Self domesticating mice

Rodent science stories are always welcome, and here's one about a study suggesting mice can "domesticate" themselves.

The Alfie story

The Guardian finally explains the background to some of the hangers-on who have politicised the Alfie Evans story for their own polemic purposes.   That really is sickening, especially when hospital staff should be getting death threats from right wing nutters.  And now, it would seem that the father might have had enough too, as he has issued a statement in which he appears to be reconciled to the fact that the British doctors may have had his child's best interest at heart, after all.

The weirdest thing about this case, I reckon, is the story that the Italian defence force had been authorised to fly the child to the Vatican aligned hospital, and that there was an Air Ambulance waiting to go.  I can understand (although regret) the Pope shoving his nose into this, but why would the Italian government lend its active support as well?   Strikes me as weird and strange.  Especially when the hospital was giving no hope of a cure at all:

Three experts from the Bambino Gesù hospital visited Alfie in Liverpool at the request of the parents, but they agreed with the doctors that further treatment would be “futile” in finding a cure.

However, they also said they were willing to take the tot to Rome to undergo operations to help him breathe and receive food, which would keep him alive for an “undefined period”.

Alfie’s parents hope that the specialists at the Bambino Gesù hospital will be able to pinpoint what is wrong with Alfie.

Dr Mariella Enoc, the president of Bambino Gesù, said: “We are ready to welcome Alfie, as we do with many children who come here from all over the world.

“We certainly do not promise to heal him, but to take care of him without overly aggressive treatment.”

Although acknowledging there is probably no cure for Alfie, Enoc said they would continue to provide a ventilator for him.

She said: “We do not argue that the diagnosis made by the British hospital will be changed, we only offer the possibility that the child can go on living. It is a bit difficult for us to understand why they will not allow him to be transported.”

She explained how the hospital would insert a breathing and feeding tube, which would not cause undue suffering.

So, simply offering to prolong keeping the kid alive until the parents get to the inevitable point of saying "OK, enough now", which may only be a matter of a week or two away?   I read somewhere, I think, that the hospital was talking about 2 weeks worth of treatment to identify the cause of his brain eroding illness.    Why would the Italian government get involved in spending money on such a purpose?

Fortunately, the Catholic Herald, as it did in the Charlie Gard case, gives a reasonably balanced account of what has happened, noting that English bishops have actually appeared to side with the hospital.   You don't see that reported on Fox News.  

I hate to say it, but you know what the problem with the Right wing media frenzy seems to come down to?   As with the Gard case, if the child, regardless of actual health, is handsome, it makes for easy, purely emotional PR campaign to appeal to the sentiment "how could the hospital wish death on such a beautiful looking boy"?  I would bet that if the illness was a disfiguring one, you would get no where near the public interest.

Look at the company Chris Berg keeps

Chris Berg's recent pro-libertarian column in the Conversation (which I have already disparaged) noted at length his support for the Friedman Conferences that attracts "hundreds" of libertarian/classical liberals each year.  (In other words, about the sum total of every Australian who has ever deliberately voted for libertarian parties.)

So, lets see who's included on the list of speakers at the next one coming up (courtesy of Catallaxy, where Sinclair Davidson promotes the conference every year):

Professors Ian Plimer

Climate Skeptic Blogger Jo Nova 

Yeah, there's your Libertarian anti-science, anti coherent policy on climate change right there.

Berg should be pilloried about this every time he appears on the ABC with his "I'm the nice, reasonable face of libertarianism/classical liberalism" facade.

And Jason Soon - you need your head read too for supporting the branch of politics that is determinedly anti-science on the most important science policy issue of the century.

Mr Robot, Season 3, episode 5

As I have written before, I find some of the episodes of this show pretty slow and tedious, and then along will come a particularly impressive episode that's pretty thrilling, like the one in the post heading.

It's a "one continuous take" episode (or at least, a looks like one continuous take episode) like Rope (or, so I believe, Birdman - that recent Oscar winner that no one saw.)    But apart from technical brilliance, it had more humour and tension than nearly all previous episodes.   Very satisfying.

Pimento praise

I keep forgetting to watch the latest series of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but caught one episode last night which featured the welcome return (perhaps only for an episode?) of Adrian Pimento.   This character would have to be the funniest sitcom character of the decade.   The series in which he featured regularly was all the more hilarious for it.  

Australia's reputation re-affirmed

See the pretty amusing tweet here.

But primarily - an A1 self promotion opportunity

Gaaaa, can't anyone make him stop?   Tim Wilson's nauseatingly self-centred promotion of ANZAC Day continues:

Let's talk appliances

Two in particular:

*   electric (battery powered) lawnmowers:    I recently bought one and I'm quiet (quite, I meant, although they are quieter too) impressed.   I've never enjoyed mowing, partly for the fumes and the messiness of petrol spills and (in the case of two stroke) getting the right proportion of oil.   Electric mowers do away with all of that aspect, making the whole experience cleaner and lighter work (my Ryobi weighs considerably less than the old Victa, and is easier to get up the few stairs necessary to get to the back yard.)  It's no longer the case that I necessarily feel the need for an immediate shower after finishing.

And something I didn't realise would be a benefit:  you know how on all TV gardening shows they encourage not cutting lawn too low because that helps weeds get ahead of grass on regrowth?   And then how, with a petrol mower, you think "I don't care, I'm going to cut as low as I can 'cos I hate this job and don't want to do it again for as long as possible"?   Well, with the electric one, there's no doubt that on longer lawn it is less powerful than any petrol mower, meaning you really do have to cut at higher height.   But the result has been - yes, I can see what those gardening/lifestyle shows have been saying all those decades is right.   The lawn is thicker and any weedy parts do seem to be being out-competed.   Who knew that having a less powerful mower would force me into doing the right thing by my lawn?

*  front loading washing machines:    I think they are terrific, especially if you have a model like ours which have a short cycle for things that aren't all that dirty.

But, right from when it was installed, we were warned that fabric softener can cause problems with glugging up their pipes.   Finally (it has taken years, though), I can see what they mean.

Which led me on the weekend to investigate the way the fabric softener gets from the "drawer" into the machine:   it would seem that nearly all front loaders use a syphon system to get the softener section of the drawer empty of the water that sprays into there to wash the conditioner into the machine.

This strikes me as peculiar:   I just didn't expect that the old fashioned idea of a syphon would be so crucial in a modern and fairly complicated bit of electro-mechanical gear like a front loading washing machine.   I was somehow expecting something mechanical - a hatch that opened and shut.  But no, just a syphon effect.

I must admit it works, though, and apart from the ease with which the hole through which the conditioner passes can clog and prevent the syphon working, I suppose it is kind of elegant in its simplicity.

I wonder who came up with that idea....

Update:   Look, I've even found a website with drawings and way more detail than you ever thought you needed to know:

Anzac Day 2018

Just your average suburban ANZAC Day memorial service from yesterday: 

There were lots more people behind where this was taken from, too.  

Continuing tourism success is never assured

It must have been about 1994 when I was last in the Whitsunday Islands, and it certainly seemed at that time to have a thriving tourist scene.   Airlie Beach on the coast was chock full of backpackers accommodation and youthful night life; the choice of short (and cheap) small boat cruises for 2 or 3 nights through the islands was large; and I also stayed at the modest but pleasant enough Club Crocodile Long Island, going on my first (and only) scuba experience.

I've had the impression over the last decade, however, that the tourism scene there is vastly diminished.  It seems a combination of factors are to blame:  the Australian dollar became more expensive, making us less attractive to backpackers and giving Australians more incentive to travel overseas;  several resorts have shut, including the Club Crocodile on Long Island I stayed at (apparently currently looking for a buyer); and as this depressing story on the ABC shows (via lots of drone shots), a formerly mid to low end resort like South Mole Island now lies in embarrassing ruins due to cyclones and a lack of interest or money from the new owners to rebuild anytime soon.  (It does look like it would be a massive job.   I see the new owners say that they will definitely rebuild and make it a 5 star resort.  Actually, I reckon that could be unfortunate overkill - the islands just needs some affordable 3 to 4 star resorts, like it used to have.) 

And now, the whole Queensland coral coast is facing the awful publicity about how much global warming is harming the Great Barrier Reef.   I can just imagine the Queensland tourism bodies grinding their teeth over this - but they really do need to be proactively trying to counter the impression that news skimming local and overseas readers are no doubt getting  that the entire reef is now getting so damaged it is hardly worth visiting.  In fact, as I understand it, it's mainly the far northern section, which has next to no tourist infrastructure anyway, which is the worst hit by the warming, for now.

Mind you, I think the other thing tourist operators need to do is to make access to decent reefs more affordable.   The cost of a family to go on a one day visit to the one popular reef platform off Cairns is $651 - that's getting up there for the cost of a one day experience.

It all goes to show how the tourism dollar is something that is very hard to rely upon in the long term.  For example, oddly, after many years in the doldrums, I get the impression that the Gold Coast is doing pretty well again.   You wouldn't have necessarily picked that a decade or so ago, when the Japanese tourism influx was drying up and the replacement Chinese had not arrived.  (Although, I see from this recent article, that nearly 80% of Gold Coast tourism is domestic.)

It's a very fickle industry, subject to nature, and the economy both local and international.

I presume it hasn't been much of a story on Fox & Friends

Wouldn't you think that Trump might have enough nous to think "I can show I'm a very fair, non racist President by tweeting a sincere thanks to the young black guy who disarmed the white nutter who shot up that Tennessee Waffle House"?   But so far, nothing.  I'm presuming it hasn't been a big enough story on Fox & Friends for this thought to occur to him. 

Speaking of which, here's a CNN clip showing Trump and Fox going virtually word for word.  

It very much reminds me of that scene in Broadcast News in which the good looking but vacuous newsreader gets fed his interview lines by (I think) a producer.    That scene has been on my mind for months even before I saw the CNN clip.

It would be hugely amusing, and somewhat disturbing, if Trump ever does tweet a thanks after seeing the guy mentioned favourably on F&F.

Always all about him

My God, has there ever been a politician more in love with himself and self promotion than Tim Wilson?   He self tweets photos of himself endlessly, as well as re-tweeting any compliment that comes his way.  And here's his ANZAC Day message, for which you might have thought he could find an image with a vaguely military theme, but no:

More Golda

My studying for my daughter's Golda Meir essay continues, with news last night that said daughter suspects that her modern history teacher (a pretty young guy) didn't recognise who she (Golda) was during a discussion regarding what the essay should address.   Should that concern me?   I mean, that Haaretz review I linked to in my first post said that lots of Israelis prefer not to commemorate her legacy given the blame they put on her for not pre-empting the Yom Kippur attacks.   But seems to me a modern history teacher should know of her.  Or maybe my daughter's mistaken?

Anyway, I was reading another Haaretz article from 2013 which went into detail as to her actions at the start of that war.  But more interestingly, it discussed her recurring nightmares:

Golda Meir, it turns out, suffered from recurring nightmares. Obliquely, she revealed a glimpse of them during a discussion held on the third anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War, during the War of Attrition. Posing his question in a challenging, defiant tone, the writer Amos Oz asked: "What do you dream about?" Meir replied tersely: "I don't have time to dream. I don't really sleep because the telephone rings at night to inform me about Israelis who have been hurt."

After Meir's death, Yaakov Hazan, a leader of the left-wing Mapam party, wrote in the kibbutz movement journal Shdemot that Meir told him about her recurring bad dream. "`Do you remember, Hazan,' Golda told me, `the question that Amos Oz posed to me? I was surprised. I knew which dreams he was referring to. Because what sort of person worthy of being called a human being doesn't dream? His question struck me as being offensive. I mumbled my answer because I didn't want to, and I couldn't, tell him what I dream about.

"`Yes, I dream, intensely. But it's all one nightmare. Suddenly all the telephones in my home start to ring; there are a lot of phones, located in every corner of the house, and they don't stop ringing. I know what the ringing means, and I'm afraid to pick up all the receivers. I wake up covered in a cold sweat. It's quiet in the house. I breath a sigh of relief, but can't get back to sleep. I know that if I fall back to sleep, the dream will return. I sometimes wonder when that dream will go away - when it does, I'll once again dream about our happy lives.'"

Update:   I briefly mentioned in the previous post that I have never read Leon Uris's Exodus, which (rather like The Kon Tiki Expedition)  I remember as something of a 60's publishing phenomena, in that you would see it on every household bookshelf (OK, I'll correct myself - every Council library) or in every second hand store, but it seems half forgotten now.

Looking at the Wikipedia entry on it, I was interested to read this part about how it came to be written:

Numerous sources say that Uris, motivated by an intense interest in Israel, financed his own research for the novel by selling the film rights in advance to MGM and writing articles about the Sinai campaign.^[9][10] It has also been reported that the book involved two years of research and involved thousands of interviews.^[11]
According to Jack Shaheen: "In the 1950s, when Americans were largely apathetic about Israel, the eminent public relations consultant Edward Gottlieb was called on "to create a more sympathetic attitude" toward the newly established state. He therefore sent Leon Uris to Israel to write a novel, which became the bestseller Exodus... Exodus introduced filmgoers to the Arab–Israel conflict, and peopled it with heroic Israelis and sleazy, brutal Arabs, some of whom link up with ex-Nazis. The movie's only "good Arab" becomes a dead Arab."^[12] Shaheen did not identity the person or collection of persons who sought Gottlieb's assistance.

 I didn't realise there was a perceived need to raise American consciousness of, and support for, Israel.  I more or less assumed that the Jewish influence was big enough that Americans as a whole would be enthusiastic about Israel.  But then again, Gentlemen's Agreement only came out in 1947 on the topic of hidden anti-Semitism (never seen it either), so the point is - I don't really know anything about post War World 2 American popular sentiment towards Jews and Israel.   

American priorities

Noticed this on Twitter about that Wafflehouse shooting:

Actually, it seems that is inaccurate.

Two days ago, the Governor signed a law that let wine be sold on Sundays.  

Adolescence and the mid life crisis

I like the short extract from a book here at The Atlantic.

About that funeral

Drum Frum re-tweeted something that I am sure struck a common sentiment across the world:

Yeah, the Barbara Bush funeral surely made everyone remember sharply how we used to feel that the White House, and federal executive generally, was at least being run by serious, well intentioned, people.  It now feels like a clown show.  

I also last week stumbled across this quote, from a very hilarious entry in Mother Jones "Trump files" - a list of absurd, immoral and inconsistent things Trump has done:

Mark Bowden, the reporter and author of the book Black Hawk Down, was “prepared to like” the aging and increasingly hefty Donald Trump when he set out to profile the mogul for Playboy in 1996. The two men took a trip down to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for a weekend, but the reality of The Donald quickly made any affection impossible.

“Trump struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong,” Bowden wrote last year in Vanity Fair, recalling his time profiling Trump. “He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression.” Any remaining chance of that went out the window when Trump unleashed his fury on an equipment box at the Mar-a-Lago tennis courts, as Bowden wrote in the profile:

You should go to the link and read what he did at Mar-a-Lago that day:  it was a bit of slapstick comedy that would not be out of place on the Simpsons.

Golda reading

My daughter has to do a school history essay on a "Great Person" of the 20th century, and wanted it to be a woman.  She had first thought about Margaret Thatcher, but then couldn't be bothered understanding English politics, so was asking me for other suggestions.  I think she is now doing Golda Meir.

As it happens, I've never read all that much about the creation of Israel: not even Exodus (or watched the movie.)

But reading up a bit today on Golda Meir so I can write the essay (just kidding), she's a far more interesting character than I realised:   born in Russia with her family experiencing Jewish pogroms there, they moved to Milwaukee (!) before she got into Zionism at a young age and was over in Palestine kibbutz-ing before heading back to the US.  I won't bother summarising the rest, except to say that I didn't realise that she had been so entrenched in the whole Zionist movement so early, and had a prominent diplomatic type role in the very creation of Israel.   Her politics were also very Left wing, generally speaking, and she was culturally Jewish but an atheist.  She had to deal with the question of using nuclear weapons during Yom Kippur war, perhaps bluffing her way into the huge American support that meant they weren't needed.

Actually, it's funny imagining how confusing the alt.right might find her, if it had been around at the time.

Perhaps I should read her autobiography, if I can ever start reading properly again...


Update:  after I typed this, I read a good review of a new biography of her in Haaretz.  Didn't realise her reputation needed "rehabilitation" in the eyes of many Israelis for the following reason:

A tragedy, because, for several generations of Israelis, Meir, if she’s remembered at all, is perceived as the leader who disregarded the signs that the country was about to be attacked on two fronts, leading to a defensive war in which Israel sustained devastating losses; someone whose hard-headed arrogance led her to reject Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s peace feelers or to recognize the long-standing costs of Israel’s holding on to the territories conquered in 1967, and whose lack of social awareness made her insensitive to the needs and simmering grievances of the non-Ashkenazi half of Israel’s Jewish population, thus contributing to Likud’s rise to power in 1977 and everything that portended.

 Yes, it sounds like I might do better reading this detailed biographer rather than her autobiography.

Kevin's having trouble walking back

I found that I was able to read the whole of a WSJ article by recently fired conservative opinion writer Kevin Williamson, in which he (as you would expect) bemoans the unfairness of his treatment for his views on abortion.    I don't know if this link will work for my reader, but here it is.

I think there are two remarkable things about the piece:

*  no where does he simply say "Of course I do not genuinely support capital punishment for women who have abortions."   Instead, his statements all seem to contain hedges:  "I am generally opposed to capital punishment"  No one asked him "Did I really want to set up gallows, despite my long-stated reservations about capital punishment?"  "I’m not eager to be any sort of executioner."   Yeah, way to convince us you're not a little bit disappointed you were born in the wrong era to be a member of the witch hunting Inquisition, Kevin.

*  his thinking on abortion is problematic because it is so fundamentally over-simplified, of course it is going to make him wonder whether it would be a good idea to execute a woman or two as an example for the rest:

Let’s not equivocate: Abortion isn’t littering or securities fraud or driving 57 in a 55-mph zone. If it isn’t homicide, then it’s no more morally significant than getting a tooth pulled. If it isn’t homicide, then there’s no real argument for prohibiting it. If it is homicide, then we need to discuss more seriously what should be done to put an end to it. For all the chatter today about diversity of viewpoint and the need for open discourse, there aren’t very many people on the pro-choice side, in my experience, who are ready to talk candidly about the reality of abortion.

That sentence in my bold - it's so patently not obvious, it's startling that Williamson can't see it.

Of course you can oppose abortion morally without thinking it is the same as,  or classified as,  homicide. Of course people draw distinctions between interference with something with the potential for fully formed human life, and something that has achieved capacity to have independent human life.   If Williamson wants to be consistent, why isn't he writing articles calling on pro-lifers to rally in protest in front of fertility clinics which can hold a thousand tiny embryos on ice, and then let hundreds of them defrost and die.   Is that the same as Hitler gassing Jews?   Williamson seems so incapable of drawing the most obvious of distinctions, I wouldn't put it past him to argue it is.

As long time readers would know, I do have pretty conservative views when it comes to sex and reproduction - I regret the IVF industry as going a step too far in commodifying a process which should be a more natural.  I certainly think surrogacy is morally flawed for similar reasons, especially when used by gay men.   

Yet I am capable - as every normal person with common sense is - of drawing distinctions between, say, a woman who takes a "morning after" pill that might prevent a pregnancy by stopping a fertilised egg from implanting, and a woman who demands a right to abortion of a fully formed fetus capable of independent life if she discovers it has a feature she does not view as desirable.   (The case of a Melbourne woman who wanted a very late abortion due to dwarfism being a good example of the latter.)  

If Williamson's only point were to be to criticise the "fundamentalism" of pro-choicers who argue that abortion right up to the day before the birth of a healthy baby is something a mother should never be criticised for - well, very few people could disagree.  

But the formulation of what he sees as the problem with abortion just reads as complete and unthinking fundamentalism of the most extreme kind in the other direction - and one which indicates a desire to punish women more than men.  (Not only that, as I mentioned in my previous post, historically, even religious authorities with political power have rarely considered it an appropriate response.)    

What Williamson did was troll about women deserving death for doing something against his fundamentalism.   Yes, he deserved to be sacked from writing for a respectable magazine.

Lost looks great

Lost in Space, that is.  On Netflix.  Watched the second episode yesterday.  Was better than the first.

I heard some critics talking about it on Radio National yesterday.   It's being taken that seriously.  It seems everyone likes Parker Posey as the female incarnation of Dr Smith.  (I'm not so sure, yet.)  Much discussion about how Maureen is now the smart spouse instead of being the Housekeeper in Chief, as her character was in 1966.   John Robinson seems a bit of a resentful "you need to respect me more"  meathead so far.  Yet Mum's not perfect - their two girls are the smart kids easily selected to leave Earth, while poor old Will only got on board by his Mum's (easy as pie) computer hacking.   Yet I would still say that Will (played by a likeable boy actor) and his now somewhat creepy Robot are still at the emotional heart of the show.  

Nevertheless, I get the feeling the show must be being despised by 4Chan and alt.righters due to the modern girl power aspect.  (At least the gender reversal of Doctor Smith makes sense in that it balances out any suggestion that all women are smarter and more sensible than men.) 

All of this is prelude to making my key point - I'm loving the production design.   The Jupiter 2 is just like the perfect update of the old TV version.  (I realised last night that I love spaceships in a flying saucer design.   I fondly remember a toy spaceship of generic, Jupiter 2-ish design given to me as a birthday or Christmas present in the late 1960's.  I kind of wish I still had it.  I guess other people like saucer designs too, given the fondness people have for the Millennium Falcon.  Perhaps there is a Jungian explanation to be contemplated.)  The new chariot is a pretty cool update too, although I had to laugh when what's-her-name last night (one of the girls, I forget who is who) used a corded radio microphone.  Maybe it was done as a deliberate reminder of the 1960's looks?  

Good work on the ABC

I saw most of the Leigh Sales interview of James Comey on 7.30 last night.  I thought it was a good interview - both performed well.   Apparently, Helen Razer doesn't think so, but fortunately her verbiage is mostly behind a paywall.

You know, she works as a strong disincentive for me to consider subscribing to Crikey.   I would like to be able to read Bernard Keane and even Guy Rundle in full when I want to, even though I get the impression the former's output has lessened in recent months. (Is he well?  I always worry he might be verging on actual depression).  But I feel can't indirectly support Razer.