Just saying...

Interesting to read last week about new estimates of the number of legally married gay couples in the US.

As explained in the New York Times, it's actually not as easy as you might think to know the number of married gay couples across the nation:

One reason it’s hard to get a fix on the marriages is that detailed marriage records are not tracked at the federal level. They’re managed by counties and states, which report the count of marriages and not much else. The Census Bureau isn’t always a lot of help either. Methodological problems like sample size and false positives have long plagued census estimates of this relatively small group.

But a new research paper published by the Treasury Department on Monday has found an interesting way around these problems: tax records.

By linking the tax returns of same-sex couples who filed jointly in 2014 with their Social Security records, researchers are able to give us the most accurate picture of same-sex marriages to date. And their estimate is this: In 2014 there were 183,280 same-sex marriages in America, roughly a third of 1 percent of all marriages.

Of course, implicit in this estimate is the assumption that all married couples file their returns jointly. But as a proxy for that, it’s pretty good. The Treasury Department estimates that 97.5 percent of married couples who file taxes file them jointly.

The article goes on to note a reason why it might be a bit of an underestimate.  On the other hand, Census estimates are likely to be way over.   (This report from last year says survey and census date indicated 390,000 married gay couples - a very big difference.)

Another report from 2014 said census date indicated 252,000.

And the LA Times, confusingly, said last year that:

About 780,000 Americans were married to same-sex partners before the high court's decision, according to Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute, who analyzed the Gallup data. That number has now risen to about 972,000.

Even if you say that you divide that number by two to get the number of gay marriages, that would be about 480,000!

In fact, the tax estimate now seems to be thought to be pretty accurate, so the real figure might be much closer to 200,000.

As to what percentage that represents of gay cohabiting couples:  well, who knows how accurate the estimate for that figure is.   One of the links above says there were 1.2 million adults living in same sex domestic partnerships (that's all? - out of 242 million adults?).  So if that means 600,000 "partnerships", does that mean 1 in 3 chose to marry?

But, going forward, you would have to allow for the initial rush that legalising gay marriage causes, when old couples who have wanted to marry finally do.   Taking that into account, I think it still seems a fair guess that clear majority of cohabiting gay couples are not going to marry.

While I'm sure people will say "so what?  - that's not reason to not allow those who want to", but as my post title says, I'm just saying.... that people seem to be often overestimating the number of gay couples who do want to go through with marriage.

And as for the effect of gay marriage on gay mental health - it seems mean spirited to point it out, but sorry,  there's not exactly strong reason to believe it will be remove higher rates of suicide amongst gay and lesbians.  This report, from the Netherlands, with its 12 years of gay marriage and famously liberal attitudes to sex education, euthanasia laws and soft drug use, still indicates high rates of suicidal thoughts amongst gay youth.   Anti gay marriage sites like to point out studies like this one from Sweden, where gay married men still seem to have a 3 times higher suicide rate.  Again, this seems mean spirited, but when an argument is based a lot on anticipated emotional reaction to a legal change, facts are still worthy of consideration, aren't they?  

Gay marriage activists make the obvious point that the symbolism of legal recognition of gay marriage can only help with societal and family acceptance of gay folk, and thereby reduce suicide;  but honestly, I think they're overestimating the extent of likely positives outcomes.  It seems to me that the process over the last 20 or 30 years of recognizing gay partnerships as civil unions (either by being registered as such, or those jurisdictions which have simply allowed them to be treated the same as a de facto heterosexual marriages), legislating  against workplace discrimination, and high profile media, sporting and other personalities coming out as gay, have collectively had a much greater chance of modifying gay suicide rates than the final step of gay marriage.


Update:   part of the reason for this post is that my 13 year old daughter recently told me that her favourite high school teachers are all gay (3 male teachers - although one or more of them I think are not her permanent teachers.)    This led to her asking what I thought of gay marriage, and her obvious annoyance when I said I did not support it.

I didn't try to launch into a detailed explanation - but there is no doubt that most teenagers and supporters see this through an emotional prism that is not very interested in numbers and an independent look at the psychology of the issue.

And, as usual, part of the problem with not supporting it is that it is embarrassing to sound aligned with those who really do take the opportunity to insult and demean homosexuals per se - such as many of the losers who comment at Catallaxy.

But I'll still try to stake out a position that I think is reasonable....

Update 2:   But I have to admit, the re-framing of the question of gay marriage to one of "marriage equality" has been brilliant marketing.  

Right wing paranoia is surely part of the explanation

Gun inequality: US study charts rise of hardcore super owners | US news | The Guardian

New survey, part of most definitive portrait of gun ownership in
decades, shows just 3% of American adults own half of guns in the US.

Good news, I guess, is that the percentage of owners (per population) overall has dropped a little.  Bad news:  some of the remaining owners are massively paranoid.

Public transport success

Gold Coast light rail study helps put a figure on value capture's funding potential

Interesting to see here a study quantifying an increase in land values after the opening of the quite successful Gold Coast light rail.  But this idea of financing transport (or other infrastructure) projects via extra taxes on adjacent land which receives its benefit just seems very fanciful, if you ask me.  Ken Parish at Club Troppo wrote a couple of lengthy posts about it (in a positive light) with respect to a Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne high speed rail.  Apparently, the idea goes, lots of people will be happy to move to the middle of the countryside, known to be hotter in summer and colder in winter than the coast, as long as they can hop on a high speed train and be in a big city within an hour.  Just seems silly to me...

As to how to get money out of the increased value on properties if they are lucky to have a good rail system built near them, the article above suggests a simple way would be to levy land tax on them at a low rate, and removing the exemption on "owner occupied" real estate.   That would be an ongoing impost.  I wonder if an  simpler way would be to levy an excess on stamp duty on purchases in the area.  Or how about estate duties, no exemptions, but at a low rate hardly anyone would object to?   Has anyone looked at the effect of no exemption 1% death tax on every single inheritance.   (OK, lets say ones with a value over $100,000.)?

Anyway, the Gold Coast rail seems a bit of a blow to the pro-road infrastructure obsession of many small government types. 

Nice and clear explanation from Gavin

Why We Don’t Know If It Will Be Sunny Next Month But We Know It’ll Be Hot All Year | FiveThirtyEight

They just do?

Why Do Some People Hate Poetry? - The Atlantic

Never been particularly interested in, or partial to, poetry.   I also doubt that this is all that worthy of much analysis.  It's a contrived style of writing/communication that just misses the mark, for me.  Some people can listen to classical music, even the most "pop" pieces, and not be moved a bit.  Meh.   

Can't please all the viewers all the time

ABC's John Howard on Robert Menzies documentary dismissed as 'propaganda'

If you're watching a documentary hosted by Howard about his political hero Menzies, and with a stated aim to put a more positive spin on the era than is common in most Left influenced commentary, it seems a bit silly to complain about it.

I found it better than I expected:  I think it gave a reasonably good (if brief) treatment of the issue of how Communism faired in Australia at the time, which I found particularly interesting. 

I also liked how clear much of the archival film was.  (Digitally restored, I would assume.)

As I have noted before, when you're watching historical film in colour instead of black and white, it really does seem to make the past seem not as distant as it otherwise can feel. 

A very complicated issue

Child sex abuse doesn't create paedophiles

I think one of the most useful things in this article is the acknowledgement of the difficulty of conducting research in this area:

Our current understanding of the victim-offender cycle in child
sexual abuse comes from studies based on interviews with incarcerated
sex offenders or those in treatment programs, or self-report measures.
These are inherently unreliable methods, which fail to get to the bottom
of a sex offender’s victimisation history.

Another problem with these studies lies not with the offenders
themselves, but with the researchers’ “expectancy biases”. Those
interviewing sex offenders, for instance, may ask about childhood sexual
abuse and note its presumed significance to the offender’s criminal
history. They may end up putting more emphasis on this link than other
(perhaps more causative) factors.

Given the recent controversy about the difficulty of reproducing almost any study in psychology, it is good to see this acknowledged...

A bit more about Shriver's talk

Further to the discussion about Lionel Shriver's talk in Brisbane about cultural appropriation, there is a "portrait" article in the Saturday Paper by Maxine Beneba Clarke that I think is really remarkable for the poor impression it leaves of her own judgement and behaviour - and it would appear she is completely unaware of this.   Seriously, an Australia Left aligned literary figure or ABC commentator who isn't completely devoid of common sense really needs to call her out.  (I'm thinking someone like Richard Fidler or Jennifer Byrne - or her Book Show regulars - could do this well.)  When will it happen?

From the other end of the literary/politico spectrum, Helen Dale has weighed in, which is unsurprising given that she's viewed herself as victim of Lefty literary types for decades.   Her Facebook comment, advising of a lengthier commentary to come, shows all the warning signs of why I think she is not particularly wise to step into the fray.  First, there is this:

I wrote an entire novel founded on cultural appropriation.

Well, yes:  can't deny that, I suppose.  But the on-going problem came from much more than mere literary cultural appropriation - it came from telling lies about her personal cultural background.  If her point had been that it was only published because she found no positive responses until she pretended it was not a case of so-called appropriation, then it could readily have been made in spectacular fashion if she had voluntarily disclosed this in one of the many post publication interviews/festival appearances.   (And do remember - the criticism of the content of the novel at the time came from both Left and Right.)

Secondly, she has never been one to not blow her own trumpet, despite the fact that I don't think she has had anything she has been writing published since:  

Shriver is transparently a better writer than her critics. I was and am transparently a better writer than my critics. Such is life.

Edit suggestion:  "a transparently better writer than some of my critics" makes you sound less egocentric, and is very likely accurate too, given the breadth of criticism you faced.

But to be fair, the main problem here is one on the academic and literary Left, and I don't think they're responding well.

Trumpian commentary

As I have complained before, there comes a point where media commentary about how much of a worry a Trump presidency would be becomes counterproductive to said media's desire not to support him.

I think we're going through another period of that, with the current tightening of the polls.  Media - calm down.  Stop talking about him so much.

With my usual disclaimer that I don't really follow US elections all that closely,  I remain very confident of my prediction that he will not win it: based on demographics, the reports of a very late start to organising voter turnout, very poor polling on personal qualities, and the unlikelihood of demonstrating policy competency in the forthcoming debates with Clinton.  If anything, as we have seen in the last couple of days, with his stupid talk of Clinton and guns, improved polling is likely to increase his cockiness into saying stupid, off the cuff, things. 

There are now, though, two uncertainties on the Clinton side:  does loser boy Assange really have something bad on her that he is saving up for maximum impact (although I am starting to doubt that); and would coming down with another coughing fit really be enough to cause an orange buffoon to be elected?  (The latter shouldn't - people can cough for all sorts of unimportant reasons - but we're talking a pretty weird electorate here that could even consider Trump as a President.)

Speaking as I was about historically inaccurate movies

Sully is the perfect fantasy for the post-fact era of the Brexit and Trump.

I dislike Clint Eastwood and his movies, so I was never destined to see this one anyway.

But, as this Slate article explains, it's a movie that had to invent conflict, and the one used aligns perfectly with the "vibe" of Trump voters.  All the more reason not to see it...

Sunday Prisma

Not saying this example is particularly beautiful, but it reminds me very much of the type of illustration that used to be common in cheaper educational books in the 60's, and perhaps into the 70's....

Hitler and Henry: a hate story

Struggles with Mein Kampf – TheTLS

Good article here discussing the recent re-publication of Mein Kampf (in a very heavily annotated version) in Germany.

But had I read this before?:

 Henry Ford’s The International Jew: The world’s foremost problem (1920),
the editors emphasize, exerted a formative influence on the intellectual world of National Socialism in the early 1920s. Hitler called Ford an “inspiration” and kept his photograph above his desk.

Here's some more about Henry Ford's intense anti-Semitism:

In the period from 1910 to 1918, Ford became increasingly anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor and anti-Semitic. In 1919, he purchased a newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. He installed Charles Pipp as editor and hired a journalist, William J. Cameron, to listen to his ideas and write a weekly column, “Mr. Ford’s Page,” to expound his views.

Ford wanted to assert that there was a Jewish conspiracy to control the world. He blamed Jewish financiers for fomenting World War I so that they could profit from supplying both sides. He accused Jewish automobile dealers of conspiring to undermine Ford Company sales policies. Ford wanted to make his bizarre beliefs public in the pages of the Dearborn Independent. For a year, editor Pipp resisted running anti-Jewish articles, and resigned rather
than publish them. Cameron took over the editorship and, in May 1920, printed the first of a series of articles titled “The International Jew: The World’s Problem.”...

A few months after the series began, Ford’s operatives introduced him to a Russian émigré, Paquita de Shishmareff. She showed Ford a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, now well-known as a malicious forgery created by the Russian czar’s secret service at the turn
of the century that purportedly recorded a series of lectures by a Jewish elder outlining a conspiracy to overthrow European governments. Ford passed the Protocols to Cameron, and the Independent turned its attention to bringing this “blueprint” for world domination to the
public.

The Independent charged that the national debt was Jewish-inspired to enslave Americans, and that German Jewish financier Paul Warburg had emigrated to America “for the express purpose of changing our financial system” by creating the Federal Reserve. The paper labeled Jews an “international nation” with had an unfair advantage in business over Christians, who relied on individualism to get ahead. The paper even described American Jewish aid for oppressed Jews overseas as part of the conspiracy.

For seven years, the Independent continued to run anti-Semitic articles until the target of one series, California farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro, sued Ford for libel. Sapiro was the third  Jew to sue Ford for libel, and the first to get to trial. Ford refused to testify, and apparently staged an automobile accident so he could hide in a hospital. The judge finally declared a mistrial, but Ford decided to settle out of court. Jewish leaders had called for a boycott of Ford motorcars, and his fear of slumping sales might have played a role in Ford’s decision to put the Sapiro case behind him.

Wow.  The lesson being, as it is today with climate change:  being a rich industrialist is no protection against being a complete and dangerous nutball conspiracist on matters outside of their limited expertise.

Update:   I should explain - I'm sure I had read something before about Ford's anti-Semitism; it's just that I didn't realise that he so was intensely involved in publicising it that even Hitler was an admirer.   Here's another source, talking about how Ford spread the word, so to speak:

What separates Ford from other people who were publishing anti-Semitic material during this time?
There are lots of small town newspapers that publish scurrilous anti-Semitic material, so it wasn't unusual in that way. But what's notable about The Dearborn Independent is that it was also spread through the Ford Motor dealerships. And so that there'd be stacks of them in a dealership in California, dealership in Massachusetts, a dealership in Iowa. In some places, the dealership would actually put copies of the newspaper in the car, so that when you drove off with your Model T, there you had on the seat next to you a copy of The Dearborn Independent.

And because The Dearborn Independent was published by Ford, it meant that other newspapers would pick up on what he said, and if only in reporting on an article that appeared in The Dearborn Independent, it meant that it got much greater currency than if it had just been a small-town newspaper in some equivalent sized town in Wisconsin or Montana. But this was Henry Ford's newspaper, and pretty much anything Henry Ford did was news.

What Henry Ford says, people stop and listen. There are people who talked about him as a potential presidential candidate in the 1920s. Some local tavern keeper makes a anti-Semitic remark over the bar, well, nobody cares. Somebody may listen, and maybe repeat it, but it has a very limited span. But Henry Ford's ability to gain a national audience with his words made him a very dangerous person.

Breeding friendly foxes

Russian geneticist repeats dog domestication with foxes in just fifty years

A Russian geneticist, the BBC is reporting, replicated the process that led to the domestication of the dog, with foxes, over the course of just fifty years. Curious about the means by which dogs became domesticated, Dmitry Belyaev began a breeding program in the late 1950's aimed at replicating the process using foxes....

Foxes were chosen based on their behavior in the presence of humans. Those that showed slightly more tolerance of humans were brought back to their Novosibirsk lab to serve as the start group. From there, the foxes were mated, and once again, those cubs that showed the most tolerance for humans were kept as part of the experiment while the others went on to become fur coats.

This process was repeated for a half-century—the research pair found that within just a few generations, the foxes had begun to lose their wildness and mistrust of humans. The fourth generation, they reported, showed traits that we see in modern dogs, such as tail wagging, seeking human contact and licking people. Over the course of 50 years, the foxes became friendly, their behavior nearly indistinguishable from domestic dogs. They changed physically, too; their ears drooped and their legs and snouts became shorter and their heads got wider. And it was not all on the outside—their adrenal glands became more active, resulting in
higher levels of serotonin in their brains, which is known to mute aggressive behavior.

Today, the foxes are still being bred, but they are also being sold as pets to help pay for the cost of the research center.

Here's a link to the longer BBC story, but I am looking for some video of friendly foxes.  Here's one, from 2013:



I think I have read about this before, but I watched a French kid's film about foxes last weekend on SBS on Demand, so I was interested..

I am officially amused

Given my Android/Samsung allegiance, this did really did make me laugh:

iPhone 7 launch in Denmark

Prisma, again

Just in case anyone is late to the story: I'm having fun running various photos from my recent Japanese holiday through the Prisma app.

Sick presidents

It's kinda topical, but let's not even discuss the evidence that Reagan had clear signs of developing dementia during his second term, and go back further to FDR.   There's a review of a new book about his last months up on the New York Review of Books, and here are a few extracts:

Roosevelt is entering his sixties when Lelyveld’s story begins, and he is still fighting his own body’s attempts to betray him. Sixty was older then than it is today, and after twelve years in the presidency his appearance sometimes left visitors alarmed. In his memoir of interviewing him that year, Turner Catledge, a respected reporter for The New York Times, recalled that at first glimpse of the president he was so “shocked and horrified” that he had an impulse to turn and walk out. He felt he was “seeing something I shouldn’t see,” he wrote, describing the president with a “vague, glassy-eyed expression” and mouth “hanging open,” a man who “would lose his train of thought, stop and stare blankly at me.”...

Yet old friends and family were now disturbed by visible signs of frailty. His hand shook when he lifted his coffee cup. His shirt collars seemed to be much too big. Ed Flynn, Democratic boss of the Bronx and one of FDR’s oldest political friends, had been keeping a professional eye on him lately and exercised friendship’s privilege by telling him that he no longer had the stamina for the job and ought to quit. There was also a somber opinion from Dr. Frank Lahey, founder of the Lahey Clinic, who had examined him. Lahey had left a memorandum that was kept from public disclosure until Roosevelt had been dead for sixty-two years. Maybe that was because it revealed doctors playing fast and loose with the presidential medical news back in the 1940s. Lahey wrote that Roosevelt was unlikely to survive another term, and that the president had been so informed. The note was dated July 10, 1944. The next day Roosevelt announced that he would run for a fourth term.....

Interviewed years later, Bruenn [a cardiologist belatedly brought in to care for the President] said Roosevelt was in “God awful” condition at their first meeting. His examination notes described “a diseased heart” that had “become enlarged and shifted away from its normal location in the chest.” The president’s face was “very grey,” indicating a possible oxygen deficiency in the blood. His blood pressure was “a worrisome 186/108.” All the evidence pointed to “an alarming enlargement of the heart, induced by chronic high blood pressure.” Bruenn’s notes said, “heart was enormous.”

His diagnosis was “acute congestive heart failure,” specifically “left ventricular heart failure.” Lelyveld observes that this would have been explosive political news in 1944 and may explain why it was kept from the public for twenty-six years.

What a jerk

‘You think this is easy?’: Trump questions Clinton’s health at Ohio rally | US news | The Guardian: “You think this is easy?” Trump asked. “In this beautiful room that’s 122 degrees. It is hot, and it is always hot when I perform because the crowds are so big. The rooms were not designed for this kind of crowd. I don’t know, folks. You think Hillary Clinton would be able to stand up here and do this for an hour? I don’t know.”

The Republican nominee later went on to add of his Democratic rival, “Now she’s lying in bed, getting better and we want her better, we want her back on the trail, right?”

He didn't "question" her health, he taunted her about it.

The reviews are in

Just noticed a comment by CL at Catallaxy regarding Pauline Hanson's speech in the Senate yesterday (the one where she rails against Muslims, immigration generally, Halal food, foreign investment, free trade, the Family Court, and welfare bludgers) that reads:

It is funny, warm and just plain real. The stand-out oration of the new Parliament.

Of course he likes it.  He's a sad refugee from the 1950's, longing for a return to that decade, as is Hanson.  (Although I note the irony that twice divorced Pauline may well have found herself stuck in one of her unhappy marriages were we to emulate the 1950's divorce system today.)

Good, but just a tad late

Hillary Clinton’s new doctor’s letter, annotated - The Washington Post

Unlike Trump's ridiculous doctor's letter, the Clinton one today released about her health is detailed, reads well, and explains a lot.  Pity it wasn't done, say, last Saturday; and that there wasn't then special provision made for Hillary to sit down during the ceremony, under shade.

There has been some very ridiculous media coverage of this matter - even by the liberal press - but there remains no doubt that a pre-faint disclosure of mild pneumonia would have prevented some of it.  (Of course, there would also have been a downside to this too - Trumpkin nutters, who will never believe she isn't on her death bed, would have said she's a Typhoid Mary by going out in public, regardless of what her doctor says.)

The Shriver incident

Lefty identity politics and emphasis on victimhood can obviously be a silly pain, especially at Universities, and it seems there is finally some mainstream push back against "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" in the US. (And perhaps here, given the complete lack of the media defence of the s.18C aboriginal claimant in the QUT case.)  I tend not to dwell on this a very serious matter - I suspect that most students can get by happily enough by ignoring the activists on campus, just as I used to ignore whatever the socialist students called themselves back in the late 70's and early 80's when I did my degree for free.  (I lucked out during that window of opportunity.)  

But I'm a bit surprised to not see more publicity given to the recent  kerfuffle at the Brisbane Writers Festival, when Lionel Shriver got stuck into the silliness of recent complaints about cultural appropriation. 

It apparently did not go over well with many in the audience, and an account of the talk and its aftermath made it into the New York Times. 

Now, I've dissed Shriver a bit before:  she is on the eccentric side (although I think she freely admits that), and I thought her complaint that people treat libertarians (as she claims to be) as kooks was wrongheaded, given that many of her stated positions in the same article were not actually typically libertarian.  But The Guardian printed her entire Festival speech, and really, it is extremely hard to see what's objectionable in it.  (I suspect that she might pay to be a bit more skeptical of the details of some of the reports of "cultural appropriation" incidents on US universities; but that's just my hunch that the media sometimes exaggerates the degree of seriousness of individual incidents.  But this is a minor quibble to what is basically a well argued case.)

And, let me say, that the readers of The Guardian do themselves much credit by also (as far as I can see) agreeing with her by a substantial majority. 

What I think is lacking is enough admission by writers and literary figures who are Left inclined (and gee, probably 90% of them are) that some of their fellow authors and commentators have just gone too far, and need to come back to something approaching common sense.  But can't say I'm noticing much of that...

Message to J Soon

Jason, took you a while to notice that Megan McArdle article, but it was discussed at several places at the time, with scientists noting that the comparison between economic models and climate models is not really  valid, and she doesn't understand climate feedbacks either.

I suggest you read ATTP's post on it, and this, and the comments following.

As he says, the "lukewarmer gambit", being the last refuge of people who don't want action taken (usually for purely ideological reasons), is a still a "rejection of evidence" position, tarted up as if it's "just being reasonable here":

This is wrong on many levels. Firstly climate models don’t assume large positive feedbacks; the level of positive feedbacks is an emergent property of the models. It’s one of the things these models are trying to determine. Secondly, climate models are not the only reason why we think that feedbacks could be positive and large. Palaeoclimate estimates of climate sensitivity are also in line with estimates from climate models.

Finally, even the energy-balance models preferred by Lukewarmers do not rule out high climate sensitivity, and this seems to be the main problem; anyone who says “warming is likely to be mild” is essentially dismissing evidence that suggests otherwise. The discussion that we should be having is what we should do if climate sensitivity is high enough that our continued emission of CO₂ could lead to substantial changes in temperature, the hydrological cycle, and extreme events. If one group has already decided that this is unlikely, and that we shouldn’t base policy on this possibility, what else is there to discuss?

As with your false equivalence attempt on the doctor who came up with his own oddball Hillary health conspiracy:  stop doing that (false equivalence).  The Right wing conspiracy stuff about Hillary's  health has been massive, relentless (and ridiculous) and given a high profile on Fox News for many months, convincing large numbers of dimwits.  They haven't been "concerned" about Hillary's health - they've been exploiting everything out of context, from a photo after a slip on stairs to a joke head movement slowed down on video with scary music to argue she has everything from dementia to Parkinson's to HIV.  It has, truly, been "tinfoil hat" material.  And as for the doctor and his poisoning tweet - he's only getting attention because he is famous for other high profile work, the article is brief, and I don't think the paper is doing much to suggest it should be taken seriously.

I would argue with you on twitter, but I'm not keen on the word limits...

Update:  another bit of blog commentary on the McArdle shrug shoulder attitude of "sure, I don't dismiss it could be a major problem, but it might not be too, and no one will go for a carbon tax; so what can you do?

Chemicals under their skin

One in five tattoo inks in Australia contain carcinogenic chemicals

Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.  But I would say that, wouldn't I...

Employment in Japan

Japan is so crazy about mascots that ‘fluffy toilet character’ is a real job - The Washington Post

Amongst the many amusing facts in this story:

The mascot industrial complex is so huge in Japan that the Finance
Ministry launched a campaign last year to cut the number of mascots to
save unnecessary spending.

There are no official figures, but
Masafumi Hagiwara, a researcher at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and
Consulting, estimates that there are about 4,000 local
­government-related mascots in Japan. The prefecture of Osaka alone had
about 92 mascots, but it gave pink slips to 20 of them during the
Finance Ministry’s campaign.

An additional 6,000 characters are probably at central government agencies, companies and other organizations, Hagiwara said.

That makes “mascot” a viable career choice in Japan. The day rate for a mascot is about $100.

Yes, I'll stop eventually...

A timing issue

Babies Take Longer To Come Out Than They Did In Grandma's Day : Shots - Health News : NPR

The typical first-time mother takes 6 1/2 hours to give birth these
days. Her counterpart 50 years ago labored for barely four hours.

That's the striking conclusion of a new federal study that compared nearly 140,000 births from two time periods.

Well I didn't know that. Possible reasons are included in the article. 

Why continue?

I hope there is someone in the media tonight who can explain why it is that the Senate couldn't just adjourn for the day (or until the afternoon) if it had no business to deal with.  It would seem that this is simply not an option, as it would be for any other organisation holding a meeting where the participants unexpectedly had nothing ready to discuss or vote on, but why is that so?

Sex and death - topics of abiding interest

A brief history of the afterlife | History Extra

This article from August summarises a new book from a Queensland academic about a topic that has been mentioned here a few times recently.  Good reading.

At the bottom of this History Extra page, there were links including to one article on sex, which lead to another, etc.  They make for some entertaining reading, and I learnt a few things on the way:

A brief history of sex and sexuality in ancient Greece

A brief history of sex and sexuality in Ancient Rome

(Can't say I had heard of the rumours of Julius Caesar "living as a girl" in the court of King Nicomedes when he was a young man.   There's a good, fairly detailed explanation of this rumour - which seems more just about him being the "passive" partner of the King, in a .pdf at this link.)

 Georgian Britain - sex in high places


I think I should be spending more on the History Extra site.

Joseph Stiglitz writes

Joseph Stiglitz Says Standard Economics Is Wrong. Inequality and Unearned Income Kills the Economy - Evonomics

It's pretty long, and I haven't read it all yet, but he does write clearly and sounds very reasonable.

Judith Sloan will hate it.

Despite the title, this is a good article

Is It Really Possible To Faint From Heat, As Clinton Claims?

Is it really possible that Right wing conspiracists are so dumb that they don't believe fainting from protracted standing in even mild warmth is not only possible, but not un-common to see happen in any large crowd of any age?  Obviously, they haven't witnessed many military parades or guards of honour...

I would also assume that the pneumonia diagnosis is a case of so-called "walking pneumonia".

She has enough time to rest before the first Presidential debate.   I predict Trump won't be so lucky as to have her pull out before that.

Yes, we'll take the lying, shallow, narcisstic, short attention span, draft dodging man boy who we don't trust to do anything he promises and whose man-crush on Putin we find rather disturbing because - Hillary

I think the heading fairly summaries the view of Instapundit's Glenn Harlan Reynolds, whose list of Hillary misdemeanours includes:

*  the email issue (even when it became clearer than ever last week that she did indeed have encouragement from Colin Powell to do what she did),

* the fact that contributors to the Clinton charity meant people asked for favours, yet no actual serious scandal of someone getting something they clearly shouldn't have has been shown; and

* a reference to the IRS targeting conservatives (because, argues Reynolds, the civil service is totally in the tank for the Democrats.)

That last point (and by the way, has anyone actually shown corruption in the American tax investigations?)  reminds me of Australian political conservatives complaining about how the institutions are against them - be it the public service, the ABC, or the Churches.   Funny thing is, it never seems to occur to them that facing widespread organisational opposition might be a sign of a self created problem - some examples being  denying climate change (boo hoo, the ABC doesn't feature the backyard scientists who don't believe NASA scientists); believing that cutting taxes always helps an economy (why won't Treasury just get, like, totally on board with that?); and pretending that keeping a couple of thousand people - including children - in indefinite detention in third world countries because they attempted to arrive in a boat is not a morally compromised position (Churches, stop being namby pamby wimps).  

The only explanation for this pathetic justification of Trump support is that the American Right (and its Australian fan base) has become so self deluded by its Right wing media echo chamber about the Evils of Hillary and the outrages of Obama that they would prefer to vote for anyone but her.  Yes, some of them think Trump is a hopeless, lying, changeable, windbag with worrying connections to Russia; but he's not Hillary, the woman who clearly deserves to be in jail because (despite detailed and repeat investigations that never can pin anything on her) the Right wing media just can't believe that prosecutions of her would fail.

As for the fate of the Nation under Clinton, there is nothing to really suggest that the path of American policy  would take a large detour from what it has been under Obama, who, for a President in charge of an alleged hell hole nation, has a pretty good approval rating.  Can't they face the fact that the American economy has not tanked?

Reynolds has outed himself, as has large slabs of the American Right, as having become simply unable to accept and process evidence with anything even faintly resembling objectivity.  Turn off the Fox news, read something other than the WSJ,  fellows, and get a grip after all these years.

Historical blender films

I'm only 16 years late to the party, but last night I watched the Cate Blanchett 1998 movie Elizabeth for the first time, in pleasing High Definition on SBS.

I'm always of two minds about these movies, given that you can always safely assume that to one degree or another they will not be historically accurate.   Does that really matter, particularly if it inspires viewers checking up on the true story to learn some real history; or is it a puzzling insult to veracity that so many screenwriters can't make an entertaining movie without grossly misleading, or lying to, the audience?

I guess I am more forgiving if a movie opens with "inspired by true events" as a warning to the audience; but how often does that happen?  (And, incidentally, I missed the first couple of minutes of Elizabeth, so I don't know if any such disclaimer last night.)

Anyhow, I remember at the time the movie came out there were many articles talking about its inaccuracies, and having refreshed my memory about them now, the movie really is like an experiment to see what happens if you put into a blender a list of historical true characters, a separate list of their ages,  some notes about events over an entire life (even if you're only supposed to be covering the first half), some soft erotica, and a few kilometers of fine fabrics.  Hit the button and see how it all tumbles out.

At the end of the day, we can all agree it looked fantasitc, and with her features and good acting, it was the role Blanchett was born to play.   But even on its own terms as a movie story, it was a bit of a mess; and when you read up on the true facts, I think the historical liberties were just too extreme to forgive.   (I , mean, seriously:  the young transvestite French suitor never even made it to England, let alone being interrupted mid-orgy by the queen.  The major dramatic revelation - that her lover was already married - is also pure invention, given that the real Liz was at his wedding.)

A few links about the inaccuracies, for anyone who cares:   here, here, here and here.

I can't stop Prisma-ing

 

 

The American floods and climate change

Flooding, Extreme Weather, and Record Temperatures: How Global Warming Puts it All Together - The Equation
I haven't posted anything about the recent American floods and climate change, even though I saw the occasional report referring to that question.  This article, though, does confirm that the rainfall intensity that lead to them was exceptionally intense, and a climate change link seems obvious.
Unless, of course, you're a Right wing, science and evidence rejecting twit from America, or Australia, who can write things like this (Hinderaker, from Powerline blog):

Is the debate over catastrophic anthropogenic global warming over? In one sense, it is. One thing we know for sure is that the models that are the sole support for alarmism are wrong. The substantial heating they projected has failed to materialize. Having been falsified by observation, we know that they are no good. The alarmists will have to come up with something better than these discredited models if they want to convince the rest of us.

Yet, again, this is the chart he is evidently unaware of (or refuses to believe over what climate non-scientist Anthony Watt and his man-shed "scientists" publish): 

Sad that the Right has become so self deluded on this matter.

It's a (ultra-Orthodox) man's life

The ultra-Orthodox Jews combining tech and the Torah - BBC News

I didn't know that this was how some Orthodox Jewish life worked (or "didn't work"):

Like many of his friends, Slaven grew up expecting a life of quiet
learning. Haredi men are expected to spend most of their time studying
the Torah and Talmud, Judaism's sacred texts, leaving their wives to go
out and work. About half of Israel's Haredi men live this way.

But while the cost of living has risen in recent years, child benefit has
been cut - bad news for Haredi families, which often have eight-to-10
children and rely on benefits to make ends meet.

In other suicide news...

Is Pokemon Go helping prevent deaths at one of Japan’s most notorious suicide spots?

Guns and suicide

When a Smaller Military Means Fewer Suicides - The Atlantic

Some strong evidence given here that if you decrease access to guns, you decrease the suicide rate.  A nice, clear, article.

More Friday Physics

Backreaction: Sorry, the universe wasn’t made for you

Here's a post by Bee H about the anthropic principle, and objecting to the idea that the universe was "fine tuned" for life.  

Lots of false equivalence noted

The media’s coverage of NBC’s Trump-Clinton forum was a disaster.


Donald Trump's proud ignorance reveals his contempt for the presidency


Fear of a female president


Last night, Clinton got 6 questions on her emails. Trump got zero on his Iraq lies.

A look at an obvious Trump feature

Donald Trump’s Shortest Attribute Isn’t His Fingers - POLITICO Magazine

Lots of evidence provided from lots of people that Trump has always had a very, very short attention span. Given that there have been many examples from the campaign where can barely articulate a thought in a full sentence before going onto some other thought, this is far from surprising.

I also see that Snopes has already called out as false the conspiracy  theory (promoted on twitter by actor James Woods, of all people) that Clinton was wearing an ear piece yesterday.

She may be reluctant to give them the attention they crave, but I don't think it would hurt Clinton to go in, boots and all, in calling out a substantial slab of Trump's supporters as being reality challenged, very gullible people who need to get a grip.

How about playing the tape to him at the Presidential debate?

Donald Trump just lied about opposing the Iraq War before it started. Here’s proof. - Vox

The article notes that there is a recording of Trump saying in 2002 (without much enthusiasm, but still) that he supported the Iraq War.

The rest of the article bemoans how the media knows that a serial repeat liar who continues repeating a lie, will more or less get away with it.

But really, why should this be:  why cannot a reporter play the audio to his face and say "why have been repeatedly lying about this?"  Why not do it as part of the Presidential debate - just play the tape, and see how he tried to deal with it?

 

The "no jack" scandal (talk about your First World problems)

Funny to read this wanky, typically Apple, explanation noted at Slate about why the new iPhone has no ear phone jack:

Apple’s own explanation for the change was a little baffling. Schiller said the rationale for jettisoning the headphone jack could be summed up in one word: “courage.” What kind of courage? “The courage to move on, and to try something new that betters all of us,” he elaborated. OK then!

Further down, it is said that there is something the phone gets from not having one:

Well, for one thing, you can now drop your iPhone in the toilet. I mean, you could do that before, but now when you get it back out, there’s a decent chance it will continue to function. Eliminating the headphone jack enabled Apple to seal the phone at last, making it “dust and water resistant,” albeit not fully waterproof.

But wait a minute - the Samsung Note 7 (yes, I know - it can explode) has been heavily promoted as being waterproof to a similar degree, and it has an audio jack.

Why is Apple not able to use a similar water resistant jack?

I'm still sticking to my Samsung allegiance - even though my first experience with their cheap, early Tab 2 tablet was not great.  (Known bugs that were never fixed with any update.)  It's been made up for by my very, very pleasing Tab S, and a cheapo phone that is still pretty damn reliable.  I always have liked the look of the round edged Galaxy 7, too, but I'm not willing to spend that much on a phone.

Only 104 years ago

Once you get past 50, events that happened 100 or so years ago no longer sound all that far in the past.  Only twice your lifetime...that's not so long ago!

So, as I was walking around the Rydges Hotel at the Exhibition grounds last Saturday (it's my routine now, and I really like its Paddock bar for coffee or, later in the day, their house beer), I noticed this metal history note around a tree:

The first flight in Brisbane was "only" 104 years ago at the Exhibition grounds.   This deserves a look at a real photo of the event:

Not the best photo to see what's going on, but what I like the next one is that you can clearly see the grandstand that is still there, and within sight of the Paddock bar.

The State Library blog post that I got these from notes that the plane crashed on landing. "Wizard" Stone was OK, though.

Incredible to consider the advances in aviation since then. 

Resistance to weed

In Colorado, a revolt against legalized marijuana - The Boston Globe

I'm not at all sure, of course, that the local anti legalisation activists are credible in all that they claim, but that said, I understand opposition to things like this:

She hates that her kids’ school is near several dispensaries. She’s
frustrated by the full-page ads in the local paper with huge photos of
buds and coupons for $1 joints with a purchase of $20 or more. 

Yes, surely a large part of the potential problem with legalisation is the accompanying capitalist urge to expand the market.   If it were ever legalised here, I would certainly hope that it is the subject of severe advertising restrictions of at least the same severity that tobacco faces.   Apparently, the Americans couldn't see their way to do that with marijuana.

There are also claims in the article that the period of legalisation has been accompanied by an increase in youthful homelessness - something you might expect to see in increased cases of schizophrenia that is likely to accompany increased youthful use.

Political correctness and the Republicans

Conservative Movement & Republicans -- ‘Establishment’ Is Only the Beginning of Their Problems | National Review

Gee, here I am recommending an article at National Review.  I thought this part was especially true:

There’s a lot to be said for refusing to be hemmed in by political
correctness, but we’ve gotten to the point where many conservatives have
embraced the idea that if political correctness is bad, then anything
that’s politically incorrect must be good. This has created an
environment where saying foolish and inflammatory things can be a major
career enhancer for conservatives. If you can say something that makes
liberals talk about how much they hate you, but conservatives won’t walk
away even if you make them cringe, that’s a recipe for selling books
and getting on TV. This may be great for the careers of a few people,
but it also gives the public at large a terrible impression of
conservatives. Even if they say some things you agree with, the last
thing that anyone who cares about the conservative movement should want
is for the public to base its opinion of it on people who are trying to
offend as many people as possible to get attention.

The moral panic continues

Under the odd headline which seems to me to be somewhat of a failure if it's meant to conjure up moral outrage (Schools told to teach kids that sex varies like the weather), I see that The Australian, and some politicians, are doing their best to drum up a moral panic over the fact that some sex education material now refers to the (rather obviously true) fact that some people over their lifetime experience somewhat varying sexual preferences:

Education Minister Adrian Piccoli yesterday ordered his ­department to withdraw the ­sexual and gender diversity ­resource for teachers, which ­appears to have been heavily based on the Safe Schools program. Alerted to its existence by The Australian, he said he was “very angry” the resource had “got out”. “I have directed the ­department to take it down ­immediately and review the ­material and all links,” he said.
“Safe Schools materials are only to be used strictly in accordance with the revised guidelines established by the federal ­government. I am furious this policy has not been adhered to and have demanded a full explanation from the (departmental) secretary.”
Launched quietly this year, the 17-page teacher toolbox for delivering content relating to ­diversity of sex, sexuality and gender contains a list of resources the educators can refer to in their teachings. One recommended activity invites Year 10 students to consider a range of characters, such as “Joseph”, who is married with three children but “when he masturbates, fantasises only about men” and “is attracted to several of his male friends” and “Alex”, who had sex with girls as a teenager but developed a relationship with a man after moving to a country town.
Students are asked to determine each character’s sexuality and whether they fit into ­“traditional binary thinking” ­regarding sexuality.

Given that it's rather likely now that in any given school of significant size, there is going to at least one  kid who has a parent who has moved into a same sex relationship (after a heterosexual one), I find it rather difficult to see how the material quoted there is doing much more than confirming what a lot of kids already know or guess sometimes happens.  (And it's also worth noting again that just because something is suggested in a teacher's manual does not mean that teachers will use it in exactly that fashion.  Hence, I wouldn't be surprised if many don't refer specifically to what the "Joseph" fantasises about, for example.) 

As I have suggested before, acknowledging that bisexuality (or fluid desire?) exists does not even necessarily imply support for same sex marriage - if we're going to be like ancient Greeks and Romans, who had little problem with sexual desire for some being "non binary",  a modern person can also take their view that marriage is primarily about heterosexual reproduction, and no matter that some people fall in love with people of the same gender, the State or society has no particular interest in recognizing those relationships as "marriage".

A simple suggestion

As much as the Trump supporting Right is the dumbest and most gullible block of voters since, well, I don't know that I can think of any valid comparison in my lifetime, the news playing up Hillary's recent coughing is, unfortunately, something she should address.

To me, it usually has sounded like a simple case of a cough induced by post nasal drip, which is nothing to write home about.  But we're talking image here, as well as the stupidest political movement in history, and I would suggest she simply has her doctor talk about it, noting that it is not serious, and that Right wing nut jobs talking about her virtually being on her death bed are being ridiculous.

Prion diseases discussed

When People Ate People, A Strange Disease Emerged : The Salt : NPR

I didn't realise that the PNG highland matter of cannibalism of the dead used to be so, um, thorough:

As one medical researcher described, "If the body was buried it was eaten by worms; if it was placed on a platform it was eaten by maggots; the Fore believed it was much better that the body was eaten by people who loved the deceased than by worms and insects."

Women removed the brain, mixed it with ferns, and cooked it in tubes of bamboo. They fire-roasted and ate everything except the gall bladder. It was primarily adult women who
did so, says Lindenbaum, because their bodies were thought to be capable of housing and taming the dangerous spirit that would accompany a dead body.

"So, the women took on the role of consuming the dead body and giving it a safe place inside their own body — taming it, for a period of time, during this dangerous period of mortuary
ceremonies," says Lindenbaum.

But women would occasionally pass pieces of the feast to children. "Snacks," says Lindenbaum. "They ate what their mothers gave them," she says, until the boys hit a certain
age and went off to live with the men. "Then, they were told not to touch that stuff."

Foreign Correspondent on China's kids

What a sad episode of Foreign Correspondent last night, looking at the issue of Chinese kids, particularly in rural areas, left in the care of grandparents (or other relatives) while their parents move away for years at a time to work in city areas.   And, of course, this does not always work out.

By the way, is it just me, or does it seem to others too that rancorous arguments within Chinese families sound like some of the nastiest you'll ever hear?  It seems that if kid's don't live up to expectations, they'll be really demeaned for it.

Testing Prisma 4 - another filter

(I really think this is awesomely good. As my son noted, it's the way it makes the lines on the more distant buildings a bit crooked that makes it look hand made.)

Prisma testing - the original photo

Testing Prisma 3 (this actually is Tokyo, run through the Tokyo filter...)

Testing Prisma 2

Testing Prisma

Well, this hardly seems fair...

Is sex in later years good for your health?: Having sex frequently - and enjoying it - puts older men at higher risk for heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems. For older women, however, good sex may actually lower the risk of hypertension.

That's according to the first large-scale study of how sex affects heart health in later life. The federally funded research, led by a Michigan State University scholar, is slated to be published online Sept. 6 in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

"These findings challenge the widely held assumption that sex brings uniform health benefits to everyone," said Hui Liu, MSU associate professor of sociology.

Liu and colleagues analyzed survey data from 2,204 people in the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project. Participants were aged 57-85 when the first wave of data was collected in 2005-06; another round of data was collected five years later. Cardiovascular risk was measured as hypertension, rapid heart rate, elevated C-reactive protein and general cardiovascular events: heart attack, heart failure and stroke.

Older men who had sex once a week or more were much more likely to experience cardiovascular events five years later than men who were sexually inactive, the study found. This risk was not found among older women.

"Strikingly, we find that having sex once a week or more puts older men at a risk for experiencing cardiovascular events that is almost two times greater than older men who are sexually inactive," said Liu. "Moreover, older men who found sex with their partner extremely pleasurable or satisfying had higher risk of cardiovascular events than men who did not feel so."

How to deal with a jerk

Obama cancels meeting with ‘colorful’ Philippine president - The Washington Post

Fear of not dying

Apeirophobia: The Fear of Eternity - The Atlantic

What a great article here, about people who get all anxious and sweaty at the idea of living forever in heaven.

Just goes to show, there's no pleasing everyone.

The article does go on to explain, however, that it is related to the fear of infinity, or at least vastness, as explained in this paragraph:

There shouldn’t be too many atheists who fear of eternity, since they
reject the idea of an afterlife, Wiener says. But that doesn’t mean
that those who aren’t religious are immune to existential anxiety.
Infinity, after all, doesn’t pertain only to time; it can also apply to
space. “I feel that we are all insignificant compared to the universe,”
wrote Jamie Adkins, a nurse and longtime friend of mine, in response to
my Facebook post. “When I start to think beyond our solar system, it is
as if my thoughts automatically stop to protect myself from having some
form of a panic attack. The knowledge of black holes will give me
nightmares for days. The thought of the distance between galaxies is
unbearable.”

She likened the experience to Horton Hears a Who. “We are on this tiny flower and can be blown away any second.”

Yeah, I did have a brush with that, once, when I was around 7 or 8.  As I recall, a brother who had gone to the Council library when I couldn't borrowed a book for me, and it was one about space or astronomy, but was primarily about galaxies and the vastness of the universe.  There were lots of pictures of galaxies.   It actually upset me, because it conjured an image of such cold, lifeless, vastness in my mind.  My brother was puzzled, saying he thought I liked books about space (and I did - this was the era of Apollo and I followed it very closely in the papers and on the news.  I also read kid's science fiction, of which there was a lot - all of it optimistic - in that decade.)  But what I liked was the idea of life in the universe, making it home.  And I still do.

But as for heaven:  well, I think right from early childhood I've accepted the view that it's a basically unknowable thing: to be experiencing something like life but without the cycles, limitations and uncertainties with which we know it on Earth.  Reunion with loved ones (at least initially) has become a widely accepted part of the commonly believed experience of it, and who (or at least, the majority of people who have loving relationships during their life) can object to that idea?   As for what goes on for the rest of eternity:  who knows;  does  the ego continue indefinitely, rather than being subsumed into a greater thing sooner or later (or even temporarily.)   I don't mind the idea that you can spend a hell of a lot of time observing (or influencing) life on Earth, or in other parts of the Universe. It can all be fun to imagine, but it's unknowable. 

As I said recently, this is a positive feature of Christianity, not a bug.  Keeping it vague and unclear is actually a good thing, if you don't want people doing all sorts of evil things on Earth with the justification that it'll all be sorted out in the afterlife.  

Transgender skepticism that's not religiously motivated

I stumbled across this transgender skeptical blog (which mainly concentrates on the issue as it relates to pre-adulthood) some months ago, and forgot to mention it here

Transgender issues are not something I care to devote that much thought to, and the whole problem with complaining about transgender activism is that it's embarrassing to be identified with religiously motivated  conservatives and the way they chose to talk about the issue.   (As I have posted before, the whole issue of transgender use of toilets is one which I think is massively overblown in importance by American conservatives.)

But, I don't have much doubt that transgender activism has reached an amazing peak of influence, and in particular, the issue of how to deal with children who feel they are the "wrong" gender is a particularly vexed one.  Hormonal treatment to delay puberty for a mental conviction that might be strong at the moment, but for how much longer?   How do you know that the influence of hormonal changes will itself not lead to eventual change of mind about gender?  You only have to read Rupert Everett's (pretty amazing) disclosure that for a long time as a child he wanted to be a girl (and then became a very promiscuous gay man - although he did sleep with the occasional woman too) to be alerted to the fact that some people change their gender identifying views.   (A counter view, arguing that the quite large number of children who act out as the other gender who do not transition is not really an argument against "genuine" childhood transexualism can be found here.)

Anyhow, the 4thWaveNow blog was apparently started by a woman with this experience:

4thWaveNow was started by the mother of a teenage girl who suddenly announced she was a “trans man” after a few weeks of total immersion in YouTube transition vlogs.  (The daughter has since desisted from identifying as transgender.) After much research and fruitless searching for an alternative online viewpoint, this mom began writing about her deepening skepticism of the ever-accelerating medical and media fascination with the phenomenon of “transgender children.”....

I created this site because mine is a viewpoint that is seldom publicly heard: that of a left-leaning parent who is critical of the dominant paradigm regarding transgender politics and treatment. My primary concern is children, teens, and people in their early 20s, particularly girls who are contemplating medical transition. While I may disagree with their views, I do understand that consenting adults have the right to do what they choose with their own bodies and minds.

 I haven't read many of the posts on the blog, but as far as I can tell, the skeptics who comment there frequently do identify as left leaning, and do not usually sound at all like being religiously motivated.

There is, though, I must say, some stridency in some material that (unfortunately) smacks of the language of conservative critics.

Interestingly, I see that they do talk about concern that there is presently a significant element of "social contagion" in the experience of teenagers who have never before seemed to have gender identity issues, but who suddenly announce they do. I really suspect that this is likely true, and a subject worthy of some detailed research.  But as the blog often complains - transgender activists (often men who transitioned late in life, oddly enough) are usually vehemently opposed to research that seems could question transgender desire as something fixed since birth, effectively.

Anyway, it's interesting to see skepticism on this issue that isn't embarrassing to be associated with.

Art apps

Prisma And Artisto: These Apps' Creations Sure Look Like Masterworks, But Is It Art? : All Tech Considered : NPR

I don't spend much time trying apps with photo filters, and the "art" filters usually give less than impressive results.  But this Prisma app looks a bit more promising.

Update:   see my posts above for my tests of it on a couple of my recent photos from Japan.   It really does very impressive "art" conversions....

Paleolibertarianism, racism and Trump

Where did Donald Trump get his racialized rhetoric? From libertarians. - The Washington Post

Interesting material in this article that's sure to get some libertarian noses out of joint.

Waterfront on the move

Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun - The New York Times

This is a pretty good article talking about the already increasing coastal flooding in America.

I am very curious as to whether economists with their "future costs of climate change" work can really have any firm basis on calculating the obviously high potential cost of works to hold back the sea.  We're not talking little old Holland here, with its puny length of coast line.

Crime in America

A few crime stories caught my eye on the weekend:

*  Anchorage, Alaska, with a population of about 300,000, has had 25 homicides this year, with 9 of them unsolved.  The unsolved ones seem to mostly be in parks and trails around the city.  

The article says that 25 was the total number of murders they had there in 2015, although going back to 1995, they had 29 in a year. 

Doesn't that seem high for a city of 300,000?    Looking at a story about Australia murder rates, yes it is:

According to the latest AIC figures, the homicide rate for the NT was 5.5 per 100,000 people. This is five times the national rate and almost four times the second highest state, Western Australia, which had a homicide rate of 1.4 per 100,000.

News.com.au examined 10 years of data from the institute’s National Homicide Monitoring Program and found the NT consistently had a higher rate for murder and manslaughter than anywhere else in Australia. In 2001-02, the NT’s rate was almost six times higher than the national average, 11.5 compared to 1.9. By 2011-12 it had improved significantly to 5.5, but was still higher than the rest of the country.

According to Matthew Willis, research officer from the AIC, the number of actual murders and manslaughters in the Northern Territory is far lower than bigger states such as NSW or Victoria, which both have larger populations. But when those numbers are calculated per (100,000) head of population, the statistics are staggering. Even when compared to smaller states such as Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia, the NT is high. All those states sit around the 1 to 1.4 rate.

 So, even compared to recent figures in the Northern Territory, the Anchorage rate is high.   I wonder if they have alcohol problems, too?

 *  The Washington Post ran a lengthy article looking at the only known black lynching that took place on a military base in World War 2.   Never solved, it appears clear that people closed ranks, and it once again paints a picture of a black man killed for being too assertive (or perhaps, too friendly to white women.)   A depressing story, but worth remember the legacy that current black America carries in living memory.  

*  Vox's long article about the issue of whether "black culture" is responsible for violent crime in America is very good - and really, it covers more than just that theory - it looks at the whole matter of the uncertainty as to why violent crime has actually dropped dramatically over the last few decades. 

Good to hear

JTB, Panasonic, Yamato to test new ‘hands-free travel’ service for visitors to Japan ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion

I mentioned in my posts about Japan a couple of months ago how the country has a fantastic luggage courier service.  Good to see they are trying making it more accessible to the non Japanese speaking tourist.

More on DNA and data storage

I don't recall posting much about this before, but reading about DNA and its great potential for data storage does make you wonder if there is anyone trying to decode human DNA just to make sure that an alien Creator class has not left us a message.   Perhaps a contact address for warranty claims?

Here are three relevant articles:

If You Were a Secret Message, Where in the Human Genome Would You Hide? (I see this was published on 1 April 2015, but I don't think its a joke - although I haven't read it carefully.)

An Alien Code May Be Hidden Inside Our DNA!

Quest For The Hidden Alien Message Embedded In Human DNA Continues (OK, it's a flaky looking website, but this article seems OK.)

End this now

Calls for restrictions on Medicare access to IVF subsidies for older women: A decade after the IVF industry defeated the federal government's attempt to restrict Medicare access to older women, the president of its peak body has says there is little taxpayer value in subsidising the treatment after a woman turns 45.

Statistics on fertility treatment outcomes released on Friday show that 73,598 women started IVF cycles in 2014, the most recent year for which statistics are available, and one in five of them (19.8 per cent) delivered a live baby.

This represented a 10 per cent improvement in the live birth rate
over five years, which has been attributed to better freezing
technology.

But the success rate dwindled to 6 per cent for women aged 40 to 44, and less than 1 per cent for women aged over 45.

If our current Coalition government cannot push this saving measure through now, they're good for nothing.

Sometimes it pays not to be an early adopter

Samsung Electronics is expected to announce a global recall of the large-screen smartphone Galaxy Note 7 because of faulty batteries that catch fire, South Korea's largest news agency reports, citing an unidentified company official.
The world's largest smartphone maker will announce the results of an investigation and a plan to deal with the issue as soon as this weekend, according to news agency Yonhap.

Link here.

As with Apple and its bend-y phone, I'm not sure it is ever a good idea to be in the first rush to get a new model phone.

Telling it like it is

Billionaire GOP Donor Wants Trump's Head Checked | Mother Jones: "As a Republican who has contributed millions of dollars to the party's causes, I ask: Why has our party not sought a psychological evaluation of its nominee?" Fernandez writes in an op-ed published in the Miami Herald on Thursday.

Under the headline "I'm a Republican and I'm With Hillary Clinton," Fernandez attacks Trump as responsible for "a neverending spiral of vulgarity, intellectual dishonesty, invective, abuse, misogyny, racism, intolerance, bullying, ignorance and downright cruelty." Fernandez says he takes particular issue with the way Trump has implied that if he loses, it will be because Clinton cheated.

"This is insanity and dictatorial machinations at best," Fernandez writes.

GMO fanboys, take note

How GMOs Cut The Use Of Pesticides — And Perhaps Boosted It Again : The Salt : NPR: One of the study's conclusions is straightforward and difficult to dispute. Genetically modified, insect-protected corn has allowed farmers to reduce their use of insecticides to fight the corn rootworm and the European corn borer. There is, however, concern that this effect won't last. Corn rootworms have evolved resistance to one of the genes that has been deployed against them.

When it comes to weedkillers, though, the picture gets more murky. For one thing, the effect of GMOs has been different in corn than in soybeans. Farmers who switched to glyphosate-tolerant corn also switched herbicides, and used less total herbicide than farmers did on conventional corn — for a while. In the years since 2007, however, glyphosate-tolerant corn got sprayed with more weedkillers, as measured in kilograms per acre, than corn without that GMO trait.

Farmers who are growing genetically modified, glyphosate-tolerant soybeans, meanwhile, have been using more weedkillers than their non-GMO neighbors. In fact, that gap has been widening in recent years.

Edward Perry of Kansas State University, a co-author of the new study, which appears in the journal Science Advances, says farmers may be using more herbicides on glyphosate-tolerant crops in recent years because they have to fight off an increasing number of weeds that have evolved to become resistant to glyphosate.

 Disclosure:  I think organic farming is a crock.  I also think that common sense always suggested that GMO for foodstuff resistance to herbicides was always doomed for failure, and was mainly about a company making lots of money in the process of eventually making a biological problem worse.

A detailed look at white voter demographics

Everyone Gets It Wrong About Donald Trump and White Voters - Rolling Stone

Interesting stuff.

More generally, Trump's non pivot on immigration this week presumably means he has killed off any hope of an increase in his Hispanic vote once and for all; and as for the black vote - isn't he supposed to be turning up in some black neighbourhoods soon?  That'll be a laugh. 

The basic argument, that there just aren't enough angry, white, poorly educated Southerners to compensate for everyone else thinking he's an offensive dope seems as strong as ever. 

DNA storage

Interesting feature article at Nature about the potential for DNA data storage.  How's this, for this example:

That is one reason why permanent archives of rarely accessed data currently rely on old-fashioned magnetic tapes. This medium packs in information much more densely than silicon can, but is much slower to read. Yet even that approach is becoming unsustainable, says David Markowitz, a computational neuroscientist at the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) in Washington DC. It is possible to imagine a data centre holding an exabyte (one billion gigabytes) on tape drives, he says. But such a centre would require US$1 billion over 10 years to build and maintain, as well as hundreds of megawatts of power. “Molecular data storage has the potential to reduce all of those requirements by up to three orders of magnitude,” says Markowitz. If information could be packaged as densely as it is in the genes of the bacterium Escherichia coli, the world's storage needs could be met by about a kilogram of DNA (see 'Storage limits').

It also features this graphic:

Some amusing psychology for the day

What your choice of smartphone says about you: Miss Shaw and her fellow researchers conducted two studies of personality differences between iPhone and Android smartphone users. Lancaster University was also involved in the study.

In the first study the researchers asked 240 participants to complete a questionnaire about characteristics they associate with users of each smartphone brand.

In the second study they tested these stereotypes against actual personality traits of 530 Android and iPhone smartphone users.

The results from the first study showed that Android users are perceived to have greater levels of honesty and humility, agreeableness and openness personality traits but are seen as less extroverted than iPhone users.

The results from the second study showed that most of the personality stereotypes did not occur in reality, as only honesty and humility was found in greater amounts within Android users.

However, they did find that women were twice more likely to own an iPhone than an Android Phone. When measuring the characteristic 'avoidance of similarity' which describes whether people like having the same products as others, Android Users avoided similarity more than iPhone users. Finally, iPhone users thought it was more important to have a high status phone than Android users.

Based on what my daughter tells me (she really, really notices iPhones when walking down the street), yes it is true that they are very big with girls/women.   I think it's because men are more likely to want to tinker with things, and there's a hell of lot of tinkering that can be done with an Android phone.

Yay for contraception - perhaps

The Pill, the Condom, and the American Dream - The Atlantic

I would prefer that teenagers not be having sex at all; or at least, not without foresight and preparation for the possibility of having a child as a result of it.  To put it another way - I'm all for sexually active teenagers using contraception, but I'd prefer that they not be sexually active at all if they can't cope with the prospect that, despite their best effort to avoid a pregnancy, no contraception is foolproof and making babies is kinda what it's really all about, as far as bodies (if not brains) are concerned.

New York at the local level

I very much enjoyed the episode last night (on SBS) of Michael Portillo's Great American Railroad Journeys, (episode 3, I see - dang it, I have missed the first two!) as it wasn't about any lengthy trip at all, but all about the very local rail of New York and (in particular) Long Island.
Here on the other side of the world, we read a bit about Brooklyn and Long Island as areas where a lot of people who work on Manhattan live, and the Hamptons as a place where the uber rich buy mansions and party (I believe even Spielberg has a house there), but any tourist type TV show rarely goes out of its way to show these places. 
Well, Portillo's show did, and it was very good to finally see them, and get some of their historical background. 
It'll be on SBS on demand for a while, and it seems some people are putting up slabs of the series on Youtube, too.

The "bad passenger" problem

BBC - Autos - Driverless taxis' human problem

So yeah, they are starting to think about how to stop driverless taxis being used for things you don't want passengers using them for:

The presence of a taxi driver also dissuades a variety of illicit
passenger behavior, including vandalism, drug use, and, of course,
self-expression of a sexual nature. During NuTonomy's Singapore taxi
test, says the company, an engineer will ride along "to observe system
performance and assume control if needed to ensure passenger comfort and
safety." Eventually, though, it will be just car and passenger. Are the
cars ready for responsibility?

"None of these problems require
particularly high-tech solutions", says Dr Richard Alan Peters, a
professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Vanderbilt
University in the US. Peters, who serves as the chief technical officer
for the artificial intelligence software company Universal Robotics,
suggests that driverless taxicabs could use features like automatic
door closers and cabin sensors to ensure seatbelt use or tattle on
smokers who light up in the car. And some tasks formerly undertaken by a
human driver — discovering a forgotten parcel or a pool of vomitus, for
instance — could fall to customers, "who would then alert the car",
says Peters. The question, therefore, may not be whether the cars are
ready for the responsibility, but whether passengers are ready for it.