David's scary dream

Advanced toilet training

Amusing story (kinda) from America.

I've been thinking...

That story about developing yeast that could make opiates reminded me today of the recent story about geeks interested in developing yeast that could make milk proteins.  In that post, I speculated about such yeast proliferating in the wild and having the potential to ruin fermented products.   Well, rather than cheese tainted home brewed beer, opiate tainted ones could be even worse.

Yeast is easy to work with for such wannabe DNA tinkerers, but doesn't the fact that it lives happily in the wild, floating invisibly around us, make the potential for its accidental release more of a concern than the escape of other micro-organisms?

Well, my point is not completely unfounded.  In a Popular Mechanics article "Better Beer from Genetically Engineered Yeast":

The ecological concern is more nuanced, Verstrepen says. Here, his main concern is the prospect of introducing non-yeast genes into a yeast, with the worry that these new, human-picked genes could be bred or passed on across yeasts in the outside world. "And this is a serious concern. You need to understand what you're doing, and make sure you're not going to accidentally confer some ecological advantage to the outside population," he says.

Even if these new yeasts were to escape, he explains, the chances of them out-competing other, wild yeast species—given that beer yeast is tailored to perform in a very unnatural environment—is unlikely, but certainly worth watching for.

I see that anti GM advocates are ahead of me, and that genetically modified yeast has already been used for lots of purposes, including drug production.  This article speculates on the possible health effects on humans getting an accidental GM modified yeast in their gut.  ( I assume that they don't actually normally take up residence there, but I'd have to read more about it.)

Going back to a science journal, I see a link to a paper in 1994 about an experiment to see if a GM modified yeast did well in a "natural" environment.   I wonder if such tests are required on all GM modified yeasts before they are used?

Curious minds - well mine, anyway - would like to know....

Stay healthy, stay smart?

Infections can affect your IQ

A man who chooses to be gay against gay gentrification*

I've muttered before about the extraordinary amount of gay navel gazing that is hosted at Slate, and the most tedious writer they have, who is wont to take 1000 words to express what others could in 100 (OK, maybe 200), is J Bryan Lowder.

He recently wrote at length about gay as his adopted culture (as opposed to merely being homosexual), and while I am a part of that large section of the population that genuinely can't quite get its head around why a great many (but not all) men who like to sleep with men act gay, or camp, and share some odd and distinctive tastes in music and art,  I just couldn't be bothered staying with Lowder's boringly expressed attempt at explanation.   As someone in comments said:

....the title seemed to represent some interesting concepts. But I couldn't finish, in part because it became quickly evident that an essentially semantic argument had been overwrought and overthought. And in part because this article reads like a dissertation--one that lacked an outline.

This author clearly has writing talent, but loves his words more than he loves his story.

This week, Mr Lowder (a young man who writes as a young man) has an idealistic, no, actually naive, complaint:  that gay couples raising children in a now somewhat gentrified part of New York should not be complaining about gay sex shops and condom littered footpaths because they don't think these are good things for their kids to be walking past on the way to school:

I realize I’m being hard on these people, parents who I’m sure just want what’s best for their children. But they’ve got to realize that this campaign is a total betrayal of a history of sexually inclusive activism that has made it possible for them to even raise kids and build lives together in this now-fancy neighborhood in the first place. The desire on the part of many gays to assimilate into traditionally straight ways of living is not in itself a bad thing; the problem comes when that move is made as some kind of repudiation of other, gayer ways of living, particularly as manifested with regard to important gay spaces like bars and shops.

Lowder, deservedly, attracts quite a bit of ridicule in comments:

Take a pill, Lowder.   Preferably a horse tranquilizer. Jesus.
"I find condoms on the New York sidewalk a few times a week, and you know what I think, every single time? I’m glad someone decided to use this when they got laid."
No you don't.

And:

Stop prude-shaming gays and lesbians who do not wear their every sexual act and proclivity on their sleeves for their entire lives. The assimilation you criticize is likely the primary, if not only, reason for the sea change we have seen in heterosexuals' attitudes toward gays and lesbians this century. "Don't discriminate against me because of whom I love and build a life with" is a much easier sell than "Don't discriminate against me because all the people at my sex orgy are of the same gender."

And I like the sentiment, to a degree, although the reference to "perversion" makes one suspect the writer is perhaps just a little more intolerant than needed:

When it comes to raising children I would certainly HOPE parents are hypocrites! Boozers, should be hiding their boozing from their children, dopers should be hiding their dope from their children, abusers should be hiding their abuse from their children, perverts of any persuasion should be protecting their children from their perversions. America seems to have entirely forgotten the concept of 'discretion'.

Finally: 

It's not homophobic or prudish to shelter young children from constantly seeing things that they are developmentally unable to comprehend. And it begs the question, what should these parents do in the meantime until their kids are "old enough?" Change schools? Blindfold their kids when walking to school? There is a reason why most municipalities have zoning laws for shops that sell sex and adult-oriented products.

Ah, zoning laws!

That raises another topic on which certain commentators have an excessive obsession.  I've got a post coming about that too.

*  I felt bad about the earlier title, since I hate the sound of the anyone saying "oh, he's a gay" as if that was the crucial identifier for any personality.

The Letterman departure

Just finished watching the last David Letterman, and agree with the writer at Slate who said it was perfect.  

Sure, I think the show ran out of creative steam maybe, I am guessing, five or so years ago, and I had stopped watching it when it started being shown at erratic times.  But seeing so many clips of how great it used to be over the decades before its decline made for a nostalgic and very satisfying end.   He was clearly emotional but with no mawkishness, and his simple thanks to his family brought a tear to the eye.

And now, let's see how Colbert goes. It's hard to imagine his transition....

Far be it for me to criticise other people's taste in entertainment...

............................................

OK, have you finished laughing yet...no?   OK

.........................................

Alrighty.

But I am curious about why people like Jonathan Greene can merely "wonder" about the way rape (and violence) is used as entertainment in Game of Thrones, and not actually conclude that the show is unworthy of his, or other people's, support.  

He writes well, if a bit too overly flowery for my liking, on the topic, but merely teeters on the edge of that conclusion.

[In spooky voice heard inside his head]:  Join me, Jonathan.  Come over to the side of actually telling people a show can be a dangerous stain on the psyche of the public and should not be made or watched.  It is your destiny.....*  

(Not that I've ever watched it, of course.)

* And while we're at it, if you email me I'll tell you a few challenges I'd like you to put to Sinclair Davidson on air.

The big lego set in the computer

Minecraft Stars on YouTube Share Secrets to Their Celebrity - NYTimes.com

I have recently started fiddling with Minecraft, under instruction from my son.

Thus far, I have a cottage and a nearly completed house in "Steve is Great" world.   I think a temple to my magnificence is next called for.

As you were...

Squash the Tomato

Now at the risk of readers thinking I'm obsessing about Tomorrowland (which has now dropped down to 59% approval, making it a Rottentomato "miss") or George Clooney, I have been meaning to observe for a quite a while that the Rottentomatoes site has gone increasingly wonky over the last year or two.

First, the number of times the "key quote" seems quite contrary to whether the movie has been scored positive or negative seems to have increased, a lot.

Secondly, the number of well known movie reviewers who appear there has been heading down, down, down.  In their place are some folk who come from backwater sites most people have never heard of.

Thirdly, when you use the app version, you get a different bunch of reviews from the web version (I think.)  Or at least, last I looked, Australian reviewers got priority. 

I had forgotten about the Metacritic site, but it still seems to feature prominent critics only, and takes the immensely sensible approach of calling a mixed review "mixed" instead of trying to count it only as a "hit" or "miss".  Someone still gives reviews a number, and I guess if I read the site more carefully I might have a problem with some of those ratings, but still it seems a lot more sensible system than what Rottentomatoes has become.

And Metacritic still has Tomorrowland at 62.  So there...

Quantum weirdness under investigation - just down the road

Quantum physics: What is really real? 

I'm quite pleased to be reading an article about experiments to determine the true nature of quantum physics, particularly when it talks to physicists from two Brisbane universities.  

It's a little hard to credit that an incredibly important scientific finding that could change everything could come from Griffith University, or Brisbane generally, but who knows? 

You will all bow down and respect the intellectual greatness of the city when that happens, I'm sure...

That's weird...then the explanation found

I was scanning the largely unfavourable review of Tomorrowland at Variety, and then had a look at the comment thread.   Dominated by complete wingnuts: 

Clooney is generally one of the most over-hyped faces out of the lala land that is Hollywood. Wouldn’t waste my money. Tomorrowland will be free on Comcast soon enough…

I’ll never know….Clooney does not get any of my hard earned money no matter how good the show is.

Anything that the Liberal Loon Clooney stars in, is not worth seeing – Total trash!!

I knew the movie was crap as soon as I saw the calving glacier. This is just another shrill eco-whackjob movie with “stupid” as a plot and “even dumber” for dialogue. Only someone who wants their kids indoctrinated into the whacko Leftist theology of environmentalism is going to pay to let their kids see this propagandized drivel.

 Purge is coming says:

May 18, 2015 at 3:51 am

More pop psy liberal propaganda. Poor baby boomers. The world no longer wants you smelly hippies in the command chair.

Now who knew that American Tea Party nutters with their hatred for George Clooney would be big readers of Variety?  

I had to get down the thread a fair way to find the explanation:  

As suspected, it's a case of sending out the flying monkeys.

I expect a comment by avid Drudge reader Steve Kates might turn up there soon...

Heh

Just spotted at the New Yorker.

Update:  how could anyone deny this is a case of "it's funny 'cos it's true" when you read articles like this.

It's complicated

Colorado Marijuana Legalization 2015: Fighting The Black Market And The Everyday Challenges Of Selling Legal Weed

Interesting, detailed article here on how the Colorado legal marijuana experience is not wiping out the black market, nor raising as much revenue as forecast.  (Presumably, those two results are closely related.)

Not paranoid at all

Steve Kates, the Nutty (Associate) Professor of Economics at RMIT who posts at Catallaxy has long made utterly ridiculous statements about the United States and Obama in particular.  (He claimed recently not to watch TV at all, which is odd because he reads like the most gullible Fox News watcher on the planet.) 

I don't bother reading his posts in detail, but I did notice this in one of his shorter posts today, wherein he seems to have crossed the line into full blown right wing paranoia:

I am now convinced that Drudge has been gotten to in the US since there was one report yesterday and then nothing today about what you would think is the most disturbing event since the War in the Middle East began. This is “Nazis take Stalingrad”. Is the news now so suppressed that it can truly be said that we are at war with Eastasia in alliance with Eurasia, as we have always been, and no one notices a thing?

Meanwhile, Sinclair Davidson's contribution to the Right Wing War on the ABC has expanded to the sophisticated level of "I don't like the way she looked at him.  That's a real problem."   

Yet Davidson himself was one of the talking heads who appeared last week on 7.30 talking about the budget in a pre-recorded bit.   And he was on Jonathan Greene's Sunday breakfast show.  Do they treat him poorly or with contempt?

The real problem with the ABC is that it gives all IPA types - including Davidson - too easy a pass and too much time to appear in short bursts as "reasonable", when if you actually look into what they write and say elsewhere they are anything but.

Paying the price for blind opposition to harm minimisation

Fighting HIV where no-one admits it's a problem - BBC News

Quite an amazing story here about the rapid rise of HIV - mainly amongst the straight population too, it seems - in Russia; largely due to conservative policies which completely oppose harm minimisation:

In an interview this month with Agence France-Presse he was even blunter, saying the Kremlin's policy of promoting traditional family values had failed to halt the spread of the virus. "The last five years of the conservative approach have led to the doubling of the number of
HIV-infected people," he said.

When Pokrovsky argued for the introduction of sex education in schools - a step resolutely opposed by presidential children's rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov - the head of Moscow City Council's health committee, Lyudmila Stebenkova, called him a "typical agent working against the national interests of Russia".

Pokrovsky's approach, she told the Russian newspaper Kommersant, would only increase children's interest in sex and lead to a surge of HIV and other diseases

And as for drugs - there'll be no needle exchange programs or methadone in that upright country.

in Russia methadone is banned. The World Health Organization may see the synthetic opiate as essential in combating heroin dependence, but in Russia anyone caught using it or distributing it can face up to 20 years in prison.

Health officials rely instead on narkologia, a traditional form of treatment that dates back to Peter the Great's attempts to fight alcoholism in the early 18th Century. In essence, this
approach consists of isolating the drug user during a month of detoxification, followed up with rehabilitation - including lectures, self-help groups, physiotherapy, diet advice and so on.

Crumbling asteroids

[1505.03800] Quantifying hazards: asteroid disruption in lunar distant retrograde orbits

NASA has been toying with the idea of towing a small asteroid to a close Earth orbit, but as this paper explains, there's a risk any such asteroid may break up if you try to do anything with it.   (I like the term "loosely bound rubble pile": reminds me of a website I mention a lot.)  Would that end up being a problem for satellites in Earth orbit?  Maybe, at least for geosynchronous ones.

Drama Queen

Wow.  Sure, I at least knew a little about Queen Victoria's over-the-top and decades long mourning for her husband, but until I watched tonight's show on SBS "Queen Victoria's Children" I didn't appreciate what a nutty, harsh, control freak of a (literal) drama Queen she was with her sons.  The show featured extracts from many of her letters, and to call her "candid" in her assessments of them and their lives would be a hilarious understatement.

This was the last of 3 episodes, but I missed the previous ones.   The second is still available on SBS on Demand for another week, so I must go watch it.

Tomorrow, tomorrow...

Oooh.  Early reviews for Brad Bird's Tomorrowland are good enough (some very positive) for me to be enthusiastic about seeing it.

Am waiting for reviews of the new Poltergeist to appear, soon...

Update:  Uh-oh.   And boy, do I mean uh-oh.  From the Time Out review (which is sort of positive) and in my bold:

 ‘Tomorrowland’ is singularly unafraid of weighty concepts, tackling climate change, our ongoing fascination with the apocalypse and the very Disney-ish idea of being ‘special’. It does get dry (some scenes feel suspiciously like TED talks) and the script’s fleeting efforts to unpick its dubious Ayn Rand-ish central ideology are completely undermined by a clunky, flat-as-a-pancake finale.

But when it puts down its copy of ‘Political Philosophy for Dummies’ and focuses on character and action, ‘Tomorrowland’ is a blast.

Update 2:  surely he's wrong.  The Guardian likes it:

It’s a brave family movie that invests in high-budget thrills without the safety-net of a franchise brand, mows down a small child with a pickup truck (it’s OK, she’s a robot), and subjects us to the sight of Hugh Laurie in black leather jodhpurs. But bolder still is Tomorrowland’s sincere attempt to jump-start humanity’s technological optimism, which it reckons stalled with the decline of the space race with potentially planet-threatening consequences. Whether or not that’s the answer to the planet’s current problems, director Brad Bird deserves praise for packing such big ideas into such an accessible, rip-roaring, retro-futurist adventure.

Carbon tax and the libertarians

Jason Soon linked to an article about this last week, but I see more writers are commenting about the promotion of a carbon tax by an American libertarian Jerry Taylor.  He's gone and set up his own think tank and his proposal is for a revenue neutral carbon tax that gradually rises.  In other words, it does not result in greater government retained revenue (hence is supposed to be libertarian friendly.)  And the political deal is that this is done in replacement of Obama's attempt to reduce carbon burning by regulating the power industry via the EPA.

I have a few immediate observations:

1.    James Hansen, the (I think) registered Republican (how he can live with himself on that matter I don't know) granddaddy scientist of climate change has been promoting the same idea since at least 2009, possibly earlier.   Are window licking Tea Party Republican types going to suddenly agree that he had a good idea all along?   I don't think so...

2.   I see that even Republican hero for stating the obvious and then taking it too far (Arthur Laffer) and Republican representative Bob Inglis have also been suggesting this since at least 2008.

3.   Jason may recall a thread from Catallaxy years ago in which he, Sinclair Davidson and I had some exchanges about this, and Sinclair acknowledged that if you had to do something about climate change, a revenue neutral carbon tax would be the preferable way to do it.   I'm pretty sure that I said that one practical problem I could see was how to match the level of tax to the desired target of reductions, likely meaning some  continual fiddling with the rate of the tax leading to investment uncertainties that business dislikes.   (On the other hand, it is less liable to the rorting involved in cap and trade scheme offsets which may prove to be off dubious value - planting a bunch of trees that go up in a forest fire in decade's time, for example, or paying for no forest clearing in a country where poor law enforcement means it happens anyway.)

4.   Sinclair Davidson then wrote in 2014 [2010 - the IPA confused me by having two publications both called "Climate Change - The Facts"] in the IPA's short collection of essays by climate change denialists/lukewarmers, based on the "climategate" emails:

...we can have no confidence in the observations that temperature has increased due to human activity because the mechanisms of science have been subverted.

 So his attitude:  problem?  what problem?; and I'll throw my weight behind trying to convince the public there's no problem.

5.   There is considerable uncertainty in terms of modelling about its effects.  I think there was a good exchange between Taylor and an economist on his website about this, but I haven't found it again, yet.  This article looks more broadly at the question from a "progressive" point of view, and I think makes some decent points.   Certainly, I would be skeptical of some incredibly optimist forecasts for its effects as cited in The Guardian, even if it would seem the British Columbian example has some positive reviews.

My initial conclusion is therefore:

a.  good on Taylor for actually believing science and not taking the libertarian "denial or lukewarmer" line.  Good on him for pointing out the obvious about the "free rider" aspect, that if large, rich economies do nothing to institute this, developing economies have no clear reason to either.

b. as the idea has been around for quite a while now, the problem is not that it theoretically appeals to libertarians, even the likes of Sinclair Davidson - the problem is the degree to which the great bulk of libertarians have adopted multipronged denialism/do-nothing-ism, and not moved an inch from the position that there is no problem worth addressing.  The proposal is going no where until that changes.

c.  the requirement of "revenue neutrality" is an unwarranted ideological add on that puts one aspect of a carbon tax less useful that it could otherwise be, in that internationally governments are scratching around looking at revenue sources and the problems of corporate tax minimisation.  I don't see why this should be a strict condition on the implementation of a carbon tax, even if the bulk of it is used to reduce other taxes.  

More detail on the prospects for home brew heroin

Engineered yeast paves way for home-brew heroin : Nature News & Comment

There's considerably more detail here on the story about yeast being engineered for making opiates.

I see that they haven't actually done it yet, or made it efficient, and the researchers are calling for serious discussion on regulation to prevent any such future engineered yeast from getting into the hands of the public.

In short, finding it being used by your neighbourhood bikies is likely many years away yet.

Sorry, any "war on drugs is futile" meme layers out there, this doesn't support your case.  It shows what sensible people should do - regulate to do their best to prevent foreseeable future problems.