Netflix reviews

*   As everyone else on line who has talked about it has already said, the third season of The Good Place got off to a shaky start, particularly with Australian audiences cringing at the attempts at our  accent.  But by episode 4 or 5 (I forget which) it regained its mojo and has some very funny writing again.   (And, co-incidentally, left Australia.)

I don't really understand how anyone could not like this show.   Terrifically smart, very funny, and a charming cast. 

*  Fargo, second season.   I've finished it and the big question is:  how did I feel about the UFO?   In a way, it didn't bother me - its re-appearance was foreshadowed often enough.  But it certainly did make for an oddball conclusion.  To be honest, I thought that part of the last episode was way, way too close to Raising Arizona (with its dream of the future),  so that I feel that the peak episodes were closer to the middle of the series.   Despite feeling a slight let down with the ending, overall, it was really great viewing, and I'll watch the third season too.   (My son watched the first season alone, and says he thought it was a bit better, but I find it hard to believe I could find any episodes better than some in this series.)

* Norsemen:  have finished watching the second series.  Still very funny.  I see that a third series is being made.  Good.   Have more people found it yet, I wonder?

* Am wanting to finish the last, apparently controversial, episode of Haunting of Hill House before Christmas.  The show has sucked me in, despite its flaws.   Expect a review of the ending soon.

*  I wrote recently that Jason Momoa seems so likeable on TV chat show appearances that I am tempted to see the kind of ludicrous Aquaman, and I did try watching the first episode of Frontier, a Canadian series in which he stars.   It had some exceptionally badly written exposition dialogue within the first 10 minutes; so bad that both my son and I said "this is not good" and chose to discontinue.   Maybe it gets better?

American politics, yet again

This is a pretty good exchange between Ezra Klein and of the guys who has written a book about this:  

“Of the many factors that make up your worldview, one is more fundamental than any other in determining which side of the divide you gravitate toward: your perception of how dangerous the world is. Fear is perhaps our most primal instinct, after all, so it’s only logical that people’s level of fearfulness informs their outlook on life.”

That’s political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler, writing in their book Prius or Pickup, which marshals a massive trove of survey data and experimental evidence to argue that the roots of our political divides run so deep that they make us almost incomprehensible to one another. Our political divisions, they say, aren’t about policy disagreements, or even demographics. They’re about something more ancient in how we view the world.  

Hetherington and Weiler call these worldviews, which express themselves in everything from policy preferences to parenting styles, “fixed” versus “fluid.” The fixed worldview “describes people who are warier of social and cultural change and hence more set in their ways, more suspicious of outsiders, and more comfortable with the familiar and predictable.” People with a fluid worldview, by contrast, “support changing social and cultural norms, are excited by things that are new and novel, and are open to, and welcoming of, people who look and sound different.”

What’s happened in recent decades, they argue, is that politics in general, and our political parties in particular, have reorganized around these worldviews, adding a new, and arguably irreconcilable, difference into our political divisions. That difference is visible in everything from what we think to where we live to how we shop, but it’s particularly apparent in how hard it is for us to understand how the other side views the world.

It's undeniable that the Trump campaign was based on ludicrous fear-mongering;  but Klein is still  skeptical about some of how this is meant to work, asking twice why this has happened when the world has actually become safer.   (And that's objectively true too, given that we don't live in a Cold War of the kind we did in the first half of my life, and the murder rate has dropped dramatically in so much of the world.)

I didn't find the answer completely satisfying.  You can go read them yourself.

But I did think the authors are right on this point -

The problem starts with conservative leaders.

The simple fact is that Republican leaders more often traffic in falsehoods than Democratic leaders do — climate change denial, birtherism, suggesting voter fraud is rampant, and more. These are not positions of the conservative fringe. The president of the United States himself has embraced all these falsehoods. If Democratic leaders were similarly likely to push false narratives, more Democrats would believe them.

Conservative media amplify these falsehoods. This is what links what leaders say and do to what the public believes. Liberals tend to rely on a range of liberal and mainstream news sources. Conservatives tend to rely on a much smaller number of highly ideological sources. According to a 2014 Pew study, consistent conservatives expressed the same level of mistrust of ABC News as consistent liberals did of Sean Hannity.

Hence, conservative Americans are more likely than liberals to believe falsehoods about the other side. For example, Democrats were about 12 points more likely than Republicans to say that the Bush administration directed flooding to parts of New Orleans during Katrina. But Republicans were 34 points more likely to believe Obama was born in Kenya than Democrats and 32 points more likely to believe that Obamacare included “death panels.”

That doesn’t mean that there is no biased thinking among liberals. They, too, are more willing to support or oppose a policy because it is or isn’t being carried out by their team. But skepticism about basic facts does, in fact, differ markedly by party and ideology.

Charles the worker

Pretty much by accident last night I saw about 20 minutes of Prince, Son & Heir: Charles at 70 on the ABC. 

He came across as down to earth (for a monarch in waiting), and very hard working.   His sons talked about how he eats dinner very late (although I did not hear how late), and then works at his desk often til midnight, and sometimes falling asleep on his papers, waking up with one stuck to his nose.   They obviously think the world of him, and their main wish seems to be that he could slow down and spend more time with their young families.  (Yeah, I know, Harry doesn't have a kid just yet.)

He drives the much of the Right nuts for his environmental concerns, and somewhat quaint interests in organic food and (I suppose) older styles of living. 

But he certainly seems smart and passionate, self-effacing and as such, very likeable.  Pretty much what you need in a future monarch, I think.

Brexit prediction

John Quiggin's post (and the following comments) predicting a revocation of Brexit early in 2019 makes for interesting reading.

Does sound plausible to me.

I again heard Theresa May on the radio this morning saying that another referendum would be a betrayal of democracy, or some such nonsense. 

I still can't get my head around how politicians like her can't get their head around how context matters.   The people would actually understand what is at stake now.  They obviously did not at the time of the first referendum.

And no Homer, you're just wrong on this one.

All about cement (and its CO2 problem)

This is more interesting than you might first expect - a very good explanation at the BCC about concrete (including its history) and its problematic nature vis a vis CO2 production.   I mean I knew that using it created a lot of greenhouse gases, but not this much:

Cement is the most widely used man-made material in existence. It is second only to water as the most-consumed resource on the planet.

But, while cement - the key ingredient in concrete - has shaped much of our built environment, it also has a massive carbon footprint.

Cement is the source of about 8% of the world's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, according to think tank Chatham House.

If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world - behind China and the US. It contributes more CO2 than air fuel (2.5%) and is not far behind the global agriculture business (12%).

Box office observed

I haven't been much motivated to see any movies recently, and I've noticed that a few major releases have had so-so reviews.  Bohemian Rhapsody has 48% on Metacritic.   The latest Harry Potter prequel 53% (but only 38% on Rottentomatoes.)    I was curious to see how they have fared at the box office.

Well, Box Office Mojo seems to indicate that Harry Potter movies are virtually critic proof, at least for international box office - it'll end up making more than $600 million internationally, which must be enough to turn a profit even with a $200 million budget.  (Not much, though, given that I think the rule of thumb is still that most movies have to make more than 3 times budget cost before getting into clear profit.)    But there is still rental and streaming money to be made from it.

Every woman who has seen it thinks Bohemian Rhapsody was fantastic, and box office would indicate a lot of men have seen it too - $635 million and still making $4 million last weekend in the US alone.  All on a $52 million budget?   That's a hugely profitable hit.   I was never a big fan of Queen's music - I remember thinking when it came out that the titular movie song and video was kind of kitschy, but some other songs were OK.   I think Freddie's life was interesting and a bit sad, but I don't feel I need to see a movie about it. 

Speaking of movies big with females in particular:  A Star is Born has made nearly $200 million in the US, but only $177 million overseas.   With a $36 million budget, that's still a solid hit, and one I have no interest in.

I see the Dr Seuss movies are ridiculously popular in the US - $239 million just in the US for the latest Grinch movie. 

Anyway, I am slightly embarrassed to say, but the latest animated version of Spiderman has received such good reviews that I am now inclined to see it.   I am also toying with seeing Aquaman when it comes out - it would seem to have a fair bit of the humour I find essential for enjoying a superhero movie, and really, that Jason Momoa has such a ridiculous amount of charisma in any of his TV appearances, I sort of want the movie to succeed to reward his likeability. 

But we'll see... 

Dubai as the airconditioned city

This article from Business Insider, talking about what future cities may start looking like as temperatures continue to rise, gives Dubai as an example.   Apparently, a huge amount is already interconnected, airconditioned buildings and shopping malls, and it's going to get bigger:

Dubai is getting so good at simulating the outdoors inside that its next megaproject is dedicated to just that. Dubai Square, set to become the world’s largest mall, is built around a four-lane “boulevard” that mimics a wide city street, a piazza, and an entertainment center for concerts and theatre shows. It will even have the Middle East’s largest Chinatown.

This is what its supposed to look like:

Um, that looks ridiculously difficult to aircondition efficiently, even if the roof has got some heat reflective film on it.  (It must, surely?)   But even if it does, isn't there a risk of it frying some other buildings, or otherwise raising already hellish temperatures in the outside of the city?

Update:  this article, also at Business Insider, I visited outlandishly wealthy Dubai, known as the 'city of gold,' and was surprised by how much fun you can have even without billions,  makes Dubai sound like not a bad place for a tourist to visit at the moment.   Not sure I am entirely convinced...

Update 2:  this helps explain why I am still leery about visiting the place - Man arrested for bringing witchcraft items into UAE.   My rule of thumb is "Do not visit countries where the government  believes in black magic, witchcraft or sorcery.  It is too easy for anyone there who you look at the wrong way to claim you are a sorcerer and must be arrested." 

More Mary legends

At the risk of sounding like I am on anti-Catholic, anti-Marian binge this Christmas, given my recent cynical post about Mary's house being flown to Italy:  this article, from The Daily Beast of all places, actually seems pretty accurate.  

But it does come up with some legendary Marian stories which I had not heard of before, and some of it is surprising.  (Not the first part, about the rumour of a Roman soldier - that is pretty well known.  The last story though - wow.)

From the time of the early Church, there were those who questioned Mary’s virginity. Some rabbinic and ancient Roman sources suggest that Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier named Panthera. According to these early critics, Mary concocted the story of the virgin birth in order to conceal the fact that she cheated on her betrothed with a member of the oppressive military force that was subjugating her people. The particular explanation is actually pretty unlikely, if only because as a resident of Nazareth Mary would have rarely (if ever!) come into contact with Roman soldiers; nevertheless ancient Christian readers took it seriously.

A second-century story known as The Protoevangelium of James fills in a lot of the gaps in Mary’s biography. It tells us about Mary’s childhood, that she had special status as a dedicated virgin, and that she was 16 when she conceived Jesus. In this version of the nativity story Joseph doesn’t just accuse her of disgracing herself, he responds to Mary’s statement that she hasn’t “known” a man by asking her, “Where did this thing in your womb come from then?”

But Joseph is a believer in comparison to woman named Salome. Salome, who meets a midwife who examined Mary, declares, “As the Lord my God lives, unless I insert my finger and investigate her, I will not believe that a virgin has given birth." Mary prepares herself for the gynecological exam and Salome performs the test. Her hand literally catches on fire, and it takes the appearance of an angel (as well as some strong statements of contrition from Salome) before she is healed.

The rest of the article, about the idea of the Immaculate Conception, is pretty good too.

Update:  it just occurred to me, that story of Salome and her burning hand could form the basis of a very novel Christmas card illustration... 

Sensitive vegans

Nothing gets a vegan more uptight than being told that their diet runs a very real risk of malnutrition.  

Have a read of this article from The Conversation:  Vegan diets are adding to malnutrition in wealth countries, and the comments from upset vegans following.

Actually, I didn't realise that Vitamin B12 was such an issue for vegans and vegetarians.   Or this problem with veganism:

Bone health is a concern for long-term vegans. Vegans are consistently reported to have lower intakes of calcium and vitamin D, with resultant lower blood levels of vitamin D and lower bone mineral density reported worldwide. Fracture rates are also nearly a third higher among vegans compared with the general population. 

I reckon that the most I could ever tolerate would be a pescetarian diet, and despite disliking aspects of the milk and egg industry, I couldn't give them up.   

Brisbane more dangerous than I knew...

I would never have guessed that there are this many venomous snake bites around Brisbane:

Many people living in Queensland's capital may assume they're far away from a dangerous snake encounter, but the numbers suggest they're more likely than their country cousins to suffer a snakebite.

According to figures released by Queensland Ambulance, Brisbanites are more likely to be bitten by a snake than residents in the outback.

A total of 156 people were bitten by venomous snakes across the Metro North and Metro South areas, which make up the Brisbane region, in the 12 months to November 18 this year.

There were 96 on the Sunshine Coast, while outback areas such as the North West region had 11 cases, and the South West just four instances.

More people live in the south-east corner of the state than in other regions, but even as a proportion of population Brisbane is over-represented in snakebites.

University of Queensland snake expert Bryan Fry said in addition to more people, Brisbane and south-east Queensland have more semi-rural areas, which are perfect for brown snakes.

"Brown snakes thrive in disturbed habitat, so you can find more brown snakes around semi-rural habitation than you can in the wild," Professor Fry said.

I suppose it's (sort of) good news that you rarely read of anyone dying of venomous snakebite around here - but that is still a hell of a lot of people being bitten.

An improbable, vaguely Christmas related miracle

An article at The Catholic Herald caught my eye:  Did angels really carry the Holy House of Mary to Loreto, Italy?  So did the photo accompanying it:

As you might expect, that's not the house itself, but an excessively ornate, um, housing for a house.

Inside, the "real thing" looks like this:

which, I dunno, looks a little more solid than I expected from a 2,000 something year old house from Israel.

The bright looking figure in the first interior is the Our Lady of Loreto statue, which is a bit more famous than I knew.  You can watch this rather pious video about the house, and the statue, here:



As to the matter of how the house got there, the Catholic Herald article (and the video) indicate that the house might have been by boat, not by Angel Air, by a family with an a name which contributed to the legend:

In 1900, the pope’s physician, Joseph Lapponi, discovered documents in the Vatican archive, stating that in the 13th century a noble Byzantine family, the Angeli family, rescued “materials” from “Our Lady’s House” from Muslim invaders and then had them transported to Italy for the building of a shrine.
The name Angeli means “angels” in both Greek and Latin.

I am suspicious: it sounds too much like a late rationalisation. 

As for the air borne house tradition, it has been depicted variously as looking like this:

or this:

I don't know the artists behind either depiction, but the second one puts me in mind of Dorothy's house crushing the Wicked Witch, because at first glance I assumed the guy underneath was a devil.  But on second thoughts, he looks like he's just helping out, except for some reason he's nude.  If he is an angel, I didn't realise Heaven was "clothing optional" for them.

Anyhow, this is the second time this week that I have been contemplating the rather idiosyncratic fervour European Catholics can hold towards Mary and statues representing her.   The first example was Mary Beard talking on Civilisations about the annual ceremony around a statue in Seville:



I'm interested in the matter of why some European countries, particularly those with the Romance languages, seemed to develop centres of intense Marian devotion, and often around statues which are treated as holy.  (It's also interesting to contemplate why it also spread readily to countries like Mexico and the Philippines, too.   Remember the photos of the crazily dangerous looking procession I posted earlier this year?  It was centred on a statue of Jesus, admittedly, but still a case of statue centred fervour.)    I always get the feeling there are sociological reasons for it which I don't know about.   My general impression is that England and Germany, pre-Reformation, were just not into it in that big a way.  Or was an uptick in Marian worship something of a reaction to the Reformation?

Anyway, the first video above says that the flying house story is the reason why Our Lady of Loreto is the patron saint of aviation:

Yes, she is the patron saint of pilots, airmen and flight attendants as per declaration of Pope Benedict XV on March 24, 1920. The pontiff approved a special blessing: "O merciful God, You have consecrated the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the mystery of the Word Incarnate and placed it in the midst of your children. Pour forth your blessing on this vehicle so that those who take an aerial trip in it may happily reach their destination and return safely home under Mary's protection."

That seems a pretty weak reason to get a "patron" job, if you ask me.  By now, hasn't there been any pilot or flight attendant who has attained sainthood after a career in, you know, actual flying? 

I've no handy way to end this post, except to note that, in English speaking countries, this type of worship seems increasingly odd and hard to understand, especially given the rapid decline in the importance of Marian worship in our version of Catholicism over the last 60 odd years. 

Non

Sounds like a case of a prediction too far:

Abu Dhabi: In 10 years, we’ll be able to learn French by swallowing a pill, claims Dr Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and co-founder of the MIT Media Lab.

“We are looking for ways to interact directly with the neurons, reaching the brain from within and not through the eyes, which have become outdated instruments,” the man who invented the touchscreen and predicted the most important technological revolutions of recent years, told the audience at the majlis of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, on Wednesday.

The 75-year-old co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and its director of over 20 years, said that over the next decade, we will increasingly see direct brain interaction. It will emerge in two and very different ways: from the outside and the inside of the head.

The climate changes

Hey, this is pretty good!:

When someone tells you, “The climate is always changing,” show them this cartoon

In praise of Micallef

I think that the latest season of Mad As Hell (it finished last night) was just about the funniest I can remember.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again - it's a really crack team of comedy actors (and writers) on the show at the moment.  

I always enjoy their jabs at the ABC itself too - their little parodies of ABC television drama always strike me as accurate and funny.   (Well, I rarely dip my toe into ABC drama, but I have found it pretty awful whenever I did.)  

Climate change in the age of the stoopid, populist Right

I know that articles about it do keep appearing in the media, but I really get the feeling that the current era of the Stupidest, Most Narcissistic President in History, and the Dumbest, Most Shoot-Itself-in-the-Foot Economic Idea Britain Ever Had (Brexit) keeps sucking the oxygen away from really serious public attention to climate change.   Here's Foreign Policy, for example:

Trump Has Officially Ruined Climate Change Diplomacy for Everyone

I mean, it is impossible for the media and the public to not get sucked into talking about Trump trying on reality TV meetings with Democrats; his never ending stream of idiotic tweets; his looking completely out of depth at international meetings;  leaks still confirming that he's impossible to brief properly; his campaign associates going to jail; the prospect of impeachment or at least post-Presidential term charges; even his wife thinking dark red Christmas trees look cool (and not like something out of The Shining.)   It's the most idiotic and chaotic trainwreck of an administration that anyone has ever seen or is likely to see again, I reckon.

And as for Brexit - a complete populist Right fantasia that, like Trump, barely got over the electoral line, but since it did, has been like a black hole sucking all interest away from the crucially important matter of climate change.

Of course, the populist Right is popping its head up elsewhere too - from Brazil to Eastern Europe - but I just don't see that there is any long term future in it as a movement.   All of the leading politicians are some sort of combination of buffoon and fascist lite; all tend to be culture war obsessives and interested in blaming as many problems as possible on immigration.  But it's at heart a reactionary movement, and not one with a credible long term intellectual or policy basis.

So, I predict it will all fizzle soon enough - but it's an incredible distraction that is, literally, endangering the planet.    

The big(foot) conspiracy

Vox has an interview with a journalist (Laura Krantz) who did a podcast episode this year about Bigfoot, and apparently it's pretty good.  (I am slow to get into listening to podcasts - I think it's because I can decide quicker visually if an article is of interest, and I don't like having to wait for 10 or 15 min before deciding if an audio presentation is really worth continuing with.)

Here's part of the interview:

I keep coming back to the eyewitness accounts, the firsthand accounts that people have had. A lot of the people that I ended up talking to about their experiences were pretty sober, upstanding citizens. They’d spent a lot of time in the woods. They’ve worked for Fish and Wildlife. They worked for the Bureau of Land Management.

These are people who are accustomed to being outside, and had a lot of experience and expertise with wildlife. And then they had this experience of being scared, shocked, just blown away by something they’d seen. Those were very, very hard for me to dismiss. I still can’t dismiss them, because it’s clear that they saw something that really rattled them. 

The thing that I’ve been most dismissive of — it’s hard to be completely dismissive because I wasn’t there, I didn’t see what was going on, but people talk about seeing Bigfoot “cloaking,” or vanishing into the ether. And those kinds of accounts I’m a little more like, “Erm... I don’t know about that.”

She explains later, she really can't give the spooky Bigfoot idea any credence:

 I did steer clear of the Bigfoot as magical, paranormal, supernatural stuff, because that was a lot harder for me to come at objectively. And my feeling was that if I couldn’t address it objectively, I shouldn’t do it.

Yeah, sounds like I should listen to the show.  Even though if there is no DNA evidence, the paranormal route is really the only one you can take, isn't it? 

But the other thing I learned from this article was the Bigfoot conspiracy, which I don't think I knew of before:

The flip-side of that is that there’s this conspiracy theory that the logging industry knows that Bigfoot is real, has seen Bigfoot, and goes out of its way to make sure bodies are disposed of, and that any knowledge of it is kept buried. Because if Bigfoot is seen to be real, it’s gonna make the stuff that happened with the spotted owl [in which logging in some areas was halted to preserve an endangered owl’s habitat], look like a picnic. 

 Sounds like there could be a fun movie plot in there somewhere!

Foreigners in Japan

The BBC talks about Japan's process of opening up to foreign workers. 

Stand up I actually liked

I've complained earlier this year about how I generally don't care at all for modern stand up comedy.

Jason recommended a Malaysian comedian with a Netflix special - I forget his name now, but yes, he was OK-ish.  Certainly not positively off putting, as I tend to find most stand up.

But - Youtube has recently started recommending to me clips of Trevor Noah from his channel, and I have to say, I've found the few I've watched funny.  (He's also pretty talented with his accent mocking, which seems to feature quite a bit.)   Little swearing too, unlike the usual standard in the profession.

Here are two I thought were good:

You're welcome.

Harm reduction

There's a short article at The Economist on harm reduction strategies for drug use in Europe.

As usual, Portugal is held up as a shining example, but at least the magazine explains a bit more than the usual shorthand of "yay, they legalised drugs" used by many drug liberalising proponents here:

At the height of the epidemic in the 1990s, authorities estimated that about 100,000 Portuguese, or 1% of the population, were heroin users. “It cut across all social classes. Nearly every family had someone,” says Dr João Goulão, head of sicad, the agency that directs Portugal’s addiction programmes. That generated the political will to take the fight against drugs out of the justice ministry and give it to the health ministry. Under the law of 2001, illegal drugs remain illegal and dealers are prosecuted. But possession for personal use is an administrative offence, not a criminal one. Anyone caught with a 10-day supply or less is ordered to visit the local Commission for Dissuasion of Drug Addiction. Rehabilitation programmes and opiate substitutes, such as methadone, are available to all users who want to quit.

Since then, the number of problem heroin users has fallen to about 33,000. The government can claim only partial credit; drug epidemics tend to fizzle. But decriminalisation and treatment helped cut Portugal’s overdose rate to one of the lowest in Europe. As for America, in 2016 it had 63,600 fatal overdoses. In Portugal there were 27.

Portugal’s policies are based on “harm reduction” approaches pioneered in countries such as Switzerland in the 1980s. The idea is to emphasise treatment and prevention more than punishment, says Brendan Hughes of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (emcdda). Most European countries now have some form of harm-reduction policy, though the east is more conservative.

Surprisingly, though, apparently Portugal doesn't have safe injecting rooms:

Américo Nave, head of crescer, criticises Portugal’s government for failing to create safe injection rooms and barring outreach workers from carrying the drug naloxone, which can save heroin users who have overdosed. Last December, Ms Correia says, she watched a man die, knowing that naloxone might have saved him. Still, that is one of just a few dozen such deaths in Portugal in the past year. In Sweden, there may be ten times as many.

As usual, it's odd the way different countries have different types of drug problems:

But lately Europe is facing different drugs. Cocaine use is up; in Barcelona, residues in wastewater suggest it more than doubled between 2011 and 2018. Most overdose deaths in the Netherlands are caused not by opiates but by party drugs like amphetamines or synthetic cannabinoids, or by ecstasy, which can cause dehydration. The drug ghb raises your libido, but can knock you out; it accounted for two-thirds of Dutch drug-related emergencies in 2016.

For stimulants like these, notes the emcdda’s Andrew Cunningham, “there are no substitute treatments like methadone”. The same goes for methamphetamines, rare in most of Europe but common in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. (They are still known there as “Pervitin”, a brand of amphetamines distributed to Nazi soldiers.) In the past few years Czech meth has spread across Germany, mainly in paste form. The more dangerous crystal variant has popped up as well, often sold at t-shirt stands along the German border. 

Which all brings us to the pill testing question in Australia.

I find it easy to be sympathetic to harm reduction strategies for opiates, because of how they are used and the difficulty of getting off them.   (I am reminded, however, how Theodore Dalrymple argued that thousands of US military members indulged in heroin while in Vietnam, and then dropped the habit without excessive drama when they had to return to their homes and families.  He thinks we are too indulgent even of heroin use:  a pretty uncommon view.)   It's harder to feel as much sympathy for the true party drug scene - harm reduction for many of them feels more like encouraging mere repeated self indulgence.

About Brexit

Climate scientist James Annan has hated Brexit from the start, and has written a lengthy complaint about (amongst other things) how the media has taken a ridiculously soft role in challenging politicians on the issue.  

I still don't understand how it is so hard to convince politicians that it should be the subject of second referendum.   There are now things that are obvious about the situation before the first referendum:  

a.  the pro-Brexit side made completely false and misleading claims about the alleged benefits;

b.  the public was completely unaware of the complexities of Brexit;

c.  the public had no idea of the costs and consequences.  

A second referendum would, I think, obviously need to be done because the first vote held was held in something like an information vacuum.   

So why are politicians acting as if holding a second one is some betrayal of democracy?   A single exercise of democracy made in the clear absence of proper information as to what their vote means is not worth defending.