The Most admired people in 2020

 

In two polls reported for the most admired people, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama were the most consistently regarded.

 

To be precise, Barack Obama came first worldwide, and first or second in the US, depending on the poll. In Australia and the UK, he was beaten by David Attenborough.

Michelle Obama was the most admired woman worldwide, and in both US polls. In the UK, Queen Elizabeth II ranked ahead of her; in Australia, both the Queen and Jacinta Ardern ranked ahead. Ardern was top in New Zealand, unsurprisingly, followed by the Queen and Obama.

Donald Trump beat Obama in one of the US polls - but that’s because it was taken at a highly politicised time, and the Democrat vote was split, with Obama coming in second, and Joe Biden third. Trump was supported by 18%, Obama by 15%, Biden by 6% and, interestingly enough Bernie Sanders by 1% (7^th most admired). It’s quite salient to find that Obama outperformed Trump in every country surveyed - except Russia. They have a friend in Trump!

 

In Australia, only two Australians made each list: the prime minister, an athlete, an actor... and a previous prime minister, Julia Gillard.

 

Of the top 20 men globally, 35% (7 men) were leaders/politicians, 20% were athletes, 20% actors, 15% capitalists and 10% spiritual leaders. I might have expected a more eclectic mix, but that gives some idea who people look up to the most: leaders and achievers that are in the public eye. People admire their power, admire them physically, or admire their wealth. There’s a 12.5% exception for their humanism, if you count Bill Gates as half philanthropist.

 

The Australian list was similar, but we admire leaders less (25% instead of 35%) and sports people more (25% instead of 20%) - which suggests we have the same regard for each! David Attenborough was an addition and exception. Is he admired as a scientist or a humanist? Possibly more of the latter.

 

The methodologies for the surveys need to be mentioned. In the US, Gallup surveyed in December, and asked an open-ended question, which meant people could choose personal acquaintances.. For the rest (including the other US survey), 42 countries were included (which included Turkey - so Erdogan got to the global top 20, although two Turkish figures were ahead of him within Turkey, both singers). YouGov did some preliminary polling earlier in the year, then asked the survey questions from a closed list of people.

My List? Off the top of my head, I’d include

 Jacinta Ardern

 Julia Gillard

 Barack Obama

 Bernie Sanders

 David Attenborough

If I wanted to include entertainment, I might include Neil Young (for his enormous. varied musical career and great guitar work), George Clooney (for his humanitarian as well as screen presence) and Patrick Mahomes (US quarterback for the KC Chiefs, for his ability and leadership). If pressed, I might come up with more names from science, literature, music and American Football.

 

And what is admired? The list of qualities seems to differ, depending on whether the involvement is personal, work-related, or those with no direct connection.

The following list appeared in Forbes, which might speak to leadership as much as anything:

 

1. Humility

2. The ability to learn

3. Integrity 

4. Responsibility

5. Resilience

6. Compassion for others

7. Respect for others

8. Big vision

9. Inspiring others

10. Reinvent ourselves

 

Spring wisteria: early

 I'm recording here 2020's spring flowerings, the wisteria and jasmine in particular.

This year, the jasmine started coming out mid-August.  This is roughly what I would hope for in a normal season: it was initially a late winter blossoming.  In the recent climate-disrupted past, it had been coming out early to mid July at the earliest.

The wisteria started appearing last week - around the 10th of September.  When it first started flowering, it had come out in early-mid spring, the first few weeks of October.  It hasn't come out this early before.

I have to emphasise that this represents the immediate micro-climate at the front of our house.  Other jasmine and wisteria around Sydney - and even around Coogee/Randwick - tends to flower earlier than ours, by several weeks.

So: in 2020 the jasmine came out at a more traditional time, and the wisteria is out a fair bit earlier.

If I were to pick a reason for the wisteria's differential, I might guess that because it spread onto the Bottlebrush and Lilly Pilly trees outside the gate, at least part of the wisteria is getting significantly more sun.

As you can see, it's all white this year - so far.  When I planted it, the wisteria was a light side of purple.  After a few years, the flowers along the side path emerged white, while the rest was purple.  Now it seems to be white everywhere.  On past experience, a few purple flowers may turn up in a few weeks.

Trump's final strategy: discord and divisiveness

Trump's poll numbers have drifted down to dangerous levels, due in no small part to his lack of leadership on COVID-19.  In fact, from mid-April he had deliberately pushed full responsibility to the States (see this report from the Guardian and this timeline).

With his hallmark rally plans in tatters due to COVID and spoilers, I estimate his ultimate strategy to win re-election is to fall back on pure divisiveness, in a two-pronged approach:

External bellicosity: ramp up the discord with China.  I see the forced shutdown of China's Houston consulate as part of this strategy.  It may well be true that there espionage activities have emanated from there, but the White House deliberately chose to take action at this particular juncture.  Trump may have hoped China's retaliation would go as far as closure of the US consulate in Honk Kong, but China's leaders are clearly going to strategise well above Trump's level

Internal friction: fan the flames of chaos by sending federal troops to US cities, ostensibly to quell violence.  My friend Bill in Portland told me protesters there "made a mistake attacking the federal building" - that's what gave the White House an excuse to move in to Portland; what followed was not just good tabloid fodder, but also summary policing, including unidentifiable agents beating protestors and arresting them without charge.  Four days ago, Trump intended to send them to Chicago too, but in the face of resistance from Chicago's mayor, it hasn't happened - yet.  Several news services report it as being "unclear" what the federal officers would do there - the biggest shooting reported there was intergang violence at a funeral (no deaths), which is a State matter in the first instance.

But chaos is good for business, when you're someone like Trump.  Expect more before November.

COVID: NSW spreads inside (Shape of an emerging outbreak, part 2)

The original outbreaks in Sydney eventually died down, as specific public warnings, testing, tracing, monitoring, restrictions and quarantining incoming travellers slowly did the job.

But Sydney remains on the cusp of a renewed outbreak due to infection leakage from Melbourne, and it's still too hard for me to get a sense of whether new infections will settle down or not.  The recent Victoria mass outbreak breeds pessimism; yet the non-explosion in new infections plus the record amount of testing (see bottom of this article) gives room for optimism.

Over the past week or so, with intensive testing and contact tracing, the shape of the clusters is known.  New infections still hover around ten per day, with nearly all infections traceable to an existing cluster.

Despite the graphic given in the previous post, the actual defined clusters are slightly more nuanced.  If you read the news daily, you learn the immediate source of the infection, the source behind that (which is apparently what is represented in that graphic), and the warnings of locations those newly infected have attended and thus who should now get tested/isolate.

At this early stage, it would seem that nearly all new infections are due to prolonged exposure indoors.  That is, more than a few minutes spend indoors in the same space as someone who is infected.  That could mean a pub, a restaurant, a workplace, a gym, a church.  That's it, so far.  The implication, which is understandably not reported, is that outdoors exposure, brief exposure, public transport and shopping centre exposure, is not currently causing infections.


But it's early days in this second outbreak, and that could change.  Complacency is dangerous.  I warn my late teenagers to be cautious at shops, bus stops, public transport.  Masks - of any sort - fully recommended.

A major reason this virus has been so hard - and a good reason for all the above precautions - is that an estimated 40% of infectious people are asymptomatic.  Did you attend that funeral or this restaurant?  Then the official line is that you are urged to get tested and self-isolate. 

COVID: The shape of an emerging outbreak?

The current situation:

Australia nearly had the virus fully under control, with little to no community spreading left.  Until.

Unfortunately, returning travellers were isolated for 14 days in hotels.  Not a problem in itself, but in Melbourne hotel-based enforcement was contracted out to major security companies, who subcontracted it to subcontractors, etc, resulting in non-professionals being recruited by WhatsApp, told little about the gig, and put on at short notice with scant training.  Everything went to pot from there.

Melbourne is now trying to tamp down a full-fledged outbreak, where new infections are hovering around 400 per day.  Despite the border closure between Victoria and New South Wales, infections have leaked through to Sydney, mainly via the road transport industry and Sydney pubs.  Yes, the border is a little too porous, and Sydney social distancing enforcement too lax.  Sydney infections today: 19.  We do contact tracing, and nearly all those 19 are traceable to one of the clusters.  So far, with a handful still under investigation.


In that context, ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has in the middle of their daily coronavirus briefing included an interesting graphic of the cluster origins:

It's not easy to fathom the cause of the differential in cluster origins.  Melbourne's pattern may be due to a more mature spread pattern, and Sydney's pattern's possibly reflect the way the outbreak is emerging (Sydney's clusters include a gym across the road from one of the pubs).

But I haven't been able to fathom why Melbourne's clusters don't include pubs and restaurants.  The regulatory environment seems to be rather similar, and Melbourne people are by all accounts behaving as incautiously as those in Sydney.  Pubs in particular are great disinhibitors, so why is it not so in Melbourne?  Answers, please on a postcard, letter or emails.

I recommend the above ABC daily briefing.  Meaningful insights often emerge.

Update 28-Jul-2020
Five days later, the cluster picture is not significantly different, apart from some relabelling:

For Victoria, Retail remains a minor source, while pubs and restaurants still don't figure - that will not change, since they are now in lockdown.  The Hotel source in Victoria was the location at which overseas returnees were isolated, but contamination spread via security guards.
It must be stressed that this represents identified clusters, and doesn't include single or unidentified sources.  However, Victoria has hundreds of cases per day dating back a full three weeks whose source is still labelled "under investigation".  NSW is still hovering around 10 - 20 new infections per day, most of which are traced to source.  Because our tracers currently have a manageable load.

COVID: for too many people, it's too hard

From the ABC today:

"Biosecurity expert Professor Raina MacIntyre said she was still noticing a worrying level of complacency in NSW despite the recent increase in cases."I have noticed it myself that nobody's keeping a physical distance, nobody's wearing a mask, and unless we do things, we may lose the freedoms that we have at the moment in Sydney," she said.
"I think people should think about it as a social contract, that if we want to retain those freedoms to do the things we want to do, then in return we need to also do the right thing, maintain that physical distance of 1.5m, download the COVIDSafe app and wear a mask."

The New South Wales government is doing a precarious balancing act.  They are saying that people will react poorly to efforts to tell them what to do (I'm paraphrasing), and that it's best to encourage the right thing.

This explains why mandating and enforcement has been particularly weak.  I've seen especially egregious flouting of laws: the Royal Randwick Hotel on the day of the Big Fight last weekend allowed the punters to pack in tightly in the sports bar; staff were equivocal, and said to me they relied on management to enforce - which is fair.  Why put it on the workers?

But pubs are the worst things to keep open.  As the SMH said, alcohol weakens resolve.  And people have to talk louder when it gets noisy and crowded - so spit is more vociferous.

The long goodbye is the big hangover.  But so is the economic depression, for years to come.

New Zealand locked down hard.  And early enough.

COVID-19: Australia turning the corner

Australia's new COVID cases are plummeting:

... and the cumulative number of cases is flattening, per this logarithmic scale:

These charts and others are courtesy of the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation; they are updated daily.

We're in lockdown, with non-essential business closed, and people working from home where possible.  But in so many ways, the whole word is in a strange place right now - a singularity for which we may never have a similar experience.  The solutions are well known: test, test, test, trace known cases, and isolate.  But testing depends on the number and quality of test kits, which is quite variable around the world - as is both political and social will.

Per the top 30 countries by GDP, our death rate - the number that matters the most - is 20th, one better than China, which implemented faster and more draconian lockdowns.  the 10 worst death rates per million are:

	Country	Deaths/ 1M pop
1	Spain	368
2	Italy	329
3	Belgium	311
4	France	221
5	Netherlands	160
6	UK	156
7	Switzerland	128
8	Sweden	89
9	USA	67
10	Iran	53
	:	:
20	Australia	2

However, I have learnt from reading between the lines on the numbers is that comparisons are fraught.  Australia, for example, shares no borders with other countries, which is a great advantage.  New Zealand: even more isolated.  Numbers of cases and deaths reported is quite variable, depending on the country and how much testing they do.  Sweden is another exception, as they did not lock down, which is something they have come to regret.

My friend Bill says you should look at the US by individual State.  That puts his State, Oregon, way down with only one death per million.  New York is at top, with 32 deaths per million, followed by New Jersey with 17.  Also above Australia and China's 2 deaths per million is: Louisiana, Michigan, Conneticut, then 11 more.


Actual numbers will never be certain.  I expect that a few years after it's over, analysts will get closer to true numbers by interpolating from existing death rates in the previous few years - and we will be surprised to find the countries whose COVID-related deaths are much higher than reported, as not all COVID deaths are known cases.  This will clearly be so for countries like Indonesia, India and Iran, but may also surprise us in countries like USA, China and UK.

I expect that at least in part, the eventual numbers per country will depend on social cohesion, and willingness to heed lockdowns and isolations.  Governments can mandate or recommend, but it's up to the people as a whole whether they do the right thing.  Complacency is literally a killer.  I see it well in evidence in Sydney - although we have done well by and large by clamping down reasonably early.

How will the world look when we come out of this?  I don't know what permanent changes will be wrought, but I'm pretty sure it will take several years for economies to recover, and many already-disadvantaged people will be far, far worse off.  Expect to see a longer tail of mortality from other poverty-related causes, particularly in less developed economies and pockets of the US.

A few insights into Blog comments spam

People have been spamming blog comments for years.  From manual beginnings, people developed spambots to automate the process, which understandably resulted in a huge increase in spam traffic.  In earlier days, the intention was a mixture of attempts to build traffic to legitimate sites (for both manual traffic and search engine optimisation),  and various scams including pump and dump.

Many blogs responded by turning off comments altogether; in my case I've vetted comments before publishing.

In more recent years, the spam comments have become apparently innocuous, and don't even try to link to other web sites.  This left me wondering what was going on, but I found it difficult to find out.

So with my previous post, I set up a honeypot to gather spam comments over time, with the intention of analysing them to understand better what was going on.  This entry will give some limited insights; maybe I will add to it when I know more.  The following is a first pass report on the results.

I posted the honeypot in August 2019, and spambot comments flowed in for about two and a half months, before abruptly stopping.  There's an implication that they're all from the same source - or using the same mechanism.

I analysed about 100 comments through a Natural Language Processing framework.  This is a form of Machine Learning (which is popularly referred to Artificial Intelligence, although I don't think it's an accurate term).  It wasn't able to tell me that much.  Amongst other things, it returned a high positive sentiment score through sentiment analysis.  This was fairly obvious already.  To get past spam vetting systems, the spambots intentionally fed relatively upbeat phrases.  They were mostly quite general comments, either about liking the blog or asking help with their own blog (again, no  links).  But it was possible to tell in the first instance that it was spam simply because there was no specific reference to the subject matter in the blog post.  To make this clear, in the honeypot I requested comments to include a specified word to flag that the commenter had read the post.  Which of course is beyond the capability of automated commenting tools.

The only thing I've really gotten from the NLP system so far is that very frequently the comments are very close variants on each other - in groups of two, three or more.  It's as if someone put together three sentences, made some variants on a few keywords/phrases, and then got the spambot to switch around the words frequently enough so as to specifically avoid getting caught by automated processes that blocked groups of indentical comments.

So it looks like it's an arms race between sets of automated tools, a battle to infuse comments on the one hand, and to deflect them on the other.  What hasn't been answered yet to my satisfaction is why the spambots are still running but are not delivering weblink payloads.  My only guess is as before: that the spambots are being used to pinpoint blogs/news sites that allow unfiltered comments to get through.  My feeling is that there must be more to it than that, so suggestions are welcome.

PS: Will a new post get those spambots started again on this blog?  Let's see.

The Spammer collection

Ever wonder what all the spam comments look like?  Is it worth doing an analysis?

If your answer to both questions is "No!!", then you're a fairly normal person, and not a spambot.

But hey, it's my blog.  So I'm going to gather up a mass of spammer comments below, and maybe someday I'll analyse them, perhaps even find a tool to track down and aggregate the information they give me - for example, the sources from which they indiscriminately yank their random word strings.

Normally I moderate comments and trash the trash, so you have no insight into what goes on.  But this time, I'll let it all through.

If you have a genuine comment to make, you'll need to use the word sphenodont to flag that you've actually read these words - and I'll publish these comments manually.  Good luck!,  and heaven help us all.

24-Aug-2018 Update: It took five and a half days for the spambots to arrive at this post, and there's currently a steady stream, at a range of times.  They mostly hit only the latest post, but there's odd exceptions that target random earlier posts.
Why do they do it?  Spamdexing is given as one explanation - this is aimed at steering search engines to particular web sites, and affecting search engine optimisation.  However, in recent times there's been no attempt to include links or phrases to steer search engines, so I'm still at a bit of a loss.  I welcome an explanation of how these random comments below can be turned to someone's advantage...

Of course Bazza is certainly not a spambot - he graced us with his presence in person a few years ago.  He was quicker off the mark than the bots.  I'll publish his and other real comments here, within the body of post.

bazza said...

I sphenodont really know what this post is about! I don't know what's squamata...
CLICK HERE for Bazza’s powerfully pervasive Blog ‘To Discover Ice’ 

Tuesday, 20 August 2019 at 06:36:00 GMT+10 


03-Sep-2019 Why is it so?  A conjecture:  The lingering question is: why post comments without any useful content.

A fresh comment came in - which I have caught in the slips - that may or may not give some insight:

"Useful Information :
Looking for the Best Digital Marketing Company in V***a [link therein] and H***d affiliate agency in *** INDIA, Digital Marketing in V***a @ p***s.com [decomposed email address therein]"

I had had a thought that the spammers were using spambots to test the waters: are there any websites that allow the comments to get through? - if so, add next-step comments with payloads.  The above is actually the first spam I've seen in a long time that had any payload at all.  It's also the first time I've seen spam from India, which may signal that over time, people in different countries are adjusting methods, moving on.

Brexit parliamentary vote resoundingly NOT a betrayal of democracy

Theresa May had been banging on for weeks about how voting against her brexit plan would be a betrayal of democracy.  And she was clearly wrong, wrong, wrong.

UK MPs voted against her plan - with no time left for a new plan - by a whopping 432 to 202.

May's concept of democracy is fundamentally flawed.  Yours is too, probably.

It is most clearly not democracy to implement brexit when the margin of a generationally important vote is 52% to 48% - and after all this time is still that close [the other way].

As it stands, any move on this will be a betrayal for half the country.

A new way has to be forged - a new question/answer altogether.  Yes, in/out of Europe is binary.  But you CANNOT move forward blithely on an issue that is so hopelessly divided.

More work, more discussion is needed.  And that is what will happen.  Despite the anguish, even if it takes another five years true democracy will be better served by continuing the discussion.

Vale Aretha (1942 - 2018)

Aretha Franklin's singing was so special, so spiritual, because she grew up singing in her father's church.  She soars, she touches the soul.

Most of the tributes that will pour in on her death will focus on her well-known songs (the BBC overnight was endlessly rehashing extracts of I Say A Little Prayer, Respect, and Natural Woman).  Few will demonstrate why they think she was unique.  Here's a good example: Call Me.

Released in 1970, this performance comes from the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1971.  She especially shines towards the end of the song.

Sadly, it's not her best performance of this song to be captured on tape.  That one was available online in 2011, but has probably been removed for copyright reasons.  It was a television performance circa 1971; the audience was seated around tables - and it's not the one on the Tom Jones program, which you can still find online.

For me, her other most notable high point was the 1973 single Angel.  Also worthwhile amongst many others is her recording of The Band's The Weight, which is also quite a spiritual song.

Sydney Climate Change report: We're a full season out of whack

35 degrees today.  That's truly awful.

This is the middle of autumn.  Sydney is seeing a week's worth of temperatures hovering in the 30s - temperatures that should be gone by the beginning of February; today's peak should sit squarely in the middle of a bad, hot summer.

Autumn leaves are blowing around while elsewhere spring flowers are confused into coming out for a second season.

And this is a population safely ensconced in a large, safe, wealthy metropolis.  Never mind the rest of the world that lives at the margins.

We knew about this over 25 years ago.  We could have stopped it if we'd done the right thing.  Conservative politicians are beholden to a self-centred support base that's in denial because they don't like to be disgusted [by reality], and while things are okay within their immediate circle.  So-called liberal politicians are likewise captive to a voter base and marginal voters that doesn't want them to make the hard choices.  Voters who do not vote Green are culpable.  Non-voters are absolutely culpable.

Phew.  Now that I've got that off my chest... no, I don't feel better.  But I will offer a couple of sparks of hope today.  And one evil signpost of complacency.

First, the global investment in renewables - half of which comes from China, a command economy - is now double the investment in fossil fuels.  Too little, too late for a two degree rise in temperature, but the catastrophe is slightly lessened.  And a possible forward is flagged by the increase in climate change litigation.  This is the path that had demonstrated success when tobacco companies were fostering political paralysis: courts may help achieve what couldn't be done by those you voted for.

The evil signpost of complacency: Marketing makes our favourite animals seem common as they slide towards extinction.



17-Apr-2018 Sydney bushfire:  The "Holsworthy" fire has a far more direct, tangible impact.  It was raging over the weekend; on Monday, a colleague who lives in Menai stayed home, messaging me: "Sore throats and noses from the smoke.  The fire has formed an arc around us.  All depends on the winds and ember strikes.  We just watch and wait."
At Jannali station on the way home last night, the plume was only a few suburbs away:

The smell of the smoke is novel for a while, but then makes breathing laboured.  As an asthma sufferer, I couldn't survive it up close.  All asthma sufferers would clearly need to get away early, and stay away until the smoke dies away completely.  Climate change?  Because this happened so far out of season, response was not as good as it could have been.  Some specialist firefighting aircraft could not be used because they had been sent back to the U.S. at the end of the season.

Mark E Smith: No More Mr Cranky

Mark E Smith is dead.  I was quite taken aback.

Thus The Fall is no more.  A band whose only constant was Smith, over a period of 40 years there were, at last count, 66 other members, a third of whom lasted less than a year.  Smith famously said "if it's me and your granny on bongos, it's The Fall".  Or, as a recent reviewer said, it's "Mark E Smith and whoever he's barking orders at".

The music was harsh, challenging, rambling, sometimes discordant, always distinctive, sometimes even pleasant.

One of the few bands I've seen in three different countries, I was fortunate not to see them when he had his back to the audience the whole time.  Apparently.  These days, the only albums I have of theirs are Bend Sinister, Infotainment Scam, Extricate, the A-Sides compilation and, hopefully still findable, Slates.  There's a lot to like if you persist, but my personal favourite is Domesday Pay-Off, a rejigged Bend Sinister that excludes Dktr Faustus and Bournemouth Runner, but adds singles There's a Ghost In My House and Hey! Luciani.  Look for the tracks R.O.D., Gross Chapel and Riddler.

My current album favourites are Slates, Bend Sinister and Extricate.  All have much to recommend, but there's so much catalog (31 studio albums) you'll always find something to like.

The cause of death has not been stated, but it's probably due to long years of drinking and smoking.  And crankiness, no doubt.  The above reviewer's characterisation of Smith/the Fall was:

"a shambolic artist whose astonishing productivity, creative restlessness, and utter disdain for the niceties of civil society know no bounds. This is Mark E. Smith’s lawn, and we’re all invited to get the fuck off of it."

American Football: Nick Foles is Carson Wentz? Super Bowl here we come.

The NFC Conference Championship was the last playoff game before the Super Bowl.  It was exciting, but it was also strange and totally unexpected.  The underdogs came through in a big way, and the only people who were happy with the result were the bookies and the denizens of Philadelphia - oh and anyone who loves a great game of gridiron.

The Philadelphia Eagles were the best team this season, and the best chance to defeat the New England Patriots at the Super Bowl.  But then star quarterback Carson Wentz was injured for the rest of the season.  Roll on up second stringer Nick Foles, and everyone expected the Wentzless Eagles to die in the dust.  But they didn't.

Instead, the NFC Championship was an exciting game, where Foles - after an indifferent string of games - seemed to channel Carson Wentz.  How could this be?

Credit must be given to the Eagles coach Doug Pederson.  The team he built was strong - as strong as you like - but nothing can help you if you have an average quarterback.  When Foles took over, he seemed pretty average.  But Pederson must have done some serious work on him: in this last playoff game, Foles played like Carson Wentz incarnated.  Seriously.  Earlier this season I remember seeing Wentz lose the pocket, move around and throw the ball as he was being sacked - and still connect with his receiver.  A magnificent effort.  And in the process of winning the Eagles the Championship game and the Super Bowl berth, Foles did exactly the same thing under great pressure.

Of course, the Patriots have been the team to beat for over fifteen years.  Their run must come to an end, but they still have a sterling coach  in Bill Bellichick, an effective and game-changing quarterback in Tom Brady, and an absolutely solid roster throughout their offense, defense and special teams.

 Wentz

Foles, er...

Will Foles pull off the unexpected again, at the Super Bowl?  The odds are against him.  And the pressure, too: the Super Bowl is a whole different level of game, with a supercharged crowd and the eyes of America (and a few other places) watching for another Patriots comeback if the Eagles even pull ahead at all.

Look out for an exciting, explosive Super Bowl.

Music Trivia: death of a Very Select Cohort

We should note the passing of a whole cohort in just the small end of this year.

Is your name Peter?  Did you release a single called You’re A Lady in 1972?  You wrote the song?  Well, the year’s not far out yet, but you’re already dead.

Peter Skellern?  His song was big at the time.  Slow, gentle, loads of sugary choir brass.  Died 17^th of February, 2017.

Peter Sarstedt?  He wrote and released one too.  Big flop, though.  For that crime, apparently fated to die slightly earlier: 8^th of January, 2017.

I guess Sarstedt’s legacy is more enduring though, even if his version was deservedly ignored.  Although both Peters only had 1 ½ hits, Sarstedt’s Where Do You Go To, My Lovely? was bigger, and arguably more enduring and endearing.

Sarstedt had a brother called Clive, who had a British hit in 1976 as Robin Sarstedt, with My Resistance Is Low.  Before that, Robin recorded as Clive Sands.  After that, he recorded as Clive Sarstedt (all of which begs a few questions…)  In between, the Sarstedt Brothers (with Rick aboard too) released a single, Chinese Restaurant (1973).  Also sank, so leaden that I haven’t even heard it myself.

But I digress.

If you’re Peter, and you released such a single at such a time, you’re dead already.  Of a brain-related ailment.  Both these Peters did.  Shows what happens if you get too close to that confluence of events.  Forty five years later it will get you, the hideous finger of fate - for those with a skerrick of superstition.

Barely worth noting, but Wikipedia claims the Sarstedt song is a cover of the Skellern song.  It’s not.  You may wish to correct it, but what does it matter in this post-fact world that Sarstedt’s release is, by comparison, a fake?

Farewell 2016, Fidel Castro, democracy, and rational polity

Well, it’s been a real car crash of a year.  To anyone who ever says “it can’t get any worse”, this is a wry reminder that it can always get worse.

Electoral outcomes that were all disastrous for the environment, voted for by people who are angry and disenfranchised, and thus fodder for any demagogue that promises a solution without having any real answers, or intention of carrying out what they promise anyway.

Habitat destruction continuing rampant – the single greatest threat to biodiversity, as it has been for a long time.

In fifty years, when too few of those alive will have reliable memory of these times, they will ask “what were they doing in the years 2000 to 2020, when they had a golden opportunity to fix things, with relatively little cost?”  All you can say is that venal, self-interested people persuaded whole electorates that first, there was no problem; then: we don’t know enough about it, or it’s not really a problem, or we can’t do anything about it, or we can live with it.

Vale Fidel Castro, who gave the world a shining example on how to improve health and education outcomes for the whole country (not just an elite) with scant resources.  And to all those who whinged that he was a dictator: look at those outcomes, then look at health, education and poverty in the USA, and how much worse they are and will be.  Then look at the US version of democracy:  with just a small nudge from Russia (with help from their stooge Wikileaks) you get an unethical, dangerous liar as president.

Things can always get worse before they get better.  But as just one person, the very least you can do is vote wisely, act ethically, and do whatever you can locally to help global outcomes.

Vale Fidel

Fidel Castro was a more ethical leader than many of the US presidents he survived.

Cuba's healthcare and education were exemplary for a poor country.  They had a good record of preventative healthcare, and they exported more doctors and health professionals to other needy countries than many that were far richer.

Vale.



28-Nov-16 Update - some figures from Wikipedia:

• Life expectancy: Third in the Americas, after Canada and Chile
• Infant mortality: 5.13 per 1,000 live births, down from 32/1000 in 1957.  Again, less than the US.
• In 2015, became the first country to eradicate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis, acknowledged by the World Health Organisation.
• As of 2014, there were 50,000 Cuban-trained healthcare workers in 66 countries
• Literacy rate: 99.8%, tenth-highest in the world (vs c.86% in the US)

Trumped

2016 will be remembered by history as a year of inflection and singularity - and not in a good way.

Why did the polls get it wrong on the US election?  That was probably the margin of Trump supporters who, when polled, didn't feel obliged to tell the truth.  Like their candidate.

Trump has many more outrageous and incorrect things to say, and he'll do it.  Much like Ronald Reagan, but with no semblance of class.  And people won't mis-remember Trump like they do Reagan.

Will he build a wall and make Mexicans pay for it?  No.  He might add a smidgen to what's already there, just to tick off that item.

Will he clear the swamp?  Of course not.

Will he put Clinton in jail?  He'll probably try.  He has a clear history of pursuing grudges.  But I very much doubt he'll be able to make good on that promise, for all his efforts.

What's left?  Global recession, unstable times, a nastier U.S. political landscape, a much worse time for America's working poor, let alone those without a job.  One thing he'll be able to do (with a non-hostile Congress) is roll back Affordable Healthcare.  An unstable polity in the hands of Clinton would be calmed; one under Trump will not.  He's anti-science, anti-truth, anti-climate-change... and a good way to make money will be to sell asbestos to Americas (Trump tweet 2012: "If we didn't remove incredibly powerful fire retardant asbestos & replace it with junk that doesn't work, the World Trade Center would never have burned down")

Be resilient in very turbulent times.

Jasmine spring: 8-Aug-2016

The jasmine climbing the arch over the front gate has just started to give a heady spring scent today.

Climate variability and garden: Spring 2016

The jasmine started coming out properly yesterday morning, Saturday 6th August 2016.  A lone sprig had turned up eight days previous.  The bees are out and energetic (aggressive) today, whereas they weren't last weekend.

For the last several seasons, the spring flowers started quite early, in mid July.  I'm glad they're holding out this year, even though early August is still too early compared to the early 2000s.