How they do politics in Uganda

A Ugandan court on Tuesday charged pop star turned leading opposition figure Bobi Wine with "annoying" President Yoweri Museveni, his lawyer told AFP.

Here is a link.

Signs of a lobby group having passed through Canberra recently?

What's behind the sudden talk of small, modular nuclear power for Australia?   Angus Taylor on Radio National Breakfast one morning, talking them up; then Ziggy Switkowski the next - both speculating that this type of nuclear could be a good way to go.  See this article at the ABC website about it.

Given that the concept of this type of nuclear power being deployed has been around for a long time now, yet still appears to be no where near actually being sold as a commercial product, there is something more than a bit suspicious about why it is on the minds of Coalition politicians suddenly.   I would guess some lobbying from some industry group from the US?

John Quiggin explained back in 2014 why this nuclear option was dubious at best - and re-reading that post, it seems little has happened to change his assessment.  Indeed, JQ has posted recently that it is really an "entire exercise...founded in fantasy".

I used to think there was promise in small, modular nuclear - but the fact that it has languished in development suggests that it just doesn't add up.   (One thing I have always had my doubts about was the oft repeated idea that they could just be buried on site - which might be a good containment idea as far as the atmosphere is concerned if one blows up, but isn't such a great idea for the water table.)

If making small nuclear work would take a lot of government directed research and investment, then it now appears to me it may well be more beneficial to put the effort into new, large scale storage instead.   There are some ideas there which seem to warrant support.

No, not deplorable at all [sarc]

I don't remember seeing this video during the Trump campaign, but someone recently put it up on a  Reddit thread in light of the discussion of racism after the recent mass shootings.   It gives a good idea of the kind of stuff that goes on in a Trump rally audience:



I think it would be an extremely useful thing if this type of video was put up with respect to his recent rallies.  People need to know what his base really thinks.

Where is the spending?

Last Saturday I had a couple of hours to spare and went for a walk around Fortitude Valley, the inner city area which has had a lot of urban development in the last 10 to 20 years.  It was a beautiful Brisbane late winter's day for being outside.

I went down to the Emporium shopping and restaurant area, which is surrounded by new to new-ish apartments, a pretty upmarket hotel, and used to be very popular for mid range restaurants:  

 

 This is what one of the large, outdoor eating areas look like now:

It also used to have an upmarket deli (many years ago, when it first opened.)  That has been replaced by a Chemists Warehouse.

The place still has one upmarket restaurant (an Italian one which we ate at last year - it was OK, but I didn't think particularly good value for money).   But the other eating places left are decidedly more downmarket - a Guzman & Gomez, a Grill'd hamburger joint (and a second burger joint), as well as (I think) a teppanyaki place that is somehow still surviving.

I then walked further down the road to a shopping centre that contains a Harvey Norman and a furniture store.  They were extremely quiet in terms of the number of shoppers.

This area has had huge development in the last 20 years - Teneriffe is a very nice, riverside suburb within walking distance of these shopping and eating areas, too, that has had many large highrise apartments blocks opening continuously in recent years - but it seems that the increase in residential living in this part of Brisbane just has not been enough to sustain the commercial centres opening within it.

And don't get me started on the nearby Chinatown mall - it was attempted to be revived by a re-design about 10 years ago too, and it is nearly completely dead.  A mere handful of restaurants left now, it seems.

This obvious lack of spending in an area of town that used to looked to be doing well only a few years ago seems a very bad sign to me as to what is going on economically in Australia.

It certainly gives a sense that discretionary spending is way, way down, and that funds that have invested in commercial retail developments must be doing much, much worse than they ever expected only 5 years ago.

I do not think there is much confidence in most aspects of the economy.

Update:  I forgot to mention, across the road from Emporium there was a yum cha restaurant that opened a couple of years ago in a pretty new building.  It was large, seemed busy on the couple of times we ate there, and had parking beneath the building.   I liked it.   It has closed, and the landlord is trying to lease it again as a retail/display space - not even as restaurant or food outlet.   (What must have been a pretty extensive kitchen has been completely removed - I could see inside the building.)  

The de facto police state the Right desires

Trump adviser Sean Hannity is being rightly ridiculed for his solution to mass shootings in the US:

I'd like to see the perimeter of every school in America surrounded, secured by retired police -- which you are -- retired Secret Service -- which you are -- military, and I want guys to donate 15 hours. I think we could cover every school, every hour, every day.

Add a metal detector, and I think we're going to have safer schools. Have one armed guard on every floor of every school, all over every mall, the perimeter, and inside every hall of every mall. Now, that gives us an instant response opportunity that we normally wouldn't have.

 I can't see Trump buying it.  I get the impression that Trump is a purely politically opportunistic pro-gun figure - he doesn't have any private history of enthusiasm for gun ownership or hunting, does he?  Certainly not for using one on the battlefield!   And he did support the bump stock ban.  

But his need for approval means he won't cross guns rights activists too far.

Cultural issues

On Gulf News:

Dubai: Sometimes words fail to express human compassion towards a mother who has lost her child. Saudi Arabia's Minister of Islamic Affairs Sheikh Abdul Latif Al Asheikh, was seen on video embracing and kissing the forehead of a woman, who was grieving the loss of her son. He was killed in the New Zealand Christchurch mosque shooting.

The footage, which is currently circulating on social media, shows the Saudi minister trying to calm the woman pilgrim crying in Makkah.....

Sheikh Abdul Latif said on Sunday that bringing the Christchurch pilgrims over to Makkah, was part of the Kingdoms efforts to “confront and defeat terrorism.”

Generally the laws of Islam prevent females and males from embracing, if they are not direct family members, especially when they are performing Haj. Many took to Twitter to criticize Sheikh Abdul Latif for coming into contact with the woman.

Twitter user @AlodidanSalwa tweeted that the Minister owes the public an apology for his behaviour.

“The minister owes an apology to the public for his behavior, even if it was spontaneous and in the moment. What is considered haram is forbidden. He embraced a non-muharam woman. We are waiting for his apology.”

"Is this the Minister of Islamic Affairs of the Unification State?! How has he legalised something for himself that is prohibited in Islam. To hug a woman, when she is someone who should not be hugged by him?" tweeted @1s2s3n4h

While another user, @Jawahir61 tweeted “You can express your feelings without the use of arms to hug.”

"It is not permissible to even look at a women, let alone touch her. God counted on you, God showed us the correct way," tweeted @ar_coffee1.

Others praised and supported Sheikh Abdul Latif for being kind and warm to a crying grieving woman.

What an over prescriptive religious/cultural tradition, based on antiquated ideas about the meaning of physical contact. 

A very Guardian article

‘I don’t smell!’ Meet the people who have stopped washing

Many years ago, there was a dermatologist on The Science Show who argued that soap was being overused and caused dry skin conditions.  He personally showered using just neutral stuff (like plain sorbolene, I think) to provide some sort of dirt lifting effect if he felt it was needed on part of his body.

I remember the forever host Robyn Williams (the ABC seems to think his talking head will need to be pickled to allow the show to continue after his body gives up, such is their reluctance to tell him to retire and bring new blood onto the show) saying that his guest didn't smell, despite the soapless washing.

So, it is an idea that has been around for a while, but given that even using the wrong brand of deodorant causes me to regret it when ironing a washed shirt the next time, those of use who know we can smell strong are reluctant to give up something that works and has not caused us to turn into a shrivelled crisp.

And yes, some people are lucky that they have never developed the skin microbiome that causes body odour (my father was one of them, and reader Jason has often shared on line that he is one too), but I am not prepared to go the period of stinking to see if I can adjust my skin bacteria that way.

Counter productive

I have never seen the point of commuter disrupting protests, ever since they were taking place in the days of Joh Bjelke Petersen.  I mean, people have to get to work, come home, go to hospital, do other good and normal things that make the world run, and there is a high chance that a significant percent of them stuck in their cars already agree with the protesters in principle.

So what is the freaking point of disrupting those who agree with you, and setting those who don't agree more vigorously against you?  

This post brought to you in light of news of more "Extinction Rebellion" traffic disrupting protests in Brisbane this morning.

Their cause is not silly in the broad sense (against the Adani mine and pro climate change action), but their tactics are just stupid.

We're dealing with paranoid idiots

What a cast of idiots on the American Right:

*  Glenn Reynolds, annoyed that Cloudflare is withdrawing services from 8Chan, the online community of choice for white supremacist killers to post their plans and justifications for mass murder, and to high five each other after they happen.  Why?  Because maybe "woke" folk will convince the company to stop protecting other sites that he likes.  Oh boo hoo.   This is all part of the Right's paranoia about tech companies not being supportive enough of the Right promoting their (frequently stupid and dangerous) ideas on the net - and getting upset when their own free speech enterprises don't take off.

You stupid culture war losers - before the Right went nuts, it would have been calling for the actual banning of hate sites for inciting violence, even if constitutionally difficult to do so.  Now that your priority is winning a culture war, deaths don't matter.

And here is Reynolds again, apparently thinking that Trump has already done enough and suggesting the answer to blind hatred against immigrants is for "institutions" to promote more patriotism (!):

GOOD: Trump offers condolences in wake of dual mass shootings: ‘Hate has no place in our country.’
As he said in his inaugural address, when your heart is filled with patriotism, there’s no room for hate. Which is why we should demand that our institutions promote patriotism. Basically, if they don’t, people will die.

Yeah, good one.  I would have thought that an inflated, paranoid version of patriotism is pretty much at the heart of this sort of killing.   You know, of the kind Trump has drummed up.

*  American Thinker (ha!) notes that it will have none of this "blame game" against Trump (and guns) because:

What's also obnoxious is their claim that Trump, who condemned the maniac and sent comfort to the victims, was somehow responsible. Trump has never advocated mass shooting or justified anyone who has. That won't stop the left.

Yeah, I see.  The same justification used by some nutters about Hitler and the Holocaust, spruced up for the orange one  - "he never said publicly that they were to be killed - just moved out of the country." 

And look at the readership of that site - here is a comment following the article:

*  For a non-idiotic discussion of the "white replacement theory", this article at The Guardian seems a good place to start.

Throwing eco fascism into the mix

Huffington Post, of all places, notes that the El Paso shooter's manifesto includes references to eco terrorism - the need to reduce humans for the sake of the planet.   It goes on to point out that this is not the first time it has appeared in white supremacist material. (And also, I did not know, in some of the European nationalist parties.)

This will, no doubt, be used by the Wingnut Right, which has convinced itself that Nazis were purely a Left wing phenomena and nothing to do with their side of the political spectrum (which is pure of heart, not like the evil, human-hating, Socialists which everything to the Left of them is now labelled), to deny that it has anything to do with why young men keep shooting up blacks, Hispanics and Jews.

It's not going to wash.  

 

Like that would come across as sincere

I see that Claire Lehmann, whose Quillette site has made a speciality of encouraging Right wing panic over antifa (current death count:  0), has re-tweeted the Washington Examiner's call for Trump to clearly and unequivocally denounce white nationalist terrorism.

Even in doing so, the Examiner can't help but attack part of the Left:

Plenty in the media and in politics blame Trump for the rise of white nationalism. Many of them are the same folks who have always argued that conservatism — whether tax cuts, defense of the unborn, or belief in free enterprise — is just thinly veiled racism, and on these grounds alone they don't deserve to be taken seriously. Even so, a president has to be above the blame game played by his critics. The single best way to prove them wrong would be for Trump to crusade actively against white nationalism.  

Well, that's big of them.

It's also a bit of a joke.   As someone writes in comments following Lehmann's tweet:

Yes:  how on earth could Trump possibly come across as sincere when he built his election campaign on fear of Hispanic and other immigration, and has continually re-stoked the fear at unnecessary rallies (done only to boost his ego) since holding office.

As for Lehmann:  I haven't spent a lot of time at Quillette, but my impression is that some of the essays there are OK - the ones which aren't so overtly political mainly - but I still get a strong impression that she is at heart a professional concern troll.   Her pre-Quillette video about the connection between feminism and obesity gave off a strong vibe of insincere "but I'm just being reasonable here".    Given that her site now is one of the prime ones giving diversionary cover to Republicans on the issue of white nationalism (but look - antifa!),  and her antifa star Andy Ngo apparently tweeted a 2016 video of car damage around the time of the El Paso shooting, I find her internet activity on this topic, at the very least, unhelpful.

I should also mention her attitude to publishing the "look, some journalists follow antifa on Twitter" article, which some of the journalists believe led to death threats from white nationalists, was pretty much inexcusable.  

Of course, none of this is to say that antifa should be ignored, and that questions around the policing of rallies should not be raised.  But until Lehmann lets her site show some more perspective on where the more serious problem in the USA lies, I don't give her credit for claiming to be Ms Reasonable.



.

Bad drought, bad flood

*Cough* climate change *cough*:

THE ongoing drought through the Murray Darling Basin is now the worst on record according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

Speaking during a Bureau of Meteorology seminar on climate, BOM climatologist David Jones said the drought had now exceeded the Federation Drought, the WWII drought and the Millennium drought in terms of its severity through the Murray Darling Basin.

"Our records only go back 120 years but in terms of the rainfall records it is the most severe," Dr Jones said.

Hydrologist and water sector engagement lead with BOM Matthew Coulton said this had also translated into markedly lower run-off into the system.

Dr Jones added temperatures were as high as they have been during the human era, saying the nearest equivalent according to paleo-climatic data (analysing historical weather trends) was a hot period encountered 2-3 million years ago.

"We are still below that threshold of a couple of million years ago but we are starting to approach it," Dr Jones said.

And the BOM panel had tough news for those hoping for a swift resolution to the big dry.

"Our climate forecasts for the next three months show well below average chances of exceeding median rainfall through most of the MDB, especially in the north," Dr Jones said.

 On the other side of the world:

Hundreds of homes were evacuated in a Derbyshire town on Thursday when a dam threatened to burst after being damaged during extreme rainfall.

Around 1,400 people in 400 houses in Whaley Bridge were told to leave their properties with just minutes’ notice due to “an unprecedented, fast-moving, emergency situation” caused by heavy downpours.

Actually, the rainfall that has been around that dam is not being claimed as "record", as far as I can see - but climate change makes for more extreme rainfall events so it's an example of what climate change is bringing anyway.

Boris as usual

Noted in this Washington Post report on Boris Johnson tour of bits of the kingdom that aren't very united behind him:

Nichola Mallon, a leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, said she had a “very blunt meeting” with Johnson and observed that he did not have a full grasp of the “complexities” of Northern Ireland. 

She said she told Johnson that he “must avoid a hard Brexit at all costs.” 

Mallon said she reminded the prime minister that he had responsibilities under the Good Friday Agreement, which ended 30 years of sectarian violence, and that he “must live up to them.”

Mallon said, “We pressed him time and time again and just got stock responses.”

Quantum Darwinism discussed

Peter Woit (of the Not Even Wrong blog) says this: 

Quantum Darwinism, an Idea to Explain Objective Reality, Passes First Tests 

is a good article, so it probably is.

Haven't the time to read it all right now, though. 

So she's an influencer?

A "reality star" has been criticised for promoting use of a diet product while pregnant.  What a surprise that such a heavily and garishly tattooed women might not be the most sensible person to pay attention to:

The slug gambit

A catering war in Victoria possibly involves slug sabotage:

A former health inspector at the City of Greater Dandenong says council managers seemed intent on shutting down a family catering business that was competing with another catering company part-owned by the council.

The owner of the shuttered business, I Cook Foods, even claims a council inspector planted a slug on its premises, which was then used as evidence the company had breached food safety regulations.....

The council has since charged I Cook Food's owner, Ian Cook, with 48 breaches of the Food Act, including one charge relating to the slug allegedly found in the kitchen the day before it was closed.

But Mr Cook claims the inspector — who did not use the normal body-worn camera during the inspection — planted the slug as evidence against the company.

The company's CCTV cameras were operating during the inspection, but did not capture the discovery of the slug, which was outside the camera's field of vision.

Heat death noted

It's summer and hot and humid in Japan.   This is a very unfortunate way to die, and I have to say, I did not realise that the Japanese did not really know how to avoid heatstroke in such high numbers:

A 28-year old man in a mascot costume who was training for a dance performance died of heatstroke Monday at Hirakata Park, a theme park in Osaka Prefecture. As of 5 p.m. the same day, the Tokyo Fire Department said 63 people had been hospitalized for heatstroke in the capital, with two people in their 70s and 80s in serious condition.

Last Saturday, a 91-year-old woman died of heatstroke in Saitama Prefecture after she was found lying in her garden at around noon. According to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, about 95,000 people were taken to hospitals for heatstroke during the May-September period last year, exceeding the previous high of 58,000 logged in 2013.

Not a fascist: just a proto-fascist. Great.

I refer to this article, at The Guardian:   Is this fascism? No. Could it become fascism? Yes

Get it while it lasts

The new Chrome will apparently get around the way lots of paywalls currently work.  Yay, for a while, even though I don't like to overdo the freeloading.

(I don't like Chrome much as a Windows browser, though.  Long time Firefox user here, although some versions have developed memory hogging issues.   Chrome is fine on Android, although I recently just started trying Brave as an alternative, and it seems very fast and quite good.  Not entirely sure what it is wanting me to do sometimes, but I ignore that.)

Making your own fake meat

I ate the left over vegetarian chilli con carne last night - yeah, the flavour was good (most spiced dishes taste better as leftovers, don't they?), but thinking about the texture of the vege mince, it did remind me again that it had a bit of a stickiness to it, unfortunately reminding me of what you get if you chew paper. 

This whole texture of fake meat issue is very important to me, and watching Youtubes where they try to make vegan analogues of real meat, it's obviously a prime concern of others too.

Last night, I watched this one and was interested to see it used pea protein isolate, which I think is the main ingredient in the Beyond Burger.   Given that I don't hang out in health food stores, I didn't realise that this product was a powder readily available.  

So here's this guy, trying to make imitation chicken using it and one main other ingredient as a binder:



I think I have worked out why this topic appeals to me - it's a bit like watching a science experiment, and now that my kids are well past doing science experiments at home, I need a substitute.

Fake meat experimentation in my kitchen might be it.