Mark it in your calendar

It seems the ageing Japanese Emperor would like to abdicate, and it looks like the government will let it happen, but not until December 2018:

The Japanese government is planning to hold a ceremony for Emperor Akihito’s envisioned abdication in December 2018, in what would be the nation’s first such ceremony in around 200 years, government sources said Wednesday.

The last time Japan held a ceremony for an emperor’s abdication was 1817, when Emperor Kokaku relinquished the Chrysanthemum throne. The government will consider how to materialize the plan by studying documents describing ceremonial manners for abdications in the past.

The abdication ceremony is planned to be held aside from a series of enthronement ceremonies for Crown Prince Naruhito. It may be treated as a state act that requires Diet approval for conducting, the sources said.

Mind you, I wonder whether one reason for the delay is the amount of time it would seem to take to prepare for the enthronement ceremony of his son.   The Wikipedia entry indicates there is a lot of perfection involved:

First, two special rice paddies are chosen and purified by elaborate Shinto purification rites. The families of the farmers who are to cultivate the rice in these paddies must be in perfect health. Once the rice is grown and harvested, it is stored in a special Shinto shrine as its goshintai (御神体), the embodiment of a kami or divine force. Each kernel must be whole and unbroken, and is individually polished before it is boiled. Some sake is also brewed from this rice.

Individually polished rice??

Wikipedia links to a NYT report on the enthronement of Akihito in 1990 (I really had forgotten that Hirohito had lived so long after WW2.)  It's interesting to see that some Left wingers in the country went as far as firebombing some Shinto shrines in protest that the ceremony seemed to be affirming the old idea that it made the Emperor a living Shinto god.  I wonder if the same controversy will happen again, or if Left wingers are less radical now than before.

And, of course, there is the fascinating question of whether the ceremony also implies some symbolic sexual congress with the Sun goddess:

Many articles, for instance, have put forth various theories of scholars about the function of a matted bed and coverlet in the inner sanctum. Some experts have suggested that the Emperor lies on the bed and transforms himself into a god or in some fashion communes, perhaps in a symbolically sexual way, with the spirit of the sun goddess.

In response to these theories, the ritualists of the Imperial Household Agency have said that the bed is used as a resting place for the sun goddess but that the Emperor never touches it.

Expect some similar coverage next year, then...

Increasing evidence the US did elect a 12 year old

Seriously, I keep saying that the way Trump speaks reminds me of a primary school kid, but it's also the content.  What adult goes into a diversion about how nice the cake was?  And as for the way this Fox News interviewer acts - she sounds like a high school journalist asking her bestie how that really important first date went.

The Quartz article headline has it right:
  
All the giggly, giddy weirdness of Trump and Fox Business News in one clip

As for what Xi Jinping really thinks of Trump - he's a tad concerned about Trump conducting foreign policy by Twitter, apparently.  As we all should be...

Update:  Furthermore, how do you square Trump's tweet about going it alone on North Korea if China doesn't help with what he said to the WSJ?:

Apparently, Trump came into his first meeting with the Chinese leader, in early April, convinced that China could simply eliminate the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear program. Xi then patiently explained Chinese-Korean history to Trump — who then promptly changed his mind.

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president told the Journal. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. ... But it’s not what you would think.”

It's like his incredible statement about  how "nobody knew health care could be so complicated."

A use for dragon blood

The BBC reports:

Komodo dragon blood contains an important compound which scientists think could offer a new treatment for infected wounds.

The reptile's saliva harbours many different types of bacteria, which somehow do not affect the dragon.

Scientists at George Mason University in the US created a synthetic compound based on a molecule in dragon blood that had antimicrobial activity.

They found it promoted the healing of infected wounds in mice.

Serial killers I had missed

I don't go out of my way to read of gruesome crimes, but I am a bit surprised that until yesterday, I don't recall reading about the "Bloody Benders", who bear the title "America's First Serial Killers".

A straight forward telling of their story, from 1870's Kansas, may be found here.  Wikipedia has a fairly detailed entry, too.  

What is particularly interesting, I think, is the link with Spiritualism, as well as the very "Sweeney Todd" aspect of victims being dumped into a cellar via a trap door in the floor.

As a medium, family member Kate was apparently giving out some rather unusual advice from the Spirit world.  From the book Psychological Consequences of the Civil War:

I have to say, if your medium is giving out advice like that, I don't think it's wise to accept an invitation to dinner at home.

Anyway, it seems to me that this would be great source material for a film - especially given that it is not clear as to what happened to the family.  Lots of room for speculation to be built into a screenplay "based on real events".

Is this why the American white working class is dying more?

From the New Yorker:

Case and Deaton published a second paper last month, in which they emphasized that the epidemic they had described was concentrated among white people without any college education. But they also searched for a source for what they had called despair. They wondered if a decline in income might explain the phenomenon, but that idea turned out not to fit the data so well. They noticed that another long-running pattern fit more precisely—a decline in what economists call returns to experience.

The return to experience is a way to describe what you get in return for aging. It describes the increase in wages that workers normally see throughout their careers. The return to experience tends to be higher for more skilled jobs: a doctor might expect the line between what she earns in her first year and what she earns in her fifties to rise in a satisfyingly steady upward trajectory; a coal miner might find it depressingly flat. But even workers with less education and skills grow more efficient the longer they hold a job, and so paying them more makes sense. Unions, in arguing for pay that rises with seniority, invoke a belief in the return to experience. It comes close to measuring what we might otherwise call wisdom.

“This decline in the return to experience closely matches the decline in attachment to the labor force,” Case and Deaton wrote. “Our data are consistent with a model in which the decline in real wages led to a reduction in labor force participation, with cascading effects on marriage, health, and mortality from deaths of despair.”

Runaway slaves

I think the Washington Post must have thought that this goes a bit with the Trump zeitgiest for hunting down illegal immigrants - but it is an interesting look at the advertisements that slave owners of America (including future presidents) would run in the papers offering rewards for returning runaway slaves.

[I think a satirist here could do a good one for Centrist Left looking for the recovery of Mark Latham.]

How boring

I meant to post last week about the incredibly bland and boring sounding menu at Trump's meeting with Xi Jinping:

Caesar Salad with homemade focaccia croutons, parmigiano-reggiano

Dinner options:

Pan-seared Dover Sole with champagne sauce
Herb-roasted new potatoes
Haricots verts, Thumbelina Carrots

OR

Dry Aged Prime New York Strip Steak
Whipped Potatoes
Roasted Root Vegetables

Dessert options:

Chocolate cake with vanilla sauce and dark chocolate sorbet

OR

Trio of Sorbet (Lemon, Mango, and Raspberry)

Wine options:

2014 Chalk Hill Chardonnay from the Sonoma Coast
2014 Girard Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley

Now look, I presume that the menu was given the "tick" by the Chinese embassy, as I'm sure even Trump wants to avoid something like anaphylactic shock causing an international crisis;  but even so, if this is meant to an example of what fine American dining can achieve (or a Trump high class joint), it's failed miserably.   Put a bit of effort in, can you, Donald?  (Mind you, some Trumpkin idiot has probably justified this as an example of Trump playing 4D chess  with Xi's mind.)

John Clarke

Yes, it was sad to read of John Clarke's sudden death yesterday.   I suppose I didn't really care for the comic persona of his younger days,  but it was impossible not to admire the cleverness and wit of his work with Bryan Dawe, as well as the sardonic acting in The Games.  In fact, I had only watched his last Dawe interview last week, and wondered why they were no longer highlighted as much by the ABC.  They were still pretty great together.

I heard an interview with him not so long ago on Radio National, and he sounded genuinely intelligent and thoughtful -  a fact which many people who knew him have confirmed.  I also think it fair to say that there was almost a type of gentleness to his humour, even though it was satire - which is no doubt why there will be virtually no ill will directed towards him.  (Although I see some Right wing commenters at Tim Blair's have leapt in to make it clear he was not funny because he was a "Leftist".  God help them if ever they try watching post Trump election Colbert.) 

Another, completely unskeptical, take on wannabe transgender children in the US press

I can't be the only person who would read this article and think that it shows zero skepticism regarding the complete swing in attitude towards this issue.   It is obviously a difficult issue for parents to deal with, but it is also obviously prone to great swings in medical fashion, too, as are all cases of how to respond to very unusual thoughts that can lodge in some people's heads. 

Update:  the latest post at 4th Wave Now notes the unintended consequence of puberty blocking for boys who want to be girls is that they don't grow enough, um, genital material in order for surgeons to later do the desired reconstruction of it into ersatz female genitalia.

True, even if satire

From the New Yorker:

Nation Desperately Hopes Real Reason for Bannon’s Exit Will Not Involve Sex Tape

The thing about Bannon is that, although people on the Left and libertarian-ish Right (hello, Jason) may agree that his anti-Globalist position is correct as far as short term military interventions are concerned (he was against the Syrian bombing last week, apparently), the way he is enamoured with a nutty book that seems to describe both global and national crisis in this present period actually indicates that his motivation for non intervention is founded in nonsense.   And that's not a good thing.   You do want appropriate US interventions, sometimes, rather than a view that some sort of global destruction is inevitable and will lead to the rise of a reinvigorated US.   See this article in the New York Times which is the basis for this comment.

And besides, his anti-Globalist views on economics and trade have extremely little support from economists or experts of any variety.

It would therefore be a mistake to regret his departure, just because he might have made an appropriate call for caution on the one issue.

Keeps the single men off the street, I guess

The BBC notes:

China will become the snooker superpower within the next decade, according to the sport's supremo Barry Hearn.

World number five Shaun Murphy says Ding is the most highly recognised sports person in China "by a mile".
"He's bigger than Ronnie is back in the UK, than Davis was, than Stephen Hendry was, than Alex Higgins was; he's bigger than them all," Murphy said.
"The fans in China are fanatical about him. They camp out at hotel lobbies for him, he and his wife have to go out for meals in secret. He is an A-list celebrity in China."
China's supposed takeover of a sport so long dominated by the UK and Ireland has been predicted for years, but it is only recently that it is truly beginning to back up Ding's breakthrough.

I wonder if they're taking on darts and drinking warm beer, too?

The obvious concern

Now, one has to admit that if Hillary were president, she would have authorised a similar attack on Syria (she said so herself.)  And several Democrats have said they think the attack was proportionate and OK.

So why should people who would have preferred her be criticising Trump?  Well, obviously:

1.  the massive, massive hypocrisy.   And the suspicion, which Republicans would have been pushing hard if the shoe had been on the other foot, that Assad may have been encouraged to use chemical weapons due the signalling from Tillerson and Trump only a day or two prior that they no longer had removing him as any part of their goal.

But, better late to do the right thing late than not to do it at all?   That's one argument, but it doesn't get around:

2.  the almost instantaneous change that some televised images, and some extremely rapid assessment of responsibility, brought in Trump.  Let's face it, despite the same (or stronger) support  Democrats may have given Hillary if it had been her attack, the history of US intelligence used to justify Middle East attacks does indicate grounds for caution, to put it mildly.  (Although, admittedly, thorough, quick and independent investigation of anything in that hell hole of a country is probably extremely difficult.)   In other words, if it had been Clinton's authorisation, in the same time frame, people should have had the same concern as well.

But by far, the worst and most dangerous concern in this is:

3.  Trump is getting swooning media praise for the attack, and we have never seen a President so obsessed  with media "reviews" of his performance. There is every reason to expect this will make Trump trigger happy in future, and it is somewhat dismaying that even mainstream American media does not recognize that before editorialising on the issue.

Of course, Fox News (and Mark Steyn) were busy giving him a tongue bath about it the morning after - that should be warning enough.  But there was praise on CNN and other outlets - who can doubt that he would be lapping it up?

Some commentary on American sites is expressing concern:

In Slate: Elites Are Giddy Over Trump’s Airstrike in Syria, and That’s Terrifying

Ezra Klein writes, with obvious truth:  Trump’s foreign policy is dangerously impulsive

This, above all else, is what is worrying about Trump on foreign policy: He is unpredictable and driven by whims. He is unmoored from any coherent philosophy of America’s role in the world, and no one — perhaps not even him — truly knows what he’ll do in the event of a crisis.

Obama’s policy on Syria was perpetually paralyzed by fear of escalation. Trump’s policy on Syria is volatile precisely because he doesn’t seem to have thought through questions of escalation. This is a foreign policy based on intuition and emotion, and there is danger in that.

(As for what constant and confusing contrarian Nassim Taleb thinks about it - I think he is indicating semi approval, as a "sending a message" to Assad, but also China and Russia!  I think that is nonsense, myself.  Russia did get a message: "Vlad, you'd better get your planes and pilots off that airfield, some cruise missiles will be there in an hour.  And don't tell Assad, promise?")

Finally, I warned before that it was silly to think that defence manufacturers were doing anything other than seeing their long term financial benefit on the rise when they were buttering up Trump by saying "yes, he's forced us to reconsider the cost of program X, and we'll do it cheaper for him."   They know that this gullible and easily manipulated President is like manna from heaven for them...

Alt Rights in turmoil

Vox notes:

Some of Trump’s biggest supporters are furious about his strikes in Syria

A brief history of instant coffee

An entertaining and educational article at NPR about instant coffee, and how important it was in World War 1 (and 2).

Included is this detail, about coffee in the American Civil War.  (I have posted before on that topic, so I knew it was an important provision then, but this additional detail is pretty amusing.):

"Some Union soldiers got rifles with a mechanical grinder with a hand crank built into the buttstock," he told NPR. "They'd fill a hallowed space within the carbine's stock with coffee beans, grind it up, dump it out and cook coffee that way."

Fast forward, and the article even explains the (likely) reason it got the name "Joe":

In 1943, just before his death, Washington sold the company. (In 1961, the George Washington coffee brand was discontinued.) By then, World War II was raging, and American GIs were calling their coffee by a different name: Joe.

One legend behind the origins of the new moniker is that it referred to Josephus Daniels, secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1921 under Woodrow Wilson, who banned alcohol onboard ships, making coffee the strongest drink in the mess. Snopes, though, fact-checked that claim and called it false.

Yet "Joe" very likely does originate in the military. "The American soldier became so closely identified with his coffee that G.I. Joe gave his name to the brew," according to Pendergrast.

Oddly, it had never occurred to me before to look up how the "Joe" moniker had arisen...

A joke suited to Twitter

Gee, the NYT is getting very disrepectful in the way it talks about the President:

The Mucus-Shooting Worm-Snail That Turned Up in the Florida Keys