A tad over the top?

Given my attitude to sport, and cricket in particular, the death of Shane Warne was never going to affect me.   But I'm still surprised at the degree of the outpouring of grief over a bloke whose claim to fame all revolved around (as far as I can tell) a particular wrist motion.

It's a funny world:

In a stage show of tears and laughter, Shane Warne's immortality was confirmed

OK, OK, he did charitable things and was nice to people, generally speaking, it seems.   But it still comes down to fame over a wrist motion.   It's a bit like, I don't know, someone becoming incredibly famous as a pub dart champion.

Murdochs protecting Morrison - but why?

I thought it was clear from the post budget Murdoch press headlines that the word had passed around - Rupert wants Morrison returned.  And now I see the message was probably being conveyed by Lachlan:

But why?  Why is this clear dud of a PM having Murdoch protection??

 

Global warming and everyone's favourite fish

It's been a long time since I posted about ocean warming (and acidification) and it's very uncertain effects on the food chain.

This Washington Post article talks about the worrying effect on salmon fisheries.

Do I have to have an opinion on the Smith/Rock incident?

I find it hard to care about, really.

It did remind me, though, that many years ago, I got really, really annoyed at the Catallaxy/right wing reaction to the video of kid who was being bullied and took revenge by up-ending the bully and (more or less) dropping him on his head.   I was furious that adults would endorse this as an admirable reaction to bullying which did not look particularly dangerous to the victim.   The reason:  it was obviously an incredibly dangerous response - people are permanently paralysed all the time from bad neck/spinal injuries, and dropping someone in a way that may cause such an injury is just never going to be good idea.  It was ridiculous to praise such a disproportionate response.

I haven't changed my opinion on that at all.  

This current incident doesn't have that same circumstance at all.   It was more a slap, and Will Smith is a bit nutty, I thought everyone accepted.  It's funny how a lot of the pushback has come from (mainly) left wing comedians who think it sets a bad example to audiences at stand up gigs.

I can understand the "don't encourage 'you hurt my honour' violence" line, but really, I don't know that violence inclined people would consider Smith someone to model themselves on anyway.

So there - my opinion is I don't have an opinion. 

Profound

Any freak out about Biden's "regime change" comment should always be in the context that we know, with certainty, that a re-elected President Trump would have said 100 stupider things about Ukraine and Russia by now.   I mean, honestly, the man's an idiot.

Fan fiction

Quite a few people like this idea, inspired no doubt by "Short Round" actor Ke Huy Quan appearing in Everything Everywhere All at Once.   (Which seems to have received an enthusiastic early audience reaction.)

This seems an appropriate opportunity to repeat my fan fic wish:   that Harrison Ford's final appearance in an Indiana Jones movie be him added to the people getting into the Mother Ship at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Yes, Coorey now plays the LNP tunes

Phil Coorey used to play a straight bat, more or less, but for whatever reason, he now reads like a permanent apologist of the LNP.  

Today's column, trying to keep the Kitching issue going, is very pathetic:

More broadly, Labor’s inability to shut this down has starved it of oxygen for 10 days in a row, exposing an alarming lack of capacity for damage control.

Where's the self awareness that it's the media that has kept giving it oxygen?   Bernard Keane has been vicious in his tweets about the press gallery on this, and I reckon he's right.

And this is real "jump the shark" whataboutism:

And why is it okay for Labor supporters to “victim shame” Kitching on the basis of her husband’s alleged misdeeds 17 years ago, when it was definitely not okay – and remains not okay – to allegedly background against Brittany Higgins’ partner and impute some motive on his behalf when questioning the timing of her going public with her alleged rape?

Um, one explains some of the background to major Victorian factional fights which was behind the pre-selection stress - it genuinely enlightens the reader as to why she was a controversial figure within the party;  the other is malicious rumour mongering to influence the view of a rape complaint yet to go to court.     

Chalk and cheese, Phil.

What was I saying about de-populating the rural areas?

They're just not good for your health:

Study finds methamphetamine the most consumed illicit drug nationwide – and the problem is worse outside the cities...

According to the latest report from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s (ACIC) Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program released this week, people living in regional areas are more likely to experience the harms related to substance use.

Using wastewater data collected by the Universities of Queensland and South Australia across 58 sites nationally – covering over half the population – the report seeks to understand local drug markets across all capitals and a range of regional cities and towns up to August 2021.

It draws on five years of data collected since the program began, and found consumption of most drugs has generally been higher per capita in regional Australia.

The exception is in cocaine and heroin use, where consumption is higher in the cities, and the report notes these two drugs are exclusively imported, without any domestic production.

 My "reverse Pol Pot" policy is looking better than ever...

Compare and contrast

A few days ago...

And today, off the cuff comments from Biden:

 

 

The supposedly "he's suffering serious cognitive decline" one is about twice as cogent as the previous President on this, and any other issue, in speeches, press conferences, and off the cuff comments like this.

 

 

Sodium ion batteries go boom (and fusion goes bust)

 That bloke who runs the Youtube channel "Just Have a Think" has had a couple of particularly interesting videos recently related to energy.  The first is about apparent advances in using sodium ion for batteries instead of lithium (which seems great news if it pans out, unless you've bought stock in lithium mining companies):

 

 There have been quite a few other videos floating around in my recommendations about this, but I haven't watched them.

 The second one is a sceptical look at fusion, building on the information Sabine Hossenfelder put out in a video he references: 

 

I am a little surprised, actually, that Sabine still says that its technology worth looking into - I would say it is, within certain economic limits, which must be just about reached with ITER.

Niki Savva on some Kitching background

Niki Savva explains why Kitching "had trust issues" within her own party:

Kitching lost the trust of many on her own side. She was suspected of leaking and undermining colleagues, not only by briefing media – so far Chris Uhlmann and Andrew Bolt have publicly revealed Kitching told them she was concerned Wong would be weak on China – but Coalition MPs, former Liberal Party officials and even senior staff in the Prime Minister’s office.

Politicians leak. And they do have friends across the aisle. But the breadth and depth of hers fed the distrust. The crunch came in June last year when then defence minister Linda Reynolds said in Senate estimates she had been forewarned by a Labor senator she would face questioning over the alleged rape of former staffer Brittany Higgins.

In private meetings later, to prove she was not making it up, Reynolds went so far as to produce for Wong, Gallagher and Keneally, video footage from the Senate chamber showing Kitching approaching her months before in early February before prayers. Reynolds told them this was when Kitching first told her the tactics committee had discussed it and planned to weaponise the alleged rape.

Reynolds also showed them subsequent text messages she had received from Kitching effectively confirming their initial conversation.

The matter had not been discussed in tactics, something Reynolds later accepted, so Kitching’s leak was actually not true. This was a sackable offence in anyone’s language. Kitching was dropped from tactics. Fearing ongoing leaks to their opponents or media, it was no wonder they restricted her access and contact with her.

In an earlier part of the article:

As well as being smart and ambitious, Kitching was a tough player who revelled in political intrigue, making enemies as easily as she made friends. She loved the nickname “Mata Hari” bestowed on her by a Labor MP, a mate, who admired her for not toeing the line, who also warned her to be careful she did not cross that line.

He reckons she never complained to him about her treatment, except that she wanted to be restored to Labor’s Senate tactics committee, from which she had been dismissed. “She was tough, she didn’t want people holding her hand,” he said. “She didn’t ask anyone to feel sorry for her.”

I would trust Savva's commentary on this much more than James Morrow, hey Jason?

 

 

 

Ha ha

 I do wonder at times about what it's like to be a complete dud of a PM.   I mean, there is no way in the world that history is going to give good marks to Morrison, or Abbott, as well performing or well regarded PMs;  and if it was me, and had been lucky enough to get the job, I think that would I look back and prefer not to have risen to my level of incompetency if I had my time over.

But I'm guessing that the type of ego necessary to want the top job means that ex-PM's never think that way?

Good point

Bullying and the late Senator

I don't follow internal party faction fighting in any party in all that much detail; life's too short.   But it's certainly clear that internal fights can be bruising and personal.  (Nothing new under the sun there).

That said, my curiosity about the late Senator Kitching was piqued when Pauline Hanson turned up on TV emotionally shaken by her death.   The fact that Senator K had gone out of her way to welcome (and befriend to some extent, it seemed) Pauline certainly seemed to indicate a strong right wing status within a left wing party.

Then, today, Guy Rundle really puts the boot into the late Senator's particular subfaction and its union adventures in a free to read Crikey article.   He's obviously decided that not speaking ill of the dead can't wait when the death is being politicised so clearly.

Rundle's overall point seems valid enough, though - for the media to just talk about "bullying" without context of the viciousness of the complicated factional and sub factional fighting within the broader Labor movement is outright misleading - and he seems rather panicky about how the small-ish number of pro "Kitching was bullied to death" proponents within Labor are handing Morrison the possibility of re-election.

From my completely amateur perspective, I reckon this will blow over soon enough, and in fact, runs the risk of a backfiring if the Coalition tries to carry on about it for too long.   The main effect of the bad PR, I think will be:

a.    people who never liked Penny Wong or Kristina Keneally will get to feel vindication and double           down on their dislike, but they were already never going to vote Labor anyway;

b.    habitual Labor voters are not to be going to be easily convinced that internal Labor treatment of its       female politicians is any worse than the treatment of Liberal females politicians, and again, votes         won't change;

c.    swinging voters are going to be bored with the issue, given that, in all honesty, the nature of the             alleged bullying doesn't really seem to stand up to scrutiny as being amongst the worst examples of         the genre.  

So the Nine Network, Shy News and the gormless characters who work there can keep trying to spin this for political purposes, but I really doubt it has any legs.

Update:   Rather annoyingly, Mike Rowland on ABC News Breakfast this morning spent about 15 mins with Albo pushing the Morrison/News Corpse line about "why aren't you having an independent enquiry into bullying".   Rowland is smart enough to know the lack of bona fides that Morrison and News Corpse have in promoting the argument, but he never acknowledged the obvious.   I thought Albo handled it pretty well, though.

The rocket everyone had forgotten was being built

NASA’s Giant Moon Rocket Reaches the Launchpad for the First Time

NASA rolled the giant Space Launch System rocket out of an assembly building to begin testing ahead of its journey later this year toward the moon.

 

Brain scan scepticism

Ukraine and war and right wing nuttiness (along with the occasional bit of left wing nuttiness*) has been crowding out other interesting stuff lately, but here's an article at Nature of note, about a field of research that seems to have been making dubious connections:

Now, in a bombshell 16 March Nature study¹, Marek and his colleagues show that even large brain-imaging studies, such as his, are still too small to reliably detect most links between brain function and behaviour.

As a result, the conclusions of most published ‘brain-wide association studies’ — typically involving dozens to hundreds of participants — might be wrong. Such studies link variations in brain structure and activity to differences in cognitive ability, mental health and other behavioural traits. For instance, numerous studies have identified brain anatomy or activity patterns that, the studies say, can distinguish people who have been diagnosed with depression from those who have not. Studies also often seek biomarkers for behavioural traits.

“There’s a lot of investigators who have committed their careers to doing the kind of science that this paper says is basically junk,” says Russell Poldrack, a cognitive neuroscientist at Stanford University in California, who was one of the paper’s peer reviewers. “It really forces a rethink.”

 

*   I saw that trans swimmer Lia Thomas talking for the first time on the weekend and I am completely unsurprised that most Americans probably think it's a nonsense that he is allowed to blitz the women's competition.  What gets up my nose is a decent trans person would recognise and accept the unfairness.  It may be that Right wingers lack nuance on the issue, but so do Lefties who refuse to acknowledge the unfairness and think trans can never be not allowed to do something in their elected gender.    

The view from Russian TV

Oh sure...

Look, Cassie, a ranty, sweary participant of original and current Catallaxy, and now Currency Lad's sad fact free blog, is getting old, and her memory is clearly fading, if this any evidence:

As I said yesterday, this kind of behaviour is consistent with “female” behaviour. And this is why I find that Wong’s comment about Kitching’s childlessness rings true. A man would never comment on a woman’s childlessness. The plain fact is that men don’t say such things. 

Ahem:

The Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan has once again called Ms Gillard "deliberately barren" and unqualified for leadership, because she has no children.

Senior members of the Government from the Prime Minister down quickly distanced themselves from the Senator's comments.

The Treasurer Peter Costello was the most critical.

He said decisions about having children were deeply personal, and Senator Heffernan should not have made the remarks.

Late this afternoon the Senator backed down and apologised to Ms Gillard for his comments.

I would also bet my last dollar on finding within old Catallaxy - if it still existed - plenty of men who joined in with the "childless Gillard just wouldn't understand" line over the years.   Quite possibly, CL himself.

Bolton correcting conservatives

A good recent article at the Washington Post - John Bolton's Crusade to debunk Trump's revisionist history on Russia and Ukraine.

Some parts:

Yes, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has turned on Trump like many others in Trump’s inner orbit have. His version of events is therefore understandably uncharitable. But if there were one thing that would seemingly earn the gratitude of an uber-hawk like Bolton, pretty high on that list would be Trump’s supposed success in keeping Putin in check.

Bolton has now said repeatedly that this simply isn’t how it went down. And he’s made quite the opposite case: that Putin didn’t do stuff like this during Trump’s presidency because Trump was already doing the work for him — specifically, by undermining NATO. And it’s a case that tracks with plenty of what we already knew, even as few Trump allies-turned-critics have seen fit to weigh in publicly of late.

In late February, Bolton appeared on Trump-friendly Newsmax and told a host who was pushing the Trump line that it was “just not accurate to say that Trump’s behavior somehow deterred the Russians.”

“In almost every case, the sanctions were imposed with Trump complaining about it, saying we were being too hard,” Bolton retorted when the host suggested that it was unthinkable that Trump would’ve handled the situation worse than President Biden has. Bolton added that Trump “barely knew where Ukraine was.”...

 

Asked whether we should believe this wouldn’t have happened on Trump’s watch, Bolton said, “Certainly not.” Bolton added that, in a second term unencumbered by future electoral considerations, Trump would’ve been even more freed up to potentially take the United States out of NATO.

“And so Putin would’ve gotten what he wanted in Ukraine for a lot lower price than he’s paying now,” Bolton said.

Then Bolton added, in perhaps his most unvarnished comment to date: “The Leninist phrase is ‘useful idiot,’ and they haven’t forgotten that in Moscow.”

 

Tick Tick noted

I watched the Netflix musical Tick, Tick ...Boom! a couple of weeks ago, and didn't review it.

Probably because I didn't much care for it.   I found most of the music pretty uninspiring and had a dated feeling, and the main character - the real life writer of the musical Rent - is not only played pretty gay for a straight guy (maybe that's how he was), but he's also kind of irritating and not very likeable.  

If it has any value, I thought it was in showing what a ridiculously hard life musically creative types can have - the struggle to get noticed and work performed in the New York theatre scene looks awful.   But I guess we already knew that: "Don't let your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington" was written a long time ago.    On a more positive note,  when you think about it, we should consider ourselves lucky that anyone sticks it out long enough to become a success and put on shows, plays (or movies) which we really do respond to.