Agreed

Understand annoyance with extreme elements of PC  but not what Right gains from promoting this un-funny  clown https://t.co/FGPd4TXxcd

— jtfsoon (@jtfsoon) October 26, 2017

Good to see a J Soon tweet I can fully endorse.

I watched the 15 minute interview noted in the tweet, just to see if there was any sense in which all the Miloheads were right: that their hero had really showed up the interviewers  - "Milo slays Aussie feminist"  "Milo kills it with hopeless Australian media"  "Thank you Milo, aussie media is so embarrassing", etc etc.

And the answer, unsurprisingly, is - no, he didn't.    There was no "crushing defeat" on either side - the panel made good general points; Milo barrelled on at a rapid rate making myriad claims of misrepresentation which no one had time or capacity to challenge him on in that interview format.  He also make multiple claims of his vast success, as if having foolish fans is self evidently reason you can't contest the offensiveness and contradictions of his style.    Conservatives of only a decade ago would have run a million miles from his self promotion and dis-ingenuous use of "mixing high brow and low brow" as a way of claiming offensive insults as legitimate.   But the culture war allows them to forgive everything.

I've also noted before that the Right wing culuture warrior class on the internet have, over the last few years, gone completely over the top with ridiculous claims of victory in debate which are apparent only to them, and the language used is routinely that of violent, physical defeat.

I really find it creepy and puzzling, and put it down yet again to the unexpectedly corrosive effects of the internet as a means of communication.    

We can see what is going on, but how to stop it?

There's an analysis up at Slate as to how Hannity operates on Fox News, entitled Hannity is a Nightly Recruitment Video for the Cult of Trump, and I reckon it's entirely accurate.

The Right wingnut side of politics swallows whole virtually any conspiracy spun by the Right wing media, bedroom pundits or paid Russian disinformation disseminators;  they have been psychologically primed for this by years of dwelling in the conspiracy mindset of climate change denial.

The effects are absolutely cult like:   the world is divided into those who perceive the Truth, and everyone else is evil and corrupt and depraved.   The faults of the Leader are readily forgiven, as they are in all cults, as the power of ultimate righteousness are not held back by the mere temporary foibles of the Leader.  There's quite the element of a persecution complex, too:  the media are out to get their leader by lying about him. 

But how is this addressed?

The provision of information contrary to their conspiracy mindset is one thing - but we all know that is not enough to break your average cult.

Surely a huge part of the problem is the refusal of the more moderate Right to call out the cult as a cult.   Cults are weakened when former insiders break away and speak publicly about the tactics as viewed from inside. 

In particular, any half reasonable journalist or worker in Fox News needs to break from the network and speak openly about the rabid, harmful partisanship of the likes of Hannity.  

The ultimate would be, of course, the actual ownership of Fox News disowning the awful obsequiousness of most of its hosts - but Murdoch would have to want to stop counting money for that to happen.  Quite frankly, the death of Rupert can't come fast enough if we want any hope of his inheritors actually taking that step.

Besides that, what hope do we have?  

In other Papal news

It's a funny old world, isn't it, when the Pope is making phone calls to the International Space Station in the same week the first English translation of the rite of exorcism is distributed in the US.   (I see that it's not on sale to the public, though:  it would seem being a freelance exorcist is not something the Church wants to encourage.)

The Pope is also making conciliatory statements about the Reformation (not that he is the first to do so, of course, but it will probably annoy the noisy, Right wing conservative branch of the Church anyway.):

The grace of God and decades of ecumenical dialogue have enabled Catholics and Protestants to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation together, emphasizing their shared baptism and faith in Jesus, Pope Francis said.

But at the Catholic Herald, there's an interesting summary of the nastiness of the Church of England's break from Rome, which I'll quote from in part:

With little alternative, Henry resorted to the most basic tool of his power: violence.

Burning people for heresy was an option, but it would raise a few eyebrows. The problem was that Henry largely believed in the same traditional theology that his people did. He had not changed his views from the time of writing the Assertio. This ruled out widespread heresy trials. The solution his circle came up with was more radical.

Treason was originally a common law offence, but put on to a statutory basis by King Edward III in the Treason Act 1351. (It is still in force, although heavily modified, and last used in 1945 against William Joyce, “Lord Haw-Haw”.)

The punishment for high treason was hanging, drawing, and quartering – first recorded in 1238 for an “educated man-at-arms” (armiger literatus) who tried to assassinate King Henry III. Other famous early victims included Dafydd ap Gruffydd in 1283 and William Wallace in 1305. The victim was drawn (dragged) to the place of execution on a hurdle or sledge. There he was hanged (slowly strangled), and while alive his genitals were cut off, his abdomen was sliced open, his bowels were pulled out, and they were burned in front of him. Once dead, he was cut down, beheaded, sliced into quarters, and a section sent to each of the four corners of the kingdom for public display. For a woman, the punishment was burning and quartering.

Henry’s first victim was a 28-year-old nun, Elizabeth Barton. She had visions which earned her a following among leading clergymen, and she had even enjoyed an audience with Henry. However, when her prophecies spoke of the wrong Henry was doing by abandoning Katherine and marrying Anne, she crossed a line. Her visions, in fact, suited Cranmer, as condemning her gave him the chance to damage some of her theologically conservative clergy supporters. He and Cromwell obtained her confession to having faked trances, to heresy, and to treason. On April 20, 1534 she was hanged and beheaded at Tyburn along with five of her supporters (two monks, two friars, and a secular priest). Her head was then spiked on London Bridge, making her the only woman in English history to suffer this fate.

The article goes on to summarise some of the English Reformation's greatest lows. 

It's remarkable how attitudes have changed to gory punishment, isn't it?  I think I have speculated before that the best explanation as to why the public butchering of humans as punishment has changed from public spectacle to something sickening to contemplate is probably due to public butchery of animals being a common sight in the market place of old.   The treat a human in the same way was to degrade them to a level of animal, but the sight of blood and gore was not of itself something so uncommon as it is now.

Anyway, in other Reformation anniversary news, a bishop and a Cardinal are getting into a bit of dispute about how to characterise it:

German cardinal Gerhard Müller has said the Protestant Reformation was not a “reform” but a “total change of the foundations of the Catholic faith”.

Writing for Italian website La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said modern-day Catholics often discuss Martin Luther “too enthusiastically”, mainly due to an ignorance of theology.

His comments come after the secretary-general of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Nunzio Galantino, reportedly said “the Reformation carried out by Martin Luther 500 years ago was an event of the Holy Spirit,” adding: “The Reformation corresponds to the truth expressed in the saying ‘Ecclesia semper reformanda’”.

The tightrope the Church is currently walking continues... 

Don't mention the war...

Some pretty extraordinary news regarding the local Catholic Church's take on the situation in Myanmar, in light of a forthcoming visit by the Pope:

When Pope Francis visits Myanmar in late November, church leaders will be listening nervously to his every word, specifically hoping he does not speak about the Rohingya. Any mention of the Muslim group, widely hated in the predominantly Buddhist country, will have widespread implications.

"The pope's visit is keeping us very anxious, as many things can go wrong. A wrong word from the Holy Father can plunge the country into chaos," said Father Mariano Soe Naing, communications director for Myanmar's bishops.

"If the Holy Father in his speech evens mentions the Rohingya, the nationalist groups will respond. This is a historic problem, and we need a lot of time to solve this problem. We cannot just say this or that. That is the reason why Aung San Suu Kyi cannot say anything," he said, referring to the de facto leader of Myanmar's civilian government, who has been criticized internationally for failing to speak out against the military's actions against Rohingya in northern Rakhine state.

Father Soe Naing told Catholic News Service that while the bishops support democracy and back Aung San Suu Kyi, they understand her silence on the Rohingya.

"Aung San Suu Kyi has no right to comment on anything. The military has the authority to decide everything," he said. "The whole world wants to criticize her, wants her to fight against the military in favor of full democracy. But that's a fight she cannot win. She might have the force of the people behind her, but the bloodshed would be terrible. The blood would flow like rivers in this country. The military is not ready to give up easily. She knows that well."

The Asian church news agency ucanews.com reported the country's Catholic bishops told the papal nuncio in June that they would prefer Pope Francis avoid mentioning the Rohingya by name.

The true Pooh

At the New Yorker, there's a review of a film based on the true life strained relationship between AA Milne, of Winnie the Pooh fame, and the real life Christopher Robin.

Maybe I have read about this before, but had forgotten how Milne was traumatised by World War 1:

A. A. Milne fought in the epic Battle of the Somme, in 1916, when a million men were killed or injured. It was one of the bloodiest battles in human history. Milne, already a playwright and a novelist, was among those wounded. He went home shell-shocked, with all the haunting symptoms of what is today diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D. He confused swarming bees with bullets buzzing by him, popping balloons with incoming cannon fire. He was morose and distant.

The success of the books brought attention to the son which was not wanted:

When he went off to boarding school, Christopher Robin Milne was never able to escape his name, or the storybook character portrayed by his father. He was taunted and teased and pushed down staircases. Fame produced a different kind of trauma from which he spent much of the rest of his life trying to recover.

You can read more at the link.

Going French in Vietnam

I was rather surprised to learn, via watching Travels with My Father on Netflix (about which I might  write separately regarding my mixed feelings), that in Vietnam they've been busy building a fake French village in the mountains:

It's called Ba Na Hills, and is very, very much like a Disney style imitation town, with hotels, rides, and Ukrainian actors who come out and dance in the square in something like Cinderella costumes.   Access is via a very long cable car ride.

Remarkable.

Blog needs cute

Happy baby sloth

Update:  Oh my.  Two comedians have just agreed that everyone who finds the clip cute are evil bastards:

A few observations:   Is Wendy Harmer a sloth body language expert?  Does she have a sixth sense in telling if a baby sloth is actually stressed?

Secondly:  I don't know how many wild baby sloths are kidnapped for pet purposes, but I had assumed it was a case of it being in a human setting because it was orphaned, or from a zoo and having a check up, or some such innocent explanation.   Perhaps I'm wrong, but how do I know this particular sloth is a victim?

Thirdly:   I think both of these comedians have talked about suffering bouts of depression before.  (Pobjie definitely has).   Seems to me they like to spread it around.

The ultimate bad boss

The stories of Harvey Weinstein as an abusive boss are really remarkable.  Here, in The Guardian, for example:

“Miramax was absolutely a cult, the cult of Harvey, and that’s how he got away with his behaviour for so long,” said Webster. “It was crude but very effective. People became brainwashed, some people had nervous breakdowns. People would be hired and then destroyed for no apparent reason, and then their careers and lives would be in tatters.”

He added: “Everything Harvey did was all about manipulation and fear. He was a massive bully. He would flatter people, get the best out of them and then dump on them really, really hard to destroy them. It was this whole thing of breaking people down so you could build them up in your own image.”

An ex marine developed nervous tics:

Other former Miramax employees described how their years working at the company had left them with post-traumatic stress disorder. “I remember friends would ask me what it was like to work at Miramax and I would always tell them that it’s kind of like telling people you fell down the stairs,” said Jesse Berdinka, a former US marine who worked at Miramax for seven years and said the “mental weight” of the sometimes “sadistic” experience would affect the rest of his life.

Berdinka, who worked his way from being a temp to being vice-president of development and production at Miramax, said he began drinking more than he should have in order to deal with the extreme stress, and developed nervous tics. The story of his own rise in the ranks was typical, he said, because when outsiders were brought into senior jobs they often did not last long.

“You see stories of domestic abuse on the news and think, how can people keep subjecting themselves to that? And then I would walk into the office the next day,” Berdinka said. “For me at least it was the drip, day after day, of never knowing if you are good enough or if you are going to be at the top of the world or the bottom of the shit list.”

An anonymous woman:

A third former senior executive, speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity, said she believed she suffered from PTSD. She described how Weinstein threw a glass frame in her direction, narrowly missing her head. The frame contained a picture of Weinstein and Mick Jagger.

“It wasn’t just sexual abuse. Everyone got abused. It didn’t really matter how high up you were, you got the same treatment,” she said.

“If I were to sum up the physical and emotional response, I would say I feel it is PTSD,” the executive said. She said some of the symptoms re-emerged when the first stories of Weinstein’s abuse were aired on television this month, making her physically ill.

“I’ve had years of recurring nightmares. Ten years of nightmares, while I was there and after,” she said.

The Washington Post had some spectacular stories too:

 And this past week, the Wall Street Journal described a Weinstein Company executive conference gone bad: “In about 2011, after an argument over how to allocate the studio’s resources between their respective movies, Harvey Weinstein punched his brother in the face in front of about a dozen other Weinstein Co. executives, knocking him to the ground, said two people who were present. ‘I’ve been assaulted!’ Bob yelled, according to those people. Bob, who was bloodied, wanted to press charges, but was talked out of it, according to a person familiar with the incident.”

 And he's been physically assaulting people for decades:

Producer Alan Brewer recounted to The Washington Post one episode from early in Weinstein’s career, circa 1984. Weinstein became enraged when he couldn’t locate Brewer for a few hours on the day before a premiere, and when Weinstein finally found him, as The Post reported, Weinstein “lunged at him and began punching him in the head, Brewer said; the skirmish tumbled into the corridor and then the elevator. By the time Brewer reached the street, intent on never associating with the Weinsteins again, he said, Harvey was pleading for him to stay.” 

 A real nutter from way back...

More on teenagers and marijuana being a bad mix

The study is about teenage use and earlier onset of schizophrenia:

At the World Psychiatric Association’s World Congress in Berlin on October 9, Hannelore Ehrenreich of the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine presented results of a study of 1,200 people with schizophrenia. The investigation analyzed a wide range of genetic and environmental risk factors for developing the debilitating mental illness. The results—being submitted for publication—show people who had consumed cannabis before age 18 developed schizophrenia approximately 10 years earlier than others. The higher the frequency of use, the data indicated, the earlier the age of schizophrenia onset. In her study neither alcohol use nor genetics predicted an earlier time of inception, but pot did. “Cannabis use during puberty is a major risk factor for schizophrenia,” Ehrenreich says.

Moderate libertarian explains himself

There is much to like in the explanation given by Will Wilkinson at the nice libertarian Niskansen Centre as to what makes their approach different from your regular, ideologically driven, Ayn Rand and gun sympathising, leave-me-and-my-money-alone!, government-welfare-is-for-losers, climate change? who-cares?-even-if-it's-real, and-I'll-chose-to-fence-sit-on-that-because-I-hate-taxes, I'll-be-on-my-floating-island-with-my-fellow-libertarians-genetically-engineering-embryos-for-life-on-Mars-anyway average libertarian.

Some key parts:

Many political philosophers, and most adherents of radical political ideologies, tend to think that an ideal vision of the best social, economic, and political system serves a useful and necessary orienting function. The idea is that reformers need to know what to aim at if they are to make steady incremental progress toward the maximally good and just society. If you don’t know where you’re headed—if you don’t know what utopia looks like—how are you supposed to know which steps to take next? 

The idea that a vision of an ideal society can serve as a moral and strategic star to steer by is both intuitive and appealing. But it turns out to be wrong. This sort of political ideal actually can’t help us find our way through the thicket of real-world politics into the clearing of justice. I’ve discussed the problems with ideal theory at length, in the context Gerald Gaus’ tremendous book The Tyranny of the Ideal, in a Vox column. This piece will be easier to understand if you read that first. Jacob Levy’s paper, “There’s No Such Thing as Ideal Theory,” is an outstanding complement. And, on the more technical side, the work of UCSD’s David Wiens is state of the art, and adds texture to Gaus’ critique...

The fact that all our evidence about how social systems actually work comes from formerly or presently existing systems is a huge problem for anyone committed to a radically revisionary ideal of the morally best society. The further a possible system is from a historical system, and thus from our base of evidence about how social systems function, the more likely we are to be mistaken about how it would work if it were realized. And the more likely we are to be mistaken about how it would actually work, the more likely we are to be mistaken that it is more free, or more equal, or more socially just than other systems, possible or actual.  

Indeed, there’s basically no way to rationally justify the belief that, say, “anarcho-capitalism” ranks better in terms of libertarian freedom than “Canada 2017,” or the belief  that “economic democracy” ranks better in terms of socialist equality than “Canada 2017.”

You may think you can imagine how anarcho-capitalism or economic democracy would work, but you can’t.  You’re really just guessing—extrapolating way beyond your evidence. You can’t just stipulate that it works the way you want it to work. Rationally speaking, you probably shouldn’t even suspect that your favorite system comes out better than an actual system. Rationally speaking, your favorite probably shouldn’t be your favorite. Utopia is a guess.

He then looks at some rankings that countries are given in terms of personal and economic freedom by the Cato Institute (not entirely sure I'm sure their methodology is sound, but still) and makes the observation:

Every highlighted country is some version of the liberal-democratic capitalist welfare state. Evidently, this general regime type is good for freedom. Indeed, it is likely the best we have ever done in terms of freedom. 

Moreover, Denmark (#5), Finland (#9), and the Netherlands (#10) are among the world’s “biggest” governments, in terms of government spending as a percentage of GDP. The “economic freedom” side of the index, which embodies a distinctly libertarian conception of economic liberty, hurts their ratings pretty significantly. Still, according to a libertarian Human Freedom Index, some of the freest places in on Earth have some of the“biggest” governments. That’s unexpected....

That is our basic data. It doesn’t necessarily imply that the United States ought to do more redistributive social spending. But when a freedom index, built from libertarian assumptions, shows that freedom thrives in many places with huge welfare states, it should lead us to downgrade our estimate of the probability that liberty and redistribution are antithetical, and upgrade our estimate of the probability that they are consistent, and possibly complementary. That’s the sort of consideration that mainly drives my current views, not ideal-theoretical qualms about neo-Lockean libertarian rights theories.

And I like these paragraphs too:

Ideal theory can drive political conflict by concealing overlapping consensus. Pretty much any way you slice it, Denmark is an actually-existing utopia. But so is Switzerland. So is New Zealand. The effective difference between the Nordic and Anglo-colonial models, in terms of “human freedom” and “social progress” is surpassingly slight. Yet passionate moral commitment to purist ideals of justice can lead us to see past the fact that the liberal-democratic capitalist welfare state, in whatever iteration, is awesome, and worth defending, from the perspective of multiple, rival political values. We miss the fact that these values fit together more harmoniously than our theories lead us to imagine. 

I suspect this has something to do with the fact that utopia-dwellers around the world seem to be losing faith in liberal democracy, and the fact that  “neoliberalism” can’t get no love, despite the fact that they measurably deliver the goods like crazy. Yet ideologues interpret this loss of faith as evidence of objective failure, which they diagnose as a lack of satisfactory progress toward their version of utopia, and push ever more passionately for an agenda they have no rational reason to believe would actually leave anyone better off.    

Really, the article is a bit of a high falutin way of saying what I have felt about libertarians for years - they don't really care about the evidence of what works in other nations in terms of tax and welfare mix, and regulation:  they just have their pat idea that small government, low taxes and little regulation is obviously a good thing.  Governing by set ideology, though, is never a good idea, whether you are a Marxist or a member of the cult of Ayn Rand. 

Even conservatives make bad Spielberg calls

I see via Jason that someone at American Conservative has written an appreciation of Stranger Things first season, but I can't say I agree with large slabs of his analysis, despite my own enjoyment of the TV show.

My main problem is that it's a bit rich for a conservative writer to be joining in on the typical progressive critic dissing of Spielberg for sentimentality, but I reckon that's what this guy is doing.

His comments on ET go particularly astray:

In E.T., the cuddly, barely articulate alien with the glowing heart is a kind of apotheosis of romanticized childhood; it functions as a Spielbergian critique of rationalistic adults who have forgotten how to love and feel. 

Er, ET is from an advanced civilisation that has perfected interstellar travel: that doesn't strike me as a very child-like thing.   He also appears to communicates telepathically with his kin:  isn't that the obvious reason he's "inarticulate" with Earthlings?

E.T. doesn’t speak much because he is Spielberg’s Rousseauan icon of pre-linguistic innocence; Eleven doesn’t speak much because she has been traumatized. 

Or - as I said - his species is telepathic.   He's more likely post-linguistic, not "pre-linguistic".

E.T.’s lack of speech reflects this innocence; Eleven’s lack of speech indicates a violation of her innocence. 

Oh for goodness sake, see above.

Look, I'll grant you that the film lets Gertie, in particular, perceive ET as child-like and in that sense "innocent".   But the older kids soon learn they are dealing with something very smart and advanced.

Unlike the scientists in E.T., the adults in Stranger Things don’t characteristically lack feeling or love; they either lack the knowledge of how to act on their love appropriately or the will to do so.

OK, the comment about the scientists in ET is just completely wrong!

One of the great things about the film is the way the screenplay gradually opens up the audience's perspective of what is going on with the adults stalking ET, from an initially mysterious and somewhat malevolent appearance, to an understanding that they are actually well intentioned.  It's made clear that Elliott has trouble seeing this due to his child's level limited perception.   No one in the film ends up evil* - there are misunderstandings on both sides, but the film is a lesson in being generous when interpreting the motives and actions of others.  That's what makes it such a positive story.

That the scientists don't lack feeling is clear from the specific, gentle scene between "Keys" (the Peter Coyote character, who leads the alien search team) and Elliott, in which the adult explains that finding ET is the fulfilment of a life long dream for him, too.   That scene, together with all the effort put in to saving the alien's life,  shows us the scientists are good, loving, and sad when they can't revive their patient.

At the same time, we don't begrudge Elliott never really "getting" that the adults are only trying to help - he's the one with the telepathic connection to the alien and the knowledge that the spaceship is returning; his lack of trust that the adults would believe his explanation of what needs to be done is understandable from his perspective. 

The film is great, and emotionally realistic, because the child hero remains psychologically a child throughout.   Sure, it feels at the end like it will be a key maturing event for him, especially when he looks back on it as he grows up, but he doesn't ever stop "acting his age" in the film.   Now that I think about it, it shares this feature with To Kill a Mockingbird - a smart kid getting her perceptions of adult life and motives opened up by events. 

As for Stranger Things:    one of the least satisfactory things was the lack of any explanation of emotional coldness of the research scientists as to what they were doing to Eleven.   It needed more emotional realism in that respect, and in that way, I would say that the lack of "sentimentality" in that part of the story was a fault, not a strength.  

In any event, I look forward to the next season.  

*   Some reader might point out the police/security team pulling guns on the escaping kids; but hey, that's just realism for gun happy America.  It's not clear they would ever have shot...

No big surprise to all but the stupid

Wingnuts being wingnuts will be in full hyperventilation mode about the Washington Post confirming that the Democrats and the Clinton campaign took over funding of the Steele dossier (from an unknown Republican who had started it), as if it wasn't obvious before today hat someone on the Democrat side must have done so.

So, as many, many people in comments in various places are saying "well duh".    

The Slate take on it is here "Does it matter?"  (Short answer - very little.)

Just wow

This sounds so ridiculous for a modern European nation, my initial reaction is to actually wonder if it is being reported right:

A Portuguese man convicted of assaulting his ex-wife will face no jail time — after an appeals court, citing the fact that his former wife was "adulterous," and noting that the Bible calls for adulterous women to be put to death, upheld his suspended sentence.

The judges called adultery a "serious attack" on a man's "dignity."

The decision has sparked outrage in Portugal.

According to Esquerda, the victim of the violent beating was, indeed, having a brief affair, which she decided to end. The man then told her husband about the relationship. Both men began directing death threats toward the woman, Esquerda writes. Then, working together, they attacked her; the scorned former sexual partner kidnapped her, then her husband, who had since divorced her, violently beat her.

The Associated Press has more on the case:

"The [husband[ was given a 15-month suspended sentence and a fine of 1,750 euros ($2,000) for using a bat spiked with nails to assault the woman in the street in 2015, leaving her covered in cuts and bruises.
"The prosecutor had argued the sentence was too lenient and asked an appeals court for prison time of 3 years and 6 months. But the appeal judges on Oct. 11 rejected his request."

 

The authoritarian Right is benefitting the most from the use of disinformation on the internet

Who can seriously argue that the Trump administration is not the most authoritarian sympathetic Presidency we have seen?    All the shouting of Trump that media criticism is fake news, and musing about revoking media licences;  his invitation in campaign rallies that protestors be beaten up; his thwarted desire for a military parade at his inauguration; his Chief of Staff drawing elitist distinctions between people who have served in the military and those who haven't; his inability to clearly condemn Nazi style marches because he knows the alt.right supports him.  

And who can argue that the disinformation rife through wingnut sites and social media was a major influence on his "base"? 

Today, I see that the New York Times has an article by a Filipino writer about how such deliberate disinformation techniques are prominent in the Philippines too, fully endorsed by the dangerous and nutty Duterte.

It starts:

MANILA — Yen Makabenta, a veteran journalist now at The Manila Times, wrote a prominent column last month about the American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who enthusiastically praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. “The Philippines is suffocating,” Mr. Makabenta quoted the ambassador as saying. “We must give President Duterte the space to run his nation.” Ms. Haley, he reported, warned of “destructive forces” that “have calibrated their plot to ouster movements” against Mr. Duterte.

Mr. Duterte no doubt appreciated Ms. Haley’s support. The only problem: It wasn’t true. Mr. Makabenta had based his column on a fake story from a website whose web address, grammatical errors and far-fetched assertions should have made clear that it was a counterfeit of Al Jazeera.

As it has around the world, the internet in the Philippines has become a morass of fake news and conspiracy theories, harassment and bullying.

Further down:

Mr. Duterte’s opponents have at times benefited from fake news, but a disproportionate amount of it favors him. Nobody knows for sure who funds these efforts, though a study by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Research Project determined that the Duterte campaign paid $200,000 for as many as 500 dedicated trolls to attack dissenters and spread disinformation. (In response, Mr. Duterte called Oxford “a school for stupid people” — before admitting that he had in fact hired trolls.)

One of the most egregious employers of this tactic is an informal group that calls itself the Duterte Diehard Supporters, whose initials, not coincidentally, are the same as those for the Davao Death Squads, which killed crime suspects in Mr. Duterte’s hometown when he was mayor. These supporters spin circuitous defenses of Mr. Duterte’s administration, disseminate spurious reports and cast dissent as destabilization. The most dedicated have been rewarded with government positions or other employment with his allies.

That's awful, and once again it makes me think how no one saw this coming as a consequence of the medium for distributing information changing.   (Well, maybe someone gave warnings about it, but not that I'm aware.)

A libertarian idea that didn't work (not much of a surprise, really)

I've joined in with the rubbishing of Megan McArdle before (you can find the posts via the search bar at the right if you want), but now that she has written a column arguing that the libertarian's school voucher idea is pretty much a failure after 20 years of evidence, I'll cite her with approval on that issue at least!

The thing is, the explanation she gives makes sense to me, so why should I disagree with her, even though I think she is generally a bit of a dill?

Physicists fighting, and things we don't "get" yet

Back in May this year, I noted the fight that had broken out between physicists about whether the theory of cosmological inflation really made sense.

Finally, I see that Bee Hossenfelder has joined in, with two recent provocative posts in which she argues that some of the key claims about certain problems inflation allegedly solved were never problems in the first place.   Instead, it just became unthinkingly accepted amongst the physicist community that they must be problems.

She doesn't argue that inflation doesn't solve anything, but it's still pretty fascinating to see a well regarded physicist pointing out blind spots amongst her fellow scientists.

In other "gee, there's really a hell of a lot we don't understand yet" news, protons have been featuring lately.

First, there's a complete puzzle going on as to why different ways of measuring of the size of the proton keep giving incompatible results.   Nature covered it here.

Another report about it is here.  I can't find the report I most preferred, but I'll add it later if I do.

Secondly, as one J Soon has already tweeted, measurements of the proton and antiproton have shown they are very symmetrical, which seemingly removes one possible explanation of why matter came to dominate anti-matter in the universe.   The headline "the universe shouldn't exist" is a stretch, though.

Always looking backwards with vindictive intent

Axios is noting the renewed Congressional interest in the US-Russia Uranium deal, all with the point (of course) of trying to pin corruption of some kind on Hillary Clinton or Obama.

Wingnuts, who have convinced themselves that HC is the devil incarnate, keeping herself alive by nightly drinking the blood of children sacrificed in the basement of a Washington pizza parlour, think this is the biggest story since Pearl Harbour.   Their judgement, of course, has long since left the reservation:  it's once again an example of the culture war mentality under which the black President and female potential successor were a complete disaster.

It goes without saying that I could be wrong, but I reckon this looks a lot like the incredibly  time wasting Benghazi investigations all over again.   Wingnuts will think, regardless of outcome, that it was so obviously outrageously wrong.   But basically, they have stupefied themselves out of reality via the internet.  

In the bigger picture, though, apart from mere stupidity, why has the Right become so vindictive in such matters?

I reckon you see it to a lesser degree in the raids yesterday on the AWU.   The Abbott led Coalition government was clearly out to get hits on the previous government via royal commissions - they basically came up with little of long lasting effect, and opinion polls indicate that it has done the approval of the Coalition no good at all.

Now raids on a union for possibly donating money to a left leaning advocacy group?   Honestly, I reckon the public couldn't care less about this.

To care about it, you have to have this Wingnut vindictiveness which makes them look nasty and completely obsessed with trying to score political wins about not very significant things that happened  years ago.  

Good luck with backwards looking obsessions helping them politically...

Innovative use for psychedelics

Not entirely sure that a study of this kind really shows anything reliable, but here's the way it's reported:

Newly published research suggests that common psychedelic drugs -- such as magic mushrooms, LSD and mescaline (a substance derived from the peyote cactus) -- may reduce criminal offences.

The new study, co-authored by UBC Okanagan's Associate Professor of Psychology Zach Walsh, found that psychedelic drugs are associated with a decreased likelihood of antisocial criminal behaviour.

"These findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that use of classic psychedelics may have positive effects for reducing antisocial behaviour," said Walsh, a p. "They certainly highlight the need for further research into the potentially beneficial effects of these stigmatized substances for both individual and public health."

Lead author, University of Alabama Assoc. Prof. Peter Hendricks, used data obtained by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to explore the connection between the use of classic psychedelic substances and criminal behaviour among more than 480,000 American adult respondents from the past 13 years.

Key findings of the study are that respondents who have used psychedelic drugs had 27 per cent decreased odds of larceny or theft, and 22 per cent decreased odds of arrest for a violent crime in the past year. At the same time, lifetime use of other illicit substances was generally associated with increased odds of criminal behaviour.

 Well, it's a bit of a better idea than the Clockwork Orange style treatment for criminals, I guess...

This is going well, Part 2

Hard not to be amused by this explanation of how the latest, soft ball, Fox interview with Trump went:

It’s not exactly a news flash at this point that Donald Trump isn’t very fluent on questions of public policy, but his interview over the weekend with Fox Business Channel’s Maria Bartiromo is really a sobering reminder of the levels of ignorance and dishonesty that the country is dealing with. 

Bartiromo is an extraordinarily soft interviewer who doesn’t ask Trump any difficult questions or press him on any subject. That makes the extent to which he manages to flub the interview all the more striking. He’s simply incapable of discussing any topic at any length in anything remotely resembling an informed or coherent way. He says the Federal Reserve is “important psychotically” and it’s part of one of his better answers, since one can at least tell that he meant to say “psychologically.” 

By contrast, it’s often hard to make any sense at all of Trump’s words. Asked whether he plans to tie an infrastructure plan to his tax plan, Trump says, “I was thinking about tying it, but there’s too many honestly.” Too many what? He then continues: “You lose a few votes, you gain a few votes. I don’t want to take any chances ’cause I feel we have the votes right now the way it is.” There is, of course, no tax bill at the moment, so there’s no way Trump has the votes for it. 

It’s a funny interview in many ways. Along with being comically ignorant, Trump for some reason keeps referring to Chief of Staff John Kelly as “elegant.” But the prospect of a president of the United States who’s incapable of talking about any of the many issues he oversees in a reasonable way is also pretty scary.

 There's much more at the article at Vox.

This is going well

As explained by the headline at Vox:

Gold Star widow: Trump couldn’t remember my husband’s name. Trump: she’s a liar.