An interesting idea has more credibility than I expected

From Gizmodo:

What If Planet Nine Is A Bowling Ball-Size Black Hole?

“Primordial black holes” are a class of proposed objects that formed as a result of the chaotic early days of the universe. Like any other black hole, they would be incredibly dense regions where gravity warps space so much that light cannot escape.

But these would weigh far less than stars, since they weren’t formed out of stars like the black holes we’ve actually observed — they would have formed out of places of leftover extra density in the rapidly expanding early universe. (And no, they wouldn’t contribute significantly to dark matter, the mysterious stuff that seems to comprise the lion’s share of the universe’s mass.)

Unwin and his collaborator Jakub Scholtz, a junior research fellow at the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology at Durham University, proposed that perhaps a primordial black hole whizzed by, interacted with the solar system’s other members, and became trapped in an orbit.

I asked Uniwn and Scholtz whether such an object would evaporate from tiny physical effects called Hawking radiation; they said that no, even a five-Earth-mass black hole would last for a very long time, far longer than the age of the universe.

If the planet really were a primordial black hole, rather than a planet-sized mass of regular matter, then it would be no use trying to find it with typical planet-searching means.

A figure in the paper, shared above, demonstrates that a five-Earth-mass black hole could fit in the palm of your hand (yes, this encounter would kill you), and a 10-Earth-mass black hole would be the size of a bowling ball.

 I didn't realise Hawking radiation would work so slowly.

More Boris Johnson

Um, wouldn't this be enough to sink most politicians, let alone Prime Ministers?:

The woman allegedly granted thousands of pounds in public funding by Boris Johnson reportedly told friends they were having an affair at the time.

Former model turned technology entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri allegedly received £126,000 in public money and had privileged access to three foreign trade missions led by the prime minister during his time as London mayor.

The Sunday Times has now reported that Ms Acuri confided to four friends that they had been having an affair during his time in City Hall. The paper said that David Enrich, now finance editor of The New York Times, claimed he had been told of the affair by two of her friends when he was working for another newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, in 2013.

His account was said by the Sunday Times to corroborate that of other sources who had spoken to Ms Arcuri.

Yet more in the ongoing series: outstanding brilliance of Boris Johnson still undetectable

Come on, Tim and Jason - my couple of not completely nutty readers who like Boris Johnson.  Surely you can't defend his UN speech as not embarrassing, can you?:

Bredan O'Neill an even bigger idiot than I thought

I'll explain it this way:   I've always disliked Brendan O'Neill's polemic style, and as a result, I haven't even paid all that much attention to his actual arguments.  And besides, Andrew Bolt likes him, so what are the chances I would?

But I see overnight that O'Neill has joined the stupid group known as "populist Right wingers who whine about the Left being dangerous thugs, while actually being the ones calling for violence."  He was on the BBC saying that Brexiteers "should" riot, being quick to qualify it by noting that such riots should not involve breaking shop windows.  (I don't think he went on to explain the exact details of the Marxist libertarian concept of "appropriate rioting".)

My Twitter feed then goes on to show me that O'Neill has over the last year been making some readily ridiculed claims that Ireland is not really that big a fan of the EU, when polling actually shows up to 90% in favour of staying.  The bemused reaction of fellow panelists (especially comedian Andrew Maxwell) is fun to watch (it's the second clip at this link.)  

More violent Brexit wankery dreams are to be found from Delingpole at Breitbart:

The more the minority Remainer Establishment carries on with its trickery, its cheating, its lies, its double-dealing, its canting, its hypocrisy, and its shenanigans, the more the majority of us will loathe it with every fibre of our beings.

We’re all too angry and determined now to accept anything but total victory.

And when we do finally crush our enemies, see them driven before us and hear the lamentation of their women, well, I doubt many of us are going to be able to spare one tear of pity. Rarely in history have bastards so totally had it coming to them!

The funny thing is, Delingpole is, physically, a scrawny human who says he has an illness that many suspect is hypochondria.   He would be the last man you would expect to be able to fight off anyone in the street.   As with many on the wingnut populist Right, it's easy to interpret the fantasies of violent victory over their enemies as psychological compensation for physical inadequacies.  (A point I've made about Catallaxy frequently too.)

Along those lines, apparently, Brexiteers don't like being told this:

We find that voting Leave is associated with older age, white ethnicity, low educational attainment, infrequent use of smartphones and the internet, receiving benefits, adverse health and low life satisfaction.

but they're not good with facing up to facts.  Such as the simple one - people voted for Brexit without understanding the complexities of achieving it, and the damage a "no deal" Brexit would cause.

Before baby formula

Science magazine notes that it's now thought that these are 3,000 year old baby bottles, from Germany:

 The carbon isotopes inside two of the vessels suggested they held milk from ruminants, such as cows, sheep, or goats. The other once held milk from another type of mammal, perhaps pigs or humans. That means babies were drinking animal milk from bottles at least 3000 years ago, the team reports today in Nature. It wouldn’t have met babies’ nutritional needs the way breast milk or modern formula does, but it could have been used as a supplementary food during weaning.

Or, I suppose, they could just be for putting milk in your ancient tea?

Anyway, the one on the right looks a bit like a fat kangaroo, no?

Send it to J Soon as well

Here's the sketch, which I think is brilliant in concept, but perhaps could have been a bit funnier in execution:

Yes of course - a court saying the Parliament has to meet is a dark era for democracy

Gawd, Brendan O'Neill is an annoying twerp given to histrionics over everything, but I think he might have reached a new peak of ridiculousness in his Spiked editorial about the Supreme Court telling the PM that he just can't close down Parliament:

Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a vile assault on the democratic order. In finding that Boris Johnson’s proroguing of parliament was unlawful, and that parliament is not prorogued, the 11 justices have made an explicitly political decision in favour of the Remainer elite....

This was a decisively political act by 11 unelected judges who have taken sides against the government of the day, and this opens up a new, dark era in British political life.  What we have seen emerge via this judgement is a borderline tyrannical layer in British politics....

This judgement is a disaster for law and for politics.

Is it the Marxist in him, or the libertarian, who hates the idea of governments having to work within the confines of the judicial arm of government?   And who hates the idea of a Parliament meeting?
 

Trump cultist watch

*  Everyone is surprised about how quickly the whistleblower complaint was released, and it certainly once again indicates that, unbeknown to Trump, he does in fact have people around him all the time who are appalled by his behaviour.   His Narcissistic Personalty Disorder prevents him from recognising it.  Most of the Trump cultists (and all round idiots - it's a Venn set diagram that is completely overlapping) who advise him were probably incapable of seeing how the doctored memo of the call could be seen as being damaging - although Axios has an article saying that there was at least some debate within some at the White House as to whether releasing it would help or hinder.   Anyway, once again I say that, whenever Trump is gone, there are going to be some ripsnorting insider accounts of outrageous and stupid things he has said and done while President.

* Australian Trump Cult central - Catallaxy - had the ridiculous CL write a post that started:

The Ukrainian impeachment hoax is over and Donald Trump won. What was that – about 48 hours?

all before the details of the whistleblower complaint were known, and on what he seems to think was an "unredacted transcript".

Of course, they being cultists, the whistleblower complaint will have no influence.  Nor will Trump being on a recording - speaking to a bunch of diplomats (!) - hinting that the "spy" who has caused him trouble really deserves execution.   They will laugh it off, because they are not only stupid, they're stupidly dangerous.   (Once again, I am at least pleased to see that the only conservative blogger I can trust to be at least on the right page re Trump - Allahpundit at Hot Air - is pretty appalled.)

As I have written before, this presidency has given us a good feel of what it must have been like being a reasonable person in the 1930's watching the rise of Hitler, progressing from:

"Oh, that loudmouth with the silly moustache?   No way people will buy into his over-the-top act.  Germans are pretty sensible, aren't they?" to "Oh my God, when will people realise the mistake they've made giving him power - they keep excusing him no matter what he says or does."

*  Hey this is pretty hilarious:   Vanity Fair claims that the Trump State Media that is Fox News is having an internal crisis as to how to drop support of Trump without losing their audience completely:

Trump’s final bulwark is liable to be his first one: Fox News. Fox controls the flow of information—what facts are, whether allegations are to be believed—to huge swaths of his base. And Republican senators, who will ultimately decide whether the president remains in office, are in turn exquisitely sensitive to the opinions of Trump’s base. But even before the whistle-blower’s revelations, Fox was having something of a Trump identity crisis, and that bulwark has been wavering. In recent weeks, Trump has bashed Fox News on Twitter, taking particular issue lately with its polling, which, like other reputable polls, has shown the president under significant water. Meanwhile, Trump’s biggest booster seems to be having doubts of his own. This morning, Sean Hannity told friends the whistle-blower’s allegations are “really bad,” a person briefed on Hannity’s conversations told me. (Hannity did not respond to a request for comment). And according to four sources, Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch is already thinking about how to position the network for a post-Trump future. A person close to Lachlan told me that Fox News has been the highest rated cable network for seventeen years, and “the success has never depended on any one administration.” (A Fox Corp spokesperson declined to comment.)

Inside Fox News, tensions over Trump are becoming harder to contain as a long-running cold war between the network’s news and opinion sides turns hot.

 They built a cult and don't know how to end it.

Update:   Some people around Trump blame it on Rudy Giuliani, and he's furious and sounds as if he's going to have a breakdown:

Giuliani unleashed a rant about the Bidens, Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Barack Obama, the media, and the “deep state.” He has spoken freely about all these topics since the moment he became a surrogate in Trump’s 2016 campaign. Giuliani has aired far-right conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s health on national television. He has discussed his convictions about alleged Biden-family corruption with Trump in the White House residence. Still, until the Ukraine scandal broke, Trump’s allies were almost uniformly supportive of Giuliani to reporters, and current and former administration officials would often praise him for his loyalty.

Not until the back-to-back release of the summary of the Trump-Zelensky call and the full whistle-blower complaint did the mood change among this group.

This morning, a former senior White House official told me this “entire thing,” referring to the Ukraine scandal, was “Rudy putting shit in Trump’s head.” A senior House Republican aide bashed Giuliani, telling me he was a “moron.” Both individuals spoke on condition of anonymity in order to be candid.

“They’re a bunch of cowards,” Giuliani told me in response. “I didn’t do anything wrong. The president knows they’re a bunch of cowards.”...

“It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I’m not. And I will be the hero! These morons—when this is over, I will be the hero,” Giuliani told me.

“I’m not acting as a lawyer. I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government,” he continued, sounding out of breath. “Anything I did should be praised.”

 
Heh.

The funny is, some at Catallaxy agree that Giuliani is poison, but they don't realise they are victims of his conspiracy mongering too.   

The hypersonic filler story that will never die

Just saw this on news.co.au:

I have a theory that this story sits in media companies' hard drives, with an automatic "run this ever 6 months".  It is just the most persistent "coming soon to transform your world" story that will quite possibly never come - a bit like fusion power, but on higher rotation.

More on the Biden story

A journalist who wrote about the Biden story in 2015 complains:

I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down.

Trump and Fox News just have to say "black is white" and the low information dimwits of the Right nod along without reading another thing about it.

As for Biden "bragging" about what he did - yes, he did, and with no reference to his son at all.   I would have thought sensible people would have wondered - if this is so obviously corrupt and self serving, why would he brag about it?

The reporting is that the prosecutor was sacked (at several country's request) for not investigating corruption actively enough - the sacked prosecutor then claimed he was actively investigating Biden's company, but other journalists say this is self serving and wrong: nothing was happening.

And a new investigation has been started but is progressing slowly.   And what is the "corruption" alleged against the son anyway?  Making money from a sleazy company due to family connections - yeah, right, I can why that would upset Trump supporters (sarcasm.)

Update:  As David Graham explains:

To summarize, Biden threatened to withhold aid if the prosecutor wasn’t fired, and he was. Importantly, Biden was not freelancing, but was acting as a representative of President Barack Obama. There’s no evidence that Biden was helping his son. Shokin’s former deputy, who quit in frustration over his boss’s intransigence, told Bloomberg in May that the U.S. wasn’t pushing to drop probes of Burisma. “There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky,” he said. “It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.”

In effect, Biden’s pressure to install a tougher prosecutor probably made it more likely, not less, that Burisma would be in the cross hairs. But since then, the Ukrainian government has not produced any evidence of wrongdoing by Burisma, and the current prosecutor general said in May there was none. A Ukrainian interior-minister official told the Daily Beast that though Ukraine has no evidence that either Biden broke the law, the government would investigate further if the U.S. formally requested it. Hunter Biden has left Burisma’s board.

Joe Biden says he did not discuss Burisma substantively with his son, though Hunter Biden told The New Yorker it came up briefly once: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’” Given Hunter Biden’s checkered past, and the political difficulty that he has caused his father, it’s doubtful he really knew what he was doing.

Hunter Biden seems to have been trading on his father’s famous name to make a buck—a common but distasteful practice familiar from Billy Carter to Roger Clinton, and indeed up to the Trump children today. He’s not exempt from criticism for this behavior, but that isn’t the same as producing evidence that Joe Biden did anything untoward, something that no one has done so far. It’s still possible that more information will emerge that will implicate Biden in trying to assist his son, but Trump has already rhetorically convicted him without any such evidence.

But as I say, the gullible, Fox News zone that the Trump supporting Right lives in just believe anything they are told from the special information bubble they live in.

We've already forgotten about Trump and the electric chair

As Dave Roberts tweeted:

And with that, the idiotic Trump defending Right has already gaslight itself that, indeed, there is a Biden scandal that is plain to see.     

In all my life, I have just never seen a political side that is stupider.  The culture wars and internet has just made them gullible, gurgling idiots.  

Including you, JC.   How are those lungs holding out?

Free will returns

Well, at least in terms of the famous Libet experiment that many interpreted as being a neurological proof that free will is illusory.  This recent article in The Atlantic reckons it's been debunked, although it sounds like some are still arguing about it.

I never found it terribly convincing in the first place.

No otter way

How come we don't have otters in Australia?   If they are in waters as diverse as those off California, and Singapore, how come up they never ended up near Brisbane?

Anyway, I wonder this because of a short report in Science:

Stranded or orphaned baby sea otters have been given a new lease on life—and a mission: restoring damaged ecosystems along the California coast.

Sea otters are a keystone species in their native coastal environments. They prey on small herbivorous sea creatures like sea urchins, which can lead to more kelp and healthier seagrass in an area. But after being hunted for their fur to near extinction in the 19th and 20th centuries, otter populations along the California coast are still struggling. Restoring populations is not as simple as bringing in new otters, though. The animals often have strong ties to their homes, and some relocated otters have made journeys of more than 100 kilometers to return to their birthplaces.

To solve this problem, scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California created the sea otter surrogacy program in 2002. So far, they have rescued 37 stranded or orphaned otters, many of which were suffering from dehydration or hypothermia. The researchers placed the pups with surrogate mothers—captive female otters at the aquarium—until they fully recovered. When the pups were 6 months to 1 year old (the typical age an otter is weaned), the researchers released them into Elkhorn Slough (shown above), a tidal wetland about 1.5 hours south of San Francisco, California. Because the orphaned otters were very young when they were rescued, they did not have strong ties to their home ranges and most thrived in the new environment, the researchers report today in Oryx–The International Journal of Conservation.

Outstanding cleverness of Boris Johnson still undetectable

Some news, hey?   Parliament going to go ahead despite Johnson shutting it down.  Perhaps all conservatives who voted for him should just stay away and let the rest govern.   

At least Johnson's not a climate change denier, so I can't criticise him as being completely stupid.  But he jumped the wrong way on Brexit, and now can't admit it.  All rather Abbott-like, except with Abbott it was climate change which was the "if I play this the right way, I could be PM" cynical power play.  Both risen way above their level of political competency, and Johnson looking good to go down in history as just as embarrassing a PM as Abbott.

UK vaping illness spotted

I see via the BBC that in fact there has been one report of respiratory illness in the UK that seems associated with vaping, last year.  I am surprised we haven't heard about this before:

A young female vaper presented with insidious onset cough, progressive dyspnoea on exertion, fever, night sweats and was in respiratory failure when admitted to hospital. Clinical examination was unremarkable. Haematological tests revealed only thrombocytopenia, which was long standing, and her biochemical and inflammatory markers were normal. Chest radiograph and high-resolution CT showed diffuse ground-glass infiltrates with reticulation. She was initially treated with empirical steroids and there was improvement in her oxygenation, which facilitated further tests. Since the bronchoscopy and high-volume lavage was unyielding, a video-assisted thoracoscopicsurgical biopsy was done later and was suggestive of lipoid pneumonia. The only source of lipid was the vegetable glycerine found in e-cigarette (EC). Despite our advice to quit vaping, she continued to use EC with different flavours and there is not much improvement in her clinical and spirometric parameters.

Still vaping, JC?

Update:  Helen Dale, vaper, is still busy tweeting articles supporting the habit (as being better than smoking, etc.)    I like the way that article at the link relies heavily on (what would surely have to be) a rubbery figure by the suspiciously pro-vaping PHE that it's 95% safer that smoking cigarettes.   Maybe it is:  until it nearly kills you after a short time of use (if you are unlucky).   Risk assessment is a funny thing - people do factor in the "but something might go suddenly wrong" in their feelings about both legal and illegal activities.   Isn't that why lots of us will never be overcome with an urge to take a pill offered as a "safe" illicit but fun drug?   It makes me not so interested in skydiving, too.   (That and a general dislike of the falling sensation.)  

The other thing about it is that the pro-activists are now talking as if there is no other way to quit or reduce smoking.   Just like transexuals who used to just tuck it away, but now can't live without having it lobbed off,  pro-vape advocates seem to talk as if nicotine patches and gum are just now completely inadequate for those trying to get off smoking.

I wonder if companies that made nicotine patches are running ads now pushing their safety?   Seems a good idea to me.