The usual over-reaction by both sides

I do tire of reactions after large and comfortable majority wins by one political party which hyperventilate along the lines of "this is a disaster for Party X and changes everything forever"; despite the fact that very often, within a decade, everything has reversed.

People might say "well with Brexit now happening, everything changing forever really is true for Britain", but I'm talking just about political control at the moment.

I mean, these are the figures for yesterday's election:

So the Labour, Liberal Democrat, Scottish Nationalist and Green combined vote was 50.4%, as against Conservative [Clown] Party at 43.6%.   I know you can't claim all Labour voters as remainers; but there is no doubt at least a smidgen of Conservative voters who are.   Hence, I doubt the election result really convincingly tells us much about how a second referendum would have gone, had the opportunity arisen. [For much more educated guessing about this by yours truly, see the update below.]

More broadly, see how first-past-the-post pans out?   43.6% of the vote gives the Conservatives 365/650 = 56.1% of the seats in parliament.   That...doesn't seem right.

Yet Imre Salusinszky, who I was thinking is a relatively sensible centre-right person, come out with this:

when asked why:

Yeah, not only win, but gain a 6% of the seats buffer, hey?    Imre's being saying a lot of things I don't agree with on Twitter lately, so I have to downgrade my opinion of him to "pretty stupid like most Conservatives these days."   I assume he is still a pal of Tim Blair, so what could I expect?

Anyway, the puzzle with Johnson is actually where his opportunistic brand of political views will take him.   What happens to Brexit now?  Is a soft one still the way forward, or is hard Brexit more likely?   No one seems to really know, but this BBC site explains that once it's started, it's still a process that has a long way to go.  What's the bet that the ageing Brexiteer in the high street has any clue about that?  

People say that his time as London's boss show Johnson as wanting to be a broad based populist:  he may be a lying, womanising, narcissist like Trump, but he is not going to let himself be beholden to the culture wars as are the American (and parts of the Australia) Right.    Or perhaps it's more a case that "culture war" means something different in Britain to what it does across the pond - with Brexit being Britain's culture war/identity issue -  but it doesn't seem to extend to things such as climate change denialism or gay marriage panic in the way American brand conservatism does.    And that, at least, is something to be grateful for.


[Update:  I've looking up some numbers to try to see what they suggest about what the election result means for Leave/Remain numbers if a second referendum was held.

I wasn't sure about the estimates for the number of Leave voters at the Brexit referendum who were Labour voters.  It seems the estimates are around 25 - 30%.  However, some of those at this election must have gone to the Conservatives already.  Also, it is a better informed electorate on what Brexit means, so presumably some former Labour Leave voters would have re-considered their position.   Hence, the proportion of those who voted Labour this time who would still want Leave remains very unclear.    Let's say 20% of Labour voters this time were still adamant Leavers.   That would put one fifth of the 32% Labour vote into the "leave parties" column - roughly 6% of the total vote.  So Tories and Brexit parties combined total of 45.6% of the vote would get boosted to 51.6% - almost identical to the Referendum outcome.   But it doesn't take account of several things if a second Referendum were held:

*  a leakage  of Conservative voters to Leave - this interesting article argues that 13% of "strong Remain" identified as Conservative in 2017, but at this election, they remained loyal to Conservatives because they would prefer to leave the EU than see a socialist Corbyn government.  That sounds pretty plausible to me, and suggests that (say) 5 to 10% of the Conservative vote yesterday could have moved to the Remain column on a second referendum - that's 2 to 4% of the total vote, and even at the lower estimate, could be decisive;

*  a likely greater turnout of Remainers, some of whom were presumably swayed by polling that they didn't really need to go and vote at the original referendum.  The turnout at the referendum was 72%; at this election 67% - it appears that the high 60's is now common for turnout at their general elections in recent decades, but it did hit 80% in the 1950's.   Thus a higher than 72% turnout in a second referendum would not have been out of the question, and I think there is every reason to expect it would have favoured Remain;

*  it's even been argued that demographic decline (that is, oldies dying off) amongst the original Leave voters might even have been influential in favour of a Leave win.

I think, therefore, that there is a pretty convincing argument that the election result is not the overwhelming endorsement of the will of the people on Brexit, at all.   Of course, Johnson would claim it as such, but anyone who factors in the British first past the post system and its inflation of seat numbers, as well as looking at the evidence listed above, should not make such claims.  Brexit got through its referendum on a 1.9% majority on a turnout that was big, but no where near a record for past elections.   There is reason to think that on a re-run, even despite yesterday's outcome, it could have lost.

Feel free to point out the error in my arguments, anyone, because I'm giving myself a pat on the back for this post.]

The Chinese are bad news for donkeys

That's not a headline I was expecting in Science magazine: Donkeys face worldwide existential threat.   (That is the headline in the magazine itself - it's not used in the article at the link for some reason.)

Anyway, the problem is once again silly Chinese traditional medicine, of which I have complained before as just about the worst cultural feature to come out of that country:

Over the past 6 years, Chinese traders have been buying the hides of millions of butchered donkeys (Equus asinus) from developing countries and shipping them to China, where they’re used to manufacture ejiao, a traditional Chinese medicine. The trade has led to an animal welfare nightmare, along with a threat to donkey populations, the severity of which is only now emerging. Without drastic measures, the number of donkeys worldwide will drop by half within 5 years, according to a 21 November report by the Donkey Sanctuary, an international equine welfare charity based in Sidmouth, U.K. The crisis threatens many of the world’s rarer donkey breeds and a vital means of transport for the poor....

Ejiao, in use for thousands of years, purportedly treats or prevents many problems, including miscarriage, circulatory issues, and premature aging, although no rigorous clinical trials support those claims. The preparation combines mineral-rich water from China’s Shandong province and collagen extracted from donkey hides, traditionally produced by boiling the skins in a 99-step process done at specific times of the year. Once reserved for China’s elites, ejiao is now marketed to the country’s booming middle class, causing demand to surge. One producer, Dong’e Ejiao in Liaocheng, China, touts it as “a creation of heaven and earth” that’s now passing “from the royal tribute to the home of ordinary people.”

Despite government incentives for new donkey farmers, farms in China can’t keep up with the exploding demand, which the Donkey Sanctuary currently estimates at 4.8 million hides per year. Donkeys’ gestation period is one full year, and they only reach their adult size after 2 years. So the industry has embarked on a frenzied hunt for donkeys elsewhere. (Importing hides is not illegal in China, and the import tax was lowered from 5% to 2% last year.) This has triggered steep population declines. In Brazil, the population dropped by 28% between 2007 and 2017, according to the new report.

Thrown into a volcano

Hope this isn't insensitive to the recent horrible deaths and injury that happened in New Zealand, but it was just a coincidence that I found this video last night.

I've taken to watching some Youtube travel bloggers - mainly ones who are based in Japan - and marvelling at the high quality videos they can produce.   (Modern video equipment is minor miracle, I reckon.)

One of them is a woman from Brisbane, who has been posting videos for quite a while under her channel Currently Hannah.   She seemingly now makes a living from this alone, and her videos have covered trips to various overseas places, not just Japan.  

I think she is quite likeable, but is inclined to be too dramatic and too talky at times.  Her Japanese boyfriend seems good natured, but I do wonder if they will last.

Anyway, last night I was watching one of her videos she made in Indonesia, where she goes to a volcano and sees a festival in which possessions are thrown into it in the hope of some good luck or benefit in return.   Yet, it's also accepted for people to go somewhat done into the volcano and try to retrieve what's thrown into it.   (And that includes chickens, which seemingly survive the ordeal, but also at least one goat, which seemed to have survived too.  They all benefit from people not being able to throw them far enough out from edge of the volcano.)   It's really weird.  Have a watch:



I quite like Poalo from Tokyo as a video blogger too, although his are all pretty much all based in Japan.  He seems a ridiculously happy and upbeat type of guy - his family from the Philippines originally but he grew up in California and then moved to Japan.  His life story is really quite interesting, if you have 25 minutes to spare to listen to him explain it.

My British election outcome explanation

Old people like clowns.

(Explains USA as well, although there it expands to "young, dumb, old and paranoid people like clowns.)  

Must be time for another "Rule for Life"

This is, I would have thought, an obvious one, even though I know it is routinely breached in the name of fitness.   And it sprung to mind because of this story: 

The day after I wrote in the Guardian about how my life as a female cyclist, and Paralympian, led to me having reconstructive surgery of my vulva – all because saddles are not designed for women – a book arrived in the post.

The rule:

*  If an activity hurts a lot and causes inflammation - stop doing it.  Permanently, if it keeps hurting.

What am I up to?  6?

1.  Always carry a clean, ironed handkerchief in your pocket.  Always.
2.  Never buy into timeshare apartments or holiday schemes.
3.  If you have a choice, buy the washing machine with a 15 minute "fast wash" option.
4.  Always buy reverseable belts. (You know, usually black on one side and brown on the other.)
5.  The best souvenir when on a good holiday is a distinctive cup or mug, which is to be used semi-regularly on your return.  (Don't get in the rut of using the same mug daily for years - you need to rotate through all of them.)  Use will prompt good memories and make you happier. 
6.  If an activity hurts a lot and causes inflammation - stop doing it.  Permanently, if it keeps hurting.

Just reviewing some of my past posts, I think I thought about adding another, but never officially did.  It's good and valid, though:

7.  If a potential boyfriend or girlfriend says, with intended irony, that they know that they can be a bit of a creep (or difficult) - don't believe the irony.   Just don't get into a relationship of any kind with them.

Ho hum

I seem to getting particularly blasted with Christmas songs around my workplace this year, and I think it's turning me off the entire season.  Certainly, any TV Christmas special in which the people start singing carols is getting me a bit queasy. 

Look - a not so weathy African nation going big on renewables

Well, I didn't know this.  Morocco, a nation not exactly known for its wealth, but with plenty of sunshine and (I presume) empty land (like Australia, and with a population in the same ballpark too) is aggressively installing renewable energy, with apparent success:


Climate Policy that Actually Works: How Morocco is Meeting its Clean Energy Goals

A big solar thermal plant has just recently opened:

Morocco Lights the Way to More Solar Power Production

Their goal is 52% of installed capacity to be renewables by 2030.  That's not actual electricity used, but capacity.  

Still, seems quite a goal, and seems a good example to use against those who argue that poorer nations just much use coal (or nuclear) to get ahead.

Prediction: this will not penetrate into the Right wing's alternative reality

Horowitz has been talking at Congress:

In response to Democrats on the panel, Horowitz said his office "certainly didn't see any evidence" in FBI or Justice Department files that former President Barack Obama asked the U.S. government to investigate Donald Trump's campaign, as Trump has charged.

Nor, Horowitz said, was there any evidence that the Obama administration tapped Trump's phones at Trump Tower.

Horowitz also reaffirmed that the so-called Steele dossier, a collection of partly unverified reports about then-candidate Trump, "had no impact" on the bureau's decision to open the investigation.

Two (OK, sort of three) crazy things about how other countries do elections

*  I guess this current UK election has caused some discussion of change to their first past the post system, but I still can't see why it isn't the subject of a continual, large scale reform campaign.   (I saw that Antony Green was over there, saying that Britain insists on a result on the election night, and if they stick to that, they are never going to get reform to any sort of proportional/preference system.  Farage, of all people, is pressing for change, but really you need the 2 major parties to talk about it.)   Why don't (more of) the English see the unfairness in first past the post when you have more than 2 substantial parties??

* Why does any country hold elections on a work day?   Especially when voting is not compulsory and you have to depend on people finding the time to get to the ballot box?   Yeah, sure there is postal voting, and I think it is overused in Australia.  But countries that rely on people getting out to vote - then making as easy as possible is just an obvious thing to do.

* And let's not get into American electoral system craziness, with each State running their own systems for eligibility to vote in Federal elections.

Worst Attorney General in American history?

I don't know American history with much intricacy, but I reckon Bill Barr is looking good at going down as America's worst, most partisan, culture war motivated Attorney General ever.   Some extracts from a Vox article about his appalling comments on the IG report:

But the most unbelievable line came when Barr attempted to cast the FBI’s surveillance of Trump campaign staff in 2016 as “the greatest danger to our free system” — because in his mind, that constituted the government abusing its powers to influence an election. Yes, really:

From a civil liberties standpoint, the greatest danger to our free system is that the incumbent government used the apparatus of the state, principally the law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies, both to spy on political opponents, but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of the election.

This is just not an accurate description of what happened in 2016. There is no credible evidence that the FBI investigation was an attempt to intervene in the election, which is a conspiracy theory that doesn’t even pass the most basic smell test. The existence of the Trump-Russia investigation wasn’t officially confirmed until March 2017 — and the most prominent leak during the campaign was pro-Trump, resulting in an iconically false New York Times headline: “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.” Why would the FBI keep its evidence against Trump secret until after the election, if it was trying to influence the outcome?

But setting aside the falsehoods, the sheer chutzpah of Barr’s comments is staggering. Again, according to Barr, “The greatest danger to our free system is that the incumbent government use the apparatus of the state ... in a way that could affect the outcome of the election.” 

What president might be doing something like that, right now, and getting impeached for it? 

In all seriousness, though, Barr’s move here is disturbingly Orwellian. He correctly identified the abuse of power to influence elections as a threat to American democracy, but then argued that the people who investigated Trump are the ones who are actually guilty of it. The criminal becomes the victim, the authoritarian the guarantor of our freedoms. You heard a similar refrain from Republicans during the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing on Monday, when they repeatedly accused the Democrats of being the real threat to democracy.

Barr’s embrace of this kind of truth-annihilating strategy is particularly interesting. He’s an establishment Republican with long credentials in the party, but one who has emerged as one of the most capable and willing defenders of Trump and the ideology for which he stands. Barr’s reasons for this, as my colleague Ezra Klein explained, stem from a deep sense of persecution, a belief that conservatives and Christians are under siege from ruthless progressives, an existential battle that must be waged if America as we know it is to be preserved.

Under these circumstances, a lot becomes justifiable — even the kind of assaults on the idea of truth more commonly seen in various types of authoritarian regimes (North Korea’s formal name, for example, is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). It’s a way of emptying words of their content, of transmuting ideas like “democratic” to mean “in the interests of the ruling faction.”

 

All true and accurate, I reckon.

Update:

The peculiar fate of Catallaxy

Sinclair Davidson made a comment in a thread yesterday that both Leftists and conservatives have shown themselves to be "Statists".   Yet the blog, today featuring prominently:

*  a photo of a dead, drowned toddler by Trump cultist Steve Kates (and, by the way, endorsement of a thorough authoritarian and wannbe fascist like Trump is an endorsement of the purest form of Statism - the kind where the leader embodies the State and is above control and accountability); and

* Sean Hannity level hack commentary on American politics by the uber Catholic conservative (not that he wants the title) Currency Lad;

is yet again confirming itself as the most intensely conservative political website in Australia.

Don't pretend otherwise, Sinclair.  You now oversee a conservative blog that yearns for the special kind of Statism that comes with authoritarianism. 

Update:  I should have mentioned the reactionary hyperbole that Kates engages in about that drowned toddler photo:

This image allowed millions of “refugees” to enter Europe, changing Western Civilisation forever, and leading to its possible demise within a century.

Yeah, sure.  Idiot.

Thinking about sacrifice

Don't ask me why, but I started thinking in the shower last night about the ubiquity of sacrifice to the gods as a key religious impulse around the world.   What do academics think is the motivation for lots of people around the globe having started to believe that gods need or desire sacrificial offerings?

Which led me to review again what Freud thought about this, and I was reminded about his obsession with boys wanting to displace their fathers sexually.   (Seriously, has anyone ever psychoanalysed Freud as to why he would think this was a universal feeling?   I mean, really:  just how many men in this modern era of on-line, public, anonymous, confession ever said they felt this way.   Or would Freud say that it's an unconscious desire, of course most boys and young men don't recognise it?)

Anyway, I read an essay by someone who pointed out Freud being influenced by a contemporary writer, William Robertson Smith, who wondered a lot about the idea of sacrifice in early societies.  Here's a key part of the essay:

In “Totem and Taboo”, Freud followed Smith’s argument closely but focused more explicitly on the killing of the totem animal, interpreting this not only as the symbolic murder of the god but as the derivative of a primal group parricide motivated by the desire of the young males to gain sexual possession of the females of the clan, who all belonged to the father (as the dominant male) and who were necessarily their mothers. Freud was indeed reiterating a principle first articulated by Smith himself (albeit in a footnote) — that there existed a double taboo which was breached in the primal sacrificial act: not to kill one’s fellow clansman and not to commit incest. Smith had written:

“I believe that in early society (and not merely in the very earliest) we may safely affirm that every offence to which death or outlawry is attached was primarily viewed as a breach of holiness; e.g. [sic] murder within the kin, and incest, are breaches of the holiness of tribal blood, which would be supernaturally avenged if men overlooked them.” (15)

This principle was to lie at the heart of Freud’s psychoanalytic theories. The abiding interest lies in its use as by Freud to explain the origins of morality, culture and religion. The totem meal was “perhaps mankind’s earliest festival” and was thus “a repetition and a commemoration of this memorable and criminal deed, which was the beginnings of so many things — of social organisation, of moral restrictions and of religion” (16). Ambivalence both motivated the killing of the father and induced remorse:

“…we need only suppose that the tumultuous mob of brothers were filled with the same contradictory feelings which we can see at work in the ambivalent father-complexes of our children and of our neurotic patients. They hated their father, who presented such a formidable obstacle to their craving for power and their sexual desires; but they loved and admired him too… A sense of guilt made its experience, which in this case coincided with the remorse felt by the whole group. The dead father became stronger than the living one had been… They revoked their deed by forbidding the killing of the totem, the substitute for the father; and they renounced its fruits by resigning their claim to the women who had now been set free. They this created out of their filial sense of guilt the two fundamental taboos of totemism, which for that very reason inevitably corresponded to the two repressed wishes of the Oedipus complex. Whoever contravened those taboos became guilty of the only two crimes with which primitive society concerned itself.” (17)

I don't know, Freud may be almost nuttily wrong about the whole Oedipus complex, but before I read this essay (that is, while I was still in the shower), it did occur to me - is part of the unrealised motivation for animal sacrifice to gods an ambivalence about killing animals for food in the first place?

I mean, it would seem that the closer modern urban people get to seeing how the animals we eat are raised and killed, the more they sense guilt about the process.  In older societies, slaughter wasn't hidden in the way it is now, and people surely (like us) thought young animals in particular were cute and endearing.  Yet people gotta eat, and lamb tastes better than mutton, and so eat animals they did.

Is part of the unconscious motivation behind the idea of sacrificing animals to God or gods that it's a way to deal with the guilt of killing animals to survive?   If the gods take part in the meal as well, then who can blame humans for having to do this to survive?

It's an idea, anyway.  Perhaps an eccentric modern one, since I don't know that anyone has really detected an ancient sense of regret in killing animals for food.   The idea of respect for a wild animal killed, yes.  Or maybe people just haven't been looking for it.  And I can use the Freudian trump card - it's an unconscious thing, but it was still there!

Reading more broadly on sacrifice, it's interesting to see that anthropological and psychological consideration of this is still a pretty active field.   I found two broad surveys of the topic that were pretty good:  one, the Encyclopaedia Britannica  entry Theories of the Origin of Sacrifice;  and another is a good essay by a Jungian psychoanalyst:   The Psychology of Sacrifice.   (I don't find the Jungian comments all that helpful really, but the survey of what others have theorised is very succinct yet comprehensive.)

All grist for the mill for my forthcoming Guide to Life for Aimless Young Adults.

Update:   I feel I should give a shout out to Buddhism for being the big religion for which, from the start, animal sacrifice was criticised and banned.  According to one Buddhist website:

One of the central rites of Brahmanism during the Buddha's time was the sacrifice (yàga)  which sometimes included the slaughter of animals. The Vedas describe in detail how these sacrifices should be conducted if the gods were to find them acceptable.  Some of these rites could be very elaborate and very expensive. The Tipiñaka records one sacrifice conducted by a brahmin named Uggatasarãra during which `five hundred bulls, five hundred steers and numerous heifers, goats and rams were brought to the sacrificial post for slaughter' (A.IV,41). The Buddha criticized these bloody rituals as being cruel wasteful and ineffective (A.II,42). He maintained that those who conduct sacrifices make negative kamma for themselves even before they have set up the sacrificial post, ignited the sacred fire and given instructions for the animals to be slaughtered (A.IV,42). He repudiated the killing of the animals, the felling of trees to make the sacrificial posts and the threatening and beating of the slaves as they were driven to do the preparations `with tear-stained faces' (A.II,207-8). He also made a plea for such sacrifices to be replaced by charity towards virtuous ascetics and monks (D.I,144).

But I see that animal sacrifice still happens in Tibet, due to the co-existence of old Shamanism with Buddhism:

The issue of animal sacrifice – the “red offering” (dmar mchod) performed in some Buddhist communities across the Tibetan cultural area in the Himalaya – has received considerable critical attention. Surveys such as that conducted by Torri (2016) have shown that, according to common belief, local deities prefer red offerings such as blood and meat1. In Sikkim – a former Buddhist kingdom and now an Indian state in the southern foothills of the Himalaya – nearly every mountain, hilltop, lake and river is said to be populated with supernatural beings. They play an important role in daily life, and need to be worshipped. Some of these entities were tamed and converted to Buddhism by Tibetan masters (Balikci-Denjongpa 2002 and Balikci 2008, p. 85). However, of course the taming of supernatural entities has not only been a feature undertaken by Buddhist masters who came to this region, but is also an important task of village religion itself. Village people often consult a Buddhist master and a shamanic expert simultaneously. As Balikci notes: “The Sikkimese shamans are the ritual specialists in charge of keeping good relations with the households’ and the lineages’ ancestral gods”  

And it seems that one of most excessive animal sacrifice festivals (not counting Eid, I suppose) happens in Nepal, but as a Hindu thing:

Despite outcry from animal rights groups, a festival widely considered to be the largest mass-slaughter of animals on Earth happened in Nepal this week, according to the Guardian. The two-day Gadhimai festival has been held every five years for the last 260 years in the village of Bariyarpur, about 100 miles (160 km) south of Kathmandu, where it attracts  thousands of Hindu worshippers from Nepal and neighboring India. Amid tight security, the festival opened on Tuesday with the ritual slaughter of a goat, rat, chicken, pig, and a pigeon, as a local shaman also offered blood taken from five points on his body. After this initial killing, around 200 butchers brandishing sharpened swords and knives entered the festival arena, a walled area larger than a football field, leading in several thousand buffalo. In the days prior, Indian authorities and volunteers seized dozens of animals at the border from unlicensed traders and pilgrims, but this effort failed to stop the massive flow of animals to the festival.

 Update 2:  Maybe I read this before, and perhaps even posted a link to it?, but Haaretz in 2016 gave an explanation of how Judaism came to stop doing Passover animal sacrifice after the destruction of the Second Temple, which was the site for a lot of ritual killing:

Jewish families made their way to Jerusalem from throughout Judea and beyond. Once they arrived, they purchased their sacrifice from one of the city’s many baby goat/sheep vendors and waited for Passover. On Passover eve, a representative from each family took their purchase to the Temple. At the appointed time, the gates would open and the representatives – each with bleating sacrifice in hand – filed in and lined up in front of one of the many priests, who themselves were lined up in rows in the Temple courtyard. Once the courtyard was full, the gates were closed and the mass slaughter began.

Each representative handed his goat or sheep to a priest who killed the animal, carefully collecting its blood into a bowl. Once the bowl was full, it was transferred to the priest beside him. From him it went to the one beside him, until, like a conveyor belt, it reached another priest who doused the altar with its bloody contents. After the blood has been completely collected, the priest handed the now-dead animal to the representative, who took it and hung it on a hook. Levites came over and removed the skin and innards, which were taken to the altar and burned. Once this was done, the representatives each took their dead goat or sheep and left the Temple compound to find their families. Then each family roasted the meat on a pomegranate branch and ate it in a festive night barbecue.

Since the Temple compound – about the size of 15 football fields – wasn’t large enough to fit all the pilgrims in at once, this process was repeated three times....

The task of adapting Judaism to its new Temple-less reality fell to Rabban Gamaliel II, head of the Jewish Assembly – the Sanhedrin. With regard to the Passover sacrifice, Gamaliel decreed that the sacrifice should continue in family homes, with each family sacrificing its own goat or sheep. 

However, other rabbis believed that the Passover sacrifice, like all the other sacrifices, could only be conducted by the priests in the Temple and that, like the other sacrifices, should not be conducted until the Messiah comes and the Temple is rebuilt. 

Some Jews followed Gamaliel and continued to sacrifice goats and sheep in their homes on Passover; others didn’t and saw the practice as apostasy. 

Within about two generations, the practice ceased when the anti-sacrifice camp assumed control and threatened to excommunicate those who practiced it. So, sometime in the second century C.E., Jews stopped the practice of sacrificing baby goats and sheep on Passover. Until recently, that is. 

Don't worry, teenagers - it will all become (sorta) clear in 40 years time!

Further to my recent post about how to motivate aimless seeming teenagers, I noticed this (arguably) less-than-useful article last night:

Scientists pinpoint the age you're most likely to find meaning in life 

Guess what the answer is:

Interviews with 1,042 people aged 21 to more than 100 years old reveal that people tend to feel like their lives have meaning at around age 60. That’s the age at which the search for meaning is often at it’s lowest, and the “presence” of meaning is at it’s highest, according to a new paper published this week in the journal Clinical Psychiatry.

 

If you’re a twenty-something ruminating about your life’s purpose, that may seem like a long time to wait. But take heart: If this study tells us anything, it’s that the ennui-fueled search for meaning in your early life is normal, and, even after 60, it doesn’t actually ever end. Instead, people may readjust how they derive purpose as they age.

Well, I'm looking forward to next year now, when I peak in life meaningfulness...

Good tweet, Adam

The next Olympics could be...problematic

By the way, has Trump yet tweeted sympathy and support for Russia in light of their ban?

A "Guide to Life" for young adults?

Well that's a co-incidence:  I have been wondering lately the very question posed at Slate:  What to say to motivate your aimless teen.

I wouldn't be the first parent to wonder - why does my teenager seem to be feeling uncertain and not have any passionate interest in anything?   Even what's she's talented at doesn't really move her much.

Why doesn't she know more fundamental general knowledge about the history of the world?   At least my son read books for a while, before his phone took control; and he watched Horrible Histories and has some knowledge of the big wars and revolutions.   [As a (perhaps sexist) generalisation, do girls have less interest in history because they don't enjoy imagining themselves in the midst of dangerous adventure in the same way that boys do?]   And don't speak to me about religion or philosophy - of the latter she knows nothing, but she's had exposure to Christianity of both Catholic and Protestant hue, and even still sometimes accompanies a friend to one of the "let's put on a show!" brand of evangelical suburban church.  But she openly says at home that she suspects there's nothing behind the curtain, so to speak.

I suggested last night that she should try the ideas in Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical Reason:   she said I may as well have just said that in a foreign language, for all the sense it made.

So yeah, I'm feeling the need for a Guide for Life type book for this type of young adult.  Of course, this is what Jordan Peterson's recent career is made out of, but he's full of waffle and rubbish such as curing his depression by eating just meat - he's not someone I trust to be imparting information and common sense.

And it can't be long - it needs to be relatively succinct.

If I can't find one, and I doubt that something that would have my seal of approval exists, I should write it myself. Getting teenagers to read it would be the challenge.   It would have to come in multimedia format for a phone, too...

Climate change and fish

News from Alaska (and sorry the extract is long, but it's important to understand it is not an overfishing problem per se):

In an unprecedented response to historically low numbers of Pacific cod, the federal cod fishery in the Gulf of Alaska is closing for the 2020 season.

The decision, announced Friday, came as little surprise, but it's the first time the fishery has closed due to concerns over low stock.

"We're on the knife's edge of this over-fished status," North Pacific Fishery Management Council member Nicole Kimball said during talks in Anchorage.

It's not over-fishing to blame for the die-off, but rather, climate change.

Warming ocean temperatures linked to climate change have wreaked havoc on a number of Alaska's fisheries in recent years, decimating stocks and jeopardizing the livelihoods of fishermen and locals alike who rely on the industry.

A stock assessment this fall put Gulf cod populations at a historic low, with "next to no" new eggs, according to Steven Barbeaux, a research biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who authored the report. At their current numbers, cod are below the federal threshold that protects them as a food source for endangered steller sea lions. Once below that line, the total allowable catch goes to zero. In other words, the fishery shuts down.

Up until the emergence of a marine heatwave known as "the blob" in 2014, the stock of cod in the Gulf of Alaska was doing well. But the heat wave caused ocean temperatures to rise 4-5 degrees. Young cod started dying off, scientists said.

"A lot of the impact on the population was due to that first heat wave that we haven't recovered from," Barbeaux said during an interview last month. Following the first heat wave, cod numbers crashed by more than half, from 113,830 metric tons in 2014 to 46,080 metric tons in 2017.
The decline was steady from there.

Too close to Christmas...

I'm going to be really busy the next couple of weeks, which means I should post less, or at least at night rather than during the day.  But the world is such a hot mess at the moment (literally, and socio-politically), it's hard not to read and be appalled by the news. Such as this:

*  the warning about rapidly increasing, low oxygen dead zones in the oceans got a lot of publicity, which is good.   I think one report noted that some sea creatures do OK in naturally low oxygen waters, such as squid.  "Well", I thought "that's probably good news for sea turtles."  But then I remembered that their gender mix is being changed hugely by increased heat around the eggs, so maybe things aren't even great for them...

* I saw Insiders yesterday, and they spent a lot of time on how this Morrison government considers itself unaccountable - if they don't want to answer a question, they just refuse to answer and move on, and journalists pretty much give up and move on too. 

This is very true, and a part of the increased authoritarian bent of the Right - but it all started under Tony Abbott and the refusal to disclose anything about how boats on the high seas were being dealt with.  And that was Scott Morrison too, citing "operational matters."  

He got away with it then, and he's getting away with it now.   A Newspoll overnight at least shows he has a negative approval rating (48% disapprove to 45% approve), which is something to at least be grateful for; but the government overall is at 52%/48% TPP, in a period where I think it's looked pretty crook.  Mind you, I still think we are in a "let's ignore politics" period still after the last election.

Oh - and Labor is still looking internally terribly conflicted on climate change and coal.   It needs to get a grip on that issue fast.

*  Republicans continue to be disgusting alternative reality nutters  taking lines they are specifically told are false and dangerous by their own national intelligence services.

For one of my stupider readers

I bet it was JC who made an anonymous comment here recently that current models couldn't be accurate because models in the 1970's said there would be global cooling.

Obviously displaying the continual self-imposed ignorance of a "it'll all be OK" lukewarmer/denier, it would appear he has never read the 2008 paper in the American Meteorological Society which explained exactly what was going on in climate research at the time, a field which was in its absolute infancy.   It contains this graph:

There was, basically, exactly one year in the early 1970's in which "cooling" papers were dominant;  and some of the very same people who featured with cooling warnings quickly realised their mistake.

Stephen Schneider's explanation appeared in a autobiography he wrote, but this is it in a nutshell:

Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, recalls those stories well. "I was one of the ones who talked about global cooling," he says. "I was also the one who said what was wrong with that idea within three years."  Schneider coauthored a 1971 article in the journal Science about atmospheric aerosols—floating particles of soil dust, volcanic ash, and human-made pollutants. His research suggested that industrial aerosols could block sunlight and reduce global temperatures enough to overcome the effects of greenhouse gases, possibly triggering an ice age. But he soon realized that he had overestimated the amount of aerosols in the air and underestimated the role of greenhouse gases.  "Back then this science was so new, so theoretical, it was really hard to sort it out," he says. He and other early climate researchers say they did not predict a global cooling trend but simply suggested the possibility. Evidence suggests that average worldwide temperatures did decrease between the 1940s and the 1970s. Some climatologists partially attribute the temporary cooling trend to industrial smog, which has since been overcome by the effects of growing greenhouse emissions and, ironically, by clean-air laws that have reduced atmospheric particulates. "Science is a self-correcting institution," Schneider says. "The data change, so of course you change your position. Otherwise, you would be dishonest." 

Having said this, I do agree with the mainstream climate scientists who are concerned with the exaggerations of Extinction Rebellion and others.   Mind you, lukewarmer/deniers already claim a long list of "failed predictions" (including, of course, global cooling) which you have to be completely ignorant to claim as failure at all, so it's completely understandable that some don't want to give any quarter to denialists by siding with them against ER.  After all, exaggeration or not, climate scientists would nearly all want ER to be politically successful in their aim for urgent action.   But the reality is, if you are concerned with accuracy, you really do have to point out exaggerations when they appear. 

There was a good thread about this on Twitter, starting here:

A bit of floating solar boosterism

Grist has an article about a floating solar cell array on a retention pond in New Jersey, and talks about other places where floating solar is being used.

It is not that big an array, as it is a pretty small body of water, yet it is still said to be America's largest.

I presume America's great lakes are far to susceptible to wild ocean-wave like conditions to consider floating solar on them, but they must have lots of other smaller lakes and dams where it is possible.

I still say it is an obviously good idea.