Political punditry gone insane

I cannot believe what I am reading in the media and on the blogs at the moment re suggestions for Federal Labor to improve its position.

And no, I'm not talking right wing blogs full of ratbaggery: they just want to have an election and aren't about suggesting what Labor can do, unless it's something facetiously self serving, such as Andrew Bolt's call for a new leader who should drop the carbon tax. (In a sign of desperation, Bolt has taken to calling for a new leader to replace Gillard within a week or so, before the carbon tax legislation is introduced to Parliament.)

It's the Left leaning commentary that has gone insane. Firstly, there's old Phillip Adams calling for Kevin Rudd to be re-instated as leader. I don't hold his political punditry in high regard anyway, but his failure to see through the flim-flammery and flakiness of much of what Rudd did in the first year is typical of some on the Left. He seems to think Rudd is an intellectual powerhouse: I think most objective people see shallowness whenever he tries to show his smarts.

But even someone who generally writes intelligently and in a moderate voice, like John Quiggin, has given up on Labor having any chance under Gillard, and suggests she gets the carbon tax through and then resign for the good of the Party. Yeah right: she finally gets a big and difficult reform through Parliament, and she should say "well, people don't like me, so I'm off." I just can't fathom the logic of this. Quiggin suggests that while he didn't used to think Rudd should replace her, he thinks he is acceptable now, due to his having "more credibility"on the asylum seeker issue (!). This is just nuts, if you ask me. And as with all people suggesting a graceful Gillard departure, it's not as if they can point to an obvious successor.

Even more bizarre are some of the comments on the Lefty blog Larvatus Prodeo, where Kim takes essentially the same position as Quiggin, and many in comments agree. Fran, who actually can hold her ground in arguing about a carbon tax, goes as far as to write this insane bit on Gillard:

I didn’t respect her before she took the job and her appearance as the candidate of the mining thugs only served to lower my already poor impression of her. Throw in attacks on The Greens as entitled latte-sipping alarm-clock ignoring intellectuals and Gillard is Bolt in drag. The roll out of “people smugglers’ business model” ad vomitus gets her the unremittingly egregious tag. The only thing positively distinguishing her from Abbott is that at the margins, The Greens still exercise some restraint on her regime. Without that, I’d watch the government go over the edge of the abyss and spit on them on the way down.

In the papers, the moderate Mumble blog gets the analysis right:

We’re in a strange place. If this federal government announced it was erecting a new set of traffic lights*, local businesses would protest, residents would fret, petitions would be signed and convoys embarked upon.

MPs in Western Sydney would report that the issue was killing them—and Graham Richardson would agree.

These are odd, but special, political times. Yes it’s the policies a bit, but more than that is a dysfunctional dynamic.

But then suggests:

Could a new leader, perhaps after the passage of the carbon legislation, quarantine the Greens and generate some authority?

It’s probably worth a try.

No, it's not.

The essential problem for Labor has been its flip flopping on key issues that have made it look weak and indecisive; but conversely, those things in which it has sought to act quickly have sometimes come out looking too rushed, ineffective or just flakey.

There is no way that replacing Gillard with a new leader is going to address these core issues. In fact, it will exacerbate them.

Getting through a carbon tax, the mining tax, and finding a workable asylum seeker policy will go a long way to fixing the problems. It's absurd to think that, as this fundamental "fix" starts to happen, the PM should resign.

One of the comments at Mumble blog gets it right, I reckon. If anything, Gillard would improve by sounding tougher, not just with Abbott but with her appalling bunch of sleazy media critics, and those in the public (even those Labor sympathisers who are telling her to go). Here's the comment, from "Balmain":

Mumbles, I keep saying the same thing and you keep saying the opposite...but do you honestly, truly believe that the electorate will tolerate yet another leadership change? I can see Gillard becoming our answer to Thatcher (I hate to draw parallels based on gender..), but I can’t see any other way back for the government. They will not be able to run on their record (once again) if they lose her, and that will make for yet another disastrous campaign. If they hold tight and the country is in good stead come 2013, they will have a much better story to tell than “we’re sorry, we stuffed up and lost our nerve again”. It requires nerves of steel from the ALP, but if they have it surely it’s their best hope? I’m not saying Gillard will be liked, but if she can campaign on successful introduction of major policies by 2013 despite blatant adversity, there will be a begrudging respect factor, surely. I have noticed that a bit of media coverage lately, whilst mostly slating the government, has begun to make frequent mention of her incredible stoicism in the face of all this. It could be starting already…

He's right.

Of course, there are good reasons for fearing the Australian economy, which virtually every economist (save perhaps for the dropkick Sinclair Davidson - hey, he's called me much ruder names at his own blog) would agree has not been fundamentally mismanaged by this Labor government, will soon go through another set of trying times if there is another international financial crisis, and Labor will unfairly wear the blame for this. But this is the fate possibly awaiting any Labor leader, new or old, and replacing Gillard is not going to help that.

UPDATE: This post makes me sound like a complete convert to Labor and can't find a thing to complain about Gillard. Well, there is pretty strong evidence that she was behind the flip-flopping on what to do about a carbon price under Rudd, but as far as those who want to see one in are concerned, actually getting one through Parliament (and, it would appear, a better one than what Rudd nearly got through) should remedy that. On asylum seekers: well, that's a very difficult one for Labor, and no leader is going to find that a breeze to manage.

But if the Coalition would drop its stupidity on climate change, accept a mining tax is a legitimate thing to pursue, and install Malcolm Turnbull as leader, I would be happy to vote for them again. Otherwise, who knows, I might even vote Labor next time.

My other point about our PM which I made reference to a few days ago is that I honestly think that to improve her image for decisiveness, as well appear better to Asian leaders, she should just marry Tim. Don't make a big song or dance about it: just release one set of photos and do it in the gardens of the Lodge. Make sure Kevin Rudd attends!

At home with At Home

I didn't have high hopes for At Home with Julia, the short run sitcom based on an "re-imagining" of the life of our Prime Minister and her de facto partner.  However, I have to say I enjoyed it.

Of course, it's absurd to paint the Lodge as just a big house in which the PM or her partner have to cook their own dinner every night, and seemingly can only afford one hired help during the day.  But hey, it's just carrying on the tradition of movies which paint what's surely a ridiculously scaled version of the actual busy-ness of official residences.  (I thought Love Actually was particularly bad in this regard.)  

But the thing I did really like about it was the caricatures of  other politicians - the Paul Keating on the speaker phone droning on bitterly about what happened in 1995 was particularly funny, and although I'm sure the Rob Oakeshott prissiness about what to drink after dinner was unfair, it also amused me. 

I agree with the SMH video review - the best part of the humour was in these minor-ish details.

The actors who played the roles (including just the voice roles) did a piece on Radio National this morning, and it was quite funny.   Go have a listen at the audio link here (not the video, which is just a promo for the show.)

The psychedelic mouse

Did the use of psychedelics lead to a computer revolution?

Well, there are many things I didn't know in this Comment is Free article from The Guardian. (Why don't they put the best CiF articles on the main page like they used. I often forget to check it now.) Anyway, here are the most surprising bits:

...as New York Times reporter John Markoff told the world in his 2005 book, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, Jobs believed that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he'd done in his life. That 2001 conversation inspired Markoff to write the book: a history of computing with the drugs kept in.

From 1961 to 1965, the Bay Area-based International Foundation for Advanced Study led more than 350 people through acid trips for research purposes. Some of them were important pioneers in the development of computing, such as Doug Engelbart, the father of the computer mouse, then heading a project to use computers to augment the human mind at nearby SRI. Grim also names the inventors of virtual reality and early Cisco employee Kevin Herbert as examples of experimenters with acid, and calls Burning Man (whose frequent attendees include Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page) the modern equivalent for those seeking mind expansion.

Well, if the idea of the computer mouse came up during an acid trip, it could well have started out as literally a mouse, if you follow my drift.

The article also notes a West Coast/East Coast theory of computer development, which I hadn't heard of before either:

Markoff traces modern computing to two sources. First is the clean-cut, military-style, suit-wearing Big Iron approach of the east coast that, in its IBM incarnation, was so memorably smashed in the 1984 Super Bowl ad for the first Apple Mac.

Second is the eclectic and iconoclastic mix of hackers, hippies, and rebels of the west coast, from whose ranks so many of today's big Silicon Valley names emerged. Markoff, born and bred in the Bay Area and 18 in 1967, argues the idea of the personal computer as a device to empower individuals was a purely west coast idea; the east coast didn't "get" anything but corporate technology.

Sounds kind of plausible.

The neighbourhood might be dangerous

Our galaxy might hold thousands of ticking 'time bombs'

A couple of astrophysicists have come up with an idea as to another mechanism which may be the precursor to supernovas, and suggest this:

"Our work is new because we show that spin-up and spin-down of the white dwarf have important consequences. Astronomers therefore must take angular momentum of accreting white dwarfs seriously, even though it's very difficult science," explained Di Stefano.
The spin-down process could produce a time delay of up to a billion years between the end of accretion and the supernova explosion. This would allow the companion star to age and evolve into a second white dwarf, and any surrounding material to dissipate.
In our Galaxy, scientists estimate that there are three Type Ia supernovae every thousand years. If a typical super-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf takes millions of years to spin down and explode, then calculations suggest that there should be dozens of pre-explosion systems within a few thousand light-years of Earth.
Those supernova precursors will be difficult to detect. However, upcoming wide-field surveys conducted at facilities like Pan-STARRS and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope should be able to spot them.

Well, how dangerous could a Type Ia supernova be?  According to Wikipedia:

Type Ia supernovae are thought to be potentially the most dangerous if they occur close enough to the Earth. Because Type Ia supernovae arise from dim, common white dwarf stars, it is likely that a supernova that could affect the Earth will occur unpredictably and take place in a star system that is not well studied. One theory suggests that a Type Ia supernova would have to be closer than 10 parsecs (33 light-years) to affect the Earth.[8] The closest known candidate is IK Pegasi.[9] It is currently estimated, however, that by the time it could become a threat, its velocity in relation to the Solar System would have carried IK Pegasi to a safe distance.[5]

Maybe we'll be OK after all.

Harry on carbon pricing

Australian Carbon Pricing - Harry Clarke

Economist Harry Clarke went to a meeting recently that was looking at carbon pricing, and made many interesting observations about the forthcoming Labor scheme.

One point about Tony Abbott's direct action plan which I had not heard raised before was this:

Birmingham claimed that because those direct actions were to be monitored on the basis of effectiveness and cost that the Liberal approach was market-related but missed totally the core point about the informational efficiency of prices in a setting where you want to change the behaviour of millions of agents. Certainly an army of bureaucrats will be needed to implement the Liberal policy which ironically seeks to make cuts in the climate-related bureaucracy.

Harry Clarke is satisfied generally with the the Labor scheme is " a remarkably successful first attempt by government to come to grips with the issue of climate change." He acknowledges it is not perfect, but in such a complicated and difficult area, I think he would say that that is hardly a surprise.

Harry used to visit and argue with the relentless and (frequently) ill-informed commentary at Catallaxy on climate change and carbon pricing. He appears to have given up out of frustration, and who can blame him.

I am pleased to see that the government is planning on getting its carbon scheme legislation introduced into Parliament as early as next week. The army of ill informed people who have been sucked in by the completely ill informed and/or dishonest right wing media figures such as Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones, Michael Smith and Jonova are going to tire of their campaign when the legislation goes through, and the Gillard will at least be able to point to one difficult issue in a decisive way, at last.

Very reasonable

RealClimate: Resignations, retractions and the process of science

Gavin Schmidt's commentary on the recent controversy over a Roy Spencer paper explains the situation very reasonably.

Who's writing them?

NASA Hopes Hard Sci-Fi Will Inspire Future Space Force

Roman might approve of a forthcoming line of science fiction books from NASA and Tor-Forge books. (Disclosure: Tor-Forge and Scientific American have the same corporate parent.)

The partnership aims to create scientifically accurate novels and to get the word out about NASA missions present and future. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center​ is hosting a workshop in November where authors can learn about NASA missions and the science behind them.

Revkin talks extremes

Extreme Weather in a Warming World - NYTimes.com

Andrew Revkin is pretty cautious on the attribution question of extreme weather events and global warming, and this post on the topic is worth reading.

More artificial reproductive stupidity

One Sperm Donor, 150 Sons and Daughters - NYTimes.com

Yes, one sperm donor in the States had been the father of 150 kids, and apparently there are many cases of 50 or so from the same donor. As the article notes:

Critics say that fertility clinics and sperm banks are earning huge profits by allowing too many children to be conceived with sperm from popular donors, and that families should be given more information on the health of donors and the children conceived with their sperm. They are also calling for legal limits on the number of children conceived using the same donor’s sperm and a re-examination of the anonymity that cloaks many donors.

“We have more rules that go into place when you buy a used car than when you buy sperm,” said Debora L. Spar, president of Barnard College and author of “The Baby Business: How Money, Science and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception.” “It’s very clear that the dealer can’t sell you a lemon, and there’s information about the history of the car. There are no such rules in the fertility industry right now.”

Although other countries, including Britain, France and Sweden, limit how many children a sperm donor can father, there is no such limit in the United States.

America: land of the free, and home of the "is that my half brother I'm kissing?"

Sleep your way to evolutionary success

Researchers seem to have a lot of interest in the sex lives of early humans.  Hot on the heals of the story last week that sleeping with Neanderthals had been good for our immune system, there's another story today of early homo sapiens sleeping with other homo-something-or-others which are no longer around:

Hammer and his colleagues argue that roughly 2% of the genetic material found in these modern African populations was inserted into the human genome some 35,000 years ago. They say these sequences must have come from a now-extinct member of the Homo genus that broke away from the modern human lineage around 700,000 years ago.

Hammer says this disproves the conventional view that we are descended from a single population that arose in Africa and replaced all other Homo species without interbreeding. "We need to modify the standard model of human origins," he says.

 Well, I suppose there was no TV in those days, and staring at the cave wall paintings was entertaining for only so long.

The right thing to do….

So that's where it goes

Extreme Flooding In 2010-2011 Lowers Global Sea Level

I find this surprising: it appears that the down bumps on the road to rising sea levels can be accounted for (at least in the last year) by the large scale flood which have happened around the world.

All the water will get back to the ocean, eventually.

It still seems to be that more frequent, larger scale, flooding, might well be the worst, early effect of global warming that AGW proponents did not really spend enough time warning people about.

Later...

Yes, Father's Day was nice, thanks.

I've found the app called Comics for the iPad, which will let me prepare my talentless "comics" easier than before.  This pleases me.

As with all people interested in politics, I am very curious as to what Newspoll will come up with for Labor tomorrow.

I am going to spend today meditating in preparation. 

Update:   could've been worse.  Primary dropping to 25% or below would have been psychologically very  bad, but Gillard can point to no drop in primary of 27%.  But what would have caused a 2% drop in Green vote?  

Odd film alert

A Dangerous Method: 'And out of the spanking comes psychoanalysis' - video | Film | guardian.co.uk

My more regulars readers will recall that I find Jung pretty interesting, and what happened between him and Freud is just about the most fascinating aspect of his life.

Now, it seems that a movie on the topic has finally been made, with David Cronenberg (or all people) the director. I see that it is based on a play, but I hadn't heard of it before.

The link above is a video report on the film's reception at the Venice Film Festival. It sounds like an interesting movie, but perhaps not one to see when tired.

Born into the job

Sex hormones impact career choices

This interesting study looked at job preferences of females with a congenital condition (CAH) that sees them exposed to abnormal levels of male sex hormone while in the womb:

The researchers report in the current issue of Hormones and Behavior that females with CAH were significantly more interested than females without CAH in careers related to things compared to careers related to people. The researchers also found that career interests directly corresponded to the amount of androgen exposure the females with CAH experienced -- those exposed to the most androgen in the uterus showed the most interest in things versus people.

"We took advantage of a natural experiment," said Berenbaum. "We're suggesting that these interests are pretty early developing."

Females without CAH had less interest than males in occupations related to things, such as engineer or surgeon, and more interest in careers focused on interactingwith people, such as social worker or teacher. There was no significant difference reported between males with CAH and males without the condition.