Message to J Soon

So you like the Trumpian approach to attacking a dead dictator and calling/taking a call from Taiwan because it annoys China?

I await your response then to his apparent praise of (or at least reluctance to criticise) "just go out and kill whoever it takes" Duterte; getting oddly enthusiastic about Pakistan; and the man crush he has on Putin...

In any event:  it's near impossible for everything to go wrong under any President; and some things that go right can be more by good fortune than good planning.  (Reagan and the collapse of Soviet communism is an example of that, I reckon.)   But with international diplomacy, Trump represents a dumb bull in a China shop that happens to be packed with nuclear weapons.  It'll be a long, long time before I stop worrying about what this "Being There" presidency is going to be like.

Update:   The New Yorker has a good article on the Taiwan call issue, indicating that it seems quite on the cards that Trump may have been played by Bolton and some of his other hangers on into taking the call.   As it says, this is not a great sign:

Trump has also shown himself to be highly exploitable on subjects that he does not grasp. He is surrounding himself with ideologically committed advisers who will seek to use those opportunities when they can. We should expect similar moments of exploitation to come on issues that Trump will regard as esoteric, such as the Middle East, health care, immigration, and entitlements.

For a piece I published in September, about what Trump’s first term could look like, I spoke to a former Republican White House official whom Trump has consulted, who told me, “Honestly, the problem with Donald is he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.” It turns out that is half of the problem; the other half is that he has surrounded himself with people who know how much he doesn’t know. Since Election Day, Trump has largely avoided receiving intelligence briefings, either because he doesn’t think it’s important that he receive them or because he just doesn’t care about them. George W. Bush, in the first months of 2001, ignored warnings about Osama bin Laden. Only in our darkest imaginings can we wonder what warnings Trump is ignoring now.

Grifting runs in the family

Certain technological issues are causing a slow down in my weekday blogging.

But I do note the following article from the New Yorker which indicates that shonky salesmanship, and a high degree of cluelessness about privilege, runs in the Trump family.  The material is from Ivanka Trump's own book:

When Ivanka was a kid, she got frustrated because she couldn’t set up a lemonade stand in Trump Tower. “We had no such advantages,” she writes, meaning, in this case, an ordinary home on an ordinary street. She and her brothers finally tried to sell lemonade at their summer place in Connecticut, but their neighborhood was so ritzy that there was no foot traffic. “As good fortune would have it, we had a bodyguard that summer,” she writes. They persuaded their bodyguard to buy lemonade, and then their driver, and then the maids, who “dug deep for their spare change.” The lesson, she says, is that the kids “made the best of a bad situation.” In another early business story, she and her brothers made fake Native American arrowheads, buried them in the woods, dug them up while playing with their friends, and sold the arrowheads to their friends for five dollars each.

And this:

For my money, though, the book’s most revealing remark arrives after Ivanka recalls a boxing match in Atlantic City, in which Mike Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks in ninety-one seconds. The crowd, having paid a lot of money and expecting more action, grew angry. Donald Trump got into the ring to calm them down, impressing his seven-year-old daughter. “That electric night in Atlantic City made me realize that it isn’t enough to win a transaction,” she writes, all these years later. “You have to be able to look the other guy in the eye and know that there is value in the deal on the other end, too—unless, of course, you’re a onetime seller and just going for the gold.”

Atomic irony

Scorsese's Silence and the Catholic connection to the atomic bomb

Yes, funny how the second atomic bomb fell on the most Christian (Catholic) of Japanese cities.  This post about the long lasting troubles of Nagasaki Catholics, and Scorsese's new film on the topic, is short but interesting.

Let's talk ironing

Steam irons are a bit of a pain.  They always seem to reach a point - it may take a couple of years or more, but they eventually get there - where they start randomly throwing the electrical safety switch on the power board, which means an annoying process of resetting the timer on many devices in the house.  I am told by an electrician that this is not an unusual problem.  

Which is where I am at with my latest iron.  I was very pleased with it, generally, until it started the old "throw the safety switch" trick, but I've found this electrical problem doesn't happen as long as it is used without water.  That is where the problem arises - water meeting internal heating element.

Which has led me back to trying spray on "ironing aid", a product I haven't used since I was attempting to iron when I was a much younger man living at home.

The popular Australian brand Fabulon is still around, but both Coles and Woolworths have a home brand which is about $1.50 a can and smells and feels exactly the same.   This strikes me as ridiculously cheap - and it's even made in Australia.

I had forgotten how smoothly it makes an iron glide.  In fact, it can be a bit annoying in that it makes shirts slide off the ironing board a bit too easily.   And, I recall from my childhood, if it gets on vinyl flooring, it makes it very slippery and dangerous underfoot.  But generally speaking, it is a pretty handy thing to use.

This also made me curious as to home based alternatives.   Lots of sites say you can make your own spray on starch using cornflower - which I find rather surprising, but in any event it is not the starching effect that I am really after.

So what makes the likes of Fabulon so slippery?   Dow Corning (and other sites) tell me that it is silicone emulsion:

Dow Corning® HV 495 Emulsion has demonstrated its effectiveness in ironing aid applications. Suitable for use in rinse-cycle fabric softeners and fabric conditioners and in spray starches and other spray-on ironing aids, Dow Corning HV 495 Emulsion:

• Provides lubricity to the treated fabric
• Reduces starting and sliding friction between the fabric and the iron
• Makes ironing easier, saving time, effort and electricity
• Adds softness without negatively impacting water absorbency

 I like the word "lubricity".  A good one to try to slip into conversation at a dinner party.  (Mind you, if you luck out and okra is on the menu, it would be very easy.) 

Big hangar

Dead zeppelins: Brazilian gravesite is airships' stairway to heaven | World news | The Guardian

So, there's still a Zepplin hangar standing in Brazil, near Rio.  Neat...

Still showing some promise

External brain stimulation goes deep : Nature News & Comment

How does the world deal with a "post truth" US President?

Trump makes baseless claim that he won the popular vote excluding 'millions' of 'illegal voters' | Business Insider

As fact checking sites have explained, this claim seems to have originated with one guy, who provided no evidence whatsoever; it then got attention at Infowars and the idiot Gateway Pundit's site; and now, if you can believe him, Trump believes it too.  Or, he is willing to use it if it suits his purposes.

I mean, seriously, what's worse? - a President who is dumb enough to be convinced by whatever appears on conspiracy sites; or a President so morally base in his "win at any cost" attitude that he will use conspiracy claims not caring if they are false, and knowing many of his followers will believe him, if they suit his purposes?  

Update:  Vox's commentary on this is worth reading, too.

For someone who used to work at Breitbart, seems relatively sensible

Ben Shapiro on Steve Bannon, the alt-right, and why the left needs to turn down the outrage.

I think he makes sense on the matter of Bannon and the alt.right generally.  Points out what a nut Milo is - that Bolt should have him as a guest just shows AB's poor judgement - again.

Wearing fur in the tropics

I was watching David Attenborough's Wild Singapore the other night and was surprised to learn about its (now) locally famous family of otters living in Marina Bay, right in the city.   

I had no idea that otters even lived in a warm climate.  Their fur always made me assume they were cold water creatures only.  But obviously I was wrong. In fact:

Otters are found on every single continent in the world except for Australia and Antarctica. They enjoy the freshwater but they are also known to live in the saltwater of the oceans as well.

There's even a species of otter to be found in the middle of Africa.

How did Australia manage to miss out on them??  Was there some ancient territorial war with platypus that our poison spurred local river inhabitant won?

Anyway, this site explains that the Singaporean otters were no where to be seen in the 1970's, but they've reappeared since the city cleaned up its waterways.

Another site says that if you count all of the know otter families around the island, there are perhaps 50 furry residents. 

The things you learn...

Chow mein cooked

Maybe it was just my family, but I remember the mainstay of takeaway Chinese food in the 60's and 70's was Chicken Chow Mein.  With the discovery in our pantry of a packet of friend noodles yesterday, I thought it was about time I tried cooking it myself.

I followed this recipe, which was pretty straight forward, and used pork instead of chicken.   (I also used a full onion - I remember most takeaway chinese uses a lot of onion in the vegetable mix.)

The result was pretty good.  Nothing fancy, but had that old childhood comfort food feel about it.

For my future reference:

I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know that...

Is Life on Earth Premature from a Cosmic Perspective?: Life as we know it first became possible about 30 million years after the Big Bang, when the first stars seeded the cosmos with the necessary elements like carbon and oxygen. Life will end 10 trillion years from now when the last stars fade away and die. Loeb and his colleagues considered the relative likelihood of life between those two boundaries.

The dominant factor proved to be the lifetimes of stars. The higher a star’s mass, the shorter its lifetime. Stars larger than about three times the sun’s mass will expire before life has a chance to evolve.

Conversely, the smallest stars weigh less than 10 percent as much as the Sun. They will glow for 10 trillion years, giving life ample time to emerge on any planets they host. As a result, the probability of life grows over time. In fact, chances of life are 1000 times higher in the distant future than now.

I am going to tell this to the kids over dinner tonight.   My daughter will respond "when are getting me a new mobile phone?"  and my son will say "hurry up, you have to drive me to the party."  But I try...

Update:  here's another brief explanation about the extraordinary longevity of red dwarf stars:

The smallest stars are the red dwarfs, these start at 50% the mass of the Sun, and can be as small as 7.5% the mass of the Sun. A red dwarf with only 10% the mass of the Sun will emit 1/10,000th the amount of energy given off by the Sun. Furthermore, red dwarfs lack radiative zones around their cores. Instead, the convective zone of the star comes right down to the cure. This means that the core of the star is continuously mixed up, and the helium ash is carried away to prevent it from building up. Red dwarf stars use up all their hydrogen, not just the stuff in the core. It’s believed that the smaller red dwarf stars will live for 10 trillion years or more. 

Just passing on an important message...

A ridiculous situation

Trump’s Kleptocracy Already Feels Like Old News

Because Trump is presumably still - for the moment, but who knows how many policy reversals it can bear - riding a wave of populism and "things gotta change" rhetoric, I would bet that most of his electors don't care if his businesses are not in anything like a blind trust and profit from his presidency.   Yet they were intensely interested in the Clinton Foundation.  Basically, this is pretty strong evidence that Trumpkins are not very bright.

An odd trend in Japan

As Japan Ages, More Of Its Elderly Are Becoming Petty Criminals : Parallels : NPR

An old problem

Doctor's overdose death prompts warning over misuse of anaesthetics | Australia news | The Guardian

I think anaesthetists using their own drugs has been a problem for a long time, no?  

Claiming the credit

News today of another decrease in the rate of abortion in the US:

The latest report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, incorporating data from 47 states, said the abortion rate for 2013 was 12.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 years. That's half the rate recorded in 1980.

It's mildly amusing watching pro-life organisations claiming all the credit for this.  While there are several articles around saying that there is no single factor at play, there are certainly good reasons for rejecting the pro-lifers "it's all our great work" claim.    Last year, for example, fivethirtyeight had an article arguing strongly that fewer pregnancies - almost certainly related to better access to contraception - is behind the lower abortion rate:

Although it’s impossible to attribute the decline to a single factor, the data shows that better contraception — combined with a bad economy and a falling teen pregnancy rate — is largely responsible. Abortion rates did fall in many of the states with new restrictions, but they also dropped in others, such as New York and Connecticut, where access to abortion is relatively unobstructed. In fact, some of the states with the biggest declines — Hawaii, Nevada and New Mexico — have enacted no new abortion laws in recent years, suggesting that something other than reduced access is spurring the trend.

Elizabeth Ananat, an associate professor of economics at Duke University who studies the economics of fertility, said the data also contradicts the notion that more women are rejecting abortion and choosing to stay pregnant. “If women’s attitudes were really shifting, we should see the birth rate go up,” she says. “Instead, birth rates are falling, too.” (The birth rate reached a record low in 2013, according to the CDC. It fell by 2 percent between 2010 and 2013, and by 9 percent between 2007 and 2013.) According to Ananat and other experts, the decline in abortions is a symptom of another trend: Fewer women are getting pregnant in the first place.
What’s behind the declining pregnancy rate is more difficult to pinpoint. One clear factor, said Joerg Dreweke, a spokesman for the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, is the teenage pregnancy rate, which has been falling steadily since the early 1990s. According to Dreweke, this is partially due to better contraceptive use among teenagers. Other research on teen fertility rates supports this: In a paper published earlier this year, economists Phillip Levine and Melissa Kearney found that other policy changes — such as sex education, whether it was comprehensive or abstinence-only — couldn’t explain the decline. Because the vast majority (82 percent in 2010) of teen pregnancies are unplanned, a reduction in teen pregnancy overall will have an effect on the abortion rate. Since teenagers account for only about 18 percent of abortions, though, their effect is limited.

With the distinct possibility that Republican changes to the health system will lead to more expensive contraception, and harder access to abortions, who knows what will happen to the rate in future.

But, to confound things further, I also note that, oddly, it may be that the abortion rate in Australia is now quite a bit higher than America, despite Medicare, easy access to contraception, and non religious sex education in schools.

Seems there is something we may not be doing right....  

Update:   Oh, and before any escapee from Catallaxy drops by and suggests that the higher Australia rate is evidence of the success of the much higher profile pro-Life culture in the US, I would point out that places like most of the the Nordic countries have rates either very similar to, or lower than, the new low in the US, and other corners of Europe, like Holland  have had a substantially lower rate for many years.    I doubt that the pro-Life movement has any significant profile in those countries.  In fact, the whole lesson of what happened in Eastern Europe (a dramatic drop in abortion rate after contraception became more available) is that contraception can massively reduce abortion.  

Surprise - a good environmental story

Mercury levels dropping in north Atlantic tuna

Neo Nazi murder

Far-right terrorist Thomas Mair jailed for life for Jo Cox murder | Politics | The Guardian

I had assumed that the guy who did this would turn out to be mentally ill.  But no, turns out he was a neo-Nazi who, it would appear, has no regrets about this murder done in the cause of Brexit, apparently.

Is it just me, or does it seem that the wingnut Right pays scant attention to murders when done by someone clearly on their end of the political spectrum?  

Killed four so far

Explainer: What is thunderstorm asthma?

Can't say I was even aware of this as a medical phenomena until the storm in Melbourne this week killed four people via the indirect route of asthma.   All a bit of a worry...

Sure...de-fund the most useful thing NASA does

Trump adviser says administration will eliminate NASA climate research.

Phil Plait is rightly furious at the claim by a Trump adviser that they will be de-funding NASA's climate science research.  Of course, given Trump's recent reversal track record, it's quite possible that in fact funding for it will end up increasing.   But I wouldn't bet on that one.

I suppose I should note, however, that there has been talk of a Trump administration telling NASA to forget about Mars and concentrate on going back to the Moon.  That would actually be a policy I would endorse, and may well again prove that even the worst administrations struggle to do absolutely everything wrong.  

Update:   Stoat says that maybe Plait shouldn't be so upset - it's not really obvious why NASA should be the body doing climate research anyway.  This leads to one cranky response, and one funny-'cos-it's-true, in comments:

 Eli Rabett

http:/rabett.blogspot.com

2016/11/24

Idiot, what makes you think the pie won’t shrink to nothing?

The Republicans tried to take out NSF geoscience sciences last year along with cuts in NOAA and NASA climate sciences, Took a lot of work to hold the cuts in check. There is nothing holding them back this year and they are quite likely to try and shift programs without shifting money or people,

 And, the other one:

           Phil Hays

Amused and amazed.

2016/11/23

I think you don’t understand Donald J Trump.
He has no idea about any subject, other than how great Donald J Trump is. And how Donald J Trump is going to win every time. And how everyone is going to love Donald J Trump.
Climate? Ideas will depends on who he is talking to. If he can see how Donald J Trump can win by supporting a carbon tax, he is for a carbon tax. If he can see how Donald J Trump can win with cap and trade, he would be for cap and trade. If removing regulations like soot emission limits from burning coal is a winning subject, he is for that as well. And for clean air, he is for that at the same time. If green energy technology is the wave of the future, and Donald J Trump can win by promoting it, he is for green energy technology. You can’t agree with or disagree with his views, as they change, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. He will be for or against the Paris agreement, depending on who he is talking to, where he is talking, the phase of the Moon, and probably other factors.
Don’t think his advisers know any better what he is going to say or do. Quoting them is a waste of bytes. Please don’t waste bytes.
As for should NASA be doing climate change research? Other than giving business to letterhead printing companies, I don’t see what possible advantage moving climate change research elsewhere would have.
Or stopping climate change research, for that matter. What we don’t know about can and will hurt us.