The fear of brainwashing

I was driving around on Saturday and happened to catch most of Episode 3 of a Canadian podcast (being broadcast on ABC Radio Nation) called "Brainwashed".   This episode was about the CIA's program in the 50's and 60's to try to find the key to mind control, mainly by experiments with LSD and other drugs (often conducted on unwitting subjects.)

While I've read a little bit about this before, I had not realised, or had forgotten, that the origin of the fear of brainwashing came in large part from some American soldiers who refused to return to the US at the end of the Korean war.  This led to a widespread speculation in the US that the Koreans/Chinese had worked out the secret of successful brainwashing - and if they could do that to fine American soldiers, who knows what they could do?  (I see that "The Manchurian Candidate" came out in 1962, and the Korean War ended in 1953, so the screenwriters had plenty of time to come up with their brainwashing scenario.)

However, the story of the 21 who refused repatriation is a bit complicated, and even if initially "brainwashed", it didn't last for long for many of them.  Many had actually fled China before the movie even came out:

In September, however, 23 American prisoners of war also refused repatriation, sparking a nationwide debate among journalists, politicians, military officials, psychiatrists, and the soldiers themselves.

During a 90-day cooling-off period, the GIs were held in the neutral zone at Panmunjom, but only two changed their minds in response to entreaties by U.S. officials and letters from the GIs’ families.

The commonly accepted reason at the time was that they were brainwashed while held prisoner. This was effectively confirmed by 149 other POWs held by the Chinese/North Koreans who “reported that their captors had waged a systematic effort to break down their beliefs and entice them to collaborate”.

Time and Newsweek published articles looking for defects in the 21, to explain why they were able to be brainwashed. The magazines blamed reasons such as alcoholism, STDs, low IQs, and being “diseased”.

Race played an important role throughout the nationwide debate, especially since three of the 21 nonrepatriates were black. Discussion of the black nonrepatriates in the white press highlights public perceptions of Communism and civil rights in the mid-1950s.

For example, many publications noted the special effort the Chinese had made to woo black American soldiers, how they had stressed that in their Marxist nation all members of society were treated equally.

During the 90 days cooling-off period all 23 US soldiers were held on neutral territory. The 2 that left the group were court-martialed for desertion and collaboration, one was given a 20-year sentence, and the other 10. The remaining 21 were dishonorably discharged and journeyed in China.

 Once in China, the soldiers were sent to a collective farm to work. Within 1.5 years three of them ran away and sought refuge at the British Embassy in Peking. By 1958, 7 more of the soldiers had left China.

By 1966, only two remained in China. One of the 21 returned to the US in 1965 and explained his actions in 1953 as being motivated by “anger by the recall of his idol, General Douglas MacArthur, who favored the use of nuclear weapons to end the war. During his two years as a prisoner, he increasingly felt abandoned by America”.

 Anyway, it was a very interesting podcast, and I should listen to all episodes. 

The culture wars in publishing

I enjoyed reading this lengthy piece in The Guardian on the weekend, about a controversy in England over a particular book that got caught up in the PC culture wars.  It also talks about book publishing generally, and this section caught my attention:

What’s often portrayed as a generational divide, pitching “woke” young millennials against an ageing establishment, is in reality not so simple. Like the arts and academia, publishing is historically left-leaning and tends to attract the idealistic and value-driven at all ages. But it’s also dominated by recruits who can afford to do unpaid internships and move to London. The net result, this publisher argues, is an intake of privileged graduates anxious to compensate for their privilege, and growing resistance to publishing conservative voices they might disagree with. More than one industry source dates these tensions to Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump leaving many younger staff in particular keen not to fuel what they see as dangerous fires.

Last year, more than 200 employees at the US publisher Simon & Schuster signed a petition urging the firm not to publish a memoir by Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence. Similar protests followed across the industry over books by the rightwing philosopher Jordan Peterson and “alt-right” activist Milo Yiannopoulos, while in Britain some staff at JK Rowling’s publisher, Hachette, were unhappy about working on her children’s picture book, The Ickabog, in light of Rowling’s views on trans rights.

The authors of the two big gender-critical feminist books published last year in Britain, Helen Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality and Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls, have both described battling to get published in Britain, and neither got US publishing deals. Caroline Hardman, the literary agent who originally approached Stock and suggested she write the book, stresses it is not uncommon for multiple editors to reject a title before one accepts it, but confirms that several editors passed on it. “Some people were saying, ‘Nobody will buy it; there’s no interest in this topic.’ But that wasn’t what I was seeing in my life – there was this groundswell of grassroots feminism and I had become aware of the Gender Recognition Act consultation [on making it easier to self-identify as trans]. I was thinking, ‘This is a really big thing,’’’ she says. “I did have some people who were interested, but knew they would get backlash internally.”

Eventually, Joyce’s book became a bestseller for Oneworld.

Risotto noted

As this blog doubles as my resource for recipes I don't want to forget, I'll just note here that I don't think I have ever recorded proportions of stock to arborio rice for risotto.  

Following roughly this recipe on the weekend, I've decided it's 800 ml of stock for 300 g of rice (using the normal stir it in method; none of this "baked risotto" for me.)

It also took just one chorizo, and was enough for 3 pretty large servings.  (Oh, and I put in a knob of butter, and some parmesan cheese, in at the end.)

Nice.

A gruesome post

So, I'm late in getting around to watching it, but am currently going through the 3rd season of the Norwegian Viking comedy Norsemen on Netflix.

I've posted about this series before - the show is very funny in an occasionally violent Scandinavian Monty-Python-does-history kind of way.  One of the things that I find continually funny is just the way they speak their English - it's like the rhythm itself is amusing.    (Is this the way Norwegian itself sounds?  I really don't know.)

Anyway, in this season, there is a Viking wedding which features one of the violent bits (although, as usual, done in such an over the top way it's not offending me) - the sacrifice of a slave.

This has caused me to Google whether this actually happened much, and I can't for the moment see any confirmation of this.  Animal sacrifice, yes, but slave sacrifice is usually mentioned in the context of funerals, not weddings.

However, in reading about violent Norse habits, I did come across discussion of the "blood eagle" as a method of extremely gruesome execution.   I see that people who have watched Vikings, or played bloody video games, know all about this, but it was new to me.  I almost wish I didn't know:

Particularly infamous is the so-called “blood eagle”, a gory ritual these warriors are said to have performed on their most hated enemies. The ritual allegedly involved carving the victim’s back open and cutting their ribs away from their spine, before the lungs were pulled out through the resulting wounds. The final fluttering of the lungs splayed out on the outspread ribs would supposedly resemble the movement of a bird’s wings – hence the eagle in the name. 

I see that it is questioned whether it was real:

For decades, researchers have dismissed the blood eagle as a legend. No archaeological evidence of the ritual has ever been found, and the Vikings themselves kept no records, listing their achievements only in spoken poetry and sagas that were first written down centuries later. So the bloody rite has been rejected as improbable, resulting from repeated misunderstandings of complex poetry and a desire by Christian writers to paint their Nordic attackers as barbaric heathens. 

However, our new study, takes an entirely new approach on the matter. Our team, made up of medical scientists and a historian, bypassed the long-standing question of “did the blood eagle ever really happen?”, asking instead: “Could it have been done?” Our answer is a clear yes.

I can think of better things to study...

 

Would be funny to Australians if it turned out to be Hawaii

As Montana reels from floods, no one is sure where Gov. Gianforte is

Things I don't understand about the electricity "market" in Australia

a.    How do fluctuating "spot prices" work?  I get the impression that move very quickly, but why? 

b.    If a power generating company, whether it be privately or publicly owned, says it can't make profit if the cost of gas or coal is at a certain level, over what time frame are they talking?   Businesses can wear a temporary loss if they make enough profit over the rest of the year - who determines whether these companies are being opportunistic when complaining about a temporary loss due to a temporary spike in cost to generate?

c.    There was talk about how if AMEO set a price, they would compensate companies for the loss caused.  Where does that compensation money come from?   And again, who determines what is reasonable compensation, as that surely involves the question of what a reasonable profit is (which raises the question in b.)

d.    How do the multitude of "retailers" manage to make a difference in price to customers.  I don't understand what an electricity retailer actually does, and why some should be able to offer significantly different prices to customers.

We're getting old

At the Washington Post, an article talking about the 40th anniversary of ET.

It does praise the movie, but I think leaves out two key aspects of its success:

a.    the operatic, deeply affecting, quality of the score.  Does anyone doubt that it contributes enormously to the emotional weight of the key scenes in the last 20 minutes of the film?

b.    although the article does say "Empathy is the film’s guiding philosophy", I would go further than that, and note that it doesn't really feature have true "bad guys" or enemies.  Sure, there are scary police/government officers who try to recover the alien in heavy handed fashion, but a key aspect of the film is that the adults want to "meet" ET too, just that they approach it with adult concerns that are not readily understood by children (the concern for biological contagion).   As with Close Encounters, the conflict is more a case of misunderstanding between groups - not deliberate ill will borne by one lot against another.   In this way, the Spielbergian universe of this era is the opposite of the scare world that the American Right was just starting to talk itself into, with fear of otherness cumulating in Trumpist nativism and demagoguery.   It's no accident that Right wing sites are always waiting to ridicule Spielberg and his movies for being a Hollywood woke liberal - he is their philosophical enemy for believing in a kinder world. 

Meatless Einstein

I seem to have missed that (some) vegans like to claim Einstein as a fellow non-meat eater.

However, as this article from the LA Times explains, he only went vegetarian for the last couple of years of his life.

He did, however, have misgivings about eating meat:

“I have always eaten animal flesh with a somewhat guilty conscience,” he once professed in a letter. He largely agreed with the moral motivations behind vegetarianism, but was unable to comply.

I sympathise.  

I didn't know he had life long "chronic digestive distress".  I should go back and actually read that biography sitting on my bedside table.

How Republicans will move away from Trump

I reckon Allahpundit's explanation of how a move away from Trump within Republicans will work sounds very plausible: 

To repeat a point from yesterday, Republican voters will never admit that the evidence produced at the hearings is damning and should disqualify Trump from being president again. To do so would be disloyal. They might, however, point to the hypothetical effect the evidence will have on swing voters and proclaim that Trump is hopelessly damaged goods. I suspect that’s how Ron DeSantis and other Trump rivals will spin the January 6 evidence if and when they face him in a primary. They can’t tout the evidence as proof of a character deficit but they can say that electability matters above all other things and Trump is no longer electable. The “witch hunt” destroyed him.

As a Republican, you’re not allowed to admit that you believe Trump is unfit for office but you are allowed to disguise that belief as worrying that others might find him unfit for office. Of course he’s fit for office! But … we want to play our strongest hand in 2024, don’t we?

The potential for floating solar power is bigger than I would have guessed

This is the subheading from a Nature comment piece last week:

Covering 10% of the world’s hydropower reservoirs with ‘floatovoltaics’ would install as much electrical capacity as is currently available for fossil-fuel power plants. But the environmental and social impacts must be assessed. 

There is mention of the benefits:

Placing solar arrays on reservoirs could have many advantages. The arrays are simply conventional solar panels installed on floats that are anchored through mooring lines. Proximity to water tends to keep them cool, making floating panels about 5% more efficient than land-based ones⁷. Arrays shield the surface from the sun and might reduce evaporation, retaining water for hydropower, drinking and irrigation⁸. Hydropower reservoirs already have the grid infrastructure for conveying electricity to consumers, reducing transmission costs. Pairing solar with pumped-storage hydropower could address the twin challenges of providing energy when sunlight is weak and storing it as potential energy in reservoirs when solar-power production is high⁹.

I've been saying this for some time....

A futuristic prototype if ever there was one

They were testing this prototype when I were but a boy (in the 1960's), but I am still a bit surprised that I don't recall ever seeing it before.   I think I would have remembered, as it's like a perfect example of what futurism in the 1960's looked like.   (Rather Thunderbirds-ish, don't you think?)

Agreed

Have I ever mentioned before that I was never convinced that the Turing Test made much sense?  I have a vague recollection of arguing with someone about this in the 1980's:

Update:  By the way, my bit of speculation that I think is fun is that sentience in Google (or the WWW generally) might be detected when it becomes clear that it's taking steps to reproducing itself.  Say, orders for new computers or Web components are emailed to a chip manufacturer, with someone discovering they were never generated by a human.

 

I was just complaining about the complexity of energy in Australia last week...

 And read Giles Parkinson on this:

It’s one thing to feel you are being held hostage by privately owned provider of an essential product, but quite another when the stand-off may involve a publicly owned company providing a service as fundamental as electricity.

The extraordinary scenes that emerged in Queensland over the long weekend, and which quickly infected NSW, where generators threatened power shortfalls unless they got paid more money – come from an electricity system – its markets and its regulatory environment – that are completely broken.

It has turned into a state of complete farce when, in Queensland, a state dominated by publicly owned electricity generators – apparently can’t guarantee an essential service because they can’t make sufficient profits.

 Even he doesn't really explain how to fix it properly, though... 

Update:   I suspect JQ  is right - 

Anyone reasonable can see the value in the Jan 6 committee hearings

I watched some clips of the second day of the Jan 6 committee hearing, and I have to say, the manner and questioning of several prominent Republican officials by Democrat Zoe Lofgren was very calm and effective in showing up how there was never anything to the Trump fraud claims.   A summary of 4 key takeaways from the day is here.

I really find it very difficult to believe that this will not prevent Trump successfully running again.  Sure, his deluded followers are not even watching it, and the ridiculous pro-Turmp pundits cannot reverse their opinion while saving any face - but there must some effect of this process on at least enough of the party faithful to not vote for Trump again.

Oh, and here's the Axios summary.  The comments of Allahpundit at Hot Air are worthwhile too.  He points this out, too:  a terrible aspect of the Trump lies that is so badly under-emphasised:

Trump was so sold on the “smoking gun” video that he pressed Georgia officials on it during a phone call a month after it was debunked, even mentioning one of the election workers seen in the clip by name. That woman and another worker were inundated with death threats amid the conspiracy-mongering in December 2020. Their lives have been more or less destroyed since then. As for Pak, he resigned as U.S. Attorney once he found out that Trump was considering firing him for failing to find fraud.  Pak refused to substitute the reality Trump preferred, so he had to go.

Right wingers, and stupid Bill Maher, are very upset that a nutter who planned on shooting a Supreme Court judge was not given enough publicity in the media.

They never talk about the thousands of death threats both Republican officials, and innocent election workers, received all based on a lie of a deranged President. 

More:

And more:

John Hinderaker at the Powerline blog, has moved on:

What we do not need is candidates who are obsessed with righting the alleged (and to some extent imaginary) wrongs that Donald Trump suffered in 2020. I don’t blame Trump for being unhappy, but his emotional state cannot dictate the future of the Republican Party. 

And Trump delusion continues:

You can read it here.  The footnotes are very often to 2000 Mules evidence - which prominent Republican pundits have already refused to support.

Yet more update:  this very damning take on the Bill Barr role at Slate is really worth reading.

He has a point, but still has priorities wrong

Latest Bill Maher kerfuffle:

Bill Maher is calling out Hollywood studios for being super woke on every issue except the most obvious one -- its own culture of gun violence and vengeance, and the role those images play in real-life mass shootings.

Bill got after the issue on Friday night's episode of his HBO show, "Real Time" ... pointing out Hollywood bends over backward to be politically correct, yet "when it comes to the unbridled romanticization of gun violence? Crickets."

Reacting to the recent mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, and the growing cry for Congress to "do something" ... Maher said movie and TV studios also need to acknowledge some cold hard stats.

Such as the fact the average American kid views about 200,000 acts of violence on big and little screens before they turn 18 -- and the FBI says a "fascination with violence-filled entertainment" is a huge warning sign for potential school shooters.

I've been complaining about this for a long, long time too:  I didn't like how the original Matrix showed a world where everyone "not with us is against us" and gave permission for hundreds of normies to be shot up by characters dressed to look cool.    I've complained in recent years about the  "shot to the head, brains sprayed out the back" has become completely normalised in entertainment, such that it contains no shock value at all.    I even quit Squid Games over the violent silliness and am very disappointed that more people did not have a problem with it.  (It's been renewed for a Season 2, I see.  How stupider can the plot get?)

That said:   obviously, the entire world has been watching the same movies and shows and has not been suffering mass shootings in the same repetitive fashion as the US.   Obviously, you can in practice take action on the negative effects of glamorised media violence by stopping the population having such easy access to guns.

It's OK to complain about fictional depiction of violence, but it's not the immediate answer to an immediate problem.

 

Rupert making his feelings better known

So both the New York Post and The Australian have editorialised against a Trump return, and criticised him over the Jan 6 insurrection.  

I'm sure I've posted before that it had been reported that Rupert Murdoch never believed the election was "stolen".   So has he figured he has made enough money from gullible Trump supporters now, and can tell them they're wrong after all?

And he must know that Trumpists will not feel isolated until Fox News evening line up abandons them. 

How is he going to bring that Frankenstein monster to heal?   (Or does he have any desire to - money, money, money, after all.)

 

I wouldn't disagree

From Vox:

The January 6 hearings showed why it’s reasonable to call Trump a fascist

Another weekend update

*  Yes, this has been a remarkably cold stretch for Brisbane - fortunately, from last night, I thought the cold was starting to get less intense.  We just rely on turning split system air con to "warm" if it's cold, and most winters we really don't use them often.   But the last - what? 4 days? - the living room one has been on most of the day.

*  Saw Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.  I rank it a solid "OK".  I don't know why, but I find the world of Dr Strange charmingly silly.  (I liked the way, for example, the guests at a wedding just stand on a high rise balcony watching while said doctor goes to deal with a giant, one eyed octo-monster from another dimension destroying a city street only a block or two from them, and don't run away in mad panic.)   Certainly, in this movie, the reminders Strange gives me of the covers to the Lobsang Rampa books, which I would see in bookshops as a child (but never read) became even clearer.    I guess without Marvel movies, there would be battalions of special effects artists out of work, and who knows what trouble they could get up to if not meaningfully occupied?

*  Oh, it might be something like this:

Google engineer put on leave after saying AI chatbot has become sentient

Yeah, yeah:  this story is wildly popular.   But so it should be, seeing it's like reading a science fiction story come to life:  a company has to seriously explain to one of its engineers why he is mistaken about his having helped create a sentient AI .  Mind you, I, and probably many others, had already begun to suspect broader sentience from Google just from Youtube recommendations.  (I don't really believe this, but I would like to be able to.)    

It's reminding me a little of David Brin's Earth. (Well, the bit about an AI being created - how it came to inhabit the Earth was a bit silly.)

David Roberts wrong for once

Yeah, I trust Noah Smith's take on this a lot more than I trust the (usually) reliable David Roberts's take:

Jonathan Chait's article at New York Magazine on this is also well worth a read (clear your cookies! - or use a browser that doesn't save them.)

 

Australian Fox News drone (insert Jack Nicholson yelling "You can't handle the truth")

Hey, look at old Tom, who seems to spend his days watching either Tucker Carlson or the horse races:

Tom says:

June 10, 2022 at 11:49 am

What we are seeing play out in Washington DC as we speak is unprecedented: a choreographed witchhunt by the Democratic Party against its political enemies, broadcast live from Washington DC by all three major free-to-air US TV networks and all cable news networks, except Fox News, which has refused to co-operate.

It is astonishing because this is happening in the “land of the free” which notionally has a free press.

It is not possible in a free country that the media could collude with a political party to smear (and eventually prosecute) party enemies.

Unless this is arrested, the USA will become a fascist one-party state indistinguishable from communist China or Soviet Russia.

It's truly a Goebbelsian level of brainwashing that the Murdoch family has achieved with their committed audience (of mostly cranky old white men, whose families can barely tolerate having over for dinner anymore).

Update:  from what I can make out from Twitter comments, the hearing has produced a lot of new clips of a lot of people close to Trump (including his daughter!) saying they know the election was not stolen.  It seems to have impressed a lot of people as being much more damaging and compelling than  than they had expected.

 

Energy and politics are a terrible mix

I've felt this way for years, but it's pretty appalling that energy production and sale, and government policy that affects it, is at just the right level of complexity that it becomes incredibly easy for self serving (and sometimes ridiculous) ideas about it to spread because of the mere veneer of plausibility.    For example:

 

And look, I don't understand it at all well either - I just get by on reading a range of material and getting a sense of who is talking more sense about it.

What we need is someone who is seen as a good communicator who can explain the complexities and what is possible and reasonable.   This is part of my "it's time for specifics" arguments too - as far as the plan ahead for replacing coal and gas with alternatives.   Rather than just waiting for the way it pans out now - with intermittent, ad hoc-ish, announcements like this:

Rio Tinto has called for proposals to develop large-scale wind and solar power in Central and Southern Queensland to power its aluminium assets, help meet its climate change ambitions and further encourage renewable development and industry in the region.

The approach, which is through a formal market Request for Proposals (RFP), is intended to support the development of multiple new wind and solar power projects that can, in parallel with firming solutions, start supplying power to Rio Tinto’s Gladstone assets through the Queensland grid by 2030.

Or this:

While on the topic of future energy, John Quiggin's article on nuclear in Australia seemed clear and comprehensible.   But his political allegiances (now, basically "Green") mean he's not going to be seen as a trusted national communicator more broadly on the future of electricity generation and markets, either.   I'm not sure whether he agrees with my concern about the lack of specifics, too.  I should go over to his blog and ask him, I guess!

I didn't even watch the show, but find this funny

On Twitter, David Roberts is talking about looking at episodes from the early seasons of Game of Thrones, and noting how good they were compared to the (apparently) shockingly terrible later seasons - especially the last.

Someone helpfully added this graphic illustration, which I find amusing:

 

 

When technology pushes physics

Here's a lengthy review of a book that concentrates on the development of the telegraph cable in the 19th century, and how these were up and operating before the science of electromagnetism was understood.

I hadn't really thought of this before, but the fact that 19th century technology was preceding the scientific theory behind it has been the theme of the author over several books:

 Hunt’s first book, The Maxwellians, shows how Maxwell’s disciples altered the form of his theory of electromagnetism so significantly after his death that the Maxwell’s equations taught today were unknown to Maxwell himself.¹ In his second book, Pursuing Power and Light: Technology and Physics from James Watt to Albert Einstein, Hunt examines nineteenth-century physics in the glow of nineteenth-century technology.² He shows that, just as Maxwell—and, later, his disciples—pioneered electromagnetic field theory only after telegraph wires already lined the countryside, the science of thermodynamics was developed only after steam engines were already widespread.

Hunt has now published a third volume, Imperial Science: Cable Telegraphy and Electrical Physics in the Victorian British Empire.³ It marries the electrical history of The Maxwellians to the underlying thesis of Pursuing Power—that science is pushed along by technology just as often as it pulls technology ahead.

Interesting!

When progressives go too far

I've read two articles inspired, mainly, by the recall election of the San Francisco District Attorney who seems to be the key one to blame for the rise in crime in the city.

The first appeared in the Atlantic, and seems to be written by a lesbian SF native, who certainly grew up with tolerance to the city's long standing quirks (such as public nudity in parts of it).   Here it is:  How San Francisco Became a Failed City.

The second one is by Noah Smith, who also lives there now.  His essay is broader and covers other aspects where he thinks progressives are facing some well deserved pushback:  The year we all became reactionaries.   

He doesn't cover the trans wars, and seems reluctant to dip his toe into that issue:  but as I keep saying, I reckon the progressive attitude that "there's nothing to see here" in the matter of trans in sports is not going to win in the culture wars.   

Economies of scale, and Mars

Paul Krugman talks about how even a million people living on Mars (as Elon Musk has envisaged) would not really make for an economy of the type we have come to enjoy on Earth.  He explains, with an example I hadn't heard of:

...in the modern world there are often huge economies of scale in production. These economies of scale make it efficient to supply the entire world market for some goods from only a handful of locations — sometimes just a single location — with international trade delivering those goods to customers in other countries.For example, a recent shortage of semiconductor chips — which seems, finally, to be easing — has drawn attention to the role of photolithography machines, which use light to etch microscopic circuits on silicon wafers. (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.) The world market for these it turns out, is dominated by a single firm in the Netherlands, ASML, which has a complete monopoly on the latest generation of machines, which use extreme ultraviolet light to make circuits even more microscopic.

So how many factories does ASML have assembling these cutting-edge machines? One. (It has other factories producing subsystems.)

These economies of scale mean that no one country can reasonably produce the full range of goods required to operate a modern, high-technology economy. International trade is essential, and more essential the smaller the economy — which is why Canada is far more dependent on imports than the United States, Belgium far more dependent than Germany, and so on....

Now, given access to world markets, even small countries can have full access to the benefits of modern technology; life in Luxembourg is pretty good. But unless we actually invent the Epstein Drive or something, the realities of transportation costs mean that Musk’s hypothetical Mars colony would have to be largely self-sufficient, cut off from the rest of the solar system economy. And it wouldn’t have enough people to pull that off with anything like a modern standard of living.

As I said, I see Musk on Mars as a teachable moment, an unintended thought experiment that helps remind us of the positive aspects of international trade. Yes, there are downsides to globalization, especially to rapid change that can disrupt whole communities. But you really wouldn’t want to live in a world without extensive international trade. And you really, really wouldn’t want to live on another planet, cut off from the globalization we’ve created on this one.

 

 

Culture war trumps children's lives

I have said many times, I really do not like Matthew McConaughey as an actor, but I respect him for taking steps to try to get some modest gun law changes through Congress.  But look how pathetic Fox News responds:

 Never let the culture wars go to waste, hey.   (And anyway, it's not as if McConaughey appears in trashy, violent movies.  Just dramas and the occasional comedies that I don't like because he is in them.)  

Another thing - look at this handy chart by Pew in 2021 that give the details of how much the American public values certain gun law proposals:

If only the public would get out and aggressively vote Democrat, the country would get laws that a substantial majority actually want....

Keeping things in perspective

For all of the talk of increasing electricity bills in Australia, I note that this month's bill for me (household of 3 adults) is $147 - a bit higher than last month, probably due to the number of times wet weather has necessitated the use of the clothes dryer.

According to websites I just looked at, this is a pretty average household price.  

But what about energy rich (and often Republican controlled) American states?   According to this website, they range from $80 a month to $150, with an average of around $111 a month.  But convert that to AUD, and you get - $153 average.  (The more expensive American states - and some seem to be Republican too - of $150 a month works out to $207 AUD.)  

Now, to make a fair comparison, we cook on a stove top with bottled gas (one 9 lt bottle seems to last 2 to 3 months), but a replacement gas bottle is still are costing under $30.   So I probably have another $150 or so in gas expenses, per year, or about $12 a month extra in non-electric "utility" costs.   

My point is:   for all of the talk of "soaring" gas and electricity costs coming our way, if you want to compare our cost of electricity with the "land of the free" (which has multiple power sources, including nuclear)  - we're not doing too bad.   Pretty comparable, really, but you wouldn't get that impression when reading the media.

Next up:  don't get me started on people who don't like to switch what they eat when there's a temporary price rise due to floods and other factors.   Yes, a $5.50 iceberg lettuce is expensive - but a butter leaf one in the same supermarket is still selling for $3.    (I just checked!)  Seriously, iceberg lettuce is a bit crap anyway, save for a very small number of dishes.   But if they are expensive for a time, just avoid them, it's not going to hurt to eat another type of lettuce.

There is nearly always something that is still good, seasonal, value in the shops.  I've noticed that potatoes and apples (and eggplants) are still cheap and plentiful.  Sure, it's a pity if you want to use tomatoes at the moment, but they'll come down in price again soon enough.   If you normally use them in a casserole, a can of crushed tomatoes from Italy is still ridiculously cheap and serves the same purpose.

More fantastic American administration

Another story of terrible American administration, this time at their airport.  

An Australian traveller was denied entry to the US, cavity searched, sent to prison alongside criminals and subsequently deported 30 hours after arriving, due to a little-known entry requirement for the US.

This part is the key problem: 

Dunn said he had since suffered panic attacks over his detention and called on Dfat to clearly advertise the entry rule on its Smartraveller website so others can avoid his experience.

US government websites explaining eligiblity for the visa waiver program, which Smartraveller advises Australians to consult, do not mention the specific entry rule that resulted in Dunn being deported.

 

An accurate take

 

The American criminal law system seems kind of 3rd world

This reminds me of the recent publicity given to people in the US wrongly arrested for "stealing" hire cars that they actually returned.    I posted briefly about it here.

This guy's story seems incredible - and again, a large part of the problem seems to be the way people can be arrested in one state and held for many days not knowing what the charge (from another state) is really about.

I just don't imagine that happening to anything like the same extend in Australia.   Fewer states is a good thing, I think.

Warped priorities

As for this related news:

 Elon Musk has a "right not to consummate" his acquisition of Twitter and a "right to terminate the merger agreement," according to a letter from his lawyers to the Twitter general counsel Vijaya Gadde sent Monday morning.

he should just pay the billion dollar termination fee and walk away.   It's very clear he didn't think it through, and/or didn't read the contract (with its apparent waiver of due diligence) carefully enough.

 

A complicated aspect of climate change

There's a twitter thread that's worth a read, even if it is still a little unclear on what it might mean for climate on land around the world:

 

Someone in comments asks this:

It all makes a mockery of having any confidence about the economic effect of climate change in the long term.   

Update:  here's the easier to follow summary by Prof England at The Conversation.

I wouldn't even bother with nuclear submarines, actually

 

How to look competent

 Hilariously, Currency Lad posted after the election that Penny Wong's sexuality and serious demeanour would mean she would go over like a lead balloon with socially conservative nations in the region (Fiji, etc.)

In fact, the optics of all of her meetings have been extremely impressive, with nary a leader frowning and saying "but you're a lesbian!"

Perhaps CL needs to re-evaluate his political judgement?  Ha ha ha.  As if.  It's yearning for a DLP style government and 1950's social mores forever, as far as he's concerned.

Another significant double slit experiment?

This is interesting.  The headline sums it up:

Neutrons In The Double-Slit Experiment Really Do Individually Take Both Paths

Here's another article explaining it, at Science Daily. 

And this is from the "discussion" section of the paper itself:

It should be emphasized that all results are completely
consistent with standard quantum theory. The conclusion that
particles can be physically delocalized between paths in which
no strong interactions occur and that the localization or delo-
calization is decided by a measurement that takes place after
the particles have propagated along the paths is a possibility
inherent in the paradoxical aspects of quantum superpositions.
In the present paper, we demonstrated that standard quantum
theory predicts precise and specific effects of the presence of
a particle in a path, even when the particle only undergoes a
very weak interaction on its way though the interferometer.

Now, this reminds me: back in 2017 I spotted on arXiv a Chinese paper that I thought sounded significant, regarding the paths of photons in a double slit experiment.   (It was pretty memorable for the inclusion of a very Chinese dragon illustration!)  Yet, I don't think anyone - like, no pop science site or Youtubing physicist - ever commented on it.

But now that I re-read it - I think it was basically arguing the same thing as this neutron experiment.

Maybe I should drop a line to Sabine Hossenfelder and ask her to discuss both experiments!

Now that's a headline you don't see every day...

Especially from Singapore!:

Man attacked with 20cm tactical harpoon in his back at Ming Arcade

 

How self-abasing can he get?

I missed this from last week:

Sky News host James Morrow has blamed the poor police response during the Texas school shooting on the left’s demonisation of “masculine virtues”.

“I don’t want to make it political, but it is coming from the left to de-mythologise heroes, to take heroes down a peg and say: ‘don’t be heroic’,” Mr Morrow said.

“And also, let’s be really frank about it, to take down masculine virtues.

“These masculine virtues of manliness and protection have also been taken down by the left.

“It’s the same sickness that produces the shooting.”

On being optimistic enough to have children

I strongly agree with the argument set out by Ezra Klein in the New York Times:  climate change is a very serious and urgent issue, but it is nonetheless lacking perspective to think that it is such a dire problem that adults who would otherwise like to have kids should decide not to have any.

Hurt ego

I saw that Tim Wilson was trending on Twitter, and found out that this is why (from The Age yesterday):

Wilson, who before parliament was a policy director at the free-market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, and a human rights commissioner, plans to go hiking in Yosemite National Park with his husband Ryan. He also plans to set up his own climate and energy advisory business, utilising his experience as a junior minister for industry, energy and emissions reduction.

“I’m very open about the journey that I’ve gone through, from foetal position crying on Sunday morning through to seeing a psychologist yesterday,” Wilson told an energy efficiency conference in the week after his electoral defeat.

There is, shall we say, not an awful lot of sympathy for Ego Boy being shown on Twitter.

Crazy old women

Jeez, how absolutely loopy is Bettina Arndt, not to mention ungrateful to a government which thought they were on her side of the culture wars and gave her an AM.

The crazy old Cassie, at the blog for ageing Australian wingnuts and Putin admirers, has extracted a part from an email Bettina sent out to her subscribers after the election:

It wasn’t that the Morrison government didn’t listen to women. This pussy-whipped crew sniveled, and groveled, like a cuckolded man clutching desperately at the ankles of his departing wife. Remember the appalling apology to Brittany Higgins? Or Morrison’s forced smile when Grace Tame insulted him with her infantile side-eye. Or the cowardly act of allowing Christian Porter and Alan Tudge to be pushed out of their ministerial roles over unproven sexual assault allegations. Or the cringing over the parliamentary harassment report, denying the very low incidence of actual harassment and high rates of female bullying.

Beautifully put Bettina.

Ha!   Yes, if only the Morrison government had talked tougher to the women appalled at an apparent cover up of an alleged rape at Parliament House.   If only Morrison had refused to have any type of enquiry into a historical rape allegation against the nation's top law officer.   Wait - he did!  

You have to be extraordinarily stupid to think that Morrison (or, of course, Porter, who folded his defamation action) handled it appropriately or well.  

I like the way she uses the sexist term "pussy whipped" too - and when I Google that, I see she used it against the Shorten government - but she still got her AM from Morrison - what an embarrassment.  

Earlier this year, Arndt wrote a bizarre piece at online Quadrant about the inquest about the Hannah Clarke murder case - the one where the husband burned alive his wife and 3 young children - in which she claims to condemn his actions (well, duh) - but then criticises the attitude of the police officer that the murderer's nightly demand for sex was a domestic violence warning sign.   Yes, it's all feminism gone mad, pushing a man beyond his limits.  [Sarc].  Ridiculously, Bettina lists a string of other appalling and extremely controlling behaviour by the father that came out of the inquest, including threats to kill a previous partner - but she still concluded "I will now write an article about how this man was not given enough help."    You know someone has pushed the line when a reader of Quadrant responds in comments:

It’s not often I disagree with anything Ms Arndt writes, but she’s lost me on this one.

But that's Bettina for you.  She's absolutely nuts.  (As is Cassie - whose hyperventilating climate change post I might copy one day too.)

Some good news

Whoops, I originally copied a tweet that Sky News Australia was going to no longer on the WIN regional network, but it from last year and came into effect July 2021 by the looks.  Have to pay closer attention.

By the way, I wouldn't mind betting that, despite being as Trumpist as all hell, the Sky News at Night right wing blatherers do not like touching the guns rights issue in the USA, given that everyone in Australia would think them idiots if they promoted the Wingnut pro-gun views...

Christofascist watch

 

Must be time for some...Friday physics (dark matter edition)

This video is a fantastically clear and concise explanation of the search for dark matter, and pleasingly, has an Australian connection.  (I think I had heard about a new dark matter detector being set up in Victoria before, but here we get to see what stage it is at, and a super clear explanation of how dark matter detectors work.)

Waiting for the Republican "too many doors" analysis

Tulsa police confirmed that a shooter killed four people at Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Okla., on Wednesday.

"Four innocents and one shooter" are dead, Jonathan Brooks of the Tulsa police department said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The link.

Update:  So now we know.  A guy upset with his back surgeon goes out and buys a rifle and shoots up the doctors, a receptionist and an innocent by-stander.  No discussion of security in the building, although I would suspect most large medical centres in the US would have an armed security guard.   

Anyway, I thought this Trevor Noah piece, made before this latest shooting, effectively satirised the "it's anything but guns" pathetic Republican arguments.

Details becoming necessary to maintain long term political support

I wrote this in November 2021, and in light of the change of government, I think it has become even more relevant:

The transition to clean energy - time for specifics, isn't it?? 

I mean, there is a strong tendency for the media to jump to catastrophic predictions about what may be (relatively) short term energy problems:

Australia is on the "precipice" of a UK-style energy crisis that could send many of its power retailers broke and fuel a surge of households unable to pay their bills, a leading expert has warned. 

And:

I also do not doubt stories that the easily scared - like old pensioners - will take such headlines as a sign that they need to risk ill health by not turning on any heat in their homes out of fear of the cost.

But part of the reason for such stories having legs is the impression (well justified I think) that while governments are busy committing to reduce emissions, there is scant detailed explanation of how we are going to get there.

But with the timelines being talked about, that's just not good enough now, surely?  

I don't think that everything can be worked out right now, but my post made suggestions as to what I think government could do to help, but seemingly isn't.

 

More on that Sussman trial

This was written back in September, when the indictment was first brought:

While lying to the FBI is a serious crime, deserving of attention and in many cases prosecution, this charge looks dicey. The entire case comes down to Baker’s recollection. But Baker himself testified to Congress in October 2018 that he did not recall whether or not Sussman had represented himself as representing Clinton or the Democratic Party. The entire case turns on the allegation that Sussman lied to Baker. Yet Baker — essentially the only direct witness to the purported lie — testified three years ago that he could not remember what Sussman said about the key issue in the case.

As troubling as that is, it’s not even the biggest problem for the prosecution. The indictment discloses that, when Baker spoke to an FBI assistant director about the meeting with Sussman, the assistant director’s notes state that Sussman “Represents DNC, Clinton Foundation, etc.” So the crux of the indictment is that Sussman didn’t disclose to the FBI that he represented Clinton — but the FBI knew he represented Clinton anyway. That, folks, is what we prosecutors call a problem.

You should read the whole article.

Oh, and Bill Barr calling the Russiagate investigation "seditious" - he is going down in history as the worst Attorney General the nation has ever had, no doubt about it.  

Update: 

AR-15s discussed

Here's Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent talking about AR-15s in the Washington Post (and I'll gift link again, so you should be able to read it all):

Indeed, among some Republicans, the rationale for doing little to restrict access to AR-15-style weapons seems untethered from any real-world considerations. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) recently opined that people need AR-15s to prepare for a future doomsday in which law and order breaks down entirely and police protection essentially vanishes.

Meanwhile, as The Post’s Colby Itkowitz reports, AR-15 variants have appeared in numerous GOP ads of late, and they are often brandished as little more than cultural signifiers. Assault-style weapons have taken on a kind of “own the libs” cultural life of their own: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) website recently enthused that such weaponry “TRIGGERS the Fake News Media and Democrats all across the country.”

Federal law seems decades behind this cultural shift. “The concept of what a long gun is in American culture has changed a lot in recent decades,” Mark Follman, the author of “Trigger Points,” a new book on mass shootings, told us.

Follman noted that the long gun was once understood as being primarily about hunting. But now, he said, rifles are increasingly marketed as a weapon of aggression and an “object of masculinity,” with a deliberate eye toward encouraging the “militarization” of gun culture.

In this sense, federal law is trapped in something of an anachronism. “The law may need to catch up with the way these weapons are perceived by 18-year-olds,” Follman said, citing massacres in Texas and Upstate New York.

There’s still another layer of perversity here. As Follman notes, mass shootings were historically carried out by semiautomatic handguns. “But that’s begun to shift in recent years,” he said. “More and more of these attacks are being carried out with AR-15s.”....

Ryan Busse, a former gun company executive who has emerged as a fierce critic of the industry, notes another absurdity: The age was set at 21 for handguns, Busse says, in part precisely because they were deemed more likely to be used by criminals against human victims than rifles would be.

“Now we have the AR-15,” Busse told us, which is the “most lethal, offensive thing out there.” Yet it isn’t treated as on a par with handguns, Busse notes, adding: “This demonstrates how behind-the-times our gun laws really are.”

The article is too softly worded, really:  I would prefer if it more directly said that Right wing political paranoia and culture warring, encouraged by money grubbing Right wing pundits and the gun industry itself, is what stops reasonable gun control measures in the USA. 

 

Yes, this does worry me a bit

Institute full of Right wing kook influencers

Ross Douthat had an interesting column recently about the Claremont Institute, the conservative think tank which (I had forgotten) published the absurd Flight 95 Election essay in 2016, that tried to argue the country was on a catastrophic course unless loon Trump took over.  

Today, I see that one of its publications has an article by Jim Troupis in which he makes mad claims that the 400 2000 Mules movie shows that the courts failed in not taking the election fraud cases seriously.  Jim Troupis is discussed in this article.   

The problem is, of course, that the internet so easily spreads such material into a Right wing disinformation echo chamber audience that finds it convincing.   I mean, these guys sound serious:  they are "influencers" who the gullible see no reason to question.    (And when other Right wing influencers think they are wrong - Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro have refused to endorse the 400 2000 Mules theory - they don't want to actually spend time telling their audience that one of their Tribe is wrong and misleading them.)      

PS:  don't know 400 got stuck in my mind as the number of Mules.   Just like how I keep thinking "Coorey" is spelt "Cooroy" I guess!  I do write most posts pretty quickly these days, so sue me...:)

 

So much for the Durham investigation

Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine has a clear, concise take on the failed Sussman prosecution, well worth clearing cookies to read:  

John Durham Tried to Prove Trump’s Russiagate Theory. Instead He Debunked It.

Trump’s prosecutor face-plants.

From a conservative site point of view, even  Ed Morrissey seems to acknowledge there was always reason to suspect the prosecution would fail.  

Update:   Here, I will gift link to Greg Sargent in the Washington Post:  John Durham's flop is only the latest of many Trump cover-up failures.   Let's extract some of it too:

To appreciate the significance of this moment, you have to remember that Trump and Republicans have spent years working to show that there was never any serious cause for concern about the idea that Russia went to extraordinary lengths to try to swing the 2016 election to Trump.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III did not find evidence that Trump criminally colluded with Russia. But he found that Russia interfered “in sweeping and systematic fashion” and that Trump’s campaign expected to “benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” Mueller also refrained from explicitly exonerating Trump of criminal obstruction of justice....

 

“The Durham probe has turned into what conservatives always accused the Mueller probe of being: a politically premised fishing expedition that has failed to discredit its original target, namely the Russia investigation,” prominent national security lawyer Bradley Moss told us.

None of these efforts have been able to disappear a fundamental truth: The stubborn facts show that Russiagate actually was an extraordinarily grave and disturbing scandal.

Among them: the well-documented Kremlin effort to gin up support for Trump and opposition to Clinton on American social media. Their hacking of Democratic Party systems, resulting in data dumps by WikiLeaks to aid the Trump campaign. The copious contacts between Trump, his family and his advisers with Russian officials. The fact that his own campaign chairman was secretly sharing confidential campaign information with a Russian intelligence officer. And so much more.

Sargent then lists the other ways in which the Trump team has tried to undermine "Russiagate" as a scandal.   But go read the whole thing.