Free will returns

Well, at least in terms of the famous Libet experiment that many interpreted as being a neurological proof that free will is illusory.  This recent article in The Atlantic reckons it's been debunked, although it sounds like some are still arguing about it.

I never found it terribly convincing in the first place.

No otter way

How come we don't have otters in Australia?   If they are in waters as diverse as those off California, and Singapore, how come up they never ended up near Brisbane?

Anyway, I wonder this because of a short report in Science:

Stranded or orphaned baby sea otters have been given a new lease on life—and a mission: restoring damaged ecosystems along the California coast.

Sea otters are a keystone species in their native coastal environments. They prey on small herbivorous sea creatures like sea urchins, which can lead to more kelp and healthier seagrass in an area. But after being hunted for their fur to near extinction in the 19th and 20th centuries, otter populations along the California coast are still struggling. Restoring populations is not as simple as bringing in new otters, though. The animals often have strong ties to their homes, and some relocated otters have made journeys of more than 100 kilometers to return to their birthplaces.

To solve this problem, scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California created the sea otter surrogacy program in 2002. So far, they have rescued 37 stranded or orphaned otters, many of which were suffering from dehydration or hypothermia. The researchers placed the pups with surrogate mothers—captive female otters at the aquarium—until they fully recovered. When the pups were 6 months to 1 year old (the typical age an otter is weaned), the researchers released them into Elkhorn Slough (shown above), a tidal wetland about 1.5 hours south of San Francisco, California. Because the orphaned otters were very young when they were rescued, they did not have strong ties to their home ranges and most thrived in the new environment, the researchers report today in Oryx–The International Journal of Conservation.

Outstanding cleverness of Boris Johnson still undetectable

Some news, hey?   Parliament going to go ahead despite Johnson shutting it down.  Perhaps all conservatives who voted for him should just stay away and let the rest govern.   

At least Johnson's not a climate change denier, so I can't criticise him as being completely stupid.  But he jumped the wrong way on Brexit, and now can't admit it.  All rather Abbott-like, except with Abbott it was climate change which was the "if I play this the right way, I could be PM" cynical power play.  Both risen way above their level of political competency, and Johnson looking good to go down in history as just as embarrassing a PM as Abbott.

UK vaping illness spotted

I see via the BBC that in fact there has been one report of respiratory illness in the UK that seems associated with vaping, last year.  I am surprised we haven't heard about this before:

A young female vaper presented with insidious onset cough, progressive dyspnoea on exertion, fever, night sweats and was in respiratory failure when admitted to hospital. Clinical examination was unremarkable. Haematological tests revealed only thrombocytopenia, which was long standing, and her biochemical and inflammatory markers were normal. Chest radiograph and high-resolution CT showed diffuse ground-glass infiltrates with reticulation. She was initially treated with empirical steroids and there was improvement in her oxygenation, which facilitated further tests. Since the bronchoscopy and high-volume lavage was unyielding, a video-assisted thoracoscopicsurgical biopsy was done later and was suggestive of lipoid pneumonia. The only source of lipid was the vegetable glycerine found in e-cigarette (EC). Despite our advice to quit vaping, she continued to use EC with different flavours and there is not much improvement in her clinical and spirometric parameters.

Still vaping, JC?

Update:  Helen Dale, vaper, is still busy tweeting articles supporting the habit (as being better than smoking, etc.)    I like the way that article at the link relies heavily on (what would surely have to be) a rubbery figure by the suspiciously pro-vaping PHE that it's 95% safer that smoking cigarettes.   Maybe it is:  until it nearly kills you after a short time of use (if you are unlucky).   Risk assessment is a funny thing - people do factor in the "but something might go suddenly wrong" in their feelings about both legal and illegal activities.   Isn't that why lots of us will never be overcome with an urge to take a pill offered as a "safe" illicit but fun drug?   It makes me not so interested in skydiving, too.   (That and a general dislike of the falling sensation.)  

The other thing about it is that the pro-activists are now talking as if there is no other way to quit or reduce smoking.   Just like transexuals who used to just tuck it away, but now can't live without having it lobbed off,  pro-vape advocates seem to talk as if nicotine patches and gum are just now completely inadequate for those trying to get off smoking.

I wonder if companies that made nicotine patches are running ads now pushing their safety?   Seems a good idea to me.   

Toilet trouble

An eye catching headline at the BBC:

'Toilet trouble' for Narendra Modi and Bill Gates

Modi had promised (and claims) big success in providing toilets in India, but the true situation is a bit unclear:

While it's true that the number of toilets has increased significantly, a BBC investigation found that many of them are not working or aren't being used for various reasons, from lack of running water to poor maintenance to deeply ingrained cultural habits. Recent research found that people in some parts of northern India preferred to defecate in the open because they found it more "comfortable" or thought it to be "part of a wholesome, healthy virtuous life".

Another common problem is that the government offers subsidies for the poor to build a toilet in their home. But since the subsidy is paid out in instalments over more than a year, many poor households wait for months for the construction to be complete.

"Many beneficiaries have started construction but not competed it," says Siraz Hirani from the Mahila Housing Sewa Trust, a non-profit group that also works to improve sanitation. As a senior programme manager, Mr Hirani has worked closely with rural and urban governments to implement the Clean India scheme.

His other big worry is that the subsidy does not account for the cost of laying a sewer, which has often meant that people in rural areas end up building soak pits for drainage. This, he fears, will eventually lead to ground water and soil pollution in coastal areas where the water table is higher.

Mr Hirani says open defecation has "significantly reduced", but the "biggest challenge is how do we sustain this?"

About Greta

Careful readers may have noticed that I have only once made a comment about Greta Thunberg.  I now make the following observations:

*  I like her cultured accent.  It sounds like she's been in training to marry into royalty.

*  More seriously:  if you asked me before she got onto the world stage if I would think it a good idea that a young person with autism/Aspergers become a global spokesperson for the environment, I would have said "no".   But let's face it, ageing, ignorant denialists and conservatives generally dismiss all "progressive" concerns by attacking any articulate spokesperson no matter whether they appear "normal" or not.  Look at the treatment of David Hogg and other students who survived the Florida school shooting.   A very large part of modern conversativism wallows in its own stupidity and is nasty to boot.

* So, I have no particular concerns about Greta.   She has taken on the role with, I think, a large degree of dignity.   Does she exaggerate the situation re climate change?   To be honest, I haven't analysed much of what she has said, but in a broad brush sense at least, I think most mainstream scientists feel she is on point.

* As expected, the attacks on her by conservatives are extreme, completely uncharitable, and (of course) based on complete denial of mainstream science and culture war positioning (which is all conservatives have now days).

* There is an uprise in environmental activism that is wildly exaggerating:  parts of the Extinction Rebellion movement for one.   But people who follow mainstream climate scientists know that the worst exaggerations made by that group are actively disputed by the big guns.   It's a bit of a puzzle to know how to respond to them - I find street disruptions that they have been conducting to be counterproductive - but they are fighting against idiots and the politically self interested, and I think the problem is no one knows how to effectively counter idiots.     As I have suggested before, people who seriously think that current political inaction is going to kill billions in the future should probably be planning on physically attacking infrastructure that allows the burning of fossil fuels, not inconveniencing someone who needs to get to a hospital.   If they become environmental terrorists (who take care not to kill people), I would think more highly of them.

Update:  a very reasonable (if too kind to malign conservatives) take on Greta appears here in The Atlantic. 

Update 2:  dear ageing morons of Catallaxy - why so surprised that she is angry?:

You are willfully stupid and will soon be dead, leaving your legacy of 30 years of delay in serious  action to limit the harm of climate change to teenagers like her.   In all likelihood, the economic consequences will be large, not to mention the humanitarian and general environmental harms.  But you'll have enjoyed all the benefits of fossil fuel consumption with none of the long term consequences.  She has every reason to be angry of your influence, and to not understand that only confirms your continued stupidity.  

Update 3:. Oh look, a young American conservative who believes in climate change (what a lonely life he must lead) weighs in:

Update 4:   Oh look, another example of Greta being "histrionic":

Update 5?:

Growth questionned

Gee, this might do in Jason's head.   A guy who techno-optimist Bill Gates apparently likes says economists just have to give up on the idea that economic growth has to keep happening.

An extract:

You debunk overly rosy projections by techno-optimists, who say we can solve all our problems with smarter computers, and economists, who promise endless capitalist growth. In many countries, the downside of material growth now seems greater than the upside, which leads to what you call “anthropogenic insults to ecosystems”. Is that a fair summary?
Yes, I think so. Without a biosphere in a good shape, there is no life on the planet. It’s very simple. That’s all you need to know. The economists will tell you we can decouple growth from material consumption, but that is total nonsense. The options are quite clear from the historical evidence. If you don’t manage decline, then you succumb to it and you are gone. The best hope is that you find some way to manage it. We are in a better position to do that now than we were 50 or 100 years ago, because our knowledge is much vaster. If we sit down, we can come up with something. It won’t be painless, but we can come up with ways to minimise that pain.

So we need to change our expectations of GDP growth?
Yes, the simple fact is that however you define happiness, we know – and we have known this for ages – that the amount of GDP is not going to improve your satisfaction with life, equanimity and sense of wellbeing. Look at Japan. They are pretty rich but they are among the unhappiest people on the planet. Then who is always in the top 10 of the happiest people? It is the Philippines, which is much poorer and smitten by typhoons, yet many times more happy than their neighbours in Japan. Once you reach a certain point, the benefits of GDP growth start to level off in terms of mortality, nutrition and education.

Is that point the golden mean? Is that what we should be aiming for rather than pushing until growth becomes malign, cancerous, obese and environmentally destructive?
Exactly. That would be nice. We could halve our energy and material consumption and this would put us back around the level of the 1960s. We could cut down without losing anything important. Life wasn’t horrible in 1960s or 70s Europe. People from Copenhagen would no longer be able to fly to Singapore for a three-day visit, but so what? Not much is going to happen to their lives. People don’t realise how much slack in the system we have.

 I'm not sure about this, but I do wonder about it at times.

PS:   What bothers me about techno-optimists who go on about nuclear is that they are too pessimistic about different ways of utilising increasing amounts of renewables wisely.  Too pessimistic about large and small scale storage; too insistent that unless you keep the ability to use energy in exactly the way we do now, it'll be some sort of crisis.   I mean, unexpected brown outs are inconvenient, but the way they carry on if even a single brown out happens in summer now due to generation issues is over the top.    This guy makes a lot of sense - we can probably readily adjust to energy conservation if we accept it as necessary; and not all countries need to use energy in exactly the same way we do.

Seeing a future whereby clean energy allows a similar, even if somewhat more modest, lifestyle to what we enjoy now is a form of techno-optimism;  decrying renewables as never being able to supply enough power for a modern industrial nation is a form of techno-pessimism, really.


 

No Biden corruption

Not getting as much airing as it should, in my opinion, is the fact that it is not true that the Biden acted corruptly in Ukraine.

The Intercept discusses it here.

And here is the Washington Post on it.  

Both articles are from May 2019.

Many people on Twitter are furious that the New York Times in particular is playing this for Trump just like they did Hillary's emails.   They are helping normalise Trumpian rumour mongering, even when there is plenty of evidence already that it is not true.

As has been written thousands of times, the problem is that a lot of journalism does not know how to respond to being played by a bullshitter like Trump.

Update:  Max Boot's column on this is good too.

Update 2:  and read this thread on Twitter.  

A brief Spotify note

It may just be the era the music is primarily from, but I really like the selection of songs in the Power Pop playlist on Spotify.  

More modern comedy I didn't like

Watched the 2012 movie version of 21 Jump Street last night.   (Another cheap hire on Google.  I must stop doing that.)  Can't say I cared for it. 

I didn't read much about it at the time, except that I knew it was pretty well reviewed going by Rotten Tomatoes.  I didn't care for the (more than I expected) amount of swearing, but I'm most surprised it didn't attract more commentary for being way, way too much like a homophobic teenage boy's idea of a screenplay.   I know the main characters were meant to be immature, but you can only claim to be ironically getting humour from immature straight characters talking about sex acts between men up to a certain point.    And it's disingenuous, because you know actual homophobes will find it particularly hilarious.

I have found an article at Vanity Fair that shared my take on this aspect.  (And OK, I did read this before I wrote the paragraph above):

As I hope you can intuit, I’m being ironically homophobic—as, to be very charitable, the filmmakers behind 21 Jump Street may also be. That would be an improvement over Don Draper–era jokes about limp-wristed hairdressers, I suppose, but irony can serve as a flimsy cover-up, too. It’s an easy hall pass to wave, like the way some people think saying “just kidding!” puts the burden of offense on anyone they’ve just insulted. You also have to calculate who’s laughing at a joke and why, who’s in on it and who’s left outside.

I also see that the sequel dwells more on this type of humour, and that before its release, Jonah Hill got into trouble by being caught yelling "Faggot" at some photographers bothering him.  He apologised, and said he was a gay rights activist from way back.   He may well be, but I think he's pretty dumb in that case.  From what I read, one of the characters in the sequel makes a speech about how you shouldn't use that sort of language about gays.   Which indicates real life irony as far as Hill is concerned.

As I say, why didn't this bother more reviewers?

Update:  just to show that I am not exactly squeemish about "penis" in comedy per se - I thought this recent bit on Conan was pretty funny:

I try to be charitable, but...

....Steve Kates just couldn't be more stupidly un-self aware if he tried. 

Here's the shorter version of what he's been writing for years "Why won't they engage in good faith dialogue, those moronic Lefties who want to kill everything good in the world and crush us under their totalitarian heal?  They need to dialogue, so as to learn how I understand both economics (buy my book) and the science of climate change perfectly, and they don't have a clue."

The point I was trying to make yesterday is that it is all very well to be speaking among ourselves on our side of the fence but useless if we cannot force these climate totalitarians to engage in a dialogue.....There is, of course, nothing that these ignoramuses say that we are unaware of. They, on the other hand, are unaware of every bit of the counter-arguments that have been made on our side. They are certainly unaware of the massive evidence proving that they are almost certainly wrong.

When a person is so clueless as to what the "massive evidence" actually says about climate change, and is always claiming evil ulterior motives on those who he does not agree with, why would anyone try to "dialogue" with him?   It's why no one bothers engaging on the topic on the science side at his Catallaxy outlet anymore.  They are, as with their contrarian scientist heros, nearly all old obnoxious cranks who'll be dead within 20 years anyway.  Unfortunately, we can't wait that long to get into serious CO2 reduction, though.

And it's fair enough that The Conversation won't let denialists engage in comments debate anymore.  It's pointless and just as bad as it would be to allow nutty anti-vaxers free rein on the site.

Jason, it must be a residual bit of your libertarian past that the Conversation policy annoys you - and citing Ian Plimer, for God's sake.  He has zero credibility on the topic; always has.  Freeman Dyson has next to no credibility on this topic - which is one well out of his field of expertise, too.

Stop being such a sucker for thinking people with high IQ and success in one field are worth paying attention to in fields outside of their expertise.  They very often aren't.

 

Saturday pics: West End

The Saturday West End markets are good for food:

There is also a great Greek deli nearby, with good olives, and catering size stuff:

Twenty ltrs of mayo, anyone?

And who would still be using Clive of India curry powder, let alone 3 kg of it:

It was the only curry powder of 1960s Australia, but I thought no one missed the bland yellow curried sausages, prawns and devilled eggs it made....

Why the Ukrainian matter matters

There's a good explanation by Fred Kaplan at Slate as to why the question of what Trump said to the Ukrainian President is a big deal:

Federal bribery statutes prohibit any U.S. official from expressing a “specific intent to give or receive something of value in exchange for an official act.” Courts have ruled that soliciting an attack on a political opponent constitutes asking for “something of value.”

He goes on to explain the complicated system for intelligence whistleblowing, and the clearly authoritarian way the Trump administration is seeking to circumvent it.

What an utter disgrace the Republicans are.

Seems unfair...

Alcohol-producing gut bacteria could cause liver damage even in people who don't drink

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the build-up of fat in the liver due to factors other than alcohol. It affects about a quarter of the adult population globally, but its cause remains unknown. Now, researchers have linked NAFLD to gut bacteria that produce a large amount of alcohol in the body, finding these bacteria in over 60% of non-alcoholic fatty liver patients. Their findings, publishing September 19 in the journal Cell Metabolism, could help develop a screening method for early diagnosis and treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver.

"We were surprised that bacteria can produce so much alcohol," says lead author Jing Yuan at Capital Institute of Pediatrics. "When the body is overloaded and can't break down the alcohol produced by these bacteria, you can develop fatty liver disease even if you don't drink."

I guess the ultimate irony would be if drinking alcohol killed some of these unhealthy alcohol making bacteria.

A science fiction film to look forward to?

I tend to be dubious of the merits of Brad Pitt as an actor - he has a touch of the Matthew McConaughey's about him, in that I can't fully explain why I react against him the way I do - but this Ad Astra film is getting a lot of positive reviews, so I think I should see it.  Quality science fiction in films deserves support.  (Except if it involves Matthew McConaughey, and has such an awful screenplay as Interstellar.)

(I don't dislike all Pitt movies, by the way;  but there is something about him that causes me to resist crediting him as a likeable actor.) 

Yet more flash floods

Big flash floods in Texas, I see.   

Seems that some areas are having record breaking periods of intense rainfall, but the details are not yet 100% clear.

Certainly seems to be a dramatic event, consistent with increased intensity of rain and associated flash flooding being the one of the clearest recurring (and expensive) disasters that everyone is coming to accept as being from climate change.

Interesting comments on vaping

Once more, I head to my preferred UK medical journal, The Sun, (ha ha) because it runs interesting sceptical comments about vaping from UK's retiring Chief Medical Officer:

In an interview this month with Civil Service World, Professor Davies asked: “Is this a ticking time bomb? Will they turn out to have long term consequences?”

Public Health England published a report in 2015 suggesting that vaping could be 95 per cent less harmful than normal cigarettes.

The report stated: “There is no evidence that e-cigarettes (EC) are undermining the long-term decline in cigarette smoking among adults and youth, and may in fact be contributing to it."

Professor Davies conceded evidence has accumulated to suggest that e-cigarettes may help as a smoking cessation tool, but did not believe the evidence is 'hard' yet.

She added: "Meanwhile they're not regulated. So when you buy them, you don't know that you're getting what it says on the packet.

"I do - and will continue to - worry, because we don't know what the effects are of long-term use, or about the effect on people who may be upping their nicotine addiction by using them as well as smoking."

She added: “What you have to remember is that evidence is a social construct. So there’s hard evidence, from randomised control trials and meta-analysis. But then there’s other evidence.

"Policy based just on hard evidence leaves out all sorts of things that haven’t been tested but which maybe should be tried.

“The other thing, which is always difficult to explain to the public and to non-scientists, is that science kind of flip flops a bit to get to a final answer."

Not sure about that "unregulated" comment - I thought Public Health England says they are heavily regulated there? - but the Professor's comments about "science kind of flip flops a bit to get to a final answer" reminds me very much of how the views of marijuana and the risk of psychosis developed over 20 or 30 years.

China has pork reserves?

Is it just me, or does anyone else find the idea of a Strategic Pork Reserve kinda funny?:

China to tap pork reserves as swine fever hits industry

China is set to release pork supplies from its central reserves as it moves to tackle soaring prices and shortages caused by an outbreak of swine fever. A state-backed body will auction 10,000 tonnes of frozen pork from its strategic reserves on Thursday.

I suppose Australian democracy could be in trouble if there was a sausage shortage before an election, so I think the National Party needs to fly a National Snag Reserve.   

Cancel culture

As explained by the Washington Post, "cancel culture" is in large part a result of the nature of social media:

Stand-up comedy, just like other art forms, has traditionally enjoyed an unspoken pact with the audience: Comedians can say pretty much whatever they want, and people in the crowd can feel however they want about the jokes. In live comedy, the power dynamics tend to favor the comedian who has the stage, spotlight and microphone. If a couple of people in the audience are deeply offended, the comic may never know about it.

But the Internet changed this relationship. The audience can do more than heckle a live performance; they can talk back, at length, and get a lot of people to listen.

I have also noticed some people on Twitter pointing out that people so upset with it tend to only think of the attacks run by those on the Left, not about those run by the wingnuts of the Right:

(I see someone in the thread says Chapelle mentioned Kaepernick in his special.  I wonder how briefly?)

Go Will

Everyone's favourite former Libertarian should be Will Wilkinson, who has a great column in the New York Times noting how the Right wing response to a mere proposal of an assault weapon buy back by a guy wildly unlikely to become President (to threaten violence against the police and civil war against the State) is the illiberal and undemocratic scream of an ageing minority fearful of losing control because of democracy:

Nearly every Republican policy priority lacks majority support. New restrictions on abortion are unpopular. Slashing legal immigration levels is unpopular. The president’s single major legislative achievement, tax cuts for corporations and high earners, is unpopular. 

Public support for enhanced background checks stands at an astonishing 90 percent, and 60 percent (and more) support a ban on assault weapon sales. Yet Republican legislatures block modest, popular gun control measures at every turn. The security of the minority’s self-ascribed right to make the rules has become their platform’s major plank, because unpopular rules don’t stand a chance without it. Float a rule that threatens their grip on power, no matter how popular, and it’s “my AR is waiting for you, Robert Francis.”

They’ll tell you their thinly veiled threats are really about defending their constitutional rights. Don’t believe it. The conservative Supreme Court majority’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller found an individual right to own guns for self-protection, but no civilian needs a weapon capable of shooting 26 people in 32 seconds to ward off burglars. The Second Amendment doesn’t grant the right to own one any more than it grants the right to own a surface-to-air missile.  

They’ll tell you their foreboding “predictions” of lethal resistance are really about preserving the means to protect the republic against an overweening, rights-stomping state. Don’t believe that, either. It’s really about the imagined peril of a multicultural majority running the show. Many countries that do more to protect their citizens against gun violence are more, not less, free than we are. According to the libertarian Cato Institute, 16 countries enjoy a higher level of overall freedom than the United States, and most of them ban or severely restrict ownership of assault weapons. The freedom to have your head blown off in an Applebee’s, to flee in terror from the bang of a backfiring engine, might not be freedom at all.

I’m not too proud to admit that in my misspent libertarian youth, I embraced the idea that a well-armed populace is a bulwark against tyranny. I imagined us a vast Switzerland, hived with rifles to defend our inviolable rights against … Michael Dukakis? What I slowly came to see is that freedom is inseparable from political disagreement and that holding to a trove of weapons as your last line of defense in a losing debate makes normal ideological opposition look like nascent tyranny and readies you to suppress it.

So it’s no surprise that the most authoritarian American president in living memory, elected by a paltry minority, is not threatened in the least by citizen militias bristling with military firepower. He knows they’re on his side.

Democrats don’t want to grind the rights of Republicans underfoot. They want to feel safe and think it should be harder for unhinged lunatics to turn Walmarts into abattoirs. But when minority-rule radicals hear determined talk of mandatory assault rifle buybacks, they start to feel surrounded. They hear the hammers clicking back, imagine themselves in the majority’s cross hairs.

That’s why they’re unmoved by the mounting heap of slaughtered innocents, by schoolkids missing recess to rehearse being hunted. It’s a sacrifice they’re willing to let other Americans make, because they think democracy’s coming for their power, and they’re right.