Some interesting comments on economics here

From The Guardian:

World economy is sleepwalking into a new financial crisis, warns Mervyn King

Past crashes spawned new thinking and reform but nothing has changed since 2008 banking meltdown, says former Bank of England boss

Kidneys for sale

Today on CNA, I learned about poor Filipinos selling their kidneys through social media (the report fingers Facebook, which says it's against their rules, but they don't know what's going on til someone tells them.)



Interestingly, it seems the story has sparked some racism comments on Youtube:

Is that sarcasm at perceived Singaporean racism?  Or actual racism?

And what about this comment?:

One other thing about watching CNA - I know that Singapore doesn't work like your normal, messy democracies, but when you see government ministers talking on CNA, my goodness they seem so, so reasonable and smart and sensible compared to 90% of the politicians in most Western nations.

Saturday jacarandas

A nice line of blooming jacaranda trees at St Lucia:

Not even scientifically accurate

I meant to give a Muntz-ian "ha ha" when I noticed this story a week or so ago, but forgot.

Turns out Interstellar, which I consider awful, is not so scientifically accurate after all.

Could a habitable planet orbit a supermassive black hole? 

Short answer: almost certainly not.

And I don't even like horses

7.30's story last night on the thoroughbred racehorse business and it's pretence that it really takes care to avoid having failed, even relatively young, horses ground up into greyhound mince, was a gruesome expose of a sham industry that was really hard to watch.

The treatment of the horses at the abattoir at Caboolture was awful, and the attitude of the men who worked there woeful.   If any man has to make a living that way, I have no respect for them unless they have some at least some empathy for the animal.   There was zero on display last night.

But the whole show reinforced my prejudices against the whole racing enterprise - the alleged sport of kings that has expanded on the back of (mostly) saps with a gambling problem, as well as those who occasionally like to play dress ups and get conspicuously drunk while ignoring the inherent cruelty of breeding far too many horses and disposing of them as soon as they are too expensive to care for.

 

Apartment design considered.

I've realised something about typical apartment design in Australia, and what I dislike about it.

I really don't like the way so many have the entry door opening directly into the big, open kitchen/living room space.   It's too intrusive and direct an entry into a space which should have more privacy when viewed from the front door.   Moreover, it removes the idea of a transition space from the outside to the inside that feels important and natural in Japanese living spaces, and actually makes practical sense too.

So, I reckon no apartment entry door should open with a clear line of sight right into the living area.  I like the idea of having to turn a corner after entering an apartment to be able to see the (hopefully) impressive living area.   Even if it's not a solid wall that the door opens towards, a screening of some type should be used.   This might mean that an entry door light just inside is often needed, but that should be no big deal.

The other thing I dislike about apartment design in Australia is the way that bedrooms will so often open directly into the main living area.   There is a need for hallways to separate bedroom entries from living areas. 

I also think we don't use different floor levels enough to provide a sense of separation between different areas.   Or beds that fold up into walls.  Why can't we have those in Australia?  

As you were.

Update:  examples -

This is OK:

This is good:

This is fine:

This is everything I dislike in an apartment layout:

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.