The short unhappy honeymoon of Liz Truss

Whenever a new person becomes leader of a democracy, especially one who replaces a highly unpopular one, they are usually given a grace period of 100 days or six months or so before they start getting seriously criticized, a period often referred to as a honeymoon. This is so that they can assemble their team and formulate policies that will implement whatever they promised to do.

In the case of Liz Truss, who was elected by Conservative party members in September to replace the unpopular Boris Johnson as prime minister after weeks of turbulence, she has managed within the space of less than one month after taking office to create serious turmoil within the country, so much so that even members of her own party are calling for her to either quit or fire her Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng or reverse the policies that he had revealed to parliament in a so-called ‘mini-budget’ that gave large tax cuts to the rich, reportedly the biggest tax cuts in 50 years, without any serious thought being given to how the resulting revenue shortfall would be made up. This article describes in detail how it all went down.
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Unnecessary reporting

Surely everyone should know by know that hurricanes involve very strong winds, heavy rainfall, flooding, and flying debris. And yet, each new hurricane has news channels sending some hapless weather reporter out into the storm to show them getting buffeted by the forces of nature. This is serious malpractice since the reporter could very easily get hurt or killed by getting hit with some flying object, as can be seen in this footage.

Fortunately this reporter was not hurt but I suggest that they preserve this clip and show it every time there is a hurricane to remind people how bad it can be, without risking anew the life of a reporter.

Film review: The Big Sleep (1946, 1978)

I recently watched this 1946 film directed by Howard Hawks. It had long been on my list of must-see films because it is considered a classic of the film noir genre and I finally found a DVD of it at my library. Based on a novel by Raymond Chandler, it features Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the former as a private detective Philip Marlowe hired by an elderly millionaire with two willful and beautiful daughters, the elder of whom is played by Bacall, who has a wild, drug using, promiscuous younger sister who is being blackmailed with photographs taken of her in compromising positions.

As Marlowe’s investigation proceeds, people start getting killed left and right. But unlike most detective stories, where everything is neatly tied up at the end and there is a single killer (or maybe two killers), this one defies any such clean denouement. I counted seven killings, with six each committed by a different person and the seventh unaccounted for. The Bacall character also keeps popping up everywhere, even in places where should not be, without any explanation as to why she is there and what she is doing.
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The story of atmospheric CO2

In this animation, they show how the arrival of coal and petroleum-based industrialization around the beginning of the 19th century led to a very rapid rise in atmospheric CO2 levels from a level of about 280 ppm (parts per million), which had been stable for millions of years, to about 412 ppm.

We have to go back about 2.5 million years to find a time when the level was as high as the current value and at that time there were no ice caps and glaciers, and consequently ocean levels were 55 ft higher than they are now. That should give us some idea of how dangerous it would be if we do not do something soon to combat global warming.

Dangerous times in Brazil

Brazil holds its elections on Sunday and the most significant position is that for the presidency that pits the incumbent right wing extremist Jair Bolsonaro against leftist former president Inacio Lula Da Silva. Bolsonaro is very authoritarian and is currently behind in the polls but has said, like Trump, that he can only lose if there is cheating and that he will not leave office quietly. His supporters are saying that they will not accept any other result than a Bolsonaro victory. If no candidate gets an absolute majority on Sunday, there will be a run-off election on October 30th.


Bolsonaro is in many ways like Trump but while I wrote that it was always unlikely that the US military would go along with any attempted coup by Trump after he lost, that is not the case in Brazil. Bolsonaro is a former officer and has maintained his ties to the military and has, like Trump, given ex-military people important positions in government. Brazil had a US-backed military coup in 1964 and the military stayed in power until 1985. This history of military rule means that the concept of a military takeover is not unthinkable. Bolsonaro during his presidency also greatly relaxed gun ownership laws and that has led to a very large number of people now owning weapons. He also, like Trump, has a hard core of fanatical supporters who believe his outlandish claims, and might be perfectly willing to unleash violence if Bolsonaro urges them on, like Trump’s followers on January 6th.
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Choosing films to watch

This comic strip will strike a chord with many readers who have spent a long time idly skimming through the streaming options trying to find something to watch. It can be difficult even if one is alone and there are no competing views.

(Pearls Before Swine)

I have pretty much given up on searching through the catalog as a way of finding films. It is very rarely that I stumble across anything that I think is worthwhile to spend a couple of hours on. When I do find something, it is a title that I had heard about before and made a mental note of as possibly interesting and then forgotten about it. What I do now is maintain a list of films that I would like to see based on reviews or recommendations, and then wait until they become available in some format.
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Covid superdodgers

About 95 million people (close to 25% of the US population) have got Covid so far. That is the official number. The actual number, if one includes unreported and undiagnosed cases, will be higher though how much higher is unknown. I think all of us have either had covid or know several people who did, so ubiquitous has it become.

I have not had it so far and have put it down to luck, though it is true that I am cautious and try to avoid situations where the risk of contagion is high. I do know people who have not got it even though close family members have got it on several different occasions. Have they also just been lucky? Or is there something else that might be enabling them to avoid getting infected?
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On objectivity in art criticism

George Bernard Shaw is best known as a playwright but he was also, especially early in his career, a critic of plays and operas that he wrote for newspapers and periodicals. He tended to favor the avant garde. As a theater critic, he did not think much of Shakespeare and was an early advocate of the playwright Hendrik Ibsen, at a time when Ibsen’s work was not fully appreciated in the UK. As a music critic (where he wrote under the pseudonym Corno Di Bassetto), he was an early advocate of Wagner

His reviews were fun to read and as a boy in Sri Lanka I enjoyed reading them even though they had been written long before I was born and he was writing about plays and operas that I knew nothing about, had never seen, and likely would never see. They would often make me laugh out loud. That is a sign of a good writer.
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Political developments in the UK and Italy

I did not know much about Liz Truss who was elected as the new leader of the UK Conservative party, replacing Boris Johnson and thus becoming the prime minister. Jonathan Pie says that she is the most right-wing ideologue to occupy the premiership, even more so than Margaret Thatcher, and that is saying something. And she has started off by doing what right-wingers love to do, and that is give a massive tax cut for the wealthy.

Pie thinks that the right-wingers are going for broke, trying to give away as much as they can to their rich friends as long as they remain in power.
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