So, RMIT libertarian types have been busy promoting Xi Jinping's favourite technology....

Well, isn't this ironic (in the wrong sense of the word - which is well overdue for a populist change of meaning.)

Berg, Davidson and Potts, the trio of libertarian/IPA economists have been busy writing boring articles to give them something to talk about at the international blockchain conferences they've been attending, and all the time it would appear that Xi Jinping has decided that yeah, blockchain is a great idea for government control.  From Axios:

China had a short, whirlwind relationship with Bitcoin before unceremoniously dumping it last September. Now, President Xi Jinping calls the underlying blockchain technology a "breakthrough."

What's going on: Xi is differentiating between cryptocurrencies and blockchain. In his view, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies could fuel financial risk and even jeopardize Communist Party authority. But in blockchain, he sees something he cherishes — even greater government control.

How it works:

• Blockchain technology uses a network of computers to create a record of any string of events, from financial transactions to the origin of an oyster. Every time the thing being tracked changes hands, it's publicly recorded, so its legitimacy can be verified while eliminating human intermediaries.
• Cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin being the most prominent — are digital monies that live on the blockchain.
• Those distrustful of governments are drawn to blockchain for its anonymity. But if only a few can enter transactions, blockchain could increase government power.

I've read stuff before about warnings that cryptocurrencies and blockchain may end up being quite attractive to authoritarian regimes:  see this article in The Atlantic, which I may have posted about before:

In certain circles, the technology has been hailed for its potential to usher in a new era of services that are less reliant on intermediaries like businesses and nation-states. But its boosters often overlook that the opposite is equally possible: Blockchain could further consolidate the centralized power of corporations and governments instead.

Even without Xi taking away anonymity as a feature of blockchain, some were warning that Bitcoin wasn't exactly the anonymity dream of libertarians after all.  

Or am I being unfair - are Berg and all writing stuff about how to defeat authoritarian applications of blockchain?    I don't really see how it is possible anyway - can't governments just legislate their control of entries onto key blockchain uses?   If so, what is the whole point of Berg, Potts and Davidson's excitement?

Defamation please

You all know I can't stand David Leyonhjelm - when it comes to women, he's a chronically immature throwback to the 1970's (see this evidence, as I think that was the decade I heard this "joke") and a one note politician who certainly never got into Parliament on the strength of his personality.  

Amongst his other faults, it would seem that he doesn't take the advice of lawyers, unlike Sky News, which has been full of (late) apology for his appearance on the also chronically immature "Outsiders" program.  

I have no idea why he thought it a good idea to go on 7.30 last night - is he that desperate for publicity that he doesn't care how big a loser he looks when he can't explain the exact words that prompted his stupid rejoinder?  

I don't care for Sarah Hansen-Young as a politician either, but I do hope a defamation case comes out of this, because I suspect Leyonhjelm is silly and arrogant enough to either defend himself, or hire some jackass young law graduate whose only recommendation will be having joined the LDP and commented at Catallaxy.

It would be entertaining, if nothing else.

Unwanted review - Shutter Island

I've always been of the view that Martin Scorsese is over rated, and while there's nothing wrong with his directorial style, I find it more workmanlike than particularly inspiring.   (OK, there is usually a bit of noticeable flair here and there, but he doesn't give me the near constant pleasure that I find in the best works of Spielberg, Hitchcock or even Brian de Palma when he was at the top of his game.)

The point is, I don't rush to see any of his movies, although I often do see them eventually.

Hence, I only watched 2010's Shutter Island on Netflix on the weekend.

It's not a bad movie, but an oddly old fashioned one, particularly thematically in how it deals with psychiatry.   The book it was based on is only from 2003, but it feels it could be much older.   It reminded me a bit of Hitchcock's Spellbound, at least in terms of the way it treats "talking therapy" with a seriousness which we're not exactly used to seeing in the modern era of pharmo-psychology.  (Actually, now that I re-read the plot of Hitchcock's movie, which I have only seen once perhaps 30 years ago, it has other similarities too.)

There are some aspects which hurt its credibility.   As one bad review says:

He stuffs the film with heavy-handed art direction and piles on a ludicrously ominous soundtrack. The soundtrack is a constant reminder of the movie's importance and only highlights its unimportance.

Yeah, there is one early sequence in which the score is just completely over the top.   It's impossible not to notice it, and I can't understand why Scorsese let it stand. (Interestingly, I see that there was no original music used at all - it was all bits and pieces of existing works selected.   And here I thought I could perhaps gives Hans Zimmer a blast for being overbearing again.)

The art direction bothered me too, in both extremes - the opulence of the psychiatrist's home in the mental asylum,  and the dungeon like quality of the old asylum.   I mean, the plot is essentially a bit B grade trashy (nothing wrong with that, per se), but having so much that seems OTT in art direction kept making me think that it's a bit ridiculous that they spent so much money on it.

As to final scene and what it means - my son, to his credit (unless he had already read this on line - I should double check) picked up on the intended meaning immediately, before I had thought of it.  But this article, full of spoiler of course, indicates that he was correct.

My final verdict:  I wouldn't say don't watch it, but go in with low expectations and you may end up satisfied enough.

Update:   in retrospect, it could be argued that my complaint about the art direction is unfair, given the explanation of the entire situation that comes close to the end of the film.   (This is hard to discuss without doing a big spoiler).    But we are never shown the difference between reality and delusion, and it would not have been hard to do so.   Physically, everything about the place looks the same, making the art direction problem still feel like a problem.

Guru worth watching

If my blog search bar is reliable (and it generally isn't, so don't blame me if this is wrong), the last time I mentioned the Hoodoo Gurus was in 2009.  (!)

I've always had a soft spot for that band, despite my distinct lack of a general long haired rock sensibility.   For guitar heavy rock, I always thought they were pretty tuneful, and often wittily eccentric with lyrics.   In fact, they are one of the few classic Australian rock bands I have seen live in their heyday: in Newcastle circa 1986, I reckon.   Yeah, they were loud.

All of this is by way of preamble to saying how much I liked Julia Zamiro's Home Delivery episode with Dave Faulkner on the ABC last night.    I don't think I have ever heard him interviewed before, let alone talking in detail about his childhood.   As I would have hoped, he presented as intelligent and hard working in developing his musical career.  His father's story was interesting and touching too.

And I still have this conviction, despite making allowances for people sometimes just inexplicably taking a dislike to some TV personalities,  that if a person doesn't find Julia a warm, empathetic, charming interviewer, there's something a bit wrong with them.

Bored with the chef

I've been meaning to write this for some years.  Now with news that his very fancy and expensive looking Sydney restaurant Jade Temple, which I happened to walk past on a brief visit to Sydney last August, is closing, I am inspired to say it.

Neil Perry has become boring.

Not that I've eaten at any establishment that has anything to do with him.  It's just from my reading his recipes.

It seems that he has had the recipe page  in Fairfax's Good Weekend for many years, even decades?, and it has occurred to me, in the last couple of years, that his recipes just never sound interesting anymore.   I used to find them interesting and enticing, even though I can't remember if I ever closely followed one.   These days, a lot of them seem too simple to me, or contain an oddball ingredient that I would have to go searching for in some special shop.   I no longer ever read one and think "that sounds nice, I'd like to give that a go."  

He might be a nice guy in real life - I wouldn't know.   I do know he has a terribly dull TV presence - he was on that disastrously short lived instant restaurant show on Channel 7 in 2015.  But I am really not sure how he manages to still be considered a success.

I wonder whether I'm on my own in this feeling about him...

Or, it might be an alien spaceship after all?

There's an abstract up at Nature about that interstellar visitor of last year, with the tantalising title:

Non-gravitational acceleration in the trajectory of 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua')
 
Here's the key part:

Here we report the detection, at 30σ significance, of non-gravitational acceleration in the motion of ‘Oumuamua. We analyse imaging data from extensive observations by ground-based and orbiting facilities. This analysis rules out systematic biases and shows that all astrometric data can be described once a non-gravitational component representing a heliocentric radial acceleration proportional to r⁻² or r⁻¹ (where r is the heliocentric distance) is included in the model. After ruling out solar-radiation pressure, drag- and friction-like forces, interaction with solar wind for a highly magnetized object, and geometric effects originating from ‘Oumuamua potentially being composed of several spatially separated bodies or having a pronounced offset between its photocentre and centre of mass, we find comet-like outgassing to be a physically viable explanation, provided that ‘Oumuamua has thermal properties similar to comets.

I know it's a long shot, but I guess it still leaves it open that it was an alien spaceship venting or trying to accelerate?

You actually don't have to have uranium in your drinking water

When I first saw the story on ABC's 7.30, I assumed that the reason no action had been taken to remove uranium out of bore water used in some remote aboriginal communities might have been because it's really hard to filter it out.   (Would have to be a pretty fine filter, I figured.)   In fact I thought that it sounds like a good reason to propose closing down certain remote settlements, if you can't even get reliable water at them.

And then I Googled the topic and found that getting uranium out of ground water is far from an uncommon problem in the West, and this, from an American local government health department:

Point of use devices are installed directly at the tap and are used to reduce contaminants at that location. Several technologies are available that are effective in removing uranium. For most households, a single point of use treatment system on the drinking water tap will be sufficient to provide safe water for drinking. Point of use reverse osmosis (RO) and distillation treatment will remove many different contaminants from your drinking water, including uranium and radium.

Reverse osmosis is a process that filters most impurities from water by passing it through a fine membrane. Contaminants such as uranium are left behind on the membrane while treated water passes through. You may need to install a pre-filter before the reverse osmosis system. The World Health Organization reports that reverse osmosis treatment will remove 90-99 percent of uranium. Point of use RO systems are available from a variety of different sources, and WUPHD recommends that you purchase a unit which is “NSF certified for radium 226/228 reduction”. (NSF does not offer a uranium certification.) For more information, please visit the NSF website.

A reverse osmosis system typically costs around $300 and you can save money by doing the installation yourself. A point of use RO system will typically produce about 7 to 14 gallons a day of drinkable water. This amount of production should meet the cooking and drinking needs of a typical household. To fix a uranium or radium problem, it is necessary only to treat the water you drink because uranium gets into the body through ingestion. It is safe to take baths using untreated water because uranium or radium is not absorbed through your skin.

 Um, that doesn't sound like it's a difficult problem to fix at all.

What on earth is the reason Australian governments are saying it's years away before it can be done here?   

Great health system, America

At Vox:

A baby was treated with a nap and a bottle of formula. His parents received an $18,000 bill.

I just don't like stand up comedy

I've explained before, but I've never been a fan of stand up comedy of the modern era.   I don't mind Seinfeld, as most of what he does is not intensely about himself.  But comedians who base their shtick on a sort of public self analysis - that's never held much appeal.   Or put it this way - I can enjoy some of that from some comedians in small doses.  For example, I've recently watched parts of Netflix specials by 3 female comedians I quite like:  Kitty Flanergan, Judith Lucy and Chelsea Peretti (the awful Gina in Brooklyn Nine Nine - I didn't know she was a stand up comic as well as an actor until this special)  All of them do a very similar style of self deprecation, with a fair amount of content about how awful a lot of their boyfriends or dates have been.   I find I can take it for a while - maybe 45 minutes, before I start losing interest.   And it's not  because I think their jokes about men are bad.    Kitty Flanergan, in particular, is about as cheery as you can expect a female comedian to be.  And although she makes jokes about men, she's pretty even handed with her attitude towards women too. 

Part of it is that I don't like the crudeness and language of much modern stand up, but even if I come across one with pretty clean language, I still usually can't help but feel a bit bored with the style.

Anyway, why am I talking about this?   It's because of the international praise being heaped upon Hannah Gadsby's "Nanette" on Netflix.    I started watching it, but apparently I stopped before it became more serious.  I had a fair idea where it was going, but still, in fairness I should go back to finish it.

My reaction to the first 30 minutes or so that I did watch:   I thought it was interesting that she, as a high profile lesbian, was complaining about the pressure other lesbians' identity politics has put upon her.   (She says at one point that it's not like she spends much of each day doing things that are specifically lesbian.   But having started with a lot of lesbian content early on, she had the problem of being accused of not being lesbian enough in her later shows.)    I thought this was a refreshing thing to hear from a LGBT comic. 

But the rest of the material - she makes the point early on that she is going to be giving up comedy because of the self deprecation involved, which she realised wasn't healthy.   Again, I think this is pretty refreshing.    But...I still have a bit of a sympathy problem for her taking 10 years to realise this. 

Actually, in the Chelsea Peretti special I watched most of, she does some weird cut away stuff that seems to be about the same point - that's she's aware that the nature of this style of comedy is not great for self esteem.    So it's not as if Gadsby is the first to realise it.

I have to admit, I have never found Gadsby's comic persona, such as on that Adam Hills' show, very likeable.   I don't understand the popularity she has in certain circles.   And yes, I guess while watching her I am often trying to self analyse why I don't like her, wondering how much of it is a reaction to her lesbianism.   (I have to admit, I find difficulty feeling empathy with butch lesbianism at the best of times.)   But I think there is more to it than that.   I think maybe I have always had a bit of sense that she was too sensitive (or smart?) to be doing comedy.

Anyway, I guess I have to go watch the last part of it, but I have my doubts I am going to find it life changing as some people claim.

And besides, I just don't like stand up...

The germs, the germs; and the bags

Does anyone with common sense really believe that people are going to be keeling over with salmonella due to their filthy, filthy re-useable carry bags?

If ever there was a study worth being sceptical about, it's the one Andrew Bolt and a bunch of no common sense Right wing plastic lovers are citing from the US about what happened when San Francisco moved away from disposable plastic bags.  Here's a pretty thorough debunking of that study.   (There are others around the place too.)   Yes, if you thought it sounded suss, it was indeed, very very suss.

You know what this reminds me of?  The ridiculously elaborate instructions that wingnuts used to circulate about how extremely careful to be when cleaning up a shattered compact fluoro bulbs.   The elaborate instructions always read like urban myth material, and was faintly ridiculous when no wingnut used to be in a blind panic about what would happen if a full length fluoro tube broke.  As it happens, the compact fluro was only an interim step to the LED, which are pretty brilliant and save many people lots of money.  

It's obvious what they do - when they don't like an environment protecting law due to the minor inconvenience it causes, they gullibly promote any alleged safety hazard of the law.  

As for the grocery bag issue itself:   I note that those sceptical of its benefits keep citing a Productivity Commission report from 2006 - 12 years ago, and presumably based on information from some years further back.   And I think a guy involved in that still thinks the ban is ridiculous.

But hey, don't Right wing folk even take into account changing circumstances?

There's been a hell of lot of emphasis since 2006 on the problem of plastics in the oceans.   There was even a Senate report about this in 2016, with submissions (which I haven't yet read) by the likes of the CSIRO.*   

I strongly suspect that the decrease in use of super thin grocery bags is justifiable in the interests of ocean and river pollution, but not for land pollution.   And if people start buying more bin liners and thicker plastic bags because of that, well, I suspect they will not end up on beaches and oceans at the same rate as thin grocery bags.   I reckon most people already buy bin liners anyway, and that use of grocery bags for rubbish is just doubling up.

So, yes, I can live with it.

Maybe a few wingnuts will think they've caught the runs from reusing a bag, and that'll be a plus.

* Update:  here's a 2017 report about plastics in the oceans, with some comments from Australian academics.   Yes, we're far from the worst plastic polluting countries, but doing something with little inconvenience helps, I can't see the problem.   

You too can have a body like this

There's a more interesting than I expected article at The Guardian about those Men's  Health "transform your body " covers, where former flabby dudes end up looking, what's the word?, "chung"?    Well, that's how one guy puts it:

After a month spent learning muay thai in Thailand, Tom Usher, 30, felt himself change. “I wasn’t scared of anyone,” he muses. “When you look chung physically, you feel chung – and that confidence translates into how you act around women, but also men.

I think I'll using that word around my kids, and see what reaction I get.

Pancakes and the cosmos

A very short post to note that whenever I am cooking pancakes, as I frequently do on Sunday mornings for breakfast, and flip them and watch it start to puff up, I always think about the expanding universe.  This happens so routinely that perhaps my thoughts are now along the lines of "here we go again, I can't stop myself thinking about the expanding universe." 

That is all.

Update:  no it's not.   Could it be that some novel scientific thought is trying to tunnel its way into my consciousness through this process?   The only thing I can think of is this:  the pancake is expanding due to the heat energy of the frying pan it's sitting on.  Is our universe's expansion similarly powered by a dark energy seeping into it from an adjacent hot universe?  Of course, someone else would already have thought of this:  wait, yes, I see someone asked the question on Quora.    At least I don't think it's been given much attention as a concept.

Tax cuts not paying for themselves

Amidst all the news about the Supreme Court decisions and the civility wars, Jennifer Rubin writes about a more important long term story:

The Congressional Budget Office is out with its 2018 long-term budget outlook, and the bottom line is not pretty. CBO finds:

At 78 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), federal debt held by the public is now at its highest level since shortly after World War II. If current laws generally remained unchanged, CBO projects, growing budget deficits would boost that debt sharply over the next 30 years; it would approach 100 percent of GDP by the end of the next decade and 152 percent by 2048. That amount would be the highest in the nation’s history by far. Moreover, if lawmakers changed current law to maintain certain policies now in place—preventing a significant increase in individual income taxes in 2026, for example—the result would be even larger increases in debt. The prospect of large and growing debt poses substantial risks for the nation and presents policymakers with significant challenges.

 We know why the debt is increasing — Congress is spending more on big entitlement items while slashing revenue. Those Republicans who insisted the tax cuts would pay for themselves should hang their heads in shame. And as “as members of the baby-boom generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) age and as life expectancy continues to rise, the percentage of the population age 65 or older will grow sharply, boosting the number of beneficiaries of those programs,” the CBO says. Rising health-care costs have increased spending on Medicare and other health-care programs. Interest on the ever-growing debt is skyrocketing while revenue is “roughly flat over the next few years relative to GDP,” according to the report. Unless Congress is prepared to see massive tax hikes in 2026, the gap between entitlements and revenue will continue to grow.

 And just a reminder as to how Australia compares, have a look at this from Statista:

I'm not sure if this factors in the recent tax cuts, or not.  (I suspect not)

In any case, it seems we are in a much better overall public debt position that the US.   Which makes you wonder (well, not really - he belongs to a cult and so is beyond reason) how Steve Kates and his Catallaxy homies whine about Australian debt all the time, but aren't in a panic about the forecast US debt.

Selfish Right defined

Spotted at Catallaxy, the same obnoxious ageing writer for Quadrant who came to attention for his bombing the ABC fantasies shows us what a selfish jerk he is:

Is he serious?   Because, um, it's not like the next person to have the misfortune to use his cabin would mind the fact that after two days of illicit smoking it's going to stink like hell.  

Restaurants and civility

I'm of two minds about the matter of the Red Hen rejection of the awful Sarah Sanders' group.

I am sympathetic to the views of David Roberts and others that establishment media like the Washington Post editorialising that this is a unwarranted breakdown of civility is rich hypocrisy when she works for a President who not only trashed civility and the norms of American democracy during the campaign, but continues to encourage his cult base to an authoritarian mindset.   The media has allowed the normalisation of Trump's mindset that is so obviously dangerous to nation's politics that getting uptight about a restaurant's rejection of one of the key Trump enablers is to have a distorted set of priorities.  

Zack Beauchamp runs a similar argument, but based more on Trump's trashing of the very concept of truth as the danger.   Here's his argument:

Incivility in the Trump era isn’t about rude tweets. It’s about lies. 

To understand what Sanders’s defenders are getting wrong about the dinner incident, let’s get straight on the difference between “incivility” in politics and simple rudeness. Our guide here will be John Rawls, by all accounts the greatest American political philosopher of the 20th century.

A major topic of Rawls’s work was the problem of political disagreement: How is it possible to have a democracy, a government allegedly for and by the people, when people disagree so much among themselves? Rawls attempted to answer this question in one of his major works, an extremely long tome titled Political Liberalism. 

The core of his answer, to simplify it dramatically, is that democracy depends on a certain set of principles that almost everyone agrees with. These are principles that only “reasonable” people (not Nazis, for example) can accept — ideas like “all citizens deserve to be treated equally” and “it’s wrong to imprison people on the basis of faith.”

For this system to work, Rawls argued, public debate must be free and open for people to clearly explain how their policy convictions can be justified according to the shared beliefs at the heart of a democratic society. Rawls called the obligation to adhere to these rules of discourse “the duty of civility”: If citizens in general, and politicians especially, hide and obfuscate their arguments, then people’s ability to give their informed consent to the administration disappears.

Our foremost political philosopher, in short, didn’t see “civility” in politics as identical to politeness in everyday conversation. Rather, political civility is about treating members of the opposition like reasonable people. It seems more “civil,” in this view, to honestly state disagreements with individuals, even impolitely, than to try to trick them.

Rawls never really engaged with the possibility that a democratic government might make dishonesty one of its core political principles. But as my colleague Matt Yglesias has argued at length, that is what President Donald Trump has done — using a complete disregard for the truth as a tactic for advancing his agenda and keeping his base loyal. 

The sheer breadth of this assault is jaw-dropping; according to the Toronto Star’s database of Trump lies, since becoming president Trump has made at least 1,726 verifiably false statements, a clip of more than three a day. The New York Times compared Trump’s record to Obama’s, and found a huge discrepancy: “In his first 10 months, Trump told nearly six times as many falsehoods as Obama did during his entire presidency.”

Sarah Sanders’s job as White House press secretary makes her especially complicit in this agenda.

Because the president lies constantly, a major part of her job is defending those lies — either covering for them, deflecting them, or lying herself to cover for them. Merely doing her job makes Sanders (because of her boss’s uniquely hostile approach to the truth) uncivil according to Rawls’s terms. 

The Trump administration is attacking the very heart of a democratic political system. And Sanders, by aggressively repeating and defending Trump’s lies, is a vital part of this machine.

On the other hand:   it seems a given that in private, most Republican politicians know that Trump is an idiot and is terrible for the nation long term, but they are too cowered to argue with his base that they are wrong.

If the hope for the nation is for a Republican revolt against their nominal leader, encouraging a mass uprising of harassment of all Trump administration figures regardless of whether they are engaged in private life or not may well make dealing with the idiot base harder, not easier.

I mean, look - the base already thinks that the Left must be destroyed for the sake of civilisation - and that's just from watching the news, let alone seeing a protest on the street that inconveniences them.

It's a bit of a conundrum really - are Trump supporters so self deluded that telling them in public that they are offensive, self deluded nuts will make their condition worse?    They are dangerous too, what with their love of guns and desire amongst a significant number to see actual civil war as a way of winning the culture war that they have really already lost.

I don't know.    Certainly I don't want to see riots - they routinely play into the hands of the Right.

But I do hate the normalisation of Trump rhetoric too. 

I'll have to think about it some more....

Update:  from David Corn:




 

Noted for the record

For those who follow climate science, you would already know that the dishonest Pat Michaels and Ryan Maue article in Murdoch's Wall Street Journal last week repeated a deception that Michaels had tried before regarding James Hansen's 1988 modelling, which turns out to have been pretty accurate.

A decent enough explanation appears now at The Guardian.  But there are lots of others around, including at Real Climate, although I think The Guardian's article puts it nice and succinctly.  

Once again, it is a case of lazy culture war climate change deniers not realising they are being conned, because they live in an information bubble.  (I wouldn't be surprised if the WSJ does allow a rebuttal to appear in it sometime soon - but deniers won't read it even if it's there.)

There have been some good twitter threads about the topic from climate scientists.  I don't know of this Ryan Maue, but he appears a real piece of work.   One  of the prominent people arguing with him is Jerry Taylor, who is president of the Niskanen Centre, the quasi-libertarians who actually believe in climate change as a serious issue.   (I think I've argued before, they don't sound all that libertarian to me.)  His twitter account is worth following.  It contains entries like this:

Transgender wars, continued

There is nothing, really nothing, like the wrath of transgender people/advocates against reporting or commentary on people who once thought they were the other gender, but later changed their minds.

Last week I  noted an article at The Altantic that reported sensitively on the matter of transgender kids and de-transitioners, and since then it has run not one, but two articles by transgender folk (and even a de-transitioner) unhappy with the original article.

I hate to say it (well, not really - it just seems an appropriately polite thing to say), but it's transparent what's going on here:  it's crucial to most transgender folk's self understanding that they can't be wrong about their self understanding, and so no matter how carefully or sensitively or accurately it's reported, they cannot bear hearing about people who now count a past self understanding on their "true" gender identity as mistaken.  

Yeah, well, sorry, but it happens, and it obviously presents a challenge to parents.   

Men are terrible after all

Well, I can understand a woman thinking that if it turns out that it's actually men who give women the unfortunate disease of bacterial vaginosis (which I've posted about twice before):

A Monash University trial is seeking to prove that, unlike other vaginal infections, bacterial vaginosis is actually a sexually-transmitted disease, which can be carried by men, as well as women.

A 2006 Monash study found 50 per cent of women who undergo treatment – an oral or topical antibiotic – for bacterial vaginosis have a recurrence within six months.

"When we looked at the associated factors with bacterial vaginosis coming back, women who were exposed to an ongoing, regular sexual partner had twice the risk," says Dr Catriona Bradshaw, who has been researching the condition for 15 years.

Subsequent studies by the team also suggest this high recurrence rate could be because the infection is sexually transmitted: the biggest risk factor for developing bacterial vaginosis is exposure to a new sexual partner, and a 2008 study of university students found the infection was unable to be detected in women who had never been sexually active.

Bacterial vaginosis is experienced by roughly one in 10 Australian women. It occurs when the vagina's healthy bacteria, known as lactobacilli, are replaced by a variety of different bacteria, resulting in a watery, white discharge and a fishy odour.

Which makes me wonder - if it's a case of bacteria on the penis being re-introduced and outcompeting a woman's normal  healthy bacteria, might not there be a higher risk of it with an uncircumcised penis?

Well, seems my guess is right.  A 2015 article:

Bacterial vaginosis (BV) is a common vaginal bacterial imbalance associated with risk for HIV and poor gynecologic and obstetric outcomes. Male circumcision reduces BV-associated bacteria on the penis and decreases BV in female partners, but the link between penile microbiota and female partner BV is not well understood. We tested the hypothesis that having a female partner with BV increases BV-associated bacteria in uncircumcised men.

Short answer:  it does.

So, for all of the hyperventilating that goes on about circumcision as a cruel practice on boys, women actually do have an incentive to support it.
 
 In fact, Googling on this topic indicates that some have been saying for years that BV should be considered a sexually transmitted disease.  So I'm not sure that the Monash study is all that innovative.  

Western suburbs

I found myself with 45 minutes to kill on the weekend in one of the bushy Western suburbs of Brisbane.   I went for a walk and found :

A pair of tawny frogmouths:

A swimming hole:

And some houses with really, really big front yards:

All within about 30 min drive to the CBD, at least if it is not rush hour.   Nice.

This is sheer idiocy

Andrew Bolt (and Steve Kates) extract some Mark Latham commentary from The Spectator with approval:

Mark Latham says Donald Trump is now the hope of Western civilisation:

Trump believes in the supremacy of the individual, in judging people on merit, by their work ethic and creativity, rather than race, gender and sexuality. These are the essential elements of civilisational leadership. Trump stands for the freedom of the citizen in the nation state. That is, the right to free speech, to meritocracy, to national pride and a freestanding national culture. The key political divide is no longer between Left and Right; it’s between civilisational and non-civilisational leaders. Trump is on the right side of history, with domestic ascendancy seemingly assured. He now needs to turn his mind to an even greater challenge, promulgating a Trump doctrine: a new brand of American global leadership based on the defence of Western civilisation.

It's getting to the stage of when I hear "Western civilisation" I want to reach for my (imaginary) revolver.  (Now that I mention it, didn't the Nazis come out of the one of the national hearts of "Western Civilisation"?)