A French peculiarity

Is France the only country where homoeopathy has a genuinely large popular following?   For a country that is pretty modern and capable of high tech stuff, this feature of the place is very peculiar:

In a country where nearly 60% of the population uses homeopathic remedies, the French ministry of health’s decision to slash reimbursements for the alternative remedies has sparked outrage among users of alternative medicine.

For the 38 million people in France who depend on homeopathic remedies to cure insomnia, backaches and other medical conditions, getting a good night’s sleep just became a little more difficult. 

“Homeopathic medicines do not provide sufficient public health benefits to justify their reimbursement by the federal government,”the ministry of health announced in a statement released on Wednesday.

Time to talk turbulence

I've never experienced really severe turbulence in an aircraft, but incidents like this one sound really frightening.   

Last year, there was considerable publicity to a study that said global warming will make turbulence over the Atlantic routes, at least, worse by mid century. 

Today's story made me think - do we know whether turbulence is getting worse already?  Major incidents certainly seem to come up in the news more often, but this must be a very tricky topic due to several complicating factors:

*  the increase in global aviation generally
*  whether the increase is happening on routes more, or less, naturally prone to turbulence
*  the active steps airlines, and airline manufacturers, may be taking to avoid the risk of running into it (for example, I presume that modern aircraft radars might be better at detecting danger areas ahead).

It seems there is some research indicating it has already increased:

There is evidence that clear-air turbulence (CAT) has already risen by 40-90% over Europe and North America since 1958 and studies by researchers from the universities of Reading and East Anglia in the UK have shown that as a consequence of climate change, the frequency of turbulence on flights between Europe and North America could double by 2050 and the intensity increase by 10-40%. The same researchers have since extended their previous work by analysing eight geographic regions, two flight levels, five turbulence strength categories and four seasons, and found large increases in CAT.

Not sure if I have posted about this before or not.

Still, an interesting topic, and a somewhat worrying one for the future for the slightly nervous flyer.

Hurricanes getting wetter

Seeing that increased flooding under global warming is a theme here this week, I was interested to read this NYT article:  

As Climate Changes, Hurricanes Get Wetter

In recent years, researchers have found that hurricanes have lingered longer, as Barry is expected to do, and dumped more rainfall — a sign of climate change, said Christina Patricola, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a co-author of a study that found that climate change is making tropical cyclones wetter. (Tropical cyclones include both hurricanes and tropical storms, which are hurricanes’ less speedier kin.)

Researchers have been studying the effects of climate change on tropical cyclones because those sorts of storms are driven by warm water. Water in the gulf is 0.5 to 2 degrees Celsius warmer, according to Dr. Prein, who said: “This is really increasing the likelihood of a hurricane to form in this basin. And it will increase the intensity of the hurricane as well.”....

The researchers used climate models to simulate how tropical cyclone intensity, or wind speed, and rainfall would change if hurricanes like Katrina, Irma and Maria had occurred absent climate change and under future climate scenarios. They found that for all three storms, climate change increased rainfall by up to 9 percent.

This study is not the first to find that climate change is causing tropical cyclones to have more rainfall. Studies on Hurricane Harvey found that climate change contributed as much as 38 percent, or 19 inches, of the more than 50 inches of rain that fell in some places. Dr. Patricola’s study broadens the research by using global climate models and analyzing a large number of storms.

 My stupid reader JC will say "don't talk to me about models", probably while New Orleans goes under.   Again.

Own your own crime scene

I see via Washington Post that Michael Jackson's former home, Neverland Ranch, is for sale for $31 million.  (Used to be on the market for $100 million.)

It's..kinda ugly in parts:

And doesn't do much for me in others (that ceiling looks so heavy and oppressive):

But, it is on a pretty nice looking piece of land:

You would think that if it wasn't for the icky associations, it could be made into some high class accommodation.  But good luck with that, buyers.

The jokes write themselves

From Dezeen, the jokes one can make from this are just too easy:

Pratt Institute graduate Garrett Benisch has proposed using biosolids, the organic matter derived from treated sewage, to produce a compostable ballpoint pen and its ink.

Benisch, who just graduated from New York's Pratt Institute with a degree in industrial design, created the Sum Waste pen for his thesis project.

The curvy, translucent writing instrument made from biosolids was featured in the university's year-end design show and won first place in a national competition organised by research group Healthy Materials Lab.

Populist governments and their disregard for expertise

Just as the Trump government has a solid reputation for disdain of expert advice on topics ranging from environmental issues to trade and international treaties, it seems that the populist government in India likes to tell its followers what it wants to hear.  See this (pretty angry) article at Foreign Policy, mainly about India's terrible air pollution, but also other topics:

Speaking from the headquarters of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on May 9, the cabinet member Nitin Gadkari promised a rapid elimination of air pollution. “Delhi will be free of air and water pollution in the next three years,” he said. Gadkari is now the minister of road transport and highways now, but in the years before Modi first became prime minister in 2014, Gadkari was president of the BJP. He said he expected that the air would clear because of the achievements of his political party, which “has done 100 percent corruption-free, transparent, time-bound, result-oriented, and quality work.”

Bringing air pollution down to acceptable levels—not just in New Delhi, but also throughout north India—would indeed be a tremendous accomplishment. But promising to do so within three years is absurd. China, for example, has successfully directed policymaking efforts toward reducing particle pollution, after decades of catastrophic pollution in the north and public pressure once air quality data became easily available online To do so has taken China several years (more than three), has certainly not eliminated pollution altogether, and has required facing unpleasant facts. Central Chinese officials held local governments to account for improving pollution—and moved to address the problem when statistical analysis showed that local bureaucrats were manipulating the numbers. But Gadkari’s unbelievable numbers are coming from the top.

Such absurdities have become commonplace. Gadkari’s promise echoes Modi’s claim the government could eliminate open defecation from rural India by 2019. (Open defecation rates improved, but it remains dangerously common, as independent demographic data shows.) Both numerical deadlines combine wild ambition and a good cause with needless quantitative precession and the absence of any plan that could achieve the result. 

And more about the general attitude of "we know better than experts":

 Unfortunately, the pattern extends beyond the environment. Increasingly, many of India’s leading economists and statisticians have spoken out about the dismantling of India’s systems of official statistics and expertise. Respected statisticians—including an economist whom I know personally from my time at the Delhi School of Economics—resigned from the National Statistical Commission in January, in protest of the government’s refusal to release credible unemployment data.

The government’s top economic advisors and policymakers report being as surprised as everyone else when in 2016 the prime minister, in a move remembered as “demonetization,” suddenly declared that a large fraction of India’s notes no longer counted as currency. In my own field of child health, the Economist reported that UNICEF suppressed data on child stunting because the prime minister’s home state scored poorly. I do not think any of my colleagues in sanitation research seriously believe the government’s response to a December 2018 parliamentary question, which was to insist that sanitation coverage in rural Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh is 100 percent.

Nice of them...

Searching that Samuel Gregg who Helen Dale re-tweeted (he's one of those irritating conservative Catholics who like small government because God wants people to suffer - see how easy it is to argue like him!) led me to a conservative Catholic site which had this news item of some interest:

The Russian Orthodox Church is debating an end to the practice of blessing large scale weapons, including nuclear missiles.
 
Last month, a committee on ecclesial law met in Moscow and recommended ending the practice of blessing missiles and warheads, and suggested that priests should instead bless only individual soldiers and their personal weapons.

According to a report by Religion News Service, Bishop Savva Tutunov of the Moscow Patriarchate said that it would be more appropriate to bless only the warrior who is defending their country, and their own personal weapon–instead of bombs.

“One can talk about the blessing of a warrior on military duty in defense of the fatherland,” said Tutunov.

“At the end of the corresponding ritual, the personal weapon is also blessed — precisely because it is connected to the individual person who is receiving the blessing. By the same reasoning, weapons of mass destruction should not be sanctified,” he said.

The proposal to end the blessings for larger weapons has yet to be approved by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Weapons systems, including Topol-class intercontinental ballistic missiles, are frequently blessed by members of the Russian Orthodox clergy during military parades and other events. These blessings are seen as a way of spiritually protecting the country.

The ridiculous technique

What's the name for this type of bad faith, nonsensical style of argument, whereby your opponent says X and you claim that this must mean they want Y, while surely knowing Y is a wild exaggeration and caricature of their point?  

Ironically, those on the Right rally against SJW's for using it when talking about gender and sexuality (for example), but they deploy it themselves when it suits.

Drives me nuts, whoever uses it.

Gives me mixed feelings

I mean, who wouldn't want to see the IPA staff, membership, 98% of commenters at Catallaxy, and all hosts on Sky News at Night rounded up and forced into re-education schools in which they are all taught to dance, paint and give up all radical ideas (as defined by me.)  Of course, it would have to be conducted in what would look more like an aged care facility than a young person's school, but still, it's a pleasant dream:

A short history of the "we didn't go to the Moon" conspiracy

This article at The Guardian isn't bad, and reminded me that Fox News - that unique source of the dumbing down of America - revived it with a "documentary" in 2001.

Stand proud, Rupert Murdoch, and all who support him.

Yet more "as I have been saying"...

I recently noted how I have been posting for a while about how solar power expansion should be looking at not replacing otherwise useful uses of land (like agriculture), but working within it.   (Including being deployed on water storage dams and reservoirs.)

Today I read of some paper that says the same thing:

A study released today provides the most complete list yet of the advantages of solar energy—from carbon sequestration to improvements for pollinator habitat. The paper offers a new framework for analyzing solar projects to better understand the full suite of benefits.

The study, published in Nature Sustainability, was conducted by researchers from the University of California, Davis; Lancaster University in the United Kingdom; the Center for Biological Diversity and 10 other organizations.

It suggests a framework for understanding more completely, and ultimately quantifying, the benefits of solar energy, identifying 20 frequently overlooked advantages. For example, solar panels paired with native plant restoration can add habitat while also increasing panel efficiency.

And more:

In the report, the authors:

• Suggest a model for engineering solar energy systems that maximizes both technological and ecological benefits.
• Create a framework for characterizing 20 benefits of installations on different spaces, including rooftop solar; solar on contaminated land; solar over functional bodies of water like reservoirs, water treatment areas and irrigation canals; and solar co-located with agriculture and grazing.
• Make the case for understanding that as renewable energy development is ramped up to address the climate crisis, it shouldn't create unnecessary negative impacts, especially when technology and resources are available to maximize positive effects.
• Suggest how this framework might be useful in policy and regulatory decision-making in order to ensure a sustainable energy transition.

I'm glad my common sense suggestions eventually get taken up in universities, eventually...

A very stupid idea

I'm pretty sure that gender reveal parties started in the USA, although I see they have now spread to Australia too, if this story is anything to go by.

I think they are just the silliest idea, objectionable from both liberal and conservative perspectives, and I do  not understand at all why people would want to have them.

Just be thankful if you're getting a healthy baby of any gender, even intersex for that matter, for goodness sake.

Gunshot wedding noted

From Gulf News, about an unfortunate incident in India:

Patna: A groom was killed in celebratory gunfire during a wedding in Bihar moments after the exchange of vows....

As per the itinerary, a wedding procession reached the house of the bride on the scheduled day and this was followed by the garland exchange ritual.

While the groom was walking towards the wedding venue after the garland exchange ritual, his elder brother whipped out a pistol and started firing in celebration.

Witnesses said the brother fired thrice but the gun got stuck. As he tried to clear the bullets, they fired one by one, hitting him as well as the groom. Both sustained seriously injuries in the incident and were immediately rushed to a nearby hospital. The groom succumbed to his injuries on Monday afternoon while his brother is battling for his life.

“Who will marry my daughter now? Now everyone will call her doomed,” said Kumari’s father Bhuletan Rai, sobbing inconsolably.

Wow.  An idiot brother-in-law kills the groom, and the worry is that the bride will wear the long time consequences?  

What's more, this is a recurrent problem in that part of the country, apparently:

Celebratory gunfire go on unchecked in Bihar despite the authorities putting a ban on them. It has claimed many lives during the wedding season over the years. According to a report, 15 people have been killed or wounded in celebratory gunfire in the past six months.

A wild actor

To be honest, I thought that Rip Torn had stopped appearing in Men in Black movies because he had already died! 

But now that he really has, I see that he had a "colourful" life, continuing into old age:

In 2010 he was arrested after breaking into a bank branch in Connecticut and was charged with carrying an unlicensed firearm, burglary, trespass and carrying a firearm while intoxicated. Police said Torn had broken into the bank thinking it was his home.

After pleading guilty to a number of charges surrounding his possession of a loaded weapon while drunk, he was given a two-and-a-half-year suspended jail sentence in 2010.

Torn also infamously fought director Norman Mailer during the filming of counterculture film Maidstone. In an improvised on-camera scene, Torn — playing Mailer's brother — attacked Mailer with a hammer and attempted to strangle him. Mailer bit Torn's ear in response.

The scene made it into Maidstone's final cut and was apparently planned, but the blood shed by both actors was very real. Torn was reportedly angered by Mailer's direction.

I have a feeling I probably read about the 2010 incident at the time, but it sure didn't stick in my memory.

All about palm oil

At the Jakarta Post, a couple of lengthy, detailed articles about growing palm oil, and whether EU attempts to influence its production are counterproductive, or not.