Men are terrible after all

Well, I can understand a woman thinking that if it turns out that it's actually men who give women the unfortunate disease of bacterial vaginosis (which I've posted about twice before):

A Monash University trial is seeking to prove that, unlike other vaginal infections, bacterial vaginosis is actually a sexually-transmitted disease, which can be carried by men, as well as women.

A 2006 Monash study found 50 per cent of women who undergo treatment – an oral or topical antibiotic – for bacterial vaginosis have a recurrence within six months.

"When we looked at the associated factors with bacterial vaginosis coming back, women who were exposed to an ongoing, regular sexual partner had twice the risk," says Dr Catriona Bradshaw, who has been researching the condition for 15 years.

Subsequent studies by the team also suggest this high recurrence rate could be because the infection is sexually transmitted: the biggest risk factor for developing bacterial vaginosis is exposure to a new sexual partner, and a 2008 study of university students found the infection was unable to be detected in women who had never been sexually active.

Bacterial vaginosis is experienced by roughly one in 10 Australian women. It occurs when the vagina's healthy bacteria, known as lactobacilli, are replaced by a variety of different bacteria, resulting in a watery, white discharge and a fishy odour.

Which makes me wonder - if it's a case of bacteria on the penis being re-introduced and outcompeting a woman's normal  healthy bacteria, might not there be a higher risk of it with an uncircumcised penis?

Well, seems my guess is right.  A 2015 article:

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is a common vaginal bacterial imbalance associated with risk for HIV and poor gynecologic and obstetric outcomes. Male circumcision reduces BV-associated bacteria on the penis and decreases BV in female partners, but the link between penile microbiota and female partner BV is not well understood. We tested the hypothesis that having a female partner with BV increases BV-associated bacteria in uncircumcised men.

Short answer:  it does.

So, for all of the hyperventilating that goes on about circumcision as a cruel practice on boys, women actually do have an incentive to support it.
 
 In fact, Googling on this topic indicates that some have been saying for years that BV should be considered a sexually transmitted disease.  So I'm not sure that the Monash study is all that innovative.  

Western suburbs

I found myself with 45 minutes to kill on the weekend in one of the bushy Western suburbs of Brisbane.   I went for a walk and found :

A pair of tawny frogmouths:

A swimming hole:

And some houses with really, really big front yards:

All within about 30 min drive to the CBD, at least if it is not rush hour.   Nice.

This is sheer idiocy

Andrew Bolt (and Steve Kates) extract some Mark Latham commentary from The Spectator with approval:

Mark Latham says Donald Trump is now the hope of Western civilisation:

Trump believes in the supremacy of the individual, in judging people on merit, by their work ethic and creativity, rather than race, gender and sexuality. These are the essential elements of civilisational leadership. Trump stands for the freedom of the citizen in the nation state. That is, the right to free speech, to meritocracy, to national pride and a freestanding national culture. The key political divide is no longer between Left and Right; it’s between civilisational and non-civilisational leaders. Trump is on the right side of history, with domestic ascendancy seemingly assured. He now needs to turn his mind to an even greater challenge, promulgating a Trump doctrine: a new brand of American global leadership based on the defence of Western civilisation.

It's getting to the stage of when I hear "Western civilisation" I want to reach for my (imaginary) revolver.  (Now that I mention it, didn't the Nazis come out of the one of the national hearts of "Western Civilisation"?)

Young socialists

There's been much knicker knotting going on from the Right wing commentators about a CIS survey done with millenials to see what they think of socialism vs capitalism.  Quite a lot of young folk (58%) said they view it (socialism) favourably.   Quelle horreur.  

But wait a minute - survey results depend an awful lot on how questions are asked, and in this case, there may be an obvious problem:  did it take any care to explain in any way the meaning of the term "socialism"? 

The need to be careful with the definition comes at a time when it is those on the Right - particularly the American Right - who abuse the term in a rubbery, self serving way.  You know - single payer health care (like our much beloved Medicare) is evil, outright socialism according to many Republicans (and tantamount to setting up hospitals as death camps).    You might say that we don't have quite the same level of wingnutty branding of any government support as socialism in the Australian electorate, despite Catallaxy's ratbags and Pauline Hanson.   But we do still the complication of having someone like Barnaby Joyce musing that maybe it's fair to call him an  "agrarian socialist"!   

Even without having heard Barnaby Joyce's self labelling, if millenials think "socialism" is just government helping when it could or should, and they know National Party politicians spend a lot of time asking for help for drought or flood relief, they're not exactly showing themselves up as wannabe communists for saying they think well of socialism.

Looking at the CIS report, I can see no evidence of an attempt at an explanation of the terminology of "socialism" versus "capitalism", which should set off immediate alarm bells.   

Other parts of the survey might give more grounds for concern, such as the relatively low awareness of the big political leaders of communism in the 20th century.   Yes, school teaching of the history of the 20th century could do with improvement.  It's also clear that millenials don't have sound knowledge of levels of government spending on education or wage growth - but I would say that a large part of that ignorance comes from politician's spin at election time, rather than a fault of the education system.  But for God's sake, the beneficiaries of misleading spin can just as much be the Right as the Left - look no further than Trump for that.

As for the question of whether respondents agreed that "capitalism has failed and the government should exercise more economic control" - well, it's really a broad brush loaded question.  Anyone, save for libertarians with an allergy to government per se, can probably think of an area where private sector involvement doesn't seem to be helping much - the electricity supply, or the multitude of choice for internet or health insurance which makes comparisons of products very complicated, and prices are still increasing despite apparent the competition.   It's easy to slip into hyperbole (politicians lead by example) and go with "capitalism has failed" on the slimmest of gut feelings about a few minor irritants of the current system.   Or it may well be a case that if asked those questions separately, you would get some people disagreeing that "capitalism has failed" but still agreeing that the government should be more involved in some parts of the economy.   The joining of those two statements really stuffs up the interpretation of the results.  

So, long story short:   it's a lousily constructed survey that means very, very little.

CIS can do better than that, surely. 

Update:   John Quiggin wrote something very similar on the weekend:

In ordinary usage, “socialism” means something like “social democracy with a spine”, as I’ve argued here**. That’s primarily due to the fact that any serious social democratic policy is invariably labelled as “socialist” by the political right. In ordinary usage, the term associated with Stalin and Mao is “communist”, and if Switzer & Jacobs wanted to find out how millennials felt about communism they should have asked them.

Que

Transgender wars

I finally got around to looking at the The Atlantic's recent long, long article about children who believe they are transgender, and the vexed issue of treating them for it with puberty blockers and even (in some cases) surgery while still a minor.  It deals with "de-transitioners" who have changed their mind after surgery, and opens with a story of a teenager who was confident of the source of her mental problems (she was a boy in a girl's body) but then pretty snapped out of it (before taking medication or going down the surgery path.)     It's a very nuanced, careful and respectful article. 

But, predictably, the world of identity politics armed with social media, being what it is, has apparently been full of outrage over it.  I only know this because Bernard Kean linked to an article by a pothead Trokskyist lesbian (pretty much her self description, and as such someone I would not generally care to follow) who says this about the article:

The piece, which was written by science reporter Jesse Singal, was thorough, nuanced, impeccably researched and fact-checked, and it caused an immediate firestorm. On Twitter, Roxane Gay said it was a travesty. Lena Dunham called it dangerous. Nicole Cliffe, a woman who has literally never spoken to the author in her life, said that Singal is “obsessed” with trans women. She also called him creepy.

“Mad” doesn’t quite capture my response to these tweets. I was enraged, particularly at Cliffe, a writer who should know better than to smear someone she’d never met to her 81,000 followers. Unlike Cliffe, I’ve actually met Singal, and he is not “obsessed” with trans women. He reports on social science, including the science (or lack thereof) of gender. He was, quite literally, doing his job, and, if you follow Singal on Twitter, you’ll quickly find that if he’s obsessed about anything, it’s basketball, not trans women. The irresponsibility of Cliffe’s tweet, which has more than 4,000 likes and 1,000 retweets, was astounding—but it shouldn’t have been. This is how Twitter works: You repeat something, no one bothers to fact check, and all of a sudden, it’s treated as fact. Jesse Singal is obsessed with trans women. I read it on Twitter, therefore it’s true.

So, yeah, social media is bad for the Left too.  But the effect it's having there is nothing the serious and bizarre rise of the Cult of Trump it has caused on the Right (well, at least by 50%, I would say.)

Alcoholic rats

A good article by Ed Yong about new rat research on alcoholism.  Seems to me it took them long enough to come to up with the experiment in which rodents had the choice of alcohol and something different.

Kates in a Deep State of panic

Look, it's hard to come up with new words to describe the inanity of Steven Kate's world view:  let's just settle on LOL ridiculous for this post today about the "Australian Deep State", inspired by an article written by Gareth Evans. 

Even though Evans (questionably, in my view) in the article gives credit to Trump for at least having the Singapore summit, Kates still finds reason to panic:

And what is his sage advice: to restructure our foreign policy so that it is, “as he has argued for some time”:

“Less America. More Asia. More Self Reliance.”

Moronus maximus duplicitus!!! What a sell-out to our enemies. And he finishes by telling us that there is about to be a meeting at the university that has self-declared itself unwilling to defend Western Civilisation, that there will be an “ANU Leadership Forum” involving the AFR, Business Council, academics and the public service – that is, a meeting of socialists and their crony-capitalist beneficiaries – to discuss our foreign policy future.

Or in other words, it is a meeting of the Australian Deep State, who should not be trusted by so much as an inch. You should, of course, be wary of the Libs, but you should be far far more wary of the ALP. It makes me sick to read such idiocies and fills me with fear as well.

Hey, Sinclair Davidson:  you do know you're hosting a blog for the mentally disturbed Right wing catastrophists of the land, who routinely report breaking contact with former friends and relatives due to whipping themselves into a frenzy of panic based on imagined conspiracies?  

Don't you feel just a little bit guilty hosting a place where they sit around reinforcing each other's increasingly nutty social isolation?  

Sort of a Hindmarsh Island in reverse?

This is one of those cases where groups associated with both sides of the political spectrum come out looking bad - Big Mining and aboriginal politics:

A north Queensland Indigenous organisation kept secret more than $2m in payments by the Adani mining company, federal court documents show.

Guardian Australia has obtained court documents that show the Kyburra Munda Yalga Aboriginal Corporation did not account for payments by Adani, then paid its own directors up to $1,000 a day cash-in-hand to conduct now-invalidated cultural heritage assessments for the Indian mining company.

The federal court last month delivered a ruling that may void the assessments, which are required to protect sacred sites from development.

It ruled that another Indigenous business, Juru Enterprises Limited, was the proper “nominated body” to represent traditional owners on a land-use agreement with Adani.

The impact of the decision could be wide-ranging. Traditional owners from near Bowen say they are “hugely worried” Adani has conducted work at its Abbot Point port based on improper or conflicted advice from the cultural assessment surveys.

Juru Enterprises could now demand Adani “redesign or reconfigure” any plans or works near sacred sites.

The court case has also exposed how Adani funding was central to alleged rorts conducted by Kyburra board members. Guardian Australia has seen letters, minutes of meetings, police reports, auditors reports and sworn affidavits that detail how Kyburra kept money paid by Adani off the books and then funnelled it to directors through “fees” and “loans”.

Kyburra declared only $50,000 total income in consecutive years: 2014/2015 and 2015/16. About $2m was paid to the organisation by Adani in 2014 and 2015, including an estimated $800,000 for cultural assessments. But none of it showed up in Kyburra’s annual financial statements.

In today's appalling Trump and Trump supporter news

First, as David Roberts says:

Second, why isn't this story of the man baby bully making more appearances in the mainstream media?:

President Trump reportedly tossed Starburst candies to German Chancellor Angela Merkel during his tense meeting with Group of Seven (G-7) leaders weeks ago, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer said Wednesday.

While appearing on CBS News, Bremmer painted a grim picture of Trump and Merkel’s relationship amid heightened conflict between the president and other G-7 members over his steep steel and aluminum tariffs and suggestion that Russia be reinstated into the group.
  Bremmer went on to describe a bizarre incident toward the end of the summit, when Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined some of other the allies “to press Trump directly to sign the [group] communique that talked about the commitment to a rules-based international order.”

“Trump was sitting there with his arms crossed, clearly not liking the fact that they were ganging up on him,” Bremmer said to the news outlet. “He eventually agreed and said OK, he’ll sign it. And at that point, he stood up, put his hand in his pocket, his suit jacket pocket, and he took two Starburst candies out, threw them on the table and said to Merkel, ‘Here, Angela. Don’t say I never give you anything.’ ”

“The relationship is about as dysfunctional as we’ve seen between America and its major allies since the trans-Atlantic relationship really started after World War II,” Bremmer continued.

Third:   I find it weird how, for conservative pro-Life Catholics, the issue of abortion distorts their moral judgment completely.    Because the Left supports abortion rights, they (pro-Lifers)  act as if this makes all appalling treatment of the living by the any figure on the Right excusable as being relatively minor, in their eyes.    It's always a case of "but you can't complain about that, because you want to see babies killed!"

This dynamic has been clear at Catallaxy for many, many years, most routinely deployed by 1950's blow in CL.  But I see it turns up at Hot Air too:

His point about thinking twice before handing power to a party that would take kids away from their parents with no plan to reunite them and maybe with no ability to reunite them is well taken. His suggestion to replace them with a party that condones abortion on demand at any point during pregnancy — “the only party left in America that stands for what is right and decent,” Schmidt would have you believe — is not. 

What's weird about this is Popes themselves do not take this attitude.    All Popes talk of abortion as appalling evil that they want to see ended - but it never stops them issuing teachings on, and condemning, other immoral behaviour, whether it be about social justice in terms of economics, climate change, use of social media, whatever.  

And so I'll end with a David Roberts tweet on this very topic:

Update:  entirely predictable, but even after this current Pope condemns the child separation policy, those walking ugly advertisements of modern Conservative Catholics as inanely supportive of cruelty and entirely gullible from Catallaxy chime in:

DB sounds like a genuine Catholic proto-fascist these days:  uses "bugmen" all the time, which ties in with Trump's dehumanising terminology for undocumented immigrants.   It's extremely ugly, and dumb.  But that's his brand of modern conservatism for you.    

It can be hard to understand America

The media attention on Trump's children separation policy looks very, very bad:  as does Trump using the quasi Nazi terminology of how illegal migrants are "infesting" the country.

Look, along with the wannabe dictator cry of "lock her up", the other transparently appalling thing of the Trump candidacy was his vilification of undocumented immigrants as a class, Mexicans in particular.   Yet it seemed the media noted it, it was repeated, the media got tired of noting what appallingly dangerous vilification it was, and it became un-newsworthy.   It won't be forgotten by history, however, where this Presidency will clearly be held in contempt.   I mean, come on, when even the present Chief of Staff is saying this (apparently):

He has told at least one person close to him that he may as well let the president do what he wants, even if it leads to impeachment — at least this chapter of American history would come to a close.

..we already know the judgment of history.

So called conservatives who support the Trumpian policy of child separation fill me with disgust.

So called conservatives of Australia who shrug their shoulders about it (look how much time Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair have devoted to the topic on his blogs - precisely nil, I believe, while hyperventilating daily about really important things like what Jonathan Green said next or how much they hate the ABC) are pathetic, lightweight culture warriors who can't see immoral authoritarianism on open display.

Yet the American news reports Trump's popularity is not doing so bad.   Not great, but not in the single digits where in any reasonable country it would deserve to be.   I've said it before, but there seems something peculiar about Presidential popularity polling in that country - if you don't believe me, look at the collection of approval/disapproval graphs at FiveThirtyEight for past presidents.   There are some strange looking results there.

Still, the fact that some Republicans are coming out against the child separation policy is a sign they can tell there is a real problem with the electorate there.  

What's the bet that Trump won't take his own action, which he can at any time, without the need for legislation, until the Foxs News network gives him approval to do so?   He is that pathetic.

Hope they lose in a landside in the mid terms.

And now for some sports commentary

I only do this about twice a year, so you're lucky to catch it.

I'm only half watching some World Cup soccer matches, but my distracted and uninformed opinion is that the style of play in the Japan and Columbia match on while I type this is faster and much better to watch than the turgid, too cautious play during at least the first 20 minutes of the Australia/France match.

So there.  I'm done with sports here for another six months.

Maths fail

At the end of Sinclair Davidson's latest post about how happy he is that he's causing the ABC "trouble" (the sort of trouble that is causing Turnbull and every other Coalition minister to grind their teeth at the vote losing potential of this issue), he notes:

So that is ($1,000,000,000/6000) $166,666,67 per job.

Should I go the full snark and end with something like "so that's the standard of RMIT economics teaching?", or just admit it's a typo of a comma that should be a full stop?  

Labor must be delighted at Davidson and Berg's almost single handed contribution (not counting Murdoch) to their next scare campaign. 

Speaking of cults (and with an Alexander Downer connection too!)

I hadn't noticed this story until now:  some weirdo cult leader is on trial in South Australia for various charges of unlawful sexual intercourse, and we're getting to hear some of the nutty detail of how the cult worked:

The court heard no decision was made without running it past Salerno and that on one occasion he had ordered all of the men to strip and wrestle naked in front of the group, before ordering all of the women to do the same.

In his opening address, prosecutor Patrick Hill told the court Salerno — also known as 'Taipan' — was always the leader of the group and the other 30 or so members were ranked by what the accused called the individual's "emotional quotient".

He said the group would hold daily meetings to discuss various ideas around the notion of the "ideal human environment" and that it was common for them to say "praise Taipan".

The court heard women in the group were responsible for looking after children, cooking and cleaning as well as tending to Salerno.

"This included caring for his hands and feet by these manicures and pedicures, running him a bath, towel drying him afterwards, brushing his hair, doing his laundry and also by giving him hand and leg massages," Mr Hill said.

The court heard girls as young as 13 were taught by older women in the group how to be a "personal server" to their leader, which included testing the temperature of his bath water with a thermometer to make sure it was to his liking.

And so on.

As for Alexander Downer's connection - the leader's family had bought a mansion in the Adelaide Hills from which to run the cult, and it was originally built by Alexander's Dad and was his (Alexander's) boyhood home.   Look at it:

Rather like an English country estate transplanted here.   No wonder he talks with a plum in his mouth!   

Brexit effects were obviously not understood

I think it is impossible to deny that Brexit proponents had no idea of the complications that it would involve, and that the country is now paying the price of populism encouraged by the ill conceived politics of Rupert Murdoch (and to be fair, some other British media owners whose motivations for being pro Brexit were not always clear.)    

Here's a list of Brexit problems I've been noticing lately:

Car industry in Britain could be in big trouble.

So could aviation.

Fisherman might be able to fish more, but most fish eaten in Britain are likely to get more expensive, and British fishermen might even earn less.

Universities could get less research funds.

Yes, the NHS is about to get more money, but from an increase in taxes, not from the claimed Brexit dividend.

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: