When catching the Shinkansen in Japan, you should always check the seat pocket in front of you for the rail shopping catalogue that's likely to be there. It's a bit reminiscent of the old Sharper Image catalogues from the US (younger readers may not even know about them, I guess); perhaps less techy, but with added Japanese idiosyncrasy:
Here are three products, for example:
For the 28 year old man who can't wait to get to 68, there's Silver Ash instant grey hair goop. The ladies love the older, distinguished Japanese Steve Martin look, apparently.
Here's one for a problem I sometimes find, especially if I have lost a couple of kilos on a diet and can't decide which notch my pants belt should now go to. Yes, that can make it tricky to keep your shirt tucked in neatly. What I never realised was that I could solve that with another belt, this one just for my shirt:
At current exchange rates, that comes in at about $75, though. Neatness comes at a price.
And what about that long held regret that you can't see inside your own ear hole? Well, do I have the probe for you:
She seems either surprised, amazed, or happy. Not entirely sure what my reaction would be...
I'm sure it's not just me. I'm sure that Andrew Bolt has become way, way less sensible as he has aged. Is this what happens when you become a multi-media right wing "star" and need to pump up the output to justify (what I assume is) a very substantial income?
These days, I find him positively offensive when it comes to his taunting dog-whistles about refugees and any crime they may be involved in. He takes one semi-valid point (that the media can be overly politically correct about protecting racial identity when it comes to talking about crimes committed by recent immigrants) but continually headlines posts with "Who let them in?" Why he doesn't just outright call for a renewed White Australia policy, I don't know.
This is lazy, bigoted commentary that is up there with the intellectual gravitas of Pauline Hanson. Is he saying that there are no deserving African or Islamic refugees? Is he suggesting that Immigration screening can plausibly include a foolproof method for predicting whether refugees (or their teenage children) will get involved in gang related, or other, crime? Does he forget Vietnamese involvement in drug crime in the 1980's that caused consternation at the time but is something that (as far as I know) has passed with increased societal integration?
Because he clearly can't credibly argue these points, he avoids the specifics. Just as he avoids the matter of the Iraq invasion being ultimately behind the current massive problem of Islamic refugee movement into Europe. As I have said before, surely someone like him should feel at least a bit sheepish and accept that his former positions have not had great outcomes and that the West is paying for it now?
I don't call for him or John Howard to recant and apologise on Iraq - given that I also thought at the time that the invasion was justifiable and might have had good outcomes. And we can never know what would have happened in an alternative history scenario. But I'm not going to do what Bolt does and act as if the Right is always right and look for someone else to blame. He now just follows the tropes of the nutty Fox News and other Right wing commentary in the US, where everything is Obama's fault.
He subsequently spends time on figures noting comparative figures of black on white and white on black crime - while not noting (not that I have seen) how Trump in the US had tweeted 8 months ago a completely wrong figure about white victim-hood that was out by a factor of at least 5. (And I have seen that figure repeated in a recent thread at Breitbart. Trump followers will never get that dangerously wrong figure out their heads.) Having said that, bizarrely, Trump's short response to the Dallas shootings was, compared to Bolt, full of restraint. And even some conservative commentators in America have been starting to note concern about American policing.
The best response to this panicky commentary of Bolt's type was by Ross Douthat's column "Are We Unravelling", in which he echoes Obama's point that despite the current problems, the current American situation is really no where near as bad in terms of social and political upheaval as it was in the 1960's. But this doesn't suit the "it's always the Left's fault" meme of Fox News, Breitbart and Andrew Bolt. So historical perspective matters nothing to them.
Clearly, Bolt has been unreliable and swayed by all the wrong people on many, many issues for a long time now: climate change, of course, where amateur backyard and eccentric scientists have always been more convincing to him than scientific professional bodies; his help in publicising the disgraceful 20 year old rumour campaign run by the
thoroughly discredited Michael Smith and Larry Pickering against Julia Gillard; the self pitying martyrdom (encouraged by the IPA and, I would guess, Murdoch's Australian minions for PR purposes) of his defence of s.18C action bought against him instead of just correcting errors about individuals and apologising; his endorsement of the gormless Tony Abbott and utter loathing of Turnbull; his acting as if ugly internet comments are solely the purview of the Left, while ignoring the blatant ugly misogyny and racist undercurrent in many Right wing commentary threads since Obama took office, such as at Breitbart, Fox and Catallaxy.
I have thought him foolish and annoying in the extreme in his advocacy on those issues, but his race and immigration commentary is now just so silly, and offensive, that it completely crosses the line of what I find acceptable (or forgiveable?) in political punditry.
He's become a caricature of sensible political and cultural analysis, thoroughly devoid of any common sense he once had.
No one should read anything into the fact he is on my blogroll - if he stays on it, perhaps I should just list him under a new category "Gone Stupid and Offensive"?
As an aside: I was a bit surprised to hear from someone with a bit of local knowledge that one part of Japan I'm somewhat familiar with (the North East Iwate prefecture) is doing better than it used to, due to some businesses relocating factories to the area which was formerly known as a relative poor part of Japan due to it having little industry. And it's true, the capital of the prefecture, Morioka, seemed more youthful and busier to me that it had when I first visited it 18 years ago. For a country with a demographic problem, the shopping centre seemed full of kids on a Sunday.
I think Clive James, with his clips of silly Japanese "challenge" game shows when he was at his height of TV popularity back in the 1980's and 90's, gave people a misleading impression of the country's supposedly "wild and crazy", if not cruel, sense of humour. (I am told those shows were more or less just a passing fad - so it would be a bit like the Japanese thinking they understood Australians by watching re-runs of "It's a Knockout".)
Having said that, it's OK to find amusement at some Japanese images which are, well, unusual from a Western perspective.
For example, I took from the Japan Times:
This sums up the odd juxtapositions in Japan so well - the formality of the traditionally dressed and classically pretty "Miss Sake" at one end (in Australia, I think we would only end up with a somewhat tattooed "Miss Beer" wearing ugg boots and tracky pants), and at the other end of the line, after the serious officials, a really silly looking mascot - despite the Japanese Sake Fair presumably not really needing any attempt at "kawaii" to attract attendees. (Although it's true, I suppose you could make the same argument about mascot superfluousness of the Olympics.)
Anyway, I just love the photo.
Later, in a book shop, I found this in the kid's section:
Yes, I do believe I stumbled across a relatively recent Japanese children's character, the "Bum Detective".
Now again, I know we've had our very own series of silly "bum" inspired novels for kids (The Day My Bum Went Psycho, for one), but I doubt they were illustrated, and I find the Japanese concept amusingly peculiar in its own right, as per this explanation:
The Bum Detective behaves like a perfect English gentleman, except that
his face looks like a butt, and he blows farts from his face! He is very
kind to ladies and likes tea and sweet-potato cakes. He often says, “I
smell trouble,” and solves it. In this first title of the series, the
Bum Detective tries to find a thief who stole all of the sweets at a
shop. Young readers can enjoy labyrinths and quizzes as well as the
story, which has them trying to figure out the truth together with the
Bum Detective.
Actually, it's one where the police fear of anyone carrying a pistol, especially if they're black, makes them ridiculously trigger happy; and protests can turn into revenge shoot ups which "good guys with guns" have not a chance in hell of stopping.
(And if it turns out this is actually IS inspired terrorism - it will scarcely make a difference to my points. It's legal to walk around carrying rifles in Texas - how much of an easier run can you give to a wannabe sniper?)
Also, it's hard to comprehend how "open carry" advocates cannot understand (or will deny the obvious) that their turning up at demonstrations in an urban environment creates a obvious problem. As explained in a Dallas paper:
He said Friday that about 20 people in "ammo gear and protective
equipment and rifles slung over their shoulder" participated in the
Black Lives Matter rally downtown on Thursday night.
"When the shooting started, at different angles, they started running," he said. "We started catching."
Then police interviewed them.
Rawlings said open carry brings confusion to a shooting scene.
"What I would do is look for the people with guns," he said.
Max Geron, a Dallas police major, talked about the confusion during the shooting in a post on a law enforcement website.
"There
was also the challenge of sorting out witnesses from potential
suspects," Geron said. "Texas is an open carry state, and there were a
number of armed demonstrators taking part. There was confusion on the
radio about the description of the suspects and whether or not one or
more was in custody."
As if it couldn't cause enormous diversionary confusion.
And how's this for a pathetic and "dumb as" response from an Open Carry advocate in the same article:
But C.J. Grisham, president of Open Carry Texas,
said police should be able to separate the good guys from the bad guys
in such a scenario because "the bad guys are the ones shooting."
"If you can't identify a threat, you shouldn't be wearing a uniform," he said.
Grisham said some in law enforcement look at law-abiding gun owners as a threat.
"It's
not that difficult to tell the difference between a bad actor and a
good actor," he said. "The good guys are going to obey commands, the bad
guys are not."
According to all reports, the Dallas police force has a good reputation in the country, a black chief, and it sounds as if there was never any prospect it would do anything to aggravate a peaceful demonstration. In a saner country, civilians turning up to it with long rifles would be told by police to get out of there; there is no good cause to be carrying a rifle in an inner city.
We can at least be thankful that similar gun fetishists in Australia do not wield significant political power.
In 1965, there were 58,632 priests in the U.S. with 94 percent of them
in active ministry; in 2014, there were 38,275 priests with only 68
percent in active ministry. In 2009, the average age of a priest was 63,
whereas the average age in 1970 was 35. By 2019, half of all active
priests will be at the minimum retirement age of 70.
(By the way, odd that this story was found in the medical section of phys.org!)
Hey Jason - I think it's a very silly suggestion in your tweet that Clive Hamilton "comes close" to tarring all climate change denialists with anti-Semitism when in his article he specifically details how Bolt openly repudiated Robert's Jewish banker conspiracy mongering. (Sure, Hamilton doesn't "give credit" to Bolt for that, for reasons he explains, but Bolt's stance is still a large part of the article.)
You may not like Hamilton, but an article reminding us of the conspiracy nuttiness of a new Senator (and that of prominent denialists Jonova and her husband) is a good public service, if you ask me.
As was half expected at the time they came out, the lower climate sensitivity estimates based on energy budget models look to be biased low. The IPCC's lowering of the bottom end for the range of possible sensitivity was probably premature.
Have you noticed the weather in Tokyo this week? Last Sunday (my last day there), it was 35 degrees; yesterday - 36!
This is the first time I have spent much time in Japan in summer, and yes, it can indeed be very humid and hot. I also suspect that sprawling Tokyo would have one of the hottest "urban heat island" effects around, and I wonder how much of that is reflected in the temperatures.
Over the past 100 years, Tokyo's average temperature has increased by
about three degrees Celsius, and that of Osaka has increased by two
degrees Celsius (C). Since it is said that global warming has raised the
Japan's average temperature by about one degree C, the temperature
increase due to the UHI effect is probably about two degrees in Tokyo
and about one degree in Osaka.
Along with the UHI effect, an increasing number of patients suffering
from heat stroke and other heat disorders have recently been admitted
to emergency rooms. In Tokyo, the number of such patients brought to
hospitals by ambulances increased to 1,300 persons in 2007 from 200 in
1996. Some studies show a correlation between deaths from heat stroke
and the heat experienced during extremely hot days and sweltering summer
nights.
(There are lots more articles about UHI in Japan if you care to Google it.)
The good news: I was surprised at how well airconditioned the Tokyo metro trains and stations were. I'm not sure whether the above ground parts of Toyko Station are as good, though: certainly, on one previous day we were there, when it wasn't as hot as later in the week, it seemed there was inadequate airconditioning in large sections, and it was quite unpleasant. But perhaps it was just that day?
Outside of Tokyo, the humid heat (in the high 20's and low 30's quite a few days) was still fairly unpleasant for the on-foot tourist. But we did only have one day with some interference from rain, so perhaps we were lucky in that regard.
As for dressing for the hot weather: you will read that shorts are mainly for the younger male in Japan, but I think it fair to say that the willingness of middle aged Japanese men to wear them must have increased in recent years. (There were certainly many on sale at Uniqlo, too.) I regretted that I had only brought one pair with me.
And as for long, slim legged trousers: given that I have only recently acquired some relatively slim leg chinos myself (look, they may have been in fashion for 5 to 10 years already, but cotton chinos can last nearly a decade if you can control your weight - OK?) I had not realised until this trip how they make for such hot and sweaty legs in hot and humid weather.
Honestly, men (and women) who wear them outdoors in summer are fashion victims, if you ask me.
In any event, if you have a choice, I would say it is obvious that the height of summer is not the preferred time to be in Japan. Autumn and (especially) spring would have to be the pick of the seasons.
One great thing about living in Brisbane is the frequent cheap airfares on sale for Japan (assuming you want to holiday there - and you should) via Jetstar from the Gold Coast.
This recent trip, the first one I've been on for 6 years was on a new-ish plane - the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
First observation: I had forgotten about how this plane was made with really flexible carbon fibre wings, so I was surprised to see how high they flex upwards just in normal cruising, level flight:
OK, so it's hard to give the correct impression from photographing it, but that is a "level" shot out of the window, and believe me, the tip of that wing is riding high.
As for the interior: I thought the seats were nice (we're talking economy, by the way), with the flexible headrest part (with "wings" you can tilt up to form a bit of a cradle while trying to sleep) a particularly nice feature. Even the legroom seems quite adequate to me, and overhead lockers were large. The "mood lighting", which I remember reading about when it was being built, is nice enough, but not all that noticeable. The windows with the electronic frosting were large and good for someone (like me) who likes to spend a lot of time peering outside.
But on the downside, and it is quite a downside: who on earth designed the toilets? Is the lid which will not sit back properly a deliberate thing to stop attempts at squatting on the toilet seat (there was a "no squatting" diagram on the wall, so I assume this can be an issue). Why is how to flush the toilet not made more obvious? Why did the toilet on the trip over flush unexpectedly all the time? Has any other airliner every had twin toilets with such a lightweight wall between the two stalls?
The stalls themselves are really noticeably small, and on the daytime flight over, I also doubted the aircraft had been designed with enough of them. (Yes, I know, line up for toilets can be common on all long haul flights on any aircraft, but these ones were really overused.) The overnight flight back was much better in that regard, though.
As for Jetstar service: well, they are a pretty "no nonsense" sort of airline, so you don't expect to get a lot of attention from cabin staff. I thought they were OK overall. (They could afford to get a bit of a better look with their uniforms, though, surely - especially with the men wearing pretty much just a polo shirt.)
So the Dreamliner: a good aircraft, marred (at least in Jetstar's case) by terrible toilet arrangements.
First, I see from James Annan's blog that it had an immediate bad effect on academics in England, whose working life was, it seems, already uncertain enough.
Brexit is starting to deliver. British politics was constipated and has
now overdosed on laxative. It is experiencing a great evacuation. It has
got rid of a prime minister and is about to get rid of a leader of the
opposition. It will soon be rid of a chancellor of the exchequer and a
lord chancellor. It is also rid of two, if not four, Tory heirs
apparent. Across the spectrum the left is on the brink of upheaval and
perhaps historic realignment, if only the Liberal Democrats have the
guts to engineer it. The Greens and Ukip have both lost their leaders.
An entire political class is on the way out. As Oscar Wilde said of the
death of Little Nell, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.
It seems to me that Jenkins' welcoming attitude, even though he voted to stay, is from a Left wing perspective. But he paints such a positive picture of its good effects, you have to question his voting judgement in the first place.
Let's get started on a series of posts arising from my recent Japanese holiday. First, the trivial: Japan and modern male grooming.
Shopping for personal hygiene products in Japan is educational and fun. As I noted back in 2009, there has been an insult going around the country for some years that the young Japanese male is too "herbivorous", unlike his more carnivorous (read: more masculine) predecessors, and supermarket toiletries certainly gives the impression that hair styling is of great (one could say, dandy-ish) interest to the modern Japanese young male. Although, come to think of it, there are a great many waxes, gels and styling stuff available to the modern Australian male in the supermarket now, too. (And, it's also true that nothing in Japan compares to the heights of silly European male self indulgence in fashion of the 17th and 18th century. I still giggle every time I see this painting.)
Anyway, looking at the Japanese product range is amusing, with the ubiquitous "Gatsby" brand having "hair jams", waxes and gels with odd, though admittedly creative, names. From the Gatsby Australian online store (with truly ridiculous prices, I might add):
- the "Moving Rubber" range that comes in Cool Wet, Air Rise, Spiky Edge, Wild Shake, Loose Shuffle, and Grunge Mat.
- the "Hair Jams" come in "Smart Nuance", Tight Nuance" and "Loose Nuance". I see via Google that there are also, in some markets at least, "Edgy Nuance" and "Rough Nuance".
And then there's your wax, foams, "styling grease" (an uninspiring name for a hair product, if ever there was one), sprays and "hair water" products in the Gatsby range, too.
I used up some loose change at the airport drug store by buying some Hair Jam "Smart Nuance" (see, the company knows how to appeal even to my vanity) and am wearing it for the first time today. I'm quite pleased, so far, although looking at the Singaporean Gatsby site, I see that I am using it in a far different fashion than recommended. No, this is not what I do to my hair in the morning:
(I just used two drops - honestly, I'd have to be in a higher tax bracket to be using as much as the video recommends. Not to mention at least 30 years younger.)
I don't know, perhaps it's all J-pop and K-pop's fault: maybe young Japanese women demand their boyfriends have this intense interest in precision hair looks.
But apart from hair grooming, the most notable thing about Japanese toiletries is that it confirms that the entire nation does not have to devote much time to fighting body odour - basically because they don't have that much to begin with. I would guess that the range of deodorants for sale is about 1/4 of the size of what's available here. Even foot odour is not much of an issue - it's extremely common to be seated next to a Japanese person on a Shinkansen or aircraft with their shoes slipped off, and never have I have noticed foot stink in a way I have when sitting next to a be-socked Australian.
I should also mention the limited number of shaving foam/gels available: there is certainly a much broader range of these available in the West. For some reason, shaving gels which do not foam on the face seem relatively popular. I've tried them, including on this recent trip, but unless you are shaving in good light, or have dark stubble that is obvious in any light, they don't give a good guide to where the razor has and hasn't been, making final touch ups with the blade after you've rinsed often necessary. I like the cooling menthol feeling, though, especially in hot weather. (What is it with Asians and menthol products - they love them in all their forms.)
Still, on returning home, I did appreciate using my L'Occitane shave soap and brush again. Seemed to give a smoother shave, too.
As for Japanese after shaves: actually, I do like all of those that I have tried. Not a huge selection, but the "standard" brands are invariable of a milder smell than their Western equivalents, and in summer, I do quite like the menthol which seems to be a component of most aftershaves. I recommend people try them - even the somewhat old fashioned smell of Bravas, which my wife thinks is "bay rum" scent and the strongest smelling of the ones I have tried.
So, yes, it's true: Westerners should not have much faith in finding
strong deodorant or good shaving cream in Japan. Take your own. But if you're male and
want a huge selection of hair product, or good, relatively cheap aftershave, you're set.
Update: I forget to mention two things. First, Japanese tubes of men's face wash - even the cheapest supermarket brands - are very good, and actually very useful both for the morning face wash in a land where the only soap in the hotel room is likely to be a body wash liquid soap, and for use as a pretty good shaving soap if you travel with a shaving brush. You have to like menthol, though. Chances are it will be menthol.
Secondly, how could I forget to mention this grooming product spotted in a drug store:
Yes, the nasal hair waxing product of your nightmares. Made in China, you can see in the second picture, so one can get the added thrill of wondering what dangerous chemicals might be in the wax.
I can imagine this being used in a remake of Marathon Man: "Is it safe?" being asked repeatedly while the wax hardens....
Update 2: I made a mistake. I realised it was "tight nuance" Hair Jam I bought, because the dude on the packet had a more conservative style.
I guess that Studio Ghibli is well and truly beyond the interest of just Japanohiles when the Times Literary Supplement runs commentary on a couple of its films.
The review contains this interesting section:
Both films fit into the Japanese aesthetic tradition of “mono no aware”; most commonly translated as “the pathos of things”, it describes, also, the bittersweet feeling caused by the awareness of transience. This stems from Buddhism, and countless Japanese artworks have traditionally both celebrated and lamented the impermanence of things. Despite its British source material, When Marnie Was There evokes the feeling of mono no aware in the time Anna spends with Marnie; while we celebrate the closeness of their relationship, we also lament the fact that it cannot last.
Well, I'm not too cut up about this. I didn't find myself visiting it all that often, and despite the never ending complaints of Murdoch and the IPA about the ABC crowding out private news companies, I still don't think that the ABC does on line news and news commentary all that well. (Especially when it comes to breaking stories, I have often found the ABC website quite slow to be updated.)
As for the TV show: again, I'm not a fan, and only watch it occasionally. There's something determinedly bland about it, and its attempts at balance by heavily featuring IPA talking heads is more like false balance: the positions of the IPA are actually pretty extreme and ideological (and in the case of climate change and tobacco, positively despicable), yet their talking heads are rarely challenged about the organisation they work for by the host or the other guests.
If it was up to me, I would kill the TV show, too.
Well I'm back from Japan, and more posts are coming soon.
A couple of things:
1. my hunch about the election being much closer than most pundits (or certainly, the betting market) expected turned out pretty right.*
2. I think I read that Tim Wilson won his seat with an increase in the Liberal vote (even when the predecessor was the high profile Andrew Robb). For a man already with an ego the size of Tasmania (well, if self promotion is any guide to such things), this is a bad sign. I half expect that if Turnbull loses the PM job, Timbo will be putting himself up as a replacement candidate immediately.
* I'll add this to the list of things I have correctly picked over the years - that Rudd would be at risk of being stabbed by his own MPs - well before it happened; the exact number of college votes by which Obama would win his second election (true - a prediction made at a Catallaxy thread); and that Helen Dale would leave her job with Leyonhjelm within 2 years.
Prominent later life anti Leftist Nick Cohen really gets stuck into the pro-Brexit politicians in the Guardian today. More reason to think it was a bad decision.
I really haven't followed the Brexit story in any detail at all, except that I was applying two excellent and reliable rules of thumb:
the rabid Right, and the anti-regulation, must have small government at any cost ideology tank (it's not really a "think tank",) IPA was thoroughly for it; and
Krugman thought it a bad idea, while acknowledging at the same time the problems of the European Union as originally established, and saying that the economic downside won't be quite as bad as some claim.
It is therefore a certainty that the vote outcome is not a good thing.
Krugman's nuanced view is well worth reading (see last link.)
Also, it's a tad ironic, or something, that the Right took advantage in this campaign of a refugee crisis that is essentially of their own making. If it weren't for the fact that socialism is perfectly capable of still conducting fantasy experiments that cause economic and social disasters (see Venezuela) the "street cred" of the Right in terms of experiments it's been willing to try has been taking a battering in the last decade or so. But some idiot somewhere is usually still giving nutty economists grounds to point and say "ha! Look at how bad Leftist experiments are!"
* Brooklyn Nine-Nine, currently running twice a week on SBS 2, I think. It is just the funniest thing on television. I think I may have missed the entire second season though, so I perhaps should go looking as to how I could see it. On Netflix?
* Anticipating rabbits.
* Anticipating a Spielberg movie (I saw today that The BFG is out on 30 June. Not sure if I will have to bribe the teenagers to see it with me, or not. They reluctantly went to The Jungle Book, but both liked it.)
* I dunno, I still think an election upset in Australia is a possibility: probably with Xenophon and The Greens undertaking to support a Labor government.
* Speaking of the election, when going to vote early the other day, one of the staff recognised me from 30 years ago. For the last 20 years, she had been living in the next door suburb, no doubt shopping at the same local shopping centre, but we had never run into each other. Anyway, after giving me sufficient hints as to where I should remember her from, I did remember her first name. Good. Brain not degenerating too much yet.
* And speaking of memory: I had a dream the other night in which I was annoyed I could not remember the name of a friend's child. (Which would have been true while awake too, as I knew I had been thinking of the child recently.) Anyway, it was in the dream that the name suddenly came to me. Seemed a mundane thing to be dreaming about, but interesting how the brain recalled it while asleep.
* About to catch a plane, for the first time in a few years. Posting may be light for a little while...
Hey, what good is maintaining a blog if you can't complain to no one in particular?
1. Ear candles being sold in pharmacies. Yes, I first saw them in a pharmacy years ago, but last night I saw them again, and in a suburb with a big university student population. This really annoys me - a totally useless, fantasy science based product that is barely a step above employing a witch doctor to provide consultations in the corner. (In fact, that may be considerably safer.) Lift your game, pharmacists!
2. The extraordinary number of words still devoted to a violent fantasy soap opera each new season. You know the show I am talking about (OK, Game of Nudes About to be Killed, or whatever) - and given that I noticed some news story devoted to explaining how a particularly realistic violent death was done in a recent episode, I still consider it extremely likely that the show is morally degrading.
3. While I'm getting indigent about corrupting TV shows - what about Drunk History?? I've tried watching a couple of episodes of the British version of this show on SBS on Demand, and I was going to go on a rant about the depravity of modern England, but I gather now that in fact the British version came after an American version, which I have never seen. In any event, I can't imagine a stupider idea from a social policy point of view than starting a show with "And today's narrator, after downing 2 pints of lager and 8 double scotch and soda, will now tell the story of ...." I mean, for God's sake, are they serious about the amount claimed to have been consumed at the start of the show - because in one episode it sounded literally enough to kill some people if it was consumed within a couple of hours. Honestly, I really can't imagine a worse idea: well I can, although I suppose executive producers may be somewhat wary of going to jail if they try a show based on comedians who have just snorted two lines of coke. And if they try one based on stoned comedians in cannabis legal America - being stoned just doesn't make people funny, from my limited experience around them. But in any event, as far as I could make out, the end result even with alcohol is just not very funny. It is a terrible idea.
Seems to me that for some reason, international deaths by lightning are attracting more media attention lately. Is it just journalists noticing this for the first time, or is there an unusual amount of lightning this year?
Gee, I think it in David Leyonhjelm's best interest not to win re-election to the Senate. The stress of the job is changing him in subtle but noticeable ways:
Someone's sick at the South Pole station and a little twin engine plane is flying there to the rescue. It has happened before, but the conditions are extraordinary:
In 2001, Ron Shemenski, another physician overwintering at the station, came down with gallstones and pancreatitis. The NSF decided his condition was severe enough to warrant bringing him out. “I didn't want to look back on that year and think there might have been something we could have done to save his life,” says Jerry Macala, who was the station manager for the winter and participated in discussions about whether to evacuate Shemenski. Eventually, a Twin Otter flown by Kenn Borek pilots touched down on a runway outlined by
flaming barrels.
“It was very cold, more than 90 below,” says Nathan Tift, who served as one of two meteorologists that winter. The evacuation was “so strange”, he says, “just because it had never happened before”. Crew members filed out and took a photograph of themselves with the visiting Twin Otter. But then, when the plane tried to take off, they realized that its skis had frozen to the runway from the friction of landing.
Workers had to rock the plane from side to side to liberate it, so that it could eventually take off.
If I understand the article correctly, Trump raised $3 million in May compared to $27 million by Clinton.
I am guessing that part of it may be due to his followers still thinking he's going to be self funded all the way to the White House (which, of course, he is not going to reach.) They liked the idea of his being self funded - giving money would interfere with that.
I see that the Department of Justice made a statement justifying their initial decision to release a redacted transcript of the Orlando killer's call as follows:
The Department of Justice released a statement later on Monday defending the redaction.
Officials
said they wanted to remain sensitive to the victims, their families and
the ongoing investigation, while also not providing "the killer or
terrorist organisations with a publicity platform for hateful propaganda".
"Unfortunately,
the unreleased portions of the transcript that named the terrorist
organisations and leaders have caused an unnecessary distraction from
the hard work that the FBI and our law enforcement partners have been
doing to investigate this heinous crime," the statement said, before
releasing the full transcript of Mateen's first 50-second phone call.
Seems reasonable enough to me. But then, they underestimated the amount of nutty right wing Obama paranoia in their own country.
Who would have guessed (certainly, I don't think any science fiction writer ever did) that the trajectory of American history would read "start of the 21st century - first American black president elected - sends 25% of American population nuts."*
* I'm willing to entertain debate on the precise percentage. But it's significant, whatever it is.
Compared with unexposed children, those who were prenatally exposed to
cannabis had a thicker prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved
in complex cognition, decision-making, and working memory.
The study sounds pretty careful, too. No one is sure how to interpret it, though.
WASHINGTON — Two top National Rifle Association officials took aim at Donald Trump on Sunday, blasting his suggestion that armed clubgoers could have prevented the deadliest mass shooting in US history as one that “defies common sense.”
“No one thinks that people should go into a nightclub drinking and carrying firearms,” said Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action told ABC’s “This Week.” “That defies common sense. It also defies the law.”
Trump fired up a Texas rally on Friday by saying if some people at the Pulse nightclub “had guns strapped … right to their waist or right to their ankle” it would have “beautiful sight” to have them shoot “the son of a bitch.”...
But Wayne LaPiere, NRA’s CEO, said Sunday that pistol-packing revelers are not a realistic solution.
“I don’t think you should have firearms where people are drinking,” LaPiere told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Out of curiosity, I watched some of a live stream of a Trump rally from Arizona this morning.
As far as I can make out, his policy prescriptions are:
1. I'm a winner!
2. guns are great;
3. [missed the bit about Islam, so can't summarise it]
4. I'm a winner: look how awesome my primary wins were!
5. the media are nasty liars
6. build Mexican wall and Mexico will pay for it
7. did I mention how great and awesome my win was?
8. big tax cuts to everyone, especially the middle class*
9. repeal Obamacare and replace it with "something better"
10. winner!
11. will not touch Medicare or any government benefit the sort of people who come to my rallies get
12. something about Iran fooling the US, the US being stupid for getting involved in the Iraq/Iran balance of power in the first place, and how the US will get involved in the Middle East again to "smash" ISIS
13. Veterans will get better healthcare
14. re-negotiate trade deals
15. "there will be consequences" for companies that dump American based manufacturing and go overseas**
16. I'm a winner!
I can't wait for this walking orange ball of contradictory thought bubbles to have to debate with someone, and with moderators, who will not let him bluster his way through his policy prescriptions.
He is, as if we didn't already know, running on pure, thoughtless, populism; promising that his base can "have it all", so to speak.
So, after a disastrous couple of weeks for Donald Trump, where the over-reach in his reaction to Orlando that I predicted came into effect even more spectacularly and more quickly than I expected, how is BS artist Scott Adams going with his meme about Trump being the "master persuader"?
Well, just like the positive effects of Laffer inspired tax cuts in Kansas, it's a case of "just you wait", apparently. He writes it's just the last hiccup in the third act of an action movie:
This isn’t the Republican nomination, where Trump could dominate. The
general election is a new game. There’s no way for Trump to solve a
problem this big, right?
That’s what you are supposed to think at this point in the movie.
Wait for the plot twist this summer. You’re gonna love it.
Anthropologists have found evidence that during preindustrial Europe,
bi-modal sleeping was considered the norm. Sleep onset was determined
not by a set bedtime, but by whether there were things to do. Historian
A. Roger Ekirch’s book At day’s close: night in times past
describes how households at this time retired a couple of hours after
dusk, woke a few hours later for one to two hours, and then had a second
sleep until dawn.
During this waking period, people would relax, ponder their dreams or
have sex. Some would engage in activities like sewing, chopping wood or
reading, relying on the light of the moon or oil lamps.
Ekirch found references to the first and second sleep started to
disappear during the late 17th century. This is thought to have started
in the upper classes in Northern Europe and filtered down to the rest of
Western society over the next 200 years.
Interestingly, the appearance of sleep maintenance insomnia in the literature
in the late 19th century coincides with the period where accounts of
split sleep start to disappear. Thus, modern society may place
unnecessary pressure on individuals that they must obtain a night of
continuous consolidated sleep every night, adding to the anxiety about
sleep and perpetuating the problem.
I repeat my call from some years ago (when Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was coming): the perfect way to end Indiana Jones would be for him to be revealed as one of the people being taken up into the mothership at the end of Close Encounters. You know it makes sense...
I'm not sure if the base image is an official Trump one, but it's a little odd, isn't it? I think it's meant to indicate that Trump is brave like a lion, or is it that he's brave in facing off a lion? I'm going with the former, and have added my own bit.
Who am I to disagree with the betting markets and journalists who are already calling it for the Coalition?
The story seems to be that the national swing to (perhaps) 51/50 in favour of Labor is uneven and won't cut it for a Shorten win.
Yet still there seems considerable uncertainty as to what will happen to many seats with Greens and Xenophon playing a big role. Not sure how Barnaby Joyce is going, but WA seems to be on the nose for the Coalition. And we haven't even had the campaign launches yet. Don't they count for anything any more?
It seems to me that Bill Shorten, and most Labor ministers, have looked pretty good in their TV appearances. Scott Morrison has not. And Turnbull - well, not entirely sure. To be honest, I have been busy and not seeing that much on TV lately.
But for what its worth, to me the "optics" of the situation indicate we should still not be writing off a hung parliament as a possible outcome.
Exclusive: Armitage to back Clinton over Trump - POLITICO: Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under George W. Bush, says he will vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, in one of the most dramatic signs yet that Republican national security elites are rejecting their party’s presumptive nominee.
Armitage, a retired Navy officer who also served as an assistant
secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, is thought by Clinton aides to
be the highest-ranking former GOP national security official to openly
support Clinton over Trump.
“If Donald Trump is the nominee, I would vote for Hillary Clinton,”
Armitage told POLITICO in a brief interview. “He doesn't appear to be a
Republican, he doesn't appear to want to learn about issues. So, I’m
going to vote for Mrs. Clinton.”
Dozens of Republican foreign policy elites have already declared
their unwillingness to support or work for Trump, though far fewer say
they would cast a ballot for Clinton. The latter group includes Max
Boot, a prominent neoconservative military analyst and historian; Mark
Salter, former longtime chief of staff to Republican Sen. John McCain; and retired Army Col. Peter Mansour, a former top aide to retired Gen. David Petraeus.
I think it's been very clear from his campaign appearances that Trump is a mental teenager, and one with bullying instincts. (His pathetic taunts to protesters about "going home to Mommy" are the best example of that.) But it would appear that he is no better in his own workplace.
With all the talk of Islam and its views on death for homosexuality, I wasn't entirely sure when Australia had stopped executing gays (or at least, men convicted of sodomy).
I see from various sites that the last man hanged for sodomy in Sydney was Thomas Parry in 1839, although the last "gay execution" seems to have been one in Tasmania in 1863.
I've read before of scandal in Sydney relating to what convicts were getting up to at night in their barracks, but hadn't read of this more upper class, somewhat amusing, matter before:
But it was clearly a vice that was not confined only to the lower orders. In 1836, Sydney was rocked by the Reverend Yate scandal. This involved a protégé of the very respectable Samuel Marsden who was known as the 'flogging parson' for his penchant, as a magistrate, to hand out severe sentences as a deterrent. Yate was a well known and widely published preacher in England, who had even had an audience with King William IV. On the voyage out to Sydney on the Prince Regent, Yate had spent much time in the company – and the hammock – of the third mate, Edwin Denison. When they arrived in Sydney in June of that year, the two moved into lodgings together in Park Street, where they were joined by another sailor from the Prince Regent, with the unlikely name of Dick Deck. Neighbours soon complained about the men's behaviour, and the scandal became the talk of Sydney, although the Crown Solicitor suggested that 'it seems more than probable that the crime of sodomy cannot be proved against him according to law'. By mid-December of that same year, Yate and Denison had sailed for England, much to the relief of the Anglican community in Sydney.9
Donald Trump threatens to go it alone - CNNPolitics.com: Donald Trump slammed GOP leaders on Wednesday for not lining up behind him, implying that he's willing to go forward without their help.
"We have to have our Republicans either stick together or let me just do it by myself. I'll do very well. I'm going to do very well. OK? I'm going to do very well. A lot of people thought I should do that anyway, but I'll just do it very nicely by myself," Trump said, though he did not elaborate on what doing it "by myself" would mean.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee also accused his party's leaders of being weak and told them to "please be quiet."
"You know the Republicans, honestly folks, our leaders, our leaders have to get tougher," Trump said during a rally in Atlanta. "Our leaders have to get a lot tougher. And be quiet. Just please be quiet. Don't talk. Please be quiet. Just be quiet to the leaders because they have to get tougher, they have to get sharper, they have to get smarter."
Seems that no one is sure of the reasons. Not enough banana demonstrations, so to speak, is mentioned in the article.
Or is it just that thorough education on the details of sex in a high school setting is one thing, but in-school steps which appear to actually facilitate it is another, not so good idea? It's not as if condoms are not readily available, at cheap cost, for those teens who want to start a sex life. Maybe making them responsible enough to go and buy them for themselves encourages responsibility in starting a sex life, generally? Who knows.
And I hasten to add, again: does any adult really think that it is a good idea for high school students to be having a sex life at all?
I'm not at all sure that it was a good idea for a couple of conservatives to write an article in the WSJ entitled The Mystery of Jewish and Asian-American Democratic Loyalty if they weren't going to look at their own side of politics. (It's all the fault of liberal professors at universities and colleges, is their theory.) They should have expected this comment:
So, very well-educated people tend to be more liberal. Full stop. Think about it.
Or this comment from a college professor (an Asian one, too):
I am a college professor. In order to have my vote, a candidate must
pass two preliminary tests: respect for science, and respect for
separation of church and state. The first test usually kills about 80%
of the republican candidates, and the second kills about half. Very few
republicans can pass both; those few who do pass cannot get the party
nomination. It is a sad situation. But who can help but the republicans
themselves?
So, I am tempted to say that the current cluelessness of the bulk of the American Right continues. Except - I do have to give them some credit for baulking at Trump. On the other hand, as many have said, it is the leadership of the Republicans who really have themselves to blame for his rise in the first place.
Surely this time it would be different. Surely, after the worst mass
shooting in American history, the presumptive Republican presidential
nominee would choose his words carefully. He would make the case for an
effective response to homegrown terror; listen to the counsel of his
political team, and offer reassurance to the nation and—crucially—to
Republicans who are desperately seeking evidence, even now, that they
can embrace the candidate their convention will nominate in a month.
Instead, in a speech riddled
with misleading and flatly false statements, Donald Trump ranted
incoherently Monday about the need to toughen his Muslim immigration
ban, even though the Orlando shooter was born in New York City 29 years
ago (at a time when Afghan emigres like his parents were fighting on
America’s side against the Soviet Union). In a TV interview, Trump
suggested that the president of the United States was in some undefined
way sympathetic to the murderous intentions of Islamic terrorists. And
in the hours immediately after the massacre, he tweeted a
self-congratulatory message about his prescience.
I see that Steve Kates, Australian Trump fanboy extraordinaire, has posted the full Youtube of the said Trump speech, with apparent approval. Extraordinarily, Kates tells us where to find Trump telling the "the Snake", in which he treats the audience like they're watching Playschool. We're supposed to be impressed?
Sinclair Davidson appears resigned to Catallaxy being the pro-Trump blog for Australia's nutty conservatives, with "balance" being provided only by his own, occasional, anti-Trump posts. What a chump.
In other air-headed Conservative commentator reaction, the sane and impressive speech by Obama against Trump's initial reaction to Orlando gets this sort of reaction from Dinesh D'Souza:
All Trump talking points. I wonder if D'Souza, whose intellectual descent was chronicled at Vox recently, has his number saved in Donald's cellphone?
What a "say anything" dangerous buffoon. Trump's words:
“I will be meeting with the NRA, which has given me their earliest
endorsement in a presidential race, to discuss how to ensure Americans
have the means to protect themselves in this age of terror. I will be
always defending the Second Amendment.”
Here's the video of Steven Spielberg's Harvard commencement speech. Confirms all of my positive assessments of him, except for his choice of shoes when wearing a suit. (Maybe he has foot issues?)
Update: didn't mention - his 99 year old Dad is in the audience.
Mice are a mainstay of biomedical research laboratories. But the rodents are poor models for studying women’s reproductive health, because they don’t menstruate.
Now
researchers at Monash University in Clayton, Australia, say that they
have found a rodent that defies this conventional wisdom: the spiny
mouse (Acomys cahirinus). If the finding holds up, the animal could one day be used to research women's menstruation-related health conditions.
Hilary Clinton, as quoted at Breitbart (!) sounds such a radical on gun control [/sarc]:
During an interview with the Today Show, she added, “Let’s keep
weapons of war off our streets like the one that was used in Orlando.”
Clinton criticized Florida’s gun laws, blaming legislatures for not
regulating assault weapons, 50 caliber rifles, or large capacity
ammunition magazines. She also blamed Florida for not requiring a permit
to purchase a gun, not requiring gun registration, and not requiring
gun owners to be licensed to carry a shotgun or a rifle.
“We know the gunman used a weapon of war to shoot down at least 50
innocent Americans and, you know, we won’t even be able to get the
congress to prevent terrorists or people on the no-fly list from buying
guns,” she said.
Clinton demanded more gun control to stop mass shootings, reminding
viewers that the mass shooting in Orlando was the worst in American
history.
“Yes, there is a right for law-abiding, responsible Americans to own
guns and, yes, there are reasonable common sense measures to try to keep
people safe from guns,” she said. “We have to figure out the best way
to move forward on that. That’s what I’m committed to doing.”
Clinton condemned gun rights groups after they “scared the heck out of voting officials” on gun control. “We cannot fall into the trap set by the gun lobby that says if you
can’t stop every shooting and every incident, you should not try to stop
any,” she said. “That is not how laws work. it’s not common sense.”
One odd outcome of the Orlando shootings is that Jim Hoft, (the "stupidest man on the internet", as Little Green Footballs like to call him, with good justification) has come out as a gay Republican. On Breitbart, no less, with several thousands of comments following. (Can't be bothered fighting my way through them, although I'm sure some must be interesting reading.)
Nutty conservative Catholic CL over at Catallaxy has been linking to Hoft's Gateway Pundit posts for years. CL's startling contribution to Catallaxy reaction to the shootings was this:
Let us not forget that Islam is 100 percent correct about such things as
gay ‘marriage’ and adoption. 100 percent correct. The gay lobby poses a
far bigger threat to civilisation than ISIS.
So, (hopefully soon to be ex-) Senator Leyonhjelm couldn't hold it back any longer - tweeting the solution to gun massacres in gay nightclubs is for gays to be armed. Because, yeah, a flurry of bullets from pistols as well as the spray from a rapidly firing AR15 in a semi dark nightclub full of a few hundred dancers is a better solution than - not letting nutters (Islamic or otherwise) getting their hands on a AR15. Not to mention the fact that Florida already has concealed weapon licences, although bars are apparently "gun free zones" by law.*
What a "guns cure everything" moron.
* Of course, the appalling gun nutters believe this is unfair. If Leyonhjelm thinks people going out to a bar or nightclub would feel safer by knowing some patrons are probably carrying a concealed carry pistol, then he should say so; and the rest of Australia can laugh at his face.
Without taking away from the personal tragedies in Orlando, the bigger picture everyone will be thinking about is the extent to which Trump may benefit out of Islamic inspired terrorism (whether or not the killer appears - like in Sydney's Lindt cafe siege - to be a generic violent nutter from way back, as well as an IS fanboy.)
While Trump fans will think he has already benefited (there is a line already popular with the gormless Right at Catallaxy that "Trump was right",) and there will probably be a hundred pieces of panicky commentary about this is how America slides into becoming a Trumpian fascist nation, I think that in all likelihood, Trump will overreach; and when pressed for details, will not come up with a response that is legally, or even morally, credible. In fact, with his statement, sensible people (I know: that's not Trump supporters) will already see overreach.
This is what those who are appalled with Trump need to do - demand he get specific with Constitutional responses that make sense. Not let him waffle on with his generic loudmouth demands and thought bubbles.
Senate Republicans rejected a bill that aims to stop suspected terrorists from legally buying guns, on Thursday. The vote came a day after at
least 14 people were killed during the San Bernardino massacre in
California by two suspects, including a woman said to have pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Forty-five senators voted for the bill and 54 voted against it. One Democrat, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and one Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, crossed party lines.
The measure would have denied people on the terrorist watch list the ability to buy guns.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who sponsored the
legislation, argued that former President George W. Bush initially
proposed the legislation in 2007, and the Obama administration also
supports it.
A fascinating article here about how the internet is letting the paranoid find and support each other - and reinforce their mad theories. (I have never heard of the "T.I." - Targetted Individuals - community before. It's pretty sad.)
After recently buying a cheap Blu-ray of the Coen brothers' 2010 version of True Grit, I watched it last weekend.
It was well reviewed when released, and there is much to like about it. First and foremost - it's a fantastic looking film. Just gorgeous on Blu-ray, and the town where it starts looks extremely authentic in a way most Western settings struggle to. [It turns out there's a good reason for that - in the fascinating short Extra feature about the film's production design*, the setting is shown as a street in a real Texas town that had facades built in front of some buildings that were too modern, some period alterations to others, and truckloads of dirt emptied on the paving to make it look like the right era. It's really awesome, sometimes, to see the effort large scale movie making can go to. And it was great to realise that my perception of authenticity was justified, and that I hadn't been fooled by a green screened background.]
Secondly, the Coens are great with loquacious characters in period pieces. We know, from Ken Burn's The Civil War how eloquent even working class men and women from this period could be, and the Coens showed a similar flare for such dialogue in Oh Brother Where Art Thou?** Mind you, I am not at all sure how much of the dialogue is lifted from the novel. I take it from another extra feature that this movie is probably closer to the novel than the John Wayne version.
Thirdly - well, actually, there is no thirdly. Here I have to move on to a couple of issues I had with it.
Number 1 on the downside: Jeff Bridges being allowed to growl his way through scores of pages of dialogue. I've never been a huge fan of his; he always strikes me as a bit of a B actor who has been out of his league in A movies. But really, in this film, his line delivery was too often too much of a challenge to follow: it was rough and gravely to the point of being hard to understand. And it makes the plot of the film (in terms of his background story) too difficult to follow.
I also think the film has a bit of a structural problem. Look, I can barely remember the John Wayne version (I probably saw it on TV in the late 1970's), and certainly was never a Wayne fan; but I do remember thinking that the climatic scene (the horseback confrontation with the four outlaws) was effective, and felt iconic as soon as you saw it.
But the same scene in this re-make plays flat, for some reason. Perhaps because the preamble is poorly set up - there's some "past" between the two main antagonists, but it was lost in the thickly accented shouting at each other before the charge begins. I also think it may be that the scene just seems to spring up too suddenly. I would have to watch the movie again (and I almost certainly will) to work out why this climax seems poorly handled, compared to the cheesier John Wayne version, but I think it is.
That said, there are other sequences and images that do work very well (for example, it's an extremely realistic looking hanging sequence that startles by not pulling back from the actual violence of the act). And apart from Bridges, the actors are all quite fine. (Even Matt Damon, who I often find oddly unconvincing.)
So I enjoyed it very much as a "nearly great, but flawed in interesting ways" sort of experience. Recommended.
Yes, I was wondering if anyone recalled the Trump like character in Gremlins 2 - which I thought was a much better (and much funnier) movie than the original.
