A ridiculous sheet position

David Roberts tweets a lot, and is pretty entertaining and informative on various subjects, but he is bizarrely wrong on this matter (as to whether top sheets are useful, or not.)   You could only conceivably hold the view that a quilt cover alone is better if you lived in a permanently cold bedroom.   In Brisbane, everyone probably spends 6 months of every year sleeping just under a sheet.

The innovation that I want to see in top sheets for double, queen or king sized beds is to have them made so that there is a lengthwise split in the middle from the top down to about 60 cm from the bottom edge, and the two halves overlap by about 30cm.   This would allow one person to use their side to cover their body and (say - because this is how I sleep) pull the top over their head without pulling off the other half from their partner's body.   Sure, you could achieve this by just putting two single sheets on the bed, but the precise arrangement doing that is always going to be fiddly.  

Perhaps I should check if this sheet design has been patented.

Update:   gawd - Google patent search shows many, many patents related to sheets.  One is about half way to my suggestion, but the split should be longer.    A lot of people have thought about sheets over the years...

The ever professional Judith

Have a look at the gif at this tweet, showing Judith Sloan in all her glory.   She must have been a joy to work with.  [sarc].

Yay China?

In an opinion piece sure to make Jason Soon grind his teeth, one Steven Rattner writes in the New York Times:

Is China’s Version of Capitalism Winning?

It's a curious piece, in which he notes and criticises many of the problems with how China operates,  while noting its economic success, and his overall message is something like "just shows you what a unified government (unlike the complete mess of US politics) can achieve." 

Perhaps the better question is whether the material success of the Chinese methods are worth the cost to individual liberties.   Many in China would no doubt answer yes, given the base they've come off.   But  there is the matter of how long the country can keep such a system going, both economically and with respect to the many likely detrimental societal effects (like gender imbalance, and family life being sacrificed for making money.)

Hey monty...

Not sure how often monty might drop in here, but if you do...

Can you pass on a message to dover beach that I find his continual use of "urban bugman" carries with it unpleasant connotations that his culture war/political opponents literally deserve extermination, like cockroaches?  

I had to look up the meme, and it apparently it's meant to signify the (alleged) empty soul-lessness of modern folk.  But honestly, it's hard to avoid reading into it implications similar to Nazi allusions to Jews as rats, deserving death.

In fact, the extermination style talk is very high with several of the sour, angry and damaged characters over there - Tom, cohenite, and the mad 26 high amongst them.   And as advertisement for conservative Catholicism, dover beach himself is a complete fail.  

Thanks...

E-cigarettes under continued scrutiny

Seems that inhaling vapours might be better for you than inhaling tobacco smoke, but is still something that is hardly going to be healthy for you:

Some e-cigarette ingredients are surprisingly more toxic than others

A new study by UNC School of Medicine researchers shows that e-liquids are far from harmless and contain ingredients that can vary wildly from one type of e-cigarette to another.

"We found that e-liquid ingredients are extremely diverse, and some of them are more toxic than nicotine alone and more toxic than just the standard base ingredients in e-cigarettes - propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin," said study senior author Robert Tarran, PhD, associate professor of cell biology and physiology. "The FDA, which helped fund our study, is just beginning to regulate e-liquid ingredients, and we hope that our data will inform their efforts."....

E-liquid's main ingredients of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin have been considered non-toxic when delivered orally, but of course e-cigarette vapors are inhaled. The UNC scientists found that even in the absence of nicotine or flavorings, small doses of these two organic compounds significantly reduced the growth of the test cells.

Again, I have to control my sense of schadenfreude  over the way at least some liberation aligned folk have rushed to endorse (or use) this product well ahead of proper testing and regulation, perhaps at the cost to their health.

And you thought the worst thing could be living next door to a meth lab

I feel very sorry for any neighbour hoping to sell their house in the next year if they are within, say, 100 metres of the house where it now appears nerve gas was sprayed:

Detectives investigating the attempted murders of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal have said they believe the pair were poisoned with a nerve agent at the front door of his Salisbury home.

Specialists investigating the poisoning of the the Skripals have found the highest concentration of the nerve agent on the front door at the address, police said.

Jews in comedy

Some interesting takes on modern American comedy and its dominance by (largely secular) Jews in this review of a book at the TLS.  Some extracts:

In the latter half of the twentieth century, American comedy just was Jewish comedy, even if the Jewishness had to be tamped down to appease mainstream audiences. It was often said of Friends that it was written as if for six old Jews, and then cast with six young attractive people. In Seinfeld, that most Jewish of sitcoms, there was only one codified Jewish character, but that’s simply because the extremely Jewish Elaine and absurdly Jewish George were handed other ethnic identities (WASP with “Shiksappeal” and Greek, respectively) to keep the networks calm....


Instead, Jewishness in comedy – what, in other words, is actually Jewish about the comedy of these secular Jews – is elusive, a bit like Judaism’s conception of the afterlife. Sahl, when first approached with the idea that his act was pervasively Jewish even though he rarely drew on his ethnicity directly, is quoted as saying, “If the role of the Jew is to rock the boat and to be inquisitive – intellectually curious, that is – fine. Classic role”. It is an interesting concept: that Jewishness in comedy is subversive but also something that can be identified in comedians whether or not they wear it on their sleeve...

The complexity is the point: so, too, the obscurity. Dauber talks of how Seinfeld, created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, with its endless discussion of the invisible rules of life – “what are the boundary lines in nebulously defined situations? What consitututes the limits of social acceptability? When does this status change to that one?” – was described by Larry Charles, the show’s producer, as “a dark Talmud”. Except dark is possibly the wrong word: Seinfeld was never a show about nothing, it was a show about small things, about the minutiae and microscopia of everyday, modern life, and as such the one thing Seinfeld never was, was dark. Because dark means weighty, deep, gravitas-achieving. Jewish comedy depends on bathos, on bringing things down to earth – which specifically tends to be the Jewish earth: whether it be with a well-chosen Yiddishism, or a comic-sounding Jewish name, or a reference to the mundane worlds of work, food, money, sex and, well, Jewishness. A joke with a four-word punchline that is quoted by Dauber neatly bears this out: when the Dalai Lama meets his mother she tells him, “Sheldon! Enough is enough”

To come back, then, to what appeared to be a passing, but was not, point about the afterlife: Christianity, and most other religions, are all in the clouds, in the great hereafter – Judaism tends to concentrate on the here and now, and indeed its rules. But in minutiae, there is humanity: it is in reaching after the grandiose things in life that civilization gets skewed. To be microscopic, comically, is to create engagement: these people, the joke says, are like you, because like you, they sweat the small stuff.

Calling John Bolton

I have a solution to this Australian Cricket Team cheating business, which seems to be occupying about 98% of the nation's attention:  invite John Bolton to arrange a tactical nuclear strike on the team, and any outpost of cricket administration.  We know he wants to nuke something, and no one in Australia (or any other cricketing nation) is possibly going to object.   (Or so it seems.)

It may also rid the nation of the most tedious sport ever invented, at least until the cockroaches learn how to hold a bat. 

[Disclaimer:  of course, I have to acknowledge that loving a tedious game does not per se make a cricket fan a bad or deficient person in any respect.   That would require loving both cricket and Frozen, and a short course of treatment involving electrodes would be worth a try...]

Theatre critic time

Went to see Alladin last night at QPAC.

I reckon plenty of adults not normally attracted to Disney "princess" stories saw the movie in the 1980's because of Robin Williams as the genie; but to be honest, it was probably the start of my assessment that his shtick was overrated.   I was underwhelmed.

As a stage show, however, mounted on a large scale with additional songs, it's impossible to actively dislike.   It's very enjoyable, in fact. 

Struggling to find something to analyse, I would say, however, that the resolution at the end seems rushed.   But, now that I think of it, My Fair Lady (the last musical I saw) suffered the same issue.   I guess there is something about the structure of a Broadway musical that is unavoidable - the expectation that the first half will contain the killer highlight, then the second half has to have another peak well ahead of the ending which, at most, contains a short reprieve of the main songs.  

Something of an exception, perhaps, now that I think of it, is the musical version of Hairspray (which I have only seen as a movie.)   The protracted set piece at the end really is the highlight of the movie, which, however, is too long overall.  

Anyway, one thing I will never see is the stage version of Frozen, which has just started in New York.   That girl power material that plays, let's face it, as a warning to young girls to not only never trust men, but also encourages using passive males for advantage,  remains (to my mind), only capable of great endorsement by girls and gay men, both of whom suffer from a peculiar fondness for schmaltzy power ballads.  

Fake meat fun

Yeah, while I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with it, I do share this guy's interest is seeking out fake meat products that are satisfyingly meat-like:

I’m obsessed with mock meat and I’m not even a vegetarian

And the best products do tend to involve fungi - particularly shiitake mushrooms, which can be made with the firmer "bite" that a lot of fake meat products lack.   (Quorn is too soft, and expensive, in my opinion.) 

Sounds premature

This article seems to involve a little too much self-promotion, but if true, it's good news:

A Vancouver-based research team led by Canada's most cited neuroscientist, Dr. Patrick McGeer, has successfully carried out studies suggesting that, if started early enough, a daily regimen of the non-prescription NSAID (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug) ibuprofen can prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease. This means that by taking an over-the-counter medication, people can ward off a disease that, according to Alzheimer's Disease International's World Alzheimer Report 2016, affects an estimated 47 million people worldwide, costs health care systems worldwide more than US$818 billion per year and is the fifth leading cause of death in those aged 65 or older.

It actually goes on to talk more about testing saliva to see if people are likely to develop Alzheimer's, rather than the protective effects of ibuprofen.  Seems very PR department written, if you ask me...

Things never cooked

Inspired by seeing a can of ghee for sale in my local Coles, I started mentally listing things I've never cooked/cooked with:

Ghee
celeriac
jerusalem artichokes
real saffron
livers from any creature
kidneys from any creature

My Mum used to cook lamb's fry (liver) in a pressure cooker when I was a kid, and I didn't mind it in small quantities.  I seem to recall it make for a particularly delicious gravy.  She also did steak and kidney stew, and again, kidneys in small amounts were OK.   But can't say I have had much inclination to try eating them again (pate excepted.)

I haven't been paying close attention to My Kitchen Rules this season - I agree with some critic somewhere who said that the "drama" element of the show has been pumped up more and more every season, and it's now more the point than the cooking.   From some advertisement I half watched last night, it looks like the show will soon feature a disaster of some kind - was that a contestant or two  lying on the yard with an ambulance in attendance?   Come on, this is getting very silly.

Anyway, I did see part of it recently where, once again, the cooks were served bone marrow as an entry.

Don't know why, but I find the idea of eating the jelly like, fatty substance by itself just really off-putting.  Even though, when cooking ossu bucco, it is probably the melted marrow which makes the surrounding stew so good.   Some cooks love it, though.

Must mean something to someone

An abstract at arXiv:

The ability to control multidimensional quantum systems is key for the investigation of fundamental science and for the development of advanced quantum technologies. Here we demonstrate a multidimensional integrated quantum photonic platform able to robustly generate, control and analyze high-dimensional entanglement. We realize a programmable bipartite entangled system with dimension up to 15×15 on a large-scale silicon-photonics quantum circuit. The device integrates more than 550 photonic components on a single chip, including 16 identical photon-pair sources. We verify the high precision, generality and controllability of our multidimensional technology, and further exploit these abilities to demonstrate key quantum applications experimentally unexplored before, such as quantum randomness expansion and self-testing on multidimensional states. Our work provides a prominent experimental platform for the development of multidimensional quantum technologies. 

Facebook and your call history

Look, privacy concerns don't rank very highly with me, given that I work on the theory that anyone who uses the incredible useful Google products should just assume that the company knows everything about everyone and hope that the flood of information is what inadvertently protects your privacy.  (And besides, most people's private life is not that interesting anyway.)

But  even I can see how this is pretty outrageous:

Facebook logs texts and calls, users find as they delete accounts

I've never held Facebook in high regard, and I imagine that it is a much easier hacked source of private info than Google accounts.   I hope the company gets hurt out of this.

Update:   have a look at this Twitter thread for some more details on the amazing amount of data retained by Facebook and Google.

Jumper song

I've been enjoying Moone Boy on Netflix (before it disappears on 30 March), and thought I should look up the origin of the short theme song.  Wikipedia told me it's part of a song that was well known in Ireland.

Here it is - the very silly "Where's Me Jumper":