Depravity noted

As if you couldn't be more appalled at what the Holocaust entailed:

It was noon in early 1942 as Johann Grüner approached the ‘German House’ in the Polish town of Nowy Targ for lunch. As a mid-level Nazi bureaucrat in occupied Poland, he enjoyed the privileges of power and the opportunity for career advancement that came with duty in the East. The German House, a mix of cultural centre, restaurant and pub, was one of the privileges enjoyed by the occupiers. As he entered the building, he could hear a boisterous celebration within. At the front door, a clearly inebriated Gestapo official passed by, a beer coaster with the number 1,000 written in red pinned to his blouse. Addressing Grüner, the policeman drunkenly bragged: ‘Man, today I am celebrating my 1,000th execution!’

At first glance, the incident at the German House might appear to be a grotesque aberration involving a single depraved Nazi killer. However, such ‘celebrations’ were widespread in the occupied Eastern territories as members of the notorious Schutzstaffel (SS) and the German police routinely engaged in celebratory rituals after mass killings. In fact, among the perpetrators of genocide, heavy drinking was common at the killing sites, in pubs and on bases throughout Poland and the Soviet Union. In another horrific example, a group of policemen charged with the cremation of some 800 Jewish corpses used the occasion to tap a keg. In this case, one of the men, named Müller, had the ‘honour’ of setting fire to ‘his Jews’ as he and his colleagues sat around the fire drinking beer. In a similar case, a Jewish woman recalled the aftermath of a killing operation at Przemyśl in Poland: ‘I smelled the odour of burning bodies and saw a group of Gestapo men who sat by the fire, singing and drinking.’ For these Gestapo men, ‘victory celebrations’ proved to be the order of the day, and followed every killing action or ‘liberation from the Jews’.

The role of alcohol in the Nazi genocide of European Jews deserves greater attention. While numerous studies from the social sciences have demonstrated the link between drinking and acts of homicide and sexual violence, the connection between mass murder and alcohol is under-researched. Among the Nazi perpetrators, alcohol served several roles: it incentivised and rewarded murder, promoted disinhibition to facilitate killing, and acted as a coping mechanism.

 Read the whole essay, at Aeon, for other eyewitness accounts of drunken celebrations that were part and parcel of massacres.

No love lost

Further to the remarkably successful fiscal turnaround in California under remarkably Blue Governor Jerry Brown, which I posted about yesterday, it's fun to read of the outright war between him and the Trump administration on immigration:

SACRAMENTO — California and the Trump administration have locked horns from the very first hours of Donald J. Trump’s presidency. But a visit by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to the California capital, Sacramento, on Wednesday produced an unfiltered shouting match that was remarkable even for the long-embattled antagonists, and seemed to be a culmination of fraying relations between the conservative administration and the country’s deepest blue state.

Mr. Sessions told a crowd of more than 200 law enforcement officials in a hotel ballroom that he would not stand for the insubordination of California lawmakers and what he called the dangerous obstruction of federal immigration laws.

A 10-minute walk away, in a briefing room of the State Capitol, Gov. Jerry Brown unleashed a tirade against Mr. Sessions and the Trump administration. He said that the administration was “full of liars” and that Mr. Sessions was “basically going to war against the state of California.”

It was highly unusual for an attorney general “to come out here and engage in a political stunt, make wild accusations, many of which are based on outright lies,” Mr. Brown added, “particularly a fellow coming from Alabama talking to us about secession and protecting human and civil rights.”

Speaking of Tehran...

....as I was a few posts back, it certainly makes me feel like deserves a supervolcano eruption when it starts doing stuff like this:

An Iranian woman who publicly removed her veil in protest against Iran’s compulsory headscarf law has been sentenced to two years in prison, the judiciary said on Wednesday.
Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, who announced the sentence, did not give the woman’s identity but said she intended to appeal against the verdict, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency reported.
Dolatabadi said the unidentified woman took off her headscarf in Tehran’s Enghelab Street to “encourage corruption through the removal of the hijab in public”.
The woman will be eligible for parole after three months, but Dolatabadi criticised what he said was a “light” sentence and said he would push for the full two-year penalty.

Speaking of comedy...

....I think Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell has been hitting some pretty high notes this season.

Tim - I saw somewhere on the net that you've cooled on him.   Hope you have been watching this current season, before I find it hard to imagine you don't find it amusing.

I think the thing that makes the show really work is the great team of support actors he has with him.  I reckon they're really talented.

Micallef himself is performing fine, too, but I have noticed he seems to have aged suddenly in the last year or so.   Hope he doesn't have any health problems...

Get your Moone on Netflix

Finding stuff to watch on Netflix is not always easy, but I was happy to find recently that the very pleasing Irish comedy Moone Boy (of which I had only ever seen the first season on Australian TV) is currently on Netflix - but only until 30 March!

So, I have 12 episodes (the total of Seasons 2 and 3) to watch in quick succession.

I'm not a binge watcher, though, and don't quite understand that practice.   This may sound odd, but I just have the feeling that watching many episodes of anything in one sitting feels like its not really honouring the effort put into making the show.   It just feels a bit wrong to consume so quickly something that took a long time to create.    Anyway, I like to protract enjoyment.   Why, when you find something you like, would you want to get all of the enjoyment done in a day, instead of stretching it over at least a few weeks?

Dinesh dumbs down further

If you enjoy seeing Dinesh D'Souza making an even greater fool of himself, you should read his tweet on tariffs and Milton Friedman, and the responses.

That's one way to end Middle East conflict...

I see in this article at Nature that vulcanologists don't think we're planning enough for the next massive volcanic eruption - one that would hit VEI-7 on the scale that I knew nothing much about until now.   [See the brief Wikipedia article - it involves blowing 100 cubic kilometres of stuff into the air.  VEI-8 gets really serious - 1,000 cubic km.!]

So, where do they think are possible sites for the next VEI-7?:

The researchers already have a long list of candidate volcanoes that might be capable of a VEI-7 blast. They include Taupo in New Zealand, site of the world’s last VEI-8 eruption — 26,500 years ago — and Iran’s Mount Damavand, which lies just 50 kilometres from Tehran.

Well, we Australians don't want Taupo blowing:  it's last eruption was a VEI-7 around 200AD, but fortunately Maori folk hadn't reached the islands at that time.  [Is there nothing in aboriginal folklore that has been theorised as being sourced from that event?   Let me Google it -  nope, nothing comes up in my first attempt.]

But Mount Damavand?   Just 50km from Tehran?  Let's see where that is on a map:

Look, it's a bit of a dramatic solution, but a big sprinkling of ash in a 1,000 radius would give the locals something else to think about for a good few years.

Who'd have thought?

Yes, this is remarkable.  The Wall Street Journal notes, with no criticism to speak of, that a Governor who I'm pretty sure wingnuts have longed derided as about as Left wing as Castro has brought California into a very healthy budget position without killing the economy.   How?  By taxing the rich:

Buoyed by tax increases passed under his administration and a strong economy, Mr. Brown said Wednesday that the state is projecting a $6.1 billion surplus for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

The governor proposed socking most of the money away in a rainy-day fund whose creation he pushed for in 2014. Nearly 70% of the state’s projected revenue of about $135 billion next fiscal year is derived from personal income taxes, according to the governor’s office.

As the tweet says:

Update:  I thought "should I be skeptical of the claim that the taxes really were on the rich?  Did the whole population suffer?   So, Googling the topic, I see it was pretty well targetted to the rich:

The measure creates three new personal income tax brackets for rich residents and adds a quarter-cent to the sales tax. The higher tax rates, which hit single filers making $250,000 and up and married taxpayers earning at least $500,000, last for seven years, and push the top tax rate to 12.3% for filers earning $500,000 and above, or $1 million per couple. It is effective starting with the 2012 tax year.
The sales tax hike, which brings that levy to 7.5%, starts Jan. 1 and lasts for four years.

The wealthiest 1% of Californians -- those with annual incomes of $533,000 or more -- will shoulder nearly 79% of the tax increase, according to the California Budget Project, a research group that endorsed the proposition. They will see their taxes rise by 1.1% of their income, while the bottom four-fifths of the state's residents will see an increase of between 0.1% and 0.2% of their incomes.

Conspiracy minded idiots

I see the wingnutty right continues with its pathetic "kill the messenger, who cares about the message" reality avoidance technique (just as they do with climate change), with the latest nut meme being that Downer was an untrustworthy Clinton agent because when he was foreign minister, the Australian government donated to the Clinton Foundation's anti-HIV initiative.

This is ridiculous - Downer passed on that Papadopoulos had told him that the Russians were shopping dirt on Clinton.  Normal people might think that normal Americans would have an interest in blatant but underhanded attempts to interfere in the election coming from Russia.   But no - for wingnuts it's all grand conspiracy thinking that no one should ever have acted on this because - you know - Clinton and anyone who ever had anything to do with her was in every and any way always corrupt and it's a case of conspiring against the Right.

Steve Kates (of course) passes on the meme today, and such influential wingnut bloggers like the high functioning but gormless idiot Ace of Spades thinks it's really big too.

Monty - again, I say to you - the wingnutty Right is just too stupid to argue with these days.   Just too stupid...

Bad news

If Bolton has any influence, everyone seems to think there'll be a much, much higher chance of American nukes flying off during a Trump presidency:

And I see that anti-tariff economics adviser Gary Cohn is said to be resigning.

Things getting much grimmer in the White House...

Update:   speaking of ranting men, you'd think Nassim Taleb might find time to occasionally make a critical comment on Trump's economics, but on his Twitter feed, he very, very rarely makes any comment on him at all.

A worthy Krugman

Been a while since I recommended a Krugman column, but this one "A Ranting Old Guy With Nukes" is pretty good.   (And Mother Jones notes an attempt to nitpick it by Kevin Williamson, which fails.)

Forgotten subway

In an article that explains that American governments are getting too carried away with the unproved technology of hyperloop, I found this bit:

There is reason to think high-speed vacuum-tube transportation can work, at least on paper. (A pneumatic subway briefly opened beneath Manhattan in 1870.) 

 Wikipedia has an entry about that short lived, short length, pneumatic subway, and it also notes that a similar novelty subway was built before that at the Crystal Palace in London.

The things you learn...

Prophetting in Africa

Seems I have missed the rise of "Prophet" Shepherd Bushiri in Africa:

On a regular Sunday, about 40,000 people will gather to hear the Prophet preach, and potentially pick up some of the specially designed merchandise on sale at stalls dotted around the large church complex - anything from "miracle oil", calendars and wrist bands, to branded towels, T-shirts and caps, all emblazoned with his face. 

Now I have to go look at the video which shows him walking on air.   [Done - and I don't think I will bother sharing it.  I see he has been a thing for a few years now, and been the subject of skepticism within Africa too.  Good.]

Blockchain skepticism in detail

When it comes to reading the stuff being put out by Berg, Davidson and Potts (key line - don't get too distracted by Bitcoin, the real revolution coming is glorious blockchain) I've never got over the feeling that it was pretty vacuous waffle that didn't make much sense.

Hence it gives me pleasure to read this great piece of blockchain skepticism by Roubini and Byrne in The Guardian today.   They make clear much of what I always thought was obvious, yet seems to never be addressed (or at least, in a way I can understand) in the RMIT conference machine material.

Strange choices

Have the Oscars become unimportant because the Academy has become more and more peculiar in its choices?   It would seem that the big winner (so far, I was just watching some of it during my lunch) is The Shape of Water, the "adult fairy tale" featuring a sexy love story between a woman and what looks like a slightly more human Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Being underwhelmed by the director's Pan's Labyrinth, and given the nature of the story, I am in no hurry to watch this movie at all.   As, I suspect, is most of the public.  I see now that it had a December release in the USA, and has made a relatively paltry $57 million.   (I'm surprised it made that much.)

I am particularly miffed that Shape took the award for best score, when I had predicted that Dunkirk should definitely get it.

Update: yes, it won best picture.   Ugh.

At some point, hopefully if it is free on a streaming service, I will watch it hoping to confirm my anticipatory dislike.

Update 2:  I hadn't really bothered to read reviews of it before, but I see that Rex Reed wrote one  with the pleasing title ‘The Shape of Water’ Is a Loopy, Lunkheaded Load of Drivel.'

Hero revisionism

Reading this story gives a good picture of how terrifying being involved in a US school shoot up must be for both students and teachers.

In brief - at least a couple of Florida students are saying that a teacher formerly called a hero in the media didn't seem very heroic to them when they were caught in the corridor and he (perhaps following procedure technically correctly?)  refused to let them back in the classroom.

I'm not sure who's right or wrong, to be honest, but you can imagine that causing some disruption in the school for some time afterwards.

Opioids can cause extra pain - huh

I didn't know this.  From the start of an article at NPR:

When patients arrive in the emergency room, nearly all but those with the most minor complaints get an IV.

To draw blood, give medications or administer fluids, the IV is the way doctors and nurses gain access to the body. Putting one in is quick and simple, and it's no more painful than a mild bee sting.

Yet for some patients, this routine procedure becomes excruciating. On my shifts as an emergency physician, I began to notice a strange pattern. These hypersensitive patients often had a history of using opioids.

Shouldn't these patients be less susceptible to pain, instead of more so?

As I looked into it, I found that I was far from the first to notice the paradox of heightened pain sensitivity with opioid use. An English physician in 1870 reported on morphine's tendency to "encourage the very pain it pretends to relieve." In 1880, a German doctor named Rossbach described a similar hypersensitivity to pain with opioid dependence.

A century passed before the phenomenon received serious scientific attention. 

Turns out it is still not well understood.  Read the whole thing.

Disliking Stephen King

My son wanted to watch the recent movie version of Stephen King's It. 

Now, as I may have mentioned before, I have found one - just one - adaptation of Stephen King material which I liked:  The Shining.   And I like that a lot.  But from what I have read, it's almost in spite of the novel that it turned out to be a great movie.  (King himself doesn't like it!)   But every other King inspired mini series or movie I've seen has not impressed.  I didn't even care for Stand by Me, his (only?) non horror work, when I saw it at the cinema decades ago.  (Too much overwrought acting, and characters that I don't recall being all that sympathetic.)

So, would this reasonably well received movie change my mind - especially since I had not watched the earlier adaptation of it, and was therefore coming to it without preconceptions.  

No.   A hundred times no.  

Look, I know you have to make allowances for certain conventions in ghost or horror stories - the most obvious being nervous people walking into darkened rooms/haunted houses/sewer systems that look more appropriate for New York than a country town, when every normal person would run away or at least go in prepared - but it can be pushed so far that it just becomes ridiculous, and so it is, repeatedly, in this movie.

Apart from that, was King himself bullied at school and dislike his parents, because now that I think of it, meanness of kids to other kids, and incompetent or nasty parents, seems to be a feature of a lot of his stories.  The kid on kid meanness is a very big component in this movie, but it doesn't seem to have any context.  It's just there.

The movie reminded me at times of the two other King movies mentioned above - but the use of gushing blood in this one was (sorry to use the word again) ridiculous, as to opposed to malevolent, as it was in The Shining.

Overall, I found it an unpleasant, silly and non-scary story - so very conventional in the way the scary music would start, and even managing jump scares which didn't scare.   

And it convinces more than ever that King is a puzzlingly over-rated creative force.

In nerdy construction news...

Hey, look what I saw yesterday:

Why's this interesting?  Because it's the start of the 10 level office building being built in Brisbane using engineered wood.   (OK, well there's concrete involved at the bottom, obviously, but most of it is meant to be wood.)

I wrote about it in previous posts here and here.   Interesting, no?  (It just is, shut up.)

In more Trump tariff news...

*   Yes, another network confirms what Jonathan Swan told us the other day - that Trump was going off his nut on the night he decided to start a trade war.   (Maybe Kelly made sure the nuclear codes were kept out of the room for a few hours.):

According to two officials, Trump's decision to launch a potential trade war was born out of anger at other simmering issues and the result of a broken internal process that has failed to deliver him consensus views that represent the best advice of his team.
On Wednesday evening, the president became "unglued," in the words of one official familiar with the president's state of mind.

*  I am waiting for the Steve Kates, Trump sycophant extraordinaire,  to explain to the world why it's actually not a bad idea idea at all.   Or is that a challenge too far even for him?   (I'm suspecting he'll go with a "but every single other decision Trump has made has been so good, this one won't undo his tremendous legacy.") 

*  If you look up Scott Adams on twitter, you will see  that not only is he claiming that Trump making decisions irrationally is actually a good "negotiating" tactic (left unsaid is who he is actually "negotiating" with when it comes to tariff wars); he's now on board with the Seth Rich conspiracy.  Funny how Adams doesn't seem to realise that chatting into his webcam every day makes him look like a loser talking to himself.  (Yes, I know, he does have live viewers during these pieces, but it still makes him look like what he almost certainly is - an eccentric lonely looser with no real friends, even if he does have squillions.)