Unmasked

I was in the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane on Saturday, and it was a cool, showery day.  I thought, seeing I had some left in the car, I would wear a mask, given that I usually associate such weather with catching a cold.   I also wasn't sure how crowded it would be.

Turned out it was pretty busy, and that nearly no one was wearing a mask.  I was paying close attention once I realised I seemed to be alone, and I spotted exactly two people wearing them - both Asian.   There are always plenty of young Asian people in the city, and even most of them were not wearing them.

It's true, with days going by with no new cases in Queensland, let alone Brisbane, there should be little to fear.   But I still would feel more comfortable if wearing them was treated as standard for a few months yet.  

By the way, I presume that we ought to be seeing very little transmission of ordinary colds and flu this winter season due to the hygiene care that shops and other places are still taking.  Is anyone trying to keep of that through our GPs, I wonder?

Ha!

Yes, this is amusing:

Referencing the half full stadium that Trump and his campaign was claiming had issued one million tickets to his cult members.

Update:  liked this, too:

Most postmodernism from Republicans

It's been pretty funny reading Twitter about this today:

Rep. Matt Gaetz created a social media frenzy Thursday when he revealed he had a teenage son named Nestor and later introduced the young man during an appearance on Fox News.

Gaetz (R-Fla.) shared that he has a Cuban-born son to explain why he became so irate when Rep. Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.), who is black, said the white lawmakers in the room couldn’t understand what it was like to father a black child.

Many raised doubts about Gaetz’s claim of a secret son. He never mentioned his son in his biographical data or elsewhere. An old photo surfaced online of Gaetz with Nestor in which the congressman refers to him as a “local student.”

He also appeared as an intern in one photo.  Which explains this tweet:

The appalling Tucker Carlson had Gaetz and his "son" on his show, yet never asked the obvious question:  how did a (then) 31 year old single man manage to adopt a 12 year old Cuban "son".

The answer appears to be as simple as this:    

Gaetz told People Magazine in an interview that he never formally adopted 19-year-old Nestor but that Nestor has lived with him since immigrating from Cuba at age 12.

 So he's not a son, biologically (of course) or legally.   I saw someone sympathetic to Gaetz said that Nester was mainly raised by Gaetz's parents, which would make more sense.

So, for a Republican, "son" means just whatever they want it to mean:  a young dude he's "raised", probably more like "been in the same family house with", but that's close enough for fake outrage when arguing with a black man.

Gaetz is also single, leading many to speculate on whether this is a gay relationship.   I expect not, as this would be the weirdest way ever to come out.

The unifying President

Trump is so appallingly un-Presidential in language and sentiment that this has become normalised, but it shouldn't be.   This thread is correct:

Trump watch

What a baby.

And here he is trying to suck up to the police unions, again, as authoritarians are want to do; as well as making inappropriate pre-trial comments on what will be a high profile case with the potential to cause further rioting: 

 He has no idea how to be a responsible President.

Branch stacking

Is it just me, or is my sense correct that most of the public find branch stacking scandals to be pretty uninteresting and less important than most journalists find them?

How to respond to racism

In the case of Sinclair Davidson, you leave it up on the blog you can moderate.

Why?

And why does RMIT tolerate staff who moderate a blog leaving it up?

Update:  If I am not mistaken, it has been removed - but with no explanation.

While that is good, I remain somewhat puzzled as to why he doesn't make it clear that such clear racism is not to be posted in comments.

Update 2:  wait:  although the original comment is gone, it had been copied into another person's comment, in full, so it is still in the thread!

Sinclair, Sinclair:   if you are (and I assume you are) the one who deleted the original comment - why not make a clear statement on the blog that it was unacceptable and such blatant racism is not to be repeated?? 

Set some standards and be clear about it, for God's sake.

Update 3:  the reposting of the comment is now deleted.  Again, no comment from Sinclair on the blog as to why, though.

Meanwhile, in movie making land

I like those visual effects videos which have long showed how much green screens have taken over TV and movie production;  but  this video showing the next level - virtual sets using massive LED screens - is even more fascinating: 

Some quantum stuff to consider

This paper (or article) at arXiv is written at a relatively non-technical level.  I have only skimmed it at the moment, but will come back to read it later:

Bell's Theorem, Quantum Probabilities, and Superdeterminism

Things not going well in Alabama

A report in the Montgomery Advertiser about the local council considering making mask wearing in public compulsory (my bolds):

Jackson Hospital pulmonologist William Saliski cleared his throat as he started describing the dire situation created by the coronavirus pandemic in Montgomery to its City Council before they voted on a mandatory mask ordinance. "It's been a long day, I apologize," he said.

"The units are full with critically-ill COVID patients," Saliski said. About 90% of them are Black. He said hospitals are able to manage for now, but it's not sustainable. "This mask slows that down, 95% protection from something as easy as cloth. ... If this continues the way it's going, we will be overrun."

More doctors followed him to the microphone, describing the dead being carried out within 30 minutes of each other, and doctors being disturbed when people on the street ask them if the media is lying about the pandemic as part of a political ploy.

After they spoke, and before the council voted on a proposal by Councilman C.C. Calhoun to mandate mask-wearing in public in Montgomery, Councilman Brantley Lyons questioned whether masks and six-foot distancing really helps. They do, the doctors replied. Lyons was unmoved. "At the end of the day, if an illness or a pandemic comes through we do not throw our constitutional rights out the window," Lyons said.

From the crowd, doctors called for him to visit the hospital sometime.

Instead, the council killed the ordinance after it failed to pass in a 4-4 tie, mostly along racial lines, with Councilman Tracy Larkin absent. Councilman Clay McInnis voted with three Black council members — Calhoun, Oronde Mitchell and Audrey Graham — in favor of the ordinance. Lyons, Charles Jinright, Richard Bollinger and Glen Pruitt voted against it.

Bad news for the Fox News audience, then

An odd study:

In the study of people aged over 55, published in Alzheimer's & Dementia, researchers found 'repetitive negative thinking' (RNT) is linked to subsequent cognitive decline as well as the deposition of harmful brain proteins linked to Alzheimer's.

The researchers say RNT should now be further investigated as a potential risk factor for dementia, and psychological tools, such as mindfulness or meditation, should be studied to see if these could reduce dementia risk.

Lead author Dr Natalie Marchant (UCL Psychiatry) said: "Depression and anxiety in mid-life and old age are already known to be risk factors for dementia. Here, we found that certain thinking patterns implicated in depression and anxiety could be an underlying reason why people with those disorders are more likely to develop dementia.

"Taken alongside other studies, which link depression and anxiety with dementia risk, we expect that chronic negative thinking patterns over a long period of time could increase the risk of dementia. We do not think the evidence suggests that short-term setbacks would increase one's risk of dementia.

Adam Creighton re-confirms his foolishness

Look, as I have said before, I have never held Creighton in high regard; but with today's column in The Australian:  Coronavirus: Inflated pandemic estimates weaken climate forecasts, he re-confirms  himself as the most ignorant fool.

He decided early on to go with one take on the COVID-19 problem and he is sticking to it, obviously in such a way that no evidence is going to change his mind.

Most of the column is devoted to the COVID pandemic, but when it gets to climate change, he only quotes this:

Climate modelling was struggling even before the pandemic, given the planet has warmed about half as much as forecast by the first Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in back 1990.

“Almost the entire alarm about global warming is based on model predictions. If you just look at the last 30 to 40 years of data, nothing spectacular has happened, there’s no sign temperature increase is accelerating,” says Benny Peiser, founder of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London.

This claim has been debunked years ago - Creighton reads only what he wants to on the topic, obviously.  As for quoting Benny Peiser - his qualifications:

Peiser studied political science, English, and sports science. 

Yeah, the man to trust.   

The rule of thumb should apply - if anyone is running with "climate change is no problem" line after all this time, they are not to be trusted on any topic, even one they are supposedly an expert on, such as economics.   It's a solid marker for foolishness, not knowing how to tell a genuine expert from a charlatan, and an inability to admit to past error.   

Movie scene debunked

I guess if you haven't seen Da 5 Bloods yet, but you think you will give it a try, you won't want to read this article that debunks a key scene in the movie.

But if you have seen it, you will be interested.

I see that the movie continues to get many more realistic reviews from audiences than from professional critics.  

Where does my Himalayan rock salt come from?

I've lately been using Himalayan rock salt (crushed pretty fine) in cooking (Coles own brand), and I like it.  It flows easily, and is sort of easier to see where you have applied it compared to your common white cooking stuff.   I didn't buy it, but I assume it must have dropped in price in order for Coles to be doing their own in-house branded version.

It's from Pakistan, apparently, and that made me curious as to what the salt mines there might look like.   NPR reports:

The salt is mined from rolling red-brick hills that rise from marshes in Khewra, about two hours from the capital, Islamabad. They are hundreds of miles from the iconic snowy peaks of the Himalayas, and the area shimmers with heat. The hills — known as the salt range — are distant tendrils of the Himalayas and are a remnant of a lagoon that existed some 600 million years ago, said Shahid Iqbal, a lecturer in the department of earth sciences at Quaid-i-Azam University.

Mining here was once a small-time industry that attracted little attention. Some 400,000 tons of salt are exported a year, largely as crude rock, according to Nadeem Babar, the adviser to Pakistan's prime minister on petroleum and natural resources. About a quarter of those exports were shipped at around $40 a ton to India — Pakistan's neighbor, with which it has fought four wars. The salt was literally blown out of mines, hauled in trucks and dispatched some 160 miles to the border.

Here's a France 24 video about the salt mining enterprise there, including tour into a pink salt mine cave:



I posted recently about the Indus valley civilisation, and noted that Harappa has a big archaeological site that looks as if it would be good to visit.   But it's in Pakistan too.

It's a pity that it is considered a very unsafe place to travel, as it looks as if it could have a decent tourist industry if it could get its act together.
 

Foreign viewing

My son's starting to complain that I only ever want to watch foreign made shows on Netflix now, and he might have a point.  It's starting to get hard to remember the last English speaking series we watched - probably Haunting of Hill House.  [Update:  how could I forget - it was Lost in Space, season 2.]

But this has been a great thing about Netflix, the variety of high quality foreign shows.   I guess I could always have watched Nordic noir crime on SBS, but dark crime is a genre that doesn't hold much interest to me, generally speaking.  And don't go pointing to my fondness of Babylon Berlin as hypocrisy - while lots of bad crimes happen, often in seedy settings, it also has Weimar politics, young Nazis, prostitution, drug addiction, cults, gay bars, military spying, lots of scenes confirming that German food has always been pretty crap, a rich sooky son with a haircut that really annoys me, and a nutty hypnotist whose radio show (my son said, wittily) is like an early successful podcast (for the alt.right of the day, I would add).

We finished watching the third season of BB last night, and I ended up enjoying it a lot, even though I still think it was not quite as satisfying as the first two seasons.   Did anyone else notice how much Gereon seemed to get beaten up and injured in this season?   It's a wonder he sticks with the job, really.

I am still dissatisfied with the unexplained mystery about his brother (or is he?) Anno.   Actually, I think this Reddit theory about him might have something going for it.

Anyway, it seems they planned on season 4 to start being made later this year.  I hope COVID-19 doesn't stuff that up.