Warm up north

Record US temperatures are work of El Nino and polar vortex, experts say | US news | The Guardian

It can't be helping the Republican PR cause, having some cherry blossoms in December....

German coco nut

Death By Coconut: A Story Of Food Obsession Gone Too Far : The Salt : NPR

Born in Nuremberg in 1875, August Engelhardt was among the disaffected youngsters drawn to the back-to-nature Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement sweeping through Germany and Switzerland at the time. Its proponents yearned after an unspoiled Eden where people ate
vegetables and raw food.

Engelhardt was especially taken by Gustav Schlickeysen's 1877 dietary treatise, Fruit and Bread: A Scientific Diet. Influenced by Darwinism, the book claimed that since the natural food of apes was uncooked food and grain, that was also "the proper food for man."

Engelhardt  took it even further: For him, even bread and fruit were tainted. In his mind, the only immaculate and mystical fleshpot was the coconut, with its snowy white meat and translucent water.

In 1898, he and fellow vegetarian August Bethmann laid out their vision in a pamphlet called A Carefree Future: The New Gospel. As the pamphlet's grandiose subtitle makes plain, Engelhardt's ambitions of a Coconut Camelot, with himself as a nude King Arthur, were driven by much more than dietary compulsions: His was a spiritual quest.

"He believed that since the coconut grew high up in the tree, closest to God and closest to the sun, it was godlike," says Kracht. "And since it had hair and looked like a human head, he thought it came closest to being a man. According to his rather crackpot theory, to be a  cocovore was to be a theophage — or eater of God."

 So he goes to an island in New Guinea with a coconut plantation, 15 young Germans join him, they die or catch malaria (which Engelhart claimed wouldn't happen because of the power of the coconut) and his cult ends.   Engelhardt himself dies at 44 as a skinny and very unhealthy man.

Now if only it had been parsnips, on the other hand....

Fundamental mistake

What???  I, as a Spielberg nerd, and no doubt thousands of Star Wars nerds, am shocked at the caption beneath this report on The Australian:

Kate's looking nice, in an Annie Hall kind of way, but Spielberg has never been "an original director" of anything Star Wars.  

Whichever wet behind the ears journalist who wrote that deserves the sack.

How did the Right get so stupid and nasty, Part 2

For no particular reason, via Tim Blairs blog (which still lists me in the blogroll, as it appears not to have been updated for 8 years or so), I dropped in on the long running American right wing comic Day By Day.  A couple of recent entries:

Yeah, the first one is meant to be (I think) from a DVD the characters are watching.  Cos, you know, there's  nothing the paranoid gun owners of America would like more to watch than a black president (is he meant to be a zombie too?) being blown away over gun rights.

The second one again shows the "don't worry, if he tries that he'll be shot" philosophy of the cartoonist.

This cartoon is still linked to by the half respectable Hot Air conservative site (which seems to have a lot of Catholics amongst its columnists).   Perhaps they don't read it, too. 

How did the Right become so stupid and nasty?

The nastiness is not confined to one side of politics:  if anything, the Left used to pretty much have the market in asinine, ridiculously over-simplistic yet rudely and aggressively stated views to itself.

But why did the American Right decide to go that way too?  Seems to me to be a major socio-cultural question that I really haven't seen properly explained, yet.

This was brought to mind by noting on the weekend the American Right blogosphere (and their Australian numbskull followers) high-fiving themselves over convicted criminal and Obama hyperventilator Dinesh D'Souza  getting nasty with a college student in America (while simultaneously not listening to him.)

To paraphrase the exchange down to its key parts:

Privileged white college student:    Don't you think you should acknowledge that black disadvantage is ongoing not only as a result of the slavery era, but even from the well documented modern financial discrimination such as how veterans after WW2 were treated?

D'Souza:   well, why don't you give up your rich white-ass seat at this college to a black person?

PWCS:  hey, I didn't say I supported Affirmative Action..

D'Souza:  well if you're serious you would

PWCS:  hey, if you're saying I'm a hypocrite - we're all a bit hypocritical in the way we don't all do the maximum thing that our concerns indicate we could, in theory, do; but you know, I've tried to help in some ways....

D'Souza:   so you support Affirmative Action.

PWCS:   I just told you I didn't.  I'm talking about effective social security - 

D'Souza:   You massive hypocrite - you make me sick - yes, you personally.  We can deal with the historical injustices either by ending discrimination (which we did in the civil rights movement) or you can be a Leftist thieving scumbag, like you, who wants to steal from others to give it to the underprivileged, but won't give up your own seat in this college.   

......

I don't think I'm exaggerating much...

Now, I've left out the bits about D'Souza saying how if you want to look far enough back in history, lots of people confiscated lots of stuff from lots of other people, so rectifying all historical injustices could be a never ending exercise (true).  But he ends up in such an over the top position of his own that is only defensible if he's a "all tax is theft" twit. 

I see that The Atlantic took a look at his decline from relatively credible conservative commentator to over-the-top, irrationally Obama hating darling of the Tea Party.   (The article notes that critics say he likes to attack straw men - a tactic used in abundance in the video above.   Surely people can see that?   Oh, that's right, these are the same people who can't believe thermometers, either.)  For a more acerbic attack on D'Souza, you can't go past Bill Maher interviewing him in 2012. 

I hadn't paid attention to him much til this weekend, but it seems he may well be emblematic of the decline of American Right.

Update:   I meant to add that D'Souza's story seems similar to Niall Ferguson - formerly somewhat interesting conservative writer capable of making decent argument becomes mere hyperbolic shadow of his former self in playing up to the Tea Party wing of the Right.   Both are divorced too, in what I think were unhappy ends to their first marriage.   Niall Ferguson got much publicity a couple of years ago by arguing Keynes didn't really care about the future (and the effect of his economics on it) because he was gay.  Perhaps  conservative extremism in academics is exacerbated by adultery and divorce, hey Niall?

Another good Marvel comedy

As readers will recall, the genre of science fiction comedy is one that I particularly enjoy, and while I regret the huge amount of Hollywood time now devoted to comic book material (in the form of Marvel or DC Comics characters) played seriously, I can enjoy it if it is used primarily for humour.

Hence I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy, and this weekend, very much enjoyed Ant-man, too.

It's a terribly witty script with (of course) very silly and inconsistent physics.  But it is funny, fast, nicely acted, and features the best role for Thomas the Tank Engine ever written.

I suppose I should say something about Paris...

For a short, sharp take on the outcome of Paris, I think James at his Empty Blog is probably as good as any - as long as you read the comments too.

As I try to be a "glass half full" type of person, generally speaking, I find myself somewhat encouraged to read about the shocking pollution in China last week (and, perhaps, the incredible smoke problem stemming from Indonesia that blights neighbouring countries too) as giving reason for at least those countries to get serious about not burning carbon for reasons other than mere temperature rises and climate change.  But then again, maybe I am being too optimistic (see The Economist's short take on the Chinese air pollution problem.)

I see that Lomborg has been The Australian's go-to boy for commentary on how the Paris meeting was all for nought.   I see that Senator for Guns, Soccer Fans (but not Bicycle Helmets)  Leyonhjelm tweet-cites him, which is a bit odd, given that Lomborg actually advocates a $100 billion to be spent on clean energy research.  I thought small government types didn't trust governments to back winners.   

By the way, Lomborg's website seems to contain even more selfies than Tim Wilson's twitter account, if that's possible.   Wilson:  "Oh look, here I am, in one of the crucial historical and cultural centres of the world, so let's take up half of this shot with my beaming face!":

And what the heck is he doing there at a meeting with the Palestinians and Bronwyn Bishop and Christopher Pyne??   See his twitter account, if his visage doesn't give you hives.

Update: John Quiggin's cautious optimism seems about right, too.

I'm quantum walking backwards for Christmas*

I didn't care all that much for Adam Gopnik's recent New Yorker piece talking about science, and in particular, "spooky action at a distance", but I did like the end of this paragraph:

What started out as a reductio ad absurdum became proof that the cosmos is in certain ways absurd. What began as a bug became a feature and is now a fact. Musser takes us into the lab of the Colgate professor Enrique Galvez, who has constructed a simple apparatus that allows him to entangle photons and then show that “the photons are behaving like a pair of magic coins. . . .They are not in contact, and no known force links them, yet they act as one.” With near-quantum serendipity, the publication of Musser’s book has coincided with news of another breakthrough experiment, in which scientists at Delft University measured two hundred and forty-five pairs of entangled electrons and confirmed the phenomenon with greater rigor than before. The certainty that spooky action at a distance takes place, Musser says, challenges the very notion of “locality,” our intuitive sense that some stuff happens only here, and some stuff over there. What’s happening isn’t really spooky action at a distance; it’s spooky distance, revealed through an action.

A clever way to put it!

Speaking of spooky action, I also noticed this week on arXiv another paper (he has many) by Australian philosopher Huw Price (and Ken Wharton) entitled "A Live Alternative to Quantum Spooks"  about how retrocausality could an explanation. even though this possibility is pretty routinely overlooked.  Here's the crucial page:

If I understand him correctly, Price argues that this type of retrocausality preserves free will - it's just that the consequences of it can work both forwards and backwards.  (!)

He also says that this couldn't be used for potentially paradox causing signalling to the past: 

It couldn’t be used to signal for much the same reason that entanglement itself can't be used to signal

Well, he's convinced me of the possibility.  Now if only the physicists will get on board...

*  for the young reader:  a topical reference to a song from the Goon Show.

Satellites vs Thermometers

Sometimes you have to wonder why someone on the science reality side hasn't graphed something earlier.

For the last couple of years, I guess, the climate change denialists have moved from following Roy Spencer's UAH satellite temperature graph to the one by RSS, because of the lower trend it now gives for recent atmospheric warming.   As can be seen from the Skeptical Science trend calculator, this is what your get for RSS for the last 18 years:

This is what you get when you use UAH for the same period:

So you can guess which one is now Andrew Bolt's favourite (even though he used to post only UAH every month.)

But, as people who read other than denialist propaganda know, the satellite method of determining temperatures is inherently complicated, and is about the temperature at different levels of the atmosphere.   Hence, they do compare what they are doing with the balloon based thermometer readings to see if the methods they are using for the satellites seem right.

So, given that RSS is now the denier's outlier, Tamino has graphed it against the balloon thermometer record known as RATPAC, and shows this:

 As Tamino says:

They’re in excellent agreement until recently. Lately there’s a strong divergence, one which seems to be growing, after about 2012. It’s hard to believe that the problem is with balloon data; yes there are important calibration issues with them, but thermometers are still thermometers, and there are just as many serious issues if not more with the satellites’ microwave sounding units, including merging over a dozen different instruments, disentangling the signal from different levels of the atmosphere, and changing orbital drift and timing — issues about which different teams do not agree.....

 The RSS data simply fail to show the recent warming which is plain to see in the balloon data — the data from actual thermometers.

Now, as we know from Andrew Bolt's recent whiny post about being called out by Waleed Aly, Carl Mears from RSS is no AGW skeptic.  So I am curious as to why this discrepancy hasn't been brought up earlier.

Unless Tamino has made some sort of mistake, this graph of his absolutely blows away the "satellite temperatures are the gold standard that NOAA is ignoring"  in a way that is so plain to see, even to denialists. (And that's before the likely spike from the El Nino shows up early next year.)

Update:  this recent article in Forbes gave some of the technical details of how satellite measurements work.

Took me a while...

...to work out who the departing Oz editor (and disgrace to the whatever good name journalism might sometimes be capable of) Chris Mitchell:

 reminded me of, but I'm pretty sure it's the young Les Patterson:

OK, maybe  not that much of a physical resemblance, but the swept up hair and plain features just makes them both look old fashioned and not the brightest, to my mind.

Caution urged

I'm getting rather concerned that the new Star Wars film may be being burdened by the extraordinarily high expectations of the public.   Can it live up to its hype?

I'm not really the Star Wars nerd that some other middle aged men (and women) seem to be.   The first movie was good and ground breaking in several ways;  the second was terrific; unfortunately the promise was squibbed in the third.   The prequels are notable for many things, but none of them positive:   Lucas' tin ear for dialogue; his tin ear for mythology after all, with the strange quasi-demolition of the mysticism of the Force via the "midi chlorian" explanation ( I am betting the new movie tries to forget completely about that - and Jar Jar Binks); and of course the un-engaging results of making adventure movies with way too much CGI.

But yes, I am relatively keen to see the new movie, although I think my expectations are realistically lower than those of many.   (I am not convinced that JJ Abrams is that good a director - but everyone's so relieved it's not George, it may hardly matter.)

Anyhow, I was thinking this morning:  what things would really disappoint me in the new film?  Here are a few ideas:

*  if it ends with an X Wing attack on a new and deadly space based weapon, I'll scream.  That's what made Return of the Jedi a dull re-write of the first film:  it must not happen again.

* any mention of midi chlorians (see above);

* a CG  army of Yoda clones (although I would be slightly amused if some sort of long lost loser son of his turned up and had to learn the way of the Force from aging Luke - as long as the son is a puppet, not pixels);

*  a set of Chewbacca pups could be funny too, as long as they make a brief appearance only;

*  no ewoks, please.

The shrill cries of denialism failing

Seems to me that the climate change denialism movement is getting rather shrill and hysterical.

They are, after all, having an embarrassing failure of a time in attempting to counter the negotiations in Paris.  What do they expect if the likes of loon faced conspiracist Monckton is one of their stars:

"I'm quite sure that without Turnbull and his own faction, the UN would have found it harder [to topple Mr Abbott]," he said. "But I think it's also naive to assume that [Mr Turnbull] has not been in contact with the UN and that they have not provided him with whatever assistance he required to achieve his objective.

"I talked to [UN Secretary-General] Ban Ki-moon a few months ago. They know perfectly well that the climate is just a side issue; it's an excuse, a pretext. It's pseudo-moral cover to give the UN a form of supra-national, indeed global, governing power from which there will be no escape."

It seems that, in an odd turn, the Heartland Institute decided to go to Paris primarily to just talk to each other. Strange. 

Someone paid Alan Moran to go to Paris too - since he apparently no longer works at the IPA, perhaps it's Gina paying for him personally?   (Or some coal company or other, I expect.)  Anyway, his reports back are full of his complaints about climate change "factoids", which is pretty funny if he thinks people don't  recognise him as a routine deployer of denialism factoids.   Are his reports appearing in the Murdoch press, or just at denier central (aka "Catallaxy Files")?   Anyway, seems to me he's getting no traction with anyone important;  I don't really know why he's there.

And Andrew Bolt is having a hissy fit over Waleed Aly calling him out over using just the RSS satellite record to "prove" global warming is still paused.    Does Bolt read enough to realise that there is an excellent chance that the satellite graphs are about to turn against him?   Because that could explain his shrill tone in that piece.

I don't even think that Ted Cruz's calling Mark Steyn to give evidence at his repetitious Congressional committee denial-a-palooza has worked out well.    Is this what the denial movement is reduced to - relying on testimony from experts on Broadway and popular music of the 20th century?  Because, you know, the actual scientist who is on the side of the 97% of other climate scientists pretty much wiped the floor at the hearing:

After Senator Cruz pushed Titley to answer a question about the satellite records, which he claimed “the global warming alarmists don’t want to talk about,” Titley let loose. “Let’s talk about the satellite measurements,” Titley said. “Let’s talk about orbital decay. Let’s talk about overlapping satellite records. Let’s talk about stratospheric temperature contamination. I think Dr. Christy and Dr. [Roy] Spencer, when they’ve put this out, they have been wrong, I think, at least four consecutive times. Each time the data record has had to be adjusted upward. There have been several sign errors. So, with all due respect, sir, I don’t know which data, exactly, your staff has, whether it’s the first or second or third or fourth correction to Dr. Christy’s data. We used to have a negative trend, and then we had no trend, and now we begrudgingly have an upward trend.”

As someone writes, Cruz, Steyn and other denialists are trying to claim they are "victims" now.  This tactic has been around for a while, but perhaps its exacerbated by the sense coming from watching Paris that they really are sidelined and being ignored by the serious people in the world.

Things to post about

There's actually quite a lot I would like to post about:   the awfulness of Donald Trump and the gutlessness of the Republican Party (he'll be dumped, eventually - I can't really see any other outcome);  the ridiculousness and lack of insight on the part of Tony Abbott (he is Kevin Rudd circa 2010 - but with the addition of testosterone, unpopularity with the Australian public, and fewer brain cells);  the outright smug ignorance of Ted Cruz on climate change;  but I am rather busy.

So instead, I will just post this trailer for Steven Spielberg's next film.  I am presumably not in the prime demographic for this type of film, but the trailer is extremely pleasing, as it highlights everything that's fantastic  about a good Spielberg film:   the lush and enveloping John Williams score (so sorely missed in Bridge of Spies); beautiful cinematography; the use of suspense, even in comedy or lighter movies; graceful and engaging camera movement; pleasing composition of shots; good acting; and story material with themes that are never degrading or violent for its own sake.   Can you tell I like him?:

NYT really can't stand this Republican field

Bizarre Responses to a Plea for Reason - The New York Times

Look at this editorial piece from the NYT, and enjoy its withering  dismissal of this bunch of Republican candidates:

Donald Trump, a bigot without foreign policy experience, showed that there is nothing he won’t say or support to sow hatred. On Monday he outrageously proposed barring all Muslims from entering the country. There is no precedent for denying immigration based on religion, experts say, and any such test would surely be used as an excuse to attack Muslim Americans.

Ted Cruz, Twitter warrior, pledged after Mr. Obama’s speech to “direct the Department of Defense to destroy ISIS.” He played soldier all weekend in Iowa, spouting “We will carpet bomb them into oblivion,” to a tea-party crowd in Cedar Rapids, adding “I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out,” whatever that means.

Marco Rubio took to Fox News to remind Americans that they are, or should be, “really scared and worried.” He also said that “people are scared not just because of these attacks but because of a growing sense that we have a president that’s completely overwhelmed by them,” as if he alone had his finger on the pulse of America.

“Bolder action across the board is needed because our way of life is what’s at stake,” was the nonprescription from Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. “Also, when terrorists threaten us, our response can’t be to target our own constitutional rights. Our rights aren’t the problem, our unwillingness to act to defeat extremists is the problem. We need to decisively and aggressively protect our nation and our ideals. We can’t delay.”

Greenpeace does something useful

Exposed: Academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel funding - Energydesk

I don't pay much attention to Greenpeace, but this investigation was good and useful.

Don't believe everything said at a police conference...

As it happens, I have some personal knowledge of the family beset by tragedy yesterday in Brisbane (daughter suffering a "violent death", mother believed to have committed suicide, father said to have been asleep until police arrived.)   I did, in fact, contact the police.  No return call (yet).

Suffice to say that certain things said by the police officer conducting the press interview yesterday afternoon were not accurate.   Of course, I do not know what happened on the night; but it was more of a matter of a comment or two made at the conference about the background of the family situation.

I guess this is not unusual in the early stages of an investigation, but it is still a bit annoying to not see more care taken in comments made.   

Update:  police statement given.   

How your teenager will get lost

How Fallout 4 took over my life — and gave me a new one - Vox

I have to say, this writer does a great job of explaining why he finds the recently released Fallout 4 so engaging and addictive.   But in doing so, he also inadvertently serves as a warning to parents as to how "dangerous" this game may be if your teenager gets it, at least if you want them to have a recreational life away from the computer.

A bit of a reality check

Drug tests wouldn't prevent deaths: expert | SBS News


Also, read this article at Vice where the English seller of testing kits says the same thing - they have to be very cautious about not over-promising about what can be done with crude on site testing.

Of course it's sad for the family when a young person dies from a drug.   But people in grief are not the best judges of public policy, particularly when they have the added grief that their child deliberately took something (and merely for fun, not due to any addiction) not knowing whether it was safe.   

 

Kant in 8 minutes

I quite liked this recently created short discussion of the life and (some of the) works of Kant:



The only thing I would say, though, is that the video gives no attention to his Critique of Pure Reason, which modern philosophers tend to like more than his moral philosophy. 

Deadly talk radio

Dead Air — The California Sunday Magazine

Actually, it's about The Philippines, where being a talk back radio has an usually large role, and can be very dangerous:

The Philippines has about 600 radio stations, generally small affairs held together with hope and duct tape. To defray costs, many stations rent out “blocks” of transmitter time to freelancers. In the provincial Philippines, where radio is king, “blocktimers” are often the only source of news and political criticism people can hear. At its best, blocktiming is a mix of political theater, social commentary, and yellow journalism. Some blocktimers are loudmouthed demagogues (think Rush Limbaugh). Some are serious journalists producing shows akin to 60 Minutes. Some are zealots and crusaders, fighting corruption and environmental degradation. Some are hacks working for the families that run the Philippines. A good blocktimer — one who stirs up some controversy and gets a good audience and a sponsorship deal — can earn a middle-class living.

Are blocktimers trustworthy? It is hard to say. A political system built on double-­dealing and conspiracy breeds a paranoid style. That federal report a blocktimer is reading, which provides evidence of a politician’s theft from a road-building fund: Is  it accurate or ginned up by one of his rivals? And the blocktimer himself, fulminating against corruption: Who is paying him? All too often, it’s another politician buying his voice the same way he might buy a hit man....

The Philippines is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. Depending on how you count, only Syria, Iraq, and Somalia are more lethal. According to the Philippine Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, at least 168 journalists have been killed since1986, when the Marcos dictatorship fell and democracy was restored. About half of the dead have been freelance broadcasters, like Damasco. By the time Damasco took to the air against Hagedorn, the murders had developed a certain ritual. As the broadcaster leaves work, a motorcycle with two men drives up. The passenger fires. The journalist falls. The motorcycle speeds away. Whoever hired the hit man goes unpunished.