Colbert does well

Stephen Colbert's lengthy reaction to the (apparent) outcome of the Mueller investigation was sharp, very funny, and passionate:



While I am at it - is it just me, or is the vibe of Trump himself not quite as jubilant as one might have expected?   Sure, he's been talking about exoneration and looking into those who made claims, etc:  but to my mind there is has been a whiff of exhaustion and resignation about it, rather than energy.  

This might be imagination, but is it possible he feels he will miss victimhood status?  Or even regret that a finding against him might have given him grounds to resign from a job he doesn't really like?   OK, maybe that's going too far, but the fact he fell silent on twitter before the Barr letter indicated something a bit odd - who had convinced him not to tweet?   The other funny thing I have seen speculated is that, feeling relieved, he will soon be making admissions that will throw doubt on the whole obstruction/collusion question again.

Making it up as we go along

Over at the TLS, Phillip Goff has a lengthy go at justifying the practice of religion without believing in it. 

It's an interesting argument, perhaps put better here than I have read previously.  Not sure I'm convinced.

In the meantime, I'm developing my own religion based on some combination of the moral sensibilities of To Kill a Mockingbird, the sense of awe from the films of Steven Spielberg, and the all powerful, all seeing knowledge of Google as the forerunner of the Tiplerian/de Chardin-ian Omega Point.   That last bit explains why it will be crucial for my congregation to use Android, not Apple.

But what heresy is this, with Spielberg appearing in support of Apple yesterday?    My belief system is being tested already....

Quick One Nation takes

After watching the "Party for Sale to the Highest Gun Lobby Bidder" show last night I have some comments:

*  what a deeply obnoxious, redneck jerk that Steve Dickson is.   (Head of Queensland One Nation, apparently.)  And he was a Queensland Minister for something, getting high in his office on his power to make regulations about anything?  Shows the embarrassingly shallow pool that politicians, especially Queensland politicians, are drawn from.  [Update - Wikipedia says he was a minister under Campbell Newman, and is 56.  He he looks like he could easily pass for 70.]

* strangely, it seems the NRA actually recognises the difficulty of arguing against the relative success of the Australia gun buy back.

* plainly, they were telling the NRA they were not just there for tactical hints, but they needed money to get more power within Australia.

* will Mark Latham use this as a reason to leave the party?   As soon as he was elected, people have been asking "has he left the party yet?"[Update:  I am told Latham is defending the Party.  What a joke.]

* like Trump supporters, One Nation voters are too dumb to watch the ABC, will vaguely hear something about how One Nation wanted to relax gun laws, and say "sounds OK to me, I'm voting for Pauline anyway.  She's one of us."   The party base is, basically, too dumb to not support the party.  

The Malaysian problems

An interesting paper is at the Lowy Institute site talking about 4 key problems Malaysia has to deal with.

I didn't realise that 35% of the population was non-Muslim.   (That's a lot bigger figure than I expected.)   Sure doesn't feel that way when you are there these days.

I also see in the footnotes some examples of recent, shall we shall, stupid Muslim activism:

Ludicrous examples of such behaviour include attempts by a laundromat in Muar to ban non-Muslims from using its washing machines arguing that their clothing will contaminate Muslim washing (“Muslim-only Laundromat puts Malaysia in a Spin”, Today (Singapore), 27 September 2017), and complaints that a housing project was promoting Christianity because the roof-top air vents resembled crosses (“Stir over Langkawi Housing Project’s Cross-shaped Air Wells Prompts Developer to Repaint Them”, The Straits Times (Singapore), 29 December 2015).

I watch nutters so you don't have to

The reality distortion field caused by fear of an attractive, articulate and pretty sharp political opponent is absurdly powerful:

Geothermal woes

Gee - it turns out it's best not to play around with geothermal energy in earthquake prone places:

A South Korean government panel has concluded that a magnitude-5.4 earthquake that struck the city of Pohang on 15 November 2017 was probably caused by an experimental geothermal power plant. The panel was convened under presidential orders and released its findings on 20 March.

Unlike conventional geothermal plants, which extract energy directly from hot underground water or rock, the Pohang power plant injected fluid at high pressure into the ground to fracture the rock and release heat — a technology known as an enhanced geothermal system. This pressure caused small earthquakes that affected nearby faults, and eventually triggered the bigger 2017 quake, the panel found.

The quake was the nation’s second strongest and its most destructive on modern record — it injured 135 people and caused an estimated 300 billion won (US$290 million) in damage.

Russian collusion

Maybe no more posts about Mueller after this one.

At The Atlantic, an argument that the investigation was a stunning success in revealing corruption (which, of course, Republicans refuse to acknowledge):

The Mueller investigation has been an unmitigated success in exposing political corruption. In the case of Paul Manafort, the corruption was criminal. In the case of Trump, the corruption doesn’t seem to have transgressed any laws. As Michael Kinsley famously quipped, “The scandal isn’t what’s illegal; the scandal is what’s legal.” Lying to the electorate, adjusting foreign policy for the sake of personal lucre, and undermining an investigation seem to me pretty sound impeachable offenses—they might also happen to be technically legal.

Through his investigation, Mueller has also provided a plausible answer to the question that first bothered me. Trump’s motive for praising Putin appears to have been, in large part, commercial. With his relentless pursuit of Trump Tower Moscow, the Republican nominee for president had active commercial interests in Russia that he failed to disclose to the American people. In fact, he explicitly and shamelessly lied about them. As Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen implied in his congressional testimony, Trump ran his campaign as something of an infomercial, hoping to convince the Russians that he was a good partner. To enrich himself, Trump promised to realign American foreign policy.

 This is the very definition of corruption, and it provides the plot line that runs through the entirety of Trump’s political life. The president never chooses to distinguish—and indeed, may be temperamentally incapable of distinguishing—his personal interests from the national interest. Why has he failed so consistently to acknowledge Russian interference in the election? Because that interference was designed to benefit him. Why did he fire James Comey and, let’s use the word, obstruct the investigation into election interference? Because he wanted to protect himself from any investigation that might turn up material that reflected badly on him and his circle. (And whatever Mueller’s ultimate conclusion about collusion, his investigation has proved to be an unending source of damning revelations about the president and the men who constituted his closest advisers. )

 David Corn has written in much more detail along these lines.  I didn't even recall we knew this in detail:

Let’s start with Trump. Shortly after he leaped into the 2016 contest, Trump began pursuing a grand project in Moscow: a sky-high tower bearing his name. It could reap him hundreds of millions of dollars. His fixer,  Michael Cohen, was the Trump Organization’s point man in the negotiations.

Trump signed a letter of intent, and the talks went on for months through the fall of 2015 and the first half of 2016. At one point, Cohen spoke to an official in Putin’s office, seeking help for the venture. And throughout this period, Trump the candidate, when asked for his opinions on Russia and Putin, issued curiously positive remarks about the thuggish and autocratic Russian leader.

Trump also claimed throughout the campaign that he had nothing to do with Russia—no business there, nothing. And when he was asked whether he knew Felix Sater, a wheeling-dealing developer and one-time felon who was the middleman for the Moscow project negotiations, Trump claimed he was “not that familiar with him.”

That was a lie.

The Moscow deal did fizzle at some point, but Trump had engaged in the the most significant conflict of interest in modern American politics. He was making positive statements about Putin on the campaign trail, at the same time he needed support from the Russian government for his project. Yet he hid this conflict from American voters and lied to keep it secret. (After the election, Cohen lied to Congress about this project to protect Trump, and that’s one reason Cohen is soon heading to prison.)

  It’s deplorable that a presidential candidate would double-deal in this manner and deceive the public—insisting he was an America First candidate, while pursuing a secret agenda overseas to enrich himself. But Trump’s duplicity also compromised him.

Cult follower comfortable with jailing disbelievers, apparently

RMIT's worst walking advertisement in the history of their academia (Steve Kates) continues his cult longings at their second worst advertisement's hate blog: 

Trump added that if he has his way, those who investigated him will themselves be investigated.
“Those people will certainly be looked at. I’ve been looking at them for a long time and I’m saying why haven’t they been looked at? They lied to Congress. Many of them, you know who they are, they’ve done so many evil things,” he said.

Trump also said he wants to make sure that what he’s endured never happens to another president.

 “Lock her up” was the mantra during the election, and it might soon apply to a number of those who worked with and supported Mueller. As Emerson said: “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” Same may go for Presidents.

That last paragraph is Kates's own words. 

Some relevant tweets about the Mueller investigation

In the pre-Cult days of America...

....regardless of the question of whether it amounts to criminal conduct, it would have been non controversial that it should be terribly politically damaging for:

*  a Presidential candidate's family and campaign staff to be running off to meetings with sleazy Russian characters indicating that dirt on Hilary might be available to them;

* a Presidential candidate at a rally to invite Russia (or any foreign power) to help him by providing Hilary's emails;

* a Presidential candidate, and a President, to laugh and cajole supporter rallies in chants of locking up the candidate who lost to him at the election;  

* a President to fume openly about an investigation into the Russian assistance, and to publicly take the word of Putin over that of his intelligence community;

* a President to sack his FBI director for not toeing his line.

But we are living in the days of the weirdest political cult America has ever seen, so this behaviour is considered innocent by its members.

Some curious stuff about the Mueller report

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person to be startled at how quickly Barr made his decision after receiving the report.  From The Atlantic:

In less than 48 hours, he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—who supervised Mueller for most of his investigation—“concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offence.” Though Barr emphasized that he and Rosenstein had been involved in evaluating the status of the investigation for months, and that they consulted the Office of Legal Counsel and other Department of Justice experts, this conclusion reflects startling and unseemly haste for such a historic matter.

Crucially, we don’t know whether Barr concluded that the president didn’t obstruct justice or that he couldn’t obstruct justice. Well before his appointment, Barr wrote an unsolicited memo to Rosenstein arguing that Mueller’s investigation was “fatally misconceived,” to the extent that it was premised on Trump firing former FBI Director James Comey or trying to persuade Comey to drop the investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national-security adviser. Barr’s memo was a forceful exposition of the legal argument that the president cannot obstruct justice by exercising certain core powers such as hiring or firing staff or directing the course of executive-branch investigations. So although Barr’s letter to Congress says that he and Rosenstein found no actions that constituted “obstructive conduct” undertaken with the requisite corrupt intent, we don’t know whether he means that Trump didn’t try to interfere with an investigation, or that even if he did, it wasn’t obstruction for a president to do so. Democrats in Congress will want to probe that distinction—as they should.

And elsewhere in the magazine, David Frum writes, with nice sarcasm:

Good news, America. Russia helped install your president. But although he owes his job in large part to that help, the president did not conspire or collude with his helpers. He was the beneficiary of a foreign intelligence operation, but not an active participant in that operation. He received the stolen goods, but he did not conspire with the thieves in advance.

This is what Donald Trump’s administration and its enablers in Congress and the media are already calling exoneration. But it offers no reassurance to Americans who cherish the independence and integrity of their political process.

Update:   another lawyer (who helped draw up Mueller's terms of reference) is directly critical of Barr's previous memo which apparently expresses a controversial take on the matter.

A look at Norilsk

BBC Culture has a gallery of remarkable photos and short videos about the Russian city of Norilsk - which is 400 km north of the Arctic circle.  That means no sun at all for 2 months, and a winter that lasts for 9 months.  

Humans really do live in stupid places.  

Paranoia unbound

I see Steve Kates having an outbreak of paranoia (again) about the fact that there was an investigation into Trump and his campaign's dealings with Russia, a country which we know intervened in the election in his favour.

These people should terrify you

Why are these lefty idiots so upset about Mueller not intending to indict the President? Why aren’t they relieved that there was no conspiracy to subvert their democracy? Because they are dishonest swine who care not a whit about truth, justice or the democratic order. Here’s the answer.
ALL BECAUSE DEMOCRATS COULDN’T ACCEPT AN ELECTION RESULT:
They stand for nothing other than power. No decency, no morality, nothing but the raw assertion of power. 

He's a deep believer in the Deep State conspiracy theory - everyone who wanted an investigation - doesn't matter if they were Republican figures or not - were just out to get his hero Trump. 

The Wingnut Right has become the new Manicheans - everything in politics has to fit into a dichotomy and battle between Good (them and - ha ha, I know - Trump) and Evil (Democrats - a.k.a. Socialists - who are as bad as Hitler because he was a socialist,  Muslims, Mexicans, Europeans and any foreigners who think that Trump's an idiot and embarrassment).

It's astounding, and will be written about by historians for centuries.


Anyway, Sinclair Davidson's sheltered workshop for the paranoid and obnoxious continues on its merry, nutty way. 

I think the Olympic Games are safe from this competition...

Headline of the year so far at NPR:

Headless Goat Polo Is A Top Sport At World Nomad Games

Two bare-chested men on horseback wrestle. The goal is to pull your opponent off the horse so a part of his body touches the ground.

Three dogs chase a dummy clad in a fox or hare skin to see who's fastest. Biting an opponent is grounds for disqualification.

And then there is this sport: "Each team seeks to throw as many goat carcasses as possible into the tai kazan (goal) of the opposing team."

They're definitely not Olympic sports but they are a part of another global competition: The World Nomad Games, held in Kyrgyzstan last September.

Some photos of the action at the link, too.

Wow, she's good

It seems Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared a couple of days ago on Seth Meyer's show, and this is probably the first time I've watched her in this format.   No wonder she scares Republicans and Fox News - she's incredibly relaxed, charming and polished as a media performer, and also appears as sharp as a tack.   





I particularly liked the part where she ridicules the Republican who asks the same stupid question at every committee hearing "Are you a capitalist or a socialist."

Is there lead in the water of the American Right at the moment?   I just don't understand how stupid it's become.

Disclaimer:  first impressions don't always count - I was impressed with the first big media appearance of  Sarah Palin, to my perpetual embarrassment now.  But AOC has actually been doing the work, asking good questions, and appearing astoundingly confident, but also quite modest.  I don't think I'm wrong this time, although of course all politicians will have mis-steps of one kind or another over time.

Apropos of nothing much - Gray on Hayek and Keynes

John Gray is usually interesting, if sometimes obviously wrong.   I just stumbled across a piece he wrote in 2015 which gives some brief but interesting biographical details and analysis about Hayek (what he got right and wrong.) 

Unpleasant twits

One of the participants at Catallaxy threads calls himself "Percy Popinjay": in the same tradition, I suppose, of others there who go under names like "Confused Old Misfit" or "Knuckeldragger":  the attempted ironic humour doesn't work as their comments show it's an accurate description.

I am continually gobsmacked at how so many people who comment there do not realise what deeply unpleasant, viciously intolerant and arrogant personalities they have on display.  Here's Percy, talking about his time at the voting booth in Sydney yesterday, handing out how to vote cards for Australian Conservatives:

People continually confused the AusCons HTV with that of the Gliberals. I ended up having to change my script to “Conservatives, they’re not the liberals”, or “Conservatives, the sensible alternative to the liberals”.

About the closest I came to being abused was when some ol’ smartarse had a good look at the HTV and then dramatically recoiled, stating, “I’m not a conservative”. Had to bite my tongue so as not to reply with “so, you’re an unthinking brainwashed imbecile”.

That smarmy ol’ mayor also made an appearance at the booth. The greenfilth HTV distributors were exactly what I expected – smug hypocritcal middle aged white boomer scumbags.

The name and the attitude puts me very much in mind of Monty Python dealing with "upper class twits".  Any of these could be our man Percy:

I think the Australian Conservatives only ran in the Upper House, and I don't think any figures are available for them yet.  (Nor for David Leyonhjelm's run either?)   I may well be amused when the voting numbers are out, to see if twit Percy's efforts counted for much. 

Update:  Percy himself has read the post and thinks I don't get that his name is his attempt at a "pisstake".  He's not very bright.  

Earth instruction manual sent to the Moon

What a neat idea.  Having a lunar lifeboat repository in case the planet gets smashed or nukes itself into near oblivion has always appealed.  Now, we have the start of one:

A 30-million page library is heading to the moon to help preserve human civilization.

The massive archive is aboard Israel's Beresheet spacecraft. 

From the article itself:

Included in the Lunar Library’s more than 200 gigabytes of data are the entire English-language version of Wikipedia; tens of thousands of fiction and nonfiction books; a collection of textbooks; and a guide to 5,000 languages along with 1.5 billion sample translations between them.

All of that information is etched onto 25 stacked nickel disks, each just 40 microns (about 1/600th of an inch) thick.

Since people of the far future will presumably not have a DVD player handy, and might not speak any language now in use, the top of the Lunar Library’s disc is engraved with tiny images of books and other documents explaining human linguistics, along with instructions about how to read the library beneath. The introductory layers can easily be viewed when magnified 100 times under a simple microscope. Then it’s up to our crafty descendants to build the player so they can read the rest of the Library....

The Lunar Library is shielded by a protective layer and insulation, as well as the structure of the Beresheet lander itself. All of that should help safeguard it from micrometeorites that strike the moon on a regular basis. Even so, it may not have anything like the 6-billion-year lifetime that Spivack is targeting. “These objects will not survive for a billion years un-degraded, but they might be intact and unburied after 10 million years, maybe 50 million years,” Davies said.

Me and podcasts; and a movie genesis

My flu-y type sickness made me rest all day Friday, and yesterday, but I am starting to feel better, thanks for asking.

Lying around the house led to me dropping back into Podbean, a podcast app that sees as good as any other.   I had used it to listen to some podcasts on the flight to Singapore and back at Christmas, given that Scoot has absolutely no in-flight entertainment system.  Ah, who needs it on an 8 hour flight if you have a phone with a battery that lasts that long? 

Even though there are so many podcasts available, on lots of topics which I find potentially interesting, I think I have mentioned before that I have trouble getting into this internet phenomena.  Not doing anything other than listening to one feels wrong, and I'm not sure why.   I guess it's like listening to talk radio - I never sit down to just listen to it live, but it's perfectly fine while shaving and ironing and getting ready for work;  or driving.  Yes, a lot of my Radio National listening has happened while driving.  

So, lying in bed and trying to listen to one just doesn't work for me.  I also don't much enjoy ones where there are too many people interjecting - I tried listening to How Did This Get Made, in which a room full of people, including the quite funny Jason Mantzoukas, take apart movies which raise the titular question.   It was too much, for too long.  (It did convince me, though, that the 2018 movie Skyscraper is a real dud in all respects.)  

But then, I had to go pick up my daughter last night and was listening to The Good Place podcast, episode one (it's hosted by the actor who plays the devil Sean in the series) and it quite enjoyable.  It was more just a protracted one on one interview, and it was fine, especially as I was driving at the time.

I also tried the Scriptnotes podcast, by two genuine Hollywood screenwriters with significant credits to their name.   The content seems very directed towards fellow writers, and it sounded like their industry advice was practical and likely very helpful for those trying to get a foot in the door in that business. Not sure that I am going to listen to them that much, but I did listen to an old one they did in which they analysed Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Which led to me to the transcripts of the meeting between Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan in which the ideas for the movie were fleshed out from an outline created by Lucas.

Maybe I had read before, in 2013, that the transcripts were available online - it did attract some attention that year.  But I don't recall going and reading them before.

It's all very satisfying, listening in, as it were, as to who came up with what idea.   It's clear that an awful lot of what ended up in Temple of Doom came from those sessions too.  (Essentially, they had too many ideas for one movie.)   

Some of it sounds kind of racist by today's standards, and some a bit weird.  George suggesting that Marion was only 12 when she fell in love with Indy, for example:

Lucas: He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven.
Kasdan: And he was forty-two.
Lucas: He hasn’t seen her in twelve years. Now she’s twenty-two. It’s a real strange relationship.
Spielberg: She had better be older.

 Anyway, the full transcripts go for many, many pages, and I didn't read them all.

Still, it's nice to know they are there.

Is there a mild flu going around?

..because if there is, it sure feels like I have it.   Light headed; feet and calves a bit achy even though I have done no special exercise; nose not blocked but some drip in the back of the throat; and tired.  Stomach not feeling great either.

Not just a cold, I think.  I am going to bed.