The Entertainer : DEFINITELY NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORIST

More entertainment to be found from the dude who does RSL and pub gigs for a living (I'd love to know if he was playing near Brisbane:   I would think of getting a triggering T Shirt made up to wear - "Make Australia Great - support UN Agenda 2030").

TV viewed

*  Netflix's Lost in Space:  only seen the first episode, and while not totally thrilled, it's promising enough to keep going.   Oddly, though, I don't understand why people like to rubbish the movie version (which I am one of few people to defend - I really quite liked it) on the grounds that it  made tension within the Robinson family a key part of the plot, when this update does something similar but is generally receiving kinder reviews.   Netflix is promoting it very heavily, which I have read is a ploy to get more family friendly material, and I like that the company is doing that.  

* Netflix's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:   I was dubious on viewing the first episode: too many plot threads and I was finding Dirk a bit, I dunno, verging on camp fey?   But I came back to it recently and watched a few more episodes, and it has grown on me considerably.   Most episodes have a good few laughs, and a surprise or two, and the leads are good together.   It takes a too violent turn every now and again, and the basic plot is as silly as a Doctor Who episode, but I'm glad I came back.

* Mr Robot Season 3:  3 episodes in and I think it's moving faster than some of the glacially paced talky episodes in Season 2.  The weirdness of the writing of some characters continues.  Got a good laugh when it incorporated the matter of how Trump got elected.   He obviously hasn't seen the show, or he would be decrying it as fake news, even though it's not news.   Given the key "Dark Army" out of China aspect, I can imagine Jason Soon getting a thrill from it...

Tony was wrong? (Read as sarcasm)

Interesting:

Australia's renewable energy capacity is set to exceed a target the Federal Government said was impossible to reach by 2020, according to new research from Green Energy Markets.

In its quarterly Renewable Energy Index, GEM said the amount of renewable energy generated in 2020 was set to exceed the original 41,000 Gigawatt hour (GWh) Renewable Energy Target (RET) that was in place before being scrapped in 2015 by the federal government led by then prime minister Tony Abbott.

The original RET was put in place to help Australia meet its 2030 climate change commitment to cut emissions by 26 to 28 per cent from 2005 levels.

It was replaced by a less ambitious target of 33,000 GWh after the Abbott government characterised the original RET as impossible to achieve, while arguing there was already too much generating capacity.

The GEM study — funded by activist group GetUp — found estimated eligible generation would hit 41,381 GWh by 2020, not only exceeding the current RET, but the original RET as well.

Mind you, it is so hard to understand disputes about energy policy in Australia that I wouldn't be surprised if someone turns up pointing to some misleading aspect of this perhaps overly positive report.    I mean, you do get the feeling that each side exaggerates in their own self interest.  And as for what the Liberal's National Energy Guarantee even means, let alone an objective assessment of it - well, I have yet to see a good, clear explanation.

Must make Murdoch proud

I'm referring to Hannity failing to disclose during rants against the (judicially authorised) Cohen raid that he was a client of Cohen.  How spectacularly self-interested and unethical was that?

What I don't understand is why the few allegedly neutral journalist/commentator types who work at the network don't all resign due to the network's overall design of being the ultimate pro-Trump/conspiracy  network.  Have some self respect, guys.

Chait on the failure of moderates to moderate the GOP

Good article by Jonathan Chait on the problem of Republican "never Trumpers" just giving up.

A bad look for UQ

At the ABC, a rather surprising story:

The University of Queensland (UQ) and two international medical journals are investigating alleged ethical violations in research around Universal Medicine (UM), an organisation based in Lismore in New South Wales, which touts the healing power of "esoteric breast massage" and other unproven treatments.

Founded by Serge Benhayon — a former bankrupt tennis coach with no medical qualifications who claims to be the reincarnation of Leonardo Da Vinci — UM is a multi-million-dollar enterprise with 700 mostly women followers in 15 countries.

UM practitioners are also taught by Mr Benhayon to carry out esoteric ovary massage to "help women connect back to their body".

An ABC investigation can reveal three members of UQ's faculty of medicine have publicly advocated for the controversial group.

Eminent medical educator John Dwyer, the former head of immunology at Yale University, said the researchers had "an unbelievable conflict of interest" as "apostles for Universal Medicine, heavily involved in the organisation and the teachings of the group".
UM is linked to Mr Benhayon's Way of the Livingness religion, with UM followers urged to follow his strict lifestyle instructions from diet and sleep to sex.

Mr Benhayon's acolytes include Christoph Schnelle, a UQ faculty of medicine researcher who was the lead author of three articles on UM health practices.

He and eight co-authors are now under scrutiny for an alleged failure to declare their roles in what has been described as "a dangerous cult" by Professor Dwyer, who is now based at the University of New South Wales.

The ABC has obtained video of four of the researchers publicly advocating UM practices, including two doctors.

 How very odd...

Right wing cranks are cranky

Well, as if you didn't know they live in their own little, intensely unhappy, bubble world, I've just noticed that many of the self admitted inmates of Catallaxy have, by and large, been saying that they didn't watch a minute of Commonwealth Games coverage and (seemingly) avoided the whole thing more-or-less on principle. 

Given that the crowds at the Games seemed reasonably large and enthusiastic, and Channel 7 killed it in the TV ratings, they are confirming again how they live in their own bubble world, where unless it's an angry white guy on Sky News going off about Malcolm Turnbull or political correctness, they aren't interested in TV.

Right wing bubble world is a pretty sad place...and angry.  Very, very angry.  And funnily enough, while they disparage Hollywood stars who threaten to leave the US if a candidate they hate were to get elected, the Catallaxy inmates frequently make very similar statements, about how they would get out of Australia if they could.  Because it's gone to the dogs, obviously.  

Very low level of self awareness going on...

A post is coming

I haven't posted anything specifically about climate change news for some time.

I have been saving some links and intend to make a climate change bad news mega-post soon.

Just in case any of you thought I wasn't worrying about it any more...

Funniest Commonwealth Games Closing ceremoney tweet

It was, I suppose, kind of refreshing to have Channel 7 hosts bag their own broadcast as soon it finished.  I guess seeing they were standing in front of an empty stadium they had little choice.

I saw bits and pieces of it, and the choices did all seem very bizarre. 

Anyway, the funniest tweet I saw about it all was this:

That sinking Roman feeling

An article at The Guardian talks about the increasing number of disastrous sinkholes appearing in Rome - associated, it seems, with increased rainfall:

It’s not a new phenomenon: there have been an average of 90 sinkholes a year in Rome since 2010. In 2013, there were 104 and 2018 will surely surpass even that record. The problem is clearly getting worse: the streets are beginning to look like black emmenthal and everyone in Italy is wondering why the earth seems, in the words of the Jewish prophet Isaiah, “to stagger like a drunken man”.

Some blame the rain. Romans are used to wearing sunglasses all winter, but this has been the wettest six months in living memory. There have been plenty of what are melodramatically called bombe d’acqua, water bombs. In September last year, flooded subways were closed as rivers cascaded down the escalators and stations became huge shower rooms with water gushing through ceiling cracks. Thousands of cars were in water up to their wing mirrors.

In November – and this is a sure sign things are serious – Lazio’s football match against Udinese was postponed due to torrential rain. Last week, there was more flooding of the subway. In the past month, central Italy has had 141% more “anomalous rainfall” than average.

It then goes on to talk about Rome's geology (built on soft sediments), but it fails to mention something that was dealt with on a BBC documentary that I mentioned last year:  the extraordinary degree to which modern day Rome is built on top of ancient, underground quarries and other empty spaces.  (Oh, I see the link in my previous post no longer works - here's one to the BBC showing just one clip.)  Anyway, there was one map on that show that indicated that Rome was like swiss cheese below ground - not just aqueducts and sewers, but vast cavernous spaces carved out 2,000 years ago.  No wonder heavy rain is causing problems.   

Seems just a little overstated, and I get back to normal about sport

According to News Corp, Australia's netball team losing to England means this:

As the Commonwealth Games near an end, may I also revert back to some more typical anti-sporting sentiment?:

*  I can't for the life of me see why netball has a significant following in this country.   Just can't see that it's a technically interesting sport to watch.

*  To be honest, I have no interest in women's team sports of any colour.  Sure, I can admire female swimmers, athletes, cyclists, etc;  but put a team of women playing something that only ever used to be played by men - looks a bit weird to me.  There are men my age who seemingly don't share this view, but with my low interest in sports anyway, there just seems something not quite right about women teaming up for chasing games (see my last comment below.)

*  Really, I'm never going to get used to women's boxing.   The sentiment is growing, with great justification, for men's boxing to be banned;  but at least that sport can be argued as a safer formalisation of testosterone fuelled aggro between men.   With women - yes, I'll say it - it's an unnatural look.

*  Also not a good look to see a marathon runner collapsed on the ground.   I have never understood the public's interest in watching or participating in that event either - just seems to me to a sport so far outside of the bounds of any "natural" activity that it becomes a little, well, silly.   Like free diving.   I mean, ball games like rugby and soccer likely have appeal due to the unconscious reminders of ancient male hunting and chasing on the plains of the Serengeti, or wherever;  but actually testing yourself as to how far deep you can go on a held breath, or how many minutes you can shave off a distance no one ever needs to run: well, it's all rather pointless to my way of thinking. 

Recipe reminder - pumpkin soup

Yesterday we ate at a Yum Cha restaurant in a (I think) Vietnamese run restaurant.  It was very nice (although I have had better chicken feet), cost $64 for four (bargain), and it remains one of my favourite ways to lunch.

Not being sure of its origin as a way of eating, I found the Wikipedia entries on yum cha and dim sum quite helpful.

Anyway, this is all prelude to explaining that we needed a lighter than average evening meal, so I made for the first time in many, many years some basic pumpkin soup following a recipe I wrote in the back of a cookbook maybe 25 years ago.   (I forget where I got it from originally - oh, now I remember, it was on the side of a can of evaporated milk!)   I was pretty sure my wife, or one of the kids, had said many years ago that they didn't care for pumpkin soup, and hence I had not made it for at least a decade, I suspect.   But being told that this was no longer the case, I went ahead and resurrected it, and the result did seem particularly delicious - perhaps it was just the right sort of pumpkin (kent, I think) that came from a roadside sales bin when we trekked off to  Mulgowie last week.

As this blog occasionally serves as a (hopefully permanent) repository for some key recipes I don't want to lose, here goes:

750 g of cubed pumpkin
1 1/2 cups of water turned into chick broth using a stock cube or powder
a large onion
15 g of butter (just a large knob, I guess)
normal size can of lite evaporated milk
nutmeg

That's it.   In a fairly wide saucepan, fry off the onion in the butter to soften it a bit, throw in the pumpkin, water and stock cube/powder and let it simmer, uncovered, for 25 minutes.   Blend what's left in the saucepan (a stickblender should work fine), add the can of evaporated milk, some nutmeg and maybe a little bit of salt to taste.   Reheat gently, and eat.    Toast and some garlic fried beans as a side.  Nice.

Zero Dark Thirty: another in the series of "Late Movie Reviews"

Watched Zero Dark Thirty, the Kathryn Bigelow directed movie about the hunting down of Osama Bin Laden, last night.  This discussion may contain spoilers, on the assumption that most readers who were interested in it have already seen it.

I think it's very much of a piece with Black Hawk Down, which I happened to watch for the first time last week:  high on military realism, but very shallow on depth of characterisation, and little attempt at character development.   I think the latter is more of an issue for ZDT, because it follows one character (a real female CIA agent who did play a large role in finding Bin Laden) over 10 years.  The film gives you the impression she has no inner life at all.  At the start she seems a friendless workaholic; by the end she's moved on to be an even less likeable obsessive friendless workaholic. 

Yet I see, now that I look up articles about the accuracy of the film, that this might actually be an accurate character portrayal, if this part of a 2012 Washington Post article  is anything to go by:

This spring, she was among a handful of employees given the agency’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal, its highest honor except for those recognizing people who have come under direct fire. But when dozens of others were given lesser awards, the female officer lashed out.

“She hit ‘reply all’ ” to an e-mail announcement of the awards, a second former CIA official said. The thrust of her message, the former official said, was: “You guys tried to obstruct me. You fought me. Only I deserve the award.”

Not exactly a generous spirit, by the sounds.  (She was also passed over for promotion, according to the report.)

As to the accuracy of the film overall,  I see from this article in The Telegraph that it is pretty true to life, although (amongst other quibbles) some of the things the SEALs do in the Bin Laden compound raid are not technically correct.   I haven't read whether one thing that bothered me in the film was accurate or not - the way this white, red haired, female CIA operative drove herself to and from work in Pakistan.   Seemed a kind of dangerous thing to do - I would have assumed female CIA agents in that country would have had male drivers and bigger cars.

One small but surprising detail in the film is this (from the Telegraph article), although perhaps I had heard it before:

One of the most intriguing cameos in Zero Dark Thirty is that of Fredric Lehne, who plays the CIA’s counterterrorism chief, referred to only as “The Wolf”. Despite being a key figure in the fight against Islamist militants, when we meet him in his office he is practising Muslim prayer.

As surprising as it sounds, this is true, at least according to a report by the Washington Post in March last year: the director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC), and the leader of the hunt for bin Laden, really has converted to Islam. Named only as “Roger” by the newspaper, he is in his late fifties and has worked for two presidents, four CIA directors and four directors of national intelligence.

His conversion to Islam came after he married a Muslim woman, but, according to the Washington Post, there is no prayer rug in his office. He is, however, known to clutch a strand of prayer beads.

But what about its portrayal of torture as a sometimes useful undertaking?    I think it's hard to deny that the film works as an apologia for torture, and a disingenuous one at that.   I think it tries to show sympathy to anti-torture advocates in the way it starts with our heroine Maya being disturbed by it, and later the male interrogator who feels he has to get out that line of work for a while because it's doing his head in, too.   Yet the film suggests that, while it doesn't always work, information from some interrogations was useful.

This article in The New Yorker argues that this is where the film falls down:

 In addition to excising the moral debate that raged over the interrogation program during the Bush years, the film also seems to accept almost without question that the C.I.A.’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” played a key role in enabling the agency to identify the courier who unwittingly led them to bin Laden. But this claim has been debunked, repeatedly, by reliable sources with access to the facts. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent first reported, shortly after bin Laden was killed, Leon Panetta, then the director of the C.I.A., sent a letter to Arizona Senator John McCain, clearly stating that “we first learned about ‘the facilitator / courier’s nom de guerre’ from a detainee not in the C.I.A.’s custody.” Panetta wrote that “no detainee in C.I.A. custody revealed the facilitator / courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts.”

Well, yeah, that is a bit problematic for how one should view the film morally, I reckon.

So, overall, it's an interesting film as a bit of slightly fictionalised quasi-documentary, which turns out to have a morally dubious take on a key controversy; but even apart from that issue, I don't quite understand why it received so many completely uncritical reviews.   As with Black Hawk Down, these types of film are very impressive as recreations, but they lack emotional kick and the sort of imagery that really makes a film powerful.  Worth watching, but ultimately, not worth endorsing as great movies either.

Off-putting

So, I'm in the somewhat painful process of trying to work out a holiday, and found this photo, from a Mercure Hotel room...

...and I find it triggers claustrophic feelings just from looking at it. 

It's a seriously off-putting photo.

What's happening to me?

The issue:  the Commonwealth Games is making me feel all warm and gooey towards sports.  This is very much out of character. 

I guess I felt somewhat the same when the Sydney Olympics were on - I think it's partly a weird parochial pride that our country can organise these things well.  

I have to say, the TV coverage by the Seven Network has looked and sounded very professional.  It's pretty remarkable, really, that there are any commentators for some esoteric sports who can sound confident and knowledgeable during live commentary.   Who'd have thought there was anyone out there who could talk up the excitement of, I don't know, a 10m air gun target competition, for example?

I also have liked the way that the paralympic events have just been mixed in between the (what's the politically correct term?) able bodied(?) events.    Makes them seem much more relevant, and it seems to me the Olympics would be wise to copy that, if it was at all possible.  

We all know that the Games will have been a mixed economic blessing to businesses on the Gold Coast.   Yet the images on TV have looked so good, and the Australian medal tally so impressive (especially for swimming, which looked to be in an incredible funk only a short time ago, but is once again full of charismatic, spectacularly fit and good looking young folk) that it's hard to believe that it will not be viewed as a success.   Sure, I understand the Olympics are a gargantuan waste of money for host cities and everyone thinks it needs to be reformed, but a more modest scaled event like this looks, well, just about the right size.

But don't worry, I'm be back to my normal dismissive attitude to each and every sport any day now...

Calm and angry comments about Chris Berg

Oh dear.  I was criticising Chris Berg earlier this week for writing vapid papers on blockchain, now he's contributing a vapid, self serving piece on The Conversation:

Are Australians ready to embrace libertarianism?

Everyone agrees that the answer is "no", but I've been torn as to how angry to sound in this post detailing why.

OK, here's the calm response.    If you missed it last year,  I recommend you look at Will Wilkinson's explanation about why purist libertarianism is a utopian idealistic belief system, and those are not a way to make sound policy. 

And here's the angry response:

CHRIS BERG, YOU WERE HAPPY TO BE PART OF A LIBERTARIAN FRIENDLY THINK TANK, NO DOUBT PARTLY FUNDED IN SECRET BY MINING INTERESTS,  THAT HAS AGGRESSIVELY RUN ANTI CLIMATE SCIENCE PROPAGANDA FOR A COUPLE OF DECADES BECAUSE "OO - ER - WE DON'T LIKE TAXES."  YOU MIGHT NEVER HAVE SULLIED YOURSELF BY SAYING "HA! CLIMATE CHANGE IS A CROCK MADE UP BY CROOKED SCIENTISTS", LIKE YOUR STAGFLATION PREDICTING MATE SINCLAIR DAVIDSON:  NO - YOU WERE AN EARLY ADOPTER OF THE DISINGENUOUS "OH, IT'S TOO LATE NOW - NATIONS WILL NEVER AGREE TO LIMIT CO2" WHILE AT THE SAME TIME WATCHING YOUR OWN THINK TANK - AND MATES LIKE DAVIDSON -  RUN PROPAGANDA BY CRANKS DIRECTED TO POLITICIANS AND THE PUBLIC TO TRY TO ENSURE NATIONS WOULD FACE INTERNAL OPPOSITION TO EFFECTIVE AND SIMPLE ACTION LIKE A CARBON TAX.

YES, YOU WERE HAPPY TO BE PART OF ACTIVELY POISONING THE WELL OF GOOD POLICY DECISION MAKING.

IT MAY HAVE TAKEN MARXISM TO KILL OFF A 100 MILLION OR SO DURING THE 20TH CENTURY BEFORE ITS BUNCH OF IDEALIST UPTOPIAN ASSHATS WERE COMPLETELY DISCREDITED, BUT HISTORY WILL LIKELY SHOW IT TOOK DUMB ASS, IDEOLOGICALLY MOTIVATED LIBERTARIANS TO FLOOD EVERY COASTAL CITY ON THE PLANET, DISPROPORTIONATELY KILL OFF THE POOR, AND PERMANENTLY DISAPPEAR HUNDREDS OF SPECIES.

YEAH, THANKS, LIBERTARIANS.  YOU'RE A BUNCH OF DANGEROUS CRANKS.

THAT'S WHY AUSTRALIA IS NOT "READY TO EMBRACE LIBERTARIANISM".  

Outrageous lying politician poisoning politics in his country

Newt Gingrich on Fox and Friends, about the Cohen FBI raids:

We're supposed to have the rule of law. It ain't the rule of law when they kick in your door at 3:00 in the morning and you're faced with armed men and you have had no reason to be told you're going to have that kind of treatment. That's Stalin. That's the Gestapo in Germany. That shouldn't be the American FBI.

You can imagine a large number of the gullible Trumpers watching this thinking that this reflects reality,  when Cohen himself said:

Trump's personal attorney tells ABC News FBI raids were 'respectful' and 'courteous'

WASHINGTON) -- President Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen told ABC News Tuesday that FBI agents did not storm in, but simply knocked on the door, as they raided his office, hotel room and home Monday.

There were no SWAT teams, no guns drawn. The operation was "respectful" and "courteous," he told ABC News on Tuesday.

All after, of course, various Republican justice officials went to a judge and got a warrant for this.

I mean, seriously, no matter how loony you think parts of the Left have gone in the US, with its intense identity politics and University political correctness, surely all fair minded people should be appalled that it is a famous Republican political actually poisoning political discourse by such ridiculous and deliberately misleading hyperbole. 

To anyone who thinks Trump's tough guy tweets indicate there's no shady connection with Russia...

...I make the following comments:

*  we all know he's an empty shell with no consistent principles, able to be influenced by the last thing he heard, and his fragile buffoon ego always wants to claim he's a "winner".   It's not surprising that one minute he'll decide to sound tough on Russia/Putin, and the next he'll try to walk it back a bit;

*  that's pretty much what we are seeing now. Look at these tweets and their tone of "Jeez, don't blame me for things being bad with Russia.  If it weren't for those damn Democrats persecuting me I'd have it all back on track and things would be great with Russia":

*  there is also the possibility that his peanut brain is just smart enough to think "I'd better sound tough on Putin so that people don't think I'm under the Russian thumb."

*  tax returns?   A very plausible theory is that Trump is scared of the investigation not because he was closely involved in collusion re Russian interference in the election (although his having some knowledge of seedy contacts by his staff is quite likely), but that the investigation will turn up financial ties to Russians that he does not want to see disclosed.  Again, this would justify a "better sound tough, but still want to be friends with Russia" back and forth in his rhetoric.  

Conversion for politics

Interesting article up at The Atlantic:

Converting to Buddhism as a Form of Political Protest 

Low-caste Indians are leaving Hinduism en masse—partly to stick it to their prime minister.

Sounds a lot

China and clean air don't exactly go hand in hand, and it's reflected in lung health:

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is widespread in China with 8.6 percent of the country's adult population - almost 100 million people -suffering from the chronic lung disease, according to a new Tulane University study published in The Lancet.

The study, which provided lung-function screenings for more than 50,990 participants, is the largest survey of COPD across age groups ever conducted in China, researchers say.

COPD, an inflammatory lung disease that causes obstructed airflow into the lungs, is the third leading cause of death in China. It is caused by long-term exposure to irritants in the air, including cigarette smoke. During the past decade, ambient air pollution has become a major public-health crisis in the country while cigarette smoking remains high, especially among men, says senior author Dr. Jiang He, Joseph S. Copes Chair of Epidemiology at Tulane University School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine.