My interview at the Hong Kong Literary Festival, and a note on folk medicine

November 11, 2016 • 11:30 am

Last night I had an hour event (45 minutes of conversation about Faith Versus Fact and 15 minutes of Q&A) at the Hong Kong Literary Festival, co-sponsored by the Hong Kong Skeptics. You can watch it by clicking on the screenshot below.

The interviewer is Mike Bigelow, a businessman, former Jehovah’s Witness (now a nonbeliever), and officer of the Hong Kong Skeptics Society; he had some great questions. The taping was done by Andrew Davidson, who kindly recorded it on his phone and posted it on Periscope.

My thanks as well to Phillipa Milne, head of the Literary Festival, to David Young, one of my “handlers” who extended me warm hospitality, and the other Literary Festival and Hong Kong Skeptic folk who dealt with the logistical hurdles.

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I was gratified that the event was sold out, that the audience seemed enthusiastic, and that many people bought books (WEIT was also on sale).

After the event I got to talk to some of the audience, and I was especially interested in what four young Hong Kong medics—practitioners of modern scientific medicine—had to say.

One thing I’ve learned is that although many people in Hong Kong and China are not conventionally religious, they are often deeply superstitious, not only relying on untested or disproven forms of medical treatment (acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal medicine), but having a belief in feng shui, lucky numbers (many buildings don’t have fourth floors), ghosts, and the like. Since the last chapter of Faith versus Fact was about the dangers of faith healing, I wanted to know whether these dangers applied to non-religious but untested Chinese folk medicine.

The medics instantly said “yes,” and noted that they’d come across many cases of people who had been severely damaged by relying on folk and traditional cures rather than scientific medicine. One, an oncologist, told me grisly stories about women with breast cancer who had tried to cure themselves by rubbing herbal creams on their tumor-ridden breasts, which of course only got worse and worse, often over years. By the time they sought Western treatment, it was too late, though many could have been cured had they consulted a real doctor early on. The oncologist said the same thing about lymphoma: it’s often a treatable and curable form of cancer, but becomes terminal if treated with folk nostrums.

So yes, there is lots of ineffective “faith healing” in which the “faith” devolves not on gods and their wills, but on untested remedies. Belief in untested forms of medicine is itself a form of faith, for there’s no systematic evidence that they work. But I suppose we knew that already. I just wanted confirmation from local doctors, and got it in spades.

Read and weep: Trump’s reported nominees for Cabinet posts and other offices

November 11, 2016 • 10:00 am

We all knew that when Trump was elected he was going to fill the executive branch and the courts with extremists, incompetents, and ideologues. That’s pretty much a given unless the Donald undergoes some miraculous personality transformation. Now, according to BuzzFeed, his transition team has aseembled a list of potential nominees for Cabinet posts. It does nothing to calm my fears.

Note that this is tentative; as BuzzFeed notes:

The list of 41 names, obtained by BuzzFeed News, covers 13 departments, the attorney general, Office of Management and Budget, White House chief of staff, and White House counsel.

A source familiar with the list stressed it was not final, and it is unclear whether transition officials have narrowed it down or added more potential candidates for consideration by Trump.

Still, have a look at it. The most egregious is Ben Carson being vetted for Secretary of Education or Health and Human Services; this is a man who is a full-bore Biblical creationist. Chris Christie is entangled with criminal conspiracies, and as for Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin (seriously, Secretary of the Interior? Shades of James G. Watt!), I have no words.

As I said, the real cabinet may be very different, but I think its ideological slant won’t be too far off from this.

We’re in for a rough four years. Here’s the list from BuzzFeed:

List of Potential Trump Cabinet Nominees:

Attorney General:

Gov. Chris Christie
Attorney General Pam Bondi
Sen. Jeff Sessions
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani

Secretary of Commerce:

Christie
Former Nucor CEO Dan DiMicco
Businessman Lew Eisenberg
Former Gov. Mike Huckabee
Sen. David Perdue
Former Sen. Jim Talent

Agriculture Secretary:

Gov. Sam Brownback
National Council of Farmer Cooperatives CEO Chuck Conner
Gov. Dave Heineman
Texas Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller
Former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue

Secretary of Education:

Ben Carson
Hoover Institution fellow William Evers

Secretary of Energy:

Venture Capitalist Robert Grady
Businessman Harold Hamm

Secretary of Health and Human Services:

Former New Jersey state Sen. Rich Bagger
Ben Carson
Newt Gingrich
Gov. Rick Scott

Secretary of Homeland Security:

Christie
Sheriff David Clarke

Secretary of the Interior:

Gov. Jan Brewer
Gov. Mary Fallin
Grady
Hamm
Oil Executive Forrest Lucas
Rep. Cynthia Lummis
Former Gov. Sarah Palin

Secretary of Defense:

Former Gen. Mike Flynn
Stephen Hadley
Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr.
Sessions
Former Sen. Jim Talent

Secretary of State:

John Bolton
Sen. Bob Corker
Gingrich

Treasury Secretary:

Rep. Jeb Hensarling
Businessman Carl Icahn
Banker Steven Mnuchin

Chief of Staff:

Reince Priebus

Director of Office of Management and Budget:

Sessions

Secretary of Labor:

EEOC Commissioner Victoria Lipnic

Veterans Affairs:

Rep. Jeff Miller

White House Counsel:

Donald McGahn

To read more about the awful Trump Cabinet that may be in store for us, read New York Magazine’s speculations, though they devalue their article by using Millennial lingo and referring to men by their genitals: “The Trump Cabinet is Shaping Up to be a Total Sausagefest.” (Imagine what people would say if I published a post saying “The Huffington Post List of Editors is Shaping Up to be a Total [insert your favorite term for female genitalia here]Fest!) After all, the vast majority of its editors are women.

Scientific American has already reported that Trump chose a climate-change skeptic, Myron Ebell, to head his EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) team:

Ebell is a well-known and polarizing figure in the energy and environment realm. His participation in the EPA transition signals that the Trump team is looking to drastically reshape the climate policies the agency has pursued under the Obama administration. Ebell’s role is likely to infuriate environmentalists and Democrats but buoy critics of Obama’s climate rules.

Ebell, who was dubbed an “elegant nerd” and a “policy wonk” by Vanity Fair, is known for his prolific writings that question what he calls climate change “alarmism.” He appears frequently in the media and before Congress. He’s also chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a group of nonprofits that “question global warming alarmism and oppose energy-rationing policies.”

Any tears left? The Daily Kos reports that “The architect of the most racist law in American history has been named to Trump’s team.” The man is Kansas’s Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, and the law is this:

Why should this terrify you? Because Donald Trump has just named one of the most racist politicians in all of America to his transition team. Kris Kobach was the architect of the most racist law in modern American history. SB 1070 passed in Arizona in 2010. What did it mean? If you have brown skin or an accent, police had a right to stop you, detain you and demand you prove your citizenship.

Arizona’s S.B. 1070 compels police to ask for papers from anyone they have a reasonable suspicion of being without status. Under this law any person of color, or anyone with a foreign accent, can be required to prove their status and be jailed—regardless of whether they are a citizen or an immigrant—until they can do so. The Supreme Court indicated that prolonged detention would be impermissible, but people’s rights will likely be violated before that limitation can be enforced.

By targeting certain groups of people living within the state, the Arizona law amounts to an ethnically divisive and deeply hostile social policy. It raises the specter of states treating people differently based solely on their appearance rather than on their actions. Every person in Arizona and states that pass S.B. 1070-like legislation will be required to carry proof of their legal status at all times or face the possibility of being detained. In practice it will be people of color that bear the brunt of these policies.

It was nicknamed the “Papers Please” law and thanks to Kris Kobach and the right-wing ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), two dozen copycat bills quickly spread to other conservative states. Can you imagine walking down the street and police having the power to stop you and your children and throw you in jail on the suspicion alone that maybe you don’t belong? Because you have brown skin or an accent? Terrifying, right?

Kobach has also spoken before white nationalist and anti-immigration groups. Welcome to Götterdämmerung.

Readers’ wildlife photograph

November 11, 2016 • 8:15 am

We have only two photos today, but they’re both lovely.

The first is a picture of one of my favorite bird species, the sexually dimorphic wood duck (Aix sponsa)—a striking instantiation of sexual selection: the coevolution of male traits with female preferences for those traits.

One wonders, as in all such cases, what features of that gaudy male gave him a reproductive advantage over other males—and why. Was it a marker of his better genetic endowment {the “good genes” model), a fortuitous pattern that appealed to pre-existing female biases, or some other reason? While the mechanism of sexual selection is well understood, the reason why some features appeal to female preference—and thus enhance both the male and female’s reproductive output—is poorly understood. In only a handful of cases do we know what advantage accrues to a female who chooses certain male traits.

This photo was taken by reader Nicole Reggia at Valley Green, Wissahickon Park, Pennsylvania.

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And I’ve stolen this (with permission) from naturalist/biologist Piotr Naskrecki’s Facebook page, which showed this ethereal photo along with the caption below:

The early downpours in Gorongosa National Parkhave created a massive network of ephemeral ponds. They are now teaming with life and freshwater crabs (Potamonautes obesus) are everywhere.

Yes, it’s a photo, not a drawing:

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Leonard Cohen dies at 82

November 11, 2016 • 7:15 am

Truth be told, I was never a big fan of Canadian poet and musician Leonard Cohen. Nor did I dislike him—I was pretty much indifferent. His music simply didn’t turn me on, I didn’t care for his voice, and the only song I really enjoyed (and that to a limited extent) was “Suzanne”—but only the Judy Collins version.

That said, I recognize that many readers here (and many of my friends) were huge fans of Cohen, and that he was enormously influential as a musician. So it’s with sadness I report, as noted on his Facebook page only an hour before I’m writing this, Cohen has died at age 82:

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His last album was released only three weeks ago, and he was touring (largely to recoup money taken by an embezzling manager) into his late seventies.  There will be more obituaries as the new day dawns in Canada and America, but for now there’s just the BBC and Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone has this poignant ending to his hastily-written obituary:

When the Grand Tour ended in December 2013, Cohen largely vanished from the public eye. In October 2016, he released You Want It Darker, produced by his son Adam. Severe back issues made it difficult for Cohen to leave his home, so Adam placed a microphone on his dining room table and recorded him on a laptop. The album was met with rave reviews, though a New Yorker article timed to its release revealed that he was in very poor health. “I am ready to die,” he said. “I hope it’s not too uncomfortable. That’s about it for me.”

And so it was, to the sadness of his many fans. Here’s perhaps his most famous song, “Hallelujah,” and a photo of an aging Cohen with my favorite mammal:

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Leonard Cohen at home in Los Angeles in September, 2016. Photograph by Graeme Mitchell for The New Yorker 

Do read David Remnick’s New Yorker profile of Cohen published only a month ago.

 

Friday: Hili dialogue

November 11, 2016 • 6:30 am

你好! It’s Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) back at the helm, though perhaps temporarily. Thanks to Grania for her dedicated service over the past several weeks. It’s Friday, November 11 (already evening in Hong Kong when you read this), which means it’s the day that World War I came to an end. That’s celebrated as Armistice Day in various places like New Zealand, Remembrance Day in the UK, Veterans Day in the US, and, in Poland, Independence Day, marking the resumption of Poland’s sovereignty in 1918. As you’ll see below, Hili has a few words on the holiday.

By the way, several people on this trip have asked me “What’s all this with the Hili posts?”, not knowing the backstory. The backstory is this: Malgorzata and Andrzej had long published dialogues with their former cat, Pia, on their former website. When Pia died, they soon got another kitten, Hili, and resumed the dialogues. When I became friends with them, I asked if I, too, could publish the dialogues from their new website, Listy, with Malgorazata translating them into English. The rest is history. But you should know the proper pronunciation of the Princess’s name. It is HEE-LEE, with long “e”s, not Hill-ee or Hill-uh, as some people have said it. And her names means “she’s mine” in Hebrew.

On this day in 1675, Leibniz first demonstrated the use of integral calculus to find the area under a given curve, and, in 2004, Yasser Arafat died. Notables born on this day include George S. Patton (1885) and Kurt Vonnegut (1922). those who died on this day include Nat Turner (1831) and Jerome Kern (1945).

Sad news: Leonard Cohen died yesterday at 82, and I’ll put up an obituary shortly. Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, the animals celebrate the holiday:

Hili: It’s Independence Day, Cyrus.
Cyrus: I know, but does it have to be independence from reason?
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In Polish:
Hili: Jest dzień niepodległości, Cyrusie.
Cyrus: Ja wiem, ale czy musi to być niepodległość od rozumu?

Some lagniappe. First, “Cathulu,” sent by reader jsp:

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How to draw a deer, from Facebook. This is a Cartoon of Truth:

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And a bit of readers’ wildlife from Lee Beringsmith, with an explanation:

Just in case you want a break from the normal wildlife photos thought you might enjoy a shot I took a few days ago on our ranch. Here is a one day old baby llama (cria) meeting a Texas Longhorn. Thought it was pretty touching photo if you love livestock.

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Hong Kong: Lunch

November 10, 2016 • 12:45 pm

I have tons of food pictures to come, but no time to post them (I’m doing my Literary Festival event tonight). These include awesome dim sum breakfasts and banquet meals in both mainland China and Hong Kong. As a teaser, here’s a simple lunch I had today.

Hong Kong is full of business and retail folk, and I swear that, as in mainland China, none of them bring a cold lunch to work. They all seem to go out for a hot lunch during the work week, crowding into the small but delightful noodle and rice joints in the business district. I picked one at random today, hankering for some barbecued pork. You can apparently choose the best places by the lines outside, so I made a random selection:

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When you reach the head of the line, you tell them how many in your party (1), and they put you in any open space. This looked good: packed to the gills with people wolfing down lunches of noodles and rice with meat and veg:

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A simple but eminently satisfying lunch of rice, barbecued pork, and Chinese broccoli:

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And parked right outside, a sign of Hong Kong’s wealth: a fire-engine red Ferrari:

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