A Great Moment in Science

As this interesting post from Discover explains, it was not until 1 January 1925 that it was really "official" that Hubble had confirmed that the Andromeda and other spiral "nebulae" were really galaxies a very long way away.

It's extraordinary to think we not quite 100 years into a proper understanding of the size and nature of the universe.   (And barely 150 years into Darwinian evolution.)

No wonder humanity is, in a sense, still adjusting to all this.   

To my sometime twitter troll

*  I didn't even know what Pseud's Corner was: had to Google it.

*  I generally eschew comment on MMA:  I assume I would be appalled if I looked into it in too much detail, so I don't bother.  Instead, I get my daily fill of "appalling" by checking Catallaxy.

Weird judgement on display, again

I might have guessed.  Despite being no pro-Trumper in the lead up to the election, Sinclair Davidson can't seem to stop himself getting a vicarious thrill whenever a politician (or at least one vaguely on the Right) behaves belligerently to the media or a political opponent.  Remember - he was one of the very, very few people in the land who  thought Bronwyn Bishop's aggro, hopelessly partisan time as Speaker was actually praiseworthy.

Psychoanalysis via blog posts may not be a reliable exercise, but I continually get the feeling that SD is frustrated that he personally doesn't get the chance to be as rude to people to their face as he would like to be.   Or a frustrated wannabe tough cop (or soldier) on a loose leash to clean up a bad part of town - that kind of thing.  

The title of his post on Trump and CNN is particularly confusing: CNN has been caught out.

"Caught out" doing what, exactly?   Correctly reporting that briefings about serious claims about Trump being compromised by the Russians - or his team co-operating with them for election intel - had been made?  

I think the theory that Trump didn't even realise the distinction between what CNN reported, and what Buzzfeed did, has plausibility.  

Tillerson & China

A reasonable sounding bit of commentary from The Interpreter about Tillerson sounding gung-ho about China in the South China Sea. 

Not sure of the value of this..

Nature has a story with the science fiction friendly title: 

Lasers activate killer instinct in mice 

Now, while I don't want to come across as a PETA softy, but the details of this experiment make me doubt somewhat whether its scientific benefits make the treatment of the mice worth it.  (I say that, though, very unaware of the treatment of lab mammals, generally.  There are probably far worse examples.)   

My feelings about animal experimentation are still influenced somewhat by the anti-vivisectionist sentiment and argument of CS Lewis.  You can read about that here. 

Friday Trump dump

*  Vox talks to 3 experts who outline the defence Buzzfeed would have to any defamation action by Trump.  Sounds pretty convincing to me that we aren't going to see Trump try.

*  I was reminded this week by Tim Blair's linking back to a post of mine in 2006 that I used to defend the Bush administration from Leftie panic merchants worrying that he was a Christian fundamentalist who thought the US was inevitably going to have to nuke the evil out of the world.   I still take that view:  George W never struck me as that kind of Christian, and, of course, nor did his neocon advisers.  (Does anyone dispute that they were motivated by misplaced, mistaken and self-interested idealism about the ease with which Western-friendly democracy would organically arise in the Middle East if you only knocked over a dictator or two?)

That said, it has slipped under the radar somewhat that Trump is installing as CIA head someone who really does hold the ideas that both secularists and sensible Christians fear.  From Slate:

In June 2015, Rep. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas congressman, headlined a “God and Country Rally” at Wichita’s Summit Church. “To worship our lord and celebrate our nation at the same place is not only our right, it is our duty,” he began. Pompeo’s speech was a mishmash of domestic culture war callouts and dark warnings about the danger of radical Islam. He cited an inflammatory prayer that a pastor named the Rev. Joe Wright once delivered before the Kansas State Legislature: “America had worshipped other Gods and called it multiculturalism. We’d endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.” He lamented government efforts to “rip faith from our schools” and then segued immediately into a discussion of the jihadi threat: “This evil is all around us.” Pompeo concluded by describing politics as “a never-ending struggle … until the rapture.”

Donald Trump has appointed Pompeo to head the CIA; his confirmation hearings begin on Thursday. If a normal Republican president had nominated a figure like this to head the country’s major foreign intelligence agency, there likely would have been a lot of attention paid to his apocalyptic religiosity and Manichaean worldview. Amid the fire hose of lunacy that is the Trump transition, however, Pompeo’s extremism has been overlooked. It’s worth pausing to appreciate the fact that America’s CIA will shortly be run by a man who appears to view American foreign policy as a vehicle for holy war.

Great.

*  Fake news spread by the hit team of stupid and dishonest gay right wingers - Gateway Pundit and Drudge.    And no, Trumpkin dimwits, what they did is not the equivalent of Buzzfeed - which published a document noting its content was unverified and contained some mistakes and should be taken with a great deal of caution.  Remember, fake news is the deliberate dissemination of disinformation that asserts its truth, or knowingly doesn't care about its truth.  Like Drudge running the story of Bill Clinton's black son during this election campaign, and not mentioning that Drudge himself had years ago run the stories showing the medical evidence that this couldn't be true.

Now, I must post something other than Trump stuff....

Not just one source

Gee.   Why shouldn't Democrats be upset that, while Trump was able to make maximum political use of the FBI looking at what Clinton did with her email server, six government agencies were secretly investigating Trump's team getting money from Russia? The BBC alleges now (thanks fellas, but it's a bit late):

Last April, the CIA director was shown intelligence that worried him. It was - allegedly - a tape recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into the US presidential campaign.

It was passed to the US by an intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States. The CIA cannot act domestically against American citizens so a joint counter-intelligence taskforce was created.

The taskforce included six agencies or departments of government. Dealing with the domestic, US, side of the inquiry, were the FBI, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Justice. For the foreign and intelligence aspects of the investigation, there were another three agencies: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency, responsible for electronic spying.

As for the Russians having the dirt on Trump's bedroom antics, again the same reporter tells us that it's believed by many to be true:

And the former MI6 agent is not the only source for the claim about Russian kompromat on the president-elect. Back in August, a retired spy told me he had been informed of its existence by "the head of an East European intelligence agency".

Later, I used an intermediary to pass some questions to active duty CIA officers dealing with the case file - they would not speak to me directly. I got a message back that there was "more than one tape", "audio and video", on "more than one date", in "more than one place" - in the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and also in St Petersburg - and that the material was "of a sexual nature".

Seems to me that things have gone awry somewhere when you had even the liberal media blowing up the significance of every damn internal Democrat email, and the widely misunderstood and exaggerated significance of how Hillary used her email server, and yet there was no proper reporting of actually explosive matters until now.

How to stack a press conference

It had all the signs of authoritarian showmanship:   the 10 flag backdrop for one, but also this:

As Mr Trump likened the leaks to the kind of things that happened in Nazi Germany and detailed his plans for his corporate empire, a coterie of Trump business loyalists gathered by the elevator bank in the tower lobby to urge him on.

The Trump employees laughed at his jokes and shouted out supportive answers to his rhetorical questions. One even took it upon himself to look over a reporter’s shoulder and ask if he intended to publish the words written on his notepad. When Mr Trump was finished, his acolytes pronounced his performance a resounding success.

And a thug for a soon to be press secretary:

SEAN SPICER: So, what happened was after the exchange that you just noted, he did it again towards the end, he continued to harass the president-elect. After the president-elect had ended the press conference and been removed from the area, I went up to Mr. Acosta and I said his behavior was rude, inappropriate, and disrespectful of the president-elect. He told me that he thought that had a right to ask a question, even though CNN had been granted a question to one of their other correspondents. I informed him that I thought no one should be treated that way and treated that disrespectfully, and that if he did it again in the future, I would have him removed. 

It also appears from a "related story" on that page that Spicer's first reaction had been to deny it...

Good reporting/bad reporting

Journalism is pretty odd, hey?

A bunch of mainstream outlets are saying they would not print the full dossier as it was all unsubstantiated;  yet they know that it was an election in which absolute fake news and social media promotion of it played a really key role, and that American agencies were concerned enough to be seeking warrants about the dossier.    

Putting out allegations, saying they don't know if they are true, and leaving it up to the people mentioned to rebut it, is not the normal way you would want media to operate;  but the role of rumour and false claims against Clinton in the election campaign, combined with a candidate who just routinely lies through his teeth, really puts us in an exceptional position.

I'm with many of the commenters in the WAPO who think the media is being a little precious in their reaction.  For example, in response to Erik Wemple's criticism of Buzzfeed:

 Okay, Erik, let's talk about reporting of unsubstantiated claims.

Mr. Trump came to rely on the 24/7 unedited reporting of every muddy, salacious rumor about Secretary Clinton. "I'm hearing people say that..." "My sources are telling me that..." "There's a lot of talk about..."
Those unsubstantiated claims from Mr. Trump have been splashed all over the news media since he first hoisted the "Birthergate" standard.

For some reason, you appear to think we - the media's audience - could be trusted to draw our own conclusions when such unsubstantiated claims were lobbed, because, for some reason, if they were uttered by Mr. Trump, they were newsworthy.

You can't have it both ways. If we are able to draw our own conclusions about reports that Secretary Clinton was involved in a child sex ring run out of a pizza parlor, are we not also able to draw our own conclusions from reporting of material deemed sufficiently important by the US Intelligence community to merit briefings about their substance to the POTUS, PEOTUS and Gang of Eight?

My grandmother would have referred to your opinion piece by saying "He's buttering both sides of his bread."

And CNN is absolutely correct that it was fair to report that Obama and Trump had been briefed on the allegations, without running the allegations themselves.   It is exactly the same as reporting that the FBI was looking into the Clinton email matter again, days prior to the election.  If that was fair, what CNN did was fair too.

The stupidity of Trump supporters prevents them seeing that.

Trump the Compromised

A few thoughts after reading about the Trump dossier and assorted commentary today:

*  history teaches us that it's a pretty safe rule of thumb to assume that any male politician will have had an affair or ten, either with paid or unpaid partners, over the course of his career.   The reasons are similar as for Hollywood celebrities:  they're often away from home; they work in a hot house environment beside people who passionately believe in the same causes, and/or are simply shallow groupies attracted to power; and failing that they can always afford to pay for carnal services.     But with Trump - well, has there ever been a businessman/politician more likely in the public mind to have slept with a prostitute (or co-worker) while travelling?   I doubt it.   And as such, the mere revelation that he has done so would not harm him, unless there was an extraordinary amount of kink involved.  It's actually not entirely clear from the dossier what the alleged Trump related kink involved - not that I want to know the details, to be honest!

But where it becomes a problem, of course, is if any time with prostitutes was done in such a way that Russia thinks they can bribe him with that revelation.

And given Trumps' routine denials that everyone knows are demonstrably wrong (even about his own previous statements on tape),  it is no surprise that a mere claim that it is "all fake news" is not going to be convincing to anyone other than the stupidest of the the stupid who voted for him.

That said, the specifics of what is said to have happened in the Ritz-Carlton do sound improbable.  To my mind, it has more of the ring of a "friend of a friend" story:  "yeah, her best friend worked as a cleaner at the hotel at the time, and you know what they found when they cleaned Trump's suite?..."etc

* The more important issue, though, as most analysis is saying, is the matter of Trump team contacts with Russians regarding helpful information for his campaign.  And the fact that the FBI took it seriously enough to ask for warrants - assuming that the Guardian is right about that - it's really extraordinary, isn't it?   That the FBI is concerned enough to be checking into a President-elect's advisers direct involvement with Russian hacking of an American political party?    It really casts a terrible pall over the legitimacy of the entire Trump team.

* The sexual element of the allegations is not big enough to distract the public mind from this more important part.  Thus Caroline Overington at The Australian is very silly to be claiming otherwise:

But do you know what really works for Trump? The fact that the sex tape gets a mention in the dossier means that every other piece of information in it – the alleged links between Russia and his campaign, for example – gets swamped.  

 Rubbish.

It is hard to imagine a President-elect coming to an inauguration with less credibility that what is happening now.

The Bannon influence

I think this David Brooks column on Steve Bannon and the different ideologies fighting for Trump's tiny attention span sounds as if it is accurate.  But he ends by saying that he thinks even as Bannon fails with Trump, he may have more influence on the next generation.

I have my doubts about that.  For one thing,  Bannon is a remarkably unhealthy looking 63 year old - the puffy face and general tired look just doesn't suggest to me someone whose health is going to hold up long.  And besides, isn't he just a bit of an opportunist who has floated from career to career?  I think he'll fall out with Trump - assuming Trump makes it to the inauguration - soon enough and we won't hear much of him again.

Tax and the rich

To be honest, I'm in no position to judge the modelling work in the paper, and "common sense" is a tricky thing when it comes to economics, but this certainly sounds worth looking at:

We Need To Tax The Rich But Instead We'll Do The Opposite

What’s the scale of the problem? The paper notes that in the U.S., “the share of overall wealth held by the top 1% has increased from around 25% in 1980 to over 40% today; for the top 0.1% it has increased from less than 10% to over 20% over the same time period.” Economic mobility has severely declined during the same time period as well, which means that our country today is far more unequal and offers far less opportunity than it did a generation ago. When the very wealthy double their share of the pie at the same time when it is harder than ever to achieve a better living standard than your own parents, people will naturally get frustrated, even if they can’t put their finger on who or what is thwarting their dreams.

The new study uses an economic model to examine several possible drivers of inequality in the past 35 years, including the decline of progressive taxation (meaning that the rich are being asked to give less of what they earn back to the public), increases in wage inequality (the growing gap between how much high and low earners are paid), and the rise of the capital share of income (how much of our national income comes from capital, rather than from wages for labor). Their findings: It’s the taxes, stupid.
 

Warming oceans and toxic shellfish

From NPR:

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found a link between warming ocean conditions and a dangerous neurotoxin that builds up in sea life: domoic acid.

Seafood lovers got a glimpse of that threat in 2015, when record high ocean temperatures and lingering toxic algae blooms raised the domoic acid in shellfish to unsafe levels, shutting down the West Coast Dungeness crab fishery from Alaska to Southern California for several months. Though less dramatic, the problem emerged again this season, when harvesting was again delayed for portions of the coasts.

Domoic acid is a toxin produced by Pseudo-nitzschia, a micro algae which can accumulate in species like Dungeness crab, clams, mussels and anchovy. It can be harmful to both humans and wildlife, including sea lions and birds....

Although we're starting to hear about domoic acid more often, it's been on the radar of public health officials since a Canadian outbreak in 1987 killed three and sickened over 100. In mild cases, it can cause vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Severe cases can cause trouble breathing, memory loss, and even coma or death.

And, of course, the AGW link:

And a future with more frequent domoic acid events seems likely, says says Bill Peterson, a NOAA senior scientist and co-author of the study. "We're having more and more of these warm ocean events and we're going to have more domoic acid blooms each year. It might become a chronic problem," he says.

The Trump problem

If true, it just confirms the gigantic problem with Trump - he's a shallow intellect who doesn't have a clue as to who to take advice from:

President-elect Donald Trump met Tuesday with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to discuss “vaccines and immunizations,” and after the meeting Kennedy announced that Trump had selected him to lead a commission looking into “vaccine safety.” This should worry just about anyone who believes in science, public health, and dispelling myths about vaccines:

 

What a guy

The latest allegations against Bill O'Reilly, combined with a reading of the some lowlights of his personal life at Wikipedia, are really amazing.     How gullible would the average Fox viewer have to be to not believe there is at some disgraceful behaviour behind all of this? 

It's pretty extraordinary that he manages to maintain his career at Fox at all.  

An alcohol flavour I didn't know existed

From NPR:

Though the great outdoors becomes more inhospitable when winter winds rise and temperatures drop, there's nothing like wandering through an evergreen forest as snow squeaks underfoot. And once people have trudged stiffly back inside, they can keep those forests with them by imbibing one of the world's many pine liqueurs.

These liqueurs have been a longtime fixture in European hotels and ski lodges. Under the umbrella of "schnapps" (essentially any strong, clear alcoholic drink with little resemblance to the sweetened stuff marketed as schnapps in the United States), Austrians have been brewing their own pine-flavored varieties for generations. Yet it wasn't until the early 2000s that these evergreen spirits finally made their way to America — 2005, in particular, seems to be the magic year. Call it good market research or just good timing, but at least three major pine spirits made their U.S. debut that year.

A possible concern re virtual reality

I missed the original Atlantic article which Michael Prescott posts about, but he quotes a lot from it anyway.

Does sound a bit like good VR gaming in the future might create a lot of teenage depressed zombies.   As if sitting around the house all day watching Youtubes or Netflix all day isn't bad enough.  (I just got back from lunch at which I urged my local teenagers to do something else - build a model, read a book, anything other than staring at the screen.   I was ignored.)

A licence to print money

I see that Rogue One (still unseen by yours truly) has already made $914,000,000 globally - in less than a month.  (And it made $22 million last weekend in the US - so the total is soon going to hit a billion.)

An amazing licence to print money, this franchise. 

About champagne

A good summary of how it's made, and its history, is up at the TLS.   Here's some esoteric history for your next dinner party:

No single person can be credited with the invention of champagne, but the English can take some of the credit. In 1657, a book by Ralph Austen, a cider manufacturer from Oxford, described adding a “walnut” of sugar to cider bottles to make the drink sparkle. In December 1662, the physician and scientist Dr Christopher Merrett gave a lecture to the Royal Society which described how to make wines “brisk” by the addition of molasses. In France, champagne had always been enjoyed as a still wine; the occasional sparkling bottle was considered flawed. But the taste caught on, from Britain to France, and such research made it possible to replicate the effects in the production process itself. In the meantime, the famous courtier and adventurer Sir Kenelm Digby had been experimenting with making bottles strong enough to withstand the additional pressure brought about by fermentation.

Digby’s experiments showed foresight. The main problem facing the Champenois in the early nineteenth century was the casse – broken bottles. Without a proper understanding of how much sugar was needed to create an adequate sparkle, or mousse, and without proper temperature control in the cellar, bottles would explode under the pressure of excessive carbon dioxide. In 1828, for example – a year known as la grande casse – eight out of ten of all champagne bottles were smashed.

The problem was definitively solved in 1837 by André François, a pharmacist from Châlons-en-Marne, whose work had an incalculable effect on the history of champagne. François worked out the precise formula needed to ensure that enough sugar was added to create the mousse, but not enough to create excessive fermentation. As the official “notes on the history of champagne” presented at the 1899 Exposition Universelle proudly stated: “Since M. François’ important discovery, the sparkling wine trade has considerably expanded”.

Brisbane River sharks, revisited

Last week there was a report of a large hammerhead shark being caught near the mouth of the Brisbane River.  But from what I saw, how close was a bit of a mystery.

Now, however, I see that the bull sharks, which are known to swim all the way up to Ipswich, are also in the news:

A young rower had her scull attacked at the weekend while training near the Kurilpa Bridge in the CBD.
Coach Peter Toon said teeth marks were left on the rower's craft after the attack.
"She saw the fin and it went around and gave it a big snap on the stern of the boat," he said.
"It put some big gouges into it and it upset her quite a bit as you could imagine."
Mr Toon said despite the scary incident, the rower had been back on the water this week.
"I've been coaching for over 25 years and I've never heard of an incident where a bull shark has attacked a rower."

Yikes.  There's a photo at the link if you want to see the damage to the boat.

I wrote a lengthy post about bull sharks in the river in 2010.