Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Building and buying global power
Look, China is a worry, given their system of government and rapidly developing high tech population control techniques, but it's still kind of fascinating watching how they're trying to buy their way into total global control, more or less. It makes for a pretty fascinating contrast with Soviet Union attempts to win control and influence people. Maybe if smart phones and electronic devices had been invented by the 1960s, it would be Russia that could have become assembly central for the rest of the world and gained riches that way? Then again, China didn't never had a vodka problem, and Mao apparently dealt with opium...
Go away, Adam
Hasn't Adam Creighton long argued that the family home should not be exempt from the old age pension assets test? A truly enormous change that would have very far reaching consequences for many on the age pension.
Yet here he is today, co-writer of an article of the type we will see re-cycled endlessly in The Australian before the next election, taking a sympathetic approach to rich self funded retirees whining about how Shorten's changes to dividend imputation would reduce their income.
Apparently, Creighton has oodles of sympathy for self funded retirees who pay no tax on superannuation earnings, but very limited sympathy for pensioner folk who are the (often inadvertent) beneficiaries of capital gain on a asset which doesn't produce income for them:
And Creighton I still think is awful on policy.
Yet here he is today, co-writer of an article of the type we will see re-cycled endlessly in The Australian before the next election, taking a sympathetic approach to rich self funded retirees whining about how Shorten's changes to dividend imputation would reduce their income.
Apparently, Creighton has oodles of sympathy for self funded retirees who pay no tax on superannuation earnings, but very limited sympathy for pensioner folk who are the (often inadvertent) beneficiaries of capital gain on a asset which doesn't produce income for them:
Labor’s push to slap a minimum 30 per cent tax on dividends hasn’t only enraged tax purists by tearing up an 18-year-old tax principle, it’s incensed the nation’s million-plus army of self-funded retirees who are increasingly asking “why did we even bother saving?’’Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s policy to cease cash refunds for dividend franking credits should Labor win the election has potentially left up to one million self-funded retirees out of pocket.
Yeah, sorry about your wife and all that, Mr Bolton, but telling the story of crying at 24 when you sold your boat to buy a block of land - yeah, I would have held that bit back if you're hunting for sympathy. Also - there are other ways to arrange your investments to reduce the effect of the change. But no, you go and spend it all on yourself in a fit of pique that governments sometimes reverse poorly justified policies.John Bolton, a 64-year-old retired lawyer from Caloundra, in southeast Queensland, said Labor’s plan to “defraud” him of his retirement savings had made him reconsider a lifetime of hard work, describing the proposed changes as “grossly unfair”.“I’ve had my children, I’ve raised my family, I’ve done a lot of free legal aid work and made my contribution to society,” Mr Bolton said. He likened Labor’s plans to “playing a game of football and the referee saying ‘that’s no longer a goal because I’ve changed the rules’”....Despite his effort to put aside enough money to ensure he would not be a drain on public funds, Mr Bolton said Labor’s proposal meant he was seriously considering going on “back-to-back overseas trips until my money runs out so I can seek a pension”.The former lawyer, who retired earlier than anticipated after his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer, said he had always adopted a practical financial approach, working 10-14-hour days, weekends and public holidays for most of his working life. “I have planned my life around the rules as they exist,” Mr Bolton said. He said he cried when at 24 he had to sell his boat in order to afford his first home, but “it was just what you had to do”.“Unlike the kids of today who claim they’re priced out of the housing market when they can’t live on Sydney’s north shore,” Mr Bolton said. “We sold our toys and bought a block of land for $8500, about an hour out of town.’’
And Creighton I still think is awful on policy.
Always the legend in his own mind
I see via a Catallaxy cut and paste that Kevin Rudd has written to the AFR and is still keen to defend his legacy by attacking Gillard. How unpleasant to watch a bitter man doing this. It was an enormous mistake for Labor to make him leader in the first place.
In more rodent news...
...it seems that medical scientists may have been keeping lab mice a bit too clean for their (the scientists) own good:
What Pierson is doing breaks the rules. For more than 50 years, scientists have worked to make lab mice cleaner. In most labs today, the animals’ cages are sanitized, and their water bottles and food are sterilized. “We really go to great lengths to keep natural infectious experience out of the mouse house,” says David Masopust, an immunologist at the University of Minnesota who heads the lab where Pierson works. Those efforts have paid off: with the confounding effects of pathogens controlled, mouse experiments have become less variable.Read the whole thing, at Nature.
But a raft of studies now suggests that this cleanliness has come at a cost, leaving the rodents with stunted immune systems. In a quest for standardized and spotless mice, scientists have made the creatures a less-faithful model for human immune systems, which develop in a world teeming with microbes. And that could have serious implications for researchers working to usher treatments and vaccines out of the lab and into the clinic. Although it’s not yet possible to pin specific failures on the impeccable hygiene of standard mouse models, Masopust thinks the artificial environment must have some effect. It’s no secret that the success rate for moving therapies from animal to humans is abysmal — according to one estimate1, 90% of drugs that enter clinical trials fail. “You have to wonder if you might sometimes get misinformed simply because you’re in a clean environment,” says Masopust.
A balanced look at Trump and trade
This article at The Lowy Institute's Interpreter blog seems a very balanced one on the matter of Trump and trade and its historical precedents.
Giant rats to the rescue, again
You've probably seen those African giant pouched rats used as landmine detectors before, and it turns out they are good at detecting disease too:
Rats are able to detect whether a child has tuberculosis (TB), and are much more successful at doing this than a commonly used basic microscopy test. These are the results of research led by Georgies Mgode of the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania.
The study, published by Springer Nature in Pediatric Research, shows that when trained rats were given children's sputum samples to sniff, the animals were able to pinpoint 68 percent more cases of TB infections than detected through a standard smear test. Inspiration for investigating the diagnosis of TB through smell came from anecdotal evidence that people suffering from the potentially fatal lung disease emit a specific odour. According to Mgode, current TB detection methods are far from perfect, especially in under-resourced countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia where the disease is prevalent, and where a reasonably cheap smear test is commonly used. Problems with this type of test are that the accuracy varies depending on the quality of sputum sample used, and very young children are often unable to provide enough sputum to be analysed.
"As a result, many children with TB are not bacteriologically confirmed or even diagnosed, which then has major implications for their possible successful treatment," explains Mgode. "There is a need for new diagnostic tests to better detect TB in children, especially in low and middle-income countries."
Previous work pioneered in Tanzania and Mozambique focussed on training African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei) to pick up the scent of molecules released by the TB-causing Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacterium in sputum. The training technique is similar to one used to teach rats to detect vapours released by landmine explosives. In the case of TB, when a rat highlights a possibly infected sample, it is analysed further using a WHO endorsed concentrated microscopy techniques to confirm a positive diagnosis.
Monday, April 09, 2018
On Malcolm
Malcolm Turnbull is a disappointing Prime Minister leading a disappointingly shallow and untalented party.
He's almost certainly the best to be leader out of the unimpressive bunch, however. Also, given the ridiculous ease with which tax reform can be made the subject of a scare campaign, he likely stands a 50/50 chance of winning the next election, after which the country would continue to stumble on in a generally less than satisfactory manner.
I don't have any doubt that it is actually Labor that is (on the whole) doing serious and useful policy reform work on tax and other matters that is more in the long term interests of the nation. Sure, Bill Shorten has a charisma deficit, but provided he can resist the temptation to increase spending on new ideas (he has enough on his plate funding current ones), he's likely to do more good for the long term budget deficit than Turnbull.
Labor's instincts on most matters are currently pretty consistent and reasonable, I reckon; the Liberals and Nationals, on the other hand, are all over the shop, being riven as they are with undue influence from objectively long discredited American right wing ideologically motivated policy positions.
So, here's to a new Labor government early next year. I hope.
He's almost certainly the best to be leader out of the unimpressive bunch, however. Also, given the ridiculous ease with which tax reform can be made the subject of a scare campaign, he likely stands a 50/50 chance of winning the next election, after which the country would continue to stumble on in a generally less than satisfactory manner.
I don't have any doubt that it is actually Labor that is (on the whole) doing serious and useful policy reform work on tax and other matters that is more in the long term interests of the nation. Sure, Bill Shorten has a charisma deficit, but provided he can resist the temptation to increase spending on new ideas (he has enough on his plate funding current ones), he's likely to do more good for the long term budget deficit than Turnbull.
Labor's instincts on most matters are currently pretty consistent and reasonable, I reckon; the Liberals and Nationals, on the other hand, are all over the shop, being riven as they are with undue influence from objectively long discredited American right wing ideologically motivated policy positions.
So, here's to a new Labor government early next year. I hope.
Radin on magic
Dean Radin has done some pretty "high woo" studies in parapsychology (try "Effect of intentionally enhanced chocolate on mood" for a starter), yet he sounds pretty sensible and rational in interviews, such as this one.
His new book coming out on "real magic", however, may well push his credibility out further than I would like.
His new book coming out on "real magic", however, may well push his credibility out further than I would like.
On Kevin
I have the urge to weigh in on the Kevin Williamson matter. First, I should note that it's no wonder I get confused about who is who in American commentary, when the editor of The Atlantic is Jeffrey Goldberg and Jonah Goldberg is a senior editor at National Review.
As most readers would likely know, Williamson has long written diatribes at National Review, sometimes amusingly, and he is a strong "never Trumper", which means I don't disagree with every word he has ever written. But I did note over the last couple of years that his comments on Obama and Chelsea Clinton were ridiculously over the top: his supporters claim he can argue powerfully, but I reckon he's often a conservative troll more than anything else.
So anyway, Jeffrey Goldberg hired him briefly for The Altantic, using the "diversity of opinion" justification, only to sack him a few weeks later when he realised that Williamson had suggested/proposed that women who had an abortion should be treated as murderers, and suffer capital punishment for it - hanging, he has quipped, on more than one occasion.
Williamson's tendency to rhetorical exaggeration no doubt means his anti-abortion (or rather, anti-women who have abortions) musings shouldn't be a complete surprise. Certainly, that's what his supporters want us to believe. Jonah Goldberg says he was "sardonically" suggesting that such women be hanged. I had to double check the meaning of that ("characterized by bitter or scornful derision; mocking; cynical; sneering: a sardonic grin") and I'm not sure it's apt. His not so subtle view is apparently that he is generally against capital punishment, so of course he wouldn't argue that American women should hang for abortion, but... Well, here, you read the summary of his more nuanced (ha) view in an article in The Atlantic (Jeffrey Goldberg is a pretty fair editor!) arguing against his sacking:
Here's my take on the whole matter:
* Goldberg, Jeffrey, was wrong to hire him in the first place due to the high "troll" content of much of Williamson's writing on all issues.
* Goldberg, Jonah, is wrong to carry on about him being a "thought criminal". Take another example and see how Goldberg would run with it - if Williamson had argued (as some in the American conservative Right would still agree) that homosexuality is against the laws of nature and God's laws, and a seriously Christian society should feel fully justified in executing recalcitrant men practising sodomy with other men in the same way that they carry out executions for other capital offences. You know, provided that everyone knew it was against State law, and the men had plenty of warning but still insisted on carrying on that practice.
Would Goldberg (Jonah) have then run with "of course that's a logical argument - not a popular one, and he was being deliberately provocative when saying he has no problem with Islamic or Christian states treating sexual morality really seriously by throwing gays off buildings. Why should The Atlantic condemn him for such a "thought crime"?"
And might I point out here that Williamson would almost certainly here have a stronger case from a historical perspective - sodomy was a capital offence for three to four centuries in England; there appears to have been no similar period of consistent dire punishment for women procuring their own abortion in the West in the same period. (Have a look at the Wikipedia entries here and here, but also this article, the accuracy of which I would not necessarily vouch for.)
So, Williamson is suggesting a more extreme position than anyone in the West has for centuries, and we're just supposed to say oh - we shouldn't expect a liberal leaning publication to sack him for his thoughts? Get out of here.
* It's not a free speech issue - he's free to spout off about this back at any publication that will have him.
* It is the Right which has moved away from the centre on all sorts of issues, from gun control to their profoundly anti-science attitude on climate change, not to mention their shrug of the shoulders endorsement of patently authoritarian chants at Trump rallies and the "who really cares?" attitude to his non-disclosure of his personal finances and Russian interference in his election. No, the Left and the "old" centre does not have to give them respect for their new, nutty and dangerous views and excuse making for things conservatives of only 30 years ago would have found repulsive.
As most readers would likely know, Williamson has long written diatribes at National Review, sometimes amusingly, and he is a strong "never Trumper", which means I don't disagree with every word he has ever written. But I did note over the last couple of years that his comments on Obama and Chelsea Clinton were ridiculously over the top: his supporters claim he can argue powerfully, but I reckon he's often a conservative troll more than anything else.
So anyway, Jeffrey Goldberg hired him briefly for The Altantic, using the "diversity of opinion" justification, only to sack him a few weeks later when he realised that Williamson had suggested/proposed that women who had an abortion should be treated as murderers, and suffer capital punishment for it - hanging, he has quipped, on more than one occasion.
Williamson's tendency to rhetorical exaggeration no doubt means his anti-abortion (or rather, anti-women who have abortions) musings shouldn't be a complete surprise. Certainly, that's what his supporters want us to believe. Jonah Goldberg says he was "sardonically" suggesting that such women be hanged. I had to double check the meaning of that ("characterized by bitter or scornful derision; mocking; cynical; sneering: a sardonic grin") and I'm not sure it's apt. His not so subtle view is apparently that he is generally against capital punishment, so of course he wouldn't argue that American women should hang for abortion, but... Well, here, you read the summary of his more nuanced (ha) view in an article in The Atlantic (Jeffrey Goldberg is a pretty fair editor!) arguing against his sacking:
My own reaction is informed by an interview Williamson gave at Hillsdale College where he was asked by a student if he really argued that all women who have abortions ought to be hanged.
He called that an “intellectually dishonest” accounting of his deliberately provocative viewpoint. “I am generally against capital punishment, I am generally against abortion, I am always against ex-post facto punishment and always against lynching,” he said.Well, that helps, I say sardonically. (It doesn't really.)
Cathy Young, who is especially clear-eyed about the uncertainty around Williamson’s exact position, probes all the nuances for those so inclined, but as best I can tell, his position is this: if he were writing the laws, abortion would be treated as homicide but homicides would not be punished by death; whereas in places where the law did punish homicide by death, he’d nevertheless favor charging abortions as homicides.
Does he want to execute women who have abortions? No. Would he charge them with homicide even knowing that the state would kill them were they convicted? Yes.
Here's my take on the whole matter:
* Goldberg, Jeffrey, was wrong to hire him in the first place due to the high "troll" content of much of Williamson's writing on all issues.
* Goldberg, Jonah, is wrong to carry on about him being a "thought criminal". Take another example and see how Goldberg would run with it - if Williamson had argued (as some in the American conservative Right would still agree) that homosexuality is against the laws of nature and God's laws, and a seriously Christian society should feel fully justified in executing recalcitrant men practising sodomy with other men in the same way that they carry out executions for other capital offences. You know, provided that everyone knew it was against State law, and the men had plenty of warning but still insisted on carrying on that practice.
Would Goldberg (Jonah) have then run with "of course that's a logical argument - not a popular one, and he was being deliberately provocative when saying he has no problem with Islamic or Christian states treating sexual morality really seriously by throwing gays off buildings. Why should The Atlantic condemn him for such a "thought crime"?"
And might I point out here that Williamson would almost certainly here have a stronger case from a historical perspective - sodomy was a capital offence for three to four centuries in England; there appears to have been no similar period of consistent dire punishment for women procuring their own abortion in the West in the same period. (Have a look at the Wikipedia entries here and here, but also this article, the accuracy of which I would not necessarily vouch for.)
So, Williamson is suggesting a more extreme position than anyone in the West has for centuries, and we're just supposed to say oh - we shouldn't expect a liberal leaning publication to sack him for his thoughts? Get out of here.
* It's not a free speech issue - he's free to spout off about this back at any publication that will have him.
* It is the Right which has moved away from the centre on all sorts of issues, from gun control to their profoundly anti-science attitude on climate change, not to mention their shrug of the shoulders endorsement of patently authoritarian chants at Trump rallies and the "who really cares?" attitude to his non-disclosure of his personal finances and Russian interference in his election. No, the Left and the "old" centre does not have to give them respect for their new, nutty and dangerous views and excuse making for things conservatives of only 30 years ago would have found repulsive.
Sunday, April 08, 2018
The One Hour Survivalist
As I was driving out to Mulgowie yesterday, my mind wandered to the scenario of hiding from an alien invasion. Perhaps influenced by the recent Youtube clips from the US military planes*, it started with thoughts about how electrifying it would be to see a clear-as-day, pulsating UFO cross the sky at low altitude ahead of the car while driving. I can imagine the heart rate soaring, and my brain exploding with the implications, particularly if the radio confirmed there were UFOs appearing elsewhere, likely leading to a good vomit on the side of the road.
But, more interestingly, what would I think I should do, pending the determination of whether our visitors from the sky were friendly or not?
On returning home, I think there would be a good case to be made for an immediate "bugging out" of large cities, they being obvious targets for any invasion bent on sterilizing the planet for their own purposes, at least until the reason for their visit was known. Could I sell that to my family?
The scenario that has some appeal is to go bush for a period, in or near a heavily forested area that may make detection difficult. Particularly in South East Queensland, we have some pretty thick subtropical rainforest not too far from the city, with lots of water and dense canopy that would surely hide your infrared signal pretty well. There is Lamington National Park, but it's very up and down, and I imagine most flat sites under cover to be some distance from water. Instead, I have one particular State forest area in mind, where I went camping (not entirely legally) in my early 20's. As far as I know, it remains undeveloped. The creek is substantial and very clean, and few people have likely have seen much of it beyond the one swimming hole/picnic area, because there are no paths going upstream - you can follow the creek and there are other waterholes further up there, but it's not the easiest of walks, involving as it does going through water and scrambling over boulders. No, I'm not telling you where this is, because it's my secret, illegal hideout, not yours.
Here's the part that I like fantasising about more: if the reason to get out of the city was becoming very clear and urgent (say, reports of major cities in the Northern Hemisphere starting to be nuked), what would I urge the family to collect from the house (and the nearest - perhaps in the process of being ransacked - shops) if I only had an hour to organise the car being packed for an indefinite period of survival in the bush? My scenario is a bit like Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds, except he had no time at all - the tripods were just a few blocks away.
Hence the title of this post: what is the best strategy if you suddenly become "the one hour survivalist"?
I was a bit surprised to find that Googling that phrase doesn't produce anything useful, but rather has links to some video games.
I've never spent much time looking at American survivalist websites, but they are (of course) more about years of planning for economic collapse and defending your homestead - lots and lots of emphasis on shooting and having a decade's worth of ammo - rather than people who are suddenly pressed into running away.
I found one web page semi-helpfully entitled The Quickest Way I Know to Get a Family of Four Prepped for the Coming Collapse (Updated for 2018). (Good to know the author keeps updating it.) His main recommendation, though, is to be buy a year's worth of survivalist food from America's survivalist food specialist company - Augason Farm. (Only in America, I would guess, can one make a successful family business out of a perceived need for tasty survival food that has a shelf life of up to 25 years.) The cost of a year of food seems to have gone up a bit from what that first link indicated - it's now $5,000. They don't ship outside of America, though - not even to Alaska or Puerto Rico, which seems a bit unpatriotic of them.
So that link is not as useful as one might hope.
There is the more directly on point article from the (UK) Telegraph - Could you survive an alien Invasion? 8 ways to stay alive if disaster strikes. Now we're talking.
It does feature UK "Prepper" Steve Hart, who " sees prepping as an “enjoyable hobby” primarily, but knows his meticulous preparations may just help him survive in the unlikely event of evil aliens running riot."
Actually, must of what he says is very similar to the thoughts I had in the car yesterday:
Back to my imagined problem: the big complication is, of course, not knowing how long you may have to live out of town. Camping stuff is an obvious start, but should you worry about the folding stretcher bed or folding chair if you just have one car to take? Probably not. Any tents and tarpaulins - obviously. Warm clothes and sleeping bags, yes - might be a nuclear winter coming, and if it's the reverse, it's easy to not wear clothes. My mind keeps running to knives, lots of knives, and any sharpening method available - I imagine kitchen cutlery can be shaped into good spear heads. Ropes, strings, fishing tackle, at least one good shovel and any garden saw - all crucial. As are water containers. All medicine in the house I would take. If I could find the big glass magnifying glass, I would definitely take that.
From the food cupboard, I would think going for dry foods (rice or beans, especially) would have to be the priority, followed by anything high fat and therefore high calorie. (Not that we tend to buy Spam or canned corned beef.) Based on something I read on some survivalists site - salt. A very useful product if permanently trying to live off the land, large amounts of it would be one of the first things I would steal from the local Coles. That and vitamins. And dried beans. Matches and fire starters, of course. Soaps and detergents in pretty high quantity too - they are not going to be easily replaced with something from the wild.
And that's were my imagination starts to dry up. One of the main things I think would be very useful, and which I don't own, is a solar cell charger for mobile phones and rechargeable batteries. They are pretty cheap now, but it does seem redundant when you have electricity at home and rarely camp away from power.
I keep getting the feeling I am missing something important in that quick list. Anyway, doomsday is hopefully far enough off that my mental listing for it may be improved.
We all need a hobby...
Update: One key thing I think would be useful, provided I had the means of recharging the smartphones and tablets in the house, would be downloading some books on first aid, survival medicine, local bush foods, and off line maps of South East Queensland. Shouldn't take up more than 10 or 15 minutes of the hour, provided the internet is still up.
Secondly - you know one thing I can imagine causing the biggest argument: toilet paper. It's not as if civilisation is based on it, but I can just imagine everyone else wanting to take every roll in the house, and my arguing for sacks of salt in the space 50 rolls would take up.
* about which I retain, I should hasten to add, some skepticism arising from how there were released and their limited context. But that pilot interview about what he saw - that was more convincing that something was odd. Even then, though, there should be more willing to talk about his incident, no?
But, more interestingly, what would I think I should do, pending the determination of whether our visitors from the sky were friendly or not?
On returning home, I think there would be a good case to be made for an immediate "bugging out" of large cities, they being obvious targets for any invasion bent on sterilizing the planet for their own purposes, at least until the reason for their visit was known. Could I sell that to my family?
The scenario that has some appeal is to go bush for a period, in or near a heavily forested area that may make detection difficult. Particularly in South East Queensland, we have some pretty thick subtropical rainforest not too far from the city, with lots of water and dense canopy that would surely hide your infrared signal pretty well. There is Lamington National Park, but it's very up and down, and I imagine most flat sites under cover to be some distance from water. Instead, I have one particular State forest area in mind, where I went camping (not entirely legally) in my early 20's. As far as I know, it remains undeveloped. The creek is substantial and very clean, and few people have likely have seen much of it beyond the one swimming hole/picnic area, because there are no paths going upstream - you can follow the creek and there are other waterholes further up there, but it's not the easiest of walks, involving as it does going through water and scrambling over boulders. No, I'm not telling you where this is, because it's my secret, illegal hideout, not yours.
Here's the part that I like fantasising about more: if the reason to get out of the city was becoming very clear and urgent (say, reports of major cities in the Northern Hemisphere starting to be nuked), what would I urge the family to collect from the house (and the nearest - perhaps in the process of being ransacked - shops) if I only had an hour to organise the car being packed for an indefinite period of survival in the bush? My scenario is a bit like Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds, except he had no time at all - the tripods were just a few blocks away.
Hence the title of this post: what is the best strategy if you suddenly become "the one hour survivalist"?
I was a bit surprised to find that Googling that phrase doesn't produce anything useful, but rather has links to some video games.
I've never spent much time looking at American survivalist websites, but they are (of course) more about years of planning for economic collapse and defending your homestead - lots and lots of emphasis on shooting and having a decade's worth of ammo - rather than people who are suddenly pressed into running away.
I found one web page semi-helpfully entitled The Quickest Way I Know to Get a Family of Four Prepped for the Coming Collapse (Updated for 2018). (Good to know the author keeps updating it.) His main recommendation, though, is to be buy a year's worth of survivalist food from America's survivalist food specialist company - Augason Farm. (Only in America, I would guess, can one make a successful family business out of a perceived need for tasty survival food that has a shelf life of up to 25 years.) The cost of a year of food seems to have gone up a bit from what that first link indicated - it's now $5,000. They don't ship outside of America, though - not even to Alaska or Puerto Rico, which seems a bit unpatriotic of them.
So that link is not as useful as one might hope.
There is the more directly on point article from the (UK) Telegraph - Could you survive an alien Invasion? 8 ways to stay alive if disaster strikes. Now we're talking.
It does feature UK "Prepper" Steve Hart, who " sees prepping as an “enjoyable hobby” primarily, but knows his meticulous preparations may just help him survive in the unlikely event of evil aliens running riot."
Actually, must of what he says is very similar to the thoughts I had in the car yesterday:
The survivalist likens having an underground bunker stocked up with food to “lasting a bit longer in your own coffin” but explains that he does have three ‘bug out’ locations he can go to in the event of a ‘Doomsday’ scenario....
He adds: “I would only leave my house if the situation was so bad that I feared for my life. There could be a virus or a pandemic moving towards me and you obviously need to put as much distance between you and ‘it’ as possible. It could be that I have some aliens coming towards me, I’m going to leg it and I’m not going to try and stay and fight.
OK, so he takes it much more seriously than me, although I suspect that, if I had to walk, I could reach my "bug out" location within 3 days - perhaps 4. Generally speaking, though, it looks like British "prepping" is more about bushcraft and skills without guns, unlike US prepping sites which all unduly obsessed with ammunition.“I have three 'bug out' locations, these are areas that I go to, regularly, minimally stocked up with enough supplies for a few days … all within three days walking distance of my house, in different directions. That’s how most preppers would work.”
Back to my imagined problem: the big complication is, of course, not knowing how long you may have to live out of town. Camping stuff is an obvious start, but should you worry about the folding stretcher bed or folding chair if you just have one car to take? Probably not. Any tents and tarpaulins - obviously. Warm clothes and sleeping bags, yes - might be a nuclear winter coming, and if it's the reverse, it's easy to not wear clothes. My mind keeps running to knives, lots of knives, and any sharpening method available - I imagine kitchen cutlery can be shaped into good spear heads. Ropes, strings, fishing tackle, at least one good shovel and any garden saw - all crucial. As are water containers. All medicine in the house I would take. If I could find the big glass magnifying glass, I would definitely take that.
From the food cupboard, I would think going for dry foods (rice or beans, especially) would have to be the priority, followed by anything high fat and therefore high calorie. (Not that we tend to buy Spam or canned corned beef.) Based on something I read on some survivalists site - salt. A very useful product if permanently trying to live off the land, large amounts of it would be one of the first things I would steal from the local Coles. That and vitamins. And dried beans. Matches and fire starters, of course. Soaps and detergents in pretty high quantity too - they are not going to be easily replaced with something from the wild.
And that's were my imagination starts to dry up. One of the main things I think would be very useful, and which I don't own, is a solar cell charger for mobile phones and rechargeable batteries. They are pretty cheap now, but it does seem redundant when you have electricity at home and rarely camp away from power.
I keep getting the feeling I am missing something important in that quick list. Anyway, doomsday is hopefully far enough off that my mental listing for it may be improved.
We all need a hobby...
Update: One key thing I think would be useful, provided I had the means of recharging the smartphones and tablets in the house, would be downloading some books on first aid, survival medicine, local bush foods, and off line maps of South East Queensland. Shouldn't take up more than 10 or 15 minutes of the hour, provided the internet is still up.
Secondly - you know one thing I can imagine causing the biggest argument: toilet paper. It's not as if civilisation is based on it, but I can just imagine everyone else wanting to take every roll in the house, and my arguing for sacks of salt in the space 50 rolls would take up.
* about which I retain, I should hasten to add, some skepticism arising from how there were released and their limited context. But that pilot interview about what he saw - that was more convincing that something was odd. Even then, though, there should be more willing to talk about his incident, no?
Dream jumble noted (and the contents discussed)
Yesterday we drove to Mulgowie for the farmers market where we saw live chickens for sale and one get lose when the seller was trying to pack up; I watched some of the Commonwealth Games from the Gold Coast, and then (for the first time) Black Hawk Down on Netflix with my son, who at one point said "why do some of the helmets they wear look like bicycle helmets?".
So, naturally (I presume), this morning I woke from a dream which initially featured terrorists being chased by an army on the Sunshine Coast, one of them being Saddam Hussein who had been in hiding, and it segued into a story where a retired, traumatised Army sergeant started working in a studio with other ex army types who were paid to wear bicycle helmets with a single antenna type thing on top (like the Reddit logo) and smile as a group into a camera which would beam their happy faces into chicken farms, it having been worked out that to chickens in captivity, they looked like happy chickens and this had a calming effect on them.
That last bit is nearly as good as the dream I had as a young man in which Michael Parkinson was interviewing a grasshopper in the interviewee chair, and I realised in the dream that this was very odd.
Anyhoo, back to the day's events in more detail:
* there's someone selling meat again at Mulgowie, which makes the trip all the more worthwhile. Free range pork from a farm in the area, and we had some particularly nice Italian sausages made from (previously) happy pigs at lunch.
* the Commonwealth Games - looks to me on TV like they are a success. True, the opening ceremony was too long, but it's funny how it's pretty much the "daggy games", with sports such as lawn bowling meaning you have quite old competitors in the mix, as well as some very young ones. (An 11 year old table tennis player, I believe!) It does make it feel like a more inclusive event, though: way less intimidating than the Olympics. The television images of the Gold Coast have looked good (at least when the sun is out), the stadiums have looked pretty full even for the more esoteric events (men's hockey - who normally goes to watch that?), and the fact that world records are being broken at quite a pace makes it seem a relevant sporting event. So, yeah, I think it will be counted as a success despite the cynicism about why they exist at all.
* Black Hawk Down: terrific realism (with only a couple of exceptions), and I was curious as to where it was filmed (a couple of Moroccan cities, as it turns out - which certainly serves as a disincentive to ever visit them - maybe it's the "magic" of Hollywood, but the urban areas on screen did look awful.) Clearly, the script pleased the US military enough to have their full co-operation, but watching it now with the benefit of post Iraq invasion hindsight, it's hard to avoid some cynicism towards the "of course we always comply with the laws of war" hard sell that is pretty continuous throughout the film. (It came out in 2001, a couple of years ahead of the Iraq misadventure.) I would also say that the film doesn't reach the emotional impact that it seems to be striving for in some parts, but it was well worth watching.
So, naturally (I presume), this morning I woke from a dream which initially featured terrorists being chased by an army on the Sunshine Coast, one of them being Saddam Hussein who had been in hiding, and it segued into a story where a retired, traumatised Army sergeant started working in a studio with other ex army types who were paid to wear bicycle helmets with a single antenna type thing on top (like the Reddit logo) and smile as a group into a camera which would beam their happy faces into chicken farms, it having been worked out that to chickens in captivity, they looked like happy chickens and this had a calming effect on them.
That last bit is nearly as good as the dream I had as a young man in which Michael Parkinson was interviewing a grasshopper in the interviewee chair, and I realised in the dream that this was very odd.
Anyhoo, back to the day's events in more detail:
* there's someone selling meat again at Mulgowie, which makes the trip all the more worthwhile. Free range pork from a farm in the area, and we had some particularly nice Italian sausages made from (previously) happy pigs at lunch.
* the Commonwealth Games - looks to me on TV like they are a success. True, the opening ceremony was too long, but it's funny how it's pretty much the "daggy games", with sports such as lawn bowling meaning you have quite old competitors in the mix, as well as some very young ones. (An 11 year old table tennis player, I believe!) It does make it feel like a more inclusive event, though: way less intimidating than the Olympics. The television images of the Gold Coast have looked good (at least when the sun is out), the stadiums have looked pretty full even for the more esoteric events (men's hockey - who normally goes to watch that?), and the fact that world records are being broken at quite a pace makes it seem a relevant sporting event. So, yeah, I think it will be counted as a success despite the cynicism about why they exist at all.
* Black Hawk Down: terrific realism (with only a couple of exceptions), and I was curious as to where it was filmed (a couple of Moroccan cities, as it turns out - which certainly serves as a disincentive to ever visit them - maybe it's the "magic" of Hollywood, but the urban areas on screen did look awful.) Clearly, the script pleased the US military enough to have their full co-operation, but watching it now with the benefit of post Iraq invasion hindsight, it's hard to avoid some cynicism towards the "of course we always comply with the laws of war" hard sell that is pretty continuous throughout the film. (It came out in 2001, a couple of years ahead of the Iraq misadventure.) I would also say that the film doesn't reach the emotional impact that it seems to be striving for in some parts, but it was well worth watching.
Friday, April 06, 2018
Hard to disagree
Update: at the same event, I think:
President Trump said on Thursday, when talking about immigration at a West Virginia event, that women are being "raped at levels that nobody's ever seen before." Trump was in West Virginia for a tax reform discussion.And elsewhere at Axios:
By the way, I thought Krugman's column on the China trade war was pretty good and balanced.President Trump tonight says he's directed the U.S. Trade Representative to consider an additional $100 billion in tariffs on China, and that the administration may take other actions to "protect our farmers and agricultural interests." The White House says it's announcing these new measures "in light of China's unfair retaliation" to an earlier $50 billion in proposed tariffs.Why it matters via Jonathan Swan: This is exactly what the free traders who formerly worked in the White House feared, Trump in a macho pissing match against Chinese President Xi. Trump has a blunt understanding of leverage and believes the worst thing he can show is weakness. He also believes, as he tweeted, that the U.S. already is so far down on the scorecard with China that he’s got nothing to lose.
Update 2: the Wisdom of the Elder (that's sarcasm, by the way) from Catallaxy:
Ahahahhahahahaha
Just having a quick scan of Catallaxy to get my blood pressure up, and noted this assessment of marginal media culture warrior Mark Steyn from even more marginal culture warrior CL:
Steyn was just wrapping everything up into an all-you-can-eat meal deal of dazzling polemic. It didn’t work on this occasion. He does this sometimes; he’s still the Chesterton of our time and, people, appreciate him because when he’s gone (cent’anni!) a black hole will be left.Just ludicrous.
Thursday, April 05, 2018
Everybody needs a hobby [Pt 4 in a long running series]
Such as...setting up office in Melbourne as a gynaecologist and fertility expert when you didn't even graduate from university at all, let alone qualify as an actual doctor. This is something that's apparently not that hard to do:
He saw a further 23 people who were desperate to become parents and who, collectively, over hundreds of hours put their hopes in his hands, at his rooms in Brighton and St Kilda Road, Melbourne.
But it was all a sham. The women weren't pregnant.
In truth Dr Raff wasn't a gynaecologist, he wasn't even a doctor. He was nothing but a charlatan. He had studied at university but never gained any tertiary qualifications....
On top of all this, the aspiring parents paid Raffaele Di Paolo a combined $385,000 over a decade-long con during which he claimed he was a gynaecologist, obstetrician and an expert in fertility matters, with qualifications from Melbourne and Italy.
Di Paolo, 61, is now in jail waiting sentence after being found guilty of fraud, indecent assault and sexual penetration charges following a recent County Court trial, during which he denied the allegations.How did he do it? Simples:
Prosecutor Ray Gibson told the jury Di Paolo registered a company named Artemedica and purported to be a properly registered and qualified doctor and gynaecologist, and went as far as hiring a retired obstetrician and gynaecologist to assist him two days a week. His patients came to him after having unsuccessful fertility treatment elsewhere, although in some cases women were referred to him by chiropractors or osteopaths. One couple was referred to him by a doctor at the Epworth Hospital.This is a very strange story.
Dr Phone
Your smartphone may well do some things better than a human doctor:
A smartphone application using the phone's camera function performed better than traditional physical examination to assess blood flow in a wrist artery for patients undergoing coronary angiography, according to a randomized trial published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
These findings highlight the potential of smartphone applications to help physicians make decisions at the bedside. "Because of the widespread availability of smartphones, they are being used increasingly as point-of-care diagnostics in clinical settings with minimal or no cost," says Dr. Benjamin Hibbert of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, Ottawa, Ontario. "For example, built-in cameras with dedicated software or photodiode sensors using infrared light-emitting diodes have the potential to render smartphones into functional plethysmographs [instruments that measure changes in blood flow]."
The researchers compared the use of a heart-rate monitoring application (the Instant Heart Rate application version 4.5.0 on an iPhone 4S) with the modified Allen test, which measures blood flow in the radial and ulnar arteries of the wrist, one of which is used to access the heart for coronary angiography. A total of 438 participants were split into two groups; one group was assessed using the app and the other was assessed using a gold-standard traditional physical examination (known as the Allen test). The smartphone app had a diagnostic accuracy of 94% compared with 84% using the traditional method.
Yet more warnings about e-cigarettes
An assistant professor from Harvard who has been involved in e-cigarette research notes how they have known for years that they can produce formaldehyde:
Meanwhile, libertarians can continue sucking away unhealthfully instead of just quitting via patches or whatever other aids have long been adequate. Bit of the old "evolution in action", perhaps?
Nicotine isn’t the only thing e-cigs deliver; they also deliver formaldehyde, a carcinogen. It seems equally fair to call them Electronic Formaldehyde Delivery Systems.
Do manufacturers intentionally put formaldehyde in e-cigs? No, they don’t. But there’s some fundamental chemistry happening that can generate formaldehyde. E-cigs often use propylene glycol or glycerol to help transport nicotine and flavors and to create the big vapor cloud. We’ve known for a long time that when we heat these so-called carrier fluids they can transform into formaldehyde.Sure enough, when we measure what’s coming out of an e-cigarette, we have found formaldehyde. Sometimes, a lot of it. A letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine caught widespread attention in 2015 when its authors reported that they had found emissions of formaldehyde from e-cigs. There was some initial push back from skeptics who claimed that the e-cig vaping conditions in the research used too high of a voltage (an actual user, they argued, would be deterred from puffing hard enough to generate the excessive formaldehyde because it would taste bad). Of note, one author of that critique receives funding from a group that has accepted money from tobacco companies, and another received money from an e-cig company.
And as for the concern that they are acting as a gateway to real smoking - yes of course there is good concern they work that way in the US, at least:
Consider this: 22 percent of eighth-grade smokers used e-cigs first. That’s one in five — an astounding number of kids. The addictive nicotine in e-cigs is contributing to the next generation of traditional cigarette users. Will we then recommend that they use e-cigs to help them quit? This is the opposite of a virtuous cycle.The groups opposing the legalisation of nicotine producing e-cigarettes in Australia have some pretty good arguments going for them.
Although many states now restrict e-cig sales for those under 18, it’s clear that kids are finding ways to access e-cigs. And in my opinion, e-cigs are being marketed toward this age group. Who else is interested in puffing on an “Alien Blood”-flavored e-cig?
Meanwhile, libertarians can continue sucking away unhealthfully instead of just quitting via patches or whatever other aids have long been adequate. Bit of the old "evolution in action", perhaps?
That's a lot of black holes
NPR reports:
The supermassive black hole lurking at the center of our galaxy appears to have a lot of company, according to a new study that suggests the monster is surrounded by about 10,000 other black holes.The centre of galaxies sounds like a very dangerous place to be...
Wednesday, April 04, 2018
The F word
From a Vox article which notes some interesting facts from the book "Does it Fart?":
The entry on sloths explains that while they eat a lot of plants, they avoid releasing gas through the quirk of their slow digestion. “They only poo about every three weeks,” says Rabaiotti.
If gases accumulated in sloths’ intestines over that long a time, they might get sick — and even burst. So would-be sloth farts are simply reabsorbed through the intestines into the bloodstream. The gases are then respired out of the lungs: literal fart breath.
There are some cases where researchers just don’t know if animals fart or not. Like with salamanders and other amphibians, which “may not possess strong-enough sphincter muscles to create the necessary pressure for a definitive flatus,” the authors write. Gases may ooze out of their bums continually. Is that a fart? Some questions in science are best left to philosophy.
Down the rabbit hole they go
I see the conspiracy obsessed (no) brains trust at Catallaxy is now convinced that Russia has been set up by anti-Trump Western intelligence in the recent nerve agent poisonings:
Putin tells CL who to suspect, and he dutifully agrees. And he counts BA Santamaria as a hero. Heh.
Time for more Spielberg love
Stop your whining: how can you possibly know too much about this nicest of directors? From an article in The Sun, I learn these things:
* he could live with Indiana Jones being a woman (cue alt.right horror);
* he's "long" insisted that his actors and actresses get paid the same;
* he has deliberately stayed off social media
* he spent half a day with the Queen when she invited him to screen War Horse (a pretty underrated film, in my opinion) at Windsor Castle.
I warned my daughter recently that when he dies, I'll be wearing black for the rest of my life in the style of Queen Victoria. Perhaps without the bustle in the dress, but something similar.
* he could live with Indiana Jones being a woman (cue alt.right horror);
* he's "long" insisted that his actors and actresses get paid the same;
* he has deliberately stayed off social media
* he spent half a day with the Queen when she invited him to screen War Horse (a pretty underrated film, in my opinion) at Windsor Castle.
I warned my daughter recently that when he dies, I'll be wearing black for the rest of my life in the style of Queen Victoria. Perhaps without the bustle in the dress, but something similar.
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