No contact greetings

Yeah, I thought the "Wuhan foot bump" greeting video looked pretty cool, but it is only practical for people with no balance issues who are quick on their feet.   Old people at risk of a hip fracture just shouldn't try it.

I'm sure lots of people must have been saying it on social media, but the obvious replacement for the handshake greeting should be the Japanese bow.   (I see that someone suggested the Vulcan hand greeting, but not everyone can easily get their hand to do that quickly - including, if I recall correctly, Leonard Nimoy!)  

A propos of nothing...

This turned up on Youtube suggestions for me, and it was surprisingly interesting - how they make Tabasco sauce.  It is a huge enterprise, still family run, with production methods pretty much unchanged, and all from the same place in Louisiana since it was first made 150 years ago:


A bit of personal history: my first exposure to it was when I was perhaps 8, and my sister's then husband, from America, put a few drops of it into some tomato sauce which we were eating with some prawns. It couldn't have been much, because I thought it nice, even though (of course) as a child of 1960's Australia, I had no previous exposure to chilli in any form.

More Singapore love

And in Twitter comments following that:

Buttigieg and the 9 yr boy (not a scandal)

So, Pete Buttigieg has dropped out of the race.   As I have said, I never saw much of him and didn't work out why a lot of journalists and Democrat sympathisers I follow on Twitter found him so annoying.

I also had missed, until this weekend when I saw it on a Conan O'Brien sketch (which is sort of funny)....




that Democrats had set themselves up for conservative outrage by getting Pete to respond to a 9 year old boy who wanted help to "tell the world" he is gay.  

Maybe I haven't been following conservatives sites closely enough, but it's pretty remarkable that there wasn't some sort of meltdown about this.      

And, to be perfectly honest, it's not unreasonable to have misgivings about it.   Not so much  about Buttigieg's supportive response - he could hardly say anything other than what he did -  but more about the world view of modern liberal identity politics, wherein it is taken as a given that a 9 year old has a sufficient understanding of sexuality such that it is entirely natural that he or she should already have picked out a sexual identity.    

Now, I don't doubt that the following statements are true:

*  there are kids whose parents suspect from a young age will be gay when they grow up;
*  there are kids who know from a young age that they are "different";
*  there are people who work out that, in hindsight, some childhood feelings were consistent with their older sexual feeling;

and yet I still think it's only sensible for adults and parents to teach pre-pubescent kids to be cautious about thinking they fully understand themselves in the matter of sexual and emotional attraction and attachment before their body and life experience is even close to that of an adult yet.   

To my mind, people of any political persuasion should be able to live with something like this as a response:  

"We love you regardless of who you may want to love and be with; and we will support you if anyone gives you a hard time over your identity in future.   But as for deciding on a sexuality identity to tell "the world" right now:   to be honest, both your body and emotions should  be given a bit more time to develop before you say to everyone that you understand yourself in that aspect.  At this stage of your life, worry more about studying hard, treating other people well and just being a good person.   That's what important now."

PS:  I see that they are saying Buttigieg gave up because he was getting no traction with black voters whatsoever.   Given their relative conservatism regarding homosexuality, why on Earth did the people managing the campaign event think it would be helpful to highlight a 9 year old bringing up the topic? 

PPS:  I think I can even claim some support for my take on the matter from this article, written by gay science writer Jesse Bering in Scientific American back in 2010 (and which I had read before, but forgotten) on research into "prehomosexual" behaviour in children.  

"Filthy foreigners bring in disease" is very big at Sinclair Davidson's Catallaxy

Basically, I don't understand why, in order to maintain their reputation, RMIT doesn't tell Sinclair Davidson that he can't run a blog for appalling, racist conservatives and still work at a university that hosts a lot of foreign students.    

Look at these examples:  he doesn't expand on it in the post itself, but it is clear from the post title that Catholic conservative-in-denial CL thinks Trump is on a winner with corona virus because he will be able to play it as a case of "filthy foreigners bring in disease":

Good luck: Disease-o-crats campaign on open bug borders 

(I won't link - you can google it if you want.)

But even worse is this comment in a thread (which is fully supported by other regulars) by another crusty Catholic, who even has an Asian wife (probably Filipino - so she's OK, she's Catholic.)

The World Health Organisation is utterly useless. It is run by palookas like that Rudd sheila for Pete’s sake! … who cannot even spell “honest”, let alone know what it means. The executive board is 34 nations – they include Sudan, Djibouti, Tanzania, Zambia, Burkina Faso (say what?), probably Haiti and a whole lot of other failed tribes of no consequence – directing how the civilised world should keep is people healthy. Fabulous – they are barely literate, you can forget them....

The demanding unpleasant little Irish p00ve from Qantas will have been throwing his weight around Canberra on Week One protecting his airline’s cash flow and his massive pay packet, followed by a conga line of tourist associations, the retail traders representative, heads of commerce flogging insurance and bank loans, the English language schools and universities who rely on their Asian students for their very survival, and so on. Not one of these people has any interest in public health protection – its someone else’s problem. They will lie handsomely to safeguard their corner.

Further, we have a government and a bureaucracy that is still shipping in illegal Centrelinkers from North Africa, the Middle East and other primitive places, people who routinely have a bog in the street and who don’t bother bathing. When they spit everywhere and shove their dirty mitts into the bowl from which the reffo next to them takes his next mouthful – and contract a gutful of Corona Virus 123 by hundreds – these public servants will ship ’em in by the truckload to the same hospital wards as Australians, because diversity is our strength.

 Sinclair even appears in the comments thread, with apparent intention to mock the catastrophising of the fatality of the disease, but not to tell anyone that they are racist pigs.

Not good enough for RMIT, I would have hoped. 

Sounds a fair summary

PS:  I acknowledge that there is not likely to be any easy, face saving way for the US to get out of Afghanistan.   But it seems pretty clear that this attempt at such looks doomed from the start, and that Republicans supporting it reeks of political hypocrisy.   (Obama doing something similar would have been the end of American greatness and a shameful capitulation to the "real" terrorists.)

Worse than usual

I presume this photo from Trump's "we're getting out of Afghanistan, I'm terrific for that; and by the way, coronavirus is not a hoax after all" press conference has had some filtering:

but it's still true that he has been looking exceptionally tired at recent appearances, no doubt caused by the trip to India followed by flying to some completely unnecessary and self indulgent "maintain the cult" rallies.   In fact, given the huge rally he must have known the dangerous nationalist Modi had organised for him, does Trump ever go anywhere other than to places where he knows his elephantine ego will be massaged?  

Anyway, here's a shot from a video of the same presser:

As lots of people have been noticing, his right eye is much more squinty than his left eye over the last few days.  And he did sound tired.

I cannot fathom how his supporters (or those who make excuses for him, or just keep silent) can stomach the way he tries to turn every single topic into ridiculous self praise.  I also have some sympathy to the critics of media who point out that mainstream media reporting, by editing down his statements, are inadvertently constructing a greater coherence to his media performances than what you get from viewing longer stretches.

On a cheerier note, kinda:  the Colbert 8 minute piece he did with Elizabeth Warren earlier this week really shows her as very likeable.  She looks great for her age, too:



I really think a Sanders/ Warren ticket would stand a chance...  

Update:

Update 2:  Oh, he's back into dictator talk -

Update 3:  I thought this was a "funny cos it's true" take by some random person on the net:

Something about this makeup, demeanor and expression here looks terrible. He looks like he was pampered by a mortician.

  

Why Warren has the right idea

Another great piece at Vox by David Roberts, arguing that the sickness in American politics, caused by the American brand of conservatism, is a systemic one about which only Elizabeth Warren seems to have clearly thought about.

His summary of the problem is not new, but I like it nonetheless:

As I have recounted at great length in other posts, over the last several decades, conservatives have waged war on social and political trust, calling into question the fairness and independence of almost every major US institution from journalism to academia to science. They have created parallel institutions of their own, meant to support their factional interests. And they have relentlessly cast “libs” as an enemy within — an alien, hostile, and ultimately illegitimate force.

As a result, a large faction of the country has descended into paranoia and conspiracy theories, fighting intensely against the basic rules, norms, and post-war assumptions of American life. And because that faction has successfully rendered all political fights — even fights over basic facts — as vicious, zero-sum partisan struggles, another large faction of the country has simply tuned out, coming to regard politics and public life generally as corrupt and fruitless. Americans’ trust in their institutions and in one another is at record lows. 

This serves the right’s purposes. If all common identity is dissolved, all transpartisan facts and norms, then there is no longer any ability to communicate across factional lines. What remains is raw power struggle. That is the milieu in which an identitarian like Donald Trump feels at home; witness his purging of public servants he deems insufficiently loyal. 

But it works against the left’s purposes. The left needs for voters to believe that effective, responsive governance is possible — that we can, in fact, have nice things. The left needs social and political trust. Without them, collective action for collective benefit, the left’s stock in trade, becomes impossible. 

This is the left’s challenge in the US: how to break out of the doom loop and get on a trajectory of better governance and rising trust.

 As to the difficulty of addressing this, politically, you should go read the rest of the article.

COVID-19, explained

Someone just cut and pasted this on twitter, and I can't see whose account it is from.   Probably for the best:

American cuisine can be...excessive

Look, even though I can enjoy a good steak, a 250 to 300 g cut is plenty.   But the American way with meat can be pretty over the top and look distinctly unappealing.  And what is it with the meat on the rib?  Looks like it is charcoal:

I vote Gore

Talk about your trivial First World problems, but The Guardian has an article speculating on who a good replacement director should be for the next Indiana Jones film, now that Steven Spielberg has dropped out.

I don't know anything about most directors on the list, but I agree with the section on Gore Verbinski:  he is extremely talented with protracted action sequences, and I would love him to have a go at an Indiana Jones.

The success of the film, however, will be extremely dependent on its screenplay, and who it sets up to taking over the hat.   The idea flown in the last film obviously didn't pan out.  (Not that it was as bad a film as everyone makes out.)

I am not at all convinced that it is a good idea to be making another one at all.  Harrison Ford looks very old now, and films in which ageing actors are trying to appear too active often look a bit pathetic.   (There are many examples in recent years.) 

BUT I STILL SAY THIS:   the perfect last appearance for Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones would be for him to be one of the astronauts going into the Mothership at the end of Close Encounters.

A fruity observation

I usually notice what fruit and vegetables are good each season.   A couple of summers ago, I think it was, stone fruit seemed to have an exceptionally nice season.  After that, maybe a year or so ago, we seemed to have a flood of cheap but good quality pineapples.

This summer, I have often been impressed with - tomatoes.   I don't know who is growing them now, and how they have got them to develop better flavour and colour, but I reckon tomatoes have been really good, and often not very expensive, this summer.

Back to your more important reading, now.

Possible outcomes of COVID-19 taking off in the USA

While this guy bemoans (rightly) the politicisation of COVID-19 by Trump, he doesn't go on to note that it's possible that the result of the gullibility of believing Donald and his conspiracy mongering mates might be a reduction in the population of Donald Trump supporters (seeing the virus is most deadly in the older demographic):

As for a more, slightly paranoid, pondering about what might happen:

Update:   Trump calms a troubled nation:

Google and loneliness

I got given a couple of Google Home Minis (now called Google Nest Mini) for Christmas, and I have set one up in the bedroom, and one in the bathroom.  

I don't do all that much with them:  listening to radio streams is one useful thing (so I no longer need to use a portable radio in the bathroom to listen to the ABC while shaving in the morning);  asking it to find my mobile phone by making it ring is another useful feature, as is asking for the day's weather.   I've played guessing games, or quiz games, and asked it to play named songs from Spotify too.   I see that you can also buy screen "hubs" for the system too, as well as lights controlled by it.   Also a combined pack with a Googlecast for the TV with a mini speaker too, presumably to help make searching for content easier.

Despite the limited use to which I have put mine, using it has made me think that it must have considerable potential to help older people fight loneliness, and cope with technology in the easiest way possible.   Having a voice respond to a request is surely a more psychologically comforting thing than poking at a screen.  

I would guess that some psychology department somewhere is already doing a study along these lines:  perhaps setting up Google Minis in half of a retirement village and training the residents how to use it, and comparing their mood after 6 months to those residents who don't have access to the service?

I would not be surprised to find it has a positive influence.  

Guilt increasing

Yeah, I have been aware of this for some time (and although the figures are for America, I think it is similar here):

One in five pounds of beef sold come from Holstein or Jersey cows, which frequently are decommissioned dairy cows past their prime. Almost all of the meat from dairy cows is ground (it’s generally not marbled enough or muscled enough for steaks) and made into inexpensive hamburger for food service. So, it’s our consumption of milk and cheese that ultimately fuels the avalanche of burgers at fast-food restaurants.

I think young male calves from dairy production often face the same fate.

When buying cheap mince from Coles or Woolworths, it usually does cross my mind how it is from cows, which I like to think don't suffer much in the milk production phase of their life.  (Although they do get calves taken away from them.)

At least steak from adult cattle is from an animal that had a pretty good life.

While I enjoy a good steak, I can imagine a life in which I give up beef.   I can't bear the idea of giving up on cheese, though.  Which reminds me - why don't we hear more about the question to make "cow-free dairy products"?   The company is apparently selling (on a very small scale, by the sounds) an ice cream product, but it attracts very little attention.

Something good comes from an (almost) pandemic

France 24 reports:

China on Monday declared an immediate and “comprehensive” ban on the trade and consumption of wild animals, a practice believed responsible for the deadly coronavirus outbreak.

The country’s top legislative committee approved a proposal “prohibiting the illegal wildlife trade, abolishing the bad habit of overconsumption of wildlife, and effectively protecting the lives and health of the people,” state television reported.

Previous temporary bans have been put in place, including after the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus killed hundreds of people in China and Hong Kong in 2002-03 and was also traced to wild animal consumption.

That prohibition was short-lived, however, and conservationists have long accused China of tolerating a cruel trade in wild animals as exotic menu items or for use in traditional medicines whose efficacy is not confirmed by science.

Sounds as if the government might be serious about keeping this as a long term ban.  

Rules for Life (continued)

I mentioned my ever-so-slowly-compiling Rules for Life previously today, and TimT seems to have been missing them.   (My readers really are inattentive at times!)   Anyway, it did remind me that I had not added the important one about witchcraft.  So the update:

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.
6.  If an activity hurts a lot and causes inflammation - stop doing it.  Permanently, if it keeps hurting.
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) at times - don't believe the irony.   Just don't get into a relationship of any kind with them.

and the new one I remembered today:

8.  Do not take holidays in countries where witchcraft or sorcery is still an offence on the books.   It basically means you can be arrested for looking the wrong way at someone.  

I'll have enough for a book any year now...

Update:  I think this one should be added, too:

9.  If you like mashed potato, buy and use a potato ricer.   No - just do it.  The uniformly smooth results for every future batch of mash will give you pleasure for the rest of your life.   

Misogynists upset with Coalition

Sinclair Davidson has an unsubtle view of politics in which he thinks the winning party should crush all Opposition under its heal and never concede to it on anything.   He was, for example, probably the only academic in the land who thought the asinine and highly partisan Bronwyn Bishop was a good Speaker in the House under the Abbott government:  a truly eye roll inducing attitude for an educated observer of Parliament at the time.

So, naturally, he is upset with this (somewhat surprisingly uniform, but pleasing) vote yesterday:

The Coalition government has supported Labor’s motion in the Senate to call for men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt to be stripped of her Order of Australia award over her comments on last week’s horrendous murder-suicide in Brisbane.

The successful motion puts more pressure on the Council for the Order of Australia to remove the AM Arndt received in the Australia Day honours.

The Senate motion was carried 55-2, with only One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts voting against it.

It said Arndt’s comments “are reckless and abhorrent”.

“The values that underpin Ms. Arndt’s views on this horrific family violence incident are not consistent with her retaining her Order of Australia,” it said.

And look at the misogynist commenters agreeing how "disgraceful" this vote was.

Seriously, a bunch of people who routinely speculate that the downfall of the West began with women getting the vote (I'd like to know how often they say this in front of their wives - those of them that have or still retain wives) should take a hard look at their own attitudes and realise why they are ignored by the politicians they vote for.

I bet Arndt is smarting over this, too.  If only she could be "driven too far" to drop out of public commentary and culture warring.

Another important woman in science I'm only just hearing about...

At Nature, a review of a biography about a woman astronomer (Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin) who was big in her field, but not famous in the public mind:

In 1925, Payne was the first person to be awarded a PhD in astronomy at Radcliffe College, at the time the women’s branch of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her thesis on stellar atmospheres is her greatest contribution: she related the line patterns in the observed spectra of stars to their physical conditions. She also discovered that hydrogen is the main component of stars, followed by helium. Her discoveries and expertise were eventually recognized with prizes and honours, culminating in a life-achievement lectureship from the American Astronomical Society.

The brilliance of Payne’s thesis was acknowledged by the most prominent US astronomers of the early twentieth century: her supervisor, Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory; and Henry Norris Russell at Princeton University in New Jersey. But both disagreed that hydrogen is the main component of stars. She based her theory on painstaking analysis of the large cache of stellar spectra in the Harvard collection. It was informed by the predictions of Indian physicist Meghnad Saha’s theory of ionization, which relates the observed spectrum of a stellar atmosphere (assuming it is a gas in thermal equilibrium) to its temperature, pressure and composition.

Her conclusion went against a view widely espoused by prominent astronomers, including Arthur Eddington: that stars are made up of essentially the same elements as Earth (silicon, carbon, iron and so on). In response to this criticism, and because she was anxious to get her results published, Payne downplayed her finding as a possible error. Russell was later credited with the discovery, having reached the same result by different means. Payne’s role stayed hidden from the wider scientific consciousness for several decades.

It doesn't sound like she was very likeable at a personal level, though:

I met Payne in the mid-1970s. I remember her as a stern, chain-smoking presence stalking the halls of the observatory: she scolded me for being late for a meeting (recently arrived from Italy, I regarded being precisely on time as impolite). After reading Moore’s well-researched book, I realized that she was a complex figure with whom I can empathize despite being two generations younger and from a different background. A committed scientist and mentor to a new generation, she successfully juggled career and family with a love of the arts and world travel.

Her autobiography (published privately as The Dyer’s Hand in 1979, and publicly as Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin in 1984), is worth a read for its personal view of her multifaceted life and her interaction with observatory colleagues, including the female ‘computers’ who processed astronomical data. I also recommend for its immediacy her 1968 interview for the American Institute of Physics oral-history programme, conducted by Harvard astronomer and historian Owen Gingerich (see go.nature.com/37nm0vr). It captures her essential briskness and rare ability to talk in complex and nuanced sentences.

I expect Graeme (who has argued, from God's knows what line of reasoning, that planets grow up to be stars, to argue in comments that Arthur Eddington was right all along.) 

Some observations

*  Last night's Foreign Correspondent, about Saudi Arabia's attempt to open up to foreign (well, Western) tourism actually showed the place to be of much more archaeological and geographic interest than I realised.  (Call me ignorant, but I didn't expect some of the mountain-y bits in the country.  I usually just imagine it as all sand dunes with a handful of cities.)   I still don't want to go there, though.   It's one of my Rules of Life:  do not holiday in countries where you can be charged with witchcraft.

*  I really think American pundits spend too much time trying to analyse the potential performance of Presidential candidates.   Polling is difficult in the country, with their voluntary voting and weird system of voter registration into categories that people may not follow on the day anyway;  international and domestic events are quite unpredictable;  and with any luck it would be Trump, who appears to get no sleep anymore and slurs regularly at rallies and speeches, who might have a health crisis before November.  Hence I am cynical about this study, indicating that Sanders can only do win  if he gets a surge of new young voters, and the way people like David Roberts are already certain that with Sanders, who they don't mind, is still bound to lose.

*  That Malaysian king seems pretty considerate, for a king:

By the way, Jason - do you follow that Erin Cook on Twitter?  She seems to combine smart, informed, on the ground commentary on South East Asia together with a fragile personal life in which she is always broke and emotionally just scrapping through.   

*  Oh, and here is some analysis of what is going on in Malaysia at CNA.  It includes this bit:

Professor James Chin, director of the Asia Institute Tasmania at the University of Tasmania, told CNA that Dr Mahathir’s decision to resign on Monday was purely tactical as he never wanted to hand over the baton to PKR’s president Anwar Ibrahim.

He said Dr Mahathir had agreed to the PH succession pact to hand over the premiership to Mr Anwar before the May 2018 polls because he needed the help of PKR, Democratic Action Party (DAP) and Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah) to overthrow former prime minister Najib Razak and his Barisan Nasional coalition.

“Prior to the election, everybody got together because everybody wanted to get rid of Najib. You can’t really hold them to what they agreed on before the election because back in 2018, it was widely understood that Najib had damaged Malaysia because of the 1MDB (1Malaysia Development Berhad) corruption case,” he said.

Prof Chin said the bitter history between Dr Mahathir and Mr Anwar suggested that the succession would never have happened between them.

“The general consensus in Kuala Lumpur is that Anwar will not be prime minister this year or next year and will probably miss his chance to be prime minister in the future as well.

“As long as Mahathir is in charge, he will try to hand over the prime minister position to somebody else,” said Prof Chin.