Oral history

I don't know why, but it occurred to me the other day that I didn't know all that much about the history of teeth cleaning.

Yeah, I had read before about chewing sticks as the original teeth cleaning device (still popular in some parts of the world - you can download a Word document paper about them here.) And I remembered I had read before about all types of abrasive stuff that people used to try to remove gunk off their teeth.   But when and where tooth brushes and daily cleaning became popular, I wasn't sure.

A "Fun Science Facts from the Library of Congress" site gives a surprisingly specific year for the invention of something like the modern toothbrush - 1498 in China.  They took a while to catch on, it seems:

The bristles were actually the stiff, coarse hairs taken from the back of a hog's neck and attached to handles made of bone or bamboo.
Boar bristles were used until 1938, when nylon bristles were introduced by Dupont de Nemours. The first nylon toothbrush was called Doctor West's Miracle Toothbrush. Later, Americans were influenced by the disciplined hygiene habits of soldiers from World War II. They became increasingly concerned with the practice of good oral hygiene and quickly adopted the nylon toothbrush.
Some other interesting toothbrush facts:

• The first mass-produced toothbrush was made by William Addis of Clerkenwald, England, around 1780.
• The first American to patent a toothbrush was H. N. Wadsworth, (patent number 18,653,) on Nov. 7, 1857.
• Mass production of toothbrushes began in America around 1885.

Another link from that site credits the French as early adopters:

French dentists were the first Europeans to promote the use of toothbrushes in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

A New York dental practice's blog claims some pretty low figures for teeth cleaning of any kind in the US at the start of the 20th century:

In the early 1900’s only 7% of American household brushed their teeth or at least had toothpaste in their houses. During World War 1 most of the Army recruits had such poor oral hygiene that the military considered dental disease a national crisis.

A few sites say that the military strongly promoted tooth brushing during World War 2, and this habit (together with nylon toothbrushes, I suppose) meant that daily teeth cleaning finally took off in popularity.

But my favourite website talking about "oral care" is from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.  And the part of it which amused me most was this, about the liquid teeth cleaner Sozodont:

During the late nineteenth century, Sozodont was the most successful patent liquid dentifrice , due in great part to its many eye-catching advertisements. Historian Kerry Segrave notes that Sozodont company profits had reached $10 million by 1894. The product contained a high percentage of alcohol—37.15%. In 1897, the financial manager of the Sozodont firm had to testify before Congress to assure the government that consumers were not purchasing the product as a tax-free form of liquor. Sozodont also contained abrasive and acidic ingredients that gradually destroyed tooth enamel.

Heh!  37.15% alcohol!  No wonder this woman looks happy after a good long brush with it:

This product has its own Wikipedia page, but I had never heard of it before.  Given the concern that the medical profession now has that  mouthwashes containing  alcohol promote oral cancers, I can only assume that Sozodont didn't help in that regard, either.

Back to the Smithsonian site, we learn a bit more the failure of libertarianism in consumer products: 

Before new drug and cosmetic regulations were enacted in the late 1930s, consumers had little information about the ingredients and safety of the products they used. Dentists and journalists wrote articles about the need to warn the public of the dangers of many dentifrices. In 1931, the Journal of the American Dental Association reported on the danger of products such as Ex-Cel Tooth Stain Remover, Bleachodent, and Snowy White, which all contained hydrochloric acid. One such product, Tartaroff, was in 1928 famously shown to dissolve 3% of one’s tooth enamel each time it was used.

And thus ends the history lesson, for now...

 

Gangsters and me

I never got around to seeing Scarface until this weekend just gone.

Given that I only saw The Godfather in 2016, and found it lacking, there just might be a bit of a "it's not you, it's me" going on with my reaction to well received mafia/gangster movies.   Because, yeah, I was underwhelmed with this movie too, despite my fondness for a lot of the work of Brian de Palma.

I just thought the story didn't have much dramatic drive.  It was too simple, really, and as such, perhaps I can blame Oliver Stone's script.  But even the direction was uneven - sometimes some swooping crane shots, sometimes some heavy handed zooms into eyes or faces - signs of de Palma thinking about what to do.  But often on the important sequences, it seemed the direction went suddenly static and mundane.  I love the entire shoot out at the train station sequence in The Untouchables - there was nothing thrilling like that in this one.  The one big public shoot out was nothing special, directorially.

As with The Godfather, I didn't hate it:  just didn't really understand why a lot of reviewers thought it was great.   But it's true - I rarely think much of any film that dwells on the lives of gangsters.  For example, I've seen Goodfellas once (at the cinema, I think) and also found it OK, but nothing to get excited about, and I am disinclined to watch it again.    And yet I am enjoying the second season of Fargo.  And I love The Untouchables.  I think I see the pattern here - I can only really like movies featuring criminal families and gangsters if the Good Guys also have a prominent role in the story.  Simplifies my viewing choices, that does...

The empathy question

David Roberts also hits it home in his tweet thread on the matter of conservatives and empathy.  Here's part of it:

He makes a good point.   

However, I think it should also be acknowledged that liberals can take empathy too far:  for example, isn't extreme identity politics a matter of demanding that empathy extends to never questioning the views or actions of someone because you aren't inside their skin?   Or even (in the case of silly cultural appropriation extremists) claiming that authors should empathise with the pain they are causing if they even try to write (ironically, empathetically) from the other's perspective?  

Currently, I think it clear that there is a fashion for too much empathy in the matter of transgender activism;   there sometimes is in response to hedonistic behaviour be it sexual or with drugs.   I think it became politically important in race issues when Labor under Hawke became paralysed with inability to call out some aboriginal activism as fabricated.  In short, a liberal overemphasis on empathy can be a way of arguing against anyone ever being able to make a legitimate moral argument about behaviour.

Like lots of things in life, the deployment of empathy needs to fall within a happy medium - your judgement is going to be way off if you have trouble using it at all, or if you overuse it as a way of denying the very ability to judge.

That's how I see it, anyway...

Colbert on the Kav

Stephen Colbert is so impressive when he mixes his comedy talent with anger.   He rates highly too on days like yesterday.   Wingnuts hate him:

A failed big nuclear promise

Can't say I had heard of it, but seems Peter Thiel (amongst others) blew a couple of million on a nuclear start up that make some wildly inaccurate claims:

Nuclear reactor startup Transatomic Power is shutting down operations, after deciding it doesn’t see a viable path to bringing its molten salt reactor designs to scale. ...

Transatomic’s current work doesn’t include its initial goal of using spent nuclear fuel to power its reactors, however. Dewan and co-founder Mark Massie launched the company in 2011, while they were doctoral candidates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the goal of creating a reactor that could use spent fuel rods and thus manage the challenges of safely disposing of this nuclear waste.

This promise helped Transatomic raise $2 million in 2014 from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, and raise another $2.5 million round in 2015 from Acadia Woods Partners, Founders Fund, and Daniel Aegerter, chairman of the Swiss fund Armada Investment AG.

But in 2016, the company was forced to backtrack on its earlier claims, after an informal review by MIT professors found errors in its calculations. As first reported by MIT Technology Review, these errors included its initial claim that its design could produce "75 times more electricity per ton of mined uranium than a light-water reactor” of typical design — a figure that was downgraded to “more than twice” the usual reactor’s output per unit of uranium in a company report from November 2016.

Quick comments on the Kav

*  Seeing the media reports on waking up this morning, they were all headlining Kavanaugh's angry rejection of Ford's claim - giving the impression that the headline writers thought it was effective.  But looking at the live comments on Twitter, and seeing a bit of him on TV, it was not as effective as angry, white men think it was.   I endorse this tweet:

*  Surely it's obvious that the best thing, electorally, for the Republicans would for Kavanaugh to withdraw voluntarily, and then the Wingnuts can outrage without blaming the GOP Senators, and be motivated to get out to vote to punish the e-vil woman supporting Democrats who persecute good old boys who just reasonably thought that Animal House and Risky Business were guides for life.

*  I saw some GOP Senator, not sure who, insisting that near rape claims must be corroborated to be credible:  yeah, way to explain why a women near raped might not report it at the time, Senator.

*  The absence of the best friend to support Kavanaugh is very telling, and something that could presumably be overcome by referral to the FBI.

*  On ABC Breakfast, the point was being made that by Kavanaugh  getting emotional about his life being ruined by this (maybe he can't coach girl's netball anymore?),  then isn't he also painting a picture that his credibility on women's issues in Supreme Court decisions is also going to be under a permanent cloud?   Seemed a bit of an obvious two edged sword he raised there.

*  I dunno - I have the feeling that Republicans are so obnoxiously set on winning culture wars that they will confirm him - and the vote against them in the midterms is going to be massive.  

*  Of course, over at Sinclair Davidson's Blog for Obnoxious, Ageing, White Men (and the White Women Who Love them),  the assessments of the credibility of Ford are shot through with resentment against women generally.   CL, a fantasist who I like to quote occasionally for his unwitting disclosures that he presents as a lonely ageing Catholic bachelor who could never meet a woman as good as his Mum, and he resents them for it:

Updates:

*  I quite like the sarcasm of the WAPO piece "HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO BRETT KAVANAUGH". 

*  But I think Jennifer Rubin at WAPO has a measured, sensible take on it:

The shouting didn’t end with his opening statement. He barked at the ranking Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Then the Republicans got into the screaming act, pushing their outside lawyer Rachel Mitchell aside in favor of histrionics from Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.). If President Trump loved the nasty, male grievance game, the rest of us had reason to wonder if anyone of this temperament — Cornyn, Graham or Kavanaugh — should be in a position of power. If they were women, they would be called “hysterical.”...

Kavanaugh says he was not the attacker. But even if you believe that — despite Ford’s riveting testimony — one can reasonably conclude he is not the right person to sit on the court. His anger toward liberals is palpable, his lack of humility bracing. He has the partisan mindset that opponents are unworthy of respect and kindness.

One has had the sense, since his testimony skated past the truth on his involvement with Charles Pickering and on his awareness that documents he received were purloined, that his heart is that of a conservative partisan, one who tried so very hard to make himself into Supreme Court material. The mentality of a political operative — willing to go on Fox News, ready to inflame passions, disrespectful toward opponents — is still there. A nonpartisan would ask for, if not demand, an FBI investigation and Judge’s appearance. Kavanaugh wants to avoid both at all costs.

Update 2:  I didn't watch the Ford evidence, but Saletan's take on the matter of a witness being open and careful about the gaps in their memory actually works in favour of their credibility is a point well taken.  

Good for Toowoomba (and some autobiographic details)

Toowoomba is a lovely, lively regional town, and it's great to see that it will be a hub for training of this kind:

Qantas has chosen Toowoomba as the location for its first pilot training school, which it says will eventually turn out 250 pilots a year to help address a global shortage of skilled aviators.

The airline said on Thursday that Toowoomba, in Queensland’s Darling Downs, beat a shortlist of other regional towns thanks to its favourable environment and infrastructure, and students and trainers' willingness to live in the area.

The shortage of pilots predicted internationally is huge:

Qantas says an estimated 790,000 extra pilots will be needed globally over the next 20 years - about a third of those in the Asia Pacific - as population growth and burgeoning middle classes see more people take to the sky.

As for why this is of personal interest:   as a kid, I always fancied the idea of being a pilot.   Not coming from a rich family, however, paying a private pilot school was never a possibility.

I was reminded of this a couple of years ago when going through some old personal papers at home, with the kids around.   I found a letter, written to me in (I think) 1974, from QANTAS thanking me for the enquiry, but advising that they did not conduct their own pilot training.   "See!"  I said to my I-don't-have-any-idea-how-I-would-like-to-make-a-living high school age children "at 14 I was writing to a company asking about how I might get to work for them - and they were taking me seriously enough to write back!"   (I like to complain about young people today taking far, far too long to work out what they might like to do work-wise:  I am particularly encouraging my kids to not waste time accumulating HECS debt on courses they start but don't finish.)

A consequence of the QANTAS letter was that I knew the only prospect I had to be a pilot would be via RAAF entry.  But then, around age 15 I think, I realised that my left eye was considerably weaker than my right.   This led to me dropping in one day at the Defence Force Recruiting centre in the city, and asking whether it could be checked so that I would know whether pilot entry was a possibility.  They did, and the answer was "no, sorry". 

Hence, I knew that pilot as a career was not an option, and I started thinking about other things.

As it happens, go forward a few years and I was learning to drive and finding it a much more stressful experience than I expected.  (I really did not like the first driving instructor I had.)  It made me realise, though, that the weaker eye sight in one eye may have been a blessing in disguise - I think I would have found RAAF pilot training a bit too stressful.

As it happens, the path I chose ended up with spending years in the RAAF anyway, with the occasional joy ride in jets (including one in an F-18 - but for which I ended up with no documentary proof.  There is a photo of me about to get into it, but I don't even know where that is at the moment.  My son likes to annoy me by saying that I probably dreamt it all.)

I also tried learning to fly in gliders, but I found landings a bit of a worry, including once landing roughly with the gear still retracted!  (My instructor kicked himself for missing it.)   My Dad took terminally ill in this period anyway, causing me to lose interest and did not go back to it.

But, yeah, perhaps a good thing the pilot career option was abandoned at an early age...:)  

Sweden and China go to war...

...well, at least to PR war.

It's a pretty funny situation, explained at the BBC.

Cultists think this press conference went fine

In other, uh, highlights (from Axios): 

On the media: "I think ABC, CBS, NBC, The [New York] Times, The Washington Post, they're all going to endorse me, because if they don't, they're going out of business. Can you imagine if you didn't have me?"

On North Korea and Kim Jong-un: "If I wasn't elected, you'd be in a war....You would've had a war and you would've lost millions, not thousands, millions of people."

On United Nations members laughing at him: "That's fake news, that's fake news. It was covered that way...They were not laughing at me, they were laughing with me."

On soybeans and farmers: Trump called farmers "patriots" and said his policies are creating growth for the soybean industry, but they've fallen 12% year to year.

Oh, and by the way, Axios also has the full prepared testimony of that Christine Ford, re rich, drunk kid Kavanaugh, and it's pretty persuasive.  

Rambling on about retail woes

Oh good - an ABC report talking about the worrying decline in retail in Australia.

I almost daily walk through 2 suburban shopping centres - one a major sized one, with 3 supermarkets and 3 of the big retailers; and the other a smaller, local one with one supermarket and maybe 20 other small shops and food outlets.

Both were substantially renovated and extended about (I think) 7 or so years ago.

Walking around them these days, you just get the unavoidable feeling that the centre owners expanded too far - they just can't fill all of the space that is now available.  In the last year or so it has become clearly worse in the bigger centre - new tenants who took up leases for 5 or 6 years in the expansion just aren't renewing.

People blame on line shopping for the downturn, but I am not sure it can account for too much of the problem.  (Or is that just my bias because I buy very little on line as I actually want to support retail on the ground?   For some things, though, on line is ridiculously cheaper.   I am astounded at the almost throw away price of some electronics coming out of China.   For example, my car is old enough that it does not have Bluetooth built in, but a device that plugs into the cigarette lighter works fine by rebroadcasting from my phone to the FM radio.  That hi tech, tiny device cost all of $15.)

And the problem is just not Australia.   One of the very, very few useful things  I learn from reading the madhouse comments at Catallaxy is that even in NYC, retail in former swanky retail areas is emptying out.

Another old commenter at that blog was saying recently that he thinks people might just have reached a realisation that they have everything they need.    And I am feeling inclined to agree.  For some electronics stuff (big screen TVs for example), the quality has become so good that you can't imagine needing to upgrade for increased viewing pleasure;  and the build is such that they would seem to have many years of life in them.   I guess TVs always were a bit that way - you never bought one not expecting it to last a long time - but there used to be room for improvement in the basic function in a way that is hard to imagine now.   Other technological changes make some items hardly necessary - DVDs and DVD players are being replaced by streaming services; I hardly ever bother trying to record something off free to air TV now, even with higher definition broadcast.  

Clothes tend to mostly last a long time,  and if I go to DFO I can buy a good business shirt for all of $30 any day of the year.   Any purely cotton item is more likely to need to be replaced more for being completely outdated in fashion terms  rather than for developing holes.  (Except in pockets - that remains the weak spot in pants.)

So, yeah, I am feeling a bit lately like I do have everything I need.   I couldn't think of anything to ask for from my family for my recent birthday.   Or is this just a function of older age?   And busy-ness generally?

Anyway, failing retail feels bad, because of the knock on effect on investment in retail space.   Mind you, maybe part of the problem is ridiculously greedy landlords, too.

A busy marketplace makes everyone feel good, and confident in the economy.   I would like to see retail on the ground at more confident levels than it is now, but I am sure how that is going to happen in current circumstances.... 

Rich kids and acting

Somewhat interesting article about the serious faced young actor Will Poulter in The Guardian, notable because it talks about a disproportionate number of British actors coming from rich kids' schools:

...he was a pupil at the Harrodian School in west London (current fees: upwards of £6,000 per term), whose alumni also include Robert Pattinson, Jack Whitehall, Tom Sturridge and George Mackay....

I wonder how it felt to hear Daniel Mays observe, in 2016, that the industry was “awash” with privately educated actors, or to read the Sutton report’s findings that the same group takes a disproportionately high share of awards (42% of British Bafta winners and 67% of British Oscar winners). Is it like being under attack? “No, no. Not at all. I’ve undoubtedly benefited from my middle-class environment. I hold my hands up to that. And I know that unless we try to make pathways into the industry more open and accessible, then we can’t expect it to reflect society.”

I wonder how that compares with the backgrounds of Australian (and American) actors.  Not something I have thought about all that much...

A bigger problem than we knew at the ABC

This story has legs, surely:  

ABC chairman Justin Milne told former managing director Michelle Guthrie to sack high-profile presenter Emma Alberici following a complaint from then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

In an extraordinary intervention that underlines the political pressure on Ms Guthrie before she was axed on Monday, Mr Milne appeared to acquiesce to government complaints about “bias” by calling for the chief economics correspondent to be fired because she was damaging the public broadcaster's standing with Coalition MPs.

Also, it shows Turnbull in a bad light for having made such a song and dance about the report, too.

So, all we need now is a change of government, a new ABC Chairperson, and a new ABC managing direction.

About Kavanaugh

I said a few days ago that I don't get that much into the minutiae of things like the odd, highly politicised way America goes about appointing Supreme Court judges.  But this Kavanaugh case is very strange in more ways than one.  

Isn't it unseemly for him to be going on Fox News to talk about his (lack of) a sex life at high school/college?   Have previous nominees treated it all as a big PR war that have engaged in outside of the hearing room? 

And the evidence seems clear from several people that he was a young, obnoxious drunk.  Take this statement:

It seems entirely plausible that he would make a drunken grope at a woman, or expose himself, and not remember the next morning.   Being a repeat, aggro, young drunk doesn't mean he did do those things - but it does tend to raise questions about how much to trust his recall and denials as to what he may have done.

His sycophantic suck up to Trump too was really remarkable (and not in a good way):

Brett M. Kavanaugh thanked President Trump for his nomination to the Supreme Court on Monday night. Almost immediately, he made a thoroughly strange and quite possibly bogus claim.

“No president has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination,” Kavanaugh said.

It may seem like a throwaway line — a bit of harmless political hyperbole. But this was also the first public claim from a potential Supreme Court justice who will be tasked with interpreting and parsing the law down to the letter. Specificity and precision are the name of the game in Kavanaugh's chosen profession. How on earth could he be so sure?

On the other hand, oddly for a conservative, he seems to be on record for saying that climate change is real and man made and is a serious policy issue.   But apparently there is still such concern about his narrow view as to the limits of government power that he will be very bad for climate  action anyway.

Isn't it time America put its mind to a less politicised way of getting its Supreme Court chosen?  I don't know - let there be a panel selected and then a random draw, or something.   And compulsory retirement ages.  

It's too weird the way it is...


 

Stupid solar / good solar

Why would anyone have ever taken solar cells embedded in roads seriously?   The problems are obvious - and are set out in this article about a couple of tests of the concept that gave very underwhelming results.

On the other hand, why is no one in Australia talking about floating solar on our dams and lakes? :

....installing Solar PV system on water bodies like oceans, lakes, lagoons, reservoir, irrigation ponds, waste water treatment plants, wineries, fish farms, dams and canals can be an attractive option. Floating type solar photovoltaic panels have numerous advantages compared to overland installed solar panels, including fewer obstacles to block sunlight , convenient, energy efficiency, higher power generation efficiency owing to its lower temperature underneath the panels . Additionally, the aquatic environment profits by the solar installation because the shading of the plant prevents excessive water evaporation, limits algae growth and potentially improving water quality.
Floating photo voltaic power plant:A review | Request PDF. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/307540858_Floating_photo_voltaic_power_plantA_review [accessed Sep 25 2018].

My Rules for Life (updated)

As indicated in a previous post, I have two firm rules already.   But sometimes I think of a new one, and unless I get it down quick, it may be forgotten.   So I might just keep updating them here, when inspiration strikes.  So, the list now:

1.  Always carry a clean, ironed handkerchief in your pocket.  Always.
2.  Never buy into timeshare apartments or holiday schemes. 

And now:

3.  If you have a choice, buy the washing machine with a 15 minute "fast wash" option.   

More as they occur to me.

Pretty much agree

I wonder if this anecdote is true

I haven't followed the Guthrie story with any great care, but I never felt she seemed particularly impressive, and certainly seemed to be a bit all over the shop in terms of defence of the organisation at a time it needed strong pushback against culture war idiots in the Coalition.

I don't really like the changes that have taken place in ABC content under her leadership.   But if she had any hand in the cancellation of Tonightly, I'll give her credit for that...

Aldi's big adventure

I didn't read about this before:   a 19 year old gets stuck aboard a floating "fishing hut" and drifts from Indonesia to Guam before rescue:

Sort of cool, actually.  Read about it at NPR.

O M G

Bernard Keane is a TMBG fan too?:

I shouldn't be surprised:  I can imagine him liking Hopeless Bleak Despair, for example.   (It is a great song, typical of TMGB unique ability to make you feel happy about darkness.   Come to think of it - by rights they should be big in Mexico.   That Day of the Dead stuff is along similar lines.)

Netflix update

I'm sure readers are fascinated to know what I've been watching on Netflix recently:

*  Grimm:   a long running crime/fantasy series which I had never watched before, although I have a feeling it used to be on free to air TV.    (I can't be bothered watching  this type of show on commercial television any more - the week to week changeability of programming that's become its hallmark over the last couple of decades just means you can't get into a set weekly pattern of viewing like you used to.)

Anyhow,  I find this a pleasing enough show - the acting can be a little hammy, but its got a light touch and I see that it's actually filmed in the town where it is set - Portland, Oregon.  The frequent trips it makes into green forests and quaint looking suburban streets and houses do make it look like a nice part of the States.  (I half expected it would turn out to be shot in Canada, but no.)    Only into the first season so far:  it's not earth shattering but it's good enough to keep watching.

*  Fargo:   because my son started watching the first season without me, we've started watching together season 2.   Quite a lot to like - visually very cinematic, good acting and the same, dry sort of approach to character and humour as I recall from the movie.  (Which, incidentally, I never held in particularly high regard.  It was more-or-less harmless, but I never understood the strong critical enthusiasm.  I have only seen it once and have little interest in re-watching.)   It seems to me this show, or this season, is more enjoyable than the movie.  Good.

* Godless:  I had trouble convincing my son to watch it - he's not the biggest fan of the Western.  But the first episode last night was really impressive - again, the cinematic looks and fine acting (and some unexpected scenes - riding the horse into the church service was something you don't see in Westerns every day) all worked a treat.   Very happy so far.

*  American Horror Story:   I know it's a different story every series, but the season I first tried is unimpressive.   Won't continue after 2 episodes.

Returning soon:    The Good Place (yay!), and (I saw by accident last night) another series of the very under-watched Norsemen (comedy Vikings from Norway.  I don't know why it doesn't seem to be better known.)