It's been quite a while (4 or 5 years?) since there's been any news of interesting research results in parapsychology studies done by proper researchers. It would seem the field has diminished in effort over the last decade or so, and regrettably, it probably suffers reputational damage from the crappy and unwatchable "ghost investigators" shows made for American cable TV.
But someone, somewhere, is still doing useful work on it, I trust?
Thursday, April 14, 2016
The cost of rapid economic growth
Counting the cost of China’s left-behind children - BBC News
Here's a problem that doesn't get much publicity - the huge number of Chinese kids who are growing up without one or both parents due to work.
Here's a problem that doesn't get much publicity - the huge number of Chinese kids who are growing up without one or both parents due to work.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Warming on the plateau
From the abstract of an article looking at the changing climate on the Tibetan Plateau (TP):
The TP is overall getting warmer and wetter during the past decades. Temperature is significantly increased, especially since the 1980s. The overall warming rate ranges from 0.16 to 0.67 °C decade–1 since the 1950s during different periods. The TP shows a uniform warming trend with the most significant warming in the northern part.Sure sounds like a rapid warming rate for some parts of Tibet, then...
The Handel (sort of) scandal
Inspired by a radio announcer (ABC, of course) informing me today that it is the 275th (I think) anniversary of the first performance of Handel's "Messiah" in Dublin, I decided to Google "Handel scandal" and see what popped up.
Indeed there was a bit of associated scandal around this production. A short summary is given in this NYT review in 2000 of a (apparently, not very good) play about the oratorio:
As for Handel himself, it sounds like he was a mix of physical greed and generosity:
Indeed there was a bit of associated scandal around this production. A short summary is given in this NYT review in 2000 of a (apparently, not very good) play about the oratorio:
In 1741, Handel, then 56, was in debt and in crisis. His royal patron and ardent admirer, Queen Caroline, the wife of King George II of the House of Hanover, had died in 1737. His Italian operas were losing popularity. He was suffering from the aftermath of a partial stroke. In the summer of 1741, Charles Jennens, a wealthy squire and music connoisseur, who had written the libretto for Handel's oratorio ''Saul,'' sent him a new script. It had no characters; it simply told the story of the Messiah using biblical scripture compiled by Jennens. At first Handel was baffled by it. But when a performance opportunity arose in Dublin, he composed a score in three weeks.
Wait a minute: three weeks? He composed it in 3 weeks? They don't make composers like they used to. Let's look more into that (at Wikipedia):All the characters in Mr. Slover's play are based on historical people, and they are quite a gallery. Susannah Cibber (performed by Mary Miller), was a singer and actress who had married the co-manager of the Drury Lane Theater to assist the flagging career of her brother, the composer Thomas Arne. She was ruined by her part in an adultery scandal, the salacious details of which were circulated in a best-selling book at the time, the Starr report of its day, as Mr. Slover has called it. The play includes quotes from the book and the trial transcript. The Dublin and London premieres of the ''Messiah'' were Cibber's comeback.
The music for Messiah was completed in 24 days of swift composition. Having received Jennens's text some time after 10 July 1741, Handel began work on it on 22 August. His records show that he had completed Part I in outline by 28 August, Part II by 6 September and Part III by 12 September, followed by two days of "filling up" to produce the finished work on 14 September. The autograph score's 259 pages show some signs of haste such as blots, scratchings-out, unfilled bars and other uncorrected errors, but according to the music scholar Richard Luckett the number of errors is remarkably small in a document of this length.[26] The original manuscript for Messiah is now one of the chief highlights from the British Library's music collection.I really like The Messiah, but have never read much about Handel. There's a short but entertaining account of him and, the music scene in London in which he worked, to be found at Smithsonian.com. Here are some of my favourite parts:
At the end of his manuscript Handel wrote the letters "SDG"—Soli Deo Gloria, "To God alone the glory". This inscription, taken with the speed of composition, has encouraged belief in the apocryphal story that Handel wrote the music in a fervour of divine inspiration in which, as he wrote the "Hallelujah" chorus, "he saw all heaven before him".[26] Burrows points out that many of Handel's operas, of comparable length and structure to Messiah, were composed within similar timescales between theatrical seasons. The effort of writing so much music in so short a time was not unusual for Handel and his contemporaries; Handel commenced his next oratorio, Samson, within a week of finishing Messiah, and completed his draft of this new work in a month.
Increasingly elaborate opera productions led to rising costs due, in part, to hiring musicians and singers from Italy. "It was generally agreed Italian singers were better trained and more talented than local products," notes Christopher Hogwood, a Handel biographer and founder of the Academy of Ancient Music, the London period-instrument orchestra he directs. But beautiful voices were often accompanied by mercurial temperaments. At a 1727 opera performance, Handel's leading sopranos, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, actually came to blows onstage, with their partisans cheering them on. "Shame that two such well-bred ladies should call [each other] Bitch and Whore, should scold and fight," John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), the mathematician and satirist, wrote in a pamphlet describing the increasing hysteria of London's opera world.
Despite his fame, Handel's inner life remains enigmatic. "We know far more about the environment in which he lived and the sort of people he knew than about his private life," Keates adds. Part of the explanation lies in the dearth of personal letters. We must rely on contradictory descriptions of Handel by admirers and detractors, whose opinions were colored by the musical rivalries of 1700s London.
Although he neither married nor was known to have had a long-lasting romantic relationship, Handel was pursued by various young women and a leading Italian soprano, Vittoria Tarquini, according to accounts by his contemporaries. Intensely loyal to friends and colleagues, he was capable of appalling temper outbursts. Because of a dispute over seating in an orchestra pit, he fought a near-fatal duel with a fellow composer and musician, Johann Mattheson, whose sword thrust was blunted by a metal button on Handel's coat. Yet the two remained close friends for years afterward. During rehearsals at a London opera house with Francesca Cuzzoni, Handel grew so infuriated by her refusal to follow his every instruction that he grabbed her by the waist and threatened to hurl her out an open window. "I know well that you are a real she-devil, but I will have you know that I am Beelzebub!" he screamed at the terrified soprano.
Handel, who grew increasingly obese over the years, certainly had an intimidating physique. "He paid more attention to [food] than is becoming to any man," wrote Handel's earliest biographer, John Mainwaring, in 1760. Artist Joseph Goupy, who designed scenery for Handel operas, complained that he was served a meager dinner at the composer's home in 1745; only afterward did he discover his host in the next room, secretly gorging on "claret and French dishes." The irate Goupy produced a caricature of Handel at an organ keyboard, his face contorted into a pig snout, surrounded by fowl, wine bottles and oysters strewn at his feet.The picture painted of the turbulent world of opera at the time sounds like it would make a good movie or play. Pity the one attempt the NYTimes reviewed was not good...
"He may have been mean with food, but not with money," says Keates. Amassing a fortune through his music and shrewd investments in London's burgeoning stock market, Handel donated munificently to orphans, retired musicians and the ill. (He gave his portion of his Messiah debut proceeds to a debtors' prison and hospital in Dublin.)
Someone else who only likes superhero comedies
‘Deadpool’ Isn’t the Only Solution. But ‘Batman v Superman’ Is the Problem. - The New York Times
This take on the matter of superhero movies sounds pretty right to me - except that I assume I would dislike the violence and poor language in Deadpool.
This take on the matter of superhero movies sounds pretty right to me - except that I assume I would dislike the violence and poor language in Deadpool.
Because you weren't?
I didn’t I know I was transgender.
Reading this article of a former butch lesbian who has decided she is transgender after all does little to encourage sympathy; but that may just be me (and my new best friend Germaine - ha).
I think what really grates with me is the use of medical effort to endorse something which (in this woman's case) sounds more like a curious exercise in what it will feel like to be more manly in appearance than she already is.
Reading this article of a former butch lesbian who has decided she is transgender after all does little to encourage sympathy; but that may just be me (and my new best friend Germaine - ha).
I think what really grates with me is the use of medical effort to endorse something which (in this woman's case) sounds more like a curious exercise in what it will feel like to be more manly in appearance than she already is.
Not a good look
News Corp journalists reject domestic violence views of Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair | Media | The Guardian
Actually, I had read Tim Blair's post about the ABC adding "domestic violence leave" to its work conditions, and didn't take much offence. (It does seem to stretch the imagination that the ABC employs people who would be in violent relationships - we like to imagine that smart people don't get themselves into that situation, but then again, we all know of examples where it has happened.)
Still, it's a very embarrassing look for Tim to be taking this line when it turns out his own company is doing the same:
Actually, I had read Tim Blair's post about the ABC adding "domestic violence leave" to its work conditions, and didn't take much offence. (It does seem to stretch the imagination that the ABC employs people who would be in violent relationships - we like to imagine that smart people don't get themselves into that situation, but then again, we all know of examples where it has happened.)
Still, it's a very embarrassing look for Tim to be taking this line when it turns out his own company is doing the same:
A constant critic of the ABC, Blair ridiculed the ABC staff for askingHonestly, his constant ridiculing of the ABC has long since spilled over from ridicule of pretentiousness to what reads like sour grapes and an unhealthy obsession with every single person who works there (and makes a good quid out of it.) The same can be said of Andrew Bolt, of course, although with Blair it feels more, I don't know, personal. (He did have a brief attempt at a radio show there, didn't he?)
for domestic violence leave but appeared ignorant that his own
colleagues had logged a similar claim in the current bargaining round.
Maglev, if you must
High speed rail: wrong train, right track?
Michael Pascoe argues that if you must have high speed rail in Australia, use maglev.
He might be right...
Michael Pascoe argues that if you must have high speed rail in Australia, use maglev.
He might be right...
The perfect Guardian storm
Heh. I don't think I can imagine a more perfect storm for Guardian readers' response than an opinion piece criticising Germanine Greer for her, um, less-than-entirely-endorsing-transexuals opinions.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Scratching the high speed itch
As much as I like taking the Shinkansen when in Japan, count me as skeptical about the prospects of a successful very fast train that runs any distance in Australia. But if we have to build one, instead of doing all this tunnelling (I heard someone on the radio saying that the Melbourne to Sydney one requires sixty something kilometres of tunnels) I'd like to see this design:
How cool was that? Avoids the 'roo on the track issue, too (unless you catch a very unlucky one mid-bound.) And instead of having just one leave the station every 2 hours or so, you could have one small one leave every ten minutes. Sort of like Musk's Hyperloop, without the claustrophobia.
Clearly, this desire to try for something like a Shinkansen in Australia will not go away from the public's mind. But like some itches that need to be scratched, it's probably best to try small scale before committing to large. Buy just a couple of handweights before putting that home gym machine on the credit card; or a set of rubber cuffs before the deluxe ceiling swing. (I have no idea what I am talking about in either case.)
So, just build the thing for a relatively short, relatively useful distance, like Sydney to Canberra, and see how that goes before spending money on expanding it beyond that. In fact, given how long both projects will seemingly take, build it from the new airport site at Badgerys Creek to Canberra, maybe? Put a relatively fast train from Central to Badgerys, perhaps - with an automatic luggage transfer to the really fast train? (I am assuming that might cut costs a fair bit.)
You can thank me later, Australia, for my useful suggestions....
How cool was that? Avoids the 'roo on the track issue, too (unless you catch a very unlucky one mid-bound.) And instead of having just one leave the station every 2 hours or so, you could have one small one leave every ten minutes. Sort of like Musk's Hyperloop, without the claustrophobia.
Clearly, this desire to try for something like a Shinkansen in Australia will not go away from the public's mind. But like some itches that need to be scratched, it's probably best to try small scale before committing to large. Buy just a couple of handweights before putting that home gym machine on the credit card; or a set of rubber cuffs before the deluxe ceiling swing. (I have no idea what I am talking about in either case.)
So, just build the thing for a relatively short, relatively useful distance, like Sydney to Canberra, and see how that goes before spending money on expanding it beyond that. In fact, given how long both projects will seemingly take, build it from the new airport site at Badgerys Creek to Canberra, maybe? Put a relatively fast train from Central to Badgerys, perhaps - with an automatic luggage transfer to the really fast train? (I am assuming that might cut costs a fair bit.)
You can thank me later, Australia, for my useful suggestions....
Monday, April 11, 2016
The history of a denier meme
The Volcano Gambit � RealClimate
I'm not sure why Gavin Schmidt is re-visiting this right now, but it's still good to read of the origin of the mistaken meme on the matter of volcanoes and their greenhouse gas contributions.
I'm not sure why Gavin Schmidt is re-visiting this right now, but it's still good to read of the origin of the mistaken meme on the matter of volcanoes and their greenhouse gas contributions.
More "in praise of higher taxes"
I'm an American living in Sweden. Here's why I came to embrace the higher taxes. - Vox
There was a very similar article to this in one of the other American sites I visit earlier this year, and I think I posted about it, too.
I feel I should point out something, in light of how often I post about this: it's not that I'm an ideologue when it comes to taxes and the role of government, and I don't think every country should (or can) be like Scandinavia. For one thing, the physical size of countries surely helps determine what governments can reasonably be expected to provide, and all European nations benefit from the small geography and high density of living. Singapore does, too.
There is also the cultural element that affects the way a government can succeed (or not), so that (for example) a country like Japan can expect societal co-operation in some policies (ease of access to alcohol, little societal interest in illicit drugs) that others can't.
My attitude is more that the international examples of how countries and economies work show us the many ways different tax and government spending regimes can work, so that it is clear that low tax, limited government is not the only way to success and a happy society.
It's more a case that I am interested in showing that the libertarian/small government/low tax position that is powerful in the US and parts of the Australian Right is more pure ideology and belief system than something that is inherently the best way to approach economics and how we should run Australia.
There was a very similar article to this in one of the other American sites I visit earlier this year, and I think I posted about it, too.
I feel I should point out something, in light of how often I post about this: it's not that I'm an ideologue when it comes to taxes and the role of government, and I don't think every country should (or can) be like Scandinavia. For one thing, the physical size of countries surely helps determine what governments can reasonably be expected to provide, and all European nations benefit from the small geography and high density of living. Singapore does, too.
There is also the cultural element that affects the way a government can succeed (or not), so that (for example) a country like Japan can expect societal co-operation in some policies (ease of access to alcohol, little societal interest in illicit drugs) that others can't.
My attitude is more that the international examples of how countries and economies work show us the many ways different tax and government spending regimes can work, so that it is clear that low tax, limited government is not the only way to success and a happy society.
It's more a case that I am interested in showing that the libertarian/small government/low tax position that is powerful in the US and parts of the Australian Right is more pure ideology and belief system than something that is inherently the best way to approach economics and how we should run Australia.
Human misbehaviour less than expected
Fathered by the Mailman? It’s Mostly an Urban Legend - The New York Times
Yeah, I think I have read this before: the old estimates of how many children are fathered by someone other than their assumed father are way over the top, and many scientists think the true figure is closer to a relatively modest 1%.
Yeah, I think I have read this before: the old estimates of how many children are fathered by someone other than their assumed father are way over the top, and many scientists think the true figure is closer to a relatively modest 1%.
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Zootopia viewed
Got around to seeing Zootopia today.
Utterly charming, constantly witty but often hilarious; visually pleasing, inventive in concept, not heavy handed in "messaging"; great fun for adults, and intense cuteness in character design bound to please the younger viewer as well. It's terrific.
The Disney brand on animated movies has, without doubt, replaced that of Pixar as the one to look out for.
Utterly charming, constantly witty but often hilarious; visually pleasing, inventive in concept, not heavy handed in "messaging"; great fun for adults, and intense cuteness in character design bound to please the younger viewer as well. It's terrific.
The Disney brand on animated movies has, without doubt, replaced that of Pixar as the one to look out for.
Transgender politics
How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired
A truly startling article here from February 2016 about transgender identity politics in the matter of how to deal with children who think they are transgender. (Added to put some justification into my "cynical" positioning on the current state of our culture's understanding of transgender issues.)
A truly startling article here from February 2016 about transgender identity politics in the matter of how to deal with children who think they are transgender. (Added to put some justification into my "cynical" positioning on the current state of our culture's understanding of transgender issues.)
Friday, April 08, 2016
Who do I believe, the trader or the libertarian?
Well, this is kinda weird.
Sinclair Davidson writes this morning indicating that he's distinctly ambiguous when it comes to the question of what's wrong with Westpac rate rigging. (OK, he mentions "poor banking behaviour" in one sentence, then in the next he puts "scandal" in inverted commas, and indicates that he thinks no one can really explain why it's a problem.) This is even when the trader in question has been widely quoted in the media saying:
Update: perhaps Sinclair should read this post at The Conversation for some ethical enlightenment.
Sinclair Davidson writes this morning indicating that he's distinctly ambiguous when it comes to the question of what's wrong with Westpac rate rigging. (OK, he mentions "poor banking behaviour" in one sentence, then in the next he puts "scandal" in inverted commas, and indicates that he thinks no one can really explain why it's a problem.) This is even when the trader in question has been widely quoted in the media saying:
"I knew it was completely wrong but f--- it I might as well, I thought f--- it. We've just got so much money on it, we just had to do it, right ...", court documents allege Mr Roden said.I think when it comes to matters of ethics, and their potential to interfere with making money, don't let a libertarian, or anyone associated with the IPA, anywhere near policy influence.
Update: perhaps Sinclair should read this post at The Conversation for some ethical enlightenment.
Transgender comment
Readers would know that I am certainly somewhere on the "cynical" end of the scale on acceptance of the current understanding of what transgender identity is all about. Especially when it comes to the matter of children and the way some parents respond to it.
On the other hand, what is this American conservative panic about transgenders using the toilets they want to use? I would have thought that a man who wants to be a woman wants to identify with them - not use their existing equipment to present a danger to them. I mean, I could be wrong, but I would have thought a transgender man (pre-op or not) is about the safest person a woman could find in their toilet - more wanting to exchange make up tips than have raise any issue about sex.
Is the concern that men could pretend to be transgender so as to get their way into a toilet that might give them access to a woman alone? I suppose...but really, any heterosexual potential rapist could already sneak into a women's toilet if he wants to.
If a woman is concerned by any man who does not appear to be non transgender in the toilet alone, does the law change prevent her raising a concern?
On the other hand, what is this American conservative panic about transgenders using the toilets they want to use? I would have thought that a man who wants to be a woman wants to identify with them - not use their existing equipment to present a danger to them. I mean, I could be wrong, but I would have thought a transgender man (pre-op or not) is about the safest person a woman could find in their toilet - more wanting to exchange make up tips than have raise any issue about sex.
Is the concern that men could pretend to be transgender so as to get their way into a toilet that might give them access to a woman alone? I suppose...but really, any heterosexual potential rapist could already sneak into a women's toilet if he wants to.
If a woman is concerned by any man who does not appear to be non transgender in the toilet alone, does the law change prevent her raising a concern?
A tale of two business/economics commentators
In the Australian today, I was able to Google through to two columns about the Arrium steel crisis in Whyalla.
First: Judith Sloan has a piece with all the analytical depth of Nelson Muntz going "ha ha". Seems she can't actually find a way to blame the union (noting that they have made wage cut concessions), but that doesn't stop her with an implied "AWU. Phff. What do you expect..." And same with the electricity prices increases which haven't actually happened yet.
So it's to John Durrie to get some actual detail as to what has gone wrong with the company, and he ends with a pretty compelling sounding:
On the Labor side and the suggestion of (I think) some protectionist motivated unionists that cheap steel from China is potentially dangerous: that does raise a good point - what sort of quality control is there for imported steel? Obviously, the company overseas manufacturing it would say it meets a set of specifications or standards, but do nations importing it have any systems for quality testing to see whether it does meet them? Or is it up to private enterprise to do that? How much of each shipload would you have to test to be confident that a batch is fine?
That's something I have no idea about, but I would hope there is some system of quality testing.
First: Judith Sloan has a piece with all the analytical depth of Nelson Muntz going "ha ha". Seems she can't actually find a way to blame the union (noting that they have made wage cut concessions), but that doesn't stop her with an implied "AWU. Phff. What do you expect..." And same with the electricity prices increases which haven't actually happened yet.
So it's to John Durrie to get some actual detail as to what has gone wrong with the company, and he ends with a pretty compelling sounding:
To suggest the company’s failure is anything more than failed business strategy compounded by cyclical markets is a nonsense and that is where the argument starts and finishes.As for the political responses: I thought Christopher Pyne came across pretty well on 7.30 last night. It's remarkable how working for Turnbull has made him sound a much more reasonable politician.
On the Labor side and the suggestion of (I think) some protectionist motivated unionists that cheap steel from China is potentially dangerous: that does raise a good point - what sort of quality control is there for imported steel? Obviously, the company overseas manufacturing it would say it meets a set of specifications or standards, but do nations importing it have any systems for quality testing to see whether it does meet them? Or is it up to private enterprise to do that? How much of each shipload would you have to test to be confident that a batch is fine?
That's something I have no idea about, but I would hope there is some system of quality testing.
Thursday, April 07, 2016
A nervous stop
Shinkansen makes emergency stop in Hokkaido's subsea tunnel | The Japan Times
I see that the underground tunnel that runs between the islands of Hokkaido and Honshu has been opened for decades (since 1988), but the Shinkansen service using it is new.
I don't know: being in a tunnel 54 km long and under the ocean in that earthquake prone part of the world - it would certainly make me nervous to undergo an emergency stop.
Update: the Wikipedia entry on the tunnel explains that it is well below the ocean floor - about 100 m or so. But with the massive shift in the ocean bed during that last earthquake, it may not get wet, but I really wonder if it would withstand the worst.
Also interesting to read that 34 people died in its construction.
I see that the underground tunnel that runs between the islands of Hokkaido and Honshu has been opened for decades (since 1988), but the Shinkansen service using it is new.
I don't know: being in a tunnel 54 km long and under the ocean in that earthquake prone part of the world - it would certainly make me nervous to undergo an emergency stop.
Update: the Wikipedia entry on the tunnel explains that it is well below the ocean floor - about 100 m or so. But with the massive shift in the ocean bed during that last earthquake, it may not get wet, but I really wonder if it would withstand the worst.
Also interesting to read that 34 people died in its construction.
If I ruled the world...
....there would be an immediate and permanent ban on "relationship" "reality" TV shows. Australian night time television is being absolutely overrun by this woeful category of "entertainment" at the moment, which I strongly suspect is primarily watched by women (and the occasional boyfriend or young husband trying to feign interest.)
And while I'm at it: the producers of Gogglebox would be jailed, and anyone who had agreed to be part of the show deported.
You know it makes sense...
And while I'm at it: the producers of Gogglebox would be jailed, and anyone who had agreed to be part of the show deported.
You know it makes sense...
In Catallaxy watch
I am amused to note how, presumably under the onslaught of Steven Kates's frequent endorsements of (far from libertarian) Donald Trump, the subtitle of Catallaxy has removed all reference to libertarianism and is now merely "Diverse and Independent Media is here". Poor Sinclair has well and truly lost all control of the place, with the great majority of commenters continually deriding his endorsement of Malcolm Turnbull. The conservative Boltians (well, when they aren't criticising Bolt for being too soft on the gays) have well and truly taken over. The only meeting of minds is when SD makes a comment that is at the intersection of libertarianism and nutty conservatism, such as deriding Australian gun control, tobacco plain packaging, or sex education (of any kind, apparently.)
It would be incredible if it maintains any political influence at all. But I guess until the Coalition is purged of its ratbag Right elements, it might...
Update: oh, I see that the change in the subtitle is meant to be a mocking joke about Fairfax. I don't know that anyone who reads the site got it, though.
It would be incredible if it maintains any political influence at all. But I guess until the Coalition is purged of its ratbag Right elements, it might...
Update: oh, I see that the change in the subtitle is meant to be a mocking joke about Fairfax. I don't know that anyone who reads the site got it, though.
The WSJ does not talk for all of business?
Fox Business Pushes 3 Minimum Wage Myths In Just 90 Seconds | Blog | Media Matters for America
I was pleasantly surprised to read this:
I was pleasantly surprised to read this:
Right-wing media have repeatedly pushed the myth that businesses are opposed to raising the minimum wage while spreading debunked claims that raising the minimum wage leads to job losses. Contrary to Fox Business' claims that business oppose raising the minimum wage, The Washington Post reported on April 4 that a leaked poll conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz found "80 percent of respondents [business executives] said they supported raising their state's minimum wage, while only eight percent opposed it." The advocacy organization Small Business Majority found that 60 percent of small-business owners supported raising the minimum wage to at least $12 per hour.
Ant attack
Folklore has it that a surge in ants coming into a house is a sign of rain. If that's right, and our house is a fair indicator of what in store for Brisbane, I should have been expecting a deluge of Biblical proportions for the last 3 months, at least.
We've had an extraordinarily persistent attempt at permanent settlement inside our house by slow moving, small black ants recently. They've also seemingly taken a permanent interest in a couple of citrus trees, which is a pest because of the disease they bring with them to the fruit. (Well, think they farm them, don't they?)
Now, they're even staging a serious attack on my work office (which is not at home) desk. I rarely eat at this desk - I don't know what they hope for.
I'm off to get a can of spray...
We've had an extraordinarily persistent attempt at permanent settlement inside our house by slow moving, small black ants recently. They've also seemingly taken a permanent interest in a couple of citrus trees, which is a pest because of the disease they bring with them to the fruit. (Well, think they farm them, don't they?)
Now, they're even staging a serious attack on my work office (which is not at home) desk. I rarely eat at this desk - I don't know what they hope for.
I'm off to get a can of spray...
Dark matter experimental mystery
Controversial dark-matter claim faces ultimate test : Nature News & Comment
Good article here about some experimental results which may - or may not - have already found dark matter.
Here's part of it:
Gee. Hope that survives the science unfriendly Coalition government.*
If these experiments do confirm dark matter as WIMPS, I reckon this will be a more momentous discovery than the detection of gravity waves. I still think that the excitement about that was a tad overblown...
* Updated: I see that, while being skeptical of global warming, the last Abbott budget at least funded this research.
Good article here about some experimental results which may - or may not - have already found dark matter.
Here's part of it:
Scientists have substantial evidence that dark matter exists and is at least five times as abundant as ordinary matter. But its nature remains a mystery. The leading hypothesis is that at least some of its mass is composed of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which on Earth should occasionally bump into an atomic nucleus.The key to working this out is a number of other detectors that are about to go on line - one in Australia, too, apparently, "t the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory, which is being built in a gold mine in Victoria, Australia."
DAMA’s sodium iodide crystals should produce a flash of light if this happens in the detector. And although natural radioactivity also produces such flashes, DAMA’s claim to have detected WIMPs, first made in 1998, rests on the fact that the number of flashes produced per day has varied with the seasons.
This, they say, is exactly whatis expected if the signal is produced by WIMPs that rain down on Earth as the Solar System moves through the Milky Way’s dark-matter halo2. In this scenario, the number of particles crossing Earth should peak when the planet’s orbital motion lines up with that of the Sun, in early June, and should hit a low when its motion works against the Sun’s, in early December.
There is one big problem. “If it’s really dark matter, many other experiments should have seen it
already,” says Thomas Schwetz-Mangold, a theoretical physicist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany — and none has. But at the same time, all attempts to find weaknesses in the DAMA experiment, such as environmental effects that the researchers had not taken into
account, have failed. “The modulation signal is there,” says Kaixuan Ni at the University of California, San Diego, who works on a dark-matter experiment called XENON1T. “But how to interpret that signal — whether it’s from dark matter or something else — is not clear.”
Gee. Hope that survives the science unfriendly Coalition government.*
If these experiments do confirm dark matter as WIMPS, I reckon this will be a more momentous discovery than the detection of gravity waves. I still think that the excitement about that was a tad overblown...
* Updated: I see that, while being skeptical of global warming, the last Abbott budget at least funded this research.
Wednesday, April 06, 2016
Movie biz talk
It seems to me that Disney is probably in for a great year with its movies, both critically and financially.
Item 1: Zootopia (which I haven't seen yet) has already made $800 million internationally (with $231 million of that from China!) This movie seemed to come with not much publicity build up, but I guess its uniformly strong reviews (except from the Nutty Economist - now there's a movie title for you - Steve Kates) means there has also been strong word of mouth and it's just taken off.
Item 2: to my surprise, as I wasn't very impressed with any trailer I saw, and the source material also holds no interest,The Jungle Book is also getting strong reviews. Not sure that I would see it, but presumably it will make money.
Item 3: a new trailer for The BFG is out and gaining a lot of attention (deservedly - it does look like a very visually pleasing film). Spielberg doesn't always have great outcomes with kids films (see Hook, which was barely passable), but I reckon everyone will be getting a very good feeling about this one.
[And for the adults reading who want to watch something from overseas, I will remind them to check out the extensive list of movies that SBS's on line service seems to make permanently available. The quality of their free streaming video always seems good to me on mere ADSL; why can't the ABC on line service meet the same standards? I watched a Dutch WW2 movie last weekend on the SBS service - Winter in Wartime - and it's pretty good. The eccentric Big Man Japan, on the other hand - not so great, despite the rottentomato reviews.]
Item 1: Zootopia (which I haven't seen yet) has already made $800 million internationally (with $231 million of that from China!) This movie seemed to come with not much publicity build up, but I guess its uniformly strong reviews (except from the Nutty Economist - now there's a movie title for you - Steve Kates) means there has also been strong word of mouth and it's just taken off.
Item 2: to my surprise, as I wasn't very impressed with any trailer I saw, and the source material also holds no interest,The Jungle Book is also getting strong reviews. Not sure that I would see it, but presumably it will make money.
Item 3: a new trailer for The BFG is out and gaining a lot of attention (deservedly - it does look like a very visually pleasing film). Spielberg doesn't always have great outcomes with kids films (see Hook, which was barely passable), but I reckon everyone will be getting a very good feeling about this one.
[And for the adults reading who want to watch something from overseas, I will remind them to check out the extensive list of movies that SBS's on line service seems to make permanently available. The quality of their free streaming video always seems good to me on mere ADSL; why can't the ABC on line service meet the same standards? I watched a Dutch WW2 movie last weekend on the SBS service - Winter in Wartime - and it's pretty good. The eccentric Big Man Japan, on the other hand - not so great, despite the rottentomato reviews.]
The Northern Hemisphere weather see-saw
Record Cold Temperatures Sweep Into Northeast; Another Arctic Blast on the Way (FORECAST) | The Weather Channel
I see that the Arctic jet stream has taken one of its southern wanders over North America leading to some record April cold temperatures. This after the Arctic was exceptionally warm recently.
Seems a fair chance of a connection, I would guess.
I see that the Arctic jet stream has taken one of its southern wanders over North America leading to some record April cold temperatures. This after the Arctic was exceptionally warm recently.
Seems a fair chance of a connection, I would guess.
Sloanian economics
Now, I'll admit I know next to nothing about the Australian trucking industry, but I would have thought it obvious that there is a distinct possibility that the large supermarket chains (amongst other corporate customers) could easily squeeze down remuneration for owner drivers to the point that they have the incentive to work dangerous hours just to make ends meet.
Labor's response was to set up an industry specific remuneration tribunal that has come up with something like an award which sees owner drivers get higher remuneration. According to the government, (and even at least some owner driver bodies*) this is causing anguish amongst owner drivers, who say they won't get work at those rates. (And who might be telling them that, I wonder? Their corporate customers, no doubt.)
Riding into the midst of this is Judith Sloan, whose column in the Australian this morning is worth parsing::
Second: does the dismissal of a "one size fits all" approach seems mean she's arguing for remuneration to more accurately reflect worker's needs? I sure hope so, because that would indicate the rich can afford to have their tax rate increased. Who knew Judith would be philosophically onside with John Quiggin on that point?
Third, and here's the funniest bit, from her next paragraph:
This seems to be from the Sloanian "heads I win, tails you lose" school of minimal restraint, free market economics. Minimum wages that no person could survive on (as per the US): they're great for workers, who should just appreciate that they have a job. Pay them too much and there'll be businesses sacking workers all over the place. Pay owner drivers enough that they don't have to work dangerous hours to merely pay their truck loan: but they'll get greedy. Can't have that.
It's obvious (but I don't bother calling it Economics 101) that big businesses can use private contractors to screw down costs way beyond what is reasonable - we see it in the courier business too, and (in a similar vein) we get entire business models more or less based on it (Google "7-11 Franchises".) Whether this approach is the only way to tackle that may be a moot point, but I'm not convinced that this Labor approach is entirely wrong because "unions!"
Having said that, I guess I have to allow the possibility that the remuneration rates KPMG came up with are unrealistic - but if the corporate customers won't use owner drivers any more because they can do it more cheaply, I would hope that at least some of the owner drivers could off load their truck and get regular employment as a paid employee drivers (and dob in their boss if they are forced to drive for dangerous hours.)
In any event, I still find the arguments put up by Sloan to be self serving and hypocritical.
* although I note that the union guy on the radio this morning said they represent (I think) 20,000 owner drivers. Seems a lot, and I assume many of them are on side with the union position on this.
Labor's response was to set up an industry specific remuneration tribunal that has come up with something like an award which sees owner drivers get higher remuneration. According to the government, (and even at least some owner driver bodies*) this is causing anguish amongst owner drivers, who say they won't get work at those rates. (And who might be telling them that, I wonder? Their corporate customers, no doubt.)
Riding into the midst of this is Judith Sloan, whose column in the Australian this morning is worth parsing::
But here’s the rub: the highly paid members of the RSRT contracted out the work of determining these rates to KPMG, which used a one-size-fits-all model to work out the hourly rate based on an assumption of annual hours.
But as this hired-gun outfit notes: “The annual hours worked assumption is used to convert annual fixed cost estimates into an hourly payment. Note, the use of this assumption means if a road transport contractor driver works more hours than assumed, they will be overcompensated for fixed costs incurred. Conversely, if the driver works fewer hours than assumed, they will be under-compensated for fixed costs.”First: I like the way KPMG becomes a "hired gun" when it comes to making a determination she doesn't like. I wouldn't mind betting she's more sympathetic to their findings when they've commissioned by someone she's politically on side with.
Second: does the dismissal of a "one size fits all" approach seems mean she's arguing for remuneration to more accurately reflect worker's needs? I sure hope so, because that would indicate the rich can afford to have their tax rate increased. Who knew Judith would be philosophically onside with John Quiggin on that point?
Third, and here's the funniest bit, from her next paragraph:
In other words, KPMG is not making any claim that minimum hourly payments will influence hours and, by inference, road safety. Indeed, there is an argument that if owner-drivers can get higher payments by dint of regulation, they may actually drive longer hours to make more money. (Economics 101: income and substitution effects.)Obviously, then, you just can't trust people who might be motivated to make more money than they need to cover their minimum needs. Seems to me that this suggests companies should cap director remunerations they're prepared to offer: pay too much and you just attract the greedy and untalented. I didn't realise that was her position.
This seems to be from the Sloanian "heads I win, tails you lose" school of minimal restraint, free market economics. Minimum wages that no person could survive on (as per the US): they're great for workers, who should just appreciate that they have a job. Pay them too much and there'll be businesses sacking workers all over the place. Pay owner drivers enough that they don't have to work dangerous hours to merely pay their truck loan: but they'll get greedy. Can't have that.
It's obvious (but I don't bother calling it Economics 101) that big businesses can use private contractors to screw down costs way beyond what is reasonable - we see it in the courier business too, and (in a similar vein) we get entire business models more or less based on it (Google "7-11 Franchises".) Whether this approach is the only way to tackle that may be a moot point, but I'm not convinced that this Labor approach is entirely wrong because "unions!"
Having said that, I guess I have to allow the possibility that the remuneration rates KPMG came up with are unrealistic - but if the corporate customers won't use owner drivers any more because they can do it more cheaply, I would hope that at least some of the owner drivers could off load their truck and get regular employment as a paid employee drivers (and dob in their boss if they are forced to drive for dangerous hours.)
In any event, I still find the arguments put up by Sloan to be self serving and hypocritical.
* although I note that the union guy on the radio this morning said they represent (I think) 20,000 owner drivers. Seems a lot, and I assume many of them are on side with the union position on this.
Tuesday, April 05, 2016
Warm water summer
This summer's sea temperatures were the hottest on record for Australia: here’s why
Seems no one's entirely sure what this may mean for the weather for the next year. (Usually means wetter weather, but the North did just have a weak Monsoon season, apparently.) It seems unusual because the high water temperatures were behind the Brisbane (and Australian) widespread floods of 2011, but that was a La Nina year. Anyway, luckily, Brisbane doesn't flood in winter.
Seems no one's entirely sure what this may mean for the weather for the next year. (Usually means wetter weather, but the North did just have a weak Monsoon season, apparently.) It seems unusual because the high water temperatures were behind the Brisbane (and Australian) widespread floods of 2011, but that was a La Nina year. Anyway, luckily, Brisbane doesn't flood in winter.
An important, overlooked role of the Moon in evolution?
The Moon may play a major role in maintaining Earth's magnetic field -- ScienceDaily
The article doesn't talk about this aspect of the research, but, presumably life could have evolved very differently if there was no Moon, and the Earth's magnetic field had dwindled faster than it has.
Perhaps this is also reason to be pessimist about advance life on other planets?
The article doesn't talk about this aspect of the research, but, presumably life could have evolved very differently if there was no Moon, and the Earth's magnetic field had dwindled faster than it has.
Perhaps this is also reason to be pessimist about advance life on other planets?
People were more suspicious than I realised
I spend a very small amount of time thinking about comic book superheroes, especially on the silly matter of how "gay" the relationship between Batman and Robin seemed to be; but I admit that there is a rather amusing article at Slate all about this particular topic.
I used to assume that it was only through our present sensibilities, and obsessions with gay identity, that people would be seeing any gay "subtext" to the Batman and Robin relationship. So, sure, by the 1970's when gay rights were starting to become a mainstream issue people were probably sniggering about it, but back in the 1950's? I wouldn't have thought so.
But I was very wrong.
In particular, the guy behind the comic books moral panic of the 50's (an episode that I was really only made aware of from watching the best of the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis movies , "Artists and Models") was specifically offended by it:
Into the 60's, and the writers were more aware of the issue than ever:
It also presents a challenge. I had been thinking of making a joke post about what it could possibly take to make Jason Soon dislike a Batman/Superman story, given that he appears to be amongst the rather small proportion of viewers of the current movie who would call it "fantastic". Turning it into a superhero version of Brokeback Mountain? (And don't ask what happens when Lois meets Wonder Woman, either.)
But, as I say, these gay worries about the superheros are old news now.
No, I think it may take something more dire. Let me try: Batman finally gets the grief management therapy he's so badly needed for years. Newly invigorated with a love for all of life, and while taking the Batmobile on a run to have a picnic in the country, he accidentally runs over a chicken which he discovers has escaped from a cruelly overpopulated farm run by a mad, bald ex-politician who wears a cat for a toupee. Batman commits his future energies into releasing farm animals into the wild under cover of dark. Meanwhile, Superman makes a mistake and discovers that a bound man at an S&M club (revealed as Alfred) is not actually wanting rescue. Embarrassed, Alfred scams Superman into blowing up a truck trailer full of chickens which Batman was actually driving towards asylum in Canada. CGI mayhem follows....
I used to assume that it was only through our present sensibilities, and obsessions with gay identity, that people would be seeing any gay "subtext" to the Batman and Robin relationship. So, sure, by the 1970's when gay rights were starting to become a mainstream issue people were probably sniggering about it, but back in the 1950's? I wouldn't have thought so.
But I was very wrong.
In particular, the guy behind the comic books moral panic of the 50's (an episode that I was really only made aware of from watching the best of the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis movies , "Artists and Models") was specifically offended by it:
People noticed. One person, in particular: Dr. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist convinced that comic books were directly responsible for the scourge of juvenile delinquency, led a nationwide anti-comics crusade that proved hugely effective. He published his “research” (read: testimonials from his juvenile psychiatric patients strung together with anti-comics rhetoric) in a book called Seduction of the Innocent in the spring of 1954, just as he testified before Sen. Estes Kefauver’s Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.
Wertham devoted a scant four pages of his book to Batman and Robin; he had bigger fish to fry, attacking the luridly violent, sexist, and racist imagery found in many crime comics of the day. (About which: Dude had a point.) He did call Superman out as a fascist, and he noted that Wonder Woman’s whole shtick seemed unapologetically Sapphic. When it came to the Dynamic Duo, he seemed to relish drawing the reader’s attention to Wayne Manor’s “beautiful flowers in large vases” and the fact that Bruce was given to swanning about the estate in a dressing gown.
“It is like a wish-dream,” he famously wrote, “of two homosexuals living together.”Dr Wertham strikes me as the Cory Bernardi of his day, then!
Into the 60's, and the writers were more aware of the issue than ever:
The shadow of Wertham lingered long into the ’60s, and Batman editors resolved to do what they could to dispel it, even if doing so came with a body count: When asked why Alfred the butler was killed off—briefly—in 1964 to be replaced by the dithering Aunt Harriet, editor Julius Schwartz averred, “There was a lot of discussion in those days about three males living in Wayne Manor.”The writer makes it clear that he doesn't think the "gay subtext" readings is a particularly valid exercise:
This is the issue with gay readings. Any given bond between males can be homosocial without being homoerotic, and even the most explicitly homoerotic bond can exist without ever rubbing up against homosexual desire. To willfully and sneeringly misinterpret what was clearly intended as a familial connection as a romantic one—as Wertham did in 1954 and as so many Tumblr feeds do today— seems ungenerous at best and snide at worst, no?And that seems right to me, too. He's also right about the "camp yet [perhaps oddly, in retrospect] not gay" reading of the 60's TV show:
Although the show became inextricably associated with the notion of camp, its pop-art sensibility never came off as particularly gay despite the presence of guest villains played by such fierce divas as Tallulah Bankhead and Liberace.So, there you go. The "gay subtext in comics" issue has been around a long time, then.
It also presents a challenge. I had been thinking of making a joke post about what it could possibly take to make Jason Soon dislike a Batman/Superman story, given that he appears to be amongst the rather small proportion of viewers of the current movie who would call it "fantastic". Turning it into a superhero version of Brokeback Mountain? (And don't ask what happens when Lois meets Wonder Woman, either.)
But, as I say, these gay worries about the superheros are old news now.
No, I think it may take something more dire. Let me try: Batman finally gets the grief management therapy he's so badly needed for years. Newly invigorated with a love for all of life, and while taking the Batmobile on a run to have a picnic in the country, he accidentally runs over a chicken which he discovers has escaped from a cruelly overpopulated farm run by a mad, bald ex-politician who wears a cat for a toupee. Batman commits his future energies into releasing farm animals into the wild under cover of dark. Meanwhile, Superman makes a mistake and discovers that a bound man at an S&M club (revealed as Alfred) is not actually wanting rescue. Embarrassed, Alfred scams Superman into blowing up a truck trailer full of chickens which Batman was actually driving towards asylum in Canada. CGI mayhem follows....
Monday, April 04, 2016
The article with a heading that possibly has never been said before...
BBC - Future - Why we need a better way to measure farts
Actually, it's interesting, but sadly doesn't have a photo of the prototype internal sniffer that may be swallowed by unfortunate patients in future.
Actually, it's interesting, but sadly doesn't have a photo of the prototype internal sniffer that may be swallowed by unfortunate patients in future.
Don't tell your calculator about this surprising result - it'll get depressed
How many digits of pi do we really need? Eh, not that many, says NASA. - Vox
Marc Rayman, the director and chief engineer for NASA's Dawn mission, recently made this clear in response to a question on Facebook. NASA, he explained, certainly doesn't need trillions of digits for itscalculations. In fact, they get by with using just fifteen — 3.141592653589793. It's not perfect, but it's close enough:
The most distant spacecraft from Earth is Voyager 1. It is about 12.5 billion miles away. Let's say we have a circle with a radius of exactly that size (or 25 billion miles in diameter) and we want to calculate the circumference, which is pi times the radius times 2. Using pi rounded to the 15th decimal, as I gave above, that comes out to a little more than 78 billion miles.Going further, if you used 40 digits of pi, Rayman says, you could calculate the circumference of the entire visible universe — an area with the radius of about 46 billion light years — "to an
We don't need to be concerned here with exactly what the value is (you can multiply it out if you like) but rather what the error in the value is by not using more digits of pi. In other words, by cutting pi off at the 15th decimal point, we would calculate a circumference for that circle that is very slightly off. It turns out that our calculated circumference of the 25 billion mile diameter circle would be wrong by
1.5 inches.
Think about that. We have a circle more than 78 billion miles around, and our calculation of that distance would be off by perhaps less than the length of your little finger.
accuracy equal to the diameter of a hydrogen atom." That'll do!
Sunday, April 03, 2016
Deserves to be a scandal
I like to spend my one free article a week from the Saturday Paper on Richard Ackland's Gadfly column, in large part because I can always rely on him to pass on with high sarcasm and contempt any gossip about "Freedom Boy" (Tim Wilson).
But really today, while the Boy gets a mention, the best part is about the robotic Abetz, and it sounds like this deserves to be a scandal:
But really today, while the Boy gets a mention, the best part is about the robotic Abetz, and it sounds like this deserves to be a scandal:
The story had been around Tassie for a while, but it is nice that others can now share it. In 2000 Abetz paid $100,000 for almost four hectares of government land adjacent to his weatherboard house in the Hobart suburb of Kingston. Five years later the land was rezoned from residential to business and civic. Four months after that, Otto sold both his house block and the rezoned land to a property developer named Rockefeller for nearly $2 million. Rockefeller paid $400,000 for the large block of vacant land and for the Abetz house and land of about half a hectare, $1.5 million – more than five times the government valuation. In other words, Otto avoided a lot of capital gains tax which would have been payable on the unoccupied land, but was exempt on the family home. Otto insists that his old house, which has been demolished, had more road frontage, so the deal was entirely kosher. Tasmanian Times columnist John Hawkins, who has studied the transaction in searing detail, was onto him: “Erich’s throwaway line on road frontage as being the key to the increase in value of the house block and the decrease in value of the internal block is complete and absolute rubbish. The adjoining block – also with a house and with virtually the same street frontage to the Channel Highway – sold for a million dollars less than that owned by Uncle Erich, to the same purchaser at the same time. Erich, it was a way to transfer the profit on the ten acres to your home in order to avoid payment of capital gains tax. You know it, I know it, in fact we all know it. The question now is, has the tax man laid off collecting the tax as a result of your former exalted position? “If I am wrong sue me and we can investigate the matter in more detail.”
Friday, April 01, 2016
Uh-oh, it's not just Hansen
Sea-level projections may be vastly underestimated, say scientists - CSMonitor.com
Long story short: modelling work on Antarctic ice (and comparisons to previous periods of similar global warmth as we soon expect) indicate that sea level rise over the next century could be closer to the 2 metre mark, rather than the 2 foot mark as was previously favoured.
This should get attention.
And by the way, why do climate change denialists think that history won't repeat? In the big picture, as I understand it, the question is more "how quickly will we get disastrous-for-our-cities, multi meter sea level rises - one century, or two or three?" not "will we get disastrous sea level rise".
Long story short: modelling work on Antarctic ice (and comparisons to previous periods of similar global warmth as we soon expect) indicate that sea level rise over the next century could be closer to the 2 metre mark, rather than the 2 foot mark as was previously favoured.
This should get attention.
And by the way, why do climate change denialists think that history won't repeat? In the big picture, as I understand it, the question is more "how quickly will we get disastrous-for-our-cities, multi meter sea level rises - one century, or two or three?" not "will we get disastrous sea level rise".
Maybe some astronomers have too much spare time on their hands...
Laser cloaking device could help us hide from aliens
The two authors of the new study suggest that transits could be masked by controlled laser
emission, with the beam directed at the star where the aliens might live. When the transit takes place, the laser would be switched on to compensate for the dip in light.
According to the authors, emitting a continuous 30 MW laser for about 10 hours, once a year, would be enough to eliminate the transit signal, at least in visible light. The energy needed is comparable to that collected by the International Space Station in a year. A chromatic
cloak, effective at all wavelengths, is more challenging, and would need a large array of tuneable lasers with a total power of 250 MW.
"Alternatively, we could cloak only the atmospheric signatures associated with biological activity, such as oxygen, which is achievable with a peak laser power of just 160 kW per transit. To another civilisation, this should make the Earth appear as if life never took
hold on our world", said Alex.
Yet more States and taxes
As I expected, the public reception of Turnbull's State tax musings seems underwhelming, given that on Sunrise this morning we had the spectacle of both Jeff Kennett and Mark Latham opposing it. (And David Koch was cynical from the start too.)
The reception to this idea gives good examples of political opportunism, too. While Labor might claim credit for being the side to recognize (and say openly) that there is both a revenue and a spending issue with Australian governments at the moment, Shorten is more than happy to note as one objection to Turnbull's plan that it probably means "more taxes". And, of course, on the Coalition side you have the spectacle of the PM and Treasurer seemingly not getting their lines straight.
As for "middle of the road" economics writers who are for it, I see that Tim Colebatch has joined Martin in basic support. But he dismisses my "race to the bottom" concern:
But generally, Malcolm Turnbull remains a bit of a puzzle: smart, urbane, compassionate, says all the right things before getting the top job; but then as a leader it seems his political skills go all wonky
The reception to this idea gives good examples of political opportunism, too. While Labor might claim credit for being the side to recognize (and say openly) that there is both a revenue and a spending issue with Australian governments at the moment, Shorten is more than happy to note as one objection to Turnbull's plan that it probably means "more taxes". And, of course, on the Coalition side you have the spectacle of the PM and Treasurer seemingly not getting their lines straight.
As for "middle of the road" economics writers who are for it, I see that Tim Colebatch has joined Martin in basic support. But he dismisses my "race to the bottom" concern:
Wouldn’t it mean a “race to the bottom” in which states compete to cut tax rates, forcing them to cut services as well?That seems a tad naive, given the history noted in Creighton's column yesterday.
Only if state governments think they will win more political support from lower taxes than they would lose from lower services. It is no more likely than the opposite fear, that states will keep raising taxes so they can expand services.
But generally, Malcolm Turnbull remains a bit of a puzzle: smart, urbane, compassionate, says all the right things before getting the top job; but then as a leader it seems his political skills go all wonky
Nasty virus news
So, scientists are pretty certain that the zika virus does cause microcephaly. And even the Wall Street Journal is reporting about how the range of the mosquito that carries it can extend much further into America than previously thought. (Of course, being the WSJ, they don't mention that scientists have been warning for years of the increasing range of this mosquito due to climate change.)
In other unwelcome virus news, I see that ebola may be causing blindness in survivors of the disease. Great...
In other unwelcome virus news, I see that ebola may be causing blindness in survivors of the disease. Great...
Thursday, March 31, 2016
States and taxes
Well, this potential tax reform is interesting because of the way it attracts both supporters and detractors from both sides of the political spectrum.
Andrew Bolt is against it, as are all of his cohort who now comment at Catallaxy, but it's hard to say how much of that is due simply to it being Turnbull's idea. Turnbull hatred is a powerful force amongst the del cons .
But amongst economics commentators, I see that both Peter Martin and Adam Creighton support it, even though they are not that often on the same page when it comes to economics analysis.
Creighton's column this morning is interesting because it raises one issue that Martin ignores: how competitive tax regimes can lead to a race to the bottom. (Not that Creighton wants to call it that.)
Of course small government types love the idea of competition tax regimes, because that suits their basic goal of seeing that government is strangled of ability to provide services. But they don't like acknowledging that competition can lead to a race to the bottom.
It seems to me that it clearly can - with the best example being Kansas in America. It's in serious fiscal trouble because of Laffernomics which Art promises will help them, eventually. Maybe in 10 years? Meanwhile, its universities lose funding. So sorry, universities: Art says it'll all come good, one day.
Creighton notes a couple of things that happened under State competition in Australia:
But I will give credit to Creighton for noting these "race to the bottom" examples - even if he reluctant to name them as such.
Andrew Bolt is against it, as are all of his cohort who now comment at Catallaxy, but it's hard to say how much of that is due simply to it being Turnbull's idea. Turnbull hatred is a powerful force amongst the del cons .
But amongst economics commentators, I see that both Peter Martin and Adam Creighton support it, even though they are not that often on the same page when it comes to economics analysis.
Creighton's column this morning is interesting because it raises one issue that Martin ignores: how competitive tax regimes can lead to a race to the bottom. (Not that Creighton wants to call it that.)
Of course small government types love the idea of competition tax regimes, because that suits their basic goal of seeing that government is strangled of ability to provide services. But they don't like acknowledging that competition can lead to a race to the bottom.
It seems to me that it clearly can - with the best example being Kansas in America. It's in serious fiscal trouble because of Laffernomics which Art promises will help them, eventually. Maybe in 10 years? Meanwhile, its universities lose funding. So sorry, universities: Art says it'll all come good, one day.
Creighton notes a couple of things that happened under State competition in Australia:
But Egan sounds a note of warning. “I hope [this reform] wouldn’t mean states would compete their income tax rights away as they did with payroll tax,” he says.Well, that land tax reform is unrealistically ambitious and isn't going to happen, but economists like to fantasize about efficiency.
Indeed, then prime minister William McMahon ceded states payroll tax in the early 1970s, to help restore their financial independence. But this was undone by an explosion of tied grants under the Whitlam government. Payroll taxes are theoretically efficient — broadly similarly to a consumption tax, in fact — but states progressively increased the turnover threshold to win votes from small businesses. This meant rate increased on a dwindling base — the very opposite of good tax policy. The same can be said for inheritance tax — a relatively efficient (and some would say fair) tax that Queensland premier Joh Bjelke Peterson effectively killed off in the 1980s. This prompted other states to follow suit.
In fact, states have access to the most efficient tax of all — land tax. They could in theory spurn all Canberra’s money and levy a flat rate percentage rate of tax on all land: business and residential.
But I will give credit to Creighton for noting these "race to the bottom" examples - even if he reluctant to name them as such.
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Now for the nuance
Was Nixon's war on drugs a racially motivated crusade? It's a bit more complicated. - Vox
You can pretty much bet that any simplistic take on the history of the "war on drugs" is flawed; but pro-drug reformers love repeating them anyway.
Such was my grounds for being suspicious of the internet story doing the rounds last week about Erlichman explaining why Nixon wanted the war.
As this article explains, it's not so simple, and Nixon's approach also encompassed a compassionate approach to funding rehabilitation for the drug addicted:
You can pretty much bet that any simplistic take on the history of the "war on drugs" is flawed; but pro-drug reformers love repeating them anyway.
Such was my grounds for being suspicious of the internet story doing the rounds last week about Erlichman explaining why Nixon wanted the war.
As this article explains, it's not so simple, and Nixon's approach also encompassed a compassionate approach to funding rehabilitation for the drug addicted:
Let's start with what Nixon actually sought to do when he launched his war on drugs. The speech that started the formal war on drugs in 1971 did not focus solely on criminalization. Instead, Nixon dedicated much of his time to talking up initiatives that would increase prevention and treatment for drug abuse.Interesting. And there's more:
"Enforcement must be coupled with a rational approach to the reclamation of the drug user himself," Nixon told Congress in 1971. "We must rehabilitate the drug user if we are to
eliminate drug abuse and all the antisocial activities that flow from drug abuse."
The numbers back this up. According to the federal government's budget numbers for anti-drug programs, the "demand" side of the war on drugs (treatment, education, and prevention) consistently got more funding during Nixon's time in office (1969 to 1974) than the "supply"
side (law enforcement and interdiction).
Historically, this is a commitment for treating drugs as a public health issue that the federal government has not replicated since the 1970s. (Although President Barack Obama's budget proposal would, for the first time in decades, put a majority of anti-drug spending on the demand side once again.)
Drug policy historians say this was intentional. Nixon poured money into public health initiatives, such as medication-assisted treatments like methadone clinics, education campaigns that sought to prevent teens from trying drugs, and more research on drug abuse. In fact, the Controlled Substances Act — the basis for so much of modern drug policy — actually reduced penalties on marijuana possession in 1970, when Nixon was in office.
"Nixon was really worried about kids and drugs," David Courtwright, a drug policy historian at the University of North Florida, told me. "He saw illicit drug use by young people as a form of social rot, and it's something that weakens America."So, treating it as a public health issue was high on Nixon's agenda. As I have noted before, this was not unusual even within conservative governments in Australia - with the Bjelke-Petersen government having well funded methodone programs too, I believe.
Don't change, Japan
Let's discuss tourists and their tattoos | The Japan Times
The Japan Tourism Agency has asked spa operators to allow tattooedI think it would be a pity for one of the last reasons to give to children to never get a tattoo ("you'll never be able to enjoy onsen during holidays in Japan!") passes. Stay strong, Japan.
foreign tourists into their facilities in a bid to get more overseas
visitors experiencing the nation’s onsen....
Akamichi said the current no-tattoo policy at many onsen
resorts had rejected people with tattoos indiscriminately, including
foreign guests who wear them for fashion, religious or other reasons.
The agency asked operators to take measures such as offering stickers
to cover tattoos and setting certain time frames for tattooed tourists
to bathe, so as to separate them from other visitors.
Krugman on global trade and politics
Trade, Labor, and Politics - The New York Times
As usual, he comes across as such a clear and balanced writer.
As usual, he comes across as such a clear and balanced writer.
Not going to go over well
Malcolm Turnbull says states should levy own income tax levels | afr.com
I can't see that the public is going to warm to the idea of varying levels of tax from State to State. For one thing, it's easy for either side of politics to attack it, and hence Abbott has been against such ideas in the past, using the same arguments as Neville Wran, apparently*. (Immediate reaction at Conservatives Who Think Sinclair Davidson is Nuts [Catallaxy] is also negative.)
Oh look - I've found something useful at the IPA website about the history of this sort of proposal.
It's also a good sign that it should be rejected: if the IPA is for something, it's a very safe rule of thumb that it's a bad idea.
* see link following.
I can't see that the public is going to warm to the idea of varying levels of tax from State to State. For one thing, it's easy for either side of politics to attack it, and hence Abbott has been against such ideas in the past, using the same arguments as Neville Wran, apparently*. (Immediate reaction at Conservatives Who Think Sinclair Davidson is Nuts [Catallaxy] is also negative.)
Oh look - I've found something useful at the IPA website about the history of this sort of proposal.
It's also a good sign that it should be rejected: if the IPA is for something, it's a very safe rule of thumb that it's a bad idea.
* see link following.
Problematic study
Psychotherapy for depressed rats shows genes aren't destiny
I don't know: it seems to me that what passes for rat "psychotherapy" is nothing much at all like psychotherapy in humans.
Still, I suppose that anything that shows beneficial changes to rats bred to be "depressed" can come from their environment gives encouragement to humans with a parent who suffers depression...
I don't know: it seems to me that what passes for rat "psychotherapy" is nothing much at all like psychotherapy in humans.
Still, I suppose that anything that shows beneficial changes to rats bred to be "depressed" can come from their environment gives encouragement to humans with a parent who suffers depression...
No wonder the studios make them
‘A stink bucket of disappointment’ – the most savage Batman v Superman reviews | Film | The Guardian
The link is to a handy list of some of the worst reviews of the movie, but the incredible thing is how superhero movies with high recognition characters are, to a large degree, impervious to poor reviews when they go out on global mega releases. This one has almost made $500 million in a week.
One would hope the critical reaction might put a dint in the studio's enthusiasm for the genre, but all they can see is the money, I guess.
The link is to a handy list of some of the worst reviews of the movie, but the incredible thing is how superhero movies with high recognition characters are, to a large degree, impervious to poor reviews when they go out on global mega releases. This one has almost made $500 million in a week.
One would hope the critical reaction might put a dint in the studio's enthusiasm for the genre, but all they can see is the money, I guess.
Still not at peak transgender...
Largest ever study of transgender teenagers kicks off : Nature News & Comment
Probably is about time they decided to study the effect of puberty blocking treatment in adolescents, if they are going to offer it.
You have to wonder though - some old cultures (Polynesian , for example) would have happily, in certain circumstances, let their effeminate boys dress and act as women, but there was no option for surgery in past centuries. (Mind you, some boys were forced into the role, too, which was unlikely to please them.)
But if that group of genuinely "want to be a girl" boys weren't hurling themselves off cliffs because they were depressed about still having a penis, how has it become such a matter of crucial importance to Western men in the 20th century that it be whipped off ASAP?
(Sorry, my vast audience of transgender readers, no doubt I am not dealing with the topic sensitively enough.)
Probably is about time they decided to study the effect of puberty blocking treatment in adolescents, if they are going to offer it.
You have to wonder though - some old cultures (Polynesian , for example) would have happily, in certain circumstances, let their effeminate boys dress and act as women, but there was no option for surgery in past centuries. (Mind you, some boys were forced into the role, too, which was unlikely to please them.)
But if that group of genuinely "want to be a girl" boys weren't hurling themselves off cliffs because they were depressed about still having a penis, how has it become such a matter of crucial importance to Western men in the 20th century that it be whipped off ASAP?
(Sorry, my vast audience of transgender readers, no doubt I am not dealing with the topic sensitively enough.)
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Running out of ideas, Chris?
The democratic case for splitting Queensland in two - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
The way I read this column, Chris Berg is having trouble finding anything worthwhile to write about.
The way I read this column, Chris Berg is having trouble finding anything worthwhile to write about.
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