It shouldn't need to be repeated, but culture war propaganda and blindness requires it

A good list put up by Mike Allen at Axios, about the indisputable things known about the Russia investigation:

Why it matters: Take the known knowns — 10 undisputed facts — and the smoke clears considerably.

1. At the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the Trump campaign, chaired by Paul Manafort (since indicted), worked behind the scenes to weaken the party platform's anti-Russia stance on Ukraine.
2. "Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting."
3. Top Trump campaign officials met at Trump Tower with sketchy Russians who had offered dirt on Hillary Clinton.
4. On Air Force One, Trump helped his son, Don Jr., prepare a misleading statement about the meeting.
5. Trump, contradicting what his staff had said earlier, told NBC he fired FBI Director James Comey because of "this Russia thing."
6. Michael Flynn, later Trump's first national security adviser, talked privately about sanctions with the Russian ambassador during the transition, then denied it to Vice President Pence.
7. Flynn (who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI) failed to disclose payments from Russia-linked entities. Trump has repeatedly defended Flynn.
8. During the transition, Jared Kushner spoke with the Russian ambassador "about establishing a secret communications channel between the Trump transition team and Moscow."
9. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then a U.S. senator, spoke twice to the Russian ambassador, then didn't disclose the contacts during his confirmation hearing.
10. When Bob Mueller was named special counsel, Republicans widely praised him.

Be smart: No sane person looking at those known knowns would say this is a crazy investigation.

The big picture: Yes, FBI agents have probably said things in texts they shouldn't have. Yes, former FBI Director James Comey was clumsy in his comments about Hillary Clinton. But none of that changes what this investigation is really about.

Speaking of bad writing

This is a very strange piece of writing at Slate about (Apple boss) Tim Cook.   I don't know what to make of it, except to think that it shouldn't be there. 

A review best avoided

I do torture myself occasionally by trying a Helen Razor column, and if you thought one in which she complains about The Post, feminism when it is "pressed into the service of power", as well as her fear of menopause and dislike of hot weather, would be an excruciating read - yes, it is!

Her discursive, always self-involved, style is (as usual) virtually impenetrable, and yet she has her supporters in comments.  (Not many, though.)  

Brexit and the economy

Axios notes:

An analysis from the U.K. government anticipates entirely negative economic impacts from Brexit regardless of the terms of the exit deal, Buzzfeed News, which got its hands on the analysis, reports.

• Top-line figures: Growth would fall by 8% over 15 years under a "no-deal Brexit," 2% under a "soft Brexit" and 5% under a middle course. Nearly every economic sector would be hurt, with the exception of agriculture, along with every geographic region.

The bottom line: The British government is going to spend the next year or so in intense negotiations over a process its own analysis suggests will bring entirely negative economic consequences.

Seriously, why would a sensible government continue down that path when it believes those are the consequences?   

Update:  Simon Wren-Lewis writes about Brexit and the Conservatives:

This Brexit syndrome, which infects nearly half the Conservative party MPs and most of its membership, is a visceral dislike of the EU in all its manifestations. I am not talking about why most voters chose to leave, which was an unfortunately all too familiar reaction to a public campaign that has blamed immigrants for every grievance and fear they have. Brexit syndrome is instead manifested in a belief that you must leave a customs union with your overwhelmingly biggest trading partner so you can seek inferior trade agreements with other more distant countries. The only explanation for that belief is a deep irrational dislike of all things EU.

For those Conservative MPs not subject to Brexit syndrome I have bad news. Leaving the EU as planned is not a cure. The nightmare of Brexit will not pass. Whatever deal the UK eventually concludes with the EU, it will be unacceptable to the Brexiters. Only a clean break with all things EU will satisfy them.

Please let it happen

Jonathan Swan apparently said this re Trump giving evidence to Mueller:

In other stuff watched on Netflix

*  Tried watching the first episode of "Black Lightning", a DC superhero show that seems oddly timed to match the soon to be released Marvel "Black Panther" movie (which I doubt is funny enough for me to bother seeing.)   Terrible.

*  Am getting through the second series of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.   Yes, it's often very amusing.    I haven't come across an episode yet which I felt didn't work at all.   Also, in the Julia Louis Deyfus episode, I was surprised how ordinary and suburban her part of Hollywood (where she lives) looked.

*  Watched the well reviewed movie "The Witch" on the weekend (I think it's a recent addition.)  Well, it's very odd, I think, the way it comes across as a very authentic recreation of the isolation, hyper-religiosity and hysteria leading to the witch panics in New England, but then the ending seems to undercut it completely.   While it looks very painterly and is pretty well directed, I just didn't get it...

A good thing

I've been meaning to commend the Netflix comedy show The Good Place for some months, and after watching the first episode of the second season last night, it's time to do it.

The show has been a hit with most critics, and deservedly so.   It's rare to find something that is so intelligent, so well acted by every single cast member, and so frequently very funny.   (Its humour is not timed for every 60 seconds, as it is for "filmed before a live studio audience" sitcoms, but nonetheless it is continually amusing.)   Also, it's good to see Ted Danson in something as classy as this after his long run in pretty B grade sitcom material.

I was a bit dubious about the scenario set up for the second series, but the first episode (well, sort of two episodes combined) was very good.  Not sure they'll manage to wrangle a 3rd series though!

Roubini hates everything crypto and block

I don't really understand enough about the economic theory of currency to tell whether Nouriel Roubini is correct in how he says Bitcoin won't work, but here is part of it anyway:

Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value, whereas fiat currencies certainly do, because they can be used to pay taxes. Fiat currencies are also protected from value debasement by central banks committed to price stability; and if a fiat currency loses credibility, as in some weak monetary systems with high inflation, it will be swapped out for more stable foreign fiat currencies or real assets.

As it happens, Bitcoin’s supposed advantage is also its Achilles’s heel, because even if it actually did have a steady-state supply of 21 million units, that would disqualify it as a viable currency. Unless the supply of a currency tracks potential nominal GDP, prices will undergo deflation.

That means if a steady-state supply of Bitcoin really did gradually replace a fiat currency, the price index of all goods and services would continuously fall. By extension, any nominal debt contract denominated in Bitcoin would rise in real value over time, leading to the kind of debt deflation that economist Irving Fisher believed precipitated the Great Depression. At the same time, nominal wages in Bitcoin would increase forever in real terms, regardless of productivity growth, adding further to the likelihood of an economic disaster.

But not only that, he believes that blockchain is a bit of a crock too:

As for the underlying blockchain technology, there are still massive obstacles standing in its way, even if it has more potential than cryptocurrencies. Chief among them is that it lacks the kind of basic common and universal protocols that made the Internet universally accessible (TCP-IP, HTML, and so forth). More fundamentally, its promise of decentralized transactions with no intermediary authority amounts to an untested, Utopian pipedream. No wonder blockchain is ranked close to the peak of the hype cycle of technologies with inflated expectations.

Yes, I strongly suspect that blockchain technology is being way over-hyped.   It's working great to get RMIT professors who have given up on noting "no statistically significant increase in temperatures" and warning about Keynesian induced stagflation invitations to international conferences, though.

Very, very mixed feelings

I don't think there is any issue which gives me more internal conflict than watching the matter of indigenous issues and politics in Australia.

Yesterday, I see there were very large "invasion day" marches, indicating that the "change the date" movement (with which I have sympathy, given the rather non-crucial connection the actual date had with the creation of the modern Australian nation in the first place) is stronger than ever.


I further sympathise with the view that the mistreatment of aborigines as the colony expanded has long been underappreciated, as is the general "caught between two cultures" dilemma that befell them.   (European arrival so frequently has had the same effect - with high rates of alcoholism, poor education results and apparent listlessness in remote communities, and welfare dependence.)   I was leery at first of the effect of the Mabo decision, but it has been implemented in a way that hasn't had (as far as I know) any detrimental effect on reasonable development.   I really dislike how people on the Right (such as Andrew Bolt) can oversimplify the matter of aboriginal identity, and take a pretty sneery attitude to the whole matter of how long the effect of historical culture shock can reach into modern life.  The attitude is rather like the obnoxious "it's your choice whether to take offence at words" meme of libertarians, thereby giving free reign to the obnoxious. 

On the other hand:   I don't doubt that much of what passes for respect for aboriginal culture is genuinely what those on the (pretty obnoxious) Right call mere "virtue signalling" - such as "acknowledgement of traditional owners" statements made even to rooms where it is clear there is no descendent of a traditional owner present as a guest or observer;  yesterday's "#AlwaysWasAlwaysWillBe" on Twitter, in which many Lefty celebs appeared to be agreeing with activists that land over which Aboriginal groups have no meaningful control must still be called Aboriginal land;  incorporation of aboriginal ceremonies which are, in key respects, modern inventions;  trying to wring way, way more out of aboriginal knowledge as relevant to modern education than is reasonable;  disregarding the historically harsh aspects of aboriginal societies in terms of treatment of women;  and, yes, some people of very limited aboriginal ancestry who insist it is still of vital relevance to their identity.   Seriously, at some point you have to imagine that Chinese tourists watching some aboriginal dance troupe doing their thing must be thinking "I didn't know aborigines could be white."


It just seems so hard to get both sides to stop with factual and rhetorical exaggerations on the matter - and to express mutual good will.   It makes me dislike both sides.  

Update:   the rhetoric of Ms Onus-Williams is a good example of why it is so difficult to be completely onside with aboriginal advocacy groups, and to be annoyed with virtue signallers who don't call it out.    If she wants the Andrew Bolts and Tim Blairs of the world to show some greater sympathy to historical wrongs, she needs to get real herself.

The (pretty strong) skeptical case against the multiverse

Hey, Sabine Hossenfelder has written as clearly as I think I have ever read about the reasons people should be very skeptical about the idea of the multiverse, covering the three main types of multiverse scientists speculate about. 

She has a book coming out too, which I strongly suspect may be worth reading.

I'm sure people (including me!) at least partly like the multiverse idea because of the large slab of science fiction scenarios it lends itself to.   But I'd be happy if there was just one other universe that consciousness can interact with, as many religions would consider as the supernatural realm...

Just a reminder

This is what "there is no evidence of global warming" [Steve Kates - who likes to keep an open mind on whether Soros and the Bushes are currently being interrogated at Gitmo] looks like:

Funny because it's true

I thought Allahpundit at Hot Air made a witty comment when discussing the "Trump ordered Mueller sacked" story:

Trump reportedly planned to justify the firing on grounds that Mueller had three separate conflicts of interest, one of which was, uhhhhhh, a dispute over golf fees when he used to play at Trump’s course in Virginia. I like to imagine McGahn literally curling up into the fetal position on his office floor when he heard Trump float that idea.

(McGahn being the White House counsel who dissuaded Trump by threatening to resign if Trump insisted on this happening.)

I also see that my occasional Catallaxian visitor JC thought it was "fake news".   Good call, JC, given that Fox News confirmed the story during Hannity's show.

And I see that it turns out that Trump didn't want to go to Davos to call everyone in the room poopy heads, as at least half the world thought might be his motivation.  From Vox:

His criticism of free trade was cast not in the crude terms he’s used in the past — “we can’t continue to allow China to rape our country” — but as a sort of tinkering at the edges designed to make free trade work for everyone. “We support free trade,” he said, “but it needs to be fair and it needs to be reciprocal because in the end, unfair trade undermines us all.”

Trump even signaled openness to rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an East Asian trade agreement that he withdrew the US from in one of his first acts as president. “We would consider negotiating with [TPP countries], either individually or perhaps as a group, if it is in the interests of all,” he said. ...

This morning was a clear victory for the conventional members of the Trump administration — National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster — who have long been pushing Trump in this direction. With Steve Bannon out of the administration and marginalized, the highest-level policy advisers in the Trump administration generally do not share the president’s instinctive hostility toward the global order — and today, it showed.

Will this stick? That’s impossible to say with a president this mercurial.

Talk about your puppet president, so highly dependent on the matter of which advisers are currently in his good books, which is highly dependent on never hurting his fragile ego via criticism.

In fact, in another Vox article, Matthew Yglesias expands on this empty vessel of a President observation by reference to an interview he gave at Davos:

President Donald Trump’s first non-Fox television interview in a long time, conducted with CNBC’s Joe Kernen from Davos, Switzerland, is in many respects weirdly devoid of substance. And much of the substance that’s there consists of misstatements of fact. 

But lurking in that is an important insight: Trump is holding the office of president, but he’s not doing the job of president. He seems to have no real idea what’s going on, even with his own signature policy moves. 

Some of his misstatements have the color of propaganda, but often he seems to be caught up in other people’s propaganda or even to have misunderstood his own talking points. He’s disengaged from the details of big questions like NAFTA — “I may terminate NAFTA, I may not,” he says profoundly. He can’t even describe his own negotiating positions in the immigration standoff accurately.

A surprising biological discovery (if true)

Phys.org notes  research that indicates that mitochondria within cells actually operate at about 10 degrees hotter than average human body temperature:

Our body temperature is held at a fairly steady 37.5°C, and the assumption has always been that most of our physiological processes take place at this temperature. The heat needed to maintain this temperature in the face of a colder environment is generated by tiny subcellular structures called mitochondria. But a new study publishing January 25 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by INSERM and CNRS researchers at Hôpital Robert Debré in Paris led by Dr Pierre Rustin (and their international collaborators from Finland, South Korea, Lebanon and Germany) presents surprising evidence that mitochondria can run more than 10°C hotter than the body's bulk temperature, and indeed are optimized to do so. Because of the extraordinary nature of these claims, PLOS Biology has commissioned a cautionary accompanying article by Professor Nick Lane from University College, London, an expert on evolutionary bioenergetics.

I wonder if this would have some important implications to anti-ageing research, too.

Not entirely to be trusted

I like Axios a lot (you can read a detailed Buzzfeed report about how it operates here) and its two key contributors are Mike Allen and (Australian) Jonathan Swan.  Swan's reports are routinely accurate, and he is obviously well connected to the White House, but he keeps making snide comments on Twitter against other reporters and media that indicate a distinct bias against the "liberal media" which makes me not entirely trust him.  Latest example:

Now, as it happens, I don't often find the short satire of Shouts and Murmurs all that funny either, but I consider it pretty harmless.   Swan's reaction to it is strangely over the top, and given that it routinely targets Trump, Republicans and the Right, is suggestive of a bias.  (Because it's undeniable that the American Right has never more thoroughly deserved satire that it does now.)

Economist making sense Vs economist entertaining nonsense

Seems to me that Simon Wren Lewis's recent post The fatal inconsistency with neoliberalism makes a lot of sense, and is easy to read, too.

Meanwhile, at Nonsense Central (Catallaxy), I am amused to see that Sinclair challenged Trump cultist, conspiracist and fellow "Keynes ruined economics" economist Steve Kates to be clearer as to what "this" is when he complains about the media failing to report on the Greatest American Political Scandal Ever, and in reply Kates posted conspiracy nonsense that some commenter had put up that includes this:

Gitmo, in fact, is currently accommodating a number of people (more than 30 at last count), many of whom you have already heard about over the years. Anyone heard from Soros lately? Anyone noticed a diminution in Getup trolls on certain news blog sites. Anyone noticing Lady Rothchild is getting a little testy on Twitter. Anyone heard from the Bushes lately? And what about Las Vegas? Does the bad Saudi ‘uncle’ really own the top floors of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Join the dots. 

And at the end, Kates rubs his chin with a non-committal bit of later wriggle room "We shall see".

Even for most of the regulars in threads there, this is too much, and they're muttering about tinfoil for Kates.

The irony is, as I have said many times, the only single unifying belief amongst all who participate in threads at that blog is a solid belief that climate change is a non existent problem, either because it doesn't exist at all (I reckon 95% hold that view) or for the more sophisticated (LOL), it might exist but not in any form that is any problem.    What they don't realise is that this is fundamentally a conspiracy belief, making their raised eyebrows at what Kates is willing to entertain a supreme example of pot calling kettle black. 

I am also amused to see that it now is clear to all normal people that a Republican/Fox News conspiracy frenzy over the last couple of days regarding a FBI tweet about a "secret society" out to bring down Trump was a pure conspiracy beat up over a joke in a tweet which was referencing Trump's own claims of secret conspiracies in the FBI.  

That's how the Right wing, which has never been stupider, nonsense/conspiracy generating machine works.   They mutter darkly about conspiracies against them, someone makes a joke about it in a tweet, and Republican Senators (for God's sake) cite the joke as evidence for the conspiracy.

What a circle of jerks.

How's Tom going?

I have again switched over a few times to try watching Tom Ballard on Tonightly to see if he, or the show's writing,  has improved.   He hasn't.  It hasn't.  It is awful.

It would honestly be a mercy to Ballard to can the show ASAP.  He needs to be doing, I don't know, musical theatre or something - anything - other than terrible delivery of terribly written topical political humour.  

Surely it can't be rating highly?  Oh look, this review of the show, by someone who actually likes it, indicates that it is tanking so badly that even Ballard is making jokes about it:

In fact he wished he had the ratings for The Ghan instead of the 70,000 or so he is attracting. Understandable.

“I don’t know why I’m talking to this, nobody’s watching,” he joked at one point.

And even that reviewer complains about this:

If I have any early criticism, it is the prolific F-bombs dropped throughout the show. Not because I am offended by them, but because they distract. Yes I get that it’s cool to swear on ABC because you can, but language is better used for dramatic effect. If the audience is just waiting for the next one to drop, there is a risk we miss what’s being said in between. 

Kill the show, ABC.   I'll keep complaining until you do.

Re-visiting the 1980's

I've seen 3 movies from the 1980's via Netflix or SBS on Demand recently, each for the first time in many, many years.  In fact, the first two I don't think I have re-viewed since seeing them at the cinema.   I had forgotten how good they were:

*  The Fly:   gee, Jeff Goldblum was great in that role, wasn't he?  I remember I found the movie left me feeling it was too dark when I first saw it; but that was due to it being close to my father's terminal lung cancer, and the theme of a body deteriorating in front of its owner felt too close to the bone.   Now, with a bit of distance, and the modern desensitisation to gore (I didn't like the end shot - ha, a pun - when I first saw it), I can see how good the screenplay was without feeling depressed at the end.   Geena Davis struggled a bit with acting distraught, though, it must be said.

*  Little Shop of Horrors:  I had completely forgotten how funny Steve Martin was in the film, and the cameo by Bill Murray too.   A very amusing film, although it did make me wonder whether the black voice and slang of Audrey II might be questioned on PC grounds today?

*  Ferris Bueller's Day Off:  There was something perfect about Matthew Broderick's performance in the way it made you both like him and want to smack his smug face at the same time.  Particularly in the last scenes, when he is in bed talking to his gullible parents.  I had also forgotten Charlie Sheen's brief "bad boy" role in the film, which in retrospect is funny, given that it seems to have set the path for his actual life. Sure, the subplot of rich boy whose father doesn't love him was overdone, but it doesn't detract from the best elements of the film, such as the street parade sequence, which remains as infectious and impressive as it was when I first saw it. Incidentally, I checked the Metacritic rating for the film, and saw that Julie Salamon from the Wall Street Journal gave it a rating that the site scores as "0".  The only quote from the review is this:   

One of the least appealing movies I've seen in a while.... When a member of the audience belched loudly, that got the biggest laugh of the day.

 I saw it in a cinema, and with an audience strongly skewed to the 20 - 35 age range*, and there is no way it was not a popular hit  at the time with young-ish adults, not just teens.  I wish I could read the whole review to see how wrongheaded it must be.


* there is a reason I can safely say that, that I might explain another day...

Colour correction

One of the things I've noticed after having cataract surgery in one eye is the colour difference between the "old" eye and the new lens one.   The un-operated eye (which I was told does have some early cataract development, but is no where near the stage that it needs an operation) shows the world in what looks like a warmer light, whereas in the newly lensed eye things look whiter, perhaps bluer.  The difference reminds me very much of that between a "warm" toned LED or CF house light, and a "cooler" one, with its crisper, bluer light.

The ophthalmologist said yes, a cataract is like a yellowing of the lens, not just a clouding.

So people with slowly progressing cataracts start seeing the world in warmer, yellow-er tones, and don't realise it.   (Well, I didn't.)  I see that this has been discussed in the context of famous artists who developed cataracts, too.

Spotted at Aeon

That Aeon website has a pretty fascinating collection of essays up at the moment.

First, for the high minded:   a very good one about the "occult roots" of the idea of a fourth dimension and how it was mooted for a long time as a quasi-scientific explanation for the existence of a spirit world which we just can't perceive.

This is topic I've long been interested in, but this essay does a particularly good job of explaining how the idea was greeted by scientists, including Einstein.  Its explanation of how time became treated as a real fourth dimension, and Minkowki's work which Einstein reluctantly adopted, is not overly detailed, but enlightening.

Secondly:  for the more low minded, an explanation of medieval ideas of the importance of sex for health, with the most interesting aspect being the widespread idea that celibacy was pretty much as bad for you as having too much sex.

On the other hand, medieval medical authority held that too little sex presented a medical problem: celibacy was potentially detrimental to health, particularly for young men. Long-term celibacy meant the retention of excess semen, which would affect the heart, which in turn could damage other parts of the body. The celibate might experience symptoms including headaches, anxiety, weight loss and, in the most serious cases, death. Although celibacy was highly valued as a spiritual virtue in medieval society, in medical terms the celibate was as much at risk as the debauchee.

King Louis VIII of France, for example, insisted on remaining faithful to his wife while fighting in the Albigensian Crusade of 1209-29. Conventional opinion attributed his death to the resulting celibacy, making him the most famous victim of death by celibacy. According to the 12th-century Norman poet Ambroise, abstinence claimed many victims:

By famine and by malady
More than 3,000 were struck down
At the Siege of Acre and in the town
But in pilgrims’ hearing I declare
A hundred thousand men die there
Because from women they abstained.
’Twas for God’s love that they restrained
Themselves. They had not perished thus
Had they not been abstemious.

For most crusaders, sexual abstinence was (at most) a temporary inconvenience, to be endured only until they returned home and were reunited with their wives. But for medieval Europe’s many priests, celibacy was a lifelong state, and this could leave them facing a difficult choice. Thomas Becket’s doctor urged him to give up celibacy for the sake of his health, telling him that the celibate life was incompatible with his age and complexion, but the saint disregarded the physician’s advice. Becket lived for many years after this (and ultimately died a martyr at the hands of an assassin), but other bishops were less fortunate. An unnamed 12th-century archdeacon of Louvain, having struggled to remain celibate for a long time, was promoted against his will to the bishopric of the same city. For a month, he abstained from all sexual activity, but soon his genitals swelled up and he became seriously ill. His family and friends urged him to secretly ‘take a woman to himself’, but he was determined to resist temptation. Within days, he was dead.

The writer goes on to note that women were also considered at dire risk from prolonged celibacy, but oddly, through the quirk of their understanding of what was going on in bodies, it seems that some medical authorities were keener to endorse what sounds like masturbation as a cure for celibate women, rather than for celibate men. (!)

Anyway, all pretty fascinating.

Why IPA and Australia Day?

I see that many on Twitter have noted that the IPA funded poll on whether people want Australia Day moved from January 26 to be a clear case of "respondent training" to get the desired result.   Very hard to dispute that when you see the questions:

I was more interested in the question of why this is a matter the Institute of Paid Advocacy would be interested in at all.

I strongly suspect the answer can be found here: