A very decent man

Read this remarkable article about an AIDS activist's personal experience of Anthony Fauci, and feel your blood pressure rise at the stupidity of the way the American Right has demonised him.  

A new year

*  I've never been one for New Year's resolutions, but I think I will try for one this year: reinstate only reading books when going to bed at night.  I mean, it was impossible not to doomscroll endlessly while Trump was President.  But now that's he gone (and as I have said, I don't think he's coming back), I'm pretty sure that it's better for my dreams to read fiction (or narrative history) before sleep.

* Matthew Yglesias tweeted about this comment piece in a psychiatry  journal urging research into the role social media plays in spreading self diagnosed psychiatric conditions.  The abstract:

There has been an increasing recognition among both medical and psychological professionals, as well as the public media, of a concerning trend for child and adolescent users of audiovisual-based, algorithmic social media platforms (e.g., TikTok) to present with or claim functional psychiatric impairment that is inconsistent with or distinct from classic psychiatric nosology. In this short communication, we provide a detailed historical overview of this transdiagnostic phenomenon and suggest a conceptual model to organize thinking and research examining it. We then discuss the implications of our suggested model for accurate assessment, diagnosis, and medical-psychiatric treatment. We believe there is an urgent need for focused empirical research investigation into this concerning phenomenon that is related to the broader research and discourse examining social media influences on mental health.

It gives as its main example the upswing in young people thinking they have developed a Tourette's tic after watching Tourette's sufferers (some real, some fake) on Tiktok.  Even though I meant to, I don't think I have posted previously about that phenomena, but there was an article about it over a year ago in Psychology Today, and I see that it also featured on 60 Minutes, and a couple of times in The Guardian.  

The article only mentions "gender identity related conditions" once, in passing, but people commenting on Yglesias's tweet often raise it, for obvious reasons.  Someone posted a Tiktok video of a teenage girl publically coming out as "a guy", something she said she only realised two days before, and getting hugs and endorsement immediately.  She also talks about how hurtful it will be to hear the wrong pronouns at home, so it's a case of instant victimhood as well as instant membership of a new friend club.  (I don't know the context, but it looked something like a high school queer support group.).  

Anyway, just as I was thinking that it's good to see there is likely to be support from some psychiatric professionals about the likely role of social contagion in the sudden upsurge of teenage girls thinking they can only be happy as "a guy", I had a look at Twitter feed of one of the authors, JD Haltigan, and it's a worry.  He has very Trumpy attitudes on many issues - including hating the MSM, a huge covid policy critic, and retweets Glenn Greenwald and Musk with approval.  In other words, I wouldn't trust him on a lot of issues, and he's not the type of person who I would hope was not into "culture war-ing" so that he could be seen as a politically neutral critic.

One of the other authors is also on twitter and doesn't tweet about politics at all.  She's a Tourette's and OCD researcher.  No reason to doubt her credibility, although why she has "warrior in training" in her Twitter profile is unclear!

Anyway, interesting stuff.  

* I watched, so you don't have to, Xi Jinping's 15 minute New Year Address  on CGTN.   Fortunately, Taiwan only got fleeting mention, which I took as some indication that an invasion is not high on his priorities.  

Apart from that, it's pretty incredible to watch how, when you're a dictator, you can just power through complete reversals of vital policy (I'm referring to the abandonment of zero covid) with nothing reassembling apology, or acknowledgement of any form of mistake by anyone.   

From the general gist of topics on CGTN today, I do get the impression that Xi wants to re-engage with the world again, and not just Putin.  In fact, wouldn't you love to know what Xi really thinks of Vlad's call for them to unite against the West, when Ukraine makes him look both weak and morally degenerate.

Youth justice reform advocates do a terrible job of proving their case

With the shocking case of two teenage (aboriginal, it would seem) past offenders, staying at a local "half way house", stabbing a couple of neighbours (and killing one) in what was probably a thwarted attempt to steal their car (or Christmas presents) on Boxing Day, some of the media has been giving space for prison reform advocates who have criticised the Premier's immediate promise to increase sentences, make bail harder to obtain, etc.

Their common cry is along the lines that research shows that incarcerating youth actually increases the chances of them re-offending.   Instead of building youth prisons, more money should be put into "addressing the root cause" and early interventions before kids go completely off the rails.  Research shows that actually works best.

I saw one such advocate, Mindy Sotiri, from a group called Justice Reform Initiative, interviewed on TV, and she at least acknowledged that this was a hard sell when the public legitimately had a concern for safety.   She did acknowledge that reform of what was done within youth prisons was part of the picture - she wasn't just one of reflexive "never prison" so-called experts.

But look at the typically airy fairy response from a Greens politician, for example:

What an easy peasy bunch of issues to "address", hey Stephen?

And what about this contribution:

Maggie Munn, an Indigenous rights campaigner for Amnesty International Australia, said further penalties would disproportionately affect First Nations people.

“This is not what commitment to justice looks like; this is what failing our children looks like,” Munn told Guardian Australia.

“More than half of the kids in detention on remand are [from] First Nations and the government wants to fast-track their sentences.

Um, how about an acknowledgement that what happened a few days ago was something that happened when the offender was being diverted from remand prison into a suburban half way house???  

What I find particularly galling is when someone like semi-high profile prison reform (more like prison abolish) advocate Debbie Kilroy not only fully supports criticism of prison for youth, but also is apparently against stern government intervention within the problematic, dysfunction families which most youth crime no doubt comes from.  Here she is again, today:

Look, I am sure that when criminologist types talk about (some type of) prisons being good at making people criminals, I don't doubt that they have research that supports them.

But honestly, when the matter is swirling around the complicated social issue of aboriginal youth crime, if they have the compelling examples of the specific type of non-prison intervention schemes that have been deemed clear successes, then put them out for all of us to see, and to see how much it costs, whether it really scales up, and sell the case with full details, not just sentiment.

I mean, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn of some programs in some locations that might have been successes.   But what scale were they on?  Were they dependent on the happenstance of a few aboriginal families in that locality that were particularly stable and willing to be involved in the reform of kids?   (I certainly presume that such programs are heavily dependent on being run by aboriginal participants.)  Did the families the kids came of get over their drug/alcohol/domestic violence issues that their children probably suffered under?  How long have such diversion programs been tracked?

And seriously, don't advocates for prison reform as far as it concerns aboriginals ever think that promoting an intense sense of grievance over historical injustices is counterproductive if you want to stop property crime and the deaths that are incidental to it?      

Mythical Poppins

I have only slight memory of the Mary Poppins movie from my childhood - and no wonder, as I see that I must have been only 4 or 5 when I saw it (unless it had some return run when I was older?)   My vague memory of it was that it was a tad melancholy in some of the songs and themes (Feed the Birds, in particular), and I wasn't exactly a sucker for fantasy as a kid, although a few years later I did enjoy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang quite a lot.  (It was the techno excitement of a long distance trip in an open flying car that did it, I'm sure.)  

So, I've never given the movie much thought as an adult, until now.   

The reason - my wife got relatively cheap tickets to the stage version currently showing at QPAC in Brisbane.  It's been playing around Australia for much of 2022.

My impression of the stage show (since confirmed on my reading this morning) was that it must have drawn more heavily on the book(s) than did the movie, as I was pretty sure there were features in it that didn't appear in the film at all.   And it got me thinking about the peculiarity of the whole concept, and why it didn't grab me as a child.  I think (rationalising with nearly 60 years of hindsight!) that I didn't like the lack of an origin story, or even origin hints, as to the magical title character.  

The stage show, on the other hand, with its repeated featuring of Greek classical park statues come to life, and the kids being interested in Greek gods' relationships, gives a greater sense of the story having strong mythological undertones.   I'm still a bit puzzled as to the nature of the relationship between Bert and her, though:  I mean, if it followed Greek mythology too closely, there would probably be some weird carnal episode between them on every visit.  But instead we get the notion that she appears to him out of the blue when she wants a bit of chaste fun, with a sort of hint of some important role she plays in maintaining his unusual cheerfulness over the years.   A kind of a muse, perhaps?  Maybe it is further explained in the books, but I am not that keen to look it up.

Anyway, I was thinking along these lines when I Googled up this morning a few articles about the author, PJ Travers.  Yes, I already knew a little bit about how she was born in Queensland, had a cantankerous relationship with Disney and the studio, and didn't like the film.  But I've never bothered watching Saving Mr Banks:  my interest was not that high.  

I am pleased to see from this 2018 article, though, that my guesses about the author's intentions and interest in mythology were spot on.   This was written by a guy who met her, although in which decade seems unclear - he says she was in her 50's, but she was born in 1899, making that the 1950's.  The context of the article suggests it was after the movie was made, hence the 1970's.  Doesn't much matter:

I first met Pamela Travers 10 years later when she was in her 50s. This was shortly after she had been a visiting writer at Radcliffe and Smith colleges, but before she had taken up the great passion of her later life — composing meditative essays for Parabola, a magazine “devoted to the exploration of the quest for meaning as it is expressed in the world’s myths, symbols, and religious traditions, with particular emphasis on the relationship between this store of wisdom and our modern life.” That mission statement also amounts to a description of Travers’s life.

Travers was the wisest woman I’ve ever met. She was the second Western woman to study Zen in Kyoto, part of the inner circle of the famous mystic G.I. Gurdjieff and did yoga daily (an exotic practice in the 1970s). One afternoon in her Manhattan apartment, we had a conversation that would later appear in Paris Review. She spoke about the meanings of Humpty Dumpty, how her book “Friend Monkey” had been inspired by the Hindu myth of Hanuman, the Zen expression “summoned not created,” the sacredness of names in aboriginal cultures and a spiritual understanding of the parable of the Prodigal Son. And as for linking “this store of wisdom and our modern life,” she led me step by step through parallels between the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and the myth of Persephone. It was one of the richest afternoons of my life.

As she often did, Travers emphasized that she “never wrote for children” but remained “immensely grateful that children have included my books in their treasure trove.” She thought her books appealed to the young because she had never forgotten her own childhood: “I can, as it were, turn aside and consult it.”

Of Irish descent, Travers grew up in the Australian Outback and moved as a young woman to England in 1924 to pursue her dream of being a journalist and poet. By great good luck, she was taken in and encouraged by leading figures of the Celtic Twilight, including William Butler Yeats.

Then, further down, this explanation:

But what is most important is that Mary Poppins comes from the world of myth, where she is a magnificent and significant figure. In the world of myth, she is the Great Goddess, but comically reincarnated as a nanny who “pops in” to turn-of-the-century London. In the Disney version, her mystic and mythic story becomes music-hall song-and-dance. As Travers said in a letter to writer Brian Sibley, “It is as though they took a sausage, threw away the contents but kept the skin, and filled the skin with their own ideas, very far from the original substance.”

Take, for instance, the heart of the movie, where the children step into a sidewalk drawing and join Mary and Bert in a make-believe world, ride on a merry-go-round and hear the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” The heart of the book, on the other hand, is a scene where Jane and Michael Banks go with Mary to the zoo — on the one night of the year when all of the animals dance together — and a wise snake tells the children about the unity of all life. That chapter reads like one of the animal fables from the ancient Indian epic “The Panchatantra,” set in a modern era.

When you read the original book, you enter a world of mythological thinking, where scholars have found references to the Bible, Greek deities and Sufi parables; and in commenting on Travers, critics have reached for parallels in the works of William Blake, Zen Buddhism and beliefs about the Hindu goddess Kali. Indeed, to the informed reader, “Mary Poppins” is a modernized collection of ancient fables and teaching stories. That’s what makes it an extraordinary children’s book.

Almost makes me want to check out the books, after all!

As for the stage show:  regardless of what you think of the story, or some of the music, it's one of those productions where the staging and enthusiasm of the cast make it pretty much impossible to dislike.  (The massive changing sets are nearly worth a ticket alone.)  I also thought it unusual, for a stage musical, in that I think most shows end the first half on a production number high, but this one doesn't.   The second half really does "wow" the audience more, in my opinion.   The climax (I don't think I am giving anything away) featuring a high wire ascent back into the heavens over the audience is just, well,  theatrically thrilling - and really makes you wonder how on earth the performers get used to doing it without being nervous wrecks.   

As for who of my handful of regular readers might be interested in a post like this:  Tim Train, I at least expect a comment from you!  

The demise of (most) cheap aftershave, noted

For many years, I have used Japanese aftershave.  There are a few common brands, often found in hotels (or in good onsen), and while I think they are mainly a thing for the older male (hey, that's me now!), it seems enough older males must use it for the product to be readily available in supermarkets, pharmacies, etc. (For the younger male, the skin care and hair care product range is much broader than it is in Australia, and there are some very mild versions of aftershave, not obviously alcohol based, for them, too.)  The thing I like about that country's aftershave is that they are not overpowering - even the initially stronger smelling ones are definitely not lingering, but give the nice, bracing astringent sensation that leaves the skin feeling very clean, especially in summer.  (In winter, I might moisturise instead - at least if the weather is super dry.)

But - I didn't realise until this Christmas just how comprehensively the "cheap-ish alcohol based aftershave" market has collapsed in Australia.   This may sound odd, but I thought I would buy my son a bottle of some "classic", since he has never used after shave. (OK, I suppose I could gift one of my Japanese bottles - but that's already mine!)  

As far as I can tell, after visiting Chemist Warehouse, a couple of supermarkets, and a couple of independent pharmacies, about the only "old school" brand of aftershave still more-or-less available is Blue Stratos.  I'm not even sure how old it is - an internet search first indicated that an Australian company has been making it since 2002, but elsewhere someone says it was released in 1976.   (It is, by the looks, made by different companies around the world.)  

Now, sure, you can get at the supermarket a few brands of after shave "balms", but if you live in a humid climate, the alcohol based end to a shave is far more desirable.   Whatever happened to plain old Old Spice, for example?   It's not be found anywhere on the shelves.  I see now that I can buy it online from Chemist Warehouse, but I am sure it wasn't on the shelf.   I saw something of (ugh) Brut in a pharmacy, but it was always crassly overpowering, and I didn't even check if it was aftershave or something else. 

Now, yes, I am aware that Chemist Warehouse has a substantial section of men's colognes, and amongst them there is one or two which are sold as aftershaves.  But they are more expensive European brands, and anything in that entire section is always overpowering in the "hairy man who wants to be smelt from across the room" kind of way.   I mean, what do they put in these colognes that make them impossible to remove even after a couple of washings with soap?   This time, I thought that surely a company like Reebok wouldn't sell a cologne that was too strong, but I sprayed a tiny spray (from a tester bottle, of course) onto the back of my hand and then was still smelling it there 4 hours later after several hand washing attempts to remove it.  Awful.

I would presume Australia is just following the lead of other Western nations, America in particular?   Oddly, given the number of varieties of Lynx deodorant/body spray on the supermarket shelf, which I think is the local equivalent of the often joked about Axe body spray in the US, the problem seems not to be young men don't want to smell - it's more that they want to smell too much.   At least after exercise, or something?   But, I don't know, I still associate strong male cologne smells with men of my age (or older) - I don't really recall noticing such a smell from a 20 something guy.  Then again, it's not that I am ever socialising with them.  Maybe if I went to a nightclub I would learn.

But yeah, I used to use Old Spice, maybe not daily, but often, as a young man, and its attraction was the mildness of the smell.  I really can't remember now when I stopped using it.  Maybe about 23 years ago, when I first went to Japan?    

By the way, there is probably a story to be told as to how men's aftershave came to be popular in Japan at all - given that I have noticed in other Asian countries (Singapore, Malaysia) that any form of male aftershave is virtually non-existant.   One might think that the relatively less expansive amount of facial hair to be found on many Eastern Asian men would be the reason (as shaving might not be a daily necessity for all) - but of course, Japanese men can have the same feature.  Was it the American post war occupation that set them on the path of aftershave?  And what is the situation in Korea, I wonder?   (Even more intense preoccupation with young men's skin and hair care than Japan, I presume, but what about aftershave?)  

Anyway, I bought the (very cheap) Blue Stratos aftershave, and, as I recall, it's not a bad smell (although I don't think I ever used it myself; just smelt it in the past and thought it was OK.)   He's used it and seems to thinks it's OK, but is wondering how it will affect his moisturising regime.  Young men these days!

Time she made another appearance

This was Christmas Eve...

Christmas greetings

I see that Wikipedia has an interesting entry on the history of the Nativity in art, and that's where I get this early Roman example, from the 4th century, indicating that the gift giving part of the season has been key for a long time!

The unimportance of importance

A recent philosophical article takes a view that I would have thought is obvious to those of most religious faith, but it probably bears repeating:

It is widely thought that we have good reason to try to be important. Being important or doing significant things is supposed to add value to our lives. In particular, it is supposed to make our lives exceptionally meaningful. This essay develops an alternative view. After exploring what importance is and how it might relate to meaning in life, a series of cases are presented to validate the perspective that being important adds no meaning to our lives. The meaningful life does need valuable projects, activities, and relationships. But no added meaning is secured by those projects, activities, and relationships being especially significant. The extraordinary life has no more meaning than the ordinary life.

That's the abstract.  The whole thing is here.

(Also, it reminds me of the Warren Zevon life advice "enjoy every sandwich", which I think of often, especially while eating.)

Questionable side effects?

I had a quick read of Dr Kerryn Phelps's (relatively) well publicised submission to the parliamentary health committee's inquiry into long Covid, and I don't know, but it felt - kind of fishy.  

As everyone knows, she was no anti-vaxxer when Covid started, and the first 7 pages of her submission are really spent justifying her warnings early on about the danger Covid (and long Covid) generally.

It's when she starts talking about the damage vaccination caused her and her wife that it starts sounding  questionable.  First, it's pretty surprising that both of them should have adverse effects.   And secondly, despite her talking about all of the specialists who have confirmed a real problem with both of them, I would like to hear more directly from specialists than from her:

I have had CT pulmonary angiogram, ECG, blood tests, cardiac echogram, transthoracic
cardiac stress echo, Holter monitor, blood pressure monitoring and autonomic testing.  In my case the injury resulted in dysautonomia with intermittent fevers and cardiovascular implications including breathlessness, inappropriate sinus tachycardia and blood pressure fluctuations.

These reactions were reported to the TGA at the time, but never followed up. 

I have spoken with other doctors who have themselves experienced a serious and persistent
adverse event including cardiological, rheumatological, autoimmune reactions and
neurological consequences. Patients and other members of the community have told me
about their stories.

They have had to search for answers, find GPs and specialists who are interested and able to help them, spend large amounts of money on medical investigations, isolate from friends
and family, reduce work hours, lose work if they are required to attend in person and avoid
social and cultural events.

Look, this is really just my gut reaction, but there is a reliance on anecdote to bolster her argument  (and from people who sound like they have a "no one will listen to me" sort of semi-conspiracy mindset) which feels like there are some psychological issues drawn into this.   

On the other hand, it's true - I did find myself having some bursts of high blood pressure readings for the first time in my life during this year (they seem to have stopped or reduced now, and I suspected some work stress which has lessened now has helped with that.)    I did wonder whether Covid vaccination had any connection with it, and I posted before that some studies indicated that there could be.   

But I just get the feeling that with Phelps and her partner, it's more complicated than a direct vaccine side effect.  

 

The best raccoon themed video I've seen for a long time...

I've never seen this guy's content before, but the Almighty Algorithm of Google (in its Youtube incarnation) new that I would enjoy this, and I really did:

The weed that will remain un-named?

I have been curious to know more about how harvesting a bit of weed with your spinach could result is hallucinations and other ill health.   I see there was a bit more commentary on this yesterday, and I get the feeling that even if the weed is clearly identified, the authorities doubt it is a good idea to publicise it:

Australians are being urged not to seek out contaminated baby spinach products for a recreational high after more than 130 people who ate a range of fresh food items suffered symptoms including hallucinations and delirium.

Authorities were on Sunday night testing the weed believed to be responsible for the widespread recall of products containing spinach thought to have come from a farm in Victoria....

Symptoms can be severe and include delirium or confusion, hallucinations, dilated pupils, rapid heartbeat, flushed face, blurred vision, dry mouth and skin, and fever....

Dr Brett Summerell, chief scientist at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, said it was hard to distinguish between many plant species when they were small. He suspected toxic plants including nightshades could be to blame.

“There are lots of plants that could do this – lots of weeds that are relatives to potato and tomato,” he said.

“This is likely to be a nightshade. When young, they are just a few dark green leaves which is probably not that much different to spinach. You’re harvesting all these leafy greens now at a very young age, sometimes it can be quite difficult [to identify].”

Summerell said farmers were facing the extra challenge of an explosion of weeds right across the country after months of rain and floods....

Summerell warned people not to go searching for the contaminated products or pick and eat weeds they could not identify in search of a cheap high.

“People might be tempted to go out picking weeds thinking that they’ll get some sort of high [but] it’s really important to remember yes, there might be a hallucinogenic side to this, but there’s a whole lot of really horrible health issues,” he said.

Update:  well, that took a while, but it has been named:  thornapple.  Never heard of it, and kind of surprising that this is the first time it has happened.   

 

A direct line from God

I don't know why this crossed my mind recently - oh yeah, I do remember now, but the story is too long to relate here - but I thought "Isn't it odd that generally speaking, it seems Muslims faith does not involve the idea of God ever 'talking' directly into the mind of the believer, it's more about listening to what God wants as teachings mediated via your Imam.  Christians, on the other hand, and especially fundamentalist (and American) Christians, are all about thinking that God is causing them directly to think or feel something in their head.  One would think that the latter might be potentially more dangerous for society, and the Christian Nationalism movement in the US is full of highly armed people who seem to want to fantasise about killing the evil for God; but on the other hand, Muslim terrorist attacks have obviously been a thing.  It's a bit complicated..."

On the issue of "does God talk directly to believers", I thought I would Google it, and came up with this rather handy column from (of all places) the Reno Gazette Journal, which quotes people pretty much confirming my understanding:

Sherif A. Elfass, Northern Nevada Muslim Community president

In Islam, the means of communication that can take place between God and human beings are described by God in the Quran: “And it is not for any human being that Allah should speak to him except by revelation or from behind a partition or that He sends a messenger to reveal, by His permission, what He wills. Indeed, He is Most High and Wise.” (42:51).  Islam teaches us Allah (SWT) spoke directly to Prophets Adam, Moses and Muhammad (PBUT) only without ever revealing Himself (from behind a partition). Allah (SWT) spoke to some of the prophets, like Prophet Ibrahim (PBUH), through revelation that came as dreams. However, the most common method Allah (SWT) used to communicate to His prophets is through angels sent as messengers. Since no prophets will come after Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the communication between Allah (SWT) and human beings is limited to revelations through dreams.

As for one of the Christians represented in the column, he's a bit cautious:

Steve Bond, lead pastor, Summit Christian Church, Sparks

Yes … God speaks directly to humans. Over 2,000 times in the Old Testament there are phrases such as, "And God spoke to Moses" or "the word of the Lord came to Jonah" or "God said."  We see an example of this in Jeremiah 1:9. "The LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, 'Now I have put my words in your mouth.'" Jeremiah claims to speak specific words God had put into his mouth.

During the birth of Jesus, God spoke to Mary through an angel; he spoke to Joseph through a dream; he spoke to the shepherds through an angel and he spoke to the Magi through a dream. Yes, God speaks!

But now that the Scriptures are complete, any word from God must be corroborated by the Bible. God’s Word is the plumb-line against which all new revelation is measured.

In fact the Catholic representative sounds a bit more into affirming the direct line from God to the brain:

Monique Jacobs, director of faith formation, Roman Catholic Diocese of Reno

God has a long history of speaking directly to humans. In Scripture — Old and New Testaments — you will see God has made it a priority to communicate directly with us over the centuries. If you love someone, you find every opportunity to communicate — it’s no different for God. Though you may not have experienced this (yet) God doesn’t reserve this loving, intimate conversation for saints alone. There is a lot of competition in our lives for the voice of God; the trick is to make time for quiet: intervals of solitude, hiking or running without earphones, sitting beside a candle trusting your presence is enough. Breathe. God is patient, so must we be. We cannot make these encounters happen by willpower; it is all God’s initiative — our part is the response. Our heart should be open, expectant; don’t worry about “doing it” right or imagining the whisper.

The Buddhist rep sounds a bit trippy:

Matthew T. Fisher, Reno Buddhist Center resident priest

Buddhism is a non-theistic world view, so this is not a central question. But we can ask if the Light of the universe can be heard? After the Buddha was enlightened he described a vibrant scene — more beautiful than any he had ever seen. He called this “being awake,” deeply hearing the world around him. All sentient beings can reach this state, but we are limited by biases and narrow habits of thought. This deep hearing of the light is joyous appreciation of the wondrous gifts the universe offers. Does the universe talk? Only if we listen.

Conversations do happen. Just after the Buddha was enlightened, the highest of Hindu gods, Brahma, encouraged Buddha to go forth and teach. Though Buddha was reluctant, he was swayed by Brahma’s request. And sutras recount many gods listening with interest to the Buddha’s important discourses like the Lotus Sutra.

Just wait until Elon Musk gets to put in brain implants:  maybe that will increase the efficiency of communication...

      

A short video on (Chinese) language

Yes, it's from CGTN, so naturally it's going to be here only to show something positive about China, but I had never thought of the benefits of their type of written language before, so here we go:

Things I didn't know about Chesterton

I've never read much about GK Chesterton:  I did start one of his Christian apologetics books once but gave up, finding the writing style too much hard work.   (From memory, it was a bit like Joseph Conrad writing non-fiction.)   

There's a long review of a book about him here which makes me glad I haven't bothered too much about his biographic details, as his life seems to have involved an awful lot of political intrigue which seems rather arcane from this distance in time.  (By which I mean, you have to have a pretty detailed understanding of early 20th century British politics to follow it fully.)  

Anyway, I did learn a few things which are odd and noteworthy:

Sex was not an obvious temptation either. Despite the restrictions she put on his wallet and on his waistline, G.K. adored his sober, dutiful, unshowy Frances, and was content to be mothered in his incompetence. But no children came, and Chesterton’s sister-in-law, Ada – she married his younger brother, Cecil – later claimed the wedding night had been so ghastly for Frances that their marriage had remained sexless. This might not be true: Ada had long nursed a grudge against Frances for taking G.K. out of the sharp-witted, boastful and heavy-drinking coterie of Fleet Street pals, where she had met the Chestertons, and off to sober Beaconsfield. 

[To be fair:  I see from a paper written for the Australian Chesterton Society, that there is this apparent explanation for their childlessness: 

The first eight years of their marriage they tried to conceive. Frances underwent an operation. Then a second. Then a third. There are no medical records as far as what exactly these operations were. After the third, the doctor sadly informed Gilbert and Frances that it was unlikely they would have any biological children.

The source for that is not given, however.]

He had a younger brother, Cecil, who apparently was a very unlikeable fellow:

Ada, writing in 1941, leaves this without comment, as ungainsayable evidence that Cecil was ‘the most brilliant debater of his time’. As a child, she adds, he kept pet cockroaches and stacks of copybooks ‘containing juvenile novels and political theses and economic systems – the outlines of a Cecilian form of government, which covered every phase of national life’.

Unpopular at school, Cecil would monopolise conversations with his ‘contradictory temperament and an extraordinary belief in his own ability’, his fellow journalist Frank Harris remembered. It could not have been easy being the little brother of someone so famous and well-loved, but Cecil was convinced he’d been overlooked: Leonard Woolf noted the streak of ‘fanatical intolerance’ nourished by a ‘grudge against the universe, the world and you in particular’.

I didn't realise he only became a Catholic in 1922, at the age of 48.  He died aged 62.   

Also, and this is not from the book review, but Wikipedia:  I knew he was rotund, but didn't realise he was also extremely tall:  6 foot 4.  

An odd character all around.

It's all making sense now

 (As you can see, I'm still visiting Twitter, but it is definitely starting to empty out of people I like.)

The rise of Mastodon?

I went and tried Mastodon in Android App form.

A few observations:

a.    creating an account is not hard, and I think it's a bit ridiculous that so many people are complaining that the basic way it operates is so confusing.   Gee, how much does it take to Google up any number of various guides as to how it works? 

b.    I don't know why more journalists I follow are not already on there, and putting their mastodon address on their twitter profile.   It is currently not necessarily easy to find people via search.

c.    This, in my short, less than 24 hours, experience is the biggest problem with it as a Twitter substitute - the search function seems very wonky compared to that of the blue bird.   Is it always going to be like that, because of the distributed server aspect of it?   

But look, overall, it seems to me to have potential.

"Twitter is my toy now and I chose who to share it with"

 It just occurred to me that Elon Musk is now running Twitter pretty much like how Sinclair Davidson ran his (alleged) exercise in "free speech" (the old defunct Catallaxy blog):  they both claim to defend it [free speech], but not to the extent that you can freely rubbish them or their special friends without knowing when the arbitrary  hammer would strike to ban or restrict someone just for annoying them.    

Musk's behaviour is increasingly erratic and petty:  and by the way, if the richest man in the world can't afford a good security minder for him and his family, who can?    It seems a significant number of people I like to follow have left Twitter now, as hanging around to be treated by the owner like you're a mere cat toy is degrading.

It has reached the stage that I have to investigate Mastodon.    Not that I post tweets, but yes, there really needs to be a general strike against using the site. 

Fusion issues - when does an exaggeration become deception? [And cringe, but I cite Elon Musk in support!]

I'm a bit surprised, but Sabine Hossenfelder seems to not want to give any encouragement to fusion power skepticism after the "net energy gain" breakthrough announcement from Lawrence Liverpool this week.  

And look, I know that I criticise amateur "armchair experts" on matters like climate change and vaccines, so I feel I am at great risk of being called a hypocrite when I now put my own version of amateur assessment on this topic.  

But, but:  I reckon anyone just has to read a bit more widely to understand that the problem is not just getting fusion to work - it's getting it to ever work in a way that makes economic sense for power generation.  I reckon that it's that aspect which no one is asking the pro-fusion researchers to properly discuss and justify. (Sure, the timeframe question comes up - more on that below - but I reckon there is plenty of reason to doubt that it will ever be economically viable.)

I mean (ugh, I know I shouldn't do this appeal to gut reaction, because it feels so much like the same tactics climate "skeptics" use) but look at this photo:

Does this look even vaguely like an easily deployable system for power generation?   It's the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore where they made the breakthrough, and of course, it just an experimental set up and it was never meant to be something that would generate useful power.  But still, a picture gives an idea of the complexity of this type of fusion set up, so I'm still running with it. 

And when you read about the set up, it almost seems that the question should be "how come it took so long to even get to the net energy gain"?  

‘Nif is the world’s largest, most energetic laser,’ she explains. ‘It’s 192 separate lasers, each one of which is close to the most energetic in the world. And it’s housed in a building that’s three American football fields wide and 10 storeys tall, which is needed for all the amplifying objects. In fact, it’s the world’s largest optical instrument.’ When it fires, the facility’s beams are amplified by 3070 sheets of phosphate glass doped with neodymium, each weighing 42kg and set at Brewster’s angle, which reduces reflective loss. ‘The idea is we take all of that energy, which comes to about 1.9 megajoules, and focus it down on a target the size of a small ball bearing, about 2mm in diameter.’

As for how long they have been trying to get it to make net energy (and only considering the laser power going in, not the energy needed to make the lasers) Science magazine explains:

The $3.5 billion NIF began its “ignition” campaign in 2010.  ...That self-sustaining burn is what defines ignition, and after more than a decade of effort NIF scientists declared they had achieved that milestone after a shot in August 2021 produced 70% of the input laser energy. But NIF’s funder, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, set NIF’s goal as an energy gain greater than one—the threshold it passed last week.

So, $3.5 billion and 12 years to get a single event in which the energy of the reaction was about "the equivalent of about three sticks of dynamite."  A small energy return on investment, if ever there were one.

The Science article does go on to explain a possible future direction for laser fusion (my bold):

The NIF scheme has another inefficiency, Betti says. It relies on “indirect drive,” in which the laser blasts the gold can to generate the x-rays that actually spark fusion. Only about 1% of the laser energy gets into the fuel, he says. He favors “direct drive,” an approach pursued by his lab, where laser beams fire directly onto a fuel capsule and deposit 5% of their energy. But DOE has never funded a program to develop inertial fusion for power generation. In 2020, the agency’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee recommended it should, in a report co-authored by Betti and White. “We need a new paradigm,” Betti says, but “there is no clear path how to do it.”

Now that NIF has cracked the nut, researchers hope laser fusion will gain credibility and more funding may flow. 

[Betti, by the way, is from another research lab.]

About that funding - as everyone who has read anything about this knows, a lot more money is going into tokamak fusion research, in the form of the gigantic and hugely expensive ITER plant being built in France:

However, the leading tokamak device, the ITER reactor under construction in France, is anything but simple. It is vastly over budget, long overdue, and will not reach breakeven until the late 2030s at the earliest. With NIF’s new success, proponents of such laser-based “inertial fusion energy” will be pushing for funding to see whether they can compete with the tokamaks.

As for the cost - it seems a matter of much dispute as to how to actually cost it, which is a little odd, but the range (shared by many nations) seems to be from $22 billion to $65 billion.

All that money for possible breakeven by the late 2030's.

Also, the article I first linked to in this post is from Chemistry World, which explains one of the fundamental issues on the economic development of fusion power - the development of suitable materials needed around a fusion reactor:

The greatest problem faced in fusion isn’t achieving the incredible temperatures required – it’s the materials science required to maintain that environment long-term. It’s why Jet couldn’t go past a few seconds, explains Rimini. ‘Jet is based on fairly old copper coils for the magnetic fields, and the tokamak walls are not actively water-cooled, so the high fusion period is only designed to run for 10–15 seconds at most.’

UKAEA has built a new materials research facility at Culham Science Centre to tackle such problems. One of the staff searching for solutions is Greg Bailey, a computational nuclear physicist. ‘The copper magnets get too hot,’ he says. ‘So, in the future, we’re using superconducting magnets. And hopefully we’ll learn more.’ These material changes have already happened in the past. ‘Jet actually changed the material of its walls,’ Bailey says. ‘Initially we’d made the walls out of carbon, because that made life easier for the experiments. It should have been perfect, but, actually, it was terrible! We were getting a lot of tritium retention – we were losing our fuel into the wall, the hydrogen was drifting inside. So we had to change it.’

The design challenges discovered and solved by Jet are already being fed into Iter, explains Bailey. ‘What does a material for a reactor need to be? Resistant to damage [from radiation], it needs to be able to take the temperatures and extreme environments, and maintain its mechanical properties during its lifetime. So, in terms of a fusion reactor, the vast majority is probably going to be steel. The really interesting bits come inside the vacuum vessels, your housing, because they’re going to be facing extremes. They need armour, obviously.’

This has resulted in plans for Iter to be covered by 440 ‘blanket’ modules, weighing up to 4.6 tonnes, which cover the steel of the tokamak’s structure. Neutrons discharged during the reaction the enter the blanket can be slowed, and their kinetic energy transferred to a coolant system for another form of power. It’s hoped the blanket can also be used to solve another issue for reactors: their feedstock.

‘There’s plenty of deuterium on Earth,’ Bailey says, ‘but deuterium fusion produces much lower energy neutrons; it’s not really a viable source to make a power plant. And tritium is not naturally occurring.’ To obtain their tritium, the team plans to use lithium with an enhanced level of lithium-6, which can break apart under neutron irradiation to produce tritium. Although this is naturally occurring, the problem is that lithium is already in high demand for its use in lithium-ion batteries. ‘Frankly, when lithium comes into our reactor, we’re going to destroy it,’ Bailey says. ‘The fuel is not the problem; it’s how you produce it.’

This is where the blanket could come in, explains Bailey. ‘A lot of designs right now are mixing lithium with lead, or lithium with ceramic and some beryllium in there. The idea is that you get deuterium and tritium, the fusion reactor turns on, and neutrons produced in the fusion reactions smash into the blanket and tritium breeding reactions can occur. We can then extract that tritium to refuel the reactor. And, obviously, the neutron radiation into the blanket will cause a huge amount of heating.’ It’s still not perfected yet, but Bailey is confident the experiments done at Culham will show the way, potentially in collaboration with the private sector; fusion is already attracting major investors, including Amazon’s multibillionaire founder Jeff Bezos. ‘If we want to do fusion on an industrial scale we need to start building that supply chain now,’ says Rimini. ‘We need to start evolving the industry.’

Obvious questions I have:  how long will the "blanket" modules last?   How long will a fusion power plant need to be down while they are replaced?   At 4.6 tonnes each, and presumably all getting radioactive at the same rate - it's going to be a huge maintenance job, and it's something they are only now trying to work out. 

There's a complicated 2017 paper here about the materials science challenges for testing and developing suitable materials:

This paper presents a preliminary evaluation of the materials challenges presented by the
conceptual design [1] for a Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) to bridge the development gap between ITER and a demonstration power plant (DEMO). Here the FNSF specifically denotes the concept that has been studied in the recent Fusion Energy System Studies (FESS) supported by the US Department of Energy, also called the FESS–FNSF, which is examining a  conventional aspect ratio tokamak. The FNSF is an experimental machine designed to establish the reliable performance of the critical fusion system technologies required in DEMO and power plants. The FNSF horizontal maintenance system [2] allows for periodic removal, examination, and replacement of full power core sectors.

As far as I can tell, this Facility does not exist yet, and won't for some time.   This presentation from 2014 seems to indicate that it wouldn't really get going until ITER is up and running - in the 2030's - and the 2017 paper says this:

A minimum 20-year timeframe will be required to accommodate the development of the advanced materials to commercialization and code qualification, development of blanket fabrication technologies, evaluation in non-nuclear integrated test programs, and 14 MeV neutron testing in DONES/A-FNS/IFMIF to validate irradiation performance.

So piecing this together, we're getting the "best hope" for tokamak fusion not likely getting to break even until the late 2030's, during which decade a materials research stage which will take a minimum of 20 years will have started.   

Does this sound like commercialisation of fusion power within 20 years?   No it doesn't - sounds more like 40 to 50 - if it is possible at all.  Because isn't this complicated materials science issue likely to be a key one in the question of whether fusion will ever be economically viable?  And we won't even know the answer to that for another 20 to 30 years.

AND YET:   this morning on Radio National, we heard Kim Budil, the director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (home of the "breakthrough") say this at the 12.40 mark:

"So not 50 years away anymore, I would say probably 2 decades of concerted effort and it's plausible we have power plants in development"

To her credit, Patricia Karvelis, sounds skeptical "Wow - really - in 2 decades?"

And Ma says "I think so"

I'm sorry, but ever allowing for the qualifiers of "probably" and "plausible", I reckon that that answer is so practically unrealistic as to be deceptive.  

I'll come back and add a bit more to this post later...

Update:   I had a look at Youtube videos about it, and quickly found one in which a former Secretary of Energy (and nuclear physicist) makes an outlandish claim the he "think[s] we can demonstrate and maybe initially deploy some power plants on the grid within the next decade or so".  [!]

Gee, if anyone invests money in the company he's on the board of, based on this type of spruiking, I reckon it would come close to fraud:

 

More realistically (much, much more realistically) we have an actual former fusion scientist who thinks it's worth pursuing, but he explains in this video from a year ago the huge engineering issues yet to be overcome.  He says there is no way we will have fusion by 2040, and everything I have listed above indicates that is correct: 

 

Finally, and I didn't see this coming or realise it until now, but I'm on the side of Elon Musk!  Here's a short clip in which he says that sure, fusion will be achievable, but it's just not going to be economically viable as a power source, citing the tritium issue mainly.   [I can't embed it, as it's a Youtube short.]   

How embarrassing is that, given that he seems to have driven himself nuts by blowing many billions on Twitter?  Quite - but hey, if the facts are actually on his side on this issue, so be it.

 

What attention are wingnuts (and certain journalists and billionairies) giving to their Paul Pelosi conspiracy being blown away?

The New York Times reports:

It was as quick as it was brutal — captured in just a few seconds of grainy video from a police body camera. Arriving at the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, two officers find an intruder and Ms. Pelosi’s husband, Paul, standing calmly, each with a hand on a hammer that the police demand they drop. Just then, the video shows, the intruder takes control, wields the weapon over his head and slams it with full force.

“Mr. Pelosi was face down on the ground, a pool of blood by his head,” said Kyle Cagney, one of the two San Francisco police officers who were first to arrive in the early hours of Oct. 28, during a court hearing on Wednesday.

As for the mangled initial reporting that Pelosi knew the name of his attacker:

The hearing began with prosecutors playing a recording of a call that Mr. Pelosi made to 911 shortly after the intruder woke him up. During the call, Mr. Pelosi speaks calmly but emphatically, seemingly trying to convey to the operator that he is in danger but without alarming the intruder threatening his life.

Mr. Pelosi said on the call that there was “a gentleman here waiting for my wife to come back.” He told the operator who his wife was, and at one point the intruder in the background could be heard saying, “The name is David.”

Chait on transgender reporting

I see nothing at all to disagree with in Jonathan Chait's column in New York Magazine, complaining about the progressives' debate tactics when it comes to the issue of transgender treatment of children/young adults.   

And it's disappointing when someone like David Roberts, who is sensible on most things, joins in with a snide attack on the bona fides of Chait.