Common sense not heard so often in the US

It's Really Hard to Be a Good Guy With a Gun

This article in Gawker makes much sense.   I find it incredible that over my life time, the US has moved more towards something resembling the Wild West, rather than away from it.  Like libertarians generally, gun loving NRA types live in a fantasy world and discount the common good.

And I would also note that while LDP eccentric Senator elect Australian David Leyonhjelm is doing media bits claiming that our drop in firearm deaths both before and after the gun buyback means that the buyback affected nothing, in the US the NRA and gun loving nutters continually draw a connection between concealed carry and a drop in crime.  It's OK to draw the connection sometimes then, is it?

Stern on the inadequacies of economic modelling of climate change

Climate change will ‘cost world far more than estimated’ - Climate Change - Environment - The Independent

Just as I suspected:

Lord Stern, who wrote a hugely influential review on the financial
implications of climate change in 2006, says the economic models that
have been used to calculate the fiscal fallout from climate change are
woefully inadequate and severely underestimate the scale of the threat....

Professor Stern and his colleague Dr Simon Dietz will today publish the
peer-reviewed findings of their research into climate change economic
modelling in the The Economic Journal.

Their review is highly critical of established economic models which,
among other things, fail to acknowledge the full breadth of climate
change’s likely impact on the economy and are predicated on assumptions
about global warming’s effect on output that are “without scientific
foundation”.

Professor Stern, whose earlier research said it is
far cheaper to tackle climate change now than in the future, added: “I
hope our paper will prompt ... economists to strive for much better
models [and] ... help policy-makers and the public recognise the
immensity of the potential risks of unmanaged climate change.”

What the heck, Andrew Robb?

Up on Business Insider:

Australia’s chief trade-deals negotiator has labeled the bid by President Barack Obama to cut U.S. power-plant emissions as lacking substance.

“There’s no action associated with it,” Trade Minister Andrew Robb said in a Sky News interview from Houston, Texas, where he was accompanying Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Abbott, who is seeking to dismantle Australia’s carbon- price mechanism before it hosts Group of 20 leaders in November, isn’t supporting Obama’s bid to pressure India, China and other nations to help form a world-wide agreement to combat climate change. The president is seeking state-by-state limitations on carbon-dioxide emissions to limit the effects of man-made global warming, and earlier this month proposed cutting power-plant discharges, the nation’s largest source of the gas, by 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels.

“Despite the rhetoric you get over here and all the targets for 30 percent reductions and all this, it’s just rhetoric,” Robb said.

I'm sure that Obama appreciates the two faced aspect of the Ministry of the government he just hosted.

Or is there some misreporting, because that sounds an extraordinarily ill considered thing for Robb to say.

Rude economist

I see on the weekend Catallaxy that Sinclair Davidson grumbled about being ignored:

I actually did start listening to the forum just at the point that SD was making his points.   Unless my ears deceived me, there was one direct response to him by one of the other people on the forum.  It was respectful.  As indeed Jonathan Greene always is to him.

Mind you, his apparent feeling that he wasn't adequately responded to in the forum, by posting this at his blog before the show was even on the air, indicates that he probably did deserve to be ignored - that's what people who engage in pre-emptive hyperbole should expect.  

Sure, there can be humour in hyperbole; but we all know that when people use it too much, depending on which audience they are talking to (calling anyone even slightly Left "commies", or admitting a fondness for thinking in terms of "moochers"), people soon start to cotton on that there is something more going on underneath.

This change of language by people who are writers or guests on media outlets when they are talking on their own blogs has always annoyed me - as I wrote last year in a more general attack on Catallaxy:

I used to get really annoyed with Tim Dunlop when he was a paid blogger for News Ltd putting on the "voice of reason" approach in that forum, and then sneaking off to his own personal blog to make snarky, nasty and personal attacks on John Howard.

That applies as much to the Right as to the Left.

Jericho analysis wins me again

Joe Hockey: all's fair in welfare and budgets | Business | theguardian.com

Yet again, I find Greg Jericho's take on matters to be far better argued than the ideologically driven take of the Coalition and, of course, The (laughably biased) Australian. 

Adam Creighton spinning faster than a wind turbine

Adam Creighton says today:



A couple of questions for Mr Creighton - no where in the article can I see an explanation of where the losses come from. I would have thought a steady process of erecting turbines and building other renewable energy plants, as well as adapting the network to be able to cope with it, would generate quite a few jobs. But I guess the report works out some way that it won't be a net employment benefit - it would just be good if you would tell us how that works.

Secondly - isn't the proper response, even if the job loss figure is plausible and not a beat up  - "what, only 6,000 jobs for a very sizeable increase in renewable energy? That's a fantastic deal".

The Coalition is said to be cutting 16,500 jobs in the space of 3 years. No Right wing economist is claiming that this is going to be a dire crush on the national economy, are they? So why then are you pretending that 6,000 jobs up to 2030 is a drama?  There are presently about 11,500,000 people working in this country.  Who knows what the figure will be by 2030, but at the moment 6,000 is about .05% of the work force.  

Lenore rips into Tony on climate change

Tony Abbott is no action man on climate change | World news | theguardian.com

This summary last week by Lenore Taylor explaining how Abbott is not serious about substantial action on climate change was very good.

And since then, we have a story in Fairfax today that Greg Hunt got rolled, in a big way, on spending on solar.

I don't know how Hunt lives with himself, really.  Supposedly devoted to emissions trading schemes, he was forced to reject them just so that Abbott could differentiate himself from Labor, and now can't even get good funding for solar up.

Edge reviewed, and back to the 60's

So, I'm sure everyone's waiting to hear what I thought about Edge of Tomorrow?  Hello....?

Anyhoo, saw it yesterday, and yes it's a good, solid science fiction-y treat.  Cruise is fine, so is Emily Blunt, and the film looks a million bucks.  (Actually, about 178 million bucks, apparently.)   It is actually good to see that a movie involving extensive battlefield violence can do it without showing much at all in the way of blood or gore. 

But I have two reservations - it does involve one very  improbable fall that doesn't kill our hero; and the very end was a little too, I don't know, not quite clever enough?   In fact, from a time bending point of view, I'm not at all sure that the story makes that much sense if one examines the ideas carefully, but it doesn't really matter.  The pace keeps you from pondering it anyway. 

Cruise's last science fiction film, the (I think) under-rated Oblivion was, for me, actually a little bit more enjoyable.  (Virtually no one is going to agree on that, but it did have more originality going for it.)   But once again, Tom deserves to be rewarded for working in pretty intelligent and well made science fiction as often as he does.

Apart from the thematic similarity to both Groundhog Day and Source Code, and the somewhat Starship Troopers feel of the exosketons and the way they drop from the sky, the one connection I haven't seen anyone make is to Captain Scarlet.  Yes, the Gerry Anderson show from the 60's in which our "indestructible" puppet hero got killed near the end of virtually every episode.  This always seemed to me to be a silly and somewhat depressing set up for a kid's show, but I watched it anyway.   It seems nearly every episode may be on Youtube, as well as the awful looking later CGI attempt to revive it, which seemed to be based on the bizarre idea that computer generated puppet like characters would go over better than actual puppets.

Here's an episode for your edification.  If you do nothing else, you should go to the end credits, involving many scenes of our hero being killed, but over a very groovy song:



And from the somewhat ridiculous to the extremely silly, it was while looking at Captain S on Youtube that I found a link to something called Solarnauts, an atrocious looking British pilot that was never made into a full series.   It stars one familiar face - a young Derek Fowlds who later was famous for "Yes Minister".

The model work is spectacularly bad, and as for a British concept of what the well dressed lady astronaut of the future will wear, try this:

I sense that all actors involved were seriously happy that the show was never picked up.   Anyway, here it is:


  

Update:  by an odd coincidence, I read today that the actor who provided the voice of Captain Scarlet has died.  

Rugby union explained

Continuing my series "Pretty obvious things from a disinterested observer's point of view about various codes of sport (and why can't anyone else see these?)".

A game of union was on TV last night, and once again I just could not shake the old verdict I made years ago:   this sport looks exactly like a group of 4 year old boys playing rugby league.  

True, the ball did not stay out of sight under a group of boys blokes for as long as I have noticed in some previous (rare) viewings, but it's still a silly looking game.

That is all.

An interesting suggestion

The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth - NYTimes.com

Tyler Cowen writes:

Counterintuitive though it may sound, the greater peacefulness of the
world may make the attainment of higher rates of economic growth less
urgent and thus less likely. This view does not claim that fighting wars
improves economies, as of course the actual conflict brings death and
destruction. The claim is also distinct from the Keynesian argument that
preparing for war lifts government spending and puts people to work.
Rather, the very possibility of war focuses the attention of governments
on getting some basic decisions right — whether investing in science or
simply liberalizing the economy. Such focus ends up improving a
nation’s longer-run prospects.

Here's the last few paragraphs:

There is a more optimistic read to all this than may first appear. Arguably
the contemporary world is trading some growth in material living
standards for peace — a relative paucity of war deaths and injuries,
even with a kind of associated laziness.

We can prefer higher rates of economic growth and progress, even while
recognizing that recent G.D.P. figures do not adequately measure all of
the gains we have been enjoying. In addition to more peace, we also have
a cleaner environment (along most but not all dimensions), more leisure
time and a higher degree of social tolerance for minorities and
formerly persecuted groups. Our more peaceful and — yes — more
slacker-oriented world is in fact better than our economic measures
acknowledge.

Living in a largely peaceful world with 2 percent G.D.P. growth has some big advantages that you don’t get with 4 percent growth and many more war
deaths. Economic stasis may not feel very impressive, but it’s something
our ancestors never quite managed to pull off. The real questions are
whether we can do any better, and whether the recent prevalence of peace
is a mere temporary bubble just waiting to be burst.

 Spotting a large, alien spaceship in the outer parts of the solar system, heading towards Earth, may give a good replacement sense of purpose.

Soccer explained

It has a very low scoring rate, making it a boring game to watch.

That billions of people can still nonetheless get excited about it tells us something about humans, but I don't know what.

That is all.

Ratgrets, I've had a few...

Been forgetting to post about this rather intriguing study that indicates rats suffer from regret. 

That is all.

A man who thinks like me

Could the demand for affordable housing be solved by going back to tents? - Architecture - Arts and Entertainment - The Independent

In a Culture Show special, Tents: The Beginning of Architecture, to be broadcast next week on BBC2, Tom Dyckhoff wonders whether tents could be a solution to today's housing crisis. The
presenter seems to think that tents – or at least more comfortable, more modern, and bigger versions – might be an option if we can't build enough flats and houses. Maybe one of architecture's oldest forms could have a life past festival season?

Cool.   My vision of a yurt led economic recovery of Australia might be shared by someone else...
 

ISIS explained

Interesting article from December on the rise of this ISIS group of fanatics currently trying to take over Iraq. 

In record heat news...

Anger rises as India swelters under record heatwave | Reuters

Swathes of north India are sweltering under the longest heatwave on record, triggering
widespread breakdowns in the supply of electricity and increasingly angry protests over the government's failure to provide people with basic services.

The power crisis and heatwave, which some activists say has caused dozens of deaths, is one of the first major challenges for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was elected
three weeks ago partly on promises to provide reliable electricity supplies.

In Delhi, where temperatures have hit 45 Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) for six days straight, residents marched through the streets in protests organised by opposition parties on Thursday. In the north of the city, people enraged by night-long outages clashed with police and torched a bus, media reported.

I would be surprised if it has only caused "dozens" of deaths.  It's hard to imagine a worse urban environment to be in during a 45 degree heatwave...

Update:  reported yesterday from beautiful downtown Doha:

In the coming days, the Qatar Meteorology Department has forecast that temperatures across the country will reach highs between 44C (111F) and 49C (120F) by noontime, the highest the nation has seen during the month of June in almost 52 years.

The rising temperatures have been attributed to the “deepening of the Indian Monsoon” over the Gulf coast.  In a statement, the MET said that 49C weather during this month is relatively unusual.

Honestly, why does anyone live in that part of the world?

Agreed

An adviser to Pope Francis says Catholicism is incompatible with libertarianism. He's right. - The Week

Libertarianism and Catholicism are not compatible, and the weird thing is that it seems to be only very conservative Catholics who think it is. 

Where is it?

Gee, Andrew Bolt seems late with his daily post about how ABC News isn't identical to The Australian's news and is thereby totally out of control. 

Can someone please explain this to me?

Well this is weird:   Adam Creighton has written a column in which he sounds pretty convinced by Piketty's book, which is probably causing several Right wing economists to wonder whether he's suffered a recent bump on the head. 

But in the very last paragraph, he says:

The deeper question is whether all this matters. Inequality in all countries has been falling. Also, Marx’s premise — falling real wages — was being refuted at the very time he was writing Das Kapital in the 1860s.

Wasn't the point of Piketty's work that there is strong evidence of rising inequality in the West, at least?  And that the Financial Times efforts to claim he had made serious mistakes had pretty much fallen on its face? 

Colorado Govenor recognises the danger, at least

In a Washington Post report, the Colorado (Democrat) Govenor with one of those peculiarly American names (Hickenlooper) at least sounds alert to the danger of the legalisation experiment:

Hickenlooper’s office has been monitoring marijuana usage through public polls. He said Tuesday there has been no noticeable spike in marijuana use by adults; most of those purchasing marijuana for recreational purposes were buying weed illegally before Jan. 1. What concerns him most, he said, is that those polls show evolving attitudes about marijuana among kids.

“Our biggest fear with marijuana, without question, is that it’s going to get in the hands of kids. Most of our polling doesn’t seem like there’s a big spike of adults using it. Most of the people that are using recreational marijuana were using it before. But when you look at kids and whether they think they’re going to smoke marijuana in the near future versus the old days, they seem to think it’s a lot less dangerous,” Hickenlooper said.

How's that Iraq going?

Mosul’s collapse is Nouri al-Maliki’s fault: Iraq’s prime minister failed to rule inclusively.

This seems like a straight forward explanation of what's going on in Iraq at the moment.  These  paragraphs at the end sum up the bigger picture:

The countries in the region have to form indigenous alliances to stave off these radical threats. The United States can help, but there is no way any American politician
is sending back tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of troops: They didn’t compel or convince Maliki to adopt a smart policy before, and they wouldn’t be able to do so now.

But this could be yet another sign of a breakdown in the entire Middle East. The war in Syria, which can be seen as a proxy war between the region’s Sunnis and Shiites, is now expanding into Iraq. The violence will intensify, and the neighboring countries will be flooded with refugees (half a million have already fled Mosul), with few resources to house or feed them.

Depending on what happens in the next few weeks, or maybe even days, we may be witnessing the beginning of either a new political order in the region or a drastic surge in the geostrategic swamp and humanitarian disaster that have all too palpably come to define it.

Of course, for some on the Right it's All Obama's Fault.  (I see that John McCain is even taking that line, and I used to think he was a more reasonable Republican.)  But then again, for Tea Party types, if they nick themselves shaving in the morning, I'm sure they curse Obama's name.

An unhealthy look at plain packaging

Good Lord!   Is it actually a requirement to be gullible and ignorant about issues to be a writer for the Australian?  (As well as onside with Rupert's view of the world?)

I had not noticed til today that long time Australian media writer Errol Simper wrote a couple of days ago about why he thought plain packaging of tobacco was not working.   The funny thing is, (and to be bitchy for a moment), Simper's ghost like photo used by the Oz for years has always had an "unhealthy, prematurely aged smoker" vibe about it, and in this column he confirms he has long had issues with giving up the habit. 

But Simper's article contains all the lack of insight you expect from the ideologically motivated smoker or ex-smoker - no skepticism about tobacco company supplied figures or how to properly interpret them, and (most importantly) a complete ignorance of the fact that there has been considerable research on how people respond to ugly packaging, and that the view was always that a long term reduction in smoking involves discouraging young people from ever starting. 

As those who post at Catallaxy have shown, smokers (or ex smokers who delighted in the habit and bear ongoing resentment that they no longer do it) are about the last people to have objective ideas or understanding of anti smoking tactics.  But do they have to embarrass themselves by showing that off in the media?

What if Hedley ran a press campaign and no one cared?

I got the distinct feeling yesterday that Hedley Thomas is cranky because he's put all this effort into supporting those obsessed with trying to prove Gillard was right in on the dodgy deals that her boyfriend did as a unionist 20 years ago, and yet no one cares much about the politically motivated Royal Commission which is now looking into it.

As I have said from the start:   the basic details of what Wilson and Blewitt did has been known for years,  Gillard did discuss it in the press and no one cared. Including Andrew Bolt.   Almost certainly, journalists did not keep talking about it because, given her rise as a politician, there had been years for her enemies to leak discretely about her direct knowledge of Wilson's fraud, and as it had not happened, it was very unlikely that anyone did have such proof.  

Then, once she became PM, one journalist stuffed up in his attempt to revive the story, making a claim on a detail which he previously hadn't been allowed to by the paper's defamation lawyers.  He got sacked as a result when Gillard blew her top to his editor.

This lead to a radio shock jock journalist trying to pick up the story, falling out with his boss, getting the sack too, and then entertaining the sleaziest of all people involved (Blewitt) and running a web based campaign for right wing obsessives with a problem with a left leaning female Prime Minister.

Andrew Bolt decided to get his mouth involved in a quite disingenuous way, repeating all allegations, none of which proved criminality on behalf of Gillard, but working well as a general smear campaign (for the Right wing that cared what happened 20 years ago, at least).  The rest of the media didn't pay much attention because, well, it happened 20 years ago and no one - no one - had ever said that Julia had told them "Ha!  All that lovely money that my boyfriend conned out of Theiss!  Straight into my house reno!" 

Somewhere along the line Hedley thought he would join the campaign too.

At the heart of this, as always acknowledged by Smith, at least, was the personal efforts of a rich ex lawyer and (former) Labor associated entity  Harry Nowicki, whose appearance on 7.30 Tuesday night indicated he (and, according to Wilson) others have been bankrolling all this with, at heart, not much more than a political motivation to hurt Gillard:

SARAH FERGUSON: What's your motivation for your involvement in this?

HARRY NOWICKI: I think it's important for the facts of this story to come out, because it is a link in the chain of Ms Gillard becoming Prime Minister.

How is it possible that someone involved in... in, in questionable behaviour becomes Prime Minister? Now that's a political story, that's not my story.

There was a tantalising hint at the end of that interview that Ferguson knew Nowicki had spoken to Labor Party identities too, but he denied it. Yesterday, he suddenly "clarified" that he had "misunderstood" Sarah Ferguson:

Mr Nowicki said he misunderstood 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson's question last night when he was asked if he had ever discussed the case with members of the parliamentary Labor Party.

"I spoke to Robert McClelland, not in his capacity as a Labor minister but as a participant in court proceedings in 1995 and 1996 involving the AWU and Bruce Wilson," he said today.

Mr Nowicki said Mr McClelland suggested he contacted The Australian newspaper’s Hedley Thomas who was also investigating the case.

Mr Nowicki is not coming out of this as a disinterested investigator smelling of roses.

In yesterday's evidence, I don't think we heard anything significant that hasn't been publicised before by Bolt, Smith, etc over the last year or two.   Even the evidence of Hem is going no where - Wilson turned up at the office after pulling some sort of all nighter at the casino and asked him to deposit money to Gillard's account.   So how does anyone know that he wasn't just using the winnings from the night before?

The one thing I am not sure I had heard before was about the builder who remembered money changing hands at the house.   Is it just me, but I find it a little hard to credit that an 84 year old builder would maintain a clear recollection of money exchanging hands at a work site nearly 20 years ago.   There might be an explanation as to why it would stick in your mind - like if someone had told you shortly thereafter that it was stolen money.  But I don't think there was any such explanation given, and remember - Gillard was not even a politician at the time.

This has always been, at heart, a sleazy attempted political smear attack against a PM who, in any event, lost the job due to the poisonous internal politics of Labor resulting not from having a crooked boyfriend 20 years ago, but merely from the disastrous ascendancy of Kevin Rudd.

This makes people care even less about the Royal Commission, and Hedley, Smith, con man Pickering and Bolt are almost certainly going to miss any sense of satisfaction out of its results.   At least, one hopes, Smith has lost money out of being a complete jerk and all round tosser.  (Although with all the talk of the money floating around to fund it, who knows if even that has happened.)   Unfortunately, Andrew Bolt continues to make a pretty penny out of the same tactic.

But it is kind of funny watching him fume about the ABC not covering the commission in sufficient detail for his editorial standards.

A dinner to forget

Well, I never heard of this before:

Almost 50 years ago to the day, an unlikely dinner date took place between TS Eliot and Groucho Marx. Each a huge fan of the other's work, Groucho and Eliot corresponded for three years before their meeting eventually took place. In June 1964, a car took the star of A Night at the Opera, Duck Soup and A Day at the Races, from the Savoy to Eliot's home nearby for a much anticipated dinner with his hero, wives included. Eliot wanted to hear about what it was like to make those movies, but Groucho couldn't remember the desired scene from Duck Soup and preferred to quote to Eliot the vast chunks of The Waste Land that he'd memorised. Eliot couldn't be less interested in hearing his own poetry spouted back at him. The meeting was a disaster.

Death by dress in Victorian days

Here's a short but surprising article about the dangerous fashion for crinoline (go to the link to see what they are) in Victorian times.  The opening paragraph:

In addition to smallpox, cholera, and consumption, Victorian era denizens had to consider the perils of crinoline, the rigid, cage-like structure worn under ladies’ skirts that, at the apex of its popularity, reached a diameter of six feet. The New York Times first reported the phenomenon of crinoline-related casualties in 1858, when a young Boston woman, standing by the mantel in her parlor, caught fire and within minutes was entirely consumed by flames—an unfortunate incident that came on the heels of nineteen such deaths in England in a two-month period. Witnesses, impeded by their own crinolines, were forced to watch the victims burn. “Certainly an average of three deaths per week from crinolines in conflagration,” the Times admonished, “ought to startle the most thoughtless of the privileged sex.” A similar tragedy occurred shortly thereafter in Philadelphia, when nine ballerinas burned to death at the Continental Theatre.

Stop drinking from jars, trendoids

For all I know, it's been happening for years and I've only recently noticed (as I recently explained.); But here's a photo from a NYT article on the best iced coffee in the country - and it features at least two photos of them being served in jars:

Just stop it!

Mind you, an iced almond-macadamia milk latte does sound pretty tasty.

Tea Party thinks it's on a winner?

So, Tea Partiers are ecstatic that they got David Brat in, primarily on the basis that he is against immigration reform?

Yes, way to go to win over the Hispanic and Asian vote, Republicans. Sowing the seeds of long term demographic failure, more like it.

The Tea Party Right really isn't very bright, to put it mildly.

Update:  from a January 2014 look at Brat at National Review:

He chairs the department of economics and business at Randolph-Macon College and heads its BB&T Moral Foundations of Capitalism program. The funding for the program came from John Allison, the former CEO of BB&T (a financial-services company) who now heads the Cato Institute. The two share an affinity for Ayn Rand: Allison is a major supporter of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Brat co-authored a paper titled “An Analysis of the Moral Foundations in Ayn Rand.” Brat says that while he isn’t a Randian, he has been influenced by Atlas Shrugged and appreciates Rand’s case for human freedom and free markets.

His academic background isn’t all economics, though. Brat got a business degree from Hope College in Holland, Mich., then went to Princeton seminary. Before deciding to focus on economics, he wanted to be a professor of systematic theology and cites John Calvin, Karl Barth, and Reinhold Niebuhr as influences.

And he says his religious background informs his views on economics. “I’ve always found it amazing how we have the grand swath of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and we lost moral arguments on the major issue of our day,” he says, referring to fiscal-policy issues. 

 OK, an admiration for Ayn Rand of any form is a warning sign for - at the very least - unreliability in an economist  (cough *stagflation warning* cough), but as with Paul Ryan, a serious Christian who still admires Rand and takes economic hints from her is just ideologically nutty. 

Murdoch has dinner with our leader

Update:  today's Essential poll shows Labor reaching the magic 40% primary figure.   Coalition 37%.  TTP 54/46, pretty much in line now with all other polls.  (As an aside:  how do the Nationals manage to have so much influence with a primary vote of 3%?) Shorten now preferred PM by 4%.

Anyhow, monty and I should be off for drinks at Sussex Street again...

Foreign Correspondent recommended, yet again

Last night's Foreign Correspondent, about a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan, was fascinating viewing.  In fact, every week since the show's return has just been fantastically well done stories about international politics, but always with a large element of human interest.

There is nothing that compares to this show on commercial TV.   In fact, serious current affairs on any commercial TV station has been dead for decades.   Perhaps 60 Minutes in it original incarnation in - what?, the late 70's or 80's? - came closest to being worthy.  But since then?

Just do a proper test

BBC News - Mobile phone effect on fertility - 'research needed'

I see from the side links to this story that there has been speculation for at least a decade that mobile phones might be affecting sperm cells, at least if the phone is worn close to their traditional mobile storage facilities.

Surely the way to get some definitive evidence of this is to recruit sufficient university students (cut out those who use marijuana or other drugs) who carry phones in their shirt, test their "boys", and then give them a belt pouch for their phone and get them to use that in the same front facing position for (I don't know?) 3 to 6 months, and re-test them.

That seems better than all this survey evidence, and laboratory testing of exposing samples to radiation, doesn't it?

Greg's getting annoyed

IR debate hijacked by the right - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Here's a good post, full of graphs, whereby Greg Jericho gets to blast away about how Coalition complaints about the state of IR and wages are pretty much fact free.  

A recent recruit to the Anti Tattoo League

I still get people commenting from time to time at my anti tattoo post (quite a few from the angry tattooed of the world, last time I looked), so it's of interest to note that The Guardian has a comment piece up by a young woman who has regretted getting a "sleeve".

I wonder how many people have the physical discomfit she describes:

Underneath my ink smears are raised scars; the whole thing bubbles up and itches in summer. Even in a tailored suit it peeps out like mould. Blue ink has seeped between the layers of skin and spread into my armpit. My generation will be at the NHS at 80 getting our gammy legs seen to while doctors try to find a vein under the faded, stretched, misshapen detritus of our unartistic body art; a postmodern mash-up of badly translated Chinese words, bungled Latin quotes, dolphins, roses, anchors, faces of favoured children or pets, and Japanese wallpaper designs.

Yes, I award her honorary membership to the League. 

The comments that follow the article are often pretty amusing, too; partly driven by the fact that the writer seems to be a child prodigy that few have heard of.

Still, she's on the righteous side of the tattoo issue, and for that she's OK in my books.

Somehow, I doubt he has the solution

Warren Mundine has a whine today about how money spent on aboriginal housing still hasn't made a difference and he'll see that cuts to "failed programs" and "eliminating waste" will make a difference.

It is amazing that cost effective aboriginal housing programs just never seem to happen.

But let's face it:  there have been decades of talk of the need for a different approach to providing appropriate aboriginal housing in remote areas; surely at least some of the new ideas have been tried and failed.  In light of this, I am very skeptical of anyone who comes along and suggests, like Mundine, that he can see where it's all going wrong and something new must be tried and wasteful administration must stop and it'll improve.   

In fact, it's hard to avoid the feeling that the problems with housing arise from some very fundamental issues which are near intractable unless there were to be pretty major movement towards changing these things:  settlements which exist in areas with next to nothing resembling an economic attachment to the rest of the nation; chronic drug and alcohol problems in those places, and the dire effects that has on child raising as well as engagement with what slim economic opportunities which may be nearby; and family arrangements which can led to overcrowding of housing and maintenance needs well beyond those of, say, the Western nuclear family.

None of these problems are easily addressed, and some suggestions (educating children in towns away from family) have sensitivities due to past aboriginal treatment.

So Warren's complaints and proposed actions are rather unlikely to represent any major change to what has gone on before, is my bet.

And see - for once I got through this topic without mentioning yurts.  Well, nearly. 

Hilarious

I noticed this morning The Guardian report that News Corp is accusing the Daily Mail Australia of plagiarism.

Yes, that would be the company that saw this Daily Mail site layout, which has been used for years:

 

and recently decided to start setting out its Daily Tele like this:

Oh I see - on the side bar the photo is on the left and the words on the right on the Tele version.  And they like pinky-red too.  That's OK then.

Good question

Someone at the Christian Science Monitor is wondering why the US media seems reluctant or slow to call the weekend Vegas shootings an act of domestic terrorism.

And of course, the guns will turn out to have been legally purchased, I bet.

Update:  looks like I was wrong on the legally purchased guns.  Mother Jones report indicates they may have received them in response to a plea on Facebook, of all places, for any gun "that can reach out and touch evil tyrant bastards."    Of course, it really takes a country with an unusual number of Right wing paranoid gun loving nutters for such a request to be made and receive helpful responses...

The blockbuster not doing so well at the box office...

Suggestions for lines for Peta to be saying welcome.

I think it's Twitter worthy as it is, though.

Update:  that was a hint to someone, anyone, with a Twitter account to post it to auspol.  :-)

BTW, I haven't seen the movie yet. Next weekend.

Update 2:   I have previously been critical of politicians who call a broken promise a lie.  (And yes, I don't give credit to Labor when they do that to Abbott either.)

But just on the radio this morning, I heard Abbott repeat what is a clear lie from 2011 when giving his press conference with (his only) international buddy on climate change, Stephen Harper:

“We should do what we reasonably can to limit emissions and avoid man-made climate change but we shouldn’t clobber the economy, and that’s why I’ve always been against a carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme, because it harms our economy without necessarily helping the environment.”

This is a lie.   As Bernard Keane noted in 2011, Abbott tried to "un-lie" (my word, not Bernard's) the same claim he made back then by a later qualification:

 Oddly, despite the media attention, most missed Mr Abbott’s particularly risible remark. It wasn’t merely that Abbott claimed he had never supported a carbon tax or an ETS — a claim so demonstrably untrue even The Australian mentioned it. He belatedly qualified that by adding the caveat “as leader” hours later, the worst recovery since Basil Fawlty, learning his American guest enjoyed the works of Harold Robbins, pretended to be lambasting someone else. “Oh Harold Robbins. I was talking about… Harold Robinson.”

 Years later, and he's back with the same claim, with no qualification.

For all of the gigantic (and undeserved) kerfuffle from the public about Gillard (allegedly) breaking a promise when her general sympathy to the idea of carbon pricing was well known, Tony Abbott with his "say anything" approach to climate change and a host of other issues is truly the one who has earned the "liar" title.

Weekend update

*  I am happy to report that the chicken recipe as noted last week is quite nice.  But can someone explain to me why, for as long as I can remember, baking chicken always takes about 1 1/2 to 2 times longer than recipes suggest?

*  I didn't even want to go to the Lifeline Bookfest which is on again this long weekend at the Convention centre.  (I have probably 10 books from previous years' visits awaiting my attention.)  But my wife wanted to go, and while there, I remembered that I wouldn't mind reading a biography of Einstein.   Located! (And it was the only bio I saw about him in the whole place.)  Cost $6.  Also got a couple of short Graham Greenes I hadn't heard about before.   A successful visit.

*  Had a couple of nice craft beers at the Hoo Ha Bar yesterday afternoon.   A nice, comfy bar close to Southbank which one could imagine being happy at every Saturday afternoon.   (And the craft beer movement is a fantastic thing that I trust will never end.  Why did it take so long to happen, though, I wonder?)

*  Long weekends are good, aren't they?  They avoid that neither-here-nor-there feeling of a Sunday afternoon in a normal workweek.  I have never got the hang of Sunday afternoons.  Maybe it's because I used to do homework at that time when I was a student if there wasn't anything else on that weekend, but even as an adult it goes something like this:  Saturdays are a welcome break, and good for shopping and either eating out (if you are single or in childless coupledom) or cooking something that take more time; Sunday mornings are relaxing for a special breakfast and a political review on TV, followed by a relaxed lunch; but Sunday afternoons are just too close to Monday to feel entirely comfortable with them.

* I have not yet seen Edge of Tomorrow.  I might, tomorrow.  (Or maybe next weekend when daughter is on a sleep over.)

Always the same answer

Well, if you ask me, Adam Creighton's latest column is a complete schemozzle, and illustrates again why his type of analysis is best ignored:  it doesn't matter what the problem is, the answer is always going to be less taxes, less bureaucracy, and less welfare bludgers.  Oh, and suppress wages in the meantime too.  

Antarctic sea ice noted

What is the paradox of increasing Antarctic sea ice really telling us?

Not a bad look at the question of why Antarctic sea ice has been increasing, while Arctic sea ice (in summer) has been dramatically decreasing.

By the way, the Arctic is well into melt season, and tracking at pretty low levels.  (I would paste a pic here, but the NSIDC site is currently down.)

A cultural change

Back on the Colorado marijuana experiment, it's interesting to read this:

In Colorado, reviews of pot are fast eclipsing fuddy duddy reviews of wine, restaurants, cigars and pretty much everything else. 

Since January, the Denver Post has been running a culture-of-cannabis website called The Cannabist. It reviews every conceivable variety of pot (recreational marijuana is legal in the state) but also pot’s accouterments, including pipes, vapor pens, cuisine prepared with pot and outdoor activities made more enjoyable by being high. 

Ricardo Baca, 37, the Post’s marijuana editor and founder of The Cannabist, tells ABC News the site has been a huge hit (no pun intended) since its January debut. He declines to quote numbers for how much traffic it has gotten, but says, “We launched three or four days before recreational sales of marijuana started in Colorado, and we came out of the gate strong. The traffic has been unreal.”

This suggests that legalisation of the product will have a significant cultural effect towards encouraging teenage use of it, which is exactly what you do not want.  

Ironically, I read elsewhere that the legalisation law requires that the first slice of government profit from it has to go to school funding.   Yet my prediction (which will take some time to see if it comes true) is that the major concern about the social effect of legalisation will come from its effects on teenage education (and teenage health effects generally).     We will see.

A question

The oddest political story around at the moment, apart from the Bolt/Jones/Turnbull fight, is the one wherein the ABC is saying that "leading Liberals" told them that the Nationals had been gamed on the matter of the petrol excise increase.

Who in the Liberal Party has the motivation to be causing such trouble for the Coalition at the moment?  (I find it hard to believe it would be Turnbull himself; and besides which, the ABC has always indicated it was not a single source.)

What was I saying about early evidence?

Here's a rule of thumb:  any reporter who uses "nanny state" in his writing deserves to be a blogger, not a serious journalist; and chances are they're aligned with libertarianism and/or the IPA.

Christian Kerr falls into that category with his report today under the shock! horror! headline "Labor's plain packaging fails as cigarette sales rise."  Apparently, industry figures (gee, no room for manipulation there, I guess, Christian?)  indicate a .3 percent rise in tobacco sales in the first full year of plain packaging.

0.3!   A catastrophe.

Libertarian types, of course, might be rather loathe to consider a few factors here:

a.   industry manipulation of their sales or sales figures.  No, this industry has always been scrupulously honest, hey?

b.   (I don't know if this is possible, I would have to check, but then I'm sure Kerr hasn't) stockpiling of cigarettes to avoid price rises;

c.   even, possibly, a genuine smoker led rebellion against "nanny statism", but one which is so small that the true way plain packaging was expected to work will not be deterred for long.

I always understood that the point of plain packaging was mainly to deter teenagers from starting.  I would not dismiss the possibility that, for a very, very small number of dumb teenagers (being inspired by parents in the IPA, probably), might take up smoking so as laugh in the face of "nanny statism".    But for every one of them, how many teenage girls will be subtly put off by the ugly packaging?

Time will tell, but it was never reasonable to expect that huge numbers of smokers would immediately be butting out because of this change.

As for the Australian - I don't remember looking up before whether Rupert was a smoker, but I see he certainly has had tobacco connections in the past:

Media magnate Rupert Murdoch joined the Board of Directors of Philip Morris in August 1989 and he continued to serve on their board into the 1990s. [1][2] The relationship appeared to serve PM well. A 1985 PM internal report shows that information that could negatively affect the tobacco industry was routinely withheld from Murdoch-owned newspapers worldwide:

As regards the media, we plan to build similar relationships to those we now have with Murdoch's News Limited with other newspaper proprietors. Murdoch's papers rarely publish anti-smoking articles these days. To sum up, then, on using our natural allies. We have made a start; we have proved that it can be done; we have found that they can be a very effective force; and we intend to do more in the future.

Update:  Stephen Koukoulas says some Bureau of Stats figures paint a completely different picture of substantial dropping consumption.  There may be nothing to explain at all, apart from tobacco company spin, and The Australian's shameful shilling for them.

Update 2:   of course, I knew Sinclair Davidson would be gobbling up this tobacco company promoted news without the slightest hint of skepticism, just like an ex smoker from a think tank with known past, if not current, ties to the tobacco industry, would.   In fact, as a long time reader of Catallaxy, my expectation from the various self disclosures there is that something approaching 95% of its thread participants are ex or current smokers.    The evidence from there suggests smoking is more harmful to cognition than people recognise.  

And another thought - if (as someone suggests in that thread) the figures are right, and explained by smokers moving to cheaper brands and therefore smoking slightly more - a .3% on average increase in smoking by existing smokers is not going to matter one pinch in the public health issue. 

What is much more important is the effect on total number of smokers - particularly new, young smokers taking it up.   And that could only be answered by survey information, over time.

Is that so hard for an economist to work out?

Update 3:  in a pretty desperate attempt to save his argument in light of the Koukoulas cited ABS figures, I see that SD has gone to the monthly quarterly figures to declare that plain packaging still led to higher consumption, and arguing that consumption only dropped off after the excise increase.

Seems to me this doesn't rebut my stockpiling possible explanation, and how with any certainly can you say the excise increase must be the sole reason for the drop off?

But let's not let considering all possible factors get in the way of simplistic story fed to us by tobacco companies, hey?  

Update 4:  don't believe me, just read The Guardian.

Learning about Leo

Last night, in my post about Einstein, I noted that I was not familiar with Leó Szilárd, who apparently wrote the letter that Einstein signed that convinced Roosevelt to get going with developing the atomic bomb.   The letter has its own Wikipedia entry, and here's the key part of the fascinating story:

On July 12, 1939, Szilárd and Wigner drove in Wigner's car to Peconic Bay on Long Island, where Einstein was staying.^[9] When they explained about the possibility of atomic bombs, Einstein replied: Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht (I had not thought of that).^[10] Szilárd dictated a letter in German to the Belgian Ambassador to the United States. Wigner wrote it down, and Einstein signed it. At Wigner's suggestion, they also prepared a letter for the State Department explaining what they were doing and why, giving it two weeks to respond if it had any objections.^[9]

This still left the problem of getting government support for uranium research. Another friend of Szilárd's, the Austrian economist Gustav Stolper, suggested approaching Alexander Sachs, who had access to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sachs told Szilárd that he had already spoken to the President about uranium, but that Fermi and Pegram had reported that the prospects for building an atomic bomb were remote. He told Szilárd that he would deliver the letter, but suggested that it come from someone more prestigious. For Szilárd, Einstein was again the obvious choice.^[6] Sachs and Szilárd drafted a letter riddled with spelling errors and mailed it to Einstein.^[11]

Szilárd set out for Long Island again on August 2. Wigner was unavailable, so this time Szilárd co-opted another Hungarian physicist, Edward Teller to do the driving. Einstein dictated the letter in German. On returning to Columbia University, Szilárd dictated the letter in English to a young departmental stenographer, Janet Coatesworth. She later recalled that when Szilárd mentioned extremely powerful bombs, she "was sure she was working for a nut".^[12] Ending the letter with "Yours truly, Albert Einstein" did nothing to alter this impression. Both the letter and a longer explanatory letter were then posted to Einstein....

The letter was signed by Einstein and posted back to Szilárd, who received it on August 9.^[12] Szilárd gave both the short and long letters, along with a letter of his own, to Sachs on August 15. Sachs asked the White House staff for an appointment to see the President, but before one could be set up, the administration became embroiled in a crisis due to Germany's invasion of Poland, which started World War II.^[14] Sachs delayed his appointment until October so that the President would give the letter due attention, securing an appointment on October 11. On that date he met with the President, the President's secretary, Brigadier General Edwin "Pa" Watson, and two ordnance experts, Army Lieutenant Colonel Keith F. Adamson and Navy Commander Gilbert C. Hoover. Roosevelt summed up the conversation as: "Alex, what you are after is to see that the Nazis don't blow us up."^[15]

But back to Leo.

His own Wikipedia entry is pretty good, and I feel I should know his name, given he held the patent (with Fermi) for the nuclear reactor!   (He had also developed a type of refrigerator with Einstein in the 1920's, and the linear accelerator.  Quite a significant scientist.) 

The most interesting part in the Wiki entry, though, is about Leo's attempt to get the US to merely demonstrate the atomic bomb in the hopes it would convince the Japanese to surrender:

As the war continued, Szilárd became increasingly dismayed that scientists were losing control over their research to the military, and argued many times with General Leslie Groves, military director of the project. His resentment towards the U.S. government was exacerbated by his failure to prevent the destructive use of the atomic bomb through having a test explosion that could be witnessed by Japanese observers who would then have the opportunity to surrender and spare lives...

He drafted the Szilárd petition advocating demonstration of the atomic bomb.

And from that last link (another Wikipedia entry):

The Szilárd petition, drafted by scientist Leó Szilárd, was signed by 70 scientists working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois. It was circulated in July 1945 and asked President Harry S. Truman to consider an observed demonstration of the power of the atomic bomb first, before using it against people. However, the petition never made it through the chain of command to President Truman. It also was not declassified and made public until 1961.

In reaction to the petition, General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project, sought evidence of unlawful behavior against Szilárd.^[2] Most of the signers lost their jobs in weapons work. 

Leo was hoping to get to Roosevelt via his wife, but the timing was unfortunate. Here's the short version:

Using another letter from Einstein, Szilard scheduled a meeting with Eleanor Roosevelt for May 8. He planned to give her information that would caution President Roosevelt about the danger of a nuclear arms race if the a-bomb was used before an international control agreement could be discussed with the Soviets. But on April 12, President Roosevelt died. 

An attempt to meet with President Truman led instead to a May 28, 1945 meeting with James Byrnes, who would soon become Sec. of State. But Byrnes thoroughly disagreed with Szilard's views.

For the longer version, straight from a 1960 interview with Szilárd, go here.

The other interesting thing in the interview is that he disputes the argument that America could not afford to put on a mere demonstration because it only had two atomic bombs:

Q Did you have any knowledge of Secretary of War Stimson's concern at this time on the question of using the bomb?
A I knew that Mr. Stimson was a thoughtful man who gave the bomb serious consideration. He was one of the most thoughtful members of the Truman cabinet. However, I certainly have to take exception to the article Stimson wrote after Hiroshima in "Harper's Magazine." He wrote that a "demonstration" of the A-bomb was impossible because we had only two bombs. Had we staged a "demonstration" both bombs might have been duds and then we would have lost face.

Now, this argument is clearly invalid. It is quite true that at the time of Hiroshima we had only two bombs, but it would not have been necessary to wait for very long before we would have had several more.

 It's not explained how long, but it's nonetheless interesting that Leo strongly disputes this argument.

So Leo certainly sounds like an interesting, somewhat controversial character.   Maybe good material for a movie, but then again he was not exactly matinee idol material.  Here is he with Einstein in 1946, looking a bit like Jackie Gleason to me:

(And who knew Albert liked such long pipes.)

Here is Leo at some unspecified older age:

Note exactly Tom Hanks material.

After the war he got into biological research, although it's not clear how significant that work was, except that he managed to treat his own bladder cancer with radiation successfully.

Another slightly peculiar thing about him from this chronology of his life:  he appears to have met his future wife in 1930 (when he was 32), but didn't marry her 1951 (aged 53.)   No kids, I assume.

Here's a very old web page (not updated since 2000 apparently - it really takes you back to how the internet used to look)  with many more links to further material about him.

The post about him at Restricted Data: the Nuclear Secrecy Blog (which looks like a good site generally) starts:

Leo Szilard is one of the most fascinating characters of the nuclear age. He was colorful, principled, clever, and often genuinely ahead of his time. And he always shows up early in the story.

That sounds about right.

Nietzsche should've kept away from the cannabis

Heh.  This post contains a nice thematic mix from several recent blog posts.

I don't even remember why I looked up the topic of whether or not Nietzsche died of neurosyphilis.  OK, yes I do:  it was because I Googled whether Beethoven had died a virgin (the jury's out on that), but someone's list of famous virgins contained Nietzsche too.   (It suggested he got his syphilis medically - something I had never heard before, but I haven't tracked down who came up with that idea.)

Anyhow, it turns out that there has been a substantial body of doubt about whether N really did have the dreaded disease at all, and you can read on line a pretty good argument made out in 2003 by Leonard Sax in the Journal of Medical Biography as to why he did not.   (It's a .pdf).

Given that the Wikipedia entry for N contains not only the common belief that he caught syphilis from a female prostitute, but also an alternative theory that he was gay and caught it in a male brothel in Genoa, it's pretty clear that is very broad uncertainty indeed as to what went on in Friedrich's sex life, if anything.

The Sax article is particularly interesting because it notes that there are examples of  bizarre thoughts going on in Nietzsche's head, suggestive of mental issues, going right back to adolescence. 

Not only that, but I also get to drag in my personal jihad against cannabis from this part of the paper, regarding N's sisters attempt to rehabilitate the image of her brother:

Mobius’ book came as a shock to Elisabeth. [He had re-stated the belief that N died of syphilis.]  She set about the task of writing a definitive biography of her brother herself, to refute Mobius’ ‘‘vile insinuations’’. Her subsequent biography portrayed her brother as a saint. She included letters and testimonials from Nietzsche’s closest friends to the effect that he had always been chaste. Elisabeth suggested that the trigger for Nietzsche’s collapse was a mysterious ‘‘Javanese tea’’, which she claimed to have identified as Cannabis indica. Subsequent scholarship showed that Elisabeth’s suggestion was fantasy. There is no mention of ‘‘Javanese tea’’ or any variety of cannabis in any authenticated letter to or from Nietzsche. Elisabeth herself never mentioned it until the publication of Mobius’ book in 1902.

What is this "cannabis indica"?   Well, the Hash Museum of Amsterdam website (not a regular cyberhaunt of mine, but I figured it was more likely to be reliable than the scores of pothead sites that came up) confirms that it is closely related to cannabis sativa and certainly contains lots of cannabinoids and is used to get high.

OK, so it turns out no one believes Elisabeth was right; but as I say, biographers can't even decide if he was a virgin or male brothel customer.

I therefore choose to believe what suits my biases:  Nietzsche may well have gone mad due to using cannabis.  Take that, Jason Soon... hahahaha.

Update:  first version spelt his name about 4 different ways.  I think I have finally got it right.  Who can trust a philosopher whose name is so hard to remember, anyway?

Why bother?

I'm waiting to find someone who knows something about Indonesia to explain why Yudhoyono would even bother meeting with Tony Abbott, given that he's on the way out.  (SBY, that is.  Not Tony, as much as I wish Andrew Bolt was right that Malcolm Turnbull was about to stage some sort of bloody Game of Thrones style coup while Tone's away.) 

The Jakarta Post reports that the meeting didn't mean much:

While praising his host President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as a great statesman and a true friend of his country, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has apparently chosen to wait for the new Indonesian president before reaching substantial agreements on such sensitive issues as intelligence gathering and boat people, which have rocked relations between the two countries since Abbott’s election last year.

 Maybe  SBY was just happy to be meeting anyone, because the Post also reports:

With his final term winding down, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has three times this week chastised Cabinet ministers and military generals for getting involved in the presidential campaign and neglecting their duties.

In a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, coinciding with the start of the 30-day presidential campaign period, Yudhoyono reiterated a statement he made on Tuesday that his ministers should take leave or resign if participating in campaign activities would prevent them from performing their main duties.

On Wednesday, Yudhoyono went even further by saying that according to his own “observation and judgment” some of his ministers were no longer focused on doing their jobs.

Still victim mongering

I see that Right wing victim mongering on behalf of Chris Kenny continues apace.

Maybe I can set it out more clearly for them:

a. people who thought Chris Kenny was a ****head before the Chaser skit still think he's a ****head;

b. pretty much everyone who didn't think he was a ****head before the skit still don't think he is; except for those who thought his taking defamation action for an obvious photoshop that would convince no one that he had sex with dogs was an out of proportion response;

c. if you start defamation action, you keep the original story alive for much, much longer than would otherwise have occurred, and when it is not a matter of proving that the original story was a lie, why bother if the story hasn't made anyone change their opinion of you?

Now, leave me alone while I further work on the very special photoshops of Sinclair Davidson I keep encrypted on the hard drive.

PS:  may I remind readers, who might have just read poor old (wait a minute - he's younger than me) Sinclair's complaint that SBS replayed the offensive image, that (as I pointed on months ago) Andrew Bolt's blog has a permanent post up showing the image in all its "glory".

Has Sinclair ever suggested to Andrew, one of his biggest fans, that this might be just a little counterproductive to Kenny's complaint that he didn't want that to be the image that permanently appears on Google search for his kids to see?

In fact, the SBS brief replay of it will not affect Google search results at all; unlike his News Ltd pal's effort.

But SBS is public broadcasting and Bolt is a glorious part of private enterprise, or something .....

And just to be sure that no one misunderstands my position:   I don't like the Chaser team - they've been past their prime for many a year; they lack sensible self censorship and are part of the downwards spiral of what is acceptable in crudity on Australian TV comedy.

I didn't even think the Kenny skit made much sense as a joke.

The skit was offensive, just as much for the language as the image.  I have no problem with anyone (including Kenny) complaining about ABC standards in letting it on.

But it was not defamatory, anymore than would a photoshop of  an obviously fake nude Gina Rinehart in many different positions with Rupert Murdoch on a Hawaiian beach while being served drinks by Davidson in a mankini.  (I believe they were actually all in swimsuits at the time.)

And just as a public figure like Julia Gillard had to put up with Pickering doing cartoons of her nude and with a strap on at hand (and let me note that Bolt was happy to link to Pickering's blog  at least once, and in Catallaxy threads there were direct links to the Gillard cartoons), the best way to deal with it would have been to not grace it with more attention.  

Leaping on early evidence

Pro marijuana reformers are happy to be citing reduced crime figures for Colorado as a positive.

Of course, such early figures count for next to nothing.  The figures could mean anything, including that increasing the amount of time potential criminals are stoned saps away their motivation for getting out of the house. 

Anti regulation types will always claim dubious, early figures support them.   Look at Sinclair Davidson and the smoking lobby, who have been grabbing anything at all after plain package labelling came into effect to declare it a failure.   All sensible people would assume that it would take time for the effect to filter through, but that doesn't bother the ideologically motivated of the world.

As for full on marijuana legalisation, as in Colorado, the real test of it will be years away, on the effect that it has on things like the rate at which teenagers use it; academic performance in its high schools and colleges; and rates of early on set schizophrenia.  The economy of the State could also, conceivably, be effected.   I mean, it's not like Nimbin is the economic powerhouse of Australia. 

But no one is going to know the true effect of this experiment for quite a while yet.

(And as a side note - the Maureen Dowd story does again show that the State simply did not properly think through the consequences of legalising the sale of edible marijuana.)