Shopping centres as living rooms

I'm been meaning to ask this out loud for about 6 months now:   who came up with the idea of making shopping malls into living rooms?

Honestly, the amount of trendy looking, living room-ish style furniture that has appeared in public spaces of the local large shopping mall in the last year or so is pretty astounding - and I'm not saying that I don't like the look of it, really.  It just strikes me as slightly odd.   I assume that it must be based on some research that shows that if you let people relax in a colourful high back chair, with a funny shaped coffee table in front of them, probably while they use their mobile phones to check up on Facebook, they'll end up buying more?

But we all know that retail rents are already astronomical in large Australian shopping centres - and my local one also seems to having a series of prominent departures of smaller retailers, perhaps due to leases that started when they opened the last extension about 5 or 6 years ago expiring.    So, you just have to wonder whether the cost of all these mini lounge rooms appearing every 30 metres or so down every walkway is really worth it.   (Not to mention the question of how often they will end up needing to be cleaned and/or replaced.)  The retailer tenants will end up paying for it, no doubt.

I'm guessing that the idea originated in America, or England, but it's a very distinctive change.

Emperor to abdicate

So, Japan has done the right thing and will let the Emperor abdicate.  The BBC has a "ten things you may not know" article about him, which includes this:

1. He has a really long family history Born 23 December 1933, he is the 125th emperor of a line which is traced back more than 2,600 years, according to official genealogies. That would make it the world's oldest continuing hereditary monarchy.

In keeping with ultra-formal royal tradition, he was raised apart from his parents in an imperial nursery from the age of two.

Let's check in on how the brains trust* forecast the UK election..

 

And how are they taking the news of a very, very close result?:

* sarcasm of the highest order.   And yes, I did get the last US presidential election wrong - but this is still fun.

Placebo, placebo

Two  links about the placebo effect for you:

*   people act drunker if they think that what they drink should make them drunk, faster.   (It's a study about mixing Red Bull and alcohol.)   I'm pretty sure this type of effect was already pretty well established, but it's still interesting how anticipation of how a drink should affect you does influence how you feel.

*  Over at Vox, there was a fascinating interview recently with a researcher who says that, for some conditions, giving patients a placebo, even while they know it's a placebo, still helps!:

About five years ago, I said to myself, “I’m really tired about doing research that people say is about deception and tricking people.” 

Let’s just try to see if we can be honest, transparent: Is it possible that [the placebo effect] would work giving a placebo pill and telling people the truth? People said I was nuts. 

The first open-label study we did was in irritable bowel syndrome. 

People on no treatment got about 30 percent better. And people who were given an open-label placebo got 60 percent improvement in the adequate relief of their irritable bowel syndrome.

He admits this makes little sense:

Brian Resnick

What I still can’t wrap my mind around: Okay, the placebo effect is real, and it’s not just about people’s expectations. Fine. But why on earth does the effect still work when you tell patients the drug isn’t real? That it’s just sugar?

Ted Kaptchuk

First of all, I have no idea.

Brian Resnick

That’s actually a refreshing answer.

Ted Kaptchuk

Ultimately, it’s very peculiar. Our patients tell us it’s nuts and crazy. The doctors think it’s nuts. And we just do it. And we’ve been getting good results.

I don’t know if this is going to keep working [in clinical studies]. It’s really novel and new, in infancy. This needs to be replicated. We need to test it over time, too.

One other surprise in the article - I would not have guessed this:

Placebo effects accompany real drugs. Morphine given without a person knowing — surreptitiously, in a IV drip — is 50 percent less effective than when it is given in front of them. That’s the placebo effect. 

Fascinating! 

And here's a thought, seeing I was recently writing about hallucinogens - to what extent can you reduce LSD or other hallucinogens dose and still talk people into having what they perceived as a full blown trip if they think it is full strength?   Has anyone studied that?

Take that, Monsanto

It might make weekend gardening a lot more fun for the average husband, too:

Laser-based weed control can eliminate herbicides

(Actually, it's currently just an idea for a start up - sounds pretty fanciful to me.)

Let's not worry too much about a vacuum decay end of the universe

I'm making another attempt at a Trump free Friday, so instead I'll refer the reader to a vaguely optimistic post by Bee about why she doesn't worry too much about the potential for the universe to disappear rapidly as a result of quantum vacuum decay.

Go to Mars and die

Yet more research indicating that travelling to Mars is very risky business for astronaut's health.

Collateral damage from cosmic rays increases cancer risks for Mars astronauts. New predictive model, published in Scientific Reports, shows radiation from cosmic rays extends from damaged to otherwise healthy 'bystander' cells, effectively doubling cancer risk

I think one of the first facilities that would need to be set up in a Mars colony would be a nursing home with palliative care.   

Glittergate

So, the video from the guy who was filming the two who assaulted Andrew Bolt has turned up on the net.   Fairfax has it here.

In my previous post, I questioned whether Bolt had gone too far in (so he said) kicking one of the assailants in the groin, while he was down.

The funny thing is, unless there was yet more fighting than appears in this video, and I don't think there is, I can't see that a clear kick happened at all - or at least, not as Bolt described it.   (The young looking Fairfax journalist writing it up is completely on Bolt's side, by the way, saying "He fights back fiercely, kicking and punching his two assailants in the face and groin before they give up and start to walk away."  But I can't see clear evidence of a kick, or not of a kick as Bolt claimed.)

Let's revisit how Bolt himself described it:

I hit the head of one so hard that my knuckles are still tender, and when he was down, legs sprawled apart, I kicked.

Post that footage, moron.

Um, unless my eyes deceive, there is no one " ... down, legs sprawled apart".

He keeps talking about the kick, too.  Here is how he first put it:

Luckily the cameras do not capture me kicking one between the legs. I cannot have my children see me acting like a thug.

(I said it was an insincere, boastful, apology.)

Here's my take on the matter, after seeing this second video:

* It does make Bolt's reaction to swing out and fight them perfectly understandable (not that I ever questioned that);

* It actually shows Bolt stumbling in a way that the previous video didn't show - his performance as a street fighter does not look quite as good as his words suggest.  (Not that he didn't, in a general sense, do well enough);

* I think he's greatly exaggerating the kicking part of his fight, because that plays well to his fan club. (Really, who can avoid the feeling that Bolt secretly thinks this is the best PR he has received in a decade?)

So I reckon he's OK on the disproportionate response to provocation - if he hadn't exaggerated what he had done, I wouldn't have even raised it.

Update:  Again, just to make it clear I make no excuses for the idiot assailants - the three involved ought to face charges.  Even if it's a fine that their family pays for them, they deserve a conviction for assault on their record.

Update 2:  it's still being said on many sites that the stuff sprayed at Bolt was shaving cream, but it sure doesn't look like that on the videos, and it's supposed to have involved glitter and dye.   Last I looked, shaving cream comes only in non-dying white, and without glitter.  You can, however, get glittery hair colour spray, mainly used by kids.   I would suspect that that is more likely what was used, which is a stupid thing to be spraying towards someone's face.

Update 3:  It's not just me.  Despite every single Catallaxy commenter probably having watched the Bolt videos ten times, I see only one asking the same question I have - where's the groin kick on someone down?

And that, I expect, is about where their inquirying minds will leave it.

And now - pop culture

Tom Cruise's The Mummy movie is not exactly getting rave reviews.  Metacritic puts it at 37%, with the great majority of reviews "mixed", which is borderline as to whether I should see it at the cinema.   It does look like too much of a CGI fest on the trailers, but it does have Tom in it...

Agency, consciousness and maths

It's all a bit complicated to follow, but I gather that it is a mathematical argument that emergent consciousness is much more than the sum of its parts.  But as that seems sort of obvious to most of us as lived experience, it's hard to understand the significance of a mathematical proof.  And the reductions dispute it shows anything new at all.

Anyway, have a read:   A Theory of Reality as More Than the Sum of Its Parts

Trump expects loyalty, but doesn't give it

Mike Allen at Axios has a look at Trump's poor record of loyalty to his aides:

So what's with the constant needling and belittling?

• A person who has experienced Trump's moods said: "He feels some sort of deep--seated emotional need to assert his primacy over people he has very clear primacy over. These are people you need to trust, and to be loyal to you."
• Trump's treatment of his aides is a factor in the unwillingness of some top talent to go into the White House, according to an official involved in the search: "You never know when you're going to get thrown under the bus. He has this constant need for reassurance and affirmation that he takes out on the staff."
• An irony: It's people who were with Trump on the earlier side (Sessions, Priebus, Spicer) who seem to take the brunt of his fickleness, while later arrivals like Gary Cohn and Dina Powell (so far) have escaped Trump's crowded doghouse.
• Sound smart: Quick! Name a top-titled White House official — not named Ivanka or Jared — who authentically likes or feels sincere loyalty toward Trump. Then, quick, name a top-titled official — not named Jared or Ivanka — who Trump genuinely likes or feels loyalty toward. This is a problem.

No wonder Trump likes Putin

Both like to talk about how women have "bad days" because of menstruation:

When Stone asked Putin during a tour of the Kremlin if he ever had bad days, Putin said being a man meant he did not have to worry about this. “I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days. I am not trying to insult anyone. That’s just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles,” Putin told the director, according to Bloomberg News, which has seen an advance version of the documentary.

History repeats - Republicans don't learn

News today out of Kansas that there's been a revolt over not raising taxes:

Kansas lawmakers have voted to roll back a series of major tax cuts that became an example for conservative lawmakers around the country but didn't deliver the growth and prosperity promised by Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican.

A coalition of conservative Republicans, some of whom voted for sweeping tax cuts in 2012 or defended them in the years since, sided with moderates and Democrats to override Brownback's veto of a $1.2 billion tax increase.

The law to increase taxes over the next two years comes as legislators seek to close a projected $900 million budget gap for that same period and bolster funding for K-12 schools under a Kansas Supreme Court order.

Which reminds of the Reagan administration and what Republicans in the past have had to do:

Everyone remembers Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. His admirers are less likely to tout the tax hikes he accepted as the 1981 recession and his own tax cuts began to unravel his long-term fiscal picture–a large tax increase on business in 1982, higher payroll taxes enacted in 1983 and higher energy taxes in 1984. A decade later, when a serious recession and higher spending began to upend the fiscal outlook again, the first President Bush similarly raised taxes on higher-income people in 1991; Bill Clinton doubled down and raised them again in 1993. 

Why are the current bunch of Republicans so slow to learn?  Why is Laffer still granted credibility?   At the risk of repeating myself:  it seems that it's mainly to do with the small government/libertarian strain in the American Right - it just doesn't like, on principle, government doing things, and strangling revenue is a means to an end for them.  It's not economics that suggests deep tax cuts are always a good idea - although I gather that Laffer does his best at mathturbation to try to show lower tax States do better than higher taxed ones.   (I suspect this is one of the examples where the huge range of factors that are difficult to account for in economics lets an economist construct a result he desires.)   But the public does expect government to do things now, and the Republicans eventually have to come back towards reality.

As I was saying (about Red States and renewables)

Remember last week I said I was relatively sanguine about the consequences of Trump leaving the Paris Accord* because, surprisingly, Republican States were actually already taking up renewable energy despite their rhetoric on climate change?

Well, there's a full article in the NYT talking in more detail about this, and it's far more widespread than Texas.    Here's how it starts:

Two years ago, Kansas repealed a law requiring that 20 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources by 2020, seemingly a step backward on energy in a deeply conservative state.

Yet by the time the law was scrapped, it had become largely irrelevant. Kansas blew past that 20 percent target in 2014, and last year it generated more than 30 percent of its power from wind. The state may be the first in the country to hit 50 percent wind generation in a year or two, unless Iowa gets there first.

Some of the fastest progress on clean energy is occurring in states led by Republican governors and legislators, and states carried by Donald J. Trump in the presidential election.

The five states that get the largest percentage of their power from wind turbines — Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma and North Dakota — all voted for Mr. Trump. So did Texas, which produces the most wind power in absolute terms. In fact, 69 percent of the wind power produced in the country comes from states that Mr. Trump carried in November.

*  which is not the same thing as saying I think it was a wise decision - quite the contrary.  It was a stupid decision made only to get applause from rednecks at rallies and libertarian billionaires and those who they fund.

Brexit consequences you don't read much about

James Annan, who did some quite important work on climate sensitivity, writes scathingly of Brexit and the forthcoming British election.   Well worth a read, and I trust he won't object to my re-printing much of it here:

Of course, it's all about brexit, so there hasn't been any sort of meaningful debate about this. Both tories and labour are rushing headlong for the most catastrophic outcome they can possibly engineer, and there isn't a fag-paper of difference between them on anything substantive. Corbyn promises better employment protection and May less red tape but these are not really issues of how and why we leave the EU, rather what we do afterwards. The Labour vision may be marginally more attractive but that's basically a question of what colour deck-chairs you prefer on the “Titanic Success”.

It's important to realise, there is no such thing as  a “good brexit”. The only reasonable brexit would be something functionally indistinguishable from the status quo, which both sides have ruled out. The choice is between a bad brexit, a worse brexit and a catastrophic brexit, with all the smart money on the latter. All competent experts have repeatedly pointed out the huge problems that brexit will bring, including but not limited to our European flights (there's no agreement for anything post 2019 and timetables will have to be designed well in advance of that), the operation of our nuclear industry (including such details as medical isotopes), the huge customs problem at Dover/Calais for which the infrastructure does not exist and simply cannot be built in time, the Northern Irish border which will likely spark off unification violence, the harm to our financial industry, the fact that we aren't even normal WTO members in our own right and negotiating that will take agreement from the other 162, the 759 separate agreements with 168 countries that need to be renegotiated in the remaining 661 days etc. The whole thing is idiotic nonsense and the failure of most of our politicians to say as much in plain terms is a gross dereliction of their duty.

In my opinion, the most likely outcome by some way remains a year or so of increasingly acrimonious negotiations or rather arguments, followed by a collapse of the process and long period of recrimination. This national humiliation will come at great cost of course, not just economically but also politically, culturally and socially, as we are already starting to see. Lots of people are starting to bleat about the entirely predictable consequences. I'm intensely relaxed about the poor farmers, since just about every field round here had a “Vote Leave” placard this time last year. They of all people should realise that they will reap what they have sown!

And all for what? Even though it was all about “taking back control”, no-one is prepared to make any promises about immigration anyway. For while the EU was always the convenient excuse for the large-scale immigration that govts of all stripes have encouraged over recent years, it was never actually anything more than that. They could have reduced immigration substantially had they wanted to, but they saw the obvious economic benefits of it and rather than arguing honestly in favour, passed the buck on to the EU.

 I strongly suspect he is right.

Not exactly Zootopia

Disgruntled investors can get a little irrational in China: 

Witnesses have watched on in horror as disgruntled shareholders of a Chinese zoo fed a live donkey to tigers in an ongoing dispute with zoo management.

The Changzhou zoo, located in Yancheng city, north of Shanghai, said the shareholders tossed the donkey into the tiger enclosure "in a fit of rage" and later apologised to the public.

Good point, Garry

News at 7: Idiots attack idiot

I dunno - seems to me that the response of Andrew Bolt to the foolish "fascist attackers" (whose use of masks, more than anything, will probably be used as justification by Bolt) looked like it could be argued as disproportionate to the provocation.   (He says he was sprayed in the face and on his suit with some "sticky liquid and glitter" - some reports say it was shaving cream -  yet it seems  he wasn't hurt at all by the alleged face spray, given he went ahead and gave his speech shortly thereafter.)   Clearly, he's happy to boast about "clobbering" then, adding only an an insincere apology about kicking one in the groin.   All good for the ratings of his cable show, I'm sure.

But if the guy he kicked turns out to have suffered serious gonad injury, I wonder what response he would get from the legal system?   If I were Bolt, I wouldn't be making light of it, just in case.  (Actually, never mind, Andrew, go ahead - I would get more amusement from watching another case of your legal system martyrdom.)

In the meantime, there was probably the sound of Viagra being popped out of its packaging across the land of Catallaxy last night, in celebration of a bit of biffo by one of their own.   (Although, amusingly enough, he is not right wing enough for some of them.)

And in case anyone is thinking that I am suggesting he had no right to make a physical response at all - no, I am not saying that.   But I think all sensible people realise that there must be an element of proportionality to provocation as a defence.  It's in the law anyway, whether you like it or not.

If the Right want violent desire policed, perhaps they should stop expressing violent desire

Everyone would like there to be a better way of preventing Islamic inspired terrorists from killing, and there is much concern over facts like one of the London killers having appeared on a British documentary last year about Islamic State supporters.

But what the nutty Right need to get a better grip on is the difficulty of policing violent thoughts, because they keep on expressing them themselves.

Let's face it:  if an Islamic journalist had written in a on line publication with a devoted readership this:

"if there was any justice, the bomb would have gone off at the Studios of Sky News, where the death of the reactionary Right wing commentators that infest the place would have improved our society",

would the defenders of Roger Franklin have shrugged their shoulders and said it was clearly angry satire that didn't really feel threatening?  (I read this morning via the perpetually angry Tom at Catallaxy that Franklin has kept his job at Quadrant - and hundreds of Quadrant are apparently upset that the board was even considering his future.)

And, speaking of that blog, you get death wish comment not infrequently, including last night from migration obsessed troll machine Fisk:

Now, of course (some) readers are going to say that he doesn't have a helicopter with which to carry out his desire - you just have to accept that some people use hyperbole and don't literally mean they   really want their political/cultural opponents to suffer violence or a nasty death.

But the problem is, of course, that the same argument will be used by radicalised Islamists.

Sure the next fallback will be "But violent, radical Islam has form - it is killing people!"   To which the response will naturally be "Right wing killing does occur - especially in the US.   You can't just argue (unless you're a real fool) that you can just tell that if a death wish is expressed by an angry white guy it's always just the righteous blowing off of steam, but if it's from someone on the Left or a Muslim, it's always serious."  (You do actually get this "all Leftists wants us to die" paranoid claim from the commenters at Catallaxy all the time.  It's just part of the ridiculous but sincerely held nutty exaggeration that routinely goes unchallenged there.)

So, yeah, we would all like something to be able to be done about Islamist inspired radicals from carrying out death wishes, and monitoring what they say about death desires towards others is one part of that.

But the nutty Right is its own worse enemy in this regard.

No "Wow" after all...

A paper details what sounds like a credible, but prosaic, explanation for the famous "Wow" radio signal of 1977.   (I thought that the signal was significant for its strength, yet I would have thought a comet's radio signal would be pretty feeble.  Still, they are near neighbours compared to pulsars and the like, so I suppose that could explain that.)

All the more reason for Chris Carter to abandon another bout of X Files.   Although, I suppose investigating the alien connections to Don Trump's hair might make it all worthwhile.

[By the way - having Trump as President undoubtedly means that new POTUSs do not receive a top secret briefing on the existence of UFOs and aliens.   Can you imagine him being able to resist tweeting about that if he did?]