Economist confirms economics fail

Economics: Current climate models are grossly misleading : Nature News & Comment

Well, now even Nicholas Stern is joining in on the "economic modelling we've been using for climate effects is almost certainly a crock for being too optimistic" line.

Seems a bit late for that now, doesn't it?   He should have been arguing that about 10 years ago, and just saying something like this:  "Ha!  you expect us to be able to calculate the effect of climate change of various types and uncertain extremity on GDP in 100 years time?   Forget it.   There's obvious potential for massive damage to humanity and its built and natural environment: you just need to get urgent policies into place to get CO2 down now."

Oscars not worth my consideration

I'd be slightly worried that it might be a sign of old age that it seems that each year, the Oscars have become less relevant than the year before to the type of movies I actually want to see, were it not for the fact that the badly declining ratings for the show indicate I am far from alone.

I mean, the movies which probably got the biggest pre and post release publicity (Force Awakens, and perhaps Spectre) are of no real interest to the Academy, it seems. 

But I did see Bridge of Spies, which was OK, if a tad underwhelming, so I should still watch it for a glimpse of my directorial hero and his wife.

Actually, I do want to see Spotlight, too.  And that adult stop motion mid life crisis story Anomalisa, which (strangely) is being shown at a brisbane  art-house cinema once a day at lunchtime.   Perhaps that should be another Google Play rent...

Funniest Oscar related tweet you'll probably see

Only 10 years late

Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid, reviewed.

I mentioned last week that I saw and liked Journey to the West, a well directed kung fu-ish Buddhist comedy.

It was directed by Stephen Chow, who I didn't realise has been a huge name in Hong Kong and China (and relatively well known in the West too) until I read up about Journey. 

He's now got an enormous hit on his hands in China with The Mermaid, which I see has a one cinema release in Brisbane (in one of the more Chinese heavy suburbs.)

I also see from Reddit that lots of people love his 2005 film Kung Fu Hustle, which I found on Google Play movies, and have "rented" to watch sometime in the next month.

(This is the first time I have rented a movie from Google Play.  I see that buying movies from them has attracted much criticism, as they apparently do not allow the downloaded movie to be moved, ever, from the location it was downloaded to.  And that can't be a PC hard drive: it has to be an Android device or a Chromebook tablet.   I also am curious about the SD picture quality.  But all will be revealed when I start watching the downloaded movie...)

Douthat trying to walk that tightrope again

It's one of the signs of the current Republican (almost obscene) clueless-ness that some of them are trying on the "this Trump phenomena - it's all the fault of Obama" line.   Jonah Goldberg had a particularly ludicrous go at this a couple of week's ago at the LA Times, which opened with this:

In Springfield, Ill., last week, President Obama commemorated the ninth anniversary of his bid for the White House. He admitted that one of his “few regrets” was his inability “to reduce the polarization and the meanness in our politics.”

To conservative ears, Obama's comments fell somewhere between risible and infuriating. Obama has always done his best to demonize and marginalize his opponents. Either the president honestly cannot see that or he's cynically pretending that the fault lies entirely with his critics. If only there were some way to figure out whether he's sincere.

(OK, so the column wasn't directly about Trump - it was about how Obama shouldn't appoint the next Supreme Court judge as a way of making it all up to the Republicans who have been hurt by his refusal to bend to their will by things like, well, undoing his signature health care policy.   But you can see how this plays into the "he has caused Trump" line.)

Now it's Ross Douthat's turn, and as usual, he tries to take a more considered, reasonable sounding line.

Look, there is one element of truth in there:  that Obama's first campaign was big on "hope" rhetoric and light on policy - as I've said many times, he didn't impress me as a well qualified person for the job, at all.   And the "change" rhetoric leaves me cold generally - it was too much like the Kevin Rudd line with its shallowness.

But seriously, there is no comparison between the concern that reasonable people may have had about the suitability of Obama for the job with that which they should have with blowhard, "say anything" ratbag Trump.

As the top comment after the article says (typos and all):

We could see this coming, couldn't we? It was inevitable that establishment Republicans would blame Donald Trump's successful insurgent campaign for the GOP nomination on Obama. Ross Douthat ties himself in knots making the argument that it's all the fault of Obama and the Democrats.

But here's the real connection: the election of Barack Obama gave Republicans the opening to make incivility in politics sonehow...cool. He made it possible for them to claim that the president of the United States was born in Kenya; they could yell "You lie!" as he delivered his State of the Union; they could boast that they were going to kick his rear end out of the White House. They did all this and their constituents loved it.

Donald Trump is riding that wave, quite possibly all the way to the Republican nomination. Is it Barack Obama's fault, or the fault of a party that has gone so far off the rails that a carnival barker like Trump is now seen as a plausible leader?

I didn't mind this comment further down, too:

Ross, you're better than this.

Commenters who point to Reagan's imagery, in his campaigns and in office, are completely right. Obama did some over the top stuff in his first campaign, but he didn't invent the celebrity politics business which, at a minimum, goes back to JFK and Jacquie.

You know as well as your readers that the most important influences leading to Trump were: the Southern Strategy, stagnant wages, loss of good jobs, leadership failure of "the elites."

Any contribution from "politicians as celebrities" is completely overshadowed by the take-no-prisoners politics that emerged with the removal of the "fairness doctrine" for broadcast. That, in turn, gave rise to Limbaugh and company, followed by Gingrich revolution in the mid-90s, the rise of Fox News, and, now, the evolution of cable news, a media-politics complex that has turned the Presidential election process into a non-stop source of programming.

Tracing this to something Obama did is, I think, beneath you.

Holding the candle for Tony

I can only assume that it's courtesy of former Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker's taking on the top job at The Australian that it has become so firmly the National Paper of Yearning for the Return of Tony Abbott.  

Which is really pretty hilarious.   No matter how badly Turnbull may be perceived to perform, there is no way that voters are going to think the solution is to go back to gormless Tony.   I work around people pretty passionately against Labor - none of them thought Abbott was a success as a PM.   They think he was an inarticulate idiot in the role.

But it's good to see The Australian sinking further and further into negative credibility and/or irrelevance. 

Update:  as people on Twitter are saying:

Evidence for harmful reef effects already taking place

Landmark experiment confirms ocean acidification’s toll on Great Barrier Reef : Nature News & Comment

Given the complexity of this type of experiment, I would still be a little cautious about its conclusions.

But it's still not good news for the long term prospects for the GBR.

Something I would have thought obvious, but evidently not...

Yeast study offers evidence of superiority of sexual reproduction versus cloning in speed of adaptation

Apples in India

While reading about that too-good-to-be-true cheapo smart phone in India last week, I was reminded about how iPhones barely sell there:

Now, a sales target of a million iPhones is within breaching distance in a country where the installed base of smartphones is very low. According to Counterpoint Technology Research’s senior analyst Tarun Pathak, 106 million smartphones were sold in India in 2015 but 300 million more smartphones are expected to be sold in the next two years. Significantly, Apple has only about 1 percent share of this booming smartphone market. “It is a huge, enticing market that just cannot be disregarded,” says Pathak. “India is a high-potential market not only in terms of volume but also the massive scale and opportunity that lies ahead.”

Amazing.  (But then again, it could just be that I'm easily amazed.)

It would be, like, Peak America

Douthat Apologizes For Trump Joke | The Daily Caller

Poor old Ross Douthat attempted a joke about how an assassination attempt (like one in a movie, which involved the target using a baby to shield himself and thus losing credibility) could end the Trump campaign.  He's since deleted the tweet and said sorry.

Well, normally, conservatives would complain about PC self censorship, but not now, hey?

Because, honestly, who with any imagination at all hasn't had an idle thought about how deeply ironic and "peak America" it would be if Trump were shot on the campaign trail, preferably by some schizophrenic migrant nutter with no health care plan (perhaps with immigrant parents from Mexico?) who had still managed to legally buy a gun with cash supplied by the Koch brothers?

And, as I have noted before, Right wing nutters have been fantasising about Obama being shot for his e-vil (non-existant) plans to seize American's guns.

So Ross should be cut some slack...

Ooh, a mystery!

BBC Future - The quest to solve YouTube’s strangest mystery

I suppose if I read Reddit more carefully, I would have known about this earlier.  And now it's slightly more mysterious, given that when I check the channel in question, it seems the recent Youtubes have been taken down.

All sounds very "numbers station" to me...

A reasonable take on lock out laws

Sydney wasn't vibrant before these alcohol laws, it was embarrassing - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Inner city areas change all the time - weren't people complaining about Oxford Street dying long before the lock out laws?   As the author writes in this very fair minded article, it's also the case that 24 hour liquor licences and sudden popularity with hoards of drunk youngsters crowds out other, more sedate, businesses (like restaurants).

Overly liberal licencing laws therefore benefit some type of businesses at the cost of others.  Tightening those laws means there may be a transition to the other type of businesses in the area.   Residents may well find their property values increasing; drug peddlers, prostitutes and strippers may have to find some other area to work from.  Such is life when governments decide, with voter approval, that regulation needs tightening.

President Troll

I was going to post about how much Trump's campaign behaviour resembles one gigantic troll of the Republican party, and the entire planet, but I see the point has been made before.

The thing is, some trolls can be pretty funny, and I'd be pretty sure that at some of those supporting him think it is all part of a game.

But I can't see it lasting all the way to the White House.

The fact that the Koch Brothers are starting to fight harder against him doesn't mean much - didn't they blow a huge amount of money on the Romney run?

Trump winning the candidacy would therefore have a couple of benefits - it may further impoverish the Koch's bank account and influence, and (presumably) blow up the Party whose behaviour and nonsense ideology for the last decade deserves blowing up.

I also didn't mind this article that gives a possible explanation as to why even evangelicals are voting for Trump:  as a "last hurrah" against a lost culture war.  Or, maybe, evangelicals just enjoy a funny troll, too...

About that Safe Schools program...

Many years ago, I wrote a post complaining that American schools with their gay support clubs were going too far, in the sense that I don't see that teenage sexuality really warrants school based scrutiny or endorsement.   All sensible adults don't really want high school teenagers of any type having sex;  that complete sexuality self understanding is not something that teenagers (in particular) actually need to be certain of seems badly unacknowledged these days; and an emphasis on the right to privacy in terms of sexual feelings should (to my mind) be the priority.   But, as is usual, I find it hard Googling my own blog successfully, so I haven't re-read it for a while.  I think that is how it went.

So now we have some hoo-ha about an anti-bullying program that concentrates on sexuality based bullying.  The idea of an anti bullying program that incorporates sexuality based bullying is fine.   Part of the concern about the Safe School program, though, is that some of the suggested exercises seem a tad too advanced for the age intended.   (The bit about asking 11 year olds to imagine they're 16 and with "someone they're really into".   My recent experience with 2 former eleven year olds is that this would have been like asking them to imagine they're an aardvark - it would have been pretty incomprehensible. )  But as I understand it, educational material like this is not set in concrete - the manual gives suggested exercises that teachers can pick and choose from, as would appear to suit their circumstances.

So part of the complaint appears overblown to me; but it probably does grate somewhat against my views about how sexuality is dealt with not just in schools, but in the media and broader society these days.

Can't an anti-bullying program just emphasise that it's none of  a student's business to care or complain about which gender a fellow student might feel some sexual attraction towards, and that bullying based on that will be sternly dealt with?

But this is not to say that I have any particular problem with school based, quite detailed, sex education material regarding how your basic sex works, and its practical and emotional consequences.  (And contraception, of course.)  After all, the European approach to this does seem to work reasonably well.  And as if teenagers want to hear the details about it from their parents...

A modest proposal

Malcolm Turnbull sticks to Tony Abbott's defence spending pledges in long-awaited white paper - ABC News 

Well, Malcolm Turnbull seems to be truly turning into an Abbott Lite (or "Not So Lite") with this announcement that we'll be going for 12 new submarines.  (And a commitment to a 2% GDP defence budget.)

Now, I like defence technology as much as the next, um, man/woman/transgender defence person, but the whole problem with our submarine fleet has long been not being able to convince sailors to serve on them, hasn't it?.  

How do they propose getting around that problem with a fleet of 12?

My proposal - which will presumably cut costs too - subcontract out their running to the Filipinos.
I understand that they already run a huge percentage of cargo and passenger shipping.  They'll work for half the salary, too, provided they are left with tips after a successful voyage.

I cannot see why I'm not a politician. 

Amazing technology

Li-fi '100 times faster than wi-fi' at shine of a light presented at Mobile World Congress - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Did I post about this before?  I forget, but I have read about it previously.  I find it hard to believe that an LED bulb can transmit data this quickly:

Laboratory tests have shown theoretical speeds of over 200 gbps —
fast enough to "download the equivalent of 23 DVDs in one second",
founder and head of Oledcomm Suat Topsu said.

"Li-fi allows speeds that are 100 times faster than wi-fi" which uses radio waves to transmit data, he said.

Fair enough

Proposed Senate electoral reform is essential

The man with the dorkiest face pic at the Conversation (please change it, Adrian) writes about the Senate voting reform, and figures that (unlike Labor's concerns) that Labor and the Greens may benefit from it.

Brain parasite reconsidered

The Myth of "Mind-Altering Parasite" Toxoplasma Gondii? - Neuroskeptic

Hey, maybe cats aren't quite as evil as we all suspect.*   Read above for an interesting study looking again into the question of whether toxoplasma gondii has much effect on human behaviour.


* I doubt this.  I have a theory that they may explain libertarianism.

Marked "not to be trusted"

Chris Uhlmann should mind his language on 'cultural Marxism' | Jason Wilson | Opinion | The Guardian

Interesting column here about Uhlmann believing a right wing campfire scare story that I had never bothered looking into because I always thought it improbable.

Look, my rule of thumb for reliability across a spectrum of subjects holds good here:  Uhlmann years ago made it plain that he thought belief in AGW was more religion than science - a favourite trope of climate change denialism.   This alone indicates he's not the brightest, and his time as host on 7.30 confirmed him as not particularly quick witted, and routinely soft on the Coalition and dismissive of Labor. 

You can't really trust him on anything.

Entirely reasonable

Government set to change Senate voting in bad news for 'micros'

I find it hard to credit that making people vote so as to indicate their actual preferences, as opposed to letting people vote when they are absolutely in ignorance of where their preferences will go, can be argued as being bad for representative democracy.  

I suppose that the "micro" argument is that, regardless of how they get there, having more micro members (so to speak) in the Senate is better for democracy.   They like the current system, but they should be more upfront that it pretty much like running a lottery for a handful of Senate seats each election. 

I would also assume that, should this reform be followed by a double dissolution, it will be goodbye to my favourite Senator to hate, Leyonhjelm.  I will have to re-focus the target of my political hatred elsewhere if that happens.  But I can live with that.