What Putin wants

I watched Four Corners last night on the Russian influence on the American elections.  (I had missed the previous instalments.)   A few observations:

*  that Russian female lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya did not present well - her manner indicated someone who's a bit of an actor who is hiding something with her too emphatic "nothing to see here" claims;

*  James Clapper presented as sincere, calm and genuinely alarmed at Trump's attitude;

*  The timing of Trump's promise of new dirt on Clinton also makes it look extremely likely he knew about the upcoming Trump Tower meeting - and that would also explain why he had a hand in drafting the dishonest statement for his son;

*  I remain gobsmacked that there was not more condemnation from the media and the public over  the blatantly authoritarian atmosphere of the Republican convention with the "lock her up" chant led by an ex General (Flynn) - as well as others.   It genuinely was a low and scary point for American politics, and Trump supporters deserve condemnation for either joining in, or simply shrugging their shoulders.    To talk about jailing your political opponent when the investigators have already cleared her - there is simply no justification for it, short of wanting to become a tinpot dictatorship.

*  The conclusion, though, that Putin has got exactly what he wanted, in terms of a chaotic Presidency and administration weakening Western ties, as well as a President openly warm to him and Russian interests, is probably true, but should not have been stated as such by Sarah Ferguson as the host.   She should have left that for someone else to draw that conclusion.  Her stating it didn't sound journalistic enough. 

 

Not for sale

Mark Humphries is a very likeable comedy performer:

The New Testament revisited, again

Back in January I posted briefly about a new translation of the New Testament by Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart.  Here's a review of it from Literary Review, and I'll extract a few paragraphs of paragraphs of particular interest:

No less radical, in Hart’s reading, is the young Jewish teacher, to whom he gives the title not of ‘Christ’ or ‘Messiah’ but of ‘Anointed’, whose antinomian ‘concern for the ptōchoi – the abjectly destitute – is more or less exclusive of any other social class’. It has been suggested that this is a Marxist Jesus, for whom the rich are the ‘revilers of the divine name, who should howl in terror at the judgment that is coming upon them’, and it is here that Hart has attracted the most cavils and harrumphing. In this translation, Jesus’s teachings on material wealth are emphatically not advisory suggestions, counsels of good karma, but commands; far from the metaphors that we might wish them to be, they are clear injunctions urgently to rid ourselves of possessions, which keep our souls from the light.

This is stressed, in another departure from tradition, in the rendering of the word that we are accustomed to hear as ‘blessed’. For Hart, the Greek makarios conveys ‘a special intensity of delight and freedom from care that the more shopworn renderings no longer quite capture’. Thus in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3) we hear, ‘How blissful the destitute, abject in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of the heavens.’ To lack, to be empty of possessions, is here to become a vessel imbued with bliss.

And this:

Hart is from the Orthodox tradition, which eschews the Augustinian notion of Original Sin and proposes, more congenially, that humans are born not already stained by sin but merely capable of sinning. This temperamental distinction gives rise to his most controversial translation (among Christian bigwigs), that of aiōn, aiōnios, which is generally given to us as ‘eternity, eternal’. According to Hart, there is an ambiguity in the Greek that means it has no English equivalent. Taking his cue from the Septuagint, the second century BC Greek translation of the Old Testament, he insists that it can equally mean an age, a lifetime or a temporal span. Consequently, in his version of the story of Jesus, the punishment meted out, for example, to the goats, who are notoriously divided from the sheep, is remedial rather than retributive, temporary rather than everlasting, which allows for an altogether kinder, more 21st-century-friendly outlook.

Another silly IPA inspired suggestion

Senator for the IPA James Patterson wants universities to be fined for not accepting money from the Ramsay Centre.   Because nothing says intellectual freedom like forcing a university to teach IPA approved courses.

Dutch teen happiness

The Guardian notes that Dutch teenagers are regularly at the top of teenage happiness analysis:

In report after report, the Netherlands tops OECD countries for high life satisfaction among its young people. Researchers compiling this year’s Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, a four-yearly analysis on 48 countries, say Dutch children’s happiness scores are up again.

It contrasts starkly with the picture in countries like Britain, where depression and anxiety are on the rise among teenagers, and the US, where the number of young people taking their own lives has risen sharply.

So why is this flat, damp country of 17 million people with its history of Calvinism and colonialism so good at giving young people an optimistic outlook?

It is a great question, because the country is so famously liberal in many respects, yet the behaviour of the kids is more conservative than what you get in places like the Red State in the USA.  They are:

... in the bottom five for being overweight, having sex before 15, and feeling pressure from schoolwork. They were less likely than average to experience bullying and generally found it easy to talk to parents.

Despite the country’s reputation for cannabis smoking, the Trimbos Institute reports a downward trend for using alcohol and drugs and smoking in Dutch children aged 12 to 16. Such activities are described by HBSC experts as “risk behaviours” that impact happiness....

The rate of teenage pregnancies in the Netherlands is also the lowest in the EU.

The school system sounds to be behind a lot of it.  It sounds nice and flexible.  

The Dutch school system – almost entirely public –incorporates major exams at about the age of 12 and three levels of secondary education from practical to the most academic. But it is possible to progress from one to the other or repeat a year and, despite concerns about dropping standards and increasing segregation, such flexibility could make for less stress.

Yara Agterhof, 17, from Vlaardingen, has just changed her subject focus. “I was a year ahead, [taking] physics, chemistry and biology,” she says. “I figured it was too hard for me and made a decision to go back. Now I have a different profile with the things I do actually enjoy. I don’t feel like I’ve lost a year and I think my parents feel: ‘As long as you’re happy, we’re happy.’”

It's a very interesting country. 

Hard not to laugh

I rarely use the word "orgy" at this blog, but this clip from Stephen Colbert about a recent failed one at Las Vegas is pretty funny:

Owner of obnoxious clown rodeo still likes clown rodeos, apparently

So, Sinclair Davidson got his noggin on the most ridiculous and embarrassing advertisement for the state of Right wing politics in Australia - Outsiders on Sky News, headed by laughing mop head Dean Rowan and "I think Donald Trump may be the greatest man on Earth" Ross Cameron.   (Yes, something very close to those exact words was his assessment of the outcome of the Singapore meeting last week - I saw it on The Weekly.  Not to mention his various gay ridiculing comments made from time to time - a bit rich from a founding member of a parliamentary Christian fellowship who promptly lost his seat after his history of adultery was revealed.) 

He was talking up his and Chris Berg's plan on how to end the ABC as a government funded organisation, and I have to say, the details of the suggestion sound even sillier than I expected.   (Give shares in it for free it to current and ex ABC staff, who will pay capital gains tax when they sell them off if there is any profit in selling them off.   I have many questions, but honestly, am not very interested in the answers.)

What interests me more is that the hosts of the show gave a call out to Catallaxy, for which Sinclair was apparently appreciative.

The big question, which has bothered me for many years, is why isn't he embarrassed to be the owner/controller of the hate filled bile that passes for reader participation (and, increasingly, post content) at that blog?

He is, personally, socially liberal and was obviously at ease with gay marriage, supports high levels of immigration, appears open minded to Muslim immigration, and admits to being friendly with at least one Labor economist politician (Andrew Leigh).    He has always sounded cynical of Trump.

Of course, he is frequently flat out wrong or deeply eccentric in his views (I won't bother listing them again now, it gets tedious), but his libertarian social liberal bent would seem to indicate that he doesn't hate strongly.

But look at the blog!    It is brimming with Right wing conservatives who genuinely think that centre Left politics and economic views are literally evil and threatening the end of Western civilisation.   Many report how they have lost friends and take pride in their obnoxious arguing with people who do radical things like, you know, believe science on climate change.  Several have mentioned past bouts with depression - I judge that many, by the content of their contributions, have actual psychological personality defects for which they could well do with therapy.  Misogyny, ridicule of homosexual public figures and outbreaks of racism are just routine, extremely rarely moderated, and self-moderation amongst participants is rare too.

Steve Kates routinely posts his complete bewilderment of how anyone cannot see Trump as the saviour of the world, and repeats regularly the view that he is one of the few economists who understands it properly.   As for the Left culturally - just a couple of days ago he wrote  how "the scum on the left know no bounds to their vile subnormal behaviour."   And the other contributors, they are full of condescension and ridicule of the mainstream as well, whether it be on climate science, or anything really.   They don't just disagree, they invite no respect because of their complete rudeness and arrogance towards others economists or experts.   No one of a professional standing ever now appears in comments to dispute or correct a post - surely because they know it is a poisonous place in which respectful debate is impossible.


In short, the blog is full of genuine, nutty, irrational hatred, and works as a mutual support network for those obnoxiously ungenerous towards others.   It is in large part,  I have come to believe, the cry of despair of the cultural loser - but ironically, on their one unifying issue (not believing in the existence or seriousness of climate change) they continually think that they are on the verge of "winning".  

Why would he like being in control of such a clown rodeo?   He might think it gives voice to the frustrated - but they've always been able to go to other offensive unmoderated blogs to do that - Larry Pickering and  Michael Smith's come to mind.  Why would you want to hurt your own credibility by heading a blog that is the home of the bitter and nasty social conservative who doesn't even agree with his own socially liberal views?


It is a complete mystery to me.   

A good Krugman on the somewhat illusory benefits of corporate tax cuts

Again, I think Krugman has a talent for straight forward explanations of economic matters, and this one explaining that corporate tax cutting actually seems to be a lot more about profit-shifting, is a good example.  His final paragraph:

So, am I saying that the case for cutting corporate tax rates is unadulterated nonsense? No, it’s adulterated nonsense. There’s some reason to believe that lower tax rates will, other things equal, have some positive effect on capital formation. But the vision of a global market in which real capital moves a lot in response to tax rates is all wrong; most of what we see in response to tax rate differences is profit-shifting, not real investment. And there is no reason to believe that the kind of tax cut America just enacted will achieve much besides starving the government of revenue.

A new idea: a spinning space catapult?

Don't think I have ever heard of this before, even as a vague idea:

On Thursday, a Silicon Valley startup called SpinLaunch Inc. will reveal the first details of its plans to build a machine meant to hurl rockets into space. To achieve that goal, SpinLaunch has secured $40 million from some top technology investors, said Jonathan Yaney, the founder.

The company remains tight-lipped about exactly how this contraption will work, although its name gives away the basic idea. Rather than using propellants like kerosene and liquid oxygen to ignite a fire under a rocket, SpinLaunch plans to get a rocket spinning in a circle at up to 5,000 miles per hour and then let it go—more or less throwing the rocket to the edge of space, at which point it can light up and deliver objects like satellites into orbit....

SpinLaunch’s so-called kinetic energy launch system would use electricity to accelerate a projectile and help do much of the dirty work fighting through gravity and the atmosphere. In theory, this means the company could build a simpler, less expensive rocket that’s more efficient at ferrying satellites. “Some people call it a non-rocket launch,” said Yaney. “It seems crazy. It seems fantastic. But we are actually using relatively low-tech industrial components to break this problem into manageable chunks.”

Well, spinning at that speed there won't be any smuggling of a person on board to get into space.  Nor would I assume anything very delicate in a satellite.  I am sceptical of the usefulness of the concept, actually.

Pointless fist waving continues

Ah, I hope that in retirement, like a reverse Jim Cairns, Sinclair Davidson and his best buddy Berg can be found sitting at a card table at some outdoor market selling their latest self published screed about how important it is that (in their case) the ABC sees its comeuppance. 

They may be admired by the more obnoxious, meat-headier parts of the Coalition and the wingnutty internet for their pointless campaigning on this, but it's a ridiculous campaign that has every chance of helping ABC loving Labor votes, rather than helping those who want to abolish it.

When Rupert dies and stops funding the IPA, perhaps the campaign will slow down anyway.

About that CO2 sucking machine

I've been waiting for some nuanced commentary on the recent report about extracting CO2 from the air for fuel production.   David Roberts does a pretty good job at that in his article at Vox:

Sucking carbon out of the air won’t solve climate change

I say again - send Jonathan Swan back to Murdochland, where he belongs

Typical Swan - look at his tweet giving support to the Trump FBI conspiracists on old news, when the report itself says it found no evidence that the political views expressed in texts affected investigation decisions.  Make sure to read the comment following the tweet too.

Swan is an idiot for thinking that anyone working in the FBI shouldn't have a private view that Trump is a dangerous idiot.   Because we all know he is.   Even a substantial proportion of his cult supporters really know it - they are just willing to encourage him anyway for culture war reasons, based on their absurd belief that Obama was the worst president ever.   Look at Hugh Hewitt's defence of Trump's quip that he'll probably never admit he was wrong about Kim, even if he is.   That's a good sign of "candor" in the perverse world of conservative politics now. 

Update:  to be clearer - of course, it is not a good look for an investigator to be texting that - and it is clearly right that he be taken off any role in the investigation when they were found.   So, yeah, the guy's been foolish.   But, ultimately, if there is no evidence of wrong doing from an investigative point of view, the view the investigator has of the suspect hardly matters.

How long can a cult last in the internet age?

There has been an upswing in people noting that the Republican Party, and about 30% of Americans, are acting like cultists when it comes to Trump.  

This is, of course, depressing in that cult members are not swayed by rational argument.   Or at least, they think they are being rational, when in fact they have lost all objectively.   Getting them out of a cult mindset usually takes a long time.

On the other hand, I was musing idly while in traffic this morning, cults, whether they be of religious or political nature, rarely last all that long, as far as the big picture of history goes.   The tensions, power plays and rivalry within them eventually cause a break up, with members finally giving up and looking for another key to life.   Think of the various Indian gurus gone bad, or your dictators with former public acclaim who end up on the end of a rope.  

What's unique about the current situation is the role of the internet and private media (principally, of course, Rupert Murdoch) in prolonging cult worship and the complete lack of objectivity that is key to a cult's existence.  

It would be more interesting if it weren't so worrying, this matter of how long modern communications and media can keep a political cult alive.    But I guess I remain somewhat optimistic that the dam wall will break, and the disgust with which history will view the enablers of the cult will be long lasting.

The Right wing intellectual decline, continued

Niall Ferguson is copping a lot of criticism for his latest newspaper column, in which he mounts an argument that the chaotic, who-knows-what-he'll-do-or-say-next, style and instincts of Trump is just what the globe (or at least, America) needs.  This is the particularly offending part:

Yes, there is much to be said in principle for an international order based on explicit rules; and yes, those rules should favor free trade over protectionism. But if in practice your liberal international order has the consequence that China overtakes you, first economically and then strategically, there is probably something wrong with it.

The key to the Trump presidency is that it holds out probably the last opportunity the United States has to stop or at least slow China’s ascendancy. And, while it may not be intellectually very satisfying, Trump’s approach to the problem, which is to assert American power in unpredictable and disruptive ways, may in fact be the only viable option left.

As people are saying on twitter:

Yes, once upon a time, conservative intellectuals valued, well, intellectualism.  Now they're reduced to cheering the opposite because "that'll show them." 

And this:

And there are many other worthy Twitter comments as well, noting that wrecking Western alliances is playing exactly into Chinese (and Russian) hands.  

But the best analysis of how Ferguson has dumbed himself down is a Krugman thread, which you can read here.

Record rainfall watch - France this time

France soaked by record rainfall as deluge continues

Spider raccoon gets to climb another skyscraper

Well, this is a nice story.  

A daredevil raccoon that became an online sensation when it spent almost 20 nail-biting hours scaling a 25-storey office tower in Minnesota has been safely rescued and released back into the wild after making it to the top of the building unscathed.

The animal’s ascent on the outside of the UBS building in downtown St Paul city was watched across the world on social media on Tuesday, with updates on its progress posted regularly by the Minnesota Public Radio under the hashtag #MPRraccoon. Crowds also gathered at the scene to watch.

Seems about right

I've usually like William Saletan's commentary, and his take on Trump/Kim sounds nearly right to me.   (I think he gives too much credit to Trump though when he calls him a "skilled salesman".)  

Sickophantic

There're millions of words being written about the Trump/Kim summit, and I'm finding it tiresome to choose which seems to me to sum it up best.   So I'll just show throw a few of my own thoughts down:

*  I think it likely that Trump's limited range of rhetorical and social skills means that he has no other way of sounding positive about a political leader without coming across as inappropriately gushing.  I mean, really - can you imagine the Republican reaction to Obama talking about a "special bond" with a "very talented" North Korean dictator who has internment camps and kills his political rivals and poorly performing generals?  It's quite absurd that conservatives (or at least, more conservatives - there are a couple) are not horrified - but then again, their childish, blind, tribalistic support of Trump is absurd at the best of times.   Ironically,  I think the regular media is actually being light on the criticism of Trump for such sycophantic language, perhaps because they have made the same judgement as me (that he just doesn't have the skill to do anything better)?

* The agreement as signed means nothing.   No one will know if anything productive has come out of the meeting for another 12 months at least, I would guess.

*  I have been a bit puzzled by South Korea being too lavish in its praise of Trump early on.  Now that he seems to be making decisions affecting them without being pre-warned (cancelling joint military exercises) I think they may be realising they're not exactly dealing with a reliable ally.    Sucked in, as teens of my era used to say.

My best guess as to what Trump and Kim just signed ...

....is that's a time share deal for some Trump resort, and an associated golf course membership. 

CRISPR and cancer

Techno optimists of the "let's genetically engineer humans to make them better" extreme might need to reduce their expectations of the use of CRISPR as a gene editing technique:

Editing cells’ genomes with CRISPR-Cas9 might increase the risk that the altered cells, intended to treat disease, will trigger cancer, two studies published on Monday warn — a potential game-changer for the companies developing CRISPR-based therapies.

In the studies, published in Nature Medicine, scientists found that cells whose genomes are successfully edited by CRISPR-Cas9 have the potential to seed tumors inside a patient. That could make some CRISPR’d cells ticking time bombs, according to researchers from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and, separately, Novartis.

CRISPR has already dodged two potentially fatal bullets — a 2017 claim that it causes sky-high numbers of off-target effects was retracted in March, and a report of human immunity to Cas9 was largely shrugged off as solvable. But experts are taking the cancer-risk finding seriously.