This PBS report about Serbia's success at vaccination (and its embrace of vaccine from anywhere - especially China's) was very interesting:
Once again, I find myself (reluctantly) kind of impressed with China's push for world influence by selling themselves as the "good" guys who will just get things done.
I don't know how the new isolationist sentiment of the American (and Australia) wingnut Right thinks their position is going to achieve anything other than increasing China's global standing.
By the way, Serbia also knows a thing or two about crushing anti-vaxx ideas, which have transitioned from a thing of the nutty Left to have its new home in the Wingnut Right:
So, much gnashing of teeth in The Guardian about Labour doing poorly in last week's elections. Two bits of commentary: this one in The Guardian reflects the same issues people talk about regarding Labor in Australia (the party not finding a big enough support base after the industrial working class has dwindled; too urban, too "woke"); the other article in Financial Times points out that the pandemic has had a big influence, and people have rewarded the Conservatives for a "tough" response, and Boris retains a personal following.
While some of those factors can be seen in Australia, really, UK politics seems a weird beast all of its own.
* the first past the post system dilutes opposition votes in a way they are not in Australia
* Johnson (and I think, his party generally? - wait see my next sentence) does not follow the American and Australian wingnut Right on the major issue that is deemed a culture war one in those other countries - climate change. Actually, no - it would seem from a survey done just last year that the Conservatives at the party level are rife with climate change denialism - is it just that Boris tends green and gives the impression that it isn't so much?
* Labour couldn't even make sense on Brexit - I can't see that anyone is declaring it a success (quite the opposite) - but the pandemic has overwhelmed public attention, and as its worst effects become clearer in the post-pandemic world, Labor can't really claim credit for warning against it because they chose a path of ambiguity instead.
In Australia, meanwhile, I think there is a large danger of Morrison riding on the coat tails of COVID back into office, even though he runs a pretty terrible government and is basically incompetent on so many issues. (That gaff on China and Taiwan last week - just ridiculous.)
I just threw out this portable gas cooker after what I think was probably close to 30 years of good and faithful, if very intermittent, service:
I am inordinately fond of these devises: they're just a lovely bit of industrial design, aren't they? Simple, efficient and neat.
I wonder who first came up with this style of tabletop, butane cartridge, design? I've just spent about 20 minutes unsuccessfully Googling an answer to that. They get a mention in a Wikipedia post about portable stoves generically, but nothing about the history of this particular design. (It does tell us, though, that most butane cartridges come from South Korea, although an American company also makes them. And apparently the American Coleman company did a lot with smaller gas cartridge cookers in the mid 20th century.)
I don't think they were as popular as they are now when I bought this one. It was, due to its age, probably not meeting current safety standards, but we did use it for a dining table hot pot one last time this week. That's my version of living on the edge.
Update: my research skills led me to search just "history of butane cartridges" and it shows up an article from the New York Times in 1983 praising:
....a remarkable new portable burner called the Cassette Feu (model A-7),
made by a Japanese company, Iwatani. This powerful, cleverly designed
device virtually simulates range-top cooking; it may keep me out of the
kitchen much of this summer.
and there is a photo showing it is indeed this design of cooker.
I did notice that company is still prominent in selling these.
The Japanese website does not explain more, although it does mention that 2019 was the 50th anniversary of the Cassette Feu. So, we're back to 1969?
But for those who want more flavors than barbecuing could offer, the portable gas cooker provides an easy answer.
Fueled
by a disposable butane canister, this little stove unit came to America
from Japan, where it originated. “It was developed almost 15 years ago
for on-the-table cooking for sukiyakis and shabu-shabus,
" said Ken Semba, western region sales manager for Iwatani and Co., the
distributor of Cassette Feu portable gas stove. He explained, “Since
the gas hose was dangerous and the electric cookers didn’t give us
enough heat for this type of cooking, the Cassette Feu, which stands for
small flamer evolved.”
And someone's blog about Japanese food says:
While this product always seems to be around at my friends' homes, the
first model came out only in 1969, from Iwatani. No wonder the company
is still the biggest name in portable gas stoves.
So, it would seem a good chance that there is an unknown Japanese designer responsible for the basic idea. He (for it surely would be) should be better known!
So, we all know that Rupert Murdoch was early in the line up to get vaccinated for COVID. (In December, in England.)
I see that his Fox News boss son Lachlan, who has presumably direct ability to intervene in the editorial content of his network, gave money for an early COVID vaccine trial for health workers:
So why do they let their top Fox News star promote vaccine distrust to his (older) audience which is the most in need of vaccination???
How is it possible to read this as anything other than a case of being opportunistic greed stomping all over their ability to do a public good?
Noah Smith posted this the other day - a lengthy essay entitled Long Live the Sun by someone or other, but with lots of figures and easily understood arguments, explaining why solar power (to be vastly expanded and with battery backup) has won over nuclear already and it's not going to change.
A very green techno-optimistic take, but an encouraging one nonetheless.
Maybe that's why Bill Gates is getting divorced - his wife might have thought he was wasting too much money on advanced nuclear technology that just isn't necessary?
...just when my Youtube subs seem to be getting a bit stale, there's a flurry of things I liked watching:
* From Chinese Propaganda Central (CGTN) I have noticed videos heavily promoting Hong Kong people to move next door to Shenzhen instead. All part of the incredible effort the Party puts into manipulating people. "Move away from your old, fuddy duddy, used-to-have-democracy-of-sorts, locality, and learn to enjoy how terrific we are in Real China."
But of more social interest - it would seem that the Party has decided to stop young single people from getting dissatisfied with life by endorsing de facto relationships as a perfectly valid option! Look at this:
I don't know, but this seems to me to be quite a cultural move.
This reminds me: I have wondered before if an excess of single males might lead to an official softening towards gay relationships too - but the nearest she gets to that topic is referring to "diversity" in relationships.
Wait a minute - I have only started watching this Youtube channel a few months ago, so I should search for how it has dealt with gay relationships.
To my surprise - they ran a series on the topic 3 years ago! Looks as if a very sympathetic line taken, too. Not much content since then though? Still, given how nothing on this channel appears other than closely aligned with what the government wants its population to think, I think I can just about claim vindication.
Also, if you want to see "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" updated in China, have a look at this:
Very macho, very military. Join the Party, sacrifice work hard for the motherland, and be glorious! Maybe the West needs to work on getting the country to develop a youth drug problem. My modest proposal to limit China: a new Opium War, of sorts. [Sorry, children.]
* Tom Scott taking the "emergency exit" from the top of a wind turbine was interesting:
* Sabine Hossenfelder gives her ideas as to how to solve the dark matter conundrum (in short, the wrong physics speciality has been looking at it the whole time):
* Finally, a happy physicist who doesn't look like your typical egg head explains how tiny neutrinos are:
Got a skip on Friday for a long weekend clean up. It feels like we are getting ready to move house, even though we aren't. Also, its a bit of a worry when you nearly fill a skip and still think parts of the house look a bit cluttered. But it is still only 2/3 full.
I'm pretty sure people have no idea how heavy old upright pianos can be. The one which I have spent 2 days trying to figure out how to get into the skip was taken by my wife off a friend who was wanting to get rid of it, in the hope that it might be repairable. (I was always sure it wasn't, at anything like a reasonable cost, and I was right.) Hence it has been used as a (feels like) one tonne, immoveable shelf for something like 20 years. I was more than happy to try to dispose of it.
It was a challenge: lots of unscrewing, sawing, spannering, kicking, and failed attempts to cut piano wire, which is extraordinary tough stuff. Despite all of this, the extremely heavy cast iron (or whatever it is) harp like heart of it, still attached to the solidly built wood back, is lying flat on the ground in front of the house, behind a bush, waiting to see if I can figure out a way to drag it the last 5 metres to the skip (not to mention how to lift it into it.)
I'm seriously thinking of setting the wood alight, since if it was the metal alone it might be more easily handled. This is probably illegal. It might also alarm the neighbours, too. But really, I'm running out of options.
I've always thought that taking apart a piano would feel a little uncomfortably wrong in some sense, like killing an animal. (It certainly makes a lot of noise.) But I'm pretty much over that. If any animal worth eating was shaped like a piano, I wouldn't hesitate.
Speaking of eating animals, I did a lot of it on Sunday, at a very authentic charcoal yakiniku place in the city. It made me think: while I have long been sceptical that lab grown meat is going to easily be made structurally into something that would have a realistic steak texture, perhaps there is a better chance of gluing cells together into a thin slice such as is used most commonly in yakiniku. But then again, it's going to be hard to do the fat in wagyu meat, thin slice or not.
Gah, I think I have a splinter in my hand from that piano. Its revenge, no doubt.
Well, it's a silly heading: I don't see what's "grim" about that at all.
Anyway, a few extracts:
If there has been a downturn in the hygge industry in recent years, it
may be because Finland, my home country, has surpassed Denmark in the World Happiness Report
four years running. Denmark occupies the third place, after Iceland, in
the most recent edition, released in March, and its distance to Finland
is growing. As reported by multiple media outlets, the Finnish spiritual equivalent to hygge is something far less convivial and much more difficult to pronounce: kalsarikännit,
which translates as “pantsdrunk,” refers to the practice of binge
drinking home alone in your underpants. If this is a secret to happy
life, let’s keep it that way: a secret.
Heh.
Apparently they don't look like the happiest people:
Nobody
is more skeptical than the Finns about the notion that we are the
world’s happiest people. To be fair, this is hardly the only global
ranking we’ve topped recently. We are totally fine with our reputation
of having the best educational system (not true), lowest levels of
corruption (probably), most sustainable economy (meh), and so forth. But
happiest country? Give us a break. As reported by
a correspondent for the Economist, when a Cabinet member of the Finnish
government was introduced at an international conference as “the
representative of the happiest country in the world,” he responded: “If
that’s true, I’d hate to see the other nations.”
Finland
hasn’t always had such a blissed out international reputation. In 1993,
when I was living in New York and still fresh off the boat, 60 Minutes featured a segment on
Finland, which opened with this description of Helsinki pedestrians
going about their business: “This is not a state of national mourning in
Finland, these are Finns in their natural state; brooding and private;
grimly in touch with no one but themselves; the shyest people on earth.
Depressed and proud of it.” As far as facial expressions of the Finnish
people, not much has changed since then. We are still just as reserved
and melancholy as before. If happiness were measured in smiles, Finnish
people would be among the most miserable in the world.
Anyway, the writer thinks the reason for their apparent happiness is this:
We should not ignore expectations, the other aspect of the
formula used in the World Happiness Report. Consistent with their
Lutheran heritage, the Nordic countries are united in their embrace of
curbed aspirations for the best possible life. This mentality is
famously captured in the Law of Jante—a
set of commandments believed to capture something essential about the
Nordic disposition to personal success: “You’re not to think you are
anything special; you’re not to imagine yourself better than we are;
you’re not to think you are good at anything,” and so on. The Nordic
ethos stands in particularly stark contrast to the American culture
characterized by “extreme emphasis upon the accumulation of wealth as a
symbol of success,” as observed by the sociologist Robert K. Merton in the 1930s.
The Nordic countries provide decent lives for their citizens and prevent
them from experiencing sustained periods of material hardship.
Moreover, they embrace a cultural orientation that sets realistic limits
to one’s expectations for a good life. In these societies, the
imaginary 10-step ladder is not so tall, the first rung is pretty high
up, and the distance between the steps is relatively short. People are
socialized to believe that that what they have is as good as it gets—or
close enough. This mindset explains why Finns are the happiest people in
the world despite living in small apartments, earning modest
incomes—with even more limited purchasing power thanks to high prices
and taxes—and, unlike Iceland, having never even made it to the World
Cup!
But - much the same can be said of Japanese society too, I think, about people being taught not to be too ostentatious about wealth (even though they do have a bit of a brand fetish); but it ranks, next to famously stressed out South Korea, at No. 62 on the World Happiness Report rankings for 2017 - 2019, which you can see here. (Australia is at No. 12. Mexico (!) is at 24, and Singapore 31.)
So, things are always a little complicated when assessing happiness.
I think the Jimmy Kimmel/Mike Lindell interview is well worth watching for a few reasons:
* I had no idea about Lindell's terrible history of addiction;
* Kimmel continues to be the surprise "who would have thought someone involved in the cringe sexism of the Man Show was actually an intelligent quasi-liberal the whole time"? Or perhaps his politics are libertarian lite - liberal, like Will Wilkinson? I dunno, but he certainly recognises the appalling state of the Right in the form of Trump and the Republican Party.
* Lots of comments following the video on Youtube are praising Lindell and saying he was brave and has largely redeemed himself as sincere. Depends on your perspective, I suppose, because I thought it showed him as a jittery character whose belief in election fraud is, as Kimmel said, entirely explicable by residual paranoia from long time (former) use of cocaine and crack.
is a good read, and makes an interesting case that the age at which young people move out of home and start living independently is very much determined by a nation's economic situation at the time, and that the boom times of the 1950's made it unusually easy for American youth to start marrying earlier and living away from their parents. So kids now taking a much longer time to leave home is more a return to previous historical norms.
Seems valid enough, although by concentrating on economics, it doesn't take into account other factors that help account for young adults staying longer with the parents. I'm thinking of the change in attitudes to sexual relationships, whereby in the West it is now considered completely unexceptional for a single, young adult child to have their girlfriend/boyfriend either live with them in the parents house, or at least stay over. I'd be pretty sure that before that change, moving out of home, at least to a independent single life, was often motivated by wanting an active sex life that was hidden from the parents. (I guess it would still be a motivating factor in many cases, because even if parents shrug shoulders about their adult kids sex lives now, it's not as if all adult children want their parents around their partner, or vice versa. But still, it certainly happens in a not insubstantial number of households, and it is perhaps hard for younger folk to appreciate how scandalous this would have been in the average, even non-religious, household before, say, the 1970's?)
U.S. B-movie actress Lana Clarkson was found dead on 3 February 2003.
She had been shot in the mouth at close range in the California mansion
of record producer Phil Spector, who was later found guilty of her
murder.
In his trial, the defense alleged that because Spector’s white jacket
was stained with only 18 tiny drops of blood, he could not have been
the perpetrator. Clarkson had to have taken her own life, they argued,
for had Spector been the shooter, he would have been covered in blood.
Now, a new study showing how muzzle exhaust moves drops of flying blood
may explain why they were wrong.
When a person is shot, tiny blood droplets typically spray back in
the direction of the shooter, a phenomenon known as “back spatter.”
Traditionally, analysts assume blood travels along straight
trajectories—but the reality is more complicated, with factors like
gravity and aerodynamic drag also in play.
Inspired by the mystery of the Clarkson case, Alexander Yarin, an
engineer at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and colleagues set out
to pin down the exact physics involved. In an indoor firing range, they
shot a foam cavity filled with pig’s blood with a 0.223-caliber long
rifle—and filmed the resulting spray, which resembles that released by a
person when shot....
Turns out that it's complicated by the gun's own muzzle gases:
As blood droplets coming from the victim encounter a vortex going in the
opposite direction, they can get swept aside or along by the gas flow. They may even end up completely reversing direction, Yarin and colleagues report today in Physics of Fluids. ....
This means such droplets can land behind the victim, along with the
forward splatter from the bullet, Yarin explains. Depending on the
position of the shooter, it’s even possible for their clothing to remain
almost free of bloodstains. The team also found that muzzle gases can
cause flying blood droplets to break up, changing the resulting spatter
patterns that forensic experts have to interpret at crime scenes.
The findings are “world class,” says Daniel Attinger, a mechanical
engineer from Iowa State University and a member of the International
Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts. Based on the work, he
argues, “It would make sense to revisit criminal cases involving
gunshots where the assumption of straight trajectories has been made.”
To be honest, it sounds a bit surprising that it has taken them that long to realise this. Or maybe they knew it was inconclusive evidence, and hence Spector was convicted despite that relative lack of blood on his clothes?
Speaking of forensics - was it a TV or movie I saw recently which made passing reference to bite pattern forensics being considered widely discredited now? I think so, but I can't remember what it was. I know it has been a controversial field - as the case of the terrible murder of Diedre Kennedy showed us back in the 1980's.
As a field, I do tend to worry about its reliability.
American astronaut Michael Collins, who was part
of the Apollo 11 original moon landing crew and kept the command module
flying while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon, has died at the age of 90, his family said on Wednesday.
Collins
had cancer. He was sometimes known as the “forgotten astronaut” because
he didn’t get to land on the moon, while Armstrong and Aldrin became
household names.
Time for me to mention again, for probably the third and last time, that I was once briefly in the same room as him.
I'm sure I read his book too. He was a very modest man.
Notice the book "Kant's Humorous Writings"? Yeah, I didn't know he told jokes or anecdotes in his lectures, but apparently he did. I doubt they were actually hilarious, but wasn't about to spend a lot of money to find out.
Buddhism gets a mention too, and as it happens, I decided to start reading Karen Armstrong's 2000 biography (of sorts, given the lack of clearly authentic source material) on its founder while I was in Sydney last weekend. (I read her book on Muhammad too, many years ago.) Stylistically, I think she's a very good writer. I'm not always sure that some of her points are valid, but she's a pleasure to read at all times.
Anyway, the free will article mentions Buddhism in this context:
This is what Harris means when he declares that,
on close inspection, it’s not merely that free will is an illusion, but
that the illusion of free will is itself an illusion: watch yourself
closely, and you don’t even seem to be free. “If one pays
sufficient attention,” he told me by email, “one can notice that there’s
no subject in the middle of experience – there is only experience. And
everything we experience simply arises on its own.” This is an idea with
roots in Buddhism, and echoed by others, including the philosopher
David Hume: when you look within, there’s no trace of an internal
commanding officer, autonomously issuing decisions. There’s only mental
activity, flowing on. Or as Arthur Rimbaud wrote, in a letter to a
friend in 1871: “I am a spectator at the unfolding of my thought; I
watch it, I listen to it.”
There are reasons
to agree with Saul Smilansky that it might be personally and societally
detrimental for too many people to start thinking in this way, even if
it turns out it’s the truth. (Dennett, although he thinks we do have
free will, takes a similar position, arguing that it’s morally
irresponsible to promote free-will denial.)
Not sure that I have thought about this much before, but I guess you would have to say that Buddhism is the religion most consistent with the free will sceptics, or disbelievers, or whatever they like to be called. But then again, if you go to Mahayana Buddhism, with its bodhisattvas taking the similar role of the Catholic equivalent of the Communion of Saints, you could hardly say that it's very consistent with a lack of free will.
Mahayana Buddhism seems more fun to me, anyway. That's how people choose religion, no?
Following up from last week's media attention to the fact that rich college boy Tucker made a "joke" about supporting a murderer of gay politicians, we get this today:
He is just an obnoxious jerk of the highest order.
Things I still like about Sydney after all these years:
* The antique feeling about some of the old underground subway stations in the city - like St James - with the iron rails and such like. It reminds me of the London Underground, except not built for hobbits. (I was surprised when I went to London that I had not known beforehand their tube trains and tunnels - or some of them, at least - seemed so narrow and small, like they were not really built for modern sized humans at all.)
* David Jones Elizabeth Street: not sure when it was last refurbished, but it's looking very spectacular now - it's the most perfect example of what a classic, upmarket department store should look like, if you ask me, putting even many overseas examples to shame. Yet, you can still buy a danish in their food court for less than $5, while thinking about how you would not buy the French cheese at $170 a kg, but it's nice to know its there, for when I win Lotto.
* A youthful feel about its East Asian-centric multiculturalism. No doubt this comes partly from always staying in the inner city, and Chinatown being pretty close to Town Hall and Central; but the city always feels to me not just multicultural, but to enjoy a particularly energetic, youthful sort of multiculturalism. Melbourne feels more like old people from other countries, and any of their young are all absorbed from the age of 3 into that mind meld that makes them think AFL is the only important thing in the universe, instead of the reality that it's an eccentric local religion.
I was last in Sydney when the George Street light rail was still under its lengthy and expensive construction. But now that it's finished, George Street is looking pretty nice, and the light rail is very convenient to use:
Mind you, they're still doing something to a section of George Street down near Chinatown. Don't know what.
I also liked the newish looking precinct near the convention centre:
That new Ribbon building will look good when finished:
And what's this public depravity happening at Circular Quay:
Adam Creighton would be ecstatic with the number of people at The Rocks yesterday:
Not where we were staying:
But a nice view of cables outside where we did stay:
Anyway, a very pleasant trip, as Sydney in good weather always is.
So, I'm in a hotel and watching BBC World news, and this guy Aaron Heslehurst turns up with 30 business Talking Business show.
He's Australian; I've never heard of him before; and both his appearance and his, shall we say, excitable and somewhat mannered delivery reminds me very much of Stephen Colbert in his Colbert Report incarnation.
I still strongly suspect that its not worth the amount of orbital space that it's taking up, but I have to admit, even with it being far from complete, the download speeds people get from Musk's Starlink satellites is pretty impressive:
If you can be bothered watching - he easily gets 123Mbps without fussing too much about setting up the antenna.
In Australia, it apparently costs $139 per month. And the equipment, about $800.
Blows out our NBN satellite service out of the water, it seems.
