Friday, December 08, 2017

The Empire secret

The best part of this amusing Jimmy Kimmel chat with Last Jedi cast members is Mark Hamill's explanation of how they kept "I am your father" a secret in Empire Strikes Back.  




Hmmm

I'm surprised this isn't a bigger story in Australian media today: 
President Trump has scheduled a physical health exam for early next year at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and will share the results with the public, the White House announced Thursday, a day after Trump's slurred speech sparked concern about his health.

Trump slurred his words during a policy address Wednesday about Israel, inspiring media speculation that he may have had a dental or health problem. But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that Trump simply was suffering from a dry throat.
Having just watched it, I'm going with the loose denture theory, myself.

Barnaby's split

So, Barnaby Joyce has confirmed separation from his wife, but not the circumstances leading to it.

Tony Windsor had suggested something which sounded like it could be due to unwelcome drunken advances towards a young female staffer.  Given the current situation with sexual workplace harassment being so much in the news, if it turns out that the media know more details and the situation was something that could be classified as harassment, but they are sitting on it due to their squeemishness about talking about politician's sexual affairs, I think it will look pretty stupid of them.

Similarly, if anyone of them is sitting on more material about Abbot/Credlin which only comes out in 20 years time, that would be wrong, too.

I think it is OK for journalists to leave out talking about relationship breakdowns, generally speaking, as not being relevant to politician's jobs, but there are times when such relationship issues are genuinely in the public interest.

Friday space

Some space themed stories for a Friday:

*  it's interesting to read recent astronaut memoir author Scott Kelly talk about how he has struggled all his life with writing at any length.   I guess that means many of us can say we can do something better than a famous test pilot/astronaut.  

*  apparently, the next international joint space project might be a space station orbiting the Moon.   This article at Nature suggests some science that could be done from there, outside of the Earth's magnetic field, but it avoids mentioning the obvious - that means potentially risky human exposure to much larger amounts of radiation.   (The story at the previous link about Scott Kelly notes the he received about 10 chest X rays worth of radiation per day, and that's in the somewhat safer for radiation low earth orbit.)  

Surely the radiation issue would make for a tricky design.  Even relatively short stays by astronauts would have some danger unless there is a radiation proof corner of the station they can shelter in during solar storms.   (They were worried during Apollo that a strong solar flare could fry all of the astronauts.)   Perhaps it would be a good place to test active radiation shields.  Somewhere around the house in a box I think I still have copies of an old article from the 1980's talking about such shielding, but I don't know how much research has gone into their design.   

*  I seemed to have missed news about the creation of the first "virtual nation" in space:
Later this week, Earth will communicate for the first time with a nation based solely in space. If you consider a tiny cubesat about the size of a toaster to be a nation, that is.

The small satellite goes by the name Asgardia-1 and makes up the entirety of the territory of the virtual nation of Asgardia, the pet project of Russian/Azerbaijani scientist and businessman Igor Ashurbeyli, an entrepreneur and investor with a Ph.D. in engineering. In his mind, Asgardia planted its flag in space when it launched from NASA's Wallops Island last month aboard an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo spacecraft.

"From a legal standpoint, the satellite is the first sovereign territory of Asgardia nation," Ashurbeyli told me over the phone via a translator. ....

The digital nation in a box will then begin orbiting Earth, and when it starts transmitting about 30 minutes later, the self-proclaimed "space kingdom" will be the first off-earth territory to be officially open for business.

Asgardia is an unusual diplomatic, legal and philosophical experiment. For now, anyone can become a citizen by simply signing up online and agreeing to accept the official constitution, which adopts an official policy of pacifism and gives Ashurbeyli the first term as "Head of Nation," among other things.

He explains that each Asgardian citizen is also entitled to up to 300 kilobytes of storage on Asgardia-1. Asgardians are encouraged to upload photos, personal documents and other digital trinkets to establish their virtual residency in space.
Given recent publicity regarding what (some) men like to suddenly show to strangers, I do have to wonder   if any nerd has yet put a photo of you-know-what appendage in orbit. 

Link to the Asgardian home page is here.   I wonder if eventually they'll be issuing passports?  Well, that's the plan:
Could you please explain passports and IDs?
We are working on creating the Parliament, creating the government, and creating the banking system and the national currency SOLAR. The ID card at this point is the card that will be a fully protected, chip-integrated card that would eventually allow you – when they are available – to receive services Asgardia will provide, and to operate within the currency system.

We will start issuing passports as booklets for traveling only when we have reached the recognition with other states as a state that they recognize Asgardia’s passport as a valid document for crossing national borders. We are very realistic, this is a long-term goal.

IDs and passports would only be received in person. We are now asking everyone, and it’s at your own discretion, to fill in your profile. This data needs to be correct. When you decide to claim your documents, you would be asked to present yourself to the ambassador of Asgardia or a consul or a national representative (this title has not been decided upon yet). Documents are taken very seriously. In the long run, it is planned to have six permanent embassies around the world, per number of continents.
I am tempted to get in early.  Having a planetary passport might come in handy during an alien invasion, perhaps...

Thursday, December 07, 2017

How not to get out of politics gracefully

How much more spectacularly can Mark Latham embarrass himself?    Literally kissing up to fellow professional troll, Milo Y, and now launching a fundraising campaign to keep Australia Day on 26 January.   Fools and their money being easily parted, he's probably got a couple of thousand for that vital (ha) campaign already.

Actually, looking at that photo of Latham slobbering Milo, he (Mark) does physically resemble that Pepe frog character, no?

Twitter on fire

This tweet, and many like it, are currently to be found on Twitter:


Actually, it's not 100% clear to me that it has been confirmed that his house is actually on fire.  But many Tweeters have their fingers crossed...

So that explains it...

The headline: Frances Abbott shows off her engagement ring from weightlifting fiance Sam Loch

The picture to which I think it refers. (Sorry.)

Just..not...funny (and likeability discussed)

I haven't seen alleged comedian Tom Ballard very often on TV, but on the occasions I have, I didn't recognize much sign of talent.  

A month or two back, when the ABC was running promos of him as star of a new daily (for goodness sake!) half hour format of comedy news commentary, I meant to comment that it looked very amateurish - remember him swinging around on a chair with his hands in the air?   Just looked like they didn't have a clue as to what to do to make a smart or witty promo.

I tried watching the actual show last night.   Even the name ("Tonightly") has "lame" written all over it.

Truly, it was awful, and I still utterly fail to see that he has any natural talent as a comedian, or basic likeability, at all.  A half hour of topical material every day is a big ask for him, and his writers, but honestly, if it's going to be as bad as this, it deserves not even trying.

Speaking of basic likeability:   I don't know anything about how amateur chat show Aaron Cheng Tonight came to be made - it looked more like a university student media project than a serious effort at TV - but I have to say, Cheng and some of the others on the show did have an appealing, dag-ish likeability which made it watchable, even with a very high rate of joke failure.   

And another show I have only recently started watching:  Rosehaven.    The leads are really good in their roles, I think.   Not the funniest show on TV, but it's quite appealing in its way.


All Hail Google

Here's something I didn't realise 'til I looked it up last night, as I waited in a vast car parking area at 11.15 pm to collect a couple of teenage girls from a concert.  (Don't worry, one was my daughter.)*

You can tell Google Maps to show your location to someone in your contacts, and just for a limited time. 

A very helpful idea when trying to meet someone in an open, crowded area.  

*  I had heard people complaining before about the complete failure of the Brisbane Entertainment Centre and/or Council to work out a way to let the car park empty in less than about 75 minutes after a concert.  Yes, it's all true.  Hard to believe, really, given the way the centre is not far from two major roadways you can use to get into the city. 

Back to Portugal

I see that The Guardian is running another article in praise of Portugal's drug policy.   Surely Jason wouldn't be goading me by tweeting it?

As far as it goes, the article isn't too bad - it contains some nuance in its noting that the law reform (decriminalisation of personal use) was not the only thing that helped reduce the impact of illicit drugs in the country.

The thing is, the country switched suddenly from a very conservative view of prohibition and lack of support services to one in which the view of drug use as a public health problem gained primacy.  But even then it's not exactly a libertarian approach, with users being able to referred to panels that may push them towards health services

But as for lessons for Australia - our governments have long been willing to address the public health aspects, including (as I have mentioned before) a methadone program available through pharmacies even in conservative stick Bjelke Peterson's Queensland in the early 1980's, if not before.   Then, of course, there is needle exchange, and (to a very limited extent) safe injecting rooms.  I would be surprised if many European countries had not followed the same path of making public health support available for those who want it, while maintaining prohibition on possession (but not making enforcement of that a priority.)

The answer to the question the article proposes "why hasn't the rest of the world followed Portugal" is therefore that, in many respects, they (more or less) were already there.

Given the involvement of drugs in cases of poverty in Australia (see Struggle Street), I remain as ever a cynic about the benefit of a full decriminalisation policy.

A sudden Spielberg surprise

The director more talented than 10 Eastwoods, 20 Tarantinos, and 50 mentally disturbed Gibsons seems to have a critical success on his hands with The Post - currently getting 82 on the (much better than Rottentomatoes) Metacritic site.   (A good sign:  I see a couple of British reviewers liking it too.)

I have to admit, though:  the trailer for it was not that inspiring.   It does make it look very "old school", and as my handful of regular review readers will recall, I wasn't actually all that sold on The Bridge despite its strong reviews.   But who knows - War Horse was very 50's Hollywood, and featured an animal I consider more-or-less evil, and yet it was pretty terrific.

So, I will attend with modest but hopeful expectations.


Wednesday, December 06, 2017

A pretty clear explanation of the quantum puzzle

Here, at the TLS, of all places, is a pretty good and succinct explanation of how quantum theory evolved, in the context of the contribution of Erwin Schrodinger.   (His complicated love life was mentioned here before in a recent post - it gets a brief mention again in this article, too.)


Struggling through Struggle Street

Can't say that I exactly long to watch the SBS documentary/reality TV show Struggle Street, but I did last night, particularly interested because this season it featured a couple of Brisbane suburbs I have passing familiarity with.

I have to say, the four "strugglers" they featured last night really pushed the boundaries of sympathy:

*  the 55 year old invalid pensioner woman who was being tossed out of the rented Inala house by the unappealing guy who had let her live with him.  The cause for eviction was not well defined, and the bloke himself may well have been obnoxious, but one suspects that her filling up a couple of rooms of a small house with hoarder's quantities of dolls, ceramic butterflies, cheap stuffed toys and general junk might have had something to do with it.   She also smokes inside the house (one of the apparent lessons of the show seems to be that no matter how badly off, those in poverty in Australia all manage to pay the exorbitant cost of tobacco), and for recreation she zooms around the suburb's footpaths in her mobility scooter (gifted to her by the Salvation Army) at what looked to be dangerous speed.    She has three adult children, who don't live close, and indicated that she had a strained relationship with them due to her "meeting the wrong men" in the past, although there seemed to be details left hanging.  (One suspects the men were abusive to her or her kids.)

At least she wasn't a drug addict, but a key theme seemed to be a life of "bad choices", including getting hooked on acquiring junk toys and trinkets because they make her feel better. 

*  The Melbourne former heroin addict who spent half a day trying to find where he had hidden the rent money, gave up and went to the community housing office to confess he had lost it while on an alcohol (and pot?) bender the day before, only to be told that he had in fact already paid it a couple of days before!   He had completely forgotten, and made the observation that maybe he did do too much marijuana.  (Well, duh.)   He was a cheerful soul, who got out of his recently inherited late mother's car carrying a tall bottle of beer, and complained about his brother who lived in the Mum's house and with whom he was fighting about the estate.

This does not bode well.   On the face of it, he will end up with half the value of the house in cash, and I would not have a great deal of confidence that the money won't go up in drugs of one kind or another.

He also indicated that, with his new set of false teeth, he expected to be pulling in the ladies soon.  (That's another lesson of the show:  no matter how poor and drug addicted your are, you'll be able to "pull" a partner with equally bad judgement.   Unless you are actually living under a bridge, perhaps.)

* The most depressing scenario - the ice addicted mother and father of four kids living in a shelter in Inala.  Him with biker friends, a criminal history (not sure for what), domestic violence orders, and seizures from his drug use, caught in his car with synthetic marijuana saying he wasn't aware it was illegal.  The mother was apparently prone to screaming violent rages from the ice and confrontations with the husband, who was too "controlling".   He did sound like a jerk, but she looked so unhealthy and self pitying, I again had trouble with feeling sympathy.

The worst thing of all, in a way, with parents like that is listening to their endless claims that they know they have to get clean and live straight, and they know that if they don't they're ruining things for their kids who they really, really, really love, and knowing they are no where near actually taking action.   I don't know how social workers put up with listening to such guff that seems to go on for years before people might finally actually get clean.

And, of course, the other lesson from this is the sad fact that children (usually) still love the parents who they know are self destructive and don't want to be away from them.   I did, of course, feel very sorry for them - although I would rather that the 16 year old wasn't already smoking too.  (She complained she was sick of being the de facto mother to the two youngest, who looked like well behaved, even if stressed out.)


I'm not sure what exactly is the right way to feel about all of this:   it's easy to have sympathy to people who are pure victims of misfortune (ill health, accident, crime);  but it is so, so common that poverty is caused or accompanied by things you know can be overcome if sufficiently motivated - drug and alcohol addiction, bad choices in how money is spent, staying with partners who are clearly hurting prospects of improvement.

You can't stop people making bad choices at first, but when it comes to government and charitable intervention, it is with much chagrin that you have to watch the bad choices continuing.    
 






  

Tuesday, December 05, 2017

Scruton all over the shop

In an opening paragraph that I assume will cause hairs to be raised on any free market economist who supported Brexit,  Roger Scruton explains why Brexit is good for the English countryside:
The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy was designed to support the small farmer, and it is fair to say it has failed to achieve that purpose. Because subsidies have been calculated by acreage, they both push up the price of land and benefit those who own the largest chunks of it — which means absentee agribusinesses. The CAP is indeed one major cause in the decline of the real rural economy — the economy of the small farmers who live and work in the fields. Leaving the EU is our opportunity to devise a new system of subsidies, one that will achieve what the public really wants from farming, which is not only food, but the two precious attributes that large-scale agribusiness threatens: beauty and bio-diversity.

The Left should be embarrassed, too, but still...

I do get rather sick of the Right going "ha ha Lefties - look at Venezuela  - look where your socialism takes countries".  

But, admittedly, it was remarkably stupid of any Left wing politician (or commentator) to be endorsing the (to my mind) obviously economically extreme policies of Chavez, and it  should be embarrassing to them that some did so.

That said, there is a more-or-less sensible centre to politics and economics, and I don't think you can plausibly argue that embarrassingly short sighted endorsement of Chavez reflected mainstream centre Left economic policy views for the rest of the world.  

That rabid Right wingers pretend otherwise (and, in American, carry on like pork chops about, say,  universal health care being "socialism" that will lead to the collapse of the country) just shows they can't see the sensible centre either.


The Right should be embarrassed - but "culture wars" or something

Jeff Sparrow's examples of Milo's "jokes" at his shows just emphasises what an embarrassment it should be, if they had any sense of shame or brains,  that Right wing commentators from Bolt, Cameron to Jones are encouraging this guy's tour.   Sure, Bolt had him on his show and apparently told him he's hurting his message by using crude and ugly hyperbole:  yeah, that'll really teach him - being MC at his stage shows and then hosting him on TV and saying "I don't really approve of your methods..."

And that's even before we get to Leyonhjelm, whose sense of humour I've called immature before, thinking it's worthwhile having the guy give a talk in Parliament House.  Here's his comments about that:
'I wouldn't call myself a disciple of him by any means,' Senator Leyonhjelm told AAP, adding he didn't agree with all his controversial views.

He expects Yiannopoulos to embark on an 'outrage campaign' to stir up the politically correct.

'I'm expecting to be amused more than anything,' Senator Leyonhjelm said.
Yup, just as I had expected...


Now that's planning ahead

I haven't been visiting arXiv much lately, but here's a paper with someone doing some maths about keeping the Earth going despite the Sun heating up:
The 'Earth Rocket': a Method for Keeping the Earth in the Habitable Zone

The Sun is expected to increase its radiant output by about 10% per billion years. The rate at which the radius of the Earth's orbit would need to increase in order to keep the present value of the Sun's radiant flux at the Earth constant is calculated. The mechanical power required to achieve this is also calculated. Remarkably, this is a small fraction (2.3%) of the total solar flux currently intercepted by the Earth. Treating the Earth itself as a rocket, the thrust required to increase the orbit is found, as well as the rate of mass ejection. The Earth has sufficient mass to maintain this rate for several billion years, allowing for the possibility that the Earth could remain habitable to biological life for billions of years into the future. 
The method:  hundreds of rail guns shooting mass off the planet.   Surprisingly, according to his calculations, you could do it in sufficient quantities for a billion years and only have lost 1/16 of the Earth's mass.  We'd hardly notice!

I see that the author is from a community college.  I have no idea if his math is correct, but I like guys who think big, anyway.

And by the way, this puts me in mind of a short article that I am pretty certain appeared in Omni magazine decades ago, where someone did the back of envelope calculations on the idea of using the Moon as a replacement Sun, if you had Earth and Moon wandering the Universe unattached to a star. The figures, using lots of lights powered by (I think) fusion looked pretty good.  

I wonder if any reader remembers that article....   

Monday, December 04, 2017

Bitcoin and the contest of ideologies

I see that Lefty John Quiggin is still a complete skeptic on Bitcoin, and that Sinclair Davidson and anyone vaguely libertarian seems to think it probably will work.   But re Davidson:  as with many people, I suspect, I find the Berg/Davidson/Potts papers they keep promoting (which are more about blockchain than Bitcoin) impossible to understand.  They're excited about it, and getting invited to lots of conferences overseas where fellow nerd types seem to spend all day telling each other how it's going to change everything, but the rest of us mere mortals don't understand why the technology, as described, is actually all that revolutionary.    However, pro Bitcoin guest pieces have been posted from time to time at Catallaxy, and so I think SD can be counted as a Bitcoin supporter of some hue, anyway.

Stiglitz has also weighed in saying it ought to be outlawed.    Libertarians and small government types dismiss him routinely for his other views, so dismissal of his views on Bitcoin are just par for the course for them.

Despite the Japanese government, for some strange reason, giving Bitcoin a credibility boost, I am firmly in the skeptic camp.    I can't see the problem that Bitcoin is intended to solve, and the problems of people who seek to trade in the proceeds of crime, avoid tax, or to enable their rogue regimes or companies to have some sort of undercover profit, are not problems that deserve solution (or, the solution will usually deserve prevention by government.)    The energy usage to make cryptocurrencies seems extarordinarily wasteful, and the present speculation driven rise only encourages more coal burning. 

Libertarians like it because they are prone to fantasies about how good everything can be with no, or next to no, government.  But reality is different from fantasy.  

The Atlantic had a pretty good article What on Earth is Going on with Bitcoin and it ends with the simplest explanation, which sounds entirely plausible to me:
4. Maybe it’s just this simple: Bitcoin is an unprecedentedly dumb bubble built on ludicrous speculation.
It seems strange to call a currency a bubble. But lacking more specific terminology, bubble seems like the only word that would apply.
Even if one buys the argument that blockchain is brilliant, cryptocurrency is the new gold, and bitcoin is the reserve currency of the ICO market, it is still beyond strange to see any product’s value double in six weeks without any material change in its underlying success or application. Instead, there has been a great and widening divergence between bitcoin’s transaction volume (which has grown 32 times since 2012) and its market price (which had grown more than 1,000 times).
Surveys show that the vast majority of bitcoin owners are buying and holding bitcoin to exchange them for dollars. Let’s be clear: If the predominant use case for any asset is to buy it, wait for it to appreciate, and then to exchange it for dollars, it is a terrible currency. That is how people treat baseball cards or stamps, not money. For most of its owners, bitcoin is not a currency. It is a collectible—a digital baseball card, without the faces or stats.
The article goes on to note that maybe something good and dramatically different comes out of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, just we don't really know what it will look like yet.   We'll see, but for the moment, I'll remain a blockchain skeptic too.    

Sunday, December 03, 2017

Nazis, music and a dog

Courtesy of my daughter's involvement in the Queensland Youth Orchestra, we were offered a few free tickets to a performance this evening by Camerata - a youthful Queensland chamber orchestra - at the Performing Arts Centre.

I haven't seen them before, and assume that most of their shows are straight music.  But this one, at least, was sort of a mini play, The White Mouse, telling the story of famous World War 2 resistance fighter Nancy Wake.

It was pretty terrific:  2 actors on stage, one playing Wake, the other a guy playing several men in her life; they both address the audience and re-enact key events while the orchestra was also on stage for the many musical pieces interspersing the story. 

A dog makes a brief appearance too.  As does a female singer with a couple of French songs, and the show ending on (of course) Je Ne Regrette Nien.  The orchestra themselves were great, making you realise just how much musical talent there is in the world, when a place like Brisbane can produce this.

To be truthful, while I had read some articles about her in the newpapers years ago, there wasn't a lot I could recall in detail about NancyWake, and my teenage kids unfortunately had never heard of her.  This was a really good way for them (and me) to learn about her:  told with verve, humour and minimalist but effective staging.   A fair bit of "strong language" too - Nancy apparently swore like a trooper - but hey if it's accurate to her personality, I don't mind.  I wonder how much swearing there is in her autobiography?

As far as I can tell, though, this show has only been performed twice - once in Toowoomba, and once in Brisbane.   A great effort, yet a relatively limited audience.  At least half of the audience in Brisbane gave it a standing ovation.  I reckon they ought to take it to all the capital cities, at least.

Tom, a Mummy and technology (not necessarily in that order)

So, last night, due to another offer from Google Play on my TV for an "any movie" hire for .99 cents, we watched  the widely panned "The Mummy". 

[On a side note:  I feel very sorry for anyone who might have invested in DVD hire vending machines, thinking there would be a market for them after the disappearance of video hire shops.  I mean, I hired perhaps less than 10 times from a DVD machine myself, and thought it was a pretty good system.  Then I bought a Smart TV (Samsung - it's excellent), got the NBN connected (it works well at very acceptable cost), subscribed to Netflix, and now I just don't see much incentive to ever hire a DVD again.  If there is nothing we want to watch on Netflix, Google Play hire for even quite recent movies is usually around $6, and I don't have to drive to return the DVD.

Have I mentioned how sorry I feel for newagents, too?  And what is it with the occasional surviving one that stocks crappy, kitchy gift items?  Have you ever seen anyone in a newsagency buying a porcelain angel, or cat, for someone's gift?  I don't believe I have ever seen anyone even looking at the crap gift shelves.  It's one of life's mysteries...]

Back to the story:  surely The Mummy was worth .99 cent hire?   Yes, actually, I think I would go as far as to say it was worth a $4 hire.   Maybe not $5, but a solid $4.

It's hardly perfect, but it's not as bad as people say.   It looks expensive, has some good action, Tom Cruise running (as Honest Trailers says, it's in his contract for every movie - "must have running sequence") and I even liked some story elements.  (The use of mercury to contain a Mummy). 

On the downside, it does this strange thing where at the beginning, it feels too simple a story, and then towards the end, too complicated.  I don't think anyone quite understood the curse thing, and what exactly was going on with Cruise's flashbacks (I thought reincarnation was being suggested at one point.)   Maybe it would make more sense on a second viewing, but the screenplay was definitely flawed.   What was Tom meant to have become by the end?   Surely there could have been a better hint than the murmuring explanation of a very tubby looking Russell Crowe.  No doubt it was going to be explained in a subsequent movie in the Dark Universe, which I see Universal has now abandoned completely!  

On another minor note:  it was probably a mistake to have Dr Jekell as a key figure in this film, without giving some of his backstory to a young audience.  My son didn't even know the character from fiction, which is a bit of a worry, but I would be sure he would not be alone.

Anyway.   You could worse than watch this movie.  If you like Tom Cruise, generally, I don't think you're going to hate it.

And speaking of Tom, I'm feeling sorry for him having two underperforming movies this year:  the one I just discussed, and the much better reviewed (actually, well reviewed) American Made.  The latter seemed to have some sort of marketing fail, to me.   I'll watch it soon.

But as for proof that Tom is actually a good actor, I reckon that this performance with Conan O'Brien is not only funny, but actually a convincing bit of performance by Tom.   Watch it if you haven't before: