The Earth seems kinda lucky

There's a really good article in Science talking about the Earth's inner core which starts:

Earth’s magnetic field, nearly as old as the planet itself, protects life from damaging space radiation. But 565 million years ago, the field was sputtering, dropping to 10% of today’s strength, according to a recent discovery. Then, almost miraculously, over the course of just a few tens of millions of years, it regained its strength—just in time for the sudden profusion of complex multicellular life known as the Cambrian explosion.

What could have caused the rapid revival? Increasingly, scientists believe it was the birth of Earth’s inner core, a sphere of solid iron that sits within the molten outer core, where churning metal generates the planet’s magnetic field. Once the inner core was born, possibly 4 billion years after the planet itself, its treelike growth—accreting a few millimeters per year at its surface—would have turbocharged motions in the outer core, reviving the faltering magnetic field and renewing the protective shield for life. “The inner core regenerated Earth’s magnetic field at a really interesting time in evolution,” says John Tarduno, a geophysicist at the University of Rochester. “What would have happened if it didn’t form?”

Indeed.  Is it possible that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that, while there may be plenty of planets rolling around the universe, few of them get or keep the type of protective magnetic field that Earth developed, pretty much at the right time?  

Other snippets from the article:

The ancients thought Earth’s center was hollow: the home of Hades or hellfire, or a realm of tunnels that heated ocean waters. Later, following erroneous density estimates of the Moon and Earth by Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley suggested in 1686 that Earth was a series of nested shells surrounding a spinning sphere that drove the magnetism witnessed at the surface.

Edmond was a bit ahead of his time.

Here's an illustration from it:

And more about the lucky timing of the revival of the magnetic field, due to the inner core forming:

All this complexity appears to be geologically recent. Scientists once placed the inner core’s birth back near the planet’s formation. But a decade ago, researchers found, using diamond anvils at outer core conditions, that iron conducts heat at least twice as fast as previously thought. Cooling drives the growth of the inner core, so the rapid heat loss combined with the inner core’s current size meant it was unlikely to have formed more than 1 billion years ago, and more than likely came even later. “There’s no way around a relatively recent appearance of the inner core,” says Bruce Buffett, a geodynamicist at UC Berkeley.

Tarduno realized rocks from the time might record the dramatic magnetic field changes expected at the inner core’s birth. Until recently, the paleomagnetic data from 600 million to 1 billion years ago were sparse. So Tarduno went searching for rocks of the right age containing tiny, needle-shaped crystals of the mineral titanomagnetite, which record the magnetic field’s strength at the time of their crystallization. In a 565-million-year-old volcanic formation on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, his team found the crystals—and convincing evidence that the magnetic field of the time was one-tenth the present day strength, they reported in 2019. The fragility of the field at the time has since been confirmed by multiple studies.

It was probably a sign that rapid heat loss from the outer core was weakening the convective motions that generate the magnetic field, says Peter Driscoll, a geodynamicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “The dynamo could have been close to dying,” he says. Its death could have left Earth’s developing life—which mostly lived in the ocean as microbes and protojellyfish—exposed to far more radiation from solar flares. In Earth’s atmosphere, where oxygen levels were rising, the increased radiation could have ionized some of this oxygen, allowing it to escape to space and depleting a valuable resource for life, Tarduno says. “The potential for loss was gaining.”

Just 30 million years later, the tide had turned in favor of life. Tarduno’s team went to quarries and roadcuts in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma and harvested 532-million-year-old volcanic rocks. After analyzing the field strength frozen in the tiny magnetic needles, they found that its intensity had already jumped to 70% of present values, they reported at the AGU meeting. “That kind of nails it now,” Tarduno says. He credits the growth of the inner core for the field jump, which he says is “the true signature of inner core nucleation.”

Around the same time, life experienced its own revolution: the Cambrian explosion, the rapid diversification of life that gave rise to most animal groups and eventually led to the first land animals, protomillipedes that ventured onto land some 425 million years ago.

It just may be that the clement world they found owes much to the inner iron planet we’ll never see, 5000 kilometers below.

Huh.

About the Oscars more generally...

I didn't watch all of the Oscars this year, and I'm actually rather tired of the (annual) "why the show doesn't work anymore" analysis.   But I will add my two cents worth:

*    the redesign to have the nominees sitting at tables instead of rows of seats made it look cheaper and riper for trouble - even if the guests were not being served drinks and food, like at the Golden Globes or the (ugh) Logies.   Ironically, it was the ease with which this made getting to the stage which probably contributed to Will Smith doing his slap - if he had to get past a few sets of knees while sitting in a row he might not have bothered.

*   it really did seem very, um, black, this year, even apart from the Smith incident.   The "diversity is good and needs to be celebrated" theme - which has run for many years, I guess - does now seem to me to be getting a tad OTT.   

*   stars and celebrities have always been not necessarily the sharpest, and its true that social media now means we can now learn directly about some of their dumber views and sometimes sordid personal lives.  But before social media, there were gossip and movie magazines which gave us some insight.   A good performance in a movie remains a good performance, regardless of dumb or nutty personal views.

*   basically, the world is in a funk due to a multitude of issues and I guess we shouldn't be surprised if this spills over into everything.  

On a related Hollywood note:  lots of people this week are feeling sorry for Bruce Willis, and sure, it's sad to hear of anyone getting that type of disease.  But I thought his career followed a really remarkable trajectory of downwards likeability in the roles he chose.  He seemed a particularly embittered man after breaking up with Demi Moore - I still remember an interview show he did with Bob Geldorf as another guest, in which he basically said all relationships end in pain and unhappiness, so he was never going to have another, or something like that.

 

Recurring dream analysis needed

Years ago (gosh - 2006!), I posted about having recurring "I can levitate and I can prove it" dreams, in which I was not only thrilled that I could levitate, but I was also taking steps to prove to people it wasn't just a dream, only to wake up to the obvious disappointment.

This morning, it occurred to me that over the last year or so, I seem to be having a lot of spooky, dark, possibly haunted, house dreams.   Last night, I was in one in which a new family was living, and I was staying with them, after having sold the mansion to them because it was huge and creepy and empty at night, and I felt sure it was probably haunted.   As it turned out, they were travelling somewhere and it looked like I was being left alone in the house again, with considerable misgivings.  

I haven't even been watching any ghost or haunted house movies for a long time.   I do like the genre, when well done, but it sometimes feels that it's sort of got to the point where it's all been done as well as it can.   Although it's a few years ago that I watched it, I still think the best spooky movie I have seen - possibly ever - might be The Orphanage.  

Incidentally, I have often mentioned to my daughter, when we are looking at some huge mansion style residence either in real life or on Youtube, that I don't know I would want to live in a house so big that it could be being broken into at one end, and you would never know it from the other, because of the sheer distance involved.   (I know that common thieves will walk into even modest sized houses with unwisely unlocked doors and quietly take keys and stuff - I have an acquaintance to whom that happened recently, as it happens.  But I don't like the idea that something really bad could happen in one end of a house, and barely be heard from the other.)

Anyway, I don't know why haunted house dreams seem a popular feature in my sleeping brain lately.  

A tad over the top?

Given my attitude to sport, and cricket in particular, the death of Shane Warne was never going to affect me.   But I'm still surprised at the degree of the outpouring of grief over a bloke whose claim to fame all revolved around (as far as I can tell) a particular wrist motion.

It's a funny world:

In a stage show of tears and laughter, Shane Warne's immortality was confirmed

OK, OK, he did charitable things and was nice to people, generally speaking, it seems.   But it still comes down to fame over a wrist motion.   It's a bit like, I don't know, someone becoming incredibly famous as a pub dart champion.

Murdochs protecting Morrison - but why?

I thought it was clear from the post budget Murdoch press headlines that the word had passed around - Rupert wants Morrison returned.  And now I see the message was probably being conveyed by Lachlan:

But why?  Why is this clear dud of a PM having Murdoch protection??

 

Global warming and everyone's favourite fish

It's been a long time since I posted about ocean warming (and acidification) and it's very uncertain effects on the food chain.

This Washington Post article talks about the worrying effect on salmon fisheries.

Do I have to have an opinion on the Smith/Rock incident?

I find it hard to care about, really.

It did remind me, though, that many years ago, I got really, really annoyed at the Catallaxy/right wing reaction to the video of kid who was being bullied and took revenge by up-ending the bully and (more or less) dropping him on his head.   I was furious that adults would endorse this as an admirable reaction to bullying which did not look particularly dangerous to the victim.   The reason:  it was obviously an incredibly dangerous response - people are permanently paralysed all the time from bad neck/spinal injuries, and dropping someone in a way that may cause such an injury is just never going to be good idea.  It was ridiculous to praise such a disproportionate response.

I haven't changed my opinion on that at all.  

This current incident doesn't have that same circumstance at all.   It was more a slap, and Will Smith is a bit nutty, I thought everyone accepted.  It's funny how a lot of the pushback has come from (mainly) left wing comedians who think it sets a bad example to audiences at stand up gigs.

I can understand the "don't encourage 'you hurt my honour' violence" line, but really, I don't know that violence inclined people would consider Smith someone to model themselves on anyway.

So there - my opinion is I don't have an opinion. 

Profound

Any freak out about Biden's "regime change" comment should always be in the context that we know, with certainty, that a re-elected President Trump would have said 100 stupider things about Ukraine and Russia by now.   I mean, honestly, the man's an idiot.

Fan fiction

Quite a few people like this idea, inspired no doubt by "Short Round" actor Ke Huy Quan appearing in Everything Everywhere All at Once.   (Which seems to have received an enthusiastic early audience reaction.)

This seems an appropriate opportunity to repeat my fan fic wish:   that Harrison Ford's final appearance in an Indiana Jones movie be him added to the people getting into the Mother Ship at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Yes, Coorey now plays the LNP tunes

Phil Coorey used to play a straight bat, more or less, but for whatever reason, he now reads like a permanent apologist of the LNP.  

Today's column, trying to keep the Kitching issue going, is very pathetic:

More broadly, Labor’s inability to shut this down has starved it of oxygen for 10 days in a row, exposing an alarming lack of capacity for damage control.

Where's the self awareness that it's the media that has kept giving it oxygen?   Bernard Keane has been vicious in his tweets about the press gallery on this, and I reckon he's right.

And this is real "jump the shark" whataboutism:

And why is it okay for Labor supporters to “victim shame” Kitching on the basis of her husband’s alleged misdeeds 17 years ago, when it was definitely not okay – and remains not okay – to allegedly background against Brittany Higgins’ partner and impute some motive on his behalf when questioning the timing of her going public with her alleged rape?

Um, one explains some of the background to major Victorian factional fights which was behind the pre-selection stress - it genuinely enlightens the reader as to why she was a controversial figure within the party;  the other is malicious rumour mongering to influence the view of a rape complaint yet to go to court.     

Chalk and cheese, Phil.

What was I saying about de-populating the rural areas?

They're just not good for your health:

Study finds methamphetamine the most consumed illicit drug nationwide – and the problem is worse outside the cities...

According to the latest report from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s (ACIC) Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program released this week, people living in regional areas are more likely to experience the harms related to substance use.

Using wastewater data collected by the Universities of Queensland and South Australia across 58 sites nationally – covering over half the population – the report seeks to understand local drug markets across all capitals and a range of regional cities and towns up to August 2021.

It draws on five years of data collected since the program began, and found consumption of most drugs has generally been higher per capita in regional Australia.

The exception is in cocaine and heroin use, where consumption is higher in the cities, and the report notes these two drugs are exclusively imported, without any domestic production.

 My "reverse Pol Pot" policy is looking better than ever...

Compare and contrast

A few days ago...

And today, off the cuff comments from Biden:

 

 

The supposedly "he's suffering serious cognitive decline" one is about twice as cogent as the previous President on this, and any other issue, in speeches, press conferences, and off the cuff comments like this.

 

 

Sodium ion batteries go boom (and fusion goes bust)

 That bloke who runs the Youtube channel "Just Have a Think" has had a couple of particularly interesting videos recently related to energy.  The first is about apparent advances in using sodium ion for batteries instead of lithium (which seems great news if it pans out, unless you've bought stock in lithium mining companies):

 

 There have been quite a few other videos floating around in my recommendations about this, but I haven't watched them.

 The second one is a sceptical look at fusion, building on the information Sabine Hossenfelder put out in a video he references: 

 

I am a little surprised, actually, that Sabine still says that its technology worth looking into - I would say it is, within certain economic limits, which must be just about reached with ITER.

Niki Savva on some Kitching background

Niki Savva explains why Kitching "had trust issues" within her own party:

Kitching lost the trust of many on her own side. She was suspected of leaking and undermining colleagues, not only by briefing media – so far Chris Uhlmann and Andrew Bolt have publicly revealed Kitching told them she was concerned Wong would be weak on China – but Coalition MPs, former Liberal Party officials and even senior staff in the Prime Minister’s office.

Politicians leak. And they do have friends across the aisle. But the breadth and depth of hers fed the distrust. The crunch came in June last year when then defence minister Linda Reynolds said in Senate estimates she had been forewarned by a Labor senator she would face questioning over the alleged rape of former staffer Brittany Higgins.

In private meetings later, to prove she was not making it up, Reynolds went so far as to produce for Wong, Gallagher and Keneally, video footage from the Senate chamber showing Kitching approaching her months before in early February before prayers. Reynolds told them this was when Kitching first told her the tactics committee had discussed it and planned to weaponise the alleged rape.

Reynolds also showed them subsequent text messages she had received from Kitching effectively confirming their initial conversation.

The matter had not been discussed in tactics, something Reynolds later accepted, so Kitching’s leak was actually not true. This was a sackable offence in anyone’s language. Kitching was dropped from tactics. Fearing ongoing leaks to their opponents or media, it was no wonder they restricted her access and contact with her.

In an earlier part of the article:

As well as being smart and ambitious, Kitching was a tough player who revelled in political intrigue, making enemies as easily as she made friends. She loved the nickname “Mata Hari” bestowed on her by a Labor MP, a mate, who admired her for not toeing the line, who also warned her to be careful she did not cross that line.

He reckons she never complained to him about her treatment, except that she wanted to be restored to Labor’s Senate tactics committee, from which she had been dismissed. “She was tough, she didn’t want people holding her hand,” he said. “She didn’t ask anyone to feel sorry for her.”

I would trust Savva's commentary on this much more than James Morrow, hey Jason?

 

 

 

Ha ha

 I do wonder at times about what it's like to be a complete dud of a PM.   I mean, there is no way in the world that history is going to give good marks to Morrison, or Abbott, as well performing or well regarded PMs;  and if it was me, and had been lucky enough to get the job, I think that would I look back and prefer not to have risen to my level of incompetency if I had my time over.

But I'm guessing that the type of ego necessary to want the top job means that ex-PM's never think that way?

Good point

Bullying and the late Senator

I don't follow internal party faction fighting in any party in all that much detail; life's too short.   But it's certainly clear that internal fights can be bruising and personal.  (Nothing new under the sun there).

That said, my curiosity about the late Senator Kitching was piqued when Pauline Hanson turned up on TV emotionally shaken by her death.   The fact that Senator K had gone out of her way to welcome (and befriend to some extent, it seemed) Pauline certainly seemed to indicate a strong right wing status within a left wing party.

Then, today, Guy Rundle really puts the boot into the late Senator's particular subfaction and its union adventures in a free to read Crikey article.   He's obviously decided that not speaking ill of the dead can't wait when the death is being politicised so clearly.

Rundle's overall point seems valid enough, though - for the media to just talk about "bullying" without context of the viciousness of the complicated factional and sub factional fighting within the broader Labor movement is outright misleading - and he seems rather panicky about how the small-ish number of pro "Kitching was bullied to death" proponents within Labor are handing Morrison the possibility of re-election.

From my completely amateur perspective, I reckon this will blow over soon enough, and in fact, runs the risk of a backfiring if the Coalition tries to carry on about it for too long.   The main effect of the bad PR, I think will be:

a.    people who never liked Penny Wong or Kristina Keneally will get to feel vindication and double           down on their dislike, but they were already never going to vote Labor anyway;

b.    habitual Labor voters are not to be going to be easily convinced that internal Labor treatment of its       female politicians is any worse than the treatment of Liberal females politicians, and again, votes         won't change;

c.    swinging voters are going to be bored with the issue, given that, in all honesty, the nature of the             alleged bullying doesn't really seem to stand up to scrutiny as being amongst the worst examples of         the genre.  

So the Nine Network, Shy News and the gormless characters who work there can keep trying to spin this for political purposes, but I really doubt it has any legs.

Update:   Rather annoyingly, Mike Rowland on ABC News Breakfast this morning spent about 15 mins with Albo pushing the Morrison/News Corpse line about "why aren't you having an independent enquiry into bullying".   Rowland is smart enough to know the lack of bona fides that Morrison and News Corpse have in promoting the argument, but he never acknowledged the obvious.   I thought Albo handled it pretty well, though.

The rocket everyone had forgotten was being built

NASA’s Giant Moon Rocket Reaches the Launchpad for the First Time

NASA rolled the giant Space Launch System rocket out of an assembly building to begin testing ahead of its journey later this year toward the moon.

 

Brain scan scepticism

Ukraine and war and right wing nuttiness (along with the occasional bit of left wing nuttiness*) has been crowding out other interesting stuff lately, but here's an article at Nature of note, about a field of research that seems to have been making dubious connections:

Now, in a bombshell 16 March Nature study¹, Marek and his colleagues show that even large brain-imaging studies, such as his, are still too small to reliably detect most links between brain function and behaviour.

As a result, the conclusions of most published ‘brain-wide association studies’ — typically involving dozens to hundreds of participants — might be wrong. Such studies link variations in brain structure and activity to differences in cognitive ability, mental health and other behavioural traits. For instance, numerous studies have identified brain anatomy or activity patterns that, the studies say, can distinguish people who have been diagnosed with depression from those who have not. Studies also often seek biomarkers for behavioural traits.

“There’s a lot of investigators who have committed their careers to doing the kind of science that this paper says is basically junk,” says Russell Poldrack, a cognitive neuroscientist at Stanford University in California, who was one of the paper’s peer reviewers. “It really forces a rethink.”

 

*   I saw that trans swimmer Lia Thomas talking for the first time on the weekend and I am completely unsurprised that most Americans probably think it's a nonsense that he is allowed to blitz the women's competition.  What gets up my nose is a decent trans person would recognise and accept the unfairness.  It may be that Right wingers lack nuance on the issue, but so do Lefties who refuse to acknowledge the unfairness and think trans can never be not allowed to do something in their elected gender.    

The view from Russian TV

Oh sure...

Look, Cassie, a ranty, sweary participant of original and current Catallaxy, and now Currency Lad's sad fact free blog, is getting old, and her memory is clearly fading, if this any evidence:

As I said yesterday, this kind of behaviour is consistent with “female” behaviour. And this is why I find that Wong’s comment about Kitching’s childlessness rings true. A man would never comment on a woman’s childlessness. The plain fact is that men don’t say such things. 

Ahem:

The Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan has once again called Ms Gillard "deliberately barren" and unqualified for leadership, because she has no children.

Senior members of the Government from the Prime Minister down quickly distanced themselves from the Senator's comments.

The Treasurer Peter Costello was the most critical.

He said decisions about having children were deeply personal, and Senator Heffernan should not have made the remarks.

Late this afternoon the Senator backed down and apologised to Ms Gillard for his comments.

I would also bet my last dollar on finding within old Catallaxy - if it still existed - plenty of men who joined in with the "childless Gillard just wouldn't understand" line over the years.   Quite possibly, CL himself.

Bolton correcting conservatives

A good recent article at the Washington Post - John Bolton's Crusade to debunk Trump's revisionist history on Russia and Ukraine.

Some parts:

Yes, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has turned on Trump like many others in Trump’s inner orbit have. His version of events is therefore understandably uncharitable. But if there were one thing that would seemingly earn the gratitude of an uber-hawk like Bolton, pretty high on that list would be Trump’s supposed success in keeping Putin in check.

Bolton has now said repeatedly that this simply isn’t how it went down. And he’s made quite the opposite case: that Putin didn’t do stuff like this during Trump’s presidency because Trump was already doing the work for him — specifically, by undermining NATO. And it’s a case that tracks with plenty of what we already knew, even as few Trump allies-turned-critics have seen fit to weigh in publicly of late.

In late February, Bolton appeared on Trump-friendly Newsmax and told a host who was pushing the Trump line that it was “just not accurate to say that Trump’s behavior somehow deterred the Russians.”

“In almost every case, the sanctions were imposed with Trump complaining about it, saying we were being too hard,” Bolton retorted when the host suggested that it was unthinkable that Trump would’ve handled the situation worse than President Biden has. Bolton added that Trump “barely knew where Ukraine was.”...

 

Asked whether we should believe this wouldn’t have happened on Trump’s watch, Bolton said, “Certainly not.” Bolton added that, in a second term unencumbered by future electoral considerations, Trump would’ve been even more freed up to potentially take the United States out of NATO.

“And so Putin would’ve gotten what he wanted in Ukraine for a lot lower price than he’s paying now,” Bolton said.

Then Bolton added, in perhaps his most unvarnished comment to date: “The Leninist phrase is ‘useful idiot,’ and they haven’t forgotten that in Moscow.”

 

Tick Tick noted

I watched the Netflix musical Tick, Tick ...Boom! a couple of weeks ago, and didn't review it.

Probably because I didn't much care for it.   I found most of the music pretty uninspiring and had a dated feeling, and the main character - the real life writer of the musical Rent - is not only played pretty gay for a straight guy (maybe that's how he was), but he's also kind of irritating and not very likeable.  

If it has any value, I thought it was in showing what a ridiculously hard life musically creative types can have - the struggle to get noticed and work performed in the New York theatre scene looks awful.   But I guess we already knew that: "Don't let your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington" was written a long time ago.    On a more positive note,  when you think about it, we should consider ourselves lucky that anyone sticks it out long enough to become a success and put on shows, plays (or movies) which we really do respond to. 

Cognitive dissonance

I'm not sure I should say this, as I'm sure it's objectionable in one way or another, but here goes.

I really think Beverley O'Connor does a great job hosting The World on ABC News every night - she's intelligent, likeable and always well prepared.  But...I keep getting a bit of cognitive dissonance going because of her looks, and particularly her hair style of the last year or more.  It's kind of "USA Barbie" hair, if you ask me, and based on that alone, I keep expecting her to be, well, shallow in a conservative USA media "she's got this hosting job because some ageing leering male boss liked her looks" kind of way.

Please forgive me, Beverley.

[And by the way, I see you were born in 1960 too!   Goodness me.  My email address is available at the side - ha ha.] 

Update:  I can just imagine my daughter reading this and saying "Didn't 'Legally Blonde' teach you anything??" 

Hope this is true...

 

So, how's the Ben Roberts-Smith "I must defend my reputation, so that anyone who hasn't heard about it before, will now" trial going?

Oh:

Ben Roberts-Smith machine-gunned an Afghan prisoner to death as an “exhibition execution”, a comrade has told the federal court during cross-examination.

“He wanted people to see he was going to kill someone out there in front of everyone,” the former SAS soldier, anonymised before court as Person 24, testified during a combative, and at times emotional, second day in the witness box.

So many people are so puzzled as to why this trial is happening.  It's unbelievable. 

Update:  more "Oh!" -

Person 7, a serving Special Air Service soldier whose identity cannot be revealed for national security reasons, told Mr Roberts-Smith’s defamation case on Wednesday that the decorated former soldier’s actions in 2010 in assaulting the man, who posed no threat, were “completely and utterly unnecessary”.

Person 7 said Mr Roberts-Smith approached him on a separate occasion in 2012 as he was sorting equipment and said: “I’m going to talk the talk, I want you to make sure I walk the walk. Before this trip’s over I’m going to choke a man to death with my bare hands, I’m going to look him in the eye and watch the life drain out of his eyes.”

Person 7 said he told Mr Roberts-Smith he was busy and ended the conversation....

Person 7 said he and another soldier, Person 8, discovered an unarmed man sitting with his legs crossed in the corner of a room in a compound in Afghanistan. The man rolled onto his side as the soldiers approached him to detain him for questioning, Person 7 said, and “started to make a whimpering type sound”.

The man was extremely scared and in the foetal position, and his body was so tense that it made it difficult for Person 7 to lift him, he told the court. He said he turned to his comrade and said words to the effect of: “Jeez, this bloke is shitting himself, we’ll give him a moment.”

Mr Roberts-Smith entered the room without speaking to his comrades, Person 7 said, before kneeling and delivering “three to four quick fire punches into the side of the Afghan’s head”, and kneeing him in the chest and stomach area.

Person 7 said he yelled, “Woah, woah, woah, what are you doing? We’re looking after this, get out of here,” and Mr Roberts-Smith turned and left without a word. The Afghan man was left with significant swelling to his face and nose, he said.

Person 7 said he subsequently witnessed Mr Roberts-Smith in 2012 assaulting a second unarmed Afghan man who was with a young girl. He said Mr Roberts-Smith told him he believed it was suspicious that the man did not give the name of his daughter.

 

 

More Trump-ian gullibility

I noticed that old JC and others at fascist (as long as they don't care for the gays) friendly New Catallaxy, amongst other gullible wingnuts, were excited about a Special Counsel report on voting in Wisconsin that claimed that nursing home votes there were very, very suspect, including a claim that some showed 100% of votes for Biden.

Nevermind that the author of the report had already decided in November 2020 that the election had been been "stolen":

Leading the investigation is former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman, no neutral arbiter but rather a man who told a group of supporters of former president Donald Trump in November 2020 that the election had been stolen. Asked last week if he had voted for Mr. Trump, he proudly declared: “You bet I did.” 

or that he has now suggested "de-certifying" the election (something that has no legal basis whatsoever), gullible wingnuts just have to read any claim of fraud and they'll gobble it up without bothering with the details.

As I've said before, all Trump-ian "the election was stolen" evidence is actually just a bunch of conspiracy primed twits seeing something they don't understand, thinking "that looks suspicious to me", and then leaping from that to thinking it proves fraud.   

So I knew that a more careful examination of the Wisconsin situation with nursing homes would show how little there is to this report.   And those examinations have been done now.

Have a read of this article, for example:

Senior citizens have long been more likely to vote than the population at large. But after reviewing thousands of pages in the 2020 poll books from the 10 Dane County municipalities in which nursing homes are located, the State Journal could find only one where turnout was 100%: Nazareth Health and Rehab Center in Stoughton, where all 12 people listed as registered in the poll book had their ballots tallied.

Turnout among all the others ranged from 42% to 91%. In the case of the facility with 91% turnout, Capitol Lakes in Downtown Madison, it’s likely that number includes mostly independent living residents along with nursing home residents because both types of voters registered at the facility’s main address, 333 W. Main St., according to Capitol Lakes executive director Tim Conroy.

Even those turnout figures are inflated, since the state Elections Commission considers turnout to be the number of votes cast divided by the voting-age population, not the number of registered voters, since that number can change up to Election Day. It’s not known how many voting-age residents lived at the nursing homes in 2020.

The DHS list of nursing homes does not include all types of long-term care, which also includes various kinds of assisted living care, but the list provides a snapshot of one county’s nursing facilities as defined by a state agency.

Turnout figures compiled for city of Milwaukee nursing homes by city elections administrator Claire Woodall-Vogg also call into question the 100% turnout figure Gableman reported for all nursing homes in Milwaukee County. Woodall-Vogg found turnouts of between 36% and 97% for 32 city nursing homes.

Gableman and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who appointed him, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

So once again, a highly partisan person made a big claim (without providing the detailed evidence), it got inflated on the Wingnut web by partisan commentators who make a living by promoting Trumpian conspiracy, and gullible Australians believe it.

 

 

Tourist spot I'm unlikely to ever see

It's kind of hard imagining Iraq having a snowy, ski-able area with chairlift, but they do:

Neat summary

Of personal interest

At phys.org:

A new study from Keck Medicine of USC finds that the incidence rate of metastatic prostate cancer has significantly increased for men 45 and older and coincides with recommendations against routine prostate cancer screenings. ...

The introduction of screenings resulted in drops in both metastatic prostate cancer and prostate cancer deaths. However, the benefit of routine screenings was counterbalanced by risks of overdiagnosis and overtreatment of low-risk prostate cancer.

In 2008, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a leading national organization in disease prevention and evidence-based medicine, recommended against routine PSA screening for men older than 75. This was followed by a recommendation against screening for all men in 2012.

Research shows that prostate cancer screenings for men declined after the recommendations changed across all age groups and racial backgrounds.

I wasn't sure what the recommendation is in Australia, but I see from some recent publication that it seems to be this:

Men who are at average risk of prostate cancer who
have been informed of the benefits and harms of testing,
and who decide to undergo regular testing for prostate
cancer, should be offered PSA testing every 2 years from
age 50 to 69. Further investigation should be offered if
the total PSA concentration is greater than 3 ng/mL....

Digital rectal examination is not recommended for
asymptomatic men as a routine addition to PSA
testing in the primary care setting. Note, however,
that on referral to a urologist or other specialist, digital
rectal examination remains an important assessment
procedure prior to consideration for biopsy. 

OK, well that seems consistent with my GP's thinking.   I've had PSA checked 3 or 4 times in the last maybe 6 years, and all's looking good, so far.

More on Ukraine and bio-labs

An explanation here of how the US Right wing conspiracy web (as well as Fox News) went all in with bio lab propaganda.

More reason to de-populate the rural areas

Look, I live in Queensland, with its large regional centres and persistently Right wing bias (in Federal elections, at least), and home of nutty, dumb Right wing populists like Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer (amongst others).    So I can sympathise with the problem of the rural/urban cultural and voting divide in the US.  Was it last year that I (with wistful facetiousness) suggested that the best hope for the world is a "reverse Pol Pot" policy of de-populating the rural regions and forcing them into the larger towns and cities?   [I've checked now - it was at the end of 2020.]  Let robots and remote control equipment farm the land and do the mining.   Why do people want to live on such crappy, dry, flat landscapes as exist in much of the outback, anyway?

These thoughts were revived by this recent article from the Washington Post, confirming that the problem there is that the rural areas went further Republican and outbalanced the urban areas that went further Democrat:

“Republicans’ plight as the rural party of a increasingly nonrural nation has so far been balanced out by the fact that rural America has moved toward the GOP at a faster pace since the 1990s than urban America has shifted away,” political scientist David Hopkins wrote last year. “When combined with the structural biases of the electoral college and Senate in favor of rural voters, the current Republican popular coalition can easily remain fully competitive in national elections.”

The data reinforces that point. From 2000 to 2020 — and particularly in the last two, Trump-inflected elections — rural counties shifted to the right more than urban counties moved to the left. That’s helped rural areas add votes on net even as they trail urban counties in terms of population. On the graph at right below, you can see the net vote totals from each type of county. That the Democrat earned far more votes in 2016 than the Republican was offset by the Republican’s votes coming in rural areas that cumulatively hold disproportionate power in the electoral college.

Update:   How to force the de-population of the rural, I wonder?   Actually, maybe I don't want it de-populated, just as long as their susceptibility to dumb populism doesn't interfere with things like, you know, the fate of the entire planet for millennia.   Perhaps instead of marching them at gunpoint into the cities, the deal could just be "if you want to be able to vote, you got to live in an urban area.  Sure, keep your farm life if you want, but you just don't get a vote.  Us city folk need your food, so don't worry, it's not like we're going to make things intolerable for you."  Sounds fair, no?

Job and sarcasm

Slate occasionally still throws up interesting stuff - even though it's not as good as it used to be.

This article, about the unclear meaning of the Book of Job, is pretty good.   You should read it all, but I'll extract a key part:

Edward L. Greenstein’s astounding recent translation taught me that Job’s suffering is only half the story. It’s not even the most important half. Greenstein’s version does not rob readers of the comfort that comes from sympathizing with Job. But it also exhorts us to rebellion against power and received wisdom.

Greenstein points out that a huge portion of what looks like Job praising God throughout the text may be meant as the opposite: Job sarcastically riffing on existing Bible passages, using God’s words to point out how much He has to answer for. Most importantly, Greenstein argues, there’s something revolutionary in the mysterious final words Job lobs at God, something that was buried in mistranslation.

In the professor’s eyes, various words were misunderstood, and the “dust and ashes” phrase was intended as a direct quote from a source no less venerable than Abraham, in the Genesis story of Sodom and Gomorrah. In that one, Abraham has the audacity to argue with God on behalf of the people whom He will smite; however, Abraham is deferential, referring to himself, a mortal human, as afar v’eyfer—dust and ashes. It is the only other time the phrase appears in the Hebrew Bible.

So, Greenstein says, Job’s final words to God should be read as follows:

That is why I am fed up:
I take pity on “dust and ashes” [humanity]!

Remember, for this statement, God praises Job’s honesty.

The deity does not give any logic for mortal suffering. Indeed, He denounces Job’s friends who say there is any logic that a human could understand. God is not praising Job’s ability to suffer and repent. He’s praising him for speaking the truth about how awful life is.

Maybe the moral of Job is this: If God won’t create just circumstances, then we have to. As we do, Job’s honesty—in the face of both a harsh, collapsing world and the kinds of ignorant devotion that worsen it—must be our guiding force.

The key quote with the uncertain translation is this (from earlier in the article):

Job then utters a few enigmatic lines of Hebrew that scholars have struggled to translate for millennia: “al kayn em’as / v’nikham’ti al afar v’eyfer.”

The King James Version gives those lines as “Wherefore I abhor myself / and repent in dust and ashes.” Historically, most other versions stab at something similar—though, as we will see, modern scholarship suggests some very different alternatives.

Whatever Job says, it seems to work: In an abrupt epilogue, we see Job restored to his former comfort and glory. Many analysts think the happy ending was added to an initial core text that lacked such comfort. But even if you accept it as part of the story, it’s unsettlingly cryptic. We are not told why Job is rewarded, whether his reward was divinely given, or what scars the episode has left upon him. We are merely told that he’s materially back to something resembling what he had before.

 

 

How not to win a PR war

 

Yep, the modern "Lefty" (or libertarian) who do "just asking questions" videos for clicks are pseudo-intellectuals who give succour to the nutty Right

William Hurt, RIP

Going by the online reaction to his death, I guess I didn't appreciate how many people really liked William Hurt.   I did too, although I seem to recall he was quite eccentric in real life.  

The biggest whistle while passing the graveyard you'll hear today

 

Wingnuts are so, so gullible

I suppose I'd better get around to pointing out the gullibility (and complete lack of interest in details) of Trump supporting conservatives in the US, and Australia, about the idea that American would be carrying out bio-weapons programs in Ukraine.  As Allahpundit notes:

The “debate” over U.S. bioweapons in Ukraine isn’t a debate about bioweapons at all, of course. It’s not even a debate about how much you should trust the U.S. government, the only source for information on what’s happening in these labs. Any conservative worth his salt when asked how much the federal government should be trusted would say, “Not much.”

The actual “debate” here is this: Should you trust the U.S. government more than you trust the Russian government? Carlson’s answer, implicitly and characteristically, is no. Griffin’s answer, and the answer most Americans would give, is yes.

The Dispatch has a nice explainer today about the Ukrainian labs. They’re not new and they’re not secret.

There are laboratories in Ukraine that receive funding from the U.S. government as part of the defense threat reduction program. The USSR had a massive secret biological weapons program known as Biopreparat, and when the USSR collapsed the scientists and facilities did not just evaporate. The U.S. program, run as part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program under the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, provides funding to prevent the proliferation of bioweapons and make sure that the next plague does not emerge accidentally from an old Soviet lab. This involves helping make sure scientists with the skills that could be used to create bioweapons stay at home and work on important medical research instead (so they are less likely to get poached by higher-paid gigs in China, or Iran, or North Korea, for example). This program involves upgrading the facilities in the former USSR where the remnants of the Soviet bioweapons program might lay in order to ensure their security and guard against theft or accidental leaks.

In fact, just days before Russia began its propaganda barrage about these documents, the head of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program Robert Pope expressed concern about the effects of the war in Ukraine. In an interview with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Pope said that he did not believe that Russian forces would deliberately target any of the Ukrainian biolabs because they “know enough about the kinds of pathogens that are stored in biological research laboratories,” However, Pope was concerned that the facilities could be damaged by conflict, which could lead to disastrous consequences.

That’s why the U.S. and the Ukrainians are rushing to destroy pathogens in the lab as the Russians advance. It’s not a matter of “covering up evidence,” it’s a matter of not wanting anything to escape the lab if a Russian shell should accidentally hit it. We’ve already seen one near-miss on a Ukrainian facility hosting a weapon of mass death, remember.

Again, not only is this not a secret, the U.S. has acknowledged the labs before — including during the Trump administration, Greg Sargent notes. And even if you’re disinclined to believe Trump’s State Department, basic common sense points to an innocent explanation for the facilities. As Dispatch reporter Andrew Fink says, it would be batty for the U.S. to outsource something as sensitive as a bioweapons program to a country that’s crawling with Russian spies and which contains many Russian sympathizers. (Although far fewer now than it did two weeks ago.) We’d be asking for trouble, whether Russian penetration of the lab or a Wuhan-style accident that brings about a global pandemic. It makes no sense.

The Washington Post also did a "fact checker" analysis article about it too. 

In Australia, Putin sympathisers can't be bothered waiting for, or reading, the details:

CL, like Tucker Carlson, now thinks Glenn Greenwald is some kind of honest commentator. As Bernard Keane says of Pilger:

Twitter analysis of Republicans

Apparently, she used to be a decent journalist, then working for Fox News ate her brain:

A very strange country

I'm talking Pakistan, which, according to this somewhat amateur-ish but nonetheless entertaining/horrifying video, contains the world's most dangerous road.

It's kind of inconceivable to Western eyes that anyone in their right mind would use it:

 

I see that there are actually many contenders for "most dangerous road in the world" on Youtube, and many people who have made this trip in Pakistan so as to get the clicks.  (It would seem it's sold as a 4WD adventure type of thing to do?)   

I am also curious as to what goes on at the end destination, the rather un-Pakistani sounding "Fairy Meadows".   When you get there in the video, you can see substantial wood building construction in the background, indicating there is actually a decent  road to get there.  Let's check that out.   Nope, doesn't seem there's anything else:

 I guess the wood is from trees there?   I dunno.

Anyway, this is the description of the road at www.dangerousroads.org: 

Is Fairy Meadows Road Safe?

It’s said to be one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Getting to Fairy Meadows is a huge risk that prevents many from enjoying the view. In 2013 the road was ranked as the second deadliest highway in the world, because it's a 'treacherous high altitude, unstable and narrow mountain road'. The most dangerous part of the road involves a narrow 6-mile ascend on an unpaved and uneven road. There are no barriers to prevent a vehicle from falling off the cliff to a fiery death. The road is no wider than a standard Jeep Wrangler and there’s plenty of through traffic. One false move and it’s a very long drop. The first part of the road can be driven by a 4x4 vehicle, but the concluding sections, all the way to Fairy Meadows, needs to be traversed by foot or by a bicycle owing to the congested narrow lane.

Not just me

There's an interview article with Al Pacino in the New York Times which seems mostly about his gratitude at starting his career with The Godfather.   This is the opening paragraph:

It’s hard to imagine “The Godfather” without Al Pacino. His understated performance as Michael Corleone, who became a respectable war hero despite his corrupt family, goes almost unnoticed for the first hour of the film — until at last he asserts himself, gradually taking control of the Corleone criminal operation and the film along with it.

Key words:  "understated performance".

And further down:

There is an intense quietness to how you play Michael in “The Godfather” that I don’t think I ever saw again in your other film performances, even the later times you played him. Was that a part of yourself that went away or was it just the nature of the character that called for it?

I’d like to think it was the nature of that particular person and that interpretation.

I had written in my very, very late review (2016):

Which bring me to Al Pacino's acting - for a movie about his character's descent into the banality of the Mafia's brand of corporate evil (where murder is nothing personal - just "business"), we really don't get much insight into why he takes the path.  His acting after his character has taken the first step (with the murder in the restaurant) is really just somewhat static, unemotional staring for the most part.  (The character seems a lot more unengaged in life than his father.)  The problem may well be with the script - I assume the novel gives more insight into his inner emotions, but the movie sure doesn't.

 Well, at least I know I wasn't imagining the static nature of his acting...

This is pretty hilarious

At the Washington Post, a deeply ironic story about how a judge is citing Tucker Carlson's period of voter fraud skepticism as evidence that the network knew there was malice involved in the other hosts who went in boots and all.

It’s a pretty remarkable state of affairs when a judge is approvingly citing Tucker Carlson’s journalistic rigor, but that’s precisely the situation we find ourselves in now.

And rather ironically, that could be bad news for Fox News.

New York Supreme Court Judge David B. Cohen has now ruled that voting-machine company Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and Rudolph W. Giuliani can proceed. The case involved numerous false and baseless claims made on Fox about voter fraud involving the company’s voting machines....

In the course of laying out the legal requirements for Smartmatic to prove its case, the judge noted that the company must prove Fox met the standard of acting with “actual malice” — i.e. not merely promoting false claims, but doing so with malice. And on that count, the judge says the best evidence that it did is Carlson.

That’s because Carlson, unlike the others, applied significant actual skepticism to the claims — and broadcast it.

It’s an episode many might have forgotten in the long and sordid run-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. But there was a time in which none other than Carlson stepped forward to question the “stolen election” narrative that had taken hold in the Trump movement and in certain corners of his network. Carlson said on Nov. 19 that Powell’s claims were serious, but he also (rightfully) noted that she had yet to substantiate them. He said he had asked, over the course of a week, for the evidence and offered her his platform, but that she had declined.

Carlson said Powell “never demonstrated that a single actual vote was moved illegitimately by software from one candidate to another. Not one.” He said that when he invited her on his show, she became “angry and told us to stop contacting her.”

The episode alienated some Trump allies. But it also, in Cohen’s estimation, speaks to the possibility that Fox might meet the “actual malice” standard.

 

 

 

How is the effect of conspiracy and poisonous partisan performative narrative ever going to be stopped??

On the matter of Joe Biden and his mental acuity:   of course he's not going to be as sharp as person 20 or 30 years younger, and all politicians will make rhetorical slips.

But frankly, I find it sickening to read the wingnut Right (or anyone, really) continuing to tell each other that he is dangerously senile.   I mean, to anyone who has ever watched a close relative develop dementia, the idea that a person can deliver a hour long address, or this shorter one, and still be suffering dementia is ridiculous, and I find it actually offensive:

 

Yes, I know this is largely a speech read off a teleprompter with a few asides - but it is delivered fluently, at quick pace, with barely an error.   What's more, the argument presented is cogent and rhetoric reasonable. And yet, the wingnut Right will claim he should be shunted out of the Presidency due to mental health; and the effect of edited bits of other appearances has some broader effect on the public - with too large a number buying into this narrative.   (Fortunately, there is some sign of a recovery in his approval ratings, no doubt due to a solid performance on Ukraine.)  The wingnut Right will circle jerk themselves into all kinds of bullshit fantasies - that Biden's frailty tempted Putin into the Ukraine invasion (when they're not blaming Western defence departments for going too gay and woke). 

Certainly, the wingnut Right have built themselves a fantasy world and they aren't leaving it anytime soon. 

I just don't know it is going to be broken - certainly, I reckon there should be a lot more calling out of the media and any politician being offensive idiots who need to stop building performative* false narratives as a way to make money - in the US, they are on the verge of killing democracy.   

*    This is what makes me so sick watching clips of Fox News or Sky News here - there is so clearly performance as part of the show, with no care at all about the effect of it. 

Update:  more on the matter of "conversative" criticisms just being performance art -

A reminder: record rains and climate change

I wrote this in 2011 (unfortunately without a link to the CSIRO report it extracts):

In terms of the climate change debate, I have never paid all that much attention to the particular regional rainfall changes for Australia forecast by CSIRO and the like. I just always assumed that regional forecasts under climate models were going to be more rubbery than the general effect of increased heat waves, which I consider a big enough worry. This explains why I wasn't really aware that there had been predictions of both extended droughts and intense rainfall under AGW. But as Tim Lambert notes, the report Bolt tries to slur as being warmenist propaganda that puts the emphasis all on drought, has this:

Climate change is also likely to affect extreme rainfall in south-east Queensland (Abbs et al. 2007). Projections indicate an increase in two-hour, 24-hour and 72-hour extreme rainfall events for large areas of south-east Queensland, especially in the McPherson and Great Dividing ranges, west of Brisbane and the Gold Coast. For example, Abbs et al. (2007) found that under the A2 emissions scenario, extreme rainfall intensity averaged over the Gold Coast sub-region is projected to increase by 48 per cent for a two-hour event, 16 per cent for a 24-hour event and 14 per cent for a 72-hour event by 2070. Therefore despite a projected decrease in rainfall across most of Queensland, the projected increase in rainfall intensity could result in more flooding events.

Very prescient, as it turns out. (Not to say that you can directly attribute any particular extreme weather event to AGW yet.)

Last week, I pointed out a different paper which indicated the same thing (modelling indicates longer droughts but broken by intense rain) at Catallaxy, a.k.a the "centre right" blog where climate science goes to die. This was followed by the glib "so, everything's consistent with AGW" response that shows that even though a weather event may (after all) be consistent with climate modelling of some years ago, they will insist on claiming that it either isn't, or that it doesn't matter.

And what is Andrew Bolt doing today, 11 years later?:

 

Jowl vote noted

Allahpundit from Hot Air notes:

And he explains well at Hot Air the appalling state of the Republicans:

The flaw in Barr’s logic about supporting a primary challenger to Trump while committing to supporting the eventual nominee in the general election is that it ignores the fact that the GOP has been in a hostage crisis since 2016. There are two major camps in the party, the Trump-loving MAGAs and the Trump-tolerating “Never Democrats.” (Never Trumpers are a third component but a small one at five to 10 percent.) Since 2016, Trump and his MAGAs have threatened constantly to bolt the party if they don’t get their way. Trump palpably doesn’t care about the GOP as an institution; if he did, he would have held his fire against top-tier candidates like Doug Ducey and Brian Kemp this cycle rather than settle election grudges with them. Meanwhile, something like a third of Republican voters say they support Trump more than they do the party.

If Trump left the GOP out of pique and demanded that his fans come with him, there’s no telling how many would do so but it would almost certainly be enough to spoil Republicans’ chances in the general election. Because of that, the party has no choice but to cater to him and them even though they’re a minority of the base. By comparison, 56 percent of Republicans said they support the party more than they support Trump according to a poll released in January. That’s the “Never Democrats” group, the Bill Barr contingent that’s open to (or even enthusiastic about) a different nominee in 2024. But the GOP establishment feels free to take that majority for granted in pandering to Trump and his whims. Why?

Because the “Never Democrats” won’t shoot the hostage. They won’t stay home or bolt the party if they get stuck with Trump as nominee again but the MAGAs will if they get stuck with someone else, and that explains the entirety of Republican politics over the last six years. Barr’s embarrassing capitulation in the interview captures the asymmetry as succinctly as we’ll ever see. “Never Democrats” means … never Democrats. If that requires reelecting the tinpot authoritarian who inflamed a mob on January 6 to try to hold on to power illegally then so be it....

Few Republicans have been as critical of Trump over the past year as Chris Christie has but Christie won’t rule out voting for Trump in 2024. Mitch McConnell delivered a floor speech after Trump’s impeachment trial blaming him for the insurrection, an attack that permanently ruptured their relationship, yet McConnell has pledged to support Trump in 2024 if he’s the nominee as well. To find a Republican willing to say that Trump’s attempt to seize power illegally in 2020 is disqualifying for future office, you have to look to a critic as strident as Liz Cheney. The “Never Democrats” wing, true to their name, simply won’t withhold their votes or even threaten to withhold their votes in a general election.

And so we’re almost certainly going to get more Trump. Congratulations to Barr, Christie, McConnell and all the rest.

 

Nuance on NATO

A good column at the Washington Post looking at the conservative's "but it's our fault for encouraging NATO expansion" line - especially with respect to the version espoused by the dribbling bow tie on Fox News that it's specifically Biden's fault.