Vague dreams

Elon Musk Unveils His Plan For Colonizing Mars : The Two-Way : NPR

Let's see how his car business pans out, before anyone gets too excited that this guy's Mars dreams will do any better.

When will a billionaire do something really useful for off planet colonization - like sponsor some Moon exploration that is specifically about locating any large reserves of ice?

Clearly, Clinton won

I see that Right wing blogs from Catallaxy to Powerline have up posts either outright lamenting Trump's debate performance, or giving him luke warm praise for not self immolating completely (and claiming that it won't swing any voters anyway.)    This is most definitely conclusive evidence that Clinton came out the winner. 

Mind you, I can't wait for Catallaxy's nuttiest economist, Steve Kates, to weigh in on it.   I'm going for "A narrow win by Trump, who had to face the most biased moderation in Presidential debate history" as his line.   Or I could be wrong: he might have discerned through the haze of Trump love that clouds his mind that his hero stuffed it up, and he's on medication before he can write a post admitting it.

And by the way:  this column just up at The Atlantic is very obviously right - Trump has a clear cruel streak, evident repeatedly in this campaign by his bizarre personal taunting of not only people who he opposes, but even those who have capitulated and endorsed him.   

Yay for Australian tech

Australian technology runs world’s largest single-dish radio telescope in China – Astronomy Now

This new telescope looks pretty awesome.  And I wouldn't mind betting that some Hollywood type is thinking how it could be used as a location in the next James Bond or Mission Impossible film (helping guarantee Chinese box office, too.)   But - they had better use it in a way that makes at least some sense.  Not like the travesty of GoldenEye. 

New stuff for fillings

Professor unveils first data on new dental fillings that will repair tooth decay

Climate sensitivity fight

The Snyder Sensitivity Situation � RealClimate

An important post up at Real Climate disputing a high figure for possible climate sensitivity which is in at least the PR for a new paleo climate paper.  Jim Hanson appears in comments too.

This doesn't exactly fit in with the denier theory that climate scientists make stuff up to enhance research grants and their careers generally.  Would they admit that?  Hardly...

Great moment in social science

And this was before Pokeman Go, which almost certainly could form the basis for another silly essay...

The Democrat voting libertarian

Will the Left Survive the Millennials? - The New York Times

Oh yeah, I noticed this last week and forgot to pass it on.  Lionel Shriver has her say on the Brisbane Writer's Festival speech, and while most of it is OK, it is mainly of interest because she says she's been a life long "Democratic" voter. 

Doesn't this help confirm what I said when I posted about her column in which she said she identified as a Libertarian?   If you support gun control, think health care like the NHS works well, believe in climate change and have always voted Democrat, you're pretty far from being in the same tent as a libertarian.  If you ask me...

Ailes's long history

I didn't realise that former Fox News sleazemaster Roger Ailes had such a long history of supplying "zingers" to Republican Presidential candidates, until I saw this segment from Samantha Bee's show last night:



(I still don't care that much for her high strung comedy persona on this show, but you can learn things from anyone.) 

Let's get curious

How curiosity can save you from political tribalism – Mind Hacks

I hope that, if nothing else, this blog shows I'm curious about many things, with the exception of 98% of sports, poetry, and...well, I don't know, I'm at least a little interested in most other things.  So, by this criteria, I should not be very tribal when it comes to politics, and I don't think I am.

It's hard to summarise the study, and I'm not even entirely sure how reliable it is, but I like the conclusion.  So go read it.

Spotted wearing the Pauline Spring Collection today at Parliament House...

Well,  you tell me where the views of Bolt and Hanson haven't merged.   (I feel this needs a word or thought bubble somewhere to make it better, but am having trouble with what he should say.  Suggestions welcome...)

Old man writes nonsense

Adam Walinsky, Donald Trump, and the Kennedy Brothers' Dream of Peace - The Atlantic

What a great Fisking [haven't had the chance to use that word for a long time] of a patently silly piece by a former Robert Kennedy speechwriter, Adam Walinsky, who thinks Trump is the President for Peace.  

In fact, who could trust Trump on anything that requires calm consideration that's not to be outweighed by testosterone driven* one-upmanship?   How contradictory can one candidate get - to be promising that Iranians boats which harass US Navy ships would be blown out of the water; that ISIS has to be crushed, immediately, with overwhelming force [I hope you're all hearing this in your head in Trump's ridiculous voice]; that America must spend more money on its military; and yet he'll be slower to get involved in international conflicts that aren't really in America's interest?   But if they do - he'll keep the oil.  What is he meant to be, the Reluctant Imperialist? 

Despite the occasional fanciful and deluded pundit like Walinsky, it is clear that Trump's base wants him to be aggro with other countries, and they would not be adverse to the big stick being swung every now and again.  Given how he repeatedly plays up to his base - he so much wants to give the audience what it wants - how could anyone really think he would resist mititary adventurism when it's a matter of saving national face? 


And anyway,  how old must Walinsky be?  Speechwriting in 1964, he must be pushing 80, if not older.  Has he said other silly things lately?  I mean, he writes sentences well enough, but what else does he argue?

It would seem, from this site, that he thinks there is probably something being hidden about JFK's assassination; uh-oh, he's written for the Washington Times too - criticising Baltimore's politicians for not getting behind their police (hmmm).  He's worked for a long time as a consultant to police departments, it seems, urging large increases in police numbers.

Seems to me he hasn't been very reliable for quite a long time...



*What a transparent bit of theatre it was when Dr Oz noted with seeming awe Trump's testosterone level.  Never have we seen a candidate run so blatantly on the importance of his being a real man, a virile man, who looks Presidential, with stamina, and a penis that pleases da ladies.   As Colbert said recently, it's like we've reverted to a system where the hairiest guy who can lift the heaviest rock gets to be village chief.

Self interest and economics

More Virtuous Than We Think : Democracy Journal

Here's an extract from an interesting review:

To be clear, most policymakers probably recognize that people behave
from diverse motives. But standard economic analysis indicates that
policy should normally be based solely on the self-interest assumption.
Bowles’ second assertion is that policies based on the assumption that
people are motivated primarily or entirely by selfish motives often work
poorly and sometimes backfire. Worse, such policies may actually
promote selfishness and amorality.

Put more positively, public and
private policies often work much better if they are designed with the
recognition that people act in part from self-interest and in part from
“social preferences,” which include “altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic
pleasure in helping others, aversion to inequity, ethical commitments,
and other motives that induce people to help people more than is
consistent with maximizing their own wealth or material payoff.”
Furthermore, incentive-based policies may strengthen or weaken these
motivations. Simply put, public policy can promote or erode civic
virtue.

Planes should soon be harder to lose

Satellite tracking could prevent airliner disappearances, developers say ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

I hope something like this is taken up.  The cost of lengthy ocean searches would reduce dramatically if it is.

Back to the lesser known adventures of Captain Cook's crew

Remember back in February, I had a series of salacious posts about the 18th century sexual mores of the South Pacific, and the misadventures of Captain Cook's crew with respect to same?  No?  Well, I thought they were a fun read, and here's a link to the one about same sex stuff.

Anyway, here's another incident, this time from the Maori part of the voyage:

Joseph Banks, a scientist on board Cook’s ship the Endeavour, recorded that one of the sailors had been with a Māori family and had paid them to have sexual relations with a young woman. The ‘young woman’ who retired with him turned out to be a boy. He returned and complained and was given another ‘young woman’ who turned out to also be a boy. When he complained again the family laughed at him. Banks was not sure whether this was evidence of homosexuality, or sharp trading.

The website doesn't mention anything about the "gender inversion" males of other parts of the South Pacific, but it does seem that Maori could still shrug their shoulders about men engaging in at least some sexual practices together:

There are a number of recorded examples of new settlers cohabiting in same-sex relationships with Māori. The most well-documented example is the Reverend William Yate, an English missionary, who lived with his male companion for two years in the Māori village of Waimate, before being expelled to England for homosexual behaviour. His relationship seems to have been accepted by the Māori community but it was frowned on by his religious peers. An investigation into allegations that Yate had engaged in sexual acts with Māori youths illustrates that there was a more open attitude by Māori to sexuality. Richard Davis observed that ‘[they] showed no shame. They simply declared that they were unaware of any sinfulness in such practices and that Yate had not initiated them.’³ *

As for Maori heterosexual behaviour (which I had never read anything about before), here's how the same article summarises it:

Māori chiefs would often have more than one wife. Except for puhi (high-born women set aside for a political marriage), sex before marriage carried no stigma. English and French explorers tried to make sense of the culture they saw. For example naturalist Georg Forster, who was on British explorer James Cook’s second voyage, said, ‘Their ideas of female chastity are, in this respect so different from ours, that a girl may favour a number of lovers without any detriment to her character; but if she marries, conjugal fidelity is exacted from her with the greatest rigour.’¹ French explorer Julien Crozet said, ‘[Māori] gave us to understand by signs that we must not touch the married women, but that we might with perfect freedom make advances to the girls.’² Many explorers, sailors and even missionaries had sexual relationships with Māori.
Children born outside marriage were still considered part of their tribe.

* Update:  actually, I see that Rev Yate has turned up in my blog before.   And on reading other accounts of what went wrong for him in New Zealand, I haven't seen mention of him living in a gay relationship in Waimate, so that article might be a bit misleading.  The acts he did get into trouble were not sodomy, which seems to have been a technical point on which he was saved from criminal sanction.

Some important astronomical news

I haven't noticed this in the press yet, but this new paper seems really significant.  It would seem, if I understand it correctly, that galaxy rotation rates may not need a halo of dark matter to explain them after all.  But it might also mean there is something stranger to be learnt from them, too.

Gay love and death: Islamic cultural contradictions

The things that Google can bring to your attention.

Here's a chapter (link to a .pdf) from a book published in 1997 entitled "Islamic Homosexualities: Culture: History and Literature".  The chapter title is "Male Love and Islamic Law in Arab Spain", although the points it makes apply more broadly than just to the left end of the Mediterranean.  I have to say, it's a really intriguing read about the deep contradiction in a range of Islamic national cultures where everyone could talk openly about how men could feel romantic love for men, but still be adamant that acting upon it sexually deserved punishment up to death.

Most interestingly, a large part of the explanation is said to go back to a "curious" hadith ascribed to Mohammad himself.  After describing the severe, hadith derived, punishments imposed on the actual practice of homosexuality, the chapter notes:

When we look at other aspects of Islamic culture, however, the indices are strikingly contradictory. Popular attitudes appear much less hostile than in Christendom, and European visitors to Muslim lands were repeatedly shocked by the relaxed tolerance of Arabs, Turks, and Persians who seemed to find nothing unnatural in relations between men and boys (Greenberg 1988:178-81; Crompton 1985:111-18). One measure of this important cultural difference is a vein of ardent romanticism in medieval Arab treatises on love. For Arab writers this "emotional intoxication," as it has been called, springs not just from the love of women, as with the troubadours, but also from the love of boys and other men.

Arab enthusiasts were concerned to establish that romantic love was an experience meaningful and valuable for its own sake. But how were they to reconcile such a view with their faith? They did this did by appealing to a curious hadlth ascribed to Muhammad himself-"He who loves and remains chaste and conceals his secret and dies, dies a martyr" (Giffen 1971:99). The Iraqi essayist Jahiz, who wrote extensively on the subject of love, had laid down the rule that 'ishq-or passionate love---could exist only between a man and a woman. But Ibn Da'ud, who was born the year Jahiz died (868), extended the possibility to love between males in his Book of the flower, and this view seems to have prevailed in Arab culture subsequently (Giffen 1971:86). Ibn Da'ud was a learned jurisprudent as well as a literary man: according to an account frequently mentioned in Arab writings on love, his passion for his friend Muhammad ibn JamI (to whom his book was dedicated) made him a "martyr of love."

Here's the description of how Ibn Da'ud was an example of this:

I went to see [Ibn Da'ud] during the illness in which he died and I said to him, "How do you feel?" He said to me, "Love of you-know-who has brought upon me what you see!" So I said to him, "What prevents you from enjoying him, as long as you have the power to do so?" He said, "Enjoyment has two aspects: One of them is the permitted gaze and the other is the forbidden pleasure. As for the permitted gaze, it has brought upon me the condition that you see, and as for the forbidden pleasure, something my father told me has kept me from it. He said ... "the Prophet said ... 'He who loves passionately and conceals his secret and remains chaste and patient, God will forgive him and make him enter Paradise,'" ... and he died that very night or perhaps it was the next day. (Giffen 1971:10-11)

Now look, long time readers know that I would generally wish that there was more sexual restraint in the modern West rather than less; but I have to say,  there's something that seems oddly immature in this elevation of hidden passion as something especially pleasing to God.  A bit like something an adolescent school girl might write in her diary:  "It's so romantic, the way he smiled at me today, all the time not knowing how much I love him."

I don't think it's the same as traditional Christian emphasis on the purity of virginity: it's like arguing that virgins are especially favoured for not just resisting sexual feelings, but for keeping all emotion a secret. (OK, well, I suppose in some situations this is the moral thing to do - for example, if your wannabe lover is already married and you don't want to risk upsetting that apple cart.  But really, this old Islamic principle seems much broader in intent.)

Anyway, the whole chapter is well written and an easy read.  It includes this apparent bit of history, which put me in mind of the old "girl has to pretend she's a boy" story plots, but I don't think we'll see this one turn up in a Disney movie any time soon:

New Zealand and economic mono-cultures

John Quiggin  - New Zealand’s zombie miracle

JQ has an interesting post about the current Australian Right wing fanbase that the New Zealand economy has.  (It's all a beat up, how good it's economy is supposed to be, argues the Professor.)

One thing that I have been meaning to say in a post for a long time - my impression, although it stands to be corrected - is that small countries under a strong sway of free market, business friendly policies, often seem to end up as economic mono-cultures, with most of their sudden, relatively good economic improvement coming disproportionately off just one sector.  In New Zealand's case, it's dairy (which is even a subset of one sector); in many other countries, it seems to be financial services, or corporate services of one kind or another.  (Hey global companies, pretend your sales all come from here, and minimise your tax.)

I think we see it in Australia to a degree too, with free marketeers all poo-pooing any manufacturing support of any kind whatsoever.

It's supposed to be all about economic efficiency - letting countries that do something particularly well corner a large part of the global market for it, and we're all better off.

But there must be a risk to the way economies can swing in these mono-cultures, surely.   In New Zealand's case, there's an upheaval going on in dairy globally at the moment - how badly can that affect the country?   Quite a lot, by the sounds:

In its global dairy update for June, Fonterra said the country's milk production is continuing to decline as farmers respond to low prices.

Until recently, dairy was the backbone of New Zealand's economy, representing around 25 percent of exports. But prices have tumbled by more than half since early 2014, hurt by China's
economic slowdown and global oversupply.

In the season that ended May 31 milk production fell 3 percent on the previous 2014-15 season.

"Lower milk collections were largely a result of the low milk price environment, with farmers reducing stocking rates and supplementary feeding to reduce costs," Fonterra said.


Weak dairy prices have put significant pressure on New Zealand farmers. More than 85 percent of dairy farmers are estimated to be running at a loss.

 So, while understanding the benefits of global trade and economic efficiencies, isn't it reasonable to say that governments can play a positive role in ensuring that their economies do not end up putting all eggs in one basket?   Ultimately, doesn't a degree of government support for different sectors help ensure that wild swings in markets and economic circumstances are smoothed out, so to speak, and have reduced potential to cause too much damage?

What do small government, free-market-is-always-best, economists say about that, because it seems to me to be just a sensible position I'm suggesting.

Yet I heard ABC News repeating them word for word

Christian Porter's welfare figures are designed to shock. Pay them no respect | Greg Jericho | Business | The Guardian

Of interest

Why Panpsychism Is Probably Wrong - The Atlantic

Sounds fanciful

Productivity Commission calls to privatise public health and housing | Australia news | The Guardian: Social housing, public dental services and public hospitals could soon be opened to more market competition.

The Productivity Commission has said they are among six “priority areas” in the human services sector where the quality of services could be greatly improved if people are given a greater say over how they use them.

They cite services to remote communities, too, as an area where more privatisation can help.  All very improbable sounding, if you ask me...