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.

She's such a radical

Hilary Clinton, as quoted at Breitbart (!) sounds such a radical on gun control [/sarc]:

During an interview with the Today Show, she added, “Let’s keep weapons of war off our streets like the one that was used in Orlando.”
Clinton criticized Florida’s gun laws, blaming legislatures for not regulating assault weapons, 50 caliber rifles, or large capacity ammunition magazines. She also blamed Florida for not requiring a permit to purchase a gun, not requiring gun registration, and not requiring gun owners to be licensed to carry a shotgun or a rifle.
“We know the gunman used a weapon of war to shoot down at least 50 innocent Americans and, you know, we won’t even be able to get the congress to prevent terrorists or people on the no-fly list from buying guns,” she said.
Clinton demanded more gun control to stop mass shootings, reminding viewers that the mass shooting in Orlando was the worst in American history.
“Yes, there is a right for law-abiding, responsible Americans to own guns and, yes, there are reasonable common sense measures to try to keep people safe from guns,” she said. “We have to figure out the best way to move forward on that. That’s what I’m committed to doing.”
Clinton condemned gun rights groups after they “scared the heck out of voting officials” on gun control.
“We cannot fall into the trap set by the gun lobby that says if you can’t stop every shooting and every incident, you should not try to stop any,” she said. “That is not how laws work. it’s not common sense.”

Trump panders to the paranoid Right - no surprise

Donald Trump Implies President Obama Was Involved in the Orlando Shooting - The Atlantic

Good article on the 2nd Amendment

How the NRA perverted the meaning of the 2nd Amendment.

Stupid man halves his readership

One odd outcome of the Orlando shootings is that Jim Hoft, (the "stupidest man on the internet", as Little Green Footballs like to call him, with good justification) has come out as a gay Republican.   On Breitbart, no less, with several thousands of comments following.   (Can't be bothered fighting my way through them, although I'm sure some must be interesting reading.)

Nutty conservative Catholic CL over at Catallaxy has been linking to Hoft's Gateway Pundit posts for years.  CL's startling contribution to Catallaxy reaction to the shootings was this:

Let us not forget that Islam is 100 percent correct about such things as gay ‘marriage’ and adoption. 100 percent correct. The gay lobby poses a far bigger threat to civilisation than ISIS.

Leyonhjelm can't resist

So, (hopefully soon to be ex-) Senator Leyonhjelm couldn't hold it back any longer - tweeting the solution to gun massacres in gay nightclubs is for gays to be armed.   Because, yeah, a flurry of bullets from pistols as well as the spray from a rapidly firing AR15 in a semi dark nightclub full of a few hundred dancers is a better solution than - not letting nutters (Islamic or otherwise) getting their hands on a AR15. Not to mention the fact that Florida already has concealed weapon licences, although bars are apparently "gun free zones" by law.*

 What a "guns cure everything" moron.


*  Of course, the appalling gun nutters believe this is unfair.   If Leyonhjelm thinks people going out to a bar or nightclub would feel safer by knowing some patrons are probably carrying a concealed carry pistol, then he should say so; and the rest of Australia can laugh at his face.

Trump and terrorism

Without taking away from the personal tragedies in Orlando, the bigger picture everyone will be thinking about is the extent to which Trump may benefit out of Islamic inspired terrorism (whether or not the killer  appears - like in Sydney's Lindt cafe siege - to be a generic violent nutter from way back, as well as an IS fanboy.)

While Trump fans will think he has already benefited (there is a line already popular with the gormless Right at Catallaxy that "Trump was right",) and there will probably be a hundred pieces of panicky commentary about this is how America slides into becoming a Trumpian fascist nation, I think that in all likelihood, Trump will overreach; and when pressed for details, will not come up with a response that is legally, or even morally, credible.  In fact, with his statement, sensible people (I know:  that's not Trump supporters) will already see overreach.

This is what those who are appalled with Trump need to do - demand he get specific with Constitutional responses that make sense.    Not let him waffle on with his generic loudmouth demands and thought bubbles.  

Update:  when will someone ask Trump about his position on this story from 2015? :

Senate Republicans rejected a bill that aims to stop suspected terrorists from legally buying guns, on Thursday.  The vote came a day after at least 14 people were killed during the San Bernardino massacre in California by two suspects, including a woman said to have pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Forty-five senators voted for the bill and 54 voted against it. One Democrat, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and one Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, crossed party lines.
The measure would have denied people on the terrorist watch list the ability to buy guns.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who sponsored the legislation, argued that former President George W. Bush initially proposed the legislation in 2007, and the Obama administration also supports it.

 Update 2:  more on the general nuttiness of the killer.  Still able to buy an assault rifle, though. 

Madness loves company

United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers - The New York Times

A fascinating article here about how the internet is letting the paranoid find and support each other - and reinforce their mad theories.  (I have never heard of the "T.I." - Targetted Individuals - community before.  It's pretty sad.) 

Another in the series - Untopical Movie Reviews

After recently buying a cheap Blu-ray of the Coen brothers' 2010 version of True Grit, I watched it last weekend.

It was well reviewed when released, and there is much to like about it.   First and foremost - it's a fantastic looking film.   Just gorgeous on Blu-ray, and the town where it starts looks extremely authentic in a way most Western settings struggle to.   [It turns out there's a good reason for that - in the fascinating short Extra feature about the film's production design*, the setting is shown as a street in a real Texas town that had facades built in front of some buildings that were too modern, some period alterations to others, and truckloads of dirt emptied on the paving to make it look like the right era.  It's really awesome, sometimes, to see the effort large scale movie making can go to.  And it was great to realise that my perception of authenticity was justified, and that I hadn't been fooled by a green screened background.] 

Secondly, the Coens are great with loquacious characters in period pieces.   We know, from Ken Burn's The Civil War how eloquent even working class men and women  from this period could be, and the Coens showed a similar flare for such dialogue in Oh Brother Where Art Thou?**  Mind you, I am not at all sure how much of the dialogue is lifted from the novel.  I take it from another extra feature that this movie is probably closer to the novel than the John Wayne version.

Thirdly - well, actually, there is no thirdly.   Here I have to move on to a couple of issues I had with it.

Number 1 on the downside:  Jeff Bridges being allowed to growl his way through scores of pages of dialogue.  I've never been a huge fan of his; he always strikes me as a bit of a B actor who has been out of his league in A movies.  But really, in this film, his line delivery was too often too much of a challenge to follow:  it was rough and gravely to the point of being hard to understand.   And it makes the plot of the film (in terms of his background story) too difficult to follow.

I also think the film has a bit of a structural problem.  Look, I can barely remember the John Wayne version (I probably saw it on TV in the late 1970's), and certainly was never a Wayne fan; but I do remember thinking that the climatic scene (the horseback confrontation with the four outlaws) was effective, and felt iconic as soon as you saw it.

But the same scene in this re-make plays flat, for some reason.  Perhaps because the preamble is poorly set up - there's some "past" between the two main antagonists, but it was lost in the thickly accented shouting at each other before the charge begins.    I also think it may be that the scene just seems to spring up too suddenly.  I would have to watch the movie again (and I almost certainly will) to work out why this climax seems poorly handled, compared to the cheesier John Wayne version, but I think it is.

That said, there are other sequences and images that do work very well (for example, it's an extremely realistic looking hanging sequence that startles by not pulling back from the actual violence of the act).   And  apart from Bridges, the actors are all quite fine.  (Even Matt Damon, who I often find oddly unconvincing.)

So I enjoyed it very much as a "nearly great, but flawed in interesting ways" sort of experience.  Recommended.  


*  You can see a shorter version of it on Youtube.

** Production design was great  in that one too - along with Spielberg, they seem to care about production design to an extremely pleasing degree.

Remembering a parody

How the Gremlins 2 Creators Feel About Their Donald Trump Parody Now | WIRED

Yes, I was wondering if anyone recalled the Trump like character in Gremlins 2 - which I thought was a much better (and much funnier) movie than the original.   

Trump gets the Roseanne Barr endorsement he so richly deserves

It's probably not worth reading, but here you go.

Amanda on Adams

Dilbert has gone fascist: The strange unrequited love Scott Adams seems to have for Donald Trump - Salon.com

I haven't fully followed the weird Scott Adams hearts (but does not endorse) Trump saga, but Amanda Marcotte seems to have.    And I suspect her analysis may be close to the truth.   (Although she doesn't consider my theory - that Adams will later claim that he managed to fool everyone with his own powerful mind control techniques.)

This never works

Public servants told it's Armidale or find new jobs

It could be that the audience at Q&A this week was not representative of the electorate (of course it wasn't, some will say), but I did get the impression from it that Barnaby  Joyce could be in real trouble.  It would be a very bad look for a narrowly returned Turnbull government to have lost its Deputy PM.

In fact, this whole election campaign is a bit weird.   It seems we keep hearing mainly about Liberal seats that are in trouble for various reasons; the Greens are probably more electable than ever before with their relatively moderate sounding leader; and Malcolm came across to me as a bit desperate to change his image with his "me and my Dad" video - which I haven't yet watched;  yet the betting market (based, presumably, on some internal polling stuff we don't know) seems thoroughly convinced of a comfortable Coalition win.

A documentary getting strong reviews

De Palma Reviews - Metacritic

I guess it'll be on SBS soon enough.

I like quite a few De Palma films, but his peak must surely be The Untouchables.   (And, hey, I just Googled the movie, and up came a link to a 3/5 star review by Ebert, who apparently complained about de Palma's "curiously lead-footed direction" (!!)   I knew there was a reason I never could trust Ebert's reviews - he was sometimes right, but at other times so off the mark I didn't really bother regularly following him.)

Sequel-itis discussed

Hollywood Has a Big Millennial Problem - The Atlantic

Not sure I've learnt much new from this article, but sure, everyone recognises there is too much money going into too many sequels.  Even if I did like the Star Wars, Bond, Mission Impossible and Jurassic movies of last year.  Sorry...

Republicans on the nose

Just How Bad an Election Night Was It for California Republicans? - The New York Times

The political problem of climate change

It would be funny if it were not worrying, but this post at Real Climate shows how the American Right (and a large slab of ours) likes to "double down" when their beliefs on climate change are challenged:

My study asked the question: “how do Republican individuals perceive persuasive information on climate change action, and what types of information are more or less effective?” To answer this question, I conducted a survey experiment wherein respondents in the treatment conditions were asked to read a paragraph about climate change. Each paragraph linked climate change to a prominent concept in American politics (either free markets, national security, poverty alleviation, or natural disaster preparation), attributed the message to a fictional but realistic-sounding source (either a Republican former Congressman or Democrat), and ended with a call for public action on the issue. These passages were rigorously pretested to ensure realism and impact.

The experiment, conducted in March 2014, used a nationally representative sample of 478 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, who were randomly sorted into one of the eight treatment groups or the control group, where respondents were asked in a single sentence to consider climate change as a political issue. Afterwards, all respondents were asked a series of questions to assess their support for or opposition to governmental action against climate change, their likelihood of taking personal action on the issue, and how sure they felt about their climate change opinions.

What I found was that every single treatment condition failed to convince respondents. In fact, treating Republicans with persuasive information made them more resistant to climate action regardless of the content or sourcing of that information. Overall, simply being exposed to pro-climate action communication appeared to polarize Republicans even further; they became more opposed to governmental action and less likely to take personal action compared to the control group. They also became more certain of their negative opinions on the issue, displaying significantly lower attitudinal ambivalence compared to the control group. What’s more, all of these treatment effects doubled to tripled in size for respondents who reported high personal interest in politics, all statistically significant outcomes. These highly politically interested individuals make up roughly one-third of Republicans in the sample and in the United States.

 If you ask me, a large part of the problem is due to Republican leadership:   if you had the leaders of the party actually prepared to tell their supporters that, sorry, they are wrong on this, in the same way that anti-vaxxers are wrong and hold beliefs supported by only a handful of contrarians whose policy views are against the public interest, you may start to get some marginalisation of the denialists at least underway.  Who is going to be the first high profile Republican leader to take such a position?

It's the current leadership, pandering to their nutty support base, that prevents any movement.  But why should I expect any different?   It is a party full of people ideologically devoted to cutting taxes, no matter what the circumstances, as the economic cure all, listening to just one set of evidence resistant economists. 

When will the Party come back to its senses?

Kristina arguing reasonably

Labor has not backflipped on corporate tax cuts. Here are the facts | Kristina Keneally | Opinion | The Guardian

I suspect she is right - the benefits of corporate tax cuts are being oversold by many economists, particularly in the context of the Federal government's current need to not be giving away revenue.  Small government fans, of course, think it's a great idea, because lower revenue is never a problem for them - it means smaller government.

Yet another cleverer than we thought animal

Fish can recognize human faces, new study shows

Trump secures the Australian comb-over vote

That's Maurice Newman, of course.  Completely un-expected - not.

Look at meeeeeeeee

Just a minor observation, but for a person such as Tim "Freedomboy" Wilson, who has always self promoted (and posted selfies) with an intensity that suggests a mental teenager,  becoming the Liberal candidate for a safe seat has been like entering Seventh Heaven.    It's his perfect excuse for a zillion photos of his beaming face to be printed.  Some examples from his twitter feed:

That last one features another young person who always strikes me as a bit of a self promoting right wing lightweight - Grace Collier.

And how much of a swing would be needed for Labor to unseat the Coalition?   According to Wikipedia - 11%.

Tim, you can ease up a bit now.  No, seriously.  Your over-promotion is probably doing you more harm than good.  On second thoughts - just keep it up:  there's no way an electorate could ever get sick of seeing your face and start thinking you're a vain try hard.   Have you tried sky-writing yet?  

Tuesday links

Work's still distracting me from the important job of blogging, but here are a few recent links of note:

*  anyone who was taking Dilbert writer Scott Adams even half seriously on his "Trump as Master Persuader" meme should perhaps read his latest post in which he endorses Hilary Clinton for the obvious reason [/sarc] that she's now sounding persuasive and may well trigger a race war in which he [Adams] would be a target for assassination.  

I wouldn't be surprised if he later reveals that anyone who believed him is a victim of his own persuasive powers.   The guy's just a tad nutty, and an attention seeker.

*  The Boston Globe has set up a very good looking site called STAT - Reporting from the Frontiers of Health and Medicine.  (I don't think it's a great name though - Googling it comes up with lots of alternatives.)  And it's from there that you find an article that raises a good point relevant to recent transplant news:  How do you ask grieving parents to donate their son's penis.

*  The Conversation looks at the question of whether East Coast lows that caused much flooding and wave damage the last few days are expected to become less or more frequent under global warming.  The answer:  modelling suggests they may become fewer, but those that do come could be stronger.  I don't think that's an encouraging answer.  Here's a screen shot from The Guardian yesterday of the before and after situation at that Sydney beach:


Update:   I think Slate is probably taking the right mocking tone in its Trump Apocalypse Watch, and this entry about his ridiculous comments on judges is good.

It's annoying, but I have to keep re-assuring my kids that Trump is not going to become President. 

Wait (oh OK, I'm bringing up racism)

I've got a lot of work on my plate at the moment.  As much as I enjoy not getting to it by posting here instead, I'm not going to do that today.  Well, at least not until this evening.

OK, wait.  From the weekend:  I really hate Andrew Bolt's posts when a migrant/s is/are caught in a crime, and he says "who let them in?"   Yeah, Andrew:  the government hasn't yet got a Precognition Unit up and running, so instead I suppose we just should go with "don't let in blacks or Muslims" hey?   The guys in the video you're complaining about (and of course their behaviour was bad) don't even look to be adults.   How the hell are governments supposed to be able to tell which children/teenagers coming with their families will get into trouble, and which won't?

It really is pretty disgusting race-baiting to the Pauline Hanson level voter.  Up there with Trump bringing on stage victims of Mexicans.   And what about Steve Kates and the subtle racism that goes over a treat at Catallaxy?  Hey wait a minute....A couple of days ago Kates published one of his "Obama is the worst most disgusting Presidents eva!" posts and the first paragraph is now shown as this:

Sure it’s funny in a pathetic kind of way. Sure the president of the United States has been elected because he can read a teleprompter. Sure we know he pretended to have written two books when we know the first one was written by the communist Bill Ayres and the second was just a gaggle of campaign rhetoric written by no one in particular. The only people who will find the video truly funny are our enemies, the enemies of the United States, the enlightenment and Western civilisation. They laugh at us because so many across the US are simpletons and fools, and their president is all the proof they need.

I am sure that's been editted.  The post originally read - I would say with about 95% certainty (anyone please correct me if I am wrong):   "sure the president of the United States has been elected because he is black and can read a teleprompter."

I very nearly posted about it when I read it, but didn't.   Can any of my readers confirm my recollection?

If it was pressure from Sinclair that led to the change, good.  But he's left so much slide on this blog, I have my doubts.  

Blogroll clean up time

It's hard keeping a blogroll current, isn't it?   Links change and hide in other locations (if not disappearing forever); I keep on wondering for how long I can possibly keep the few formerly respectable, now so utterly partisan and driven insane by the Obama Presidency that they're rarely worth a look, right wing sites still on the list.   (Well, Hot Air I'll keep, but the "columnists" at PJ Media just haven't been worth reading for years.) 

I've also got to try to remember any blogs/sites that I have been meaning to add but not got around to yet.  NPR was probably the most recent one.  The Barfblog is surely the world's best and most active blog on food poisoning, and deserves a place.

As I think I have lamented before, there are actually few good, active sites or blogs on things I've always been interested in - the paranormal and even UFOs.   (By the way, my shower thought of the other night - is it possible that the now highly debris cluttered region of low earth orbit be part of the reason we don't see many alien visitors in the last couple of decades?  I thought there was one or two pretty well testified sightings from the 60's or 70's of what looked like satellites that suddenly took paths that could not possibly be followed by Earth launched ones, but I haven't heard of anything like that for a long time.  Perhaps because it has become too dangerous for them to hang around there.)

Somewhere on twitter I noticed recently a list of science fiction authors who tweet/blog.  Not that I really read any of them lately, but one or two might be worthwhile.  Jerry Pournelle is increasingly frail, and he's a bit of a climate change skeptic, further confirming the rule that denialism is a club for old, white men, and silly (usually rich) but slightly younger libertarians.

Speaking of aging climate change denialists, it was funny to read that Mark Steyn  is asking the court to hurry up with his defamation case because his expert witnesses are mostly old and at risk of dying before they can give evidence at this trial.  (He noted that one had died already - I'm betting it was Bob Carter.)   As far as I can make out, Steyn has taken the too-cute-by-half technique of doubling down on over-the-top criticism of Mann and climate science generally since this action started, all as a way of being able to argue at trial  "come on, look how I exaggerate and carry on all the time - no one can really take it seriously, and nor should Michael Mann."   It's a pretty shameful thing to do, and it's no wonder no lawyer is involved.

Anyway, blogroll clean up later tonight.  Or tomorrow.

  

LDP games

Election 2016: Cash for candidacy: Leaked documents show $500,000 offer to become Liberal Democratic senate candidate

Senator Blofeld Leyonhjelm seems to be having some serious leakage issues lately.

All rather interesting;  and all confirming what a joke his little dog and pony party is.

Not very clever

I watched some of the much promoted ABC aboriginal superhero TV series Cleverman last night.

A few comments:

*  is it just me, or does the body hair on the "hairies" look really, really fake;
*  just before the daughter hairy was shot, I think her Mum was clipping her nail, which I could swear wobbled like it was a not-properly-glued on fake nail;
*  the newspaper/media owner baddie was terribly arch acting.  They should have put a moustache for him to twirl and be done with;
*  the whole thing suffers from the over-ernestness that seems typical of TV or movies which try aboriginal quasi mysticism.  (I'm thinking the fire sparks sequence in The Right Stuff as another example, but I'm sure there are others not coming to mind.)

I doubt it is worth re-visiting.

Good to see

Hillary Clinton Warns Donald Trump’s ‘Thin Skin’ Would Set Off War or Economic Crisis - The New York Times

Friday history snippet

An email from Literary Review contains this bit of information which I had not heard before:

Over the course of the 20th century, British prime ministers reacted to the intelligence services in various ways. Neville Chamberlain turned a blind eye to reports that appeasement only made Hitler more aggressive, even after the foreign secretary had drawn his attention to the fact that the Führer had called him an Arschloch (‘arsehole’) by underlining the word;

Good PR for rats

Rats in the ranks? Tanya Plibersek left cradling a rat in new Chaser stunt

Yes, it is odd that pet rats are featuring heavily in this election campaign.

Of course, my opinion of Tanya Plibersek is only enhanced by her natural rat handling manner, indicating that she is reasonably fond of them, as all the nicest people are....

Not interested

Wow.  Henry Miller's work, and personal attitudes, do sound pretty repulsive in this article.  Yet, as it notes, he had some big-names-in-literature endorsements at the time.

A proposition with which I have complete sympathy

Running a marathon is a dangerous, expensive, stupid, meaningless task. Don’t do it.

Here's a key section (not sure if I was writing it that I would bother including figures for "chafing", though):

Indeed a vast, disturbing literature has now accumulated on the ill effects of running marathons. Studies find that up to 1 in 12 participants end up seeking medical help during the race. (At
hot-weather events, runners can end up “dropping like flies.”) As many as four-fifths report having gastrointestinal problems such as bloating, cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, and fecal incontinence while on the course. Some runners suffer from blood poisoning. Others must endure a blitz of dermatological conditions: sore nipples (affecting up to 1 in 6 on race day); chafing (another 1 in 6); blisters (1 in 3); and jogger’s toe (1 in 40). Given all the risks, it’s no wonder that some marathon organizers have asked doctors to embed as race participants so they can quickly tend to runners who collapse.

When researchers consider all the injuries that accrue during the period of training—and not just on the day of the marathon itself—they find even greater cause for alarm. One study looked at 255 participants in an extended, 32-week marathon training program and found that 90 of them—that’s 35 percent—experienced “overuse” injuries. (Among the most common training ailments are anterior knee pain, Achilles tendinitis, shin splints, and stress fractures.) Another research group surveyed 725 men who raced in the 2005 Rotterdam Marathon, and found that more than half of them had sustained a running injury over the course of the year. Among those who sustained a new injury during the month leading up to the race, one-quarter were still suffering, to some extent, three months later.

Cultural notes

*  The BBC has a story about the odd, and secretive, ways that Indians go about having a drink.

*  An American survey (and not one of the silly ones done by a condom manufacturer for publicity) seems to show an apparent rise in sexual experimentation of the same-sex variety (or at least, preparedness to admit to it).  Up to about 8 percent now, and the differences between the genders is interesting.  It's a bit funny to read the "lesbian before graduation" term being used in the reports - I remember I first heard it used by Libbie Gore on one of her shows on the ABC many, many years ago - and I imagine it probably really annoys some lesbians.

*  In other survey news, I stumbled across this one when looking at the Gallop website for other reasons:

1% of russians approve of u.s. leadership, the lowest approval in the world in 2015 and the lowest approval gallup has ever recorded.

Russians are a bit of a worry, to put it mildly.

[And I reckon if you did the "have you ever had a sexual experience with a member of the same sex" survey in that country, the number would probably be "- 8%".  At least if Putin had anything to do with it.]

Fun while it lasted, I suppose

Police make first arrests over Y1.4 bil theft from ATMs ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

This crime - stealing $12 million or so from Japanese ATMs - was the sort of one you would expect to see in a movie, committed by likeable rogues. But there were always too many people involved for it to have any hope of long term success.

Loudmouth Canadian disappointed there is no market for right wing rants and poetry

Spineless, Supine and Proud Of It — Quadrant Online

Quadrant has become the home for the Tea Party style constituents of Australian conservatism, and has painted itself into a corner where its subscribers are in the overlap section of  the Venn diagram with "people who succumb to the pleadings of the IPA for subscribers because Gina's donations have (apparently) dried up."

Look, how can proponents of the free market really complain that their "product" can't stand on its own two feet?   Especially while they keep running the argument that the ABC is ridiculously biased and doesn't present the conservative side?  Surely that means the ABC is not "crowding out" the views in their product?

I find it hard to pick between James Allan and Rowan Dean in the competition for the title of Australia's most irritating conservatives.  (Yes, I find them worse than Bolt in manner).  

Krugman considers the narrative

Good post here by Krugman, complaining about media "narratives" that don't really hold up to scrutiny. 

Big money still doesn't believe in climate change

See, I occasionally learn something from reading the Dunning-Kruger Blog (aka Catallaxy):  JC kindly quotes a Wall Street Journal editorial that praises Trump for his climate change ignoring energy "policy".

This is a real scandal, isn't it?  That the newspaper of business and big money is still, despite recent records,  denying that there is any reason to take climate change seriously.   It's like they get their science from Watts Up With That and Lomborg exclusively.

And speaking of those two ridiculous sources of advocacy, have a look at the graphs on sea levels at this post at Open Mind.    (I have posted that Lomborg illustration before - but I see the technique is repeated by others.  How can anyone take Lomborg seriously when they see this example of how disingenuously he can argue?)

And  here's the recent article about the Dunning-Kruger effect and Trump that I've been meaning to link to.

Quite right

Leaks, secrets and the really scary thing about the NBN raids

I don't fret much about meta-data access, but I reckon Holmes is right that it's ridiculous that even the recipients of a leaked NBN report are in danger of prosecution.

But this is what the fascist-lite Coalition government has acclimatised the public to.

(Need I repeat the point - for years, silly Lefties have flung about "fascist" as an all purpose complaint against Coalition Prime Ministers.  Yet when we got a Coalition government under Abbott that actually comes closest to the name, the insult has fallen out of fashion.  Strange.  Perhaps a bit of the "boy who cried wolf" effect going on?)

The nutty, nutty libertarians of America

Gary Johnson needs to leave the Libertarian Party behind.

A very amusing read here about the convention of the nuttiest political group of all - the American Libertarians.  

Slow news day

Some days, the morning scan of the internet just doesn't bring up anything all that obviously blogworthy.

So, just a bit of conservative Catholic trolling instead:  this photo will irritate them:

The story, even more so:

Pope Francis awarded medals to George Clooney, Salma Hayek and Richard Gere in recognition of their contributions to a Vatican education project.
The Hollywood stars were in Rome on Sunday at an event for the Scholas Occurentes (Schools Meet) global educational initiative that Pope Francis launched.
Scholas Occurentes works in 82 countries with 400,000 schools and other education institutions, aiming to bring together children from different cultures and religions.

Funny, isn't it, how the cultural warrior, climate change denying, conservative Catholics are less concerned about wildly erratic Donald Trump becoming President than they are about Pope Francis.

Speaking of Trump (and breaking my own complaint that there are too many words being written about him), here's someone who finds that Trump's scattergun approach to avoiding answers reminds him of his late father's early Alzheimer's strategy.   I see that Trump is 70, but you get the impression he may have always blustered like that in private.  Still, I can see how his manner does look like the avoidance strategy of someone with early dementia...

Prediction vindicated

I made a very specific prediction in September 2014 about Helen Dale's future as a high profile staffer for Senator Leyonhjelm:

Update 2:   I'll make a prediction:  she will not be in the job for more than a year or two.

And so, it has come to pass, and not even via her losing her job if Leyonhjelm fails to be re-elected in the unexpectedly early election.  Having held the position for, what, 20 months, how more accurate could I possibly be?

Says Leyonhjelm:

"I'm disappointed [Helen Dale] chose to quit in the middle of a very intense campaign, but I expected her to leave after the election anyway," Senator Leyonhjelm wrote in the email dated May 28.

In maths news

Two-hundred-terabyte maths proof is largest ever : Nature News

Well, I didn't know this:

Computer-assisted proofs too large to be directly verifiable by humans
have become commonplace, and mathematicians are familiar with computers
that solve problems in combinatorics — the study of finite discrete
structures — by checking through umpteen individual cases. Still, “200
terabytes is unbelievable”, says Ronald Graham, a mathematician at the
University of California, San Diego. The previous record-holder is
thought to be a 13-gigabyte proof², published in 2014.

And how big is a 200Tb proof?:

...roughly equivalent to all the digitized text held by the US Library of
Congress. The researchers have created a 68-gigabyte compressed version
of their solution — which would allow anyone with about 30,000 hours of
spare processor time to download, reconstruct and verify it — but a
human could never hope to read through it.

Out of sight, out of mind

The Philippines has 1.8 million abandoned children. Here's what keeps many from adoption - LA Times

It seems to me that the matter of extreme poverty in the Philippines does not get much attention in the Western media these days.  This story paints a very bleak picture of the problem there, right in Manila.

Weekend stuff

*  I reckon Jamelle Bouie at Slate is spot on about Trump:

All of this raises a question: If the media didn’t make Trump popular—if it’s actually done the reverse—then how did he win the Republican primary? One answer is that Trump has broken the rules of politics—he’s killed the dungeon master, changed the character sheets, rewritten American politics into a game of his own making. This isn’t just wrong, it buys into the myth of Trump as a force of will and power who can reshape reality to his liking.

The better explanation, the one that treats Trump like an important force but not a dispositive one, is that Donald Trump won the Republican primary because the Republican Party is broken. Years of disdain—for moderation, for compromise, for governance, expertise, and conventional qualifications—have merged with long-exploited currents of bigotry to produce an electorate primed for a man like Donald Trump. Republicans put a Trump-like figure on the 2008 presidential ticket, backed Trump-like figures in the 2012 primaries, and even solicited Trump himself for an endorsement that same year. It was only a matter of time before Republican voters clamored for the real deal.

If you trace Trump to institutional failure within the Republican Party, then it’s hard to say he can scramble the general electorate like he did the primary one. For all of its problems, the two party contest isn’t dysfunctional; Democrats will fight hard to stop Trump. CNN taking the bait and airing his bluster 24/7 isn’t going to help him.

*  The New York Times has people pointing out that Trump's "energy policy" is just empty sloganeering, with no attention to economic reality.  Apart from the matter of how long OPEC will make oil so cheap that its getting uneconomic to drill for it in parts of the US, there's the obvious contradiction of this:

One major consequence of the surge in domestic natural gas production has been a turn by electricity generators toward gas from coal. That has cost thousands of coal jobs. Yet Mr. Trump has both vowed to increase natural gas production even as he promises to restore coal jobs, scoffed Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard.

“Trump will presumably support less regulation and other actions to encourage greater use of fracking. That would tend to lower natural gas prices,” Mr. Stavins wrote in an email. “And, therefore, Trump’s promised support of greater natural gas fracking would actually have the effect of lowering demand for coal, causing more mines to close.”

Mr. Stavins added, “He can’t have it both ways — talk up expanding natural gas supply when in North Dakota, and talk about bringing back coal mining jobs when in Kentucky!”

* As far as I can tell, Trump is getting more and more popular at Catallaxy threads - a sure sign that his appeal is to aging, sexist, white, mostly male culture warriors who are easily swayed by politicians for all the wrong reasons. 

Perhaps JC, who was getting all excited about the Trump "let the oil and gas flow" policy can explain here in comments the error in the NYT's article.

*  Speaking of stupidity at Catallaxy, here's lizzie, self confessed (actually, self proclaimed) trophy wife; nanny employing, continually jet setting mother for whom I think the term "the vanity press" might have been coined, following the Steve Kates' line:

In the popular mind, anthropogenic climate change, an unproven hypothesis, is looking less and less like a scientific proposition these days (not that it ever did to those with a critical eye), more and more like the green fable that it is.

Yes, even after "the pause" has ended quite spectacularly, Sydney having an unusually warm autumn, the Arctic ice cap looking set for a new record melt, and each year being globally hotter than the previous for - how years now? - it's more like a "green fable".   Nothing will convince her, short of her rich husband having a conversion.

*  It seemed that it was a unusual weekend for lightning in Europe, no?

The remote community problem

Just to further confound matters regarding the sad state of aboriginal affairs (particularly regarding Aurukun, which seems to have been on a long term descent into increasing dysfunction, despite much government attention), I was just listening to Warren Entsch - the straight talking Liberal with outback "cred" -  putting a lot of the blame on the education system that Noel Pearson has been championing.

Here I thought Pearson was a bit of a hero to the right side of politics, and his idea that kids finish their education at boarding schools sounds intuitively a good idea to us white folk down south.

Yet Entsch says that the kids don't have the educational and social skills to cope with the boarding school when they arrive, frequently run away and end up back in Aurukun in a more hopeless position than before.

Here's a summary of his take on the matter, from yesterday's news.

Pearson seems to be blaming other things, although I'm not sure what he expects.   Teachers up there to live in isolated camps with barbed wire around them?

But then I see today that his idea is to get many, many more kids out of Aurukun into work experience elsewhere, presumably with the (not so clearly stated) intention that they don't go back there to live:

The high-profile indigenous leader confirmed last night that in-community schooling was halted at Year 7 two years ago after his Cape York Academy was brought in to pilot welfare reform.

But Mr Pearson said there should be no going back to offering high school to Year 10, as was formerly the case in Aurukun, as this had been “extended child-minding” that had no value to stud­ents who didn’t want to be in class.

Instead, a scheme that has put eight Aurukun young people to work fruit-picking and in a South Australian abattoir should be widened to cover the “shadow group” of youths at the centre of a security scare that forced the evacuation of local primary school teachers for the second time in a month and the school to close.

“We just need to scale it up by 10,” Mr Pearson told The Australian. “Instead of eight, we need 80. And after six months of fruit-picking or on a harvest trail or in an abattoir … you will then have the basis for entry-level labourers to go on to work in a mine or in a fulltime job.
“Our problem and challenge is we have to scale up the number of youth who are taken out of an ­environment that is pretty toxic to them.”

Well, I guess this makes sense:  really,hasn't it always seemed logical that remote aboriginal communities that do not have any connection to economic activity are always likely to be full of social problems.   Put a bunch of unemployed white people in the same situation, and you wouldn't expect much different.

And even when there is just one economic activity near a remote community, such as one mine, or luxury resort, I get the impression that only a handful of the locals usually have the skill set and discipline to get a good living out of working for it. 

But Pearson's suggestion is a hell of an expensive way to try to encourage people away from living in such places.  And if they get the work experience, but end up back at Aurukun to be near kin, and just go back on welfare because there is no economic activity there, it would have been for nothing...

Local custom enforced

Swiss region: Muslim boys must shake female teachers' hands - The Jakarta Post

Can't say I am feeling any sympathy for the Muslims concerned:

The Central Islamic Council of Switzerland accused the authorities of
"grossly overstepping their competency," saying such measures won't help
integration but rather contribute to a feeling of alienation among
Muslims. The council said it would take legal action against any effort
to apply the sanctions, and ignore any fines.

It's only a handshake, for goodness sake.

Update:  mind you, ultra Orthodox Jews can be unreasonable about the proximity to women, too:

In a similar case based on religious beliefs, media reports said an 81-year-old Jewish lawyer is suing the Israeli airline El Al after being asked to move on a New York- Tel Aviv flight in December when an ultra-orthodox Jewish man objected to sitting next to her. 

A very sarcastic piece on Thiel

How Can We Make You Happy Today, Peter Thiel? | WIRED

Buried within the story - the part the Republicans won't want to talk about

Hillary Clinton Is Criticized for Private Emails in State Dept. Review - The New York Times: The report found that while dozens of State Department employees used personal email accounts periodically over the years, only three officials were found to have used it “exclusively” for day-to-day operations: Mrs. Clinton; Colin Powell, the secretary of state under President George W. Bush; and Scott Gration, the ambassador to Kenya from 2011 to 2012.

While State Department officials never directly told Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Powell that they needed to end their use of personal email, the report found, they did do so with Mr. Gration, a lower-level diplomat who did not have the same political clout.

So I'm more Marxist than I knew?

I don't always find Yanis Varoufakis that good in interviews:  I sometimes find his economic advice a bit hard to follow.

But here in an article that shows us The Guardian as the wild mix of the silly and the sensible that it is (see my previous post),  Varoufakis calls himself an "erratic Marxist" and seems to me to make much sense.   (I thought Jason Soon respected his views - but I hadn't realised what a polar opposite of a small government proponent he is.)   Take this paragraph, for example:

“Because what Australians do not understand is that there is a major disconnect between the United States’ official ideology and its practice. The ideology is one of free market, but the practice is one of a state that is extremely activist, and is investing very heavily in whole networks of innovation and production: the military industrial complex, the medical industrial complex, even the prison industrial complex. They are investing heavily through the state to create networks of value creation, and actually producing things. And Australia is moving very rapidly into divesting itself of actual production.”

And how about this paragraph (which would mark him in the mind of Sinclair Davidson and the IPA as the economic Anti-Christ):

The idea that individuals create wealth and that all governments do is come along and tax them is what Varoufakis calls “a preposterous reversal of the truth”.
“There is an amazing myth in our enterprise culture that wealth is created individually and then appropriated by the state to be distributed.
“We are conceptualising what is happening in society as if we are an archipelago of Robinson Crusoes, everybody on an island, creating our own thing individually and then a boat comes along and collects it and redistributes it. It’s not true. We are not individual producers, we produce things collectively.”

 He sounds also as if he would be completely in favour of the Labor policy on negative gearing.

I like him more than I realised. 

Every time you think we've reached "Peak Guardian", it turns out wrong

Look, I'm a bit reluctant to give this publicity, but the reason the article is a new "peak Guardian" is not so much that it appears on their site per se, but the way the opening paragraph invites sympathetic understanding:

It’s easy to laugh at a grown man in a rubber dog suit chewing on a squeaky toy. Maybe too easy, in fact, because to laugh is to dismiss it, denigrate it – ignore the fact that many of us have found comfort and joy in pretending to be animals at some point in our lives.

As you might expect, though, the comments thread is very active, and very mocking.

Quantum saves free will - again?

New Age-ish books on quantum physics in the 70's and 80's, as well as the quantum mind theory of Penrose and Hameroff,* seemed to provide grounds to argue that, in one way or another, quantum effects could be key to consciousness, and even free will.

This likeable use of quantum theory (well, for those of us who think the concept of free will is important) has  become unpopular with modern physicists and hard nosed, atheistic, philosophers, with the likes of Sean Carroll, Sabine Hossenfelder, Sam Harris and a host of others arguing that, basically, you're a doofus who doesn't understand science properly if you think there could possibly be true free will, or "downwards causation" by the mind.

[And, by the way - I have my doubts that they are being consistent - or honest - when they argue that the lack of true free will does not mean you have to give up on notions of morality and socially important things like punishment for crime.  But that should be a matter for another post.]

Anyhow, this is all preamble to a link to a paper on arXiv which, as papers at that site go, is understandable for quite large sections, and argues that, properly understood, quantum mechanics does indeed mean there are emergent new properties, and "downward causation".

Now, I have read it through once, and do not understand every point.  Or perhaps even the key point, properly.

But it doesn't sound nutty - much of what they cover I have read enough to know is not nonsense - and it seems that the authors promise another paper specifically on free will.

I have to say this paper appeals strongly to me because of the frequent reaction I have to the anti free will physicists:  it's very odd that they are perfectly willing to ask me to swallow logs of intuitive nonsense (such as it being quite possible that there are continually created versions of me wandering off into non accessible multiple universes of the Many Worlds Theory) while at the same time calling me an idiot for believing the speck that is most naturally intuitive thing in the world - that I am free to choose whether to write this post, or not.   And yes, although it sounds paradoxical at first, but the wildly non intuitive results of quantum theory does seem to be the "natural" place where one might find something that feels intuitive, but on paper isn't supposed to be there.

Am I making sense?   (I wondered the other day, incidentally, whether the idea of the entire universe "downward causing" itself in a giant time loop that future intelligence creates - I am still fond of Tipler's Omega Point ideas - might have some implication for believing in more localised downward causation.)

Who knows:  this might be an important paper for the rehabilitation of free will amongst physicists, and those who doubt their own experience of life.

Here's the abstract:

We show that several interpretations of quantum mechanics admit an ontology of objects and events. This ontology reduces the breach between mind and matter. When humans act, their actions do not appear explainable in mechanical terms but through mental activity: motives, desires or needs that propel them to action. These are examples of what in the last few decades have come to be called "downward causation". Basically, downward causation is present when the disposition of the whole to behave in a certain way cannot be predicted from the dispositions of the parts. The event ontology of quantum mechanics allow us to show that systems in entangled states present emergent new properties and downward causation.

Now, I should re-read it to see if more sinks in... 

* Their microtubules and quantum effects theory is not, by the way, entirely dead yet.  See this report from 2014.

Will it last?

As more states legalize marijuana, adolescents' problems with pot decline: Fewer adolescents also report using marijuana -- ScienceDaily

Interesting to read that marijuana use amongst teens in America overall seems to have declined a bit from 2002 to 2013.  Is there a reason it has become not so cool to try or use it?

In any event, with the high profile change in State law in Colorado taking effect only in late 2013, and with other States following, it will be interesting to see if this holds up.

Oooooh

Spielberg to speak at 365th Commencement | Harvard Gazette

I'll be looking out for the Youtube of that...

Update:  and to further bolster my belief that he is a genuinely nice guy, as well as being the most talented  director who has ever lived, a comment from actor Mark Rylance, who has worked with him twice now:  

Sex and the law

I take it from this article that, with reform of Queensland laws, the effective age of consent in all Australian states will be 16, regardless of the type of sex involved.  No, wait a minute, it's still basically 17 in South Australia, apparently.  And Tasmania.

I see that some Australian States do have the sense to also have "Romeo and Juliet" laws, which provide a defence if the age difference is not more than 2 (or 3, or even 5[?!]) years.  (In fact, it is Tasmania with the high age of 17 that has laws allowing a defence if up to 5 years age difference.  Odd.)

Queensland doesn't, though.   Wouldn't that seem a sensible reform?   If even Texas has it, can't we?

On a related issue, I did feel sorry for the old guys who appeared in the report on 7.30 last night who attended the Victorian government's apology for past governments having criminalised homosexual sex.  From this point in history, it is a little hard to understand the intense interest in policing such activities in the mid 20th century.   I guess part of it may have to do with people hating the idea of public sexual activity, which is something still to be disdained; but the irony is, I suppose, that making it a crime even in private almost certainly encouraged secretive and opportunistic liaisons in public.    

We all love reading about ancient toilets, no?

From an interesting feature article at Nature News, about ancient toilets:

Asteroid uncertainty?

How Big Are Those Killer Asteroids? A Critic Says NASA Doesn’t Know. - The New York Times

Can you imagine the Gamergate guys' reaction to this?

It's Bond, Jane Bond: Gillian Anderson throws hat into the ring to be next 007 | Film | The Guardian

Stop paying attention

My feeling is that there are way too many words being written about Donald Trump. 

He's a joke who was helped to get where he is with minimal spend because of the fascination of the media with how far a joke campaigner could go.  Now the media is full of "maybe he's not a joke after all!" semi-panicked writing from all and sundry, on the basis of a polling boost from winning the nomination.   (Even though American polling is fraught with complications and a post nomination boost is not unusual.)

All this attention gives him a de facto credibility he doesn't deserve.   Not only that, it feeds his attention seeking bad behaviour.

I would suggest pundits ignore him til the Democrats stop squabbling and settle on Clinton;  perhaps even longer, to see how he performs in a head to head debate with her. 

I remain very calm that there is no way he will become President.

Not very encouraging

Chinese banks sitting on $1.7 trillion debt time bomb - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

At least, I suppose, in China you get a sense of active government involvement to head off any crisis.  In the West, it seems you don't enough economists even recognising the possibility of a crisis (and hence no government action) until it happens.

The IPA seeking fools, and their money

I won't post the video directly, but here, you can view it on the IPA's virtual blog.

A few observations:

*  does the IPA have some sort of grooming rules?   They tend to do their PR with young, very well groomed, men and women, with nary a hair out of place.   (Or, in the case of Sinclair Davidson, with nary a hair.)    Chris Berg is perhaps the exception - his slightly shaggy "do" puts him a bit on the outer.

*  I'd love to see the membership broken down by age - the video suggests a bit of a numbers gap in the middle age range.  The organisation is either for young, foolish, idealists (sort like the way the libertarian movement in the US attracts some of the college set, with some rebelling against their parent's views, no doubt), or the over 60's cashed-up-too-old-to-be-idealists-but-defiantly-foolish-despite-their-age set.

*  the video quite heavily promotes its credentials as a voice against climate change action.  When might the media (and which means the ABC, by and large) start  actively calling out the talking heads from that organisation for their involvement with an organisation that has spent years trying to persuade the public that climate change does not even exist?

I'm pretty sick of this:   as I'm sure I have complained before, why let the affable Chris Berg off the hook when he wants to present as Mr Reasonable Dry Right on matters economic and political when he is working for an organisation that has a position that is already completely unreasonable, if not down right evil, in terms of promoting the interests of the mining sector over humanity's long term interests?

Rise of the Kraken

Cephalopods like it hot, apparently:

Gillanders noted that after the El Niño and La Niña phenomena of 1997-98, for instance, warm Pacific waters apparently affected whole populations of Humboldt squid (also known as jumbo flying squid): unusually large Humboldts were found in large numbers swimming off Mexico, Peru and Chile.
The squid, which live longer than most other squid (two years, rather than one), can grow to nearly 5ft: after El Niño, they were found weighing between 25lb and 88lb.
More than a decade later, the long-lived squid were found to have adapted to the 2009-10 El Niño by moving 100 miles north of their usual territory. Others moved into the open ocean and began breeding much earlier than normal.

10 Degrees in Two Hundred Years?

I suppose a couple of cautions are in order:   I haven't seen any of the big names in climate science comment on this yet, and one of the authors is a Greens politician;  but still, this seems an interesting look at what may happen if you were to burn all fossil fuel reserves.  The abstract:

Concrete actions to curtail greenhouse gas emissions have so far been limited on a global scale¹, and therefore the ultimate magnitude of climate change in the absence of further mitigation is an important consideration for climate policy². Estimates of fossil fuel reserves and resources are highly uncertain, and the amount used under a business-as-usual scenario would depend on prevailing economic and technological conditions. In the absence of global mitigation actions, five trillion tonnes of carbon (5 EgC), corresponding to the lower end of the range of estimates of the total fossil fuel resource³, is often cited as an estimate of total cumulative emissions^{4, 5, 6}. An approximately linear relationship between global warming and cumulative CO₂ emissions is known to hold up to 2 EgC emissions on decadal to centennial timescales^{7, 8, 9, 10, 11}; however, in some simple climate models the predicted warming at higher cumulative emissions is less than that predicted by such a linear relationship⁸. Here, using simulations¹² from four comprehensive Earth system models¹³, we demonstrate that CO₂-attributable warming continues to increase approximately linearly up to 5 EgC emissions. These models simulate, in response to 5 EgC of CO₂ emissions, global mean warming of 6.4–9.5 °C, mean Arctic warming of 14.7–19.5 °C, and mean regional precipitation increases by more than a factor of four. These results indicate that the unregulated exploitation of the fossil fuel resource could ultimately result in considerably more profound climate changes than previously suggested.

Just don't do it

Three-person embryos may fail to vanquish mutant mitochondria : Nature News & Comment

Once again, I ask - why do this at all?   It's a bit sad that it's not safe for every mother to be able to have their own genes in their children, but with the ability to carry an embryo (via egg donation) with at least their partner's genetic heritage, they can still have the experience of carrying a child.

It's pretty much like the ultimate "First World problem", and I don't understand why medical science is so interested in fiddling with genetic material to solve it.

I still don't understand the dairy industry (and a segue into Heat In India)

There are two recent articles about the problems with the Australian dairy industry:   one in Fairfax by Peter Martin, and this one in The Conversation:  Murray Goulburn and Fonterra are playing chicken with dairy farmers, but I still don't really understand what is going on.

To do so, I need to understand more about dairy internationally. What happens to all the New Zealand exported dairy, for example? And I thought that to a large extent, New Zealand's recent financial success had largely been built on the back of their cows. If there are some international changes hurting the industry there, how will it affect their farmers, and budget bottom line?

It's funny, though, how it would seem that the sense most people have probably had for a few years now, that the price of supermarket milk just seems too cheap to be viable, may finally be being shown to be true.

Or, I could be wrong on that, too. I mean, I also find the price of carrots hard to believe; and have my doubts about how asparagus farmers in California, Mexico or Peru could find it worth their while to fly produce to Australia.  The economics of food seems full of surprises, to me...

Update:  by the way, which country do you think would be the world's biggest producer of milk?   According to the Times of India:

NEW DELHI: Dairy business provides livelihood to 60 million rural households in India and the country continues to be the largest producer of milk in the world, but global warming could result in adversely impacting the overall output in the coming years. 

 Speaking of India and climate change:  did you see the new all time record set last week of 51 degrees?   It's hard to believe that this is not killing hundreds of people there, but that aspect of the recent heat is not getting much publicity.  

Oh, here we go, a recent news story confirming the deaths caused in just one city:

NEW DELHI: Even Dante would’ve winced. Since the last week, with temperatures climbing  to 47 degree Celsius, Delhi is hot as hell. Around  350 have died on the streets. Water shortage of 7,949 lakh litres a day is dehydrating the city; a family uses 225 liters of water a day. Power outages are up to five hours daily as a result of a 20 per cent increase in demand up to 6,044 megawatts. But “no sweat” is the attitude of the Delhi government, which has no on the ground to handle the situation. In 2014, the Delhi High Court constituted a Joint Apex Advisory Committee (JAAC) to look into lack of summer shelter homes, but the committee has not held a single meeting in the last two years. The reason being Delhi government officials are too busy in “some other work” to even participate in any initiative to address the issue. But Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who has promised to compensate those affected by unscheduled power cuts issued a threat to power companies and asked them to limit power cuts to two hours on Saturday. “I have copies of official communication from Delhi government where it has said that the JAAC meeting can’t be held as officials are busy in other work. It seems that government is not concerned about people dying on street because of heat,” said Sunil Kumar Aledia of Centre for Holistic Development (CHD).
A majority of heat related deaths were of the homeless, their bodies found on roads, pavements and other open areas like parks, says CHD. The organisation works with the state government’s Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) for improving the conditions in shelter homes.

 I get the feeling that the lack of news reporting about deaths caused by heat waves may be explained by a couple of things - that it happens to some extent most summers, and also, the politicians don't like it to be publicised.