Poor decisions - parents and courts

I've said many times here that I am not in favour of euthanasia laws, but I do get very irritated by reflexive conservative Christian attitudes to prolonging life by artificial means in cases where the doctors want to withdraw life support, and parents or relatives disagree.

Why do conservatives always assume that the parents know what is best?

The irony in the current Baby Gard case (which Trump has opportunistically weighed in on - groan), is that the US neurologist who has offered to try an experimental treatment is explicitly saying that it would be a "treatment, not a cure", and at most may achieve this:

He said the therapy, which would be tried for six months, would provide a "small chance" of a meaningful improvement in Charlie's brain function.

"[Charlie] may be able to interact. To smile. To look at objects," he said.

Charlie at the moment is (apparently) completely reliant on ventilation and a feeding tube, and is not conscious.   Given that I'm sure both ventilation and feeding tubes are distressing if you are awake, at least he is not suffering.   (True, a young, awake baby would not understand what is happening, but the physical sensation of having feeding tube and ventilation is presumably detectable by a conscious baby, and is surely not pleasant.)

It would seem that, at best, the neurologist is suggesting that he might be improved enough to gain consciousness, but if that happens while he is still reliant on a feeding tube and ventilator, that is where the true suffering would begin!

Don't the parents recognise that risk?

The mother (and her supporters) have been quoted as saying that even if this treatment doesn't work, it's worth the experiment because that is how effective treatments might be found.   I can see the "in principle" reasoning for that - but no acknowledgement that a partially successful treatment sounds likely to increase this baby's suffering before his ultimate death. And,  it very much seems that there is no real medical opinion that there will ever be a cure for mitochondrial disease, given the problem is at the cellular level.   

Look,  these cases are tragic and he is a really beautiful baby, but the fact remains that highly emotional parents, and conservative Christians who believe in miracles, may well not be capable of making the best decisions in cases like this.   There is a strong case to be made that it is the English doctors and the judges backing them who are the ones being more compassionate here.

Therapy animals

There is quite a bit of common sense on display in this article about the therapy animal fad in America.   The idea has definitely gotten a bit out of hand: 

A therapy-animal trend grips the United States. The San Francisco airport now deploys a pig to calm frazzled travelers. Universities nationwide bring dogs (and a donkey) onto campus to soothe students during finals. Llamas comfort hospital patients, pooches provide succor at disaster sites and horses are used to treat sex addiction.

And that duck on a plane? It might be an emotional-support animal prescribed by a mental health professional.

As some in the article say, it's hardly surprising to find that a lot of troubled people find some comfort with being around animals - but bumping it up into a form of therapy can get more than a little silly (as with the duck story.)   I was interested to read this:

Using animals in mental health settings is nothing new. In the 17th century, a Quaker-run retreat in England encouraged mentally ill patients to interact with animals on its grounds. Sigmund Freud often included one of his dogs in psychoanalysis sessions. Yet the subject did not become a research target until the American child psychologist Boris Levinson began writing in the 1960s about the positive effect his dog Jingles had on patients.

I was also wryly amused by the therapy bear cub gone wrong story:

But there are good reasons for rigorous research on animals and mental health. ... Crossman pointed to a 2014 incident at Washington University in St. Louis as an example of animal therapy gone wrong. A bear cub brought to campus during finals week nipped some students, causing a rabies scare that almost ended with the animal being euthanized. More generally, Serpell said, the popular idea that pets make you happier “is not a harmless distortion. … If the public believes that getting an animal is going to be good for them, many times an unsuitable person will get an unsuitable animal, and it doesn’t work out well for either.”

Guns in America and the Trump effect

It seems to me that it now has to be a case of victims being within special categories in American mass shootings before the world media pays that much attention to them.   Hence, while a nightclub shooting where 28 are injured, or a hospital rampage by a mad doctor, both get noticed, media attention moves on pretty fast.   I'm suspecting that it is partly the Trump effect - the media is so amazed at the mental 13 year old who became President**that it crowds out attention to all but the most spectacular examples of death by gun.

I also have been meaning to post about the new study that indicates that right to carry laws in the US do not make States safer.  Quite the opposite.

It's one of the great ironies that rabid guns rights advocates are also likely to be climate change denialists who believe (even if they don't put it this way) that correlation does not mean causation when it comes to increasing CO2 and rising global temperatures, yet they won't apply the same rule to decreasing crime rates and looser gun laws, where it actually deserves to be applied*.    This recent study address that particular issue.

I liked the concluding remarks in The Atlantic interview with one of the study's authors (linked above):

Ewing: Is the general takeaway that gun owners in these states are more likely to commit crimes because they are allowed to be armed all the time?

Donohue: The one thing that the paper puts most of its focus on is estimating what the net impact is. There could be some beneficial use of these guns, but overall the harm outweighs the benefit. And the harm comes in many different forms.

For example, the Philando Castile case in St. Paul, Minnesota. [After he was stopped by police,] he immediately told the officer that he was a right-to-carry holder and had a gun, which you’re advised to do. And then the officer shot at him seven times. It scares the hell out of people when they think someone has a gun. Obviously, that right-to-carry holder wasn’t doing anything wrong, but he ended up getting killed anyway.

When more people are carrying guns, things can get more heated. There are times in which the gun could be involved in a way that thwarts a crime, but for the same reason that the officer shot Castile, guns tend to escalate the situation.

The NRA offers a very simplistic view to the public in the way in which the world works, which is: There are all these bad guys out there, but now we’re going to give you a gun, and that means you’re going to be able to be the good guy who saves your life and the lives of other people.

But [with more] people carrying around guns—they’re going to be losing them, they’re going to be stolen, there are going to be more criminals with guns, and the criminals are more likely to carry guns because they know there are guns out there. For a whole array of reasons, more concealed-gun-carrying outside the home pushes up violent crime.

*  And in climate change it has been applied, in the sense that scientists have excluded other explanations. 

**  I think it's a bit silly of CNN to be saying the tweet encourages violence against reporters - but it does show the juvenile mind of Trump.

Boxing observed

I've never paid (much) attention to boxing, but having a bout on in my city which attracted a stadium audience of fifty odd thousand, a large international viewership, and a week long build up in the media, I did notice it today.  A few observations:

a.  It was, I take it, a close win; but the sport does seem to have a credibility problem if some well known figures within it are going to carry on as much about a close decision not going the way they thought it should as they did today.

b.  I won't go into the matter of concussion and blood and whether it's a sport that really should be endorsed as entertainment.   (As it happens, I don't really have a strong view.)   But I was annoyed to see on TV in the post match wrap up that our Lord Mayor (who was thrilled with the national and international publicity his city received for hosting it) had a couple of young, bare female torsos standing prominently behind him at his press conference table.  Really, isn't the quasi-gladiatorial nature of the enterprise appealing enough to the average male viewer without throwing in titillating female (un)dress too?  I thought the promoters could do a fair bit towards making it seem a sport more connected to modern mores if they avoided adding superfluous heterosexual  messaging into the mix. 

c.  One thing I don't get about boxing at this level is how those who want to be close to the action will get all dressed up for it, as if it's as sophisticated as going to a ritzy European opera house.   (Bear in mind, I have never been to an opera - I'm just trying to think of a form of entertainment most associated with dressing up for a night out.)  Sure, it may well just be a factor of the wealth required to get an expensive seat, but if you're going to a show that appeals at a visceral level, why sit at it in a suit and look on impassively, as most seem to do.   I have always wondered about this, as it strikes me as very incongruous - I have this feeling that, by rights, it should be more like how viewing Shakespeare in his day at the Globe was depicted in Shakespeare in Love - pretty rough and ready regardless of how much money you have. 

Kon-tiki revisited

I never read the book, but I'm sure it was lying around the house when I was a child, so I at least knew about it; but it does seem that the 20th century fame of the Kon-Tiki expedition has faded a lot from popular memory.  (I'm extrapolating from the fact that my teenage son didn't know about it - but I think I'm right.)

However, one serendipitous off shoot of reading reviews of the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie was that I learned that the same Norwegian directors had made a pretty well regarded movie of the expedition, simply called Kon-Tiki.  And, as luck would have it, it is available on SBS on Demand, and has been for some time.

We watched it last night, and it is a genuinely well made and engaging movie.  I was not expecting it to be in English, and I was particularly impressed with the visual realism of nearly all of it - particularly with the sharks and other sea creatures lurking around much of the time. 

I see from reading the Wikipedia entry that the movie does take considerable liberties with the true, on water, events - I guess that was probably inevitable, and I would recommend not reading Wiki until after viewing the movie, so as to not spoil a key scene.  

In a way, this doesn't really worry me, as the real voyage and the theory behind it (that Polynesians had come from Peru) was never thought to be probable in the first place, and that still pretty much stands to this day despite the raft's journey.  (Although it looks like look there was a genetic mixing of South Americans with Polynesians at least in Easter Island, but when and how that happened is still unclear.)  On my "should I be annoyed with the historical inaccuracies or not" scale, I'm happy to put this one into the "no, as it encouraged me to double check on the real facts" category.

Anyway, well worth watching.

Morning Trump

This Trump, Morning Joe warfare is quite the thing, isn't it?

The Washington Post story has thousands of comments following it, mostly despairing about Trump's behaviour, of course.  Some were amusing:

Another WAPO article lists the criticism of Trump from cable tv commentators.   Worth reading. 

A Brisbane winter

It's supposed to be getting cold in the southern States today, and cooler up here as well.

I have to say that, so far, this Brisbane "winter" has been very mild.   And I don't think it's just in my mind - there seem to be things fruiting/flowering in the garden out of season.  The dwarf mulberry, in particular, which is not doing very well in a pot and needs to be moved, has been fruiting in the last month.   The lavender has also been flowering a lot, although to be honest, I don't recall if lavender normally does well at this time of year.

The Right has never been stupider

I simply cannot believe the stupidity to which the American (Trump supporting) Right (and its Australian counterparts) have descended.

Now, whenever a news organisation retracts one story (or part of one story) out of literally thousands regarding Russian interference in the US election, this is supposed to be a complete vindication of the childish, self serving, quasi authoritarian Trumpian line of "fake news", even after Trump switches tactic from claiming for months that there was nothing to the Russian hacking claims at all, to blaming Obama for not taking action on it.  (And, of course, despite an active special counsel  investigation under way.)   

Is there a lot more lead in the water in America than they realise?  (That's no excuse for Australian sycophants, though.)   I'm starting to look for some explanation, because it just seems all so abnormal.

Quantum and causation

Some more "quantum is weird" reading from Nature.com here:

How quantum trickery can scramble cause and effect

One voice in a head is enough, isn't it?

In a lengthy Atlantic article about research comparing psychics who claim to hear voices of the dead, and schizophrenics who also hear voices, there is one paragraph about an idea ("tulpas") which is new to me:

In her work, Luhrmann has come across groups of people who—unlike Jessica—hear voices only as a result of practice. She gives the example of tulpamancers: people who create tulpas, which are believed to be other beings or personalities that co-exist along inside a person’s mind along with their own. “Somebody in that community estimated to me that one-fifth of the community had frequent voice hearing experiences with their tulpas, that their tulpas talked in a way that was auditory or quasi auditory,” Luhrmann said, a practice that she was told takes two hours a day to develop.“That’s connected to work. Psychosis is not connected to effort. It happens to people.”

Odd.

Neurosurgeons behaving badly - very badly

It's a pretty gobsmacking story to read of two neurosurgeons using party drugs like they're going out of style.   And, the tribunal said, there was evidence of plenty of nurses using them recreationally too.

I wonder if patients should take one of these with them to hospital, and ask their surgeon to provide a sample.  (I didn't even know anyone could buy those, 'til now.) 

You had me at "you shouldn't exercise"...

Actually, the article is about why you shouldn't think exercise will help a lot with weight loss (despite it being good for plenty of other reasons.)

(I'm not an obese butterball, honestly.  I just find going out to deliberately exercise intellectually boring.)

In which I say two conservative-ish things

1.   While I think that Federal Labor is looking the better party for dealing with all sorts of things at the moment, I regret that Shorten is saying that Labor will make Sunday penalty rates go back up again if elected.

My common sense judgement is that penalty rates got too high, and deserve the present decrease, which is relatively modest in any case. 

I wish Labor could accept the same.

2.  There is an article at NPR in which someone argues that "cultural appropriation is indefensible"  for writers and artists generally.     It is completely and utterly unconvincing.   Take this, for example:

I teach classes and seminars alongside author and editor Nisi Shawl on Writing the Other, and the foundation of our work is that authors should create characters from many different races, cultures, class backgrounds, physical abilities, and genders, even if — especially if — these don't match their own. We are not alone in this. You won't find many people advising authors to only create characters similar to themselves. You will find many who say: Don't write characters from minority or marginalized identities if you are not going to put in the hard work to do it well and avoid cultural appropriation and other harmful outcomes. These are different messages. But writers often see or hear the latter and imagine that it means the former.

So what is cultural appropriation?  She explains:

Cultural appropriation can feel hard to get a handle on, because boiling it down to a two-sentence dictionary definition does no one any favors. Writer Maisha Z. Johnson offers an excellent starting point by describing it not only as the act of an individual, but an individual working within a "power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group."

Uhuh.   

This has lead to accusations of gatekeeping by Malik and others: Who has the right to decide what is appropriation and what isn't? What does true cultural exchange look like? There's no one easy answer to either question.

But there are some helpful guidelines: The Australian Council for the Arts developed a set of protocols for working with Indigenous artists that lays out how to approach Aboriginal culture as a respectful guest, who to contact for guidance and permission, and how to proceed with your art if that permission is not granted. Some of these protocols are specific to Australia, but the key to all of them is finding ways for creativity to flourish while also reducing harm.

Well, seems to me that the accusations of gatekeeping are entirely justified by the explanation in the second paragraph. 

I'm sorry, this is all ill defined bulldust, if you ask me.   Sure, I can understand people being annoyed by  lazy or insultingly inaccurate depictions of culture by an artist outside of it.    That can just be called "bad art".   But to try to dress it up in high minded, vaguely defined, heavy on offence taking,  resentful of the potential for someone outside to make money, demands for only doing art one way, is just painful and silly.

I can hear the sound of furious typing coming from the Sydney Institute and Catallaxy...

To be honest, I haven't been following the ins and outs of the investigation of George Pell for child sex abuse offences in any close detail.  I had the impression that the evidence was very old and not very convincing, but as I say, that was just an impression.  

So I am a bit surprised to see that the Victorian Police have charged him.

This will, I expect, infuriate the Catholics and other sundry conservatives of Catallaxy, as well as Andrew Bolt and Gerard Henderson, who have been convinced for many a year that Pell is a lovely, lovely man the subject of a witch hunt.  And, to be honest, there is a witch hunt air about the reaction to Pell from many on the Left.

I suspect the truth in Pell's behaviour lies somewhere between the two extremes:  whether any of it results in a criminal conviction, I would be surprised;  but I also suspect people might have been right to worry a little bit about his behaviour at one time.

The whole thing is unfortunate in many respects.   But for now, watch the steam rise from the predictable defenders.  

Thanks, Noam

Seeing I think 1984 is a vastly overrated book, and I'm still annoyed that I had to write an English class review of it in which I felt compelled by the teacher to praise it,  I'm always interested if I spot anyone expressing a similar view.  Apparently, I have Noam Chomsky on my side:

In the interview at the top of the post (with clumsy subtitles), Noam Chomsky makes some similar observations, and declares We the superior book to both Brave New World and 1984 (which he pronounces “obvious and wooden”).

Yay Noam.

Lukewarmers: making the perfect the enemy of the good

There's a very good explanation here by Dana Nuccitelli about the recent paper by Santer and others which identified the problem with some (modest) overestimates of atmospheric warming in modelling.   (It's to do with errors in forcings estimates, not the models themselves.   Climate change denialists instead will claim the models are all wrong and cannot be relied on to make any policy decisions.)

The thing is, the latter is the whole lukewarmer argument, isn't it?   Because the models might not be precisely on point for a certain period, you can never rely on them to make policy decisions.   It's a classic case of making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Incidentally, there was a Science Show recently that gave voice to certain key climate change "skeptics" (you can read the transcript here),  but the one key impression you got listening to it was the age of the voices of the skeptics.   

Tasmanian thoughts

I've posted before about the reasonable house prices in certain parts of Brisbane, and out of curiosity, I've been looking at Tasmania for bargains as well.  

Now, it may have high unemployment and (probably) more than its fair share of ice addicts, but as long as you don't want to live at Sandy Bay in Hobart, the buying is still remarkably good.  Especially if you go to Launceston, where I'll concentrate today.  Look:

Four bedroom, two bathrooms in a pleasing expanded older house, close to the centre of town for 400 and something thousand?

What about this handsome enough looking renovated old place:

Still too expensive?:

Sure, it looks boxy, but it's pretty damn tasteful inside:

This is pretty ridiculous.

I wonder what the fishing is like in the Tamar River?   I'm feeling like a reverse Ratso from Midnight Cowboy, where he says "The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk. Did you know that? That's a fact. In Florida, they got a terrific amount of coconut trees there."

For me, it's more like "The two basic items for life are a cheap but cosy  house, and salmon.  They've got a terrific amount of both in Tasmania."

A culinary observation

I just noticed this at The Guardian:

First, that's a very odd combination of food, if you ask me.


More importantly:   I think brownies are just about the most over rated food thing ever devised.   I mean, I like chocolate (at least, dark chocolate), but a brownie is the biggest waste of chocolate I know of.

That's all...

Diet news

I've been on a 5-2 diet maybe three times now, over a couple of years, because I do indeed put the weight back on if I stop completely.   (I really must follow Michael's advice and go on a permanent 1-6 diet if I want to keep it off.  Or get serious about exercise.) 

So I'm on it again, and I have to say, maybe I like yo-yo dieting.   I mean, as I've said before, the fasting days on the diet (600 cal allowed) really make the small amount of food you do eat taste pretty fantastically good.   (And, as I scrap up every last morsel of salad or cracker crumb, I am also always reminded of the scene in Empire of the Sun where our young hero carefully gathers all of the weevils from his rice and eats them happily.)   There is a sort of feeling of mental focus that can come with the fast days, too.

True, after a few months the novelty wears off, and the reducing speed of the weight loss encourages me to stop at "close enough".   But the early weeks of being on the diet - they feel pretty good.

In other diet news, I see that Eddie McGuire and Malcolm Turnbull have apparently both tried a severe fasting diet over 3 weeks and lost something like 15 kg.  Yeah, I agree with the experts - that's not a good idea.   It might take me a year to lose that much on 5-2, but I can enjoy life on the way.   (By the way, I should lose about 7 kg this time - I really did let myself rebound too far this time.)

She should take the train

From the BBC:

A superstitious elderly passenger delayed a flight in Shanghai after throwing coins at the engine for good luck, a Chinese airline has confirmed.

The 80-year-old woman threw her change at the China Southern Airlines flight as she crossed the tarmac to board.

She told police she launched the coins as she "prayed for safety" on Tuesday.

Of the nine coins launched, only one hit its intended target - but this was enough to force the evacuation of 150 passengers for several hours.

Police were called to Shanghai Pudong International Airport after a passenger noticed the woman's bizarre behaviour, apparently aimed at ensuring a safe flight, and alerted authorities.