El Nino to finally bring flooding rain to California? (And drought in Syria)

El Nino’s Long-Awaited Grand Performance Is On Its Way to California
 | Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Could be very wet in California in the next couple of weeks.

In other climate related news, a study suggest the Syrian drought (which may have contributed somewhat to the current disastrous war) is the worst one for 900 years, and could indicate more to come:

War has been the direct driver of the refugee flux and behind that is  a complex mix of social and political factors both inside and outside the region. One fiercely studied and debated driver has been a recent dip into a series of severe droughts starting in the late 1990s.


Previous work has prescribed some of the drought — and its impact on the socioeconomic fabric in the Middle East — to climate change. New findings published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres put it in even starker context, showing that the drought is likely the worst to affect the region in 900 years. The Mediterranean as a whole has been subject to widespread drought at various points in the past 20 years. Climate models project that the region is likely to get drier in the future, which Ben Cook, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said drove the new line of inquiry.

“These recent drought events have motivated a lot of concern that this could be an indication of climate change, with the eastern Mediterranean and Syrian droughts being the most obvious,” Cook said....The projections for the region show a continued drying trend throughout
the coming century as climate change contributes to a shift in circulation patterns. That means what’s happening there now could just be the start of more prolonged, more severe drought. In a region already wracked by water scarcity and conflict, more drying could ratchet up
tension even further.

I take it that the economists' models for future effect of climate change on global GDP have trouble factoring that one in?

Some explanation of how America's odd system works

Primary voters don't really look like America | Guide to the presidential primaries

For starters, it's a small group. Just 20 percent of American adults vote in presidential primaries. They tend to be older, whiter, and better-educated than your average general election voter.

Primary voters also tend to be highly partisan, which helps explain why ideas at the fringes of each party (free college for all, a giant wall along the Mexican-US border) gain traction
during the primaries.

Primaries in the US are also sequential; rather than everyone voting on the same day, some states have their primaries early in the year, some later (for more on why, check out our previous videos).

Unless you live in a state with an early primary, there's a good chance your party will already have a nominee by the time you get to vote, meaning your vote is basically meaningless.

New(ish) physics papers

Noted recently on arXiv, a paper with the attractive title:   Black Holes and the Multiverse.  The abstract:

Vacuum bubbles may nucleate and expand during the inflationary epoch in the early universe. After inflation ends, the bubbles quickly dissipate their kinetic energy; they come to rest with respect to the Hubble flow and eventually form black holes. The fate of the bubble itself depends on the resulting black hole mass. If the mass is smaller than a certain critical value, the bubble collapses to a singularity. Otherwise, the bubble interior inflates, forming a baby universe, which is connected to the exterior FRW region by a wormhole. A similar black hole formation mechanism operates for spherical domain walls nucleating during inflation. As an illustrative example, we studied the black hole mass spectrum in the domain wall scenario, assuming that domain walls interact with matter only gravitationally. Our results indicate that, depending on the model parameters, black holes produced in this scenario can have significant astrophysical effects and can even serve as dark matter or as seeds for supermassive black holes. The mechanism of black hole formation described in this paper is very generic and has important implications for the global structure of the universe. Baby universes inside super-critical black holes inflate eternally and nucleate bubbles of all vacua allowed by the underlying particle physics. The resulting multiverse has a very non-trivial spacetime structure, with a multitude of eternally inflating regions connected by wormholes. If a black hole population with the predicted mass spectrum is discovered, it could be regarded as evidence for inflation and for the existence of a multiverse.

I'm still a bit unclear whether this is relevant to the black hole and information issue.  This gets a mention at the end of the paper, but I don't understand their point.

Another paper of recent interest has John D Barrow, who's been around for a while, as a co-author.  It's Turning on Gravity with the Higgs mechanism.   OK, it's not as if I understand it, but I thought it noteworthy because the authors seem excited that its a genuinely new idea that may help a lot with quantum gravity, and working out the fate of the universe.

Still too radioactive to eat

Norway's Radioactive Reindeer - The Atlantic

Didn't realise that radioactivity from Chernobyl was still causing problems in northern Europe, 30 years later...

Madhouse driven madder

Always full of mad, and frequently offensive, right wing vitriol*, I see that the participants* of Catallaxy** are being driven especially berserk over the clearly poor impression George Pell is leaving in his evidence to the Royal Commission into child abuse.  Not only that, but Andrew Bolt's surprisingly harsh assessment is causing further outrage.  (Don't worry, Bolt will probably recant - he's too much of a cultural warrior to not come back to support for Pell.)

Mind you, I'm still not particularly interested in the matter.  I remain distinctly uncomfortable with the publicity the survivor group is getting.   As truly shocking and terrible (parts of) the Catholic Church have been in this matter, I still cannot get over the feeling that some victims are unhealthfully not moving on, ever; and intense media attention promotes that.

To be fair to some indirect victims, however, such as those with suicide in their family very likely attributable to abuse, it is hard to see how you would ever stop thinking about it.


* average physical age is now up to 70, by my estimate; but mental age:  a cranky 86. 

**  Other recent Catallaxy highlights:  people there cancelling their subscription to The Australian because it's become too left wing [hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha];  the endorsement of Trump by "I'm right and the rest of the world is wrong" economist Kates;  the continuing eccentric obsession with tobacco plain packaging by Prof Davidson; and of course (I'm contractually obliged to mention this at least every 6 months) the continuing failure of the latter's stagflation warning of 2011 - stagflation being the natural consequence of following Keynesian policy, of course.   Now that the global temperature alleged "pause" is well and truly over, I wonder when he'll start talking about policy responses to climate change, too.

Update:  and the predicted Bolt-ian retreat is in.

Yay for a broken record

Of course, if you've been following matters closely, you will know that there is excellent reason to be suspicious of the satellite temperature record, given the complexity of that method of measuring temperatures high in the atmosphere.  

Nonetheless, the psychological effect of having the climate change denier's (now former) favourite graph with a broken record should be fairly big.   At least, if the deniers weren't ideologically devoted to not believing science on this issue:

 

Blame the Tahitians

Last week, I was reading about the effect of Tahiti on the European sexual imagination, and Joseph Banks and his tattoo did get a mention in passing.  Well, it seems from another book (Maritime History and Identity:  The Sea and Culture in the Modern World) that we can blame the current scourge of Western civilisation (tattoos, of course) on the same period in history:

I should add though:  I don't really have an issue with an actual islander person (especially a male) having an authentic islander design on their body, if it is a genuine reflection of connection to a culture that is many centuries old.  (I draw the line at face tattoos, though.)   My biggest problem is, of course, with the garish Western rubbish of skulls, flags, dogs, girlfriend/boyfriends names, slogans, unicorns, fairies and flowers that comprises modern tattooing.

Bringing light to Africa

What difference will Obama's plan to bring power to Africa make? - BBC News

Interesting article here on an American move (with bipartisan support, oddly enough) to bring renewable energy to Sub Saharan Africa to people who currently have no electricity at all.

I particularly like that it notes the infrastructure issues which make your simplistic, "they just have to get some coal power plants built" argument unrealistic.

Malcolm's burden....

Dancing in the New World

How Columbus Said Hello: He Tried Dancing – Phenomena: Curiously Krulwich

An odd bit of history here - talking about how Columbus and other new arrivals to the New World tried dancing as a way of starting up interaction with the natives.  (I guess "natives" is not PC?)

Loss of privacy

God knows that the concept of wanting to be a champion athlete in any sporting endeavour is foreign to me:  the idea of losing a huge amount of each day to exercise, winning a medal or five and then not knowing what to do with your life after you've peaked at (say) 21 sounds horrible.

But it does seem to be what quite a few swimming champions, in particular, go through. 

And so it is that I feel sorry for Ian Thorpe.   And his point about loss of privacy in his teenage years again seems oddly relevant to the Safe Schools program discussion:

The Olympic champion Ian Thorpe has said he would have come out earlier if he’d had more time to become comfortable with his sexuality.....

Thorpe said he was first asked about his sexuality when he was just 15.

“If I had a little bit more time when I was younger I would have come out, because I would have been comfortable with that,” Thorpe said. “And that’s why I think, we’re all making the same point, around why we don’t push people to come out.

Again, I should say that I think much of the concern about the program is being overblown by conservatives (the latest politician to attach himself to outrage about it - Tony Abbott!  Could this man possibly "do a Rudd" any more thoroughly than he clearly is?)

But on the other hand - it sure seems to me that the program might have the consequence of making some teenagers feel under pressure amongst their peers in a similar way that Thorpe did not appreciate.

Careful with the green tea

Herbal supplements linked to at least six Australian organ transplants since 2011, data shows - ABC News 

The "herbal supplement" that is most discussed in this article is green tea extract.  It's put in some protein supplements, apparently, but:

There is research that suggests green tea extract can become toxic at median level at the equivalent of 24 cups in a day.

An unusual form of OCD

Here's an odd story, from a therapist at an American website about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (and which, as far as I can tell, is not aligned with any Christian group), that has particular interest in light of the ongoing discussion about the Safe Schools program and its material related to teenage sexuality:

"Let me guess," I said, leaning forward.  "One day you were doing something you always do, and suddenly you started to pay attention to yourself in a different way.  As you focused on yourself, the thought suddenly came into your head, "Maybe this means I'm gay.  How do I really know I'm not?"  I kept on, "Since then, you keep checking yourself, you know, like looking at guys or girls and trying to see who you're attracted to.  Maybe you watch the way you talk, or walk, or move your hands, to see if you do these things the way a gay or straight person would.  How am I doing so far, Mike?"  He stared at me and answered, "I feel creeped out, like you're reading my mind."

I went on to explain that I definitely didn't have ESP (as far as I knew), but that he was suffering from a very common form of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (also known by the abbreviation OCD); one that doesn't get talked about very much, and certainly not a lot by people his age.  Many people with obsessive sexual identity thoughts shared the particular symptoms I had outlined, so they weren't very hard to guess at.  I related to him that at one time, a few years ago, I actually found myself treating six different people at once for this type of OCD, and that we had even held a support group meeting just for this group.  I added that these thoughts weren't confined to heterosexual people, and that I had even treated a gay patient who was troubled by obsessive thoughts that he might be straight.

Michael went on to confirm that his doubtful thoughts of being gay came on suddenly one day when he was looking through one of his bodybuilding magazines.  He remembered looking at one picture in particular and thinking, "I wonder if I find this guy attractive?"  With that, he suddenly became very anxious and horrified that he could have such a thought.  He also found that in the days following, he couldn't get the thought out of his head.  What made things worse, was that the other guys in school had a habit of teasing each other about being gay, a not unusual occurrence.  Remarks that he used to shrug off now became very frightening.  "What if they really can tell?" he remembered asking himself.  He found himself avoiding his usual crowd.  He threw away the bodybuilding magazines.  He stopped going to school.  Nothing helped.  It seemed like the harder he worked to avoid thinking about whether or not he was gay, the more he would think about it.  "But I'm not gay," he emphasized, "I'm not attracted to guys, so why am I thinking this?  I've never been attracted to guys!"  He paused for a moment.  "But the thoughts seem so real."

OK, it may not be very common, but it's possible that the Safe Schools program leads to this in some teenagers.

[Not sure about any teenager with bodybuilding magazines, though.  I can't get my head around that as an interest...]

Dinner party downer

Wittgenstein, bewitched | TLS

Perhaps there's not much new in the biographical details in this review of a book about Wittgenstein, but it is amusing to read lines like this:

As in many of these pieces, one thing that comes across in
Malcolm’s memoir is how incredibly difficult Wittgenstein was. “It was
always a strain to be with Wittgenstein”, Malcolm writes; “not only were the
intellectual demands of his conversation very great, but there was also his
severity, his ruthless judgements, his tendency to be censorious, and his
depression.” Von Wright concurs: “each conversation with Wittgenstein was
living through the day of judgement. It was terrible”.

[Kant, I will remind the reader, was supposed to good dinner party company.]

All true

Ross Douthat says Obama created Trump. That’s nuts.

William Saletan writes scathingly of the Republican blame game:

 In Trump, Republican voters have found their anti-Obama. Trump spurns
not just political correctness, but correctness of any kind. He lies
about Muslims and 9/11, insults women and people with disabilities,
accuses a judge of bias for being Hispanic, and hurls profanities. Trump
validates the maxim that in presidential primaries, the opposition
party tends to choose a candidate who differs temperamentally from the
incumbent. Obama is an adult. Therefore, Republicans are nominating a
child.

Ouch, as they say.

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.