The problems (and contradictions) of Japan

This article at the BCC by its long time correspondent in Japan gives a very convincing summary of the situation with the county.   You've probably read the matters noted in other places, but this just puts it together very well.

Doesn't this seem a charge destined for acquittal from the start?

Alex Baldwin being charged with involuntary manslaughter, I mean.   As noted in the NYT:

The criminal charges Mr. Baldwin faces came as a surprise to many in the film industry and were strongly disputed by his legal team. A lawyer for Mr. Baldwin, Luke Nikas, said the prosecutors’ decision “distorts Halyna Hutchins’s tragic death and represents a terrible miscarriage of justice.”

“Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun — or anywhere on the movie set,” Mr. Nikas said in a statement on Thursday. “He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds. We will fight these charges, and we will win.”

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing film, television and radio workers, said in a statement that the death of Ms. Hutchins was a “preventable” tragedy but that it was “not a failure of duty or a criminal act on the part of any performer.”

“The prosecutor’s contention that an actor has a duty to ensure the functional and mechanical operation of a firearm on a production set is wrong and uninformed,” the union said. “An actor’s job is not to be a firearms or weapons expert.”

 I just can't see that a jury (I assume it's a jury trial) wouldn't see it this way.  

Gotta pierce my eye, again

I didn't realise it was so long ago, but it was apparently in January 2018 that I had a cataract operation on my right eye.  The left had a much milder cataract but it has worsened:  interestingly, it seems they can get to a point where the suddenly get significantly worse in a short timeframe, and that's where I've been at for the last 6 months.

So, it's time to get the left eye done, this afternoon, and hopefully stop my brain from being confused about why it should ignore the looking-through-yellow-tinted-frosted-glass style of vision from one eye. 

See you later...clearer, too. 

Update: Success.   Seems I may be able to revert to reading and computer use without glasses, too.

Can I mention something that I often think: undergoing light anaesthesia is cool.  It's close to experiencing magic, I reckon.  Awake, awake, there's the slight tingle or warmth in that arm, I guess it will work: bam, awake in a different room.

The King of Buddhas, noted

Sometimes I watch low quality Buddhist videos for fun, but this one does show how simple the Pure Land style of Buddhism can be, with the "King of Buddhas" (a term I hadn't heard before) Amitabha Buddha having vowed to bring all who chant his name into the Pure Land upon death, which is almost the same as Heaven:

 

Perhaps I have written this before, but this simple formula does remind me very much of the "born again" strain of Protestantism which places a lot of emphasis on acknowledging Christ as your Lord and Saviour as the key thing to get right, and the importance of good works after that are given short shrift. 

So in that respect, it is unlike Catholicism.   But on the other hand, the countless number of Buddhas,  and bodhisattvas, and the way they are in a hierarchy and doing stuff to help people, not to mention the Pure Land itself as pretty much an Eastern decorated version of Heaven, does resemble the colour and flavour of Catholicism with its communion of saints, and its interest in angels and the hierarchy of Heavenly beings.  

It's this odd meld of two strains of Christianity that makes it interesting.

     

  

Why is the ABC trying so hard with this person?

I really don't understand why the ABC seems to be trying so hard to give high profile to drag figure Courtney Star, who I don't find particularly talented or engaging as an interviewer, presenter, or singer.  (OK, I have to admit, I haven't even seen the singing part of it: I'm making an assumption there.)  Yet he/she has been everywhere over the ABC for the last 12 months.  Like this video, one in a big series in which matters are discussed between his drag and non drag persona.

I don't know the preferred pronouns either, but it's like he/she/they has got incriminating photos of Ita Buttrose, or something...

Bugs we share

From Nature:

People living in the same household share more than just a roof (and pints of milk). Be they family or flatmate, housemates tend to have the same microbes colonizing their bodies, and the longer the cohabitation, the more similar these microbiomes become.

The conclusion — based on an 18 January study in Nature of the gut and mouth microbiomes of thousands of people from around the world¹ — raises the possibility that diseases linked to microbiome dysfunction, including cancer, diabetes and obesity, could be partly transmissible.

“This study is the most comprehensive look to date at when and why microbes transmit into the gut and oral microbiomes,” says Katherine Xue, a microbiome researcher at Stanford University in California. “New microbes can continue to reshape our microbiomes throughout our lives.”...

The analysis confirmed the strong link between the microbiomes of mothers and those of their children, particularly early in life. During an infant’s first year of life, half of the microbial strains in their guts were shared with their mothers. The extent of overlap decreased as children aged — but did not vanish. Older people, aged 50–85, still had gut microbe strains in common with their mothers.

Other family members were also an important source of gut microbes. After the age of 4, children shared similar numbers of microbe strains with their father as with their mother. And twins who moved away from each other shared fewer gut microbes the longer they had lived apart. Sharing occurred even between households in several of the rural-living groups: people from separate households in the same village tended to have more overlap in gut microbes than did people from different villages.

And this is a bit surprising:

The researchers also found that the extent of household sharing was no less in people from Westernized cultures than it was elsewhere. Ilana Brito, a microbiome researcher at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was surprised by that insight. She expected that microbiome transmission would be harder to detect in Western populations because of factors, such as better public-health infrastructure, that might impede spread.

Counting again

Further to my previous posts about the various attempts that have been made to count the number of gay (and generically queer) people in different countries, this recent news out of England about its 2021 census seems to have attracted little attention:

• The census question on sexual orientation was a voluntary question asked of those aged 16 years and over.
• In total, 44.9 million people (92.5% of the population aged 16 years and over) answered the question.
• Around 43.4 million people (89.4%) identified as straight or heterosexual.
• Around 1.5 million people (3.2%) identified with an LGB+ orientation (“Gay or Lesbian”, “Bisexual” or “Other sexual orientation”).
• The remaining 3.6 million people (7.5%) did not answer the question.

 A lot of the 3.2% million did put themselves down as bisexual or other, and I think we can safely assume (based on other surveys in Western countries) that this would include more women than men:

• 748,000 (1.5%), described themselves as gay or lesbian

• 624,000 (1.3%) described themselves as bisexual

• 165,000 (0.3%) selected “Other sexual orientation”

Apparently, they will be releasing more information about the gender of the respondents later this month.

Anyhoo, given that 7.5% didn't answer the question, it would seem plausible to add a significant number from that group into one of the "queer" categories, so I would still stick by my guesstimate from 2013 that the "true" figure in the Western countries that have done this research is that around 4 to 5% fall within the broad "queer" category, although it seems to have become clearer over the years that a lot of that is actually bisexuality which might not (or might, who knows?) play a significant role over a lifetime. 

But perhaps the biggest surprise is that in a country where gay celebrities seem so prominent (especially in their media and entertainment industry), the number of "pure" gay or lesbian willing to disclose it is under 2%.  They do seem to be disproportionately visible because of the sort of work they like to do.  (Same can be said about all Western countries, really.) 

Speaking of economics...what has happened to Jason Soon?

He hardly seems to have any online presence anywhere anymore...

Economics Explained seems OK...

I think I have not watched Google recommended videos from the Economics Explained Youtube channel before now because I assumed it might be something like that god awful PragerU channel.   But I finally watched a couple of the videos, and thought they were pretty mainstream and good.  For example, this one about capitalism and economics generally:

 

 And this one about Sri Lanka's problems in particular:

 

The latter doesn't spend much time on the issue they say they will discuss, about the inevitable inequality between nations, in terms of their ability to grow into wealthy modern economies, but maybe they will come back to that. But overall, I didn't find much to criticise or be suspicious about.

Get a grip

In my never ending quest to find the laziest way I can remain fit, there's this:

Want to know how well you’re aging? Check your grip strength.

A recent study of 1,275 men and women found that those with relatively feeble handgrip strength, a reliable marker of overall muscle quality and strength, showed signs of accelerated aging of their DNA. Their genes appeared to be growing old faster than those of people with greater strength.

The study, although preliminary, raises the possibility that visiting the gym or doing a few push-ups in our living rooms might help turn back the clock and make our cells and selves more biologically youthful, whatever our current age.

Strength also can be an augury of how long we’ll live. In a 2015 study of almost 140,000 adults in high-, middle- and low-income nations, reduced handgrip strength was closely linked to mortality in people of all incomes, predicting risks for early death better than blood pressure, which is often considered one of the best indicators of life span.

I think my grip is not bad, but I have never measured it properly...

 

Fairly unimpressed, or just getting old?

I tried watching the much praised first episode of The Last of Us on Binge last night.

I was deeply unimpressed.  OK, the first 5 minutes was pretty well done, but as I said to my son, the next 20 minutes of "the world is suddenly turning zombie and collapsing overnight" is stuff we've seen many times before and there was nothing novel or particularly interesting in how it happened in this story.

The rest of the show was heavy on dialogue, which I didn't think was particularly well written, and the main male and female character don't display much at all in the way of likeability.   I get that the developing dynamic between them is at the heart of the show, but I already don't care for them.

It just feels a very well trodden path of familiar tropes.

This is not a view widely shared amongst critics, although here is one exception.  On Twitter, it seems that many gamers are just ecstatic that the show follows the game so closely, with comparisons of the cut scenes from the game apparently looking at times exactly the same as the scene in the TV show.   Am I supposed to impressed about that?  Why? 

So, I wonder if this is a fair reaction, or a sign that I'm getting old(er)-age cynical of what anyone 30 years or more younger than me likes?    I'm not entirely sure...

 

Noel Coward's advice remembered

So, Renee Geyer has died.  I thought I might have posted briefly before about an autobiography (of sorts) that came out about her, but I see now that it predates this blog, so I probably didn't. 

It certainly confirmed her "bad girl" reputation, but as this review/interview with her explains, it was (somewhat refreshingly) not done in the often cloying "I was lost but am now redeemed" style of American celebrity autobiography.  

But I have a suspicion that the conservatives over at the ageing Australian reactionaries blog have forgotten about the extent of her unapologetically (shall we say) dissolute life:

So there are the stripped-bare stories of three near-fatal drug overdoses, six abortions and a collection of short-lived relationships.

"I've died three times," she writes. "Overdosed ... heart stopped beating ... blue in the face for 20 minutes ... had to be revived. That kind of dead."

Of the abortions, she says she was unlucky, with three of the pregnancies happening while she was using contraception.

Oddly, Googling her has also turned up that she sang the campaign song for the Liberals in the 1975 election (!)*, and got charged with threatening a  hotel receptionist (in racist terms) in 2015.  Had forgotten about that.  As well as the car crashes. 

She was an odd character, I think it is fair to say.

And the Noel Coward advice, of course, refers to this:

Regarding yours, dear Mrs. Worthington,
Of Wednesday the 23rd,
Although your baby
May be
Keen on a stage career,
How can I make it clear
That this is not a good idea? 

At least I suspect a quieter life out of the public eye could have been a happier one.  Although you never know, I guess.

* This site says that she later distanced herself from the Liberals and politics generally, saying she only did it for the money. 

Toilet talk

Well, it's really poop talk, but I didn't want that to be in the heading.

An article in the Washington Post "Ask a Doctor:  Are my bowel movements normal?" (gift link)  contains some enlightening information, such as:

A general rule of thumb is that anywhere from three bowel movements per day to three per week is within the range of “normal.” If we look at the numbers closely, stool frequency varies by geographic region, age, sex and cultural habits. In the United States, the majority of people who consider themselves to have normal bowel habits report having between 3-7 bowel movements per week. In eastern India, however, where more people are vegetarian and the typical diet is much higher in fiber, people have a median of 14 stools per week. In Italy, meanwhile, people tend to defecate once per day.

Women and older people tend to have less frequent stools.

Hmmm...that last point doesn't seem to apply to me, but I will spare you the details here.  Anyway, I do fit within the normal range.  I like the coy words here: 

Once-a-day bowel movement is great for many people. But the key to a healthy stool frequency is that however often it happens, it should be comfortable and occur in a socially appropriate context.

If you consistently have a bowel movement once a day, but to do so, you have to strain significantly, take four laxatives in the morning, and never feel like you’ve quite … evacuated … everything, then I’d say there is a problem...

Maybe you’re someone who has three bowel movements each day, but they’re soft and never feel so urgent as to disrupt important work meetings or stymie your agenda at happy hour. I’d say to leave it alone and consider yourself “normal.” But when the urge to poop occurs at frequent and inconvenient times, making you afraid to socialize for fear of an embarrassing call of nature, it’s worth talking to a physician about potential ways to address it.

So if you find that your bathroom habits are comfortable and don’t hold you back socially, then poop in peace, even if it’s not always precisely once per day.

As for the question of colour, this is the commentary:

Green: Don’t sweat it.

Yellow: No big deal.

Orange: Not worried.

Dark brown: Still not worried. If it’s not black like the hue of your TV screen and sticky, it’s probably not because of bleeding....

White: You have my attention. Bilirubin, the waste product found in bile, is what gives your poop its characteristic brown color. Without it, stools are pale. White or clay-colored poop could suggest a blockage, such as from a gallstone that is preventing bile from reaching your intestine. This should be discussed as soon as possible with your physician.

Silver: Do tell. There was a vivid case report about the stool of a patient with simultaneous gastrointestinal bleeding and bile duct blockage, leading to shiny silvery stool. But this would be exceedingly rare.

She doesn't mention something that caught my attention recently:  following Eric Idle's publicity tour where he talked about surviving pancreatic cancer (he was very lucky that it was caught very very early), I watched some English video about the warning signs, and a woman survivor said that, in retrospect, one of the first signs for her had been changes in her poop,  as explained at this website:

If your pancreatic duct blocks, you might develop a symptom called steatorrhoea. This means fatty stools. You may pass frequent, large bowel motions that are pale coloured and smelly, and are difficult to flush away. These bowel changes can mean that you are not absorbing your food properly. This can also cause weight loss.

Diarrhoea and constipation are also other possible bowel changes you can have.

I hadn't realised that could be a sign of pancreatic cancer before.  Now I'm happy when it doesn't float.  

 

 

 

Climate change denial doesn't seem great for health

I learn from reading the Australian blogs for ageing conservatives/reactionaries that Tim Blair had a heart attack at the start of this year (he did post about it but I don't bother checking even the headlines of his paywalled blog anymore); apparently Ian Plimer is unwell*; and Mark Steyn had two heart attacks in December (saying he didn't recognise the symptoms at first.)    Jim Molan died this morning, and of course, the late George Pell was a gullible fan of Plimer.

Of course, ill health can strike anyone, and I will touch the (probably fake veneer of) wood of my desk more than once while writing this post.  But, I see via (smoker) Currency Lad's ridiculous blog that Tim Blair started his post with:

I chose to ignore relatively mild early symptoms and instead filed this year’s predictions – which somehow didn’t include any personal cardiac catastrophes. Bit of a missed opportunity there.

Symptoms intensified on January 2. I was suffering, to use a medical acronym I’d soon learn, a full-blown STEMI.

It has stuck in my mind from years ago that Blair, in his column explaining his bout with colon cancer, said he ignored the initial signs for a very substantial period.

Mark Steyn explains that his first heart attack started just before his TV show started, but he went ahead anyway (and, to be fair, I know that it is indeed possible to not recognise the symptoms for what they really are.)  

But still - it seems to me that if you have pinned your whole public shtick on poo-pooing scientists' near unanimous warnings of the confirmed and dangerous phenomena of AGW, it doesn't exactly help your credibility to be happily explaining that you are good at ignoring other danger warning signs that are happening, like, 50 cm from your own brain.

Just sayin', as they say....

Update:   I see also from reading another ageing smoker, Roger Franklin from Quadrant in his areff incarnation at Catallaxy, who visit Tim in hospital, this:

We both agree his great challenge will be learning to write without a fag in the ashtray by the keyboard. His post suggests he’s on the way to mastering the art. 

Smoking and climate change denial are incredibly strongly co-related.   I would have thought that someone with colon cancer might also have given up on the habit already, but apparently not.

It's a very safe rule of thumb that if anyone likes to opine about issues of public safety and health, including on climate change, vaccines, or diet, and they are a proud smoker, you know with 95% certainty that their view can be safely ignored.   

* disseminated melanoma, someone has since said on the site.  

A bit of casual racism

A terrible story of American racism from the end of World War 2 in the Washington Post.   Here's a gift  link.

The basics:

About two weeks after the end of World War II in Europe, French women were serving U.S. soldiers coffee and doughnuts in a Red Cross tent in France. Two Black soldiers went inside to get some.

This was a breach of norms: In a segregated army, many White American soldiers did not want Black men talking to French women.

The Black soldiers — Allen Leftridge and Frank Glenn — were challenged by a White sergeant, according to a witness. When a White armed guard arrived, he fatally shot the two men. A third soldier — a White man just released from a German prison camp who was not named in documents related to the incident — was caught in the crossfire and killed, a newspaper from the time reported.

Now, there was a court martial, but they acquitted.  

On the most "generous" reading, a fight broke out and the guard acted in self defence;  but it remains hard to believe that he would have been so trigger happy in a fight with a white soldier.  Or, of course, that a white soldier would be in trouble for talking to a white woman.