In rat research news...

Researchers test meth-addicted rats in a rodent casino

It's kind of what you would expect, I suppose, but this is what they found:

Using a gambling test, we demonstrated that methamphetamine
(METH)-treated rats chose a high-risk/high-reward option more frequently
and assigned higher value to high returns than control rats, suggestive
of changes in decision-making choice strategy. 

Liking the Lollipop

The Samsung TabS I use got its software upgrade to Lollipop (Android 5.0.2) on the weekend.

I'm not a giant nerd about these matters, but I have to say, the new operating system seems to have sped up the way the tablet operates in a very pleasing way.

Not sure that I've learned to love the keyboard yet, but I think I'm starting to like that too.

I also finally got around to paying all of $4 to get PicSay Pro.  (I usually use the lite version to make the comic book speaking boxes in photos.)  It's a very comprehensive set of photo fiddling tools, and has very a high positive rating on Google Play which is well deserved.

The high attrition rate detailed

What Happens to Sperm Once They're Inside a Woman?

I didn't go looking for this post, honest.  But it does give an interesting explanation of the high attrition rate of sperm cells at each waypoint, so to speak, on the way to the egg.

Pompeii finally viewed

I mentioned recently that I had recorded but not watched Mary Beard's doco on Pompeii.  (I thought it was a short series, but it appears it was a single show.)

I watched it with my son last night, who was surprised to learn about all the sex and rude bits on open display around the town.

Anyway, it was really very good, and I see that it is on Youtube for viewing too.   Hope Mary, and the BBC, don't mind. 

Big wind, indeed

Wind power generates 140% of Denmark's electricity demand | Environment | The Guardian

Infrasound worrier David Leyonhjelm has taken to sarcastically calling the wind power industry "Big Wind".

I take it he saw this story.

True, Denmark has a population of only 5.6 million, and is particularly windy, but still, a modern industrial country getting all of its power that way seems surprising.

In a more general sense, I see that the country is aiming for half of its power from renewables by 2020 (and completely "green" in power by 2050.)

The other interesting wind power story is to do with South Australia, In fact, I see that the State is ambitious in targets too (although it is aiming to achieve this through a combination of solar and wind):

Interestingly, the South Australia government has already exceeded its target of generating 33 per cent of the state’s electricity needs from renewables (over a full year), and has now set a 50 per cent target by 2025. In reality, it will likely reach that mark well before that, particularly if the Ceres wind farm and the Hornsdale wind farm are built. It could even be the first mainland state towards 100 per cent renewables over the whole year.

Wind power is performing better than expected, it seems.

Yet more "we need babies" talk

Japan should re-examine the idea of marriage to help spur a baby boom | The Japan Times

Yet more talk here about the Japanese population decline and the need to be "creative" in finding ways to encourage reproduction.

I did learn something new about France along the way (I thought it was perhaps a bit more "traditional" than this, given it managed some decent sized protests about gay marriage):

For instance, one of the biggest social obstacles is the institution of
marriage, which sounds counterintuitive, since everywhere marriage is
considered a prerequisite for having children. But it doesn’t need to
be. France has one of the highest birthrates in the developed world, and
in 2006 the majority of new mothers there were not married.
In Japan, the birthrate for unmarried women is almost zero, because the
taboo against having children out of wedlock is effective.

Trump and the base

Republican Base and Donald Trump — WHINOS Are Frustrated and Choosing Foolishly | National Review Online

 Heh.  The apparent popularity of nutty Trump with the Republican "base" is upsetting some other Republicans. 

Premature praise

Grindr – The app that has become part of the sexual health solution | Croakey

Interesting report here of a study of the use of sexual health messaging on the Grindr app, which most people think has likely increased the amount of unsafe sex amongst men by making casual "hook ups" easier to organise.

The report seems to say that because a lot of people using the app did go to the site with more information, it was a success.

What it doesn't (and probably can't) deal with is the question of whether more men got tested as a result, or were dissuaded from their intended recreational sex, or were convinced to have the sex but only safe sex.   (And, I note, with syphilis in particular, which this campaign seems to have been about, safe sex means no unprotected oral, which one suspects is a particularly "hard sell" in the gay community.)

So, I wouldn't getting too full of praise for it being a "sexual health solution."

Nothing has changed

Some careless media reporting out there, taking its cue from a poorly drafted press release, about the prospects for a "mini ice age" sooner rather than later, which of course would be grabbed with glee by people who refuse to read widely on global warming.  (And by "reading widely" I mean read what science says, apart from a handful of do-nothing/denialists sciecntists.)

Here is the correction on the latest story (read the comments too), but it's pretty much what we have known for years - a new solar minimum will likely have small consequences for global warming, given the amount of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere over the last few hundred years.  But yes, it could mean some cold winters in parts of the world.

Sad to report the decline of Pixar

I think it's probably time to call it:  Pixar is past its prime and lately producing only passable entertainment that carries little in the way of its early quality.

This is prompted by seeing Inside Out yesterday, inspired as I was by high praise from critics, and despite a trailer which I thought indicated a not very funny or visually exciting film.

Guess what - it was the trailer that was right, not the critics.

I really don't understand their excitement.  The movie was more like an academic exercise to build a story around a psychology book.  So there were ideas there, just not very interesting ones; characters on screen who were hard to identify with (most the characters are the "inside your head" emotions, anyway - they aren't meant to be nuanced) and a visual style that was unexciting and uninnovative.

It was not a bad film per se, just a very forgettable and not very engaging one.  (I actually think Brave was positively bad, so its certainly possible for Pixar to have a complete dud, in my books.) 

As for the big picture at Pixar, the last one I quite liked was Toy Story 3, and that was in 2010.  I have never bothered with Cars2, given that I thought the first was dull and childish; and Monsters University was underwhelming.

Now, part of the problem is how often they are re-visiting the old stories, and it's a bit distressing to see there are probably 4 sequels in their current production line up.  But Brave and Inside Out show they are fizzing on "stand alone" stories too.

Their highlight films for me remain the original Toy Story, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille, with A Bug's Life deserving an entry too.  Brad Bird is the pick of their directors, but he hasn't made enough yet to really see how consistent he can be.
 

Rising Inequality and its apologists

There's a good and enlightening review from last month at The Economist about another book on inequality, this one by British economist Anthony Atkinson.

We get to see this chart:

and these bits of explanatory comment:

Inequality across rich countries was high before the two world wars of the 20th century. It fell to striking lows after 1945 and then began growing again around 1980 (see chart). Rising income inequality is a feature of most rich countries, especially America and Britain, and parts of the emerging world, including China. Sir Anthony is not interested in outlining any fundamental economic rules. Instead he carefully walks the reader through the ways that different forces have pushed incomes apart historically.

In America, for instance, incomes at the top of the scale began pulling away from the rest quite soon after 1945. Yet household inequality—taking account of taxes and transfers—did not rise until what Mr Atkinson calls the “Inequality Turn” around 1980. Several factors contributed to this, including changes for women and work. After the second world war, when female labour-force participation grew rapidly, high-earning men tended to marry low-earning women; the rising numbers of working women reduced household inequality. From the 1980s on, by contrast, men and women tended to marry those who earned like themselves—rich paired with rich; rising female participation in the workforce exacerbated inequality.

This line from the review:

Sir Anthony dwells on one class of contributory factors above all others: the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways the rich are able to influence government policy in order to protect their wealth.

 put me in mind of some commentators in Australia.  Who could they be*?:

Anyhow, The Economist reviewer is critical of many of Atkinson's suggestions as to reigning in inequality, basically saying they are unwelcome throwback to the 1960's and 1970's.   And to be fair, the criticisms on some points ring true.

But overall the review obviously considers the book an important contribution to an important issue. What irks me most is the effort those in the ABC** collective put into arguing there is no issue at all.

* words in their mouths are mine, but as far as I can tell, represent their positions with only mild exaggeration, if at all in some cases

(** the Australian, Bolt, Catallaxy)

A troubled life

Literary Review - Donald Rayfield on Stalin's Daughter

Well, amongst the many things I didn't know much about until now was the turbulent life of Svetlana Alliluyena, Stalin's daughter.  She defected from Russia in 1967.  This paragraph  from a review of a new biography gives some details of her, shall we say with understatement, troubled life:

Svetlana emerges as a remarkable, largely generous, sometimes heroic
figure. Whatever she inherited from her pathologically cruel and
vindictive father and from her neurotic, suicidal mother she did her
best to overcome (her brother, Vasili, succumbed and destroyed himself
with drink and sex; her half-brother, Yakov, who grew up fostered in
Georgia and did not meet his father until he was a teenager, was
captured by Germany during the Second World War and effectively
committed suicide by provoking his German captors to shoot him).
Svetlana's childhood and youth were as traumatic as any of Euripides's
tragedies: her mother shot herself when she was six; Stalin had nearly
all the maternal aunts, uncles and cousins of his children arrested and,
in many cases, shot. Svetlana's first love was badly beaten and sent to
the Gulag; her first husband was erased from her passport after they
divorced; her second husband was the withdrawn son of one of Stalin's
cronies. She barely saw her father after she ceased to be a living doll
that he could play with: her most searing memory is of Stalin in his
death throes on the floor, soaked in urine, threatening her with a
raised left hand. Yet after his death she negotiated a career for
herself and refused to be a mascot for the party or for anyone else. In
the prestigious Gorky Literary Institute she stood up for the first
dissident writers to fall victim to the Brezhnev regime. She dared to
live openly as Singh's partner.

She did not have a particularly good time after her defection, either, but you can read the review to see what went wrong.

A tad misleading by the publisher?

Maybe I just hadn't bothered to read up on it, but I hadn't realised until now where this new Harper Lee book stood in relation to Mockingbird:

Though “Watchman” is being published for the first time now, it was essentially an early version of “Mockingbird.” According to news accounts, “Watchman” was submitted to publishers in the summer of 1957; after her editor asked for a rewrite focusing on Scout’s girlhood two decades earlier, Ms. Lee spent some two years reworking the story, which became “Mockingbird.”

So, although it is set ahead of the first book, it's a bit like a first draft of the famous one.

I wonder how many people ordered the book on the basis that it was a sequel written after the first?  Because coming to the book on the basis of how it was really written may well lower ridiculously high expectations.

The Guardian did have a lovely graphic/audio accompaniment to the first chapter, though.  (Actually, I don't care for the audio.  It quickly becomes tedious.)

Krugman on Greece

Greece’s Economy Is a Lesson for Republicans in the U.S. - The New York Times

I find Krugman pretty convincing on most things.  His summary of Greece, and implications for American politics, sounds reasonable, too.

That odd topic again

Do I Sound Gay? Film-maker's personal journey explores the 'gay voice' | Film | The Guardian

So, an entire documentary has been made by a gay man about the "gay voice".  Looking at the trailer for it (it's in the article linked), it seems an earnest effort.  Perhaps too earnest.

I think I have written here before that the topic is of interest because I once shared an office with a gay guy, who was surprised to learn that I could readily tell when he was taking a call from a gay friend.  Not one with a terribly masculine inflection at the best of times, his voice clearly became "gayer" when he took calls from certain friends.  As his sexuality was a potential issue for his job (we're back in the 80's now),he was concerned that his voice gave him away.

It's unclear whether the documentary offers any clear explanation as to how the stereotypical gay accent developed (and develops in individuals);  as far as I know there is not really one simple answer.

Sort of encouraging

Richard Ackland's Gadfly column in today's Saturday Paper summaries an article by academic Rod Tiffin a few weeks ago, concerning the diminishing influence of the Murdock press:

It seems the News Corp sheets have a diminishing ability to influence elections. They are simply lecturing to the same ageing, welded-on conservatives and reactionaries, so the “conversion factor” is nil.

Tiffen goes through the data, which is sobering. Last year the total circulation of all Australian daily newspapers was about 2.1 million, one million lower than 15 years ago.

In the past 18 years the “penetration” rate of newspapers has declined to such an extent that Moloch papers, with roughly a 60 per cent share of daily newspaper circulation, are now bought by a gritty hardcore of 4 per cent of the Australian population.

Apart from that, Essential Research has discovered that about half the readers of the Moloch tabs don’t trust what they’re reading.

The ability to influence, because of the uptake of tabloid content by the radio shock jocks, is also limited. Again the elderly listeners are a similar demographic to the readers of these jaunty sheets.

As Tiffen puts it: “Together, the two media form a self-aggrandising and self-referential noise machine, and their volume and bluster should not be mistaken for outreach.”

When it comes to web readership the picture is even grimmer because, of all the newsprint products, tabloids are the most challenged by the digital revolution, with the exception of Britain’s Daily Mail.

Difficult as it is to believe, Tiffen says most visits to The Daily Smellograph’s website are “fleeting”, often only 30 seconds or less, with much less “political impact”.

Confused over the "culture war"

Culture War Two: conservatives get high on their own supply | Jason Wilson | Comment is free | The Guardian

Jason Wilson's discussion of the culture war raises in my mind the uncertainty of what can or cannot be included under the umbrella of that idea.

Wilson says that it all started as follows:

Culture war arrived in Australia as a wedge tactic borrowed from US Republicans. There, it was crafted in the late 1980s, as a way of shifting debate from the inequalities brought about by Reaganomics to the more advantageous terrain of morality and values. Culture war also allowed conservatives to substitute an internal enemy for the collapsed USSR.

In Australia, Howard used an adapted version to court the votes of blue collar conservatives – Howard’s battlers, who were promised “An Australian nation that feels comfortable and relaxed about three things: about their history, about their present and the future”. The ABC
“luvvies”, who had been tarnished by their association with Paul Keating, became the enemy.

What started as a cynical ploy has apparently become a deeply-held belief for some conservative politicians and pundits. The right are now high on their own supply, and some of them may never come down.

Seems to me that the article suffers a bit by lacking a definition of "culture war".

Gerard Henderson is quoted as saying that Howard lost the culture war with the ABC.  By which he means, ABC analysis still typically skews soft left.   (What Henderson overlooks is that this does not necessarily help the political Left:   the Labor reforming governments of the 80's were often attacked on ABC current affairs from the left, too.)   The reality is that journalism is always going to appeal as a career to people on the soft Left.   Obsessing about that is like complaining there are too many gay guys serving you your drink on Qantas:  it's not going to make any difference in the big picture, even if you would prefer to be handed your scotch by an attractive woman, and running a campaign against it is going to make you look like a  controlling nut.

I tend to view the big "culture war" issues of my lifetime as being the silly post-modernist movement and its rub off effect on history and education (and, possibly, sexual identity politics.)

On these matters, I say the Left mostly lost - no one treats post modernist guff seriously anymore, and despite the complaints of old time culture war warriors writing in the Australian, extremes in education theory have swung back to an evidence based centre, as has history.   And starry eyed views of aboriginal issues influenced by such things are not so prominent now as well.

The one area where you could perhaps say the Left had a spectacular culture war win has been sexuality (what with gay marriage.)   But it's a bit hard to pin down the Left/Right divide on that - I mean you have the libertarian Right supporting gay marriage as much as former "anti-marriage for anyone" Left.  And I have a theory that a change in public attitude towards heterosexual reproduction, with the technological revolution in simple contraception and IVF, has had a big influence on how people perceive homosexual relationships.  I don't think it was so much the Left driving the culture change here; it just evolved through several strands of societal change.

Next you get to the tricky area of how culture war ideas effect economics theory.  I guess there is appeal in saying that Thatcher's "no such thing as society" sounds like a "culture" statement, as does Libertarian fetishism over doing what they want whenever they want to ("how dare you propose locking me out of a Club at 4 am even if I have never wanted to go there at that time before"), but I suspect these are more properly characterised as ideological or philosophical positions rather than cultural ones.

In any event, there is no doubt that the political Left has tended to become more centrist in it adoption of economic policy over my lifetime - another way in which you can argue the Right has been the "winner".

I'm think Wilson's article supports the view parts of the Right have gone rather nutty in several respects because it has already had the reasonable wins it could expect, and has been left with a sense of no where else to go.   (Amusingly, pop analysis of the Labor movement is that it has lost its heart because of falling relevance of trade union membership.   This is simply a factor of rising wealth and a move to the sensible centre.  And yes,  a move to centrism can represent an identity problem for either side, but to its credit, it's not Labor which has swung to an anti-evidence ideological extreme in response.)

So, unfortunately, much of the Right has chosen to be ideological over evidence based, and to unjustifiably interpret everything through a "culture war" lens no matter how inappropriate or redundant that approach may be to the practical matter at hand.   In a weird role reversal, they have become the ones now who think evidence is unimportant, not because (as the Left thought for a while) that everything is relative and a social construct, but because they think everyone else except them are the ones making stuff up.  They already know from their ideology how the evidence should really go.

A sad situation...

Little doubt what people would have assumed...

Cairns bomb plot: Accused had car full of fuel, court hears | The Courier-Mail

Some fascinating details here from a court case of an alleged plot to blow up an Australian Naval base, which appears to have been prevented in the nick of time.

I can just imagine how, if this happened, the media speculation (and Abbott's reaction) would have been assuming it was a likely Muslim terrorist attack.

Tiny hero?

Ant-Man Reviews - Metacritic

Surprisingly, this Marvel entry is getting some good reviews.  As there appears to be humour in the film, possibly it is worth seeing.  Silly science fiction can be quite OK, if it is reasonably funny along the way.

Philosophy in comic form

I was fairly amused by this installment of Existential Comics.

Actually, the previous installment was good too.   Perhaps I need to spend a while at that site...