If the Liberals fielded Berejiklian ahead of the ICAC report, they would be adding insult to injury in their performance on integrity issues.

Update:  and this:

 

Too much work

I got too much work on my hands at the moment.

Maybe should only post after work?   I always say stuff like this then find something during the day that demands a post.

How do you govern the Dunning-Kruger set who think experts are out to kill them and their children?

Yes, the stupid have always been with us, but outside of individual cults, never have the self certain holders of bad takes (not technically just "stupid", even though I am far past caring that they deserve any respect - I know these people make a living and are not dumb as such) had the ability to so easily reinforce their views in a community of the like minded.  Some reactions today at Cathollaxy, on the matter of Covid vaccination for children:

Tom says:

December 5, 2021 at 8:27 am

This is what happens when you insert politics into science. It’s pure evil.

Our politicians think they can ride public fear of Kung Flu all the way to re-election whatever the cost — especially to the most vulnerable, our children.

areff says:

December 5, 2021 at 8:55 am

The last time and place the young were sacrificed for the alleged benefit of the old was at the altar atop an Aztec pyramid.

Arky says:

December 5, 2021 at 10:19 am

STOP: DO NOT FLICK BACK TO THE OPEN THREAD JUST BECAUSE YOU SEE A GRAPH DOWN PAGE.

..
Eventually you’re going to conclude, like me, that most people are too stupid to comment.
This, sadly, now applies to the cat readership too.
I think those vaccines are eating people’s brains. The deterioration in the quality of commentary since the vaxx rollout is marked.
It’s like being the only person staying sober at a party and watching as the night goes on as the rest of the company starts slurring their words, and then finally decide to skinny dip in the dam opposite the ammonia plant.
We could be experiencing the moment the vaccines make people too damn stupid to read the graphs showing that the vaccines are making people too damn stupid to read the graphs.

Fat Tony says:

December 5, 2021 at 11:24 am

Health Minister Greg Hunt says subject to final checks from the vaccination experts on the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, the federal government will start rolling out the Pfizer vaccine to 5- to 11-year-olds from January 10.

This is why the protests must continue and escalate. There is a war to be fought and, hopefully, won.
These arseholes are not going to relax, or stop for a Christmas break, or to go fishing on the weekend. They want us all dead.

Fat Tony featured on another thread, making a protest trip for nothing:

Fat Tony says:

December 5, 2021 at 1:42 am

Just a thought regarding protests…
Do the people thinking we should hold off for a while think the politicians/government/WEF scum are going to have a break for a while too?

We have only a very short time before all resistance in Australia is crushed – we can worry about our weekend shit next year if we prevail.

The protests should be constant, on-going and escalating – our enemies are relentless and will crush us as quickly as possible. We have very little time before this turns very ugly.

I spent 3 hours today travelling from home to Brisbane’s Botanic Gardens and back home on the off-chance there would be a protest march today – there wasn’t.

 

Heh.  Loser.

Physicist gets up other physicist's noses, again

The particle physicists who spend much of their time lobbying governments for ever bigger particle accelerators must really dislike Sabine Hossenfelder's take on things.   She's at it again in today's video on the question of why there's more matter than anti-matter in the universe:  

Australian far Right muttering about violence

dover beach's Cathollaxy continues to attract those wishing for a violent uprising against Australian governments.   Today, the protest in Melbourne was apparently smaller, according to "Behind Enemy Lines":

It’s a much smaller crowd than the last two weeks. Still a decent crowd, given that people have responsibilities that don’t end on weekends. Plenty of familiar faces and flags. Am still seeing some newbies, too (welcome, Japan!).

So, here we are.

None of the federation’s checks-and-balances safeguards have protected what was left of our already much-diminished rights. And the normies’ attempts at a People Power approach hasn’t achieved what they hoped for (because of course People Power is just another example of the left’s perpetual money-go-round).

Granted, I’ve been happy to turn out for protests because it shows the government’s lack of legitimacy. Plus, ordinary people need to know they aren’t alone.

Well, now they know.

Yet Victoria now lives under a dictatorial enabling act while the federal government, courts and major political parties sit on their collective thumb.

Barring any surprise relief, the ‘normal’ political process has just ended.

A new stage begins.

Oh and earlier this week, dover beach, a fool, leaves up a post featuring a string of images, ending with one of Dan Andrews in the Obama "Hope" poster format, but substituted with "Rope".  A real knee slapper, that one.

Update:  for some reason, I couldn't upload it last night, but here it is:

 Where's that National Security Hotline - here it is 1800 000 634. 

Blunt humour

I saw this pop up on Twitter, and James Blunt endorsing it.   Very funny, and you know, I don't recall seeing the video for the song before, which was pretty remarkable.   

Follow the link. 

Judith Sloan wrong (what a surprise)

Hey, have a look at this article from Judith Sloan in the rubbish Australian Spectator from July 2021, whining about how she can't read the Economist now because it's too "woke/green".   

Quite the compendium of bad right wing takes, such as:

Brexit – OK, anti-Brexit – has been another pet topic for the magazine. Its previous measured tone on matters European was no more. The Economist tried to fight the will of the British people to be free of the shackles of the European Union. ‘This deal must never be done’ was its motto.

Just think of the impact on the British economy. London’s financial hub would be decimated; living standards would slump; and pharmaceutical and other necessary goods would no longer be available.

Funny, but the "will of the British people" has now dropped to about 37% thinking it was right to leave Europe.  (A YouGov poll has it bouncing around the same figure, so it seems accurate.)

What about this curious statement:

Sensing perhaps that readers were tiring of the incessant Covid fearmongering, in recent issues, the Economist has been trying to change its tune. It has acknowledged the risk that media companies face in the near future of an ‘attention recession’.

It has actually put out some very useful comparative figures showing excess death rates over the past eighteen months for a large number of countries. These figures are not contaminated by inaccuracies of reporting in relation to cause of death.

What they show is that, apart from some countries in South America mainly, most countries have not experienced excess death rates – or have done so for a month or so. In fact, many countries have experienced negative excess death rates – below what would have been expected.

 I don't subscribe to the magazine, but Googling the topic, I have the strongest suspicion that this misrepresents (or misreads) whatever she was reading. 

Update:  amusingly, I see that some people think the Economist has gone right wing, at least on trans/identity issues:

Coorey goes right

I'm sure that it's been noted on Twitter that Phil Coorey has moved to the right in his current gig at the AFR.   Today's column has this quasi sympathetic take on Porter losing his job:

Porter’s life and career were destroyed by the publication of historic rape allegations which could never be proven and which he has vehemently denied. There is a degree of sympathy towards him from colleagues, mindful that the new standard is that allegation is enough to end a career.

“If he did it, then fair enough, if he didn’t, then he’s been treated like shit,” opined one senior Liberal. “We’ll never know.”

Either way, it doesn’t matter. Politics is ruthless and this election campaign is shaping up to be especially so. The numbers are tight, both sides expect a close result and, more than ever, every seat matters. Including Pearce.

There's no consideration in those paragraphs that the biggest problem was the Morrison method of trying to push through this - regardless of Porter's denials.

As I am sure many people would agree, if Porter, as the nations top law officer under a serious allegation of past crime, had immediately offered to stand aside while there was an enquiry which examined the matter and gave him a "balance of probabilities" clearance, I reckon he could have survived.  But he (and Morrison) chose to fight it with all guns blazing and it didn't wash with the public. 

There is no reason for sympathy at all.  

Just the worst

Greg Sargent goes to town on Trump and his family over their stupidly political decision to refuse to mask up even after he had tested positive:

The operating principle for the Trump family is impunity from rules, laws and accountability at all costs. Indeed, soon after it became known that Trump had covid, the Commission on Presidential Debates complained that his family had violated all protocols by attending the debate maskless.

Needless to say, nothing was done about this at the time, even as they brashly flouted those protocols before a national audience of millions.

In retrospect, now that we know Trump — and likely those around him as well — knew that he’d tested positive for covid, this stands as yet another example of our total underestimation of this clan’s depraved disregard for rules, norms, and any sense of basic decency and responsibility to those around them.

 Quite simply, you have to be stupid, or a jerk, or a combination of those two factors in varying degrees, to defend Trump as a person.   

Update:  Allahpundit notes that Meadows, ridiculously, is now trying to agree with Trump that the mainstream media is reporting "fake news."  Which has lead to one theory:

Did he think he was … doing Trump a favor? Tim Miller has a theory:

The timeline as laid out by Meadows indicates that Trump tested positive for COVID three days before that debate, then followed up with a second negative test, then quit taking tests altogether so that he wouldn’t be prevented from debating.

Trump has kinda sorta disputed this version of events via fax, though it’s unclear why his own former chief of staff, a toadying supplicant, would be peddling fake news. It seems much more likely that Trump is using weasel words and Meadows is such a moron that he thought relaying this story made his old boss look like a Strong Fighting Man for all the poorly endowed super fans in need of a big daddy. Trump is so alpha that he beat Sleepy Joe in a debate while he had COVID!

 

Excellent news

Take him down:

Two Georgia election workers targeted by former U.S. President Donald Trump in a vote-rigging conspiracy theory have sued a far-right website that trumpeted the false story, alleging it incited months of death threats and harassment against them.

The defamation suit against The Gateway Pundit was filed Thursday by Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a voter registration officer in the Fulton County elections office, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who was a temp worker for the 2020 election. The women were featured in a Reuters report published Wednesday on their ordeal.

As I have said before, it bothers me that it was absolutely obvious, watching social media, that these women would be being insanely harassed and death threatened by Trumpian wingnuts - but the mainstream media seemed to take no strong interest in following their story and doing what it could to counter the insanity as it directly related to them. 

Reuters should not be the only media that was actively pursuing this story, although their belated account is pretty good.

"Metagut"

Over at Science, an article about how hippos crapping prodigiously in their ponds means they share a lot of gut microbiome, as well as creating some fetid, deadly pools of water:

Hippos (Hippopotamus amphibius) already have a reputation for modifying their environment. At night, they head to shore to fill up on grass, then they return to the water to digest and excrete the leftovers, basically fertilizing the water. Gut bacteria help them digest these meals, and some escape in the dung excreted into the water. “Much of this dung is alive—microbially speaking,” says Douglas McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California (UC), Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the work.

Suspecting that gut microbes might survive outside the gut, researchers led by Christopher Dutton, an ecologist at the University of Florida, collected water from hippo pools along the Mara River, which flows through the Serengeti in Kenya and Tanzania. During the dry season, some of these pools—which can be up to the size of an ice hockey rink and can support a few to scores of hippos—get cut off from the river’s flow. The team sequenced RNA from hippo dung and the pools, choosing ones with moderate flow, low flow, or no flow to assess the impact of ever-more concentrated dung.

The more stagnant the pool, the more hippo gut microbes survived in the water, the team concludes today in Scientific Reports. The bacteria represented a “metagut,” in which one animal’s microbes could easily infect other hippos, the scientists say, possibly boosting the digestive capabilities and immune defenses of all the hippos in the pond. (There might be more pathogens as well, however).

"Metagut".  Lulz.

 

Very James Bond

Well, this sounds somewhat creepy, and reminds me of the nanobot menace that featured in No Time to Die:

The robots are alive, and now they can reproduce.

That’s not a sequel to “The Terminator.” It’s the result of new research showing that microscopic life-forms made of frogs’ stem cells can self-replicate in a way not seen in other animals or plants.

These xenobots, named for the African frog Xenopus laevis from which they are made, could already move around, display collective behavior and heal themselves. A study released Monday suggests that the cell clumps also can be engineered to sustain themselves for at least five generations.

“There’s nothing theoretical that would stop us from making these out of human cells,” said Sam Kriegman, an author of the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “They could perform useful work inside of human bodies in places were traditional robots can’t go because our bodies detest even the smallest amount of metal.”

 

Foul Georgians of London

Back to a matter of long standing intrigue - how people before the 20th century put up with the risk of extremely serious venereal disease (most notably, syphilis) and just went about having risky sex anyway.     

I think I had missed this study from 2020:

250 years ago, over one-fifth of Londoners had contracted syphilis by their 35th birthday, historians have calculated.

The same study shows that Georgian Londoners were over twice as likely to be treated for the disease as people living in the much smaller city of Chester at the same time (c.1775), and about 25 times more likely than those living in parts of rural Cheshire and north-east Wales....

The researchers are confident that one-fifth represents a reliable minimum estimate, consistent with the rigorously conservative methodological assumptions they made at every stage. They also point out that a far greater number of Londoners would have contracted gonorrhea (or, indeed, chlamydia) than contracted syphilis in this period.

"Our findings suggest that Boswell's London fully deserves its historical reputation," Szreter said. "The city had an astonishingly high incidence of STIs at that time. It no longer seems unreasonable to suggest that a majority of those living in London while young adults in this period contracted an STI at some point in their lives."

"In an age before prophylaxis or effective treatments, here was a fast-growing city with a continuous influx of young adults, many struggling financially. Georgian London was extremely vulnerable to epidemic STI infection rates on this scale."

Although I knew about the mercury treatment for syphilis, I didn't know this level of detail:

Mercury salivation treatment was considered a reliable and permanent cure for syphilis but it was debilitating and required at least five weeks of residential care. This was provided, for free, by London's largest hospitals, at least two specialist hospitals, and many poor law infirmaries, as well as privately for those who could afford it.

To maximise the accuracy of their estimates, Szreter and Siena drew on large quantities of data from hospital admission registers and inspection reports, and other sources to make numerous conservative estimates including for bed occupancy rates and duration of hospital stays. Along the way, they excluded many patients to avoid counting the false positives that arise from syphilis's notoriously tricky diagnosis.

Of particular value to the researchers were surviving admissions registers from the late 1760s through to the 1780s for St Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals which consistently housed 20-30 per cent of their patients in 'foul' wards reserved for residential treatment for the pox. But the researchers also drew on evidence for St Bartholomew's hospital; workhouse infirmaries; and two subscription hospitals, the Lock and the Misericordia, which also cared for 'Foul' men and women.

Patients in London's foul wards often battled their diseases for six months or more before seeking hospitalization.

Here's a link to the full article, which towards the end, makes some other remarkable comments about sex in the period:

Historians of eighteenth-century sexuality have long relied on birth rates, especially those out of wedlock, as an empirical foundation block on which assertions about sexuality can rest. As is well known, rates of illegitimate births and prenuptial pregnancy rose substantially during the long eighteenth century, such that by the early nineteenth century a quarter of all first births were delivered by unmarried women and almost 40 per cent of brides had conceived before their wedding day.83 Demographic historians view this as mainly a predictable corollary of earlier and more frequent marriage in a more dynamic labour market.84 Others have argued this must signal a changing sexual culture, one that historians like Porter or Dabhoiwalla present as sexual liberation, but which scholars like Trumbach and Hitchcock cast in the darker shades of male predation and assault.85 If there was such a new sexual regime manifest during the second half of the eighteenth century, it is typically presented as developing in London first. Wilson argued that this new sexual culture is borne out by London's illegitimacy ratio, which was considerably higher than the national average. However, Levene has revised Wilson's figures downward from 12 per cent to 7 per cent of London baptisms, from three times to slightly less than twice the national average of 4 per cent, noting that while London's rate was higher, the capital was not a ‘sink of illegitimacy’.8

The article goes on to consider what their STI rate findings might mean in relation to this, but it's too much to post here.  All pretty interesting, though.

Who could have seen this coming?

Thomas Friedman writes in the NYT:

The judges have voted and the results are in: President Donald Trump’s decision to tear up the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 — a decision urged on by his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — was one of the dumbest, most poorly thought out and counterproductive U.S. national security decisions of the post-Cold War era.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Moshe Ya’alon was the Israeli defense minister when the nuclear agreement was signed, and he strongly opposed it. But at a conference last week, he said, according to a summary by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, “as bad as that deal was, Trump’s decision to withdraw from it — with Netanyahu’s encouragement — was even worse.” Ya’alon called it “the main mistake of the last decade” in Iran policy.

Two days later, Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s top military commander when Trump withdrew from the deal, offered a similar sentiment, which Haaretz reported as “a net negative for Israel: It released Iran from all restrictions, and brought its nuclear program to a much more advanced position.”

It sure has. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently reported that Iran has amassed a stock of enriched uranium hexafluoride that independent nuclear experts calculate is sufficient to produce weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear bomb in as little as three weeks.

 

 

On historical cycles -the Fremen mirage

I saw this on Twitter, in response to a Noah Smith tweet, but haven't had time to read it yet.  Seems good and interesting, though.  

On unique combinations

I must admit, if ever I had heard this before, it did not stick in my mind.  But I'm finding it so remarkable, I'm inclined to think it is new to me:

The chances that anyone has ever shuffled a pack of cards (fairly) in the same way twice in the history of the world, or ever will again, are infinitesimally small. The number of possible ways to order a pack of 52 cards is ’52!’ (“52 factorial”) which means multiplying 52 by 51 by 50… all the way down to 1. The number you get at the end is 8×10^67 (8 with 67 ‘0’s after it), essentially meaning that a randomly shuffled deck has never been seen before and will never be seen again. So next time you shuffle a deck, you should feel pretty special for holding something so unique! Try for yourself – if you make friends with every person on earth and each person shuffles one deck of cards each second, for the age of the Universe, there will be a one in a trillion, trillion, trillion chance of two decks matching.

This came to my attention because all knowing Google, in the form of the Youtube recommendation, wanted me to know it.  Here's the video about it, that makes the pleasing point about the uniqueness of each human, too:

 

Oh - I see now that I search for it on Youtube that this fact turned up on Stephen Fry's QI, too. So maybe I did hear it there, but it just didn't sink in?   Anyway, expanding the point to the uniqueness of each human is a pleasing humanist one that makes it feel more cosmically relevant.

Cinema is starting to look up

So, this Christmas brings me adult science fiction (Dune) and Steven Spielberg directing his first musical (West Side Story) which seems to be getting pretty positive comment from the first screening in New York.  

Speaking of Spielberg, I watched Austin Powers in Goldmember for the first time last weekend.  I had not known of the Spielberg participation - showing that he (and Tom Cruise) are very good sports.  

 

So, how's that Brexit going?

Not very well for pigs, or pig farmers.  (I guess the pigs were going to die anyway, but it is a waste to breed an animal and kill it not for food, but just because you can't afford to keep it living.)

From UK Sky News, which is not nuts, like our Sky News wannabe Fox News outlet:

Every farmers' worst nightmare is coming to pass; the mass culling of healthy animals because there simply aren't enough butchers to process them and get them off farms...

I'm officially out of the Game

Last night, I tried watching the 4th episode of Squid Game, and I'm officially out.  It struck me as a particularly unpleasant episode.

But I just can't get over the fundamentally stupid things about it as a story - even allowing for fictional fantasy.

And the violence is striking me as just too sadistic now - I am disappointed that there are not more people saying that character arc, or meta commentary on rabid capitalism, or whatever, does not justify this level of routine violence. 

Here are some articles that support my condemnation of the show:

Squid Game: 9 Things That Don't Make Sense About The Series

(That article shows me that some of the things I already think are ridiculous about it are not resolved by the show's end.)

Things about Netflix's Squid Games that Make Absolutely No Sense

Same things, really.

There are plenty more links, and I might add some later.

Update:  interesting article at The Conversation about the terrible history of labour fights in modern South Korea.    Yet, haven't I read that South Koreans themselves are not the biggest fans of the show?

Update:  I am pleased to see that Variety and NYT both gave it negative reviews.  I am not alone.

So, nothing much has changed...

Amused to see this on Twitter:

Not all engineers are know-it-all jerks; it's just that if you meet a male know-it-all jerk, betting that he's an engineer would give you decent odds.   (All based on my work experience of some decades past.)

Update: this tweet noticed this morning:

The comment in full:

Are they getting frustrated, yet?

I will have to check on the Cathollaxy blog later, but I trust that the anti-government COVID response protesters are getting frustrated that the media covered last Saturday's protests with a bit of a shrug, with images of the attendees being just outright anti-vaxxer nuts.  

They might be learning that just because social media allows protest organising to be easy as pie amongst a minority, it can still be ineffective in actually achieving anything.

 

Back to the cinema

I can't even remember the last, pre-pandemic, movie I saw at the cinema.  Maybe if I search my movie review posts I could work it out.

But, happily, yesterday I discovered that the new cinemas quite close to home are really well fitted out, and cheap, and I am happy to get back into this movie going thing, as soon as more good movies start coming out.  (I'm in on the new Spiderman, but the way.  The Tom Holland incarnation and Dr Strange:  I can't resist.)

Anyway, yesterday it was No Time to Die, and I was pretty impressed.   In fact, I think it would be a good idea to not make another Bond, the Daniel Craig era was just so good, everything is going to suffer in comparison*.  (I'm even a quasi defender of Quantum of Solace:  although just re-reading my review now, I see it may partly have been because I saw it before I saw Casino Royale, and so the effectiveness of Craig in the role sort of blew me away.)

What to say about it?   The action was really well handled (although tending at times to the "too quickly edited, shaky cam" end of the spectrum in some of the up close fights); I think it could have been trimmed slightly, but I was never bored, and I didn't notice anyone leave the cinema for a toilet break during its long run time;  I tend to agree with most reviewers that Skyfall is a smidge better,  but they both have the sense of gravitas that made Bond feel real.

I do have something to say that I haven't read elsewhere, although it must have occurred to some reviewer, somewhere:   the screenwriters (sort of) lucked out with COVID giving a metaphoric topicality to the evil, world threatening device in this story - a fast spreading, silent infectious agent of sorts, weaponised (as Right wingers love to fantasise is the case with our current pandemic.)

Finally: unfortunately, one of the two big plot surprises was ruined for me by Peter Van Onselen.   I agree with all the hate and douche-calling that followed this on his twitter account, and I hope he lost a thousand followers.  He's a jerk, honestly.

OK, really finally:  given our tough COVID response in Australia, it's a surprise to realise that the rest of the world is back to the cinema - I see that it has made $758 million internationally, although Variety claims that "insiders" say it needs to make $900 million to break even.  (What a joke Hollywood and accounting is.)  Anyway, it looks like it should make that goal.  Congratulations, everyone. 

 *  I can advise, though, that the last thing on the screen at the end of the credits is "James Bond will return".  I then confirmed with the handful of others remaining in the cinema that this was why we were still there.  

My unpopular opinion of the day

I don't care for Sondheim's work, although to be honest, I haven't really paid close enough attention to work out why.  Tentatively, I think I can safely say there's not much sense of fun in anything he's done, is there?   That's the overall impression I get when I think of him..a bit heavy and, um, over-earnest?  Or something.  

Come to think of it, that's probably an odd criticism from someone who recently watched all of the Ring cycle and enjoyed it!  But hey, whatever.  If some facist dictators were Sondheim groupies, I might be more interested in him.

Morrison's done

In the history books, PM Morrison is going down as the shallow, hapless PM who thought he could PR his way to success, while not being bright enough to realise he's not good at PR.   This line of attack yesterday was just so inane:

The Liberal Party seems to really be specialising in giving us living examples of the Peter Principle, this last decade.   Abbott was perhaps the best example of that, as he arguably gave earlier indications of maybe being a good political operator, only to turn out as PM to be a weirdo with a "mummy" thing going on with his chief of staff.    Turnbull's problem was not exactly one I would call a Peter Principle issue;  more just a simple lack of courage against the climate change deniers in his own party.  But the PP definitely applies to PM Smirko.  It's just that it hit very early in his working life, and somehow didn't stop further promotion. Politics can be like that, given it's often a case of "least worst option".

Who's next to take the mantle of "risen to his level of incompetence"?  Seems likely it will be Dutton, the potential PM with the weirdest looking head since Federation.  The only problem is, you can see the media narrative now:  even if he proves the slightest bit effective as a campaigner, journalists will not be able to resist a "surprise! the public is finding him likeable after all" take.  

Guardian click bait review

That's my theory behind this headline (and review):  

The Beatles: Get Back review – eight hours of TV so aimless it threatens your sanity

 Most people tweeting about it seem to strongly disagree - but then, they might have gone the full 8 hours yet.   

(As for my own views - like everyone else, I was pretty stunned at the clarity of the film that was shown on the preview some months ago - as if it was made yesterday (subtle pun) instead of 50 years ago.   And it was very pleasing to see them looking happier than we all had been led to believe.  But I am not the world's biggest Beatle fan, so yeah, 8 hours might be pushing it for me.)

Dumb

You would think she might be smart enough to hold off making this point for a case where it didn't take two months for the white men who shot a black unarmed man on the street (and videoed it) to be arrested.

And for which a white prosecutor is being charged for obstruction of justice.

A depressing read

A really bleak assessment in an opinion piece in the Washington Post:  Republican authoritarianism is here to stay.

A taste:

What has happened in the United States over the past five years is, in many ways, a classic of the autocratic genre. A populist leader rose to power, attacked the press, politicized rule of law, threatened to jail his opponents, demonized minorities, praised dictators abroad, spread conspiracy theories and lies, and then sought to seize power despite losing an election. When such despotic figures emerge in democracies, their political party has two options: push back against the would-be despot while reasserting democratic principles, or remake the party in his image. Republicans have quite clearly chosen the latter path....

What’s left, then, is some distant hope that a profound national crisis could jolt Republicans away from their embrace of authoritarian politics. Just as the tragedy of Sept. 11 brought Democrats and Republicans together, perhaps a major national shock could cause Republicans to rally back toward democracy. But we’ve already had two major crises — Jan. 6 and a once-in-a-century pandemic — and they’ve made the GOP more extreme, not less. If a violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol aimed at overturning an election and more than 770,000 dead Americans in the pandemic aren’t enough of a jolt, what would it take?

The conclusion is depressing, but we must face reality: The battle for the Republican Party is over. The Trumpian authoritarians have won — and they’re not going to be defeated by pro-democracy Republicans anytime soon.

 

Out of Africa

 Waiting for Adam Creighton to laugh at this. 

Silly old Cardinal

So, I learn from Cathollaxy that Breitbart has a story up about how George Pell spent part of his time in cells writing up his whiny, non-expert, and patently out of date thoughts on how climate change is not real. 

We've long known he was the captive of ageing crank geologist (and atheist) Ian Plimer's utter nonsense of climate change denial - funny how a religious conservative let himself be conned by a non believer into thinking that it was all hysteria caused by modern folk having lost religion! 

Still more "more than I expected"

I'm referring to the accuracy of GPS, about which I will never stop feeling awe as a technological and scientific marvel.   I didn't realise, until watching a youtube about its monitoring applications, that high end, scientific research versions of GPS receivers can be this accurate:

High-end users boost GPS accuracy with dual-frequency receivers and/or augmentation systems. These can enable real-time positioning within a few centimeters, and long-term measurements at the millimeter level.  

I have the feeling I knew this before, but had forgotten.    

Here's the video, by the way:

Someone in comments to the video notes this: 

I frequently vacation in coastal Oregon, where earth movement is a big concern. GPS stations (the most accurate in the world) measure earth movement as small as one third of a millimetre and they discovered the study area oscillates east and west every two weeks. Japan uses the same accurate GPS equipment, and I believe Oregon got their equipment from Japan (the US military probably has more accurate stuff). Good post! Thanks for sharing it with us.

Other people question the millimetre accuracy, but it seems not out of the question:

I'd assume it's not just GPS. I'm 99% sure GPS does not provide millimetre level resolution. They're probably using a combination of positioning systems.

HotelPapa100

8 days ago

 @Andy Lord  AFAIK the method involves multiple measurements and statistical evaluation. Means can be vastly more precise than individual measurements.

2

ooooneeee

8 days ago

 @Andy Lord  agreed, using GPS and Galileo simultaneously should give them much higher accuracy.

More than I expected...

 

How Antarctica got so cold

Here's the short version:

New research has shed light on a sudden cooling event 34 million years ago, which contributed to formation of the Antarctic ice sheets.

High-resolution simulations of ocean circulations show that the tectonic opening of Southern Ocean seaways caused a fundamental reorganisation of ocean currents, heat transport and initiated a strong Antarctic surface water cooling of up to 5°C....

“A 600m change in the depth of an ocean gateway can cause a dramatic drop in coastal temperatures and, therefore, the fate of the Antarctic ice sheet.”

The last land bridges connecting Antarctica with its surrounding continents, Australia, and South America, broke off about 34 million years ago. This tectonic event did not only leave the polar continent isolated by other land masses; it also led to a major reorganisation of ocean currents in the Southern Ocean.

A circumpolar current started to flow, preventing subpolar gyres from transporting warm surface waters to the Antarctic coast. At the same time, ice sheets started to build on Antarctica and the Earth underwent one of its most fundamental climate change events, transitioning from warm Greenhouse to cold Icehouse conditions.

The role of the opening seaways in the formation of Antarctic ice sheets versus decreasing amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, has always been strongly debated by scientists.

 And here's the long version, in Nature Communications (open access).

 

Noam the Gnome

Physically, he's seen better days:

 

Too stupid to engage with (continued)

There is much excitement over at dover beach's Cathollaxy, a pro-Christofascist blog, over the "success" of the large demonstrations in Melbourne and Sydney last week over vaccination and mandates, etc.   

The so called ‘governments’ are taking orders from above.

Unless the freedom fighters start proper full blooded violence, they wont win.

and

 flyingduk says:

November 23, 2021 at 11:12 am

Unless the freedom fighters start proper full blooded violence, they wont win.

Quite, some people are afraid this will lead to all out war, the people v their governments – I am afraid it wont.

Which led to a severe dressing down by the blog controller:  

dover0beach says:

November 23, 2021 at 11:44 am

Can we ease up on the rhetoric please.

Of course, they're paying attention:

struth says:

November 23, 2021 at 5:57 pm

Hey, …..Hey, ……..they’re killing us.
They are killing our children.
They’re imprisoning, enslaving us.
They have taken all our freedoms and separated families.
The army are now dragging people away to camps.

But………Don’t be so uncivil and threaten violence back, FFS, says the forever submissive.
Write a strongly worded letter.
That should do it.
Well it didn’t work did it?
And peaceful rallies just increase the speed of their growing tyranny as they start to see the need for urgency.
What do they need to do before you suggest they’ve crossed a line , here?
At what point do you pick up a rock?

 Dover beach was at the rally himself, and posted boring photos of it.  He routinely notes dubious analysis of the Covid vaccines.

Catholic conservative wannabe Christo-fascism at its finest.  [That's sarcasm, for any Federal domestic violence authorities who are reading.]

 

Grandpa Xi

An article at The Conversation, about how Chinese school books are developing the personality cult around Xi Jinping.

I don't know - in the digital world, it feels it should be harder for a personality cult to be built up in children - or teenagers - especially when Grandpa won't let them play video games except for a few hours one night a week.