About mass shootings

6 Things Americans Should Know about Mass Shootings - Scientific American

Some good information in this article.

It's all about the hair

My God, he's a nut.  This apparently is what people in Dallas came to hear Trump say today:

Friday Spielberg

Steven Spielberg: Indiana Jones won't be killed off - BBC News

I repeat my call from some years ago (when Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was coming):  the perfect way to end Indiana Jones would be for him to be revealed as one of the people being taken up into the mothership at the end of Close Encounters.   You know it makes sense...

Trump and the lion

I'm not sure if the base image is an official Trump one, but it's a little odd, isn't it?   I think it's meant to indicate that Trump is brave like a lion, or is it that he's brave in facing off a lion?  I'm going with the former, and have added my own bit.

Still having an odd feeling about this election

Who am I to disagree with the betting markets and journalists who are already calling it for the Coalition?

The story seems to be that the national swing to (perhaps) 51/50 in favour of Labor is uneven and won't cut it for a Shorten win.

Yet still there seems considerable uncertainty as to what will happen to many seats with Greens and Xenophon playing a big role.   Not sure how Barnaby Joyce is going, but WA seems to be on the nose for the Coalition.   And we haven't even had the campaign launches yet.  Don't they count for anything any more?

It seems to me that Bill Shorten, and most Labor ministers, have looked pretty good in their TV appearances.  Scott Morrison has not.  And Turnbull - well, not entirely sure.   To be honest, I have been busy and not seeing that much on TV lately.  

But for what its worth, to me the "optics" of the situation indicate we should still not be writing off a hung parliament as a possible outcome.

Trump big with the redneck vote; not so big elsewhere

Exclusive: Armitage to back Clinton over Trump - POLITICO: Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under George W. Bush, says he will vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, in one of the most dramatic signs yet that Republican national security elites are rejecting their party’s presumptive nominee.

Armitage, a retired Navy officer who also served as an assistant
secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, is thought by Clinton aides to
be the highest-ranking former GOP national security official to openly
support Clinton over Trump.

“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I would vote for Hillary Clinton,”
Armitage told POLITICO in a brief interview. “He doesn't appear to be a
Republican, he doesn't appear to want to learn about issues. So, I’m
going to vote for Mrs. Clinton.”

Dozens of Republican foreign policy elites have already declared
their unwillingness to support or work for Trump, though far fewer say
they would cast a ballot for Clinton. The latter group includes Max
Boot, a prominent neoconservative military analyst and historian; Mark
Salter, former longtime chief of staff to Republican Sen. John McCain; and retired Army Col. Peter Mansour, a former top aide to retired Gen. David Petraeus.

Spectacular immaturity

Apprentice crew members on their old boss, Donald Trump.

I think it's been very clear from his campaign appearances that Trump is a mental teenager, and one with bullying instincts.   (His pathetic taunts to protesters about "going home to Mommy" are the best example of that.)   But it would appear that he is no better in his own workplace.  

Time to retire

McCain: Obama 'directly responsible' for Orlando shooting

He tried to walk back from it, but what a silly thing to say.

On guard

It's common dog behaviour, it seems, how they love to watch the road out the front window:

She will soon be one year old.  Still scruffy, though:

Some history of gay executions

With all the talk of Islam and its views on death for homosexuality, I wasn't entirely sure when Australia had stopped executing gays (or at least, men convicted of sodomy).

I see from various sites that the last man hanged for sodomy in Sydney was Thomas Parry in 1839, although the last "gay execution" seems to have been one in Tasmania in 1863.

I've read before of scandal in Sydney relating to what convicts were getting up to at night in their barracks, but hadn't read of this more upper class, somewhat amusing, matter before:

But it was clearly a vice that was not confined only to the lower orders. In 1836, Sydney was rocked by the Reverend Yate scandal. This involved a protégé of the very respectable Samuel Marsden who was known as the 'flogging parson' for his penchant, as a magistrate, to hand out severe sentences as a deterrent. Yate was a well known and widely published preacher in England, who had even had an audience with King William IV. On the voyage out to Sydney on the Prince Regent, Yate had spent much time in the company – and the hammock – of the third mate, Edwin Denison. When they arrived in Sydney in June of that year, the two moved into lodgings together in Park Street, where they were joined by another sailor from the Prince Regent, with the unlikely name of Dick Deck. Neighbours soon complained about the men's behaviour, and the scandal became the talk of Sydney, although the Crown Solicitor suggested that 'it seems more than probable that the crime of sodomy cannot be proved against him according to law'. By mid-December of that same year, Yate and Denison had sailed for England, much to the relief of the Anglican community in Sydney.9

Good article on Obama and Islam

The Obama Doctrine: What the President Actually Thinks About Radical Islam - The Atlantic

Trump modestly attempts to repair his relationship with Republican leadership

Donald Trump threatens to go it alone - CNNPolitics.com: Donald Trump slammed GOP leaders on Wednesday for not lining up behind him, implying that he's willing to go forward without their help.
"We have to have our Republicans either stick together or let me just do it by myself. I'll do very well. I'm going to do very well. OK? I'm going to do very well. A lot of people thought I should do that anyway, but I'll just do it very nicely by myself," Trump said, though he did not elaborate on what doing it "by myself" would mean.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also accused his party's leaders of being weak and told them to "please be quiet."
"You know the Republicans, honestly folks, our leaders, our leaders have to get tougher," Trump said during a rally in Atlanta. "Our leaders have to get a lot tougher. And be quiet. Just please be quiet. Don't talk. Please be quiet. Just be quiet to the leaders because they have to get tougher, they have to get sharper, they have to get smarter."

Pretty amusing train wreck we're watching.   

Not every high school safe sex initiative works...

Study: schools that give away condoms see more teen births, not fewer - Vox

Seems that no one is sure of the reasons.  Not enough banana demonstrations, so to speak, is mentioned in the article.

Or is it just that thorough education on the details of sex in a high school setting is one thing, but in-school steps which appear to actually facilitate it is another, not so good idea?   It's not as if condoms are not readily available, at cheap cost, for those teens who want to start a sex life.  Maybe making them responsible enough to go and buy them for themselves encourages responsibility in starting a sex life, generally?   Who knows.

And I hasten to add, again:  does any adult really think that it is a good idea for high school students to be having a sex life at all? 

Looking everywhere, except in the mirror

I'm not at all sure that it was a good idea for a couple of conservatives to write an article in the WSJ entitled The Mystery of Jewish and Asian-American Democratic Loyalty if they weren't going to look at their own side of politics.   (It's all the fault of liberal professors at universities and colleges, is their theory.)  They should have expected this comment:

So, very well-educated people tend to be more liberal.  Full stop.  Think about it.

Or this comment from a college professor (an Asian one, too):

I am a college professor. In order to have my vote, a candidate must pass two preliminary tests: respect for science, and respect for separation of church and state. The first test usually kills about 80% of the republican candidates, and the second kills about half. Very few republicans can pass both; those few who do pass cannot get the party nomination. It is a sad situation. But who can help but the republicans themselves? 

So, I am tempted to say that the current cluelessness of the bulk of the American Right continues.  Except - I do have to give them some credit for baulking at Trump.  On the other hand, as many have said, it is the leadership of the Republicans who really have themselves to blame for his rise in the first place. 

Yes, he is...

From an article entitled "Is Trump losing the GOP?": 

Surely this time it would be different. Surely, after the worst mass shooting in American history, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would choose his words carefully. He would make the case for an effective response to homegrown terror; listen to the counsel of his political team, and offer reassurance to the nation and—crucially—to Republicans who are desperately seeking evidence, even now, that they can embrace the candidate their convention will nominate in a month.

Instead, in a speech riddled with misleading and flatly false statements, Donald Trump ranted incoherently Monday about the need to toughen his Muslim immigration ban, even though the Orlando shooter was born in New York City 29 years ago (at a time when Afghan emigres like his parents were fighting on America’s side against the Soviet Union). In a TV interview, Trump suggested that the president of the United States was in some undefined way sympathetic to the murderous intentions of Islamic terrorists. And in the hours immediately after the massacre, he tweeted a self-congratulatory message about his prescience.

I see that Steve Kates, Australian Trump fanboy extraordinaire, has posted the full Youtube of the said Trump speech, with apparent approval.  Extraordinarily, Kates tells us where to find Trump telling the "the Snake", in which he treats the audience like they're watching Playschool.   We're supposed to be impressed?

Sinclair Davidson appears resigned to Catallaxy being the pro-Trump blog for Australia's nutty conservatives, with "balance" being provided only by his own, occasional, anti-Trump posts.  What a chump.  

In other air-headed Conservative commentator reaction, the sane and impressive speech by Obama against Trump's initial reaction to Orlando gets this sort of reaction from Dinesh D'Souza:

All Trump talking points.   I wonder if D'Souza, whose intellectual descent was chronicled at Vox recently,  has his number saved in Donald's cellphone?

Because the NRA policies have been helping so much in the fight against terrorism so far

Trump Says He Will Seek Anti-Terrorism Advice from the Domestic Terrorist-Loving NRA


What a "say anything" dangerous buffoon.  Trump's words:

“I will be meeting with the NRA, which has given me their earliest
endorsement in a presidential race, to discuss how to ensure Americans
have the means to protect themselves in this age of terror. I will be
always defending the Second Amendment.”

Spielberg speaks

Here's the video of Steven Spielberg's Harvard commencement speech.   Confirms all of my positive assessments of him, except for his choice of shoes when wearing a suit.  (Maybe he has foot issues?)



Update:  didn't mention - his 99 year old Dad is in the audience. 

How to raise tax revenue, sensibly

We're Going to Need More Tax Revenue. Here's How to Raise It.

Found this via Peter Whiteford's twitter feed.  He really strikes me as one of the most sensible economic/social commentators around.

Anyway, although it is about the American tax system, it seems that most of the recommendations translate well to Australia.

Watch an astronaut trying to make himself sick

Pretty good video from that British astronaut Tim Peake up in ISS:

Rather unfortunate discovery for the mice concerned

First rodent found with a human-like menstrual cycle : Nature News & Comment

Mice are a mainstay of biomedical research laboratories. But the rodents are poor models for studying women’s reproductive health, because they don’t menstruate.

Now
researchers at Monash University in Clayton, Australia, say that they
have found a rodent that defies this conventional wisdom: the spiny
mouse (Acomys cahirinus). If the finding holds up, the animal could one day be used to research women's menstruation-related health conditions.