Tourist spot I'm unlikely to ever see

It's kind of hard imagining Iraq having a snowy, ski-able area with chairlift, but they do:

Neat summary

Of personal interest

At phys.org:

A new study from Keck Medicine of USC finds that the incidence rate of metastatic prostate cancer has significantly increased for men 45 and older and coincides with recommendations against routine prostate cancer screenings. ...

The introduction of screenings resulted in drops in both metastatic prostate cancer and prostate cancer deaths. However, the benefit of routine screenings was counterbalanced by risks of overdiagnosis and overtreatment of low-risk prostate cancer.

In 2008, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a leading national organization in disease prevention and evidence-based medicine, recommended against routine PSA screening for men older than 75. This was followed by a recommendation against screening for all men in 2012.

Research shows that prostate cancer screenings for men declined after the recommendations changed across all age groups and racial backgrounds.

I wasn't sure what the recommendation is in Australia, but I see from some recent publication that it seems to be this:

Men who are at average risk of prostate cancer who
have been informed of the benefits and harms of testing,
and who decide to undergo regular testing for prostate
cancer, should be offered PSA testing every 2 years from
age 50 to 69. Further investigation should be offered if
the total PSA concentration is greater than 3 ng/mL....

Digital rectal examination is not recommended for
asymptomatic men as a routine addition to PSA
testing in the primary care setting. Note, however,
that on referral to a urologist or other specialist, digital
rectal examination remains an important assessment
procedure prior to consideration for biopsy. 

OK, well that seems consistent with my GP's thinking.   I've had PSA checked 3 or 4 times in the last maybe 6 years, and all's looking good, so far.

More on Ukraine and bio-labs

An explanation here of how the US Right wing conspiracy web (as well as Fox News) went all in with bio lab propaganda.

More reason to de-populate the rural areas

Look, I live in Queensland, with its large regional centres and persistently Right wing bias (in Federal elections, at least), and home of nutty, dumb Right wing populists like Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer (amongst others).    So I can sympathise with the problem of the rural/urban cultural and voting divide in the US.  Was it last year that I (with wistful facetiousness) suggested that the best hope for the world is a "reverse Pol Pot" policy of de-populating the rural regions and forcing them into the larger towns and cities?   [I've checked now - it was at the end of 2020.]  Let robots and remote control equipment farm the land and do the mining.   Why do people want to live on such crappy, dry, flat landscapes as exist in much of the outback, anyway?

These thoughts were revived by this recent article from the Washington Post, confirming that the problem there is that the rural areas went further Republican and outbalanced the urban areas that went further Democrat:

“Republicans’ plight as the rural party of a increasingly nonrural nation has so far been balanced out by the fact that rural America has moved toward the GOP at a faster pace since the 1990s than urban America has shifted away,” political scientist David Hopkins wrote last year. “When combined with the structural biases of the electoral college and Senate in favor of rural voters, the current Republican popular coalition can easily remain fully competitive in national elections.”

The data reinforces that point. From 2000 to 2020 — and particularly in the last two, Trump-inflected elections — rural counties shifted to the right more than urban counties moved to the left. That’s helped rural areas add votes on net even as they trail urban counties in terms of population. On the graph at right below, you can see the net vote totals from each type of county. That the Democrat earned far more votes in 2016 than the Republican was offset by the Republican’s votes coming in rural areas that cumulatively hold disproportionate power in the electoral college.

Update:   How to force the de-population of the rural, I wonder?   Actually, maybe I don't want it de-populated, just as long as their susceptibility to dumb populism doesn't interfere with things like, you know, the fate of the entire planet for millennia.   Perhaps instead of marching them at gunpoint into the cities, the deal could just be "if you want to be able to vote, you got to live in an urban area.  Sure, keep your farm life if you want, but you just don't get a vote.  Us city folk need your food, so don't worry, it's not like we're going to make things intolerable for you."  Sounds fair, no?

Job and sarcasm

Slate occasionally still throws up interesting stuff - even though it's not as good as it used to be.

This article, about the unclear meaning of the Book of Job, is pretty good.   You should read it all, but I'll extract a key part:

Edward L. Greenstein’s astounding recent translation taught me that Job’s suffering is only half the story. It’s not even the most important half. Greenstein’s version does not rob readers of the comfort that comes from sympathizing with Job. But it also exhorts us to rebellion against power and received wisdom.

Greenstein points out that a huge portion of what looks like Job praising God throughout the text may be meant as the opposite: Job sarcastically riffing on existing Bible passages, using God’s words to point out how much He has to answer for. Most importantly, Greenstein argues, there’s something revolutionary in the mysterious final words Job lobs at God, something that was buried in mistranslation.

In the professor’s eyes, various words were misunderstood, and the “dust and ashes” phrase was intended as a direct quote from a source no less venerable than Abraham, in the Genesis story of Sodom and Gomorrah. In that one, Abraham has the audacity to argue with God on behalf of the people whom He will smite; however, Abraham is deferential, referring to himself, a mortal human, as afar v’eyfer—dust and ashes. It is the only other time the phrase appears in the Hebrew Bible.

So, Greenstein says, Job’s final words to God should be read as follows:

That is why I am fed up:
I take pity on “dust and ashes” [humanity]!

Remember, for this statement, God praises Job’s honesty.

The deity does not give any logic for mortal suffering. Indeed, He denounces Job’s friends who say there is any logic that a human could understand. God is not praising Job’s ability to suffer and repent. He’s praising him for speaking the truth about how awful life is.

Maybe the moral of Job is this: If God won’t create just circumstances, then we have to. As we do, Job’s honesty—in the face of both a harsh, collapsing world and the kinds of ignorant devotion that worsen it—must be our guiding force.

The key quote with the uncertain translation is this (from earlier in the article):

Job then utters a few enigmatic lines of Hebrew that scholars have struggled to translate for millennia: “al kayn em’as / v’nikham’ti al afar v’eyfer.”

The King James Version gives those lines as “Wherefore I abhor myself / and repent in dust and ashes.” Historically, most other versions stab at something similar—though, as we will see, modern scholarship suggests some very different alternatives.

Whatever Job says, it seems to work: In an abrupt epilogue, we see Job restored to his former comfort and glory. Many analysts think the happy ending was added to an initial core text that lacked such comfort. But even if you accept it as part of the story, it’s unsettlingly cryptic. We are not told why Job is rewarded, whether his reward was divinely given, or what scars the episode has left upon him. We are merely told that he’s materially back to something resembling what he had before.

 

 

How not to win a PR war

 

Yep, the modern "Lefty" (or libertarian) who do "just asking questions" videos for clicks are pseudo-intellectuals who give succour to the nutty Right

William Hurt, RIP

Going by the online reaction to his death, I guess I didn't appreciate how many people really liked William Hurt.   I did too, although I seem to recall he was quite eccentric in real life.  

The biggest whistle while passing the graveyard you'll hear today

 

Wingnuts are so, so gullible

I suppose I'd better get around to pointing out the gullibility (and complete lack of interest in details) of Trump supporting conservatives in the US, and Australia, about the idea that American would be carrying out bio-weapons programs in Ukraine.  As Allahpundit notes:

The “debate” over U.S. bioweapons in Ukraine isn’t a debate about bioweapons at all, of course. It’s not even a debate about how much you should trust the U.S. government, the only source for information on what’s happening in these labs. Any conservative worth his salt when asked how much the federal government should be trusted would say, “Not much.”

The actual “debate” here is this: Should you trust the U.S. government more than you trust the Russian government? Carlson’s answer, implicitly and characteristically, is no. Griffin’s answer, and the answer most Americans would give, is yes.

The Dispatch has a nice explainer today about the Ukrainian labs. They’re not new and they’re not secret.

There are laboratories in Ukraine that receive funding from the U.S. government as part of the defense threat reduction program. The USSR had a massive secret biological weapons program known as Biopreparat, and when the USSR collapsed the scientists and facilities did not just evaporate. The U.S. program, run as part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program under the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, provides funding to prevent the proliferation of bioweapons and make sure that the next plague does not emerge accidentally from an old Soviet lab. This involves helping make sure scientists with the skills that could be used to create bioweapons stay at home and work on important medical research instead (so they are less likely to get poached by higher-paid gigs in China, or Iran, or North Korea, for example). This program involves upgrading the facilities in the former USSR where the remnants of the Soviet bioweapons program might lay in order to ensure their security and guard against theft or accidental leaks.

In fact, just days before Russia began its propaganda barrage about these documents, the head of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program Robert Pope expressed concern about the effects of the war in Ukraine. In an interview with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Pope said that he did not believe that Russian forces would deliberately target any of the Ukrainian biolabs because they “know enough about the kinds of pathogens that are stored in biological research laboratories,” However, Pope was concerned that the facilities could be damaged by conflict, which could lead to disastrous consequences.

That’s why the U.S. and the Ukrainians are rushing to destroy pathogens in the lab as the Russians advance. It’s not a matter of “covering up evidence,” it’s a matter of not wanting anything to escape the lab if a Russian shell should accidentally hit it. We’ve already seen one near-miss on a Ukrainian facility hosting a weapon of mass death, remember.

Again, not only is this not a secret, the U.S. has acknowledged the labs before — including during the Trump administration, Greg Sargent notes. And even if you’re disinclined to believe Trump’s State Department, basic common sense points to an innocent explanation for the facilities. As Dispatch reporter Andrew Fink says, it would be batty for the U.S. to outsource something as sensitive as a bioweapons program to a country that’s crawling with Russian spies and which contains many Russian sympathizers. (Although far fewer now than it did two weeks ago.) We’d be asking for trouble, whether Russian penetration of the lab or a Wuhan-style accident that brings about a global pandemic. It makes no sense.

The Washington Post also did a "fact checker" analysis article about it too. 

In Australia, Putin sympathisers can't be bothered waiting for, or reading, the details:

CL, like Tucker Carlson, now thinks Glenn Greenwald is some kind of honest commentator. As Bernard Keane says of Pilger:

Twitter analysis of Republicans

Apparently, she used to be a decent journalist, then working for Fox News ate her brain:

A very strange country

I'm talking Pakistan, which, according to this somewhat amateur-ish but nonetheless entertaining/horrifying video, contains the world's most dangerous road.

It's kind of inconceivable to Western eyes that anyone in their right mind would use it:

 

I see that there are actually many contenders for "most dangerous road in the world" on Youtube, and many people who have made this trip in Pakistan so as to get the clicks.  (It would seem it's sold as a 4WD adventure type of thing to do?)   

I am also curious as to what goes on at the end destination, the rather un-Pakistani sounding "Fairy Meadows".   When you get there in the video, you can see substantial wood building construction in the background, indicating there is actually a decent  road to get there.  Let's check that out.   Nope, doesn't seem there's anything else:

 I guess the wood is from trees there?   I dunno.

Anyway, this is the description of the road at www.dangerousroads.org: 

Is Fairy Meadows Road Safe?

It’s said to be one of the most dangerous roads in the world. Getting to Fairy Meadows is a huge risk that prevents many from enjoying the view. In 2013 the road was ranked as the second deadliest highway in the world, because it's a 'treacherous high altitude, unstable and narrow mountain road'. The most dangerous part of the road involves a narrow 6-mile ascend on an unpaved and uneven road. There are no barriers to prevent a vehicle from falling off the cliff to a fiery death. The road is no wider than a standard Jeep Wrangler and there’s plenty of through traffic. One false move and it’s a very long drop. The first part of the road can be driven by a 4x4 vehicle, but the concluding sections, all the way to Fairy Meadows, needs to be traversed by foot or by a bicycle owing to the congested narrow lane.

Not just me

There's an interview article with Al Pacino in the New York Times which seems mostly about his gratitude at starting his career with The Godfather.   This is the opening paragraph:

It’s hard to imagine “The Godfather” without Al Pacino. His understated performance as Michael Corleone, who became a respectable war hero despite his corrupt family, goes almost unnoticed for the first hour of the film — until at last he asserts himself, gradually taking control of the Corleone criminal operation and the film along with it.

Key words:  "understated performance".

And further down:

There is an intense quietness to how you play Michael in “The Godfather” that I don’t think I ever saw again in your other film performances, even the later times you played him. Was that a part of yourself that went away or was it just the nature of the character that called for it?

I’d like to think it was the nature of that particular person and that interpretation.

I had written in my very, very late review (2016):

Which bring me to Al Pacino's acting - for a movie about his character's descent into the banality of the Mafia's brand of corporate evil (where murder is nothing personal - just "business"), we really don't get much insight into why he takes the path.  His acting after his character has taken the first step (with the murder in the restaurant) is really just somewhat static, unemotional staring for the most part.  (The character seems a lot more unengaged in life than his father.)  The problem may well be with the script - I assume the novel gives more insight into his inner emotions, but the movie sure doesn't.

 Well, at least I know I wasn't imagining the static nature of his acting...

This is pretty hilarious

At the Washington Post, a deeply ironic story about how a judge is citing Tucker Carlson's period of voter fraud skepticism as evidence that the network knew there was malice involved in the other hosts who went in boots and all.

It’s a pretty remarkable state of affairs when a judge is approvingly citing Tucker Carlson’s journalistic rigor, but that’s precisely the situation we find ourselves in now.

And rather ironically, that could be bad news for Fox News.

New York Supreme Court Judge David B. Cohen has now ruled that voting-machine company Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News and Rudolph W. Giuliani can proceed. The case involved numerous false and baseless claims made on Fox about voter fraud involving the company’s voting machines....

In the course of laying out the legal requirements for Smartmatic to prove its case, the judge noted that the company must prove Fox met the standard of acting with “actual malice” — i.e. not merely promoting false claims, but doing so with malice. And on that count, the judge says the best evidence that it did is Carlson.

That’s because Carlson, unlike the others, applied significant actual skepticism to the claims — and broadcast it.

It’s an episode many might have forgotten in the long and sordid run-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. But there was a time in which none other than Carlson stepped forward to question the “stolen election” narrative that had taken hold in the Trump movement and in certain corners of his network. Carlson said on Nov. 19 that Powell’s claims were serious, but he also (rightfully) noted that she had yet to substantiate them. He said he had asked, over the course of a week, for the evidence and offered her his platform, but that she had declined.

Carlson said Powell “never demonstrated that a single actual vote was moved illegitimately by software from one candidate to another. Not one.” He said that when he invited her on his show, she became “angry and told us to stop contacting her.”

The episode alienated some Trump allies. But it also, in Cohen’s estimation, speaks to the possibility that Fox might meet the “actual malice” standard.

 

 

 

How is the effect of conspiracy and poisonous partisan performative narrative ever going to be stopped??

On the matter of Joe Biden and his mental acuity:   of course he's not going to be as sharp as person 20 or 30 years younger, and all politicians will make rhetorical slips.

But frankly, I find it sickening to read the wingnut Right (or anyone, really) continuing to tell each other that he is dangerously senile.   I mean, to anyone who has ever watched a close relative develop dementia, the idea that a person can deliver a hour long address, or this shorter one, and still be suffering dementia is ridiculous, and I find it actually offensive:

 

Yes, I know this is largely a speech read off a teleprompter with a few asides - but it is delivered fluently, at quick pace, with barely an error.   What's more, the argument presented is cogent and rhetoric reasonable. And yet, the wingnut Right will claim he should be shunted out of the Presidency due to mental health; and the effect of edited bits of other appearances has some broader effect on the public - with too large a number buying into this narrative.   (Fortunately, there is some sign of a recovery in his approval ratings, no doubt due to a solid performance on Ukraine.)  The wingnut Right will circle jerk themselves into all kinds of bullshit fantasies - that Biden's frailty tempted Putin into the Ukraine invasion (when they're not blaming Western defence departments for going too gay and woke). 

Certainly, the wingnut Right have built themselves a fantasy world and they aren't leaving it anytime soon. 

I just don't know it is going to be broken - certainly, I reckon there should be a lot more calling out of the media and any politician being offensive idiots who need to stop building performative* false narratives as a way to make money - in the US, they are on the verge of killing democracy.   

*    This is what makes me so sick watching clips of Fox News or Sky News here - there is so clearly performance as part of the show, with no care at all about the effect of it. 

Update:  more on the matter of "conversative" criticisms just being performance art -

A reminder: record rains and climate change

I wrote this in 2011 (unfortunately without a link to the CSIRO report it extracts):

In terms of the climate change debate, I have never paid all that much attention to the particular regional rainfall changes for Australia forecast by CSIRO and the like. I just always assumed that regional forecasts under climate models were going to be more rubbery than the general effect of increased heat waves, which I consider a big enough worry. This explains why I wasn't really aware that there had been predictions of both extended droughts and intense rainfall under AGW. But as Tim Lambert notes, the report Bolt tries to slur as being warmenist propaganda that puts the emphasis all on drought, has this:

Climate change is also likely to affect extreme rainfall in south-east Queensland (Abbs et al. 2007). Projections indicate an increase in two-hour, 24-hour and 72-hour extreme rainfall events for large areas of south-east Queensland, especially in the McPherson and Great Dividing ranges, west of Brisbane and the Gold Coast. For example, Abbs et al. (2007) found that under the A2 emissions scenario, extreme rainfall intensity averaged over the Gold Coast sub-region is projected to increase by 48 per cent for a two-hour event, 16 per cent for a 24-hour event and 14 per cent for a 72-hour event by 2070. Therefore despite a projected decrease in rainfall across most of Queensland, the projected increase in rainfall intensity could result in more flooding events.

Very prescient, as it turns out. (Not to say that you can directly attribute any particular extreme weather event to AGW yet.)

Last week, I pointed out a different paper which indicated the same thing (modelling indicates longer droughts but broken by intense rain) at Catallaxy, a.k.a the "centre right" blog where climate science goes to die. This was followed by the glib "so, everything's consistent with AGW" response that shows that even though a weather event may (after all) be consistent with climate modelling of some years ago, they will insist on claiming that it either isn't, or that it doesn't matter.

And what is Andrew Bolt doing today, 11 years later?:

 

Jowl vote noted

Allahpundit from Hot Air notes:

And he explains well at Hot Air the appalling state of the Republicans:

The flaw in Barr’s logic about supporting a primary challenger to Trump while committing to supporting the eventual nominee in the general election is that it ignores the fact that the GOP has been in a hostage crisis since 2016. There are two major camps in the party, the Trump-loving MAGAs and the Trump-tolerating “Never Democrats.” (Never Trumpers are a third component but a small one at five to 10 percent.) Since 2016, Trump and his MAGAs have threatened constantly to bolt the party if they don’t get their way. Trump palpably doesn’t care about the GOP as an institution; if he did, he would have held his fire against top-tier candidates like Doug Ducey and Brian Kemp this cycle rather than settle election grudges with them. Meanwhile, something like a third of Republican voters say they support Trump more than they do the party.

If Trump left the GOP out of pique and demanded that his fans come with him, there’s no telling how many would do so but it would almost certainly be enough to spoil Republicans’ chances in the general election. Because of that, the party has no choice but to cater to him and them even though they’re a minority of the base. By comparison, 56 percent of Republicans said they support the party more than they support Trump according to a poll released in January. That’s the “Never Democrats” group, the Bill Barr contingent that’s open to (or even enthusiastic about) a different nominee in 2024. But the GOP establishment feels free to take that majority for granted in pandering to Trump and his whims. Why?

Because the “Never Democrats” won’t shoot the hostage. They won’t stay home or bolt the party if they get stuck with Trump as nominee again but the MAGAs will if they get stuck with someone else, and that explains the entirety of Republican politics over the last six years. Barr’s embarrassing capitulation in the interview captures the asymmetry as succinctly as we’ll ever see. “Never Democrats” means … never Democrats. If that requires reelecting the tinpot authoritarian who inflamed a mob on January 6 to try to hold on to power illegally then so be it....

Few Republicans have been as critical of Trump over the past year as Chris Christie has but Christie won’t rule out voting for Trump in 2024. Mitch McConnell delivered a floor speech after Trump’s impeachment trial blaming him for the insurrection, an attack that permanently ruptured their relationship, yet McConnell has pledged to support Trump in 2024 if he’s the nominee as well. To find a Republican willing to say that Trump’s attempt to seize power illegally in 2020 is disqualifying for future office, you have to look to a critic as strident as Liz Cheney. The “Never Democrats” wing, true to their name, simply won’t withhold their votes or even threaten to withhold their votes in a general election.

And so we’re almost certainly going to get more Trump. Congratulations to Barr, Christie, McConnell and all the rest.

 

Nuance on NATO

A good column at the Washington Post looking at the conservative's "but it's our fault for encouraging NATO expansion" line - especially with respect to the version espoused by the dribbling bow tie on Fox News that it's specifically Biden's fault.

Best Batman takes

Matt Y has been repeatedly tweeting sarcastic takes on Batman (due to the new movie) and I agree entirely.  (Although I would go as far as saying I don't care for the character in either campy or dark modes.  It's just an inherently silly concept.)