Asia and motorbikes (soon to be electric, hopefully)

The BBC asks Will electric motorbike sales take off across Asia, and gives some interesting figures:

Asia accounts for more than half of all global motorbike sales, and in some countries it is unusual for a family to not own one.

Take Thailand, the nation with the highest per person use of motorcycles. There 87% of households own at least one motorbike. These are typically the scooter variety, whereby the rider sits with his or her feet directly in front.

Thailand is closely followed by Vietnam (86%), Indonesia (85%), and Malaysia (83%) for households with motorbikes. The figures then drop to 60% and 47% respectively, in giant markets China and India, but that still dwarfs the UK's 7%.

The vast majority of Asia's motorbikes currently run on petrol, but transport experts say that a big switch to electric versions is now gathering pace.

I like this innovation:

While the big Japanese motorbike manufacturers like Yamaha and Honda are now making electric models, the Asian market has been led by newer companies.

Taiwan's Gogoro is one such firm. In addition to a range of electric motorbikes, it has come up with a solution to the problem of a rider having to stand around while their bikes charge.

Instead of charging points, Gogoro's users in Taiwan simply need to drive to one of more than 2,200 battery stations, and swap their batteries for free. The outdoor stations run 24-hours a day, and are said to be able to withstand the typhoons and searing heat of Taiwanese summers.

Gogoro is now planning to make this battery-swapping hardware and technology available to partner companies across Asia. These include Hero in India, Gojek in Indonesia, and DCJ and Yadea in China. Gogoro is also working on a partnership with Yamaha.

Horace Luke, Gogoro's chief executive, says the company is trying to become the "Android" of the electric motorbike world, providing the invisible scaffolding for other brands He likens it to the mobile phone system which encourages innovation by giving device makers more freedom to customise phones. In this spirit, Gogoro also intends to share its battery-management software, which helps to extend the life of the batteries.

Cool.

About that Roe decision

One of the most interesting articles about it was this one in the New York Times (it's a gift link so you'll be able to read it) about Justice Alito's life long determination to see it overruled.  

His statements at confirmation fitted the usual deceptive pattern that all conservative judges follow:

Later that year [1985], Mr. Alito applied for another position in the Justice Department, proudly citing his role in devising a strategy for those cases. “I personally believe very strongly,” he wrote in an application, that “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.”

Years later, when those documents were disclosed during his Supreme Court confirmation, he assured senators that while that statement reflected his views in 1985, he would approach abortion cases with an open mind as a justice, with due respect for precedent and with no ideological agenda.

“When someone becomes a judge,” he said, “you really have to put aside the things that you did as a lawyer at prior points in your legal career and think about legal issues the way a judge thinks about legal issues.”

Amongst other things of note I only learnt since the decision - about 50% of American abortions are via medication now.   How States expect to stop the inter State movement of the few pills that are needed remains to be seen.   But there will probably be States that seek to punish a woman for taking them, despite (I think) most (or all?) States saying they will criminalise abortion providers, not the women seeking an abortion.   Anyway, I still suspect that this method (not around at the time of Roe) is going to reduce the effect of this court decision in preventing access to abortion.

Also - there has been talk around how how American abortion rights were (under Roe) more liberal than those in many European countries.   (Noah Smith was going on about it.)   As many people were pointing out to him, and others, this can be very deceptive, as anyone who has experience of Australian laws would know.   Women might have the right to an abortion for any reason up to a certain time, but if they retain the right after that to have an abortion for their health, and this is broadly interpreted to include their mental health, then you can have de facto liberal access anyway.   

And I am pretty sure that it was long established that, within Australian states, having access to abortion as of right, and having it only by claiming it will hurt your mental health, resulted in virtually the same rate of abortion in each jurisdiction.   

Pro-lifers like to go on about the apparent depravity of having a right to abortion up to birth, without recognising the difficulty of getting doctors to actually agree to a late procedure.   As someone I saw on Twitter said, with rare exception, very late term abortions are about wanted pregnancies in which a serious medical problem with the baby has been discovered very late.   

Update:  Allahpundit notes this:

Once red states ban abortion entirely, forcing local pregnant women to find providers out of state, demand will quickly overwhelm supply and create long waits that will lead to women getting abortions later in their pregnancies. A 15-week national ban would prevent those abortions — but as I say, that won’t pass until 2025 at the soonest. In the short term, the perverse outcome of today’s decision is likely to mean more abortions getting pushed off into the second and even third trimesters, when babies are viable.

That is from a post about Republicans now talking about a Federal 15 week limit on abortion.  He starts:

In December I predicted that the traditional conservative rationale for overturning Roe, that the 50 states rather than the Court are the proper venue for regulating abortion, would expire five minutes after the Dobbs decision dropped. At which point it would shift instantly to “national restrictions!”

I was wrong. It took about two hours after the ruling for that decades-old federalist credo to be dumped in a ditch by House Republicans.

Here’s something I rarely say about these chuckleheads, though. The idea of a national 15-week ban is … good politics.

I think?

He's the only conservative commenter who does nuance well.

This is nuts, too!

Never seen this before:

 A video about the place:

This is kinda nuts

On the up side, I guess, it's a benefit to other Western countries that we  get to see the effects of slack regulation in the US and hence avoid problems before they can happen here.

 I mean, this is just kinda nuts, isn't it:

Although recreational cannabis is illegal in the United States for those under 21, it has become more accessible as many states have legalized it. But experts say today’s high-THC cannabis products — vastly different than the joints smoked decades ago — are poisoning some heavy users, including teenagers.

Marijuana is not as dangerous as a drug like fentanyl, but it can have potentially harmful effects — especially for young people, whose brains are still developing. In addition to uncontrollable vomiting and addiction, adolescents who frequently use high doses of cannabis may also experience psychosis that could possibly lead to a lifelong psychiatric disorder, an increased likelihood of developing depression and suicidal ideation, changes in brain anatomy and connectivity and poor memory.

But despite these dangers, the potency of the products currently on the market is largely unregulated.

In 1995, the average concentration of THC in cannabis samples seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration was about 4 percent. By 2017, it was 17 percent. And now cannabis manufacturers are extracting THC to make oils; edibles; wax; sugar-size crystals; and glass-like products called shatter that advertise high THC levels in some cases exceeding 95 percent.

Meanwhile, the average level of CBD — the nonintoxicating compound from the cannabis plant tied to relief from seizures, pain, anxiety and inflammation — has been on the decline in cannabis plants. Studies suggest that lower levels of CBD can potentially make cannabis more addictive.

THC concentrates “are as close to the cannabis plant as strawberries are to frosted strawberry pop tarts,” Beatriz Carlini, a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Addictions, Drug and Alcohol Institute, wrote in a report on the health risks of highly concentrated cannabis.

Although cannabis is legal for recreational use in 19 states and Washington, D.C., and for medical use in 37 states and D.C., only Vermont and Connecticut have imposed caps on THC concentration. Both ban concentrates above 60 percent, with the exception of pre-filled cartridges, and do not permit cannabis plant material to exceed 30 percent THC. But there is little evidence to suggest these specific levels are somehow safer.

I have been saying for a while:  if you're going to legalise cannabis based products, why wouldn't you set regulations about the apparently protective part of it - the CBD levels?   

And really, why would you let such a plethora of cannabis containing products exist in the first place - like candies and cookies, with their obvious potential risk of being eaten by little kids?

 

 

Break out the pre-nup

How did she manage to stay with him for this long, if this is true:

The billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall, a former top model, are reportedly set to divorce....

Before the wedding, a friend of the couple told the Guardian: “They are very sweet together, in a little couple bubble. They act like a married couple already, talking over each other, holding hands.

“She puts her feet up on his legs, they disagree on things like any married couple. She hates Trump, he understands Trump, it’s been like that from the beginning.”

 

French speakers like big animated things

Not sure if I had seen the giant Minotaur of Toulouse before, but it's pretty impressive (and reminds me a lot of something that could be in a Miyazaki film - especially Howl's Moving Castle.)

 

 It also reminded me of some giant puppets from somewhere - turns out it was probably Montreal: 

Drag panic

Even though I doubt I will ever fully understand the appeal of watching drag artists, I agree with Yglesias that we are in the midst of a full blown conservative panic:

Their most prominent target is, of course, the "drag queen story hour" events that are aimed at children.

The history of that movement is relatively short, and set out in this Wikipedia article.  (It started in San Francisco - no surprise there.)

The events that are held in libraries are no doubt attended by children with parents who are already highly motivated to expose to children to "diversity" - and the relatively small number of families involved should be of no great concern to anyone.   

On the other hand, I do think it a bit odd that schools should partake of these shows (as they have in New York).   

But where ever these events are held, I have strong doubts that any but a relatively small proportion of the children in attendance would find them especially entertaining or of particular interest.   In fact, an article in the Wall Street Journal "What I saw at Drag Queen Story Hour" made this point way back in 2019:

The adults present loved Drag Queen Story Hour. They laughed at Venus’s jokes, and they sang the children’s songs along with her, rolling their hands and shaking their fingers Hokey Pokey-style as she did. When she stuck out her tongue during a ditty about a frog, so did the mothers and fathers. It was the children who . . . didn’t react at all. They either stared transfixed at Venus, squirmed restlessly, or crawled and toddled off to find their own entertainments. After the reading a mother brought her little daughter up to meet Venus, who offered to let the girl try on one of the massive rhinestone bracelets she wore on both wrists. The mother, delighted, slipped a bracelet onto her own wrist; the little girl shrank back and turned her head away.

I couldn’t tell what was going on inside those small heads, of course. Perhaps they were shy, or bored. Perhaps some of them were too young. Or perhaps Venus and her 6-inch eyelashes terrified them. Heavy stage makeup can look flattering under stage lights, but in ordinary indoor daylight the effect can be more Medusa than goddess of love. Spike heels and glitter viewed up close might seem scary to a small child whose mother’s fashion inspirations are New Balance and Lululemon.

Still, drag is a time-honored form of comic entertainment, from the Greek stage to RuPaul. Perhaps if the drag queens toned it down and positioned themselves less as “queer role models” and more as comedians in the Milton Berle tradition, they’d be less off-putting. Also if they ditched the propagandistic reading lists: How many kids really want to hear one more tiresome lesson about “individuality,” much less same-sex marriage?

The last paragraph makes a valid enough point - it's not that I can't find some drag funny if part of a comedy act; it's just that I don't get the point of gay glamour drag, like Ru Paul, with its over the top visuals that are often more a parody of feminine glamour.  (I guess some of the more ridiculous looking drag artists use it with ribald humour in shows with a primarily gay audience - so I suppose I "get" that aspect of drag show - but I still don't understand the appeal of the "serious" side of song or dance performance as a drag queen.  And I seriously doubt that most children can understand the vibe of most drag playing to them, either.) 

Anyway, while I find all gay drag rather strange and unappealing, I also know that conservative panic about it is  ridiculous in its own way.   I mean, seriously:

And in a San Francisco suburb, men invade Panda Dulce’s reading at a library’s Drag Queen Story Hour, shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs.

After focusing on transgender athletes and youths, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is now targeting drag storytimes — conceived as a way to educate and entertain children by appealing to their imaginations — with interruptions and other protests reported across the country in the past two weeks, since Pride Month began.

I think drag is perhaps at a peak of cultural attention at the moment, and I can understand parents thinking it is a dubious use of school funds.   But if I am right, and most kids don't really respond that well to the shows, the movement might never gain widespread footholds in schools.   Or perhaps continue just as a thing you might see once during all of primary school - big deal.

Anyway, regardless of the degree of cultural visibility of drag, I very much doubt that it's ever going to be an evil influence over children who would otherwise not become gay.   I mean, just common sense based on our childhood feelings tells us that, doesn't it?   If a 6 year old boy gets a thrill that he doesn't quite understand from realising the "woman" is a man, it would seem a fair bet that he might not be destined for a purely straight life in future in any event.  Isn't that sort of obvious to conservatives?  Apparently not....

Update:   Ha!  Dover Beach at his New Catallaxy is still fanboying Ed Feser, the only Catholic philosopher in the world who still thinks the existence of (Catholic version) God is a lay down misere by force of logic alone, and has a completely over the top reaction to the issue:

Bad news I forgot to post about

Two recent-ish stories I overlooked posting about:

*  Salmon really don't like warming water (even in frigid New Zealand oceans):

New Zealand’s biggest king salmon farmer says it is shutting some of its farms after warming seas prompted mass die-offs of fish, warning that it is a “canary in the coalmine” for climate change.

New Zealand is the world’s largest producer of king, or “chinook” salmon, a highly valued breed which fetches a premium on the world market. The country’s farms account for about 85% of global supply, New Zealand King Salmon chief executive Grant Rosewarne said.

Now, increasingly warm summer seas mean the fish at some sites are dying en masse before they can reach maturity, leaving farmers dumping thousands of tonnes of dead fish into local landfills.

I see (now that I Google the topic) that increasing temperatures in Alaska have been a worry for years.  here is a story from early 2022:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Feb 25 (Reuters) - With marine heat waves helping to wipe out some of Alaska’s storied salmon runs in recent years, officials have resorted to sending emergency food shipments to affected communities while scientists warn that the industry’s days of traditional harvests may be numbered.

Salmon all but disappeared from the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) Yukon River run last year, as record-high temperatures led to the fish piling up dead in streams and rivers before they were able to spawn. A study published Feb. 15 in the journal Fisheries detailed more than 100 salmon die-offs at freshwater sites around Alaska.

*  Just how many rogue black holes are wandering the galaxy?  Way, way too many, by the sounds:

A rogue black hole wandering the space lanes of our Milky Way galaxy alone could be the smallest black hole yet found, according to one estimate of its mass.

Earlier this year, astronomers led by Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, announced the discovery of the first known isolated stellar-mass black hole. 

The black hole is 5,000 light-years away and was discovered thanks to the power of its gravity to act as a gravitational lens, magnifying the light of a background star 19,000 light-years away.....

Even though stars with more than 20 solar masses account for just 0.1% of all the stars in the Milky Way, there are so many stars in the Milky Way (an estimated 100–200 billion), and the Milky Way is so old (approximately 13 billion years) that there should now be 100 million or more stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy. 

Many of these are found in binary systems, where their presence is evident from their gravitational pull on their companion star and their accretion of matter from their neighbor. One has even been found inside a star cluster, NGC 1850 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. However, many others will be wandering between the stars, going unnoticed until a chance alignment with a background star means we spot them creating a gravitational lens.

 

 

 

America is in a very, very strange place in history

As noted at Hot Air, by never-Trumper Allahpundit:

The survey of 1,541 U.S. adults, which was conducted from June 10-13, found that if another presidential election were held today, more registered voters say they would cast ballots for Donald Trump (44%) than for Biden (42%) — even though the House Jan. 6 committee has spent the last week linking Trump to what it called a “seditious conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 election and laying the groundwork for possible criminal prosecution…

Biden’s job approval rating has been atrophying for much of the last year, and the new survey shows that it has never been weaker. A full 56% of Americans now disapprove of the president’s performance — the highest share to date — while just 39% approve. Three weeks ago, those numbers were 53% and 42%, respectively…

How bad is it? Many more independents say Biden shouldn’t run again (76 percent) than say Trump shouldn’t (57 percent). Among Biden’s own voters in 2020, more say he shouldn’t run again than say he should, 40/37. 

While there will likely be many theories floating around about how this could possibly be correct (not Biden's unpopularity - inflation and an apparent inability to convince the rogue elements in his own Party to put Democrat policy into effect account for that - but the willingness to consider Trump as a better alternative),  I really think you have to consider the brokenness of the media landscape to be the major factor.

In any event, I am dubious about the polling of hypothetical contests - it's surely the kind of polling that is most likely to generate off the cuff gut reactions.

And besides, all serious people know it's already clear that Trump's position in history as a danger to democracy and the worst President who ever got into office via a cult following generated by the internet and the Murdoch media is secure.  Biden, on the other hand, is likely to be seen as a victim of circumstance, pretty much like Jimmy Carter.   

Nonetheless, I would prefer the polling was not like this.   It doesn't inspire confidence in the future of the country... 

Update:   further to the title of this post:

You can only explain Republican cowardice on Trump by a lust for power replacing decency and common sense, I think?  Or are there other theories out there.

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.