Why California?

Can't say that I have seen a good explanation of why California, which I understood to be pretty aggressive in its shut down for COVID precautions from the start, and not one of the States considered to be politically inclined to rush to re-open, is doing so badly with COVID at the moment.

The New York Times had a go at explaining it about a week ago, I see.   Some extracts:

California was the first state to issue a stay-at-home order this spring, helping to control an early outbreak. But after a reopening that some health officials warned was too fast, cases surged, leading to a new statewide mask mandate and the closure of bars and indoor dining again. With more than 420,000 known cases, California has surpassed New York to have the most recorded cases of any state, and it set a single-day record on Wednesday with more than 12,100 new cases and 155 new deaths.

And as California struggles once again to contain the virus, the multitude of challenges playing out across America have collided in every corner of the state, as if it were a microcosm of the country itself....

It is in some ways California’s sprawling nature, with 40 million residents spread across urban downtowns and rural areas, liberal strongholds and conservative alcoves, that has aggravated the feeling of back-and-forth. What applies in one area may not feel necessary in another, even as residents live under statewide orders. And the sense of confusion is often made worse by conflicting political messages from local leaders, the governor and the White House...

Gov. Gavin Newsom is wrestling with how to convey a consistent message, while dealing with local officials who have resisted both new shutdowns and enforcing a mandatory mask order. Some rural areas of the state remain relatively unscathed with low case counts, while cases in Los Angeles are skyrocketing. The city’s mayor, Eric M. Garcetti, has warned that a new stay-at-home order could come down in the coming days...

In Los Angeles and San Diego, classrooms will be empty this fall, after public school officials decided they were unwilling to risk in-person instruction. But in Orange County, a recommendation by the Board of Education that children return to school without masks became political fodder for debate, even as the governor announced that most California schools would not be able to teach in person.

The contradictions span the state, creating a sense of regional dissonance. In Imperial County, on the southern border with Mexico, hospitals have been so overwhelmed with virus cases that patients have had to be airlifted elsewhere. But in the northernmost tip, the virus has yet to hit Modoc County, an agricultural community of around 9,000, where there were zero known cases as of Thursday.

In Los Angeles — which has seen the most cases in California, and where hospitals are filling up — parts of the city feel under siege and in other areas, there is little palpable sense of the severity of the situation. Unlike in New York City during the height of the outbreak, most Angelenos have not had to absorb the piercing wail of ambulance sirens at all hours, a sound that came to define the pandemic there.

Unusual hobby noted

Well, I like to have a craft beer at West End in Brisbane every now and then, but it is a pretty bohemian suburb, and if I had to pick an area in Brisbane where this activity was most likely to happen, it would either be there (or the sleazier Fortitude Valley, I guess):

Police went to the West End flat of electrician Ryan Andrew King, 27, in inner city Brisbane while investigating a bizarre mutilation last weekend.

Police and paramedics were called to a city backpacker hostel last Saturday night where they allegedly found a 26-year-old Sydney man with his genitals partly removed.

It is alleged the man had arranged to be partially castrated by Mr King in one of the rooms, after meeting online.

Mr King, who works as an electrician at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and has volunteered in the SES, is not believed to be medically qualified but allegedly taught himself castration from online research.

It is alleged he may have used a Cryopen, a device for removing lesions such as warts and benign skin spots with nitrous oxide under high pressure.

After finding the allegedly mutilated man at the hostel, police searched Mr King’s West End apartment and allegedly found a human penis and set of testicles in his freezer.

Here's an abstract from a 2004 study in Archives of Sexual Behaviour (sounds a fun journal) about this weird fetish/interest: 

We used a survey posted on the Internet to explore the motivation of men who are interested in being castrated. Out of 134 respondents, 23 (17%) reported already having been castrated. The 104 (78%) individuals who said they had not been castrated were asked why they wanted to be castrated and why they had not actualized that desire. They were given multiple-choice answers to select from. The major reason (selected by 40% of respondents) for desiring castration was to achieve a “eunuch calm” and freedom from sexual urges; however, a large proportion (∼30%) of respondents found fantasies about being castrated sexually exciting and a similar percentage desired castration for the “cosmetic” appearance it achieved (which we interpret to mean scrotal removal along with an orchiectomy). This high interest in castration as either a sexual stimulus (a fetish) or a cosmetic enhancement was unexpected and contrasted with the more classically stated motivation for voluntary castration in the psychiatric literature, i.e., libido control and transsexualism. Internet discussion groups that serve these men may encourage them to act out their castration fantasies. Alternately, Internet discussions may give them a displacement outlet for their fantasies and decrease the risk of castration by nonmedically qualified “street-cutters” or by self-mutilation. Forty percent of our respondents claimed that they would have an orchiectomy, if it were cheap, safe, and simple. A quarter wanted to try chemical castration first, but 40% were embarrassed to talk to their doctors about their interest in castration. Information now available on the Internet provides these men with increasingly easy access to street-cutters and directions on how to perform surgical castrations, putting them at risk of permanent injury and disability. Physicians need to be aware of these risks.

The French and their drugs

Huh.  I didn't think that France under Macron would be keen to crack down on marijuana, but there you go.  More reason for me to like the country:

Spot fines of 200 euros ($233) have been tested in several French cities in recent weeks and will now be applied nationwide, Castex said, ruling out a decriminalisation of cannabis.

A French law dating back to 1970 allows for illicit drug use to be punished with up to a year in prison and fined with up to 3,750 euros, but few users actually do jail time.

French people are Europe's leading consumers of cannabis and hold the number three spot for cocaine use.

The new measure would simplify police procedures by "inflicting punishment without delay", Castex said during a visit to the southern port city of Nice, and would be an efficient tool against sale points run by drug dealers "which are eating away at neighbourhoods".

If paid within two weeks the fine will be reduced to 150 euros, but will rise to 450 euros unless settled within 45 days.

The move honours an election campaign pledge by President Emmanuel Macron, who said spot fines should be used to deter petty crimes that often end up unpunished in overloaded courts.

Will submarines ever be designed to not feel claustrophobic?

I fell asleep last night half way through this recent video, but I should go back and finish it:



I have to say, it's a tad disappointing to see how cramped even a modern nuclear attack submarine seems to be.    Just watching the confined and cluttered spaces (and apparent low ceiling height) of most of the spaces started giving me claustrophobia vibes.   (Oddly, I don't get that when watching images from the ISS or spaceships.   Maybe its the thought of the crushing pressure outside a sub that helps contribute to it?)

Ban trout pout entry

Thank God I have a teenage daughter who agrees that "lip enhancement" is just the stupidest, most unnatural looking thing ever, and agrees with me that in 30 years people will be looking at photos of this fashion and saying "what were they thinking?" 

Hence, I would bet that it's this aspect of these two quasi Typhoid Marys which is immediately noticed in the media attention they are receiving:

 
As I said to my daughter:  of course you can't trust the common sense of 19 year old women with "trout pout" (I had to Google a derogatory slang term for lip enhancement - I thought it might be "duck lips" but that seems to be more a pose than a permanent feature), and it would simplify Queensland border protection to just ban any woman with that feature trying to enter. 

Anyway, the question will now be debated as to how fair it is for the media to get on board with a good social media pile on.   In a way, I suppose it isn't.  On the other hand, this is just what young people should expect if they want to promote their image on social media, and do really stupid and dishonest and dangerous stuff.

Crank

Probably most of my readers have already read about the crank doctor/Chistian minister and her pro Trump PR stunt about HCQ for COVID.   But I thought one of her theories sounded pretty unique:

Some of her other claims include blaming medical conditions on witches and demons - a common enough belief among some evangelical Christians - though she says they have sex with people in a dream world.

"They turn into a woman and then they sleep with the man and collect his sperm… then they turn into the man and they sleep with a man and deposit the sperm and reproduce more of themselves," she said during a sermon in 2013.

She's from Nigeria: is it rude to say it sounds like an African bit of demon folklore?

Also amusing to read about the sort of pro-HCQ company you keep, isn't it Graeme?

This be true

Pass the lithium

Yes, I have posted on the topic before, but another study seems to indicate the link between higher natural lithium intake (via the water supply) and lower suicide rates:

Professor Allan Young, Chair of Mood Disorders at King's College London, said: "This synthesis and analysis of all available evidence confirms previous findings of some individual studies and shows a significant relationship between higher lithium levels in drinking water and lower suicide rates in the community. The levels of lithium in drinking water are far lower than those recommended when lithium is used as medicine although the duration of exposure may be far longer, potentially starting at conception. These findings are also consistent with the finding in clinical trials that lithium reduces suicide and related behaviours in people with a mood disorder."

Professor Memon added: "Next steps might include testing this hypothesis by randomised community trials of lithium supplementation of the water supply, particularly in communities (or settings) with demonstrated high prevalence of mental health conditions, violent criminal behaviour, chronic substance abuse and risk of suicide. This may provide further evidence to support the hypothesis that lithium could be used at the community level to reduce or combat the risk of these conditions."

Hmm.  Somehow, I can't imagine those who freak out about fluoride in the water supply are going to take well the suggestion of adding lithium for its psycho-active benefits.

Update:  from a short article elsewhere, a brief history of lithium as an additive:

Until 1950, popular soft drink 7-Up² contained lithium citrate and even beer³ was brewed with lithium-heavy water and promoted for its mood-enhancing abilities.

However, both the real and perceived health benefits of lithium were overshadowed when lithium was prescribed to patients with heart disease as a replacement for salt.⁴ The resulting overdoses and deaths led to the US banning lithium as an additive in 1950.

It seems there is nothing to stop people buying a lithium supplement in Australia, but I would be pretty cautious about it. 

First, would be good to know what the lithium level in the local water supply is, but Googling doesn't turn any pointers towards that information.  I mean, I did find this:

but no entry for lithium.  :(  That puts me in a bad mood, and in more need of lithium.

Big in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR: Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was sentenced to 12 years in jail and fined RM210 million (US$49.38 million) on Tuesday (Jul 28), following a guilty verdict in his first corruption trial involving millions of ringgit linked to state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

The charges include abuse of power, money laundering and criminal breach of trust.

High Court judge Mohamad Nazlan Mohamad Ghazali said when reading the judgment: “I find that the prosecution has successfully proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. I therefore find the accused guilty and convict the accused on all seven charges."

From CNA.

Fish problem

Someone like Lomborg or his new best buddy Schellenberger might respond to this story with "so what, we now farm heaps of fish", but I suspect this is a much bigger problem because of the role such fish apparently play in fertilising the great forests surrounding the rivers.  (Something most of us probably only ever realised via David Attenborough pointing it out in one of this relatively recent series):

Populations of migratory river fish around the world have plunged by a “catastrophic” 76% since 1970, an analysis has found.

The fall was even greater in Europe at 93%, and for some groups of fish, with sturgeon and eel populations both down by more than 90%.

Species such as salmon, trout and giant catfish are vital not just to the rivers and lakes in which they breed or feed but to entire ecosystems. By swimming upstream, they transport nutrients from the oceans and provide food for many land animals, including bears, wolves and birds of prey.

The migratory fish are also critical for the food security and livelihoods of millions of people around the world, while recreational fishing is worth billions of dollars a year. The causes of the decline are the hundreds of thousands of dams around the world, overfishing, the climate crisis and water pollution.

 

A clear case for that "Why not both?" meme

Spotted at Twitter:

Jeez, Jason - there's no need to chose between either Carlson or glibertarians in the credibility stakes.  Both are terrible.

On Carlson in particular - he has been sending out contradictory messaging on COVID and masks, just as Hannity has, and both would clearly be responsible for a large percentage of the Fox ageing audience not taking COVID precautions seriously. 

Of course, he is also escalating, for political purposes, the sense of a national security crisis and encouraging Trump to use his heavy handed response which polling would indicate even most Americans think is hurting the situation rather than helping.   (See this article in Washington Post today.)  

I think there is room to criticise a lack of effective Democrat leadership on trying to get protesters to de-escalate too (Biden should be taking a higher profile on this), but any President should be taking a de-escalation approach.   (Yeah, I know, Trump is constitutionally incapable of being a figure of unifying appeal - but it's still a scandal that a "news" network works to goad him into being even more divisive than he needs to be.)

Capitalism in transition to...something?

What's the movie meme with the woman shouting "What's happening?!" ?  Oh yeah - one of my all time favourite Spielberg related movies - Poltergeist.   Disappointing that I had to Google that to double check.

Seems to me that those in the field of economics ought to be doing more of that, because I've been increasingly suspecting over the last few years that there is a crisis of confidence going on with respect to the understanding of some of the very basic concepts in the whole field. 

I don't know that John Quiggin would agree, but I take support for my gut feeling from his recent post:  The End of Interest.  Some extracts:

Amid all the strange, alarming and exciting things that have happened lately, the fact that real long-term (30-year) interest rates have fallen below zero has been largely overlooked. Yet this is the end of capitalism, at least as it has traditionally been understood. Interest is the pure form of return to capital, excluding any return to monopoly power, corporate control, managerial skills or compensation for risk.

If there is no real return to capital, then then there is no capitalism. In case it isn’t obvious, I’ll make the point in subsequent posts that there is no reason to expect the system that replaces capitalism (I’ll call it plutocracy for the moment) to be an improvement.....

In thinking about the future of the economic system, interest rates on 30-year bonds are much more significant than the ‘cash’ rates set by central banks, such as the Federal Funds rate, which have been at or near zero ever since the GFC, or the short-term market rates they influence. These rates aren’t critical in evaluating long-term investments.

The central idea of capitalism is, as the name implies, that of capital. Capital is accumulated through saving, then invested in machines, buildings and other capital assets to be used by workers in producing goods and services. Part of the value of those goods and services is paid out as wages, and the rest is returned to capital, as interest on loans and bonds or as profits for shareholders. Some of the return to capital is saved and reinvested, allowing growth to continue indefinitely. Workers, on this account, can become capitalists too, by saving and investing some of their wages. At a minimum, they should be able to save enough, while working, to finance a decent standard of living in retirement.

I await his further posts with interest.

Still surprising to be reminded of this...

More information on this topic:

The national exit polls have broken out their survey results by racial group since 1976, and since that year, the Republican nominee for president has received, on average, 54.8 percent of the white vote, while the Democratic nominee has garnered an average of 40.6 percent. In 1980, 1992, and 1996, third-party candidacies affected the distribution of the white vote. The highest percentage secured by a Republican was the 66 percent won by Ronald Reagan in his landslide re-election in 1984; the lowest Democratic number was Walter Mondale’s 34 percent in that same election. Jimmy Carter received the largest percentage of white votes for a Democrat with 48 percent in 1976; George H.W. Bush received the lowest at 41 percent in 1992 when Ross Perot ran, splitting the white vote and dropping Bush from the 60 percent white share he received in 1988.

Singapore builds a COVID ward

There was a lot of scepticism about the quality of the Chinese COVID hospital built from scratch in ridiculously short time, but if you want to see a country doing something similar with a high quality outcome, watch this video about Singapore building a COVID ward in a hospital car park:



Once again, I will swoon over the technocratic success story of Singapore, and Homer will complain I am supporting a disgusting authoritarian regime.  

Big in Turkey

When I turned the TV on yesterday morning, SBS was showing its re-broadcast of foreign news services, and the one from Turkey was just beginning.  After about 20 minutes of (I think) a 30 minute evening news show, I switched over, because it was still talking about Hagia Sophia going back to being a mosque.

It was, it would seem, a popular move amongst most Turks.  Some polling would indicate that's right.

Yet some polling earlier in the year indicated that private religious beliefs were not as devout as they were a decade ago.  The suggestion is that it might be a bit of youth rebellion against their conservative government trying to get people to be more religious.

Going more conservative in Islam in particular has probably never turned out well for a country's economic development, has it?   I see now, Googling the topic of Islam and economic development generally, there's been some pretty negative analysis around for a long time. Here's an abstract:

This essay critically evaluates the analytic literature concerned with causal connections between Islam and economic performance. It focuses on works since 1997, when this literature was last surveyed. Among the findings are the following: Ramadan fasting by pregnant women harms prenatal development; Islamic charities mainly benefit the middle class; Islam affects educational outcomes less through Islamic schooling than through structural factors that handicap learning as a whole; Islamic finance hardly affects Muslim financial behavior; and low generalized trust depresses Muslim trade. The last feature reflects the Muslim world's delay in transitioning from personal to impersonal exchange. The delay resulted from the persistent simplicity of the private enterprises formed under Islamic law. Weak property rights reinforced the private sector's stagnation by driving capital out of commerce and into rigid waqfs. Waqfs limited economic development through their inflexibility and democratization by restraining the development of civil society. Parts of the Muslim world conquered by Arab armies are especially undemocratic, which suggests that early Islamic institutions, including slave-based armies, were particularly critical to the persistence of authoritarian patterns of governance. States have contributed themselves to the persistence of authoritarianism by treating Islam as an instrument of governance. As the world started to industrialize, non-Muslim subjects of Muslim-governed states pulled ahead of their Muslim neighbors by exercising the choice of law they enjoyed under Islamic law in favor of a Western legal system. 

To be honest, I would have thought that the Ramadan fast would not apply to pregnant women, and the issue of it hurting pre-natal development is something I hadn't heard of before.*   The full paper for that abstract is available here.  It's very long, so I skipped to the end summary, and yeah, things look bad for the connection between Islam and economic development.  (Unless, I guess, you're a tiny country sitting on top of a giant pool of oil.)


* Or maybe I have, but forgotten.  When I Google the topic, there are lots of articles about it as a controversial topic.  Apparently, pregnant women are told that they do not have to fast if they are concerned bout the health of their fetus, but many chose to do so anyway.   One study from Iraq seem to say that more of the better educated chose not to fast.  I find it hard to imagine how pregnant mothers in the countries with severe heat during it can think that not drinking during the day is OK for the baby.    

Snowflake cavemen

In research that strikes me as kind of amusing, though particularly useless, it turns out there is good reason to suspect that Neanderthals had a low pain threshold:

As several Neandertal genomes of high quality are now available researchers can identify genetic changes that were present in many or all Neandertals, investigate their physiological effects and look into their consequences when they occur in people today. Looking into one gene that carries such changes, Hugo Zeberg, Svante Pääbo and colleagues found that some people, especially from central and south America but also in Europe, have inherited a Neandertal variant of a gene that encodes an ion channel that initiates the sensation of pain.

By using data from a huge population study in the UK, the authors show that people in the UK who carry the Neandertal variant of the ion channel experience more pain. "The biggest factor for how much pain people report is their age. But carrying the Neandertal variant of the ion channel makes you experience more pain similar to if you were eight years older," says lead author Hugo Zeberg, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Karolinska Institutet. "The Neandertal variant of the ion channel carries three amino acid differences to the common, 'modern' variant,'" explains Zeberg. "While single amino acid substitutions do not affect the function of the ion channel, the full Neandertal variant carrying three amino acid substitutions leads to heightened pain sensitivity in present-day people."

There's a little bit more in the article here.

All rather unfortunate if you had a higher than modern chance of being gnawed on by a sabretooth.

As noted by lots of other people...

....Andrew Bolt is approaching Donald Trump levels of lack of self awareness:

Add caption

No, no they are not...

Article at The Guardian:

Rediscovering the male soap opera: 'The highs and lows of wrestling rivalry are intoxicating' 

It seems to be about a gay (or queer, to use his term) bloke saying that the camp drama of TV wrestling really appealed to him as a queer kid.   I guess I can get that - and still be completely puzzled as to why adult straight men or women would want anything to do with this lurid form of cosplay.

Things going "bang" in Iran

An interesting article at ABC News on the question of why Iran seems to be having so many infrastructure explosions.

It notes that Israel could well be behind some of it, aiming to prevent Biden re-negotiating the nuclear deal if he wins in November. 

Not sure Taleb is his friend

Well, that's odd.

James Allan, the conservative law lecturer at UQ who I have previously pointed out makes statements unsupported by, you know, facts, has a typical Australian right wing conservative blowhard's take on COVID-19:  its danger has been vastly overestimated and the lockdown approach has been a terrible error.

But in the Spectator column in which he is opining this, he starts with citing Nassim Taleb's "skin in the game" idea as being crucial to understanding why governments have got it wrong. 

Which seems odd for this reason: I think Taleb is far too idiosyncratic to spend much time paying attention to, but as far as I know, from my brief looks at his Twitter account since the pandemic started, he has never been a sceptic of the danger of COVID 19 and lately has spent time arguing that governments requiring face mask wearing would be a good policy they should have been pushing earlier.  

In other words, Allan seems to be using one idea of Taleb's to make an argument, but ignoring Taleb's actual opinion on COVID and risk.  Which seems a foolish (that is, typical Australian version of a conservative) thing to do. 

Perhaps Jason can confirm this is correct, as I assume you still follow Taleb much more closely than I do....