A Brisbane winter

It's supposed to be getting cold in the southern States today, and cooler up here as well.

I have to say that, so far, this Brisbane "winter" has been very mild.   And I don't think it's just in my mind - there seem to be things fruiting/flowering in the garden out of season.  The dwarf mulberry, in particular, which is not doing very well in a pot and needs to be moved, has been fruiting in the last month.   The lavender has also been flowering a lot, although to be honest, I don't recall if lavender normally does well at this time of year.

The Right has never been stupider

I simply cannot believe the stupidity to which the American (Trump supporting) Right (and its Australian counterparts) have descended.

Now, whenever a news organisation retracts one story (or part of one story) out of literally thousands regarding Russian interference in the US election, this is supposed to be a complete vindication of the childish, self serving, quasi authoritarian Trumpian line of "fake news", even after Trump switches tactic from claiming for months that there was nothing to the Russian hacking claims at all, to blaming Obama for not taking action on it.  (And, of course, despite an active special counsel  investigation under way.)   

Is there a lot more lead in the water in America than they realise?  (That's no excuse for Australian sycophants, though.)   I'm starting to look for some explanation, because it just seems all so abnormal.

Quantum and causation

Some more "quantum is weird" reading from Nature.com here:

How quantum trickery can scramble cause and effect

One voice in a head is enough, isn't it?

In a lengthy Atlantic article about research comparing psychics who claim to hear voices of the dead, and schizophrenics who also hear voices, there is one paragraph about an idea ("tulpas") which is new to me:

In her work, Luhrmann has come across groups of people who—unlike Jessica—hear voices only as a result of practice. She gives the example of tulpamancers: people who create tulpas, which are believed to be other beings or personalities that co-exist along inside a person’s mind along with their own. “Somebody in that community estimated to me that one-fifth of the community had frequent voice hearing experiences with their tulpas, that their tulpas talked in a way that was auditory or quasi auditory,” Luhrmann said, a practice that she was told takes two hours a day to develop.“That’s connected to work. Psychosis is not connected to effort. It happens to people.”

Odd.

Neurosurgeons behaving badly - very badly

It's a pretty gobsmacking story to read of two neurosurgeons using party drugs like they're going out of style.   And, the tribunal said, there was evidence of plenty of nurses using them recreationally too.

I wonder if patients should take one of these with them to hospital, and ask their surgeon to provide a sample.  (I didn't even know anyone could buy those, 'til now.) 

You had me at "you shouldn't exercise"...

Actually, the article is about why you shouldn't think exercise will help a lot with weight loss (despite it being good for plenty of other reasons.)

(I'm not an obese butterball, honestly.  I just find going out to deliberately exercise intellectually boring.)

In which I say two conservative-ish things

1.   While I think that Federal Labor is looking the better party for dealing with all sorts of things at the moment, I regret that Shorten is saying that Labor will make Sunday penalty rates go back up again if elected.

My common sense judgement is that penalty rates got too high, and deserve the present decrease, which is relatively modest in any case. 

I wish Labor could accept the same.

2.  There is an article at NPR in which someone argues that "cultural appropriation is indefensible"  for writers and artists generally.     It is completely and utterly unconvincing.   Take this, for example:

I teach classes and seminars alongside author and editor Nisi Shawl on Writing the Other, and the foundation of our work is that authors should create characters from many different races, cultures, class backgrounds, physical abilities, and genders, even if — especially if — these don't match their own. We are not alone in this. You won't find many people advising authors to only create characters similar to themselves. You will find many who say: Don't write characters from minority or marginalized identities if you are not going to put in the hard work to do it well and avoid cultural appropriation and other harmful outcomes. These are different messages. But writers often see or hear the latter and imagine that it means the former.

So what is cultural appropriation?  She explains:

Cultural appropriation can feel hard to get a handle on, because boiling it down to a two-sentence dictionary definition does no one any favors. Writer Maisha Z. Johnson offers an excellent starting point by describing it not only as the act of an individual, but an individual working within a "power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group."

Uhuh.   

This has lead to accusations of gatekeeping by Malik and others: Who has the right to decide what is appropriation and what isn't? What does true cultural exchange look like? There's no one easy answer to either question.

But there are some helpful guidelines: The Australian Council for the Arts developed a set of protocols for working with Indigenous artists that lays out how to approach Aboriginal culture as a respectful guest, who to contact for guidance and permission, and how to proceed with your art if that permission is not granted. Some of these protocols are specific to Australia, but the key to all of them is finding ways for creativity to flourish while also reducing harm.

Well, seems to me that the accusations of gatekeeping are entirely justified by the explanation in the second paragraph. 

I'm sorry, this is all ill defined bulldust, if you ask me.   Sure, I can understand people being annoyed by  lazy or insultingly inaccurate depictions of culture by an artist outside of it.    That can just be called "bad art".   But to try to dress it up in high minded, vaguely defined, heavy on offence taking,  resentful of the potential for someone outside to make money, demands for only doing art one way, is just painful and silly.

I can hear the sound of furious typing coming from the Sydney Institute and Catallaxy...

To be honest, I haven't been following the ins and outs of the investigation of George Pell for child sex abuse offences in any close detail.  I had the impression that the evidence was very old and not very convincing, but as I say, that was just an impression.  

So I am a bit surprised to see that the Victorian Police have charged him.

This will, I expect, infuriate the Catholics and other sundry conservatives of Catallaxy, as well as Andrew Bolt and Gerard Henderson, who have been convinced for many a year that Pell is a lovely, lovely man the subject of a witch hunt.  And, to be honest, there is a witch hunt air about the reaction to Pell from many on the Left.

I suspect the truth in Pell's behaviour lies somewhere between the two extremes:  whether any of it results in a criminal conviction, I would be surprised;  but I also suspect people might have been right to worry a little bit about his behaviour at one time.

The whole thing is unfortunate in many respects.   But for now, watch the steam rise from the predictable defenders.  

Thanks, Noam

Seeing I think 1984 is a vastly overrated book, and I'm still annoyed that I had to write an English class review of it in which I felt compelled by the teacher to praise it,  I'm always interested if I spot anyone expressing a similar view.  Apparently, I have Noam Chomsky on my side:

In the interview at the top of the post (with clumsy subtitles), Noam Chomsky makes some similar observations, and declares We the superior book to both Brave New World and 1984 (which he pronounces “obvious and wooden”).

Yay Noam.

Lukewarmers: making the perfect the enemy of the good

There's a very good explanation here by Dana Nuccitelli about the recent paper by Santer and others which identified the problem with some (modest) overestimates of atmospheric warming in modelling.   (It's to do with errors in forcings estimates, not the models themselves.   Climate change denialists instead will claim the models are all wrong and cannot be relied on to make any policy decisions.)

The thing is, the latter is the whole lukewarmer argument, isn't it?   Because the models might not be precisely on point for a certain period, you can never rely on them to make policy decisions.   It's a classic case of making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Incidentally, there was a Science Show recently that gave voice to certain key climate change "skeptics" (you can read the transcript here),  but the one key impression you got listening to it was the age of the voices of the skeptics.   

Tasmanian thoughts

I've posted before about the reasonable house prices in certain parts of Brisbane, and out of curiosity, I've been looking at Tasmania for bargains as well.  

Now, it may have high unemployment and (probably) more than its fair share of ice addicts, but as long as you don't want to live at Sandy Bay in Hobart, the buying is still remarkably good.  Especially if you go to Launceston, where I'll concentrate today.  Look:

Four bedroom, two bathrooms in a pleasing expanded older house, close to the centre of town for 400 and something thousand?

What about this handsome enough looking renovated old place:

Still too expensive?:

Sure, it looks boxy, but it's pretty damn tasteful inside:

This is pretty ridiculous.

I wonder what the fishing is like in the Tamar River?   I'm feeling like a reverse Ratso from Midnight Cowboy, where he says "The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk. Did you know that? That's a fact. In Florida, they got a terrific amount of coconut trees there."

For me, it's more like "The two basic items for life are a cheap but cosy  house, and salmon.  They've got a terrific amount of both in Tasmania."

A culinary observation

I just noticed this at The Guardian:

First, that's a very odd combination of food, if you ask me.


More importantly:   I think brownies are just about the most over rated food thing ever devised.   I mean, I like chocolate (at least, dark chocolate), but a brownie is the biggest waste of chocolate I know of.

That's all...

Diet news

I've been on a 5-2 diet maybe three times now, over a couple of years, because I do indeed put the weight back on if I stop completely.   (I really must follow Michael's advice and go on a permanent 1-6 diet if I want to keep it off.  Or get serious about exercise.) 

So I'm on it again, and I have to say, maybe I like yo-yo dieting.   I mean, as I've said before, the fasting days on the diet (600 cal allowed) really make the small amount of food you do eat taste pretty fantastically good.   (And, as I scrap up every last morsel of salad or cracker crumb, I am also always reminded of the scene in Empire of the Sun where our young hero carefully gathers all of the weevils from his rice and eats them happily.)   There is a sort of feeling of mental focus that can come with the fast days, too.

True, after a few months the novelty wears off, and the reducing speed of the weight loss encourages me to stop at "close enough".   But the early weeks of being on the diet - they feel pretty good.

In other diet news, I see that Eddie McGuire and Malcolm Turnbull have apparently both tried a severe fasting diet over 3 weeks and lost something like 15 kg.  Yeah, I agree with the experts - that's not a good idea.   It might take me a year to lose that much on 5-2, but I can enjoy life on the way.   (By the way, I should lose about 7 kg this time - I really did let myself rebound too far this time.)

She should take the train

From the BBC:

A superstitious elderly passenger delayed a flight in Shanghai after throwing coins at the engine for good luck, a Chinese airline has confirmed.

The 80-year-old woman threw her change at the China Southern Airlines flight as she crossed the tarmac to board.

She told police she launched the coins as she "prayed for safety" on Tuesday.

Of the nine coins launched, only one hit its intended target - but this was enough to force the evacuation of 150 passengers for several hours.

Police were called to Shanghai Pudong International Airport after a passenger noticed the woman's bizarre behaviour, apparently aimed at ensuring a safe flight, and alerted authorities.

Oh dear...

Once again, Helen Dale is attracting attention, and not in a good way: An Award Winning Novelist Is Lifting Viral Tweets.

(She apparently doesn't like Twitter*, so instead of retweets, she just lifts them and puts them on her Facebook page, with no acknowledgement of the source.   But I guess if they are viral, people would often be recognizing the main part as being from elsewhere - and it's not as if people would think she drew a professional cartoon or graphic.    The problem is more the words or caption in a lifted Tweet:  they make it look awfully like her either desiring, or not caring, that some people will think they were her creation too.)

* I was quoting her from the article, though I now see that she is pretty regularly using Twitter - so it seems a very odd explanation.

Update:  I had forgotten, until I re-read her Wikipedia entry, that she had been sacked from writing for the Courier Mail for not acknowledging someone else's jokes she used in a column.    And I'm pretty sure she left Catallaxy after putting up a viral giant pig photo, claiming it was genuine and from people she knew, and then people called her out about that.   It is strange behaviour, and the book tour for her next novel is likely to present more oddities, I expect...

Increasing acceptance

With legalisation of same sex marriage in Australia in the news again, it's interesting to see NPR reports on a new Pew survey result showing that, in the US, public approval of legalising it is still on the rise:

And even Republicans have weakened in opposition:

I guess it's a factor of former opponents not seeing the world change much around them after it's legalised.   There's no reason to believe it wouldn't happen similarly in Australia.

That said, a defensible conservative position remains to have civil unions for those who want the equivalent rights as heterosexual marriage,  but which leave millennial long understandings of the meaning of "marriage" alone.

Sea level rise and climate change

Seems there's a significant new paper on the increasing rate of sea level rise at Nature Climate Change.  I'm waiting for some better explanation of its significance, though.

It is, of course, important to remember how "lumpy" sea level rise will be across the globe.

Hail and climate change

It usually crosses my mind at least once every summer, particularly if hail is falling outside, what effect a warming atmosphere might have on its frequency and size.

Well, some scientists have looked at this for the United States, where it is expected to make a difference:

Anthropogenic climate change is anticipated to increase severe thunderstorm potential in North America, but the resulting changes in associated convective hazards are not well known. Here, using a novel modelling approach, we investigate the spatiotemporal changes in hail frequency and size between the present (1971–2000) and future (2041–2070). Although fewer hail days are expected over most areas in the future, an increase in the mean hail size is projected, with fewer small hail events and a shift toward a more frequent occurrence of larger hail. This leads to an anticipated increase in hail damage potential over most southern regions in spring, retreating to the higher latitudes (that is, north of 50° N) and the Rocky Mountains in the summer. In contrast, a dramatic decrease in hail frequency and damage potential is predicted over eastern and southeastern regions in spring and summer due to a significant increase in melting that mitigates gains in hail size from increased buoyancy.

Reminds me a bit of the complexity of rainfall changes under climate change - with rainfall intensification, but increased drying on hotter days, you might end up with roughly the same amount of rainfall over (say) a year, but more damage caused by the intensity when it does fall.

A Liberal split?

Is it too much to hope for that the Liberals could rid itself of the climate change denying Right in a major party split that was actually initiated over Pyne's not particularly shocking comments that he favours gay marriage coming in soon?   I doubt it will happen - there are too many of them who would need to leave, I think.   But I can't see the conservative forces getting the upper hand in the party room for a leadership spill either - surely they could not contemplate an Rudd-like Abbott rerun, and Dutton has not the slightest hint of any charm that a leader needs.   Who else is there that conservatives could be happy with?

Mind you, it's sort of fun watching the culture warrior Right gnashing their teeth over the centrists in the Liberals having the upper hand.

Wow apology

I've been a bit remiss, because it's been a few weeks since I read this article in Discover magazine on 8 June pretty much debunking the claimed identification of the Wow radio signal as coming from comets.  (Which I had posted about on 6 June.)

Turns out I had very good reason to be skeptical that comets would make a radio signal  of sufficient strength to be mistaken for the Wow signal (or, indeed, that they make radio signals at all.)

So, it's back to the drawing board, I reckon.