Blasphemy in the Gulf (again)

At Gulf News:

A businessman, who threatened his former partner and sent him blasphemous and offensive SMSes over a financial dispute, has been fined Dh500,000.
The 39-year-old Lebanese businessman was involved in a business partnership with the Emirati man before they had a financial dispute in October.
After the two men failed to reach an amicable settlement, the Lebanese man sent several SMSes in which he cursed God and threatened the Emirati man.
The 39-year-old sent to the Emirati’s mobile three SMSes in which he offended the latter, threatened to harm him and cursed God as well.

The fine equates to about $172,000 Australia dollars, I think.

Taking offence on campus, revisited

The current problem on (mainly*) American campuses regarding offensiveness is given a going over again at the Atlantic: Why It's a Bad Idea to Tell Students Words Are Violence,  and it puts up a very good argument.

The only misgiving I have about this issue is that I hate the way that the Wingnut Right takes a bad argument by the too-precious-for-reality Left as justification for complete incivility in debate, and for genuinely offensive claims to be made  - it's like the opposite of a virtuous circle. (Which I see Google says is a "vicious circle/cycle.")

* you could say that the recent silliness of the QUT case is an illustration of the same disease, but at least we rarely have riots here of the kind you see in the US over controversial speakers on campuses. 

Beachfront land as a long term investment

Nature reports that the reason for some sea level rise discrepancies in the satellite record has been identified, and indeed, the rate of sea level rise is accelerating:

“The rate of sea-level rise is increasing, and that increase is basically what we expected,” says Steven Nerem, a remote-sensing expert at the University of Colorado Boulder who is leading the reanalysis. He presented the as-yet-unpublished analysis on 13 July in New York City at a conference sponsored by the World Climate Research Programme and the International Oceanographic Commission, among others.

Nerem's team calculated that the rate of sea-level rise increased from around 1.8 millimetres per year in 1993 to roughly 3.9 millimetres per year today as a result of global warming. In addition to the satellite calibration error, his analysis also takes into account other factors that have influenced sea-level rise in the last several decades, such as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 and the recent El Niño weather pattern....

 If sea-level rise continues to accelerate at the current rate, Nerem says, the world’s oceans could rise by about 75 centimetres over the next century. That is in line with projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2013.

Obamacare as a qualified success

I think Ezra Klein makes a lot of sense here - the only way you can make sense of consistent polling finding that Americans are not approving of Republican plans to replace Obamacare is because it basically works well enough in enough States to make it popular.    (Which is not to say that it is not without its problems.)

Now to an unpleasant subject

Antibiotic resistant gonorrhoea (gosh, it's hard to remember how to spell that word) has been in the news a lot lately, including in the top story on The Age's website (about the number of worrying cases in Australia.)   

As it happens, I also heard the Health Report on Monday evening, which a story about a trial of the use of mouthwash to reduce transmission.   I had heard about that before, but the most surprising thing was this discussion about transmission:

And then there was a second observation that led us towards this mouthwash issue, and that was we saw that gonorrhoea was really common in young gay men but not very common in older gay men. So there must be something different that young gay men were doing, so that led us to a separate study to try and work out what that was, and it was kissing. So young gay men kiss a lot more individuals and don't have sex with them. And when they have sex with them they seem to kiss more than older gay men. And so we thought perhaps it's the throat. And that led us to think, well, if gonorrhoea is being transmitted from throat to throat, perhaps there's something we could do to attack that. And that led us to do some laboratory work on mouthwash.

Denton Callander: So wait a second, are you saying that kissing can transmit gonorrhoea?

Christopher Fairley: It's very hard to work out exactly what act transmits gonorrhoea because they all tend to happen at the same time, but yes that's exactly right. So we can grow gonorrhoea in almost all individuals who've got it in their throat in saliva. So yes, we think that the transmission of saliva through kissing might well transmit gonorrhoea.

Denton Callander: So you're saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, the throat seems to be a key anatomical site when it comes to gonorrhoea.

Christopher Fairley: Absolutely right. And this is flying in the face of what everyone else has always thought. They've always thought that you transmit gonorrhoea principally involving the penis, putting it into the throat or the vagina or into the anus and that's how it is transmitted, but we think probably that's not the case with sex between men, that it's saliva in the throat that is the key driver of infection.

Bugs really are out to get people, aren't they?   And it would appear that, until now, no one thought that this particular bug was probably being spread in this "safe sex" endorsed way. 

Although the trial is not yet finished, I reckon buying shares in mouthwash producing companies is probably a good idea at the moment.

Why people should worry while Trump is President

I'll copy this Axios post in full, because of the way it illustrates how a dysfunctional White House under a gormless President works:

The Trump administration re-certified yesterday that Iran is in compliance with its nuclear deal, preventing Congress from having to decide whether to levy additional sanctions or scrap the deal in its entirety.

• But it was only after a day-long drama featuring the president's advisers trying to get him to change his mind, I can independently confirm, as reported last night by Peter Baker at the New York Times and this morning by Eli Lake at Bloomberg View.
• The vast majority of the principals — led by National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster — were in favor of the U.S. staying in the deal. But Trump hates the deal, and the decision goes against Trump's gut instincts.
• Why it matters: It's not just the media that Trump keeps in suspense — he frequently keeps his top advisers guessing on consequential decisions until the last minute. Yesterday's decision shows he's willing to go against his gut instincts, but not without giving his team serious heartburn. Trump re-certified again, but his top advisers are far from confident he'll do it again the next time.

What a worry...

Update:  a lot more detail on why Trump more or less had to give in on this is in this article at Slate.
The campaign promises and claims are falling by the wayside at a pretty fast rate at the moment.  

Sure has that feel about it

The man who crosses Tim Blair's mind every 5 minutes is right:

It's hard to work out what is going on with the Liberals and Coalition at the moment.

For example, Barnaby Joyce has definitely swung in behind Turnbull, as has (I think) former Abbott hard man Morrison.   Yet Barnaby's previous form with Malcolm was precarious, to say the least, as indicated in this extract from an interview that appeared in Fairfax yesterday:

Joyce has also gone toe-to-toe with Malcolm Turnbull which also almost came close to ending with an urgent dentist appointment.

"[We] had a huge blue in the past over the carbon tax. And...Oh, god. Furious argument. Absolutely furious. Shouting, screaming, the whole lot," Joyce said.

"Other people kept a cap on it by getting me out of the room. Bundling me out like I used to do folks [as a bouncer] at the Wicklow. So after that, it was raw but now we respect each other. We work well together. He completely trusts my confidence and I trust his."

My impression is that Turnbull already didn't need to do the Abbott hairy chest imitation with Defence and security to defeat the conservative forces in his party.  But he has anyway.

All a bit strange.... 

Revolutionary rubber

A bit of historical clickbait here at the NYT:

How German Condoms Funded the Russian Revolution

(Actually, the condoms don't feature much in the complicated story of Lenin bouncing around Europe and trying to get himself and funds back into Russia.)

Water music

A short account here at NPR about King George I and his barge trip on the Thames for which Handel wrote his Water Music.  (It's the 300th anniversary of the outing, hence the article.)

It's a wonder it hasn't been recreated for some movie or other.  Or has it?

[Instead of showmanship in front of the military, why doesn't Malcolm Turnbull try a similar exercise on Lake Burley Griffin?   He's got the spare change to pay a composer, too.]

Mark Latham - on board with Trump

I see that Mark Latham is getting rave reviews from the Catallaxy commenters for a column today in which he repeats so many of their favourite themes that  he could replace all of that mob using half a dozen aliases and no one would notice any difference.

It's all there - the Leftist "march through the institutions", cultural Marxism, the glorious Trumpian fight back as an outsider and populist who takes his message directly to the people, the complete disdain for civility in debate (because "they started it").   He even praises Trump for dumping the Paris Accord, when he (Latham) used to be adamant that politicians were foolish to reject climate change.

Getting caught up in the culture wars (which, in reality, has become a grand conspiracy theory believed in on the wingnut side) corrupts good sense and judgement, and Marks's a prime example.

No mention of the chronic lying and repetition of falsehood by Trump;  no mention of his political rise on the back of birtherism and climate change as a Chinese conspiracy;  no concern about repeat stories about how hard it is for anyone to give detailed explanations to him on complex issues; nothing about his less than useful contribution to health care reform; his simplistic understanding of tax, trade and economic policy; his dogwhistling to racism;  etc, etc.

Trump is personally obnoxious to opponents (which essentially means, anyone who criticises him) and on his side in the culture wars, and that's good enough for Mark.

What a loser.

Will see

Dunkirk is getting very good reviews, like this one, although I also keep reading reviewers warning that some audience members might not warm to it because it doesn't follow a straight narrative or spend much time on character.  I see it currently has a 97% rating on the (unreliable but I still need to check it) Rotten Tomatoes scale.

I am feeling keen to see it.

It won't wash, Malcolm

I have to admit, if it was Tony Abbott yesterday using the Defence Force in the most obvious "I'm a tough guy, look at my military behind me" way, I would have been condemning the tinpot dictator look immediately.

So I am a bit slow to join the criticism of Malcolm Turnbull for doing the same - but he really does deserve it.   And, to be honest, poor old Binskin (looking very unhappy behind the PM) should have said "no", and worn the fallout.

I think Malcolm may need to be told by someone that trying this tactic to appeal to conservatives isn't going to work:  if Catallaxy is any guide, it will do nothing to turn around their hatred of him, and instead their conspiracy prone minds are more likely to worry that he is signalling to use the military to put down the forces of righteous conservatism, or something.  (Yes, they are that nutty.)

And, of course, moderates and Lefties hate the use of the military as such an obvious power prop, too, so he ends up impressing no one.

So Malcolm, you really need to stop trying to impress the conservative wing. 

And speaking of Catallaxy, I see that one of the nuttier, most obnoxious grand-analyst-in-his-own mind of history (and also plagiarist) is back commenting in his fruity style, and this was part of his contribution yesterday:

The elites are stupid enough to think they can control everything. They are deluded.

The kumbaya rednecks of the left become real dead real fast when this happens, because they absolutely depend on high-trust societies which do NOT retaliate against their particular brand of destructive idiocy.

A thought experiment: How long would the Australian Greens last as a political group if a decent percentage of people whose elderly relatives died this winter due to Greens policies conducted retaliatory revenge and killed a couple of them for each death?

yet those same Greens are Gramscian socialists who cannot even conceive of the possibility of being held personally accountable, in blood, for the outcomes of their actions even when they result in deaths.

Even though that’s a near-guaranteed social outcome over time.

Studying this is not pleasant. I don’t like any of the trends we are seeing.

The blog is retirement/nursing home for ex military types who are always seeing conspiracy and warning of the coming crisis - this guy in particular used to thrill himself by reading wingnut fantasies from the US about armed militia making sure Obama won't get away with disarming the nation, or establishing hereditary rule, or some such nonsense.   Now he's having Roger Franklin style Lefties being shot for their policies fantasies.

(Of course, he would be completely dismissive of actual conspiracy, of the Trump team trying to get their hands on Putin sourced dirt for political advantage kind.)

There's another Catallaxy controversy going on at the moment, which I might post about later.  Too much stupid in one day might be too much. 

Practical athletics

I'm pleased enough to see that the Australian version of Ninja Warrior is rating very well.  (We used to watch the Japanese version when it was on SBS.)

I don't worry about watching it every night, but as a Sunday night, family friendly time filler, it's pretty good.

On last night's episode, the rock climbers were all ridiculously talented; and on the last week's Sunday night show, the Brisbane parkour twins were also scarily good.    (I noticed that their parents were not there - do they freak out about the routinely dangerous nature of parkour, I wonder?)

I think the show works because of the very practical nature of the athleticism on display, more so than watching a bunch of gymnasts flipping on rings, for example.

And finally - one thing I was noticing last night.   If they  get themselves into situations where they have to swing their legs to get momentum going, I kept on feeling like getting my legs moving in sympathy, too.    It was a funny sensation.

A discussion that can wait

I'm rather sick of reading about the supposedly soon to arrive brave new world of "sex robots".  Even Nature had an editorial about them!

I strongly suspect that it's going to be a very long time before they resemble anything other than a high quality sex doll, and having removable bits for men to rinse under the tap between uses is going to be a bit of a fantasy breaker, if you ask me.   Of course they'll be men who would use them, but as for the vast majority of people thinking of those guys as other than lonely weirdos who are willing to spend a fortune on an advanced sex toy - I think that is far, far away. 

There was one line in the Nature editorial that interested me, though:

And bonds will form, even though unrequited. (Soldiers have been shown to develop emotional attachments to bomb-disposal robots.)

Hadn't heard that before...

The Middle East mess, continued

There's a very interesting and lengthy report at the NYT about how Iran is now exerting great influence over Iraq. 

Not exactly the outcome the US was expecting.

A woman won't help; a man leaving might

I reckon Steven Moffat's departure from Dr Who is likely to be more important for changing (and possibly reviving) the show than having a female doctor.  But basically, I still say that the show has run out of decent ideas and needs to given a rest again for a decade or so.  

Yes, nefarious

Hot Air has some decent speculation on what might have happened at the Trump team meeting with some Russians.

There is also the matter of the mystery 8th person present, which will apparently soon be revealed.

And by the way, don't all of Team Trump's lawyers look like they have stepped out of a 1980's TV show - I'm thinking LA Law, perhaps.  They just all have something in their looks that seems not of the current style.   I find it rather odd.

Stephen Colbert's first monologue on the meeting was often very funny - I just caught up with it on the weekend.  Here it is:

In other science fiction news

*  I see that old Galaxy magazines are available to read on the internet now.   Might be stuff of  nostalgic interest in there, but reading quaintly out of date predictions of the future does seem an exercise not really worth devoting too much time to.

* There was an interview with author Neal Stephenson in Vanity Fair recently that I forgot to link to.  I've never read him, but he apparently is given much credit in Silicon Valley for predicting things:

In an interview, Stephenson told Vanity Fair that he was just “making shit up.” But the Metaverse isn’t the only element of Snow Crash that has earned him a reputation as a tech Nostradamus. He’s credited with predicting everything from our addiction to portable technology to the digitization of, well, everything, and you can thank him, not James Cameron, for bringing the Hindu concept of “avatar” into the everyday language. Google Earth designer Avi Bar-Zeev has said he was inspired by Stephenson’s ideas, and even tried to get the author to visit his office when he was working on Keyhole, an app suite that later served as a basis for Google’s mapping technology. “He wasn’t interested in visiting Keyhole, or didn’t have time. My best guess is that he was somewhat tired of hearing us engineering geeks rave about Snow Crash as a grand vision for the future. That may have something to do with Snow Crash being a dystopian vision.”

The interview is short, but of interest.

*  The Disney Star Wars additions to their theme parks do sound like they will be fun.  

*  One of the more intriguing sounding science fiction movies due out later this year is God Particle, written by JJ Abrams and (apparently) part of the Cloverfield franchise - even though the synopsis at Wikipedia makes it sound rather unrelated.   One of the most surprising things about it - Chris O'Dowd stars.  (As an astronaut, I presume.  Hard to imagine!)

Don't Choose Life

Foolishly assuming that a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 68% meant that it was worth watching, we viewed the very recent science fiction movie Life last night.

In case you didn't see the trailer, which made the story very clear, it's like a mash up of Alien and Gravity, each of which were better movies by an order of magnitude.

Life is terrible on all sorts of levels, and I am at a loss to understand how it got any good reviews.  (By the way, this is again a case where Metacritic is a more reliable guide than Tomatoes, as it got a much more acceptable rating there of 54.  But even that, by my reckoning, is 5 times more generous than it should be.) 
My key complaints:

*  if you know anything about astronautics, the ISS, orbits and such like, and you felt you had to forgive Gravity for a fair few inaccuracies for the sake of the story, let me assure you that Life takes "dramatic licence" into the absolutely, 100%  unforgiveable "crimes against reality" range.   I would have thought, for example, that at least some critics might question using something resembling an improvised flame thrower not once, but several times, on board this futuristic version of the ISS might be a tactic that would throw everyone on board into a panic, but no - it's like the first line of defence in this movie, and no one screams to the astronaut in question "are you trying to kill us all?" 

*  the dialogue is life-less (ha, a pun), and no character feels real.   One line in particular is just outright embarrassing - even my son recognised it as such.  I don't understand how the actors didn't recognise the dubious writing, from a character point of view.  Or did it look better on the page, and just got stuffed up somehow in transition to the screen? We'll never know.

*  it's often not very clear what is going on, or why certain things are happening.  Yeah, there's some rushed and shouted attempts at exposition, I suppose - but honestly, a good movie can manage to make it clear enough even while battling monsters.

*  My son also guessed the ending, and the choice of the upbeat end credit song seemed just out of place.

Yes, a terrible movie all round.  And it's a bad sign for Jake Gyllenhaal - who I basically like - as it appears to confirm that he is in the category of "good actor, but puzzlingly terrible at picking screenplays." 

Rubin speaks the truth

Some people in comments are criticising Rubin for her being (apparently) a former pretty strong Obama critic, but many others are praising her for stepping into the light. 

Her column "The GOP's moral rot is the problem, not Donald Trump Jr" is great, from the opening paragraph:

The key insight from a week of gobsmacking revelations is not that the Russia scandal may finally have an underlying crime but that, as David Brooks suggests, “over the past few generations the Trump family built an enveloping culture that is beyond good and evil.” (Remember when the media collectively oohed and ahhed that, “Say what you will about Donald Trump, but his kids are great!”? Add that to the heap of inane media narratives that helped normalize Trump to the voters.) We now see that, sure enough, the Trump legal team (the fastest-growing segment of the economy) has trouble restraining its clients, explaining away initial, false explanations and preventing self-incriminating statements. (The biggest trouble, of course, is that the president lied that this is all “fake news” and arguably committed obstruction of justice to hide his campaign team’s misdeeds.)

to the key section (my bold):

Let’s dispense with the “Democrats are just as bad” defense. First, I don’t much care; we collectively face a party in charge of virtually the entire federal government and the vast majority of statehouses and governorships. It’s that party’s inner moral rot that must concern us for now. Second, it’s simply not true, and saying so reveals the origin of the problem — a “woe is me” sense of victimhood that grossly exaggerates the opposition’s ills and in turn justifies its own egregious political judgments and rhetoric. If the GOP had not become unhinged about the Clintons, would it have rationalized Trump as the lesser of two evils? Only in the crazed bubble of right-wing hysteria does an ethically challenged, moderate Democrat become a threat to Western civilization and Trump the salvation of America.

and right to the end:

Out of its collective sense of victimhood came the GOP’s disdain for not just intellectuals but also intellectualism, science, Economics 101, history and constitutional fidelity. If the Trump children became slaves to money and to their father’s unbridled ego, then the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives. A party that has to deny climate change and insist illegal immigrants are creating a crime wave — because that is what “conservatives” must believe, since liberals do not — is a party that will deny Trump’s complicity in gross misconduct. It’s a party as unfit to govern as Trump is unfit to occupy the White House. It’s not by accident that Trump chose to inhabit the party that has defined itself in opposition to reality and to any “external moral truth or ethical code.”