Krugman, Colebatch, and the big picture

Paul Krugman has an interesting column in which he seems somewhat persuaded by an argument that the world may have moved to a sort of permanent economic slump:

Again, the evidence suggests that we have become an economy whose normal state is one of mild depression, whose brief episodes of prosperity occur only thanks to bubbles and unsustainable borrowing. 

Why might this be happening? One answer could be slowing population growth. A growing population creates a demand for new houses, new office buildings, and so on; when growth slows, that demand drops off. America’s working-age population rose rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, as baby boomers grew up, and its work force rose even faster, as women moved into the labor market. That’s now all behind us. And you can see the effects: Even at the height of the housing bubble, we weren’t building nearly as many houses as in the 1970s. 

Another important factor may be persistent trade deficits, which emerged in the 1980s and since then have fluctuated but never gone away. 

Why does all of this matter? One answer is that central bankers need to stop talking about “exit strategies.” Easy money should, and probably will, be with us for a very long time. This, in turn, means we can forget all those scare stories about government debt, which run along the lines of “It may not be a problem now, but just wait until interest rates rise.” 

More broadly, if our economy has a persistent tendency toward depression, we’re going to be living under the looking-glass rules of depression economics — in which virtue is vice and prudence is folly, in which attempts to save more (including attempts to reduce budget deficits) make everyone worse off — for a long time. 

In other economics talk of note, Tim Colebatch gives the thumbs up to a new book by Garnaut about what Australia should be doing:

What to do? The first priority, Garnaut insists, is to try to bring the dollar down, a lot. It's not the only thing we have to do, but without that, all else is in vain. Newman's contrary view that the dollar is only a minor issue is silly, as his muddled comparison of Australian and US wages shows. In $A, our average manufacturing wage rose 11 per cent between 2009 and 2012. In $US, it rose 42 per cent. Three-quarters of that rise came from the rising dollar. We cannot restore our lost competitiveness without bringing it down.

Garnaut hopes that more interest rate cuts could do the trick. Experience suggests that's optimistic: in my view, the Reserve Bank needs to intervene in the markets to drive the dollar down, with the government helping by removing the $2 billion a year tax break to foreign owners of government bonds.

What about the budget? Garnaut's forecasts imply that, without action, the deficit could blow out horribly ahead - yet to cut spending and/or raise taxes would slow the economy further. He advocates doing both, trimming middle class welfare while closing tax breaks, but offsetting this (as Hockey plans to do) by a strong push to build productivity-enhancing infrastructure - chosen on economic merit, not for political reasons.

St Francis revisited

Here's an enjoyable article by Joan Acocella reviewing a couple of recent biographies of St Francis of Assisi, which gives a decent short history of his life.

I had not realised he had been such an immediate success.  But I had heard of his eccentricities before:

A corollary of Francis’s devotion to humility was his distrust of book learning. Almost proudly, it seems, he called himself “illiteratus.” He never owned a complete Bible. He never became a priest. To him, book learning smelled of wealth—only rich people had books at that time—and thus of arrogance. One medieval source records his response to a novice who asked for a psalter: “When you have a psalter, you will want a breviary; and when you will have a breviary, you will install yourself in a throne like a great prelate, and you will command your brother: ‘Bring me my breviary!’ ” He then took some ashes from the hearth and rubbed them into his body, all the while repeating, “I’m a breviary, I’m a breviary!” Over time, his hostility to scholarship encouraged some people—for example, members of religious orders devoted to education, such as the Dominicans—to regard the Franciscans as a bunch of oddballs and half-wits, which, no doubt, some of them were. Francis accepted into the community anyone who applied. There was no test, no waiting period.

The story about the psalter seems to represent Francis as a man of rigid principles. He was not. To every rule, he made exceptions, on the spot. No friar could ride a horse (a symbol of wealth), but if the friar was sick, all of a sudden a friar could ride a horse. No new entrant, in divesting himself of his goods, could give them to his family, but if it turned out that the man’s giving away his ox would impoverish the family, the ox stayed home. Francis believed in discipline—fasting, hair shirts—but he didn’t eat bugs, and he warned the friars that excessive fasting was harmful to “Brother Body.” Also, he occasionally advised his followers to find their own way to salvation. On his deathbed, he said to them, “I have done what was mine to do. May Christ teach you what is yours!” This is strange, since he had so clear a program for a Christian life. He may not have meant to be permissive, but he often was.

Which was certainly owing in part to another of his characteristics, attested to by everyone who knew him: an extreme natural sweetness. He was courteous, genial, extroverted—he was fun, a quality not always found in saints—and he laid it upon the brothers, as a duty, to be cheerful.

Read the whole thing.

Unusually preserved singers

English singer Petula Clark is back 'Downtown' - latimes.com

The 1960's now feels like a long, long time ago, and as with Shirley Bassey, it can be startling to realise a singer from that era is still alive and still working.

It turns out Petula Clark, aged 81, is still at it.  I haven't thought about her for a long, long time; but when thinking of "Downtown", I am inclined to join Gerald the Gorilla* and observe that the production on that album is amazing.  

Speaking on the big production values of the 1960's, I thought this recent article in The Guardian by Jimmy Webb about the making of Macathur Park with Richard Harris was interesting.  (When did Harris die?  2002?  Doesn't seem that long ago.)

I suppose I shouldn't be all that surprised that famous singer from the 1960's are still with us, given Paul McCartney and the Stones rarely being out of the news.   But it's the ones who you don't think of for ages who suddenly turn up still alive who cause the surprise.  


* yes, I know, he was talking of Johnny Mathis, who I see is still alive and aged 78.  (I am contractually obliged to mention this sketch at least once a year.)

Stoic revival

I see via Mary Beard's blog that the second "Live Like a Stoic Week" is soon upon us, and more detail can be learnt from the "Stoicism Today" website.

Well, I suppose it's just lucky that we don't have any academics into reviving Cynicism by following the example of Diogenes:

From Life of Diogenes: "Someone took him [Diogenes] into a magnificent house and warned him not to spit, whereupon, having cleared his throat, he spat into the man's face, being unable, he said, to find a meaner receptacle."

That was from the Wikipedia entry on unpopular house guest Diogenes.  I also learn from there the origin of the "cynic":

The term "Cynic" itself derives from the Greek word κυνικός, kynikos, "dog-like" and that from κύων, kyôn, "dog" (genitive: kynos).^[48] One explanation offered in ancient times for why the Cynics were called dogs was because Antisthenes taught in the Cynosarges gymnasium at Athens.^[49] The word Cynosarges means the place of the white dog. Later Cynics also sought to turn the word to their advantage, as a later commentator explained:

There are four reasons why the Cynics are so named. First because of the indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference and, like dogs, eat and make love in public, go barefoot, and sleep in tubs and at crossroads. The second reason is that the dog is a shameless animal, and they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a good guard, and they guard the tenets of their philosophy. The fourth reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those who are suited to philosophy, and receive them kindly, while those unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them.

 Maybe I had read that before, but forgotten.   

Big hail

Having suffered some house damage in a hail storm exactly one year ago, I certainly have a good idea how scary it would have been to be in the huge and damaging hail that hit the Sunshine Coast on the weekend.   

The biggest hail stones appear to be the of the type which are make up by smaller hail freezing together, but that still makes for a massive chunk of  ice falling out of the sky.  I think there was a report of one person injured directly by the hail; it's a wonder there weren't more.

Dubious theory noted

I seem to have missed "biocentrism," as coined by medical Professor Robert Lanza, but it got a run in The Indpendent the other day, in a somewhat confusing article which says Lanza thinks his theory means that there is definitely life after death.  It sounds rather like Hugh Everett's idea that he would continue living in another corner of the multiverse - but not quite.   (I don't know that anyone has put this "multiple versions of everyone" idea to much philosophical, theological or science fiction consideration yet.  It always seems to me that it must be good for some interesting conjecture about God and the meaning of the universe, and it's a topic I often find myself thinking about in the shower.  Never with any worthwhile result, however.) 

Reddit has an article on it which contains more criticism, and there is a Wikipedia entry too.

Doesn't seem all that promising to me...

Captain Shaky

I knew nothing really about the events portrayed in Captain Phillips, even though they only occurred in 2009, and this is an excellent way to have seen the movie yesterday.

It's a very solid film:  good acting, pretty good writing, and just a really interesting story.  But there are a couple of, not exactly reservations, but at least observations I would make:

a.  the US military obviously fully co-operated with the film, and it's no wonder, given they are the heroes of the piece.   But the movie does perhaps treat them as so superbly efficient that, on reflection,  they seem just about too good to be true.   I can't really call this a criticism of the film - the US military probably deserves some unreserved cinematic high praise at least once in a while - but it wouldn't have hurt to shown one military character being a bit more human.

b.  Given that I have spent the last decade or so concentrating more on children's movies than adult ones, this was the first film I have seen by Paul Greengrass.  David Stratton and others have long complained or at least noted this director's love of hand held camera, or "shaky cam", and I have finally seen what it is like.

It's self evident that the style works best for documentary style story telling, and this movie certainly fits the bill.   As I have already indicated, it didn't ruin the movie for me, but I have got to say, it must surely make a director's job a hell of a lot easier to do an entire movie in this fashion.  I mean, it's virtually a complete jettison of concern about careful composition of a shot:  the actors just need to be approximately where they should be, and the cameraman just has to get them approximately in shot.  I would also assume it makes shooting the film a hell of a lot faster.

But given its limitations, it would seem almost a cheat to me if Greengrass got a Director's award for the film, no matter how much critics liked it.     

Still, I recommend it.

Yet another possible solar/hydrogen "breakthrough"

Researchers create a low-cost, long-lasting water splitter made of silicon and nickel

New proposals for putting together solar power and hydrogen production from water seem to be cropping up all the time.   It would be good if one of them ever got to production scale.

I see this article suggests the hydrogen would be used in fuel cells to generate power overnight or when it is cloudy.   (Well, hot salt systems seem to work overnight anyway.)   I wonder if this is more efficient than just burning hydrogen under the salts to keep them hot?  

Some other article I read recently suggested that putting small nuclear reactors at solar power stations could work well too.  I can't find it right now, though...

Friends in high places

Gina Rinehart meets Coalition MPs in secret trip to Canberra

Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart, invited a small group of Coalition friends for drinks in her private hotel suite, after planning a secret flight to Canberra to visit the Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce.

Some of Mrs Rinehart's closest political friends, the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and Liberal Party senators Cory Bernardi and Michaelia Cash, were invited to join the billionaire for the intimate gathering on Wednesday night.

The iron ore magnate, who has vigorously supported Prime Minister Tony Abbott's plans to abolish the carbon and mining taxes, suggested the politicians meet for drinks in her Canberra hotel room to avoid media attention.

It is understood the reason for Mrs Rinehart's surprise trip to Canberra was so she could attend Parliament House to watch Mr Joyce's maiden speech on Thursday as the newly elected MP for New England.

It is understood Mrs Rinehart's secretary booked a room in the Hyatt Hotel and organised a private jet to fly from Sydney to Canberra late on Wednesday.

The billionaire had also planned to meet senators Bernardi and Cash and the Speaker, Ms Bishop, for lunch on Thursday after Mr Joyce's speech.

Yeah, well, that's a great look isn't it.  Not just swinging by to dine with old buddy Joyce, but to meet up with the new Speaker of the house, during a term in which several policies in which Gina is personally interested financially will be hotly contested.    

 

And Abbott's idea of government in secret (covered well on 7.30 last night) continues to attract only muted criticism from the Murdoch press.

 

Abbott is just showing himself as the most appalling hypocrite, even by the normally low standards of politicians. 

The Kevinburg finale

As I wrote elsewhere last night:

Rudd performed well in initial interviews on his return, but his old policy-on-the-run habit re-asserted itself during the campaign, as well as his vanity. Still, it’s true, I would have preferred Labor to have won this election under him, as I consider Abbott has certainly become a flakey politician with no sign of having good intuitions on anything currently important.

But having lost the election, it is indeed a good thing to see the final end of the Rudd experiment, which in terms of the internal affairs of Labor, was a clear disaster.

Update:   

Julia Gillard has wished Kevin Rudd well following the announcement of his resignation from Parliament.

Ms Gillard tweeted her best wishes on Thursday morning to the man who ended her prime ministership.

 She's obviously not an embittered ex politician.   She was always likeable, and remains so.  

High dollar frustration

Reserve Bank should intervene to push down the Australian dollar

Tim Colebatch continues his argument that the ongoing problem for the Australian economy is the high Australian dollar, and it deserves Reserve Bank intervention.

I had thought that the Abbott government would reap the benefit (under false pretences) of an Australian dollar which appeared to be heading down to a permanently lower rate.  But it keeps hovering around the mid 90's, which is not good enough.  As Colebatch argues:

The high dollar cannot last forever. But there is a limit to how long companies can go on losing money while waiting for the dollar to fall. We are allowing a temporary over-valuation to shut down economic capacity permanently. This is not how the successful Asian economies operate.

I find this a very convincing take on the matter.

How many still displaced in Japan

Little hope of evacuee homecoming | The Japan Times

I had been wondering recently about the number of people in Japan who are still displaced as a result of the Fukushima reactor accident, but it's been hard to find current numbers via Google.

The article above gives an indication, however:

There is still little prospect that nuclear refugees will be able to return to their homes near the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, the government said in a new report.

The report, submitted to the Diet on Tuesday, notes that the reclassification of evacuation zones around the plant has been completed and that the cleanup is continuing.

But the government failed to specify when evacuated residents — some 81,000 as of September — will be able to return to their hometowns.

Challenges cited by the government include the need to ease health worries and stop false rumors about radiation exposure.

According to the report, which covers progress between October 2012 and September this year on reconstructing areas hit by the 2011 natural and nuclear disasters, the total number of evacuees is now around 280,000, compared with about 470,000 shortly after the disasters.

 So, about 81,000 appears to be the answer.

When nuclear goes wrong, it is massively disruptive and hugely expensive to clean up.

They chose the wrong typhoon

HotWhopper: Ethically-challenged Anthony Watts is seeking revenge, playing games with tragedy. How low can he go?

I have been meaning to add a link to the Hot Whopper blog, where Sou puts in what is now almost certainly the most detailed and comprehensive critiques of Anthony Watts and his increasingly desperate Watts Up With That blog.

As the story linked above explains, Watts unwisely chose to publish a way-too-early post along the lines of "you see, this typhoon wasn't as bad as the media made out" post.

I'm not sure if they are still updating the number of dead, but the post is one of the most embarrassing things Watts has ever published.

As David Appell and Andrew Friedman note, actual climate scientists are cautious in their comments about climate change and typhoons.   But even Lomborg says it would seem the research is pointing towards possibly fewer, but stronger, typhoons in the future.   Then he goes on to complain that it is immoral (!) to use this typhoon to argue for CO2 cuts, because adaptation is better!   He's become a one track idiot - adaptation to 6 m storm surges in seaside towns and villages in poor countries like the Philippines or Bangladesh?  Yeah, sure. 

UPDATE:   someone in comments wanted me to update this.   You can see my response, but I will add an update after all, from a blog post that has a good discussion of why typhoons are particularly destructive and deadly in that part of the world.  I thought this part was especially interesting:

There are hints that global warming may be playing a  role here: One 2008 study (pdf) in Nature found that the very strongest typhoons in the northwest Pacific seem to have become somewhat more intense since 1981 — by about 20 mph, on average — as the oceans have warmed. Yet making out a clear trend in tropical cyclones over the past few decades is notoriously difficult, and attributing the strength of a single storm like Haiyan to man-made climate change is even harder.

Interesting.  You have to wonder whether those scientists in the "attribution wars" who always urge caution (to the point of being dismissive) on AGW contribution to an extreme weather event are actually the ones being somewhat prematurely misleading.

In defence of Tom

Tom Cruise did not make widely reported claim that acting is as tough as combat 

I saw them talking about this on Sunrise over the weekend - how Tom Cruise had said that making movies was like fighting in Afghanistan.

If you read the above link, in fact poor old Tom was careful to be specifically dismissive of the suggestion. 

This was just an appalling bit of mischief making by someone in the media, by the looks.

Tom may be in a nutty religion, but he has made many very good science fiction and action films, and I just want people to leave him alone.  (Readers are invited to imagine me overly emotion in a Youtube video making this plea.)  

Ted Cruz - Student jerk

Ted Cruz was a polarizing figure at Harvard Law, foreshadowing his partisan profile in the Senate - Politics - The Boston Globe

Tea Party "hero" (for leading a campaign that failed and led to the Republican's loss in popularity, but hey, whoever said the Tea Party had smarts?) Ted Cruz is the subject of a not very complimentary story in the Boston Globe about his time at Harvard.  An example:

As they were entering their second year in law school, Melissa Hart agreed to give Cruz a ride from New York, where Cruz was at the end of the summer, back to Cambridge. She didn’t know him well, but he sought her out after she had been given a prestigious award for first-year students.

“We hadn’t left Manhattan before he asked my IQ,” Hart said. “When I told him I didn’t know, he asked, ‘Well, what’s your SAT score? That’s closely coordinated with your IQ.’ ”

“It went from, ‘Nice guy,’ ” she said, “to ‘uh-oh.’ ”

 Strangely, he was very keen on acting at that age.   The article suggests he still is.

I also see that the Australia Tea Party sub branch known as Catallaxy has commenters who think he is a promising Presidential candidate.  I suspect the Democrats would celebrate if he does run.
 
 

Arty photography made easy

The range of free or cheap apps available on tablets these makes arty photo manipulation ridiculously easy.  One effort by my primary school daughter, for a school project, for example:

I am still a little surprised, however, that it is hard to find a photo app that really does everything you can on (say) some PC software.  There is usually something I can't do on my Android tablet.  Then again, I haven't gone and just got the Adobe Photoshop Touch app, which I see is only $10.  

This will probably be my Christmas present to myself.

PS:  for anyone who cares what I think about apps, I find Sketchbook Pro is really a very good art app which is very useful for dealing with photos too.  It does take a bit of getting used to, though.

Recent possum visits

Babies and bugs

Babies weak immune systems let good bacteria in 

As any new parent knows, infants are notoriously susceptible to bacterial infections. A study now suggests that the body engineers this vulnerability deliberately, allowing beneficial microbes to colonize the baby’s gut, skin, mouth and lungs. Learning to manipulate this system could lead to treatments for infections in newborns, and perhaps even improve the way babies are vaccinated.

n the womb, a fetus is sterile. But from the moment that a baby travels down the birth canal, bacteria and fungi begin their colonization. How the immune system tolerates this sudden influx of invaders has been a mystery.

I wonder, from where do babies born via caesarian pick up their useful bugs.   Must look around for that information later...

Update:  an answer? -

In vaginally-born babies, the bacteria destined for the gut microbiota originate primarily in the maternal birth canal and rectum. Once these bacteria are swallowed by the newborn, they travel through the stomach and colonize the upper and lower intestine, a complicated process that evolves rapidly.

Infants born by cesarean section—particularly cesareans performed before labor begins—don’t encounter the bacteria of the birth canal and maternal rectum. (If a cesarean is performed during labor the infant may be exposed to these bacteria, but to a lesser degree than in vaginal birth.) Instead, bacteria from the skin and hospital environment quickly populate the bowel. As a result, the bacteria inhabiting the lower intestine following a cesarean birth can differ significantly from those found in the vaginally-born baby.

The wages of sin (or at least, dubious taste)

To dye for? Jury still out on tattoo ink causing cancer

Given that I would be pleased if the entire tattoo industry was banned, and my "anti tattoo league" post continues getting hits and (often) upsets the tattooed of the world, I have been reading the stories about the possible dangers of tattoo ink with interest.  The article above is not sensationalist enough for my purposes, but it gives a reasonable background.

I hear the trip is going well...

Just trying to get an extra click or two...