Could help explain something

Bill Leak obviously had a lot of friends, on the Left and Right, and but even so there has been a somewhat extraordinary amount of column space in the News Ltd press lauding him.

I see that Chris Mitchell, former editor from when the paper went full blown Tea Party lite, has written this about Leak's post accident period:

Bill knew that fall could have, should have, killed him. He was in a coma, had severe brain damage and a 15cm hole in his head as wide as his thumb.

He suffered debilitating headaches for the first few years back in the cartoonist’s chair. He struggled through the fog of heavy pain relief to get his thoughts together each morning for the day’s cartoon.

After starting back a couple of days a week, in time he came back to full- time work. 

Someone on line, in the last year or two, made the observation that the problem with post accident Leak was not just that he was being "controversial", but that his work had stopped being funny.

Mitchell provides evidence that the lingering effects of the head injury had a role in that.   (Although, it has to be said, that his moving house out of concern for radical Muslim death threats in 2015 could be good reason for loss of sense of humour, too.)

Mitchell claims that Leak didn't change politics, as people claimed - but looking back over some of his old work, as people have been posting since his death, I reckon that is rubbish.

Update:  another person writing in the Australian notes:

He rose most days at 5am, went downstairs to his office, and, ­fuelled by coffee and cigarettes, scanned the overnight news while waiting for his friends to wake up so he could engage them in vigorous, often ribald phone calls and email exchanges.

Sounds like quite a big tobacco habit.  As some others have noted, in response to the hysterical "the HRC hounded him to death!" claims from some on the Right, the smoking no doubt had a major  hand in causing Leak's death.  

Sinclair Davidson, in his semi-routinely hyperbolic way, went so far as to have his post on Leak's death entitled "The Australian Human Rights Commission has blood on its hands".    Yet, ironically, he spends much of his time deriding tobacco plain packaging; work which undoubtedly the tobacco industry is happy to see.   Say no more...

Update:   two more things about Leak I heard today:  I caught a bit of a replay of a Richard Fidler interview with him in 2009 (post accident) in which Leak spoke about now being off alcohol, giving the distinct impression he had been a very heavy drinker before.  Then Guy Rundle, in an obit which I presume will upset some, claims Leak had 30 plus years of high functioning alcoholism (and drug use - although he doesn't say illicit drug use.)   I don't even know if Rundle knew Leak, of course.  But still - it would seem that Leak had a very far from healthy lifestyle for much, or most, of his adult life.  

Developments in the afterlife

Peter Whiteford tweeted a link to a review of an interesting sounding book review in New Humanist (a journal I'm not in the habit of noting.)   Here's an extract, which I hope is not too long:

In his latest book, The Ransom of the Soul, Brown offers an exhilarating survey of attitudes towards death, mourning and the afterlife in late antiquity, and their connections to money, politics and social justice. He reminds us that the Christians of the third century were still an insurgent minority, inspired by what he calls a “countercultural longing for a religious community” – a form of community at loggerheads with the blatant inequalities of wealth and status that prevailed in the world around them. They also believed that Christ was going to return to earth in a matter of weeks or months or at most a few years, and that he would then preside over an earthly paradise in which the faithful dead would join the rest of his followers in endless celebrations of their victory over paganism, sin and death itself.

Two centuries later, Christian certainties were in disarray. Believers had to recognise that their messiah was taking far longer to return to earth than any of them had imagined. (If you are a socialist with a sense of history, you will know how they must have felt.) They could not carry on assuming that the dead were going to rise from their graves like sleepers waking from a nap: they realised that the bodies of the waiting dead were not in any condition to resume their former functions, and they also started to face up to the question of what activities the souls of the dead could engage in while waiting for their bodies to be resurrected.

To complicate matters further, the church was running into problems of worldly success. Christianity was on its way to encompassing Roman society as a whole, and its followers now included hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who were not “altogether good”, but not “altogether bad” either. Christians began to suppose that the souls of the departed spent their time trying to make amends for their sins, and they started to draw up graduated schemes of reward and punishment – systems of moral taxation, in effect, designed to account for different grades and qualities of guilt. Augustine tried to turn back the tide of speculation by arguing that the living could never understand the world of the dead; but he went along with the idea that the afterlife is fraught with dangers, and that the faithful here on earth should do everything in their power to support the souls of the deceased in their quest for salvation.

On top of that there were difficulties about the sort of existence that could be attributed to the soul. Paradise was starting to be seen as heavenly rather than earthly, and, as Brown puts it, “the distance between heaven and earth seemed to yawn more widely”. Augustine went so far as to ask his fellow Christians to give up their attachment to the earthly body, maintaining that the soul was a spiritual entity, completely distinct from matter. But that theory was closer to the pagan philosophy of the Greeks than to anything in the Bible or the gospels, and most Christians were unwilling to accept it: they could not see how a soul without a body could have an individual identity, or any real connection with a life that had been lived on earth.

Despite Augustine, therefore, they persisted in taking an unplatonic interest in the fate of dead bodies, and they aspired to have their corpses enclosed in stout coffins, inscribed with their names to prevent confusion, and buried in the vicinity of the mortal remains of saints, or at least in a sanctified building or consecrated ground.
Unfortunately these burial practices were in obvious conflict with the teachings of Jesus: instead of favouring the meek and the poor, they gave enormous spiritual advantages to rich grandees. To make matters worse, the recommended technique for interceding on behalf of the dead – repeated prayers asking God to have mercy on their souls – offered the rich further opportunities to jump the queue: they could pay for prayers on behalf of their friends and family, and endow colleges, chapels or religious houses on condition that they say prayers for their benefactors in perpetuity.

Augustine did his best to block the plutocratic path to salvation, telling the rich that if they wanted to be saved, they would have to give large sums to the church, not for their own sakes but to fund the relief of poverty together with prayers for the souls of the poor. This was a novel idea, and as Brown points out it involved a far-reaching revolution in “the social imagination”. Early Christianity, like Judaism, was a tribal religion, and social obligations were not seen as extending beyond the limits of the tribe. In the same way, the civilisations of Greece and Rome rested on loyalty to individual cities, and acts of civic generosity – gifts of public buildings or circuses, games or races – were designed not to assist the poor but to enhance the magnificence of the city, and no doubt the donor as well. But the new Christian doctrine of death and charity involved a move from what Brown calls a “closed” moral universe to an “open” one, throwing down an implicit challenge to the social assumptions of both Jerusalem and Rome. From now on, he says, the rich would be expected to spend their money not on themselves or their cities, but on the “faceless mass of the poor”. Some teachers advocated a total renunciation of wealth, but Augustine advised the rich to retain their capital so that they could carry on giving to the poor, year after year, world without end. Either way, they could be assured that they were making a sound investment, building up “treasure in heaven” by directing their generosity not to particular people or groups, but simply to the wretched of the earth.

Death and sorghum

There's a short transcript of (parts of) an interview up at NPR with an American comedian who I'm not aware of, but who has taken to talking about his grief process since his wife died. 

He made one comment that rings very true:

One thing that I've learned since what happened to me happened is: You don't know the kind of pain and loss other people may have gone through — even close friends and acquaintances. ... In really awful science fiction terms it is like putting on the sunglasses in They Live and then seeing the world for what it really is. Do you know what I mean? Obviously I knew there was loss and death and depression, but you can only sympathize so far until it directly happens to you.

And he ended with a bit which I thought was pretty funny (after earlier saying that he personally didn't buy the idea that getting physically fit was a help with grieving):

On whether he's disappointed people who expected him to be funny
Sorry for bumming you out. I'm very sorry. Go walk for half an hour; it will flood you with endorphins. ... What am I saying?! You're NPR listeners. You're used to being bummed out. Now let's cut to some sad jazz. Stay tuned: We're going to talk about things to do with sorghum. It's sorghum season!

Oddly, as it happens, only last weekend I was pointing to a crop in a field near Mulgowie and opining that it might be sorghum.

Also somewhat oddly - I have no memory at all as to how it is that I know what sorghum looks like.  Perhaps it was covered in primary school?   In fact, behind my primary school, there were several factory buildings, one of which used to be a place that dealt with different seeds/grains - I think truck loads of stuff would arrive there and perhaps be distributed out in smaller packaging.   The place had a distinctive, but not unpleasant, smell.  It's no longer there;  I was in the area about 6 months ago.

And for the uneducated, here is sorghum in the field:

Yes, I am sure that is what I was seeing out of the car window in the Lockyer Valley.

By the way, fresh corn from the Valley is particularly delicious at the moment....

Scratching mice

Just a test, posting a page from Science magazine, about how scratching is "contagious" amongst mice, as with humans.

Oh, that works well...At least on my tablet.  Click on the image and I can read it easily.

About Bill Leak

There are sufficient numbers of people of Left inclination on Twitter saying that Bill Leak was smart and funny in real life to make me not doubt he was more likeable in person than his recent years' cartooning output would indicate.  And it is not a good look for anyone to be celebrating his death as the means of ending that output.      

What those people should wish for is that he were alive but that his work showed more thoughtful, subtle and diverse opinion than the narrow, bitter, and quite extreme Right wing, culture war politics that they routinely did in the last few years.

He had become a tribal hero of  those who you could say are the Australian equivalent of the Tea Party Right - a group who I am frankly pleased to see not get its daily endorsement that their views are widespread and reasonable.    I really did intensely dislike his recent output for that reason:  foolish people are not best served by public endorsement or incitement of their foolish views.   But do I wish it ended this way?  No. 

As some have noted on Twitter, too, one can surely resent the editorial guidance of The Australian for never pulling him back.   I doubt that even his tribal admirers could often describe his recent work as witty - I think they were more inclined to laugh in delight their views were being endorsed in an over the top way - and in a (little read) national paper!  Brilliant!  (/sarc).  That's not the same, in my books, as smart, witty cartooning.

It remains an open question as to whether his personality, judgement or political views were changed by the serious head injury he suffered some years ago - it seems his work was just politely dropped (by the likes of The Insiders) when it became more extreme, rather than anyone who knew him wanting to talk openly about why he had gone that way. Perhaps, in coming months, we might learn more about whether that incident really did seem to have personality changing effects...

Update:   I had forgotten that Leak had written in 2012 that he knew that critics were saying he had gone strongly Right wing after his head injury, and denied it.   I am curious as to what people who knew him well are prepared to say (apart from Right wing commentators, who clearly have no problem with his continual Muslim baiting, for example), but I guess it may be some time before we'll hear.

Furthermore, the Right wing meme is around that the stress of the HRC complaints (all dropped or dismissed in relatively short time, and nearly 3 months ago) caused his heart attack.  He clearly did complain about the stress of it all:

"It shows what a farcical process this is. I've got News Corp backing me legally. But if I was a private citizen, this would have cost me an absolute fortune," he told The Australian.

"She has put me through a month or so of incredible stress. She never met me, she doesn't have to justify anything she does. No one asked her any questions and it doesn't cost her a cent. As a consequence my life has been thrown into utter chaos. And at time when it just happens to suit her, she just decides this could turn into a bit of a hassle, so she can withdraw it."

Look, I just don't understand this - I have read elsewhere that he moved house once due to Muslim death threats - now that I can understand being stressful. 

But being stressed out by complaints lodged by distant complainants about an aboriginal themed cartoon when you have the full backing of your employer to legally fight said complaints?    No, I actually don't get that.

I'm sorry, but this reminds me too much of Andrew Bolt's martyrdom over his columns - in both cases, I think the complaints could have been resolved easily with good will (a "sorry if any offence caused, but it was not done with racist intent" style apology from Leak, and correction of errors in Bolt's case), and they could have been free to continue to complain about what they perceive as the HRC interfering with their work.   I also entirely understand Leak being unhappy with the HRC inviting complaints. 

But really, I find the stress complaints from deliberate provocateurs hard to sympathise with.

Sorry if that sounds like a criticism of Leak too soon - it's partly a statement of puzzlement.  But, to be honest, if we're all going to agree that Left wingers and their stupid "trigger warnings" idea is a matter of pandering to people's exaggerated sensitivities too much, I don't see why some on the Right should be free of the same criticism.

Update:  Richard Fidler talking on Radio National about his long friendship with Leak was interesting.   He says Leak was once one of the most Left wing guys he knew, and his politics did change, although Leak would claim they hadn't.   Nonetheless, Fidler was very sad about it, as are many Left leaning journalists.    There seems no doubt about his charm and wit as a friend, which in a way makes some of his work all the harder to understand....

Hey Jason...

I don't think Thiel sounds all that bright, really.   Not just because of climate change (although my  rule of thumb about that still applies), but the other quotes from him lately.

He just sounds rather vapid to me.

Krugman's take

Krugman has taken a very dispassionate tone on this column on the Republican health plan.  I presume he is correct.

Ryan's lost his lustre

Paul Krugman has complained bitterly for years that Paul Ryan's treatment by much of the media as the Republican's reasonable and moderate smart guy was completely unwarranted, and I would have to  guess that he is probably laughing wildly about how Ryan is, indeed, making himself look foolish in the fight over Obamacare.

The quote, which I heard this morning on Radio National, that the problem with Obamacare is that it's a case of the healthy young paying for treatment of older sick people (that's a pretty close paraphrase) just sounded like the silliest possible criticism of health insurance you could hear from a politician's mouth.

You can read about that line, and much twitter reaction to it, here.

OK, here's the actual quote:

“The fatal conceit of Obamacare is that we’re just going to make everybody buy our health insurance at the federal government level. Young and healthy people are going to go into the market and pay for the older, sicker people. So the young, healthy person is going to be made to buy healthcare, and they’re going to pay for the person, you know, who gets breast cancer in her 40s or who gets heart disease in his 50s,” Ryan said.

Talk about your simple solutions

From the Atlantic:   Can Salted Doorknobs Prevent Superbug Infections?

...it was a casual conversation with a former butcher that led Brayden Whitlock, a graduate student at the University of Alberta, to design a pilot study that put salt and copper head to head. Coupon-sized strips of pure, compressed sodium chloride were covered in an MRSA culture, alongside similar strips of antimicrobial copper and stainless steel. Whitlock found that salt killed off the bug 20 to 30 times faster than the copper did, reducing MRSA levels by 85 percent after 20 seconds, and by 94 percent after a minute.

That was “considerably faster” than expected, Whitlock says—and he believes this efficiency could have major ramifications for how bugs like MRSA spread. “It’s great to be able to eliminate pathogens over the course of a few hours,” he says, “but if you think of a busy place that has a doorknob, or a push pad, can you imagine a time when it goes more than a few minutes without being touched? The answer to us is no. And that’s why this is really exciting.”....

The salt-covered doorknobs, meanwhile, are already in the market. Doug Olson, the former butcher who first told Whitlock about the idea, has already received a patent for the technology in nine different countries, and registered the trade name Outbreaker. Prototypes have been built by local salt companies—the compression process is identical to how salt licks for livestock are made—and discreetly installed in a handful of settings around Edmonton, Alberta’s capital, over the past few years. Compressed and smooth, with a feel akin to ceramics, Whitlock says most users have no idea that what they’re really grabbing is a fistful of table salt.

Corruption in Russia

An interesting piece here via Sky News about Putin and a recent report on the way corruption is done in Russia. 

It also features a photo of what appears to be a rather dangerous form of "celebration" in the backwoods

The caption reads:

A man tries to get a prize from a pole during a celebration in Krasnoyarsk last month

No need to add salt?

From the BBC:  Why a German lab is growing tomatoes in urine.

(Answer - to develop systems for future use by astronauts.)   It's more interesting than you might think.

Stroke your rodent

From the Improbable Research site - a serious study involving stroking mice, as type of mouse massage, to see how it affects their immune system.  (It does them good, it seems.)

Large scale clean power storage soon a reality?

Yeah, this guy was on Radio National this morning, saying that Tesla batteries are capable of being deployed on such a scale that they could have prevented SA losing power during that recent heatwave.

Quite remarkable, if true, and possible at acceptable cost:

Tesla's confidence of being able to plug gaps in grid power has been buoyed by its successful completion of a similar assignment in southern California last year, when it built an 80MW battery farm in 90 days after a gas peaker near Los Angeles leaked tonnes of methane and had to be mothballed.

Tesla was one of three battery companies to step forward when the California power system operator called for emergency storage and it is one of a large number of battery companies vying for the 1.6 million solar rooftop homes and businesses in Australia.
"We could install everything and get it up and running within 100 days," Mr Rive said at the launch of Tesla's Powerwall 2 battery in a converted substation at Newport, near Melbourne.

"We had a similar challenge in southern California ... We got 80MW up in 90 days. That's unheard of. You just don't get power plants running up and down that fast." 

Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/tesla-battery-boss-we-can-solve-sas-power-woes-in-100-days-20170308-gut8xh#ixzz4amuio0lU
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Cause for slight optimism

China's world-leading coal consumption fell for the third straight year in 2016, government data showed Tuesday, as the planet's biggest carbon emitter struggles to break its addiction to the heavily polluting fuel.

Coal consumption fell by 4.7 percent year-on-year in 2016, and the share of coal in the country's energy mix slipped to 62.0 percent, down 2.0 percent year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a report.

Overall coal production also fell, dropping 9.0 percent to 3.41 billion tonnes in 2016.
The data suggests that "coal consumption probably peaked around 2014," according to a statement from environmental group China Dialogue.

It added that "there is still some concern about a 'rebound' in coal demand if China continues to stimulate its economy by infrastructure investment".

The link.

As the world turns...

I hadn't heard this before, and I don't know if the Indian commentator, writing in The Japan Times, is reliable, but according to him, Putin is getting friendly with the Taliban in Afghanistan, for his own reasons:

Almost three decades after the end of the Soviet Union’s own war in Afghanistan — a war that enfeebled the Soviet economy and undermined the communist state — Russia has moved to establish itself as a central actor in Afghan affairs. And the Kremlin has surprised many by embracing the Afghan Taliban. Russia had long viewed the thuggish force created by Pakistan’s rogue Inter-Services Intelligence agency as a major terrorist threat. From 2009 to 2015, Russia served as a critical supply route for U.S.-led forces fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan; it even contributed military helicopters to the effort.

Russia’s reversal on the Afghan Taliban reflects a larger strategy linked to its clash with the U.S. and its European allies — a clash that has intensified considerably since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea spurred the U.S. and Europe to impose heavy economic sanctions. In fact, in a sense, Russia is exchanging roles with the U.S. in Afghanistan.

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan used Islam as an ideological tool to spur armed resistance to the Soviet occupation. Reasoning that the enemy of their enemy was their friend, the CIA trained and armed thousands of Afghan mujahedeen — the jihadi force from which al-Qaida and later the Taliban evolved.

Today, Russia is using the same logic to justify its cooperation with the Afghan Taliban, which it wants to keep fighting the unstable U.S.-backed government in Kabul. And the Taliban, which has acknowledged that it shares Russia’s enmity with the U.S., will take whatever help it can get to expel the Americans.