All perfectly normal, in Bizzaro World

Come on, Trump supporters, or even quasi apologists.   How does this sound in any way, well, not weird?   Was it because they were already worried that the authorities were investigating links and communications between the Trump campaign and the Russians?   Maybe - but then what did they want to discuss with the Russians in such secrecy that they didn't want any other part of the US government to possibly learn about it?  And Kushner is supposed to be one of the liberal advisers around Trump:

Jared Kushner and Russia's ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Donald Trump's transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to US officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergei Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on December 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by US officials.

 Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser.

OK, so is this a lie from the Russians to try to hurt Trump?   Seems unlikely, given the White House is declining to comment.  Is it just unbridled paranoia about the "deep state" trying to stop Trump getting on better with the Russians?  There might be something to that if it were just Flynn asking the Russians to do it - he's as mad as a cut snake.  But again, Kushner is tied up with the proposal? 

It's just very, very strange...

And as for pathetic attempts at false equivalence go, there's a spectacularly silly one from poor old perpetual hand waver CL at Catallaxy:

Last I knew, the US was not supposed to be under permanent threat of full out nuclear attack by a crazy Russian leader who had promised that he would bury capitalism...

I tried to have a Trump free Friday, but I give up...

I can't resist posting these GIFs which are doing the rounds.  What a great impression Donald has been making:

So Macron actually had to try to fight off the Trump handshake?  Talk about Trump making himself look like a weird, old bully.     

Arab science, again

 I'm sure I've said here before that Saudi Arabia, which should have had squillions to spend on good science or technology research, seems to have universities which instead spend an inordinate amount of time investigating arcane matters such as the wonders of camel milk, all because"Islam". 

Here's a story in a similar vein -  an article from Arab News commending the use of sticks for cleaning your teeth:

RIYADH: Using miswak, the twig used by a majority of people in Muslim countries to brush their teeth, is alien to most people in the West. Although it might sound outdated to use twigs from different trees to clean one’s mouth and teeth, studies conducted on miswak have proved otherwise, inferring that the miswak is better than toothpaste for preventing mouth and dental diseases.

The miswak, referred to at times as a chewing stick, is also an alternative form of medicine, according to some research findings. The twig’s usage has been highly recommended in Islam, and Muslims across the world practice it. In Saudi Arabia, the use of sticks or twigs from the Salvadora persica trees, known as arak in Arabic, are common....

 According to research conducted by the Riyadh-based King Saud University (KSU), a total of 19 natural substances were found in miswak that benefit dental health. According to research, the miswak contains a number of natural antiseptics that kill harmful micro-organisms in the mouth, tannic acids that protect gums from disease, and aromatic oils that increase salivation.

I don't know if Mo ever mentioned teeth cleaning, but the religion has specific views on all sort of hygiene matters, so who knows.   Mind you, they were ahead of the trend when it comes to hair shaving in regions Westerners never used to worry about.

Not a happy thought, but useful

This article about what people can expect to experience when with a dying person makes not for the happiest reading, but it is worth knowing anyway.

A couple of points:  have I told this story before?  My late mother used to say she had her own experience of the dying still hearing conversations, even if they seem unconscious.  Her first husband was killed in a military accident (crushed under an aircraft's wheels, I believe.)   She was with him in hospital, when he was apparently unconscious, and a doctor in the room told her he thought her husband was not going to make it.   Her poor husband then opened his eyes, looked shocked, and went downhill from there pretty fast. 

Secondly;  the article refers to the "death bed lucidity" stories about those who have dementia.  I have read about this before, and it is, surely, a rather odd thing to explain....

Mind beyond physics?

Here's some physics for your Friday:

Scientists Are About to Perform an Experiment to See if The Human Mind Is Bound by Physics

This is a bit hard to follow, and it involves quantum nonlocality and a Bell's Test - the exact implications of which are still being hotly contested, when you read arXiv.  Anyway, this is the key part:

Now, Lucien Hardy, a theoretical physicist from the Perimeter Institute in Canada, is suggesting that the measurements between A and B could be controlled by something that may potentially be separate from the material world: the human mind.

His idea is derived from what French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes called the mind-matter duality, "[where] the mind is outside of regular physics and intervenes on the physical world," as Hardy explained.

To do this, Hardy proposed a version of the Bell test involving 100 humans, each hooked up to EEG headsets that would read their brain activity. These devices would be used to switch the settings on the measuring devices for A and B, set at 100 kilometres apart.
"The radical possibility we wish to investigate is that, when humans are used to decide the settings (rather than various types of random number generators), we might then expect to see a violation of quantum theory in agreement with the relevant Bell inequality," Hardy wrote in a paper published online earlier this month.

If the correlation between the measurements don't match previous Bell tests, then there could be a violation of quantum theory that suggests A and B are being controlled by factors outside the realm of standard physics.

"[If] you only saw a violation of quantum theory when you had systems that might be regarded as conscious, humans or other animals, that would certainly be exciting. I can't imagine a more striking experimental result in physics than that," Hardy said.

While we're on a theme

I seem to be having a very "gay" Friday, so here's another homosexual snippet.

Turns out that Peter Ackroyd, the prolific British author who I don't think I've ever got around to reading, is gay and has written a gay history of London.   He claims it has always been a queer city:

I don't think I learned that much new from reading an article about it in The Guardian, but I do note this:

Unlike many chroniclers of gay culture, Ackroyd doesn’t neglect lesbianism: we are gleefully taken on a tour of the dildo shops of the Georgian city – it’s said that one establishment in Leicester Fields sold nothing else – and behind the closed doors of cigarillo smoke-filled Edwardian clubs such as the Cave of Harmony and the Orange Tree.

In 2017, 50 years after some forms of homosexuality were tentatively legalised, it’s hard to think of anything that has undergone greater upheavals than gay culture. But in Ackroyd’s view, things haven’t really changed that much.

“The manifestations alter, but the essence remains the same. There are still drag bars, there are still travesti acts, there are still pick-up places in parks, there are still men-only clubs. As a percentage of the population, there were as many gay bars in 18th-century London as there are today.”

Policing homosexuality in Indonesia

This article, in the Jakarta Post, notes that there is a lot more going on in regional parts of Indonesia regarding policing of homosexuality than we hear about here:

Behind the protests and actions and debate on blasphemy law, the wars on homosexuality and/or LGBT still continues. Indonesian police raided a “gay sex party” in Surabaya, East Java, arrested 14 men, and forced them to undergo HIV tests, which violated their rights to privacy. They face charges of infringing the 2008 Pornography Law and the 2008 Electronic Information and Transaction Law (ITE), prohibiting the distribution of pornographic and/or indecent material. The police found and confiscated condoms, mobile phones, and a flash drive containing porn videos, reports said....

While homosexuality remains illegal here, the loose, malleable, and subjective definition of pornography of the 2008 Pornography Law so far has been a powerful weapon to outlaw homosexuality practices and interfere in individual private spaces. Last year a male couple in Manado, North Sulawesi, was arrested after a photo of them kissing was uploaded on Facebook and went viral. Similar with the recent gay arrests in Surabaya, this couple was at risk of being charged under the Pornography Law and the cyberlaw.

The writer notes that the problem is how too much decentralised democracy has played out in the nation with patches of fundamentalist Islam:

Daily power dynamics and contestations among political actors mark constant ideological struggles to define the contours of the regime. Indonesia’s transition to democracy has also led the previously suppressed fundamentalist Islamic political groups to flourish openly and exert their power, with many cities and regencies adopting “moral-based regulations” or sharia-inspired bylaws.

The scholar Kathryn Robinson in Masculinity, Sexuality, and Islam ( 2015 ) asserts that political Islam actors exploit decentralization to enact sharia-based regulations. With their greater political   power, politicians of any hue see them as potential supporters and constituents for their own interests. Hence, this shift has also changed the way of regulating and policing people, particularly those who do not conform to the formal norms of the state and of the majority. If in the previous regime, state-centered power and surveillance was inevitable, the current regime of controls are deployed and reverberates throughout dispersed policies, creating new modes of policing.

Damn...

It's increasingly looking like direct-current stimulation isn't all that it's early proponents thought it would be:

Transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) -- a non-invasive technique for applying electric current to areas of the brain -- may be growing in popularity, but new research suggests that it probably does not add any meaningful benefit to cognitive training.

It does sound like a fairly limited experiment, though...

Same sex marriage in Asia

The Japan Times has an article about the unexpected court ruling from Taiwan regarding same sex marriage.    In looking at how it may affect other Asian nations, I was surprised to read this:

In Vietnam, which is seen as socially progressive on LGBT issues and where a vibrant gay scene flourishes online and in some big cities, hopes for marriage reform have stalled.

Why would Vietnam be "socially progressive" on this?

As far as mainland China is concerned, the report notes: 

Homosexuality was officially decriminalised in 1997 but only taken off the list of psychiatric disorders four years later.

“Taiwan and mainland China have the same roots and culture so it suggests that Chinese society could also accept the idea of gay marriage,” said Li Yinhe, a renowned Chinese sexologist who has pressed Beijing policymakers on the issue.

There have been small signs of progress. While a Chinese court last year ruled against two men seeking to marry, the fact the case even made it into the judicial system was seen by many as an achievement.

I still say that the gender imbalance in China is likely to influence attitudes, in the long term, towards gay relationships. 

Update:  here's a 2015 article from the ABC noting the surprising tolerance to gay rights activities being shown by the government in Vietnam.  I hadn't noticed this at the time. 

Magic poop

Amused to read this in the Japan Times:

Learning more than 1,000 kanji during six years of grade school isn’t an easy task. But it can be fun if all the characters are associated with a word they love — poop.

A workbook series that features a heavy dose of the word “unko,” poop in Japanese, has quickly sold over a million copies since its release in March. The series’ main selling point is that it engages children by using the word “poop” in every single example on how a kanji is used in a sentence.

“Adults would raise their eyebrows, but for children, the word ‘poop’ is magical and makes things fun,” said Yusaku Furuya, 40, the author of the books.

You need to see the picture to understand more:

Looking for signs of cognitive decline in Trump

Here's a lengthy article from STAT, which examines changes in Trump's speaking style as an indicator of cognitive decline.

Let's just say, it doesn't look good....

Ironing the ocean in the news again

Nature notes that there is talk again from a somewhat oddly secretive Canadian foundation of conducting an iron fertilising experiment in the ocean - but this time, the justification being to boost fisheries.

The situation with these experiments is summed up as follows:

Researchers worldwide have conducted 13 major iron-fertilization experiments in the open ocean since 1990. All have sought to test whether stimulating phytoplankton growth can increase the amount of carbon dioxide that the organisms pull out of the atmosphere and deposit in the deep ocean when they die. Determining how much carbon is sequestered during such experiments has proved difficult, however, and scientists have raised concerns about potential adverse effects, such as toxic algal blooms. In 2008, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity put in place a moratorium on all ocean-fertilization projects apart from small ones in coastal waters. Five years later, the London Convention on ocean pollution adopted rules for evaluating such studies.

Because Oceaneos’s planned experiment would take place in Chilean waters, it is allowed under those rules. Riedijk says that the foundation will voluntarily follow international protocols for such studies; it is unclear whether that will allay fears that the group is promoting an unproven technology, rather than conducting basic research....

Whether it would help fisheries is a very moot point:

In the meantime, scientists say that it will be difficult to get solid data from the Oceaneos foundation’s planned experiment. The geology off the Chilean coast, and the patterns of currents there, create a mosaic of low- and high-iron waters. Anchovies, horse mackerel and other fish move freely between these areas.

And adding iron could shift the location and timing of phytoplankton blooms to favour fast-growing species, says Adrian Marchetti, a biological oceanographer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One of those, the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia, produces domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can kill mammals and birds. Oceaneos’s experiment will probably increase plankton growth in low-iron waters, Marchetti says, “but it’s not to say that that is actually good for the higher levels of the food chain”.

Turmoil in Wingnut land

The Australian conservative/Right commentariat did find themselves in somewhat of a quandary yesterday when one of their members was so annoyed with a Q&A panel that he openly, implicitly, wished (it was hard to read it any other way) that they had been the ones killed by Muslim terrorists, not the people at Manchester.

Wishing death on people you disagree with in Australia is not considered by sensible folk to be within acceptable political commentary or discourse.   But Roger Franklin was attacking the ABC and all who sail within her, so it was too much of a temptation for the likes of Bolt, Blair and Sinclair Davidson to not endorse it, or go "ha, ha, that was witty satire, wasn't it."   

Yet, another group of the Right side commentariat had their misgivings from the start - Chris Kenny, to his credit, was (I think) first off the ranks.   But even Franklin, or someone at Quadrant, had a rethink and had edited it (with no acknowledgement) to remove the "if there was any justice" part aspect of it, so as to make sound less of a lament that Q&A wasn't bombed.  

By late in the day, and following universal condemnation from real journalists and commentators across the land,  there were more breaks in the ranks, so we ended up with Nick Cater criticising it, and Keith Windschuttle apologising "without reservation" to the ABC and saying that the article would be removed from the Quadrant website.  Paul Murray on Sky apparently attacked it too.   IBy the evening, Bolt had semi recanted, and today, he has even (again, silently) removed all reference to the Quadrant comment piece from his post. 

And despite Windschuttle's apology  and promise it would go from the site, some were saying that this morning it was still there.   Hey, Quadrant, who's running the place, anyway?  (Well, checking just now, I think it has gone.  Took their time.  Were Franklin and Windschuttle having fisticuffs in whose ever basement it operates from?)

And so here is my final wrap up of how it panned out:

*  kudos to the one old Catallaxy regular (well, apart from monty) who came out with a straight condemnation that it was a stupid thing for Franklin to have said - CL.    But any praise for a rare outburst of common sense has to tempered by the fact that he is one of the worst with hyperbole about how to deal with Islamic terrorism, as I am sure he has wished for the nuking of Mecca more than once.

*  I had been meaning to note yesterday that Franklin had made it very clear that he hates Krauss with a passion partly because he was a "warmist" who "dares call himself a man of science" (I think that were the exact words:  I can't check any more.)  As I ended my piece yesterday, wingnuts have no perspective of risk because they cannot conceive that they are wrong on the matter of the biggest environmental risk the entire planet faces.  Hence, any terrorist attack, no matter the number of victims and whether it was by a lone (Islamic inspired) mutter or not will be cause for saying that Western civilisation is about to collapse, yet the actual threat to long term civilisation is laughed at.   Is the problem with their anger that, at some level, they can perceive that they are wrong on climate change, as their movement is diminishing as their handful of ageing contrarian scientists die off and the world does, indeed, continue to warm? 

* Sinclair Davidson's rapidly diminishing circle of Right wingers he can trust diminished further when he complained that he probably wouldn't watch Paul Murray again after he also jumped ship and condemned Franklin.   I'm not sure - hasn't he mentioned avoiding watching the ABC before?  If this continues, he'll soon be down to just watching Bolt and reading comics the rest of the night. 

* For all of that, the fact that the ABC called in security to advise about it was a bit over the top in its own way.   Regardless of that, their hot anger at someone saying something as stupid and offensive as Franklin's original post was entirely justified.

Update:   now Catallaxy readers (average age - 85 - mentally if not chronologically) are perturbed that Andrew Bolt said this on the radio:

“I think a lot of people are making mileage out of this in order to get the ABC off the hook. I think the reaction, the ABC posting extra security. I mean, give me a break. As if the Quadrant audience would get their zimmer frames out of the cupboard and shuffle off and go and do … come on, give me a break.” – Andrew Bolt

 Ha ha.

Oh Look - The Addams Family meets the Pope

OK, the glowing Orb of Destiny, or whatever it was, was pretty hilarious, but at least it wasn't of Trump's own doing.

But isn't this just the weirdest photo ever of a political family meeting a Pontiff?

I mean, who the heck advised Ivanka that it was a good idea to look like she was going to her belated first communion, except in black?   What are she and Melania mourning?   The death of credibility of Donald?  (Actually, it died decades ago.)

And I also see that Melania again declined Donald's hand.   If this goes on, I'm half expecting her to give him a big shove in the back at the top of some staircase or other any day now.

The optics (and reality) of American politics has never been weirder....

Update:  it's being said that Melania, at least, is complying with Vatican protocol:

“Per Vatican protocol, women who have an audience with the Pope are required to wear long sleeves, formal black clothing, and a veil to cover the head,” Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s spokeswomen told CNN.

However, the Associated Press said it wasn’t necessarily a rule that was hard and fast and many women have met the Pope without a veil. But as a practising Catholic, Melania chose to wear one.

Some have also noted the striking similarity in her choice of garb at the Vatican to another first lady — style icon Jackie Kennedy.

 I still say Ivanka looks ridiculous.

Just a hemisphere away

It's taking a long time for Slate to notice that Australian breakfast TV is not English breakfast TV:

Tom Cruise told the hosts of U.K. TV show Sunrise on Tuesday that he was making a sequel to his 1986 fighter jet/beach volleyball extravaganza Top Gun, and expected filming to start “probably in the next year,” Deadline reports.

 David Koch will probably not be too impressed.

As for Top Gun:  as much as I have enjoyed Cruise's movies since then, that was really was one of his cheesiest, despite some cool flying.   It will be interesting to see what sort of tone would be brought to a new version.  

Body count doesn't matter

Well, we all know Trump loves a "hard man" politician, and is ill informed on virtually any topic, but seriously, he put it this puerile way to Duterte?:

"I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I wanted to tell you that."

Links for a Wednesday

*  I noted the other day how someone in comments at the NYT had made the point that Right wingers talking about "elite consensus" on social and economic policies were kidding themselves if they didn't recognize that the public in the US (and here, I bet) do actually lean Left on a range of issues.  Here's an article at Vox that makes the point in more detail: "What right-wing populism?  Polls reveal that its Liberalism that's surging"

*  With the departure of Ailes and O'Reilly, is Fox News morphing into something vaguely resembling a responsible news network?   They have retracted the despicable wingnut hand wave story about the murder of Seth Rich, but can they pull Hannity himself into line?  God knows the network could only be improved if he left, as well as those awful, awful breakfast hosts.

* I don't have a link for this, but on some clips on TV of Trump's latest day in the Middle East, I thought his face looked blank and very tired.   I also would love to know how he took the Melania hand swipe.  I wouldn't mind betting that his minders have tried to keep any internet item about it out of his field of view, because with his personality, it is hard to imagine he wouldn't be upset about the publicity it has achieved.

* What a surprise.  Sinclair Davidson has popped up in London to talk about the "failure" of plain packaging of tobacco.   For my sins, I've watched most of his little video at Catallaxy.   Some observations:   just as with climate change denial, he seeks to discredit anti tobacco campaigners as having their own "industry", and being in it for the money.  This is his very first line, in fact.   Well, would be good to know if anyone ever pays SD to travel somewhere for his talks.    Secondly, any actual valid criticism he may uncover about slippery use of stats and figures in assessments of plain packaging are somewhat undercut when he starts later uncritically quoting KPMG studies funded by tobacco and worthy of their own detail scrutiny.   Thirdly, I don't think he ever mentions the way many researchers thought plain packaging would have its best impact - by making buying cigarettes less attractive to youth.   (Because if you can stop young people starting, you have won half the battle.)  Nor does he address the common sense question that such an effect might take some years to turn up clearly in survey or other evidence.

I trust that he will next be parachuted into the Philippines to deal with Duterte's new laws.

* Roger Franklin's stupid and offensive rant against anyone on the ABC quoting figures about Muslim terrorism has gone down a treat is Sinclair's poisonous toilet of a blog, as you would expect.   Tim Blair urges his readers to read it too.   (Blair has become increasingly petty - especially when it comes to the ABC - and stupid over the years.)   Perhaps Right wingnuts would be better served by considering what you can actually do when, as I pretty much expected, the suicide bomber turns out to be a person born in the country.   Sure, they could argue for a complete ban on Muslim migrants, many of whom are escaping Middle East crises in which the West has played a role, but what do they want to do to current, native, children of migrants who are at risk of being radicalised by the internet or a local crazy imam?   Round them all up in detention camps for the next 40 years?   Or just nuke Saudi Arabia, the sources of modern radicalising schools of Islam?    (You do hear calls for that at Catallaxy after virtually every Islamic inspired attack.)    And if they do want to nuke the problem away, what do they think of Trump making nice with the Saudis again?

Come on wingnuts:  your cloud of rage at everything Muslim achieves nothing.   Make some serious proposals and think about their consequences instead of raging at politicians who actually have to deal with the problem in a serious, meaningful way.

When anger overwhelms decency

Whatever credibility Quadrant used to have an outlet for thoughtful conservative intellectuals has long been gone, but Roger Franklin plummets into new depths of Right wing reactionary anger and, frankly, stupidity, today. 

While virtually no one is expecting the suicide bomber at Manchester to not have been motivated by radical Islam, Roger is beside himself with rage that last night, on the ABC, left leaning quasi intellectuals were opining that the risk of harm for the average citizen in countries like the US and Australia from Islamic terrorism, especially by foreign terrorists,  is actually very small.

Now, if these comments had been made after the Manchester bombing, Franklin might have had some emotional excuse, at least, for anger at insensitivity at what would have been seen as  downplaying the public distress at such a terrible terrorist attack.   [And by writing this post, I am certainly not trying to make any excuse either - this is surely the most unforgivable attack because of the age and innocence of the victims.  It is, by all standards, horrifying.]

But this is not what happened.   Roger can't  see through his anger that the comments remain essentially true, and were not made in any context where they could be taken as insensitive. 

Furthermore, everyone, Left or Right, understands that radical Islam is a terrible problem and causes great evil.   Fuming about it alone doesn't solve, in particular, the problem of self radicalised, Western born terrorists.  All nations already spend a lot of effort in trying to trace and prevent it.  No one on the Left thinks that is a wasted effort.

Franklin's disgust reaches absurd and offensive heights with his ending:

Life isn’t fair and death less so. Had there been a shred of justice, that blast would have detonated in an Ultimo TV studio. Unlike those young girls in Manchester, their lives snuffed out before they could begin, none of the panel’s likely casualties would have represented the slightest reduction in humanity’s intelligence, decency, empathy or honesty.

Mind you, as Krauss felt his body being penetrated by the Prophet’s shrapnel of nuts, bolts and nails, those goitered eyes might in their last glimmering have caught a glimpse of vindication.

Yeah, nice one Roger.   You're just another example why such a large part of the conservative Right has become so untrustworthy in thinking about risk.  

Update:    It took a day, and scores of real journalists and members of the public condemning Franklin,  but Quadrant (although not specifically Franklin) has apologised.  From the paywalled Australian:

Quadrant magazine today “unreservedly apologised” to ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie for an online article that suggested it would have been better off if the Manchester terrorist had bombed the public broadcaster’s Sydney headquarters. 

The magazine’s editor in chief, Keith Windshuttle, responded to Ms Guthrie late today in a letter agreeing the “intemperate wording” in the article was a “serious error of judgment and should not have been published”.

The article will be withdraw from the magazine’s website, he said.

“Even though I do not share all of the interpretations expressed in your letter, I accept your assurance about the offence it caused you and your staff. You have my unreserved apology for any concerns it might have given you,” Mr Windshuttle wrote.

Earlier, Communications Minister Mitch Fifield blasted Quadrant for its “sick and unhinged” comments about the ABC after contained in the article.

 The now amusing thing about this, if one reads the Catallaxy threads, is that the many wingnutters ecstatic with Franklin's offensiveness have been pledging subscriptions to Quadrant all day, and now have had the rug pulled out from under them. 

Sinclair Davidson - who pathetically joined in with the defence of Franklin, suggests its because the magazine couldn't afford a legal fight with the government funded ABC.   What tosh.

No, simple decency required the apology, but ageing, angry ant culture warriors are too blind to see that.

Pirates noted, again

It feels like I shouldn't be talking entertainment trivia, with news of what sounds like one of those entirely pointless home grown Islamic terrorist attacks in Manchester (at least with the IRA attacks, you could see the aim they were trying to achieve), but I will anyway.

I am a very soft touch when it comes to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.   I re-watched the last one on TV last weekend for the first time since I saw it at the cinema, and found myself laughing and enjoying it more than expected.  I did give it a decent enough review when it came out, and now I see that No 5 - Dead Men Tell No Tales is getting a similar bag of not so great reviews as did Stranger Tides.

No matter.  I will be off to see it, perhaps with both (now well into teenage) kids in tow again (maybe even my wife),  and I have the feeling I will enjoy it.   This guy, who (like me) defends the original trilogy against the increasingly poor reviews it gathered, gave it a positive enough review.

But unemployment is really worse

I see that Adam Creighton continues his quest for contrarianism (just for the sake of contrarianism, I suspect) by bringing up that golden oldie that unemployment is really much worse than official statistics claim.

Now, I'm going to make hell freeze over by quoting her in rebuttal, but didn't Judith Sloan, of all people, adequately deal this never ending populist claim 6 years ago?