The blockbuster not doing so well at the box office...

Suggestions for lines for Peta to be saying welcome.

I think it's Twitter worthy as it is, though.

Update:  that was a hint to someone, anyone, with a Twitter account to post it to auspol.  :-)

BTW, I haven't seen the movie yet. Next weekend.

Update 2:   I have previously been critical of politicians who call a broken promise a lie.  (And yes, I don't give credit to Labor when they do that to Abbott either.)

But just on the radio this morning, I heard Abbott repeat what is a clear lie from 2011 when giving his press conference with (his only) international buddy on climate change, Stephen Harper:

“We should do what we reasonably can to limit emissions and avoid man-made climate change but we shouldn’t clobber the economy, and that’s why I’ve always been against a carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme, because it harms our economy without necessarily helping the environment.”

This is a lie.   As Bernard Keane noted in 2011, Abbott tried to "un-lie" (my word, not Bernard's) the same claim he made back then by a later qualification:

 Oddly, despite the media attention, most missed Mr Abbott’s particularly risible remark. It wasn’t merely that Abbott claimed he had never supported a carbon tax or an ETS — a claim so demonstrably untrue even The Australian mentioned it. He belatedly qualified that by adding the caveat “as leader” hours later, the worst recovery since Basil Fawlty, learning his American guest enjoyed the works of Harold Robbins, pretended to be lambasting someone else. “Oh Harold Robbins. I was talking about… Harold Robinson.”

 Years later, and he's back with the same claim, with no qualification.

For all of the gigantic (and undeserved) kerfuffle from the public about Gillard (allegedly) breaking a promise when her general sympathy to the idea of carbon pricing was well known, Tony Abbott with his "say anything" approach to climate change and a host of other issues is truly the one who has earned the "liar" title.

Weekend update

*  I am happy to report that the chicken recipe as noted last week is quite nice.  But can someone explain to me why, for as long as I can remember, baking chicken always takes about 1 1/2 to 2 times longer than recipes suggest?

*  I didn't even want to go to the Lifeline Bookfest which is on again this long weekend at the Convention centre.  (I have probably 10 books from previous years' visits awaiting my attention.)  But my wife wanted to go, and while there, I remembered that I wouldn't mind reading a biography of Einstein.   Located! (And it was the only bio I saw about him in the whole place.)  Cost $6.  Also got a couple of short Graham Greenes I hadn't heard about before.   A successful visit.

*  Had a couple of nice craft beers at the Hoo Ha Bar yesterday afternoon.   A nice, comfy bar close to Southbank which one could imagine being happy at every Saturday afternoon.   (And the craft beer movement is a fantastic thing that I trust will never end.  Why did it take so long to happen, though, I wonder?)

*  Long weekends are good, aren't they?  They avoid that neither-here-nor-there feeling of a Sunday afternoon in a normal workweek.  I have never got the hang of Sunday afternoons.  Maybe it's because I used to do homework at that time when I was a student if there wasn't anything else on that weekend, but even as an adult it goes something like this:  Saturdays are a welcome break, and good for shopping and either eating out (if you are single or in childless coupledom) or cooking something that take more time; Sunday mornings are relaxing for a special breakfast and a political review on TV, followed by a relaxed lunch; but Sunday afternoons are just too close to Monday to feel entirely comfortable with them.

* I have not yet seen Edge of Tomorrow.  I might, tomorrow.  (Or maybe next weekend when daughter is on a sleep over.)

Always the same answer

Well, if you ask me, Adam Creighton's latest column is a complete schemozzle, and illustrates again why his type of analysis is best ignored:  it doesn't matter what the problem is, the answer is always going to be less taxes, less bureaucracy, and less welfare bludgers.  Oh, and suppress wages in the meantime too.  

Antarctic sea ice noted

What is the paradox of increasing Antarctic sea ice really telling us?

Not a bad look at the question of why Antarctic sea ice has been increasing, while Arctic sea ice (in summer) has been dramatically decreasing.

By the way, the Arctic is well into melt season, and tracking at pretty low levels.  (I would paste a pic here, but the NSIDC site is currently down.)

A cultural change

Back on the Colorado marijuana experiment, it's interesting to read this:

In Colorado, reviews of pot are fast eclipsing fuddy duddy reviews of wine, restaurants, cigars and pretty much everything else. 

Since January, the Denver Post has been running a culture-of-cannabis website called The Cannabist. It reviews every conceivable variety of pot (recreational marijuana is legal in the state) but also pot’s accouterments, including pipes, vapor pens, cuisine prepared with pot and outdoor activities made more enjoyable by being high. 

Ricardo Baca, 37, the Post’s marijuana editor and founder of The Cannabist, tells ABC News the site has been a huge hit (no pun intended) since its January debut. He declines to quote numbers for how much traffic it has gotten, but says, “We launched three or four days before recreational sales of marijuana started in Colorado, and we came out of the gate strong. The traffic has been unreal.”

This suggests that legalisation of the product will have a significant cultural effect towards encouraging teenage use of it, which is exactly what you do not want.  

Ironically, I read elsewhere that the legalisation law requires that the first slice of government profit from it has to go to school funding.   Yet my prediction (which will take some time to see if it comes true) is that the major concern about the social effect of legalisation will come from its effects on teenage education (and teenage health effects generally).     We will see.

A question

The oddest political story around at the moment, apart from the Bolt/Jones/Turnbull fight, is the one wherein the ABC is saying that "leading Liberals" told them that the Nationals had been gamed on the matter of the petrol excise increase.

Who in the Liberal Party has the motivation to be causing such trouble for the Coalition at the moment?  (I find it hard to believe it would be Turnbull himself; and besides which, the ABC has always indicated it was not a single source.)

What was I saying about early evidence?

Here's a rule of thumb:  any reporter who uses "nanny state" in his writing deserves to be a blogger, not a serious journalist; and chances are they're aligned with libertarianism and/or the IPA.

Christian Kerr falls into that category with his report today under the shock! horror! headline "Labor's plain packaging fails as cigarette sales rise."  Apparently, industry figures (gee, no room for manipulation there, I guess, Christian?)  indicate a .3 percent rise in tobacco sales in the first full year of plain packaging.

0.3!   A catastrophe.

Libertarian types, of course, might be rather loathe to consider a few factors here:

a.   industry manipulation of their sales or sales figures.  No, this industry has always been scrupulously honest, hey?

b.   (I don't know if this is possible, I would have to check, but then I'm sure Kerr hasn't) stockpiling of cigarettes to avoid price rises;

c.   even, possibly, a genuine smoker led rebellion against "nanny statism", but one which is so small that the true way plain packaging was expected to work will not be deterred for long.

I always understood that the point of plain packaging was mainly to deter teenagers from starting.  I would not dismiss the possibility that, for a very, very small number of dumb teenagers (being inspired by parents in the IPA, probably), might take up smoking so as laugh in the face of "nanny statism".    But for every one of them, how many teenage girls will be subtly put off by the ugly packaging?

Time will tell, but it was never reasonable to expect that huge numbers of smokers would immediately be butting out because of this change.

As for the Australian - I don't remember looking up before whether Rupert was a smoker, but I see he certainly has had tobacco connections in the past:

Media magnate Rupert Murdoch joined the Board of Directors of Philip Morris in August 1989 and he continued to serve on their board into the 1990s. [1][2] The relationship appeared to serve PM well. A 1985 PM internal report shows that information that could negatively affect the tobacco industry was routinely withheld from Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide:

As regards the media, we plan to build similar relationships to those we now have with Murdoch's News Limited with other newspaper proprietors. Murdoch's papers rarely publish anti-smoking articles these days. To sum up, then, on using our natural allies. We have made a start; we have proved that it can be done; we have found that they can be a very effective force; and we intend to do more in the future.

Update:  Stephen Koukoulas says some Bureau of Stats figures paint a completely different picture of substantial dropping consumption.  There may be nothing to explain at all, apart from tobacco company spin, and The Australian's shameful shilling for them.

Update 2:   of course, I knew Sinclair Davidson would be gobbling up this tobacco company promoted news without the slightest hint of skepticism, just like an ex smoker from a think tank with known past, if not current, ties to the tobacco industry, would.   In fact, as a long time reader of Catallaxy, my expectation from the various self disclosures there is that something approaching 95% of its thread participants are ex or current smokers.    The evidence from there suggests smoking is more harmful to cognition than people recognise.  

And another thought - if (as someone suggests in that thread) the figures are right, and explained by smokers moving to cheaper brands and therefore smoking slightly more - a .3% on average increase in smoking by existing smokers is not going to matter one pinch in the public health issue. 

What is much more important is the effect on total number of smokers - particularly new, young smokers taking it up.   And that could only be answered by survey information, over time.

Is that so hard for an economist to work out?

Update 3:  in a pretty desperate attempt to save his argument in light of the Koukoulas cited ABS figures, I see that SD has gone to the monthly quarterly figures to declare that plain packaging still led to higher consumption, and arguing that consumption only dropped off after the excise increase.

Seems to me this doesn't rebut my stockpiling possible explanation, and how with any certainly can you say the excise increase must be the sole reason for the drop off?

But let's not let considering all possible factors get in the way of simplistic story fed to us by tobacco companies, hey?  

Update 4:  don't believe me, just read The Guardian.

Learning about Leo

Last night, in my post about Einstein, I noted that I was not familiar with Leó Szilárd, who apparently wrote the letter that Einstein signed that convinced Roosevelt to get going with developing the atomic bomb.   The letter has its own Wikipedia entry, and here's the key part of the fascinating story:

On July 12, 1939, Szilárd and Wigner drove in Wigner's car to Peconic Bay on Long Island, where Einstein was staying.^[9] When they explained about the possibility of atomic bombs, Einstein replied: Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht (I had not thought of that).^[10] Szilárd dictated a letter in German to the Belgian Ambassador to the United States. Wigner wrote it down, and Einstein signed it. At Wigner's suggestion, they also prepared a letter for the State Department explaining what they were doing and why, giving it two weeks to respond if it had any objections.^[9]

This still left the problem of getting government support for uranium research. Another friend of Szilárd's, the Austrian economist Gustav Stolper, suggested approaching Alexander Sachs, who had access to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sachs told Szilárd that he had already spoken to the President about uranium, but that Fermi and Pegram had reported that the prospects for building an atomic bomb were remote. He told Szilárd that he would deliver the letter, but suggested that it come from someone more prestigious. For Szilárd, Einstein was again the obvious choice.^[6] Sachs and Szilárd drafted a letter riddled with spelling errors and mailed it to Einstein.^[11]

Szilárd set out for Long Island again on August 2. Wigner was unavailable, so this time Szilárd co-opted another Hungarian physicist, Edward Teller to do the driving. Einstein dictated the letter in German. On returning to Columbia University, Szilárd dictated the letter in English to a young departmental stenographer, Janet Coatesworth. She later recalled that when Szilárd mentioned extremely powerful bombs, she "was sure she was working for a nut".^[12] Ending the letter with "Yours truly, Albert Einstein" did nothing to alter this impression. Both the letter and a longer explanatory letter were then posted to Einstein....

The letter was signed by Einstein and posted back to Szilárd, who received it on August 9.^[12] Szilárd gave both the short and long letters, along with a letter of his own, to Sachs on August 15. Sachs asked the White House staff for an appointment to see the President, but before one could be set up, the administration became embroiled in a crisis due to Germany's invasion of Poland, which started World War II.^[14] Sachs delayed his appointment until October so that the President would give the letter due attention, securing an appointment on October 11. On that date he met with the President, the President's secretary, Brigadier General Edwin "Pa" Watson, and two ordnance experts, Army Lieutenant Colonel Keith F. Adamson and Navy Commander Gilbert C. Hoover. Roosevelt summed up the conversation as: "Alex, what you are after is to see that the Nazis don't blow us up."^[15]

But back to Leo.

His own Wikipedia entry is pretty good, and I feel I should know his name, given he held the patent (with Fermi) for the nuclear reactor!   (He had also developed a type of refrigerator with Einstein in the 1920's, and the linear accelerator.  Quite a significant scientist.) 

The most interesting part in the Wiki entry, though, is about Leo's attempt to get the US to merely demonstrate the atomic bomb in the hopes it would convince the Japanese to surrender:

As the war continued, Szilárd became increasingly dismayed that scientists were losing control over their research to the military, and argued many times with General Leslie Groves, military director of the project. His resentment towards the U.S. government was exacerbated by his failure to prevent the destructive use of the atomic bomb through having a test explosion that could be witnessed by Japanese observers who would then have the opportunity to surrender and spare lives...

He drafted the Szilárd petition advocating demonstration of the atomic bomb.

And from that last link (another Wikipedia entry):

The Szilárd petition, drafted by scientist Leó Szilárd, was signed by 70 scientists working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois. It was circulated in July 1945 and asked President Harry S. Truman to consider an observed demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb first, before using it against people. However, the petition never made it through the chain of command to President Truman. It also was not declassified and made public until 1961.

In reaction to the petition, General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, sought evidence of unlawful behavior against Szilárd.^[2] Most of the signers lost their jobs in weapons work. 

Leo was hoping to get to Roosevelt via his wife, but the timing was unfortunate. Here's the short version:

Using another letter from Einstein, Szilard scheduled a meeting with Eleanor Roosevelt for May 8. He planned to give her information that would caution President Roosevelt about the danger of a nuclear arms race if the a-bomb was used before an international control agreement could be discussed with the Soviets. But on April 12, President Roosevelt died. 

An attempt to meet with President Truman led instead to a May 28, 1945 meeting with James Byrnes, who would soon become Sec. of State. But Byrnes thoroughly disagreed with Szilard's views.

For the longer version, straight from a 1960 interview with Szilárd, go here.

The other interesting thing in the interview is that he disputes the argument that America could not afford to put on a mere demonstration because it only had two atomic bombs:

Q Did you have any knowledge of Secretary of War Stimson's concern at this time on the question of using the bomb?
A I knew that Mr. Stimson was a thoughtful man who gave the bomb serious consideration. He was one of the most thoughtful members of the Truman cabinet. However, I certainly have to take exception to the article Stimson wrote after Hiroshima in "Harper's Magazine." He wrote that a "demonstration" of the A-bomb was impossible because we had only two bombs. Had we staged a "demonstration" both bombs might have been duds and then we would have lost face.

Now, this argument is clearly invalid. It is quite true that at the time of Hiroshima we had only two bombs, but it would not have been necessary to wait for very long before we would have had several more.

 It's not explained how long, but it's nonetheless interesting that Leo strongly disputes this argument.

So Leo certainly sounds like an interesting, somewhat controversial character.   Maybe good material for a movie, but then again he was not exactly matinee idol material.  Here is he with Einstein in 1946, looking a bit like Jackie Gleason to me:

(And who knew Albert liked such long pipes.)

Here is Leo at some unspecified older age:

Note exactly Tom Hanks material.

After the war he got into biological research, although it's not clear how significant that work was, except that he managed to treat his own bladder cancer with radiation successfully.

Another slightly peculiar thing about him from this chronology of his life:  he appears to have met his future wife in 1930 (when he was 32), but didn't marry her 1951 (aged 53.)   No kids, I assume.

Here's a very old web page (not updated since 2000 apparently - it really takes you back to how the internet used to look)  with many more links to further material about him.

The post about him at Restricted Data: the Nuclear Secrecy Blog (which looks like a good site generally) starts:

Leo Szilard is one of the most fascinating characters of the nuclear age. He was colorful, principled, clever, and often genuinely ahead of his time. And he always shows up early in the story.

That sounds about right.

Nietzsche should've kept away from the cannabis

Heh.  This post contains a nice thematic mix from several recent blog posts.

I don't even remember why I looked up the topic of whether or not Nietzsche died of neurosyphilis.  OK, yes I do:  it was because I Googled whether Beethoven had died a virgin (the jury's out on that), but someone's list of famous virgins contained Nietzsche too.   (It suggested he got his syphilis medically - something I had never heard before, but I haven't tracked down who came up with that idea.)

Anyhow, it turns out that there has been a substantial body of doubt about whether N really did have the dreaded disease at all, and you can read on line a pretty good argument made out in 2003 by Leonard Sax in the Journal of Medical Biography as to why he did not.   (It's a .pdf).

Given that the Wikipedia entry for N contains not only the common belief that he caught syphilis from a female prostitute, but also an alternative theory that he was gay and caught it in a male brothel in Genoa, it's pretty clear that is very broad uncertainty indeed as to what went on in Friedrich's sex life, if anything.

The Sax article is particularly interesting because it notes that there are examples of  bizarre thoughts going on in Nietzsche's head, suggestive of mental issues, going right back to adolescence. 

Not only that, but I also get to drag in my personal jihad against cannabis from this part of the paper, regarding N's sisters attempt to rehabilitate the image of her brother:

Mobius’ book came as a shock to Elisabeth. [He had re-stated the belief that N died of syphilis.]  She set about the task of writing a definitive biography of her brother herself, to refute Mobius’ ‘‘vile insinuations’’. Her subsequent biography portrayed her brother as a saint. She included letters and testimonials from Nietzsche’s closest friends to the effect that he had always been chaste. Elisabeth suggested that the trigger for Nietzsche’s collapse was a mysterious ‘‘Javanese tea’’, which she claimed to have identified as Cannabis indica. Subsequent scholarship showed that Elisabeth’s suggestion was fantasy. There is no mention of ‘‘Javanese tea’’ or any variety of cannabis in any authenticated letter to or from Nietzsche. Elisabeth herself never mentioned it until the publication of Mobius’ book in 1902.

What is this "cannabis indica"?   Well, the Hash Museum of Amsterdam website (not a regular cyberhaunt of mine, but I figured it was more likely to be reliable than the scores of pothead sites that came up) confirms that it is closely related to cannabis sativa and certainly contains lots of cannabinoids and is used to get high.

OK, so it turns out no one believes Elisabeth was right; but as I say, biographers can't even decide if he was a virgin or male brothel customer.

I therefore choose to believe what suits my biases:  Nietzsche may well have gone mad due to using cannabis.  Take that, Jason Soon... hahahaha.

Update:  first version spelt his name about 4 different ways.  I think I have finally got it right.  Who can trust a philosopher whose name is so hard to remember, anyway?

Why bother?

I'm waiting to find someone who knows something about Indonesia to explain why Yudhoyono would even bother meeting with Tony Abbott, given that he's on the way out.  (SBY, that is.  Not Tony, as much as I wish Andrew Bolt was right that Malcolm Turnbull was about to stage some sort of bloody Game of Thrones style coup while Tone's away.) 

The Jakarta Post reports that the meeting didn't mean much:

While praising his host President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as a great statesman and a true friend of his country, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has apparently chosen to wait for the new Indonesian president before reaching substantial agreements on such sensitive issues as intelligence gathering and boat people, which have rocked relations between the two countries since Abbott’s election last year.

 Maybe  SBY was just happy to be meeting anyone, because the Post also reports:

With his final term winding down, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has three times this week chastised Cabinet ministers and military generals for getting involved in the presidential campaign and neglecting their duties.

In a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, coinciding with the start of the 30-day presidential campaign period, Yudhoyono reiterated a statement he made on Tuesday that his ministers should take leave or resign if participating in campaign activities would prevent them from performing their main duties.

On Wednesday, Yudhoyono went even further by saying that according to his own “observation and judgment” some of his ministers were no longer focused on doing their jobs.

Still victim mongering

I see that Right wing victim mongering on behalf of Chris Kenny continues apace.

Maybe I can set it out more clearly for them:

a. people who thought Chris Kenny was a ****head before the Chaser skit still think he's a ****head;

b. pretty much everyone who didn't think he was a ****head before the skit still don't think he is; except for those who thought his taking defamation action for an obvious photoshop that would convince no one that he had sex with dogs was an out of proportion response;

c. if you start defamation action, you keep the original story alive for much, much longer than would otherwise have occurred, and when it is not a matter of proving that the original story was a lie, why bother if the story hasn't made anyone change their opinion of you?

Now, leave me alone while I further work on the very special photoshops of Sinclair Davidson I keep encrypted on the hard drive.

PS:  may I remind readers, who might have just read poor old (wait a minute - he's younger than me) Sinclair's complaint that SBS replayed the offensive image, that (as I pointed on months ago) Andrew Bolt's blog has a permanent post up showing the image in all its "glory".

Has Sinclair ever suggested to Andrew, one of his biggest fans, that this might be just a little counterproductive to Kenny's complaint that he didn't want that to be the image that permanently appears on Google search for his kids to see?

In fact, the SBS brief replay of it will not affect Google search results at all; unlike his News Ltd pal's effort.

But SBS is public broadcasting and Bolt is a glorious part of private enterprise, or something .....

And just to be sure that no one misunderstands my position:   I don't like the Chaser team - they've been past their prime for many a year; they lack sensible self censorship and are part of the downwards spiral of what is acceptable in crudity on Australian TV comedy.

I didn't even think the Kenny skit made much sense as a joke.

The skit was offensive, just as much for the language as the image.  I have no problem with anyone (including Kenny) complaining about ABC standards in letting it on.

But it was not defamatory, anymore than would a photoshop of  an obviously fake nude Gina Rinehart in many different positions with Rupert Murdoch on a Hawaiian beach while being served drinks by Davidson in a mankini.  (I believe they were actually all in swimsuits at the time.)

And just as a public figure like Julia Gillard had to put up with Pickering doing cartoons of her nude and with a strap on at hand (and let me note that Bolt was happy to link to Pickering's blog  at least once, and in Catallaxy threads there were direct links to the Gillard cartoons), the best way to deal with it would have been to not grace it with more attention.  

Leaping on early evidence

Pro marijuana reformers are happy to be citing reduced crime figures for Colorado as a positive.

Of course, such early figures count for next to nothing.  The figures could mean anything, including that increasing the amount of time potential criminals are stoned saps away their motivation for getting out of the house. 

Anti regulation types will always claim dubious, early figures support them.   Look at Sinclair Davidson and the smoking lobby, who have been grabbing anything at all after plain package labelling came into effect to declare it a failure.   All sensible people would assume that it would take time for the effect to filter through, but that doesn't bother the ideologically motivated of the world.

As for full on marijuana legalisation, as in Colorado, the real test of it will be years away, on the effect that it has on things like the rate at which teenagers use it; academic performance in its high schools and colleges; and rates of early on set schizophrenia.  The economy of the State could also, conceivably, be effected.   I mean, it's not like Nimbin is the economic powerhouse of Australia. 

But no one is going to know the true effect of this experiment for quite a while yet.

(And as a side note - the Maureen Dowd story does again show that the State simply did not properly think through the consequences of legalising the sale of edible marijuana.)

Warm weather

Every few days I Google around for record temperatures.  During May, apart from Australia being unusually warm, there were large parts of the Western side of the States getting unusually hot for the time of year, plus Japan and China.  I see today that Moscow is hot for the time of year.

I would be surprised if the averaged global temperature for the month is not significantly up. But I could be wrong...

Update:  a good discussion of where we are with the current El Nino situation is here.    It is, apparently, arguably, already a kind of weak El Nino, but it will be months before we know where it's really going.

Good economic figures hurt the Coalition's credibility

I am not sure that Labor, or journalists, are making these points as clearly as they should, since they seem to me to represent an entirely reasonable interpretation of the situation:

a.   clearly, the new Coalition government has not yet implemented anything of significance in terms of its effect on the performance of the economy;

b.   any good figures for the economy which have come out since the election eat into the credibility of the Coalition argument that the economy was suffering from Labor mismanagement.  In particular, it eats into (or rather, destroys) the credibility of the argument that the carbon tax or mining tax was having a harmful effect;

c.   the one clear thing which it seems may well harm the economy - consumer confidence - has taken a battering because of the announced Coalition's budget.  That is undeniable, there is no other explanation.

Gun nuts fighting gun nuts

Assault-rifle-toting Texans get NRA to back down on 'weird' claims - CSMonitor.com

By way of further background to this example of severe American weirdness, try this Mother Jones article. 

Who knew that a lot of Texans thought the Taliban looked cool?

Einstein summarised

I enjoyed this article about Einstein and his fame.  I've never read a biography of him; perhaps it's time I did.

I didn't know that he really did make serious money from his fame, although he did lose some of it through his first marriage break up too.  Some extracts:

In college, Einstein had fallen in love, against his family’s wishes, with a fellow physics student named Mileva Marić. They had two sons (Hans, a future engineer, and Eduard, who died in an asylum) and packed plenty of Sturm und Drang into just a few years. It didn’t help that, whenever a domestic storm kicked up, Einstein buried himself in his equations and ignored the problem.

Einstein eventually divorced Marić, and married Elsa, his cousin and a mother of two girls, in 1919. And although his domestic life quieted down, the price was not cheap. For one thing, Einstein now had two families to support. Furthermore, in a desperate gambit to rid himself of Marić in 1918, he’d agreed to give her—for he expected to win it soon—the cash bonus that accompanied the Nobel Prize. (The sum turned out to be nearly fifty times his annual salary, with which Marić bought three houses.) To compound the problem, Marić and their sons moved to expensive Switzerland while Einstein remained in Germany, where inflation was laying waste to the economy: In 1923 alone, the price of bread rose from 700 marks per loaf to one billion marks. Fame allowed Einstein to hoist himself out of this financial hole. He requested fees as high as $15,000, almost $200,000 today, for a talk. Some institutions balked; others happily paid what they could for the honor of a visit.

 Also of interest - I don't recall the name of Leo Szilard, who apparently actually came up with the core idea for an atomic bomb:

Despite his pacifism, he also supported U.S. involvement in World War II. He donated $11.5 million from the sale of a handwritten copy of his 1905 paper on special relativity to the war effort. His celebrity also changed the course of the war. A less famous colleague of Einstein’s realized in the late 1930s that uranium could be harnessed into an atomic weapon. Having no pull himself, Leó Szilárd turned to Einstein to alert President Franklin Roosevelt, who soon initiated the Manhattan Project. After the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein regretted even his peripheral involvement in the project. For once, he refused to talk to reporters.

 The magazine this article appears in looks generally pretty interesting -  Humanities - The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Peta causing more problems

Hard not to snigger:

The deputy leader of the Nationals was asked about the power Peta Credlin wields while being interviewed by Channel Ten’s The Project on Tuesday evening.

“Peta has a strong role,” he said. “You have to be to be the chief of staff to the prime minister. You wouldn't expect to be a wallflower and she’s not.”

He said Credlin answered the “fallacy” that there are no strong women involved in running the country. “Peta Credlin … certainly ticks all those boxes. And I’m on good information from her husband that she is definitely a woman.”

He did apologise abruptly when (as far as I could tell) no one laughed.

Creighton again

Readers will have noticed my dislike of Oz journalist Adam Creighton for his spin-riffic economics analysis.  Here's a tweet from him today, confirming my disdain:

Tolstoy's Meaning of Life

I quite liked this lengthy summary of Tolstoy's (late) mid life Meaning of Life spiritual crisis.   In a general sense, I pretty much agree with his take on things, although my dislike of physical exercise makes me somewhat less inclined to be impressed with the spirituality of peasants labouring in the fields.

Tolstoy missed out on the modern quantum and cosmological mysteries of science which provide another way that people can legitimately get ideas about how the finite and infinite may interact.   (Although, I would have to admit, that biological science with its attack on free will works in the opposite direction - towards encouraging dismay about whether humans are even in control of themselves.)   

All change sides

It's a really weird political situation at the moment, isn't it?

As we can see in matters of science (climate change) and economics (rabid anti-Keynesianism and massive over simplification about debt and taxes), large slabs of the Right have gone all "ideology over evidence", which was something that the Left formerly specialised in.

We can clearly add to this list "self pitying victimhood" as shown by Andrew "I lost a court case and I risk losing another one if I don't do better research - you need to change the law" Bolt; Gerard "why won't the ABC put on a conservative host?*" Henderson; and Chris "people might really think I would have sex with a dog!" Kenny. 

In fact, all of the Coalition moaning about the ABC is victim mentality.

Sure, sure:  when it comes to sexuality, the Left has victim claiming status for that still firmly aligned with them.

But to a very large extent, the Right wants to feel sorry for itself:  probably because (as they have just realised) they are not all that intrinsically popular.  People do actually want centrism. ** It must be the ABC's fault, then, for not hosting a conservative show.

To be fair, as much as I hate doing so with him, Tony Abbott looked positively embarrassed about Andrew Bolt getting upset on his behalf last Sunday about Abbott's wife getting stupid criticism from Tim Mathieson.  (Yes, I did watch Bolt for the first ten minutes because Abbott was there from the opening.)  So I don't actually think that Abbott is so much into this victimhood thing - but it is obvious that a huge slab of his strongest supporters are.

Update:  I forgot to add to this "victimhood" business on the Right the way they demand that every single Left sympathetic voice in the land join in condemnation of sexism, even when it is made by someone on the Right (like Clive Palmer).   Not enough that the Leader makes a quick and unqualified attack on Palmer - every single person who ever agreed that Gillard faced sexist attacks is now supposed to find a media outlet to say "Oh, and it is also wrong against Credlin".   Give me a break, and get a life.


* I don't know if Henderson reads Catallaxy, but it is widely acknowledged, even in that collection of Boltheads, that the one prominent Right wing show on TV is often pretty awful due to his poor broadcast media skills.   Henderson himself is clearly not capable of the job, and in fact I have no knowledge of any likely conservative figure who has an obviously appealing media presence.  This fact is resolutely ignored by those calling for a "conservative" show.

** thanks to monty for indicating this was an interesting post.