The media is very bad at context, sometimes

Even the great Planet America show last week did not seem to emphasise this enough - they showed similar graphs, ran a full length interview with a conservative from the Heritage Foundation, and just a snippet from a Cato Institute guy saying that it's not all Biden pull factors, we've seen seasonal surges before.  This is the graph:

Honestly, how much media attention is being given to the 2019 surge under Trump?  Very little, if you ask me.  There's also pretty small attention being given to the ease with which Trump's wall is being breached.

Planet America, I reckon, too often tries too hard to be "fair" to conservatives and Republicans, and ends up being unbalanced in their favour.

 Update:  yet more context -

That's from this article, which argues:

If you've been reading or watching mainstream media over the past week or so, you've undoubtedly heard a lot about a supposed screaming emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border. More migrants are trying to cross the border, which all three network Sunday shows gave frantic saturation coverage — ABC's This Week nonsensically held a panel segment on the border itself, as if that would somehow lend gravitas to a bunch of talking heads. On Monday, the networks' big morning shows all ran segments calling the story a "crisis" once more. CNN even ran a video of a repeated boat crossing that, as numerous experts testified to The American Prospect, gave every indication of being staged, possibly even by the Border Patrol.

This is nonsense. There is a problem at the border, but it is not remotely a "crisis." It's an administrative challenge that could be solved easily with more resources and clear policy — not even ranking with, say, the importance of securing loose nuclear material, much less the ongoing global pandemic, or the truly civilization-threatening crisis of climate change. The mainstream media is in effect collaborating with Republicans to stoke unreasoning xenophobic panic.

Sounds pretty accurate to me...

Good gorilla Dads

Well, if you overlook the infanticide they might commit before having their own kids, at least.  Science reports:

A few years ago, four female mountain gorillas left home, abandoning not only their mate—a sick alpha silverback—but their infants, which were barely old enough to feed themselves. They may have sensed that their offspring would be safer with their ailing father than with new males that often kill infants from other groups. Still, most mammals abandoned by their mothers risk an early death, and researchers worried about the young gorillas.

Instead, the scientists got a heartwarming surprise. The juveniles’ uncle, a male gorilla named Kubaha, began to take care of them. “He let them sleep in his nest and climb all over him like a jungle gym,” recalls primatologist Tara Stoinski, chief scientist of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Kubaha’s willingness to be a foster dad turns out to be surprisingly common in mountain gorillas, according to a new study. An analysis of 53 years of data on mountain gorillas at the Gorilla Fund’s Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda has revealed that when young mountain gorillas lose their mothers—and sometimes their fathers as well—they do not have a greater risk of dying or losing their place in the social hierarchy because the rest of the group buffers them from the loss.....

The study is “terrific,” says Duke primatologist Anne Pusey, who was not part of the work. The data come from one of the longest mammal field studies, she notes, and the number of orphaned gorillas is high enough to compare directly with data from young chimps. Those data show that chimps die young or suffer other ill effects if they lose their mothers because females don’t change groups often—and infants are more dependent on their care longer than are gorillas.

Now, researchers need to comb decades of data for bonobos and other species to see whether they, too, adopt motherless infants more often than believed, Zipple says. A study published last week found that two bonobo females adopted infants from another social group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The findings suggest such altruistic behavior is not unique to humans—and that dads play an important role in primate youngsters’ lives, says Duke behavioral ecologist Susan Alberts, who was not part of this study. “Nonhuman primates often are really good dads,” she says. “This shows that paternal care goes very deep in our primate lineage.”

 

 

Odd things that continue to worry me

I get the feeling I have mentioned one or more of these before, but just have had an urge to repeat them:

*   I am forever puzzled by the "too low to make sense to me" cost of carrots.  Is it is a sign of something wrong with how agriculture works in Australia?   I would not have these thoughts if they were, say, double the cost.  Perhaps I should offer to pay more at the check out?   I'm sure that's a conversation which wouldn't be awkward at all.

*  A significant reduction in CO2 emissions will not be possible until we outlaw Pringles, or imitation Pringles.  I mean, just slice and fry potatoes for a nice snack - don't expend all that energy on drying and powdering them, only to reconstitute it to bake them again.   It's ridiculous.

*  Elon Musk enjoys, I suspect, his Twitter avatar of his Starship looking rather pointy-phallic:  

*   OK, this one is serious:   just how much unnecessary crap do governments think we can put into orbit before it becomes so full of dangerous shards of debris that we can't do anything important there?:

China is ramping up plans for government-sponsored satellites to beam internet from space, taking on U.S. rivals like SpaceX and Amazon in the race to own the next frontier of connectivity.

Why it matters: There's growing concern that China is trying to enter the space internet market with the same strategy it used on earth with Huawei and 5G — use a state-backed company to undercut competitors and spread global influence.

What's happening: China is attempting to launch its own network to rival global competitors.

• China's "StarNet" would launch 10,000 satellites in the next 5 to 10 years, according to an Asia Times report that cites a publication run by the official China News Service.
• China intends to build a space infrastructure system for communications, navigation and remote sensing with global coverage as part of its latest five-year plan.

*   Speaking of China:   as far as I can tell, they have become good enough at rocketry, but still can't put together a decent airliner.  (And I think their military jets are all based on other nation's designs and tech, too.)   Doesn't that seem a little odd?   Maybe your basic rocket is relatively simple compared to a 777, and you don't have to worry about using it twice, so I guess it makes sense.   [And I have read that airline manufacture requires so many components that they all inevitably have input from other nations, even if it is a Boeing or (obviously) an Airbus.]   Is this technological barrier a reason to doubt China is genuinely in a position to take over the world - that if you can't put together a decent fighter or passenger jet in your nation, because other nations don't want to help you do it, you're not as powerful as you think you are?   

And toilets - based on a couple of Youtube videos, it seems Chinese toilets are, outside of your decent big city hotels, routinely horrendous.   Again, perhaps this is a measure of international power -  you are not a country ready to take over the world while ever a significant number of your toilets are holes in the ground.  But wait - maybe we only 10 years left!:

A “Toilet Revolution” was launched in China five years ago. The aim was to eliminate epidemics such as the deadly Covid-19 outbreak, which has so far claimed more than 1,800 lives and infected at least 72,000 people.

Geared to upgrade hygiene and sanitation in urban and rural parts of the world’s second-largest economy, up to 68,000 toilets were built or refurbished between 2015 and 2019.

By the end of this year, an additional 64,000 will come online as part of the ultimate goal to have a 100% “civilized” toilet culture by 2030.

“The toilet issue is not a small issue. It is an important part of civilized construction in both urban and rural areas,” President Xi Jinping said at the launch of his ambitious building program.

*  Radical African Islam - I mean, seriously, how do these people ever think they will be popular enough to actually really run a country.  In Mozambique, for example:

A leading aid agency says that children as young as 11 are being beheaded in Mozambique's Cabo Delgado province.

One mother told Save the Children she had to watch her 12-year-old son killed in this way close to where she was hiding with her other children.

More than 2,500 people have been killed and 700,000 have fled their homes since the insurgency began in 2017.

Militants linked to the Islamic State (IS) group are behind a conflict in the province....

The insurgents are known locally as al-Shabab, which means The Youth in Arabic. This reflects that it receives its support mostly from young unemployed people in the predominantly Muslim region of Cabo Delgado.

A group with a similar name has existed in Somalia for more than a decade. It is affiliated to al-Qaeda, unlike the Mozambican group which allied itself with the rival IS movement in 2019.

IS sees the insurgents as being part of what it calls its Central Africa Province. It released images last year showing fighters in Cabo Delgado with AK-47 rifles and rocket propelled grenades....

Mr Briggs told the BBC World Service it was difficult to determine their exact motivations as they did not have a manifesto.

"They co-opt young people in to joining them as conscripts and if they refuse they are killed and sometimes beheaded. It's really hard to see what is the end game."

After visiting Cabo Delgado's capital Pemba last year, a delegation from the South African Bishop's Conference said that "almost everyone spoken to agrees that the war is about multinational corporations gaining control of the province's mineral and gas resources".

I don't know - but youth beheading even younger youth seems a, shall we say, very indirect way of dealing with too much control by multinational corporations.  

 

He's hopeless

I'm certainly hoping that more people are beginning to realise the asinine incompetence of Scott Morrison and the  LNP generally.   The sex scandals in Parliament are being appalling handled by a government more interested in self preservation than doing the right thing.

 Now, I see Morrison has apparently got all teary eyed about not wanting to let down his wife, daughters and mother.   Hasn't anyone told him to stop personalising it this way, as if he has no moral sense of sexism and misogyny unless he can personalise it to his own life?:

 And then he gets irritated with a media question:

And as Bernard says:

Update:   Yes, I keep thinking how the Coalition's moral authority on sexual conduct collapsed when its most conservative wing had Barnaby as a shining example:

Update 2:   I wonder.   Certainly the media's reaction to Morrison bringing up a sexual harassment incident within one of its outlets is so hostile, is anyone in the party starting to think leadership spill?   Maybe Dutton is getting itchy counting fingers again - although, really, his gradual (but now complete) scary head-morph into Darth Vader without a mask, or scowling version of Mr Potatohead, rules him out forever.  Frydenberg is surely the only person with a hint of charisma left in cabinet?  

Another thought:  isn't it ironic that sex in the workplace has caused the LNP so much trouble in recent years - I mean, arguably, Tony Abbott lost his job because many in his own party suspected he was sleeping with Peta Credlin.   (And, funnily enough, the most common opinion seems to have moved on to believing they were not, after all; their behaviour together just weirdly looked like it.)   

Similarly, it would be somewhat amusing if sex in the workplace (that he had no direct involvement in) brought down Morrison.

Stupid Prick

I can explain the title - James Morrow tweets/used to blog under the name "Prick with a Fork".   He now features on the ridiculous Sky News show Outsiders, and did he make a fool of himself on the weekend, or what?

Here is the Youtube story - entitled "This is the most important story about Trump story you never heard": 

 

It's about the Washington Post retraction of parts of a report which incorrectly quoted parts of a Trump phone call to Georgia election investigator Frances Watson.   In fact, the bits they had put in quotes was more like a paraphrase - and yes, they should never have portrayed it as otherwise without having heard the actual recording.

But - gormless Morrow runs his segment conflating two entirely separate telephone calls - he actually appears to believe that the retraction relates to the Trump call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger - a call for which there was always a full transcript and recording published!

I cannot fathom how lazy and stupid Morrow is to not have read into the story in any detail whatsoever so as to not realise that the retraction relates to a different telephone call.   I mean, it was set out in easy to read detail at places like Vox:   The Washington Post's correction about Trump's phone call to a Georgia official, explained.

What's more, as I have read before, Sky News Australia's nutty night time line up is actually very popular with American Trumpsters - and after the Morrow story, there are thousands of comments from Americans saying things like "this is why we don't trust the fake news in America".   I scanned perhaps a hundred or two comments, and did not find one which recognised that the video was a crock.  The nearest I got was one person who said something like "but I thought I had read a transcript of the call?" - again, still not realising that Morrow was conflating two separate phone calls.   (And the one to Raffensperger was worse for Trump, too.)

It'll be something to do with the internet

Noticed this tweet today, which I guess is of renewed interest given that terrible shooting in Atlanta, but the news story it is from is nearly 2 years old now.   I guess things probably have not changed much since then, though:

 

Tucker spotting

 

 

 

Actually, there was a very good twitter thread about evangelicals and "sex addiction", which can be read here.

Friday trivia

I haven't read the article yet, but sounds like an plausible inspiration for a screenplay:

My feeling that not enough economists are being honest about not understanding stuff anymore continues

 

Interesting science

*   It seems sperm whales told each other how to avoid whalers in 19th century Pacific Ocean:

Using newly digitised logbooks detailing the hunting of sperm whales in the north Pacific, the authors discovered that within just a few years, the strike rate of the whalers’ harpoons fell by 58%. This simple fact leads to an astonishing conclusion: that information about what was happening to them was being collectively shared among the whales, who made vital changes to their behaviour. As their culture made fatal first contact with ours, they learned quickly from their mistakes.

“Sperm whales have a traditional way of reacting to attacks from orca,” notes Hal Whitehead, who spoke to the Guardian from his house overlooking the ocean in Dalhousie, Nova Scotia, where he teaches. Before humans, orca were their only predators, against whom sperm whales form defensive circles, their powerful tails held outwards to keep their assailants at bay. But such techniques “just made it easier for the whalers to slaughter them”, says Whitehead....

Sperm whales are highly socialised animals, able to communicate over great distances. They associate in clans defined by the dialect pattern of their sonar clicks. Their culture is matrilinear, and information about the new dangers may have been passed on in the same way whale matriarchs share knowledge about feeding grounds. Sperm whales also possess the largest brain on the planet. It is not hard to imagine that they understood what was happening to them.

The hunters themselves realised the whales’ efforts to escape. They saw that the animals appeared to communicate the threat within their attacked groups. Abandoning their usual defensive formations, the whales swam upwind to escape the hunters’ ships, themselves wind-powered. ‘This was cultural evolution, much too fast for genetic evolution,’ says Whitehead.

*   Quanta has an article that is relatively easy to follow, about a paper showing that imaginary numbers are essential in quantum physics:

... physicists may have just shown for the first time that imaginary numbers are, in a sense, real.

*   They have measured a tiny amount of gravitational attraction:

An experiment shows that Newton’s law of gravity holds even for two masses as small as about 90 milligrams. The findings take us a step nearer to measuring gravitational fields that are so weak that they could enter the quantum regime.

 Still, sounds hard to believe it could lead to this:

The next step is to push on to even smaller masses — Westphal et al. suggest that gravitational fields of masses of the order of 10^–8 kg could eventually be measured. However, much work will need to be done to achieve this goal. The first task will be to substantially reduce damping of the oscillations of the torsion balance, which won’t be easy. But if it can be done, then perhaps quantum gravitational effects will finally be observed.

Tacky

Good grief:   this sounds like a new version of Leyland Brothers World:

Clive Palmer has promised to spend $100 million on resurrecting his derelict Coolum resort complex, giving it a “Wonders of the World” theme, complete with replica Trevi Fountain.

Can't the government resume the land and hand it over to a company that knows how to run a resort that isn't tacky?

About the American urban crime rate

 Sharkey, a sociologist, wrote a well reviewed book on the reduction in urban crime that came out in (I think) 2018.  Adam Gopnik reviewed it, and discussed the topic more broadly, at the New Yorker.

Maybe remote living is just kinda boring?

This is the synopsis of a story on ABC AM this morning:

In some of the Northern Territory's biggest remote communities Aboriginal organisations say youth crime is now so out of control that they can no longer deliver essential services.

They had hoped after the Northern Territory's Royal Commission into Youth Justice they'd get more support to help break their young people out of a cycle of offending.

But community leaders in the NT's largest remote community in Western Arhem Land say they've been facing a youth crime crisis for six months, and they're now begging for help.

On the audio version of the story I heard the following complaints:

*  need more housing (although part of the reason is some kids need to escape some of the dysfunctional households and so you get overcrowding in some houses)

*  need more diversion programs for kids - nothing much to do there; need more sports etc.  Kids think they are "ganstas";

*  government needs to do more.

You could have written the same story 20 or 30 years ago.

I actually assumed that Arnhem Land was probably one of the better "remote" areas for Aboriginal communities - it's green and fertile at least, isn't it?, unlike the useless, barren, hot red dirt of inland NT and South Australian remote communities.   Not that far from Darwin either.  But still, not much to do, there's apparently no economic activity and kids are bored.  

Just another example where "connection to land" of itself does not cut it as forming the basis of good living lifestyle for communities.   And all this reliance on government to fix dysfunction in the community

But how dare anyone say that out loud, hey?  

Your daily dose of "direct from Xi to you" CGTN propaganda (one is kind of cool, actually)

First, from the "dude, all the cool Hong Kong guys actually support China" files:  the "keybros" (who are doing this from London) might have made a spare pound or two by making their very sincere call to the citizens of their home city to be more open minded about mainland China:  

 

There's also a terrible attempt at pro-China rap to be found on the channel with the catchy title - the Song for the 14th Five Year Plan:

 

Gawd.  I can't quite work out how to feel about such shameless propaganda and the people who make it.   I mean, I guess it's at least better that it's cheerful rather than a full on racist diatribe against the rest of the world: but it's so unsubtle it keeps making me want to laugh, a bit like the pro-war propaganda segments in the Starship Troopers movie.

Anyway, one thing it seems the country is pretty good at is high speed rail, and this video about a new maglev version was pretty interesting, actually:

 

Porter and defamation

If PR smarts are any sign of suitability to be Commonwealth Attorney General, Christian Porter has spectacularly failed the test.

He was, apparently, so stressed out by having to deny a rape allegation that he couldn't work.  But he was cogent enough to spend (what is likely to have been) hours and hours in consultation with defamation lawyers.   

That's a very bad look for anyone, let alone a politician.

The media release seems to indicate that starting the action is about shutting down media commentary on the matter, and talks in a very legalistic sense about burdens and standards of proof.   Again, yeah, that's a real good look - using lawfare to try to stop a legitimate question in the mind of the public as to whether this guy is really suitable to be Attorney General.

Look, if Porter is about to resign from the position, and is going to be back in Parliament this week, I guess this action does not look so patently counterproductive.  

But if thinks this is otherwise a good move to help his career - well, he's too lacking in common sense to be AG, or even a politician.

I take some amusement, though, from imagining how Morrison - Scotty from Marketing - might be grinding his teeth about the PR aspects of this.  (If Porter has told him he is going to "tough it out" this way, at least.)   But then again, perhaps Porter ran this plan past the PM, who might have thought this is a good way to avoid having an enquiry.  But surely, keeping this whole issue in the public eye in the run up to an election early next year is not going to be helpful.  Is Morrison smart enough to see this as a PR disaster?   Who knows?

Update: fair point - 

Yet another dose of weekend stuff

*   Not much to report, really.   Bought a new hose for the Vacuum Maid ducted system.  The old one must have been nearly 30 years old, I reckon (assuming it was the original bought by the people who built the house.)   I doubt the new one will last as long.

*  Became more concerned that I am losing incentive to actually travel anywhere new, even when we can, because amateur/semi-professional Youtube vloggers do such a good job of documenting destinations.   I started watching a channel by young British guy Ben Morris (he seems OK-ish in personality, but a little tending to the shallow "rich kid turned influencer" genre) who has started living in Dubai.  Through him I got to see what a 7 million pound apartment in the Burg Khalifa looks like inside (he doesn't live there, but his "friend" Mohammed does.)   I was not overly impressed with the apartment, particularly with yet another example of the "this is what capitalism can lead to and it's kind of offensive" world of rich people collectibles:     

Apart from the cost of buying the apartment, which is large and I guess the price did not surprise me, the amazing thing was the cost of (what we would call) the body corporate levies.  I think he said 100,000 pounds a year ($180,000 AUD).   That's about 10 times the highest body corporate levies I have seen in Brisbane, in a nice, large, close to inner city apartment at Kangaroo Point.   Of course, that Brisbane apartment was probably about $2,000,000, so I guess we talking an apartment about 6 times lower in cost.  Still, the cost of living in the worlds tallest building (with those queasy full glass walls - which I don't trust) is expensive.

I also Ben Morris stay at that expensive hotel in Dubai, the Burj Al Arab (the one that looks like a sail, with a heliport near the top.)   Sure, the room is big, and I don't mind the hotel atrium, but the suite itself is Versace tacky in colour and style.  (How was Versace ever considered otherwise?)

 

So there, I feel I have sort of "done" Dubai now!

Porter watch

Let's watch Morrison continue trying to bat away calls for an enquiry:

A longtime friend of the woman who alleged she was raped by the attorney general, Christian Porter, as a teenager has said he had “clear recollections of relevant discussions” with Porter, from at least 1992.

Macquarie Bank managing director James Hooke released a statement on Friday afternoon as someone who has known Porter’s accuser, and Porter, for the past 30 years.

Hooke said the woman, who he considered to be a “very dear friend”, and he had “relevant discussions” about the event from “mid-1988 until her death”. Hooke also recollects speaking with Porter from 1992 onwards.

No wonder Porter was upset at his press conference - I reckon he knew there was more that might potentially come out, but he didn't know if it would or not.  That would cause considerable stress.

Now, it is always possible that James's conversations with Porter may confirm Porter has always denied everything.  Or, it may indicate something else.

Seems like James only wants to disclose that to an enquiry.   So, we won't know unless that happens.   

   

Good news and not so good news

The not so good news - the amount at which there was a clear benefit was only 2 drinks a week!  (I think a "standard" serving is 12 g of alcohol - the amount in one 100 ml glass of wine.)

Mind you, if I can read that graph correctly, it looks like "all cause" mortality is better at over 6 drinks a week than at under 6 drinks.  That's good to know!

Here's the abstract:

The new Rome?

Cullen Murphy writes at The Atlantic about America's current political state in "No, Really, Are We Rome?".  He wrote a book on the topic some time ago, and revisits the idea that we're watching a similar fall of an empire. 

If I were writing Are We Rome? today, one new theme I’d emphasize emerges from a phrase we heard over and over during the Trump administration: “adults in the room.” The basic idea—a delusion with a long history—was that an unfit and childish chief executive could be kept in check by the seasoned advisers around him, and if not by them, then by the competent career professionals throughout the government. The administration official who anonymously published a famous op-ed in The New York Times in 2018 offered explicit reassurance: “Americans should know that there are adults in the room.” Various individuals were given adult-in-the-room designation, including the White House counsel Don McGahn and Chief of Staff John Kelly. I sometimes imagined these adults, who included distinguished military veterans, wearing special ribbons. The obvious flaw in the arrangement was that the child could summarily dismiss the adults with an intemperate tweet.

For long periods in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, the Roman empire was literally in the hands of children, as reigning emperors died unexpectedly and sons as young as 4 and 8 ascended to the most exalted rank. Adults in the room were appointed to serve them—often capable generals such as Stilicho (who served Honorius) and Aetius (who served Valentinian III). The idea was to acknowledge imperial authority as sacrosanct but at the same time have people in charge who could handle the job. And often it worked, for a while. The diplomat and historian Priscus described what happened when Valentinian grew up. The emperor’s intemperate tweet took this form:

As Aetius was explaining the finances and calculating tax revenues, with a shout Valentinian suddenly leaped up from his throne and cried out that he would no longer endure to be abused by such treacheries … While Aetius was stunned by this unexpected rage and was attempting to calm his irrational outburst, Valentinian drew his sword from his scabbard and together with Heracleius, who was carrying the cleaver ready under his cloak (for he was a head chamberlain), fell upon him.

There is no substitute, it turns out, for actual leadership at the top. Even so, when the adults are gone, the next line of defense is bureaucratic heroism. A civil service is one reason entities as large as the Roman empire—or the British or American one—have had staying power. Watch the behavior of imperial functionaries in the fifth century, when much of the Roman world was falling apart, and you see the ability of bureaucratic procedure and administrative competence—food goes here, gold goes there—to hold bits of the rickety scaffolding together when no one seems to be in charge. I’m not aware of ancient references to a civitas profunda, but the “deep state” is neither a modern nor a malevolent invention.

I do like this caution he gives in the article, though:

The comparisons, of course, can be facile. A Roman state of some sort lasted so long—well over a millennium—and changed so continuously that its history touches on any imaginable type of human occurrence, serves up parallels for any modern event, and provides contradictory answers to any question posed. Still, I am not immune to preoccupation with the Roman past.

Oh look - another "deep state" traitor (who Trump appointed)

From Axios:

Former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller told "VICE on Showtime" that he believes former President Trump incited the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 with his speech preceding the deadly riot.

Why it matters: Miller, who Trump appointed to lead the Pentagon after firing Mark Esper following the 2020 election, said, "it’s pretty much definitive" that the riot, which left five people dead, would not have happened without the president’s “Save America” rally speech.