This is why politics is not working properly in the USA

 Part 2::

 

Some days, you do just wish that the government ran power stations and electricity grids

The sudden winter black out problem in Texas is leading many American journalists to make comments like this:

 which I think is pretty applicable to my feelings about understanding Australia's electricity grid/power generation issues too.

Back when I were a lad, I think it was all under direct government control, and if you had too many blackouts, you knew who to blame.  

It's rare to see any summary as to when and how that all started to change.   In the 1980's, was it?  

The whole electricity market thing with spot prices, etc, just always seems too complicated to understand fully, given that it is tied up with grid issues too.

Anyway, back to Texas.

The true story seems to simply be that that State never expected wind to generate much power for an event like this, but the back up from natural gas in particular just hasn't been there.   

I have read many times that Texas didn't bother with buying winterised wind turbines, like other, colder, states do;  but it remains unclear as to what difference that would have made to this particular crisis anyway.

As for my wish that electricity was just a public utility like it used to be:  I do qualify that by noting that it always seems to me that we had a hell of a lot more blackouts in the suburbs of Brisbane when I was a child than we get now.  They do seem really rare to me over the last 20 or 30 years.  So maybe the more complicated system does something right.

Ex-cellent

Trump (tries to) hit back at McConnell (my bold):

Trump unleashed a torrent of insults at McConnell, who just a few days ago voted to acquit Trump but also said the former president bore responsibility for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

In a lengthy statement, Trump eviscerates McConnell, claiming the Kentucky Republican “begged” Trump for his support in his 2020 reelection bid and threatening to back primary challengers to lawmakers who aren’t aligned with Trump.

“Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership,” Trump warns.

Safe bet that Trump didn't write that string of words himself.

Oh, apparently this is even admitted further down:

The statement on McConnell was edited by a “bunch” of people and the entire process took several days, according to the adviser, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

 More:

The former president says he “regrets” giving McConnell his endorsement last year and claims the veteran politician would have lost had it not been for Trump. McConnell won another term by nearly 20 percentage points over Democrat Amy McGrath.

Trump then blames McConnell for Republicans losing two Senate seats in Georgia, where Trump continued to perpetuate unfounded claims that the presidential election was rigged.

“He doesn’t have what it takes, never did, and never will,” Trump says in the statement, hinting at his role going forward.

“This is a big moment for our country," Trump says, in closing, "and we cannot let it pass by using third rate ‘leaders’ to dictate our future!”

 Yeah, there are bits in there that are Trump's own words.

Go on, Donald:  make a third party.  Split the GOP vote.  Please?

Not a good sign for a Trump return

News of a poll post the impeachment:

Over half of Americans (58%) say that Trump should have been convicted, which tracks with the 56% who said the same last week before the 57-43 Senate vote to acquit left Trump free to possibly run for office again. Last year, after Trump was acquitted in his first Senate impeachment trial, Americans were evenly split on the outcome, with 49% approving of the Senate's judgment and 47% disapproving, according to a Monmouth University poll....

The seven Republicans, who make up 14% of the GOP conference in the Senate, mirrors the 14% of Republicans nationwide who believe Trump should have been convicted and barred from holding future office in the poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.

I had to check again - how popular was the idea of Bill Clinton's impeachment back in the day.   It was never very popular at all, as noted in this Gallup article written about Trump's first impeachment:

Americans' support for the Senate convicting Clinton in 1999 was much lower than current support for convicting Donald Trump. Gallup's Jan. 22-24, 1999, survey (one of a number we conducted while Clinton was on trial) found 33% of Americans in favor of Clinton being found guilty and removed from office, while 64% were against. Our latest survey on Trump shows 46% in favor of his conviction.

In the 1999 survey, Clinton's job approval rating was 69%, much higher than Trump's current 44% approval. So, the lower support for Clinton's conviction went hand in glove with his approval rating: 64% were against conviction compared with his 69% approval rating, and 33% were in favor of conviction juxtaposed against a 29% disapproval rating.

Thus, as is the case now for Trump, Americans' views on Clinton's impeachment largely reflected their overall assessment of the job he was doing more generally. Clinton had a high job approval rating and a concomitantly low "convict" rating; Trump's approval is lower and his "convict" rating higher.

No meat Saturday

Had these for lunch:

They were good.  Made in Malaysia.   

 

Made this for dinner:

That's my latest attempt to make a vegetarian/vegan burger patty that sticks together well.  It worked better in that regard, but I still was not completely happy with its texture.  

 

For my future reference, this time I sort of followed the Youtube recipe that appears at the previous post I linked above, but with some variation:

 

1 can black beans

1 can lentils

1/2 can of chick peas

1/2 cup or so of grated raw beetroot

1/4 cup of rolled oats

1/4 cup of nutritional yeast (that stuff's not cheap, by the way)

Some re-hydrated dried shitake mushrooms (probably barely 1/4 cup by the time I squeezed the liquid out - next time I would add much more)

2 tablespoons of coconut oil 

2 teaspoons of tapioca starch (for binding effect - I think it worked, but could still go with more next time)

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

1/2 teaspoon chilli powder

1 teaspoon garlic powder

salt (I forget - I think 1/2 teaspoon)

pepper (I ran out - was intended to be 1/2 teaspoon) 

 

Of course, the ingredients were blitzed (with a hand blender this time) to a rough consistency - you don't want a smooth paste, of course.

Next time, I propose dropping the lentils, perhaps just going with a full can of beans and chick peas, more shitake mushrooms, a bit more tapioca starch, and add some crushed walnuts at the end for more texture.  I am perhaps inclined to put in a bit less smoked paprika and add some other herb too, but I am not sure what.

Speaking of Carlson

I agree wholeheartedly with Max Boot's recent column: 

In office, Trump was the greatest threat to U.S. democracy. Now it may be Tucker Carlson.

The Right and UFOs

Hey, here's a enjoyable article at Slate:

What UFOs and Joe McCarthy Have to Do With the Assault on the Capitol

which covers some stuff I hadn't read about before - the Right Wing interest in UFOs and their representation in 1950's science fiction, and then moving forward into Right Wing interest today in paranormal stuff and (in particular) Tucker Carlson's interest in running UFO content too.

This is a bit of a worry, given my own interest in UFOs - although I don't really follow the topic closely now.  I was more on board when it was a liberal interest:  I mean, Close Encounters of the Third Kind paints the aliens as merely misunderstood and somewhat child-like.   (As was ET a few years later.)

I guess there were plenty of Right wing style aliens to be feared in the late 70's, early 80's too (I suppose Alien could readily have been seen as a communist analogue if it had been made in the 1950's).   But interest in UFOs in the 60's and 70's was more a liberal, alternative lifestyle, alternative religion sort of thing.   Perhaps it was in the 1990's (with X Files and the whole alien's are into anal probe or changing our DNA stuff) that it started taking on the more paranoid Right wing character. 

 

Republican Party fractures

Yeah, yeah, so Trump was acquitted; but followed by a very clear denunciation of his  behaviour by McConnell, which had been preceded by former Trump suck up Nikki Haley also making a clean break from Trumpism.   Then Lindsay Graham, the southern weirdo who seems to be playing a continual game of "I love him, I love him not" with Trump, makes it clear that he will try to convince Trump to continue supporting the party, and harrumphing about the impeachment being ridiculous, etc etc.

This points to some serious disunity issues down the track.

The best overall take on the impeachment that I read was by David Frum in The Atlantic, basically arguing that despite acquittal, Trump still lost.  

Perhaps the "put Trump behind us" side is just hoping that Donald will soon be too busy defending himself in various courts over various actions to be bothered thinking about trying to control the party from Florida, and in that way they won't have to deal with his nutjob base and the state based GOP branches which are, it would seem, still fervently pro-Trump.

On the pessimistic side of the question, though, is this piece on CNN:  Is the GOP's extremist wing now too big to fail?

I have said it before, but I still think it's true:  if there is going to be a clear case of a Right Wing anti government terrorism attack in the USA, as the security services obviously fear may happen, it would be better for the country for it to happen in the near future rather than in (say) a couple of years time, in order to send a message to the Republican base that this is where Trumpish coddling of violence takes them.

A terrible "best picture"

So, my son likes crime and gangster films and has been keen to watch Scorsese content on Netflix over the last year or so.   I can be cooler on the genre and Scorsese in particular, considering him over-rated and always feeling that his commercially successful movies have a very limited range of thematic interests.  

Which leads us to The Departed, viewed last night.

As it happens, I had watched (with my son) the original Hong Kong movie it was based on - Infernal Affairs - sometime probably last year.   I did so on the basis of its very good reviews, but as it turned out, I didn't think much of the film at all.   Little of it has stuck in my mind, and I think I didn't even bother giving it a mention here.   I didn't understand why it was so well regarded.

Well, I have to say - The Departed struck me as a terrible adaptation of the same story - although, truth be told, I had decided that after 20 minutes and only half watched bits of the rest of it.

Nothing about the movie, transplanted to Boston, felt realistic to me.  Everything felt hyped up to the point of incredulity - it is chock full of top notch actors with hyped up dialogue that didn't feel credible; acting that felt hammy, and (of course) much more violence than the original movie.   

The direction and/or editing was deliberately different to, and much worse than, his best films.   It has some very short takes and fast editing that seemed pretty pointless.  I don't know what he was trying for, but it did occur to me (and I see now that there was some commentary to this effect) that he was perhaps trying to emulate the style of Tarantino - who you may remember I regard as a trash director of B or C material that remains so despite the added gloss.

And - I am happy to say - that although my son derided me for my early dismissal of its quality, by the end of the movie he actually said "unfortunately, it kept all of the bad qualities of the original movie."   He wasn't prepared to say that this meant it was a bad movie - that would be going too far to agreeing with my early assessment - but close enough.

I had completely forgotten how well regarded this film was when it came out in 2006, and that it had won best picture at the Oscars.  The Wikipedia article notes that some have said it was a bit of a consolation prize for Marty for having lost so many previous nominations for better movies, and apparently even he said he won because: "This is the first movie I've done with a plot".   (An exaggeration, of course, but I didn't realise he acknowledged the relative plotlessness of the likes of Good Fellas and - in particular, I say - Casino.) 

Anyway, a terrible movie all around.

Friday esoteria - bay leaves

I assume everyone with the slightest interest in cooking would agree - if you live in a climate where they are easy to grow, you should have a bay leaf shrub.  They are used in so many recipes, after all.  

But I was thinking the other day that I didn't know much the history of this odd leaf.   A bit like the oyster, it's funny to think about how someone, sometime in the past, was the very first person to chow down on something that does not obviously seem like food, and discovered it was worthwhile eating after all. 

I didn't realise that it is the same leaf that:

... constituted the wreaths of laurel that crowned victorious athletes in ancient Greece.

Here's more on why it was considered such an honourable leaf (and yes, as is typical in silly Greek myth, rape plays a part):

According to legend the Delphi oracle chewed bay leaves, or sniffed the smoke of burning leaves to promote her visionary trances. Bay, or laurel, was famed in ancient Greece and Rome. Emperors, heroes and poets wore wreaths of laurel leaves.

The Greek word for laurel is dhafni, named for the myth of the nymph Daphne, who was changed into a laurel tree by Gaea, who transformed her to help her escape Apollo’s attempted rape. Apollo made the tree sacred and thus it became a symbol of honour. The association with honour and glory continue today; we have poet laureates (Apollo was the God of poets), and bacca-laureate means “laurel berries” which signifies the completion of a bachelor degree. Doctors were also crowned with laurel, which was considered a cure-all. Triumphant athletes of ancient Greece were awarded laurel garlands and was given to winners at Olympic games since 776 BC Today, grand prix winners are bedecked with laurel wreaths. It was also believed that the laurel provided safety from the deities responsible for thunder and lightning. The Emperor Tiberius always wore a laurel wreath during thunderstorms.

 And from another source, yet more on the leaf's ritualistic importance:

The Temple of Delphi, dedicated to Apollo, used many bay leaves. The roof was made of bay leaves, and priestesses would have to eat bay before giving their oracles. This may have been aided by bay's slightly narcotic qualities. Thus bay leaves are said to aid with psychic powers, particularly prophetic dreams, clairvoyance, protection, healing, purification, strength, wishes, magic, exorcism, divination, visions, inspiration, wisdom, meditation, defense, and accessing the creative world. Israelite society consider the bay leaf as a symbol of victory over misfortune; they were very impressed by this tree. Ancient Mediterraneans said this tree radiates protective power and prevents them from misfortune, so it is planted near houses to keep lightning away. 

It's starting to sound like the minor league magic mushroom of the pantry.

I see you can make a tea from the leaves - perhaps I should give that a try. 

Speaking of which, this article points out that if you want an idea of what flavour you are adding to a stew by including it, try it as a tea.   I know the flavour it imparts to food seems subtle, and I do wonder sometimes if in a blind taste test I could which version of the same dish had used bay leaf in it;  but I am pretty sure that it gives off a nice aroma while cooking, and I think there is a flavour left in the dish. 

So, there you have it.

I have some esoteric educational material with which torment my (young adult) children over the dinner table the next time I use them.

The problem with daughters

I hadn't heard of this before:  from the start of an article at The Economist, before it slips behind the paywall:

 DAUGHTERS HAVE long been linked with divorce. Several studies conducted in America since the 1980s provide strong evidence that a couple’s first-born being a girl increases the likelihood of their subsequently splitting up. At the time, the researchers involved speculated that this was an expression of “son preference”, a phenomenon which, in its most extreme form, manifests itself as the selective abortion or infanticide of female offspring.

Work published in the Economic Journal, however, debunks that particular idea. In “Daughters and Divorce”, Jan Kabatek of the University of Melbourne and David Ribar of Georgia State University, in Atlanta, confirm that having a female first-born does indeed increase the risk of that child’s parents divorcing, in both America and the Netherlands. But, unlike previous work, their study also looked at the effect of the girl’s age. It found that “daughter-divorce” risk emerges only in a first-born girl’s teenage years (see chart). Before they reach the age of 12, daughters are no more linked to couples splitting up than sons are. “If fathers were really more likely to take off because they preferred sons, surely they wouldn’t wait 13 years to do so,” reasons Dr Kabatek. Instead, he argues, the fact that the risk is so age-specific requires a different explanation, namely that parents quarrel more over the upbringing of teenage daughters than of teenage sons.

And, sorry to blame daughters in my post title...

A Jim Holt review that considers future lives

Oh!  I haven't read anything by Jim Holt for ages - he was a favourite writer on science matters for a long time.

But on a whim I checked New York Review today, and he has an interesting review entitled The Power of Catastrophic Thinking.    Actually it's a review of a cheery sounding book The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by one Toby Ord.

The basic question the book and review addresses is the extent to which we should value future lives, and at what cost to our current lives if some sacrifice is needed.  All very relevant to the question of climate change, which does get a mention, with this somewhat surprising statement:

Could global warming cause unrecoverable collapse or even human extinction? Here too, Ord’s prognosis, though dire, is not so dire as you might expect. On our present course, climate change will wreak global havoc for generations and drive many nonhuman species to extinction. But it is unlikely to wipe out humanity entirely. Even in the extreme case where global temperatures rise by as much as 20 degrees centigrade, there will still be enough habitable land mass, fresh water, and agricultural output to sustain at least a miserable remnant of us. 

Gee.  I would not have thought global average of 20 degrees would barely be survivable unless you were living in a airconditioned dome anywhere on the planet - but I really don't know what the daily temperature at the poles in summer or winter would be like under those conditions.    

He does point out the runaway global warming idea next:

There is, however, at least one scenario in which climate change might indeed spell the end of human life and civilization. Called the “runaway greenhouse effect,” this could arise—in theory—from an amplifying feedback loop in which heat generates water vapor (a potent greenhouse gas) and water vapor in turn traps heat. Such a feedback loop might raise the earth’s temperature by hundreds of degrees, boiling off all the oceans. (“Something like this probably happened on Venus,” Ord tells us.) The runaway greenhouse effect would be fatal to most life on earth, including humans. But is it likely? Evidence from past geological eras, when the carbon content of the atmosphere was much higher than it is today, suggests not. In Ord’s summation, “It is probably physically impossible for our actions to produce the catastrophe—but we aren’t sure.”

Anyway, the rest of the review goes into the more philosophical and analytical issues with thinking about the value of future lives, and Holt points out some of the flaws in certain ways of thinking about it.

It's a bit too complicated to do it justice here, but here is a key section:

Ord cites both kinds of reasons for valuing humanity’s future. He acknowledges that there are difficulties with the utilitarian account, particularly when considerations of the quantity of future people are balanced against the quality of their lives. But he seems more comfortable when he doffs his utilitarian hat and puts on a Platonic one instead. What really moves him is humanity’s promise for achievement—for exploring the entire cosmos and suffusing it with value. If we and our potential descendants are the only rational beings in the universe—a distinct possibility, so far as we know—then, he writes, “responsibility for the history of the universe is entirely on us.” Once we have reduced our existential risks enough to back off from the acute danger we’re currently in—the Precipice—he encourages us to undertake what he calls “the Long Reflection” on what is the best kind of future for humanity: a reflection that, he hopes, will “deliver a verdict that stands the test of eternity.”

I guess I have always felt a similar way:  and if you are keen on an Omega Point idea, it makes it particularly important that humanity doesn't stupidly kill itself, just in case it's the only way it can be reached.

But if this is the sort of thing that interests you - just go read the whole review article (set up an account to be able to read it for free).

Good fat news

Big news for a weight loss drug:

One third (35%) of people who took a new drug for treating obesity lost more than one-fifth (greater than or equal to 20%) of their total body weight, according to a major global study involving UCL researchers.  ...

Professor Batterham (UCL Medicine) said: "The findings of this study represent a major breakthrough for improving the health of people with obesity. Three quarters (75%) of people who received semaglutide 2.4mg lost more than 10% of their body weight and more than one-third lost more than 20%. No other drug has come close to producing this level of weight loss—this really is a gamechanger. For the first time, people can achieve through drugs what was only possible through weight-loss surgery."

I wonder if it has side effects that mean it won't be used as a general diet pill.

Good anti-Trump news

Axios reports:

Prosecutors in Georgia have launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the state's 2020 election results, including a phone call with the state's top elections official in which the former president asked to "find" enough votes to declare he won Georgia.

Driving the news: The Fulton County District Attorney's office on Wednesday sent letters to a number of state officials — including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was on the other end of the call — asking them to preserve any documents related to Trump's efforts, DA spokesperson Jeff DiSantis confirmed.

Also good news:

Donald Trump’s ban from the social media platform Twitter is going to stick even if he runs for the White House again – and even if he won again, a senior executive said on Wednesday.

Reason for optimism, reason for pessimism

First, the Washington Post notes that the (presumably) soon to leave this world Rush Limbaugh has a really ageing audience anyway: 

Rush Limbaugh, the most successful talk-radio host in history, is ailing. And so is the medium he helped revolutionize over the past 30 years.

Faced with aging and shrinking audiences, competition from newer technologies and financial problems for the biggest station owners, talk radio is in decline — both as a business and a political force. Once a leading platform for popularizing conservative candidates and policies, talk radio is on the verge of becoming background noise, drowned out by a cacophony of voices on podcasts, cable TV and social media.....

But conservative talk radio’s foremost problem isn’t so much how many people are listening as who.

The audience that grew up with Limbaugh is now quite gray, largely people 65 and older. Fewer than 8 percent of those who regularly listen to talk radio (including public radio) are 25 to 54, according Nielsen’s research.

But, on a more pessimistic note, it looks like Fox News had a strategy meeting and decided that the way to grab back the pro-Trumpers from Newsmax and OANN is to run hard on one of the worst bits of Trump popularism - encouraging rabid fear of illegal immigration: 

 

It's really dispicable the way they try to personalise all politics in such a nasty, fear based, fashion.  It's not just "policy X will be bad for the country in this way"; it's always "the Left hates you and despises you and wants to punish you and you should be scared."

Yes, the greatest Zoom meeting accident in history

It's perfection - like it was scripted for one of those mockumentary style TV shows (like The Office) where the reaction to stupid things happening is just deadpan and no one laughs. 

Texas lawyer trapped by cat filter on Zoom call, informs judge he is not a cat

 

And maybe that's how the problems with China end?

Pandemics aren't great for birth rates, it would seem:

The number of newborn babies in China registered with the police fell by double digits last year, a sign that the birthrate is continuing to decline and worsening demographic pressures in the rapidly aging nation.

There were a total of 10.04 million babies registered with the government in 2020, 14.8% lower than in 2019, according to data released by the Ministry of Public Security on Monday.

Haven't I read that birth rates in Western countries have dropped off last year as well, even though some early thoughts were that bored couples in lockdown would resort to sex to pass the time?   Yes -  I have read that.  Perhaps they didn't take into account the dis-incentivising effect of being in lockdown with children you already have?    

Back to China:  how big is the expected demographic decline, even without COVID assistance?  Very big:

The population of China is projected to decline from 1.4 billion in 2017 to 732 million by 2100, a drop of 48%, according to a new report published in the medical journal The Lancet and authored by University of Washington School of Medicine Professor Stein Emil Vollset and 23 coauthors. The number of people of working age in China is expected to plummet. The report forecasts a decline of 64% for China's population aged 20–24 years. That is the prime age for a country’s military, the authors note.

Prison watching

I'm late to the party (it's up to season 5, I see), but I have started watching Inside the World's Toughest Prisons on Netflix.    

I've only watched a few episodes, and so far I have learned:

*  Columbian prisoners may be tough thugs, but they take very good care of their hair grooming;

*  Greenland is trying the "college group house" style of prison running which seems popular in Scandinavia, and it seems every prisoner is in there for some offence related to hashish.  

*  Papua New Guinea treats its remand prisoners to accommodation worse than my local RSPCA gives to its stray dogs.   

Each episode is pretty formulaic, I suppose, and there is something of a "meta" fascination with how the prisoners (and guards) seem to ignore the cameraman, and don't seem to "act up" to being filmed.  (OK, maybe sometimes they do.  But it is sort of hard to tell.)

I still say that the best extended documentary series about an exotic prison, and how it is run, is Happy Jail, about the (formerly) all singing and dancing prison in Cebu.   I strongly recommended it here at the time, and have told people about it in person, but have yet to meet someone else who has actually watched it. My powers of persuasion are obviously low.

A seasonal produce observation

The white nectarines this year are exceptionally sweet and cheap.

I read someone somewhere saying that all stone fruit was better this year because the farmers had to pick later, and riper, fruit due to labour shortages.  I wonder if that's true.

The insightful rabbit man

For a young guy with an obsession with rabbits, that Noah Smith sure writes well and insightfully on a variety of topics.   Here's the latest example:  The End of the War on Islam. 

An extract:

Some of America’s 16-year panic over Islam was due to terror attacks, but some was due to the fact that the American Right simply panics about stuff. It is what they do. Communism, crime, rap lyrics, the War on Christmas, Dungeons and Dragons, video games — always just one thing after another. Some of the panics are much more justifiable than others, but the supply of panic is roughly fixed.

Readers on the Right are not going to like hearing this, but some portion of the panic over Islam was not really about terror attacks, but a displaced fear of the demographic and cultural changes that were taking place in America in the 2000s and early 2010s. The conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was a Muslim was obviously just a stand-in for the fact that he was part African. The fear of Sharia Law probably had something to do with the decline of Christianity in the U.S. The years of 2001-2016 were years of high immigration and rapid demographic change, and many people on the Right were afraid of that, and it was easy to associate those things with a “foreign”-feeling religion like Islam, especially given the backdrop of the War on Terror.

But the Trump Era changed this in two ways. First of all, it gave people on the Right permission to express explicit worries about one of the things they were really scared of — immigration. Instead of using the foreign-seeming-ness of Islam as a proxy, conservatives were free to point the finger at actual foreigners. Second, the Trump Era saw the reignition of America’s biggest and most fundamental and most divisive social conflict — the Black-White Conflict. Given a choice to fight about the Black-White Conflict vs. anything else, Americans will choose the former. With Antifa and BLM to worry about, who needs ISIS?

This change will be durable, I think. The GOP has decisively shifted away from the party of Bush to the party of Trump, and Trumpism has decisively shifted away from attacking Islam to attacking BLM, wokeness, Antifa, anarchism, rioters, etc. etc.

He doesn't actually mention it, but surely much of the Right's panic supply has moved onto China generically as its target.  (Which is not to say that China is not a cause for concern in many respects, of course.)  

 

Phrenology noted

I don't even know the details of the "Quillette supports phrenology" controversy, but I still found this funny:

 

Timbo in love

Martian origins

There's a paper at arXiv talking about how there is reason to suspect Mars may have actually been more hospitable to the creation of life than Earth.  (I assumed that life originating on Mars was more of a long shot theory.)   The abstract:

An origin of Earth life on Mars would resolve significant inconsistencies between the inferred history of life and Earth's geologic history. Life as we know it utilizes amino acids, nucleic acids, and lipids for the metabolic, informational, and compartment-forming subsystems of a cell. Such building blocks may have formed simultaneously from cyanosulfidic chemical precursors in a planetary surface scenario involving ultraviolet light, wet-dry cycling, and volcanism. However, early Earth was a water world, and the timing of the rise of oxygen on Earth is inconsistent with final fixation of the genetic code in response to oxidative stress. A cyanosulfidic origin of life could have taken place on Mars via photoredox chemistry, facilitated by orders of magnitude more sub-aerial crust than early Earth, and an earlier transition to oxidative conditions. Meteoritic bombardment may have generated transient habitable environments and ejected and transferred life to Earth. The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover offers an unprecedented opportunity to confirm or refute evidence consistent with a cyanosulfidic origin of life on Mars, search for evidence of ancient life, and constrain the evolution of Mars' oxidation state over time. We should seek to prove or refute a Martian origin for life on Earth alongside other possibilities.

You can download the paper from here.

Only joking

The conservative Rights sympathy for Putin continues its merry way, no matter how many of his enemies end up poisoned or in jail.

Trump supporters in denial

On the one hand, this article by William Saletan at Slate gives cause for some optimism about the majority of the American population not being nuts:

Donald Trump might be in denial about who won the 2020 election, but his pollsters aren’t. Two of them have performed autopsies on his defeat, and those autopsies are now public. One of his pollsters, John McLaughlin, published an analysis in Newsmax in November. Another report, written by consultant Tony Fabrizio, was posted on Monday by Politico. Neither pollster blames the former president, but their numbers tell the story: Trump destroyed himself.

The autopsies identified two reasons why Trump should have won. First, based on self-identification, the 2020 electorate was significantly more Republican than the 2016 electorate. Second, public satisfaction with the economy favored the incumbent. Both pollsters found that people who voted in 2020 thought Trump would handle the economy better than Joe Biden would. McLaughlin’s analysis, based on his post-election survey of people who voted in 2020, noted that 61 percent of these voters said they were better off than they had been four years earlier. Despite this, Trump managed to lose one-third of the 61 percent. “Fully 20% of all voters thought they were better off today than four years ago and did not vote for President Trump,” McLaughlin wrote.

Fabrizio analyzed exit polls from 10 battleground states Trump had won in 2016. Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas stayed with Trump in 2020; Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin flipped to Biden. Collectively, in the 10 states, Fabrizio computed a “massive swing” against Trump among independents (by 17 to 19 percentage points) and a similar shift among college-educated white voters (by 14 to 18 points). Likewise, in his national sample, McLaughlin found that Biden won moderates, 62 percent to 36 percent.

Trump repelled these voters, even those who were happy with the economy. In McLaughlin’s national sample, Biden was viewed more favorably than Trump. Among voters who disliked both candidates, the pollster noted, “dislike of Trump was more dominant.” Three-quarters of Biden voters cited character or personality traits as reasons for their voting decisions, and the reasons they gave were “mostly anti-Trump,” McLaughlin wrote. Seven percent of respondents said they had voted mostly “against Biden,” but 19 percent said they had voted mostly “against Trump.”

Fabrizio found similar results. In the battleground states, voters said by a four-point margin that Biden wasn’t “honest and trustworthy.” Trump’s deficit on the same question was much bigger: 14 to 18 points. The exit polls also indicated that Trump inspired millions of new voters to turn out, either in person or by mail, to get rid of him. Fabrizio noted that collectively, in the five states that flipped to Biden, Trump outpolled Biden among people who had voted in 2016. What killed Trump were the new voters. Biden won them by 14 points in the five decisive states.

On the other hand - it's depressing to know that the Trump cultist base is still in complete denial that their cult leader is unpopular and that this alone accounts for his loss.

I would guess that this is not going to be cured until top GOP figures bite the bullet and start telling the base, that they fear, some home truths.

The extent of the GOP takeover by the cultists in denial is discussed in this article from Daily Kos, which starts:

It’s becoming much clearer why Republicans in Congress are so reluctant to acknowledge factual reality—such as the reality that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fairly, or that Donald Trump incited a mob that attacked Congress and ransacked the U.S. Capitol—and have doubled down on their embrace of anti-democratic disinformation that fueled the insurrection. If the Republicans dare admit any of it is real, they risk the insane wrath of the millions of GOP voters out there who have wholly swallowed all that false Trumpian propaganda.

That’s become especially self-evident among Republicans at the state and local levels throughout the country in the weeks since the Jan. 6 riot. As Hunter recently explained, the GOP at the ground level not only has fully embraced the conspiracist rot that Trump promoted after he lost, but it also has become even more openly extreme than it was before the election. Liz Cheney is now finding that out.

It ends with the point that (sorry) I keep coming back to, but it is so obviously true:

This is what Barack Obama adroitly describes as America’s “epistemological crisis.” It will not stop happening as long as there are news organs that traffic in falsehoods as a profit model, and who devote 24 hours a day, seven days a week of broadcast time to using those lies to coach half of the nation on how and why to hate the other half—and politicians gleefully profiting from it as well.

New York steam explained

So Google made me watch an interesting video about the steam heating system in New York and other American cities: 

I would never have guessed that such systems had been around for so long, and were so extensive.   I wonder what other international cities have something similar?  

But yeah, that asbestos aspect is a very unattractive feature....

Another in the series - late movie reviews

This time:  American Hustle, from 2013.

I knew it had good reviews at the time, but yeah - it's a terrifically made, very enjoyable, film.   

My son thought it covered a lot of similar ground to Martin Scorsese, but I said no, it's better than Scorsese because the women aren't just background characters.  (True, the wife in Casino was important, but most Scorsese films are exceptionally man-centric.  You could say that's just because of the gangster/mafia material he is interested in, but I recently re-watched his early black comedy After Hours for the first time since I had viewed it in the 1980's, and what struck me was how all of the women were nuts.  The entire theme of he movie seemed to be a warning to men to not trust any women, no matter how nice they might seem initially - most are actually nuts and can get you into diabolical trouble.)

Anyway, back to Hustle.  My God, isn't Amy Adams versatile?   Of course, Christian Bale is too, but Amy Adams just seems to have chosen a wider range of roles than him.   And Louis CK - a competent actor who I now can't see without thinking "weirdo chronic masturbater".  (Or is that spelt with "..or"?)

It's really hard to fault the movie - although, of course, it could have been written with a little less swearing.  But I forgive it.

 

Friday philosophy - hedonism

So, I learned from this article in Philosophy Now that the there was a group in ancient India who considered hedonism as a legitimate life philosophy, just as there was in Greece:

By the time of the Cārvākas, around the time of the Buddha (6th-5th C. BCE), the six orthodox schools of Hinduism had already considered valid means of knowledge and the good life extensively. One of a number of heterodox schools of Indian philosophy, the Cārvākas rejected almost all of the standard Hindu means of knowledge, were staunch materialists, and considered pleasure as the goal of a good life, denying the pursuit of the kind of liberation from desire advocated by Hindus and Buddhists alike. For many schools of Indian philosophy, the self or soul persists through many lifetimes, and how subsequent lives manifest is contingent on one’s actions (this is karma), and liberation from this cycle of rebirth is attained through enlightenment, which frequently involves the denial of one’s desires. The Cārvākas, however, don’t seem preoccupied with breaking the cycle of rebirth: they are very much rooted in the present, and in the sensations of the here and now.

While there is only fragmentary records of this school, they were real party boys (and pretty irresponsible sounding ones at that):

... according to the Sarvasiddhantasamgraha, the Cārvākas maintained that “the enjoyment of heaven lies in eating delicious food, keeping company of young women, using fine clothes, perfumes, garlands, [and] sandal paste.” And the Cārvākas didn’t let anything stop them from enjoying life, as illustrated by an earlier claim in the Sarvadarsanasamgraha that “while life remains let a man live happily, let him feed on ghee even though he runs into debt.” They also vehemently decried the abstinence typical of Hindu ascetics, arguing that “chastity and other such ordinances are laid down by clever weaklings”, instead preferring to argue for the sensual indulgences mentioned. This dedication to indulgence was not to be hampered by the social conventions of mainstream Hindu society, such as debt or devotion or belief in karma, and it is also consistent with their views on knowledge. If the only means of experiencing the world is through sense perception, and the highest good is pleasure, then it makes sense that the Cārvākas would consider pleasure a phenomenon of the senses.

The article then goes on to contrast with the more refined Epicurean view of hedonism, which is much more reasonable sounding:

For the Epicureans, the height of pleasure was the absence of pain. Some may find it strange to say that out of all pleasures, the greatest isn’t an indulgence in or an achievement of something, but rather an absence of something. Even among hedonists, such a view is a radical one. But the Epicureans leave little room for ambiguity in their view. As Epicurus himself argues in the Letter :

“It is not drinking bouts and continuous partying and enjoying boys and women, or consuming fish and the other dainties of an extravagant table, which produce the pleasant life, but sober calculation which searches out the reasons for every choice and avoidance and drives out the opinions which are the source of the greatest turmoil for men’s souls.”

Despite such a refined view of pleasure Epicurus was able to develop a theory based on it. Epicurus’ prescription for the good life outlined in the Letter famously includes the maxim that ‘the limit of good things is easy to achieve completely, and easy to provide’. The hedonist who views pleasure as constant indulgence in partying and other sensual objects, an Epicurean would argue, is setting himself up for disappointment when these things are no longer within his means. However, the hedonist who understands that the greatest pleasure is freedom from pain seeks contentment in a frugal and simple life, and will always be ready to cope with life’s struggles. Indeed, it seems clear that the Epicureans would certainly be proponents of attitudinal rather than sensory pleasures. They definitely don’t seem susceptible to the criticisms of hedonism we noted. Despite Cicero’s claim that the pursuit of pleasure is ‘totally unworthy of a human being’, it’s not entirely clear how the ‘sober calculation’ and ‘lack of pain in the body’ that the Epicureans strive for is any less worthy a pursuit than any of the virtues advocated by, say, the followers of Aristotle.

So, it all depends on how you define "pleasure" as to whether the pursuit of it sounds reasonable, or not. 

I have probably read about the Epicureans' modest form of hedonism before, but forgotten about it.

Getting to the bottom (ha ha)

This was an unexpected headline:

China rolls out anal swab coronavirus test, saying it’s more accurate than throat method 

Months-long lockdowns. Entire city populations herded through the streets for mandatory testing. The people of China could be forgiven for thinking they had seen it all during the coronavirus pandemic.

But now they face a new indignity: the addition of anal swabs — yes, you read that right — to the testing regimen for those in quarantine.

Chinese state media outlets introduced the new protocol in recent days, prompting widespread discussion and some outrage. Some Chinese doctors say the science is there. Recovering patients, they say, have continued to test positive through samples from the lower digestive tract days after nasal and throat swabs came back negative.

Yet for many, it seemed a step too far in government intrusions after a year and counting of a dignity-eroding pandemic.

“Everyone involved will be so embarrassed,” one user in Guang­dong province said Wednesday on ­Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. In a Weibo poll, 80 percent of respondents said they “could not accept” the invasive method.

It can't be that hard to get the patient to do the swab themselves, surely?  

And anyone who has had to insert cream for a haemorrhoid would know it's not going to kill you to have something thin inserted.   I mean, it's not going to be like a prostate digital exam, surely.

Are the Chinese particularly culturally sensitive to examination of their body?   I have wondered about this - the Japanese are so relaxed about public and family nudity in the right context (bathing, mainly), yet go across to China and my impression is they seem to have a cultural shyness about bodies.

Very unclear how this will progress

While this sounds very bad:

 there are several likely complicating factors yet to unfold:

*  more "Trump in private" disclosures to come (making no difference to Trumpists, but still influential on establishment Republicans who don't want to see a return of Trump influence?)  

*  Trump's personal legal problems coming to a head in the next year 

*  possible international tensions coming to a head, and (hopefully) being capably handled by Biden (perhaps a bit of Chinese or North Korean military sabre rattling?)

*  some key right wing media figures having their own problems removing them from influence.  Alex Jones is now facing several defamation law suits which may well harm his career;  Rush Limbaugh will die one day.   On the other hand, Fox News though is going harder right to try to get back audience from OANN and Newsmax.   

 I think it is impossible to overemphasis the damaging role of Fox News and the rest of the RW media universe in restoring "normal" politics again in the US.  

The odious Carlson

Tucker Carlson is an odious disgrace, selling fear and (as someone in comments to the Washington Post article linked below says) White Grievance to an ageing audience.

Here's his latest appalling take:

The impetus for the segment was a bill proposed by Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.). In response to the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol this month, which practically coursed with QAnon fervor, Murphy wants to prevent people who subscribe to it and other such conspiracy theories from gaining federal government security clearances.

“If any Americans participated in the Capitol attack, or if they subscribe to these dangerous anti-government views of QAnon, then they have no business being entrusted with our nation’s secrets,” she said.

In Carlson’s estimation, though, this is an attempt at mind control by the federal government....

“We’re watching a profound change taking place in American society that’s happening very fast,” Carlson said. “The stakes could not be higher. There is a clear line between democracy and tyranny, between self-government and dictatorship, and here’s what that line is: That line is your conscience. They cannot cross that.”

Carlson acknowledged that the government can make laws prohibiting certain behaviors such as murder, rape, speeding and jaywalking. But he cast this as a bridge too far.

“But no democratic government can ever tell you what to think. Your mind belongs to you. It is yours and yours alone,” he said. “Once politicians attempt to control what you believe, they are no longer politicians, they are by definition dictators. And if they succeed in controlling what you believe, you are no longer a citizen. You are not a free man. You are a slave.”

As someone in comments writes:

Oh, good grief. The QAnon cult believes in a violent overthrow of the government by Trump. This includes executing high ranking Democratic members of the government. All part of "The Storm", stamped with God's approval, and I am certain lacking any due process for the victims. WHY ON EARTH WOULD IT BE APPROPRIATE TO GIVE THESE PEOPLE ACCESS TO OUR COUNTRY'S SECRETS?
 
FOX "news" demonstrates every day that they don't care about America! 

I also read today that the nutty Qanon sympathising GOP congresswoman is even worse than we already knew:

Why it matters: The freshman Republican from Georgia made a series of bizarre and outlandish remarks before her time in Congress that rival former Rep. Steve King's talk of white supremacy.

What’s happening: The latest round of Greene comments, pulled from archives of her Facebook page, show the congresswoman promoting an outlandish, QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton cutting off and donning the face of a child.

• That comment was reported by the progressive group Media Matters for America, which previously noted her endorsements of claims that 9/11 was perpetrated by the American government, and that the Parkland school shooting was staged.
• CNN reported Tuesday that Greene had floated executing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for treason, and “liked” Facebook comments suggesting the execution of FBI agents.

Politics is going to be broken in America for a long, long time if ludicrous political conspiracy theories continue to have influence.   But Carlson is trying to keep Qanon idiots on side - all the better for his and his network's profit.

The long term COVID problem

An article at France 24: The end of offices? New York's business districts face uncertain future details a similar thing to what I assume must be happening all over the world - 

Boarded-up stores, shuttered restaurants and empty office towers: Covid-19 has turned New York's famous business districts into ghost towns, with companies scrambling to come up with ways to entice workers to return post-pandemic.

"If they don't come back, we're sunk," said Kenneth McClure, vice president of Hospitality Holdings, whose Midtown bistro pre-coronavirus would buzz with the sound of financiers striking deals at lunch and sharing cocktails after a hard day at the office.

The group has closed its six restaurants and bars in Manhattan, two of them permanently, due to lockdown restrictions that have paused office culture - a culture as intrinsic to the Big Apple as a Broadway show, a yellow taxi or a slice of cheese pizza.

The problem is, turns out that a lot of people quite like working from home, and businesses have found it isn't as bad as they feared:

Seventy-nine percent of employees questioned in a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey published this month said that working remotely had been a success, but the report also found that offices are not about to be consigned to history.

Some 87 percent of employees said the office was important to them for collaborating with team members and building relationships, aspects of working life they felt was easier and more rewarding in person than over Zoom.

As I have been saying to anyone who would listen for the last 9 months, I reckon the big crunch will be over the next few years as businesses come up for lease renewals of office space, and tell the landlord they really only need half of the space in future, as each day about half of their workforce is at home.

This does not augur well for values of commercial office space, and (probably) our superannuation returns.

Sounds about right

 

Just waiting for the "Control my Brain" app

News from Korea:

A group of KAIST researchers and collaborators have engineered a tiny brain implant that can be wirelessly recharged from outside the body to control brain circuits for long periods of time without battery replacement. The device is constructed of ultra-soft and bio-compliant polymers to help provide long-term compatibility with tissue. Geared with micrometer-sized LEDs (equivalent to the size of a grain of salt) mounted on ultrathin probes (the thickness of a human hair), it can wirelessly manipulate target neurons in the deep brain using light.  ....

Neuroscientists successfully tested these implants in rats and demonstrated their ability to suppress cocaine-induced behavior after the rats were injected with cocaine. This was achieved by precise light stimulation of relevant target neurons in their brains using the smartphone-controlled LEDs. Furthermore, the battery in the implants could be repeatedly recharged while the rats were behaving freely, thus minimizing any physical interruption to the experiments.

"Wireless battery re-charging makes experimental procedures much less complicated," said the co-lead author Min Jeong Ku, a researcher at Yonsei University's College of Medicine.

"The fact that we can control a specific behavior of animals, by delivering light stimulation into the brain just with a simple manipulation of smartphone app, watching freely moving animals nearby, is very interesting and stimulates a lot of imagination," said Jeong-Hoon Kim, a professor of physiology at Yonsei University's College of Medicine. "This technology will facilitate various avenues of brain research."

Water, water everywhere, etc

I was watching CNA on the weekend, and they had a special about Bangladesh's problems with water.

I thought the main issue would be that it's a delta nation that seems to be half under water for 2 months every year (I exaggerate - it's only a third!). And yes, while that is a problem, I didn't know that Dhaka has a major problem with drinking water.

 Then I was looking at Al Jazeera, and saw a story about how up in the hills (which look prettier than I expected), there are streams drying up and causing problems for farmers and residents there. Here's the story about that: 

 

As for the city of Dhaka running out of water (they rely on groundwater from deep wells, apparently - I am guessing the river water is too sludgey and polluted to try to use?), I see that this has been a story for many years. Al Jazeera again, from 8 years ago: 

To top it all off, there is a large arsenic problem in Bangladeshi ground water too. 

This seems to be close to the unluckiest country in the world.

Life in a Northern town

I've recommended Cecilia Blomdhal's youtube channel on her life in Svalsbard before.  It's an incredible environment, and kind of amazing that people happily live there.  

In her latest video, she talks about how a lot of people there actually like the 2 month polar night - finding it sort of relaxing, apparently.   I think the sun doesn't actually rise for 4 months, but for some of that period they get twilight sky, which looks very pretty indeed.  This video is mainly her talking to camera, but with some impressive photos.   Have a watch, if you're interested:

 

 I like all of her videos.  Maybe the dog, which is beautiful and smart, is part of the attraction, too.

Speaking of which - in this video, you get to see her gearing up (including with shotgun on her back) to take her dog for a walk during the polar night:

So interesting...

Mr Bird opines

I haven't been letting Birdian content through in comments - it's been full of "rigged election" conspiracy mongering, and then much abuse of me for not letting comments through.   I've even stopped his other topic comments, because I am trying to get through the message that I would much prefer that he wasn't commenting here at all.  Go start another blog - even anonymously - and stop harassing mine, Graeme.

But here is the most recent one, so you can see his thought processes, and laugh (my bold):

I can't help thinking that there will have to be a military interim government. Trumps not coming back but it appears unlikely that the Biden Presidency can hold. Particularly as it wasn't Biden that was sworn in but some body double. Possibly his younger brother. Perhaps young James got some sort of facial surgery. Anyway whoever the imposter is; I wouldn't put money on guessing. It makes no difference whether it is James Biden or some other clown. But whoever he is, its going to be hard even for the combined power of the moneyed elites to hold this racket together for any length of time. So they had the power to produce this alternative reality. But do they have the power to maintain it as the public gets more and more impoverished and angry?

 

 

Monday observations

*   what with this Margaret Court gets an award for being Margaret Court kerfuffle, time to revisit my 2016 post - why does Australia have so many awards?   Isn't everyone feeling this way now?  Every year seems to be more and more scratching around trying to find enough appropriate award recipients.   Can't some politician bite the bullet and say this out loud?   

*  I thought I was getting more and more into art house foreign films, but on Saturday I watched the very well reviewed Taiwanese move A Sun on Netflix, and I did not care for it at all.   It starts with a startling act of violence, follows the protagonist as he goes to juvenile prison, but then get progressively less interesting the longer it goes on.  And it is pretty long.   The direction is often pretty, and I can see that the actors are good, but the screenplay (to my mind) keeps too many characters' motivations completely opaque.   I felt I didn't understand any of them properly for all of the movie.  

I was tired while watching it, which never helps, but I am pretty sure I am right on this one.  I am puzzled as to why it got such enthusiastic reviews.

*  I endorse this brand of rendang paste mix.  There are some other brands I have tried (from Indonesia actually) and they just aren't so great, particularly the Indofoods one.  But this one from Malaysia is good:

One other observation:  Ayam brand products are often a bit underflavoured, I think.   Although, having said that, I did like the nyonya curry paste of their's recently.

This is her "It's Sunday, isn't it time to go to the dog park yet?" look

Well, this is stupid

Will Wilkinson made what was clearly a sarcastic/sardonic joke tweet (about those Republicans who wanted to lynch Pence) and regretted it:

 but still got sacked from the Niskanen Centre for it:

And those who are doing this: 

 

 are using the same bad faith, pretend it's not a joke, line that I have seen Sinclair Davidson use with me, many years ago.   (Because they don't want to see legitimate calls for violence from their side of the fence punished, in the name of free speech.)  

Update:

 Others disagree that it was even a bad joke (and actually, I am inclined to agree):

Yet more:

One day in and...

*   doomscrolling Twitter is just not the same anymore.   In fact, it has almost ceased to exist, overnight.

*   Yes, this is true, and delightful:

*   The key word used by all of the late night talk show hosts (well, Colbert, Kimmel and Oliver) who I saw last night was the one I used yesterday "relief".   They were all very happy, as they should be.

*   The problem continues:

I have been meaning to make this point again:   Fox News used to make a clear attempt to have a liberal perspective on even its opinion shows.   I know because I used to watch it sometimes on Foxtel back in (I think) the early 2000's.   Even with the then popular Bill O'Reilly used to position conservatism as a "middle American just being sensible" sort of thing.  I don't recall him, at least at that time, being big on positively demonising the Left.   But as with Andrew Bolt, being paid for sprouting opinions every day of the week is bad for the soul - it forces people to become more extreme and certain to please the audience.   Being a "well, I don't really know what to think of this" sort of person doesn't sell well.

At some point we stopped getting Foxtel at home and I don't really know when the network decided to ramp up the demonisation of all thing liberal.   I also see from this article that they still had liberal punching bags on into the 2010's to try to show "balance" (or more likely, appeal to the audience who liked to see the liberal "lose" every panel argument).

But at some point, the network chose to get into full blown demonisation and scaremongering of liberals as its opinion shows' raison d'etre.   

That is why it is an appalling poisonous influence on American politics.

The day of great relief

I am sure I am not alone in saying I have never been happier in my entire life to see a new US President.

Also, funny sarcasm:

Yet more "the problem continues"

I have been meaning to say that there is a lot of renewed talk about the fairness doctrine being re-instated.   Noah Smith talked about it in the context of social media.   But I am not sure I have read anything about how it could apply to cable media.

But honestly, if the likes of Fox News, Newsmax and others are going to be allowed to continuously poison "news" coverage with blatant scare propaganda, it's hard to see a cure for the current schism. 

The problem continues (part something)

 

Not a bad summary