A presidential debate, noted

I happened to see about that last 15 minutes, which was perhaps not quite as full of interruptions as was the first part?   (Certainly, even at the end, it was clear that Trump was the prime interrupter, refusing to follow the rules regarding a two minute statement that was had been agreed to be without interruption.)

Looking at the comments of the Australian based Trump supporters, it seems an uncontroversial opinion that their dumb ass orange hero interrupted too much and was too aggressive.  Many theorised that he wasn't letting Biden hang himself by not allowing him to talk long enough.  

I thought that, in the parts I saw, Biden was doing fine in his language, especially if you make allowances for an old issue with stuttering, which I think does still show itself in occasional vocal hesitations.

It is quite unbelievable that some "two sides" commentators think that neither side won because Biden also cut loose with some personal insults.   I mean, seriously?   Do they think contenders just have to "rise above" the rambling personal aggression of Trump in that context?   

The correct view is that Trump's performance could only possibly have appealed to his already rusted on, beyond all reasoning, culture war fighting, base.    And anyone who claims they were fence sitting and decided to side with Trump after that performance are, with 99% certainty, not being truthful about there ever being a chance that they were going to vote for Biden.

There is no point in saying that Trump won because he "dominated" and would have impressed his base.  His base is not really like rusted on party members of old - they are (in large part) genuine deplorables given permission by their cult leader to finally be open about their worst instincts, and if Trump had gone over and punched Wallace and slapped Biden in the face, they would say they deserved it and still vote for him.   He's their projected revenge figure against, basically, a modern world over which they are losing control.

Biden performed well enough to dispel any genuine concern about his mental acuity, and reinforced his basic humanity, serious approach to issues, and genuine move towards at least trying to not further divide Americans and promote self serving conspiracy based theories damaging to confidence in democracy in the way Trump clearly seeks to.     

So yeah, obviously, Biden was the winner.   It seems most on line polling and the betting market agrees.

10 meters of water!

Science magazine has an interesting article:

Moon safe for long-term human exploration, first surface radiation measurements show

 But I am not sure the details are as encouraging as the headline.  It's about how some recent dosimeters on recent moonlanders have given a more accurate idea as to the amount of radiation astronauts would be exposed to while staying there:

The device measured hourly radiation rates and found that astronauts would be exposed to roughly 200 times the radiation levels as people on Earth, they report today in Science Advances. The dosimeter’s placement inside the Chang’e 4 probe provides partial shielding, much as an astronaut’s spacesuit would to their body, so the findings are quite applicable to human explorers, Wimmer-Schweingruber says.

The measured dose is about five to 10 times what passengers on an intercontinental flight from New York City to Frankfurt, Germany, receive when the plane is above parts of the protective atmosphere, Wimmer-Schweingruber says. Though high for Earth-based standards, radiation is one of the known dangers of spaceflight. NASA is legally prohibited from increasing the risk of its astronauts dying from cancer by more than 3%, and these levels remain below that.

What’s more, the researchers calculated that Moon bases covered with at least 50 centimeters of lunar soil would be sufficient to protect them. A deeper chamber shielded with about 10 meters of water would be enough to protect against occasional solar storms, which can cause radiation levels to spike dramatically. (Between the Apollo 16 and 17 missions, the Sun flared up in a way that could have caused radiation sickness, vomiting, and possibly death had astronauts been unprotected in space at the time.) Such a chamber would need to be reachable within 30 minutes, the amount of advanced warning time that is now possible with monitoring satellites.

Why the heck are they talking about 10 m of water on the moon, as if that's what would be readily available to use for your emergency shelter?   It's going to be a long, long time before there's that much of it available for colonists.

If I recall correctly, Gerard O'Neill's work on L5 colonies used to argue that your would need about 2 to 3 meters of moon dirt packed around one of his gigantic space colonies to provide adequate radiation protection.   Is that the same effect as 10 m of water?  I don't know.   I want to know how much dirt moon stations are going to need to bury their shelters under for an emergency shelter.

Oh - and let's not forget - this need for radiation shielding is one of the key reasons why they may as well be looking at old lava tubes as a place to building a station.   Although, the other thing is, I don't know that there are any near the South pole, which I think is where they think the ice may be?

 

 

More than a hint of hypocrisy

Re the Victorian situation with the decision to use private security for COVID hotel quarantine:  am I the only person who detects strong hypocrisy whenever a Liberal opposition goes nuts about a Labor government using private contractors who turn out to be of dubious quality?   Wasn't the "the public service is coddled and inefficient and we should privatise services for greater efficiency and value for money" political party always keener to use private contractors for the last, um, four decades or so?  

It was the exact same thing with the Rudd insulation program.   The crap, profiteering private sector was the one that caused some deaths, and the true lesson should have been "if you want a job done properly, don't rush it out into the private sector".   (Mind you, I know the insulation job could not have been done by public servants.  But still.)

More about Victoria, Adam Creighton continues his hyperventilation:

Ooh, I like the "evil eyes of Dan" photo the AFR is running with.  I bet Adam wished it was being used in The Australian.  But maybe it is?

Adam presumably is still dismissing entirely the reports of long term effects of the virus.  This report from the BBC explains why India should be worried:

Mr Ketkar is not alone in this - tens of thousands of people have been reporting post-Covid health complications from across the world. Thrombosis is common - it has been found in 30% of seriously ill coronavirus patients, according to experts. 

 

These problems have been generally described as "long Covid" or "long-haul Covid". 

 

Awareness around post-Covid care is crucial, but it is not the focus in India, which is still struggling to control the spread of the virus. It has the world's second-highest caseload and has been averaging 90,000 cases daily in recent weeks.

 Lots of experts warning about the long term effects of Covid are quoted.   

But no, Adam hates the idea of people being told to wear masks outside, so that's what's important.

Things seem not to be going so well for the Trump campaign...

There's the NYT story about his tax fiddling, which apparently includes this:

Between 2010 and 2018, Trump wrote off about $26 million in mysterious "consulting fees," helping to reduce his family's tax bill. At least some of those fees appear to have been paid to his daughter Ivanka Trump, despite her being a top Trump Organization executive, according to the Times.

And this:

President Donald Trump spent more than $US70,000 to style his hair when he was on “The Apprentice,” and he wrote off the costs as a business expense, The New York Times reported Sunday. 

and this:

Additionally, nine Trump entities paid nearly $US100,000 to Ivanka Trump’s hair and makeup artist, according to The Times report. 

And the NYT promises more stories to come.

Trump is sounding desperate with "Biden should be drug tested before the debate".   

Polling seems to be sticking pretty solidly in Biden's favour.

And meanwhile, his recently sacked campaign manager is suicidal.   

I find it hard to imagine Biden doing so badly in the first debate so as to undo all of this bad PR.

But I guess you never know...

Okra recipe (and a beef curry)

Just for future reference:   cooked okra this way on Saturday, to go with a basic beef curry* (using the easy homemade mix of curry powder I referenced before) and it was nice.    

*  onion, three fresh tomatoes, 500g of cubed beef, that curry powder (couple of tablespoons it makes), some water, some curry leaves, a little bit of cream at the end.  (Yoghurt's probably better, but had none.)

Mexican movies and sense of place

I really liked the much praised Mexican movie Roma from a couple of years ago, and in my comments about it here, I noted the very distinctive and convincing (for want of a better phrase) sense of place it achieved (in its case, Mexico City in 1971.)  

Last night I watched another Mexican movie on Netflix I'm No Longer Here, and again I was blown away by the direction and sense of place it gave.   

Set only a decade or so ago, it cuts between the poor parts of the Mexican city Monterrey and a pretty seedy  looking Queens area in New York.  I had never heard of Monterrey before, but it's a distintive looking city because of the mountains surrounding it, and here it is on the map:

 

 

It is an arthouse-ish flim, which as I described in my Roma post, means you should expect more a "slice of life" story than much of a narrative arc. 

But it's so interesting.  I had not heard of cumbia music as such, but it is a key feature of the film, which indicates that there are youthful dance gangs in Monterrey who do not do much more than hassle their fellow school students for money to buy cumbia music and get into weirdly distinctive fashion.  For a kind of gang, the one in the film seems quite innocent.  But gang related conflict and violence still happens in the movie, and our hero has to move out of country and try and find his way living in Queens.  

 Here, the background to the setting is better explained at the start of this review:

With flashy dance moves and even flashier hairstyles, the Cholombiano street culture of Monterrey, Mexico exists at a cultural crossroads. Patterns of migration and commerce have brought together this subculture’s preferred genre of Colombian cumbia, the laggy mixes of Mexico City’s sonidero DJ style and the oversized garments of West Coast cholo fashion into this northeastern Mexican city.

It is in Monterrey where sounds and culture which have captivated the rest of Latin America have risen up from. The Avanzada Regia movement which took over Monterrey during the mid 90s laid out a blueprint for electronica, alternative rock and hip hop in Spanish to spread into the Spanish-speaking mainstream, at home and abroad. The corrido tumbado movement, currently setting Mexican regional stations ablaze, might riff closer to Sinaloa and Sonora-style folk ballads, but draws its core from German polka and Texano influence hailing from Monterrey over a century ago.

But unlike the many popular sounds and trends which spawned in this city, the cholombiano way of life remained contained in the city’s marginalized communities. In Ya No Estoy Aquí (I’m No Longer Here) we are treated to an exploration of place and belonging through the experience of Ulises Samperio (Juan Daniel Garcia), a cholombiano displaced from the his home in the middle of an intensifying turf war triggered by the Mexican war on drugs of the 2010s.

Monterrey as a centre of cumbia music in Mexico is was also discussed in this Vice article from 2018 (which also gives the impression that the city as a whole is pretty seedy.)  As for the style of dancing to it, my son perceptively noted that its sort of similar to what Cab Calloway does on stage sometimes.     

Anyway, I think the most remarkable thing about the film is the direction - there is not a lot of camera movement, but instead it's nearly all exquisitely composed shots in which the action happens (sometimes with the actors or objects moving in and out of the framing.)    I love a fancy moving camera as much as anyone, but this shows how fantastic a movie can look with a stationary camera most to the time, but with great care for composition of every single shot.  

Once again, a movie set in Mexico has made me strongly wish that I could visit there - if only it felt safe enough.  I'm drawn to Asia enough that I like to joke that it's probably because I must have been East Asian in a past life; but if that's true, I am starting to assume there must be a Mexican re-incarnation in there as well.

 

On a personal, dental note

I think I should probably be embarrassed to admit this, but it seems I took the risk and it worked out OK.

Today I had my first dental check up in, I am pretty sure, about 20-something years.

I don't know why - I had some older amalgam filings replaced in the last bit of dental work around my mid 30's.  And that was replaced with the white stuff instead of the old amalgam.  

Since then, I got married and had kids and am pretty sure never got around to going back to the dentist.  Maybe 7 or so years ago I bought a cheap dental pick from (I think) Daiso and use it occasionally to held remove the tartar (stupid word that) which can build up behind my lower front teeth, regardless of morning and evening brushing and evening flossing.  (I asked a dentist what that was about - why do I only get it there - and was told it is because it is near salivary glands that produce a lot of calcium ions to repair enamel.  That made me stop worrying that I was a failure at brushing, and perhaps my saliva is just particularly calcium rich.)   

Anyway, I had a couple of minor issues I wanted to get checked and finally went back to a "new" dentist today.  I didn't like the old one much.  He got very cranky with me once when I was late for an appointment.

The result - I made a full confession to the dentist, but she didn't find any cavities or problems.  X rays show no hidden problem.   She did take a long time to give my teeth a proper clean though, and I sort of promised not to leave it another 20 years so that the next clean could be quicker.   

But I do feel somewhat vindicated that my 20 year hunch that my teeth were, by and large, not getting any problems, seems to have been correct.

[Actually, I seem to recall that my father had an enormously long gap in seeking dentistry too, and when he finally did there was not much wrong.    I think flossing had been "in" for a good couple of decades but he never did it.   Is there something about the middle aged mouth that means more youthful propensity to decay stops or slows down?   In my father's case, it could have been pretty regular evening alcohol consumption, perhaps.   He was very big on drinking port (or sherry) nearly every evening.  Does that work like a bacteria killing mouthwash?]

  

Allahpundit is worried

He's always been against Trump, but he's really starting to panic about the state of the nation post election.  He's making this comment following Trump refusing to give a commitment to a "peaceful" transfer of power yesterday:

My earnest advice to anyone who’s not bound to stay put here in the U.S. because of family or employment ties from which they simply can’t extricate themselves is to think seriously about leaving. And I don’t mean “think seriously of leaving if Trump wins.” I mean think seriously of leaving, period. Because even if he loses by 250 electoral votes, more than 60 million people will have watched him say stuff like this for months, insisting repeatedly that any defeat can only be explained by cheating, and will vote. for. him. anyway.

There’s no coming all the way back from that, even though Trump will eventually leave the political scene one way or another. Anyone who’s willing to look the other way at what he says here is willing to look the other way at much worse, and that’s an enormous population. That’s the reason to leave.

By tomorrow, the right’s anti-anti-Trump faction will have long forgotten this clip, assuming they noted it at all. They’ll be right back to the task of confirming Amy Coney Barrett followed by a glorious November victory in which Trump will once again get millions fewer votes than his opponent and then govern as if his approval rating is 80 percent.

Speaking of which, he explained earlier today why it’s so important for him to have a ninth justice on the Court before November. Interestingly, this wasn’t a concern for the GOP in 2016, when they preferred an eight-person Court to one with Merrick Garland in Scalia’s seat. Trump wants a full house this time, though, for a specific reason:  [clip of Trump]

He wants his nominee to be the fifth vote for him in invalidating contested ballots that might give Biden the presidency. He made the same point yesterday in another gaggle with reporters. Why any fan of Amy Coney Barrett would want her placed in that horrendous situation, knowing what it would do to public perceptions of her and of the Supreme Court if she cast that vote — or if she refused to cast it — I can’t imagine.

If it does happen, with Trump’s eleventh-hour bizarro-Garland appointee becoming the deciding vote that assures him a second term, we’ll be in a new era in American history. I’m not trying to be dramatic in saying that. It just is what it is. The country will be ungovernable.

 

 

Dumb, dishonest, or just unable to process information due to - whatever?

That's the puzzle about Trump supporters, isn't it?   And still not resolved after 4 years.

For example, here's the headlines to Wall Street Journal reporting on the Republican's failed "gotcha" report on Joe Biden:

 

Hunter Biden’s Ukraine Work Raised Concerns With Obama Officials, GOP-Led Probe Confirms

Findings don’t support Trump’s accusation that Joe Biden sought to remove a prosecutor to protect a gas firm whose board Hunter Biden served on

Um, yes:  every "fake news" liberal commentator on the matter had already acknowledged years ago that it wasn't a great look for Hunter Biden to be on the board.    But obviously, the mere potential for family related conflict of interest doesn't mean there was actually one, and as the press had reported umpteen times before, there was no evidence that Biden's actions were motivated at protecting his son, and in fact, put the company in question at greater risk of actual investigation.   This is confirmed in the second part of the headline.

But at Sinclair Davidson's Home for Ageing Fools:

It's like (well, it's the fact that) there is no point in trying to reason with them.  They can't process information if it doesn't fit a preconceived conclusion.

Dumber though

 

An extraordinary fool

 

Not that I want it to happen, but it's a bit surprising it isn't happening...

I have to walk a fine line here:  political violence is never to be encouraged, but I do wonder about this a lot lately...

Left wing political radicals (of "the revolution is just around the corner" kind) in the US used to be seen a real threat in terms of targeting Right wing politicians for assassination, and the wealthy for kidnap and ransom.    Now, no one on the Left seems to be on the radar as possibly thinking about doing things that would make a real political difference in the US - targeting conservative Supreme Court judges, for example, or (of course) Trump himself or McConnell.   It's a similar thing for environmentalism - I often get the feeling that radicals in the late 60's and into the 70's, if they knew about global warming and corporate and political reluctance to do anything about it, would have been willing to risk death in blowing up an oil pipeline, or a coal field train track.  

Did the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and the obvious economic (shall we say) under-performance of Cuba or other socialist regimes in countries around there deflate the whole idea of success for radical Left wing revolution so much that they just lost all motivation towards highly targeted political violence?     Was it the military draft that radicalised them so much, and without it, Lefties can't get as motivated to threaten violence now?  Or is it that it became obvious that threats of direct violence against politicians never worked in the big picture?   (And yes I know:  trashing businesses, targeting police buildings, and street violence is a form of violence.  But it's not the same as very targeted kidnappings, threats to kill or bomb that used to seem to be the radical Left's idea of how to influence things.) 

These days, it's obvious that the risk of some kind of very serious political violence is more real from the Right in the US.  It's quite the turnaround.  And worrying because it attracts bigger numbers of armed, semi-organised nuts than the radical Left ever had,  spinning out on their own fantasy of how the world is and how it should.  

Yet, observers on the Right are so self-gaslite they think that it's the Left that is the "real danger" to political and social stability in the US.   

The other "funny" thing is that the blatant authoritarian and anti-democratic statements of Trump and Barr - seeking to encourage a fake crisis of election results credibility amongst their followers - means that Left wing threat of violence, if aimed at preserving democracy, would actually be more rational than ever.    Let's face it, if Trump was shot, everyone would condemn it, while about 60% of the US population would say under their breath "well, you know, if ever a President provoked an assassination attempt, it was him."

Some speculation

 I agree with this:

and I hope he does.  I reckon all Democrats should be saying repeatedly that it is nuts and any politician expressly any sympathy to such a dangerous fantasy of violent revenge against imaginary crimes is a danger to the nation.  

But - I bet if Biden did put out this challenge, Trump would respond with some mealy mouthed "I don't know.  I don't know if any of it is true or not; but who knows? There might be an element of truth in there somewhere.  And I see more danger from rioting in the streets by anarchists." And his cult followers would praise him for being an open minded and fair President who has his priorities right.   

It's hard to find a likeable cult

About that Siberian cult leader who's been around a long time but has only now been arrested:

Torop, who lost his job as a traffic officer in 1989, claimed he experienced an “awakening” as the Soviet regime began to collapse. In 1991 he founded a movement now known as the Church of the Last Testament.

Several thousand followers live in a series of remote hamlets in the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia. Converts to the cult have included professionals from across Russia as well as pilgrims from abroad.

“I am not God. And it is a mistake to see Jesus as God. But I am the living word of God the father. Everything that God wants to say, he says through me,” Vissarion told the Guardian in 2002.

Russian media reported that in the original ideology of the cult, Vissarion claimed Jesus was watching over people from an orbit close to Earth, and the Virgin Mary was “running Russia”, but later he declared himself to be Jesus.

His commune mixes a selection of rites drawn from Orthodox Christianity with environmental edicts and a series of other rules. Veganism is enforced and monetary exchange is banned inside the commune. Followers wear austere clothing and count years starting from 1961, the year of Vissarion’s birth, while Christmas has been replaced by a feast day on 14 January, his birthday.

 Well, I do like the idea of Jesus watching us from orbit - that's all a bit Philip K Dick-ish.   I don't care for the veganism, though.   I wonder where they stand on sex - cults are either rabidly against it and suggesting men lob off bits of their body, or excessively for it, it seems.   

Anyway, I think we can all agree - Russia has a history of being a weird place when it comes to religion.

 

Well, I thought it was funny

 

Sweden has a space corporation?

 This seems odd:  

China will lose access to two important and strategic space satellite-tracking stations in Australia, with their Swedish owners citing the "complexity" of doing business with Beijing.

The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), owned by the Swedish Government, operates 11 satellite-tracking facilities around the world, including the Dongara and Yatharagga stations south of Geraldton in Western Australia.

The Dongara station is primarily used by US government agencies such as NASA.

 The Swedish government has built a satellite tracking facility in Australia that is used by NASA?   Why isn't Australia building them on Australian soil?

SETI still plugging away

Science magazine had an article a couple of weeks ago:  How big money is powering a massive hunt for alien intelligence.

 Some extracts:

SETI researchers are used to negative results, but they are trying harder than ever to turn that record around. Breakthrough Listen, the $100 million, 10-year, privately funded SETI effort Siemion leads, is lifting a field that has for decades relied on sporadic philanthropic handouts. Prior to Breakthrough Listen, SETI was “creeping along” with a few dozen hours of telescope time a year, Siemion says; now it gets thousands. It’s like “sitting in a Formula 1 racing car,” he says. The new funds have also been “a huge catalyst” for training scientists in SETI, says Jason Wright, director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, which opened this year. “They really are nurturing a community.”

Breakthrough Listen is bolstering radio surveys, which are the mainstay of SETI. But the money is also spurring other searches, in case aliens opt for other kinds of messages—laser flashes, for example—or none at all, revealing themselves only through passive “technosignatures.” And because the data gathered by Breakthrough Listen are posted in a public archive, astronomers are combing through it for nonliving phenomena: mysterious deep-space pulses called fast radio bursts and proposed dark matter particles called axions. “There are untapped possibilities here,” says axion searcher Matthew Lawson of Stockholm University.

Breakthrough Listen set out ambitious goals.  It would survey 1 million of the closest stars to Earth and 100 nearby galaxies using two of the world’s most sensitive steerable telescopes, the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Buying up about 20% and 25% of the time on those telescopes, Breakthrough Listen promised to cover 10 times more sky than previous surveys and five times more of the radio spectrum, and gather data 100 times faster. 

 There's a lot more in the article, which is a good read.

Some good news for a change

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s record of losing legal battles remained unblemished this week when the Connecticut Supreme Court denied three separate motions in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Sandy Hook families.

The link to the story is here.

If ever a media figure deserves suing out of a job, it's him.

Comedy's a funny thing

I see that Schitt's Creek is winning Emmies, and it is widely praised by ABC types.  I have also seen warnings that the first episode is not a good guide to the rest of the series.   

I dunno - I have only seen small bits of it and I don't know from what season, but it didn't grab me.   It seems, shall we say, a sort of laboured sitcom writing which I don't care for.

Another widely praised show that feels that way to me - Parks and Recreation.    I guess it seems good natured, but the dialogue and characters just a bit too forced.

I have also re-watched a couple of Seinfeld episodes recently.   It really did become bad in its lack of connection to reality in the last season or two, and the laugh track seems extremely excessive by current standards.    

And OMG, Friends has started on Netflix and is up the top of the popular list already.  Seriously?   I always maintained it was a vastly over-rated show held up by basically likeable actors but so-so writing.  There were some occasional bits I liked enough to watch it semi-regularly, but I really am puzzled by how it has maintained its popularity.

I am sounding like a grump who is generally down on all popular sitcoms:  but I have given lots of praise to recent shows like Brooklyn Nine Nine and The Good Place, and I went through a list of older shows in a post in 2005.   (Gosh, I have been blogging for a long time.)   I just find it interesting trying to work out why I don't like some comedy sitcom writing, and what does work for me.

Update:   Oh!  I am not alone on Schitt's Creek failure to impress after all.  A "lefty" Australian cartoonist has given it her best shot, and still doesn't care for it:

I'm sorry to say, but as explained at length in a comment I make below, it seems to be yet another illustration of how a sitcom with a prominent gay character gets over-praised.

Yes, just glossed over