As Hillary said "what difference does it make?"

I don't quite understand the Australian bipartisan take on an independent inquiry into the origin of the current pandemic, with its big question mark over the role of China.

Doesn't everyone just take it as a given that the Chinese government is not to be entirely trusted in such matters? It's a fantasy to think they would pay reparations for not disclosing details sooner, or trying to cover it up, or whatever they did.   And even if there was something really big to be found  (escape of a bioweapon, for example, which no one serious seems to believe), the rest of the world is more likely to discover that via espionage or secret sources that would never expose themselves in an independent inquiry.

It just seems pretty pointless to me...

The tortilla project

Huh.  I was "cooking" (toasting in a dry frying pan) some pre-made corn totillas the other night  from a Mexican meal kit, and thinking how much I liked them.  I didn't realise that making your own just involves a special cornmeal flour, and water:

Homemade Tortillas Only Take Two Ingredients

Tortillas start with a dough made from regular old tap water and masa harina, a corn flour made from kernels that have been nixtamalized—soaked in an alkaline solution that softens them and makes them easier to digest. Then, those softened kernels are ground into a paste which is dried and sold as masa harina. All you have to do is add hot water to the dried corn to rehydrate—the resulting dough is similar to clay, and it’s quite easy to work with.

This sounds like a cooking experiment worth trying.

Here's a short video by a woman originally from Mexico.  They are simple - although it seems salt should be added too:



Of course, I don't have a tortilla press lying around at home.  Maybe my next birthday present?

I will report in due course.

An odd Buddhist thing

Here's something that I did not know about Buddhism.  (Or some Buddhists.)

I just had someone explaining to me that they would want their death (assuming it is from a terminal  illness) to be according to Buddhist principles, which are that a dying person does not have their close family around the death bed, for concern that it makes them more reluctant to give up their spirit (or consciousness, or whatever.)  Apparently, the Buddhist way is that it is OK to have a couple of Buddhist people who aren't close to you in the room saying prayers, but the family (spouse included) stays outside.   I asked about pain relief, and he said no, Buddhists are supposed to work through the pain as part of the natural order of things.  (!)  Having a clear  mind at the point of death is important as it can affect the metaphysical outcome.  So, no morphine for dying Buddhist cancer sufferers, apparently.

I have no time to check today how widespread within Buddhism this view is.  I do not know well the person who was telling me this, but he seemed to be well into Buddhist belief.   It's certainly pretty unappealing to our Western ideas of the value of close relatives being with their loved one as they die.

I wonder:  I am aware that the Japanese medical system, in certain respects, is much less into pain relief than we are in Australia.   (Endoscopy into the stomach with no twilight sedation;  have to go to a special birth clinic if you expect gas or epidural to give pain relief.)   Is this partly because of Buddhist pain stoicism?

Update:  on the matter of pain relief, here is an extract from a nursing website discussing it in 2003.   The attitude of the person I was speaking to today is very consistent with this:

QUESTION: My patient is a Buddhist with end-stage colon cancer who keeps refusing pain medication. How can I help him manage his pain without infringing on his religious beliefs?

ANSWER: Buddhism is an Eastern religion that's taken root in the United States. Its followers have a unique perspective on pain. Buddhists believe that suffering is part of life, to be expected, and that if a person experiences pain calmly, without becoming emotionally distressed, he can attain greater states of being.

Preparation for death is an important part of Buddhism. Many religious practices focus on the moment of death and the immediate transition to the next life. Because Buddhists believe the mind must be as alert as possible at the time of death, many may decline pain medication or limit its use.

Pain assessment for a Buddhist patient is the same as for any other patient. And, as with any patient, you should understand his pain control goals. A Buddhist patient may wish to withhold or limit the use of drugs that can cause drowsiness, such as opioids, so educate him about pain control choices that won't interfere with his goals. (Explain that drowsiness, for example, subsides after the first few days of opioid use.)

Use the World Health Organization pain ladder to step up analgesic therapy for pain control. Using adjuvant medications, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, lets you give lower doses of opioids and so limit adverse opioid reactions, such as drowsiness. Obtain orders for additional pain relief, even if the patient initially declines it. You'll be ready to provide immediate relief if his pain suddenly intensifies and he changes his mind. Be sure to document his statements about pain control interventions and goals and monitor the effectiveness of any alternative interventions used.

From a Buddhist perspective, pain can be offered as a sacrifice to benefit all beings and has long-term benefits in reaching a higher state of consciousness. Your patient may wish to perform religious rituals such as quiet reflection, chanting, meditation, and prayer. Allow him periods of time alone for these rituals.

Quiet reflection is one of the most important practices for Buddhists. Help the patient create a small space in his room for pictures of religious leaders or ancestors, prayer beads, and flowers. This area helps him focus his energy and can help him manage pain.

Chanting involves quietly repeating specific prayers or mantras many times. Other members of the religious community may participate in this practice with the patient. If he can't chant himself, the family may bring in tapes from services, which you can play for him during the day. An alternative intervention is to encourage him to slowly breathe deeply and focus on inhalation and exhalation.

Meditation can provide the most satisfying and effective religious expression for Buddhists. Allow the patient quiet time to empty his mind of thoughts, or to visualize specific images, depending on his tradition. If possible, put him in a room away from noisy areas, such as the nurses' station. Document your interventions to show that you're individualizing the patient's care plan. Contact religious representatives as requested by the patient.

Gee.  If I was a Western nurse/doctor, I would probably be a tad annoyed that I had to go to a lot more trouble with a Buddhist patient than just dosing them up with enough pain relief that they stop feeling pain.

Movie reviews you didn't need

From my Netflix viewing:

*  tried to watch 1922, based on a Stephen King short story.  It got mostly good reviews, it seems, but I couldn't stick with it.   My biggest issue was with the lead actor:  his Southern drawl was actually hard to understand at many points, and his acting generally seemed to be just "too much".   I didn't like the narration, either.    As I have explained before, I am, generally speaking, a Stephen King sceptic - it is pretty rare that I find any project sourced in his stories to be anything more than just passable.   (The one exception - Kubrick's version of The Shining - King hated.)   This movie did nothing to swing my judgement about his oeuvre.

*  Johnny English Strikes Again:  the first two Rowan Atkinson vehicles were much better than I had expected.  The third outing, form 2018, shows that they have run out of ideas, and Atkinson's acting seemed more desperate and Mr Bean than in the previous ones.   (I am not so keen on the Mr Bean character, incidentally.)  Not offensively bad;  just a case of a franchise out of steam.

*  Veronica:  a Spanish 2017 supernatural thriller, this story of a teenage girl who seemingly has invited a haunting into her apartment by virtue of use of a ouija board with friends is actually pretty good, despite that set up sounding like it owes too much to The Exorcist or various other films whereby teenagers invite supernatural trouble into their lives that way.   It's well directed, and well acted by its mainly young cast.   (The movie made me realise -I think that Spanish movies often do very well with their child actors.   Now that I think about it, it also confirmed another thing about Spanish language films - they have probably the least reluctance of any culture to showing full frontal - adult - male nudity.)   The only slight downside is that it was said to be "based on a true story" which was well known in Spain (because of police involvement), but checking later revealed that the movie had exceptionally few actual similarities to the real story.   Oh well.   

Rare sights in Japan

Just stumbled across a site with links to live Youtube feeds in Japan.

This one which I find the most remarkable:  a near deserted looking entry to Sensoji Temple in Asakusa.   Just the occasional person walking through what is probably the busiest tourist temple in Tokyo:



There is another live feed, with a nice view of the actual temple area, but I can't embed it.  The link is here though.

The relative lack of pedestrians, and depleted vehicle traffic, at the famous Shibuya crossing is also worth a look:

Consequences

A headline at Vox:

Governors say Trump’s disinfectant comments prompted hundreds of poison center calls

Governors from both parties warn that people take what the president says seriously, even if he doesn’t.

He's got an excuse and he's sticking to it

Seems pretty clear that someone around Trump has said "It's easy - whenever you make a silly mistake or want to walk back from something you said, just say you were being 'sarcastic'", and he is sticking to that for all it's worth.   (Which is, nothing.)

 

Excess deaths noted

This is important:

And here is the link to the story:  

According to the FT analysis, overall deaths rose 60 per cent in Belgium, 51 per cent in Spain, 42 per cent in the Netherlands and 34 per cent in France during the pandemic compared with the same period in previous years. Some of these deaths may be the result of causes other than Covid-19, as people avoid hospitals for other ailments. But excess mortality has risen most steeply in places suffering the worst Covid-19 outbreaks, suggesting most of these deaths are directly related to the virus rather than simply side-effects of lockdowns.

Track me

I have downloaded the government's COVID 19 tracking app, with my only concern being how much battery use it takes when you leave Bluetooth on all day every day.   

However, given that I am itching for a new phone amyway, this may be the perfect excuse.  JB Hi Fi should be running some ads along those lines...

A perfect cartoon

I see that in lieu of Trump getting his face on TV at his useless briefings, he has been rage tweeting about the media overnight.  Which led to someone re-tweeting this cartoon.  It is a near perfect summation of why Covid-19 is politically hurting him:

And what about this:

Confirmation of another thing we already knew

It appears from this article that John Roskam, long standing IPA head who can't get a Lib nomination to Parliament when younger twerps in his organisation have, has long been personally invested in attacking the COVID-19 semi lockdown.

He is a wanker, and a dangerous one at that.

I would still like to know, though, whether he is being prodded by a wealthy donor into aggressively campaigning on this.   Or is it just his own very bad idea?

COVID and graphs

If the COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated anything convincingly, it's that analysing information, in particular with graphs, is rife with potential to mislead.  I guess we all knew that, but still.

I thought this thread on the issue was pretty interesting.  (Link is to a threadreader compilation.)

A brief interlude from other topics...

I have an urge to write about Android and mobile phones.

Every 6 to 12 months I post about how astounded I am about the improvements in mobile phones, especially in low to mid level range where my buying choices have always been.   (Carry an easily breakable $1300 computer in my pocket every day?   No thanks.)

I remain pretty happy with my Moto G5 Plus, but I am a bit puzzled about Android and the way apps seem to rapidly accumulate memory.   My phone has 16GB internal memory, and after my last phone had, what, 4 or 8GB?, this sounded like a luxurious amount which would take a long time to use up. 

However Android apps seem to take up quite ridiculous amounts of memory for what they do.  Photos and video go to the sd card, so they can't be blamed, but my internal memory is now always hovering at about 15 to 15.5GB, meaning I am forever being urged by my phone to delete files and apps I haven't used for a while.

When I check on my phone as to the size of certain apps, I just don't understand why they can take up so much space.   A couple of hundred MB used to be considered an enormous size for a program of any description.  Now, to take an example, the Flipboard app, which I quite like as a sort of news and magazine aggregator, takes up 42 MB plus 179 MB of user data, and 51MB of cache.   I can delete the cache, but I presume I lose my topic preferences if I delete the user data. 

Line, a chat and call app that I sometimes use, but not that often, takes up 220 MB in the app itself, plus has 342MB in user data!  That's huge.   But even the internet browser I like to use now - Brave - takes up 112MB and shows 70MB of user data.   Why so much?

Anyway, this has made me consider a new phone, just for the internal memory increase.   I see that I can now get $399 phones with 128MB of internal memory - again, a huge leap forward in the space of a couple of years. 

I do love Android, and would never consider going to Apple.

But as I say, I still would like to know how Android Apps have become the incredible memory bloat software that they are.

One other thing:   it's really weird what sensors various phone companies choose to put in their phones, and how they can be completely inconsistent across their range.    There are two Moto phones I was considering buying, which until one went on sale recently, were both $399 and both in the same series.  Yet one has NFC capability, and one doesn't.  My current Moto, which is getting up to 2 years old now, had one and I don't think it cost more than $400.

OPPO phones, which are very popular in Asia and my son loves his, at the cheaper end at least, do not seem generally to have NFC (needed to use your phone in lieu of your credit card), and a lot of other cheaper Chinese phones don't have it either.  Yet when I checked the specs on a cheaper OPPO model currently on sale at JB Hi Fi, it does have it. 

Then the other day I wanted to put a compass app on my phone, only to discover it doesn't have the magnetic sensor to allow that.  Websites written years ago say that nearly all phones have it, but not Moto in their midrange.   It seems all OPPO phones in the mid range have it, but even the new Moto with 128GB I am considering buying - a 2019 model - does not.

It is really odd the way companies seem to play around with what they can provide.   All part of the fun of buying Android, though, I guess.  


   

We live in extraordinary times

He also went on about sunlight and heat killing the virus quickly, which led to this (via Hotair):

The really funny part was when he circled back to it later and put Birx on the spot. What do you think, doctor? Think we can scrap the vaccine and hit this virus with a little internal heat and light instead?

I am half expecting Trump to endorse nudism, at least for women, as a protective measure.

Update:  there are going to be many funny tweets about this.  Here's one:

As noted before...

Update:   David Serwer has this right:

A genuine QAnon nutcase on the Gold Coast

I was looking at a Twitter thread about Tom Hanks giving a typewriter to a boy when I saw this:

Unusually, for a nutter, he appears to put his face to his account, which is good in that it gives all of us who live close enough to the Gold Coast to step to the other side of the street if we think we spot him.

Here's his twitter account.  He appears to be as big an un-ironic believer in the most lurid, religiously tinged, American based conspiracy theories as it is possible to be.   I wonder if he is American? 

Jerks worried about bias against uber jerk

Honestly, the cesspit for obnoxious commentators, ageing crank climate change denialists and Trump cult membership has become the most risible joke on the Australian internet.   I offer as proof a post by uber Catholic CL in which he expresses concern about bias in The Australian for the biggest and most obnoxious jerk to come to the nation's attention in at least a decade.  And nearly every comment following agrees with him.   Many are willing to suggest blame on the police, even though the full details of how the deaths happened are not yet 100% clear.  (As far as I can tell, though, the police and stopped vehicle were in the emergency lane, and the truck that killed then did veer from a normal lane into the emergency lane, suggesting the "medical episode" of the driver may well be behind his actions.)

The Daily Mail, from which CL routinely gets his news, gives a lengthy history of Richard Pusey's history of awful, sometimes criminal, behaviour; yet this is the guy they decide to go all "hey, let's be fair" about?

I think there are two threads of motivation here:   first, lots of people at that place, from Sinclair Davidson down, hate the Victorian Police in particular with a passion, so of course they are inclined to look for a way to blame the police themselves.     Second, just as it has long been clear that a lot of wingnut enthusiasm for Trump is because he gives jerks a thrill when they hear someone at the top of political power talk openly like they wish they could, jerks just feel drawn to defend other jerks.

Update:  there's a comment in the thread by a guy who's avatar is a MAGA cap, who claims to be ex police, which includes this line:

At best, they had a guy in a Porsche turbo doing 140 which isn’t that fast on a quiet freeway

The accident happened late afternoon, not at freaking 3 am.  There's more from MAGA man:

Sure: morally he’s bereft. But legally, and barrister worth his salt will have this guy walking and he will get bail. What threat to the community does he represent?

I note on the ABC, after Pusey's court appearance this morning:

Mr Pusey has been remanded in custody and is expected to reappear in July.

The cap is the label of an idiot.

Tweets worth noting

Making an exception

I'm not generally one to suggest that an opinion writer warrants being dragged out of his office and beaten up on the street by a mob of Leftists, but a tweet like this motivates me strongly to make an exception:

The argument put by this IPA wanker is not new - it's the routine, conspiracy heavy, argument that has been deployed against climate change action and environment protecting regulation generally.  Namely, that you can't believe warnings of danger and harm to human life and nature - because it's really just all a front for enforcing socialism.   

And I am also curious about this paragraph from the article:

It is not surprising then that, far from recommending revolution, the pandemic has reinforced the value of traditional goods. Stay-at-home orders, for example, might not be quite so harsh were more people homeowners than renters of small apartments. The alienation of social distancing might not be so severe were more adults married with children. Expert rule might be more effective had the academy and media class not been engaged in generations-long ideological mission creep. Perhaps borders and self-sufficiency might also have renewed credibility now that globalism has gone viral.

This seems quaintly dogmatically conservative for someone from the IPA:  he seems to be against relaxing planning laws to build whatever developers want;  thinks more people should be married with children; and is dubious about globalism?    Has he run this past Gina Rinehart, given that she doesn't have much of a business left if she can't ship away gigantic chunks of Australian dirt to other parts of the globe.

John Oliver is right

Lots of sites are noting John Oliver's critique of the appalling Fox News/conservative media - Trump feedback loop.   It's particularly sickening to see the patent money-hungry hypocrisy of running one line on the screen and a completely different one within the corporation:

Fox News underestimated the danger of the coronavirus early on but as the death toll mounted, they were behind the scenes suspending non-essential business travel and had their employees cancel in-person meetings and summits. They also encouraged them to conduct business via Skype. According to Oliver, they did this because “they only tend to believe these things on television for money.”