Not sure what is going on in Spain and Luxembourg

Found it at Business Insider, which notes:

The divorce rate is still high in the U.S. at 53%. But Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, and Hungary are worse off with divorce rates higher than 60%.
Australia fares a little better but had a rate of 43% in 2010.
Belgium has the highest rate of divorce in this data set at a staggering 70%.
The lowest official rate is in Chile with 3%.

About the Piketty claims

A good commentary piece, I think, on Piketty is here in The Guardian.

Fantasy crime and consequences

Mob kills man for 'stealing genitals' in Burkina Faso | The FRANCE 24 Observers

I had assumed that "penis stealing" was something that was done as a revenge curse against someone who had done you wrong.  But according to this report, it is used as a scam:

There are usually two or three accomplices who carry out this scam
in three parts: first, someone who claims to have magical powers touches
a victim and persuades him that they’ve stolen his genitals. Then,
another accomplice approaches the victim and drives home the point by
saying that if the victim doesn’t buy a specific product, he’ll lose his
ability to reproduce. Finally, the victim pays a hefty sum [Editor’s
note: around 30,000 CFA Francs, or 45 euros] for a Viagra-like medicine
that is supposed to make his genitals work again.

It had been several years since I had heard of any such cases in
Koudougou. There were a few isolated cases in nearby areas about 10
years ago, but they quickly stopped. This time, though, the first cases
in the beginning of May were handled very badly: local authorities
didn’t intervene immediately to calm the crowds, and a lot of people
were caught up in the hysteria. I don’t think the lynching of this man
has calmed tensions.

Just too many guns

Even in a State With Restrictive Laws, Gunman Amassed Weapons and Ammunition - NYTimes.com

Mass murderer  Elliott Rodger was able to acquire 3 handguns in California easily and legally, despite the State being considered to have some of the toughest gun laws in America.

There are two ways of looking at this:   the American gun lobby will be arguing that it demonstrates that restrictive  gun laws don't stop really determined killers (and it's true, he killed 3 by stabbing - although I still haven't read exactly how that happened) and so why bother with such laws?  In fact, no matter how a mass killing happens, there is a powerful fantasy amongst gun lovers that if only there were more guns around, more mass killings would be prevented.   An obscenely nutty ex Republican executive is said to have tweeted this:  "No idea how my son will die, but I know it won't be cowering like a bitch at UC Santa Barbara. Any son of mine would have been shooting back."  If the parent of one of the deceased beat this guy to within an inch of his life, no jury would convict.

The second way of looking at it is this:  you can never guarantee that mentally disturbed young men will not kill, but if you make it pretty hard for anyone in society to get guns (and handguns in particular), you are going to have very few mass shootings involving handguns.  Evidence for this - Australia and England.

Fortunately, Australians tend to think the second, sensible way.  American-lite, Heinlein-ian  libertarian fantasies of a society being better if everyone who wants to be armed is armed don't wash here, and may it forever remain so.

Moby Dump

Whale defecation good fertiliser for fisheries

Yet more on Frances

Frances Abbott Chosen ‘On Merit’ To Help Lobby Fed Govt Regulators | newmatilda.com

OK, so Frances may have given the same gushing review of her institution even if she didn't have a "scholarship" there which appears to have been extended to her by personal invitation that she should ask for it.

But I guess we will never know.

I explained the story to someone today (a strong anti-Labor voter) and he ended up saying - "Well, the Abbott's could end all of this just by saying they will pay the tuition fee."   Well, yes, a principled politician might do so, by way of apology for not disclosing a large and generous (effective) gift to his daughter from someone who clearly thought that Tony should help her business by seeing regulations were eased (and probably also by giving it funding previously unavailable).  But Tony Abbott's complained before about his personal finances being stretched, so I can't see it happening.

Co-payments and their raison d'etre

 If I have understood Henry Ergas in the Australian correctly this morning, the fact that the Abbott government's co-payment does not go into general revenue but rather to a special medical research fund that (according to Hockey) will cut future costs by finding a cure for cancer and dementia (honestly, this is his extremely improbable argument) means that it cannot be justified as a measure directly offsetting the cost of health care.

Instead Ergas is seeking to justify it by praising the "moderating" effect of the number of doctor visits.

But wait a minute:   what evidence is there that Australia suffers from an overuse of doctors because of the lack of such a price signal?

I have heard it said that in fact Australian rates of doctor visits is entirely within the normal range for similar countries.   Unfortunately, I don't have a link for that at the moment.

If there is no convincing evidence that Australia is suffering from a public overuse of GPs, why would you want to save money by trying to persuade them to go to the doctor less?    (The fact that the mere news of a co-payment coming has led to doctor's waiting rooms in some parts of the country being unusually empty is no good evidence of overuse - although I noticed that the likes of Andrew Bolt thought so, taking the line that if a $7 co-payment puts you off a doctors visit, you can't be so sick.  The point is, you would have to work out how many hospital admissions have been caused by delay in seeing a GP to work out whether the costs savings of reducing GP visits had really been worth it.)

As Ergas himself admits, the effect on population health is not clear, with the Rand study being of highly uncertain application to this country.   And as Peter Martin notes:

And general practitioners are cheap compared to other forms of medicine. They account for just 6 per cent of health spending. They act as gatekeepers, directing Australians to hospitals and more expensive specialists only when needed. They are not where the costs are rising. They are among the last places costs should be cut back.

Ergas makes one valid point - that countries with what we consider "socialised" medicine do sometimes impose a co-payment and do not consider it ideologically wrong.

But the rest of his contorted argument - that the Coalition plan for one is worthwhile in Australia because it will reduce the number of GP visits - is not justified at all, and is prepared to take a "lets see what happens to the poor when you impose this in Australia" that is typical of the Right at the moment.

The Coalition case for a co-payment would be at least half way plausible if they were going to use it to fund the hospital services that a visit to the GP may result in.   But to simply take the money and hide it away and hope it works by reducing the number of GP visits - no, this is just an experiment about price signals that is unwarranted.

Fear of Piketty

The fear of many Right wing, libertarian inclined economists and commentators that Piketty is right about how capitalism and the rise of inequality works has been palpable right from the start.  Any and every criticism of his book (and of him personally) has been leapt on with great enthusiasm; so much so  that was clear that they saw his argument as very threatening.   (I'm not sure whether they realised how obvious they were being.)

It's clear why they were scared:  I don't have to do more than spell out t-a-x to explain.

Anyway, this weekend's kerfuffle about Piketty's 'errors' by the Financial Times has been interesting.  In the least surprising admission from an economist this century, Sinclair Davidson today writes " I’m underwhelmed by the argument and not convinced by his thesis."  But what I am most interested in is the short video from FT that he posts that gives some examples of mistakes from graphs from the book.

Watching that, it seems pretty clear that Giles and FT are over-egging their complaints.  In a couple of the graphs, they show Piketty's originals, which pretty clearly show only a very moderate rate of growth in inequality in the recent period, and the FT corrected graph lines look insignificantly different.  If anything, the graphs gave the impression to me that Piketty was being pretty cautious on the matter of how much inequality is recently increasing.

In fact, some of the phrases about Piketty that seem to be originating from FT sound pretty much defamatory to me, and of course they are being lapped up entirely uncritically by those who fear Piketty.

Krugman was pretty restrained in his defence of Piketty over the weekend, but makes the point that is very unlikely he's off the mark on the matter of rising inequality in the US.  The Economist has done the most detailed "defence" against the FT claims so far, again showing some examples where the alleged errors seem far from important.

On the bigger scale, what I think people like me find so surprising about the whole Piketty phenomena is that we really had no idea economists do their work with such poor source material on key matters such as inequality.   It seems remarkable that they haven't put more effort into gathering the sort of information that it now appears clear has only been done in very recent years.  (And of course, even when it is collected, there is so much room for argument over its accuracy or correct way to interpret it.)

No wonder economists are so bad at prediction.  It makes the field look rather like astronomy before the telescope was invented.  (Or perhaps to be more precise, before the data from telescopes was available.  Actually, now that I think of it, the situation is more that it seems economists have been acting like astronomers who have poor quality telescopes available, but have been more interested in theorising about what they are seeing rather than in collecting, comparing and improving the data  from them.)

Seems about right

David Marr on the budget of a hidden man | The Saturday Paper

David Marr can be annoying, but his general take on Tony Abbott as summed up in this short commentary piece seems pretty right to me.  This is the core point:

The great chameleons of politics are populists. But the magical
transformations of Tony Abbott are more driven by tactics than passion:
by the need, at any particular moment, to secure advantage.

And I think this is why he will not be regarded as a good Prime Minister.

Paris envy

Over the past couple of months, there seem to have been a multitude of cooking shows about Paris or France, and I'm getting sick of it because it's such a ridiculously attractive country with food I want to eat.  (My wife feels the same way.)

My France with Manu was enjoyable - Manu from My Kitchen Rules turned out to be a likeable host showing us around the part of France where he grew up.  (I wish they hadn't cut short the scene where he tried to eat a tough old oyster about as big as his fist, though.  One strongly suspects something unpleasant but probably amusing followed.)   SBS has been replaying French Food Safari, which provided a lot of information about French food culture, even if the recipes (usually done in Australia) didn't do that much for me.  Luke Nguyen has also been swanning around Paris and France, and whilw I don't find him a particularly engaging TV chef, as always, the locale and scenery is impressive.

Today in the New York Times, the torment continues, with a lengthy article about five signature dishes from different parts of France.  I didn't know that good cassoulet took quite this long:

That long-simmering is key. “All the components must harmonize,” Mr. Malé said. “Nothing is more catastrophic than a cassoulet made at the last minute.” Indeed, the best versions are cooked and cooled — preferably overnight — at least three times, a slow process that yields beans redolent with the deep flavors of the confit and pork sausage, topped by a thin layer of the dish’s natural juice and starches sealed in the oven. (Though cassoulet recipes often call for a topping of breadcrumbs, they are “never found on the authentic version,” Mr. Malé said.)

 I have only been to France once - about a three or four day side trip to Paris from England in the 1980's.   It remains the most beautiful city I have been to, and while at that age I was not overly concerned about food (and remember no real memorable meals there) I have always wanted to return, and to travel through the countryside. 

Speaking of food, even if not exactly French, we bought a ceramic tagine a year or more ago (one made in France, so there's a connection), but only recently started using it.  I thought it rather unlikely that it would give results significantly different from using normal lidded saucepans, but somehow, it does seem to make a difference, and it is in fact a real pleasure to cook in.   Last night, I basically followed this fish tagine recipe from Jamie Oliver, and it was good.

Northern beauty

I was very taken with this photo of Alesund, Norway, which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald last week in a travel story about the increasing popularity of the Scandinavian countries for Australian tourists:



Yes, I would like to go.

Parts of Africa still pretty dark

Witch doctors arrested after albino woman murdered 'for potions' in Tanzania - Africa - World - The Independent

Police in the Simiyu region said the 40-year-old victim was murdered
overnight earlier this month and the attackers had hacked off her left
leg, the index and middle fingers of her left hand and part of her left
thumb.

Photographs of the murder scene outside her home were too graphic to publish.

People with albinism are often subjected to violent attacks in the country, where they are known as the “zeru zeru” or ghosts.

The condition is heavily stigmatised and families who see it as a curse have known to kick relatives out of their homes.

But sufferers are also a target for traditional healers, who harvest body parts to make potions for wealth, success and even election victories.

Kind of blackly ironic that they are killed for potions for success, isn't it?

I also note this oddity in the report:

Under the Same Sun is campaigning for better protection for people with
albinism in Africa and wants to see witch doctors banned as they claim
current regulation is not working.

 Current regulation for witchdoctors?  The Witchdoctor Registration Board, or something?

And then this sad note:

The group is concerned that attacks will increase in the run-up to
elections in October, when the demand for potions made from albino body
parts is expected to increase.

New Matilda expands the Frances Abbott story yet again

Some terrific journalism being done by New Matilda that shows exactly why Abbott should have disclosed the "scholarship" that his daughter received from Whitehouse.

Of course, it doesn't take much to convince me that Tony is a fool; but honestly, given that he was being publicly courted to makes changes favourable to the College, there is an overwhelmingly clear case that the onus is on him to plausibly explain why he did not disclose the valuable gift to his daughter.  Trying to brazen it out as an attack on her is not going to work.

At best, he should admit it was a mistake (with appropriate weasel words like "in hindsight", "now that I realise the full extent of generosity in how Frances was approached for this scholarship") but his current tactic earns him no credit at all.

Go Tom

Gee, when I recently complained the lack of promising (US) summer films this years, I had forgotten about the new Tom Cruise science fiction outing Edge of Tomorrow.

An early (sort of) review for it on io9 reckons it's terrific, and it has good reviews on Rottentomatoes too.

Cruise always impresses with how much he throws himself physically into his science fiction/action films.  His Spielberg movies were great, Mission Impossible 1 and 4 were very enjoyable, and I even liked Oblivion quite a bit last year.   So I will be very pleased if this one is also good, if it encourages him to continue to pick intelligent and entertaining science fiction that is not a frickin' superhero/comic book movie.   

No showers - but lots of bacteria

I can't see it ever becoming popular, but it's interesting to read of this woman's account of her month long experiment of just using a spray on skin bacteria in lieu of showering and shampooing.  

She indicates that the worst effect was on her hair, even though I thought it was reliably said that if you stop shampooing and removing oils from your hair, it eventually stops producing much in the way of replacement oil and becomes (more or less) clean looking again.  I didn't think it would take more than a month to achieve that, though.

Some of the men in the company that is investigating this idea have taken things to quite an extreme:

AOBiome does not market its product as an alternative to conventional cleansers, but it notes that some regular users may find themselves less reliant on soaps, moisturizers and deodorants after as little as a month. Jamas, a quiet, serial entrepreneur with a doctorate in biotechnology, incorporated N. eutropha into his hygiene routine years ago; today he uses soap just twice a week. The chairman of the company’s board of directors, Jamie Heywood, lathers up once or twice a month and shampoos just three times a year. The most extreme case is David Whitlock, the M.I.T.-trained chemical engineer who invented AO+. He has not showered for the past 12 years. He occasionally takes a sponge bath to wash away grime but trusts his skin’s bacterial colony to do the rest. I met these men. I got close enough to shake their hands, engage in casual conversation and note that they in no way conveyed a sense of being “unclean” in either the visual or olfactory sense.

Thanks, but no thanks.

At least, I suppose, it indicates that the historical periods where fear of regular bathing was rampant were not as smelly as we might expect.

Aren't there any cranky critics who have just had enough with superhero movies?

Is it just me, or a sign of old age, that I really, really care not a hoot how good an X Men movie is reviewed - I still won't be seeing it.

From what bits of X Men past that I have seen on TV, I have no interest at all its whole, silly scenario.

Superhero/comic book movies have been done to death and the effect on creativity in the industry is much, much more dire than the much maligned "blockbuster" effect of the Spielberg/Lucas era of the late 70's to 1980's.

As spotted on twitter:

Tingle on the Budget

Coalition gets a brutal lesson in policy on the run

Interesting to note a few things from Laura Tingle's article:

Who is responsible for the debacle?

It is interesting that when The Australian Financial Review
was preparing a piece ahead of the budget on how it was put together,
people involved all described it as an Abbott budget, not a Hockey one.
There were lots of impressed references to the PM’s decisiveness in
meetings of the expenditure review committee.

This was despite the fact it was Joe Hockey who did all the footwork on the whole “age of entitlement” argument.

 Good to know that I can blame our not very bright PM, then.

Sympathy misplaced

Graham Richardson  this morning in the Oz:

I should also make it clear that I am appalled that the media in this country should give publicity to stories about a scholarship ­obtained by one of the PM’s daughters. The children of the famous can never win. Their achievements are too often belittled as if they would never get anywhere without the name and the good graces of the powerful mum or dad. I don’t know the young woman in question but I can imagine how she feels at the moment. The PM’s family should be off ­limits. They are not fair game.

A few corrections:

1.  Frances did actually win:  apparently a "scholarship" for which (it would appear - we are all awaiting any statement to the contrary)  she was contacted by the College to come and apply for, and with no other "applicants" competing.

2.  I don't think any of her classmates are actually criticising her achievements.  They're just annoyed that their College didn't give them any opportunity to compete for free money on offer.

3.  The story is about her father - a Prime Minister who has abruptly adopted a policy that will massively increase the cost of University courses, and give government support to the type of college his daughter attended, not declaring that his daughter's college seems to have gone out of its way to save him or her $70,000.   $60,000.

There is even evidence to suggest (see New Matilda - which also challenges in detail Abbott's understanding of the disclosure rules) that the money was thrown at Frances to curry favour with her father.

This is a matter that should be pursued.

PS:  we all know that the children of politicians and the famous will often be offered jobs through their family connections.  Nothing's ever going to stop that.   But there is a difference between being offered a position whereby you earn remuneration, and being actually given a gift, which is what this "scholarship" effectively appears to have been.  Frances was entitled to accept it, although if she is smarter than her father, she should also have realised that if word of this ever got out, it may well annoy the other students.  More importantly, her father should have disclosed it.

PPS:   further to my last point - the New Matilda article up today (saying Frances appears to have "no role" despite being on the Whitehouse payroll) is pretty irrelevant, and kind of petty, and came out after I made my last comment.    As I said, you are always going to have the "well connected" getting cushy jobs; maybe even positions created just for them.   Can't see that anyone can expect that to change...

Bacteria everywhere

Yet another case of bacteria turning up somewhere rather unexpected in the body:

The placenta, long thought to be sterile, is home to a bacterial community similar to the one found in the mouth, researchers report today. The microbes are generally non-pathogenic, but according to the authors of the study, variations in their composition could be at the root of common but poorly understood pregnancy disorders such as preterm birth, which occurs in one out of every ten pregnancies.....

The researchers also compared the placental microbiomes to those found in the vagina, gut, mouth and on the skin of non-pregnant women. They found that the placental microbiome was most similar to that of the mouth. The authors speculate that the microbes travel to the placenta from the mouth via the blood. The results reinforce data suggesting a link between periodontal disease in the mother and the risk of preterm birth, says Aagaard.