Virtually here

For my recent birthday, I was pleased to receive a relatively cheap VR headset to use with my new Moto G5 Plus phone (which I had specifically bought because it had a gyro sensor, which is necessary for VR use.  I am very happy with the phone as a phone, by the way.)

As for this exciting new world of Virtual Reality more or less in my pocket:   it's pretty impressive, even if a bit like looking at the world in standard definition instead of 4K.

I've only tried a few apps so far.  The rollercoaster videos I've seen are a bit meh:  for the best experience of that, drop into the Samsung shop like I did recently and sit in their motion chairs while watching the rollercoaster video.  That really gives a strong sensation.  (My daughter, sitting in the chair beside me, said she felt like taking it off while climbing up the clickerty first slope.    We're both a bit chicken about rollercoasters - I knew what she met.)

But some other 360 degree content on Youtube is pretty good.  I especially enjoyed the Experience the Blue Angels in 360 Degree Video put on there by USA today.   It's very cool to be able to turn your head around and look at the guy behind you, and up through and all around the cockpit.  (I've done it - flown in an F18 - in real life, so it was a bit like re-living it.)

Even if it's not in 360 degree mode, watching some of the videos I had taken on my phone was pretty interesting too.  It blew them up in a way that I had to turn my head to see all of what was going on at the periphery.   (You can use an app to change the setting of how big the videos appear.)

There is increasing content being put out there with the 360 aspect.  Not all of it makes that much sense - in some animation I was watching, there really was no point in looking away from where the director wanted you to watch, even though you could. [Update:  I see now too that I can download the Cardboard Camera app to let me take 360 degree photos.   Cool.  I think.]

I was also wondering about future uses.  I can imagine it being helpful for preserving the sanity of the confined - astronauts on the long trip to Mars, perhaps?   And as for those who have thought of  administering psychedelics to the dying (that's how Aldous Huxley went out, apparently - but how would you know it would be a "good" trip at this key point when you would surely regret giving them a nightmarish one?), I presume they will be thinking of adding this device with some trippy app as well.

So, overall, it's pretty fun and exciting, and I recommend that, if you don't have it already, make sure your next phone has a gyro sensor so you can experiment with this.

(Even you, Homer.  You can do some virtual cricket stuff, or something.   Explore the inside of Shane Warne's empty head in 360 degrees, perhaps?)

Many laughs were had

I chose a few things to watch with my son over the weekend, and they were all a success:

What We Do in the Shadows:   probably the last thing I will view on Stan before un-subscribing.  (Netflix conquers all.)   This New Zealand mockumentary from a few years ago about a group of vampires flatsharing a house in Wellington got better reviews than I realised, and it is very enjoyable in its silly way.   I don't know why, but the line "Remember, we're werewolves, not swearwolves"  delivered by Rhys Darby struck me as particularly memorable.

The Good Place:   a Netflix sitcom that good reviews, and from the first episode, I can see why.   The set up:  a woman who has led a less than exemplary life ends up in heaven, but realises she must have got there by some sort of mistake.  What to do about it?   Looks like a sizeable budget and charming acting by all concerned.  

Mystery Science Theatre 3000:  the Netflix revival of a popular US show from the 80's and 90's which I never saw.     (I don't think it ever got a run on Australian television, and I forget where I did see a bit of a episode but not enough to understand why it had a following.)   I see now that there are lots of the old episodes on Youtube.

Look, it's all a bit hit and miss, the quips made while watching atrocious old science fiction movies, but the ones that hit can make you laugh a lot, and the stunningly poor quality of the movie featured last night ("Reptilicus", a Danish [!] 1961 monster movie) was a sight to behold.

My son found the framing comedy in the space station very cringeworthy (some of it sort of is), but he ended up admitting that overall it was pretty funny.   I think it might be even funnier under the influence of just the right amount of alcohol:  future experiments may be held in that regard.

In more recently viewed Colbert

I hadn't really bothered to follow the Equifax hacking scandal in the US, so if you are like me and didn't realise how bad the company had behaved, do yourself a favour and what the very funny Colbert explanation:

Now for a nice post about same sex marriage

I have to say, if one is inclined towards making out the conservative case for same sex marriage, this recent video of gay actor Jim Parsons talking to Colbert about how getting married to his partner of 15 years did make him feel different is pretty good stuff:



Colbert himself is always charming when talking about his marriage and family (there's a video out there where he tells his studio audience, before taping a show, the story of how he met his wife, and it's really good.)  

Going back to Parsons, what he says does match with something that I heard from a relative who did some work as a civil marriage celebrant for a while after she retired from her full time job.  She said when marrying couples who have been living together for some time (as most are these days), it was often the partner who claimed to be the most nonchalant about the significance of getting married who turned out to be the most emotional on the day.  

Bashing Tony Abbott, and Tim Blair

Gee, if it weren't for the ABC and immature Lefties to complain about, Tim Blair would have trouble finding fodder for more than a couple of blog posts a week.  He's managed to get 4 posts out of the not terribly effective attack on Tony Abbott by the weirdo anarchist:  yes, the Left is crammed full of violent ratbags cheering on horrendous violence on the just and righteous Right, which doesn't have a violent bone in its body.

He seems to overlook that people mightn't feel all that much shame in finding this incident just a bit funny, because:

a.  it's not as if there was any sign of actual injury on Tone's face the next day - which isn't to say that the attempt to do him worse injury wasn't an action to condemn (as every politician from any side of politics immediately did) - but it did mean that the Tweeters that have stirred Blair weren't making fun of an incident that clearly cause the victim much pain.  One suspects that if it involved blood, stitches or a black eye, fewer people would be game to tweet in support of the attacker;

b.  the funniest thing - because it is so unexpected - is that a weird, scary looking assailant goes on TV, admits to the crime and indicates he regrets not doing a better job.    I mean, come on, he's an idiot.  Idiots acting out with no sense of what's in their best interest are pretty funny.

Anyway, what's become pathetic about Tim Blair (and this goes for Bolt too - in spades) is the pure unadulterated one sidedness of his chosen role - regardless of whether he was on holidays or not, not a word on his blog about the great visuals of a torch bearing march of (mainly) white dudes at Charlottesville, armed militia wandering the streets of the same town and worrying the local Synagogue, followed by a President who was mainly concerned about blaming "both sides"; but some twits on Twitter support an idiot who tried to head butt a politician here, and this is meant to show that the problem with political violence is all a Leftist one?

As I have noted many times, including yesterday, the pure Right threads of Catallaxy have for years had some regulars opining that its going to take an armed uprising to set things aright in this country, or the US.   Jokes are routinely made about how many people it would take to be shot to get small government and low taxes in place, and no one blinks an eye. 

Yeah, yeah, we get it Tim:   you can find hypocrisy and idiots on the Left side of politics.

Why don't you look at the morons and the objectionable comments they make your own side for once, instead of just standing by and making a buck by pandering to them?

A peculiar piece

There's an article at the New York Times written by a black gay man entitled My struggle to take Anti-Hiv medication.    I think people should find it odd.

First, there's no doubt that he's had much misfortune in his life:

My father was convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison in 1989, where he contracted H.I.V. No one in my family is exactly sure how. In 1991, six months after he returned home, he died. Less than two years later, my mother also died. I was only 7.

I don’t remember my parents in any great detail, but I do remember that people in our rural South Carolina community ostracized my sister and me once they learned our parents were H.I.V. positive. One parent even transferred her daughter out of my second-grade class.

He goes on to explain that he was put off asking for this HIV prophylactic drug by the first doctor he asked:

I was 27 when I first worked up the nerve to ask my doctor for a PrEP prescription. I was there for my fifth annual H.I.V. test, and I’ll never forget the look of disgust on her face as she told me why I wasn’t a candidate for the drug: I didn’t engage in “reckless sex” and I wasn’t a “druggie.” She was white and her tone was so thick with judgment that it made my skin crawl. I quickly dropped the subject. 

Five years later, with a more sympathetic doctor, he did go on it, but this is where it gets odd:

Instead of telling me why I wasn’t right for the drug, we spent the time talking about why I felt that I needed it. I had promised my parents that I would take every precaution against H.I.V., so I put enormous pressure on myself to take it. Plus, it let me be extra cautious about my health and my partner’s health. After our conversation, he tested me for H.I.V. and wrote me a prescription.

Promised his parents posthumously, I assume he means?  Anyway, having obtained the drug:

My first few weeks on PrEP, I felt fine. Every morning at 8 a.m. my cellphone chimed with a reminder for me to take my pill. I even began to develop a subtle sense of pride in knowing that although I was having sex only with my partner, I was upholding my word to my parents.

But as the one-month mark approached, I began to have serious doubts about why I was taking PrEP. After all, I wasn’t having sex with men other than my partner; same for him. We still used condoms, despite having been together for several years.

I recognize that PrEP is effective and agree that it should be available to people who want to take it. But after about a month of taking it off and on, I just stopped. I couldn’t get over the psychological barrier that somehow I was weakening my body by training myself to rely on pills. Instead, my partner and I decided to take the precautions we’re comfortable with.

Um, unless his partner was already HIV positive (or on medication for it), and this is never stated as being the case, the only implication seems to be that he took it because he cannot trust his partner to be true to his promise that he isn't sleeping around with other men.  Or, perhaps, that he couldn't keep his own promise to his partner - who he has been with for several years?

He points out that blacks have historical reasons to be wary of the medical establishment, and notes:

Retention rates for PrEP are deplorable — one study showed usage in Mississippi dropped by 15 percent over a three-month period — and it’s clear to me why. I had guilt and carried emotional baggage. I also felt alone in my journey. There was no PrEP community that I could find with which I could share my anxieties, no PrEP “sponsor” to call and discuss my night terrors or fatigue.

Is it possible that low retention rates indicate confidence that a partner found is HIV negative and faithful?   Not after 3 months, I guess.

Really, the article just seems to re-enforce something about the expectations of a gay lifestyle - that they have very low expectations of their partners - or themselves? - managing to have sexually exclusive relationships even if they promise to do so.

The conservative case for gay marriage is supposed to be about treating gay men similarly to how straight men behave - but honestly, how many heterosexual men (or women) have the expectation that they are at risk of contracting an STD from a steady girlfriend or boyfriend if they have started sleeping together (and assuming they don't have one from the start)?   Very, very few, I would say.   It's pretty much a natural expectation of fidelity that does not even need stating.  But in the gay community, it seems that it is quite the reverse, and few people think that is unreasonable.

The matter of exclusivity in relationships is one where a vast difference still lies between the heterosexual and homosexual communities.

Decline and Fall

(Before I start - Jason, I wouldn't have picked you for a Waugh fan.  I was quite surprised.)

Anyway, Crikey has an amusing free article up noting the descent of Mark Latham, who I was annoyed to see turning up on Sunrise this morning.  

The entertainer, part 2

Look, perhaps JC, who visits here sometimes, can try telling "struth" to get on the antidepressants, or take some professional counselling, or something.  Here's part of his unhinged performance for today:

JC, stop ignoring these paranoid, depressed twits who share forum space with you and only find solace in imagining that an armed uprising will set Australia back on the path of true righteousness and wealth.   It's a very unhealthy place if you let them encourage each other that they aren't nuts.

Stop motion Wes

I've said before that Wes Anderson's artistic sensibilities seem best suited to a cinema medium where he can control absolutely everything - stop motion animation.   (I haven't seen all of his films, but Fantastic Mr Fox remains my favourite thus far.)

Here's his next stop motion effort, which looks good, but has that slightly concerning aspect of whether he will do Japanese culture justice:

Reason not to trust competitive swimmers

Via NPR, I was linked to an article in Chemical and Engineering News, talking about the smelly and unhealthy disinfection by-products (DBPs) of chlorinated swimming pools:

But the biggest contributor to DBPs in pools is urine. Researchers estimate that swimming pools contain an average of 30 to 80 mL of urine for each person that’s jumped in. Some of that is released accidentally or without the person realizing.

But for elite swimmers, peeing in the pool is an accepted part of the culture. Eldridge, the Masters swimmer, confirms that peeing in pools is commonplace in elite competitive swimming. It’s a frequent topic of conversation and joking among swimmers.

Practices can last for hours, Eldridge says, and swimmers chug water during stops between intervals. Swimmers rarely leave the pool during that time. “Do you really think that all these people in the pool, exerting at the level they are, drinking as much as they are, don’t have to pee in two hours?” she asks.

Olympic swimmers Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte have both been captured on video admitting to peeing in the pool and seeing nothing wrong with it. A quick YouTube search turns up multiple such videos highlighting their cavalier attitudes.

Hero Jimmy

I just got around to watching the Jimmy Kimmel videos in which he attacks Senator Cassidy for his claims about what he would insist on in Obamacare repeal, and it is a very impressive performance.

The follow up, where he puts the boot into that Fox News host is equally refreshing.

You can watch the first video with some commentary at Slate, and the follow up also is also there.

It is incredible, from here, to see how dire Republican politics has become in the United States.   How can they be so hell bent on repeal of such a key area of government policy with so little care for the details of what it is being replaced with? 

Kimmel is being praised all over the mainstream media for his stance, and he deserves it. 

Who would have thought, watching him years ago on the Man Show (which presumably made more than a few feminist liberals grind their teeth - although I think it was, basically, good natured) that he would become such a liberal hero?   

Modern reproduction

Well, this is news to me.   Via an article from QUT entitled

What motivates men to donate sperm online?

 (no, the answer is not pornography), I've learnt that such do it yourself on line services exist.  (Sure, sperm banks have been around for a long time, but we're talking about a non commercial system here.)

This one, Pride Angel, is English based, and as the name suggests, seems designed mainly to cater to gay and lesbian couples who want to reproduce but don't have all the right equipment at hand, so to speak.  Single women can use it too, though.  They'll sell you the "insemination kit", too.

I have no doubt that gay couples can be good parents, and I feel that those who adopt or foster any child with health or behavioural problems who are difficult to place with families are positively praiseworthy.

On the other hand, it will be a long time before I can see that the commodification of child creation by gay, lesbian, or straight people via these methods as normal and unobjectionable.

Update:  didn't I once write here that the image of the stork delivering babies was a premonition of the future in which semen would be flown around the cities by drones for immediate use for people using a service like this?    I think I did...Yes, I did back in 2013.  (I've been having odd thoughts for longer than I remembered.)

A familiar title

Helen Dale's apparently going to get her ex-boss David Leyonhjelm (Mr Glum now that he doesn't swing as much power as he used to in the Senate) to launch her new book The Kingdom of the Wicked in a couple of weeks' time.

Googling the title to see if there were any early reviews (there aren't), I was suddenly reminded that it shares the title with a (not very widely read, I think) later novel by Anthony Burgess, also set at the time of Christ, and which I actually once started to read, but quickly abandoned as not being to my taste.

I guess it is a generic sounding title for a Roman historical novel (or an alternative history one - which I think her's is), and it does have a subtitle (threatening that it's a series), but I still think a different title might have been a better idea given some of the literary controversies in her past...

To someone who never visits...

Happy birthday, apparently, to:

Philippa Martyr, whose photo here I took from her own blog, so I assume it's up to date...

(I shouldn't be rude, given she recently nearly met her Maker, were it not for the government funded medical care which she now, as a self identifying Catholic libertarian* - excuse me while I roll my eyes - presumably thinks should have been a private facility.) 

*  secular libertarians are annoying enough;  Catholic libertarians are even bigger fantasists who I find all the more annoying.

An updated graph of some consequence

Endorsement by reliable idiot is a sign of a bad movie

I've never watched the first Kingsman movie - the enthusiasm with which it was endorsed by wingnuts for its political incorrectness was a good warning sign, as well as several reviews which indicated to me that I really would not like anything by its director - so I am somewhat pleased that the second is receiving a lukewarm response from the critics. 

And here is more confirmation than I would have thought possible that it must be objectionable on all levels - a thorough endorsement by Breitbart's British village idiot James Delingpole, whose science comprehension level of a 12 year old naughty boy who wasn't paying attention in class indicates taste in movies of a similar immaturity.  

Indian rubber

The BBC has a story about a festival in India, and its connection to increased condom sales:

Many years ago, a young woman who had just moved from the Gujarati city of Ahmedabad to Delhi, told me about the "fun" they had during Navratri - the festival of nine nights.

It's a time when even the most conservative parents adopt a somewhat relaxed attitude and teenagers and young unmarried men and women are allowed to stay out until late in the night, participating in the traditional garba dances held at hotels, banquet halls, parks and private farmhouses.

Since the late 1990s, there have been reports that during the festival, youngsters often throw caution to the wind, indulge in unprotected sex, and two months later, there's a spike in the rate of pregnancy and many land up at clinics seeking abortions.

Although many long-time residents of Gujarat insist that these reports are hugely exaggerated and maybe even a figment of overactive imaginations, the fact remains that over the years, doctors and health workers have flagged up the issue and state authorities have expressed their concerns.

There have been attempts to encourage young people to practice safe sex and reports say that revellers, in many cases girls or young women, are shedding their inhibitions to buy condoms.

Jaswant Patel, chairman of the Federation of Gujarat State Chemists and Druggists Associations, says over the past 10 years, he's seen the sale of condoms go up by at least 30% during the festival period.

"Condoms are sold not just at chemists and general stores, they are stocked at even corner shops that sell paan (betel leaf) and most of the buyers there are teenagers and college students," Mr Patel told the BBC.

But despite the increase in condom sales, Dr Ruby Mehta, a gynaecologist who's run a clinic in Ahmedabad for the past 20 years, says a spike in teenage pregnancies after the festival has continued.

The expected clarification

The authors of the "1.5 degrees is still possible" paper should have been more careful in their PR about it - the misrepresentation was entirely predictable.  But here's their response to some of the media coverage anyway:

A number of media reports have asserted that our recent study in Nature Geoscience indicates that global temperatures are not rising as fast as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and hence that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is no longer urgent.

Both assertions are false.

Our results are entirely in line with the IPCC’s 2013 prediction that temperatures in the 2020s would be 0.9-1.3 degrees above pre-industrial (See figures 2c and 3a of our article which show the IPCC prediction, our projections, and temperatures of recent years).

What we have done is to update the implications for the amount of carbon dioxide we can still emit while expecting global temperatures to remain below the Paris Climate Agreement goal of 1.5 degrees. We find that, to likely meet the Paris goal, emission reductions would need to begin immediately and reach zero in less than 40 years’ time.

While that is not geophysically impossible, to suggest that this means that measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are now unnecessary is clearly false.

Poor Mexico

Mexico is having a rough, what, 40 years, isn't it?   A country particularly prone to natural disasters, as well as the misfortune of being next door to rich and callous drug dealers and users of the United States, I've been feeling sorry for the place for some years now. 

I've also been increasingly interested in visiting it, as the TV shows I've seen over the last year or two make it look particularly interesting, from the spectacular ruins to the lively version of Catholicism.  Does this sound odd - but I've also noticed how much I like Mexican characters when used as comic sidekicks - Guillermo on Jimmy Kimmel's show, for example; or Pedro in Napolean Dynamite.  I think it's the comic use of stoicism that appeals.

And it's stoicism that they really need a lot of at the moment.

Come on, how can this be avoided

Look, you don't have to be a woman or gay man to observe that when Melania Trump turns up on TV with an outfit like this:

or, from early on in her current role, this:

it's an unavoidable conclusion - she has terrible fashion sense, and (I would guess) just lets designers convince her that wacky is good.

And as for the weird behaviour between Donald and her - if anything like this had happened between Obama and Michelle, you would not have heard the end of it for a month on the wingnut sites: