Any suggestions?

Ridiculing Trump has become a bit like shooting a fish in a barrel for everyone, so I'm getting a bit bored with that.   Seems to me the only thing providing any real tension in the Presidential election is what's in emails that Julian Assange is determined to try to take down Clinton with, and when they'll be released.  I can't dismiss the possibility that there might be real problems for her in this - but Assange is going to be winning no friends on the Left by playing games with the timing of release, and he has no friends already on the Right.   He's stuffed either way, then.  

I wonder, though, whether Trump might do something really unprecedented - such as pulling the pin himself on his run if enough Republican figures say they can't endorse him.  His musing about a possible rigged election seems potentially on the path to something like that, and he obviously is worried about how he'll cope with one on one debates with Clinton.   Let's see...

I haven't even been posting much science lately - I think most scientists must be enjoying the NH summer holidays, because I don't think that much of interest has been in the media recently. 

Oh - here's something:   Brian Cox's new series from the BBC started last night - Forces of Nature - and as with his previous similar shows, it's beautiful to look at, and I find it rather endearing watching a man who seems continually blissed out about science and nature.  Could be a bit better edited - there seemed to be a little bit of unnecessary repetition in last night's episode - but overall, it's highly recommended.


Apart from that, I feel like calling for suggestions as to what I might find interesting on the 'net at the moment...

When any publicity is not good publicity

Some would say this is hardly surprising, given the source, but I am still amused to see this group of headlines re Trump on the Washington Post website today:

A very odd thing to say

Gee, for a man who has a long association with the IPA, with its transgender staffer Mikayla Novak and its past high profile gay spokes-ego Tim Wilson, Sinclair Davidson sure likes to buy into moral panic about high school students and sexuality.  And he has done so today in a truly spectacularly oddball way. 

This is the post in question, about a scholarship body that has started asking teenage applicants if they identify a gay/transgender etc, apparently with the intention of specifically offering money to some in that category.  SD notes, however, that the applicants will often be below the age of consent, which leads to his ending his post with this:

"...perhaps this is a matter for the police and not reporters from The Australian."

Now look, I have long, long argued in this blog that sexuality of school students is something best dealt with at school as a matter of emphasising privacy and respect for all (and therefore don't particularly care for teenagers in high school who go out of their way to be "out"), and I would agree that gay identity politics influencing sex education may have gone so far as to advertently or inadvertently put inappropriate pressure on students to categorise themselves in ways they should not need to.   So do I think it makes much sense in principle to be offering scholarships based on sexuality?  Of course not.

But do I think that they're aren't some teenagers who have a pretty good understanding of their sexuality as not being heterosexual?  Of course not.

Everyone who has read anything by, or talked to, gay adults knows that a great many do feel sure fairly soon into puberty that their sexuality is at least different, and (even before the modern Western openness to discussing homosexuality) recognized it as homosexuality, or at least bisexuality.  And in most cases, this is prior to any actual sexual experience at all.  

Therefore, it is obvious that asking a 15 or 16 year old if he or she identifies as gay, etc, (and leaving it open for them to decline to answer) carries no necessary implication about whether they are or have ever been sexually active, or will be before it becomes "legal" by virtue of their age.   So in what implausible way does SD think asking this question on a piece of paper could induce an underage teenager to have gay sex?  A scholarship possibility means they'll just go and try out the gay stuff to make sure they can honestly answer the question?    Yeah, sure.   Is it meant to be just be like how detailed sex education encourages straight students to have sex early (when in fact, if anything, it probably has the opposite effect)?   

Even when asked to clarify in comments what he could possibly mean about police looking into this, the Professor does not retract at all, and seems to make his concern sound even more like extreme conservative, moral panic, ridiculousness.   People who work in a body offering scholarships to a gay identifying 15 or 16 year old are "grooming"??  The police should look into this instead of pursuing George Pell??   In fact,  we all know the police would be rolling their eyes and writing "just plain nuts" in their notebooks. 

It's remarkable how SD can take a matter on which moderate conservatives might agree (do we really need scholarships based on sexuality?) and take the argument to such an unjustified extreme that makes it immediately dismiss-able not just by Lefties, but by any sensible social conservative too.  

Trump-ism of the day

Trump says he hopes Ivanka would quit if she got harassed: Kirsten Powers

Apparently, from a telephone interview with Trump:

What if someone had treated Ivanka in the way Ailes allegedly behaved?

His reply was startling, even by Trumpian standards. “I would like to think she would find another career or find another company if that was the case,” he said.

But most women don’t have the financial resources of Ivanka. They can’t afford to quit their job without another in hand, something that is impossible to do when you are under contract and forbidden to speak to competitors. Most importantly, why should a woman be expected to upend her career just because she ended up in the crosshairs of some harasser?

Hand cleaning considered

Health Check: should we be using alcohol-based hand sanitisers?

Here's something I didn't know about alcohol based hand cleaners:

In a hospital setting, health-care workers use medicated soap and water
wash or alcohol-based hand rub to remove germs and kill pathogens.
Alcohol-based hand rub has the added bonus of providing an additional 20
minutes of residual action on the surface of the health workers’ hands
to keep pathogens from multiplying to a level that can cause infection
in vulnerable patients.

Milling about in the dark

Tokyo’s surreal and shadowy world of Pokemon Go after dark - The Washington Post

The photos aren't that special really; but yes, I can just imagine how incredibly popular this game will be there.

The Apollo astronaut I saw

Mike Collins Talks About Mars, and How to Handle Apollo Hoaxers | Daily Planet | Air & Space Magazine

I have mentioned here before, but I saw Michael Collins in the late 1970's in the bookshop of the Air & Space Museum, when he ran the place. (I thought it was the 1980's, but I was also there in either '78 or '79, and he was the director up to 1978, apparently.)

He's 85 now, and recently gave an interview (linked above) which has a few funny parts, including this:

Is there anything particular that provokes memories of the Apollo days?

Well, the moon kind of surprises me sometimes. I’ll be out at night and I’ll see a nice moon, and say, “Hey, that looks good.” Then I’ll say, “Oh shit, I went up there one time!” Kind of  surprises me. It’s like there are two Moons, you know—the one that’s usually around, and then that one.

Trump and the Russians, continued

Trump: Don’t worry, Putin won’t go into Ukraine � Hot Air

When even Hot Air keeps noting how Trump is making a complete mess with his media appearances, you know he's in trouble...

Heh

Trump Sick And Tired Of Mainstream Media Always Trying To Put His Words Into Some Sort Of Context

It's a few days old now, from The Onion, but it's pretty funny.

Some skepticism called for

Computers will require more energy than the world generates by 2040 - ScienceAlert

Oh, and by the way:

YES, BAN THAT MILITARY GRADE FLASHLIGHT - IF THAT WILL STOP IT APPEARING AS AN ADVERTISEMENT EVERYWHERE I GO ON THE NET.

Evolving interpretations of ancient sexuality

TLS Greek homosexuality

This (sort of) review of a re-published important book about Greek homosexuality takes a broader look at how its ideas were received, and it's pretty interesting.   The author of the book - KJ Dover - also sounds like quite a strange character.

Getting mileage from your toilet

An interesting story has appeared at the LA Times about Japanese (and American) progress with hydrogen powered fuel cell cars.  (The Japanese are using sewerage to make the gas.) 

It sounds like there is more work going on with this technology than I realised.

Trump's wrath with Khan (sorry...)

No doubt someone else has already made that pun somewhere, but never mind.

Everyone except the stupidest, and those who comment at Catallaxy (what a Venn diagram that would make) can see that Trump badly hurt himself with his inane comment on the Muslim parent's appearance at the DNC.   I thought this Vox commentary really got to the heart of it:

The second thing, as Salam says at the end of his argument, is that Trump is easily baited. He couldn’t swallow his hurt and anger over the Khan’s speech, he had to lash out, to fight back, to smear them in response. This doesn’t make sense if you understand the goal of an election as getting elected, but it does make sense if you understand the goal of an election as playing out an endless series of dominance games.

This is a point TPM’s Josh Marshall has repeatedly made about Trump. A need for dominance, Marshall writes, "is the key to understanding virtually everything Trump does. Whatever is actually happening he tries to refashion it into a dominance ritual or at least will not engage before performing one. You saw that in those numerous examples where he said he would participate in a debate but only after the other party wrote a major check to charity. It's primal."

The Khans’ speech hurt Trump. He watched it. He read the coverage of it. He felt slighted, inferior, humiliated. And so he needed to rebalance the scales. He needed to regain his dominance. He seems confused that anyone faults him for this — isn’t it obvious that they attacked him, and so he should get to attack them back?

This is the logic of a schoolyard bully, which Trump is. But it’s a dangerous mindset for a president.

Putting Trump in the Oval Office would open a huge vulnerability in our national security. It’s much easier to bait Trump than it is to attack the United States. Our enemies’ aim is often to provoke us into overreacting and overcommitting abroad because they can’t hope to seriously hurt us here. With Trump in control of the armed forces, the path to manipulating us into that kind of overreaction would be clear.

By the way, monty, if you're reading.  Could you pass on a message over at an open thread that this piece made me realise why CL has such sympathy towards Trump - he's psychologically the same in this key respect.

Update:  sorry monty, had you done the "wrath of Khan" reference already?  

Meanwhile, in Siberia...

There's been an anthrax outbreak, with a possible global warming connection:

Russian army biological protection troops called in amid warnings 'utmost care' needed to stop deadly infection spreading.

The concern among experts is that global warming thawed a diseased animal carcass at least 75 years old, buried in the melting permafrost, so unleashing the disease.

A total of 40 people, the majority of them children, from nomadic herder families in northern Siberia are under observation in hospital amid fears they may have contracted the anthrax. Doctors stress that so far there are NO confirmed cases.

Up to 1,200 reindeer were killed either by anthrax or a heatwave in the Arctic district where the infection spread.

Specialists from the Chemical, Radioactive and Biological Protection Corps were rushed to regional capital Salekhard on a military Il-76 aircraft.

They were deployed by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to carry laboratory tests on the ground, detect and eliminate the focal point of the infection, and to dispose safely of dead animals.

The move confirmed the seriousness with which the authorities view the anthrax outbreak, the first in this region since 1941. 

Nearly spring

I usually post some photos from the garden at this time of year; and the type of flower hasn't changed much recently.  But some - like this daisy - even if you've seen similar before, I just like the strong contrast with the black behind it:

And this bee may not be perfectly lined up against a contrasting background, but you try taking photos of bees and see how often they stay still for a shot:

And there's always a scruffy dog to try to get to stay still, too:

And finally for now: nothing too spectacular, but nice enough:

He really likes his soy sauce

Make sure you get to the last paragraph: 

'Kioke': The secret ingredient of soy sauce | The Japan Times: Shodoshima, the largest island in the Seto Inland Sea, is not only covered in thousands of olive trees, it also holds half of Japan’s remaining wooden soy sauce barrels. Though the island has produced olive oil for about 115 years, soy sauce has been made here for centuries — and has weathered many changes.

After World War II, soy sauce makers across Japan were encouraged to modernize their 1,000-year-old tradition by fermenting in stainless steel tanks rather than kioke (wooden barrels). But Shodoshima’s residents — like many islanders — don’t always do what they’re told by mainlanders. They decided not to use stainless steel, and today there are still 20 soy sauce makers on Shodoshima who ferment the old-fashioned way. Yamaroku Shoyu is one of them.

“In the hot and muggy summer, the shōyu moromi (soy sauce mash) becomes active, making gurgling sounds as the fermentation accelerates,” says Yasuo Yamamoto, the fifth generation head of Yamaroku. “When I walk the planks between the wooden soy sauce barrels, the moromi in each barrel becomes noticeably more active, as if it is talking to me, telling me it is happy to be in my presence. We have a mutual love for each other.”

The submarine cyber hacking we don't hear much about

America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems - The Washington Post

This is pretty fascinating:

"There is a — an offensive capability that we are, that we prizevery highly," said Rear Adm. Michael Jabaley, the U.S. Navy's program executive officer for submarines. "And this is where I really can't talk about much, but suffice to say we have submarines out there on the front lines that are very involved, at the highest technical level, doing exactly the kind of things that you would want them to do."

The so-called "silent service" has a long history of using information technology to gain an edge on America's rivals. In the 1970s, the U.S. government instructed its submarines to tap undersea communications cables off the Russian coast, recording the messages being relayed back and forth between Soviet forces. (The National Security Agency has continued that tradition, monitoring underwater fiber cables as part of its globe-spanning intelligence-gathering apparatus. In some cases, the government has struck closed-door deals with the cable operators ensuring that U.S. spies can gain secure access to the information traveling over those pipes.)

These days, some U.S. subs come equipped with sophisticated antennas that can be used to intercept and manipulate other people's communications traffic, particularly on weak or unencrypted networks.

"We've gone where our targets have gone" — that is to say, online, said Stewart Baker, the National Security Agency's former general counsel, in an interview. "Only the most security-conscious now are completely cut off from the Internet." Cyberattacks are also much easier to carry out than to defend against,  he said. 

One of America's premier hacker subs, the USS Annapolis, is hooked into a much wider U.S. spying net that was disclosed as part of the 2013 Edward Snowden leaks, according to Adam
Weinstein and William Arkin, writing last year for Gawker's intelligence and national security blog, Phase Zero. A leaked slide showed that in a typical week, the Navy performs hundreds of so-called "computer network exploitations," many of which are likely the result of submarine-based hacking.

"Annapolis and its sisters are the infiltrators of the new new of cyber warfare," wrote Arkin and Weinstein, "getting close to whatever enemy — inside their defensive zones — to jam and emit and spoof and hack. They do this through mast-mounted antennas and collection systems atop the conning tower, some of them one-of-a-kind devices made for hard to reach or specific targets, all of them black boxes of future war."

Rousseau and Trump?

I was enjoying this essay in the New Yorker which argues that the origins of the anti-elitism of Trump supporters can be found in Rousseau (although I would have appreciated an explanation as to how - apart from stupidity - they can pin their hopes on a member of the pretty elite club known as "American billionaires"), when this paragraph came out of the blue:

Rousseau’s denunciations of intellectuals may have acquired an extra edge from the fact that Voltaire exposed him, in an anonymous pamphlet, as a hypocritical proponent of family values: someone who consigned all five of his children to a foundling hospital. Rousseau’s life manifested many such gaps between theory and practice, to put it mildly. A connoisseur of fine sentiments, he was prone to hide in dark alleyways and expose himself to women. More commonly, he was given to compulsive masturbation while sternly advising against it in his writings.

This makes me want to re-read Paul Johnson's chapter about him in Intellectuals - where I am sure I would have read about his kids before, but don't know if it covered his, shall we say, sexual issues.  

Book sales hard to believe

Speaking as I was about Pauline Andrew Bolt, once again I raise the mystery of why there has been such an effort by him, and the IPA, to promote and sell his book, especially when it was simply a collection of his already published columns from a newspaper and magazine.  Why would you even expect that to sell well?  All the words have been read by his fervent followers before:  it's not as if there was any effort put into creating something with original content.

And some sites have been mocking its initial small sales, and say that it has been pushed onto newsagents  who didn't actually order it.

Today Hanson Bolt  is claiming that there are only "a few" left out of its initial print of 15,000 - and that it is being reprinted. 

This seems a very surprising result for a political book (and surely it would count as that) with no fresh content.  Sales of over 10,000 for any political book in Australia seem fairly rare - according to this list, there were three that sold over 10,000 last year, and one of those was only 12,000.

Given the previous articles about how slowly it initially sold, I strongly suspect something funny is going on here.  Has the IPA (with staffer Bolt Jnr) snapped up a large number to send out for free if memberships are renewed?  Did Gina Rinehart have a particularly large gap on her library shelves that she decided to fill up just to make it look like reads a lot?   That's two possible theories that immediately spring to mind.

I await some commentary to appear on these implausible sounding sales figure to appear in the media soon.    

About political panel shows

Jack the Insider: Why I quit TV

Here's an amusingly written piece by Jack the Insider about what it's like to appear on TV political panel shows.

The only thing is - while I do think that in principle that it's a good thing that different party politicians sometimes remain on friendly terms despite opposing policies, I'm in a way disappointed that panellists on these shows routinely do likewise.  The difference being that politicians are sometimes running positions that they feel they have to and may personally regret.   TV commentators, though, argue for stupid, immoral or otherwise odious positions completely voluntarily.   So they have less excuse, and overlooking their positions for the sake of a drink later seems a bit of a cop out. 

Or am I saying that just because lately I'd like to throttle Andrew Bolt?  OK, maybe just throw a sauvignon blanc at him.