This looks good

This movie trailer is getting a lot of positive comment - and I can understand why.  

 

Yes, it's another "multiverse" themed movie, but (no insult to the new Spiderman, I do intend seeing it) it's good to see it being done with fresh new characters.

Real tragedy

Children's deaths in the news are always distressing, but it feels particularly worse in the imagination when it happens while having innocent fun.

The news is going world wide, with the New York Times story indicating that this might be the biggest number of deaths from any "bouncy castle" accident.  Ugh.

A modern tragedy

So a woman in a private hospital room is upset:

Cassie of Sydney says:

December 16, 2021 at 1:54 pm

1. I was double jabbed by October 2021…the AZ vaccine.

2. As demanded by NSW Health and all NSW hospitals, prior to my admittance to hospital on Monday 6 December, on Friday 3 December I had my first Covid test ever. It returned negative.

3. Last Saturday morning, 11 December, before being transferred to another hospital, I had my second Covid test. It returned negative. I was transferred to my new hospital on Sunday morning 12 December.

4. On Tuesday afternoon 14 December, the first hospital rang the second hospital to tell them that I may have been in contact with someone who has tested positive for the Covid Omicron strain. The contact would have happened sometime Saturday afternoon. At about 4.30p.m. on Tuesday 14 December a nurse came in in protective clothing and performed a Covid test on me…..we are still waiting on the result.

5, So, since Tuesday 14 December, at 4.00 p.m. precisely, I have been isolated in my hospital room. I am not allowed to leave, no visitors. Nothing. The nurses and physio come in to the room attired in protective clothing….as though I have Ebola! 

6. We are still waiting on the result of the first Covid test however I have been told that as a matter of security the hospital does a second Covid test, this will be one done tomorrow afternoon and sent off.

7. I will not know any result until at least Sunday….so I am locked in a hospital room until 19 December.

8. I ask genuinely….what was the point of getting jabbed?

9. There is no way…and I mean no way….that I will be having a third, fourth, fifth or sixth jab.

10. Given the above, as you can all imagine my mental health at the moment is not the best, I hope this doesn’t impact my surgical recovery.

11. I am very upset.

Considering that she has more privacy than most get in hospital, food made for her, internet access and help on call, going berserk over a 5 day period of relative isolation strikes me a pretty pathetic plead for victimhood by a woman whose constant angry on line presence I now consider due to a mental weakness.   (She is getting plenty of support from the other tossers at Cathollaxy.)   

Toughen up, dear....

(I can afford to be rude to her, as she has been endlessly rude to me when engaging directly with her on Catallaxy.)

 

An article for anti vaxxers

How do people not feel furious at the anti-vax peddling Fox News and websites (including the Australian wingnut Christofascist ones) when you have credible and detailed reporting from actual hospitals about the crisis that the un-vaxxed cause?

Take this article, about the experience in Kentucky, from Bloomberg.   

It just shows the power of relentless political/culture war propaganda to susceptible minds, doesn't it?    

Update:   just appalling.  Fox News is a plain force for human suffering in the interests of a bunch of insane hypocrites making money:

 

Allahpundit is appalled too:

I wrote 1,000+ words this morning on the new data about whether Omicron is truly “mild” or not. It might be, or its mildness might be a partial mirage created by the youth and broad natural immunity from previous waves that South Africa enjoys. The key point in all analyses of Omicron, though, is that a virus that’s freakishly infectious, as this one appears to be, needs to also be freakishly mild for there not to be a surge in hospitalizations and deaths. Assume that Omicron is half as lethal as Delta but, as some studies have indicated, four times more transmissible. We’d expect a virus like that to produce twice the death toll Delta did (at least in the non-immune population) despite it being technically “milder.”...

The insanely steep spikes we’re seeing in European cases may not be evidence of Omicron surging and replacing Delta but evidence of Omicron and Delta infecting different sub-populations at the same time. That’s the CDC’s nightmare scenario, that Omicron will hit here full force but won’t sideline Delta by doing so. Instead the two will circulate in tandem, sometimes infecting the same people, and creating a double-whammy wave of sickness with Delta patients suffering somewhat more severe outcomes.

 If that’s true then Saphier’s advice is insanely reckless. She’s telling people, including unvaccinated people, to go out and have no fear when doing so risks exposing them to Delta, not just Omicron. What is she thinking? Can we maybe wait a month to confirm that the variant is nothing worse than the “sniffles” before giving this advice?

 

Cult fight

The non-existant fraud

A good Allahpundit post at Hot Air.   (The comments usually indicate he is despised by most of the site's readership.  He is too reasonable for them.):

 I can’t believe we’re more than a year removed from the election and efforts are still ongoing to convince people that a candidate who lost the popular vote in his first national run, never had 50 percent job approval as president, got impeached, helmed the country during a pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people, and was regarded as a boorish loose cannon even by his admirers might have legitimately lost to a well-known generic Democrat.

And not by a lot. By a few thousand votes in some states. Yet it seems unfathomable to some that it could have happened, starting with the man who lost.

The AP assigned at least eight reporters and many months of research across hundreds of local election offices to this impressive but totally futile project. They went district by district across Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia to see how many cases of potential voter fraud had been identified by local authorities in each. Were there enough suspect votes to account for Biden’s margin in any of them? Answer: Not remotely. “The disputed ballots represent just 0.15% of his victory margin in those states.”

Won’t matter. The point of the gassy conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines is that devotees realize piecemeal fraud could never happen to a large enough degree to flip a state unless it’s “Florida 2000” close, which none of the states won by Biden were. There has to be some unified field theory of massive under-the-radar vote-rigging in which ballots are switched en masse by the thousands or millions to explain those margins. That’s why all conspiracy roads ultimately lead back to Dominion and Smartmatic. Maggie Haberman is right, though, that the AP analysis is useful in one respect. It challenges the suspicion that laws that were relaxed during the pandemic to make voting by mail easier meaningfully increased the amount of fraud at the polls. They didn’t.

Even poor old JC from Catallaxy, and who continues to appear at fascist Cathollaxy (where he seems to think most of the other commentators are idiots, but he still hangs out there) believes that the election fraud was real. 

I wonder if Sinclair Davidson, who seemed half convinced by dubious statistical mathturbation claims that the election count must have been fraudulent, still believes that.   Since the downfall of Catallaxy, I don't know what he believes any more.   I should check his twitter, I suppose, but I seem to recall it's a pretty dull read, and mostly talks blockchain crap.

A surprising eye innovation

The New York Times explains:

An eye drop that improves close-range vision could make misplaced reading glasses less of an inconvenience for many of the 128 million Americans who suffer from age-related deficits in near vision. Vuity, which became available by prescription on Thursday, is a once-a-day treatment that can help users see up close without affecting their long-range vision.

“For anybody who doesn’t want to fiddle with reading glasses, this might be a really helpful alternative,” said Dr. Scott M. MacRae, an ophthalmologist at the University of Rochester’s Center for Visual Science. Dr. MacRae was not involved in the clinical trials for the drug, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in late October.

But the way it works sounds, well, a little dubious:

Vuity improves near vision by constricting the size of the pupil. “It makes the pupil small, creating what we call a pinhole effect,” that way reducing the amount of peripheral light that passes through the eye that can make it hard to focus, said Dr. Stephen Orlin, an ophthalmologist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

Won't that mean it's harder to see in the dark?   Yes it does:

Although the clinical trials did not report any serious side effects, 14.9 percent of subjects who took Vuity reported mild headaches, compared with 7 percent of subjects who took placebo drops. Up to 5 percent of subjects taking Vuity reported other side effects such as eye redness, blurred vision, eye pain, visual impairment, eye irritation and an increased production of tears.

Because the eye drops reduce pupil size, they also make it harder to see in the dark, so they are not recommended for people who drive at night or need to see well in low light for other reasons, Dr. Waring said.

I think I'll pass.

 

 

 

Too stupid to know to call an ambulance

Not that I care about Sex and the City or its current sequel series at all (in fact, I pretty much consider it a blight on humanity that this set of characters ever existed), but I have been amused to read about how a fictional death could lead to much discussion about how dumb it makes the key character appear.

Read this amusing take on the matter (with expert opinion from a cardiologist) in The Vulture.

An unusual success story in criminology?

 

He makes a good point

 My personal aversion to exercise makes it hard to take sides on this one...:)

Local religion news

I want to know more about this:

This article explores how local Chinese authorities employed various strategies to promote the Patriarch of Sanping’s cult in post-Mao China from 1979 to 2015. It argues that the cult of the Patriarch of Sanping became an invented tradition for expanded religious tourism in Pinghe County in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province. Local state agents employed various placemaking strategies to promote Sanping Monastery and endorse the deity’s efficacy, creating an opportunity for resources to be channeled from other parts of China, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities to develop Pinghe County. This study shows that, on the one hand, local state agents have propagated miracle tales to entice devotees to visit and make donations to this monastery while, on the other hand, they have courted scholars, journalists, and tour guides to generate attention and interest in the cult. Overall, this article demonstrates how local government placemaking and marketing strategies have contributed to the transformation of a Buddhist master from a local deity to a popular god in contemporary China.

That's the abstract to an article in Critical Asian Studies: The making of a local deity: the Patriarch of Sanping’s cult in post-Mao China, 1979–2015.

Will see if I can access later.

That's some last line

In a Guardian story about a young-ish Catholic Spanish bishop who has given it all away to marry an "erotic novelist", the report ends on this note:

Novell, who has a degree in agricultural engineering and who was ordained in 1997, is now reported to be working for a company that extracts and sells pig semen.

A tea cup reading fortune teller of young Novell would have had quite the interpretation challenge. 

Update:  today I learned that tea cup/tea leaf/coffee grounds reading has a fancy name - tasseography.

Weekend stuff

*  Ate a very delicious yiros (lamb and haloumi) that made me think that is the best thing you can have at Greek cafe.  (But don't get me wrong; Greek food remains a basically uninteresting cuisine.)

*  Found out that Kmart can print photos on mugs immediately, if they are not busy (normally a next day service), and they cost $6.   That seems ridiculously cheap.

*  I didn't realise that Kentucky had a Democrat governor until watching the news of the amazingly damaging tornadoes.  Of course, wingnuts are working themselves into a lather over any suggestion climate change has anything to do with it - and I remember some years ago Roy Spencer getting indignant that increased atmospheric temperature should mean less (from memory) shear winds (or something?), so he was upset that anyone was suggesting that big summer tornadoes were due to it.   Others who make a career out of claiming climate scientists are exaggerating risk (Pielke Jnr) like to point out that the IPCC has said clearly that no trend is yet detectable.   But obviously, that doesn't rule out a connection to an unusual event like the weekend's - just we don't know for sure yet.

Yes a sad day

He did distinctive country rock and pop-ish work after the Monkees too, writing both memorable  break up songs (Different Drum) and great love songs.  Of the latter, I have always been very fond of Harmony Constant, and thought it would be a tearful/joyous song for anyone leaving behind a partner they love.

Here's a link to it.

It has begun...

I for one welcome our new furry overlords:

A man attacked by a pack of otters in a Singapore park has said that he thought he was going to die during the ordeal.

Graham George Spencer, a British citizen living in Singapore, said he was chased, pinned down and bitten “26 times in 10 seconds” by a family of otters while out for an early morning walk in the botanic gardens.

Spencer told The Straits Times he was approaching the gardens’ entrance on 30 November when he spotted about 20 otters crossing a path in front of him.

The animals were moving quietly but “went crazy” after another man ran towards them, Spencer told the paper. The runner was able to avoid the animals but Spencer was not as lucky.

He said they lunged at him, biting his ankles, legs and buttocks and causing him to fall over.

“I actually thought I was going to die – they were going to kill me,” he added.

Spencer’s friend, who was about “15 paces” away from him, ran up screaming in a bid to scare away the otters.

“I was bitten 26 times in 10 seconds. If it wasn’t for my friend, I don’t think I’d still be here. I’d be dead,” he told local outlet Today.

I'm trying to find a way to fit an insult to the British into this post too, without sounding too mean.  It's not coming to me, so far.

 

Just ludicrous

 

As someone else pointed out, this Rev's speech sounds very much like the satirical one Dan Ackroyd delivers to the rioting mob in 1941, which I get to mention twice in a week.  

 

To be honest, it would be incredibly funny if someone managed to torch the second tree - hundreds of millions of people would consider him (or her) a comedy troll hero. 

Sympathy (and sports terrorism) called for

I don't know why, but the start of the cricket season this year has given me a more heightened resentment than usual about the way it tramples over everything else - whole radio and TV channels previously full of potentially interesting programming overrun for days at a time by stuff I not only have no interest in, but I positively resent because of the way it pushes my mental landscape out of the way.   

Oh well.  I can always entertain myself by imagining revenge.   Throwing bottles of glycophosphate from a helicopter came to mind this morning....   

Update:  OK, here's how to keep me happier - special cricket channels that start operating during cricket matches (or cricket season), and leave the rest of the networks alone.    That way, everyone who wants cricket in their ear for 24 hours a day can get it, and I can pretend it doesn't exist as normal programming continues.

 

A good question

I think there's a lot that sounds right in this David Brooks article in The Atlantic:

What Happened to American Conservatism?

 He seems to annoy a lot on the Left in America, but I don't mind him.

Bleaching history

This morning, while using bleach to clean a sink, I realised I knew nothing about the history of this very useful, cheap product.   This article reminds us that making fabrics white used to be a very laborious process:

Humans have been whitening fabrics for centuries; ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans bleached materials. As early as 300 B.C. , soda ash, prepared from burned seaweed, was used to clean and whiten cloth. During the Middle Ages, the Dutch perfected the bleaching of fabrics in a process called crofting, whereby fabrics were spread out in large fields for maximum sunlight exposure. Textile mills as far away as Scotland shipped their material to the Netherlands for this bleaching. The practice quickly spread throughout Europe, and bleaching fields were documented in Great Britain as early as 1322. In 1728 a bleaching company using Dutch methods went into business in Galloway, Scotland. In this process, the fabrics were soaked in a lye solution for several days, then "bucked," or washed clean. The fabrics were then spread out on the grass for weeks at a time. This process was repeated five or six times until the desired whiteness was achieved. Next, the fabric was treated with sour milk or buttermilk, and again bucked and crofted. This method was lengthy and tedious, and it monopolized large tracts of land that could have been used for farming.

Late in the 18th century, scientists discovered a chemical that had the same effect as crofting, but yielded much quicker results. In 1774, Swedish chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele discovered the chemical element chlorine, a highly irritating, green-yellowish gaseous halogen. In 1785, the French scientist Claude Berthollet found that chlorine was an excellent whitening agent in fabrics. Some mill operators attempted to expose their fabrics to chlorine gas, but the process was so cumbersome and the fumes so strong that these attempts were soon abandoned. 

Another site goes into more detail about how the Dutch cornered the whitening market:

The whitening process with this lye method is a bit tricky. Additionally, it is cumbersome because it consumes several hours. Furthermore, it warrants extra care as it is pretty strong.

The Dutch are attributed for the modification they brought about in this sphere in the 11th and 12th century AD. During this time, they emerged as experts on the science of laundering in the entire European community. To soften the harsh effects, they seasoned lye with sour milk. They never let anybody know about their secret and, as a result, the process remained a mystery for many years.

Till the mid-18th century, the Dutch dominated and maintained their supremacy in the bleaching trade. Thus, all brown linen, manufactured at the time principally in Scotland, was shipped to Holland for the purpose of bleaching.

The entire course of action, from its despatch to return was a long process - it took about seven to eight months. 

As for the modern form of liquid household bleach, it wasn't a thing til the start of the 20th century:

 It wasn't until 1913 that a company named "The Electro-Alkaline Co", started to make a sodium hypochlorite bleach by chlorinating a solution of caustic soda, also known as sodium hydroxide (Mulrooney, 2013).

And here's the history of that company (the Clorox company as it became):

Clorox was founded in 1913 as the Electro-Alkaline Company by five Oakland, California-area businessmen, only one of whom had any knowledge of chemistry. Their objective was to convert brine from ocean water into sodium hypochlorite bleach using an electrolytic process considered to be technologically advanced for its time. Each partner invested $100 in the new venture, and in August 1913 they purchased a plant site. The company's first product, Clorox liquid bleach, was packaged in five-gallon returnable containers and delivered by horse-drawn wagon to local breweries, dairies, and laundries for cleaning and disinfecting their facilities. Labels for the new product identified it as being "made by electricity."

An initial stock issue of 750 shares at $100 each provided $75,000 in start-up capital. The company struggled through its early years and often depended upon personal loans from its directors to pay expenses. 

In 1916 a less concentrated liquid bleach product--5 percent sodium hypochlorite instead of 21 percent--for household use was developed and sold in amber glass pint bottles. William C. R. Murray, the company's general manager, came up with the idea of producing and promoting household bleach. Murray's wife, Annie, gave away samples of the formula to customers of the family's Oakland-based grocery store. Its value as a laundry aid, stain remover, deodorant, and disinfectant was also promoted by door-to-door salespeople who demonstrated how a solution of Clorox bleach and water could whiten an ink-stained piece of fabric. Orders were collected on the spot and then given to local grocers who purchased the necessary inventory from the company to fulfill them. Small and local at the time, Clorox was not affected by World War I. 

That 21% sodium hypochlorite formulation must have been pretty powerful stuff, given how quickly your ordinary 4 to 5% solution can white spot your clothes if it gets on them undiluted.  I can imagine  a 21% formula dissolving a hole in your pants immediately.  (Not to mention what it might have done to your skin.)

Anyway, now I know more.

The medical news that will launch about 1,000 late night chat show jokes

Viagra could be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease, study finds

Researchers then used a database of claims from more than 7 million people in the US to examine the relationship between sildenafil and Alzheimer’s disease outcomes by comparing sildenafil users to non-users.

They found sildenafil users were 69% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than non-sildenafil users after six years of follow-up. To further explore the drug’s potential effect on Alzheimer’s disease, researchers developed a lab model that showed that sildenafil increased brain cell growth and targeted tau proteins, offering insights into how it might influence disease-related brain changes. The findings were published in Nature Aging.

Cheng cautioned that the study does not demonstrate a causal relationship between sildenafil and Alzhemer’s disease. Randomised clinical trials involving both sexes with a placebo control were needed to determine sildenafil’s efficacy, he said.