Green balls of fire

I've always been skeptical of Luis Elizondo's claims about the significance of his role in the Pentagon's seemingly on again/off again interest in UFO's (or now, "UAPs").   Now he's put out a book, with a lot of big, dubious claims, and I get the impression the mainstream media is like me - pretty much ignoring him because it all sounds too much - too "good" to be true. 

But, here's a pretty non-critical article (not exactly a review) of the book at the New York Times.   It notes:

In the book he asserted that a decades-long U.F.O. crash retrieval program has been operating as a supersecret umbrella group made up of government officials working with defense and aerospace contractors. Over the years, he wrote, technology and biological remains of nonhuman origin have been retrieved from these crashes.

“Humanity is, in fact, not the only intelligent life in the universe, and not the alpha species,” Elizondo wrote.

More evidence for the big claim, please.

I am interested in this claim, though:

In “Imminent,” Elizondo described his struggle within the program to investigate the phenomena, and his effort, since his resignation in 2017, to push for greater transparency on what is officially known about U.A.P. He also wrote about personal encounters with U.A.P. — green orbs that he said visited his home while he worked for the Department of Defense....

Elizondo also wrote in the memoir of personal encounters with U.A.P., describing green-glowing orbs about the size of a basketball that invaded his home on and off for over seven years. The objects were able to pass through walls, and behaved as if they were under intelligent control, he wrote.

The orbs were also witnessed by his wife, two daughters and their neighbors, he wrote.

As for “our friends from out of town,” they do not appear to be benevolent, he wrote; perhaps they are neutral. Or they could be a threat to humanity.

Curious that, in this day of camera being in the hand of most people for much of the time they are at home, he hasn't shared any video of said orbs.

It's not that these are a novel thing associated with UFOs, though.   Stop me if you have heard this before, but there was a bit of a panic about green fireballs in the late 1940's being seen around remote military nuclear sites in the desert in the US.   The Wikipedia article about this is not very convincing, though - it gives the impression that it was likely all a case of panic over green meteors, which are not unknown.   But when you read the reports of the sightings, the trajectories of many sure don't sound like meteors.

I think I have read somewhere that some sightings were of orbs very close to the ground and looking as if they were centred on nuclear research buildings.   But Googling around isn't turning up a good example - I might have to go looking in my collection of UFO books on the shelf at home!

Certainly, it would not be surprising if some of these cases were ball lightning, or the equivalent of the "ground lights" like the Min Min from outback Australia and similar lights in other parts of the world, which turn up so often they do seem a natural electrical phenomena.

I suspect that Luis thought this was a good UFO-ish mystery story to pretend has affected his life - no one outside the house need corroborate.   Sure, if his family turn up on interviews appearing genuine and confirming more than one encounter with a green orb with seeming intentional movement, I might be intrigued and start believing him.   But I'm not taking it too seriously before then. 

So that's what sane politics looks like

Surely the overwhelming reaction that anyone reasonable should get from watching the Democrat Convention is "So, this is what a sane and normal looking bunch of American politicians and supporters looks like.  The Republican convention had me thinking American politics was essentially a carny sideshow, complete with ageing freaks and politicians wanting to get into the boxing ring with each other, all with a cosplaying audience."   

Relativism and Asian philosophy, revisited

Many, many years ago, I read online an essay by someone (no one famous, I'm pretty sure) about Eastern philosophy, and (I think) Buddhism, that argued that they were essentially relativistic about morality.   I didn't keep a link to it, and in fact I think I may have been reading it on a library computer - it was the very early days of the internet - and even if I am wrong and was reading it at home, I have been through umpteen different computers and laptops since then, and who really keeps bookmarks that consistently?   (That's a good reason to blog, actually - it does help me find links to things I read years ago.)   

Anyway, it was the type of online content that I am never likely to find again, but Googling around I see that a philosopher David B Wong has been prominent in arguing for (a kind of?) moral relativism as being legitimate, and his work has prompted a book Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy.  

Why am I thinking about this?   Probably because of the Daoism content on Religion for Breakfast, and some anti-China Tweet I saw the other that ran the argument (usually promoted by American Christians, I think) that the mainland Chinese have become irreligious and purely materialistic and hence ruthlessly immoral (using the terrible example of drivers who make sure the people they run over really are dead, as that way there is little to be claimed in compensation.)   (Lots of people tweeted in response that this is ridiculous oversimplification of the state of Chinese society.)  

So, this post is just a reminder of things I ought to get around to looking into more deeply one day.  I still haven't read more about Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi, even though I posted about him 18 months ago.  He does sound very "middle way", which seems an appealing approach to everything as I get older.    

And speaking of which, Googling turns up this - the Middle Way Society, which seems to have been recently created by people with a secular Buddhist approach:  

The Middle Way is the idea that we make better judgements by avoiding fixed beliefs and being open to practical experience. We challenge unhelpful distinctions between facts and values, reason and emotion, religion and secularism or arts and sciences. Though our name is inspired by some of the insights of the Buddha, we are independent of Buddhism or any other religion. We seek to promote and support integrative practice, overcoming conflict of all kinds.

Another page says this:

Moral judgement is an everyday part of our experience, not a remote or ‘queer’ thing requiring extraordinary proof to be justified. There are a variety of types of moral principle that people draw on – for example, religious authority, utilitarianism, Kantian principle, or virtue ethics – and any and all of these can reflect our experience of moral demands. Yet none of these types of moral principle offers the whole story, and our judgements can always gain in objectivity by addressing conditions better, whichever type of principle may be drawn on to help us do this.

Middle Way Philosophy can offer a sceptical perspective on the claims of many ethical systems that are based on metaphysics. It can also offer the grounds of confidence that there is incremental objectivity in ethical judgements. If we keep trying to extend our awareness, and draw on a variety of approaches to ethics rather than only one, we can make moral progress in the judgements we make. This perspective can be asserted with confidence because it takes into account the uncertainty of ethics, not despite it. If we avoid false certainty either of a positive or of a negative type, we have much better grounds of confidence than we had either when we appealed to false certainty or when we merely lamented its loss.

I should read more about it...  

Update:   Oh, this, a paper from Singapore, sounds interesting too:

 

Power for the taking

This is what I like to see - a specific proposal for the expansion of clean energy.  From the Conversation:

Our calculations show Australia has enough unused commercial and industrial rooftop space to supply at least 25% of our annual electricity use – five times as much as currently supplied by gas-fired generators.

Australia is already the world’s top rooftop solar nation, per capita. But our solar is largely on our houses. We have four times as much residential solar as we do on commercial buildings. In Europe, it’s the opposite – there’s 1.5 times as much solar on businesses as on houses. The EU’s new Solar Energy Standard is expected to double rooftop solar capacity in four years.

In our new discussion paper, we make the case for a massive expansion of battery-backed solar photovoltaic power on Australian business premises. Call it “business power”.

There are excellent reasons for policymakers and building owners to look at this. It offers a potentially large new source of cheap, reliable, clean electricity with little downside risk.

 

Some positive things

*  By and large, I think the ABC still does radio pretty well.   I would mark out for particular praise the overall likeability and competence of Marc Fennell (he's pretty good on TV too, although he does draw some boring shows, like host of Mastermind), Richard Fielder as an interviewer (gosh he's been doing it for a long time now), and I still think Norman Swan is also good to listen to.  Sure, there is a lot of content I won't listen to, and some hosts who are well past their "use by" date (I have complained that the Science Show has been pretty dull for many years now), but I always get the feeling that, for a small country, our government funded radio really punches above its weight.    The best way to get "the best" of it now is to use the ABC Listen app - I find it works well.

*  ABC TV is struggling a bit by comparison.   It seems pretty lazy when quite a lot of bland British light drama/light crime content is still relied upon to fill up empty space.   (Really, who watches shows like Sister Boniface Mysteries and Call the Midwife?  I mean, when I was younger I could say "it's not for me but it's probably popular with the oldies", but now that I am over 60, I can't imagine any of my contemporaries watching it!)    But then again, Australia drama is often completely unappealing too.  It has always been that way, though.  I'm not sure it is getting any worse, so that's a positive.

As for comedy content - yes I think it's main problem is in the innovation department.  But maybe its because I don't like many comedians under 30 any more?   

You still can't beat it for current affairs:  watch the ABC news, 7.30, Planet America, Foreign Correspondent, and sometimes Four Corners, and you'll be pretty well informed on all major topics.  Compared to the absolutely scandalous nature of current affairs programs on Channel 7 in the last couple of years, there is no comparison.

*   I continue to love all videos put out on Religion for Breakfast.   It doesn't matter what the topic (the massive scale of the Daoist "scriptures"), or whether I had an interest in it before (the origins of the Pope's pointy hat), there is a 95% chance I will enjoy it.    

*   This is hard to explain without sounding weird, but I un-ironically like watching the Singaporean National Day Parade.   (This was on last week.)   It starts with military parade stuff, then a demonstration, complete with corny narration, of all their defence and civil services in action (sort of like a souped up Edinburgh Military Tattoo, I guess?), and the last hour or so is a large concert full of songs old and new about the country which always - always! - emphasise the importance of unity of the mixed ethnicities.   The only way to put it is that it is 100% pure propaganda - but when it's for sentiments that are purely positive - well, it's actually praiseworthy, isn't it?  And it's flawlessly produced, with the participants from such a diversity of ages and backgrounds, it indicates that it's propanganda that is taken to heart by the citizens.  Again - it's good propaganda!

So it's not a simple kind of "just the State engendering patriotism for self interested reasons"  (although, of course, the cynical could say it is just that): it's a State that is continuously encouraging its people to get along together, and to be proud of the fact that they do, pretty much, get along.  

Here, you can watch the (pretty decent) National Day theme song for this year, and get an idea of what I mean.

 

  

Twitter madhouse

Musk's play thing formally known as Twitter is absolutely awash at the moment with Right Wing panic and attempts to invent and make slurs against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as a response to their rapid gains in the polls.

Some are gross, many based on typical RW reactions (such as "Tim Walz acts gay and weird"), others are based on "rumours" which are never, ever sourced ("Kamala's got a serious drinking problem - you can tell by the way she laughs").

It's transparently desperate. 

Good news for aurora hopefuls

I had assumed that the recent very extensive aurora, which I would quite like to see but live too far north, would not likely be repeated any time soon.   However, as explained by the Washington Post this weekend, it is likely we are going to have a repeat in the next couple of years:

The displays so far have been quite the warm-up. On May 10, when Pegram saw her first aurora, Earth was hit by the biggest geomagnetic storm in about two decades, with the most widespread aurora in probably 500 years. The storm was rated a severity level of 5 on a scale of 5, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But at least seven other storms have reached a 4 since 2019....

Scientists won’t confirm when the peak month of solar activity is until a few months after it’s passed — like waiting for all contestants of a race to compete before declaring a winner. But they know we’re getting close.

About every decade or so, the sun’s north and south magnetic poles flip, which affects the solar activity seen at the surface. This “solar cycle” means some years are more active on the sun’s surface than others, usually measured by the number of dark blotches called sunspots. More visible sunspots mean more active, magnetically complex regions on the sun that can spawn flares and explosions. Not all of these sun’s eruptions hit Earth, but it’s like adding more darts to a dart board game — there are more chances one will land....

When the cycle does reach the other side of the maximum, it will be good sign for aurora chasers. The biggest geomagnetic storms tend to occur in the year or two after reaching the maximum, a phenomenon known as the Gnevyshev gap, said McIntosh, vice president of space operations at Lynker and formerly the deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“The real fun of the solar cycle is not now. It’s what comes in the next few years,” he said. “The storms get more complex, more frequent, and that makes them a bit more impactful for Earth.”

Coming off its solar maximum, the sun becomes a complex, muddy mess. As tendrils of the next solar cycle move in, it can merge with the old solar cycle. McIntosh said the two systems have different polarities and can get tangled with each other. When the systems merge, the pluses and minuses start to realign to make the simplest configuration. But as it goes through this intricate spaghetti rearrangement, enormous amounts of energy are released.

 

 

Biden blows apart an attempted Trump narrative

The one about how incredibly bitter he is over giving up his candidacy, and he might try to take it back at the convention.  He was talking here with Kamala Harris on the same stage.

Update:  meanwhile, in Trump world -  

Also, I find it hard to disagree with this, even though I don't use that language:

 I actually suspect that even the most diehard of pro-Trump types in the couple of Australian Right Wing blogs I look at are finding it extremely difficult to keep crediting Trump as being smart.   He's just providing too much evidence against himself. 

Sabine gives a good explanation about AI

I liked Sabine Hossenfelder's take on Large Language Models and their limitations with respect to advancing AI.  It's a very clear explanation for this topic, I think: 

 

The comments are worth reading too - some saying that the issue is already being addressed.

Astronauts stuck in space - and Jerry Lewis

The story of the two astronauts stuck in the International Space Station for (possibly) an 8 month visit instead of the original planned 8 days reminded me of a Jerry Lewis film from the 1960's.    I really didn't remember much about it, except that it didn't seem very funny when I was a kid, and that it made me a bit uncomfortable  because it was essentially a sex comedy before I was anywhere near understanding sex.

Googling the topic, I see that it called Way...Way Out (a title with an unusual emphasis on punctuation), and the Wikipedia entry about it confirmed the one aspect I could recall - that near the start there were  male astronauts on the Moon who were going crazy because they had been away from women for too long.  Not having access to women drives men nuts, obviously [sarc!].   This did not really compute to my boyhood brain.   It's a curious thing, I think, that as a kid you can understand that something significant happens between men and women, but not really have any comprehension of the physical urge behind it.  But still, I always felt that it seemed in bad taste to spend all your time obsessing over the matter.  (I'm not exactly sure what made me naturally conservative in that respect.)

It is a pretty odd conceit for a film, given that 1966 was not all that long from World War 2 and the lived experience of a lot of men who had to have gone a long time without sex who didn't go nuts (for that reason, anyway).   And now, we have lots of men on long, long stays in the ISS without any reports of insanity breaking out.  I'm presuming that no sex with visiting females has ever happened there - although I guess any astronauts who did so engage wouldn't be telling anyone any time soon.   But the place has barely enough water for decent normal hygiene, let alone additional washing required due to sexual activities.  

Anyway - I've never been a fan of the "male sexual desperation" genre of comedy.  Although, now that I think of it, should I count Spielberg's 1941 as an exception?   I really like that film for a lot of different reasons, and there is one key sex element that is important to the plot.   But it's more about a fetish that is amusingly odd, and it's driven by a female character's desire, so I think that makes it more politically correct than the comedies based all on males doing desperate things to get sex that featured a lot in movies in the 1980's that I had no interest in seeing.  (1941 came out in 1979, in case you were wondering.)  

But back to Jerry Lewis's bad movie - Wikipedia says it make no money and neither critics nor the public liked it.  But someone has put the whole thing on Youtube (surprisingly, it was a Cinemascope film, apparently), so I guess I can go watch the whole thing and cringe again, if I want.  Lots of people in comments say that they still thought it a great film as a kid, so it takes all kinds, obviously.

Can you imagine what he was like as a child?

 

An interview with a very high disaster potential

It may have just started, but this was my feeling too:

Update:  Ha!  I did just try to watch it, but seems the streaming is not working on Twitter.   Good one, Elon.

Update 2:   I've started listening to a recording - so far, been about 30 minutes of Trump talking excitedly about the assassination attempt (which he claimed at the convention, with fake solemnity, he would never talk about again because it was too traumatic.)   

Continuing:   Wow, Trump's really motor-mouthing this "conversation".   Are we sure he doesn't do coke, or some other stimulant?   Elon is pathetically agreeing with everything, for the sake of not being "confrontational".   

 

More:   Elon is really pathetic, opining that the international community "respected" Trump as leader, and so ridiculously excited by Trump's post shooting theatre performance that he thinks world leaders will think it proves Trump's "don't mess with me" machismo. 

Now - Trump doing his "they're bad, Putin, Xi and Kim, but I really admire their toughness and success and I got along fine with them" dance.

And more:   Such childish attacks on Biden as "low IQ", "low IQ 30 years ago, no IQ now, can't even measure it", said "stupid things from his stupid face".   

What the heck?:   Musk opines that he thinks we have plenty of time to deal with reducing CO2, which he doesn't want to see get to 1,000 ppm because you start to get headaches at that level.   (In other words, seems to completely dismiss the IPCC work to estimate maximum "safe" temperature we should aim for.)  

And now:  Talking about high speed tunnels as an alternative to high speed trains???  Because Musk dug a couple of pretty useless, small tunnels in Vegas??

Oh thank God, it's finished....

Reverts to "very peculiar"

Recently, Noah Smith a couple of other mostly sensible people on Twitter noted that Richard Hanania seemed to be making some reasonable posts on the current state of politics.  (He has made so many bad or peculiar posts on all sorts of things I had to stop following him, it was too much.)   

Today, I see we are well and truly back to "very peculiar": 

 

The "Raygun" mystery

I'm not at all sure that it is worth spending 5 minutes on this topic, but the mystery around what exactly was going on in the heads of both (shall we say) "low quality" breakdancer "Raygun", and the collective heads of those who selected her, seems very deep.

I even saw a tweet by old blogger Mark Bahnisch criticising her from the Left (although it seems most of her defenders have been on that side):

Further down he even said this: 

 which is pretty remarkable coming from a sociologist!

Anyway, it may well mean no breakdancing next Olympics, and I'm not going to shed a tear over that.

No wonder dictators love Trump - he's so gullible

Trump falsely accuses Harris campaign of fabricated AI crowd photos  

I mean, everything points to Putin, Xi and Kim just needing to say "we really think you're doing a great job as President, Donald - the best President there's ever been. As for that question about whether we did X, no of course not.  We wouldn't lie to you."   And Trump would go out and announce to the press that there's no way they did it, regardless of the evidence his own officials are waving in front of his face.

Update:  the other story that should be being pressed harder in the media is Trump's helicopter story. It is looking very, very likely to be either a deliberation fabrication, or a result of a completely muddled memory.  (The key element and reason for telling it, that Willie Brown told him some terrible things about Kamala Harris, looks especially invented.)

We all know how the press would treat it if it had been Biden telling it.  

Funny

Interesting talkback call

I don't know the politics of James O'Brien - never heard of him before, to be honest - but the takedown in a calm manner of someone who rang him to defend "Tommy Robinson's" role in starting riots in England on the basis of a lie is something pretty awesome to listen to.  (Also pretty rare that the caller would keep his cool and keep on the line while he continously loses credibility in his initial position:  

Walz seems a good choice for VP

Of course, all I know about him is what I have learnt in about 12 hours, but he certainly presents as a likeable "regular guy", with good experience in life and politics.

Not weird at all.

A gruesome way to die

When I hear of someone being taken by a crocodile in North Australia, my initial reaction is usually to think they were probably doing something dangeroous that they shouldn't have been doing.  Going for a swim in a dangerous spot, fishing close to the murky water's edge - something like that.

But the latest victim - wow, I feel for his wife - and it's like it's out of a movie:

Police say Newcastle man and GP David Hogbin, 40, was with family members when he fell into the Annan River near Cooktown and failed to resurface on Saturday.

A police spokesperson said it was understood Mr Hogbin was not fishing at the time of his disappearance.

Friend Alex Ward, who started a GoFundMe fundraiser for the family, wrote that the family was walking on an "established path" on the riverbank when it gave way under Dr Hobkin.

He said his wife Jane heard the splash and tried to help him out.

"Due to the steepness and slipperiness of the bank Jane was able to grab his arm but began slipping into the river herself," the post reads.

"Dave's final, decisive act was to let go of Jane's arm when he realised she was slipping in, an act that likely saved her life."

It was then he was taken by the crocodile.

"One small consolation is that none of Dave's children witnessed this event," the post reads.

 

 

Extreme weirdness

Even apart from the weird original story - what the hell is he doing talking to Roseanne Barr on the video??

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, confessed on Sunday that he had left a dead bear cub in Central Park in Manhattan in 2014 because he thought it would be “amusing.”

Mr. Kennedy posted a video detailing the bizarre story on social media apparently ahead of an article in The New Yorker.

“Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one,” he said, tagging the magazine.

In the video, Mr. Kennedy appears to be seated in a kitchen as he casually tells the actress Roseanne Barr about the ordeal. He says that he was driving through the Hudson Valley when he saw a woman in a van hit and kill a young bear.

Full story from the NY Times here (gift linked.)

Update:

Ceramics noted

I have always liked this noodle/soup bowl, which I am sure was purchased after I was married, and while my wife may remember where we bought it, I have forgotten. Must ask her. (It wasn't expensive, but I just like these sort of colours and patterns on bowls and plates. I did post before about how much I like Peranakan examples.) 

I took this photo for no particular reason yesterday, then Youtube came up with this interesting story about China recovering nice ceramics, many with a not dissimilar look, from a 500 year old shipwreck. I had the feeling that China's interest in this (and the reference to where the wreck was found) has a subtle tie in with their ridiculous expansionist claims of territorial rights in the ocean, but I was still impressed with the quality of some of the ceramic pieces. Here's the video: 

 

Longevity does not run in the Waugh genes

This is a surprise:  I went to Quadrant on the off chance of finding some laughable fanboying of Donald Trump, and instead found something well written and not cringeworthy - an obituary for Alexander Waugh: grandson of Evelyn, son of Auberon.  He recently died at the age of 60 (prostate cancer - ugh), and as the article notes:

Alexander’s death on July 22 sadly mirrors the early demise of Evelyn at 62, and Auberon at 61.

It's written by Mark McGinness, a name which sounds a bit familiar but maybe I'm imagining it.  It reads like it was for a better publication than Quadrant, but there is no attribution, so I don't know.

Anyway, eccentricity and writing talent seems to have been in his genes, if not longevity.   It's an interesting read.

Be Perplexed

Nearly a year ago, I posted about how I was very impressed with the AI tool Perplexity - and since then I have seen it increasingly mentioned on line as what a lot of people use instead of, or combined with, Google for searching the internet now.

(There was an interesting thread on Twitter yesterday started by Noah Smith about how the internet has become a lot worse for finding certain information - he blamed it on people and institutions now not putting stuff up on simple web pages like they used to.   Many people agreed, complaining about how bad Google search has become, and how you sometimes find an answer faster by searching Youtube or Reddit.  But of the AI search tools that got mentioned most often, I think Perplexity was the top one.) 

I have used Perplexity at work a few times recently, and yes, the results were startlingly good and accurate.  I also used it on (what I thought) a rather obscure matter local to Brisbane and someone I know who lives here, and the detailed answer was, once again, just great. 

Once again, therefore, I recommend it to any reader.   I usually use just the "quick" search but there is a "pro" search available that I haven't tried.   There are limits on the number of pro searches you can make in a day, but you can subscribe (not so cheap - about $34 a month) to get a lot more Pro searches per day.  

I have told both of my university educated kids about it, and neither had heard of it.   Yeah, the ageing Dad felt boastful about knowing something new and valuable in the online world that they didn't.  

Krugman on the puzzling world of crypto

Good to see that Krugman is still a complete cryptocurrency skeptic, but he admits being surprised at the fact it is still a thing.  

I really hope that the rumours I have seen sometimes on Twitter are not true:  that someone acting on behalf of Harris have been making approaches to crypto world to try to convince them that Democrats can support their vapourware idea just as Republicans can.

What a deliciously bad week for Trump

After the pathetic performance at that black journalist forum, and an increasing number of polls showing Harris already beating him in some of the key swing states, the cherry on top is his best mate Putin deciding to do a deal with the supposedly lame duck Biden (that makes Biden look good).  

It's impossible for Trump not to be furious about that.

At this point, although it may be tempting fate to say so, I remind readers that I have always said Trump would not win re-election.

He speaks from first hand experience

 

Amusing tweet of the day

Aaron Rupar does a fine job in watching and tweeting the Trump rallies so we all know the nuttiest things he is saying.

Family support that may be impossible where it's most needed?

I must have grumbled here before about the constant stream of complaint about the high rate of indigenous child family removal by child safety authorities - largely because I find it incredibly hard to believe that Australian social workers, being for decades now the career choice for the Lefty-ist of progressives on any university campus, aren't highly sensitive to the racial issues when they reluctantly remove a child.

Therefore, I was interested in this story on 730 this week, which showed an apparent success story in a modest sized indigenous run support service in Sydney that has helped kids stay in their troubled homes, while their parent/s got their act together (apparently):

 

It was obviously slanted to show this as a "way forward" - basically an argument for higher funding for such services. 

But, my skeptical take on it came up with these thoughts while watching it:

*  this looks like such a time intensive way of helping the families, the cost must be enormous.   I mean, were they actually qualified social workers making the visits to the house to do such mundane things as checking the parent is doing the washing, knows how to cook a decent meal, and has a timetable on the wall so as to remember when the kids have to go to school?   I think so, but it wasn't made 100% clear.  I mean, I have no doubt that some people with long standing addiction issues may need a lot of help working out how to do things the average non-drug addled person manages to work out for themselves, but the cost of such one-on-one support must be high.

*  The charity/support featured seemed to have several staff, but was obviously located in suburban Sydney.  (Indeed, the residence of the mother who was being assisted by them looked pretty comfortable and well appointed, especially if it was social housing - which I presume it probably was?)   OK, so finding the (apparently) aboriginal background people of suitable qualification to work with "at risk" families is one thing in Sydney - but how many child removals are from regional parts of the country, and how hard is it to get workers to live there and supply the same kind of support these women provided?   My guess - extremely hard indeed.   In other words, I would not be surprised if the high rate of indigenous child removal is to a large extent explained by the practical impossibility of getting enough people to work in this field in the regions with the highest rate of problems.   If that is true, what else can be done but take the children out of the home?

*  Finally - how to put this without sounding like a Bolt-lite? - the clear change in the approach to indigenous activism in the last 20 or 30 years to a more radical and grievance based approach is one with some dubious consequences for encouraging personal responsibility.   I don't doubt that bad treatment of some indigenous can have had generational effects - but I'm also pretty sure that well intended social workers who continually endorse the attitude that all problems are rooted in racist or unfair treatment of the past are not sending the best message to some of their clients.     

  

Today's depressing read on the future of Gaza

Last month, I posted about the depressing fact that no one seemed to have any good ideas regarding the future governance of Gaza - just a bleak picture of a hopeless place gradually being re-built while its youth will still be taught that the ultimate violent triumph over Israel is just around the corner, despite the lessons of history.

I see that my pessimistic musings are pretty much confirmed in this article in Foreign Affairs headed "Can anyone govern Gaza" that pretty much comes up with the answer "nope".   But it does think there is one (slightly?) least worst option:

All options for Gaza’s future are bad, but to prevent outright chaos, it is worth focusing sharply on the least bad scenario—the return of the PA to Gaza. It is a more plausible solution than imposing a government controlled by an international trustee or by unaffiliated Palestinians and a less disastrous option than a failed state or the return to Hamas rule, whether outright or covert. Although the PA is unpopular among Palestinians, they prefer a PA-run Gaza to a direct occupation by Israel. In the long term, it might also be preferable to Israelis—after all, there is a reason Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

The United States can do much more to ensure the PA beats the odds and governs Gaza. To help the PA, Washington must provide more training and aid. The Department of Defense and intelligence agencies should also step up efforts to train and equip the PA’s security forces to fight insurgencies. Yet technical training is only the first step. The bigger problem, as the United States learned the hard way in Afghanistan, is that security forces must have a government that inspires confidence. Right now, the PA is not worth fighting for. The PA will need to help itself by changing its leadership. Abbas is too old, inept, and unpopular to run Gaza, or even to continue running the West Bank. The United States should coordinate with international and Arab donors to the PA to identify younger, more qualified Palestinians to play leadership roles. Donors should restrict some aid if Abbas resists change and increase it if new leadership is brought in.

To further add to the depressing endless cycle of no end to the problem, I see from a 2007 post about the civil war-ish situation in Gaza at that time, I quoted this from Slate:

It's no wonder that everyone involved in this issue is now madly seeking "new ideas." A state in the West Bank only, leaving Gaza to its fate? (Would that state be viable, and who would take care of Gaza?) A three-state solution? (Why give Hamas a base from which it could cause trouble?) A return to the Jordanian-Egyptian solution? (Let them deal with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, respectively. There's one problem: They aren't interested.) An international force? (Hamas promised to treat such a force as an "occupying power." Any volunteers?) Start talking to Hamas? (This won't solve the internal Palestinian problems.) Keep fighting for Gaza? (Fatah seems to be losing its appetite for conflict, and, even with the support it has received from the West, doesn't have enough muscle to stay in the fight.)

 In an effort to try to end on less than a completely depressing note, someone in this lengthy article from October last year (Arab Perspectives on the Middle East Crisis) writes:

 The history of the region has taught us that, out of crises of this magnitude, political breakthroughs can be achieved. The 1973 October War led to peace between Egypt and Israel. The first intifada, followed by the first Gulf War, led to the Madrid peace conference.

But then follows that with this:

But this time, the situation is different. The international community is faced with a radical Israeli government that is not interested in any compromise, an ineffective Palestinian leadership that has been further weakened by the current events, and a U.S. administration that is preoccupied with presidential elections next year.

The stars are not aligned for a political initiative. Such an initiative needs the willingness of both parties to seriously engage, as well as the leadership of a U.S. administration that has so far been disinterested. Yet the longer the world continues to focus only on the here and now, the more it has to deal with casualties on both sides.

Great...

Rogan's absurd nuttiness continues

 

More on Australian universities and the overseas student issue

Remember, I like universities and don't have any issue with them being attractive to overseas students.  But they will harm their reputation if they don't get on top of the serious problem of passing students who effectively cheat by use of AI or other assistance.

This is from the second part of a series in The Guardian:

Guardian Australia spoke to multiple academics and students, who described wholesale use of genAI going largely unchecked at many institutions.

A humanities tutor at a leading sandstone university said she was “distressed” to find more than half of her students were flagged to have used AI in their first assignment for all or part of their work this year – a “huge increase” on 2023.

She believed the real number was much higher. But any repercussions were minimal.

“We’re not holding students to a standard,” she said. “It’s not fair on anyone who thinks a degree is worthwhile – a lot are not at the moment. It’s just proof they’ve been paid for.”

She has worked at a number of universities over three decades and said she had seen a “huge dependence” on the international market in recent years, so much so that tutors felt under pressure to pass students in order to keep the revenue coming.

“Nobody is blind to it,” she said. “It’s not a social or educational environment; it’s a box-checking exercise. A master’s degree is not worth what a bachelor’s used to be.”

Up to 80% of her courses were composed of full fee-paying overseas students, she said. Many struggled with English language skills in classes and meetings yet produced perfectly written essays.

It certainly sounds like it causing a lot of consternation amongst staff:

Academics told Guardian Australia they often felt unsupported or discouraged when they spoke up about alleged cheating.

A science tutor at a sandstone university alleged they faced repercussions last year when raising concerns over papers during the first wave of AI.

“There was a near mutiny among the teaching staff when we were told that we had to mark [apparently] bot-written papers as if they had been written by students,” they said.

I almost lost my job raising our common concerns about this to the subject coordinators. About one-fifth of the papers were plagiarised that year. I don’t think many people, if any, got seriously disciplined in the end.

“Far from discouraging AI use, they’re doubling down.”

“Our current directives are not to report them without a smoking gun,” they said.

The Guardian goes there...

I mean, if it was the Daily Mail, I would have more doubts, but when it's The Guardian deciding to run a series on this issue:

Australian universities accused of awarding degrees to students with no grasp of ‘basic’ English

I do pay attention.

Mind you, I also don't have any doubt that Universities can harbour right wingers on staff who may well exaggerate this problem.  (I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if UQ's pro-Trumper James Allen was one of the anonymous academics for the article.   But then again, he's in the law school, and I expect that not too many non English speaking overseas students pick that as their subject.)  

I think all of us suspect that there are cases of overseas students unfairly sailing through to a degree with very little useful english by relying on the myriad ways that technology (and capitalism) can help.  But the question is how often it happens and how seriously the universities treat the issue.

Hank says things I wish more people would say

The guy has always seemed basically likeable, but how I wish more people would be as blunt as this about crypto:

 

The old Olympics

An article like this probably gets published every modern Olympics, but this version had a couple of details I don't recall reading before:

...competing in the games could be dangerous.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 50 BC-c. 40 AD) describes how a father lost both sons in the “pancration”, a type of combat sport that was a violent mixture of boxing and wrestling:

A man trained his two sons as pancratists, and presented them to compete at the Olympic games. They were paired off to fight each other. The youths were both killed together and had divine honours decreed to them.

Gee - I wonder if the father ever got over that, or if he was satisfied with the "divine honours".

Also, venue facilities were not great for a long time:

As the contest was held in the middle of summer, it was usually extremely hot. According to Claudius Aelian, some people thought watching the Olympics under “the baking heat of the sun” was a “much more severe penalty” than having to do manual labour such as grinding grain.

The site at Olympia also had problems with freshwater supply. According to the writer Lucian of Samosata (2nd century AD), visitors to the games sometimes died of thirst. This problem was fixed when Herodes Atticus built an aqueduct to the site in the middle of the 2nd century AD.

And I didn't know "the famous story" about Plato attending: 

There is a famous story about what happened when the philosopher Plato (428/427-348/347 BC) stayed at Olympia for the games.

Plato lived there with others who did not realise he was the celebrated philosopher and he made a good impression on them, as the Roman writer Claudius Aelian (2nd/3rd century AD) recalled:

The strangers were delighted by their chance encounter […] he had behaved towards them with modesty and simplicity and had proved himself able to win the confidence of anyone in his company.

Later on, Plato invited his new friends to Athens and they were amazed to find out he was in fact the famous philosopher who was the student of Socrates.

It’s unclear how many people actually visited the ancient games each time they were held, although some modern scholars think the number could have been as high as 50,000 in some years.

Of course, there is also the minor point that it was a (nearly) all male audience watching male athletes compete in the nude, which I mainly find amusing by imagining how MAGA would deal with that scenario today.

 

The best doctors on Youtube

These two Canadian doctors (both orthopaedic surgeons, but they get guest specialists on to talk about other subjects) are easily the most likeable and reasonable sounding doctors who pump out content on Youtube.   Yet they have less than a million followers.  😕 They deserve more.

Anyway, I learnt a lot about "holes in the heart" by watching their last video.  I just didn't know any of this, which makes me feel a bit dumb: 

Musk and Twitter

If my experience of using Twitter is any guide, there's no doubt that Musk uses it to push unwanted Right wing, and Republican, views on the "For You" side.   That's how I know how so many Republican politicians, for example, freaked out about the Olympic opening ceremony, with the (admittedly oddball) queer Last Supper set up, featuring a near naked blue Smurf-y guy singing - something.  (I see now that he was meant to be Dionysus.  Huh.)

And then lots of American Evangelical types called the robot horse "Satanical", "straight out of Revelations", and how it was all out war on Christianity, etc etc.

Even Musk himself decided to join the chorus - yes, the guy whose personal life is about as Christian as Donald Trump's.   

I think it's all a storm in a teacup.  Sure, it perhaps stands as a warning to giving the top creative job of such an event to someone evangelically gay (so to speak) - but the bigger lesson to take from it is how dangerous the American Christian Right is, with their spurious religious claims and desire to force it on everyone.  

Update:  I see that the artist director (and others) have said it was inspired by another painting showing a Feast of Dionysus.  But the halo like thing around the central figure seems to counter that.  I think they were probably trying to have it both ways.    In any case, it didn't seem particularly French (even the Smurfs, if that was the look the singer was going for, were Belgian, not French), or Olympian.  

But as Adam said:

 

Fingers crossed for Paris

I'm getting the impression that there are people on both sides of politics who want to put the boot into Paris and its Olympics:   on the nutty Right, they think the city is full of dangerous Leftism, multiculturalism, Muslims and snooty cultural superiority, so they are lapping up (and sometimes inventing) stories of crimes and organisational failure on Twitter.

On the nutty Left, I haven't actually got evidence of this on Twitter, but if there was to be some outbreak of anti-Israel protest (even involving moderate levels of violence), they would almost certainly think it was warranted.   (I'm not suggesting they want it to be a repeat of Munich 1972, but I still bet they would welcome some form of disruption for the cause.)

 But the French military and police are out in force, and for a country that has had the unfortunate insult of "cheese eating surrender monkeys", I think everyone knows the men (and occasional woman) in the security services always look very serious and capable.  I really would not want to be a visitor who thinks they can make a "joke" threat in front of them.

Finally, I don't yet know where the Olympic flame is set up for the games, but if they get too tricky with the way it is to be lit (I'm thinking of the famous blazing arrow of Barcelona), wouldn't be it funny if they accidentally torch Notre Dame again?   :)  

It's something of a "good news" day

*  From the Washington Post:

A federal judge in Florida threw out a bankruptcy case filed by the Gateway Pundit, ruling that the site, which is known for spreading conspiracy theories, sought bankruptcy protection in “bad faith” to avoid having to pay potential damages in defamation suits related to the site’s reporting on the 2020 election.

The Thursday ruling from U.S. bankruptcy judge Mindy Mora in the Southern District of Florida means that defamation cases from two Georgia election workers, as well as one from a former Dominion Voting Systems executive, can proceed. The defamation cases had been held up while the bankruptcy case was ongoing.

Excellent - there is no way in the world that those two Georgia election workers are going to lose against him.  The most appalling thing is that in the US they have to spend years in litigation to get justice for the most blatant and dangerous lies.

 *  In a case of "it's about time", the NY Times reports:

Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered California state officials on Thursday to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments, the nation’s most sweeping response to a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave governments greater authority to remove homeless people from their streets.

More than in any other state, homeless encampments have been a wrenching issue in California, where housing costs are among the nation’s highest, complicating the many other factors that contribute to homelessness. An estimated 180,000 people were homeless last year in California, and most of them were unsheltered. Unlike New York City, most jurisdictions in California do not guarantee a right to housing.

Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, called on state officials and local leaders to “humanely remove encampments from public spaces” and act “with urgency,” prioritizing those that most threaten health and safety.

This is an important move for changing the perception of Democrats being paralysed by good intentions that lead to bad outcomes for everyone.

 * And, of course, there is the substantial poll improvement for Harris.  I hope she appoints the astronaut over the smart gay guy as her running mate - it will make the ticket look more balanced.

 

Some good dementia news for a change

I'm getting to the age where dementia protection news grabs my attention.  From The Guardian:

Researchers have raised hopes for delaying dementia after finding that a recently approved shingles vaccine was linked to a substantial reduction in diagnoses of the condition in the six years after receiving the shot.

The discovery, based on US medical records, suggests that beyond the health benefits of preventing shingles, a painful and sometimes serious condition in elderly people, the vaccine may also delay the onset of dementia, the UK’s leading cause of death.

Dr Maxime Taquet at the University of Oxford, the first author on the study, said the results supported the idea that shingles vaccination may prevent dementia. “If validated in clinical trials, these findings could have significant implications for older adults, health services, and public health.”

Shingles is caused by the herpes zoster virus and can flare up in people who have previously had chickenpox. When a shingles vaccine, Zostavax, was first rolled out in 2006, a number of studies found hints that the risk of dementia seemed to be lower in those who got the shots.

The development of a new and more effective shingles vaccine, Shingrix, led to a rapid switch in the US in October 2017, meaning those who were vaccinated before that date received Zostavax, while those vaccinated after tended to have Shingrix.

The Oxford team studied the health records of more than 200,000 US citizens vaccinated for shingles, about half of whom received the new vaccine. Over the next six years, the risk of dementia was 17% lower in those who received Shingrix compared with Zostavax.

For those who went on to develop dementia, that amounts to an extra 164 days, or nearly six months, lived without the condition. The effect was stronger in women, at 22%, than in men at 13%.

Many years ago, I got a very mild case of shingles on my back.   So I was always planning on the getting the vaccine anyway.

 

Trump is giving me bad dreams

I've been waking up and remembering bits of a lot of dreams lately, and some have been very strange.

As I've said before, a little reflection usually turns up what I have read, seen or heard in recent days that would have inspired the content, but this morning I was having trouble working out why last night's dream featured me as a different person who bought a cooked human brain and was eating it (!)  (I really did not care for the texture or taste, and was wondering why I was even doing it.  It was also my brother's brain, which I thought was good because it probably reduced the risk of getting a prion disease from eating a random one.  Cooked brains were, by the way, commercially available in the dream - I wasn't boiling it at home).   

Other snippets of dream I could identify - going to an odd opera (I had been listening to an opera director on Radio National the other day), and being in a Singaporean grocery store (no mystery at all - I watch a lot of Singaporean content on Youtube.)  But eating a brain??  

Then it came to me this afternoon - it's almost certainly because of Donald Trump's ridiculous recent referrals to Hannibal Lector, and every time he does it, it turns up on Twitter.

So there - I don't need to worry that my true core identity has always been as a cannibal, and it's only surfacing now in later life.   It's just Trump eating my mind....

On the nature of the current autocracies

Over at NPR, there's a discussion of a new book by Anne Applebaum called Autocracy, Inc., The Dictators Who Want to Rule the World.  Sounds interesting:

Autocracy, Inc., is not a club. There are no meetings like SPECTRE in a James Bond movie, where villains give progress reports on their kleptocratic gains and attacks on democracy. Instead, Applebaum writes, it is a very loosely knit mix of regimes, ranging from theocracies to monarchies, that operate more like companies. What unites these dictators isn’t an ideology, but something simpler and more prosaic: a laser-focus on preserving their wealth, repressing their people and maintaining power at all costs.

These regimes can help each other in ways large and small, Applebaum writes.

Countries such as Zimbabwe, Belarus and Cuba voted in favor of Russia’s annexation of Crimea at the United Nations in 2014. Russia gave loans to Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro, while Venezuelan police use Chinese-made water cannons, tear gas and surveillance equipment to attack and track street protesters.

Of course, U.S. companies have also supplied authoritarian regimes. When covering the crushing of the democracy movement in Bahrain during the Arab Spring, I rummaged through bins of empty rubber bullet canisters made by a company in Pennsylvania.

More recently and more alarming, though, have been China’s tacit support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin’s June visit to North Korea, which the U.S. accuses of supplying weapons to Russia.

But Autocracy Inc., uses more than conventional arms to attack democracies. In order to retain power and build more wealth, autocrats also undermine the idea of democracy as a viable choice for their own people. Fearful of its former Soviet republics drifting further West – see Ukraine – Russia and its three main TV channels broadcast negative news about Europe an average of 18 times a day during one three-year stretch.

China extends its message through local media and helps other dictatorships. After satellite networks dropped Russia Today – RT – following the invasion of Ukraine, China’s StarTimes satellite picked up RT and put it back into African households, where it could spread Moscow’s anti-Western, anti-LGBTQ message, which resonates in many African nations.

The goal is not to persuade people that autocracy is the answer, but to encourage cynicism about the alternative. Applebaum says the message is this: You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided and dying. 

And of course, we know which side of politics is responding to this message - the reactionary MAGA Right and its admirers in other Western nations, because they often like the social conservatism of most autocracies when it comes to gay and other identity politics.  "Yeah sure, Putin may poison his critics and potential political rivals, but he does hate the gays and calls them pedophiles, so that's good enough me."

 

 

 

I'm no ballistics expert, but...

...I'm pretty sure that if even a tiny edge of an AR15 bullet hit your ear tip, it would do more damage than a mere scratch that doesn't need stitches.   Kinetic energy, and all that.   

I would bet money on it being shrapnel, especially as there are reports of others being hit by it too. 

I guess I should add that it doesn't matter much:  either way, he obviously did come close to being hit by an actual bullet.   (And then got an immediate narcissistic thrill that he had been missed, which he turned into political theatre instead of leaving in a hurry in case there was a second gunman somewhere.)   It is irksome for him (and his cult) to refer to an ear scratch, probably from shrapnel, as "taking a bullet", but of course he lies continually and everyone knows that, so just add it to the litany of self- aggrandisement that is Trump.

I thought it interesting at the convention that Trump also specifically praised the crowd for not "running for the exits".  Oh yeah - MAGA followers are so "brave" that they don't even all have the common sense to duck when there are bullets flying around.   (Some did, but many just stayed standing, and videoing it on their phones.)

It's good to be King

Well, does this mean the monarchy (sort of?) pays for itself?:

LONDON — The British royal family will be receiving a 53 percent raise, worth more than 45 million pounds ($58 million), thanks to a record increase in its estate’s annual profit, propelled in part by offshore wind farm leases on seabed plots owned by the monarchy.

The Crown Estate, the organization that manages the sprawling royal land and property portfolio, released a report Wednesday for the 2023-2024 financial year, the first to cover a full financial year with King Charles III on the throne.

It showed that the Crown Estate generated a “record net revenue profit” of 1.1 billion pounds ($1.4 billion) — 658.1 million pounds more than last year — and revealed the royal family’s plans for future purchases with its share of that money, including two new helicopters.

The Crown Estate is formally owned by the royal family but is controlled by the British government. Profits that the estate generates each year go to the state treasury, and the government returns a percentage to the royals under what is known as the “Sovereign Grant” to cover the operating costs of the royal household — including staff salaries, entertainment, property maintenance and travel....

In recent years, the royal family has received 86.3 million pounds ($111.4 million) from the government, and will again in 2024-2025. That figure will rise to 132 million pounds ($170 million) for 2025-2026.

The grant will support ongoing 10-year renovation projects at Buckingham Palace, British media reported, citing royal officials.

The program, whose total cost will be 369 million pounds ($476 million), is “making progress” according to a report published Monday by Britain’s National Audit Office, a public spending watchdog.

 

 

The "new technology vs redundancy before it's even deployed" issue in developing new energy sources

I see that Sabine Hossenfelder and others have videos out about the latest cost blowout, and delays, in the ITER project that is only a research project for fusion, with no prospect of it ever actually being an electricity generator.

For reasons I have outlined before, I am firmly on the sceptic side of fusion energy ever being a practical source of energy.   

But this latest problem did make me think about how it's odd that both high-tech ideas for future energy (fusion, or even new fission reactors) and a much more modest-tech idea (large scale deployment of renewable energy plants which already work, but still have practical problems in replacing old style generators) both share a similar issue:   they are hampered by continual changes in technology that make planning for their development (or deployment) very difficult.

I mentioned in a recent post about how, even over the (nearly) two decades of writing this blog, you can see how ideas for new renewable energy have been floated, sometimes partially developed, and abandoned:  in many cases surpassed by the steady increase in efficiency and manufacturing improvements in the "been around forever, but getting way better all the time" sources (mainly solar panels and wind generators).   And now we are at a point where we know we need renewable energy deployed very rapidly to drop CO2 before we bake the world even further, but the issue of energy storage is still seemingly at the stage "too many ideas", and no one really knows the best way to deploy it for maximum efficiency and best cost outcomes.   A large part of the problem is surely that some ideas (molten salts, hot rocks or sand, chemical flow batteries, etc) will be beaten out of contention by improvements in competing systems, as nearly all storage ideas are still undergoing a lot of development and research and technological improvement.   Hence, it may sound like a good idea to subsidise (say) Tesla powerwalls for domestic use on a massive scale - but I would presume that all battery storage is likely to be better, cheaper and safer in (say) five or ten years time, so just how much money is it wise to spend now on the current model?

On the fusion question, I have seen it said (I presume reliably) that a large part of ITER's problem is that it was designed on the basis of magnet technology current  (I think) a couple of decades ago, but that has been surpassed by big improvements in the field.    Hence it is in one sense already a white elephant, and becoming more white elephant-y every year a cost increase or repair delays its operation.

I would guess that the same could be a significant issue in the field of new fission reactor designs - what company wants to spend a ton of money on a design that might work but be soon out-competed by an alternative new design in terms of cost, efficiency or safety?

I guess there is likely a simple name for this in economics, or some management field - this race between technological development and its deployment on the one hand, and redundancy on the other - but I don't know what it is.   

I also don't really know the solution.

What I do think, though, is that surely the billions spent on a research reactor for a source of energy that may never be economically viable could have gone a very long way towards resolving the issue of the best way to store energy from renewables, and likely come up with some good answers on that a great many years before ITER is even switched on.