Interesting to read how the IS propaganda machine actually spends a lot of time on positive PR spin about the its economic and social future. "Look! - a man growing melons. Look! - a camel herder! Look! - a homosexual being thrown off a building and the crowd below stoning his body."
[Apparently, the medieval period has a lot of allure to a certain subset of the population. It's a bit like those who enjoy medieval dress up fairs - hey, I've been to one or two - but with the violence real.]
A bit of a worrying future in store for California:
A team led by climatologist Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford University in California has used historical data and climate models to show that global warming is increasing the odds of the state seeing warm, dry conditions similar to those that spawned the current drought (N. S. Diffenbaugh et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 3931–3936; 2015).
The droughts could even last for many decades. By incorporating palaeoclimate data into climate models, Benjamin Cook of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and two co-authors are predicting droughts that could last as long as 35 years (B. I. Cook et al. Sci. Adv. 1, e1400082; 2015).
“We’re in a new climate, and it’s a climate in which the probability of severe drought conditions is elevated,” Diffenbaugh says. “That recognition is really critical.”
I find Nick Xenophon's proposed changes to the Senate voting system to be very reasonable.
They will upset Senator Leyonhjelm, who openly advocates gaming the voting system by the creation of microparties simply to direct preferences, so that people have no idea who they may get. As we have seen in all other Senate or House of Reps election results, Leyonhjelm's party has a vanishingly small voter base, and he wants it to have a chance in future by the same devious tactic. This deserves to be crushed.
Been a while since I made a "just cooked this for the first time" post, but the weekend saw my first attempt at tempura.
The recipes for this on websites vary a lot - quite a few involve self raising flour, or baking powder added to plain flour; others recommend cornflower mixed in with it, or even potato starch. The matter of using an egg (or just yolk) is not even settled. The only universal thing is that the water used must be ice cold, and you do not want an over-mixed, smooth batter - lumps are good.
In any event, I found that plain flour, mixed with an equal quantity of iced water containing a lightly beaten whole egg, worked well. And one cup of flour and one of water makes quite a lot of batter. (Actually, I think I added a bit more water - I don't like thick batter. But it basically seems hard to go wrong (as long as the oil temperature is pretty high too.)
As for the dipping sauce - 1 cup of dashi (powdered stock type, of course); 1/4 cup each of mirin and soy sauce, plus a couple of teaspoons of sugar, all heated in a saucepan and cooled a bit for serving, worked well.
The history of tempura as a Japanese mainstay is interesting. As the Kikkoman company's website explains:
China, which has long influenced Japan, has traditions rich in
culinary techniques based on the use of oil. In fact, written Chinese
includes an array of characters used to distinguish different types of
frying, such as quick-frying over high heat, searing at low heat, and so
on.
Yet Japan was unaffected by this particular culinary aspect of China:
early Japanese cooking was more strongly influenced by the injunction
against eating meat that arrived with the introduction of Buddhism in
the sixth century. This meat-eating taboo came to Japan by way of China,
but Buddhism was not the state religion of China, nor was it closely
associated with the ruling classes, as it was in Japan. Pig lard was
used to prepare some dishes in China, but pork fat was unavailable in
Japan, once the eating of pork was prohibited. Vegetable oils were
obtainable here, but they were used mainly as fuel for illumination and
their quantity was limited; thus the use of oil in cooking was slow to
catch on.
Tempura most likely made its first appearance in Japan via Spanish
and Portuguese missionaries and traders, who introduced deep-frying in
oil during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Gradually, the type
of cooking we now know as tempura became firmly established during the
eighteenth century. As if to endorse this history, I have encountered a
deep-fried squid dish in Portugal. And to my surprise, I enjoyed
something called “fritters” —deep-fried seafood or vegetables—which had
an uncanny resemblance to tempura in Malacca in Malaysia. Malacca is a
bustling coastal port where the descendants of Portuguese colonists, who
arrived during the early sixteenth century, pursue fishing and other
trades while conducting their lives in the local vernacular, a dialect
of Portuguese....
What was early tempura like? The oldest extant records, dating from
the late seventeenth century, indicate that it consisted of balls made
of a paste of thrush meat, shrimp and ground walnuts, which were
deep-fried in oil, then covered with a sauce thickened with kuzu (a
perennial of the bean family) starch. No batter coating seems to have
been applied.
In the mid-eighteenth century there are records of deep-frying with a
coating, apparently fish dusted with flour or root vegetables like
burdock, lotus and taro dipped in a thin mixture of flour, soy sauce and
water. Considerable innovations then followed, creating the tempura we
know today: the production of vegetable oil increased and its price
stabilized, making it possible to use generous amounts in cooking; soy
sauce manufacture became an established industry, and this seasoning
became more widely available; it was also during this time that
bonito-flake stock was more commonly used.
During the Edo period, tempura-style cooking first became popular at
movable outdoor stalls. In those days, Edo was built entirely of wooden
structures, and so was extremely vulnerable to fire. Cooking outdoors
rather than in houses was encouraged, and outdoor stalls serving foods
like tempura were very popular. Like sushi, tempura flourished as a
snack enjoyed by the common townspeople, and went on to become an
essential element in the “flavor hierarchy” of Japanese cuisine.
I don't know why, but a lot of my pleasant dreams lately seem to be about the memorable scenery. Is it because the internet is serving up spectacular images of locations from all over the world - like a daily dose of National Geographic, instead of just a once a month (or once a dental visit) experience as it used to be when we relied on printed images?
In any event, my Zite feed has referred me to a short article at Country Living about Giethoorn, a
quaint Dutch village in which the houses are thatched and the streets are actually canals. It certainly looks dream-worthy:
You can take as true, when it comes from someone like me who only invests about 5 hours a year in watching sport, that everyone saying that the Rugby League grand final tonight was stupendously good viewing is correct. It showed everything that, even to my generally disinterested mind, makes this code the best to watch: a scoring rate that is "just right"; genuine tension that comes from clear movement of team lines back and forth in relation to the try line; less risk of idiosyncratic umpiring decisions changing a game; and the ability to always see the ball in play.
Given the latest American mass shooting (Oregon, 13 dead, 20 injured), that appears very likely to be another case of a person, probably with guns legally purchased by themselves or by a relative, who has gone nuts due to some perceived slight from fellow students, I was wondering whether one of the key differences between Australia and the US is not just the ridiculously easy access to firearms over there, but also the greater ease with which Australian authorities can remove firearms from people.
Well, I assume it is much easier in Australia. Certainly, this is the situation if a person has a domestic violence protection order against them in Queensland:
A temporary protection order will suspend your weapons licence and a final protection order will revoke your weapons licence.
You are required to surrender all weapons licences and weapons
possessed to a police officer as soon as practicable, but no later than
one day after the court makes the order, or the order is served on you.
If you fail to surrender licences or weapons in the time specified, you
may commit an offence against the Weapons Act 1990 and will be liable to a penalty of up to 10 penalty units.
You cannot apply for a weapons licence for a period of 5 years from
the date of the order if a protection order is made against you.
And certainly doctors who are concerned about whether a patient should have weapons can inform the police. A booklet here describes the process and issues.
But in the US? A paper from 2014 by some psychiatrists argues that national registries of the mentally ill aren't likely to help gun violence, but the power of authorities to order the removal of guns from those deemed "dangerous" might:
The debate regarding creation and maintenance of a national registry as a primary legal tool for keeping firearms out of the hands of people with mental disorders has obscured a potentially useful strategy for reducing firearm violence or suicide—temporary removal of a firearm from a person’s custody during periods of acutely elevated risk (32). Some states, e.g., California (33), permit removal of firearms from people during mental health emergencies and restrict access during the period of commitment. Specified clinicians in these states can work with appropriate personnel to facilitate removal of firearms from persons they believe are at significant risk of harm to themselves or others. Indiana and Connecticut (34) allow firearms to be removed from imminently dangerous individuals, whether or not they have mental disorders. Under the Connecticut statute, the state’s attorney or two police officers can file a complaint in court whereby temporary seizure of firearms of persons posing risk of imminent personal injury to self or others may be authorized for up to 14 days. After the initial firearm removal period, a court can extend the order for up to a year if it finds, after a hearing, that the danger persists. Under this statute, a history of confinement in a psychiatric hospital is only one factor that the judge may consider, in addition to several non-clinical factors, in evaluating the danger that the person presents.
Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVRO) empower families
and law enforcement to petition a judge to remove guns from relatives
who pose a risk to themselves or others. Shooters often exhibit
dangerous warning signs, and GVRO laws help keep guns away from people
with the intent to harm. California passed a landmark GVRO last year,
in response to the shooting at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. How many other mass shootings could have been prevented had the
shooters’ families had legal recourse to keep them away from deadly
weapons?
No one wants firearms in the hands of someone who’s not competent to own them. However, when someone crosses the danger to self or others
threshold, they need immediate care, not a restraining order. Police
and family members should focus on the individual, not their guns.
If the person is truly a danger to self or others, committing them to
a psychiatric institution will safeguard them from their firearms.
Has anyone taken to these nuts the matter of how incredibly illiberal their idea is, not to mention the ridiculous increase in the number of psych ward beds you would need? And of course, NRA membership would be almost a given for Tea Party Republicans, exactly the last people who would want the government spending the money that would be needed to make their "anything but the guns!" line in any way effective.
Whoever the heck is funding the IPA to send one of its youth workers* to Cambodia to shoot some street footage and talk platitudinous pap about free markets and entrepreneurs being wonderful must have money burning a hole in his or her large pocket.
I really fail to see the point.
And, incidentally, I wonder what the future Cambodian business persons interviewed for 15 seconds by the IPA think of its policy of actively discouraging any governmental response to climate change? Given that more than one body seems to think Cambodia is near top of the list of nations most likely to suffer badly as the world warms, I'm not entirely sure they would appreciate this aspect of the IPA's advocacy back in Australia.
* what is the average age of someone primarily employed there? Take out Roskam and I reckon it would be lucky to be 25...
Exhibit 1: I hired it with low expectations, which were pretty much confirmed, but watching Fast & Furious 7on DVD made me wonder how this series manages to be internationally hugely successful. (The only other one I have seen much of, however, is Tokyo Drift. Maybe I saw a bit of the first one, too. They're not exactly memorable.)
The key seems to be that they are aimed squarely at the interests of males aged 14-18, which means there is considerable overlap with those up to the age of 30, too. But then there is also the obvious marketing to the girlfriends of said primary audience, what with the hunky, good hearted lead actor; the continual emphasis on family and relationships; and the physical toughness and competency of the female leads.
This does make for some oddly mixed messages - the soft porn objectification of the women incidental to the story sits uncomfortably alongside the kick ass "girls can do anything" feminism and interest in relationships of the female leads. I get the feeling that a large part of the international success might be simply from the producers knowing exactly how much female skin they can get away without ratings interfering with the male teenage audience in key markets. (The ethnic mix of the cast doesn't hurt, too.)
Anyhow, parts of FF7 reminded me a lot of Mission Impossible, except that their stunts really are, well, impossible.
I don't find the movies offensive, but they are very, very silly and really don't deserve to do as well as they do.
Exhibit 2: My son has read the Maze Runner books, and the first movie was OK in a young adult way, so it was off to see Scorch Trials, the second in the series, last night.
Turns out it's a mish mash of the post apocalyptic and zombie genres: a bit Mad Max, a bit World War Z, making it less interesting than the first movie, which I still don't really understand. (My son assures me that, although the books are increasingly different from the films, it all makes sense by the end. I have my doubts.)
Look, it's very well executed in a visual effects sort of way - green screens and computer graphics can create really convincing looking vistas of devastated cities these days; but even some of the physical sets looked great. (Although, again, perhaps I am being fooled as to how much of what I am seeing of the cavernous interior of a decrepit shopping mall is real.)
There is one particularly odd scene, though, where they seem to stumble upon a still functioning equivalent of Studio 54 (under gay management, for some reason) in the midst of the rubble of a metropolis. A roughly equivalent scene is apparently in the book - I think it was in the movie so as to let in a drug addled kiss from the lead actor - but it was a bit weird.*
Back to the positive - the action is competently handled.
But they need to wind this series up soon - I was surprised how much older the actors looked in this film compared to the first, especially the young female lead.
And this morning, while shaving, I suddenly realised - "hey, unless I'm mistaken, those dudes wandering the deserts and dilapidated cities for a week or two never seemed to grown a hint of stubble." Maybe they are truly mutants.
* Update: I have only seen a little of the Hunger Games movies (the basic premise has no appeal) - but did Scorch Trials throw in a touch of camp weirdness inspired by them? Certainly, though, it would seem to be a common thread of these young adult series that it's a case of "The oldies - they're just using us! We have to fight back!"
Update 2: Oh look, you can learn about the digital rendering of the post apocalypse in this video. It's pretty incredible how actors now just have to imagine what they are looking at in movies like this:
Update 3: my son complains that I sound too critical of Scorch Trials. Let me be clear: I officially declare it "o-kaaay", provided you say that with the correct inflection that indicates you have reservations...
As early as 1840, antebellum historian Richard Hildreth observed that
violence was frequently employed in the South both to subordinate slaves
and to intimidate abolitionists. In the South, violence also was an
approved way to avenge perceived insults to manhood and personal status.
According to Hildreth, duels “appear but once an age” in the North, but
“are of frequent and almost daily occurrence at the [S]outh.” Southern
men thus carried weapons both “as a protection against the slaves” and
also to be prepared for “quarrels between freemen.” Two of the most
feared public-carry weapons in pre-Civil War America, the “Arkansas
toothpick” and “Bowie knife,” were forged from this Southern heritage.
The slave South’s enthusiasm for public carry influenced its legal
culture. During the antebellum years, many viewed carrying a concealed
weapon as dastardly and dishonorable—a striking contrast with the values
of the modern gun-rights movement. In an 1850 opinion, the Louisiana
Supreme Court explained that carrying a concealed weapon gave men
“secret advantages” and led to “unmanly assassinations,” while open
carry “place[d] men upon an equality” and “incite[d] men to a manly and
noble defence of themselves.” Some Southern legislatures, accordingly,
passed laws permitting open carry but punishing concealment. ...
In the North, publicly carrying concealable weapons was much less
popular than in the South. In 1845, New York jurist William Jay
contrasted “those portions of our country where it is supposed essential
to personal safety to go armed with pistols and bowie-knives” with the
“north and east, where we are unprovided with such facilities for taking
life.” Indeed, public-carry restrictions were embraced across the
region. In 1836, the respected Massachusetts jurist Peter Oxenbridge
Thacher instructed a jury that in Massachusetts “no person may go armed
with a dirk, dagger, sword, pistol, or other offensive and dangerous
weapon, without reasonable cause to apprehend an assault or violence to
his person, family, or property.” Judge Thacher’s charge was celebrated
in the contemporary press as “sensible,” “practical,” and “sage.”
Massachusetts was not unusual in broadly restricting public carry.
Wisconsin, Maine, Michigan, Virginia, Minnesota, Oregon, and
Pennsylvania passed laws modeled on the public-carry restriction in
Massachusetts.
There's been some silliness going on about a "review" of the temperature record that the "no, no, we're the reasonable climate skeptic" group GWPF announced earlier this year. Read VV's account, and follow some of his links, to know more...
It should be no surprise that the voters and politicians opposed to
climate change tend to be of a conservative bent, keen to support
free-market ideology. This is part of a phenomenon known as motivated reasoning,
where instead of evidence being evaluated critically, it is
deliberately interpreted in such a way as to reaffirm a pre-existing
belief, demanding impossibly stringent examination of unwelcome evidence
while accepting uncritically even the flimsiest information that suits
one's needs.
And today I'm reading about some New Hampshire survey results which show that a good education can help with successful self delusion. It's from a post at And Then There's Physics, where the following table appears:
Yep, if you're a Republican, a better education can actually make you less likely to believe in AGW.
And here is the explanation from the post:
After politics, education is the second-strongest predictor of views on
climate. But politics can neutralize or even reverse the effects of
education. College-educated respondents more actively assimilate
information in accord with their prejudices, whether these prejudices
incline them toward scientific or ideological sources. Figure 3 depicts
the probability of a now/human response as a function of education and
politics (details here).
The pattern is reproduced with remarkable consistency across 34
surveys. Among Democrats and Independents, agreement with the scientific
consensus rises with education. Among Republicans, agreement with the
scientific consensus does not rise with education, and sometimes even
falls. This fall becomes steeper if we separate Tea Party supporters into their own group.
The "motivated reasoning" blog par excellence in Australia is, of course, one beginning with the letter "C"....
I do want to weigh infor a minute on Donald Trump’s tax plan — which would, surprise, lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit. That’s in contrast to Jeb Bush’s plan, which would lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit, and Marco Rubio’s plan, which would lavish huge cuts on the wealthy while blowing up the deficit.
At this point there are no Republican candidates deviating at all from the usual pattern.
Why, it’s almost as if nobody in the party ever cared about deficits except as an excuse to slash social spending, and is totally committed to redistributing income upward.
And there is, of course, no evidence — zero, nada, zilch — that cutting taxes on the rich will yield large economic benefits.
What we’re seeing here is a party completely incapable of reforming
Well, I think I've mentioned the transactional interpretation of quantum physics before, but maybe not the Possibilist TI idea? I would have to check...
Sounds a good theory for ensuring even more quasi mystical explanations of the universe than ordinary quantum physics did in the 1970's and 80's.
Update: my post about the tranactional interpretation was in 2009, and the paper referenced does seem to start talking about the "possibilist" bit towards the end. (Hey, I think I'm doing reasonably well to remember the transactional interpretation at all, given that it seems to get little publicity.)
I don't want to go all Mark Latham on her or anything, but it is irritating to read this navel-gazing, oh-child-birth-and-baby-rearing-are,-like,-the-hardest-thing-ever, and all government policy must be geared to allow women like me to get back into the workforce the minute they want to, attitude of Jessica Irvine.
I've dealt with the matter of the intense gullibility of anyone swayed by Jennifer Marohasy or "Jonova" before - no need to repeat it.
But it seems a good time to note out that, no matter what (some) Catholics may believe about a flying, miracle performing monk, the last couple of Popes have at least accepted scientific advice and been promoting government action to address global warming, making them far less of a danger to the future of the planet and humanity than libertarians.
Some gullibility doesn't really matter all that much - other gullibility does.
Last week, after I mentioned quantum teleporting, I was reminded that it was the feast day for the recently canonised Padre Pio, and one of the things claimed about him during his life was his ability to bilocate. Some further reading was called for.
I've never paid much attention to the Padre Pio story. I had read years and years ago that it was suspected that his stigmata were caused, or at least maintained by, the secret application of carbolic acid, and that many in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church at the time tried to dampen down what they saw as a dangerous cult-ish devotion to him. That's not a good start for someone on the path to sainthood, yet John Paul II, the Pope who canonised so many saints that even conservative publications were asking whether it was too many, had met him (in 1948) and was happy to add him to the list in 2002.
There are, of course, many websites that discuss Padre Pio, most of them pious Catholic ones that simply repeat the litany of the claimed miracles. He was what one might call a paranormal star, with the alleged ability to read minds, emit a flowery odor of sanctity (one of the easiest saintly things to fake, of course), but also there are many claims of miraculous cures up to and including raising the dead (!). But when it comes to stretching the limits of credibility, even the revival of the (apparently) dead and the bilocation stories are small change. (And none of them, incidentally, appear particularly convincingly evidenced beyond anecdote.) The "best" story about Pio by far is that he could not only levitate, but actually flew into the sky above his monastery and diverted Allied bombers in World War 2. This weird story is discussed in detail at Beachcomber's blog here. [Ok, maybe it was more a case of his bilocated image only appearing above his monastery, not his body. But still....]
As for more skeptical short takes on Padre Pio, the best I have read so far is the one by Alexander Stille called The strange victory of Padre Pio. It's a review of a book, actually, and it puts some particularly interesting political and social context to the rise of the saint (ha, a bit of a pun there...)
This passage, about a fraudster who attached himself to the local star is particularly odd:
“A dozen years after the stigmata first appeared on the Capuchin
friar’s body his cult looked ready to burn out,” Luzzatto writes. “But
there was something that Padre Pio’s enemies had not taken into
account.” That something or someone was Emanuele Brunatto, whom Luzzatto
describes as “a con man of great talent, infinite imagination, and
world-class enterprise…a chronic liar, a ruthless extortionist, and an
incorrigible double-dealer.”
Brunatto, who had been convicted of fraud, had found his way to San
Giovanni Rotondo in the early 1920s and attached himself to Padre
Pio—perhaps to escape from the law, perhaps out of genuine religious
devotion, perhaps because of his remarkable instinct for opportunity,
and perhaps through some combination of the three. Brunatto wrote one of
the first biographies of the future saint (which the Church promptly
banned) and skimmed money from the flow of cash arriving from around the
world to Padre Pio, according to one Church report. When Padre Pio
found himself reduced almost to a condition of house arrest, Brunatto
fought back with the methods he had acquired in his earlier life. He
assembled a dossier of the alleged misdeeds and sexual misconduct of the
Puglese clergy and, at a high-level meeting at the Vatican, threatened
to publish it as a book. Not long after, the Church decided to lighten
most of the restrictions on Padre Pio’s ministry.
In the early 1930s, this imaginative man cooked up an investment
scheme for the followers of Padre Pio, putting himself at the head of a
company that would sell locomotive patents. With Padre Pio’s backing,
Brunatto raised millions of dollars, set himself up in Paris, and
traveled the continent living grandly and supposedly selling patents to
the governments of Europe. The one attempt to build a locomotive based
on one of the patents proved a fiasco, but Brunatto succeeded in keeping
the scheme going for several years while insisting that the company was
inches away from a major bonanza.
Padre Pio does not appear to have profited from the scheme. The
investors, of course, lost all their money and Brunatto moved on to
other dangerous games, among them spying for the Fascist police. During
World War II, Brunatto made a fortune as a black marketer and
collaborationist, selling rationed foodstuffs and keeping the German
army supplied with French wines and champagne. With extraordinary
foresight, he placed a portion of his stratospheric profits into a
charitable fund to help Padre Pio build a hospital in San Giovanni
Rotondo. Certainly, this charitable act proved helpful when Brunatto
sought (and managed) to avoid a lengthy prison sentence for
collaboration with the Nazis.
It is an incredible story, but not quite in the way the hierarchy of the Church now wants to promote.
Of course, while it may be accurate to say his canonization does not necessarily mean the Church believes all of the very folkloric stories of his living miracles (the couple of post mortem medical recoveries relied on are detailed here), it's worrying evidence for the gullible mindset of some adherents to the Faith that this Saint carries so much "baggage", so to speak.
But Googling around, I found some even stranger bilocation discussion, this time from a book with the intriguing title of The Quantum Vision of Simon Kimbangu. (Just Google it and bilocation to find the pages I am referring to below.) Kimbangu was a controversial Congolese religious figure of the same vintage as Padre Pio (first half of the 20th century), who apparently still has a church named after him.
As for the book, it makes some unverified claims (including a repeat of the airborne Pio story):
The amusing thing is, the story of the appearance of Kimbangu to Ekutu Camile is described on the previous page in the book, but the bilocated visitor claiming to be Kimbangu was a white European (not black, as the "original" Kimbangu most certainly was.) No problem-o:
When it comes to bilocation, anything seems possible.
Well, it's interesting to read about two different groups now investigating hyperloop transport ideas, but I remain skeptical about them for a few main reasons:
a. as passenger transport, it looks like it could readily induce claustrophobia in anyone even vaguely susceptible to it;
b. why would you build one in such a major earthquake zone such as California? Seems to me to be rather like inviting trouble in exactly the same way that common sense would have suggested that building many nuclear power plants in Japan may not be the best idea;
c. even if it works out cheaper than road or rail transport for goods, how many years will it take to recover its high capital costs if you are relying on goods transport as a key source of profit?
Still, I'm not opposed to people working on it. I wonder if it might work out better as a transport feeder system on a smaller scale than that originally proposed.
