A simple problem with Covid

I've been meaning to note that I read a thread on Twitter recently, perhaps from an overseas doctor, which made the somewhat under-appreciated point that a big problem COVID presents, especially with the wildly transmissible Omicron, for hospital managers is the lengthy period positive testing staff have to be away from work.  Hence, even with modest increases in actual COVID patients in a hospital, it may still be really suffering from inadequate staff for all of their patients.

Certified

I've mentioned before the frenetic Twitter commentator Richard Hanania, who got recommended by a couple of well known internet intellectuals and seems to have thereby picked up a heap of followers.

But, seriously, the guy is a certifiable creepy libertarian sociopath, if you ask me.  And look, it might be a cheap shot, but he has a face that would fit so well with being a Batman villain - he's got a Joker vibe going even without makeup.

The latest evidence:

This take completely ignores that Right Wing media (Fox News particularly) has combined undying support of Trump with vaccine/Covid scepticism for a year or more now.   There is no reason to think they are going to start believing Trump on this issue - they are going to put it down to "something Donald likes to bullshit about, but we like him anyway."  They know they still have "and just like that, Covid will go away" Trump from 2 years ago.

Worse:  

He is, like so many at Catallaxy, sure that there is a masculinity crisis ruining the world.   It's a view often held by incels, of which it would hardly be surprising Richard is a member.  There is also considerable irony in him calling others "twitter dorks".

 

Yeah, just being a smug jerk. 

OK, so this doctor's recommendation sounds over the top and ripe for ridicule.  Problem is, Richard's reaction sounds like he wants to blow up her apartment and practice and would think he is doing the world a good.

Sociopath who thinks we understand Omicron enough to know it's safe to spread.  We do not.   In a month or two, we will know how dangerous it is.  But it's foolish in the extreme to be like him.

 

He doesn't have to manage hospitals and health systems - so all good!   Richard's happy that people want to avoid him - a very reasonable reaction, given he doesn't care if he gives someone else a disease that might kill them.   

Comment that made me laugh:

Japanese content

First, France 24, of all channels, has a short but good report on the decline of the Yakuza in Japan:

 

And secondly, quite a charming short video by young Japanese guy Shunchan, in which he surprises his grandparents with a visit after quitting his salaryman job. (He's not your typical Japanese!) My daughter keeps saying "is he gay?" based on his often somewhat Korean boy band-ish fashion sense, but he has clearly indicated in previous videos that he isn't.  I always feel a bit sorry for him, as a guy who can't really work out what he wants to do in his life, but he has a very likeable Youtube persona. 

This isn't very Christmassy, but: an exorcism co-incidence

Well isn't that odd - American funny man (I don't really know what his main job is) "JonTron" finally put out another video, and it's a review of a fairly recent (and terribly, terribly amateurish and unconvincing) documentary by the original director of The Exorcist, William Friedkin, about a real life exorcism in Rome.   The guy swears a bit, but he's pretty funny:

 

And then, today, I see this article in The Guardian, which seems just a co-incidence: 

Boy whose case inspired The Exorcist is named by US magazine 

The article gives some details of the case, which dates back to 1949.   If they are correct (a big "if"), and comparing it to the Rome in Friedkin's flaky documentary, it would indicate that demonic possessions is not what it used to be.

Long time readers would know I am not totally averse to "woo"; I think I even count as more than merely "woo curious".   But I've never been all that sold on demonic possession.  And, as it happens, I've only ever seen little bits of The Exorcist, and feel very confident that it would not be at all unsettling for me.   I think it looks very dated and ludicrous, and find it hard to believe that it did convincingly scare people back in the day.

True, that

 

Why?

I assume from the photo that the article is talking about commercial rent hikes?   If so, why would this be the case?   Companies have just spent 2 years learning they can operate pretty well with half the staff on any one day working from home.  My expectation would be that city commercial renters will only take half the space when they renew, leading to a glut of cheaper space available in the city.

Where is that expectation wrong?

Hossenfelder tries to explain superdeterminism

Well, I knew she would have to be doing this soon, given the recent arXiv paper in which she was a co-author.  Here's Sabine Hossenfelder trying to explain superdeterminism and her expectation that it
solves all quantum oddities:

 

I don't understand the issues fully, but my impression is that Sabine underplays the philosophical significance of it. I wonder what other physicists think.  (To give more detail:  she seems to make an argument that it has no "real" implication at the macro level - but I am not sure that's right...) 

Update:   from comments following the video on Youtube, I pick out a couple that deal with the retro-causality interpretation, which she never mentions:

Before measurement of the particle in the double slit experiment, it is non-localised in time, it literally occupies all possible positions starting when it was emitted up to the point it is observed. This is how a single particle can go through both slits and interfere with itself. After it is observed, it becomes localised in time and acts like a single particle, not a wave. This is why observing before the slits eliminates interference, and does not if you observe afterwards. The crazy part is that the act of observation retroactively affects the past. If you observe before the slit, you do not get interference. If you observe afterwards, you get interference. This is because the wave collapse propagates backwards to the point the particle was emitted. Particles moving forwards and backwards through time acting like a wave, until the point they are observed at which point they never moved forwards and backwards through time in the first place and were always single particles, explains all the 'spookiness' and also explains that the hidden variables are hidden in time and as entities moving linearly through time we will never be able to observe them. Once you get your head around this concept, the weird behaviour of particles in quantum mechanics becomes obvious and logical.

 Mind you, the commenter was "Microdoser", so I'm not sure I should trust him (or her) given my skepticism about that practice.

Another one:

I would add that many physicists assume entaglement can only propagate forward in time. Basic time invariance says that entanglement must be able to propagate backward in time just as well as forward.

And:

So Is Superdeterminism described more by the future affecting the past, or by particles/ wave functions reacting differently depending on what is around them and what they interact with? thank you for the video

Last one:

If the detectors are far apart, and they do influence the measurement, then there is fast-than-light effects happening. (aka "spooky action at a distance"). And maybe this is the misunderstanding in communications with Bell or Zeilinger. As far I understand, they assumed superdeterminism to be a loophole to remove non-locality, in the sense to say the detector isn't actually choosing the angle of measurement, randomly, but is deterministic as well, and the particles kind of "know" this. Bell even got so far as to take a photon from the cosmic background radiation to determine which angle to measure at, which would leave the entanglement of the detector all the way back to the big bang.. and thats what I think they called absurd in "no free will". Thus SD and keeping non-locality, yeah why not. No issue with it, it is supposed to fix non-locality, I really would like to see a backdown how it should work, without making the universe holistic (and thats where I said in effect destryoing non-locality all together). Honestly, I don't have an issue with real faster-than-light effects as long the "cosmic censorship" is somehow in affect that it doesn't allow information communication. So maybe the wave form is physically real (the so called particle is really smeared out) and maybe the collapse is really faster than light. And maybe in case of entangled particles the waves are really connected far apart until collapse. So what. If this is reality, I don't care if Einstein wouldn't consider it beautiful ;)

Another bit of "yeah, but apart from that, what did the Romans ever do for us?"

New research suggests that the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate is the one that built the Biar Aqueduct, the most sophisticated ancient aqueduct of the Jerusalem area. The study also uncovered the way the unique aqueduct was constructed.

The aqueduct is part of the ancient water system serving Jerusalem. Biar, the shortest of the aqueducts, brought water from a point south of Bethlehem to Solomon’s Pools. Other aqueducts carried the water from there to Jerusalem. The five-kilometer aqueduct includes the Biar Spring, an underground shaft tunnel running about three kilometers, a surface channel and dozens of piers used for its construction and maintenance....

Archaeologists exploring Jerusalem have known of the aqueduct for a good 150 years. It has been dated from the Hasmonean period, in the second century B.C.E., through Herod to the late Roman period of the second century C.E. Yechezkel’s team used carbon dating of plaster to suggest that the aqueduct was built in the mid-first century C.E., before the destruction of the Second Temple. They believe Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect from 26/27 C.E. to 36/37 C.E., known for condemning Jesus to death, ordered its construction.

It's from a Haaretz article, which is quite interesting.

The mug

This is the photo print mug I got made at Kmart last weekend.  Cute, no?

Rats and New York

 The BBC reports on the new (Covid led) trend for outdoor dining in New York city, and its detrimental effects, including more rats than ever before.

The city's ridiculous garbage collection system gets plenty of mention too, but it would seem no one considers that a move to actually using bins with lids is possible.   Surely more rubbish being put out in bins with lids helps limit rat access to it?

This looks good

This movie trailer is getting a lot of positive comment - and I can understand why.  

 

Yes, it's another "multiverse" themed movie, but (no insult to the new Spiderman, I do intend seeing it) it's good to see it being done with fresh new characters.

Real tragedy

Children's deaths in the news are always distressing, but it feels particularly worse in the imagination when it happens while having innocent fun.

The news is going world wide, with the New York Times story indicating that this might be the biggest number of deaths from any "bouncy castle" accident.  Ugh.

A modern tragedy

So a woman in a private hospital room is upset:

Cassie of Sydney says:

December 16, 2021 at 1:54 pm

1. I was double jabbed by October 2021…the AZ vaccine.

2. As demanded by NSW Health and all NSW hospitals, prior to my admittance to hospital on Monday 6 December, on Friday 3 December I had my first Covid test ever. It returned negative.

3. Last Saturday morning, 11 December, before being transferred to another hospital, I had my second Covid test. It returned negative. I was transferred to my new hospital on Sunday morning 12 December.

4. On Tuesday afternoon 14 December, the first hospital rang the second hospital to tell them that I may have been in contact with someone who has tested positive for the Covid Omicron strain. The contact would have happened sometime Saturday afternoon. At about 4.30p.m. on Tuesday 14 December a nurse came in in protective clothing and performed a Covid test on me…..we are still waiting on the result.

5, So, since Tuesday 14 December, at 4.00 p.m. precisely, I have been isolated in my hospital room. I am not allowed to leave, no visitors. Nothing. The nurses and physio come in to the room attired in protective clothing….as though I have Ebola! 

6. We are still waiting on the result of the first Covid test however I have been told that as a matter of security the hospital does a second Covid test, this will be one done tomorrow afternoon and sent off.

7. I will not know any result until at least Sunday….so I am locked in a hospital room until 19 December.

8. I ask genuinely….what was the point of getting jabbed?

9. There is no way…and I mean no way….that I will be having a third, fourth, fifth or sixth jab.

10. Given the above, as you can all imagine my mental health at the moment is not the best, I hope this doesn’t impact my surgical recovery.

11. I am very upset.

Considering that she has more privacy than most get in hospital, food made for her, internet access and help on call, going berserk over a 5 day period of relative isolation strikes me a pretty pathetic plead for victimhood by a woman whose constant angry on line presence I now consider due to a mental weakness.   (She is getting plenty of support from the other tossers at Cathollaxy.)   

Toughen up, dear....

(I can afford to be rude to her, as she has been endlessly rude to me when engaging directly with her on Catallaxy.)

 

An article for anti vaxxers

How do people not feel furious at the anti-vax peddling Fox News and websites (including the Australian wingnut Christofascist ones) when you have credible and detailed reporting from actual hospitals about the crisis that the un-vaxxed cause?

Take this article, about the experience in Kentucky, from Bloomberg.   

It just shows the power of relentless political/culture war propaganda to susceptible minds, doesn't it?    

Update:   just appalling.  Fox News is a plain force for human suffering in the interests of a bunch of insane hypocrites making money:

 

Allahpundit is appalled too:

I wrote 1,000+ words this morning on the new data about whether Omicron is truly “mild” or not. It might be, or its mildness might be a partial mirage created by the youth and broad natural immunity from previous waves that South Africa enjoys. The key point in all analyses of Omicron, though, is that a virus that’s freakishly infectious, as this one appears to be, needs to also be freakishly mild for there not to be a surge in hospitalizations and deaths. Assume that Omicron is half as lethal as Delta but, as some studies have indicated, four times more transmissible. We’d expect a virus like that to produce twice the death toll Delta did (at least in the non-immune population) despite it being technically “milder.”...

The insanely steep spikes we’re seeing in European cases may not be evidence of Omicron surging and replacing Delta but evidence of Omicron and Delta infecting different sub-populations at the same time. That’s the CDC’s nightmare scenario, that Omicron will hit here full force but won’t sideline Delta by doing so. Instead the two will circulate in tandem, sometimes infecting the same people, and creating a double-whammy wave of sickness with Delta patients suffering somewhat more severe outcomes.

 If that’s true then Saphier’s advice is insanely reckless. She’s telling people, including unvaccinated people, to go out and have no fear when doing so risks exposing them to Delta, not just Omicron. What is she thinking? Can we maybe wait a month to confirm that the variant is nothing worse than the “sniffles” before giving this advice?

 

Cult fight

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.