Black holes getting closer

Big news in astronomy:

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have found the closest black hole to Earth yet, so near that the two stars dancing with it can be seen by the naked eye.

Of course, close is relative on the galactic scale. This black hole is about 1,000 light-years away, which equates to roughly 9,500 trillion kilometres.

But in terms of the cosmos and even the galaxy, it is in our neighbourhood, according to a study lead by astronomer Thomas Rivinius, who led the study.

The previous closest black hole is probably about three times further, about 3,200 light-years, he said.

The black hole is tiny, only 40 kilometres in diameter, and lives in the Telescopium constellation (the telescope), which neighbours the Sagittarius and Corona Australis constellations in the southern celestial hemisphere.

Given our galaxy is somewhere between about 100,000 to 200,000 light years wide, that really is in the local neighbourhood.

But, remember, Planet 9 at the far edge of our solar system might yet turn out to be a black hole the size of a baseball.   

I just hope there are no rogue black holes wandering around the galaxy, like the recent asteroid that make a pass around the sun. 

Back to World Order

To the bafflement of my son and daughter, I am finding this particular recording of a stage performance of Machine Civilisation (the first song on this clip) pretty mesmerising and worthy of repeat viewings:



In fact, I have trouble explaining my reaction to it as well - I just know that it is weirdly cool.

The lyrics to the song are far from cheery, but they include certain themes which recur in the groups other songs (which are written by the leader-turned-politician Genki Sudo).   And in keeping with a theme running through recent posts here, they seem clearly Buddhist influenced. 

Someone in the factory trolling?

New information on chests

Back in 2014, I had a post about the history of men's swimwear, noting that it would seem that sometime in the 1930's it became acceptable, at least in Australia, for men on a public beach to go bare-chested in their swimwear.    Then in a post earlier this year, I noted that the British police were arresting men for sunbathing shirtless in parks in the 1920's.   Men's chests seemed to be a sensitive issue, but I hadn't found anything about how the turnaround to acceptability had happened. 

Well, on the weekend, I stumbled across a Washington Post article which fills in a lot of the story, at least in the USA:

...1930s America lived in fear of the male nipple. It was illegal in most states and cities for men to go anywhere shirtless, even at the beach.

It's a fun read, looking at what was a hot social issue a mere 90 years ago.  More extracts:

A headline on a June 16, 1934, Associated Press story called it the “Perennial Battle of togs” before listing which cities and states would jail men for indecency if they showed their chests.

“New York City, for example, is that way about half-naked natators at municipal beaches. It arrests them on sight. Fines of $1 are the penalty. The city fathers insist on complete bathing suits — tops and trunks, or one-piece suits combining both.”...

Many places where folks understood the outcome of a water-meets-light-colored fabric equation specifically banned all-white suits.

In D.C., men were urged to swim in the one-piece suits their hotels provided.

And the Northeastern fashion of flirting with lawlessness by wearing a tank but letting the straps slip to reveal some pecs was strictly and specifically prohibited.

“All we demand is decency,” William E. Whittacker, secretary to the Boston Metropolitan District Commission told the Associated Press. “But we won’t allow slipping straps.”

Geez, so many rules.

 The article notes that men might have been motivated to go topless by the reaction to Tarzan!:

Men grew tired of being told what they could do with their bodies and kept rebelling, especially after observing the way dames swooned after seeing Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller bare-chested in the 1932 “Tarzan the Ape Man” flick....

Not all women were thrilled with the views their non-Olympian peers provided. A group of pearl-clutching New Yorkers said they had “no desire to gaze upon hairy chested men,” according to a June 29, 1936, Associated Press story.

“In this year of campaigns we are having our own drive, and we won’t stop until every hairy chested man covers up on the beach or removes the curls from his chest,” said Grace Donohue, a spokeswoman for the group who demanded men wear shirts or wax.

So it was the hair that was the problem, not the nipples?

Anyway, it all came to a head by 1937:

One hot August day in 1935, police rounded up, arrested and fined 42 men who protested and swam topless on the beach in Atlantic City, according to the New York Times. City official Thomas D. Taggart Jr. logged each of their arrests and collected a $2 fine from each bare-chested man.

The summer of 1936 was the summer of the men’s no-shirt movement, and arrests and protests and slipped straps were an epidemic.

But next year, in the epicenter of the men’s protests and mass arrests, a lengthy experience with “bareback bathing,” as some called it, changed one important man’s mind.

“ ‘Bareback’ bathing for men, heretofore taboo in Atlantic City, broke down the last line of official resistence today and will be allowed this Summer,” the New York Times reported on March 29, 1937. “Mayor C.D. White succeeded in holding off the invasion of shirtless bathing suits all last Summer on the ground they were ‘not nice.’ But today he returned from a vacation in Florida a convert to the style.”

 A judge in New York overturned the ban the same year. And boom, male nipples were free.

Now you know.

Against Buddhism

I'm pretty sure I have read this before, but it predates this blog and a quick search indicates I have not linked to it before.   (Or maybe I have - Google searching the blog is still rather hit or miss.)

It's a 2003 Slate piece by science writer John Horgan explaining why he gave up on meditation and his investigation of Buddhism. 

A good advertisement

They may still have witchcraft on the books, but at least they'll have flying cars too

I seem to have not previously noticed (or possibly, forgotten) that Saudi Arabia, under it's modernising Crown Prince (who's still, shall we say, old fashioned in the matter of how to deal with journalist critics), is planning a brand new, big, futuristic mega city/district on the Red Sea.  In The Guardian:

“The future has a new home,” proclaims the website.

“It’s a virgin area that has a lot of beauty,” says the voice over a string section soundtrack as the promotional video tracks colour-tinted panoramic shots of picturesque desert expanses, and deep azure lagoons.

“Better humans, better society,” it boasts extravagantly.

The brainchild of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the new city state of Neom, named from a combination of the Greek word for “new” and the Arabic term for “future”, is intended to cover an area the size of Belgium at the far north of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coastline.

There has been no shortage of outlandish promises for the $500bn (£400bn) city-state. According to strategy documents leaked last year, the project may include a huge artificial moon, glow-in-the-dark beaches, flying drone-powered taxis, robotic butlers to clean the homes of residents and a Jurassic Park-style attraction featuring animatronic lizards.

Advertising materials stressed Neom will be built on “virgin” land, ready to be conquered with futuristic technology. “In 10 years from now we will be looking back and we will say we were the first ones to come here,” declares a Neom staff member featured in the video.

I wonder if the planning includes how to deal with global warming that will probably make it deadly to be caught outside of airconditioning for more than 10 minutes.   (I might be exaggerating, but not by much...)

Optics

Who on Earth (apart from Trump himself?) thought this is a good look:

and who couldn't have guessed it would lead to this:

Bill Kristol is feeling glum:

Movie reviewed, and history considered

Watched The King on Netflix on the weekend - the reworking of the Shakespearean Henry V story which was itself a reworking of history.   I didn't really read any substantial reviews of it before watching; just enough to see that it seemed worth watching.

And it is.  It's a really great looking film, and quite engaging, even if not exactly emotionally involving. 

Of course, given my inclination to follow up after viewing historical films to see how true to life they are, and also that I am no huge fan of Shakespeare and keep little of the details of his stories in my head even if I have seen them, this was an obvious target to read up on. 

It would seem that the invasion of France and the key battle scene at Agincourt are more-or-less accurate, in the big picture anyway.  The key dramatic part, though, of the Dauphin meeting his end there is completely made up - he was no where near the battle.

There would seem to be a case for arguing the film is an even bigger fiction than the play, though, given that apparently the real Henry V was no peacenik, and really did want to fight the French.   But the other key dynamic, of young Henry being a lazy lay-about before he took on the Crown seems a dubious proposition for which there is contradictory evidence.   Here, for example, one writer seems completely skeptical about the "mis-spent youth" bit:

 With Henry IV’s ascension, the younger Henry became Prince of Wales and spent eight years leading armies against the rebellious Welsh ruler Owain Glyndwr. In 1403 Henry fought alongside his father against their former ally Henry “Hotspur” Percy in the Battle of Shrewsbury. During the battle, the younger Henry was hit in the face with an arrow but was saved by the daring surgical removal of the arrowhead.

 Stories of the rakish young “Prince Hal” (expanded upon in Shakespeare’s “Henry IV”) are difficult to prove, though there may have been father-son tensions during the last years of Henry IV’s reign.

"Difficult to prove"?  Here's someone at the BBC site giving more highly sceptical commentary on the matter:

After Henry's death, English propaganda constructed an even more elaborate legend: of his self-transformation, after a reckless youth, into a model of responsibility. For the conversion of royal sinner into royal saint - the tale of how 'Madcap Prince Hal' became 'Harry the Great' - there is no scrap of contemporary evidence. Yet the English love it as an antidote to the despair their royal heirs generally provoke....

 Henry's spell of alleged laddishness was a short episode when he was a de-mobbed soldier, twenty years old, with wild oats to sow. Supposedly, he spent time and money in taverns and brothels, in drunken brawls and sordid liaisons, with unsuitable playmates. 'He exercised meanly,' said a late but influential chronicle, ' the feats of Venus and Mars and other pastimes of youth.' The stories are plausible but untrue - part of an imaginative reconstruction of Henry's life which his brother later paid a hack to write up. The models are saintly conversion-narratives: St Augustine's, from an unchaste life, or St Paul's, from wickedness to apostleship, or St Thomas Becket's, from a wastrel 'suddenly changed into a new man'. Adolescent excess was an excusable background against which a born-again do-gooder could shine more effulgently with - in the words Shakespeare put into Hal's mouth - a 'reformation glittering o'er my fault'.

Yet if you go to another website (The Smithsonian magazine), they cite a historian who seems to think the accounts are probably more-or-less true:

Anne Curry notes that “Henry the prince was a far cry from Henry the king.” The salacious antics detailed in Shakespeare’s verses may be dramatized, the historian explains, but near-contemporary accounts validated by ties with the king’s intimate circles echo the play’s description of a “misspent youth and late change of heart.”

According to Vita Henrici Quinti, a biography penned by humanist scholar Tito Livio Frulovisi during the late 1430s, the prince “was a fervent soldier of Venus as well as of Mars; youthlike, he was fired with her torches.” After the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, Henry spent five years in Wales quelling a rebellion. Here, Frulovisi writes, “in the midst of the worthy works of war, [he] found leisure for the excesses common to ungoverned age.”

Back to the BBC guy, he indicates that the film is more true to the spirit of the final relationship Henry V had with his Dad than the play:

Equally legendary is the story of Henry's reconciliation with his father, which the propagandists crafted to resemble the edifying biblical tale of the Prodigal Son. Henry is supposed to have abased himself before his father in a cloak full of needles to signify thrifty intentions and to have earned, in return, a touching benediction. The real scene was much less edifying. Henry's quarrel with his father was not about the alleged youthful peccadilloes on which the propaganda concentrated, but about the usual political agenda: money and power. At a deeper level, Henry had every reason to hate his father, who had neglected him in childhood and slaughtered the father-substitutes to whom the child turned.

 The immediate circumstances surrounding the old king's deathbed were too urgent for sentiment. Factions were manoeuvring for power like buzzards around bones. As the king's health crumbled, Henry and his friends were out of office and excluded from patronage. This was a serious matter for the prince, who had an expensive household of toughs, lackeys, sycophants and freeloaders to keep up. He staged a coup, bursting into the king's presence with a dagger in his hand and an army at his back. What followed was not a reconciliation, but a negotiation. The king got peace. Henry got power.

Shakespeare had this:

The king angrily rebukes Hal for being so quick to seize the crown. He condemns him for his careless, violent, freewheeling life, and he paints a vivid picture of the horrors he thinks England can expect when Hal becomes king. Hal kneels before his father, weeping, and swears that he loves his father and was full of grief when he thought him dead; he says that he views the crown as an enemy to fight with, not as a treasure. King Henry, moved by the speech, lets Hal sit next to him. With his dying breath, he tells Hal that he hopes he will find more peace as king than Henry did.

Anyway, just goes to show, once again, that real life virtually never has the right timing or details to satisfy dramatists, and perhaps the rest of us?

Park life

"Let's go":

Ready for her close up:

What's going on in Aussie wingnut land?

Why has Catallaxy stopped taking comments?   It still has wrong and useless posts, but no more comments.   Overall, that's an improvement. 

Now just get rid of 95% of the posts, and it might gain a skerrick of credibility as a "centre right" blog again.

Update:  all back to it's now standard role - a Facebook substitute for a cluster of Australian conservatives to say obnoxious things they won't or can't say in front of their relatives or workplace.   It was just Sinclair having a dummy spit that the group was being too nasty to each other, whereas he thinks they should only be nasty to their "enemies", who haven't bothered showing up there for a decade or so anyway. 

The Buddhists head West - far West

The other night, SBS showed the Buddhist action/comedy movie Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back.  (I didn't stay up for all of it, but it's a sequel to what I think was the much better Stephen Chow movie Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons.)

The journey the movies (and novel, and TV series Monkey) references is from China to India.  But I didn't realise that Buddhists from India had been heading quite far West, even before the time of Christ.

Indian emperor Ashoka apparently sent Buddhist missionaries West in the 3rd century BC, and it appears possible that there were some in Alexandria in Egypt.   This Ashoka guy sounds pretty interesting, and he is the subject of a lengthy Wikipedia entry.  I've heard the name before, probably, but us Westerners don't pay much heed to anything that was going on in India if it didn't involve Europeans there, do we?

He apparently had a reputation for violence, but converted to Buddhism after getting the guilts over a particularly big war of conquest.  From his Wikipedia entry:

Ashoka waged a destructive war against the state of Kalinga (modern Odisha),^[7] which he conquered in about 260 BCE.^[8] He converted to Buddhism^[7] after witnessing the mass deaths of the Kalinga War, which he had waged out of a desire for conquest and which reportedly directly resulted in more than 100,000 deaths and 150,000 deportations.^[9] He is remembered for the Ashoka pillars and edicts, for sending Buddhist monks to Sri Lanka and Central Asia, and for establishing monuments marking several significant sites in the life of Gautama Buddha.^[10] 

Now, it would seem that the idea that Ashoka's monks set up shop near Alexandria in Egypt has some pretty slender evidence.   I haven't read all of this paper, but it's an interesting one about the identity of a particular religious community.  It all seems very up in the air, even though everyone agrees that the occasional Indian is likely to have been in Alexandria at the time, and it wouldn't be completely surprising if at least the odd monk was amongst them.

Anyway, getting closer to the time of Christ, there was the "Pandion embassy"incident which is well attested:

Roman historical accounts describe an embassy sent by the "Indian king Porus (Pandion (?) Pandya (?) or Pandita (?)^{[citation needed]}) to Caesar Augustus sometime between 22 BC and 13 AD. The embassy was travelling with a diplomatic letter on a skin in Greek, and one of its members was a sramana who burned himself alive in Athens to demonstrate his faith. The event made a sensation and was described by Nicolaus of Damascus, who met the embassy at Antioch (near present day Antakya in Turkey) and related by Strabo (XV,1,73 ^[2]) and Dio Cassius (liv, 9).

The problem is, it seems no one is 100% sure if this guy was like your average Indian, Hindu holy man, or a Buddhist.

I find it blackly amusing that it seems Indians had a habit of travelling to the West and burning themselves alive to impress the locals:

Plutarch (died 120 AD) in his Life of Alexander, after discussing the self-immolation of Calanus of India (Kalanos) writes:

The same thing was done long after by another Indian who came with Caesar to Athens, where they still show you "the Indian's Monument."^[16]

We all know of modern cases of Buddhist self immolation as a form of protest.   These ancient cases seem to be more about how impressing people with how seriously they take their religion.   On this topic, I see there is a 2015 paper in the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies about the matter:

The Self-immolation of Kalanos and other Luminous Encounters Among Greeks and Indian Buddhists in the Hellenistic World

Is he trying to be a bit witty by use of the word "luminous" like that.  (I haven't read it yet.)

Anyway, I'll end by noting that it's been an improbable (probably Theosophical?) idea for a century or so that Jesus headed East before his public ministry and got some ideas from Indian religions.

As it turns out, though, it was the other way around:  the East really came to him, or his region, before his time. 

Update:

I see that in the Wikipedia entry on the self immolating Kalanos, he is said to be Hindu, rather than Buddhist:

Kalanos, also spelled Calanus (Ancient Greek: Καλανὸς)^[1] (c. 398 – 323 BCE), was a gymnosophist, a Hindu Brahmin^[2][3][4][5] and philosopher from Taxila^[6] who accompanied Alexander the Great to Persis and later self-immolated himself by entering into a Holy Pyre, in front of Alexander and his army. Diodorus Siculus called him Caranus (Ancient Greek: Κάρανος).^[7] He did not flinch while his body was burning. He bode goodbye to the soldiers but not to Alexander. He communicated to Alexander that he would meet him in Babylon. Alexander died exactly a year later in Babylon. ^[8] It was from Kalanos that Alexander came to know of Dandamis, the leader of their group, whom Alexander later went to meet in the forest.^[9]

 And the reason for his suicide?  Just old and tired, it seems:

He was seventy-three years of age at time of his death.^[18] When the Persian weather and travel had weakened him, he informed Alexander that he would prefer to die rather than live as an invalid. He decided to take his life by self-immolation.^[19] Although Alexander tried to dissuade him from this course of action, upon Kalanos' insistence the job of building a pyre was entrusted to Ptolemy.^[18] Kalanos is mentioned also by Alexander's admirals, Nearchus and Chares of Mytilene.^[20] The city where this immolation took place was Susa in the year 323 BC.^[13] Kalanos distributed all the costly gifts he got from the king to the people and wore just a garland of flowers and chanted vedic hymns.^[21][22][3] He presented his horse to one of his Greek pupils named Lysimachus.^[23] He did not flinch as he burnt to the astonishment of those who watched.^[14][24][25]

 Couldn't he just sneak off and drink some hemlock or something?   Seems a bit of an attention seeker.

Pretty accurate prediction

Remember how I wrote a month ago that the RMIT economists' urgent book on how to "unfreeze" the economy would say this:

It will be 200 pages devoted to the urgent need for the Australian governments to:

a.  deregulate everything, as fast as possible;
b.  start using blockchain technologies, they're terrific;
c.  urgently reduce all government spending on things other than the temporary workforce support, with public broadcasting getting special mention;
d.  reduce taxes.

Done and dusted.

Sinclair Davidson posts today the book cover, with this:

My point a is their point 1.

Their point 2 and 4 is part of my point 1.

I would bet that blockchain turns up in their points 3 and 4.

My point d is bound to be part of their 3.

The only thing I missed is perhaps the point 5 - but it's an old small government trope that decentralising power our of federal government hands always works best.   Just like Kansas showed with their failed experiment with Laffernomics, hey?

I think I was close enough to claim vindication.  And I did save everyone the time.

PS:   I am also reminded of that bit in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy wherein Zapod proposes replacing Arthur's brain with a microchip that just says "What?" "I don't understand" and "Where's the tea?"  and no one would know the difference.  The three catchphrases for Sinclair would be "Lower Taxes!" "Blockchain!"  "Deregulate!" (and an occasional "Free Speech!")

Counting the flu

I found a useful discussion of the complexity of assigning cause of death to things like the flu or COVID-19 at an Allahpundit post at Hot Air.  Interestingly, he pointed to a post by an American doctor at Scientific American, who pointed out that the number of cases the CDC assigns to the fly is a very rubbery figure itself:

When reports about the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 began circulating earlier this year and questions were being raised about how the illness it causes, COVID-19, compared to the flu, it occurred to me that, in four years of emergency medicine residency and over three and a half years as an attending physician, I had almost never seen anyone die of the flu. I could only remember one tragic pediatric case.

Based on the CDC numbers though, I should have seen many, many more. In 2018, over 46,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses. Over 36,500 died in traffic accidents. Nearly 40,000 died from gun violence. I see those deaths all the time. Was I alone in noticing this discrepancy?

I decided to call colleagues around the country who work in other emergency departments and in intensive care units to ask a simple question: how many patients could they remember dying from the flu? Most of the physicians I surveyed couldn’t remember a single one over their careers. Some said they recalled a few. All of them seemed to be having the same light bulb moment I had already experienced: For too long, we have blindly accepted a statistic that does not match our clinical experience.

The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited do not represent counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates that the CDC produces by multiplying the number of flu death counts reported by various coefficients produced through complicated algorithms. These coefficients are based on assumptions of how many cases, hospitalizations, and deaths they believe went unreported. In the last six flu seasons, the CDC’s reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths—that is, counting flu deaths the way we are currently counting deaths from the coronavirus—has ranged from 3,448 to 15,620, which far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts. 

That really blows up the comparisons made by those on the Right who try to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 by comparing it to (say) 60,000 a year allegedly dying of the flu ("and we don't close down the economy", yells Creighton.)

I think it should be clear that the true way of assessing the seriousness of a pandemic has to be looking at "excess deaths" compared to same period, and those figures are not looking good.  The Financial Times has been doing good work in that regard.

Adam has a fixation

As someone in the thread notes:

More rigourously:

 And:

I have my doubts

Just saw this on Twitter:

and while there are not many comments following it yet, I really have my doubts about the accuracy of that figure for renting in Tokyo.

Why?  Because I like to watch the ever cheerful Paolo from Tokyo on Youtube (and his other channel Tokyo Zebra) , and he talked a lot about renting (or buying) an apartment in Tokyo recently, and I am pretty sure it was no where near as cheap as this guy claims.   (There are a lot of extra costs that you don't get in Australia, as well.) 

I don't have time to watch and check now, but I'm pretty I am right about this...

Update:  yeah, I just checked on this video, where he and his wife are looking for a new 2 bedroom rental, and the cost seems to be around $2700 - $2900USD a month.  This site indicates you can do much cheaper, but I still suspect that as an average, $1000 a month is just not right, at all.

Speaking of Right wing cranks...

...don't you love the way they like to proclaim they live in a bubble world of narrow Right Wing information as if that's a good thing.

Steve Kates notes:

His final line is “Television, like most things, seems to be more fun when it’s Australian”. Since the only television I watch is Bolt and The Outsiders, from that perhaps small sample I could not agree more.

And, as I have said a million times before - you basically can blame Rupert Murdoch for this, because he found creating a bubble world of "only trust us" was a good way to make money.   

Right wing hyperbolic whiner of the day award...

...goes to Andrew Bolt, who wins it probably every second day:

And amongst other Right wing twittery, James Morrow is just so dumb, stupid and transparent here.   After obviously advocating for this drug only because he has to defend Trump at every opportunity, he tries to pretend that he wasn't the one politically motivated to talk up an unverified treatment: 

Yeah, sure.

That's a lot of oil floating on the oceans

Apparently, this is the complete picture (generated from where, I don't know):

Putin has problems

According to this Vox article, the COVID-19 outbreak is getting worse in Russia and Putin acknowledges it.

And in other "so you thought you could do better than America in sorting this out?" news:

President Vladimir Putin is letting his impatience show with Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad, who isn’t proving as grateful for being kept in power by Russian intervention in his country’s brutal civil war as the Kremlin leader needs him to be.

Consumed at home by the twin shocks of collapsing oil prices and the coronavirus epidemic, and eager to wrap up his Syrian military adventure by declaring victory, Putin is insisting that Assad show more flexibility in talks with the Syrian opposition on a political settlement to end the nearly decade-long conflict, said four people familiar with Kremlin deliberations on the matter.

Assad’s refusal to concede any power in return for greater international recognition and potentially billions of dollars in reconstruction aid prompted rare public outbursts against the Syrian president this month in Russian publications with links to Putin.

“The Kremlin needs to get rid of the Syrian headache,” said Alexander Shumilin, a former Russian diplomat who runs the state-financed Europe-Middle East Center in Moscow. “The problem is with one person -- Assad -- and his entourage.”

The things you learn

Well, as readers would know, I have been looking at various Buddhist related stuff recently, which is how I found the (not actually Buddhist, but Indian) Spiritual Science Research Foundation.

Some of things I have learnt there are pretty remarkable:

That's handy to know.   Next:

Huh.

And as for the spiritual realm and its effect on us all, the pie graphs makes it all very scientific and convincing:

There you go.

Explains a lot

Just putting it out there

In my experience, the most arrogant, reluctant to help anyone with a genuine enquiry about something they know about, businesses in Australia are body corporate management companies.  

They seem to rely on having fixed, multi-year contracts to the body corporate as meaning they don't have to take calls or provide a skerrick of information to anyone (including the residents of the building) other than the current Chairman of the body corporate.  

They are terrible.

COVID-19 depressing news

Noted this morning:

Singapore reported 528 new COVID-19 cases as of noon on Tuesday (Apr 28), bringing the national total to 14,951.

The vast majority of the new cases are work permit holders residing in foreign worker dormitories, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in its preliminary update.

In a later update, MOH said there were 10 cases in the community, of which seven were Singapore citizens or permanent residents; there were also two work pass holders and one visit pass holder who were infected.

And also on the CNA website:

Rome:  Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy climbed by 382 on Tuesday (Apr 28), against 333 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the total of people infected since the start of the outbreak topped 200,000.

The daily tally of new infections stood at 2,091, higher than the 1,739 recorded on Monday.

Over in Indonesia, no one really knows what is going on, it seems:

The actual number of COVID-19 deaths in Indonesia may be substantially higher than officially reported as several regions have recorded hundreds of fatalities among patients under surveillance (PDPs), who are suspected of having contracted the highly contagious coronavirus.

Patients under surveillance refer to people with COVID-19 symptoms who have not been confirmed as having the disease, meaning that they are waiting either to be tested or for their test results to come back.

The central government's daily count of fatalities, at 773 as of Tuesday, does not include all PDPs who have died.

No one seems to understand why the UK has done so badly, too.  Now they are worried about kids getting a dangerous condition possibly related to the virus:

More than a dozen children have fallen ill with a new and potentially fatal combination of symptoms apparently linked to Covid-19, including a sore stomach and heart problems.

The children affected appear to have been struck by a form of toxic shock syndrome. All have been left so seriously unwell that they have had to be treated in intensive care.

At least one has received extra corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) treatment, which is used when someone’s life is at risk because they can no longer breathe for themselves.

NHS bosses are so concerned that they have written to doctors alerting them to the emergence of these cases and asked them to urgently refer any children with similar symptoms to hospital.

On the upside:  it's good to live in Australia, which does not seem to be getting the international attention it deserves for having apparently taken effective action that looks likely to all but eliminate it.

Update:   why are Iranians so prone to the spread of crank rumours?:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — The false belief that toxic methanol cures the coronavirus has seen over 700 people killed in Iran, an official said Monday.

That represents a higher death toll than so far released by the Iranian Health Ministry.

An adviser to the ministry, Hossein Hassanian, said that the difference in death tallies is because some alcohol poisoning victims died outside of hospital.

“Some 200 people died outside of hospitals”, Hassanian told The Associated Press.

Alcohol poisoning has skyrocketed by ten times over in Iran in the past year, according to a government report released earlier in April, amid the coronavirus pandemic.

As Hillary said "what difference does it make?"

I don't quite understand the Australian bipartisan take on an independent inquiry into the origin of the current pandemic, with its big question mark over the role of China.

Doesn't everyone just take it as a given that the Chinese government is not to be entirely trusted in such matters? It's a fantasy to think they would pay reparations for not disclosing details sooner, or trying to cover it up, or whatever they did.   And even if there was something really big to be found  (escape of a bioweapon, for example, which no one serious seems to believe), the rest of the world is more likely to discover that via espionage or secret sources that would never expose themselves in an independent inquiry.

It just seems pretty pointless to me...

The tortilla project

Huh.  I was "cooking" (toasting in a dry frying pan) some pre-made corn totillas the other night  from a Mexican meal kit, and thinking how much I liked them.  I didn't realise that making your own just involves a special cornmeal flour, and water:

Homemade Tortillas Only Take Two Ingredients

Tortillas start with a dough made from regular old tap water and masa harina, a corn flour made from kernels that have been nixtamalized—soaked in an alkaline solution that softens them and makes them easier to digest. Then, those softened kernels are ground into a paste which is dried and sold as masa harina. All you have to do is add hot water to the dried corn to rehydrate—the resulting dough is similar to clay, and it’s quite easy to work with.

This sounds like a cooking experiment worth trying.

Here's a short video by a woman originally from Mexico.  They are simple - although it seems salt should be added too:



Of course, I don't have a tortilla press lying around at home.  Maybe my next birthday present?

I will report in due course.

An odd Buddhist thing

Here's something that I did not know about Buddhism.  (Or some Buddhists.)

I just had someone explaining to me that they would want their death (assuming it is from a terminal  illness) to be according to Buddhist principles, which are that a dying person does not have their close family around the death bed, for concern that it makes them more reluctant to give up their spirit (or consciousness, or whatever.)  Apparently, the Buddhist way is that it is OK to have a couple of Buddhist people who aren't close to you in the room saying prayers, but the family (spouse included) stays outside.   I asked about pain relief, and he said no, Buddhists are supposed to work through the pain as part of the natural order of things.  (!)  Having a clear  mind at the point of death is important as it can affect the metaphysical outcome.  So, no morphine for dying Buddhist cancer sufferers, apparently.

I have no time to check today how widespread within Buddhism this view is.  I do not know well the person who was telling me this, but he seemed to be well into Buddhist belief.   It's certainly pretty unappealing to our Western ideas of the value of close relatives being with their loved one as they die.

I wonder:  I am aware that the Japanese medical system, in certain respects, is much less into pain relief than we are in Australia.   (Endoscopy into the stomach with no twilight sedation;  have to go to a special birth clinic if you expect gas or epidural to give pain relief.)   Is this partly because of Buddhist pain stoicism?

Update:  on the matter of pain relief, here is an extract from a nursing website discussing it in 2003.   The attitude of the person I was speaking to today is very consistent with this:

QUESTION: My patient is a Buddhist with end-stage colon cancer who keeps refusing pain medication. How can I help him manage his pain without infringing on his religious beliefs?

ANSWER: Buddhism is an Eastern religion that's taken root in the United States. Its followers have a unique perspective on pain. Buddhists believe that suffering is part of life, to be expected, and that if a person experiences pain calmly, without becoming emotionally distressed, he can attain greater states of being.

Preparation for death is an important part of Buddhism. Many religious practices focus on the moment of death and the immediate transition to the next life. Because Buddhists believe the mind must be as alert as possible at the time of death, many may decline pain medication or limit its use.

Pain assessment for a Buddhist patient is the same as for any other patient. And, as with any patient, you should understand his pain control goals. A Buddhist patient may wish to withhold or limit the use of drugs that can cause drowsiness, such as opioids, so educate him about pain control choices that won't interfere with his goals. (Explain that drowsiness, for example, subsides after the first few days of opioid use.)

Use the World Health Organization pain ladder to step up analgesic therapy for pain control. Using adjuvant medications, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, lets you give lower doses of opioids and so limit adverse opioid reactions, such as drowsiness. Obtain orders for additional pain relief, even if the patient initially declines it. You'll be ready to provide immediate relief if his pain suddenly intensifies and he changes his mind. Be sure to document his statements about pain control interventions and goals and monitor the effectiveness of any alternative interventions used.

From a Buddhist perspective, pain can be offered as a sacrifice to benefit all beings and has long-term benefits in reaching a higher state of consciousness. Your patient may wish to perform religious rituals such as quiet reflection, chanting, meditation, and prayer. Allow him periods of time alone for these rituals.

Quiet reflection is one of the most important practices for Buddhists. Help the patient create a small space in his room for pictures of religious leaders or ancestors, prayer beads, and flowers. This area helps him focus his energy and can help him manage pain.

Chanting involves quietly repeating specific prayers or mantras many times. Other members of the religious community may participate in this practice with the patient. If he can't chant himself, the family may bring in tapes from services, which you can play for him during the day. An alternative intervention is to encourage him to slowly breathe deeply and focus on inhalation and exhalation.

Meditation can provide the most satisfying and effective religious expression for Buddhists. Allow the patient quiet time to empty his mind of thoughts, or to visualize specific images, depending on his tradition. If possible, put him in a room away from noisy areas, such as the nurses' station. Document your interventions to show that you're individualizing the patient's care plan. Contact religious representatives as requested by the patient.

Gee.  If I was a Western nurse/doctor, I would probably be a tad annoyed that I had to go to a lot more trouble with a Buddhist patient than just dosing them up with enough pain relief that they stop feeling pain.

Movie reviews you didn't need

From my Netflix viewing:

*  tried to watch 1922, based on a Stephen King short story.  It got mostly good reviews, it seems, but I couldn't stick with it.   My biggest issue was with the lead actor:  his Southern drawl was actually hard to understand at many points, and his acting generally seemed to be just "too much".   I didn't like the narration, either.    As I have explained before, I am, generally speaking, a Stephen King sceptic - it is pretty rare that I find any project sourced in his stories to be anything more than just passable.   (The one exception - Kubrick's version of The Shining - King hated.)   This movie did nothing to swing my judgement about his oeuvre.

*  Johnny English Strikes Again:  the first two Rowan Atkinson vehicles were much better than I had expected.  The third outing, form 2018, shows that they have run out of ideas, and Atkinson's acting seemed more desperate and Mr Bean than in the previous ones.   (I am not so keen on the Mr Bean character, incidentally.)  Not offensively bad;  just a case of a franchise out of steam.

*  Veronica:  a Spanish 2017 supernatural thriller, this story of a teenage girl who seemingly has invited a haunting into her apartment by virtue of use of a ouija board with friends is actually pretty good, despite that set up sounding like it owes too much to The Exorcist or various other films whereby teenagers invite supernatural trouble into their lives that way.   It's well directed, and well acted by its mainly young cast.   (The movie made me realise -I think that Spanish movies often do very well with their child actors.   Now that I think about it, it also confirmed another thing about Spanish language films - they have probably the least reluctance of any culture to showing full frontal - adult - male nudity.)   The only slight downside is that it was said to be "based on a true story" which was well known in Spain (because of police involvement), but checking later revealed that the movie had exceptionally few actual similarities to the real story.   Oh well.