China follows the ultra conservative path to eliminating homosexuality?

 As many have noted in Tweets following, this may be the same as what goes on in Iran (and perhaps some other Muslim countries?):

Old decrepit commentator farewells old decrepit commentator

I've briefly noted before that old-before-his-age conservative commentator Currency Lad, who has resumed blogging, has developed into wordy, muddled, quasi-opaqueness in his writing.   I offer an example this piece about the retirement of Alan Jones, which seems to me to swing wildly between praise and condemnation of his "skills", only to finally settle on "he'll be missed".  Mind you, I saw on Youtube Andrew Bolt doing his farewell to Jones, and it was somewhat similar.   Seems a lot of his defenders have quite a lot of mixed feelings about how he operates.

Let there be no lack of clarity from me - he's a long time disgrace and done more harm to the country than good, by far.   I find his personality extremely grating, and have no understanding of how such a bombastic, thinks-he-knows-it-all-but-doesn't style succeeded for so long in media.  

I'm going with Krugman

The Adams tweet in full:

So, Wikipedia indicates he's a Democrat, ex cop, late convert to veganism who admires Putin and refers to himself in the third person often?  Sounds like New York got itself a strange version of SGT Terry from Brooklyn Nine-Nine as Mayor.

A special talent

The other trifecta: three Liberal PMs in a row that people on both the Left and Right (and everyone in between) consider to be completely uninspiring failures.

Some surprising renewable fuel technology described

Making useful fuels from the sun and air?   But the guys are German - I think I can trust them:

For the past two years, researchers led by Aldo Steinfeld, Professor of Renewable Energy Carriers at ETH Zurich, have been operating a solar mini-​refinery on the roof of the Machine Laboratory in the centre of Zurich. This unique system can produce liquid transportation fuels, such as methanol or kerosene, from sunlight and air in a multi-​stage thermochemical process.

Read about it here.

But I want it to work

Drinking alcohol to stay healthy? That might not work, says new study.

I wish it weren't true, but it does suggest a reason other studies might be misleading:

Increased mortality risk among current alcohol abstainers might largely be explained by other factors, including previous alcohol or drug problems, daily smoking, and overall poor health, according to a new study publishing November 2nd in PLOS Medicine by Ulrich John of University Medicine Greifswald, Germany, and colleagues. 

It's become impossible to exaggerate how appalling the Republicans have become

 Also - Rupert Murdoch, who is happy to watch his network burn down American democracy.  

Update:   despite much earlier hoopla about what a devastating result this is, the end result is going to be pretty close - 

Maybe 49% to 50.5%.

And the galling thing will be that if it ended up in those figures with a Democrat win, perhaps 50% of Republicans would believe it was Democrat fraud.

Update 2:  OK, maybe more like 48% to 51%?   But still, you only have to shift half of the gap to win next time - or 1.6%.  

Update 3:  seems to be settling on 48.3% to 51.0%.  Some progressive with the name "Princess" got .7% which would otherwise have been Democrat vote, too, probably.  So more like a 2% win...

A rather Orwellian turn

As a counterpoint to the rabid pro-China propaganda that is CGTN, I sometimes watch videos from the rabidly anti-China Youtube channel China Observer.  I don't know which country it comes out of, but it does make some pretty detailed critiques of everything happening in China.

This recent one, about a famous pianist who has (like many, many other famous folk) suddenly dramatically fallen out of favour with the government, highlights a "citizens police" force (well, a bunch of older people, it seems, more than happy to make money by being State informants) which put me very much in mind of the 1984 Anti-Sex League - a concept which, in the book and movie, I found inadvertently funny.

But in China, it seems that something close to it is becoming a reality:

I don't even like horses, but still...

...I feel a little sorry for wild introduced animals that face culling.

A report in Nature:

Scientists say Australian plan to cull up to 10,000 wild horses doesn’t go far enough

Oh, Gladys

I have a few observations to make about Gladys Berejiklian and her appearances at ICAC, which I am guessing many people will share:

*   she sounds like she makes for a pretty uninspiring "girlfriend" - not only very willing to diss the seriousness of a former lengthy relationship, but sounding so drearily bored with a lover's demands in phone calls that she would re-allocate money in a flash, just to make him stop bothering her; 

*   using the phrase "love circle" was rather cringe;

*   as Laura Tingle said on Insiders on Sunday, it's a bit (no, very) worrying to learn that such large amounts of money for essential services are capable of being allocated (or unallocated) in such a cursory fashion.   I mean, a few million here, a hundred thousand there; but $170 million to a regional hospital? 

*   those who thought she was a mere victim of love, so to speak, look very silly now.   Her instinct that her political standing was going to be irreparably damaged was correct.   She'll end up on the company directors boards circuit anyway, making money by looking serious.

Alcoholism in graphic detail

Google was reading my mind again, and knew that I would find interesting a rather graphic news special from a Grands Rapids (of all places) TV station about people with their livers destroyed by alcoholism being denied liver transplants:

 

What surprised me the most was how openly it showed the son being on death's door at home, while his mother tried to track down a hospital that might do a transplant.   I reckon if anyone has a son or daughter drinking heavily each day, regardless of their age, they ought to make them watch this to see what a miserable death it can lead to.   

Update:  and here's an article from 2019 at The Atlantic about the ethics of denying alcoholics a transplant.

Brexit chickens coming home to roost

The Guardian notes:

Almost twice as many voters now believe Brexit is having a negative effect on the UK economy as think it is benefiting the nation’s finances, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer, carried out during budget week.

The survey comes after Richard Hughes, the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, said his organisation calculated that the negative impact on GDP caused by the UK’s exit from the EU was expected to be twice as great as that resulting from the pandemic.

Hughes said Brexit would reduce the UK’s potential GDP by about 4% in the long term, while the pandemic would cut it “by a further 2%”. “In the long term, it is the case that Brexit has a bigger impact than the pandemic,” he said.

And another poll:

The survey by Savanta ComRes revealed that 52% believe that Brexit has delivered little, while 36% believe that Brexit has been a success.

In the five years since the referendum in June 2016, which saw Britons vote to leave the EU by a 52% to 48% margin, public attitudes have remained rigid and in a near 50/50 split should another referendum on membership be held.

However, the findings of the survey, of over 2,000 people, suggests that a significant proportion of Leave and Conservative party supporters are deeply underwhelmed by life outside the EU.

26% of Leave voters and one in third Conservative voters say that exiting the bloc has been a failure.

One in five of the voters for Boris Johnson’s party say that a policy to re-join the EU would improve the Conservative’s chances at the next election.

It's somewhat puzzling that there are 36% "believe it a success", but I guess that's the power of pointless populism.   

As far as I can tell, though, there is no commentator who supported Brexit who can point to how its been a success.

Helen Dale, for example, would rather post 500 cat photos on Twitter, or go on about identity politics, than actually address the economic failure of a position she supported.

Hype noted

I strongly suspect this is correct:

Experts warn the federal government has overhyped the potential for carbon farming to offset a huge volume of emissions in Australia’s push to net zero by 2050.

Australia currently emits about 490 million tonnes of carbon a year and the government’s long-term emissions reduction plan, released last week, said up to 100 million tonnes could be offset by farmers through the commercially unproven practice of soil carbon sequestration.

 

Way to ruin a party mood

A man dressed in Batman’s Joker costume has been arrested for attempted murder after a knife and fire attack on a train in Tokyo, according to Japanese media, with at least 17 people reportedly injured and one in a serious condition after being stabbed.

Witnesses told national broadcaster NHK of the bloody attack which happened on Sunday, when the Japanese capital was full of Halloween revellers, many in costume.

Media reports said the perpetrator, aged in his 20s and wearing a green shirt and indigo suit, attacked people with a knife and started a fire on the train.

Report is here.

I wonder how security conscious Japan is going to deal with this?   I mean, the sarin subway attack more or less ridded the country's cities of convenient garbage bins, I was reminded on the weekend when watching a video about the cleanliness culture in the country:

A particularly funny Huw Parkinson

In only a couple of decades time, probably, people will not be able to tell why this is funny, but it really is if you're the right age:

 

Wealth beyond my wildest dreams awaits me

Heh.  Astute readers might notice that you are now bothered by the occasional ad before you read my words of wisdom.

Look, I just thought it might amuse me to see whether giving in and letting Adsense place ads on this long running blog ever scores me, I don't know - $5 in a month?   

You have to reach a certain number of minimum hits, and I think it might perversely amuse me if they show how few I manage to get. I have my doubts I will ever make a cent.

But of course, I recommend all readers to enrich me and prove me wrong.  [As if...:)]

 

She's good...

Japan, books, paper and associated thoughts

I saw the term "Floating World prose" again recently, and had to remind myself what it referred to.    Here's the Wiki explanation:

Ukiyo (浮世, "floating/fleeting/transient world") is the Japanese term used to describe the urban lifestyle and culture, especially the pleasure-seeking aspects, of Edo period Japan (1600–1867). Ukiyo culture developed in Yoshiwara, the licensed red-light district of Edo (modern-day Tokyo), the site of many brothels frequented by Japan's growing middle class. A prominent author of the ukiyo genre was Ihara Saikaku, who wrote The Life of an Amorous Woman. Ukiyo culture also arose in other cities, such as Osaka and Kyoto.

That author Ihara Saikaku was, apparently, Japan's first professional novel writer, after being a big hit in poetry:

...the death of his dearly beloved wife in 1675 had an extremely profound impact on him. A few days after her death, in an act of grief and true love, Saikaku started to compose a thousand-verse haikai poem over twelve hours. When this work was published it was called Haikai Single Day Thousand Verse (Haikai Dokugin Ichinichi). It was the first time that Saikaku had attempted to compose such a lengthy piece of literature. The overall experience and success that Saikaku received from composing such a mammoth exercise has been credited with sparking the writer's interest in writing novels....

 Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial and amorous affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. These stories catered to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class, whose tastes of entertainment leaned toward the arts and pleasure districts."

Surprisingly, his genre of "racy" writing included an entire book devoted to short stories of pederasty, The Great Mirror of Male Love.    While I had previously heard of (many? some?) samurai operating a  somewhat Greek like, "mentoring" pederasty system, I didn't realise that there was an entire popular book devoted to the topic written by the country's first famous professional author.  It would seem from Wikipedia that the first English translation didn't appear until 1990, which is also surprising given you can imagine how popular this text would be in the gender and sexuality studies sections of some  universities.   Mind you, the Japanese being Japanese, apparently a lot of the stories involve bloody and tragic endings: 

When the woman woke in the morning, they were both silent, lying in the same bed. She called her son: "Rise up, lazy boy!" But there was no answer. She went into the room and turned back the blanket which covered them, and saw that Shinosuke had pierced Senpatji's heart with his sword passed through his own breast and out at his back.

His mother stood there for a long time overwhelmed at the sight of these two lovers' bodies, and then, in her sorrow and distress, killed herself in the same room.

Just your standard Japanese attraction to impermanence and the tragic!

Anyway, this got me thinking about publishing in Japan in the Edo period, as well as literacy, and I found Sci-hub gave me access to an article in the Journal of the Institute of Conservation all about the topic.  Here's some interesting stuff:

In 1603, Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543–1616) established a
hegemony over a country that had seen intermittent warfare
between various provincial warlords over much of the past two
centuries.2 The Tokugawa shogunate controlled Japan over the Edo
period, bringing stability and prosperity to the society and economy.
By the early eighteenth century the capital Edo (now Tokyo) had
become the largest metropolitan centre in Japan, with a population
of over one million. Half of Edo’s population was the ruling class,
the samurai or warriors, and the rest were merchants and craftsmen.
The two other major cities of Osaka, the principal trading centre, and
Kyoto, for centuries the capital and craft centre, each grew to 400,000
residents.3 With the development of monetary economy, economic
power shifted from rural agricultural producers to the urban
merchants and craftsmen (a group that was known as townsmen).
With urbanisation, economic growth and the government policy of
rule by law, literacy increased during this period. The samurai class
now became civil administrators, holding national and local
government posts in addition to their military ranks. They had to
rely on knowledge rather than military power to survive the
politically and economically complex society. Merchants had to
master account-keeping and administration. Rural village leaders
had to manage records of community activities and prepare tax
reports for their local lords. To meet these needs, educational
institutions rapidly spread in both cities and rural villages. By the
end of the Edo period, there were around 270 han-supported schools
for elite samurai education, more than 1500 private academies for
scholarly studies, and over 75,000 private schools for merchants and
farmers (commoner schools) throughout the country.4 Although it is
difficult to calculate, researchers estimate that by the middle of the
nineteenth century approximately 50–60% of the Japanese population was literate.5

 How do those literacy rates compare to, say, England?:

In 1800 around 40 percent of males and 60 percent of females in England and Wales were illiterate; by 1900 illiteracy for both sexes had dropped to around 3 percent.

That's a big change over the course of a century.  You can read about how that happened here.

Anyway, it sounds as if the Japanese had a pretty good start on literacy.

Back to making books in the Edo period:

Until the sixteenth century, printed texts were produced using woodblocks and were made almost exclusively by Buddhist institutions. By the end of the sixteenth century, movable type had been introduced to Japan from Europe and Korea.6

From the 1590s to the1640s, court aristocrats, political and social elites, priests and commercial publishers used movable type technology, and over 500 titles were printed. However, between 1624 and 1643, woodblock printing began to re-emerge and replace movable type. The dominance of woodblock printing was mainly due to its financial advantages over the movable type.7 Except for a few bestsellers and nineteenth-century popular novels, publishers usually ran a small number of copies at one time and reprinted  repeatedly, using the same woodblocks, for an extended period (sometimes over a hundred years). Block printing was ideal for this type of operation because once the wooden blocks had been carved they could be stored and used again as the market demanded. In this way publishers were able to recoup the initially high outlay of production and make a profit.8 In addition, a publisher’s right to print and the blocks themselves had a capital value and publishers could make a profit by selling their blocks, or reduce the risk of the initial investment by buying existing blocks.9 Movable type did not have the same commercial value and came to an end by 1650. At the peak of the printed culture in the eighteenth century, it is estimated that over 10,000 printed titles had been published with more than 10million copies on the market.10 A wide variety of texts, from classical to manuals, were published in response to the demands of an expanding reading population. The dominance of block printing continued into the 1890s, when it was replaced by the new western-style metal movable type and mechanised press. Binding practices also changed from the soft cover side-stitched binding to the hard cover western binding. 

That's kind of surprising - moveable font being replaced for a long time by woodblock.  What a curious country.

The article also explains that a sizeable paper re-cycling business was created by the book industry:

In the Edo region, recycled paper was first produced at the Asakusa temple for its own use in the early seventeenth century.  A network for the recycled paper industry had been established by the early eighteenth century. Edo was the largest waste paper supplier.  Below the merchant class was a class of people called eta, hinin or ‘the humble’, who lived in the slums of Edo and who engaged in waste collection, including waste paper. Their waste business was organised under government control and the gathered waste paper was sold to papermakers of recycled paper. There were several villages (communities) in the Edo region that made recycled paper.  The first villages started at Asakusa, and moved to Sanyabori in the early nineteenth century, they then moved north to Senjyu in the twentieth century. These villages were located very close to the waste business communities (waste paper suppliers). The recycled paper produced in the Edo region was called Asakusashi (meaning Asakusa paper) and it retained this name even after its production had moved from Asakusa to Sanyobori and Senjyu. Various types of recycled paper including toilet paper, book text paper, book covers, building materials and stationery were made and sold to the market through the recycled paper wholesalers. The paper did not require
the kind of quality needed for writing paper. Thus, recycled papermaking was undertaken by people such as poor farmers, who had little skill in papermaking. With ever-expanding demands, the recycled paper industry flourished in Tokyo until the twentieth century.

This recycling sounds very modern-ish.  And toilet paper!   I don't think I have ever read much about its history before, but it would appear from this account that the Chinese and Japanese were way ahead of the West in using it: 

By the early 14th century, the Chinese were manufacturing toilet paper at the rate of 10 million packages of 1,000 to 10,000 sheets annually. In 1393, thousands of perfumed paper sheets were also produced for the Hongwu Emperor’s imperial family...

...in the Western world, modern commercially available toilet paper didn’t originate until 1857, when Joseph Gayetty of New York marketed a "Medicated Paper, for the Water-Closet,” sold in packages of 500 sheets for 50 cents

Oh, and as a complete aside to this entire post, I just read this in the article about the use of the Roman toilet sponge:

The most famous example of ancient ‘toilet paper’ comes from the Roman world [during the first century A.D.] and Seneca's story about the gladiator who killed himself by going into a toilet and shoving the communal sponge on a stick down his throat,” says Erica Rowan, an environmental archaeologist and a lecturer in classical archaeology at the University of London. The sponges, known as tersoriums, may have been used once or cleaned in a bucket of vinegar or salt water and reused, or they may have been used more like toilet brushes than toilet paper.

Wait a minute:   does this give an additional gruesome detail to the crucifixion of Christ?   I have always been a bit puzzled about the detail of  vinegar, or "sour wine" offered on a sponge - I hope it wasn't a toilet sponge.  [Ugh].   I see that there are some detailed articles about whether it was actually meant to be an act of mercy or mockery - but has anyone ever thought before of it possibly being really, really insulting and cruel?   (The only reason this thought occurs to me is because I had not read before about the sponge being cleaned in a bucket of vinegar - I assumed they were just rinsed in water.)

[Update:  But, of course, it seems nearly every thought has been thought of before, so I see someone on Reddit speculated about this a few years ago.]  

What an unpleasant note to end on - sorry.

They knew they were playing a cynical political game all the time

The LNP needs to be severely punished at the next election:

Former finance minister who helped sink carbon price now urging Australia to adopt one

Mathias Cormann, now head of the OECD, was instrumental in repealing the nation’s key climate policy in 2014

I suppose a certain proportion of them were just outright climate change denialists who still prefer to believe spivs and self interested billionaires over scientists - but out of the total LNP, I would guess that 2/3 of them knew all the time that they were just playing cynical politics with carbon pricing.

And Malcolm didn't have the bravery while in power to call it out.

Ever since Gillard lost,  the leadership of the LNP has been almost startlingly incompetent and an embarrassment.  

Vaccinated, fully

Just had my second AZ vaccination for COVID.   Had my first on 5 August - the 3 month wait seems really long compared to the 3 weeks for Pfizer.

But I presume that in 6 month's time, I'll be getting a Pfizer or Moderna booster.

On the topic of COVID more generally, my early observation that that no one understands yet properly why the waves of infection come and go still seems accurate.     

Seems to me no one knows why Sydney and Florida numbers dropped away so rapidly, while Melbourne continues to struggle.   Singapore is having its own problems with getting back to "normal":

Singapore is looking into an "unusual surge" of 5,324 new infections of COVID-19, the city-state's health ministry said, its highest such figure since the beginning of the pandemic, as beds in intensive care units fill up.

Ten new deaths on Wednesday carried the toll to 349, after 3,277 infections the previous day, while the ICU utilisation rate is nearing 80%, despite a population that is 84% fully vaccinated, with 14% receiving booster doses.

Russia and Eastern Europe are having big problems, but with low vaccination rates, at least it is more understandable:

Russia on Monday reported 37,930 new COVID-19 infections in the last 24 hours, its highest in a single day since the start of the pandemic, as well as 1,069 deaths related to the virus. read more

Frustrated by the slow take-up of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine by its own population, authorities are introducing stricter measures this week to try to curb the spread of the pandemic.

I predict: there will be more somewhat puzzling rises and falls in COVID numbers in pretty fully vaccinated locations.