Martian origins

There's a paper at arXiv talking about how there is reason to suspect Mars may have actually been more hospitable to the creation of life than Earth.  (I assumed that life originating on Mars was more of a long shot theory.)   The abstract:

An origin of Earth life on Mars would resolve significant inconsistencies between the inferred history of life and Earth's geologic history. Life as we know it utilizes amino acids, nucleic acids, and lipids for the metabolic, informational, and compartment-forming subsystems of a cell. Such building blocks may have formed simultaneously from cyanosulfidic chemical precursors in a planetary surface scenario involving ultraviolet light, wet-dry cycling, and volcanism. However, early Earth was a water world, and the timing of the rise of oxygen on Earth is inconsistent with final fixation of the genetic code in response to oxidative stress. A cyanosulfidic origin of life could have taken place on Mars via photoredox chemistry, facilitated by orders of magnitude more sub-aerial crust than early Earth, and an earlier transition to oxidative conditions. Meteoritic bombardment may have generated transient habitable environments and ejected and transferred life to Earth. The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover offers an unprecedented opportunity to confirm or refute evidence consistent with a cyanosulfidic origin of life on Mars, search for evidence of ancient life, and constrain the evolution of Mars' oxidation state over time. We should seek to prove or refute a Martian origin for life on Earth alongside other possibilities.

You can download the paper from here.

Only joking

The conservative Rights sympathy for Putin continues its merry way, no matter how many of his enemies end up poisoned or in jail.

Trump supporters in denial

On the one hand, this article by William Saletan at Slate gives cause for some optimism about the majority of the American population not being nuts:

Donald Trump might be in denial about who won the 2020 election, but his pollsters aren’t. Two of them have performed autopsies on his defeat, and those autopsies are now public. One of his pollsters, John McLaughlin, published an analysis in Newsmax in November. Another report, written by consultant Tony Fabrizio, was posted on Monday by Politico. Neither pollster blames the former president, but their numbers tell the story: Trump destroyed himself.

The autopsies identified two reasons why Trump should have won. First, based on self-identification, the 2020 electorate was significantly more Republican than the 2016 electorate. Second, public satisfaction with the economy favored the incumbent. Both pollsters found that people who voted in 2020 thought Trump would handle the economy better than Joe Biden would. McLaughlin’s analysis, based on his post-election survey of people who voted in 2020, noted that 61 percent of these voters said they were better off than they had been four years earlier. Despite this, Trump managed to lose one-third of the 61 percent. “Fully 20% of all voters thought they were better off today than four years ago and did not vote for President Trump,” McLaughlin wrote.

Fabrizio analyzed exit polls from 10 battleground states Trump had won in 2016. Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas stayed with Trump in 2020; Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin flipped to Biden. Collectively, in the 10 states, Fabrizio computed a “massive swing” against Trump among independents (by 17 to 19 percentage points) and a similar shift among college-educated white voters (by 14 to 18 points). Likewise, in his national sample, McLaughlin found that Biden won moderates, 62 percent to 36 percent.

Trump repelled these voters, even those who were happy with the economy. In McLaughlin’s national sample, Biden was viewed more favorably than Trump. Among voters who disliked both candidates, the pollster noted, “dislike of Trump was more dominant.” Three-quarters of Biden voters cited character or personality traits as reasons for their voting decisions, and the reasons they gave were “mostly anti-Trump,” McLaughlin wrote. Seven percent of respondents said they had voted mostly “against Biden,” but 19 percent said they had voted mostly “against Trump.”

Fabrizio found similar results. In the battleground states, voters said by a four-point margin that Biden wasn’t “honest and trustworthy.” Trump’s deficit on the same question was much bigger: 14 to 18 points. The exit polls also indicated that Trump inspired millions of new voters to turn out, either in person or by mail, to get rid of him. Fabrizio noted that collectively, in the five states that flipped to Biden, Trump outpolled Biden among people who had voted in 2016. What killed Trump were the new voters. Biden won them by 14 points in the five decisive states.

On the other hand - it's depressing to know that the Trump cultist base is still in complete denial that their cult leader is unpopular and that this alone accounts for his loss.

I would guess that this is not going to be cured until top GOP figures bite the bullet and start telling the base, that they fear, some home truths.

The extent of the GOP takeover by the cultists in denial is discussed in this article from Daily Kos, which starts:

It’s becoming much clearer why Republicans in Congress are so reluctant to acknowledge factual reality—such as the reality that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fairly, or that Donald Trump incited a mob that attacked Congress and ransacked the U.S. Capitol—and have doubled down on their embrace of anti-democratic disinformation that fueled the insurrection. If the Republicans dare admit any of it is real, they risk the insane wrath of the millions of GOP voters out there who have wholly swallowed all that false Trumpian propaganda.

That’s become especially self-evident among Republicans at the state and local levels throughout the country in the weeks since the Jan. 6 riot. As Hunter recently explained, the GOP at the ground level not only has fully embraced the conspiracist rot that Trump promoted after he lost, but it also has become even more openly extreme than it was before the election. Liz Cheney is now finding that out.

It ends with the point that (sorry) I keep coming back to, but it is so obviously true:

This is what Barack Obama adroitly describes as America’s “epistemological crisis.” It will not stop happening as long as there are news organs that traffic in falsehoods as a profit model, and who devote 24 hours a day, seven days a week of broadcast time to using those lies to coach half of the nation on how and why to hate the other half—and politicians gleefully profiting from it as well.

New York steam explained

So Google made me watch an interesting video about the steam heating system in New York and other American cities: 

I would never have guessed that such systems had been around for so long, and were so extensive.   I wonder what other international cities have something similar?  

But yeah, that asbestos aspect is a very unattractive feature....

Another in the series - late movie reviews

This time:  American Hustle, from 2013.

I knew it had good reviews at the time, but yeah - it's a terrifically made, very enjoyable, film.   

My son thought it covered a lot of similar ground to Martin Scorsese, but I said no, it's better than Scorsese because the women aren't just background characters.  (True, the wife in Casino was important, but most Scorsese films are exceptionally man-centric.  You could say that's just because of the gangster/mafia material he is interested in, but I recently re-watched his early black comedy After Hours for the first time since I had viewed it in the 1980's, and what struck me was how all of the women were nuts.  The entire theme of he movie seemed to be a warning to men to not trust any women, no matter how nice they might seem initially - most are actually nuts and can get you into diabolical trouble.)

Anyway, back to Hustle.  My God, isn't Amy Adams versatile?   Of course, Christian Bale is too, but Amy Adams just seems to have chosen a wider range of roles than him.   And Louis CK - a competent actor who I now can't see without thinking "weirdo chronic masturbater".  (Or is that spelt with "..or"?)

It's really hard to fault the movie - although, of course, it could have been written with a little less swearing.  But I forgive it.

 

Friday philosophy - hedonism

So, I learned from this article in Philosophy Now that the there was a group in ancient India who considered hedonism as a legitimate life philosophy, just as there was in Greece:

By the time of the Cārvākas, around the time of the Buddha (6th-5th C. BCE), the six orthodox schools of Hinduism had already considered valid means of knowledge and the good life extensively. One of a number of heterodox schools of Indian philosophy, the Cārvākas rejected almost all of the standard Hindu means of knowledge, were staunch materialists, and considered pleasure as the goal of a good life, denying the pursuit of the kind of liberation from desire advocated by Hindus and Buddhists alike. For many schools of Indian philosophy, the self or soul persists through many lifetimes, and how subsequent lives manifest is contingent on one’s actions (this is karma), and liberation from this cycle of rebirth is attained through enlightenment, which frequently involves the denial of one’s desires. The Cārvākas, however, don’t seem preoccupied with breaking the cycle of rebirth: they are very much rooted in the present, and in the sensations of the here and now.

While there is only fragmentary records of this school, they were real party boys (and pretty irresponsible sounding ones at that):

... according to the Sarvasiddhantasamgraha, the Cārvākas maintained that “the enjoyment of heaven lies in eating delicious food, keeping company of young women, using fine clothes, perfumes, garlands, [and] sandal paste.” And the Cārvākas didn’t let anything stop them from enjoying life, as illustrated by an earlier claim in the Sarvadarsanasamgraha that “while life remains let a man live happily, let him feed on ghee even though he runs into debt.” They also vehemently decried the abstinence typical of Hindu ascetics, arguing that “chastity and other such ordinances are laid down by clever weaklings”, instead preferring to argue for the sensual indulgences mentioned. This dedication to indulgence was not to be hampered by the social conventions of mainstream Hindu society, such as debt or devotion or belief in karma, and it is also consistent with their views on knowledge. If the only means of experiencing the world is through sense perception, and the highest good is pleasure, then it makes sense that the Cārvākas would consider pleasure a phenomenon of the senses.

The article then goes on to contrast with the more refined Epicurean view of hedonism, which is much more reasonable sounding:

For the Epicureans, the height of pleasure was the absence of pain. Some may find it strange to say that out of all pleasures, the greatest isn’t an indulgence in or an achievement of something, but rather an absence of something. Even among hedonists, such a view is a radical one. But the Epicureans leave little room for ambiguity in their view. As Epicurus himself argues in the Letter :

“It is not drinking bouts and continuous partying and enjoying boys and women, or consuming fish and the other dainties of an extravagant table, which produce the pleasant life, but sober calculation which searches out the reasons for every choice and avoidance and drives out the opinions which are the source of the greatest turmoil for men’s souls.”

Despite such a refined view of pleasure Epicurus was able to develop a theory based on it. Epicurus’ prescription for the good life outlined in the Letter famously includes the maxim that ‘the limit of good things is easy to achieve completely, and easy to provide’. The hedonist who views pleasure as constant indulgence in partying and other sensual objects, an Epicurean would argue, is setting himself up for disappointment when these things are no longer within his means. However, the hedonist who understands that the greatest pleasure is freedom from pain seeks contentment in a frugal and simple life, and will always be ready to cope with life’s struggles. Indeed, it seems clear that the Epicureans would certainly be proponents of attitudinal rather than sensory pleasures. They definitely don’t seem susceptible to the criticisms of hedonism we noted. Despite Cicero’s claim that the pursuit of pleasure is ‘totally unworthy of a human being’, it’s not entirely clear how the ‘sober calculation’ and ‘lack of pain in the body’ that the Epicureans strive for is any less worthy a pursuit than any of the virtues advocated by, say, the followers of Aristotle.

So, it all depends on how you define "pleasure" as to whether the pursuit of it sounds reasonable, or not. 

I have probably read about the Epicureans' modest form of hedonism before, but forgotten about it.

Getting to the bottom (ha ha)

This was an unexpected headline:

China rolls out anal swab coronavirus test, saying it’s more accurate than throat method 

Months-long lockdowns. Entire city populations herded through the streets for mandatory testing. The people of China could be forgiven for thinking they had seen it all during the coronavirus pandemic.

But now they face a new indignity: the addition of anal swabs — yes, you read that right — to the testing regimen for those in quarantine.

Chinese state media outlets introduced the new protocol in recent days, prompting widespread discussion and some outrage. Some Chinese doctors say the science is there. Recovering patients, they say, have continued to test positive through samples from the lower digestive tract days after nasal and throat swabs came back negative.

Yet for many, it seemed a step too far in government intrusions after a year and counting of a dignity-eroding pandemic.

“Everyone involved will be so embarrassed,” one user in Guang­dong province said Wednesday on ­Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. In a Weibo poll, 80 percent of respondents said they “could not accept” the invasive method.

It can't be that hard to get the patient to do the swab themselves, surely?  

And anyone who has had to insert cream for a haemorrhoid would know it's not going to kill you to have something thin inserted.   I mean, it's not going to be like a prostate digital exam, surely.

Are the Chinese particularly culturally sensitive to examination of their body?   I have wondered about this - the Japanese are so relaxed about public and family nudity in the right context (bathing, mainly), yet go across to China and my impression is they seem to have a cultural shyness about bodies.

Very unclear how this will progress

While this sounds very bad:

 there are several likely complicating factors yet to unfold:

*  more "Trump in private" disclosures to come (making no difference to Trumpists, but still influential on establishment Republicans who don't want to see a return of Trump influence?)  

*  Trump's personal legal problems coming to a head in the next year 

*  possible international tensions coming to a head, and (hopefully) being capably handled by Biden (perhaps a bit of Chinese or North Korean military sabre rattling?)

*  some key right wing media figures having their own problems removing them from influence.  Alex Jones is now facing several defamation law suits which may well harm his career;  Rush Limbaugh will die one day.   On the other hand, Fox News though is going harder right to try to get back audience from OANN and Newsmax.   

 I think it is impossible to overemphasis the damaging role of Fox News and the rest of the RW media universe in restoring "normal" politics again in the US.  

The odious Carlson

Tucker Carlson is an odious disgrace, selling fear and (as someone in comments to the Washington Post article linked below says) White Grievance to an ageing audience.

Here's his latest appalling take:

The impetus for the segment was a bill proposed by Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.). In response to the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol this month, which practically coursed with QAnon fervor, Murphy wants to prevent people who subscribe to it and other such conspiracy theories from gaining federal government security clearances.

“If any Americans participated in the Capitol attack, or if they subscribe to these dangerous anti-government views of QAnon, then they have no business being entrusted with our nation’s secrets,” she said.

In Carlson’s estimation, though, this is an attempt at mind control by the federal government....

“We’re watching a profound change taking place in American society that’s happening very fast,” Carlson said. “The stakes could not be higher. There is a clear line between democracy and tyranny, between self-government and dictatorship, and here’s what that line is: That line is your conscience. They cannot cross that.”

Carlson acknowledged that the government can make laws prohibiting certain behaviors such as murder, rape, speeding and jaywalking. But he cast this as a bridge too far.

“But no democratic government can ever tell you what to think. Your mind belongs to you. It is yours and yours alone,” he said. “Once politicians attempt to control what you believe, they are no longer politicians, they are by definition dictators. And if they succeed in controlling what you believe, you are no longer a citizen. You are not a free man. You are a slave.”

As someone in comments writes:

Oh, good grief. The QAnon cult believes in a violent overthrow of the government by Trump. This includes executing high ranking Democratic members of the government. All part of "The Storm", stamped with God's approval, and I am certain lacking any due process for the victims. WHY ON EARTH WOULD IT BE APPROPRIATE TO GIVE THESE PEOPLE ACCESS TO OUR COUNTRY'S SECRETS?
 
FOX "news" demonstrates every day that they don't care about America! 

I also read today that the nutty Qanon sympathising GOP congresswoman is even worse than we already knew:

Why it matters: The freshman Republican from Georgia made a series of bizarre and outlandish remarks before her time in Congress that rival former Rep. Steve King's talk of white supremacy.

What’s happening: The latest round of Greene comments, pulled from archives of her Facebook page, show the congresswoman promoting an outlandish, QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton cutting off and donning the face of a child.

• That comment was reported by the progressive group Media Matters for America, which previously noted her endorsements of claims that 9/11 was perpetrated by the American government, and that the Parkland school shooting was staged.
• CNN reported Tuesday that Greene had floated executing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for treason, and “liked” Facebook comments suggesting the execution of FBI agents.

Politics is going to be broken in America for a long, long time if ludicrous political conspiracy theories continue to have influence.   But Carlson is trying to keep Qanon idiots on side - all the better for his and his network's profit.

The long term COVID problem

An article at France 24: The end of offices? New York's business districts face uncertain future details a similar thing to what I assume must be happening all over the world - 

Boarded-up stores, shuttered restaurants and empty office towers: Covid-19 has turned New York's famous business districts into ghost towns, with companies scrambling to come up with ways to entice workers to return post-pandemic.

"If they don't come back, we're sunk," said Kenneth McClure, vice president of Hospitality Holdings, whose Midtown bistro pre-coronavirus would buzz with the sound of financiers striking deals at lunch and sharing cocktails after a hard day at the office.

The group has closed its six restaurants and bars in Manhattan, two of them permanently, due to lockdown restrictions that have paused office culture - a culture as intrinsic to the Big Apple as a Broadway show, a yellow taxi or a slice of cheese pizza.

The problem is, turns out that a lot of people quite like working from home, and businesses have found it isn't as bad as they feared:

Seventy-nine percent of employees questioned in a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey published this month said that working remotely had been a success, but the report also found that offices are not about to be consigned to history.

Some 87 percent of employees said the office was important to them for collaborating with team members and building relationships, aspects of working life they felt was easier and more rewarding in person than over Zoom.

As I have been saying to anyone who would listen for the last 9 months, I reckon the big crunch will be over the next few years as businesses come up for lease renewals of office space, and tell the landlord they really only need half of the space in future, as each day about half of their workforce is at home.

This does not augur well for values of commercial office space, and (probably) our superannuation returns.

Sounds about right

 

Just waiting for the "Control my Brain" app

News from Korea:

A group of KAIST researchers and collaborators have engineered a tiny brain implant that can be wirelessly recharged from outside the body to control brain circuits for long periods of time without battery replacement. The device is constructed of ultra-soft and bio-compliant polymers to help provide long-term compatibility with tissue. Geared with micrometer-sized LEDs (equivalent to the size of a grain of salt) mounted on ultrathin probes (the thickness of a human hair), it can wirelessly manipulate target neurons in the deep brain using light.  ....

Neuroscientists successfully tested these implants in rats and demonstrated their ability to suppress cocaine-induced behavior after the rats were injected with cocaine. This was achieved by precise light stimulation of relevant target neurons in their brains using the smartphone-controlled LEDs. Furthermore, the battery in the implants could be repeatedly recharged while the rats were behaving freely, thus minimizing any physical interruption to the experiments.

"Wireless battery re-charging makes experimental procedures much less complicated," said the co-lead author Min Jeong Ku, a researcher at Yonsei University's College of Medicine.

"The fact that we can control a specific behavior of animals, by delivering light stimulation into the brain just with a simple manipulation of smartphone app, watching freely moving animals nearby, is very interesting and stimulates a lot of imagination," said Jeong-Hoon Kim, a professor of physiology at Yonsei University's College of Medicine. "This technology will facilitate various avenues of brain research."

Water, water everywhere, etc

I was watching CNA on the weekend, and they had a special about Bangladesh's problems with water.

I thought the main issue would be that it's a delta nation that seems to be half under water for 2 months every year (I exaggerate - it's only a third!). And yes, while that is a problem, I didn't know that Dhaka has a major problem with drinking water.

 Then I was looking at Al Jazeera, and saw a story about how up in the hills (which look prettier than I expected), there are streams drying up and causing problems for farmers and residents there. Here's the story about that: 

 

As for the city of Dhaka running out of water (they rely on groundwater from deep wells, apparently - I am guessing the river water is too sludgey and polluted to try to use?), I see that this has been a story for many years. Al Jazeera again, from 8 years ago: 

To top it all off, there is a large arsenic problem in Bangladeshi ground water too. 

This seems to be close to the unluckiest country in the world.

Life in a Northern town

I've recommended Cecilia Blomdhal's youtube channel on her life in Svalsbard before.  It's an incredible environment, and kind of amazing that people happily live there.  

In her latest video, she talks about how a lot of people there actually like the 2 month polar night - finding it sort of relaxing, apparently.   I think the sun doesn't actually rise for 4 months, but for some of that period they get twilight sky, which looks very pretty indeed.  This video is mainly her talking to camera, but with some impressive photos.   Have a watch, if you're interested:

 

 I like all of her videos.  Maybe the dog, which is beautiful and smart, is part of the attraction, too.

Speaking of which - in this video, you get to see her gearing up (including with shotgun on her back) to take her dog for a walk during the polar night:

So interesting...

Mr Bird opines

I haven't been letting Birdian content through in comments - it's been full of "rigged election" conspiracy mongering, and then much abuse of me for not letting comments through.   I've even stopped his other topic comments, because I am trying to get through the message that I would much prefer that he wasn't commenting here at all.  Go start another blog - even anonymously - and stop harassing mine, Graeme.

But here is the most recent one, so you can see his thought processes, and laugh (my bold):

I can't help thinking that there will have to be a military interim government. Trumps not coming back but it appears unlikely that the Biden Presidency can hold. Particularly as it wasn't Biden that was sworn in but some body double. Possibly his younger brother. Perhaps young James got some sort of facial surgery. Anyway whoever the imposter is; I wouldn't put money on guessing. It makes no difference whether it is James Biden or some other clown. But whoever he is, its going to be hard even for the combined power of the moneyed elites to hold this racket together for any length of time. So they had the power to produce this alternative reality. But do they have the power to maintain it as the public gets more and more impoverished and angry?

 

 

Monday observations

*   what with this Margaret Court gets an award for being Margaret Court kerfuffle, time to revisit my 2016 post - why does Australia have so many awards?   Isn't everyone feeling this way now?  Every year seems to be more and more scratching around trying to find enough appropriate award recipients.   Can't some politician bite the bullet and say this out loud?   

*  I thought I was getting more and more into art house foreign films, but on Saturday I watched the very well reviewed Taiwanese move A Sun on Netflix, and I did not care for it at all.   It starts with a startling act of violence, follows the protagonist as he goes to juvenile prison, but then get progressively less interesting the longer it goes on.  And it is pretty long.   The direction is often pretty, and I can see that the actors are good, but the screenplay (to my mind) keeps too many characters' motivations completely opaque.   I felt I didn't understand any of them properly for all of the movie.  

I was tired while watching it, which never helps, but I am pretty sure I am right on this one.  I am puzzled as to why it got such enthusiastic reviews.

*  I endorse this brand of rendang paste mix.  There are some other brands I have tried (from Indonesia actually) and they just aren't so great, particularly the Indofoods one.  But this one from Malaysia is good:

One other observation:  Ayam brand products are often a bit underflavoured, I think.   Although, having said that, I did like the nyonya curry paste of their's recently.

This is her "It's Sunday, isn't it time to go to the dog park yet?" look

Well, this is stupid

Will Wilkinson made what was clearly a sarcastic/sardonic joke tweet (about those Republicans who wanted to lynch Pence) and regretted it:

 but still got sacked from the Niskanen Centre for it:

And those who are doing this: 

 

 are using the same bad faith, pretend it's not a joke, line that I have seen Sinclair Davidson use with me, many years ago.   (Because they don't want to see legitimate calls for violence from their side of the fence punished, in the name of free speech.)  

Update:

 Others disagree that it was even a bad joke (and actually, I am inclined to agree):

Yet more:

One day in and...

*   doomscrolling Twitter is just not the same anymore.   In fact, it has almost ceased to exist, overnight.

*   Yes, this is true, and delightful:

*   The key word used by all of the late night talk show hosts (well, Colbert, Kimmel and Oliver) who I saw last night was the one I used yesterday "relief".   They were all very happy, as they should be.

*   The problem continues:

I have been meaning to make this point again:   Fox News used to make a clear attempt to have a liberal perspective on even its opinion shows.   I know because I used to watch it sometimes on Foxtel back in (I think) the early 2000's.   Even with the then popular Bill O'Reilly used to position conservatism as a "middle American just being sensible" sort of thing.  I don't recall him, at least at that time, being big on positively demonising the Left.   But as with Andrew Bolt, being paid for sprouting opinions every day of the week is bad for the soul - it forces people to become more extreme and certain to please the audience.   Being a "well, I don't really know what to think of this" sort of person doesn't sell well.

At some point we stopped getting Foxtel at home and I don't really know when the network decided to ramp up the demonisation of all thing liberal.   I also see from this article that they still had liberal punching bags on into the 2010's to try to show "balance" (or more likely, appeal to the audience who liked to see the liberal "lose" every panel argument).

But at some point, the network chose to get into full blown demonisation and scaremongering of liberals as its opinion shows' raison d'etre.   

That is why it is an appalling poisonous influence on American politics.

The day of great relief

I am sure I am not alone in saying I have never been happier in my entire life to see a new US President.

Also, funny sarcasm: