Countries with cursed politics

I had to stop following Adam Creighton on Twitter because he is just too intensely annoying.  Of course, he may also just be an attention seeking troll much of the time - something we all like to see in allegedly serious economic/political commentators for allegedly important papers [sarc] - or is it that we can fairly imagine Adam if he had lived in the 1930's would have been telling us that Hitler and Mussolini should be given a fair chance, even though they're a little Right of centre?:

Mind you, as explained in this article in The Conversation, strongly Right wing politics in Italy have not exactly ever disappeared, and this woman has the problem of trying to work in a coalition of fellow Right wingers which may not be sustainable.  I didn't even realise this until now:

Enter Berlusconi. He was pushed to resign in 2011 during the sovereign debt crisis in favour of technocrat Mario Monti and was convicted on a number of charges related to prostitution and tax fraud.

He completed community service and was banned from Parliament, but this ban was lifted by a judge in 2018. 

He may be poised to be the kingmaker of the coalition. Running as a more responsible, pro-EU statesman and centrist than his partners, he could have a large say in the direction of governance and policy if the election results are tight, and could threaten to remove his support at a moment’s notice.

Given that there has been relatively recent interest in the USA politics as to the moderating political effects of voting systems other than First Past the Post, I wondered if this had something to do with Italy's terrible politics.  I'm not the only one:

But, the situation is very complicated there.  As AP notes:

FEWER LAWMAKERS

Many lawmakers won’t be reelected — regardless of their legislative record — simply due to math. Since the last election, a reform has been passed aimed at streamlining Parliament and make its operation less costly to taxpayers. In the upper chamber, the number of senators drops from 315 to 200, while the lower Chamber of Deputies will number 400 instead of 630.

PINBALL POLITICS

Just about everyone agrees Italy’s electoral law is complicated, including lawmakers who created it. Of the total seats, 36% are determined by a first-past-the post system — whoever gets the most votes for a particular district wins. The remaining 64% of the seats get divvied up proportionally, based on candidate lists determined by parties and their alliances.

Lawmakers have likened the proportional part of the electoral system to a game of pinball, particularly in the Chamber of Deputies. Under the “pinball effect,” a candidate who, say, came in first in a specific district could see another candidate who finished second elsewhere suddenly shifted to her or his district, knocking the first-place candidate out of a seat.

Confused? So are many voters. Except for in the first-past-the-post contests, many Italians are essentially voting for alliances and parties, not candidates, and don’t have a direct say in determining their specific representative in the legislature.

What an awful system!  

The other countries that I keep thinking about their cursed politics are the United Kingdom and Malaysia.   I mean, in the UK, FFP seems largely to blame, but how unlucky was the entire country to have such a strange and dubious character as Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Labour while Brexit was being debated.   (He's now an ineffective "having it both ways" weirdo on Ukraine too, I see.)  

As for Malaysia - one day I will get around to trying to understand why its politics is so cursed, too, but not today...

 

Time for some Thiel rubbishing

He gave an interview much noticed on Twitter:

Singaporean Buddhism (Part 1)

So, I went back to the (not very old, but already pretty famous) Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple in Singapore this last trip, and this time went upstairs to the museum and rooftop section (as well as the floor that contains the actual Buddha's tooth.   Allegedly.)

The 3rd floor is a museum full of old and new Buddhist artworks, including a row of somewhat unnervingly lit wax models of significant past Buddhist leaders from Singapore and nearby areas.  Like this guy:

 Oh, I just noticed the reflections in that shot. Sorry.  Anyway, I imagined it being a creepy place in which to be accidentally locked in at night.  Not that wax models of deceased monks should be scary, but the lighting is spooky...

A lot of the artwork is impressive (some pieces very old), although many are modern and some seems a little peculiar:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyhow, the main temple hall room downstairs, which is very pretty and looks like this:

OK, maybe I took a better pic last time:

I now know features this:

I had posted about Maitreya once before, but guess I didn't realise some temples were devoted to him?   That's the funny thing about Buddhism for the casual Western tourist - it's routinely not at all obvious what version of Buddha, or bodhisattva, which a statue represents, or to which a temple is devoted.  Got to do your research.

One other thing I only recently learnt about Buddhism (or parts of it) was the (shall we say, "fanciful") belief that cremated holy people left behind crystal like beads amongst their cremated remains that were taken as a type of relic that shows their sanctity.  There are many examples shown in the museum section of this temple, and I thought I took a photo, but maybe out of politeness in not wanting to look too sceptical, I didn't.  Anyway, in the very upmarket Buddhist magazine Tricycle, there's a good article about this belief, which comes out of both Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, apparently, and it ends on this note:

There was no doubt that those who had witnessed Geshe Lama Konchog’s cremation believed the relics to be genuine; to them they were precious objects, weighty with meaning. I have decided that the Buddhist world, like the Christian, is divided into two camps: the Protestants, who regard relic worship as superstitious, silly, unintelligent, and to be put firmly into the basket of “idolatrous practice” and avoided at all costs, and the Catholics, for whom the numinous and the mystical are an essential part of their practice. Many thousands of people from around the world, including the United States, have visited relic exhibitions and have testified to finding the experience spiritually uplifting. For them, these small shining sharira encapsulate the hope that transformation of the very physical body is possible–as well as the immaterial mind. Venerating a holy object, be it an image or a relic, is seen by many as an invaluable part of spiritual practice, bestowing countless blessings, opening the heart, and lessening one’s pride.

And I suppose I should mention the Buddha Tooth relic itself, which is up on the 4th floor, behind a glass wall and sitting in a display stupa of around 320kg(!) of gold, and no photos are allowed.   You are not super close, but can make it out (I think! - see further comment below), and like other Buddha's tooth relics I had seen on the internet, it didn't look at all human to me.  It seems too big (although it would seem that the believers' answer to this can be that they have been scientifically shown that these tooth relics continue to grow!).  I thought it looked more like a horse tooth.  And now I read, in the same Tricycle article extracted above, this:

Buddhist relics, like their Christian counterparts, have their own history of fraud.

Skeptics point to Dr. Alois Anton Fuhrer, the German archaeologist who found the Buddha’s birthplace at Lumbini. In 1895, Dr. Fuhrer was caught selling horse teeth as relics to Burmese monks. Another tooth purporting to come from the Buddha himself was recently examined by the Natural History Museum in London and found to belong to a pig. I heard tell of sharira that were no more than mites of dust collected on religious pictures, and small gems thrown into the ashes of funeral pyres by conniving clergy to fool the faithful. There is even a story of a temple parrot that left sharira—he’d apparently imbibed the Buddha’s teachings!

 Oh, and here's a sceptical article from Straits Times in 2007:

Mr Yap Kok Feng, a paralegal executive, wrote to Lianhe Zaobao recently claiming that the relic looks nothing like a human tooth.

When contacted, he said that he had shown a picture of it to dentists who believe it to be a herbivore's.

One of them, Dr Pamela Craig, a senior lecturer at the School of Dental Science at the University of Melbourne, told The Sunday Times she had examined photographs and compared the tooth with teeth from various animal skulls in her comparative dental anatomy department.

'There's absolutely no possibility that it is a human tooth,' said Dr Craig, who specialises in human and animal oral anatomy.

'I'm almost certain that it belongs to a member of the Bos species, probably a cow or a water buffalo.'

Dr Craig said human teeth should be rounded with a short crown and a comparatively longer root, but the picture clearly shows a long crown and a shorter root.

'In this case, looking at a photo is clear enough because it's so obvious that it's not a human tooth. It's like comparing a pear and an apple.'

The Sunday Times also showed a picture of the tooth to four other dentists, including two forensic dental experts. All said the tooth could not have come from a human.

'This is an animal 'cheek tooth', that is, a molar at the back of the mouth,' said Professor David K. Whittaker, a forensic dental specialist at Cardiff University in Britain.

And I'm not sure about this last bit about when it can be seen:  I'm pretty sure I could see it:

The tooth relic was supposed to have been discovered by a Myanmar monk, the late Venerable Cakkapala of Bandula Monastery, in 1980 while restoring a collapsed stupa at Bagan Hill in Mrauk-U, Myanmar.

He gave the relic to Venerable Shi Fazhao, the abbot of both the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Golden Pagoda Buddhist Temple in Tampines in 2002.

The public can see the tooth only twice a year - on Vesak Day and the first day of Chinese New Year.

So, there you go.  Lots of member of the public donated a lot of money and gold to build a suitable  resting place for a relic that doesn't even look like what it is meant to be?    Not sure that I would be impressed.

As with the Catholic approach to things like the Shroud of Turin, you can always fall back on the old "does it really matter if a venerated object is genuine or not, as long as it helps the spirituality of the believer" defence.  That Tricycle article ends on that note:

At the end of my search into the meaning of Buddhist relics, I was reminded of an old Tibetan tale. A devout old woman asked her trader son if he would bring her back a tooth from the Buddha when he traveled to India. The son forgot all about his mission until his return home, when in desperation to please his mother he picked up a tooth from a dead dog he found rotting by the wayside. The mother’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude and wonder when he presented it to her, and she promptly put it on her small altar and everyday made obeisance to it. In time the tooth began to emit a strange, beautiful light. Even a dog’s tooth, if revered enough, will glow. 

Anyway, up on the roof of the Temple, they continue the modern Singaporean tradition of having a well maintained entire garden up there, and a prayer wheel in a pagoda:

 

It's lush and peaceful, and although there were couple of young women taking what looked like "influencer" style photos of one of them, we were pretty much alone in the quiet, walking above the floor with a 320 kg gold stupa worth (grabs my calculator and checks today's price) about $26 million. Someone should do a heist movie about it.  

It's well worth visiting.

Catholic conservatives still making excuses for their culture war hero, Putin

Ha!   I've been checking out the post-Catallaxy Catallaxy blogs, the two most "successful" of which are both run by conservative/reactionary Catholics Dover Beach and Currency Lad.   Here's the latest from the latter, after watching Jordan Peterson claiming last night on Piers Morgan's unwatched show that it's ridiculous to suggest Putin could lose the war:

This is worth watching for Peterson’s ‘don’t interrupt me again’ death stare alone. Morgan couldn’t resist less than 20 seconds in. As one of the more thuggish propagandists of mandates and masks (to say nothing of Zelenskyite malarkey about Ukrainian ‘democracy’), the increasingly unwatched Morgan is one to talk about lies and “terrifying his people.” My reading of Joe Biden is that he is an amoral weirdo and far more dangerous to the world than the Russian. 

What a world!   Where "conservative" reactionary Catholics have become so brainwashed in the culture wars, they prefer to support the authoritarian who murders and imprisons his opponents, and mutters about using nuclear weapons in an expansionary territorial war, because he's cosy with the Russian Orthodox and is down on the gays!

Dover Beach is no better - his comments have continually shown a "rah rah Russia" attitude to this war, and like Peterson, he's still holding out hope that the latest Putin move will mean a rapid Russian victory.

The other amusing thing about the Dover Beach blog is how clear it is how much most of the commentators really dislike each other.   The open threads are just never ending wars between characters who live online,  and gradually, the number of participants who go completely nuts increases over the years.  

Currently, it's "Custard" is showing how he has gone completely down the Qanon-ish rabbit hole, and while he is not exactly getting any support, the old timers there simply do not appreciate something I have tried to tell them many, many times:   they are in fact all major "conspiracy theory" believers in their complete denial of climate change - and now, in their "Trump probably really won the elections" belief too.   Once you swallow one or two clear conspiracy theories, really, what is stop you going whole hog?  They feel alone and abandoned in the Australian political landscape* because they are conspiracy theorists who refuse to face up to facts.   Instead, they would prefer to just endless stew in their certainty that they are right and have a true "insider" status.   The internet, Murdoch family and American Republicans are largely to blame, of course, for this epistemic crisis.  

 

* well, save for Pauline Hanson, who actually does have views most of them would support, but I suspect it might be that they consider themselves too smart to identify with someone who appears bogan-ish and less educated than them, they would find it embarrassing to admit she is one of them.

So that's where the Queen went...

Maybe these videos turned up on a lot of people's Youtube recommendations, but it was interesting last week that a British guy who edits a history magazine and runs a Youtube channel had a huge number of hits for his quickly produced video explaining what the Royal crypt under the chapel at Windsor Castle looks like.  (I would like to know more about the mechanism by which the coffin disappears into the floor - like who designed it, and when.)   It's well worth watching anyway, and I didn't know the story about the re-discovery of Henry VIII's coffin - I'm rather surprised they lost track of it:

 

His follow up video about the design of royal coffins was good too:

 

Yet more Singapore snaps

This holiday was more a case of looking around some local areas.  Tanjong Pagar area has some good hotels, and is close to many mid range cafes, but it also has a quite "local" feel, as it has a substantial amount of government built HDB flats; and directly across the road from Amara Hotel, some quite "local" shopping.  (Including a laudromat that does a $5 wash, and about another $5 to dry.  Better than returning home with a bag full of dirty clothes.)  

Here's the local mid Autumn festival party, with lots of families in a park in front of the MRT station:

 

Don't expect much from the local smallish hawker centre, though - it's upstairs and very basic - but there are lots of other options all around it. 

In particular, by happy coincidence, the 100AM shopping centre which actually adjoins the Amara has, since our last visit, turned into pretty much a "little Japan" for Singapore, with an extensive number of Japanese cafes and restaurants, and cheap goods outlets (Don Don Donki) which also do fresh food.   The cost was reasonable, too.  Look, nice looking chicken teriyaki bento boxes for $7.90 (reduced in the evening to $6.32).  

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, my entire impression this trip was that food and drink in Singapore seemed cheaper than last time.   This (very large) meal of stingray, squid, seafood fried rice and some asian veg cost (from memory) $54, with two large bottles of Tiger beer for $7 each.  (From a shop on the footpath, pretty much):

A pint of Tiger at the Lau Pa Sat hawker centre - even apart from the satay, it's one of the best in Singapore:

 

was $9 - very comparable to Australian prices.  There was craft beer for $11, although I didn't try it, but again, that price is fine.  (Wine is still hideously expensive, so don't expect to drink it while there.)   

So yeah, just as in Japan, there are plenty of cheap to moderate priced eating options, and for a country that has an expensive reputation, you can do very well for very modest prices as long as you don't want to eat at high end places.   

 

 

 

 

So, apart from that, we went to Katong area to walk around and look at the famous street of pretty, Peranakan style houses:

These are private homes, and literally is only one short street full of these ultra coloured ones, but the whole area has a nice, somewhat upmarket, relaxed local vibe, and I would have no problem staying there for a night or two:

 

(It has an extraordinary number of pet and pet grooming shops - owning nice dogs is definitely a status thing now in Singapore):

 How's this for a fancy bed, btw:

And how's this for a fancy looking small bar:

Actually, that's back near Chinatown/Tanjong Pagar, where the charming streets look like this:

and this:

And if you keep wondering around, you end up at the Buddha's Tooth Temple, which deserves a post of its own...

A few random things about Singapore

*  Anyone who has been to Japan knows that, despite it being pretty cold in much of it during winter, the country as a whole is mad for isotonic (sports) drinks.  You can barely walk 25 m in any city or town without coming across a vending machine with Pocari Sweat, or Aquarius (or various other brands.)    Yet it occurred to me in Singapore this trip that, despite it being probably the most sweat inducing major city in the world, they don't have a similar obsession with sports drinks, despite my feeling an actual need for them.   There is one brand that is common - 

 and it's not bad.  (Made in Malaysia.  I see you can buy it pretty cheaply here too.)

Anyway, my point is - if ever there is a country where you should consider putting an isotonic drink in your day backpack, instead of mere water, this is it.

* Again, in contrast to Japan, you are not even meant to take a sip of a drink (or, of course, any form of food) while on a subway (MRT) platform, or while in the train itself.   (I know they aren't subways, but Shinkansen or other long distance trains in Japan can feature vending machines for beer.)   Anyway, the end result in Singapore is subway stations that are absolutely spotless.  I just find it hard to believe there could be any cleaner ones anywhere in the world.  But if you are thirsty, better drink your 100 Plus before you enter the subway station.

*  Also speaking of the MRT, you now don't even have to buy a ticket or card, as long as you have a Visa card with a chip in it.  Just use that to tap on and off, and it works fine.  (I also saw people using their phone too, presumably with NFC.)   The charge turned up on our Australian bank account in very short order - within an hour or two I think.   Systems in Singapore just work with great efficiency.  Having to wait more than 4 or 5 minutes for the next MRT train on a main line is a rarity.

And it's extremely cheap to use compared to Brisbane fees in particular.   But the best deal, as a tourist, is still to just buy a Tourist pass card for $20 for 3 days unlimited travel on the MRT and bus network.   (Plus a $10 refundable deposit.)   You can renew it for a further 3 days too, and they don't even bother asking to see a passport anymore to issue this.    This is just extraordinary good value and very convenient.  The only odd feature about is that, while you can buy it at many of the MRT stations, some have peculiar hours that their ticket office is open.   There is no uniformity there, and it pays to check on line as what time the local office will be open.

*  Tourist sim cards are also cheap and convenient too.  $12 for a week with 100 GB of data, the M1 company one can be bought from 7 Eleven.   Easy to register and great value. 

* Mask compliance!   Just before this trip, Singapore relaxed its mask wearing rules, so that they are now only required on public transport, and waiting places for public transport.   I'm not sure what other airlines are doing now, too, but Scoot certainly required masks be worn the entire flight.   

And there was absolutely 100% mask wearing compliance on buses, the MRT and Scoot.   On the street, and in shops, I would guess that the slim majority were now unmasked, but there were a substantial number of people who just have gotten so used to it, they keep masks on everywhere.  

I was stopped getting on board a bus once because I had forgotten to put the mask in my shirt pocket onto my face - and fair enough.   But as a person who thought that Western Right wing endless whinging about whether masks were really effective or not, and elaborate hand wringing about the effects on kids in school, or oxygen levels in the blood, or whatever other dubious reason people could come up with for complaining about what an imposition on liberty it was, I was happy to be in an entire nation state in which they just stoically get on with following rules intended for the common good without complaint.

I would be happy to live in a society like that...  

In further praise of Singapore (Part 1)

As you well may know, I really enjoy visiting Singapore.  In fact, I'm threatening my family with running away to join the Buddhist College of Singapore (the temple complex of which I actually visited) if that's the only way the country would let me live there.  

Oh dear, I see I've actually missed the cut off age by 27 years, and I'm not a devout monk of one year's standing.   But what a bargain this is - a four year degree course for free, by the sounds:

All meals, accommodation and daily necessities will be provided by the college. Students will also receive a monthly allowance during their period of study at BCS.

Oh well, back to reality.

The recent week in Singapore was my first post COVID travel overseas since COVID reared its ugly head, and was in fact pretty much like a Part 2 of the last overseas trip I made with the family in December 2018(!).   This time, it was just with my wife, but the similarities were high:

a.    very cheap flight on the cut price, but pretty reliable, Singapore based airline Scoot out of the Gold Coast (I strongly recommend keeping track of their sales for all destinations in Asia);

b.    flew again on their bendy winged 787 Dreamliner (a comfortable enough aircraft, even though with Scoot there is no such thing as an inflight entertainment centre.  It's a case of load up enough material on your fully charged phone or tablet and entertain yourself for 7 to 8 hours.)

c.   even stayed at the same hotel, Amara Singapore near the Tanjong Pagar MRT station on the edge of Chinatown.   The hotel needed a bit of renovation since we last stayed there:  mould in bathrooms is the perpetual enemy of every hotel in the country, I'm sure, and it did feel a bit understaffed as I think all hospitality businesses in the world currently are.   But despite this, I found it still a comfortable hotel in an excellent location.  (They were also completely understanding when on the second day I asked for a top sheet for the bed, instead of just relying on the extremely annoying but now ubiquitous hotel habit of expecting guests to sleep directly under a covered doona, making temperature regulation during sleep an "all or nothing" affair. I hate that this has become an industry standard, but travel infrequently enough that I always forget about this problem between holidays.  Anyway, as long as on request the hotel gives me a sheet to use, I'm happy.)

So, what did we do and see this time around?    Let a series of photos illustrate:

Of course, the place is just architecture heaven:

This precinct is opposite the Suntec shopping centre, and the impressiveness of that long, louvred roof thing is hard to capture in a photo. Trust me, it's huge in real life. 

 

 Another big awing thing, a short walk from our hotel:
 

This the public area outside Tanjong Pagar MRT station, where if turn around, it looks ridiculously green and luscious:

This is a planted footpath back near Suntec:

It's just the very definition of lush, in so many parts of the city.

Including on the tops (and in the middle) of skyscrapers.  It's a lovely, Green futuristic, trend:

That's a herb and fruit garden on the 51st floor of the new CapitaSpring building, where you get awesome views like this:

And from the middle part of the building, floors 20 to 17, another garden/recreation area like this:

 

Slightly oddly, I thought, while they put high barriers up on the 51st floor that would make jumping from there difficult, they seem to have no concerns at all about putting anything other than normal railings on this 20th floor area.  I know, it's not usual to have apartment buildings of that height with normal balconies, but having this larger, open area still just cordoned off with normal height rails seemed a bit risky to me.   Incidentally, both the roof garden and this area are open to the public from 8 to 10.30, then 2 to 6 pm.  In the middle of the day, it is supposed to be reserved for the workers in the building as a lunch break relaxation place, with charging stations built into the seats, and these amusingly named things:

 

  

 

 

 

 Which, it turned out, was just these birdcage-y sitting spots:

Anyhoo, this is the building from the ground, with the bent metal giving the impression of something large having recently escaped from within:

It's so impressive.  (And there is a cheapish, clean hawker centre on the ground floors too.)

Of course, it's the mix of the old and the new that makes it special, too.  One side of the street is Raffles (now fully opened, and with a heap of high end shops and courtyards you can walk around:

 

And this across the road:

I had photos of Marina Bay Sands, the most iconic building in the city state now, in my last holiday post, so I won't specifically repeat it.  But I did make a trip to Gardens by the Bay again at night to see the very family friendly mid Autumn festival light displays:

 

Young woman with spoilt looking doggie (an increasingly common sight in Singapore) here:

  This was 9.45pm on a Sunday night, and the place was busier than the photos might indicate:

It's just a ridiculously impressive public space.   Like this, the "satay street" at Lau Pa Sat hawker centre:

I've been spending too long on this post, so I must make a part 2 later...

 

The Return of the King

Not me, although I am back from holiday.  But while I was gone, we got a King again, one with unhealthy looking swollen fingers, a hatred of fountain pens, and a somewhat urgent need for a better PR agent (one who is brave enough to tell him that cameras and mics pick up every grimace and complaint.)  

I'm no great fan of the royal family, and ignore most of the news about them.  I do find the (largely Right wing media driven) hatred of Meghan Markle utterly ridiculous, though.   I mean, why do people bother paying attention to her at all?

The most interesting thing about the funeral arrangements to date is how everyone (well, nearly everyone) has resisted the urge to grab the imperial crown and (at least) put it on their own head for a second, before being tackled by 20 coppers.  (Some of those on guard around the coffin have looked rather old for the job, though, and might break a hip in the fracas.)   Alternatively, I would have liked to see a heavy duty drone zoom in on it with a hook while it was being paraded on the street, for it to be dropped off in a villain's lair nearby.  (Maybe an abandoned Underground station, of which there are several.  If it were a Batman movie, that's how it would have gone down.)

Anyway, on a slightly more serious note, my initial thoughts on the death of the Queen was that it felt symbolically like the true end of the 20th century.   I mean, while there are lots of world figures around who have done much of their work in the tail end of that century, including of course Joe Biden, Queen Elizabeth started her "career" so far back in the last century it really felt she was more truly embodied within that period than any other leader still hanging around. 

I haven't noticed anyone else saying this, but in the millions of words spilt on the topic, it might not be an original thought.   

Anyway, the funeral's later today.  I guess I'll watch some of it live, just in case something unexpected happens.