Odd journalistic disclosure

Slate sometimes has been pretty lightweight examples of column filler, and there's one up at the moment about how its Deputy Editor (!) Julia Turner finally made herself watch Schindler's List by having a half dozen people (most of whom had also been sort of avoiding the film) over for a viewing party.

This strikes me as a very odd idea.  If a famous feature of a movie is its emotional impact, why watch it in a setting presumably designed to lessen its emotional impact?  (Unless you actually do have a history of depression or nervous breakdowns.  I guess that might give you a fair enough reason.)

Anyway, she ends up thinking the movie is "worth watching", but her analysis is rather flawed by one of the strangest critical confessions I have ever read:

 We took a break for tacos about 80 minutes in; no one talked much, apart from trying to distinguish the spicy chicken from the extra spicy. (I also admitted that I’ve long found it hard to tell Neeson and Fiennes apart. I thought Neeson was Fiennes until Fiennes himself showed up.)

That's just bizarre.  Perhaps an eye test is in order, Julia? 

Wes related material

I'm not sure when Wes Anderson's new movie The Grand Budapest Hotel is coming out in Australia, but here are a couple of stories about two of the stars:

*  Bryan Appleyard interviewed Ralph Fiennes, who I think is a great actor, and likes the new movie very much:  "It is gorgeous, moving, funny and, ideally, should have gone on for ever."   But, now that I think of it, Appleyard hated Gravity, so I have no idea whether I can trust his judgement.  (Actually, I think he's fairly lukewarm towards Spielberg too, which is a bad sign.)  

*  The Guardian has an interview article with Bill Murray.  He's only 63, apparently, but gee he's looking old in some photos I've seen.  I don't recall knowing this about him before:

And trouble followed him into his adult life; in 1970, aged 20, he was caught in possession of 10lbs of marijuana at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.

Ten pounds seems quite a lot, doesn't it?  I'm surprised he only served probation.

 I see there are American reviews out for the movie already, and they are mostly good.  But the critics' praise of his last movie was too high.  I hope they are right this time.  

Little of substance

So, Tim Wilson got a full profile in the Fairfax press this weekend, and I have to say, it only reinforced my opinion of him as an overweening, fast talking, political lightweight who shouldn't be let near the Human Rights Commission.

I mean, seriously, a limited edition print of Ron and Nancy Reagan on your bedroom wall?  (OK, so that mainly goes to warped taste for a 34 year old man, whatever his sexuality.)

But really seriously this time, a man who believes this:

 ...last year ...Wilson appeared before a parliamentary committee on anti-discrimination law. At one point, Wilson was thrown a hypothetical question about an Aboriginal man who is refused service at an outback pub. Should the publican be prosecuted under anti-discrimination laws? No, said Wilson, the publican should be free to "show [his] bigotry and hatred" - and the public should be free to boycott his pub. Once again, the market would come to the rescue.

has no place in a Human Rights Commission, if you ask me.

The article also highlights a couple of issues where, when working for the IPA, he took hard free market lines on public health issues (third world countries and HIV drugs, and plain packaging of cigarettes.)   I don't know enough about the HIV drug patent argument to have a firm view, but I find it hard to believe that anything coming out of the IPA is fair or correct or in the public health interest. If my hunch is right, it would be particularly galling for a gay man to be running a case effectively against easier access to anti HIV drugs in poor countries.

I also have to say that I have always had the impression that, whether it be for general vanity or simply as a part of relentless self promotion, Tim really loves getting his picture taken.  It appears that this dates even from his university days:

 He also had "this really clever little trick", using a digital camera, "which very few people had back then", to take photos of himself at university club functions, several of which he would attend in a single night. He would then send the photos to the club magazines the next morning. "They didn't have any photos, certainly not that immediately. So they'd run them, and of course I was in half of them, and it made me look as if I was the centre of everything."

Well, I take that as enough justification for this:

The puzzling, contradictory Russians

How Russian Prudishness Produced an Anti-Gay Propaganda Law - Olga Khazan - The Atlantic

This article about Russian cultural attitudes towards sexuality is really fascinating, and includes a couple of great charts and graphs.

First, here's a handy one that illustrates clearly the global attitudes towards homosexuality:

Look at those figures for African countries, with the exception of South Africa!  And the signs of Muslim culture seems clear - although whether that really explains Indonesia and Malaysia, I have no idea.

I would say that Japan and China are about where I expected them to be, but Italy is perhaps higher (given that I think I have read there is little in the way of "gay rights" in that country.)   Korea seems a bit unexpectedly low, but look at the Philippines - in fact, in most "traditionally" Catholic countries, the acceptance rate is pretty high.   Make of that what you will.  (Actually, it makes me laugh at traditionalist Catholics who think the future is in clinging to Church teaching on sexuality which is as bizarrely prescriptive in a married couple's bedroom as it is possible to be.  People forget this because so  many Catholics ignore the Church's analysis of sex.)

But back to the Russians.  Here's another chart I've never seen before, showing the big demographic changes that occurred around the fall of communism:

 

So, they are only now getting back into the baby making game.

And despite all the talk about the increase in social conservatism, it hasn't extended to abortion:

It’s true that protecting children makes a convenient excuse for all
sorts of legalized prejudice, but Russia’s obsession with instilling
traditional sexual mores goes back decades. In more recent years, a
small, vocal group of conservative activists, many of whom are aligned
with the Orthodox church, have been doing everything from shouting down
proposals for sex education in schools, to pushing for restrictions on
gay rights, to supporting the crackdown on protest collectives such as
Pussy Riot.

To this day, Russian schools have no sex ed to speak of. No textbooks mention the word “condom,” and abortion is still one of the most common forms of birth control. Russia's children's ombudsman said last year that Russian teens can learn everything they need to know about love and sex from Russian literature.

Gee.  I only mentioned the fact that I hadn't read War and Peace the other day.  Little did I know what I could learn from it.

What a strange, strange country.

Today's weight

The 5:2 continues, with this morning's first-thing-in-the-morning weight of 85.7kg.  (Mind you, after a breakfast with a fair bit of liquid it was back up to 86.4 or something like that.)

Not bad.  I should start posting more of my 600 cal a day menu.   

Cli-fi missing

'Cli-fi': could a literary genre help save the planet?
Yeah, I have often thought this as well: isn't it a bit odd that there hasn't really been a blockbuster science fiction novel or movie that is mainly about climate change?

Ness story

The Unbelievables: truth, lies and the myth of Eliot Ness' legendary battles with Al Capone - Features - Books - The Independent

There's a new book out about Eliot Ness, and it sounds interesting.

Rupert's bloviator

Andrew Bolt show back and bigger on Ten, with media scrutiny segment | Media | theguardian.com

I didn't know this about The Bolt Report, which is the closest thing to Fox News that we have in Australia:

Ten offloaded the show to News Corp for two years in 2013 to save money.
Ten broadcasts the show but News pays for its production, staff and
transmission costs.

Inequality in America

America risks becoming a Downton Abbey economy | Lawrence H. Summers

Larry Summers talking about inequality in the US sounds very sensible to me.

I see that one of the favourite handwave of some of the rich and comfortable in Australia at the moment is "but so many Chinese have been lifted out of poverty in the last couple of decades.  You ungrateful Westerners."

I also note that Judith Sloan, (probably, I like to imagine, while sipping a gin and tonic and between tap tapping her way through another "it's all the fault of unions and the carbon tax" bit of ideological warfare for the Australian) has taken to pooh poohing the Gini co-efficient entirely:

And, by the way, do we really care about the Gini coefficient in developed economies where those at the bottom receive government transfers and in-kind benefits? 

I don't know much about the Gini co-efficient, but given that it is in the interests of the "small government, small tax at any cost" ideology of Sloan and her mates at Catallaxy to downplay or dismiss inequality, I am very suspicious about her shrug of the shoulders approach.

A reality TV confession

I blame my daughter.  She started watching My Kitchen Rules and has got me hooked.  Reality-ish TV competitions are generally to be held in some disdain, in my books, but a lot of people seem to talking about the show this year, and I have to admit, I'm enjoying the high and low comedy it provides.

I also like the continual puzzlement over how much is real and how much isn't.  Do the producers hold auditions in which they tell people "OK, you're perfect for the role of 'annoying bitchy overconfident sneering couple who're going to take a big fall':  please sign this defamation waiver"  or do they just manipulate editing to achieve the end regardless?

I mean, some of the contestants just play the dislikeable part too, too easily for it to be true, don't they?

I'm also  enjoying some of the Fairfax analysis of how certain nights have gone.  This one today by Ben Pobjie is a pretty funny account, I think.   (And I felt really sorry for the couple who seemed very nice and certainly have been lucky in finding each other as the only 2 people in Australia who like the taste of a cinnamon biscuit with salmon.)

The celebration of rude, offensive stupidity continues

Sinclair Davidson, and his crew of dimwits, congratulate* rude and offensive namecalling from a student, because he denies AGW and climate change.

The spectacular hypocrisy continues, then, all in the name of anti-science.

*  yes, he says it was "over the top and deserving of some reprimand", after expressing his pleasure at the father defending his son.  This is his typical disingenuous on display.

Numbers and behaviour

There's an article on The Conversation by a health researcher John de Witt entitled To curb rising HIV rates, we must target our human flaws, talking about the vexed issue of the increasing rate of HIV.

Every year now, it seems there is angst about the number of new cases of HIV, and how the education methods are clearly not working.   de Witt notes:

Much of what we currently do is based on common sense and past experience, which is problematic because people do not necessarily behave in their own best interests. People are, in fact, often motivated, well intentioned and well informed but suffer from the common so-called “new year’s resolution” effect; they do genuinely want to change but just don’t quite manage to get started or fail to maintain new behaviour.

We are also, rightly, reluctant to lecture or play on people’s fears because we want them to make their own informed choices. So we assume that if we give people all the information they need they will put it together and act accordingly. But most people have more on their minds than staying healthy, and most assume they are healthy anyway.

He suggests a couple of things, such as "opt out" inclusion of HIV testing at sexual health clinics (seems odd that this is not already the case for anyone who turns up worried about an STD.)  He also talks about  "simple action plans" which sound like people being reminded on their phone to get tested, etc.

These may be well and good, but he still seems to be reluctant to go to the obvious place - telling gay men to stop having so much casual sex.   Here's a novel idea:  tell guys that if they meet someone, get to know them over dinner, talk about if they ever get tested for HIV, then decide if you want to have sex with them.   The same thing could be applied to heterosexuals too - after all, a recent study on the rate of chlamydia showed how high it is getting too, particularly amongst younger people:

Prevalence of chlamydia was 5.2 per cent in men and 4.4 per cent in women. Among men, prevalence was highest in those aged 20-24 years (6.6 per cent) and in women, it was highest in those aged 16-19 years (8.0 per cent).

One figure which I realised I had no idea about when reading the article was the proportion of gay men who are HIV positive.  Just reading about 1,000 new cases every year (or talking about a 10% rise in the rate of new diagnoses) gives readers no idea about that.

But Google being our friend, it appears de Witt himself has estimated that for Australia about 10% of gay men are HIV positive, but with many of them not knowing.

Why is that figure not more widely discussed in education to the gay community?    Have ten casual lovers in a year, and there's a pretty good chance one of them will be HIV positive.  The figure is, I'm pretty sure, not often featured in the media, but then do they talk about it in their sexual health campaigns aimed at gay men?

de Witt will probably argue that this is an attempt to scare people, which doesn't work.  And certainly, as I have wondered before in this blog, it would appear that knowledge of the risk of syphilis (when it was untreatable even) did not deter men from having sex with prostitutes for hundreds of years.  Or is it thought that the figure is not high enough to scare people?   Has any research ever been done on that, I wonder, in both the gay or heterosexual community of people who have lots of partners in any given year? 

But the thing that I thought is obvious, is that if you don't talk about the rate of HIV amongst your target population, so to speak, you aren't helping at least some people who can take a rational approach to their sex life.   

An addendum:   de Witt, along with everyone else who ever writes about the increasing rate of new HIV cases, talks about  part of the problem is the fact that anti viral treatments mean people are not scared of HIV in the way they used to be.  But he notes:

Every new infection comes with a lifetime of medical treatment, significant risk of medical complications and considerable lifelong costs; about A$18,000 each year for ARTs for one person in Australia.

Again, I really wonder whether in their education attempts, how much effort do they put in to explaining why HIV is not a good thing to have even when treated?   And certainly, regardless of life expectancy (and some reports of studies might be giving exactly the wrong impression on this), the government has got fantastic financial motive to make education work.  

And you thought Russia was a worry...

With anti-gay law, Uganda says it is defending 'morals' | The Japan Times

Veteran President Yoweri Museveni has announced he would sign into law a
controversial bill that will see homosexuals jailed for life, despite
warnings from key allies, including the United States.

Officials also said Museveni had last week signed into law
anti-pornography and dress code legislation that outlaws “provocative”
clothing, bans scantily clad performers from Ugandan television and
closely monitors what individuals watch on the Internet.

 I like the understatement in this next sentence:

The anti-gay bill cruised through parliament in December after its
architects agreed to drop an extremely controversial death penalty
clause.

The legislation still stipulates that repeat homosexuals should be
jailed for life, outlaws the promotion of homosexuality and requires
people to denounce gays.

Gee.  The people who comment at Catallaxy will have no problem-o with that last bit.   But it's good to see that this is all scientifically based:

But another presidential spokesman said Monday that Muzeveni had
decided to support the bill after seeking advice from a team of domestic
scientists who were asked to “study homosexuality and genetics in human
beings.”

The spokesman said the scientists concluded that “there is no
definitive gene responsible for homosexuality,” meaning that
“homosexuality is not a disease but merely an abnormal behavior” that
needed to be banned.

Nice of the scientists of Uganda to have saved the rest of the world the bother of research.  (Some of which was recently noted here.)

I see that Uganda is 42% Catholic.  I wonder what the Church has had to say about this?  It seems the Ugandan bishops criticised the death penalty aspect from the start, but this article indicates they distinctly softened towards it when the death sentence was dropped.  Charming.

Update:  mind you, the broader Catholic Church, including the Pope's representative, have been against the law.  But it still seems the local bishops aren't saying much anymore (as far as I can see.)

This morning, I read more about the related law, to do with public decency, that has been signed into law.  From a Ugandan paper (from which I learn that imported second hand Japanese cars are very big  in that country):

Henceforth, women have been forbidden from wearing clothes like miniskirts and cleavage-revealing blouses ('tops') that excite sexual cravings in public, unless for educational and medical purposes or during sports or cultural events.
Addressing the press at the Media Centre in Kampala on Tuesday, ethics and integrity state minister, Rev. Fr. Simon Lokodo said the President signed the bill into law on February 6, two months after its passing by the House.
Parliament passed the piece of legislation December last year.
The law creates a national anti-pornography committee responsible for its implementation by ensuring early detection, collection and destroying of pornographic materials.
The committee, whose representatives will be drawn from various sectors including the media and entertainment industries, will also offer rehabilitation services to victims of pornography.

Will the police be issued rulers to measure hemlines? 

Coincidence noted

Lincoln and Darwin, born hours apart, February 12, 1809 | Millard Fillmore's Bathtub

Dark energy in plain language

What is dark energy? Vacuum energy, braneworlds, string theory, gravity, quantum physics.

A pretty good, pretty comprehensible, article on the mystery of dark energy.

(Interestingly, though, the author says dark matter is an arguably bigger mystery.) 

Feeling vaguely depressed

Columnists like talking about aluminium as "congealed electricity":  all the better for some of them to huff and puff about how pricing carbon makes that industry uncompetitive in the long run in Australia (if you keep carbon pricing.)

Funny how then they can keep blaming carbon pricing for Alcoa closing down a smelter now, when there is a government that says it is determined to end it, and even Judith Sloan has to admit that it was sheltered from its full effects for years yet.

A broader picture of what has happened with aluminium comes from (surprise) the Fairfax press, which notes:

 Four decades ago, the United States, the USSR and Japan accounted for almost 60 per cent of aluminium production. Today, China accounts for more than half the global total. The big four producers from 40 years ago have a share of just over 10 per cent.

China is in effect subsidising its aluminium production. The industry is a means to an end: smelters and electricity generating capacity have been developed in tandem, locking in cheap power for the smelters, but also extending China's power grid, and opening up new parts of the economy for industrialisation and economic development.

The shift in aluminium production away from the developed world to the developing world and to China and particular kept a lid on aluminium prices as energy costs rose, however. Profits on aluminium smelting have been squeezed, forcing smelter closures around the developed world: Point Henry is only the latest, and it will not be the last.

Anyhow, I figure a good name for the Tea Party-ish Right, both in the US and Australia is "congealed stupidity".

Honest to God, I have never known the Right of politics to contain so many annoying, rude, over-simplying and intellectually vacuous people as it does at the moment.   What on earth has caused this?  (And no, it's not me moving to the Left - it's a large part of the Right positively moving towards anti-intellectualism and ignoring evidence for ideological reasons, both on science and economics.)  Is it because a fair slab of the Left has moved somewhat to the centre, compared to (say) the decades of the 60's to the 80's?   I honestly do not understand what has gone on here culturally, but something has.

So, to cheer me up, here's something you don't see every day (found via Rabbett Run):



Update:   Alcoa specifically denies the carbon tax was behind its decision to close Point Henry. 

Why should they disbelieved when they may have profited from the free permits?

Now, to make me happier:  rat tricks.  (I never knew they were as trainable as they obviously are.)

I don't know...

Can scientists know that they do not know?

Imagine you knew everything about the current universe – the state of every single
particle – and all the laws governing the universe's evolution. Endowed
with such knowledge, you could then predict the future, right? French
mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace thought so.

Not so, according to an analysis by SFI Professor David Wolpert – not even for the non-chaotic, non-quantum-mechanical universe that Laplace assumed.

The explanation in the article is not at all clear, but it seems an interesting argument worth following up.

UPDATE:   here's a short .pdf report from Nature in 2008 on Wolpert's idea.     

Are people comfortable with this?

Australia spied on Indonesia talks with US law firm in 2013 | World news | theguardian.com

Look, I've always assumed that mobile telephone systems were not super secure, even when they moved from analogue to digital.

So I've always assumed that politicians who talked about sensitive stuff on their mobile phones were being careless.

But even so, I am surprised at the purpose for which intelligence is being used by Australia and the US, according to the Snowden leaks. This, for example:

Australia listened in on the communications of an unnamed American
law firm which was representing Indonesia in the discussions and passed
the information to the National Security Agency, according to a document
obtained by the New York Times.

It is unclear what the discussions were about - but two trade disputes
around that time were about the importation of clove cigarettes and
shrimp, says the paper.

A monthly bulletin from the NSA’s liaison office in Canberra said the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) was monitoring the talks and offered to share any information with the US. It offered up that “information covered by attorney-client privilege may be included”.

I am also a bit puzzled that the issue is getting a bit of a soft run in the media here.

I mean, the bugging of the East Timor government operations when commercial matters were underway seems to be half forgotten by the public already.

Now evidence of bugging legal advice on the vital issue of clove cigarettes and shrimp?

I expected that certain industries might carry on their own intelligence gathering, but to have governments so fully involved in matters of commercial benefit - this seems to me to be something the public should be talking about, but it isn't. 

UPDATE:   an article in the Christian Science Monitor accuses the NYT of over dramatising the story, and points out that in the fact the US could have told Australia to not provide them with the advice the US lawyers were giving.

But but but:   what the article doesn't address is whether anyone should be surprised or question that Australia was collecting intelligence on Indonesia trade talks and offering to hand that to the US. 

The article says that the NYT times story, if stripped of  "spin, drama and adjectives" is this:

A 2013 memo leaked by Edward Snowden shows that Australia's version of the NSA, while engaged in electronic surveillance of an Indonesian trade delegation, came across communications between the Indonesian officials and a US law firm the country had hired for help with trade talks.  

Isn't that controversial enough??

Gut bacteria and milk

How Breast Milk Engineers a Baby’s Gut (and Gut Microbes) 

It seems quite a complicated story that is being sorted out - how mother's milk both encourages some of the right bacteria for the gut, and inhibits others.  In fact, it appears it passes on microbes within the milk itself, too:

And, of course, their study highlights yet another benefit to
breastfeeding. It’s unique in isolating the effect of a single (major)
ingredient of milk, but Kaetzel notes that breastfed infants also get a
wide spectrum of other helpful substances.

For example, it contains its own microbes. Lisa Funkhouser and Seth Bordenstein have speculated that the lymphatic system conveys bacteria from a mother’s guts into her mammary glands, where they can be taken up by suckling infants.

If pups that don’t get SIgA from their mothers have weird bacteria in
their lymph nodes, could they then pass on different microbes to their own offspring,
when the time comes for them to produce milk? “There could be some
really exciting transgenerational consequences from not ingesting sIgA
in mother’s milk,” says Hinde.

Typical

Climate sceptic to head Abbott review into renewable energy target

The Abbott government has launched a formal review of Australia's 20 per
cent renewable energy target, choosing senior business figure Dick
Warburton – who has been sceptical about mainstream climate change
science in the past – to head it.

More pathetically poor judgement from this lousy PM.