Yay for libertarians (\sarc)

Peter Thiel wants to destroy Gawker. It will be catastrophic if he does.

And I see today that he effectively has.

I become more and more convinced as the years roll on that libertarianism is the most destructive and dangerous political philosophy since the height of Soviet style communism.   Even though I didn't read Gawker with any regularity at all, I think Peter Thiel's campaign against it was petty and ridiculous.

But the main objection to it [libertarianism], of course, is the key role cashed up libertarians in the US have had in obstructionism of effective government policy on climate change in that country (and therefore, indirectly, internationally.)   Sure, I can't directly blame them for Indian and Chinese obstructionism in past years (well, I don't think I can), but the US has been prevented from unleashing the proper power of capitalism to building clean energy because of libertarian funded objection to proper policy settings.

And, of course, libertarians have been key figures in the climate change policy wars in Australia.  I see from recent media that Leyonhjelm tries to avoid sounding as nutty as Roberts on climate by saying his key objection to pricing carbon is that there is no point in doing it until other nations do.  Yet this is disingenuous weasel words - his party's platform is clearly that climate change (as a serious issue to be addressed) has not yet been proved to their satisfaction:

Should the evidence become compelling that global warming is due to
human activity, that such global warming is likely to have significantly
negative consequences for human existence, and that changes in human
activity could realistically reverse those consequences, the LDP would
favour market-based options.

So don't believe Leyonhjelm's attempts to portray himself as just being Mr Pragmatic on this.

Trying hard to maintain his perfect score of "0" (in the category "black Americans who will vote for me")

Donald Trump defends Milwaukee police shooting - BBC News

One would have thought that he might hold back until after video was released to the public; but this is Donald.

A common problem

In Canada's aboriginal suicide crisis, lesson on protective power of culture - CSMonitor.com

I feel I shouldn't say it, but I'm still not sure that every nation's (or perhaps, every region's) aboriginal culture has the sort of depth to it that enable it to serve this useful purpose.  

A strange French habit

For French Teens, Smoking Still Has More Allure Than Stigma : Parallels : NPR

Wow, I didn't know this:

"They know we smoke at parties; they think it's a social thing," says
Louise Ferlet, age 16. "But if they knew that on our way to school we
light a cigarette, they'd get mad. I mean, my dad caught me smoking in
my room multiple times. He doesn't react because he went through the
same thing and he knows I'm going to quit one day. And I know I'm going
to quit. Just not today," she says with a laugh.

About 40 percent of French 17-year-olds smoke, according to French government
figures. That's one of the highest rates in Europe. Less than 10 percent of American teens smoke, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a bid to reverse the high rate of smoking, particularly among the
young, France has just introduced some of the world's toughest
anti-tobacco measures, including plain cigarette packs and a ban on
menthol cigarettes.

 In Australia, incidentally, around 5-6% of teenagers smoke.  France's rate is about 8 times higher!

I wonder if the tobacco lobby there will be flying Sinclair Davidson in to tut tut about plain packaging.  But it's too late.

Writing to code

BBC - Culture - The secret code to writing a bestseller

Interesting.

Yes, this is all a bit of a worry

Rise of the critical flops: Suicide Squad takes 360m at box office | Film | The Guardian

The article notes several other films that were big financial successes despite poor reviews.  But perhaps I save my biggest indignation for films that get both good reviews and good box office when I consider them immoral trash.

Waiting for Kubo

I had noticed recently an unusual amount of advertising for the soon to be released Laika feature Kubo and the Two Strings.   Given that it is a stop motion animation being released outside of school holidays, I thought that this perhaps indicated a high degree of studio confidence in the film, even though I didn't find the trailers all that impressive.

And, yeah, seems my guess was right:  early reviews from America are very, very strong, and I am now keen to see it. [Update: the Rottentomato score is even higher, and the one "rotten" review is from someone unknown at the Guardian, and it reads more as clickbait than a serious review.]

Once again, I will be forced to bribe at least my daughter to see it with me. My son is more easily persuaded to try new movies based on my sales pitch.

Anyway, as I love seeing behind the scenes at Laika, here's a short video showing some of the work on this film:

Trump, Roberts, etc

If you ask me, Brian Cox and the rest of the panel was too soft on Malcolm Roberts last night.  While his conspiracy thoughts about NASA got an airing, we didn't hear about Agenda 21 and the European banking families.  Still, I can't blame Cox, who is a mere visitor to our shores, for not reading up a bit more on nutty Mal.  There are better things to do with your time.

As for Trump - the little bit of his speech I have heard about seemed a bit "meh" - and no explanation as to how "extreme vetting" is supposed to stop the internet radicalisation of Muslim kids who were born in the US.   Did he suggest working more closely with Putin?  I thought that was the general drift.

This'll be interesting...

Trump to lay out plan for combating radical Islamic terrorism - CNNPolitics.com

Although, truth be told, the way Trump is complaining about media bias I think the theory that he will soon "fire himself" (while trying to divert the blame to "the system") is looking more credible than ever.

What a surprise: the blog for angry white males approves of a mock complaint by an angry white male

See here.

Of course, the correct way of seeing Leyonhjelm's complaint is that it's just another example of a Senator with too much time on his hands, playing games.  

What's his "nanny State" and wind power enquiries achieved, by the way?

Monday stuff

*  Well, that's weird.   Trumpkin tragic Steve Kates from the clown rodeo at Catallaxy yesterday noted an article about the unclear size of the proton-muon combination, and how important this may turn out to be for physics, just after I had read the same day an updated article on arXiv suggesting that the discrepancy can be explained by extra dimensions, and suggesting further experiments that might help confirm it.  I assume that this type of experiment does not require high energy and particle acceleration, so it would be ironic if a "table top" experiment turned out to be key to proving the existence new physics when the LHC has not.

*  So Tony Abbott now thinks he probably shouldn't have played games with human lives by allowing the Gillard government to legislate for trying the "Malaysia solution"?   This poses a bit of a quandary - should he be at least grudgingly admired for coming around to this view, or should we feel greater vindication about his appalling hypocrisy and willingness to advance his career at any cost?    I'm leaning strongly to the latter - Abbott is like a bad advertisement for the type of Catholic who takes full advantage of its "get out of jail free" system - you can sin pretty much as much as you like provided you have enough time on your death bed to regret it and receive absolution.   Nope, sorry Tony - it was clearly a mere political game you were playing at the time, and you don't deserve sympathy.

*  The Olympics - I have my own guilty confession to make -  I'm sort of finding Rio's reputation as the most dangerous and bumbling Olympics ever held to be refreshing.   I mean, every Games there is panic about facilities not being ready on time, tickets not being sold, and whether visitors will face dangers from terrorism or whatever.  But this time, it's all coming true (well, thankfully, with visitors only being robbed and avoiding bullets, but not being killed - I wouldn't be making this comment if that had happened.)   It makes a change from the Games all going smoothly after all.   Perhaps it will work as incentive to give the games back to poor old Greece permanently, which would seem to be about the only way that country might make a long term economic recovery.  

And I would have thought most Australians would be happy enough with the performance of the swim team - I can't stand commentary about "choking" from armchair critics.

So, yeah, I am sort of perversely enjoying these games - and Rio still looks like a very pretty city.

Password problems

I am getting overwhelmed with passwords, and in particular, with the interaction between Yahoo, Google and YouTube.  I think there's less problem if you're not trying to keep a level of net anonymity, but if you are....

The end of the line for super colliders?

Physicists need to make the case for high-energy experiments : Nature News & Comment

Bee paints a pessimistic picture, too.

And here's an article (a pretty clear one, too, given the topic) about it at The Atlantic.

Message to monty (everyone else can ignore)

Can you please tell CL to stop his "I support Trump...but not really" act?  He does the same with Gateway Pundit - calls Hoft a dimwit who is only right 1 out of 20 times, yet still continually and gullibly re-posts every Clinton conspiracy theory that Hoft posts, and only occasionally covers his endorsement with "well, if this is true..."   His self created land of obfuscation is bothering me...

And - you might also note there that Snopes has looked at the wildly implausible RWDB meme that Clinton needs a doctor actually ready to inject her at any moment by her side.   You're dealing with folk not playing with a full deck, you know?

"Work with me here, Donald"..."No"

I find this hilarious - the pro-Trump Hewitt trying to help Trump de-doofus himself, and Trump refusing the invitation:

Update:  at Hot Air, of all places, they have a serious take on the stupidity of this:

This is a recurring problem for Trump, seen most recently in what he said about “Second Amendment people”: He doesn’t seem capable of imagining how the things he says will be understood beyond his own fan base. Tom Joscelyn noted this morning that “Obama founded ISIS” is also an idea pushed by Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei. He has a different meaning of “founded” than Trump does: He wants Shiites, who loathe ISIS, to believe that the organization was deliberately created and equipped by the U.S. to persecute them. That’s not what Trump means by it, but because he insists on using a word that implies intent in describing Obama’s role, Iran can use the clip of Trump in its English-language propaganda. Trump either doesn’t grasp that or doesn’t care enough to be more precise with his criticism.

Update 2:  and then comes the argument, from Slate, that Trump knows what he's doing.  Personally, I think that's giving Trump too much credit.  I think it's more likely that he wings it in front of supporters, because he likes the roar of the crowd and is actually insecure, and then comes the retro-justification:

Hewitt then countered one last time by suggesting that he personally would use “different language” to communicate the same criticism. Trump’s response was remarkable for its awareness. “But they wouldn’t talk about your language,” he told Hewitt, “and they do talk about my language, right?”

That remark is telling, and it illustrates something that should be obvious by now but is often lost in the noise of each new controversy that comes every time Trump says something outlandish and/or obviously untrue. This was not some ad-libbed comment that went awry, a bad joke that did not land, or the candidate going “off message,” as Beltway pundits call it. In fact, he’s completely on message, and this has been the message for years, dating back to Obama’s first term, during which Trump used the birther movement to lay the foundation for his current presidential run. More than anything, Trump has built his campaign on (white) America’s fears of the other, and what better way for him to harness those than by othering the sitting president of the United States, be it by questioning his citizenship, his faith, or his loyalty.  It doesn’t matter to Trump whether his wild-eyed accusations are true; it doesn’t matter to him whether they’re offensive. All that matters to him is casting an illusion his supporters want to believe in.

Ridiculous technology

While I take great pleasure in marvelling at what technological capacity there is in cheap mobile phones these days (my current phone was under $100 last Christmas), I would love to have the new Samsung Note 7, which, I see, comes with a pre-order offer of a micro SD card of 256 G capacity (at a price of $1348 at Harvey Norman.)

Carrying around 256G of storage in your smart phone (even more if you count part of the in built 64G)?  And on such a tiny card?

This is just ridiculously awesome, and young folk who are growing up with this need to understand how incredible it is.  (Hence I spend time doing this with my own kids, and encourage all adults over 40 to do the same.)

I suspect this phone is going to do well for Samsung, given the way some markets (such as India) go for the big "phablet" devices if they can only afford one computing device.  Reviews seem positive.

And, back to my under $100 Samsung phone - I have recently tried a new launcher - Smart Launcher - and I like it a lot.

Trump's still running?

The Trump campaign has been a disaster for the Trump brand - The Washington Post

Some spectacularly bad PR for Trump yesterday/today, hey?  Even being generous to the idiot that he didn't mean gun nuts could shoot her, I reckon the least you could plausibly interpret it as would be speculating about armed intimidation of a Clinton presidency over her choice of presidents (of the "open carry" type of demonstration that makes the country look like a hick third world nation.)

The article linked deals with something I had been wondering about - wouldn't all of this woeful publicity be hurting anything branded "Trump"?  I mean, if you were a Democrat who previously might have holidayed at a Trump resort, and just joked with your friends about the apparent support for an eccentric TV character that this entailed, wouldn't you now take it more seriously and definitely avoid having anything to do with his name?

Census 2016

I find it hard to understand the privacy freakout by certain folk with respect to the 2016 census.  I strongly suspect it is age related - I reckon you have to be over 45 to worry about it at all, even though I well and truly belong to that category, and don't.  I'm guessing that 95% of people under 30, most of whom have so little regard for privacy that they post about their strings of partners (temporary or longer)  on Facebook, and have probably at least once sent or received pics of their naked bits through the aether,  have no concerns at all.  

Bernard Keane has been particularly overwrought about this - and didn't he write a novel about surveillance  which featured many sex scenes?  He has some other odd obsessions, including donkeys and greyhounds.  (None of which, I trust, are involved in the novel.)   I wish he would just stick to politics.

Anyway, no I couldn't complete it on line tonight either, and I'm sure I'll get sick of hearing about this government tech failure over the next week.  

I don't know why they just didn't call it "Census Week" to make it clearer people could do it on line over (say) 7 to 14 days.  Seems an obvious way to avoid the rush of "census night", no?

Laffered out of a job

Conservative Lawmakers Ousted in Kansas Primary Election - WSJ

Even the Wall Street Journal notes the failure of the Laffer inspired Kansas experiment in large tax cuts.

Good to see some politicians paying for it.

Warming lakes not so good for them

Decline of fishing in Lake Tanganyika 'due to warming' - BBC News