In news from Jakarta...

Not sure we're likely to hear a current Australian politician say such a thing anytime soon:

In a candid podcast, Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo said he liked watching porn and that there was nothing wrong with it.

"If I watch porn, what is wrong with that? I like it. I am an adult. I have a wife,” he said during an interview with YouTube personality Deddy Corbuzier published on Wednesday.

But it's still, you know, Indonesia: 

The politician from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said it would be wrong, however, if he shared pornographic videos. “What is not allowed is to share [the videos] because sharers can be charged under the Electronic Information and Transactions Law (UU ITE),” he said.
Watching porn is still generally frowned upon in Indonesia and the government has made it difficult for citizens to access pornographic content.

The Ministry of Communication has banned pornographic websites. It has also banned websites not principally concerned with erotic material, such as Tumblr and Vimeo, due to the presence of erotica on the platforms.

This does remind me, though, of Gough Whitlam and Margaret heading off to watch that Swedish sex movie at the cinema in the 1970's.  (The Language of Love?  It's proving surprisingly hard for me to turn up the photo of them outside of the cinema that I recall.)

Has anyone debunked this yet?

This study, it seems to me, should have already been debunked by now, if it contained genuine big flaws:

Offshore windfarms 'can provide more electricity than the world needs' 

Analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed that if windfarms were built across all useable sites which are no further than 60km (37 miles) off the coast, and where coastal waters are no deeper than 60 metres, they could generate 36,000 terawatt hours of renewable electricity a year. This would easily meeting the current global demand for electricity of 23,000 terawatt hours.

Asking for friend who thinks nuclear is the only thing possible to remove power emissions ...

Good reason he's not trusted

The moderate Democrat/centrist types who I follow on Twitter (like Will Wilkinson, and some others I can't recall now) have often said that they find Buttigieg's performance during the Democrat debates off putting and annoying.   He's now handed them some real clear grounds to say his take on things is way, way off:

I don't watch Democrat debates, of course, so I don't know how he comes across.  But this was a really ridiculous thing to say.

HIV still a big problem

Was surprised to read on France 24 that the HIV transmission and death problem in Kenya is still so big:

The Kenyan government is battling the spread of the HIV virus with a nationwide campaign, but infections remain rampant: In 2018, 46,000 people tested positive, including 8,000 children under 15 years old.

With 1.6 million Kenyans living with AIDS, the eastern African country is the third most affected nation in the world.

Transmission of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, from mother to child is still common and extremely difficult to contain, mainly in the capital Nairobi's low-income neighbourhoods, and babies are often infected during breastfeeding.

“Education, education, education for the young people is key on prevention of HIV to the children once they get pregnant,” says Faith Kungu, a nutritionist at the Lea Toto clinic in Nairobi.

Despite free healthcare, 4,000 minors died of HIV-related causes in 2018. An HIV positive status is still a taboo and can lead to exclusion from society. Some women opt out of taking medicine to avoid suspicion.

Sad news for a Friday...

Let's list some stupid people (in particular ways)

*  Elon Musk - why the hell would a man worth $20 billion (but not in cash, poor diddums) not settle a defamation action by the guy he called a "pedo"?   Would be a better look than the humiliating evidence that is coming out in court:

During his testimony Mr Musk also played down other tweets, which were also later deleted, including one where he replied "bet ya a signed dollar it's true" to a follower asking about the "pedo" comment.

Mr Musk also acknowledged in court that he paid $52,000 (£40,000) to a man posing as a private detective to dig up dirt about the British diver after it became clear he would be sued. The investigator turned out to be a conman, Mr Musk said.

Under questioning on Wednesday, Mr Musk estimated his net worth to be about $20bn but insisted most of his wealth was held in stock.

"Sometimes people think I have a lot of cash. I actually don't," he told the court.

*  Angus Taylor:  has been revealed as a complete bullshit artist, both in his completely inadequate response to him and/or his office's involvement in inventing figures for political gain (insisting against all evidence that the Council itself had put the figures on its website), and for having implicated Naomi Wolf in a culture war story that happened in Oxford when she was in fact living in another country.    (Sure, a lot of people don't care for Wolf, too, but I can understand her being peeved about being mentioned in Parliament this way.)

He needs to be dumped.  Soon. 

* Scott Morrison:   a flim flam PM, now trying to make a name for himself by re-inventing the wheel of Public Service arrangements.   As Bernard Keene wrote, this stupid cycle of rearranging departments and amalgamation and de-amalgamation just goes on and on and on:

and as people wrote following his tweet:

Yes, the amount of energy put by governments into rearranging the public service chairs is ridiculous and wasteful.

Waddayaknow? Climate models have been making accurate predictions all along (pretty much)

As explained at Real Climate, even some of the first climate models, when properly assessed (which means, taking into account when they got emissions and some other forcings wrong - which is not something you can blame them for)  they have been pretty accurate.

Actually, I find the lengthy Twitter thread explanation by co-author Zeke Hausfather, which starts here, is better than the Real Climate post at explaining what they did.

Quick takes

*   I think the new James Bond trailer looks good.   And I still think the new Q looks like they really had Richard Ayoade in mind, but the producers were worried that his fans would just fall about laughing for 5 minutes as soon as he appeared on screen.

*  Richard E Grant is in the new Star Wars film and says its fantastic.  All actors in these films say that, though, don't they?    Is it possible that they have made a Star Wars film that doesn't include a big, new supa-dupa planet killing version of the Death Star?  Will they have sorted out the unsatisfactory explanations of the nature of the Force?   Gee, I'm sounding like I'm over Star Wars;  but no, I will still likely see this one.

*  What the heck?  Just days after I say I might move to an OPPO phone because I like a pop up selfie cam, there's news that my current brand Motorola has just brought out a mid-range phone with the same feature (and same memory):

 

Big if true

Sabine Hossenfelder has a couple of good posts up - one generally explaining "dark energy", and a follow up post about a paper that has just come out which says that one key measurement that was taken to prove the acceleration of the expansion of the universe is wrong, and hence dark energy doesn't exist.   The local movement of the relevant galaxies may explain the redshift of the light from certain supernovae.

This is, potentially, really big news.  At least if you're an astrophysicist, or general observer of big science ideas.  

He hates government spending, until it's directed towards his pocket (or at least, his workplace)

Chris Berg announces government funding for yet more of RMIT make-work for economists who can't get their heads on ABC TV much anymore, and look who's part of it:

At Announcement

---

• Funding: $423,540.00

• Investigators:
  • Prof Jason Potts (CI)
  • Prof Sinclair Davidson (CI)
  • Dr Christopher Berg (CI)

• Organisations:
  • RMIT University

The research:

Public Finance and Cryptocurrencies. This project aims to analyse the impact of cryptocurrency technology on taxation and the provision of public goods in Australia. The project will identify the historical relationship between money technologies and public finance, examine the impact of cryptocurrencies in relation to the modern state, and investigate the potential of utilising cryptocurrencies in the provision of public goods. The outcomes of the research will expand theoretical and practical understanding of public finance in a world of cryptocurrencies. The project findings will provide guidance to Australian and international policymakers to prepare for potential disruptions to taxation and public goods provision.

Hey, Federal government, I can tell you what the conclusions of this troika will be before you pay a cent:

*   Cryptocurrencies are great, cool, disruptive things and we really like them (because they have the potential to make governments collecting tax even harder);
*   Our government should lead the way in facilitating the adoption of cryptocurrencies as soon as possible, because that way, it makes our waffly research look important.

Now send me $200,000 (not in Bitcoin, thanks), and you're $223,540 ahead.

Update:  I have altered the heading to the post, because I don't know how such research funding works.   I would presume it may involve economics minions (post grad students?) being paid to do some work for the report, and travel or some such, so I don't know if the troika personally make money from it.

What other world leaders have to put up with...

Look, honestly: if Macron and Merkel took Trump to a side room, and he was later found to have "fallen" out of its fifth floor window, the rest of the European leaders would say "Who pushed him?  More to the point, who cares?"  

The kinda depressing "big picture"

If this graph in this tweet is correct:

what's been happening is that wind, solar and other renewables have only been replacing another source of emissions free power - nuclear.

That would help explain why, despite big deployments of non-nulcear clean energy, emissions are not going down. 

That we have to junk coal as a priority is obvious.

Well, that's weird

I don't know that I trust Hot Air contributor Jazz Shaw on anything much, but he has an interest in UFOs and occasionally talks about the Navy "tic tak" videos that have everyone puzzled.

He's interviewed a young physicist (? not sure that's right, given what follows) before about UFOs, but I hadn't read it.

Today, he's put up a post wherein said scientist (Deep Prasad) has explained that earlier this year he had an alien/otherworldly visitation (of sorts).  They were trying to blast a lot of information into his brain, apparently.   (Fortunately for Deep, anal probe was avoided.  They seem to have gone out of fashion now as part of UFO alien abduction/visitation lore.) 

You can read about it here, at Hot Air.

It puts me in mind of the sort of experiences Philip K Dick claimed to have had.  But unlike Dick, I would hope Deep is not a massive drug user.

I'm not sure about him, nonetheless.  Shaw links to a 2014 article in a University of Toronto paper in which they asked whether "first year undergrad" - on an electrical engineering course -  Prasad "could be the next Einstein".   But the big idea he discusses is - generating electricity from using your keyboard.   This does not sound promising...

Gopnik on James

Oh - Adam Gopnik's column on Clive James is very interesting (he knew him) and well written. 

The irony

To be honest, I think the White House Christmas decorations are at least better this year than the blood red theme that Melania chose last year (and which many mocked as resembling something from the Overlook Hotel):

But the funniest thing in the White House produced video (which gives the impression Melania personally sets this all up) is the bit where it shows a tree decoration reading "Be Best".

That the wife of the appallingly "Be Worst" tweeting President should have chosen that as a theme for her "everyone, be nice to each other" campaign is just irony run amok. 

Sordid

Well, this is a headline you don't see every day:

War and pissoirs: how the urinals of Paris helped beat the Nazis 

Unfortunately, most of the article is about how the Paris "pissoirs" came to be installed and then widely used by men for illicit sexual encounters.   I find that very surprising, given that I would have thought that the open air design of these things, whereby you can see who and how many are using the facility, would have meant that this protected them from such use. 

But there you go.

It is interesting that the opening anecdote is this:

At 11pm on 6 December 1876, policemen patrolling the Champs-Élysées discovered a well-to-do bourgeois in a public toilet, engaged in what they described as “indecent exposure” with an 18-year-old labourer. The older man, it turned out, was the prominent Catholic politician Eugène de Germiny, a bastion of the reactionary right who railed against the government’s secular tendencies and advocated a society based on family, religion and a return to monarchy.

The press immediately called out Germiny’s double standards. Despite his protests – he claimed his adventure was merely “research” – he became a magnet for satire, his political opponents making much of his hypocrisy. The writer Gustav Flaubert described the scandal as a “comfort that encourages the will to live”. Germiny was sent to jail and went into exile on release.

That put in mind of certain high profile "family values" Republicans in America caught out in toilets or with male staff over the years. 

And on the straight sex scandal side, this recent one shows another Trump supporting Republican with low grade morals:

Mr. Hunter is accused of spending more than $200,000 [of campaign funds] on personal expenses. The indictment, which was released last year, detailed spending on lavish family vacations to Hawaii and foreign countries, large bar tabs, and grocery purchases for his family. 

Mr. Hunter was also accused of using campaign dollars to fund several extramarital affairs between 2010 and 2016, including one with a member of his staff. Prosecutors also alleged that the congressman, a Republican elected to represent a Southern California district in 2008, attempted to pass off some of those expenses as charitable contributions to veterans.

Until Monday, Mr. Hunter had remained steadfast that he was innocent of the charges, at one point calling it a “deep state” conspiracy. Despite the allegations, Mr. Hunter won re-election to his seat in November 2018.

On a Polish question

A couple of links for a friend, if he happens to visit, and put here as a result of a conversation on Saturday night:

Kielce: The Post-Holocaust Pogrom That Poland Is Still Fighting Over

And in The Atlantic:

The Truth About Poland's Role in the Holocaust

Remarkable phones

I've been very happy with my Moto phone, but am very tempted to buy an OPPO phone when I can next justify an upgrade.

I convinced my son to buy the Reno 2Z at JB Hi Fi yesterday.  As usual, I am blown away by the increasing sophistication of newer phones in the mid range market.   And this phone was on sale for (I think) $455 - when I had only been looking at it recently at its normal price of $599.  (In fact, looking online, this does not seem to be a nation wide catalogue sale price - do JB Hi Fi do local store sales too?)  

The specifications for the phone are remarkable - especially at under $500. 

6.5" AMOLED 1080 x 2340 screen
128GB storage
8GB RAM
16MP front facing camera
48MP/f1.7 + 8MP/f2.2 + 2MP/f2.4 + 2MP/f2.4 rear cameras
Bluetooth v4.2
4000mAh battery + VOOC 3.0
Hidden Fingerprint Unlock 3.0

And I really like the pop up selfie camera, which avoids the whole issue of a camera lens cut out at the edge of a screen.  (I presume people get used to that, but it still seems an annoying feature of new phones to me.)

Of course, I might be doing my part to support a worrying wannabe world dominating nation by going for a Chinese brand over a Korean or Taiwanese one - but they make such cool stuff.  

Someone thinks Boris is not doing so well...

A really vicious take on Boris Johnson's campaign performance from someone writing (where else?) in The Guardian:

...with Boris Johnson we are in the political wild west. A one-man amoral no-go zone, whose prime motivation is his own survival and who can only talk in staccato bursts of white noise – an incoherent stream of unconsciousness designed to run down the clock in any public appearance.

Quantity theory breaks down with Johnson. The longer the election campaign goes on, the more bloated and pneumatic he becomes. Yet the more space he inhabits, the more distant he seems. Day by day, there is less to him than meets the eye. He neither looks like a prime minister, nor sounds like one.

Johnson used to at least be able to give a passable imitation of being Boris Johnson. Now he can’t even manage that. The gags and the mannerisms that used to be his calling card, now just fall flat. A one-trick pony whose one trick everyone knows. The surface has been stripped bare to reveal a core of molten need. Someone who craves attention and fears he wouldn’t exist without it. Someone whose narcissism leaves him devoid of empathy. Incapable of either giving or receiving love.

I must say, from the other side of the world, it is very hard to see why he is as successful as he is in Britain.  It would be a bit akin to, I don't know, some eccentric like Bob Katter being taken seriously as Prime Minister material here.

A recent daily visitor

It's been cute finding a wallaby having a rest at the side or front of our suburban house each recent morning, but it does cause the dog to go berserk:

By the way - that side of the house is a mess, but it can't seen from the street, and we have no reason to go there either.  Still, yeah, it should be cleaned up.

Appeal...

Against my expectations, a New South Wales court has found negligence proved in the class action against the operators of Wivenhoe dam in the 2011 floods.

Of course, I don't know the exact detail of the evidence presented, but what always seemed fishy to me was the complexity of modelling, compiled from overseas,  to show what level of flooding would have happened following different release patterns.

From memory, the modelling didn't even show that earlier releases would have guaranteed no flooding, just reduced heights.  If so, it should not be as if every house flooded deserves compensation - it should only be those in which flooding reached above the level that would have happened under the best scenario.  But maybe the judgement incorporates that?

I will be curious to see whether the litigants end up happy with the final results, or indeed, whether there might be an appeal.  The problem is, with an election looming, State Labor probably does not want to appear to be the one holding up "justice", even if there is doubt about the weighting given to conflicting expert evidence.

Update:  I wrote (surprisingly extensively!) about the details of flood levels discussed at the inquiry into the dam operation back in 2012.   It should be clear from that why I was extremely dubious of a court win on the negligence case.