To be read later, I'm a bit busy...

How American Politics Became So Ineffective - The Atlantic

South Pole rescue

Daring Antarctic rescue mission sets off for South Pole : Nature News & Comment

Someone's sick at the South Pole station and a little twin engine plane is flying there to the rescue.  It has happened before, but the conditions are extraordinary:

In 2001, Ron Shemenski, another physician overwintering at the station, came down with gallstones and pancreatitis. The NSF decided his condition was severe enough to warrant bringing him out. “I didn't want to look back on that year and think there might have been something we could have done to save his life,” says Jerry Macala, who was the station manager for the winter and participated in discussions about whether to evacuate Shemenski. Eventually, a Twin Otter flown by Kenn Borek pilots touched down on a runway outlined by
flaming barrels.

“It was very cold, more than 90 below,” says Nathan Tift, who served as one of two meteorologists that winter. The evacuation was “so strange”, he says, “just because it had never happened before”. Crew members filed out and took a photograph of themselves with the visiting Twin Otter. But then, when the plane tried to take off, they realized that its skis had frozen to the runway from the friction of landing.

Workers had to rock the plane from side to side to liberate it, so that it could eventually take off.

Trump lying noted

Trump: When I said more people at the Orlando nightclub should have had guns, I meant guards or employees � Hot Air

Campaign going down

Donald Trump’s May fundraising totals are disastrously bad - The Washington Post

If I understand the article correctly, Trump raised $3 million in May compared to $27 million by Clinton.

I am guessing that part of it may be due to his followers still thinking he's going to be self funded all the way to the White House (which, of course, he is not going to reach.)  They liked the idea of his being self funded - giving money would interfere with that.

What an amusing problem for the Republicans.

Paranoia has a win

I see that the Department of Justice made a statement justifying their initial decision to release a redacted  transcript of the Orlando killer's call as follows:

The Department of Justice released a statement later on Monday defending the redaction.
Officials said they wanted to remain sensitive to the victims, their families and the ongoing investigation, while also not providing "the killer or terrorist organisations with a publicity platform for hateful propaganda".
"Unfortunately, the unreleased portions of the transcript that named the terrorist organisations and leaders have caused an unnecessary distraction from the hard work that the FBI and our law enforcement partners have been doing to investigate this heinous crime," the statement said, before releasing the full transcript of Mateen's first 50-second phone call.

Seems reasonable enough to me.  But then, they underestimated the amount of nutty right wing Obama paranoia in their own country.

Who would have guessed (certainly, I don't think any science fiction writer ever did) that the trajectory of American history would read "start of the 21st century - first American black president elected - sends 25% of American population nuts."*

*  I'm willing to entertain debate on the precise percentage.   But it's significant, whatever it is.

Actual potheads

Cannabis use during pregnancy may affect brain development in offspring

Compared with unexposed children, those who were prenatally exposed to
cannabis had a thicker prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved
in complex cognition, decision-making, and working memory. 

The study sounds pretty careful, too.  No one is sure how to interpret it, though.

Oh Good Lord - the NRA is more sensible than Donald Trump?

NRA says Trump’s Orlando comments ‘defy common sense’ | New York Post

WASHINGTON — Two top National Rifle Association officials took aim at  Donald Trump on Sunday, blasting his suggestion that armed clubgoers could have prevented the deadliest mass shooting in US history as one that “defies common sense.”


“No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms,” said Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action told ABC’s “This Week.” “That defies common sense. It also defies the law.”

Trump fired up a Texas rally on Friday by saying if some people at the Pulse nightclub “had guns strapped … right to their waist or right to their ankle” it would have “beautiful sight” to have them shoot “the son of a bitch.”...

But Wayne LaPiere, NRA’s CEO, said Sunday that pistol-packing revelers are not a realistic solution.

“I don’t think you should have firearms where people are drinking,” LaPiere told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Seems they're more sensible than David Leyonhjelm, too.

What Trump promises his base

Everything! 

Out of curiosity, I watched some of a live stream of a Trump rally from Arizona this morning.

As far as I can make out, his policy prescriptions are:

1.  I'm a winner! 

2.  guns are great;

3.  [missed the bit about Islam, so can't summarise it]

4.  I'm a winner:  look how awesome my primary wins were!

5.  the media are nasty liars

6.  build Mexican wall and Mexico will pay for it

7.  did I mention how great and awesome my win was?


8.  big tax cuts to everyone, especially the middle class*

9.  repeal Obamacare and replace it with "something better"

10.  winner!

11.  will not touch Medicare or any government benefit the sort of people who come to my rallies get

12.  something about Iran fooling the US, the US being stupid for getting involved in the Iraq/Iran balance of power in the first place, and how the US will get involved in the Middle East again to "smash" ISIS

13.  Veterans will get better healthcare

14.   re-negotiate trade deals

15.  "there will be consequences" for companies that dump American based manufacturing and go overseas**

16.  I'm a winner!  

I can't wait for this walking orange ball of contradictory thought bubbles to have to debate with someone, and with moderators, who will not let him bluster his way through his policy prescriptions. 

He is, as if we didn't already know, running on pure, thoughtless, populism;  promising that his base can "have it all", so to speak.   

*  read the extreme scepticism this has already met.

**  where's the free marketeer economists' questioning of that, I wonder

Just you wait

So, after a disastrous couple of weeks for Donald Trump, where the over-reach in his reaction to Orlando that I predicted came into effect even more spectacularly and more quickly than I expected, how is BS artist Scott Adams going with his meme about Trump being the "master persuader"?  

Well, just like the positive effects of Laffer inspired tax cuts in Kansas, it's a case of "just you wait", apparently.  He writes it's just the last hiccup in the third act of an action movie:

This isn’t the Republican nomination, where Trump could dominate. The general election is a new game. There’s no way for Trump to solve a problem this big, right?
That’s what you are supposed to think at this point in the movie.
Wait for the plot twist this summer. You’re gonna love it.

What a maroon.  

Breaking up sleep

Somewhat interesting article about whether humans are better off with "bi-phasic" sleep:

Anthropologists have found evidence that during preindustrial Europe, bi-modal sleeping was considered the norm. Sleep onset was determined not by a set bedtime, but by whether there were things to do. Historian A. Roger Ekirch’s book At day’s close: night in times past describes how households at this time retired a couple of hours after dusk, woke a few hours later for one to two hours, and then had a second sleep until dawn.

During this waking period, people would relax, ponder their dreams or have sex. Some would engage in activities like sewing, chopping wood or reading, relying on the light of the moon or oil lamps.

Ekirch found references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th century. This is thought to have started in the upper classes in Northern Europe and filtered down to the rest of Western society over the next 200 years.

Interestingly, the appearance of sleep maintenance insomnia in the literature in the late 19th century coincides with the period where accounts of split sleep start to disappear. Thus, modern society may place unnecessary pressure on individuals that they must obtain a night of continuous consolidated sleep every night, adding to the anxiety about sleep and perpetuating the problem.

About mass shootings

6 Things Americans Should Know about Mass Shootings - Scientific American

Some good information in this article.

It's all about the hair

My God, he's a nut.  This apparently is what people in Dallas came to hear Trump say today:

Friday Spielberg

Steven Spielberg: Indiana Jones won't be killed off - BBC News

I repeat my call from some years ago (when Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was coming):  the perfect way to end Indiana Jones would be for him to be revealed as one of the people being taken up into the mothership at the end of Close Encounters.   You know it makes sense...

Trump and the lion

I'm not sure if the base image is an official Trump one, but it's a little odd, isn't it?   I think it's meant to indicate that Trump is brave like a lion, or is it that he's brave in facing off a lion?  I'm going with the former, and have added my own bit.

Still having an odd feeling about this election

Who am I to disagree with the betting markets and journalists who are already calling it for the Coalition?

The story seems to be that the national swing to (perhaps) 51/50 in favour of Labor is uneven and won't cut it for a Shorten win.

Yet still there seems considerable uncertainty as to what will happen to many seats with Greens and Xenophon playing a big role.   Not sure how Barnaby Joyce is going, but WA seems to be on the nose for the Coalition.   And we haven't even had the campaign launches yet.  Don't they count for anything any more?

It seems to me that Bill Shorten, and most Labor ministers, have looked pretty good in their TV appearances.  Scott Morrison has not.  And Turnbull - well, not entirely sure.   To be honest, I have been busy and not seeing that much on TV lately.  

But for what its worth, to me the "optics" of the situation indicate we should still not be writing off a hung parliament as a possible outcome.

Trump big with the redneck vote; not so big elsewhere

Exclusive: Armitage to back Clinton over Trump - POLITICO: Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under George W. Bush, says he will vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, in one of the most dramatic signs yet that Republican national security elites are rejecting their party’s presumptive nominee.

Armitage, a retired Navy officer who also served as an assistant
secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, is thought by Clinton aides to
be the highest-ranking former GOP national security official to openly
support Clinton over Trump.

“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I would vote for Hillary Clinton,”
Armitage told POLITICO in a brief interview. “He doesn't appear to be a
Republican, he doesn't appear to want to learn about issues. So, I’m
going to vote for Mrs. Clinton.”

Dozens of Republican foreign policy elites have already declared
their unwillingness to support or work for Trump, though far fewer say
they would cast a ballot for Clinton. The latter group includes Max
Boot, a prominent neoconservative military analyst and historian; Mark
Salter, former longtime chief of staff to Republican Sen. John McCain; and retired Army Col. Peter Mansour, a former top aide to retired Gen. David Petraeus.

Spectacular immaturity

Apprentice crew members on their old boss, Donald Trump.

I think it's been very clear from his campaign appearances that Trump is a mental teenager, and one with bullying instincts.   (His pathetic taunts to protesters about "going home to Mommy" are the best example of that.)   But it would appear that he is no better in his own workplace.  

Time to retire

McCain: Obama 'directly responsible' for Orlando shooting

He tried to walk back from it, but what a silly thing to say.

On guard

It's common dog behaviour, it seems, how they love to watch the road out the front window:

She will soon be one year old.  Still scruffy, though:

Some history of gay executions

With all the talk of Islam and its views on death for homosexuality, I wasn't entirely sure when Australia had stopped executing gays (or at least, men convicted of sodomy).

I see from various sites that the last man hanged for sodomy in Sydney was Thomas Parry in 1839, although the last "gay execution" seems to have been one in Tasmania in 1863.

I've read before of scandal in Sydney relating to what convicts were getting up to at night in their barracks, but hadn't read of this more upper class, somewhat amusing, matter before:

But it was clearly a vice that was not confined only to the lower orders. In 1836, Sydney was rocked by the Reverend Yate scandal. This involved a protégé of the very respectable Samuel Marsden who was known as the 'flogging parson' for his penchant, as a magistrate, to hand out severe sentences as a deterrent. Yate was a well known and widely published preacher in England, who had even had an audience with King William IV. On the voyage out to Sydney on the Prince Regent, Yate had spent much time in the company – and the hammock – of the third mate, Edwin Denison. When they arrived in Sydney in June of that year, the two moved into lodgings together in Park Street, where they were joined by another sailor from the Prince Regent, with the unlikely name of Dick Deck. Neighbours soon complained about the men's behaviour, and the scandal became the talk of Sydney, although the Crown Solicitor suggested that 'it seems more than probable that the crime of sodomy cannot be proved against him according to law'. By mid-December of that same year, Yate and Denison had sailed for England, much to the relief of the Anglican community in Sydney.9