Live coverage excitement

OK, I know it must be hard to have someone talking to camera for the whole 6 or 7 hours or something that it going to take the Rosetta lander to descend to the comet, but as I write this, it is on its way down and this is the exciting scene (with no audio) from the ESA live feed:

Keane on The Australian

I like the opening description of The Australian in Bernard Keane's column today:

The Australian’s smear campaign against the Prime Minister hasn’t had a lot of new material lately. Having devoted months and acres of newsprint to investigating the minutiae of what Julia Gillard did in the 1990s and not turned up a single actual claim of wrongdoing, the brains trust at Holt St must be ruing that after such a big investment of resources in smearing her, all they got for their troubles was a few points’ fall in her approval rating.

Still, The Oz didn’t get where it is today — a dying paper for angry old conservative men — without a willingness to flog a dead horse. So today, it carried over 1000 words on the AWU matter about how there’s “a prima facie case that she could have been charged”, by one Terry O’Connor.

Big Piketty vindication for the US?

An astonishing graph at The Economist, in an important article about a new study suggesting Piketty was certainly right about the US, at least:



Gee, that "trickle down" idea from the 1980's has worked out a treat.

Go ahead and shrug your shoulders, libertarians.

Update:  from the blog post at the LSE by Saez and Zucman on their work:

The growing indebtedness of most Americans is the main reason behind the erosion of the wealth share of the bottom 90 percent of families. Many middle class families own homes and have pensions, but too many of these families also have much higher mortgages to repay and much higher consumer credit and student loans to service than before. For a time, rising indebtedness was compensated by the increase in the market value of the assets of middle-class families. The average wealth of bottom 90 percent of families jumped during the stock-market bubble of the late 1990s and the housing bubble of the early 2000s. But it then collapsed during and after the Great Recession of 2007-2009.  (See Figure 2.) Since then, there has been no recovery in the wealth of the middle class and the poor. The average wealth of the bottom 90 percent of families is equal to $80,000 in 2012—the same level as in 1986. In contrast, the average wealth for the top 1 percent more than tripled between 1980 and 2012.

How can we explain the growing disparity in American wealth? The answer is that the combination of higher income inequality alongside a growing disparity in the ability to save for most Americans is fuelling the explosion in wealth inequality. For the bottom 90 percent of families, real wage gains (after factoring in inflation) were very limited over the past three decades, but for the top 1 percent real wages grew fast. In addition, the saving rate of middle class and lower class families collapsed over the same period while it remained substantial at the top. Today, the top 1 percent families save about 35 percent of their income, while bottom 90 percent families save about zero.

If income inequality stays high and if the saving rate of the bottom 90 percent of families remains low then wealth disparity will keep increasing. Ten or twenty years from now, all the gains in wealth democratization achieved during the New Deal and the post-war decades could be lost. While the rich would be extremely rich, ordinary families would own next to nothing, with debts almost as high as their assets.

What should be done to avoid this dystopian future? We need policies that reduce the concentration of wealth, prevent the transformation of self-made wealth into inherited fortunes, and encourage savings among the middle class. First, current preferential tax rates on capital income compared to wage income are hard to defend in light of the rise of wealth inequality and the very high savings rate of the wealthy. Second, estate taxation is the most direct tool to prevent self-made fortunes from becoming inherited wealth—the least justifiable form of inequality in the American meritocratic ideal. Progressive estate and income taxation were the key tools that reduced the concentration of wealth after the Great Depression. The same proven tools are needed again today.

 Update 2:   ah, I see it was Saez & Zucman who Cato and the WSJ were attacking mid year about their figures for calculating wealth.  This working paper release presumably gives the details of what was in the powerpoint presentation Piketty was referring people to. 

A libertarian makeover

Well, I used to assume on appearance alone that Julie Novak of the IPA was a lesbian (come on, I surely wasn't alone); and maybe she is, I'm not sure, but it turns out that she is also a former he.  Didn't see that coming.

So this is the second transgender libertarian-ish economist that we know of - Diedre McCloskey being the other.  I think it is well known that men who go transgender often chose quite macho careers - the military, mountain climbers, engineering - the theory being that it is an over reaction in compensation to their inner desire to be feminine.   As I think it would be fair to say that aggressively free market, libertarian ideas are the most "macho" form of economics there is (and God knows, its followers at Catallaxy routinely question the masculinity of males who they perceive as being of the Left), I think we can likely expect most transgender economists to come from that side of the fence.   Davidson does seem to really like kilts;  I'm now suspecting it's part of the softening up process for an announcement...

In any event, it changes nothing about my attitude towards Novak's work and her opinions:  they're routinely doctrinaire, predictable, full of fetishistic adoration of free markets and complete disdain of government. Best ignored, as a male or female.

Update:  I see McCloskey was saying much the same in 1999:

''There is this romantic idea among men that they are free agents in the marketplace, without any ties except to their individual selves,'' Ms. McCloskey said. ''While men think of themselves in metaphors of competition, there is an assumption among women that we are together, helping each other survive.'' She added: ''I was an aggressive, assertive male, and I felt comfortable. Now I am ashamed because that was so very macho.''

All Putin-ed out

Gee, I bet Abbott regrets the "shirtfront" line, given the way it has absolutely dominated everything in the media about the meeting.  If someone doesn't come out of it with a bloody nose, it'll feel like such an anti climate.

Oh no - Bourne again?

Look, Matt Damon seems a nice enough guy on TV chat shows and what not, but I can't say that I have ever been completely convinced that he is that good an actor, and I don't care much for the type of material he seems to chose.

It was for that reason that I never went out of my way to see any of the Bourne movies, but they were on free to air TV here recently, and my original decision was retrospectively justified.  Sadly, Bourne is set to return, with Damon and (for me) the largely unwatchable Greengrass.

Honestly, how were these movies so popular?  Let's go through some that I saw:

Bourne Identity:   Geez, just how much amnesia do you have to suffer to go into a Swiss bank, find your security box with a hoard of cash, a half dozen fake passports (and a gun?  I forget) and still not realise what kind of work you must be in?   He goes back to the girl and asks "what sort of man has all this stuff?", or something like that.   The audience, having seen spy movies over the last 60 years, has a good idea; it seems to be pushing things to suggest that our hero cannot come to a similar conclusion.

What's more, he then goes back to the Paris apartment one of his identities lived in (and, oh yeah, everyone who drives into Paris ends up parking in the morning on the embankment over the Seine with Notre Dame in the background) and makes a phone call from there.   Leading, of course, to killers turning up pronto.   Again, just how dumb does Bourne have to be?

Pushing credibility just too far, if you ask me, even allowing for its genre.  I was underwhelmed.

Bourne Supremacy:   I remember David Stratton, I think, saying that he found Paul Greengrass' intense use of "shaky cam" throughout this film made him (literally) sick, and I simply couldn't watch much of it on a big screen TV for the same reason.   Honestly, my TV has never made me feel queasy before.

 And the rapid fire editing that is part of Greengrass' style - man, I thought Quantum of Solace was the height of that*, but no, this should be like a masterclass in how not to attempt to create fake excitement by not letting the audience see anything for more than 1 to 1.5 seconds, tops.  It's a really awful technique.  The movie is literally unwatchable.

OK, missed Bourne Ultimatum.

Bourne Legacy:   a sort of spinoff/reboot with a different actor.  Strangely, he's also one who I would not associate with muscle action heroics.   Look, I wasn't watching as closely as I could, and maybe that's why I never really understood what was going on with the blue pills and why our hero was suddenly a rogue who had to be killed.   Wolves, drones, guns and lots and lots and lots of chasing through the streets of Manila.   As I have never seen much of Manila before, I did watch that sequence closely, and given that it went on for a good 25 minutes or so, I now feel I have seen much more of that city than I ever really needed to see.

Maybe the next in this off shoot (is there going to be one?) will make me understand what was going on.

*  (I know he didn't direct it - but did they share the same editor?)

A musical interlude

I saw this on Rage on the weekend, and immediately liked its cute, quirky but slightly creepy vibe.  It's been around since 2009, I see:

Bursting through the advanced age reliability threshold

An aging scientist makes what I think a very unlikely prediction:

SEX will be entirely recreational by 2050, with all reproduction achieved in the laboratory, the inventor of the contraceptive Pill has predicted.
Us chemist Carl Djerassi says sex and reproduction will soon be separated in the Western world and that men and women will freeze their eggs and sperm when young before being sterilised. By mid-century, most couples will have IVF through choice, not necessity, he believes.
“The vast majority of women who will choose IVF in the future will be _fertile women who have frozen their eggs and delayed pregnancy,” he told Britain’s Sunday Telegraph.

His age:  91.

Sorry, but this bears all the hallmarks of a person who has exceeded the age related unreliability threshold.  Basically, the great majority of people, even when formerly sensible in their field of expertise, become an unreliable source of opinion by about the age of 80.   Maybe 85, max...

Seems sound advice

For a Lasting Marriage, Marry Someone Your Own Age - The Atlantic

Seriously?

Cuts to jobless benefits will boost economic growth, Australia tells G20: The Australian government has cited controversial cuts to unemployment benefits as one of the key structural reforms that will increase economic activity by 2 per cent, according to a draft of its growth strategy to be submitted to the G20 leaders' summit.

The reference to the jobless reforms – which include a measure preventing unemployed people under 30 from accessing welfare payments for up to six months – comes even though the changes have been blocked in the Senate.

The objective of boosting economic growth by 2 per cent "above what is currently expected" during the next five years is the main goal of the G20 meeting, to be held in Brisbane at the weekend.

Andrew Leigh is quoted further down in the article:

However, Labor assistant treasury spokesman Andrew Leigh said cuts to
welfare payments such as   the unemployment benefit, family tax
benefits and the pension would act to suppress economic growth.

"If you produce a budget that reduces the income of the poor,
it has an impact on consumer demand because they spend everything
they've got," he said.

"That will detract from economic growth."

When even Judith Sloan was suggesting a few years ago that there was a good case for increasing unemployment benefits (even though I think she doesn't like to repeat this moment of Lefty madness), I think I know which side of the argument has more credibility.   

Sad news

Wayne Goss, former Queensland premier, dies at 63 | Australia news | theguardian.com

I think Wayne Goss is widely regarded as an unworthy victim of the weird local politics of Queensland, having lost the premiership prematurely for no good reason at all.  Even my late, permanently rusted on Coalition supporting mother never bore him ill will, as I recall.  The only downside that I know of is that he did help bring on the rise of Kevin Rudd in politics.   No one's perfect...

Interstellar noted by Mr Soon

I'm never sure lately if some tweets by Jason Soon are out to deliberately goad me, even though I trust he knows that some of my posts are written knowing they will annoy him.   (Yes, my readership is so small, I can write posts with one person in mind!)

This latest one, on his reaction to Interstellar, seems designed to annoy:

Saw Interstellar on Sun – unapologetic celebration of exploration & progress, vs the ‘caretaker’ spirit of the new Green religion.

"New Green religion" - the line beloved of climate change denying, Andrew Bolt readers and Catallaxy??  Bah, humbug.

I note that one of the more improbable things that Phil Plait (I think) found about the movie was that NASA survives as some secret underground organisation capable of mounting interstellar exploration while the world crumbles around it in environmental catastrophe.

I would have thought that the long term interest in having a global economy strong enough to fund humanity eventually moving off planet actually points to serious action now to limit the potential effects of global warming by urgently reducing CO2.  This would help reduce the chance of environmental catastrophe that, unlike in Hollywood, I would not be surprised may prove dire enough economically to delay human expansion indefinitely.

But of course, I haven't seen the movie....

Update:   family friendly animation wins at the box office.  (And Nolan's movie opens worse than Inception.)  

Taking the Right personally

I like watching Kitchen Cabinet for the opportunity it gives to view politicians in what is meant to be a more relaxed atmosphere, talking to the very congenial Annabel Crabbe over a meal.

I know that people will say that it is simply a part of my complaint that the Right side of politics has been badly damaged here due to the poisonous influence to the ideologically motivated side of the American Right that has lost interest in both evidence based science and economics, but I have to say, I now find that nearly all Coalition politicians compare very poorly to Labor ones, even at a personality level.

Coalition politicians nearly always come across as being nervous ninnies.  Tony Abbott and his "ha...ha...ha;"  Christopher Pyne and his career mother Amanda Vanstone didn't impress me (even though Vanstone is from the moderate wing of the spectrum); and while Andrew Robb might be admired for his gumption despite suffering long term depression, he does appear to now be a permanently glum robot incapable of pleasure (perhaps?) because of medication, and I was dismayed to be reminded that it was a man suffering long term mental illness who roused himself out of his sick bed to convince his fellow politicians to dump support for an ETS, leading to the current hopeless Prime Minister we endure.   I don't remember much about Joe Hockey's episode, except that he was another male politician who has an almost child like inability to cook anything other than a steak.  Yet he has so comprehensively stuffed up the Budget, and come out as an obsessive about wind power to the extent that a wind mill on the horizon 15 km away upsets him, he's turned out to be a pretty comprehensive embarrassment to the party.

There are exceptions, I suppose:  I certainly don't consider Barnaby Joyce to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I can see why people like him anyway.   Nigel Scullion from the Northern Territory also has a certain pleasant air of frankness about him.

But in comparison, I usually find myself pleasantly surprised by the relaxed air of intelligence of your average Labor politician on the show.

I know Bill Shorten was just a bit too lovely dovey on screen with his wife for comfort, but I still felt better about him after the show than before.  (I have always felt relatively neutral towards him.  I think it was painful watching him suffer by the way he was caught up in the Rudd/Gillard battles.)   I am strongly against lesbian couples using some donor semen to make their own baby, but again, after watching Penny Wong I found myself liking her a lot more than before.   Craig Emerson presented as living in extremely modest circumstances, and really, what was he thinking with his little song and dance routine while he was still in power?   Still, I found it hard not to warm more to him as a result of Annabel's show.

And let's broaden this out a bit:  in commentary terms, Andrew Bolt has evolved into a self satisfied ugly caricature of  moderate Right wing analysis with his self pity and obsession with race and portraying Islam in the worst possible light.  As for climate change - he is a complete gullible joke, of course, never showing a scintilla of skepticism towards anything he reads from Watts Up With That or Professors Jonova and  Monckton.  His disingenuous enthusiasm for endorsing all of the Michael Smith sliming of Gillard (while always adding the disclaimer that "Gillard denies ever having knowledge of the matters") was really appalling.

Tim Blair doesn't seem to realise that the "frightbat" thing just carried too much Young Liberal style undergraduate sexism to be funny, and while he doesn't put the same enthusiasm into climate change denial as does Bolt, his reading list on the topic is clearly limited to denial sites.  It's hard to stay enthusiastic for his brand of lightweight critique of the silly elements of Left wing culture and attitudes when he so proudly wears his intellectual laziness on the key environmental issue of our day on his sleeve.

They both like Mark Steyn, of course, who thinks he can call a scientist a fraud, despite no support amongst other scientist in the field for such a view, and then defend it as free speech, while using his corner of the climate change culture war to get more money from his deluded readers.   

And as for News Corp Right wing female commentators and their attitude towards "feminism" (Miranda Devine, Albrechtsen, Sloan) gee, its got pretty ugly when they spent all their time criticising Gillard for "playing the feminism card" instead of  noting the appalling treatment she got from Right wing broadcasters and the patronising and offensive lines Abbott used.  

So it's remarkable how unlikeable I find so many on the Right have become.   And while I have been saying for a long time that attitude to climate change seems to have become an incredibly good bellwether on political judgement generally, it seems to give a good indication of  unpleasant aspects of personality too.

There are, of course, exceptions to this, even on the Left.   Step up, K Rudd, and take a bow...

About those old temperatures

I meant to link last week to a good explanation at The Conversation about the problem with old Australian temperature records from before 1910.   There, done.

Phil says sorry

Interstellar follow-up: Movie science mistake was mine.

Phil Plait at Slate says he got some of his science critique of Interstellar wrong, and apologises.   He still thinks it was a crook movie, though.   

Review of a show I don't watch anymore

OK, so the post title is not quite right.   You see, after giving Dr Who a big miss this season (and even my 14 yr old son agreed after the season opener that it is now unwatchable) I did, out of idle curiosity,  happen to see most of the two part season end.  Promising premise - Steven Moffat deals with "heaven" and the afterlife.  The result:  the show is now just incredibly awful.   Not so awful that it is worth watching, like some shows are.  Just mind numbingly, self referentially, spectacularly poorly written and unengaging dross.

The number of people agreeing with me at the obsessive fanboy comments threads at The Guardian is on the rise, too, I reckon.

Surely its ratings must be suffering?  I think a strong case could be made out that thinking the show is still quality story telling is a sign of some form of brain damage.

The show badly needs to go away for 5 years or so.  And don't let Moffat anywhere near its return.

Ideological triumph? Yeah, sure...

I see that Sinclair Davidson goes with the "Americans finally coming to their senses" interpretation of the Republican wins, as he quotes an over the top column by bow tied cultural warrior Roger Kimball with evident approval:

Over the past six years, the American people have watched as Obama swept nearly 20 per cent of the nation’s economy under the arm of the federal government in the name of “reforming” healthcare. Obamacare, which passed into law without a single Republican vote, is the most unpopular piece of legislation since Prohibition. In a moment of quiet candour, candidate Obama noted that, under his plan, the price of energy would “necessarily skyrocket”, while the coal industry would be regulated out of existence. How’s that working out? About as well as things on our southern border. The United States already spends more on education per pupil than any other country, but we get far worse results because “investing in education” for Democrats means shovelling money into the troughs of teachers’ unions, diminishing parental authority and forcing a politically correct, multicultural agenda on schools.

The truth is that Obama is merely the latest spokesman for the Democrats’ agenda of dependency, the big-government, socialistically inclined welfare establishment that, since the 1960s, has colluded with public sector unions to substitute tax-funded entitlements for individual initiative and personal responsibility. More and more people have come to understand that the “fundamental transformation” that Obama promised was not the path to Shangri-La, but a new road to serfdom. At issue is the relationship between the individual and the coercive power of the state, economic freedom and, ultimately, our national security.

Never mind the fact that wins by the other side during Presidencies on the way out are not unusual, or that several commentators noted that quite a few Republicans were giving out a more moderate position, and I can find no one who claims that it is any sort of emphatic win for the Tea Party wing. 

Oddly enough, more reasonable commentary from a Right wing perspective can sometimes be found at American Conservative, which Jason Soon links to sometimes.  This article, for example:  Obama is a Republican made many valid points, including one about the nuttiness of the Republicans carrying on in such an ideological sense about "Obamacare" when it was modelled on what was formerly a Republican idea.

I see that there is also a very good cautionary post up at the site about why the Republican win means exactly not what Professor Stagflation thinks it does:

Here are six reasons for caution:

1. The president’s party usually loses seats in midterm elections.
2. Obama’s approval, while low, is higher than Bush’s at the same point in his presidency.
3. We’ve seen this movie before. Remember the “permanent majority” of 2004? How about the “thumping” of 2006? Then there was the “new majority” of 2008. Of course, that was followed by the “Tea Party wave” of 2010. Which didn’t stop Obama from becoming the first president since Eisenhower to win a majority of the vote for a second time in 2012.
4. The midterm electorate skews older, whiter, and richer than in presidential years. These are Republican demographics, so Republicans tend to do better. The 2016 electorate, on the other hand, will probably look more like 2008 than 2010. Republicans probably won’t ever win many votes from blacks or single women, but they need to continue doing better among the young and Hispanics (as several candidates did last night).
5. The standard explanation of the results is that the election was a referendum on Obama’s policies. That’s not true for the simple reason that most voters have only the foggiest notion of what Obama’s policies are. (Polls on these matters can be misleading because they often ask respondents to choose from a predetermined set of responses to a leading question, which encourages unrepresentative, off-the-cuff answers.) Rather than voting on the success or failure of specific programs, many voters rely on a vague sense that things are going well or badly for the country.
6. The biggest factor in voters’ assessment of the direction of the country is the condition of the economy. Right now it’s pretty lousy, despite relatively favorable growth and employment trends. But if these trends continue over the next two years—and they’re far less dependent on Washington that either party likes to admit—they may start to pay off for ordinary people. Should that occur, many will discover that they liked Democrats more than they thought.

Krugman looks at the Republican win, and grinds his teeth

Triumph of the Wrong - NYTimes.com

Lots of good links in his column to back up his claims, too.

Animation wins

I see that Big Hero 6, the new Disney animated film with some Marvel roots, has scored a high 90% at Rottentomatoes, compared to 72% for Interstellar.   Certainly, the trailers for Big Hero indicated the film has considerable charm.  

Meanwhile on At the Movies, David loved Interstellar, Margaret didn't.   I never find myself agreeing consistently with either of them, so I don't know what that means.   Oh that's right - probably that I'll dislike it. 

I certainly hope that my prejudgement is irritating some reader out there.  :)

  

El nino confusion, again

I see that Eric Holthaus is waving the white flag about the prediction earlier this year that we were likely looking at a strong El Nino.   He now says it looks like we'll get a very weak one, if any.

Yet he notes that parts of the world's weather have been looking El Nino like for a while:

In essence, a gradually warming Pacific Ocean is at once be reducing our ability to predict Earth’s single most important seasonal climate phenomenon, and tampering with it as well. For forecasters, that means this year’s El Niño tease has been “rather frustrating.” It mirrors another flash-in-the-pan-and-fizzle just two years ago.

Still, that doesn’t mean El Niño-like changes haven’t happened. “Borderline” El Niño conditions, depending on your definition, have persisted for months now. El Niño-like effects have already been felt around the globe—including the ongoing mega-drought in Brazil, a lackluster monsoon season in India, a whimper of an Atlantic hurricane season, and the opposing tropical storm fest in Hawaii. Oh, and the world is also on track for its warmest year on record, boosted by near-El Niño.

There were studies (including a recent one) indicating that global warming may result in more, damaging, strong El Nino's.   (And this year's failure does nothing to disprove that.)  But a strong El Nino right now would have been a handy thing to help convince politicians in 2015 to start talking CO2 reduction seriously.   Once again Nature is not working to a convenient timetable for convincing stupid politicians.   I suggest throwing a few libertarians and at least a couple of News Corp columnists into a volcano to get things back on track again.