The anti-matter generator on my kitchen table

I see that a recent New Scientist article started as follows:

IT'S an odd thought that the banana on your kitchen counter, squished in your lunch bag or tucked away in your desk drawer is the embodiment of one of the universe's great mysteries, just waiting to be unpeeled.

Whatever its state of ripeness, that banana is made of particles of matter, just like you: its intrinsic matteryness is why you can see, feel and taste it. What you don't see is what a banana does 15 times a day or so. Blip! It produces a particle of something else, something that vanishes almost instantaneously in a flash of light.

That something else is antimatter.

It is an odd thought, but then again, we generate our own too:

This occurs because bananas contain a small amount of potassium-40, a naturally occurring isotope of potassium. As potassium-40 decays, it occasionally spits out a positron in the process.

Our bodies also contain potassium-40, which means positrons are being emitted from you, too. Antimatter annihilates immediately on contact with matter, so these antimatter particles are very short-lived.

Body design problems - for both men and women

I think we can all agree that there are bits of the human body which indicate that, if it was directly designed by God, He did a Him-awful job at working it out.

No where is this on better display than in the reproductive system.  I mean, for men, what's with the prostate gland and it's almost guaranteed destiny to swell and, in far too many cases, cause dire interference with the essential function of urination?   I have a brother who has recently, after quite suddenly developing a problem, had to have the TURP operation, so I have heard all about how unpleasant it is.

This gland is in a seriously dumb position, wrapped around the urethra.  If via gene editing it becomes possible to change positions of organs, I wouldn't be so worried about relocating testicles to an internal spot (as I recall Arthur C Clarke suggested in one of his novels as a feature of future males), but getting the prostate to do its job from a position beside the urethra, like the Cowper's gland, would make a hell of a lot more sense, no?

Moving on to women.  Childbirth is ridiculously dangerous, we know that, and I think I have  mentioned before that if you redesigning the system from scratch, the marsupial system of giving birth to a tiny jelly bean which matures in a pouch has an awful lot to recommend it.

But now to the more fundamental issue of women and menstruation - it seems that of the animal kingdom, the human body has absolutely the worst time of it:

Yes, many animals do menstruate, but only a handful menstruate overtly like humans do (where there is blood flow from the uterus through the vagina). Other animals menstruate covertly (by simply reabsorbing the uterine lining into the body). Female animals with overt menstruation are generally sexually active throughout their cycle. In comparison, females with covert menstruation are only ‘in heat’ mid-cycle.
Overt menstruation occurs in humans; most primates (including chimpanzees, organutans, gorillas & rhesus monkeys); some types of fruit bats; and elephant shrews. The average cycle length in orangutans and opossums is the closest to that of humans, 28 days, while the cycle for chimpanzees is 35 days. Menstrual bleeding in non-human primates is minimal.

The topic of how women deal with the inconvenience of menstrual blood flow got a detailed airing in a recent Atlantic article about the history of the tampon.   First manufactured specifically for this purpose in the 1920's, the article notes its rise in popularity, and the toxic shock crisis of the 1980's.

I found the article particularly interesting for reasons of cultural comparison:   I had assumed that the tampon had very much dropped in popularity due to the toxic shock issue, and the article does say that by 1990, about half of American women surveyed had moved to using pads alone.  Yet further down, someone estimates that usage amongst women there is up to about 80% again.

In Australia, thanks to the campaign against the trivial $1 or so a month of GST women don't want to spend on sanitary items (while nearly 30% of  young women are out getting tattoos at a minimum cost of about 10 - 20 years of said GST), we have some very recent market research from Roy Morgan indicating that only about a third of women are buying tampons.

In fact,  I infer from this lengthy post about the comparative availability of pads and tampons around the world, that tampons might be most popular in American.  Certainly, it looks like they are not readily available in many poorer, third world countries. 

Even where they are available, the Atlantic article does mention the issue of the applicator/digital insertion divide.   Apparently, in Europe and Australia, ones without applicators are most popular. 
In America, applicator use seems extremely popular.

As the Atlantic article notes:

Outside North America, digital tampons have outsold applicator tampons for decades. “If you interview women in Europe and ask why they like digital tampons, they’ll tell you about [environmental] concerns. They’ll also tell you that it’s a hygienic concern—that they don’t trust the applicator being inserted inside their bodies,” Keighley says. Conversely, tampon users in the U.S., who largely prefer applicators, “will tell you it’s a hygienic thing—they don’t want to gunk up their fingers,” he explains. “Consumers develop very strong opinions on usage habits—polar opposites, for the same reason.”

If you want to read an example of how extremely seriously (some) American women take the alleged horror of ever getting their own bodily fluid on their finger, even for the briefest moment (as I assume at least toilet paper will invariably be handy), read this 2012 post from one who is distraught about not being to get applicator tampons of her choice in Australia.  An extract:

First of all, there’s disgusting stuff up inside there during menstruation that I’m not particularly interested in touching. Second of all, my finger is probably not always totally sterile, being a finger and all, and I don’t really want to stick it up there and give myself an infection.

You can sort of get around some of the ew-factor in your own bathroom at home, but let’s say you have to do this in a public restroom. I don’t want to put the same fingers I’ve used to touch the bathroom stall door up inside an infection-prone part of my body. I know that some women probably do this anyway and it disgusts me nearly to the point of vomiting to think of them doing that and then touching the handle on the stall door afterwards. GROSS!!!!! Now all their menstrual germs are all over the handle! Even more disgusting is the number of women who don’t wash their hands at all.

I wonder how many STIs have been transmitted through public bathrooms in Australia for this very reason?

Fortunately, I’m such a germophobe that I always use a paper towel or tissue of some kind to manipulate the handle if I absolutely must use a public restroom. If you ever see a blonde girl doing this in a public restroom, it’s probably me. Feel free to say hello.

So yeah. Tampons without applicators are just a no-go. That is so beyond disgusting that it doesn’t even bear thinking of.

What's worse - there are a stream of comments from fellow American agreeing with her.

Seriously - this woman sounds just short of endorsing the idea that her gaze while menstruating could curdle milk.

It also puts me in mind of the peculiarly American thing about douching, although it is more concentrated along ethnic lines (African Americans and Hispanics are particularly inclined to do it, for reasons I have never seen explained.)

I'm not at all sure as to why, but it seems that an unusually large proportion of American women have developed a particular "thing" about the cleanliness of their reproductive tract, particularly during menstruation.

Which strikes me as rather odd...

Unelected official able to make criticism without fear of immediate sacking

Look, it's like shooting fish in a barrel to go to Catallaxy and find dumb and ludicrous commentary by academics who post to a dumb and ludicrous audience (sorry, but sheesh), yet I must point to Professor Stagflation's odd post today in which he doesn't actually disagree with Gillian Triggs, but attempts to have a go at her anyway.

Is it beyond his intellectual grasp that her unelected status and security in the position is what lets her speak forthrightly in criticism of the government on the matter of human rights?

And in what sense are any of her rulings or commentary even potentially a "threat to democracy", given that (as far as I know) she can only recommend actions? If she has no power to enforce anything, why should be in an elected position?

The Abbott government's personal pursuit of Triggs, aided and heartily endorsed by the Murdoch press, and lapped up by Sinclair Davidson's drooling audience, is one of the most disgusting and vile features of any Australian government in living memory.

We've heard it before, but look at the figures

Swedish sex education has time for games and mature debate | Education | The Guardian

Years ago I posted about the very open Dutch sex education system, and it's no surprise to learn that Sweden's is very detailed as well.   But look at the teenage pregnancy comparison:

Not all Swedish schools will spend quite as long on the subject as
they do in Gnesta – some get through it in four or five weeks – but the
course is a great deal more comprehensive than what is on offer in most English schools, where sex education still not a statutory requirement and is often delivered in a single “drop-down day” at the end of term.

The UK birth rate among 15- to 19-year-olds is 19.7 births per 1,000 women, while in Sweden the figure is 5.2 per 1,000.

Seems to confirm the finding, repeated all over the place, I think, that open and frank sex education reduces teen pregnancy, and can even delay average age at which youngsters first try anything.  (If only they could get that up to about 25, he muses.)

Just out of curiosity, let's look at how this compares internationally (in births per 1,000 for 15 to 19 year olds): 

United States:  30  - worse than the supposedly degenerate UK.  But then again, according to this table, UK's rate is a steady 26, not 19.7. 

Australia:  11 - a semi-respectable figure, I guess.  Better than the US and UK; not as low as the rest of Europe.  

Austria:  3 (!) - I'm assuming teenagers there simply have no sex.  Why?

Oddly, even Japan manages a 5.   (One suspects mostly from girls in school uniforms accidentally falling pregnant to creepy guys in their 40's.  I don't know that young Japanese men are having sex at all.)

The lowest on the table:   1 each in North Korea (honestly, life must be too depressing there for a libido) but also Slovenia.  (Well, that's in that East European region of the world that I have long written off as too complicated in history to ever bother understanding.  I have no idea...)

And the highest regions:    at the very top of the table - Niger at 205.   In fact, I think every single country with a rate about 100 is African.  

Well, you learn something every day.

Nice work

RealClimate: NOAA temperature record updates and the ‘hiatus’

A cool, calm and reasoned post from Gavin Schmidt about the new NOAA paper and the "hiatus" which isn't there when you look at longer periods.  

Seems more than that

More than a fashion choice: the everyday aesthetics of tattooing

This article, basically sympathetic to the modern fashion for tattooing that I live in hope will one day fade, starts with this:

According to the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, 22% of Australian men and 29% of women aged 20 to 29 have at least one tattoo.

In a 2013 survey conducted by Sydney-based McCrindle Research, a third of people with
tattoos regretted them to some extent, and 14% had looked into or started the removal process. Laser removal has become cheaper and more readily available, but there are serious safety concerns around cheap lasers, poorly-trained operators and the risk of serious burns and scars to clients.

Oh, I just noticed:  the percent is substantially higher for young women than men!

That's it:  I find myself having to join the ranks of Catallaxy nutters in expressing the view that feminism has obviously gone completely off the rails, and the repeated warnings to my daughter that any tattoo will be viewed extremely poorly by her parents will have to be increased to at least weekly.

Blue Cat diplomacy

Success of Doraemon film in China reflects thaw in ties with Japan: expert | The Japan Times

Hot and cold

Interruption of the Gulf Stream may lead to large cooling in Europe

A repeat of this scenario is still a possibility in the future, it seems:

The investigated time interval, called the Eemian, occurred before the last Ice Age and was characterized by warmer-than-present temperatures in large parts of the globe. The Eemian climate evolution can therefore serve as an analogue for a future warmer climate.

The study of fossil remains, such as plants and insects, preserved in geological deposits in northern Finland revealed an abrupt climatic cooling event that happened in an otherwise warmer climate. During this event the temperatures dropped 2–4°C and remained low for a period of  500–1000 years. Comparison with seafloor sediment records from the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic indicates that the rapid cooling was associated with a sudden slowdown in North Atlantic deep water
formation and a reduction in the northward extension of the Gulf Stream that transports heat to northern Europe.

The new evidence shows that the last time when temperatures were significantly warmer than today, climate instability occurred.

"This may have been caused by melt water coming from the Greenland Ice Sheet, disrupting the North Atlantic Ocean circulation. While the exact mechanism behind the sudden cooling still remains uncertain, the study illustrates the potential for major climatic instability in and around the North Atlantic regionunder future global warming", says Karin Helmens at the Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University.

I am assuming, by the way, that a 4 degree drop in present temperatures for centuries would be disastrous for present day northern Europe.  On the other hand, if it comes after the region has warmed 2 or 3 three degrees, I'm not sure.

Furthermore, although Hansen has made the point that a future industrial society can readily and cheaply produce enough warming gases that would hold off  a new Ice Age, there would like be much controversy about using them for a situation of only one part of the world needing it, while the rest of the world is already too hot.

But continue with your geo-engineering dreams, libertarians!

Computers and schools

Why Technology Alone Won't Fix Schools - The Atlantic

I know this is just one guy writing, but if this is true, the conclusion is what I suspected would be the case:

Over the last decade, I’ve designed, studied, and taught
educational technology in different parts of the world. In Bangalore,
India, I experimented with multiple mice plugged into a single personal
computer to increase student interaction. In rural Uganda, I cringed as
students played a typing game with their index fingers, hunt-and-peck
style. In Seattle, Washington, I wrestled with the distraction posed by
technology in an after-school computer literacy class for pre-teens.
Across all of those projects, a single, simple pattern held in every
case. I call it technology’s “Law of Amplification”: Technology’s
primary effect is to amplify human forces, so in education, technologies
amplify whatever pedagogical capacity is already there.


Amplification seems like an obvious idea—all it says is that
technology is a tool that augments human power. But, if it’s obvious,
it nevertheless has profound consequences that are routinely overlooked.
For example, amplification explains why large-scale roll-outs of
educational technology rarely result in positive outcomes. In any
representative set of schools, some are doing well and others poorly.
Introducing computers may result in benefit for some (the ones
highlighted in pilot studies), but it distracts the weaker schools from
their core mission. On average, the outcome is a wash.

Piglet witness

Goodness.  Beachcombing notes some rather unfair trials that happened in 17th century America relating to bestiality:

Take George Spencer who was executed in April 1642 in New Haven for having sex with a pig. It all began when a pig gave birth to a still-born piglet in 1641. A God-fearing colony would only too naturally have taken interest in a prodigious animal, but why did they care about George Spencer?  Well, George had one good eye and one ‘pearled’ eye: as did the piglet! There is a very good description of the case over at Executed Today: not the least fascinating thing about the sorry affair is that, lacking the necessary two witnesses, the local magistrates used George’s pig child as a mute witness. Before George was hung the pig was executed before him: the pig certainly and George possibly were the first two innocents on death row. In 1646 one Thomas Hogg (had to resist so hard here) was likewise suspected of having sex with pigs in New Haven: what kind of place was this? A pig had had two piglets that resembled him apparently: one was white skinned and bald; and one had a bigger eye on one side than the other. Thomas was very lucky to get off: unlike George he was intelligent enough to deny and to keep denying. He did have to pass through a particularly disturbing ordeal though. He was taken to barnyard, where his transgressions were believed to have taken place, and obliged to scratch the sows to excite their lust: apparently one sow responded by pouring out ‘seede’ before the assembled host (?), whereas another sow just wasn’t interested (‘it’s not you it’s me, Tom’). Beach wondered whether there were any other attempts to blame bestiality on folks on the basis of supposed shared physical characteristics.

More about Texas and poor planning

It seems that Texas, and America, has an  ongoing problem with politicians taking not floods (and climate change) seriously:

In the months before deadly flooding in Texas killed at least 24 people, some of the state's politicians objected to the imposition of stricter building standards for federally-funded projects in floodplains.

Engineers said that such standards are needed if taxpayer money is not to be flushed away in the next flood. ...

Texas received a “D” in flood control in a 2012 report on its infrastructure by the state’s section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. It ranks among the top states in the country in dollars paid for flood claims — behind Louisiana and New Jersey and ahead of New York and Florida. But it still has no statewide floodplain management plan. Flood mitigation is divided among three state agencies, none of which has full authority to implement capital projects or manage the state’s 23 river basins.

The report warns that the population of Texas is expected to double in the next 30 to 40 years and development in the floodplains will likely increase, both of houses and commercial developments near the state’s streams, rivers and lakes and along the Gulf of Mexico.

Also, it appears the national flood insurance issue is not the "socialist" problem that another article indicated:

Texas is also not a participant in the National Flood Insurance Program, though many of its communities are, the report notes. Standard homeowners insurance does not cover flooding but residents can get insurance through the program provided their community participates. In return communities agree to meet or exceed Federal Emergency Management Agency requirements for reducing the risk of flooding. ..

And as for the problem across the nation:

A strong attachment to private property rights has gotten the United States into a cycle of spiraling flooding losses, said Nicholas Pinter, who in August will join the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis. Mitigation is far more expensive than avoiding floodplains in the first place, he said.

“This is a not a short-term problem in Texas, this is a nation-wide imbalance,” he said. “This is the history of our development, management of our floodplains.”

After massive flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in 1993, the country spent $87 million in taxpayer funds to remove flooded structures, and stayed off the floodplain for three to five years, he said. But 10 years later, $2.2 billion of new infrastructure had been built on land that was under water.

“That’s the problem, it’s one step forward, two steps back,” he said.

The CRISPR way to danger

The sudden burst of interest in the ethics of human genome editing has come about because of the recent arrival of a new gene editing technique called CRISPR, and there is an excellent Nature News feature up about it, which notes warnings and misgivings from scientists about how it could go wrong.

Some extracts:

 CRISPR is causing a major upheaval in biomedical research. Unlike other gene-editing methods, it is cheap, quick and easy to use, and it has swept through labs around the world as a result. Researchers hope to use it to adjust human genes to eliminate diseases, create hardier plants, wipe out pathogens and much more besides. “I've seen two huge developments since I've been in science: CRISPR and PCR,” says John Schimenti, a geneticist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Like PCR, the gene-amplification method that revolutionized genetic engineering after its invention in 1985, “CRISPR is impacting the life sciences in so many ways,” he says....

Biologists have long been able to edit genomes with molecular tools. About ten years ago, they became excited by enzymes called zinc finger nucleases that promised to do this accurately and efficiently. But zinc fingers, which cost US$5,000 or more to order, were not widely adopted because they are difficult to engineer and expensive, says James Haber, a molecular biologist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. CRISPR works differently: it relies on an enzyme called Cas9 that uses a guide RNA molecule to home in on its target DNA, then edits the DNA to disrupt genes or insert desired sequences. Researchers often need to order only the RNA fragment; the other components can be bought off the shelf. Total cost: as little as $30. “That effectively democratized the technology so that everyone is using it,” says Haber. “It's a huge revolution.”

Now the warnings:

“This power is so easily accessible by labs — you don't need a very expensive piece of equipment and people don't need to get many years of training to do this,” says Stanley Qi, a systems biologist at Stanford University in California. “We should think carefully about how we are going to use that power.”...

“People just don't have the time to characterize some of the very basic parameters of the system,” says Bo Huang, a biophysicist at the University of California, San Francisco. “There is a mentality that as long as it works, we don't have to understand how or why it works.” That means that researchers occasionally run up against glitches. Huang and his lab struggled for two months to adapt CRISPR for use in imaging studies. He suspects that the delay would have been shorter had more been known about how to optimize the design of guide RNAs, a basic but important nuance.

 ...Doudna has begun to have more serious concerns about safety. Her worries began at a meeting in 2014, when she saw a postdoc present work in which a virus was engineered to carry the CRISPR components into mice. The mice breathed in the virus, allowing the CRISPR system to engineer mutations and create a model for human lung cancer⁴. Doudna got a chill; a minor mistake in the design of the guide RNA could result in a CRISPR that worked in human lungs as well. “It seemed incredibly scary that you might have students who were working with such a thing,” she says. “It's important for people to appreciate what this technology can do.”

Andrea Ventura, a cancer researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and a lead author of the work, says that his lab carefully considered the safety implications: the guide sequences were designed to target genome regions that were unique to mice, and the virus was disabled such that it could not replicate. He agrees that it is important to anticipate even remote risks. “The guides are not designed to cut the human genome, but you never know,” he says. “It's not very likely, but it still needs to be considered.”

As the article later notes, it might end up being a case like the earlier excitement about gene therapy falling apart, when researchers discovered it was a lot trickier to administer that hoped, and could kill.

This seems very likely to me.

My hunch, expressed in an earlier post, was that working on the molecular genetic scale is never likely to be easy and would be readily capable of having unintended consequences on other bits of the gene.  Seems I was right:

Yet many scientists caution that there is much to do before CRISPR can be deployed safely and efficiently. Scientists need to increase the efficiency of editing, but at the same time make sure that they do not introduce changes elsewhere in the genome that have consequences for health. “These enzymes will cut in places other than the places you have designed them to cut, and that has lots of implications,” says Haber. “If you're going to replace somebody's sickle-cell gene in a stem cell, you're going to be asked, 'Well, what other damage might you have done at other sites in the genome?'”

Keith Joung, who studies gene editing at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, has been developing methods to hunt down Cas9's off-target cuts. He says that the frequency of such cuts varies widely from cell to cell and from one sequence to another: his lab and others have seen off-target sites with mutation frequencies ranging from 0.1% to more than 60%. Even low-frequency events could potentially be dangerous if they accelerate a cell's growth and lead to cancer, he says.

What's more, I wouldn't be confident that even the successful removal of certain bits of DNA which cause disease might not turn out to have other, non desired, effects, but no one in the article addresses that.  

As the article goes on to also explain, the technique has the potential to bioengineering animals that always pass on the new characteristic, leading to the possibility of completely eradicating species very quickly.  But at what ecological cost?

So libertarians can get as uptight as they like about bioethicists who are philosophically opposed to editing the human genome for permanent changes down the line, but they ought to look at the real and practical issues with the process because they get too excited about its potential.

Oh the irony (and, possibly, I can stop talking about it now)

I've been thinking of the irony of how Tomorrowland, which specifically decries the popularity of pessimistic takes on the future in films and stories, is being outdone badly at the box office by a Max Mad movie.

It's like Brad Bird had a point...

I should explain:   the whole theme of Tomorrowland (in terms of pessimism becoming a self fulfilling prophesy) is something that I have often thought about over the years, especially in relation to how science fiction has changed, and now, in relation to the "it's too late anyway" excuses people come with up for not supporting government policies to minimise future increases in CO2 or spending on clean energy. 

I am also a long time fan of the techno-optimism of Disney's EPCOT centre.

Hence, the movie very much aligns with my opinions, up to and including the potential global benefits of elitist libertarians having large masses of metal fall upon them. 

Americans and flood insurance

Texas floods highlight need to reform key insurance program

Well, this is interesting - America has a government mandated insurance scheme for those who own houses in 1 in a 100 year flood zone, but it is broke and (allegedly) encourages development on said flood plains.

Hence the libertarian inclined have something government mandated to point the finger at as contributing to bad investment decisions.

But it doesn't stop the fact that in places like Brisbane, the local council simply prevents new residential development on land that is below the 1 in a 100 year flood line (or if it allows a build, the design has to be such that living areas are above the flood line.  Therefore, a raised house may be OK.)  

Well, that's OK then...

Toothbrush contamination in communal bathrooms

From the report of a study that finds that having your toothbrush in a bathroom with a toilet does indeed mean there will be some fecal contamination on it:

"The main concern is not with the presence of your own fecal matter on
your toothbrush, but rather when a toothbrush is contaminated with fecal
matter from someone else, which contains bacteria, viruses or parasites
that are not part of your normal flora," said Lauren Aber, MHS
(Graduate Student, Quinnipiac University). 

Texas and land use restrictions

In Texas, the Race to Build in Harm's Way Outpaces Flood-Risk Studies and Warming Impacts - NYTimes.com

I've seen precious little on this issue, other than some posts at Revkin's Dot Earth blog, such as the one above.

But it certainly appears that Texas' famously loose regulation of zoning and land use (which libertarians tend to celebrate, even if Houston seems to routinely score high on World's Ugliest Cities lists) is responsible for developers being free to build lots of homes on known dangerous flood plains.

It appears there have been plenty of warnings about it, all ignored.

Way to go, libertarians.  Cheaper housing for everyone, just don't be in it when it rains heavy.

And by the way, the rain in two American States last month really was record breaking:

A big ask

The United Nations climate conference: Making climate agreements work | The Economist

A couple of economists argue here why they still favour a cap and trade scheme to make international reductions in CO2 work.  But they do show a certain optimism, to put it mildly, about enforcement mechanisms.  Here are the concluding paragraphs:

There is no bulletproof solution to the problem of enforcement, but
at least two instruments should be used against countries which break
climate agreements. First, the WTO should treat non-compliance as a form
of dumping, leading to sanctions. Second, non-compliance should commit
future administrations and should be treated like sovereign debt. In a
cap-and-trade system, a shortfall of permits at the end of the year
would add to the public debt of offending country. The conversion rate
would be the current market price. Non-participating countries should be
punished with border taxes administered by the WTO.

There is no perfect solution to climate change that wraps economic efficiency in a
politically convenient package. But the current pledge-and-review strategy is unacceptable, and will just prolong the waiting game. A carbon tax, which is efficient and reasonable, is clearly superior. But the cap-and-trade approach combines the efficiency of the carbon tax with easier enforcement. For that reason we believe it should sit at the heart of any successful global climate agreement.

Any day now, I'll stop mentioning it...

Brad Bird's Movies Are About Creativity, Not Ayn Rand - The Atlantic

A pleasing article here about Brad Bird (and Tomorrowland).

Libertarian elitism

It's quite timely that Tomorrowland [yes, when will I stop talking about it?] has a plot which has prompted discussion about its quasi libertarian/Randian aspects, given the jailing of Ross Ulbricht for founding (and running) Silk Road as his libertarian dream.

Jason Soon has been tweeting (without comment) some libertarian articles expressing sympathy for Ulbricht.  This one from (I take it) libertarian cheer leader Kathryn Steele is completely and utterly over the top:

Make no mistake, in a society that slaps pedophiles and rapists on the wrist, Ross Ulbricht is sentenced to die behind bars because he dared to question the authority of the state.

Ghandi questioned the authority of the state and strove for a solution. Rosa Parks and MLK questioned the authority of the state and strove for a solution. Thomas Jefferson questioned the authority of the state and strove for a solution, George Washington questioned the authority of the state and strove for a solution.

What she doesn't mention is the issue of whether Ulbricht was putting contracts out to kill people threatening his business model.  (Maybe it was being done as pretensies, seems to be the libertarian response - like putting out fake contracts is a legitimate way of conducting business.)  But hey, what does that all matter, as long as Ulbricht was doing something that let people thumb their noses at the law of the land (several lands, actually) and libertarians could once again feel the righteousness of condemning a "war on drugs" that they have become utterly obsessed with as their favourite boogey man.     

I have previously posted about an article in AEON that explained why Silk Road, and enterprises like it, are doomed to become dangerously criminal.   It's worth reading again, as is this detailed report of the history of Ulbricht and the evidence that came out at trial:  it shows that Steele swooning over the alleged brilliance of her hero is just crap.  For one thing, the simple way he was caught indicates he was not the sharpest libertarian criminal mind in the drawer.   Ulbricht's defence that he was not the ring leader after setting it up is shown pretty convincingly to be improbable and (of course) self serving.   The work of the police in getting the laptop he was operating on was real crime movie stuff.

In any event, this case, and the libertarian support noticeable in Reason for direct human genetic modification, does demonstrate that the intellectual elitism of Ayn Rand's view of the world (you know, killing off moochers on a train)  is still a real issue within libertarianism.   National and international drug laws are for the little people, apparently.    Help facilitate their breach because you philosophically oppose criminalising drug trade on libertarian principles, and you're supposed to be a hero.

Yeah, no.

The judge's reasoning as to why this had to be hit with the harshest possible punishment was quite compelling:

Silk Road’s birth and presence asserted that its…creator was better than the laws of this country. This is deeply troubling, terribly misguided, and very dangerous.

And as for libertarian views on direct editing of the human genome - I'll come back to that later.

Tomorrowland Viewed - Blogger Happy

Saw Tomorrowland on the weekend, with the teen and almost teen kids, and we all liked it.

I don't understand the negative, or even mixed reviews.  There was nothing wrong with the third act:  it was not "too preachy":  it was all about what Brad Bird said he wanted to make - a movie about why optimism for the future had dissipated since the 50's and 60's.

Brad Bird remains a fine action director.    It consistently looks spectacular, and has elements of considerable charm.    (It's true, it's not a film for really young kids, but then, nor were the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and no one demands that of all Disney output these days.)

But now, let's get into the political analysis and spoiler territory.

Spoiler Alert:

As I have said, it is truly weird the enthusiasm with which some on the Right have taken a cue from the likes of Breitbart to hate the film, sight unseen.  (Oh no! - a two hour film mentions global warming as a serious threat to the planet for about 45 seconds of its running time, and it must be condemned.  Geez, the Right is truly intellectually enfeebled at this point in history.  When is it going to recover ?)

To be fair, though, at least one Right wing site gave it a good review.  That attracted this comment:

George Clooney, and the movie is being used by Government Motors to push Smart cars.

I'm pretty sure I already know what the movie is about. No thanks. I'm just sick to death of Communism.

?

On the other side of the political fence, the movie has attracted a fair bit of commentary about whether Brad Bird is a crypto libertarian, particularly at Slate.  (Reason also noted it could be called a version of Atlas Shrugged for Kids.) 

I reckon this Slate article answers this proposition correctly:  no, Bird is not a Randian fan, and is clearly a supporter of Democrat politicians.  Bird has respect for the innately talented (very clear from Ratatouille and The Incredibles), but his stories also emphasize the talented fitting in to society and benefiting it collectively.

I mean, (honestly, clear plot spoilers about to be stated)  even in Tomorrowland, the two characters who espouse the wonders of said titular dimension as a de-regulated realm where the best can succeed free of restraint (a distinctly libertarian idea) turn out to be evil killing robots; and the guy who has decided to keep the rabble out of his version of Galt's Gulch gets killed (we think) in the end.  

Aren't those plot points a fair enough hint that Bird thinks talent should be free to have its head, but that's about where his libertarian/Randian sympathies stop?

And a  final point:   the movie has made me realise that any movie which heavily features rocket packs is likely to be enjoyable.   I didn't mind The Rocketeer all those years ago;  but even a dark film featuring them, like Minority Report, was also good. 

But it must just be a rocket pack, not a rocket suit.   (Based on the fact I don't care for the Ironman movies.)   My rule of thumb regarding movies with rocket packs is quite specific.