If you like wasabi flavour punching you in the mouth and nasal passages...

...you'll like these Doritos, which are really surprisingly strong on the flavour front:

I like it, but you can only eat so many at one sitting.

Extreme weather and climate, noted

Below is the start of a good thread on Twitter about climate change and extreme weather.

He goes on further down to talk about floods and drought, and the inherent complexity in judging overall trends in them, as well the matter of increasing hurricane strength (also quite complicated on a global scale.)

Very balanced, and it should be remembered, we are only at 1 degree average global change.  Double or triple that, and where do you think we'll be?

Also, do I need to bother pointing out that this week's floods in Japan came after record rainfall intensity?   

Nature reviews capitalism

A somewhat interesting review of three books on economics:

In Defense of Open Society George Soros PublicAffairs (2019)
Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World Branko Milanovic Belknap (2019)
Measuring What Counts: The Global Movement for Well-Being Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Martine Durand The New Press (2019)

is at Nature.com.

Update:  dear readers, I know that Graeme (see comments below) holds deeply to both economic anti-Semitism (for which there is a pretty good article at Wikipedia) and whatever one might call his "Jews are ruthless covert killers playing the West and Islamists for schmucks" anti-Semitism.    I usually delete his comments which are clearly in the later category, but sometimes leave those in the former category since they don't, at least, involve allegations of murder.   But I am well aware that two aspects feed off each other, and am sorely tempted to try to start deleting any and all references to Jewish matters by him.  It's a tiresome job.   Can more visitors in comments please just start telling him he is an idiot about Jews, again?   The silence he gets (and the sometimes support of Jason on economics) is, I fear, giving him a false sense that this is a "safe" place where readers maybe don't think he is a completely offensive nutjob about Jews.   

Thank you.

News from the North

North Korea, that is.

France24 informs us:

Aides to Kim Jong Un are convinced the North Korean leader plans "a great operation", state media said on Wednesday in a report that included lavish descriptions and images of the leader riding a white horse up North Korea’s most sacred mountain.

That sounds a worry.  Here's the photo they released:

I dunno, Kim's face doesn't look to me like he's exactly enjoying the experience.  Nor is the horse, in all likelihood, give the (sort of) Regal Tubbiness on his back.

Still, I can just imagine Trump seeing this image and being jealous that he doesn't have a stead on which to at least try to look like a noble warrior king. 

Various

As you can probably tell, I'm a bit busy this week.   Here's some stuff I've noticed but not given individual posts to:

*  turns out that nutty Trump economics adviser Peter Navarro has done a Trump, so to speak: invented an imaginary friend (actually himself) to give support to his positions.  Some of his co-authors did not know.   How embarrassing.

*  I've not been able to see Ad Astra, but oddly, I have had two diametrically opposed opinions of the film from two different couples.  My chances of liking it seem to be getting lower, though.

*  Who is this Bruce Mountain who argues the Snowy 2 project is a dud project?   Sorry, but I am a little suspicious of someone I haven't heard of before coming out as an expert and then dissing a renewable project that other experts seem to think is worthwhile.

*  Saudi Arabia has paid Instagram "influencers" to go there and say how marvellous the place is (in preparation of opening the country up to tourism.)  This reminds me of an old rule of thumb (actually, I must add it to my Rules for Life):  do not holiday in any country where looking the wrong way at someone can get you arrested for witchcraft (or possibly, homosexuality).

*  STDs still on the rise in America.  Most sadly:

Among newborns, syphilis cases increased 40 percent to more than 1,300 cases.

Also, look where those cases mainly come from:

The 40 percent increase in congenital syphilis cases continues a dangerous trend seen in recent years. Although most states reported at least one case of congenital syphilis, five states – Texas, California, Florida, Arizona, and Louisiana – accounted for 70 percent of cases in the U.S.

That seems an odd mix, no?

Seems to me that the USA is strangely bad at not getting on top of that particular problem.

Now they complain about the violence...

I get that it's at least poor taste for wingnut Trumpers to use the Kingsman ultra violent church scene to show Trump killing "fake news";  but I think that people who find this clip offensive for its violence should have been calling it out for such in the original movie.

But no, the largely liberal leaning world of movie criticism pretty much was silent about it.

I see someone on the internet agrees.  

About the monocle

An interesting history of the monocle is to be found at The Atlantic.

 Count me as somewhat amused to read the sentence about its populariser:

The monocle followed. It was fixed in the eye socket and held in place hands-free, wedged behind the loose skin around the eye thanks to the orbicularis oculi, the muscle that closes the eyelid. Its advent is usually associated with Philipp von Stosch, an 18th-century German baron, who in his time was better known for writing the definitive work on carved gemstones and living an active, open life as a homosexual. Notwithstanding, popularizing the monocle became his lasting legacy. By the end of the century, it was in use all over German-speaking countries. It jumped to London around the turn of the 19th century, where it took hold among the aristocracy.

Glad they haven't developed a taste for humans surfing/swimming

I never used to be all that aware that orcas were near our relatively warm coastal beaches (my image of them is always of a colder water species) but here they are not far off Ballina:

Whale watchers off the coast of Ballina in northern New South Wales have held a front-row seat to the gruesome spectacle of a juvenile humpback whale being devoured by a pod of killer whales, also known as orcas.

This is, shall we say, of limited utility...

Performance art as protest is a real "thing" with Extinction Rebellion, isn't it? 

Look, I guess it's better than people setting themselves on fire, which is perhaps the most useless protest method ever devised.   (And besides, it would only be adding to CO2.)

But I feel fairly certain that performance art conveys an air of "we're here to have fun with our like minded friends" which is not very effective in terms of political influence.

She's not convinced

Sabine Hossenfelder gave a good review of Sean Carroll's recent book promoting the Many Worlds theory, but she explains her issues with it at a recent post The Trouble With Many Worlds.

About flesh eating ulcers

That's surprising:  apparently, at least one type of flesh eating ulcer caught from some weird ground bacteria are actually more common in Victoria than tropical North Queensland:

But doctors are concerned because, in the past two years, three cases of the usually geographically confined disease have emerged in the Atherton Tablelands, south of its usual catchment area in far-north Queensland. While the disease is much rarer in Queensland than Victoria, with an average of two cases per year, there are occasional spikes, such as in 2011 when 60 cases were recorded. Victoria saw a record 340 cases of the disease in 2018 and is approaching a similar number for 2019. Internationally renowned Buruli ulcer expert Prof Paul Johnson said that despite the comparatively low number of Queensland cases, the movement of the disease outside of its normal range was a concern.

And the possible bacteria spreading culprit in Victoria:

 Johnson believes it is most likely the bacteria that causes the ulcer, Mycobacterium ulcerans, is being spread in Victoria by mosquitoes and possums. In Victoria, 40% of cases are found in visitors to the Mornington and Bellarine peninsulas. The incubation period is about five months, so people often visit the beachside areas in the summer months but only present with the disease in the colder months after returning to their home areas, where doctors may not be familiar with the disease and therefore may not immediately diagnose it.

So you in that State, you get the tropical sounding disease but without the benefit of warm weather.  Huh.

Back to my vaping scepticism

An article at The Guardian notes this (White is director of Quit Victoria):

 White disagrees, and says the products should be taken off the shelves altogether, for not just medical but consumer safety reasons. She said there had been cases of the devices exploding, causing deaths. She also cited the death of a toddler in Melbourne after he consumed his mother’s e-nicotine liquid. Consumer safety standards were sorely lacking, she said.

“I can’t buy a bicycle helmet or toys from shops that don’t meet consumer safety standards, but I can go and buy a device for heating up liquids and inhale from that device for hours on end,” she said. “We have taken other products off the shelves that have less issues with them than e-cigarettes.”

She acknowledged her position had resulted in backlash from pro-vaping lobbyists in Australia, many of whom are supported by the tobacco companies that have bought a stake in the e-cigarette market.

“There are people who so passionately believe in e-cigarettes that they’re evangelical about it,” White says. “There is a divide across public health and tobacco control on this which is no doubt being fed by vested interests, and no-one is backing down.”

But also, The Lancet has weighed in:

On Saturday, the international medical journal the Lancet published an editorial in the wake of the US deaths, and said the positioning of e-cigarettes as a quit-aid had been “vastly overstated”.

“Data also suggest that smokers switch to e-cigarettes, then remain dependent long term,” the editorial said. “No solid evidence base underpins the marketing claims that e-cigarettes are healthier than cigarettes or that they can support quitting, but lax regulation has allowed e-cigarette manufacturers to pervert the success of antismoking public health messages and position e-cigarettes as healthy.”

OK, let's extract some that Lancet editorial directly:

Manufacturers of e-cigarettes, and some public health advocates, have supported their use as a smoking cessation tool and a safer alternative to cigarettes. However, the evidence for both of these claims is weak. No e-cigarettes have been tested or launched as smoking cessation products; all are sold directly to the consumer as tobacco, not medicinal, products. Three randomised trials of third-generation products show low rates of abstinence at 6 months. Data also suggest that smokers switch to e-cigarettes, then remain dependent long term. The very high nicotine levels delivered by some e-cigarettes could make them more difficult to quit than cigarettes. Very few data on long-term health effects are available to support the safety claims. The positioning of e-cigarettes as a viable cessation aid is vastly overstated, especially since the current first line treatment (nicotine replacement therapy under medical supervision) has a strong evidence base demonstrating safety and efficacy.

Claims that e-cigarettes are useful harm-reduction tools are further undermined by their high uptake among young people. Cigarette smoking among US adolescents had declined substantially in the past 20 years, but there has been a huge rise in adolescents using e-cigarettes, with rates of use at around 25% among 18-year-olds and 20% among 16-year-olds. The availability of flavoured e-liquids is cited by nearly a third of users as a major reason to start vaping, especially among younger adults. Concerns have been raised around the marketing of e-cigarettes to young adults and new users. Advertising featuring young, attractive models, sponsorship of sports events and parties, product placement, and direct payments to social media influencers are strikingly similar techniques to those used previously by the cigarette industry. In many cases, e-cigarette marketers have commandeered the public health message around smoking to promote a healthy and glamorous alternative. In response, the US Food and Drug Administration wrote to Juul Labs, criticising illegal marketing that claimed that their e-cigarettes were less harmful than cigarettes....

No solid evidence base underpins the marketing claims that e-cigarettes are healthier than cigarettes or that they can support quitting, but lax regulation has allowed e-cigarette manufacturers to pervert the success of antismoking public health messages and position e-cigarettes as healthy. The renormalisation of smoking in the form of e-cigarettes, not only among smokers, but also among young people and never smokers, risks population-wide nicotine use and dependence on a massive scale. Surely it is time to align the public health approach to e-cigarettes with that of cigarettes.

A good Catholic movie

We watched the 2014 Bill Murray movie St Vincent on Netflix last night.

I hadn't paid much attention to the reviews when it came out, except that I had the feeling most were only lukewarm. 

But I really enjoyed it.  

Agreed, there's nothing groundbreaking about it, and it does carry the strong whiff of early Wes Anderson (not a bad thing, mind you); but it's pretty rare to get this type of good natured film that is funny, sometimes touching, and carries a pleasing moral message about understanding other people.   Now that I think of it, it also has the feel of some John Hughes movies too, and nearly everyone had a soft spot for them, no?

Most surprisingly, the message is very genuinely Catholic in a positive way.  So much so that I suspected that the screenplay may be quite old, and written well before the current period of terrible PR for the church.  But I've checked, and it was written by the director Theodore Melfi in 2011, so I'm wrong.   He went on to direct and co-write the very successful (and also "feelgood") Hidden Figures in 2016.  I should pay more attention to his work, perhaps.

Anyway, it was the most pleasing Netflix film I have seen for some time.  Yay.

Another case of "as I suspected"..

From my limited contact with social workers, I had always suspected this was true, but never really had seen it confirmed:

Such stories are common – many social work students have traumatic histories that have led them to pursue that particular career choice.  ....

Social work students have a much higher incidence of various forms of childhood trauma than students of other disciplines. A 1993 US study found 22% of social work students reported childhood sexual abuse compared to 2% of business students.

The article argues that it is a problem that some people with convictions cannot go on to be social workers:

... studies have found lived experiences to be helpful in a range of social work fields. These include addiction-treatment programs, mental health, domestic and family violence, and working with sex workers.

But the link used to justify that claim is to one study of a pretty esoteric social work study:

A peer-led mobile outreach program and increased utilization of detoxification and residential drug treatment among female sex workers who use drugs in a Canadian setting.

 I remain to be convinced that too many social workers coming from a background of, say, childhood physical or emotional abuse, is actually a good idea.   The problems I can see with it is that their personal experience could bias their decisions in cases too close to their own, and the psychological harm  from abuse can take (it would seem) decades to get over, with some people never quite recovering.

It's good that people want to help see that others don't go through what they have, and it's not as if past trauma should disqualify from getting into this work.  But I don't think it obviously helps the profession if too many are there with that sort of background.

Such a peacenik

As noted everywhere:

The Trump administration will send nearly 2,000 troops and advanced military equipment to Saudi Arabia to deter threats from Iran — a move that will increase America’s presence in the Middle East, even as President Donald Trump falsely boasts about ending wars in the region.

The announcement, made by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley on Friday, continues the administration’s campaign both to increase pressure on Tehran and deepen ties with Riyadh. The US has sent an additional 14,000 military members to the Middle East since May, which the 1,800 authorized Friday will add to.

And more:

Trump is saying these things to justify his decision on Sunday to move American troops in Syria — a decision that’s drawn bipartisan pushback. It’d be one thing if he were bringing all 1,000 US troops in the country home, but he’s not. Instead, he’s moving just 50 US service members out of northern Syria to get out of the way of a just-started Turkish invasion.

That’s not all. A late September report from US Air Forces Central Command showed that the US launched the most airstrikes in Afghanistan over a single month in roughly a decade. American troops have ramped up airstrikes in Libya targeting ISIS fighters there. And the US continues its shadow war in Somalia to fend off terrorist groups there.

Where to find the only people in Australia who can detect sincerity in Donald Trump

Brilliant political analyst Tom from somewhere in Victoria lights up a durry and turns down the permanent race call on the radio so as to swoon over Trump in a live net broadcast:

When one other says he/she doesn't agree, old Tom flies the condescension flag:

The other thing that I find hilarious is how suddenly, after Trump makes a decision, most of the wingnuts at Catallaxy suddenly become experts on Turk/Kurd history so that they can nod sagely that their culture war leader has obviously made a wise decision. 

Update:   I see Sinclair has handed posting keys over to CL, who thinks that Trump's talk about how the families of the dead brought back to Dover AFB seem fine at first but then "scream" when they see the coffin "may be his finest".   In reality, it came across like a weird and exaggerated description by an emotional cripple incapable of normal empathy himself.   (It was a "sir" story, which is always a tell with Trump.)   Oh, and let's not forget his telephone calls to relatives have not always gone down well.  Maybe that's why he sticks to letters now.

It's back to the old puzzle for me - has the internet-led culture war culminating in Trump made idiots of people, or were they just always idiots waiting to be revealed by their inability to recognise a dumb, completely unethical, wannabe autocrat?

Electricity in Africa

I see Jason's having a gut reaction again, this time to a twitter headlined article in The Economist:

Electricity does not change poor lives as much as was thought

Getting a power connection to the poorest of the poor may be the wrong priority for a cash-strapped government

The article makes a case, citing studies in Africa mainly, but all Right wingers can do is get indignant that a magazine powered by electricity is dissing Africans getting electricity.  That's outrageous!

How about addressing the actual arguments and studies the article cites, conservatives?

Surely this is far from normal

The twitterverse is abuzz about what this could mean:

Attorney General William Barr “met privately Wednesday evening with one of President Trump’s frequent confidants, Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul whose holdings include Fox News, which has recently become more critical of the president,” the New York Times reports.

“The meeting was held at Mr. Murdoch’s home in New York.”

The most immediate and valid reaction should surely be:  why is Barr making himself look like the President's personal lawyer and messenger boy?   We know Rudy has been a bumbling disaster, but this just looks so far from what an AG should be doing it's ridiculous.

On the other hand - is it a case of Rupert wanting to tell Trump he's withdrawing Fox support?  As I speculated earlier this week, the Turkey decision seems a valid pretext conservatives could use to withdraw support, especially if images of civilian deaths start pouring in. 

The French way

For a nation pretty relaxed about things like nudity and extramarital affairs, it seems the French have remained quite conservative compared to other countries regarding how kids are made. 

In this article at France 24:  Inside France's black market for sperm (some headline, hey?) we learn that -

On September 24, French lawmakers begin debating a government-proposed bill to extend the right to medically assisted procreation (MAP) to all women, a highly sensitive subject in France. Under current rules, single women and lesbian couples are barred from access to fertility treatment. This discrimination has fostered the rise of a thriving underground market for sperm that carries enormous legal and sanitary risks.

The article details how single or lesbian women have been, um, sourcing sperm via the underground online market, and the men who offer their services are sometimes not in it for altruistic reasons:

The donor, who says he belongs to the first category, claims to have fathered dozens of babies and now moderates a 1,100-member closed Facebook group that connects single and lesbian women with donors in France. He says he has seen a clear increase in both the number of donors and the number of women seeking donors on the Facebook group lately. But he has also noted a rise in inappropriate proposals, especially when it comes to donors seeking free sex, or a financial reward for their services.

“Some ask to be paid €30, €500 or even €1,000 for their ‘donations’,” he says, adding that he has to exclude at least 10 people from the group each month because of such demands.

Seriously, how brash do you have to be to offer to donate sperm to a lesbian, but only via sex?

But it is not an unusual thing in France, apparently, seemingly due to a strange law which perhaps encourages crazily opportunistic men to offer sex to lesbians/single women.   (Although, it also seems from what follows that there may be a genuine cultural feeling that personal delivery, so to speak, is just more natural and the way it should be.   You have to remember the French are not immune from dubious health ideas - homoeopathy is popular there.)

Can you imagine any Australian guy even bothering to try this on with an Australian lesbian?:

Once a woman has selected her donor online, there are three ways to carry out the insemination. Most opt for artificial insemination (AI), in which the donor collects his sperm in a small container and the woman uses a needleless syringe, a turkey baster or a pipette to inject the semen into her vagina. One alternative is partial insemination (PI), which involves penetration just before ejaculation. The other is natural insemination (NI) – in other words, sex.

The AI method, which entails “handling” the sperm but remains the least intrusive for the woman, is strictly forbidden in France and carries a penalty of up to two years in prison and a €30,000 fine. “By handling the sperm, we’re talking three things: collecting it, retaining it and finally manipulating it with one’s hands [by way of a syringe, for example],” APGL’s Faget explains.

For the purpose of this investigation, FRANCE 24’s reporter set up a profile on a popular donor app. Within 48 hours she had received more than 50 “likes” and invitations to start a conversation with potential donors. Most of them advocated natural insemination as their preferred method, with many even conditioning their donation to its use. Offering his reasons, “Joe”, 28, wrote: “I just believe this is how it should be done, it’s more effective too.”

“Jack”, 35, said he would only be prepared to donate through NI and that it would be done “over a timespan of seven to nine days in a row (to make sure you get pregnant), as both bodies are physical and [generate the] chemicals that are needed for a successful fertilisation: It’s a dance for two to make three ☺.” He also said that he was “very interested in helping out lesbian couples and getting them both pregnant in the same cycle”.

“Bebeaide” (or Babyhelp in English), 42, who claims to have impregnated at least five women in the Paris region, initially told FRANCE 24’s reporter that he did not mind donating via the less intimate AI technique, but later told her that it would be a shame to not at least attempt partial insemination because it “maximises the chances” of getting pregnant. “It would just entail sexual intercourse at ‘the moment of’, no strings attached, no foreplay. Your partner can participate in the act,” he proposed.

According to Doctor Chalas, there is some truth to the claim that sexual intercourse works better, however disturbing the propositions. “The conception rate from sexual intercourse is around 25 percent, and 21 percent from a medically assisted intrauterine insemination with frozen donor sperm – so those two methods are comparable,” she says. “But an artificial insemination carried out at home is a lot less efficient, with a conception rate of around 10 percent.”

One other thing I learn form the article - in parts of Europe, some men can make a significant supplement to their income via donation to sperm banks:

 One reason for the dearth of sperm donors is the absence of remuneration. While donors in Denmark can be paid more than €500 per month for their semen, all donations must be free in France – a principle doctors and politicians are both attached too. Another factor is the lengthy vetting process donors have to go through, including interviews with psychologists and biologists, along with fertility and chromosome tests, and screening for possible STDs. Only the candidates who clear all tests and fit within the 18-45 age bracket are accepted.

Anyway, it looks like French law will change and things will be more like it is in other countries.   But there will probably still be French men prepared to selflessly put themselves through several rounds of sex to aid women who want to get pregnant.

 

Yeah, this is a little surprising

Good, though: