And the final round goes to: China!

Gee, in what has sadly become an unusual event, an interesting, detailed post has turned up at Club Troppo again.

Paul Frijters argues that China has got a lot of long term strength behind it, which means it will beat the US in the long run in any "one on one" power fight.  His concluding paragraphs:

So if you look carefully, America has no chance of really ‘winning’ a cold war against China. If the US teams up with Europe, which is still the likely longer-run scenario, it can hold its own against China. If it furthermore teams up with large parts of Latin America and India, it will for another 20 years or so be the largest player in the block facing China.

So, the US is no longer the biggest single economic or political player on the planet. That mantle already belongs to the Chinese whose only competitor this century will be India. The Americans just have to get over it, and the current phase of denial was probably inevitable in their grieving process. We should help the Americans get over it. Part of our task as allies.

In many ways, the relative weakness of the Americans is probably a good thing. It bodes for a relatively ‘warm’ cold war that makes it easier for the Europeans to push the US from its dominant Internet and financial positions, paving the way for a more multi-polar world where large blocks keep each other in check. If the Europeans can limit the damage that the Americans will inflict in their grieving process, there are good reasons to be optimistic about peace in the 21^st century!

And Republicans carried on about Hillary's emails being a security risk...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chinese spies often eavesdrop on President Donald Trump when he uses his unsecure cellphone to gossip with old friends, and Beijing uses what it learns to try to sway U.S. policy, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing current and former U.S. officials.

Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure and that Russian spies routinely eavesdrop on the conversations, but they say the president still refuses to give up his cellular phones, the Times reported.

The officials said U.S. spy agencies had learned from people in foreign governments and by intercepting communications from foreign officials that China and Russia were listening to the president’s calls.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the Times report.

China has a sophisticated approach toward the intercepted calls and is seeking to use them to determine what Trump thinks, whom he listens to and how best to sway him, the Times reported, cited the officials.

Of course, I can imagine his conversations with "old friends" probably contains a ridiculously high noise to useful information ratio.   I can imagine some intelligence analyst in Beijing grimacing about having to listen again to the time he got some model or other into his bed.

Update:  Allahpundit at Hot Air is pretty much spot on, I expect:

 The view on both left and right for the most part will be a fatalistic “this is just how things are now” even though there absolutely would have been impeachment chatter among the House GOP if the Times had dropped a story like this on Obama. (If you thought Emailgate was a strong attack line against Hillary, imagine if she’d been caught using a phone which she knew had been tapped by foreign spooks.) In fact, if I know MAGA Nation, I bet we’ll see a few hot takes online tomorrow that this is all eight-dimensional chess and that Trump wants the Russians and Chinese listening in because it’s easier for him to feed them disinformation that way.

 He also finds amusement (and/or dismay) with this:

Administration officials said Mr. Trump’s longtime paranoia about surveillance — well before coming to the White House he believed his phone conversations were often being recorded — gave them some comfort that he was not disclosing classified information on the calls. They said they had further confidence he was not spilling secrets because he rarely digs into the details of the intelligence he is shown and is not well versed in the operational specifics of military or covert activities.

He just doesn’t pay close enough attention to the details of his job to pose a real security risk. Whew?

Just the title is likely to cause Steve Kates to have a nervous breakdown

And Jason Soon will probably enjoy it too:

She should be pleased

That looks like a very flattering, and somewhat unconventional, official portrait of Julia Gillard:

It does look like a selfie blown up large, though; which I think will make it look out of place with the others.  Still, she should be happy with it.

And by the way - she continues to be one of the most dignified and likeable public figures around.   History will remember her as a basically good Prime Minster who had the job under very difficult circumstances.

Localised drug problems

I find it interesting how localised certain illicit drug problems can be.   I've posted about this before.  I think it's odd how, say, meth can be the problem drug in outback Australia, but hardly used at all in rural Britain.  Not entirely sure how that happens - some combination of cost and marketing decisions by the suppliers I suppose.  But there seems to be a bit of social contagion about it too. 

Anyway, the illicit problem drug of choice, so to speak, in New Zealand is apparently synthetic cannabis, and it does sound quite dangerous:

Daniel says synthetics have become the drug of choice because they are cheap and easy to buy. He believes the death rate is far higher than official figures.

Despite the risks to users, New Zealand is struggling to contain a synthetic cannabis epidemic, with children as young as 11 using the drug and entire neighbourhoods collapsing under the strain of addiction.

The government has been urged to confront the crisis after 45 people died from using the drug in the past year, making it the nation’s most deadly narcotic. In September dozens were hospitalised after a bad batch circulated in Christchurch, claiming two lives.

The grip of the drug re-emerged after a Radio NZ investigation found the entire suburb of Maraenui in Napier had been “swallowed” up by synthetics, with not a single person unaffected. 

I am told by a New Zealand born friend that cannabis itself was readily available when he was a young man there, which surprised me a bit, as I would have guessed that the climate there wasn't really ideal for its outdoor cultivation.

I wonder if there is any push there for legalisation of the natural product as being a better alternative than the black market of the synthetic.

But honestly, I still find it hard to believe that there is much benefit to adding more drugs into the mix of existing legal ones, particularly in poorer areas where drug use seems tied up with boredom and lack of economic opportunity.

A completely normal White House

It's kinda incredible that a story like this is not really attracting all that much attention.  But that's what happens when you put in a narcissistic lying idiot in the Oval Office:

The New York Times, citing half a dozen sources, reported that an altercation in February between White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Corey Lewandowski turned physical, requiring the Secret Service to intervene in the episode outside the Oval Office.

According to Maggie Haberman and Katie Rogers, the near-brawl happened after a joint meeting between the men and President Trump. After a shouting match, Kelly grabbed Lewandowski by his collar and tried to push him against a wall. Lewandowski did not get physical, and the two men agreed to move on after Secret Service agents appeared on the scene.

Another teeth grinding piece at The Conversation

At the risk of upsetting one of my rare regular readers - this article at The Conversation "Why 
rapid on-set gender dysphoria is bad science"  shows what a ridiculously partisan and untrustworthy field this is.

As I said in my earlier post, it is patently clear that those with intense "pro transgender" take on the matter feel they must immediately attack and try to shut down anyone who dares suggest that there might be more to look at than just what a transgender child/person says about themselves. 

It is a ridiculous attack on the paper surveying parents which made it plain it was aware of its limitations, and acted more as a call for further research.

But no no no, we can't have that, can we?

If you enjoy grinding your teeth over cultural appropriation handwringing...

...you should try reading this article at The Conversation.

But make sure you read comments too.  There really is quite a pushback against this confected  grievance industry.

Or..they could try wearing a shirt?

An article at Medicalxpress notes that some Indian researchers have come up with a topical gel which "can be used by farmers to prevent nerve damage due to chemical crop spraying."

The article is accompanied by a video starting with this image:

Maybe I am too easily amused, but apart from the silly Bollywood macho vibe, my other thought is  "Hey, put a shirt on for your own protection, and stop waving about that poisonous chemical!"

Perhaps teenagers should read this...

Fewer Sex Partners Means a Happier Marriage
People who have had sex with fewer people seem to be more satisfied after they tie the knot. Is there hope for promiscuous romantics?

Actually, the article notes lots of cautions about how this research survey was done, but still, this graph is interesting:

Here's one paragraph from the article:

“Contrary to conventional wisdom, when it comes to sex, less experience is better, at least for the marriage,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist and senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies (and an Atlantic contributor). In an earlier analysis, Wolfinger found that women with zero or one previous sex partners before marriage were also least likely to divorce, while those with 10 or more were most likely. These divorce-proof brides are an exclusive crew: By the 2010s, he writes, just 5 percent of new brides were virgins. And just 6 percent of their marriages dissolved within five years, compared with 20 percent for most people.

How to stop this level of paranoia?

I know that old pessimists have always been with us:  I remember a neighbour when I was a kid once  chatting to my father about how everything was dire and the world (and country) were getting worse and worse.  Mind you, this might have been in about the late 60's, when there was a considerable amount of bad news on the TV: Vietnam, the sexual revolution and doubts about capitalism's ability to thrive without environmental disaster were all key themes.  Not to mention what was going on in China and Russia and the possibility of nuclear war. 

But as a kid I was inherently optimistic (I suppose techno optimist, given my interest in science in the space program), and so it seemed to me that the neighbour was a sad case.  And, to his credit, my father thought so too.   "He's always thought everything was bad and getting worse. Some people are just like that." was his observation once the neighbour had gone back into his house.  (Well, I think that's a pretty close recollection.)  

Today, the problem of pessimism is exacerbated by online communities where the paranoid and conspiracy minded find it easier than ever to form a mutual support network.   You might think that this is harmless in some ways - keeping a small community of sad sacks in their own little world - but  the problem is, it surely works to deepen their paranoia and pessimism, and probably to bring others into the fold as well. 

Take this recent, fairly typical comment from (what I assume is) some older bloke in Queensland:

This comment comes in a Steve Kates thread about how "socialism kills".   The American "hard Right" started this "any policy involving any government intervention in anything is socialism" nonsense, and Steve Kates, a political idiot, sucks it all up and passes it on the blog of the (marginally) more sensible Sinclair Davidson.  

Then, in a post in which Keryn Phelps' Labor-like environment/refugee policy positions are listed he notes "These people are your enemy."   What uncivil and paranoid talk for an Australian.  

Basically, in their mind, centrism has become "socialism" - and all part of an evil plot involving culture, schools and political plotting many decades in the making. 

It's hard to say how influential or widespread such thinking really is - I mean, I can't even tell how much it is hurting the Liberals internally, given that so many at Catallaxy say they are abandoning the Party for the likes of Australian Conservatives, and will not vote for the Coalition in the next election.  (Or so they say - of course I don't believe that all that many will follow through, and in any event, their preferences will still go to the Coalition candidate.)  

But to the extent that there are "hard Right" members who really do want the Party to reject climate change action, privatise the ABC, and go all the way with whatever Trump thinks, it surely is hurting it internally.

The paranoia needs to stop and be wound back - but how?

I think a real problem is that no one within the Liberals is prepared to call it out.  They still linger on in the hope a "broad church" approach can work, when it is very clear it cannot.  

Malcolm Turnbull, you are now free to speak your mind - save your party by talking out about this.

Who really is interested in this?

I find it hard to imagine who, apart from the odd political journalist and historian, is going to be bother buying Kevin Rudd's revenge book.   

Still, I suppose you can say that about 95% of books by Australian politicians current or past.

I make one observation:  there seems there was a lot of crying going on when Kevin was in politics...

Update:  there's an extract from the book here.   Of course, extremely self-serving, with word for word recollection of conversation which make him sound like Mr Calm and Reasonable, against his observations of the "cold" viciousness of Julia Gillard. 

Look, maybe he didn't realise at the time that the "real reason" for the move came out of his behaviour as a nightmare of a boss.  But he's had time to learn the truth since then, when so many came out with details of his poor behaviour outside of media eyes. 

Just split - there is no other solution

I'm glad the Liberals didn't manage to get over the line in Wentworth (or so it seems.) 

The wingnutty Right seems to be reacting in a combination of "it's all Turnbull's fault - you couldn't trust him and he never really was a Liberal - believed in climate change - come on, as if"  and "you can't trust the voters of Wentworth - they're all doctors wives and believe in gay marriage and climate change - come on, as if."   To them, the party is doomed unless it swings firmly to the Right, blows up the Paris Accord and gets right behind burning more coal, right now.   (Oh, and stopping high levels of immigration, their second tier obsession.)   

This just goes to show the Liberal Party is completely internally compromised while ever the "hard Right"  or "wingnut Right" or whatever you want to call it tries to be accommodated by the centrists in the Party.

Mind you, even if Sharma had won, it would not have helped.   The centrists would have felt bolstered by that, leading to more resentment from the Right, which would have still run with the message "but you can't trust the voters of Wentworth". 

The Nationals are probably equally compromised - even though I don't keep that close a track on who is who there.   But you know there is trouble when you've got the National Farmer's Federation dropping scepticism about climate change, but Barnaby Joyce openly making it known that he'd be back in as Deputy PM in a flash if only the party would let him in.  He just doesn't take environmentalism of any kind seriously.

I've said it before but I'll say it again:   climate change and energy policies are really important issues.  When a substantial fraction of your Party does not even believe in the reality of a problem - there is no accommodating them by a tightrope act that cannot keep either side happy, because effective policies cannot keep both sides happy in that situation.  

The "hard Right" simply disbelieves science.   You can't accommodate that, policy wise.

This is worse than past examples of Labor factionalism.   At least their fights have been over how to react to an acknowledged issue, either from a firm Left perspective or a more compromising centrist one.   But they weren't fighting over whether there was actually an issue to address!   By contrast, this is the key  problem with the Coalition on climate change - dealing with a solid rump denying there is even an issue.

A proper leader of the Party needs to call for a split so as to resolve the otherwise unresolveable on a key issue for the future of the country.   Perhaps 20% to 30% of members, and a similar number of MPs, need to be told to leave and join the Australian Conservatives, or create the Tony Abbott Party,  or whatever.  They know they'll get the support of Murdoch and Sky News - why not go for it?    But they cannot expect to make their participation in the Liberals or Nationals work.  

Maybe Malcolm can call for that from outside of Parliament?   Can't see who else is going to do it, at least until the Party is soundly booted out of government.

White madness, and Doug Mawson, revisted

Back in 2011 I wrote about the Mawson Antarctic expedition, since I had just read about it in a biography of one of the lesser known participants, Herbert Dyce Murphy.  (Now that I re-read that post - which is one of my favourites because the author dropped into comments, I see that missed naming her book - Lady Spy, Gentleman Explorer.  Sorry, Heather.)

It's probably more a case of my having forgotten, but I don't recall from that book much description of the mental breakdown of another member of the expedition - Sidney Jefferyes.  He was one of the six who had to stay in the hut for another year after missing the boat.  

His story is briefly told in ABC News today, and here are some highlights:   

There appeared to be no indication of Jeffryes' mental health problems until July 1913 when he got into several fights with his colleague Cecil Madigan, he stopped washing himself, and began collecting bottles of his own urine.

The expedition's medical officer wrote that Jeffryes was hallucinating and suffering from "delusive insanity".

Tensions grew further when another crew member found that Jeffryes had been telling Macquarie Island, via morse code, that he was the only sane member left on the expedition.

Mawson intervened, stating "Censor all messages Jeffryes insane" via morse, and removed him from most active duties.

In a letter declaring his sanity to his sister, Jeffryes wrote: "I am to be done to death by a jury of six murderers who are trying to prove me insane originating possibly from the jealousy of the six of them".

When the Aurora finally returned and took the men to Adelaide in early 1914, the ship's Second Officer Percy Gray wrote that "poor old Jeffryes, the wireless man, is beginning to go dotty again".

"The fellows were at the braces, they all rushed from one to the other and Jeffryes, whose cabin is on deck, thought they were coming to put him in his coffin, and leapt out of his bunk and barricaded the door."

"Poor chap, I am very sorry for him."

 Despite this, he was allowed to get on a train by himself, apparently to travel back to his home town of Toowoomba, and instead was later found wandering the Victorian countryside (naked, says one article - but another refers to having money in his pocket).   It seems he spent the rest of his life in insane asylums, at least one of which was possibly colder in winter than the hut in Antarctica.

What a sad life!

Anyway, I see that Mawson, when asked about Jeffryes making his way home unaccompanied, claimed that he thought he had recovered fully during the ocean voyage back, and the doctor who had shared his cabin thought so too.  Yet, you have that ship's officer in the above quote saying the opposite.   Perhaps this goes towards supporting the "Mawson was actually a jerk" theory which, as I noted in my 2011 post, seemed to be something of a relatively novel theme in Heather Rossiter's book.  (And got further backing in a, ahem, somewhat controversial revisionist biography in 2013 which speculated that he may have eaten one of his co-expeditioners to stay alive!)   

Blair gets around

Occasionally, very very occasionally, I learn something new from scanning through the website for Australian wingnut conservatives.  This, for example:

.
Tim Blair is that closely aligned to the climate change denial/culture warrior faction of the Liberals (the part that needs to be purged from the Coalition for it to re-gain credibility) that he goes to things like this?

I thought he might be more cynical of politics generally than to do that.

Secondly:  that Riccardo Bosi is an absolute conservative culture war nutcase. 

Android mystery

My Motorola phone had been showing me that I had used up about 14.3Gb of internal memory (out of 16 Gb) and I was wondering if I should delete some apps, since videos and pics were already on the SD card (which was also starting to fill up.)

Then this morning the phone said a new system update was ready - I think up to an Android Oreo version.  So I let it do it - about a 1Gb download and half an hour later:   my phone now says internal memory is only 11.2Gb!

How did it save 3Gb??

Anyway, I see now that you can configure your storage (on some phones, including mine) to let it format an SD card and treat it as if it were part of the internal memory.   So you don't have to fiddle about with moving apps to the card if you want to say space on internal memory.

Only problem is - it seems it formats the SD card first, and then you are really stuck with the same SD card forever, because of the way the phone is treating it for memory.   So if you get a new phone, you can't just whip out the card and put it in the new one.   Or so it would seem - still reading about it.

Not prepared

I guess hospitals are able to cope with vegetarian patients; strict vegan are surely more of a problem, but vegan and gluten free seems to have thrown one Australian hospital into a spin.  Feels a little bit mean to snigger, but snigger I did:

American Conservatives are the pits

Yes, I had noticed some of this talk on conservative websites before WAPO reported it:

Hard-line Republicans and conservative commentators are mounting a whispering campaign against Jamal Khashoggi that is designed to protect President Trump from criticism of his handling of the dissident journalist’s alleged murder by operatives of Saudi Arabia — and support Trump’s continued aversion to a forceful response to the oil-rich desert kingdom. 

In recent days, a cadre of conservative House Republicans allied with Trump has been privately exchanging articles from right-wing outlets that fuel suspicion of Khashoggi, highlighting his association with the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth and raising conspiratorial questions about his work decades ago as an embedded reporter covering Osama bin Laden, according to four GOP officials involved in the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Those aspersions — which many lawmakers have been wary of stating publicly because of the political risks of doing so — have begun to flare into public view as conservative media outlets have amplified the claims, which are aimed in part at protecting Trump as he works to preserve the U.S.-Saudi relationship and avoid confronting the Saudis on human rights. 

It's hard to credit just how deeply shameful the talk and behaviour of American (and Australian) Trump supporting conservatives has become.

A potato observation

Is it just me, or do other people also find unwashed potatoes, when peeled and cooked of course, have better flavour than washed ones that have been peeled and cooked? 

Can someone give Jake Gyllenhaal a hug?

In an effort to find a relatively short Netflix movie to watch last Saturday, I settled on Enemy, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

I mean, I've always been pretty sympathetic to him as an actor, and this movie featured a mysterious doppelgänger, and those stories are usually sort of fun, aren't they?   Well, not always, as it turned out.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten that this movie had been renowned for its weird ending.  And weird beginning.   And several weird bits on the way to the ending.

Look, I recently spent a fair few words praising A Cure for Wellness for the intriguing possible number of interpretations that could be put on it; and it seems to me that quite a few reviewers more or less praised Enemy in the same way.

But for me - nah, this one crossed the line.  Trying too hard to be a movie that people will talk about by being obscure and arch.   And ridiculous.

There is one interpretation of what's going on that pretty much makes sense, up to a point.  But let's just say:  the spider ruins it all.   Don't get it - don't care.

The movie taught me two things:   someone in Hollywood really needs to tell Jake to start making movies in which he can be a nice, happy character and face a normal story arc.    It's OK to play a normal person, Jake. 

Secondly - I didn't realise til it was finished that it was directed by Denis Villeneuve, a director whose main films I have all seen, and commented upon here.   Careful readers may recall that I always find that they have a promising set up, and visually look good, but they always have story problems which cause my interest to dwindle away until by the end I am unsatisfied.

I have given him more than a fair chance to make a movie that has impressed me from beginning to end.   He has failed every time.

I do not like him as a director.