What happened in America in 2013? (And in the past)

There's been some surprising (or not so surprising - depending on where you stand on the pessimism/optimism scale, I suppose) figures out regarding increasing rates of STDs in the US:

So, what happened in 2013?  Everyone suspects Grindr, but then I see it has been around since 2009, and The Guardian was giving it publicity in 2010.  If it was that app, it took a while to hit the STD rates.

The Atlantic had an article about syphilis's re-emergence last year, which also mentions Grindr, but it notes (as does the previous article) that there is no well researched basis for blaming it.   (How hard can it be to research this?   Why can't STD clinics ask that patients answer a short questionnaire on their use of such apps, or the internet, to find partners?) 

As for other reasons:  how about the loss of fear of HIV amongst Western men?   Surely it counts for something; but it astounds me that even if they are going to risk that, men will still take a punt on a disease that looks absolutely horrible, and  can hardly be hidden from friends and loved ones, at least it if gets to the secondary stage.  (You can Google images of the rash yourself.)

But having said that, there still seems something odd about 2013, and it seems no one knows what.

To get back to something resembling optimism again, how do current rates of STD's compare to those in past decades?   It would seem good figures are available for the US since the 1940's, and one thing that is surprising about them is the huge surge in one STD that, I assume, was a result of the 1960's sexual revolution:

As for syphilis, here's the more recent rate trend:

But go back further, and you realise just what a serious problem it was mid 20th century:

Now, that last graph is total cases, not cases per 100,000.  Here's what we really need for a graph comparison:

But, these graphs are confusing if they are including congenital syphilis, and you are only interested in the number of adults catching it. 

You can avoid that by looking at this table - where it is plain that primary and secondary syphilis had a peak 1940's rate in the USA of nearly 71 per 100,000. 

The rate today (not that I am making excuses for it!) is 7.5.  Pretty close to a tenth of the 1940's peak rate. 

Yeah, so while I can understand why the CDC is dismayed that it is on the way up after nearly disappearing, it's remarkable to realise the extent of problem it presented in the past...

He knows nothing

That's a Sgt Schultz reference, by the way, and specifically made only in relation to the curious matter of Sinclair Davidson's invitations to talk internationally about his research that disputes the efficacy of tobacco plain packaging.

Look, it's good that he spoke to this Canadian journalist at all, but TimT - what on earth is wrong with a journo pressing Sinclair on the matter of whether tobacco company money is behind his appearances at such meetings?   I don't think her questions were disrespectful in tone at all, and if a journalist wants to put challenges to his research for comment, what's wrong with that?   If anything, I wish she had been more aggressive.

Because, let's face it, Sinclair shows a distinct lack of curiosity as to whether tobacco funding is involved, indirectly:

J: Was the tobacco industry involved in the visit in any way?
SD: Not to my knowledge.
J: The Atlantic Institute for Market Studies said that their event was held in partnership with Crestview Strategy, a lobbying firm that represents one of Canada’s biggest tobacco companies, so I would like to have some clarity around the involvement of the tobacco industry.
SD: I can’t help you there – I hadn’t heard of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies before I spoke there, nor have I heard of them since. I also spoke at the Economic Club of Canada meeting in Toronto and Convenience Store meetings in Montreal, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. I have no knowledge as to how the meetings were organised. Beyond ensuring that each venue had a powerpoint projector I had no interest in the organisation of the meetings.

....I have had contact with people in Canada (obviously – at the talks I gave), the UK, and parts of Europe opposed to plain packaging. These people work in media, think tanks, and consumer rights organisations.

J: Can you confirm whether the institute currently receives any funding?
SD: I don’t know if the IPA currently receives funding from the tobacco industry – I have never been told that it does.

Here's the question that she should have asked as a follow up:

"Would it bother you if you knew that tobacco industry funding was behind the meetings you addressed, or, for that matter, part funding the IPA and its long campaign again plain packaging?"

Now, I presume his answer would be "no, not particularly.  I oppose plain packaging on libertarian grounds, and as such it matters little to me who funds the message."

And I can think of a couple of follow up questions from that.

But why does Sinclair even seemingly reject this proposition (in italics, which are mine)?:

As it turns out I had a long discussion with Garfield Mahood in Toronto during the Q&A session of my talk at the Economic Club and also again after the session. He put to me the same questions with the same underlying premise that somehow I am corrupt, or on the take, or that my motives are base, or that I am inadvertently benefiting the tobacco industry, etc. etc. that you have put to me. Mind you, he was very quick to back away from stating that premise when I asked him if that is what he was implying. In the end he seemed happy to accept that I am an academic doing research and publishing results, and my motive to come to Canada was to visit my relatives.

Oh come on.   How could he plausibly not be at least inadvertently benefiting the tobacco industry by not only doing this research, but going to meetings where they want to hear his "plain packaging hasn't worked" message?   Especially if he shows no interest in knowing whether there is tobacco funding in the background?

Seems to be an obvious over-reach there. 

Of course Trump lost

I happened to see the closing statements live on TV yesterday in the last Presidential debate.  Clinton sounded smart, relaxed and competent; Trump repeated his handful of memorised lines, starting (oddly, I thought) with a need to boost defence and spend more money on veterans, before going back to American cities being a disaster and how he'll do more for blacks than Hillary ever could.  (Seriously, he thinks he should even bother trying to appeal to the black vote?)

And right at the end, the Donald looked very unhappy, as his family approached him to comfort him in his failure, while Hillary headed into the audience, looking happy (and healthy).

On that last point, let's remember:  right wing conspiracy numbskulls have been telling each other for the last year or more that she's about to fall off the perch any day now.  And Trump personally bought right into it, the shallow  and stupid conspiracy monger that he is.    How easily they gloss over their ridiculous failed predictions. 

As for some other ridiculousness:  Scott Adams is trying to wake up to America to the realisation that all people who dislike Trump have been hypnotised by Democrat Svengalis.   Because only he, the Most Knowledgeable Man in America in the Matter of Persuasion, can see the truth:

Here I pause to remind new readers of this blog that I’m a trained hypnotist and a student of persuasion in all its forms. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to learn the tricks for discerning illusion from reality. And I’m here to tell you that if you are afraid that Donald Trump is a racist/sexist clown with a dangerous temperament, you have been brainwashed by the best group of brainwashers in the business right now: Team Clinton. They have cognitive psychologists such as Godzilla advising them. Allegedly.

I remind you that intelligence is not a defense against persuasion. No matter how smart you are, good persuaders can still make you see a pink elephant in a room where there is none (figuratively speaking). And Clinton’s team of persuaders has caused half of the country to see Trump as a racist/sexist Hitler with a dangerous temperament. That’s a pink elephant.

As a public service (and I mean that literally) I have been trying to unhypnotize the country on this matter for the past year. I don’t do this because I prefer Trump’s policies or because I know who would do the best job as president. I do it because our system doesn’t work if you think there is a pink elephant in the room and there is not. That isn’t real choice. That is an illusion of choice.

Hmm.   How odd it is the Team Clinton managed to get Trump to make hundreds of ridiculous, false and offensive statements in scores of televised appearances over the last 12 months that convinced me (and a huge number of fellow Australians)  that he's a dangerous idiot.  They really are all globally powerful, that Team.

Despite the fact that he (in a subsequent post) actually gave the debate to Clinton on points, Adams remains (arguably) the biggest self disclosed fool as a result of this election campaign.

Attack of a sea monster

Well, this is an odd headline:

Wreckage of U-boat sunken by 'sea monster' found off UK

And the details are quite bizarre:

Incredible sonar images show the 100-year-old wreck to be mostly intact, and the find has led to the resurfacing of nautical folklore. Experts say the wreckage may be the infamous UB-85, which, legend has it, was attacked by a sea beast during the war.

According to the old tale, the U-boat commander -- Capt. Gunther Krech -- said the submarine had been cruising on the surface of the water to recharge its batteries when a "strange beast" rose from the sea with "large eyes, set in a horny sort of skull." Krech said the animal had a small head, but with "teeth that could be seen glistening in the moonlight," according to a statement from Scottish Energy News...

Hey - how about a better source for the "legend" than the company that found the wreck. Is this just a clickbait story that's fooled me? Because here's the rest:  

The story goes that the sheer size of the beast was so immense that it forced the U-boat to list and the crew began shooting at the monster until it dropped back into the sea. The captain said, however, that during the course of the fight the forward deck plating had been so badly damaged that it could no longer submerge.

The British military had a slightly different take on the incident.  Official reports suggested that when the UB-85 surfaced on April 30,1918, it was spotted and destroyed by a British patrol boat -- HMS Coreopsis -- not by a mysterious sea monster.

Yes, until I hear more about how Capt Krech's story came to light, I will assume I've been clickbaited...

Rats in the news

Sounds like a ridiculously generous amount of money for a rat: 

The Indonesian capital will pay residents to catch rats as part of efforts to curb diseases transmitted by the rodents, local reports say.

Jakarta deputy governor Djarot Syaiful Hidayat says residents will be paid 20,000 rupiahs ($A2) for every rat caught and handed over to authorities, the Kompas daily reported.
"Just collect the rats, count them and we will pay," Djarot was quoted as saying.
Rats were rampant in densely populated areas, potentially causing diseases such as leptospirosis, salmonellosis and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, he said.
Some Jakartans are opposed to the idea.
"Mr governor, please don't go ahead with the plan," a resident pleaded on Twitter.
"People will farm rats, just like what happened in Hanoi."
French colonisers in Hanoi, Vietnam, introduced a program in which people were paid for each rat tail caught, prompting people to start breeding them.

And this reminds me, I was reading an article about new studies on rat intelligence on the weekend, but I have forgotten where it was.   Maybe found via Flipboard?   I'll get to this later...

More than you ever thought you needed to know

Bacterial Vaginosis and the Secrets of the Vagina's Microbiome - The Atlantic

This is a really long article about a not so pleasant subject, but I did like the title on the website:  "The Superhero in the Vagina", as it lets me make a joke about how it sounds like a rejected Marvel movie title.

Anyhow, the matter of the complicated bacterial balance in the average vagina is kind of interesting.   I wonder whether this is covered in teenage health and sex ed in schools these days?  Sounds like it should...

Fooling your animal

BBC - Earth - How a dog's mind can easily be controlled

It's all about the placebo effect in animals, which seems to be a real thing, even if this article is mainly about the difficulty in studying it.  

Political persuasions of US academia

From a Nature News article about scientists who support Trump (how on Earth did they manage to track down that handful of people?), there's a graphic showing how the political leanings of academics breaks down:

I guess most of this is pretty much what I would have guessed, except I would not have been surprised if engineers had a greater number of conservatives, and I don't really know why mathematicians lean more heavily conservative, too.  (Also, astronomers don't do conservative politics, for some reason.)

Yet more MOND

Hey, I see that my favourite physicist blogger Sabine H has a post up about the new paper which I've been posting about - the one that seems to support the unpopular MOND theory for gravity.

Now, Sabine can be hard to follow when she gets into details, but if you read the post (and the lengthy comments, which get into a bit of an almost philosophical argy bargy about when you give up on a science theory), you get an idea as to why MOND is viewed suspiciously by many. 

Interesting.

Planning for lunar living

An Astronaut Gardener On The Moon - Summits Of Sunlight And Vast Lunar Caves In Low Gravity

Yay - someone who thinks, like me, that it's more sensible to be planning on lunar colonies being the first off Earth permanent colonies for humans, rather than distant, extremely hard to get to, Mars.

This long, long post talks about many aspects of living on the moon.  I haven't read it all yet, but I'll get back to it.

One thing to be curious about - the long term health effects of lunar (or Martian) low gravity.   How can that ever be guessed at until you get people living there for a year or more.  Even more curious - would babies gestated there end up taller, weaker, or what?  I would guess that one of the first things to do on a lunar base would be to raise generations of mice or rats there, and see what happens.   (I also remember some telemovie from - I think - the 1990's that had a mining outpost on the Moon, and the pregnant mother getting spun gently in a centrifuge to provide some artificial gravity to her fetus.  I think she was then heading off to Earth to give birth?  I don't remember much about it - I didn't watch the whole movie.)

Update:  I know that studies have been done with rats raised in centrifuges to simulate a high gravity life, but short of having a centrifuge running permanently on the ISS, the equivalent studies of them raised in low gravity are hard to envisage...

American election comments

*  Donald Trump and his "rigged election" rhetoric is clearly dangerous in a country full of armed-to-the-hilt, conspiracy minded nutters who are encouraged to believe (and easily convinced) that Clinton is a dangerous criminal who wants to take their guns from them.   The mildly worded counterclaims by Republicans (such as Pence) don't seem to be anywhere near enough of a rebuke, and if Trump keeps this up, he really deserves calling out and complete repudiation from the highest levels.  It's much more serious, in its way, than the groping allegations.  (And none of this "he doesn't mean voter fraud - he means the way the media is against him" excuse making I've heard from some of his supporters.)

* There is so little appreciation of the matter of government security classification of communications in the general public that is it easy for them to think that Clinton's classified emails that ended up on her private server were really important stuff.  This is distorting the public perception of her "wrongdoing", and Trump and Republicans are taking full advantage of that.  But even the liberal media is not really helping to clarify public understanding.  This article from back in July sets out this basic point:

An important thing to understand is that the determination of what information is classified is subjective. This means reasonable people can disagree about the relative sensitivity of particular information.

Before coming to academia, I worked for many years as an analyst at both the State Department and the Department of Defense. I held a top secret clearance and worked on issues related to weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation. Debates and arguments about whether certain information should be classified were frequent. More often than not the debates centered on why something was classified in the first place. This is why determining whether Secretary Clinton was careless is not a cut and dried issue.

Well, it's fair to say she was careless - but the consequences of the carelessness are something that is not at all clear, and it is quite possibly very inconsequential from a national security point of view.   

Some pretty incredible work here

Mouse eggs made from skin cells in a dish : Nature News & Comment

Some very science-fictiony stuff here that, I guess, really could make sex redundant for reproduction.  Still need a womb for growing a baby though - I don't think any science is being done on replacing women entirely.  As far as I know... 

Surely you wouldn't, Malcolm

It's reported in The Australian today:

Malcolm Turnbull is being pressured to relax the nation’s gun laws to secure two key industrial reforms in an escalating round of Senate horsetrading, amid a political firestorm over the government’s bid to curb union power.

The government’s workplace agenda is hanging in the balance as Liberal Democratic Party senator David Leyonhjelm demands an expansion of shotgun imports to win his vote for laws to crack down on illegal union tactics across the construction industry.

Malcolm would absolutely kill his moderate credentials with voters if gave in to this from Leyonhjelm.  Surely he wouldn't do it?

Speaking of Leyonhjelm:  I have the distinct impression that he's in a bit of a funk since not only the election, but before it.  Since Helen Dale resigned, actually.  He did only barely get returned due to the double dissolution;  Pauline Hanson and her group of numbskulls has kept his numbskull off the media radar to a large extent since the election; he copped it for speaking ill of a journalist on the very day she died; and now his best mate in the Senate (the very uninspiring Bob Day - surely one of the dullest politicians to be in the Senate for many a year) is quitting.   Leyonhjelm just looks very glum anytime I see him now.  Retire, David; it'll do you good...

What a loser

Peter Thiel donating $1.25 million to Donald Trump's campaign - Oct. 15, 2016

My opinion of this weirdo just keeps heading down.

What blatant dishonesty

Matt Drudge may have lost his grip on reality - The Washington Post

Problem is, I reckon half of Drudge's readership would not go near the Washington Post for news, and will genuinely go on believing Drudge's dishonesty and propaganda.  

Why hunt bears?

Pedals the bear endeared himself to humans by walking like one. Did hunters kill him? - The Washington Post: The week of agitation over what happened to Pedals coincided with New Jersey’s first bow hunt for black bears in more than 40 years, the Asbury Park Press said. This year, the state’s black bear-hunting season spanned Oct. 10 to 15 for those using bows or muzzleloaders, and will open again from Dec. 5 to 10 for those using firearms. Hunters killed 432 bears in New Jersey last week, according to AP.

Gee. I'm very surprised there is a black bear hunting season at all.   Are they marauding around people to such an extent they need to be culled?   And why pander to the bow hunting fraternity at all?   Surely it makes for a more difficult and painful death if they have to be killed at all.

Kind of glad I don't live in the US...

Update:  I see from this anti-bear hunt Facebook site that many blame Chris Christie for the expanded hunt.   He's not a popular man, and as a sell out to Trump, he deserves it...

Ignoring MOND?

[1609.06642] MOND impact on and of the recently updated mass-discrepancy-acceleration relation

A couple of weeks back, I linked to a report of a new study of galaxy rotation which seemed to be pretty important for what it meant for dark matter.

The link above is to a paper by Mordehai Milgrom, who first proposed MOND, complaining that the paper gave way too little attention to the fact that MOND theories of gravity had predicted this, and it's effectively a strong experimental endorsement of MOND.

It does seem that MOND has a bit of a PR problem in astrophysics.  I see from the Wikipedia article on it at the last link that one of its criticisms is that, at a galactic cluster scale, you still need dark matter to make sense of their movement.  As it says, this makes the theory "less elegant"; on the other hand, it apparently means you can use much less dark matter if you use MOND, which one would think is consistent with the problems of even identifying dark matter. 

Yes, my hunch remains that MOND and Milgrom are unjustly ignored.

I sense a potential for misuse of this study...

Study finds link between marriage attitudes and risky sexual behaviors: This is the first study to investigate links between marriage attitudes and sexual behavior across racial and ethnic minority groups as well as the role skin tone plays in shaping marriage attitudes...

Researchers found that positive attitudes toward marriage had a significant dampening effect on risky behaviors for lighter-skinned African Americans and Asians compared with their
darker skin counterparts, who had more negative attitudes toward marriage. The findings suggest that skin tone plays a role in views toward relationships and marriage, thus impacting decisions about sexual behavior for some people.

I am not at all sure what to make of that!

Excuse me while I talk to monty

Your guest post at Catallaxy has the advantage of not being insane, unlike most of the blog, but I have the following criticisms:

*  did you really have to throw in the "cultural allusion"?:  it reminds me too much of the grand - and nutty - Right wing faux historical prisms that nearly everyone at that blog thinks everything has to be viewed through.  In a way, it reads too much like the grandiose crap that Mk50 used to go on about.  (And, incidentally, he seems to be on some calming medication, or something, now, since he returned under a new identity.  [And why did he bother doing that, when everyone knows who it is?]  He's no longer getting positively excited by the prospect of an American Right wing armed revolution, like he used to.)

* takes too many words to make a point that many - even on the Democrat side - have already made.

* candy was right - the reference to Trump's supporters formerly being the type who would have a country club membership is a tad improbable.  Update:   here's Nate Silver yesterday:

Based on recent polls, I’d estimate that about 35 percent of Trump’s current voters are white men without a college degree, by far Trump’s best demographic group.

  Was this demographic ever into country club membership, monty?

* it's one thing to have sympathy to the economic plight of the low educated under globalisation - and to talk of them having a logical reason for dissatisfaction - but in doing so it risks encouraging them to believe the situation is more catastrophic than it really is, exactly as Trump has been doing.   It also underplays the poisonous anti-evidence based nonsense that the entire leadership of the American Right has participated in for more than a decade as priming Trumpkins to believe any nonsense at all, including that sprouted by their orange buffoon.

I can see how it's not a winning strategy to win hearts and minds to tell people that they are being idiots - yet this is what at least the leadership of the Right needs to be told.   I fear that expressing too much sympathy towards the Trump base makes that job harder to do, and I think that your post reads too much in that direction.

PS:  please pass on the threadsters at Catallaxy that I think they're all being idiots.

JG is correct on this

Trump's Bad Sex Strategy | National Review

A calm explanation from Jonah Goldberg about the stupidity of the Trump, um, counter-grope strategy.

And it was probably written before he heard Trump basically tell a crowd that he wouldn't have forced himself on one of the women 'cos she's not hot enough (as Slate generously puts it.  Others would say - 'cos she's too ugly.)  (Mind you, if challenged on this, I bet he'll deny that's what he meant.  And absolutely no one will believe him.)

He is, genuinely, a rolled gold idiot.