More filtered flowers

Cool club

Australian life expectancy jumps to new highs | Australia news | The Guardian

Australians born now are expected to live longer than ever before.
Life expectancy for females at birth rose from 84.3 in 2013 to 84.4 last
year, while for males it jumped from 80.1 to 80.3, according to new
figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

There are only six other countries in the world where both men and
women have a life expectancy over 80 years, Beidar Cho from the ABS said
in a statement on Thursday.

Those countries are Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Iceland, Israel and Sweden.

“Australia has a higher life expectancy, at both the male and female
level, than many similar countries to ours such as New Zealand, the UK
and the US,” she said.

An alert

Although they have attractive packaging, and are from Canada, which I like to think has clean waters and nice fish, I do not care for Brunswick brand sardines at all.  (Too large, too smelly, needs salt.) 

That is all....

Busy

Update:  no reader has asked, but I tell you anyway:  created by putting a photo of a flower I had taken through some kaleidoscopic filter on an Android app, the name of which I currently forget.   I think the result is pleasingly psychedelic.

Still nuts

The fourth Republican presidential debate, explained - Vox

Amongst the other criticisms of this woeful bunch of Republican wannabe Presidents is this:

Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump have thus far all released
tax plans that are detailed enough to be assessed in terms of their
impact on Americans of different income levels. The plans all differ
slightly from one another, but they all have the same basic shape — huge
gains for the top one percent that dwarf what anyone else will get.

But the debate revealed that these are actually the
responsible, sober-minded plans in the field. Ben Carson continues to
insist that the government could be funded with a 15 percent flat tax — a
number that would yield a laughably inadequate level of revenue. Ted
Cruz and Rand Paul are all pitching plans centered around the
introduction of a Value Added Tax, a move that would likely raise
taxes for lower-income Americans (especially retirees) in order to
finance staggeringly large tax cuts for the wealthy. Carly Fiorina,
meanwhile, keeps insisting that she can deliver a three-page tax code
but can't quite seem to say what will be on the pages.

And Cruz wants to return to the gold standard.

Julia and the Old Gray Lady

Being Dishonest About Ugliness - The New York Times

How did Julia Baird get a gig doing opinion pieces for the New York Times?  At the risk of sounding bitchy, on the Drum she always seemed a pleasant enough person, but really rather dull as a host.  And this piece in the paper shares those qualities. 

The real lesson

...from this incident is probably more "it's likely to be counterproductive to use a public figure pretty widely regarded as a ****head (and a pretty aggro one at that especially when it comes to people he disagrees with on guns*) as your support person at an employer's disciplinary hearing."

Having said that, I would say it's a near certainty that the employee will win at the Fair Work Commission (which, incidentally, I didn't think libertarians had a lot of time for.)

*  Yes, we have a Senator who has said he agreed with the sentiment that John Howard "deserved to be shot" for his gun laws.

The Carson explanation

She's hardly my favourite writer, but I reckon Amanda Marcotte is right about Ben Carson:

His exaggerated tales of sin and redemption sound bizarre to most Americans, but they are par for the course in the evangelical circles that Carson is trying to win over...

Hammering messy real world experiences into trite fables about sin and redemption is standard operating procedure in conservative Christian circles. So is the exaggeration. Tales of your behavior before you were saved are embellished for maximum drama. What’s important is not the literal truth, but reinforcing fundamentalist notions that the world outside of the Jesus bubble is a depraved hellhole.

Take, for instance, Christine O’Donnell, the 2010 Republican candidate for Senate from Delaware. During her campaign, tape surfaced of her claiming she had been to a “Satanic altar” with “blood” on it during her days when she supposedly “dabbled into witchcraft”. The story was obvious nonsense and she tried to downplay its significance without coming right out and admitting what was likely true, which is that she had taken some silly incident from her youth and reformed it into a tale of Satanism and depravity with which to impress her fellow Christians.

Carson’s claim that he was a violent youth who renounced his sinful ways after praying has to be understood in this light. In Christian circles, the literal truth of such stories doesn’t matter nearly as much as their usefulness in spreading the word that Jesus is the cure for all your problems. A story about Jesus’s ability to save you from murder is just more memorable than, say, a tale of renouncing your habit of shoplifting.

A quote from a Gruen

I thought Nicholas' comment at his blog (arising out of that somewhat controversial paper about poor white Americans dying faster) was good:

Education is good, looking after those at the bottom of the ladder is good. Of course the left’s tendency to valorise ‘victims’ can go too far. I think it does and it’s a growing problem (#TriggerAlert you may not agree and this may trigger anxiety, depression and flashbacks to traumatic events in your childhood when you discovered you weren’t the only person in the world). But ethically it seems like so much less a crime than the right’s demonisation of those at the bottom and their valorisation of those at the top. Perhaps it’s also a practical mistake.

Yes, that last bit is about the ugly, poisonous influence of libertarian thought on the American Right that you see frequently at the Australian Tea Party blog Catallaxy.   I don't think the Right in America and Australia used to be like that.

More on the Lomborg deception

And Then There's Physics has his take on the Lomborg deceptive counsel of despair. 

I repeat my formula for Bill and Labor

I think it would be a trap for Labor to oppose any increase in the GST.   It also seems doubtful that they can do enough to increase revenue quickly enough (yes, Australia needs to both increase revenue and be more careful in spending) via superannuation tax concessions and welfare related changes (welfare restrictions not being Labor's strong point, exactly.)

I therefore repeat my common sense call:   compromise with a GST increase to 12.5% - it's sounds much better than 15% - and look at increasing its scope modestly.  Don't go overboard in compensation for the poor.   Also make changes to superannuation concessions.  Make changes to the negative gearing rules that ease in over a few years, don't try to do it in one big bang.

You might even get away with a modest carbon tax replacing Direct Action, but that is riskier, 'cos folks are too, too easily confused on this.  On the other hand, Labor has plenty of ammunition from Turnbull's own mouth as to how Direct Action can't work in the long run, and it is a hit to the budget bottom line.   (The problem is, of course, that just as Labor is too easily motivated to make a scare campaign of any GST increase, the Coalition is too easily motivated to do the same for any carbon pricing scheme.)

Electric powered death from the skies

Israel Is Already Selling Kamikaze Micro-Drones That Will Change Modern Warfare

I must go looking for a video of them in action.  Will add later if I find one...

Update:  here it is, the advertising blurb for this very futuristic weapon:



Update:  sorry, the video seems to have gone private since posting it here.   Maybe the company (or Israel) doesn't like the world to see how it operates?

And (some) people defend Lomborg

Indefensible Lomborg Analysis Misleads On Paris Climate Pledges, Ignores China | ThinkProgress

Pretty damning critique of Lomborgian analysis which was (as I guessed as soon as I saw Andrew Bolt promote it) simply designed to convince the gullible that the Paris conference is useless.

Fun physics

There's an essay on arXiv (Living in a Superposition) that is about a fun thought experiment.  Here's the abstract:

This essay considers a model quantum universe consisting of a very large box containing a screen with two slits and an observer (us) that can pass though the slits. We apply the modern quantum mechanics of closed systems to calculate the probabilities for alternative histories of how we move through the universe and what we see. After passing through the screen with the slits, the quantum state of the universe is a superposition of classically distinguishable histories. We are then living in a superposition. Some frequently asked questions about such situations are answered using this model. The model's relationship to more realistic quantum cosmologies is briefly discussed. 

Good question

What happened to passenger hovercraft? - BBC News

I did take the hovercraft service across the English channel in about 1986.   The article explains why they never caught on as widely as 1960's futurists may have expected.

The columnist with the common touch

I wonder what inspired Bolt to start telling us how well he has traveled?  I would have thought his occasional opera and art appreciation posts were distancing enough for most of his readership, but expanding it to "let's talk about the great places I have stayed" seems to be pushing it somewhat.

The next degree won't take as long

Here's a good, short post from And Then There's Physics explaining how the next degree of global average temperature increase won't take as long as the first:

Just a quick post to highlight that – according to the UK Met Office – 2015 is likely to be 1^oC above pre-industrial – well, 1^oC above the 1850 to 1900 average. If you think that we should have a target of staying below 2^oC, then this is something of a milestone; we’re halfway there. Or, are we?

Well, it depends on how you consider this. It’s taken us about 160 years to warm by about 1^oC. This is associated with emissions of about 550GtC (550 billion tonnes of carbon, or ~2000 billion tonnes of CO₂). Current emissions are around 10GtC/year. If we continue emitting as we are, we will double our cumulative emissions in about 50 years. If we continue to increase our emissions, it will be even sooner (H/T Aaron on Twitter). If we want to have a >66% chance of staying below 2^oC, then we have a carbon budget of only about 250GtC (850GtCO2) from 2015, which we could reach in only 25 years at current emissions.

So, we might be halfway to 2^oC in terms of temperature, but we’re much more than halfway there in terms of time.

The comments following are well worth reading, too.

[But, hey LDP, please continue to concentrate on how irritating it is to have to wear a bicycle helmet and not be able to vape nicotine while riding to the bar that's going to shut at the ridiculously early hour of 3 am.  We have to get our priorities right: I understand.]

The 2011 Australian floods revisited

The abstract from a paper to appear in GRL:

Extreme rainfall conditions in Australia during the 2010/11 La Niña resulted in devastating floods claiming 35 lives, causing billions of dollars in damages, and far-reaching impacts on global climate, including a significant drop in global sea-level and record terrestrial carbon uptake. Northeast Australian 2010/11 rainfall was 84% above-average, unusual even for a strong La Niña, and soil moisture conditions were unprecedented since 1950. Here we demonstrate that the warmer background state increased the likelihood of the extreme rainfall response. Using atmospheric general circulation model experiments with 2010/11 ocean conditions with and without long-term warming, we identify the mechanisms that increase the likelihood of extreme rainfall: additional ocean warming enhanced onshore moisture transport onto Australia and ascent and precipitation over the northeast. Our results highlight the role of long-term ocean warming for modifying rain-producing atmospheric circulation conditions, increasing the likelihood of extreme precipitation for Australia during future La Niña events.

Tax or not?

I see that David Leyonhjelm is again writing in praise of the Singaporean health system, which operates largely by requiring compulsory employee contributions to medical savings accounts.   (I see he was making the same argument back in 2014,  and it is also LDP official policy.)

Now this seems a bit odd to me - when it comes to arguing about whether we are a high or low taxing country, Leyonhjelm is happy to claim "the tax burden figure for Australia is artificially kept down by the exclusion of superannuation guarantee payments", which is extremely close to the Judith Sloan line that "we have a system of compulsory superannuation that must be regarded as a tax".   (Yes, the very special type of "tax" that goes into the taxpayer's own account, is largely untouched by the government, and is available for spending only by the taxpayer or their estate.)

Let's be a bit more consistent here, hey libertarians?   If you are for compulsory savings for medical care, but like to claim compulsory superannuation  should be treated as part of the "tax burden", then you're actually for a brand new tax, using your own peculiar (or opportunistic) categorisations.  On the other hand, if neither are a tax, stop pretending one of them is.

And as for comparing the health costs of the Singaporean system to that in Australia or other countries - goodness gracious me, I would bet there would health economists out there ecstatic at the idea of what they could do to stream line health services if they were doing it for one city state compared to providing coverage for an entire continent.

Update:  OK, so I guess Leyonhjelm might concede such a scheme is the same type of "tax" that compulsory superannuation is, but one which would be compensated for by the government (now with a reduced health spending burden) reducing income taxes.   Because he is, of course, fundamentally against ever increasing total taxes.  (Good luck with working out that transition with any fairness, though.  Let's face it, it ain't going to happen.)

Nonetheless, isn't it peculiar that the party that is all about personal responsibility and letting people act as grown ups actually agrees with Labor, which effectively says you can't rely on people to save for their retirement adequately and therefore compulsory super is required?

About time I commented on this

Yes, I keep forgetting to post about the peculiar phenomena of the adult colouring in book.   The Atlantic has a story up from a recent convert, and there was an article about it in the Sydney Morning Herald back in April, and another a few weeks ago asking the question:

Adult colouring books are all the rage, but are readers mindful or mindless?

Nearly all articles err on the generous side, and so would I, given their popularity.

The key to it (as the article from The Atlantic argues) is the involvement in a pattern:  it's a chair bound way to meditatively walk a maze, and that has a certain appeal to people like me with an aversion to sweating.

But in order to cross the boundary between mindful pattern building and more analytical thought, I think I'll work on creating my own version with patterns involving certain politicians heads, or media commentators.   Watch this space...

Update:  it's a rough first attempt, but I call it "The Leyonhjelm Mandala":