Steel story

The (largely false) globalization narrative - The Washington Post

I was surprised by this explanation of what happened to the American steel manufacturing industry.

Lol indeed

I was just on Youtube looking at the video of the old Safety Dance song (for no particular reason other than it's catchy - I've embedded it before.)  Thought I would look at the recent comments, and found this:

This song attracts the funniest comments...

Olympics

For what it's worth:  I quite liked the Rio opening ceremony.   It was, apparently, a much cheaper production than recent Olympic openings, but was actually better for it - it reminded me of the scale of the Sydney opening, which was also great but with less mechanical contraptions than seem to have turned up at later openings.   It again showed how much can be done with the clever projectors they use at all these events now.  (I particularly liked how the early airplane I had never heard of before seemed to be designed backwards.)

And yes, it was appropriately sexy in a Brazilian way.

Politics

*  Wasn't Insiders interesting yesterday, with new Senator Malcolm Roberts sealing the deal as having outpaced Leyonhjelm as the biggest nutjob in the Senate, by far.   Apparently, only 5 years ago he let some "very strong researcher" from Queensland convince him that the "sovereign citizen" movement was the way to go to try to argue against a carbon tax.  (I hadn't even heard of this bunch of nutters until Malcolm came along.)   He seems to have changed on this in more ways than one - originally trying to claim he had no knowledge of the movement, now saying it was "a mistake".

The guys looks nutty; he definitely sounds nutty; and he committed his nuttiness to paper - I think based on his "empirical evidence" insistence, I can declare the evidence is in:  he was and is a nut; and a slippery dishonest (even by normal political standards) one at that.

*  Also on Insiders, Gerard Henderson* was claiming that One Nation was a long term problem for the Coalition, as having 4 Senators and staff meant they could consolidate their credibility before the next election.

Yeah, sure, Gerard.   The track record of parties based around one personality is obviously dire - especially when they are run by self interested populists like Palmer or Hanson.  (Hanson does well out of elections whether she wins or not.).    At least people like Xenophon or Don Chipp - smart guys running for a neglected centre of politics - might establish parties that run some distance, but even then the Democrats show they won't be around forever.

Gerard's gone downhill as a political commentator; time to retire, I suggest.

*   Is Trump still the GOP candidate?    The longer this campaign runs, the more it shows that the power of positive thinking may take a BS artist who starts with a family fortune quite a long way, but it does absolutlelynothing to encourage insight.

The thing is, the more he derides Hillary's mental state, the more the electorate will see it as projection.  But he obviously doesn't see that risk.

Update:  *  even after just having watched the nut filled interview performance of Roberts.  But Henderson has always given undue credence to climate change denialism - he gave Salby a venue at which to claim he had discovered the end of AGW.   Where's Salby now?   Completely discredited, where ever he is.

Sleeping dog

Quantum papers

Yay, two papers of interest have turned up on arXiv in the quantum section.

First, one talking about the transactional interpretation of quantum physics, which I've mentioned here before, and been wondering whether it's going anywhere.  I haven't done much other than scan the paper (it's a heavy read, and I'll be skipping the maths), but it's worth looking at more carefully, I think.

Secondly, here's one talking about the enduring puzzle of the double slit experiment with the enticing title Can a Single Photon Modify Two Remote Realities Simultaneously?   Here's the abstract:

The concept of wave-particle duality, which is a key element of quantum theory, has been remarkably found to manifest itself in several experimental realizations as in the famous double-slit experiment. In this speci?c case, a single particle seems to travel through two separated slits simultaneously. Nevertheless, it is never possible to measure it in both slits, which naturally appears as a manifestation of the collapse postulate. In this respect, one could as well ask if it is possible to "perceive" the presence of the particle at the two slits simultaneously, once its collapse could be avoided. In this article, we use the recently proposed entanglement mediation protocol to provide a positive answer to this question. It is shown that a photon which behaves like a wave, i.e., which seems to be present in two distant locations at the same time, can modify two existing physical realities in these locations. Calculations of the \weak trace" left by such photon also enforce the validity of the present argumentation.

Death by (lack of) fashion

Neanderthals' failure to make parkas may have sealed their demise: A quartet of researchers at Simon Fraser University in Canada has found evidence that suggests that the reason early humans were able to survive the ice age while the Neanderthal perished is because humans figured out how to make parka-like clothing to keep warm and Neanderthals did not....

The researchers also note that other evidence of humans crafting warm
clothes has been found as well, such as bone needles for sewing and
other tools that could be used to scrape pelts. Also, a set of figurines
wearing parka-like coats and dating back approximately 24,000 years was
found in Siberia. No such evidence of Neanderthals wearing crafted clothes has ever been found.


As to why the Neanderthals would not have crafted clothes to survive
the cold, the researchers suggest they may have lacked the intelligence
or simply because their cultural traditions were standing in the way.

 I can imagine some Neanderthal bloke pointing at some newly kitted out non-Neanderthal guy and saying "ha!  look at the girly man in his new 'parka.'  Clothes are for wusses."

Derangement noted

From the Economist,  a report on a campaign stop on 1 August:

The presidential race: Donald Trump’s disastrous fortnight | The Economist:

The speech that followed was even more rambling than usual, and peppered with personal gripes; the boasts were fewer, his haranguing of the media (“some of the most dishonest people”) went on for longer.

At times, Mr Trump sounded deranged. Some of the negotiators he says he will commission to improve America’s trade terms “are horrible, horrible human beings”, he said. “Some of them don’t sleep at night, some of them turn and toss and sweat, they’re turning and tossing and sweating and it’s disgusting, and these are the people we want to negotiate for us, right?” Whose experience, actually, was he describing? With three months to the election, it is early days, and the contest looks close; yet Mr Trump’s campaign is a mess. In Mechanicsburg it was tempting to think he really had seen the writing on the wall.

Out-nutted

Well, what a pain that Senator Blofeld Leyonhjelm got re-elected.  I see his total vote in New South Wales was 3%, but his position on the ballot paper was pretty good again, and I also thought the big fault under the new system is the tiny size of the party logos at the top of their columns.    I strongly suspect that this factor, and the parties use of  the word "liberal," again benefited him, and I expect if he was way to the right of Liberal column, you could shave off at least a third of his votes. 

But as a big a nut he is on guns and other matters, he will certainly be out-nutted in the Senate by the Queensland no.2 Senator for Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts.   An ageing engineer (a professional which produces some of the most obnoxious examples of Dunning-Kruger), he's the climate change denier whose mutterings about international banking family conspiracies made even Andrew Bolt distance himself from his group.   I see from the link that he's also (naturally) an Agenda 21 conspiracist completely opposed to any support of renewables (even though, as Abbott found out, quite a lot of people who might be dumb enough to vote for Hanson actually quite like their solar panels on the roof).   I bet he's a goldbug, too.  And, I wouldn't be surprised if he loves his guns as much as Leyonhjelm.

So, it's going to be interesting, and worrying, to watch what crap he will come out during Senate speeches.
  

Unsettled weather

Just saying, but the weather in Brisbane in the last couple of weeks has been all over the shop, in a way that I think's quite unusual for this time of year.  We've had a late winter burst of quite cold mornings after some very clear nights, but then it seems out of the blue will come cloud, wind and rain.  Last night it was from an east coast low, which I don't think are very common at all in early August.  Now its sunny and warm again, although maximums are still relatively modest. (Whoops - spoke too soon, it's gone cloudy and breezy again.)

I have been noticing in other recent years that Augusts have not been very cold at night at all - I pay attention to these things because of insisting on sitting and staying at the Ekka for fireworks.  But this year - unless this messy weather all clears up - I am thinking it is going to feel colder there at night, like it used to sometimes be when I went as a child.

Is it all part of global warming causing a more turbulent and changeable mixing of the atmosphere?

Support warranted

Guardian Australia has made a difference – with your help, it can do more | Media | The Guardian

I see that The Guardian Australia is asking for subscribers (or donors, if you will) and suggesting $10 a month or $100 a year.

I think this would be well deserved support for a great paper and website.  (I already subscribe to the SMH too.)  

Get our your credit cards.

The drop out option

Would Donald Trump really consider dropping out?

A good consideration here of what would happen if Trump dropped out, and why he probably won't.   (Although I still suspect he might if enough Republicans continue to repudiate him.)

Update:  and here's Vox on what the party can do to try to get him out of the race.  (They can't force him.)

My suggestion for the next James Bond

He's dark haired; darker skinned (for a bit of character variety); good with gadgets; knows his way around Europe; and the ladies love him.   [OK, so 4 out of 5 is not bad.] :)

Anyway, he would make an excellent Q, at the very least.

An amusing comment about Friedman

Noahpinion: How are Milton Friedman's ideas holding up? Part 1: For some reason, Friedman is treated a bit like a secular saint in policy discussions. If you criticize "Idea X", fine. We can have an argument. But if you criticize "Milton Friedman's Idea X", then WHO ARE YOU, LOWLY WORM, to criticize the great FRIEDMAN?? If you say government is a lot more useful and important than Reagan and Thatcher and Art Laffer and Friedrich Hayek and Ed Prescott and Greg Mankiw think, well, fine, that's your opinion. But if you say government is a lot more useful and important than Milton Friedman thought, then you're wrong wrong wrong and don't you know that Friedman proved government was bad in the 70s?? Etc.

OK, I might be exaggerating as an excuse to use lots of capital letters and italics, but Friedman is such a towering intellectual that criticizing him does feel a bit like tipping a sacred cow. Fortunately I'm from Texas, where cow-tipping is a way of life.

Interesting technology for the drinker

Flexible wearable electronic skin patch offers new way to monitor alcohol levels -- ScienceDaily

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.