Comedian gets it right

Also agree with this take:

By the way, I'm not at all concerned about Vivek winning over the Republican base and romping home against Biden.  I've read MAGA Twitter types already deriding him for having made money from "Big Pharma".  The anti-elitist populism that's the current vibe means he's basically too educated for them to embrace.  And that's even before considering his skin tone, and religion. (He's a Hindu.)

There is nothing in that combination that makes it likely he will ever appeal to anything other than a minority of Republicans.  

I see that he was (is? - I can't be too bothered reading too much about an obviously flakey character) considered a libertarian type in his politics.  As the Paul family illustrates, they are just the pits as politicians.  

Squat your way to lower blood pressure?

This is somewhat surprising:

It has become almost a cliché across doctor’s offices: One of the most trusted tools to lower blood pressure is to exercise.

A jog or stroll around the block, experts consistently find, can have big payoffs in terms of heart health. A new study, however, points to a somewhat surprising exercise that may be able to dramatically reduce someone’s blood pressure: the wall squat.

A team of researchers based in Britain analyzed 270 previous studies that examined the link between exercise and blood pressure. They found that, predictably, exercises like running, walking, cycling, strength training and high-intensity interval workouts all helped to reduce blood pressure; mixing cardio and strength training also appeared to help.

But the most effective type of workout they looked at, especially for those who already had some form of hypertension, was isometric exercise, which involves contracting a set of muscles without moving — think planks.

The British researchers looked at three kinds of isometric workouts in particular: squeezing a handgrip, holding a leg extension machine in place and squatting with your back against a wall. The wall squat (sometimes called a wall sit) is probably the easiest option for people to try, as it doesn’t require any equipment, said Jamie J. Edwards, a researcher at Canterbury Christ Church University and the lead author on the study.  

Even though isometric exercises may appear relatively easy, they are often quite intense, Dr. Edwards said — as you hold yourself in place, sweating and straining. He recommends a 14-minute routine you can add to your regular workout perhaps three times a week: a two-minute wall squat, followed by two minutes of rest, repeated four times in total. 

You should stay at the same squat height for all four rounds, but the exercise will feel more challenging the more times you do it, said Jim Wiles, a principal lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University who was also an author on the study. The first bout should feel as if you are exerting yourself at a level of four (out of a possible 10, with 10 feeling as if you could not hold it any longer). The last bout should be around an eight, he said. You should feel reasonably exhausted by the end.

Oh, another rich smart/stupid man running for president

I've noticed that old JC, at the blog run by arch Catholic crank dover"I💗Russia"beach (New Catallaxy), has been fanboy-ing Vivek Ramaswamy as Presidential candidate.

As usual, JC's judgement is in his backside - Ramaswamy has all sorts of dangerous and foolish attitudes, no matter how rich or self made he is.   Let me count the ways:

*  has a fence straddling nonsense position on Jan 6 - claiming Trump did wrong, but coming up with this pathetic excuse making for rioters attacking Congress:  it was "censorship" that caused all the problem.  See this convoluted explanation, for example:

Ramaswamy said that he believes it is “unproductive for our country to blame Trump for January 6, because it exonerates everyone else from introspection on what actually led to the frustrations of Americans that boiled over that day,” referencing the COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccine mandates and the 2020 election as a base for having to “sort all of this out.”

“If you tell people they cannot scream that is when they tear things down,” Ramaswamy said. “And I think that's exactly what happened on January 6.”

However, in his book "Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back," Ramaswamy criticized Trump's refusal to accept to the election results.

"It was a dark day for democracy," Ramaswamy wrote. "The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again. I'm referring, of course, to Donald Trump."

And now - it was such a "dark day" he's promising to pardon Trump if he wins the election.   (Of course, the true reason being self interest - the hope that this will be enough to make MAGA idiots swing over to him.)   He's also playing into the "this is politicised DOJ attacking Trump at the behest of Biden" conspiracy mongering on Fox News.  Funny, but even former Trump AG and suck up Barr doesn't agree:

“As a legal matter, I don’t see a problem with the indictment,” he added. “I think that it’s not an abuse. The Department of Justice is not acting to weaponize the department by proceeding against the president for a conspiracy to subvert the electoral process.”

*  His views on climate change:   

In an interview, Ramaswamy said he’s “not a climate denier,” but sees the world’s warming as “not entirely bad.” He says the goal of limiting carbon emissions is “flawed” and that “people should be proud to live a high-carbon lifestyle.” He said “we have a far better chance” of growing out of the problem “than trying to engineer the climate itself.”

He also sees climate activism as one of three “secular religions” that “has America in a chokehold.” He said “the climate religion has about as much to do with the climate as the Spanish Inquisition had to do with Christ, which is to say nothing at all. It is about power, dominion, control, punishment.”

More than other GOP presidential contenders, Ramaswamy targets his criticism on Wall Street sustainability policies. He’s written letters to corporations such a Chevron, criticizing the company’s support for a carbon tax and its calculation of “Scope 3” emissions — those generated when consumers use a product, such as buying gasoline to drive a car.

On Twitter he said:

40 years ago they told us an ice age was imminent. Now they tell us that the climate warming is an existential threat to humanity. Which is it? Neither. It’s really about dominion, control and punishing the west.

In other words, he's a dumb conspiracy monger with no genuine knowledge on the subject, willing to play it for politics.

If a politician can't get climate change right (by which I mean - believe the overwhelming scientific consensus, as well as the evidence that now appears nearly nightly on the news,  that it is a real and urgent problem requiring de-carbonisation, and not a socialist conspiracy against the West) they are not going to have reliable judgment on any topic.

*   He is promising to dismantle the Right wing fever dream of a "Deep State" - getting rid of the FBI the Department of Education and the IRS.   (Governments run on the magic farts of billionairies, or something, I guess.)

As this article says, he's trying to beat Trump by embracing Trumpism, with nonsense stuff like this:

 He has also supported raising the voting age to 25 -- a pledge that would require amending the Constitution -- with exceptions for those who serve in the military, for first responders and for those who pass the civics test used to grant citizenship.

 Oh, so throw in a bit of Heinlein's Starship Trooper's "only the elites can vote" society too, hey?   

*  Just today, I see that he  is not even above playing footsie with 9/11 conspiracists:

Vivek Ramaswamy cast doubt on the veracity of the government’s explanation of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying he didn’t believe the findings of the 9/11 Commission.

In an interview Tuesday night on the conservative Blaze TV, host Alex Stein asked the Republican presidential candidate if he believes 9/11 was an “inside job” or “exactly like the government tells us.”

“I don’t believe the government has told us the truth,” Ramaswamy said. “I’m driven by evidence and data. What I’ve seen in the last several years is we have to be skeptical of what the government does tell us.

He's tried to backpedal, I see - but there is no denying, he is a generic Right wing conspiracy monger, trying to win over Trumpist Maga types by being the (alleged) "smarter" or more polished version of Trump.

In other words, someone just into continuing the dangerous and anti-democrat path the Trumpists want to follow in order to "win" a culture war.  

 

As I suspected...

From a NYT column about a guy who went on a short American mega-cruise:

While cruises themselves follow the same formula as always, parachuting hedonistic day-trippers into tourist-friendly ports, the post-Covid clientele has changed. The passenger manifest now skews rightward: A 2022 YouGov poll found that only 12 percent of Democrats said they’d feel “very comfortable” going on a cruise, compared with 35 percent for Republicans. Before Covid, the numbers were fairly even, but evidently the blue-state crowd is having a tougher time putting the Diamond Princess out of mind.

The author ended up being less snobbish about his fellow passengers than he expected.  But the reason could have something to do with this (my bold):

When a Royal Caribbean ship pulled up alongside us at port in the Bahamas, I wondered if the crowd over there included guys who wear socks in the swimming pool or ladies who approach the taco bar at 8 a.m. and ask, “Are those them morning burritos?” Well, feel free to judge us, you Royal Caribbean snobs, but I’ll have you know that our crowd had a pretty great time, and not just because the beverage package included 15 alcoholic drinks per day. If that sounds like a lot of drinks per day, don’t worry; cruise ships have their own onboard jails.

Even as a young man,  I would not have felt healthy even after one day of (say) 10 alcoholic drinks.   (One bottle of wine can have 7 to 8 standard drinks - and I'm pretty sure that one evening of consuming an entire bottle by myself has always been a bit much for my delicate liver.  Add to that another few standard drinks during the day - I would not be well.)

The never ending conspiracy world spun by Devine and the dishonest Republicans

Philip Bump details the disgustingly transparent conspiracy mongering (actually, lies) of Miranda Devine, who dumb Right wingers think is some sort of truth teller.   (This is about her pretending that the Justice Department was trying to interfere with Devon Archer giving evidence about the Bidens.)

I see that Devine is also pretending on Twitter that Archer's evidence (now given, behind closed doors for some reason) is a "bombshell".  In fact, it is already clear that it is anything but.  But she has to pretend to her conspiracy addled moron readers.

Update:  the Axios summary - 

A former Hunter Biden associate told Congress that Hunter sold "the illusion of access" by putting his father on speaker phone with business partners, but that then-Vice President Biden never talked shop, according to Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and a source familiar with the testimony.

Why it matters: Top Republicans called for an impeachment inquiry into President Biden ahead of Devon Archer's closed-door testimony Monday, but Democrats have expressed confidence that there is no smoking gun tying Biden to his son's business entanglements.

Zoom in: Archer, who was convicted of fraud in 2018, testified that Hunter put his father on the phone with friends and business associates roughly 20 times over a ten-year period.

• But Archer "repeated over and over and over again that President Biden never discussed any business dealings or interests with Hunter or anyone else," Goldman told reporters after the hours-long transcribed interview.
• Republicans cast doubt on the claim that Biden simply exchanged "niceties" during the phone calls. They also focused on Archer's testimony that embattled Ukrainian gas company Burisma wanted Hunter on its board for his family's "brand."

The intrigue: Archer testified that he knew nothing about the alleged $5 million bribes paid to the Biden family from a Burisma executive, as was claimed in an unverified FBI document touted and released by Republicans, according to one source familiar.

• Archer also testified that Burisma believed efforts to oust Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin were bad for the Ukrainian energy company, according to Goldman.
• This runs counter to Republicans' suggestions over the years that Biden pushed for Shokin's firing — which was official U.S. policy backed by the European Union and International Monetary Fund — to benefit Hunter.

TV viewed

*  I thought I would have a look at the Logies last night, but only because Sam Pang, whose dead pan style of humour I find quite funny, was hosting.  Unfortunately, though, I missed his introductory monologue, which seems to have been well received, and switched over mid show to see him doing a protracted bit involving that old bloke from Home and Away, which seemed to be a big fail.   But then again, I also saw Dave Hughes, whose routine seemed pretty dire, and once again got to wonder how such a strange looking man with a strange delivery ever managed to find a career in visual media.   I probably saw about 20 minutes in total.  It was not, shall we say, holding my interest.

As I watch nearly nothing on commercial free-to-air TV, that's hardly surprising.  I was going to say that the industry insiders seem to lack insight into how few people really care for them (and it's always been a cringe-fest); but now that I check, there were 877,000 Australians watching it, at least at the start.  (That's far more than I expected, but I would also expect there was less than half of that by the end!)  

* On a more positive note - Futurama has been revived, and while it is on Hulu in the USA, here the first episode has dropped on Disney +.  

I thought it was very, very good:  an extremely self aware take on cancelled shows and binge watching TV.  In other words, it was mocking itself in a very meta but pretty pleasing way.   It seems all of the voice actors are back, and the writers, I think this episode would have pleased everyone.  

Internal critic

I don't recall reading about Dr Allan Frances before - but he turned up on Radio National yesterday morning talking about his views on overdiagnosis of various psychiatric problems (ADHD in kids being one issue), and he sounded pretty convincing and sensible to my mind.   (One thing I did not know was that there is apparently a much greater proportion of the youngest kids in classes who get diagnosed with ADHD.  He thinks there is no other explanation for this other than kids who are too immature for the class  having worse behaviour, and it being turned into a medical problem.)  

The RN interview can be heard on the ABC website, but I don't know how long for.

His Wiki page indicates he has been running his arguments for a long time.  It would seem he is not being paid much attention, though...

  

Amateur science noted

Quite a charming article here at Science on how a 75 year old Japanese guy is one of the most prolific discoverers of supernova.  It starts:

For Koichi Itagaki, it was just another evening of supernova hunting. After his usual 7 p.m. dinner with his wife, he drove to his private observatory in the hills above his home in Yamagata, Japan, 290 kilometers north of Tokyo. He set out treats for the only visitors he allows on his celestial patrols: a stray cat he calls Nora and the raccoon dogs that warily approach from the surrounding forest. He then took a seat within his “headquarters,” a cozy hut equipped with a bed, minifridge, microwave—and a dozen monitors used to control seven telescopes at three locations across Japan.

On clear nights, each telescope runs through a routine, focusing on one of the approximately 1000 galaxies Itagaki monitors for two 15-second exposures before swiveling to the next target. On this night, clouds blanketed most of the country, leaving a clear view only for his two telescopes in Okayama, 700 kilometers to the southwest. But as the clock ticked into the early morning of 20 May, clouds drifted over Okayama, too. Itagaki called it a night and drove home, leaving the telescopes on automatic in case the weather cleared.

It did. The next morning he had scanned the night’s images for just 5 minutes when he spotted a new, bright object in a spiral arm of the Pinwheel galaxy, 21 million light-years away. “It was so bright, I thought there was no way this object could have been missed,” he says. To his surprise, he was the first to post the news to the Transient Name Server (TNS), the International Astronomical Union’s database of new celestial objects. As word spread on TNS and the Astronomer’s Telegram, an email alert service, professionals and amateurs alike began pointing their instruments toward SN 2023ixf, the universe’s newest exploding star and the closest to Earth in a decade. It was growing brighter by the minute....

Cheerful, friendly, and easy-going, Itagaki is a trim 75-year-old with wisps of white hair, wire-rimmed bifocals, and a self-effacing sense of humor. “I am not an astronomer,” Itagaki says, smiling broadly while waving his left hand dismissively, as if shooing away a fly. “I’m looking for new celestial bodies as a hobby.” He traces his path into astronomy to a boyhood fascination with lenses. “I used to play with lenses, using sunlight to burn paper,” he says. In junior high, he spent his allowance on a DIY telescope kit and studied the Moon a bit. “I also used it to spy on the neighbors,” he says, smiling and waving.

Then in 1963, a 19-year-old Japanese amateur named Kaoru Ikeya grabbed national headlines when he discovered a comet with a more substantial homemade telescope. “It amazed me that you could search the stars like this,” Itagaki says. Within Itagaki’s hut, a framed 1963 newspaper clipping of Ikeya’s achievement hangs in homage.

 The observatory set up indicates he's put a fair amount of money into his hobby:

 And this is just one of three he uses...

 

 

"Reading the room" is a concept unknown to her, apparently

 Update:  oh, that screenshot doesn't mention the key point:

The Republican congresswoman caused a firestorm when she mentioned snubbing her fiancé to make it to a prayer breakfast on time

“When I woke up this morning at seven,” Mace explained, “Patrick, my fiancé, tried to pull me by my waist over this morning in bed and I was like ‘no baby we don’t got time for that this morning, I’ve gotta get to the prayer breakfast.’”

“He can wait, I’ll see him later tonight,” she added. 

While the comment may have been a little TMI, conservative influencers reacted with wholehearted disgust. You see, Mace, 45, made the grave mistake of admitting that she, an adult woman, has a sex life outside of the confines of matrimony. A thing we’re 100 percent sure no other right-wing commentator has ever done. 

“That’s some hoe talk,” tweeted Florida Congressional candidate Lavern Spicer in response to a video of the moment. 

Nuclear rocketry back on the cards?

I'm pretty sure that Robert Heinlein's "juvenile" books (in particular Space Family Stone) were explicitly about solar system rocketry using nuclear reactor driven engines.   And NASA did NERVA research early on, but the idea lost momentum (as did the idea of rushing to Mars).   

It seems it might become a thing after all:

In less than three years, NASA could be testing a nuclear rocket in space.

The space agency and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, announced on Wednesday that Lockheed Martin had been selected to design, build and test a propulsion system that could one day speed astronauts on a trip to Mars....

“The technical capabilities, including early safety protocols, remain viable today,” Tabitha Dodson, the DRACO project manager, said in a news briefing on Wednesday.

A key difference between NERVA and DRACO is that NERVA used weapons-grade uranium for its reactors, while DRACO will use a less-enriched form of uranium.

The reactor would not be turned on until it reached space, part of the precautions to minimize the possibility of a radioactive accident on Earth.

There will be protests about the danger of one blowing up on the way to orbit, though.

The report also doesn't really make it clear why the idea has been revived...

Underwhelming witness

Do I have this right?  David Grusch says someone who knows and has first hand knowledge told him the government knows about lots of crashed UFOs and recovered stuff and bodies, but he hasn't seen it himself and can't go into further details?

Yeah, that really blows the lid right off the whole matter....

Update:  this Vox skeptical summary of the whole situation (which is not behind a paywall) seems about right.

Odd news from Japan

 These headlines caught my eye:

OK, let's take number 2 first:

The study covered prefectural residents aged 40 or older who underwent annual health checkups in the seven cities of Kaminoyama, Yamagata, Higashine, Sakata, Tendo, Yonezawa and Sagae. The subjects were studied for a maximum of nine years from 2009, with a median follow-up period of 7.1 years.

The subjects were asked if they had any interest in the opposite sex. They were also questioned about their medical history, use of medication, how often they laughed and mental stress levels.

The researchers studied the correlation between those factors and the risk of death.

They found that 8.3 percent of the roughly 7,700 male subjects and 16.1 percent of the 11,400 or so female subjects were not interested in the opposite sex. The team said 503 test subjects, 356 men and 147 women, died during the follow-up study.

Analysis of the data showed that 9.6 percent of the men who said they had no interest in the opposite sex died during the nine years. The death rate among men who said they were still sexually interested in women was 5.6 percent.

The researchers concluded the difference shows a significantly higher risk of death, even when discounting other factors, such as age and chronic illnesses.

The data on women indicated no correlation between their sexual interest and risk of death, the team members added.

I'm assuming that a significant part of this could be that the men with erectile dysfunction, which can indicate poor general health, are the ones with low interest in the opposite sex?   Or does the discounting of "chronic illness" account for that?   

Also, I continue to be very surprised that this story from last year did not really gain any widespread publicity:

And at the end of 2021, a group at Cleveland Clinic analyzed the insurance claims for more than 7 million Americans and found that people on Viagra were almost 70% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than people who were not on the drug.

(It was already know to be pretty good for the heart, too.)

I would recommend that the Japanese get into prescribing it for "men with no interest in women".  :)

And as for the first story:  it sounds like a very weird true crime story -

SAPPORO--Police on July 24 arrested a woman and her father in connection with the discovery of a headless body in a hotel here three weeks ago.

Runa Tamura, 29, and her father Osamu, a 59-year-old doctor, were held on suspicion of damaging, abandoning and illegally possessing a body, police said.

Police believe the victim, a 62-year-old Hokkaido resident, was known to Runa, who lives in Sapporo.

The daughter and father pair are suspected of decapitating the man in a hotel in Sapporo’s Susukino entertainment district late on July 1 or early on July 2, the police said.

They are also suspected of taking the victim's head to another location. It remains missing.

The man died from a stab wound in the body. His head was apparently cut off after death, investigative sources said.

The victim’s body was naked. No clothing or belongings such as a cellphone or wallet were found.

There were no signs of a struggle in the hotel room, and the victim had no defense wounds, the sources said.

 What on earth was going on??

Must be China week here

Well, Paul Krugman's column (which I will generously gift link) is mainly about what happened to Japan, but it does refer to China too:

These days the focus of anxiety about global competition has shifted from Japan to China, which is a bona fide economic superpower: Adjusted for purchasing power, its economy is already bigger than ours. But China has seemed to be faltering lately, and some have been asking whether China’s future path might resemble that of Japan.

My answer is that it probably won’t — that China will do worse. But to understand why I say that, you need to know something about what happened to Japan, which wasn’t at all the catastrophe I think many people imagine.

Krugman's argument is that Japan's basic problem is its demography, and that it has done reasonably well, considering.

As usual, he's easy to understand and presents a reasonable argument.

It's a worry

Here's a very concerning post at Real Climate by Stefan Rahmstorf about the high uncertainty as to what is happening to Atlantic currents under climate change.

This should be read to add a lot of detail to news reports today about the latest study indicating that the AMOC might shut down much sooner than the IPCC thought likely.

I'm not who I think I am?

I was just fooling around with Chat GTP, and asked it to tell me about Opinion Dominion blog.  This is most of the response:

As of my last update in September 2021, "Opinion Dominion" was a personal blog run by David Tiley, an Australian writer and film critic. The blog covered a wide range of topics, including politics, economics, science, technology, and film reviews.

Here are some key points about the Opinion Dominion blog:

1. Author: The blog was primarily authored by David Tiley, who is known for his insightful commentary and analysis on various subjects. David has a background in science and journalism, and his diverse interests are reflected in the topics he covers on the blog.

2. Topics: The Opinion Dominion blog covered a broad spectrum of topics, including political issues and current events in Australia and around the world. David also delved into economic matters, providing his take on economic policies and developments. Additionally, he shared his thoughts on films, TV shows, and cultural events.

3. Thoughtful Analysis: David Tiley's writing on the blog was known for its thoughtful and informed analysis. He often delved into the nuances of the subjects he discussed, providing readers with a deeper understanding of the issues at hand.

Ha!  I had to Google to check, but David Tiley is a real Australian writer and critic, which Chat GTP has imagined (for completely unknown reason) is the author of this blog. 

He isn't.   

There's no doubt, I think, that the summary does reflect the blog in some ways - the broad scope of topics, for example.  And of course, I am happy if it is identified as having "thoughtful and informed analysis".   

But it's dreamt up an author identity based on - what, I wonder?

 

Why Singaporeans are oddly sympathetic to China

Is it just a case of one virtual "one party" micro state admiring the biggest actual "one party" state of them all?  (Sorry Singapore, you know I love you.)

Anyway, the Washington Post has a very long article looking at why Singaporeans (mostly the Chinese Singaporeans, probably) are oddly sympathetic to China, when the rest of the world is increasingly leery:

A 2022 survey of 19 countries by the Pew Research Center found that Singapore was one of only three that saw China and Xi in favorable terms. In June, the Eurasia Group Foundation released a survey conducted in Singapore, South Korea and the Philippines that found Singapore was the only one that viewed China more favorably than it did the United States. Fewer than half of respondents in Singapore viewed the United States favorably, compared with 56 percent who viewed China favorably.

“If too many Chinese Singaporeans are foolish enough to subscribe to Xi’s version of the ‘China Dream,’ the multiracial social cohesion that is the foundation of Singapore’s success will be destroyed,” said Bilahari Kausikan, a former permanent secretary of Singapore’s Foreign Ministry. “Once destroyed, it cannot be put together again.”

Singapore’s government passed a law to prevent foreign interference in domestic politics that went into effect last year, and has warned its ethnic-Chinese population against “hostile foreign influence operations” and stressed a distinct Singapore-Chinese identity. But messaging by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on key issues such as the role of the United States in the region and China’s internal politics is already entrenched in Singapore, including in a leading Chinese-language publication long backed by Singapore’s government.

It has a lot to do with that Chinese language news in Singapore, and old people.  

A really good read, so I have gift linked to it (above).  

 

Some light reading on madness for today!

I forget exactly what I was Googling about yesterday when this cropped up:

Did Christianity lead to schizophrenia? Psychosis, psychology and self reference

Well, that's a provocative sounding title!  It's from a journal called Transcultural Psychiatry, which probably has lots of interesting articles, I imagine.

Anyway, it's there to read in full online, and it seems to run, shall we say, a not completely unreasonable argument?   But I haven't had time to read it all carefully yet.

 

Moussaka noted

While I'm generally on the dismissive side of Greek cuisine, I have tried cooking moussaka before, and gave it a go again on the weekend for the first time in probably a couple of decades.   (The inspiration:  cheap eggplant and very un-fatty looking lamb mince at Harris Farm.)  

I followed this recipe to good success.

The reasons it was better than I remembered were no doubt:

*  I didn't fry the eggplant in olive oil and let it soak it up like a sponge:  I baked it for 25 minutes after just brushing the slices with olive oil.  

*   the potatoes were sliced thinner than I used to do (just half a centimetre) and they were also brushed and baked at the same time as the eggplant.

*   despite having made bechamel sauce many times before, I don't recall ever following a recipe that had egg yolk added at the end.  But yeah, it definitely increases the richness, and perhaps the thickness, of the final product.

*   a combination of a slightly thicker bechamel and letting it sit for 10 minutes before serving did mean I didn't have runaway flow of bechamel when I served it.   

I adjusted the quantities to about 3/4 of what is in the recipe, and it still made enough for 6 servings.  It's a very substantial dish to eat.

That is all...

Quiggin talks China

John Quiggin takes a quick overview of changes in China, and encourages us not to be too pessimistic about how it affects us.  

Speaking of China, did anyone else watch the ABC's latest short run series of China Tonight?   It was buried a bit on a late night slot, perhaps because it seemed they wanted to make it lighter in tone with (relatively) unknown hosts.  When I say "lighter in tone", it was actually half comedic.  I found it informative, but a bit peculiar.   

These ABC shows focused on particular countries are actually pretty good, generally speaking - and I think they should perhaps be given greater time slot prominence if they want an audience.

Back to that unpleasant topic

I have briefly noted before that Japan had an issue with widespread infanticide during the Edo period (1603 - 1868)*, when mentioning that it was reported by anthropologists as common in aboriginal society, but I have not read anything before about the situation in Europe around the same time. 

It would seem that evidence for it being pretty widespread there, too, in the same period, may have been staring us in the face for a long time:

"Routine" infanticide of newborns by married parents in early modern Europe was a much more widespread practice than previously thought, a new book posits.  

This fresh insight sits at the heart of a new book, "Death Control in the West 1500–1800: Sex Ratios at Baptism in Italy, France and England, "by Gregory Hanlon and contributors....

Hanlon, who is Distinguished Research Professor at Dalhousie University in Canada, calls attention to the limited scope of existing scholarship, which has never focused on sex ratios of infants brought for baptism within hours or days after their birth.

These records reveal startling spikes in the number of male baptisms in the aftermath of famines or diseases.

He notes, "Historians in the West have relied almost exclusively on records of criminal trials in which unwed mothers or married women carrying progeny not sired by their husbands hid their pregnancies and killed their newborns alone or with female accomplices. Married infanticidal mothers may have been a hundred times more numerous."

Hanlon's research suggests that in rural Tuscany at the height of infanticide the victims might have constituted up to a third of the total number of live births. 

Using baptismal registers and ecclesiastical censuses drawn from scores of parishes in Italy, France and England, Hanlon shows similar infanticide patterns across city and country, for Catholics, Calvinists and Anglicans alike.

In Italy's rural 17th century Tuscany, Hanlon suggests that parents seemed willing to sacrifice a child if they were a twin, opting to keep just one of the newborns. In the north Italian city of Parma, Laura Hynes Jenkins found that working-class parents preferred girls over boys.

The question of how the baby was dealt with was important for the legal consequences:

Hanlon calls attention to lax punitive measures taken for crimes of infanticide, and notes, "Tribunals operated against single mothers almost exclusively, but only if they killed the newborn deliberately. Simple abandonment was not a comparable offense."

It seems almost hard to believe that the sex ratios of children being baptised has never been examined before for this type of research - but it seems hard to imagine that obvious large differences in sex ratios could be explained in any other way.

I would also comment that this shows that the pro-life anti-abortion movement, when it emphasises women's guilt over having an abortion as a reason not to have one, is pretty clearly ignoring the historical evidence of psychological ability of parents to not regret ending their own child's life for very economically pragmatic reasons.   (Not, I should hasten to add, that I am trying to make a case for the return of baby killing or abandonment...) 

 

* You can watch a Youtube explanation here done by an animation channel that is pretty good on explaining Japanese history and culture, actually.