Suffering on the Right

Gee, the Australian culture war fighting Right is having a bad time of it:  the only cartoonist in the land sympathetic to their gripes and obsessions died;  their anti-PC for the sake of being anti PC little cable show has gone down the drain after Mark Latham got the sack; and (in news only noticed by them), the Federal government didn't get the change they wanted to s18C Racial Discrimination Act.  (I can safely say that, due the cyclone, absolutely no one in Queensland was paying attention to that little sideshow.) 

The only thing they have to hold onto is the Trump presidency which, try as they might to pretend otherwise, is a complete shambles of Right wing infighting, lies and distortion.   (They don't see it that way, but they are dimwitted and it will get through to them, eventually.)

I suppose they still have Andrew Bolt to cling to, too.  If ever he disappears in a scandal of some kind or other, we'd have to put them on suicide watch....

Disaster coverage

Has anyone else noticed how coverage of cyclones seems to go now?

The media sends up a heap of people to a scattered area where a cyclone may hit, and they stand in front of the cameras waiting for the wind to pick up and buildings to start getting blown away around them.

When that doesn't happen on screen, and yet they keep coverage going on for hours on end, trying to talk up how bad it is when there is no real destruction behind them, you start to get people elsewhere in the country doubting that it is all that bad.  (Particularly Right wing culture warriors who want to counter any suggestion of climate change having made any bad weather worse.)

Then, the next day, you start to get some images of damaged buildings, but not too many, because the roads are blocked or flooded, so the TV crews can't get around much anyway.  Again, some viewers are starting to think "not so bad".

Then, by day 3 or 4, when you actually do start getting some more detailed images of ruined resorts, homes, and commercial premises, you get the feeling that people are sick of the coverage and don't care much about they're seeing anyway.

The people around the Whitsunday area have been without power for days now, and I saw, but only on Twitter, that many electricity pylons had been bent over in the cyclone, presumably meaning that some areas will have no power for quite a while yet.   Coverage also indicated that a huge storm downpour in the area caused a lot of flood damage the first or second night after the cyclone.

Daydream Island looks extremely smashed up; Hamilton Island less so, but in both cases, there has actually not been that much video evidence.  We don't even know what some of the other islands look like.

The few locals I have seen interviewed do seem to have considered it to have the worst experience they have had, especially given that the cyclone seemed to be very slow moving, causing them many hours of distressing high wind and rain.

It's been said that there had been damage of a lot of buildings at the inland town of Collinsville, but I don't think I have seen any news video of that at all.

My point is - the way television coverage of cyclones work now, it seems to give a very misleading impression of what has gone on.   Less live coverage of the type we have just seen would actually help correct that.

One other point:   I get the impression, from watching people in the area talking about lack of information, and how they can't communicate because mobile phones can't be charged, that some have sort of forgotten about listening to the local radio station during emergencies (and having plenty of batteries for their AM radio.)  Maybe that's not fair, but I just had the feeling that people are so used to using the internet for information, they seem to now feel there is no other way to get messages if they can't access it.

Not your average UFO sighting

I see, via The Anomalist, that a mainstream maritime worker forum/information site has run a report of a UFO arising out of the Gulf of Mexico:

A crew member of an offshore supply vessel in the Gulf of Mexico claims he saw a UFO ‘fives times’ the size of his vessel and UFO trackers are now looking for more witnesses to come forward with any information possibly related to the sighting.
The UFO sighting reportedly occurred on Tuesday in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 80 miles southeast of New Orleans.

The sighting was submitted to the National UFO Reporting Center, which apparently tracks UFO sightings and data, by the chief engineer of an OSV working the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday afternoon. According to the eyewitness report:

“Close to 7:00 pm on March 21st, just before dusk, myself and 4 of the crew members aboard our vessel saw a craft that appeared to be five times our 240 ft vessel in length. My line of sight was about 1/4 mile from our vessel. There was a rig behind the craft about a 1/2 mile. i used this to help gauge size of craft. Sighting was approximately 80 miles SE of New Orleans, Louisiana.

The scene lasted about 40 seconds. The craft rose up out of the water (Gulf of Mexico) about 40 feet, no water was dripping from the craft. Within a split second the craft disappeared at a 30 degree angle into the sky. Speed appeared to faster than speed of a light turning on in a room. Within seconds it had disappeared completely.
I can say for sure that the craft was dark colored, oval in shape and made no sound whatsoever.

The NUFORC has even highlighted the sighting as being of particular interest among the 246 reports of UFOs received in March alone. And after speaking with the witness by phone, the NUFORC said the report seems legit and has urged more witnesses to come forward. 

“We spoke via telephone with this witness, and he seemed to us to be unusually sober-minded,” NUFORC wrote in a note added to the original report. “We suspect that he is a very capable, and very reliable, witness. He estimates that upwards of perhaps 50 people, who were aboard nearby vessels, may have witnessed the event, as well. We would urge those other witnesses to submit reports of what they had witnessed.”

Hate to say it, but if no one else comes forward to back this guy up, you would have to put it down to something mental going on...

We need to talk about Mark

It generally doesn't pay to reward belligerent right wing media culture warriors with the attention they desire, but Mark Latham seems to be on some sort of bender of offensive jerk behaviour at the moment, although this article reminds me that it has been building for some time.  

Oh, and before finishing this post, I see news has broken that Sky News has sacked him.

Good.  He's been capable at times, probably years ago now, of decent commentary on certain topics, but he's decided to make a name for himself by being an offensive loud mouth on the culture wars and feminism/gender politics in particular.  Overcompensating for the loss of a testicle, perhaps? (to go for a quasi Freudian explanation...)


Update:   an amusing tweet about his career:

Transgender skepticism, noted again

I had a look at Online Opinion for the first time in ages (it's a wonder it's still around, I think), and noticed that there was a recent, skeptical take on transgenderism, referring in particular to a news story about an Australian school supporting a transgender teen.

The claims in the article were hotly disputed in comments, and to be honest, I haven't tried to check up on who was right or wrong.

But, it did remind me to check in on the 4thWaveNow blog, which I have posted about before.  (It's a non-religiously motivated blog for parents skeptical of the way transgender desire/interest is now handled in children and teens - basically arguing that views have swung way, way too far into promoting early intervention to help transition.)

There is a recent post there that is really good - showing how experts who are completely and utterly on one side of the matter (pro-transition) try to dominate discussion and advice as to how parents should act.

I find the arguments of the people who run this blog very convincing, and a correction back to the centre of how to view this matter is already overdue.

Vaccine works

New study shows HPV vaccine is working to reduce rates of genital warts

The article does note at the end that, despite this, other sexually transmitted infections are on the rise. I guess an unintended consequence of the success of a vaccine against one STD might be the belief that safe sex practices are unimportant now?

Seems worth noting

Tax Cuts Don't Lead to Economic Growth, a New 65-Year Study Finds

He gets around

Quite an odd story at NPR about how many times the body of President James Polk has been moved, and how it's still possibly on the move:

Perhaps no president has had his remains fought over more than Polk. He passed away in 1849 just months after leaving the White House, and from the beginning, his wishes were ignored. Because he died of cholera, he received a quick burial in a city cemetery for sanitary reasons.

The next year, Sarah Polk insisted he be moved to their Nashville home, Polk Place, as stated in his will.

He lay there until after Sarah's death in 1891. With no direct heirs, a judge divided the estate, leading to Polk Place's demolition and the tomb's relocation.

"I don't know that we're taking an honor away, and I would agree it is an honor to be buried at the Capitol, but it's a little bit difficult to get to," says Thomas Price, the curator of the James K. Polk Home and Museum in Columbia, Tenn.

Price says he wants the tomb moved an hour away, to the only home still standing where Polk actually lived.

 And why would I bother posting about this?  Because it reminds me of a favourite song from They Might be Giants:

Colbert is hitting some spectacular highs

Tastes in comedy vary, of course, but I really think you would have to be a Trump loving, one eyed idiot who should never stray from the comfort of the asylum of Catallaxy to not find at least some parts of his first monologue about Trump's failure last week hilarious:



He followed that up with a sharp attack on Jared Kushner's new role, the Russian connection, etc;  and in this one, I think you can really see the anger flash in his eyes for a second:



It's no wonder he's rating well now - he's never been better.

About Trump and "populism"

It's all a bit complicated, but this Vox article that talks about culture, economics, Trump and populism is worth reading.  Here's one section:

Sean Illing

As you know, there are dueling theses about what's really behind the Trump phenomenon: It’s either about economic insecurity or it’s a cultural backlash among older, whiter Americans. You seem firmly in the latter camp.

Pippa Norris

That's right, and the solutions are very different depending on how you interpret what happened. If it's economics, you can go along with the Bernie Sanders solution. You can think of job apprenticeships, such as we've had in Germany, to make sure that blue-collar workers have the skills they need, building up community colleges, improving the minimum wage. You can think about economic redistribution. Parties like Labour under Jeremy Corbyn have certainly adopted those policies in a way to try to get back to the electorate and build up their support, but it basically hasn't worked.

On the other hand, if it's cultural factors, then there's a much deeper problem. It's a problem for liberals in particular. Many of the leaders and members of parties who are active on the left are actually part of the progressive left. They’re well-educated and won't go back on issues like gender equality or issues of race and racism or Islamophobia. So they’re limited in terms of how they can respond to this cultural backlash.

On some of the basic values which Trump's supporters and authoritarians believe, they're not going to reverse. They're not going to simply abandon all evidence-based policy, the emphasis on education and expanding college education or emphasis on gender equality, women's rights or social tolerance in the broadest sense for social diversity because that's built into their DNA.

So progressive forces leading social democratic parties can try to build their support back and they can do some things, but it's much easier for parties on the right to adopt some of the similar language.

Hmmm.   I would say that, more correctly, it's a short term problem for liberals.   Because the older folk pining for the old days will be dying out, literally, sooner or later.

But on the economics side, I guess it is a problem for liberals, on the matter of how to address properly the issues with globalisation (and technological advance) not working that well for a section of the formerly employed.

Tech people can be an eccentric bunch

From Axios (which I see is being massively overrun by Starbucks advertising - it's a bit irritating):

In Maureen Dowd's Vanity Fair piece on Elon Musk and the coming revolution in artificial intelligence, researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky lays out one vision of the apocalypse:

"If you want a picture of A.I. gone wrong, don't imagine marching humanoid robots with glowing red eyes. Imagine tiny invisible synthetic bacteria made of diamond, with tiny onboard computers, hiding inside your bloodstream and everyone else's. And then, simultaneously, they release one microgram of botulinum toxin. Everyone just falls over dead."

As many suspected...

Extreme weather events linked to climate change impact on the jet stream

Against global carbon trading

There's an interesting opinion piece up at Nature News, arguing that a global carbon trading market is not a good idea, generally speaking.

Sounds pretty convincing to me.  

I wonder what John Quiggin thinks of the arguments put there...

A complaint about the weather

I'm really sick of this summer, which should be easing by now, but isn't.

It's getting close to April, and it was 32 degrees yesterday (perhaps more in my suburb, I think), humid and still.

In fact, that's my biggest complaint about this summer - it's been hot and (usually) without the benefit of any evening breeze (or, largely, any evening storms.)  

We've also had little rain (although some recently has greened the place up.)  The yard has never looked worse during a summer.  We tried growing some vegetables, as we weren't taking a holiday, and nothing grew well.

We never ended up going to the beach, partly for fear of car heat in the oppressive sun, but it appears no great loss anyway, as there were lots of reports of lots of jellyfish and stingers this whole summer.

The only arguably worse summer was the one that led to the 2011 floods, where the rain was continual and you really felt like a shut in for that reason.

Sydney has likely had an even worse time of it this year, but Brisbane's summer has been bad enough.

Instant divorce in India

All that's required for a Muslim man in India to end a marriage is to declare, talaq, which means divorce in Arabic. Pronounced three times, it's irrevocable. Many Islamic countries have banned the practice.....
Parveen says her husband rebuffed all her attempts to return to him.
"I was so young," she says, "I didn't know what was happening."
Maimoona Mollah, president of the All India Democratic Women's Association, Delhi Chapter, condemns the practice of talaq as "unilateral" and "arbitrary."

Mollah says women can also initiate divorce. But members of the community say a woman must first consult a cleric, while a man, she says, "severs the relationship" on his own. She says there needs to be a "formal process" for any divorce where a woman and her children receive financial support.
The way talaq is practiced, "it definitely stands in the way of a woman getting her rightful place," Mollah says.
Several divorced women have petitioned India's Supreme Court to ban this form of instant divorce. Countries including Pakistan, Tunisia, and Egypt have curbed the practice and moved divorce into the orbit of the state and judiciary.

From NPR.