In other election watching news

*  I was trying to work out why the election coverage seemed so dull on the ABC, but also the other networks I sometimes flicked over to.  Sure, Wong and Sinodinos are smart and therefore a tad too reserved for lively commentary, but it seemed more than that.

The answer, I think, is the lack of the sound of background activity and the live audience that used to be around the broadcasts when they were from the tally room in Canberra.  Has any station tried running an election broadcast with a mixed audience that could clap, cheer or boo results as they deem fit (rather than just the boring cuts to electorate settings when you get some of that noise)?  Is that such a silly idea?  Maybe it has happened and I have forgotten...

*  I know the national Labor primary vote is way down - 33.3% as I write this - and you can paint the Greens (whose vote has held pretty solid at this election at 10.3%, despite their own internal ructions over the last couple of years) as hurting the Labor brand.   But I'm not sure the Left leaning side of the population sees it as a fundamental problem - preferences would surely flow tightly between the two parties and I don't know that all that many people would consider not voting for Labor for fear of Greens influence.   It's like an informal coalition that Labor has to deny in the interests of wanting to formulate its own policy, but I can't really see the embarrassment potential has that much effect in much the same way that moderate urban Liberal voters know they are also empowering a regional embarrassing hick like Barnaby Joyce.  Perhaps this is just taking a naive view of the importance of swing voters, but I can't get too excited by it. 

*  Apart from my favourite explanation that the heat affects Queenslanders in weird ways, I suppose the more likely explanation is just that they (I am excusing myself from membership of the group at the moment) are ridiculously parochial - look at the popularity of Pauline Hanson and Kevin Rudd as examples.   The latter is the type of nerdy swat politician who it would have been hard imagining being all that popular in Queensland, except he was from Nambour. And Hanson's party is showing 8.7% primary vote in Queensland at the moment, with the next closest state Tasmania at 2.7%.  NSW and Victoria are 1.3% and 1% respectively.   It's extremely likely, I think, that the "she's one of us and speaks like us" explains her success here, and it just doesn't translate to other States despite the ridiculous opportunity David Koch and Sunrise have given her over the years to try to build national appeal.

*  As for polling and its accuracy - it seems the advent of the mobile phone is behind it, and no one seems sure how to get around it.  At the same time, perhaps there is exaggeration about the inaccuracy - if you take into account margin of error, will they only be 1 to 2% out, and is that such a big deal?  It's not as if the end result is an electoral wipeout, after all, in terms of composition of the House.  I think its true that newpapers and parties should stop with the fixation on frequent polling outside of election periods.   That is in large part media generated, and a bad thing for many years.



  

Election like its 1993 (with added flim flam)

In 1993,  John Hewson should have won against a Labor government that had done a lot but run out of steam, just promising more of the same (which wasn't reflecting all that well in the economy) and having wasted too much time on a messy leadership transition.  But Paul Keating won by a negative campaign based entirely on fear of tax changes.  Of course it was disingenuous - a GST was never going to be a disaster in the tax mix, and a smart man like Keating would have known it - but such is the appeal of retaining government that we got another Labor term which no one thinks accomplished much, and bumbled along in  un-satisfactory fashion.

The parallels with 2019 are pretty clear - the tax changes of Shorten would not have killed the economy or done much other than force some superannuation retirees to cut back on government funded cruise holidays - except the Keating figure has been replaced by a shallower, flim flam of a politician whose government hasn't achieved anything of importance at all.    Keating's win came off a very low personal approval rating and was more the remarkable (even though not more admirable) for it.   With Morrison, though he is nominally more popular,  I just can't see that it is based on anything substantial. And politicians who win on negative campaigning do not get any lasting regard for having done so - Keating is remembered well for all of his reforming work pre 1993.  Morrison has no such pre-existing high regard for his former ministerial roles.

There is every reason to expect a Morrison government to be a bumbling one - on my favourite topic, it is still going to be beset by internal conflict between climate change denying twits (less the key one of Abbott, thank God) and the moderates who have enough sense to not deny science but are caught in a bind as to how to pretend to be taking adequate action.

Arthur Sinodinos on the ABC election coverage made a telling point to this effect last night.  While he continues to impress me as one of the sharper Liberal politicians, on climate change he appears to embody the attitude of the likely moderate majority of Liberals who know enough that climate change cannot be denied, but are prepared to not show convincing leadership on the issue while waiting for further public pressure to force them into more meaningful action. 

With electorates as dumb as those in Queensland (I certainly predicted correctly that Adani would cost Labor votes here) that is a deeply uninspiring attitude. 

Having said that, the conservatives such as those who live at Catallaxy are not going to be satisfied either - with the loss of Abbott as a key figure around whom denialism within the party can coalesce, it is hard to see how Morrison or his moderates could ever flip to the type of outright denialism that they want.  I mean, to do so will be to show them siding with nutter Malcolm Roberts who (thanks, stupid Queenslanders) will resume a Senate seat;  he at least serves the purpose of showing how old and eccentric you have to be to continue denying a clear scientific consensus.  (Almost certainly, I would say, he gets in by virtue of recognition of Hanson's name on the "above the line" section of the Senate ballet paper; not due to his negative level charisma.)

On the other  bright side - Clive Palmer's failure was pleasing enough.   He is a deeply weird man.

So, overall, it's a Coalition win, but hardly a convincing one for any mandate for a strong, comprehensive conservative agenda, because Morrison simply didn't run on one.  (I had to read an article this morning to remind me what they had promised, since it was so easy to miss it during the campaign.)

As for Labor:   Shorten's concession and immediate resignation had a lot of dignity about it.  For whatever reason, the Coalition voters who work around me all think highly of Anthony Albonese (and, as you would expect, given their treatment of Gillard) dislike Tanya Plibersek quite intensely.   I don't have strong feelings either way - but I can see Plibersek facing an uphill battle given her somewhat Keating-like air of condescension in interviews.   (I think she is smart and likely a very good operator when in power, though.)

I think that Albonese could do well against a bumbling Morrison government,  so let's see if he gets the job.  
 
Update:   I read Peter Brent after writing this post:

All those comparisons with 1993 are apt. A government widely expected to meet its maker, possibly in a landslide, instead lifts its vote and increases its seat tally. The opposition, laden with a big policy agenda and a leader with presentational problems — who snubs the traditional final-week National Press Club event and opts instead for direct engagement with voters at rallies — is nonetheless expected to prevail.

Why? Because the opinion polls say he will. The polls, published and internal, were even more spectacularly wrong this time than back then. Right up to election day, Labor was confident of a number in at least the high seventies. Liberals were sharing their pessimism with journos.

The lashings of eggs-on-face for the commentariat come from the polls....

During the campaign I spent a fair bit of time in this column obsessing about likely preference flows making the difference, but it turned out that what the pollsters got horribly wrong were the primary votes.
Queensland not only repeated its proud tradition of underperforming for Labor relative to survey-generated expectations, it also swung to the government by (on current figures) around 2 per cent. The big difference between surveyed and actual numbers in that fifth of the country alone would account for the pollsters’ national misfire.

Labor won two-party-preferred majorities in Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria and the two territories.

I think he's right on his take on over-analysis of Labor's failings, too:

The good news is that conservative commentators who were only days ago whingeing about the greed and irresponsibility of the voters have had their faith in humanity restored. But for the rest of us, now is the time to turn off the telly and newspapers and rediscover the joy of books, because the unending prognoses of Labor doom will be too much to bear.

The reheated stories of the blue-collar base, battlers, values, a moribund party structure, estrangement from the silent majority, and how the next Labor prime minister is not even in parliament. If you’re old enough, you’ve read and heard it — and its equivalent applied to the conservative side — a thousand times before.

The next polls should  register jumps in the prime minister’s and the Coalition’s fortunes, but in the longer term there is no reason to believe this government will be any more liked by the public than it was in the past.

 Update 2:  Samantha Maiden thinks Arthur Sinodinos was hinting at moderate Liberals getting a better go on climate change as a result of the election - 

Senator Sinodinos observed that “Morrison can’t sit still”.

“He wants to do things. And, in fact, if anything, one of the challenges when he was Treasurer, and Malcolm [Turnbull] was Prime Minister, is there was this debate about, you know, how quickly we do certain things because Scott was very keen to get on with certain things and Malcolm was more cautious and wanted to weigh them up more.

“Now, I think there’s still a case for being cautious when you’re doing big things, but my point is that he is a leader who will want to get on and do things. In fact, one of the things, I think, he will have to do is take some of the elements of the Labor campaign and look at them and say, ‘Well, where were the issues that motivated some people to vote Labor, and what can I do to and ameliorate – assuage those concerns?’.”

That is code for the Liberals doing more about climate change and energy policy.

The thing that he might want to do about climate policy, though, is support coal power stations. 

Election predictions

Surely the chances of Tony Abbott going off into the sunset of voluntary firefighting and lifeguarding at this local beach have increased significantly after last night?   (Honestly, what company would think he is an asset to their board?)   There will be a great shout of joy across the land (even from the conservatives I know who hate Bill Shorten) if this comes to pass.

The betting markets are confident of a Labor win;  the polling indicates it will may be closer than they expect, but the main likely losses to Labor may be in Queensland seats above Noosa where the heat addles brains and they think mining coal is going to provide long term jobs, instead of very temporary ones.

I strongly suspect this will be more than compensated for by convincing Labor wins in other states.   Victoria, being the former Liberal stronghold, apparently looks like the disaster to watch for the Coalition.

It promises to be one of the more entertaining and engaging election nights to be watching the coverage.

Bob Hawke and the Abbott non-legacy

While I cannot say that I ever especially warmed to Bob Hawke as a personality ("larrikinism" is hardly something I feel drawn to, and let's not mention my dislike of cricket and horse racing), there is no doubting the importance of his reforming government, and the attitude of principled and intelligent compromise which he brought to politics.   And he did show regret and a conscience regarding his failings in his personal life - Catholics especially have to give him credit for that, too.

Tony Abbott, by contrast, who is being thoroughly and rightly ridiculed and criticised for rushing in with comments demonstrating his complete and utter emotional tone deafness (shorter version:  "Bob was a great PM because, when you think about it, he was a lot like me") will go down in history as a completely unprincipled, opportunistic, empty vessel of a political operative whose only achievement will be a convincing demonstration of the truth of the Peter Principle:  the country is never likely to ever see a clearer example of a PM raised above their level of political and intellectual competence.
 

Tongue bathe your way to pardon

Conrad Black has been busy writing the most obsequious commentary possible of Trump and his presidency - right up there with Steve Kates material - for the last few years.  

So what a surprise that Trump should pardon him. 

The narcissism of Trump is so transparent that it is obvious to the world how he works.   All anyone has to do (Putin, Xi, Jong-un) is to be extremely complimentary to his face, and then go away from the meeting and continue doing what they want.   Trump's vanity will ensure he is unable to attack seriously someone who told him he's a terrific fellow.

Disney grandchild quite upset with the excesses of wealth and American capitalism

Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Walt and but no direct involvement with the Disney company, delivers quite a spray against wealth and salary inequality in America.

She makes many good points, although she seems to have it in for bidet toilets too, which is odd.  (Unless there is another form of rich persons' toilet that does more than a water spray?)  

The wage and work conditions within Disney itself have been pretty dismaying.  Mickey ought to be leading a socialist revolution.

Religion, eternity and socialism

There's a lot to unpack, as they say, in this lengthy New Yorker review of a book by Martin Hagglund.  The subheading to the article:

Martin Hägglund argues that rigorous secularism leads to socialism. 

I don't have time to finish reading it carefully enough right now, but Jason if you don't find it interesting, I'd be surprised. 

Increased rainfall intensity, as predicted

Heavy rainfall is in the news a lot recently.   A headline in the Washington Post: 

California is already drenched. Now three ‘atmospheric rivers’ may unload two months’ worth of rain.

The midwest is very wet too, and Texas.

And here's a new study on rainfall intensity spotted on twitter:

I see from comments following this Tweet that the denialists take the line "yeah, but it's not that big a problem."

As it's a topic I've been interested in some time, I think common sense suggests that it's in fact a problem for which it is extremely difficult to forecast the economic effects:   I would be very surprised if there is any accurate way to forecast the cost of engineering solutions to landslides, road washouts, and flash flood mitigation generally, both in advanced economies and less advanced ones.  (And some effects are just not going to be capable of being addressed.)

Swedenborg noted

Somewhat amusingly, the Catholic Herald has a column every week entitled "Heretic of the Week", in which they get to more-or-less ridicule various heretical folk from history, both distant and recent. 

One recent interesting one was Bishop James Pike - an American Episcopalian bishop in the 1960's who was on TV a fair bit and was an early advocate for the sort of church reforms which now don't sound so controversial, but were extremely so in his day.  (Ordination of women, abortion, acceptance of gays fully into the church, etc.)    I knew a little about him from his book The Other Side in which he claimed to have got in contact with his dead son via spiritualism.   I probably read that in the paranormal-loving 1970's, and remember thinking that it sounded quite convincing.   Little did I know, however, that the Bishop's personal life was a complete mess:  alcoholism, affairs, and he died in a strange way in the Israeli desert.  I'm pretty sure that he was fictionalised in a Philip K Dick novel too, but I forget which one.

Anyhow, I see that this week's heretic is Emanuel Swedenborg, another character I would have first read about in the 1970's, but one rarely mentioned these days.  As the brief account of his life in the article notes, he was a pretty smart man in his day who went deeply off the planet into visions of angels, the afterlife and alien planets, writing at great length about his experiences and theology. 

He was famous and influential in his day - Wikipedia has a lengthy article about him,  including how he came to Kant's critical attention.

The Catholic Herald notes that the Churches established in his name still have about 7,000 members:

Swedenborg’s vivid writings attracted much interest, providing one strand of the 19th-century occult revival. But in 1817 a denomination was founded on them: the Swedenborgian Church of North America – which suffered a schism in 1890, forming the General Church of the New Jerusalem. Although together the two bodies today have only about 7,000 members, two American folk heroes were Swedenborgians: Johnny Appleseed and Helen Keller.

 I am surprised that it would even have that many members.   Spiritualist and esoteric churches based on generic mysticism have never had longevity in the West - they seem too dependent on charismatic leaders holding it all together.   In a way, I find that a bit sad - it's a bit of a fun fantasy to imagine that there is one small group out there that has actually Worked it All Out with complete accuracy, and it's only a matter of tracking them down.  

Hot in Russia

The Washington Post notes:

Saturday’s steamy 84-degree reading was posted in Arkhangelsk, Russia, where the average high temperature is around 54 this time of year. The city of 350,000 people sits next to the White Sea, which feeds into the Arctic Ocean’s Barents Sea.

In Koynas, a rural area to the east of Arkhangelsk, it was even hotter on Sunday, soaring to 87 degrees (31 Celsius). Many locations in Russia, from the Kazakhstan border to the White Sea, set record-high temperatures over the weekend, some 30 to 40 degrees (around 20 Celsius) above average. The warmth also bled west into Finland, which hit 77 degrees (25 Celsius) Saturday, the country’s warmest temperature of the season so far.

The abnormally warm conditions in this region stemmed from a bulging zone of high pressure centered over western Russia. This particular heat wave, while a manifestation of the arrangement of weather systems and fluctuations in the jet stream, fits into what has been an unusually warm year across the Arctic and most of the mid-latitudes.

In Greenland, for example, the ice sheet’s melt season began about a month early. In Alaska, several rivers saw winter ice break up on their earliest dates on record.

Meanwhile, we have small political parties running here on either a denial of climate change, or a "it's too uncertain to bother doing anything" line.  And one of the major parties still with a large rump of similar folk.

The pro-dog Bible

Biblical Archaeology Review has an article, summarised here, arguing that dogs generally get a pretty positive treatment in the Bible, and from Jews:

Throughout the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, domesticated dogs served as companions, hunting dogs, sheep dogs, and guard dogs. Dogs filled similar roles in the Bible (e.g., Job 30:1; Isaiah 56:10–11). Although dogs sometimes appear in negative contexts in the Bible, such as in insults, they are not listed as ritually “unclean” animals. Strong clarifies that at least by the second century B.C.E., Jews viewed dogs positively:

If the dog was ever considered ritually unclean by the Israelites, it had shed this taboo by the time of the second-century B.C.E. Book of Tobit. When the author narrates Tobias setting off on a long journey, he depicts Tobias’s pet dog exiting the Jewish home to tag along on the adventure, presumably as a companion and co-guardian with the angel Raphael (Tobit 6:2; 11:4).

Dogs as healers has old roots:

Dogs also filled the interesting role of physician in the Greco-Roman world. Strong explains how this developed:

Ancient authors noted, for example, that the dog knows that it should elevate an injured leg, following what Hippocrates prescribed. Alongside other evidence, the ancient observer saw that the dog knows what plants to eat as medicine to induce vomiting if it has eaten something that upsets its stomach, that the dog knows to remove foreign bodies, such as thorns, and that the dog knows to lick its wounds to ensure that they remain clean, understanding that clean wounds heal more quickly.

In the role of physician of the animal kingdom, dogs appear in the cult of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. Sacred dogs, living in the god’s temples, would lick visitors’ wounds. Their tongues reputedly soothed and healed.

Given the surprising ability of dogs to sometimes warn their owns of serious disease, the ancients were not completely off the mark.

And also, this puts a different slant on the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus:

In the parable, dogs lick the wounds of Lazarus. Viewing the dogs as healers, we can see this was a benevolent action. Strong explains that this corrects a previous interpretation of the dogs as malevolent characters: “The function of the dogs licking Lazarus has traditionally been understood by scholars to be a signal of extreme misery. Lazarus must be so disabled that he cannot drive away these ‘unclean’ dogs who are making a meal of him, so the old interpretation goes. But, as we can see now, this act would have been perceived by a first-century audience as a sign of sympathy from the dogs, who have been caring after Lazarus as though his nurses.”

Yay for dogs.

Endorsement of victimhood sought

David Frum's piece in The Atlantic about how Trump is getting angry with the FBI - again! - is good reading:

Trump got extra angry Sunday night. Uncheered by Mother’s Day, the president launched into a sequence of rage tweets that included the line: “The FBI has no leadership.” Trump has fired one FBI director, James Comey, for looking into the Russia matter. He fired an acting director, Andrew McCabe, for the same apparent reason. Apparently, he is now gunning for the present director, Chris Wray.

Why is Trump angry? Trump disjointedly tweeted over linked messages: “The Director is protecting the same gang…..that tried to……..overthrow the President through an illegal coup. (Recommended by previous DOJ) @TomFitton @JudicialWatch”

Trump wants the FBI to endorse his own theory of victimhood—and it won’t. Worse, the FBI was embedded in the Mueller investigation. The FBI received, and still holds, whatever information the investigation gathered about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, including potential answers to the all-important question: Why? Why was Vladimir Putin so eager to help Trump into the presidency? Why did Russia care so much, and run such risks for him?

This is such a weird situation - and the irony runs deep.   The American Right that so dislikes identity politics when it leads to claims of victimhood won't call out a President whose own victimhood status is based on narcissism.     

Strange German deaths

Sounds rather like some murder suicide by crossbow in Germany.   Also sounds like cult-ish people involved?:

A hotel guest said the man had a long white beard and the women were dressed in black, and described them as "strange".

On arrival on Friday evening they simply wished other guests a "good evening", then went upstairs to their second-floor room with bottles of water and Coca-Cola, said the guest, quoted by Merkur.

In Wittingen a neighbour quoted by Merkur described the 30-year-old woman as "always a bit odd - always dressed in black, sort of gothic".

News from France, and Australia

I feel this is another embarrassing admission, but I didn't realise, until I saw it on SBS this morning, that there was a good English news service from France 24, and its English news website looks very good too.  I believe it is a government funded broadcaster, and according to Wikipedia, it is a very large organisation.

On our public broadcaster, 4 Corners last night had a good episode looking at the issue of children being held in Queensland police watch-houses for unfortunate lengths of time (weeks, in some cases.)   It was pretty remarkable viewing, and (of course), the type of journalism that is non existent in the commercial news sector now.   (I trust people noticed the ridicule that Sky News Outsiders got for including a segment with a climate change astrologer who claimed it was all down to the position of the planets and energy field alignments, etc.   That James Morrow was co-hosting, eroding any credibility in his judgement even further.)  

The value and quality of the ABC is so obvious, I simply can't understand how right wing twits can spend time plotting its demise.  

The dry bar

The BBC reports that some bars in some big cities are trying to operate completely alcohol free, and are (apparently) growing in popularity.

But look at some of the cocktails (don't other countries call them "mocktails"?) one of them serves:

...the menu features a list of $13 (£10) cocktails with ingredients like tobacco syrup, lingonberry and jalapeno puree, with a friendly note from the owners that laptops are not allowed.

First, that's really expensive for a non alcoholic drink.

Secondly:  tobacco syrup, for goodness sake?  There's a taste idea I would run away from.

Vegetable cooking noted

*   Anyone who notices food writing will know that whole baked cauliflower has been the "new" big thing for a couple of years now (especially for vegetarians - there's been so much praise for it, it has sounded like the dish that will convert some to give up meat).    I tried it on the weekend, and have an announcement to make:

It is still cauliflower.

I know there are a thousand different suggestions on the net as to how to prepare and cook it, and I decided on a marinade of tahini, olive oil, garlic, salt and smoked paprika.  Pretty simple, but then again I found one person who just recommended olive oil and salt, and add a sauce at the end.   I went with the "cover in a foil tent for first half hour, then leave it open" method  (as opposed to the reverse.)  I left it in the oven for like 1 hour 20 minutes (it's a ridiculously energy intensive thing to prepare, for few calories.)

And at the end of the day:  yeah, it tastes like cauliflower with an added bit of taste on the outside.

I know:  I read some cooking sites where someone said they had to try several different ways of preparing and cooking it 'til the found the perfect one.  But I just can't see that it is worth the bother.

I think cauliflower and zucchini are both in a race for the blandest vegetables on the market, and really, I can't be bothered with the electricity and cooking experimentation to get either of them into an alleged taste sensation.

People:  just eat another vegetable that already has flavour and cooks in shorter time.

*  My wife makes a very nice, dry style pasta using garlic, anchovies, broccoli, dried chilli and - that's it, really.  Well, some olive oil, I assume.   She even saves time and energy by cooking the broccoli with the pasta.

I really enjoy the drier styles of pasta dishes now.   Less heavy that a meaty or creamy sauce, but still delicious and pretty satisfying with a tiny bit of side protein.  (We had a bit of hot smoked salmon on the side.)

Mongolian camels and their humans

NPR has a story about Mongolia's Biggest Camel Festival, and it features many photos of dolled up camels, like this one:

They do look nicer than some of your other camel versions.

Some history:

Why this regional craze for the two-humped creature? The origin story is intertwined with Mongolia's transition to democracy.

Under socialism, herding was centrally planned. Herders sold their animal products to the state. With the onset of capitalism in 1990, herders faced new pressures within the free-market economy. For some, their camels were worth more dead than alive.

"Camel herders couldn't get a good amount of money selling products from camel milk and wool," says 35-year-old festival organizer Ariunsanaa Narantuya.

Camel milk and wool wouldn't sell, but camel meat would. Some herders began slaughtering their camels. The festival was created a few years later, in 1997, by the newly formed Camel Protection Association — a local nongovernmental organization — to reverse that trend and protect the desert creature.

OK, well that makes me realise that I know very little about Mongolian political history.   I see from  Wikipedia that it sure is geographically unlucky, the way it's caught between China and Russia.   It has, however, transitioned to democracy:

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 strongly influenced Mongolian politics and youth. Its people undertook the peaceful Democratic Revolution in 1990 and the introduction of a multi-party system and a market economy.

A new constitution was introduced in 1992, and the "People's Republic" was dropped from the country's name. The transition to a decentralised economy was often rocky; during the early 1990s the country had to deal with high inflation and food shortages.^[43] The first election victories for non-communist parties came in 1993 (presidential elections) and 1996 (parliamentary elections). China has supported Mongolia's application for membership in to the Asia Cooperation Dialogue (ACD), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and granting it observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.^[44]

Anyway, as a democracy, and they are free to love their furry camels, and hold races of (allegedly) a thousand camels at a time:



I wouldn't mind visiting the place, but probably more to look at it out of the window, rather than to stay there any length of time.   Always looks such a bleak landscape.

Brisbane did not deserve you....

Where am I supposed to buy my Italian washed rind cheese now??

It was only last week that I said I was worried about the very upmarket deli/café/bottle shop Mercado surviving in King Street, in the old Exhibition grounds.

And yes, this morning it's shut, no sign on the door, but some guy who seemed to know what he's talking about said it has gone into receivership. This morning.  Ugh.

To be honest, I doubt it is in the right location.  I could imagine it working in one of the old money suburbs, perhaps Hamilton or Ascot, but it's in an area full of new, mostly small apartments, many ofwhich would have tenants who pay enough on the rent and can't spend up on tiny $9 cans of tuna from Spain, or very expensive cuts of aged steak. 

It's still a pity.  I think they were trying to provide some fish and other items at cheaper prices.  And the staff were very knowledgeable and nice.   There were so many of them, though. 

It's odd when an average Joe like me with no experience in retail can tell a place won't work out. 

Maybe it will be revived with less fancy goods and half the staff.  I hope so.

False beliefs that must change to advance the world

Ugh.  I see the Washington Post has a story about tigers being farmed and eaten in Laos.

I just posted about a ridiculous caste story from India.

No need to mention radical Islam, is there?   Wannabe terrorists (and actual arsonists) were convicted in Canberra yesterday.

Let's make a list of some key false beliefs that need to change to advance the world, and who they are addressed to:

1.    Everyone:    Climate change caused by increasing CO2 and greenhouse gases is not a matter that is any serious scientific doubt.   It's not a vast conspiracy by climate scientists, weather bureaus, socialists, "cultural Marxists" or anyone else.   Scientific advice to reduce the future concentration of greenhouse gases must be followed.   

2.    Various Asians (primarily):   You do not gain particular strength or benefits according to the type or part of animal you eat.   Eating strong animals doesn't make you any stronger than eating lazier animals.     Leave wild animals alone!    Leave most animals alone!  (If you must, do something similar to what Catholics do - invite the generic animal spirit to go into something that's harmless to eat and eat that instead.  Or adopt homeopathy, so the atoms of one dead animal should be enough to make billions of litres of spirit imbued tonic. Either way - happy animal, happy placebo affected human!)

3.    Indians:   Belief in the caste system is an offence to universal human dignity and rights.   Treat all humans with respect, and make opportunity for social and material advancement open to all.   And build more toilets while you're at it.

4.    Muslims:   God does not want you to kill other humans for not believing your brand of your faith.   Respect other faiths, and non belief, if you want to be respected.  (PS - companion dogs are cool, you don't know what you're missing out on.)

5.   Everyone who's inclined to believe it:   natural formations are not sacred.  They may be very cool, awe-inspiring, lovely to look at or be in or on, and important to preserve for environmental or aesthetic reasons:  but they are not sacred.    Gods or spirits might like natural places too, but they don't  fuss about making one spot sacred and other spots not.

To balance things out, seeing 4 out of 5 complaints are about "traditional" or ancient beliefs:

6.  Atheists and modern philosophers:   it's OK to complain that theism doesn't make any sense to you - believers worry about how to make sense of the problem of evil too, amongst other things.   But stop promoting the idea that free will is an illusion and does not exist:  it's an unhealthy meme psychologically and culturally, encouraging defeatism towards the idea of self control and choosing a moral life, however you wish to define that.  (And you may not even be right, anyway - so why promote a belief that has such obvious potential for harm?)

In more "OMG India", news

From the Times of India:

Dalit groom rides horse, community faces boycott 

 If I understand it right, it was the leadership who were boycotting the Dalits who were arrested, which is something, I suppose. 

New information for the sex ed class

Why am I reading this in the Washington Post and not in the Australian media, when it's from Australian researchers?:

It may be possible to pass gonorrhea through kissing, challenging the widely accepted notion that the sexually transmitted disease is spread almost exclusively through sexual contact, a new study says.

Researchers in Australia found that kissing with tongue may be a way to transmit oropharyngeal gonorrhea, or oral gonorrhea, particularly among gay and bisexual men. Although the idea has not been well-studied, one expert says the findings, published Thursday in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, could be important for understanding gonorrhea as it continues to spread and become more resistant to treatment.

Not entirely sure what this means for Australian coal

Spotted in the Jakarta Post:

The Indonesian coal price reference (HBA) has continued to decline this month due to shrinking market demand to US$81.86 per ton, or a month-to-month (mtm) decrease of 7.86 percent.

Energy and Mineral Resources (ESDM) Ministry spokesperson Agung Pribadi said that East and West Asian countries, especially China and India, were currently limiting their Indonesian coal imports.

“China and India have started to reduce their coal imports from Indonesia. The countries launched a protection policy and have increased domestic coal production to fulfill [local] demands,” Agung said in a statement on Tuesday.

STEM students don't care for gun control, apparently

Slate has a report of an event that I'm guessing with thrill the American Right:  apparently, a "vigil" for the student killed in the school shooting this week turned out all strange when lots of students attending didn't like that it was a "political stunt" to talk about gun control.   (The report says they apparently weren't aware of it having been organised by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.)  

“I thought this was about us, not about politics,” one student said, according to the Washington Post. Another student argued that they were “not a statistic” and shouldn’t be cited to justify gun control: “We are people, not a statement.” 

The students held their phones’ flashlights into the air and chanted, “mental health, mental health.” They also confronted journalists, whom the Brady Center had invited to cover the event, calling them derogatory names, according to the Denver Post, and asking to see what photos they had taken.

Colorado is a swing state, apparently, and it seems Denver is more Democrat than other parts.   That makes this sort of reaction surprising, but I wonder if STEM students swing more Right wing than your average student.

Oh well, they will presumably get more shootings in future, if that's their attitude.   

She keeps the best company

I see that Helen Dale has turned up on a Youtube with Carl Benjamin, better known (apparently) as Sargon of Akkad, discussing Brexit.   The discussion, which went on far too long to keep my interest, was intelligent enough, but I was more interested in the "meta" aspects.


First, she is sounding very British these days (although that happens if you live in a country); but more oddly, if I understood her correctly, she is now in the Conservative Party and said something like she was "conservative from birth".   Which sounds a tad odd:  did I read somewhere in one of the many articles/interviews about her that she once said she helped (when very young, and perhaps with her father?) on a Greens campaign?  But she has also said her father was a con man and made many disparaging remarks about him at other times.   

In any event, I have a suspicion that we are witnessing another re-invention of herself.

More significantly, this Benjamin character is a controversial figure, who I have managed to avoid knowing anything about until now.   He's running for the pro-Brexit, anti immigration UKIP, and The Guardian notes that he was a big figure in the Gamergate controversy in 2014 (and not in a good way.)   He's also in trouble for some "joke" he made about how he wouldn't rape a certain politician, and he's not apologising for it.   He puts on an air of reasonableness in some of his material, but Buzzfeed notes his online presence is closely associated with an alt.right fanbase. 

I seriously doubt he is someone who (shall we say) reasonable people should be associating with.

Dale has also done an interview with James Delingpole - the climate change denying twit and general right wing gadfly.   Apparently, he was all gushing about her take on Roman society.   For a person who thinks libertarians should stop denying climate change, she sure doesn't mind helping the profile of one of the most prominent climate change denying writers of the last decade.

At the risk of being accused of jealousy or undue obsession with her, I say again that there has always been something about her manner in talks, interviews or writing which strikes me as a facade of intellectualism more than anything substantial.  But she wins over many on the "classic liberal" or libertarian right,  who do not perceive her this way.   

She's pretty fascinating, because I perceive her as very strange, and rather Zelig-like in many ways. 

Should I ride?

I have been curious to try a Lime scooter:  they look sort of fun, but my inherently conservative view towards my safety might mean I not go anywhere near their top speed (23kph).

However, I see a man in Brisbane, not too far off my age, has died after riding one down some stairs (unintentionally, I assume.) 

I had a look at the cost of buying one of these things - if you lived in a city with a good enough bicycle path network (I think they are allowed on them?), I thought they might be pretty appealing to youngsters as a cheap commuting device.   Not much fun in rain or storms, but on a lot of days in Brisbane in winter, I can imagine them being a pretty pleasant way to get to university, for example.

I see that Segway sells a reasonably flash looking one for about $850, with a 20km range (but a 3.5 hour charge time.)   Other companies sell much more expensive ones.

I think if I lived within 10 km of a university I was  attending, I would be tempted to buy one.

The de-evolution of Mark Latham

Mark Latham's descendent into creepy old man Right wing culture war whinger was on full display in his maiden speech to the New South Wales Parliament, where some high(?)lights included:

"Like a scene from Orwell's Animal Farm, the Green-Labor-Left has become the thing it originally opposed: elitist, would-be dictators taking away from the working-class communities the things these battlers value."

He also attacked political correctness and the "confected outrage" of the "elites".

Quoting Monty Python actor John Cleese, Mr Latham argued that telling a joke about someone does not mean you hate them.

"We love the people we joke about — the Irish, the blondes, the gays, everyone — as they've helped to bring humour and joy into our lives."

Yeah, tremendous jokes and commentary such as he gave on Sky News recently:

Discussing the new "Respect Victoria: Call It Out" advertisement in which a man leers at a woman on a train – eyes running down and up her, persisting despite her visible discomfort and distress – Latham dismissed the man’s behaviour as normal.

“If you don’t have a good look at a beautiful person of the opposite sex there’s something wrong with you,” the One Nation NSW leader said on Sky News last week.

“Was he thinking … did I used to root her at uni?”

 The rest of the summary of his speech:

The One Nation MP spoke for more than 47 minutes, calling for limits on immigration, an end to identity politics, an overhaul of the state's education system and the introduction of nuclear power and greater investment in coal-fired power.

If you want to read how much he has devolved, have a look at this 2014 piece with its moderate,  thoughtful and regretful analysis of why climate change denialism had been so successful amongst large parts of the public.

Now he belongs to a climate change denying party.  (One Nation's policy position on this looks like it was written by nutter Malcolm Roberts.)  

His culture war whinging has won him many admirers at Catallaxy - fellow man-stuck-in-the-social- zeitgeist of the 1950's, CL claims this:

It’s really disappointing to me that Latham cannot be prime minister.
He is the outstanding man in Australia’s polity right now.

It all again shows that Right wing opposition to climate change action is simply based on culture war resentment and has nothing to do with a serious consideration of science or economics.

One final question:   doesn't Latham's wife find this change of persona worrying?   It must be like living with a different man from the one she married.   And don't his sons, who must at least be teenage now, find him cringeworthy and "old before his time" as well?
 

Numb to the absurdity

While you can still find tweets and the occasional headline like this:

Trump shows he still doesn't grasp who bears the brunt of tariffs 

it's pretty incredible that we are watching a US President re-engaging in a trade war while making it abundantly clear that he still doesn't understand what he is doing (in that he doesn't understand tariffs, at all.)

How can any economist of any credibility defend a President so dumb as to not be able to absorb correction on this matter?  

The media (and much of the public) has become pretty much numb to the absurdity of the situation.

Time for out and proud atheists

This one's sure to appeal to Jason. 

Lots of good points made in Max Boot's Washington Post column about America's weirdly distrustful attitude towards atheist politicians, when disbelief (or agnosticism, at least) is actually rapidly climbing in the nation, and much of American religiosity has permanently tainted itself by supporting Trump:

It’s time for us to have an unapologetic atheist in the Oval Office

Boot indicates that even Democrat Presidential candidate Andrew Yang is not an atheist.   And he's right:  Wikipedia says he attends a small Protestant denomination:

Yang attends the Reformed Church of New Paltz with his family and has identified Mark E. Mast as their pastor.^[40][41]

Update:  well, I feel it a bit embarrassing to admit I didn't know this about Winston Churchill (I have never read a biography of him), but Boot points out he was a disbeliever with only the most nominal attachment to the Anglican Church.   A detailed article about his (lack of) religious belief can be found here.   

Shorten did fine

If anything, I wish he had been more sarcastic and ridiculing of Morrison's laughable line that the Coalition accepted climate change and the need to take action on it.  He should have mentioned Morrison's lump of coal in Parliament, although I suppose that would have led to questions about Adani that Shorten would prefer not raised.

Overall, though, people who hated Shorten before the debate will still hate him;  people like me who think Morrison is an inch deep failed advertising executive who has accidentally found himself as Prime Minister will still view him the same.

Shorten's summary of the Coalition was spot on, though:  they want you to believe that everything is fine, when most suspect we are just skating on thin ice with the global economy changing in ways no one completely understands, and the feeling of an ever present risk of another financial meltdown of some sort or another.    I like that Labor has made itself a "big target" in terms of tax reform and climate change - that's how politics should work.

Mum's the word

What an interesting day in Murdoch land.

The Daily Telegraph took a pretty bizarre decision to run as front page news that Bill Shorten didn't include in his Q&A explanation about his Mum (that she wanted to be a lawyer but to support her kids she became a teacher) enough detail about how she later did go on to study and practice law, although only for 6 years as a barrister.   Unsurprisingly, Shorten had publicly discussed his Mum's late career in law before - it's not as if it is a secret.  

So it was a ridiculous decision to try to make a mountain out of a molehill.  In fact, I'm not even sure that it's a molehill - there's nothing to show Shorten was being deceptive given his mother's career was already a matter on the public record.  

Yet the Tele's opinion editor, James Morrow, who I recently noted has always seemed to want to live up closely to the first part of his "Prick with a fork" nom de plume, turned up on twitter promoting the story.   Tim Blair also noted it on his blog with approval, and hopeless partisan hack and enriched canine admirer Chris Kenny defended the story too. 

On the other side of the Murdoch fence, though, the Herald in Melbourne decided not to run it, and Andrew Bolt has defended that decision.

The overwhelming take on the matter on Twitter that this is a real misfire and is much more likely to help Shorten than hurt him.   

Here's my take:   I wouldn't have thought it's likely to be any sort of key turning point of the campaign - it didn't exactly attack his Mum, even though the headline was ambiguous - but gee it shows what ridiculous editorial judgement pervades the Daily Telegraph.  (And the Courier Mail too, apparently.)

As a semi-gotcha, it might at most have been worth appearing as a small part of some opinion hack's mid section column - and it is the sort of useless rubbish that Tim Blair now excels at in his blog.

But when even Andrew Bolt can see that putting it as the front page lead story is wrong - well, as I say, it's a weird day in Murdoch land.

Update:  I see that Shorten has elaborated on his Mum's legal career, indicating that the late start did affect it:

Mr Shorten elaborated that while his mother had eventually studied law, she was a victim of age discrimination - despite her academic record, no law firm hired her to complete her articles and when she did join the bar, she only received about nine briefs.

"It was actually a bit dispiriting," he said.

Update 2:   since I first wrote the post, I have re-read what Shorten said on Q&A, and realised he had made it very clear she did study and practice law.   (When I first posted, I was going by memory of part of what he had said.)   I have therefore amended the post.

It just makes the Daily Telegraph's story, and all who defend it, look pretty idiotic.

Update 3:  jeez, I was right the first time - I thought I was reading transcript of the Q&A show when it was an interview or talk he gave somewhere else.  Now that I'm sure I have read the right transcript, I see that he didn't go on to say on Q&A that his Mum had gone on to study and try being a barrister in her 50's - after a career in teaching that had not been her first preference.   

Awful

What a heartbreaking visual summation of the full effects on school kids of another school shooting in the US:

It's from a Politico story on today's Denver shooting, which seems to have involved injury only, not death, by some good fortune.  But you can imagine the ongoing psychological effects...

Update:  yeah, one kid did die, by putting himself in harm's way.   And another kid turned up on TV talking about he had hid and was prepared to have a go at the shooter too:

12-year-old Nate Holley tells CNN's Brooke Baldwin that he hid in a closet during the violence at STEM School Highlands Ranch and had been prepared to fight off the shooter with a baseball bat

"I was going to go down fighting, if I was going to go down."

 As Daily Kos says:

Young children like Nate Holley should not be thinking about how they can sacrifice themselves to save their classmates in the face of another mass shooting. This is insanity. In fact, it was another student at STEM School Highlands Ranch who rushed one of the shooters. Kendrick Castillo was supposed to graduate high school this week and now his parents are planning a funeral instead of a graduation party. 

Quantum physics and time

I read this paper at arXiv recently, and despite the abstract, it was in large part relatively readable:

We discuss the implications for the determinateness and intersubjective consistency of conscious experience in two gedanken experiments from quantum mechanics (QM). In particular, we discuss Wigner's friend and the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment with a twist. These are both cases (experiments) where quantum phenomena, or at least allegedly possible quantum phenomena/experiments, and the content/efficacy of conscious experience seem to bear on one another. We discuss why these two cases raise concerns for the determinateness and intersubjective consistency of conscious experience. We outline a 4D-global constraint-based approach to explanation in general and for QM in particular that resolves any such concerns without having to invoke metaphysical quietism (as with pragmatic accounts of QM), objective collapse mechanisms or subjective collapse. In short, we provide an account of QM free from any concerns associated with either the standard formalism or relative-state formalism, an account that yields a single 4D block universe with determinate and intersubjectively consistent conscious experience for all conscious agents. Essentially, the mystery in both experiments is caused by a dynamical/causal view of QM, e.g., time-evolved states in Hilbert space, and as we show this mystery can be avoided by a spatiotemporal, constraint-based view of QM, e.g., path integral calculation of probability amplitudes using future boundary conditions. What will become clear is that rather than furiously seeking some way to make dubious deep connections between quantum physics and conscious experience, the kinds of 4D adynamical global constraints that are fundamental to both classical and quantum physics and the relationship between them, also constrain conscious experience. That is, physics properly understood, already is psychology.

 That last line is, however, more or less clickbait in my opinion.  

It's also been a couple of weeks since I read it, but if I recall correctly, at the end of the day I thought it seemed to be perhaps just a very complicated way of arguing that if you view time as something we are embedded in, rather than something we pass through, it solves a lot of what seems like quantum mystery.   

The view of time they promote would also seem to raise questions of free will and determination - about which there is more here, although I have not read it thoroughly.

Interesting.  You can download the paper here.

Why now?

Doesn't it seem very odd that no one seems to know why exactly the US is sabre rattling Iran?  As the BBC says:

Mr Pompeo cancelled a trip to Berlin to meet with Iraqi leaders during a four-hour stop in the capital Baghdad.

The visit came days after a US aircraft carrier was deployed to the region, which officials said was in response to threats to US forces and its allies from Iran.

On Tuesday it was revealed the US was sending B-52 bombers to the region.

The US has given little information about the exact nature of the reported threat, which Iran has dismissed as nonsense.

John Bolton, the US national security adviser, said only that the US was acting "in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings" on announcing the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln on Sunday.

Does anyone sensible trust Bolton's judgement in such matters?

Things that I wish weren't going on right now

In the context of an election campaign where the polling is closer than it should be, I do wish that we weren't seeing:

*  eggs being thrown at any Coalition politician,

*  animal rights activists invading farms (although it hasn't happened for a few weeks), or

*  the fight over Folau.

All of these issues are capable of motivating culture war sympathy to the Coalition side by undecideds, who are (in some cases), so stupid as to be considering voting for the ridiculously politically vacuous parties of Hanson and Palmer, despite their clear, terrible, history of just being in politics as self indulgent careerists and attracting nutters as candidates.

I am surprised at the ability of Palmer advertising to make unengaged people forget what a true flake he is.   Disgustingly, Morrison and the Coalition should be blasting Palmer for his corporate behaviour with both barrels, but for their political advantage, they aren't.   

John Quiggin on the cost of carbon emissions reduction

A very clear and readable explanation by John Quiggin on the matter of modelling the cost of carbon emissions reduction.

Maximum sentence please

As a class of crime, there's something particularly vicious and nasty about road rage assaults, especially when they come after pursuing someone for kilometres.  Nine times out of ten they suggest an assailant either completely off his face on some drug or other, or full of obnoxious male entitlement, or both.

This guy completely deserves a maximum sentence - and governments need to be publicising road rage punishments at cinema or where ever stupid young men might see them. 

Back to GoT

Heh:  Slate has a whole article on the coffee cup sighting.  

Fantasy land, and the Labor launch

Ha!   What a bunch of cowards.  After months/years of "the Liberals must be destroyed" because the party won't go Trump enough for them, various Catallaxy commenters are falling back into line with "with reluctance, I will be voting Liberal because a Shorten Labor government will destroy the country."   Some, I admit, are holding out, but at the end of the day most will fall into line.

And they live in a fantasy land that, if only the Coalition would go wingnut Right on climate change, the whole issue will go away.  Here's lizzie, the Facebook-iest of commenters there:

If the Libs win I hope there is enough sense in the result for them to drop the RET like a hot brick and start building some coal-fired power stations. Also drop exploding batteries, including the big one called Snowy 11. Then a Royal Commission into Climate Science would be useful to get some realism into the lives of crying (and acting) children. 

Yes, sure.  After rejecting the need for Royal Commissions on useful things, they want a totally pointless one on climate change, as if the ageing contrarians, if they live long enough, will front up and repeat arguments discredited a decade or more ago and convince the Commission that everyone else has been wrong for all this time.

On another point:   I didn't see much of the Labor launch in Brisbane, but it was a triumph of - something - that they managed to get Rudd and Gillard entering together and showing that Kevin can can even bear to make eye contact and rub shoulders with her now.   Was he drugged, or is there some other explanation?

Anyway, it was pretty heartening, really, in the interests of seeing Labor win:

Rupert's reasons

Given the rabid pro-Coalition coverage in the Murdoch press, it's interesting to remember this reported from last year:

According to reports in the ABC and The Australian Financial Review that differ in detail rather than substance, days before Turnbull was forced to walk the plank on August 31, Murdoch told fellow billionaire Kerry Stokes, the Perth-based chairman of Seven West, “Malcolm has to go.”

Stokes apparently disagreed.

"That means we get Bill Shorten and the CFMEU,” he told Murdoch in a version of the story reported by the AFR.

Not to worry, says Murdoch, according to the ABC report, "They'll only be in for three years – it won't be so bad. I did alright under Labor and the Painters and Dockers; I can make money under Shorten and the CFMEU."

I can only assume that one or more of the following factors are currently rattling around Rupert's decrepit looking head:

*  Rupert has had second thoughts about how he could make money under Shorten;

*  Rupert wants to see his "king maker" judgement vindicated at the polls;

*   Rupert really got his nose out of joint when Shorten refused to meet with him (which is something Shorten really has not received enough credit for.)

What was I saying about Poland? (Part 2, I think)

At The Guardian:

A woman has been arrested on suspicion of offending religious sentiment, after posters bearing an image of the Virgin Mary with her halo painted in the colours of the rainbow flag appeared in the city of Płock in central Poland.

The Polish interior minister, Joachim Brudziński, announced on Twitter on Monday that a person had been arrested for “carrying out a profanation of the Virgin Mary of Częstochowa”.

A Płock police spokeswoman confirmed a 51-year-old woman had been arrested over the alleged offence. The woman had been abroad, but upon her return, the police entered and searched her home, where they found several dozen images of the Virgin Mary with the rainbow-coloured halo.

The “Black Madonna of Częstochowa” is a revered Byzantine icon that resides in the monastery of Jasna Góra, a UN world heritage site and Poland’s holiest Catholic shrine.

Offending religious feeling is a crime under the Polish penal code. If convicted, the woman could face a prison sentence of up to two years.

 Update:  can someone point Andrew Bolt to this article, because I see he gets really upset with religious interference in art.  Well, sometimes, anyway:

Permafrost worry

That commentary piece that has appeared in Nature on the great uncertainties in the amount of greenhouse gas likely to come from melting permafrost is indeed a worry.    The basic message is that things are going faster in the North than anyone expected:

Current models of greenhouse-gas release and climate assume that permafrost thaws gradually from the surface downwards. Deeper layers of organic matter are exposed over decades or even centuries, and some models are beginning to track these slow changes.

But models are ignoring an even more troubling problem. Frozen soil doesn’t just lock up carbon — it physically holds the landscape together. Across the Arctic and Boreal regions, permafrost is collapsing suddenly as pockets of ice within it melt. Instead of a few centimetres of soil thawing each year, several metres of soil can become destabilized within days or weeks. The land can sink and be inundated by swelling lakes and wetlands.

Abrupt thawing of permafrost is dramatic to watch. Returning to field sites in Alaska, for example, we often find that lands that were forested a year ago are now covered with lakes². Rivers that once ran clear are thick with sediment. Hillsides can liquefy, sometimes taking sensitive scientific equipment with them.

This type of thawing is a serious problem for communities living around the Arctic (see ‘Arctic permafrost’). Roads buckle, houses become unstable. Access to traditional foods is changing, because it is becoming dangerous to travel across the land to hunt. Families cannot reach lines of game traps that have supported them for generations.

In short, permafrost is thawing much more quickly than models have predicted, with unknown consequences for greenhouse-gas release. Researchers urgently need to learn more about it. Here we outline how. 

 There current guesstimate as to how much worse it could be than that in current models:

We estimate that abrupt permafrost thawing in lowland lakes and wetlands, together with that in upland hills, could release between 60 billion and 100 billion tonnes of carbon by 2300. This is in addition to the 200 billion tonnes of carbon expected to be released in other regions that will thaw gradually. Although abrupt permafrost thawing will occur in less than 20% of frozen land, it increases permafrost carbon release projections by about 50%. Gradual thawing affects the surface of frozen ground and slowly penetrates downwards. Sudden collapse releases more carbon per square metre because it disrupts stockpiles deep in frozen layers.

Furthermore, because abrupt thawing releases more methane than gradual thawing does, the climate impacts of the two processes will be similar⁷. So, together, the impacts of thawing permafrost on Earth’s climate could be twice that expected from current models.

The rarity of a TV show that ends well

I see via Twitter that the dying episodes of Game of Thrones are continuing to upset quite a lot of long time viewers.   So someone asked "what TV series ended for you in a satisfying way", and people are nominating things I don't agree with (the ending of MASH left me cold, but I had stopped caring much about the show long before the final season) or shows I haven't seen at all (The Shield).

And it's true, so few lengthy TV series do end in a satisfactory way.   Most people were underwhelmed with Seinfeld's final episode;  even worse, it seems The X Files make a final series which everyone simply ignored after the poor quality of the penultimate come back series.   Most sitcoms go on for about 3 seasons too long, and I stop watching them long before the end anyway.

I continue an old devotion to the Mary Tyler Moore show, and I've probably mentioned before that I did think the ending of that show was funny - new management at the TV station recognise that ratings are bad, and decide that the problem isn't the ridiculous newsreader Ted, but the rest of the newsroom which promptly gets the sack. 

I'm struggling to remember another show that I did watch to the very end, and found satisfying in the last episode.

A culinary note

I'm still in long weekend mode, ok?

The culinary note: I really like the distinctive flavour of washed rind cheeses.  They should be more popular than they seem to be. 

I'm eating one from Italy as I write.   This makes me feeler wealthier than I am, and if it got here via airplane it's probably a climate change sin, but I am trying to support the fancy deli/cafe/restaurant in King Street, which seems to have so many experienced staff I fear that Brisbane isn't sophisticated  enough for it.

The Australian sparkling wine I am having with it is quite pleasing too, and carries no guilt.

The passion post

It's the Labour Day holiday in Brisbane.  Beautiful clear blue sky and 24 degrees.  May to September is just great weather here...pity the daylight hours get short.

Anyway, a boring post about this plant:

We have a yellow passionfruit vine growing out of a not very big pot, over an arch that' only about 1.5 m wide.  It is about 2 years old and has produced fruit before, but at the moment, it has gone berserk.   I reckon there are about 35 fruit coming on this  rather small area vine which we basically ignore, apart from watering in dry weather.

I have no idea what will happen if I actually fertilize it.  Or should I just let a happy plant be?

Election on track (I think)

So I've been reading Twitter and some other commentary, and watched Insiders.

Two weeks out from the election I think the view has firmed up that Labor is not in danger of losing the election after all.  Apparently, the betting market has turned in Labor's favour again; people think the social media campaign being run by the Liberals looks desperate and run by people without a clue (the Star Wars themed tweets, for example); and Josh Frydenberg looked and sounded far from confident on Insiders today, which also brought the delightful news that Tony Abbot really is looking likely to loss his seat.  

The best thing that can come from a Labor win would be that it involves not just Abbott but other conservatives losing seats and sparking the internal confrontation that the Coalition has to have in order to rid itself of climate change denialism.  It would be a real disaster if the Liberals scraped home and avoided that fate. 

On a side note, I see from a peruse of the Catallaxy threads that an old commenter DD (Daddy Dave, I think) has turned back up after what would be years of absence.   He used to be one of few moderate Righties on the site, and nearly always maintained a polite disposition.   I think he used to occasionally look in here too, but commented that he thought it a boring and would never have a big readership because it didn't really attempt to engage with readers, or some such.  C'est la vie.

I find it to believe he will continue commenting at Catallaxy for long, given the ludicrous Down Under American Right Culture War site that it has become.  But we will see...

An unromantic lead

A review of Long Shot begins:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least in cinematic comedies of the past decade or so, that just about every woman on-screen must be in want of Seth Rogen. From Knocked Up to Zack and Miri Make a Porno to Neighbors, Hollywood has continually presented the star as a romantic lead while marveling at the supposed ludicrousness of the concept, to the extent that his new vehicle is a rom-com called Long Shot. The premise? That Rogen, playing to type as an avuncular, bearded fellow who’s no stranger to sweatpants, gets entangled in a relationship with an impressive and a spectacularly beautiful politician played by Charlize Theron.

I could be mistaken, but isn't the defining aspect of a Seth Rogan film that they have quite a lot of pretty crude sexual humour?   As such, I have never seen one of his films, and would guess that he and his ilk are behind the death of decent romantic comedies we have witnessed over about the last 10 - 15 years.

Even I find this a weird approach to policing

I may give the impression that there isn't a government intervention into lessening illicit drug use that I don't like, but even I find it pretty amazingly intrusive that police in Sydney users sniffer dogs (and strip searches) for drugs on your average commuter crowd at places like Central Station.    I mean, even for someone like me who hates the drug taking aspect of music festivals and am dubious about policies that semi endorse it can see that random searches of commuters is just extraordinary.

The only thing I can say about this is - did Labor have any different policy before the last election?  If so, sorry people, but you got the police state you voted for...*



*  I see that Labor was saying that music festival pill testing should not be off the table, so they do sound as if they were reform minded.

Automation unfairly getting the blame

Here's the article at The Week I was looking for.  Found via Peter Whiteford's twitter feed:

How robots became a scapegoat for the destruction of the working class

The gigantic Murdoch problem

I agree with a lot of this article, particularly the way it criticises the genuine journalists working within Murdoch who put up with the editorial bias of their employer.   It's moved into outright cowardice, really.  Anyway,  this is it:

News Corp: Democracy’s greatest threat

What did we do before the internet?

I went looking at The Week for an article on robots taking jobs, and saw this great contribution to humanity there instead:

I put Pringles in the fridge and it changed my life

I still read it.  Might even try it.

Far too late

The SMH repeats the news from the Washington Post:

Facebook said on Friday it had permanently banned several far-right figures and organisations, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, for being "dangerous", a sign that the social network is more aggressively enforcing its hate speech policies under pressure from civil rights groups.

Helen's made a goose of herself, again

Only yesterday I mentioned Helen Dale in the context of climate change, noting that she had once at least called on libertarians to stop denying it.   

I had missed, though, that only last week she had a nasty sounding tweet about Greta Thunbergpril: 

She explains at the Spectator this was "fairly obviously" a joke.

Very few people took it that way.   Helen has apparently deleted Twitter from her phone, such was the blowback she was getting.   And given that Dale herself has claimed she probably has a degree of Aspergers, it is very hard to see her tweet as anything other than (at least) somewhat callous from a person who should know better.   (Jealousy at the attention Thunberg has received is another theory I've seen in the Twitter response.)

Now look - I don't hold any great interest in Greta Thunberg and have paid her very little attention.   I actually share Dale's view in her Spectator attempt at self-justification that under 18's should basically never be shoved into political leadership roles.   And Britain in particular is having an outbreak of idealistic climate protest founded on exaggerated slogans and claims.   (I am extremely rarely impressed by any form of protest, though.  Not a joiner that way.)   I just take the view of "at least their heart is in the right place" and don't resent that it might have some political consequences in a useful direction.

I still say, though, that it's hard not to see behind Dale's Tweet the typical libertarian ideological motivation to just ignore climate change - either deny it exists, or deny it's bad enough to do anything about, or deny we're capable of doing anything about it and put all the eggs in the techno basket of successful geo-engineering that would have to done for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. 


She belongs on a seasteading "nation" with all other libertarians.  

A diet would help

I don't know anything about the rapper/comedian/actor Adam Briggs apart from seeing him on The Weekly from time to time.  I'd put him in the category "mostly harmless".   But last night on the show, he joked, as on Twitter, that as an indigenous man he may be 32 but (in terms of much lower indigenous life expectancy), that's like 67 in "white years":

Look, the guy's from Shepparton and it seems he has lived either there or in Melbourne all his life.     As such, he has (unlike some fellow indigenous)  ready access to healthy food and all the medical services he could need.  Yet he clearly carries quite a lot of excess weight - and on his gut, which is well recognized as the worst kind of overweight to be.

He may well be the equivalent of 67 in "health" years (I am surprised he is only 32 - he could pass for much older), but it's a bit rich to even joke that it's due to just being a "Blackfulla". 

Judith not good at analogies (when it suits her)

Whenever The Australian or AFR run articles by the likes of Judith Sloan or Alan Moran on climate change economics, they should (but don't) put a large rider in bold "READERS SHOULD KNOW:  THIS ECONOMIST DOES NOT BELIEVE CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL OR NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED IN ANY MANNER AT ALL.".  Because, of course, if your analysis is springing from  that fundamental belief, there is no reason to trust its objectivity at all.

So I see today that Sloan's column in The Australian on the modelled costs of Labor's climate plan is able to be accessed.  

To be honest, much of her account of the uncertainties is pretty well aligned  with what I heard on Radio National this morning - she could have put more effort into poohing-poohing Labor's policy than she did.   Is this a sign of a crack in her noggin that is letting in light that action is going to happen and she had better start sounding like she hasn't always been a flat earth climate change denier when talking about policy responses?

But my main reason for posting about this:  she claims to be completely puzzled by Bill Shorten's "fat person eating 10 big macs" analogy.  It's not perfect, but the point is clear enough:  the fat person [Australia] can't just continue with the easy and fast fix for hunger [energy needs] by eating fast food all the time [building coal power stations], because we all know that in the long run it will hurt/kill them [climate change effects].   They  have to put the effort in to get a better diet [clean energy and reducing all emissions] even if a good meal costs more than a Big Mac [that's where the analogy starts to go off road - although if the only choice were restaurants, it might work.]

She's just being deliberately obtuse in saying she doesn't understand it.