Not entirely sure they've got their lines straight

I've been reading around the US right wing commentary about Charlottesville, and there's a bit of a struggle going on with getting their story straight.

First, I don't think I can really say that they aren't critical enough of Trump's lost opportunity of condemning white supremacists in clear terms.  No, to find someone supportive of Trump on this, you have to come to Australian Fox News wannabe Andrew Bolt.  Idiot.

Secondly, there are very few Right wing bloggers and culture warriors who aren't taking the opportunity to personally criticise the neo Nazi, white supremacists in strong terms.  Take Roger Simon:

Nevertheless, the types who surfaced in Charlottesville on Saturday are certainly human beings of the most repellent and disgusting sort, murderous too -- pretty much violent, evil sociopaths.  I wouldn't mind if they were all rounded up, put in a space ship, and sent on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri.

His article goes on to make a point I actually suggested in another post today:  while terrible that they exist at all in this day and age, people probably shouldn't think that the white supremacist movement has all that large a following in the US based on one riot where the numbers weren't as high as originally feared.  (And compared to the US last century.)

But, on the other hand, they can't help but try to find a way the Left, and the way to do is to blame identity politics for making sad nerdy white guys with trouble keeping a girlfriend fans of Hitler; who, let's face, really knew how to make white folk feel good about themselves.

So it is that Rod Dreher starts with the sort of criticism of Trump that Andrew Bolt can't bring himself to make:

On the Right, the story is fairly straightforward. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and their ilk have to be condemned in no uncertain terms, and marginalized. The president’s coy rhetoric, dancing around these people for fear of alienating them, has to end.

Good.

He then goes on to note that God would not want people to become white supremacists either, and Churches shouldn't be shy about preaching that.

Good too.

And then, well, it goes off the rails: 

But none of this will matter at all as long as the Left refuses to oppose identity politics in its own ranks. As I keep saying here, you cannot have an identity politics of the Left without calling up the same thing on the Right. Left-liberals who want conservatives to stigmatize and denounce white nationalism, but conservatives who do so will be sneered at by white nationalists as dupes and fools who advocate disarmament in the face of racist, sexist forces of the Left.

When the Left indulges in rhetoric that demonizes whites — especially white males — it summons the demons of white nationalism.

When the Left punishes white males who violate its own delicate speech taboos, while tolerating the same kind of rhetoric on its own side, it summons the demons of white nationalism.

When the Left obsesses over ethnic, sexual, and religious minorities, but ignores the plight of poor and working-class whites, it summons the demons of white nationalism.

When the Left institutionalizes demonization of white males in college classes, in political movements, in the media and elsewhere, it summons the demons of white nationalism.

Um, I 'm no fan of the extremities of identity politics/political correctness, but it's still kind of ludicrous to argue that it causes people to become neo-Nazis and white supremacists (who, incidentally, threw in homosexual taunting into the ring too at Charlottesville too - did you see the video of the mob shout-chanting "F... you faggots"?  I did).

Look, the fact is that major discrimination in American has only been dismantled during the lifetime of someone like me - less than 60 years ago.   Of course issues of  disadvantage and how to address it are still going to live issues at this time.   And yes, there are important debates to be had as to the limits of the response, and that in some cases identity politics arguments are going to be worth criticising.

None of this should be sold as quasi justification for why White Supremacists should feeling more empowered these days.  The blame for that falls squarely on the ignorant President and his enablers, who for political advantage have drummed up populist white grievance and encouraged their self pity and sense of entitlement in matters of race and sex.

Update:   I was tempted last night to refer to blowhard Brendan O'Neill's similar line - he started a tweet with "The events in Charlottesville are the logical consequence of the politics of identity."   Which is, of course, exactly the line to take if you are a white person who wants to be completely dismissive of all attention to reasons why there are obvious race based differences in equality and income in a nation with a history of serious racism only dismantled relatively recently.  

He moved on to a second tweet arguing that Social Justice Warriors and White Supremacists are equivalent in both wanting to audition for social pity.   Again, a completely ahistorical analysis of the matter, which will (of course) actually be taken by (lets be honest and use a SJW term when it is valid) privileged white males as supporting their view that they are being hard done by. 

Evidence for that - look at the enthusiastic response it is receiving at Catallaxy - the last blog in the nation where you go to get serious and nuanced consideration of racism.  

Hilariously, CL takes the line that it is wrong of O'Neill to draw an equivalency between SJW and "moronic" white supremacists - because SJWs are much much worse.   They are communists who have killed massively more people. (A conclusion drawn by bringing in abortion  to the discussion.)    CL's answer to every allegation that the Right is wrong on something is to argue "but abortion!"

And let's end this with another

Shoutout to monty:   Catallaxy is routinely at its worst when matters of race and racism come up, and for goodness sake, you even have JC crapping on about how white men are at some disadvantage.

Furthermore, he claims "The left has won every cultural and economic battle since WW2.", which, given the massive economic growth the world has seen since then, he doesn't seem to realise would actually be an endorsement of the left.

You're dealing with the stupid, and the "routinely offensive when it comes to race" stupid.

I still think you give them encouragement by your appearing there, and should stop.

Another reason the Charlottesville rally was a worry

The armed militia who turned up got some media attention, and probably deserved more.  At Slate, Tom Perriello writes:

Saturday showed us a vision of a dystopian future that is the logical extension of our current gun laws. Not just gun ownership but AR-15s. Not just concealed carry but open carry. And not just the right to open carry even long guns but to dress in full military fatigues with accessories (earpieces, vests, insignias) to blur every line between legitimate law enforcement and a fully armed white nationalist militia. I have spent time in multiple conflict zones and still would not have known at a quick glance if bullets started flying which heavily armed men in camouflage and flak jackets represented law and order and which were armed terrorists. Donald Trump, who claims to be the hero of law enforcement, has issued no criticism of those who blur the line between public and private security forces, who blur the most sacred blue line between violence and force. Is there anything more vital of a commander in chief who claims to care about those who serve in uniform than to condemn those who fake the uniform?

That said, I feel it probably also deserves to be noted by way of balance that the images from the rally may well give a false impression of the numbers of white supremacist support in the nation.  I've noticed that estimates before the rally were that up to 6,000 may attend, but I think the final number ended up in the hundreds, rather than thousands.

Still, with the evening theatrics of burning torch rallies, not to mention the daytime armed  militia, they know how to look as intimidating as possible, and (of course) death and large scale injury was the actual result.

Paging moral midgets, paging moral midgets...

When even the National Review runs an editorial headed "Condemn the White Supremacists, Mr. President", you really have to think about the increasing moral midget qualities of Andrew Bolt, who posts in support of what NR calls Trump's 'thus-far mealy-mouthed “both sides do it”'.

Meanwhile, I expect Tim Blair is busy looking up what Jonathan Green or some feminist had to say about it, so he can respond with a resounding "ha, but he kills foxes, and she's a frightbat" response.

Update:  even someone writing at PJ Media, a right wing culture war site I hardly ever bother visiting any more, says this:

In fact, the sentiments expressed by the president were fine. But his failure to even mention the reason there was trouble in Charlottesville in the first place -- a demonstration by white supremacists -- raises questions about whether he has a real grasp of his job as president.

Trump has disavowed the alt-right and said he doesn't want their support. But they continue to embrace him and brag about how they elected him. The president of the United States does not need the stink of these people's support and condemning them in the most powerful terms yesterday would have cleared the air.

Evidently, Bolt can't see the problem with the omission that nearly everyone on the American Right can see.

The state of libertarianism

John Quiggin's post today about the current state of the US libertarian movement (he notes that one part of it has moved towards the Left - he's referring to the Niskanen Centre) is an interesting read.  The question is, though, how many libertarians are ever going to be inclined to follow that path.

As I (sort of) expected

What did I say after Trump more-or-less turned a Scout jamboree into a Trump Youth rally?:

Next up:  night time, fire torch lit rallies on the streets of some city or other..

OK, perhaps they weren't burning copies of the New York Times as I forecast, but there's no doubt they support Trump.  (Look at how few women you can spot in all the photos and videos of this event, too.  So far, I have spotted precisely one in that photo above.)

Trump is deservedly getting harsh attacks from all over the place for his woeful use of moral equivalence in response to the death of a counter protester at this white supremacist, neo Nazi rally (one at which, as many have noted, the participants nearly all feel confident enough of the political climate that they don't even worry about hiding their identity.)   The headline at this Slate piece sums it up well:

In Appalling Speech on Charlottesville, Trump Condemns Bigotry and Violence “On Many Sides”

Out of many noteworthy tweets, I'll post this one:

Meanwhile at Sinclair Davidson's Alt Right Supporter's blog, there's a hell of a lot of shrugging of shoulder's going on, and in fact it is only being discussed at all because monty brought it up.   Meanwhile Sinclair himself, showing his chronic moral immaturity (sorry, I can't read it any other way), shares a chuckle about nuclear threats to North Korea. 

Monty - trying to engage with the foolish and offensive is a losing strategy, and participation unavoidably gives the blog a sense of endorsement.  I, once again, think you are silly for appearing there at all.

I can feel my brain starting to hurt

A paper on arXiv:

The conception of reality in Quantum Mechanics

Disputes on the foundations of Quantum Mechanics often involve the conception of reality, without a clear definition on which aspect of this broad concept of reality one refers. We provide an overview of conceptions of reality in classical physics, in philosophy of science and in Quantum Mechanics and its interpretations and analyse their differences and subtleties. Structural realism as conception in philosophy of science will turn out to be a promising candidate to settle old problems regarding the conception of reality in Quantum Mechanics. We amend the analysis of three main interpretations and their relation to structural realism by three well-known informational approaches in the interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. Last we propose an additional class of structural realism supported by QBism.

In other movie news...

In Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Keshav (Akshay Kumar) isn’t expected to build a monument like the Taj Mahal that a Mughal emperor had built for his beloved wife, but a utility-friendly toilet for his bride (Bhumi Pednekar) who refuses to defecate in the open fields like the other women in his village.

I hope it's on SBS in due course.   The reviewer is having some fun further down:

The second half was decidedly a crash course on the existing government’s noble attempts at providing toilets across India and to highlight the narrow-mindedness among Indians who are shackled by cultural and religious beliefs.

But don’t give up on this film yet, because it has some golden moments scattered across it....

 The first half is smooth, but it’s the second half that gets constipated. The premise which is intriguing and novel becomes repetitive and laboured. Some of the scenes in the second half seems contrived to make the current government shine and sparkle. Keshav and Jaya’s domestic problem snowballs into such a stinker of an issue that the entire state seems to be involved towards the end. There’s a good chance that you may have lost interest and your steam by all that drama surrounding a toilet-building battle.

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, which clocks 175 minutes ...

175 minute Bollywood extravaganza about defecating in India!   Hollywood should pay attention, as it is scratching around for new ideas....

Sending him nuts

Tony Abbott is going a bit loopy, if you ask me:

Tony Abbott has called for Australia urgently to consider a missile defence shield to protect against attack by nuclear-armed North Korea.

Kevin Rudd just blathers on, so it's silly to say Tony's not nuts because Kevin said the same.

And Malcolm should be shutting up on North Korea too, I reckon.  Or at least, not giving them reason to try an experimental lob of a missile in our direction.

I also see (via Jason) that Tony's hyperbole about same sex marriage has been contradicted by Chris Kenny.   I agree, Kenny's column is an unusually calm and measured one which I find hard to disagree with.  I'm sure that Kenny will go back to being a bloviating political twit tomorrow.

My only puzzle is whether I take part in the silly postal opinion poll, or "vote" against it.   I am half inclined to do something to amuse the counters, like vote "No" but ruin the ballot by writing on it something about how I don't want to see Tony Abbott hitching up with long time suitor David Marr.    And I wonder how many papers will be not counted because of the addition of a male genitalia squiggle.   Maybe men only do that if they are forced to vote.

A funny tweet

I see that mockery of Brendan O'Neill is popular:

A long, long way to go

Here's an article in Nature  that suggests that those science fiction stories where the brain is scanned in 20 minutes and then the mind it hosts is uploaded into a computer, or another person, are just a tad unrealistic.

Even under the most humdrum conditions — “normal lighting; no sensory cues; they're not hungry”, says Zlatic — her fly larvae can be made to perform 30 different actions, including retracting or turning their heads, or rolling. The actions are generated by a brain comprising just 15,000 neurons. That is nothing compared with the 86 billion in a human brain, which is one of the reasons Zlatic and her teammates like the maggots so much.

“At the moment, really, the Drosophila larva is the sweet spot,” says Albert Cardona, Zlatic's collaborator and husband, who is also at Janelia. “If you can get the wiring diagram, you have an excellent starting point for seeing how the central nervous system works.”

Zlatic and Cardona lead two of the dozens of groups around the world that are generating detailed wiring diagrams for brains of model organisms. New tools and techniques for slicing up brains and tracing their connections have hastened progress over the past few years. And the resulting neural-network diagrams are yielding surprises — showing, for example, that a brain can use one network in multiple ways to create the same behaviours.

But understanding even the simplest of circuits — orders of magnitude smaller than those in Zlatic's maggots — presents a host of challenges. Circuits vary in layout and function from animal to animal. The systems have redundancy that makes it difficult to pin one function to one circuit. Plus, wiring alone doesn't fully explain how circuits generate behaviours; other factors, such as neurochemicals, have to be considered. “I try to avoid using the word 'understand',” says Florian Engert, who is putting together an atlas of the zebrafish brain at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “What do you even mean when you say you understand how something works? If you map it out, you haven't really understood anything.”

Against smartphone panic

After that article in The Atlantic about teenagers being ruined or destroyed or laid waste, or something like that, by obsessive use of smart phones, I've been a bit more interested in the counter articles than the original one.

Is that just because I think smartphones are awesome?   I do dislike aspects of how they are used:  everyone sitting at a table just using their phones is a bad thing.   (And I find a lot of adults are as bad at that as their kids these days.)   But then again, if you talk about what you're reading on it (and other people look up to listen), it's not as bad as it could be.  And as for people not watching a performance  directly, but viewing it on their phone screens while they record it (always with such crappy sound quality that you can't really enjoy playback at home anyway), that is a stupid habit.

Anyway, here are the articles against moral panic:   one from Slate, and one from The Guardian. There are probably more out there, waiting to be found. On my phone...

The lesson: don't have Pepsi Max with your pizza

This article notes that it would seem that drinking a diet soda on a more or less empty stomach may not be so bad, but drinking one in combination with carbohydrates may be asking for trouble.

Complicated, our bodies...

Sounds rather "Rambo"

SHANGHAI

A Chinese action film that depicts the country's soldiers saving war-ravaged Africans from Western baddies soared to become China's all-time top box-office earner this week, headlining a summer of patriotic cinematic fare.

The wildly popular "Wolf Warriors 2" boasts the ominous tagline "whoever offends China will be hunted down no matter how far away they are", and millions of Chinese cinema-goers have lapped it up since the movie's release less than two weeks ago.

The blockbuster has raked in more than 3.4 billion yuan ($500 million) since debuting on July 27, according to unofficial China box-office trackers Maoyan, a leading ticket merchant, and other industry tallies.

Update:  Don't say that I don't put in effort for my reader[s] - here's the trailer from Youtube.  And yes, it does involve Chinese Rambo rescuing poor Africans from bad guy Caucasians.  Which, given China's recent inroads into African development, makes obvious propaganda sense.   I look forward to future Chinese attempts to right the dysfunctional governments of that continent.  They should have a crack at Afghanistan and the entire Middle East (save for Israel), too.



Update 2:  I'm a bit annoyed that the Youtube is stuck on the flipping the finger scene.  This blog usually has higher standards.  On the other hand, it is of interest, I suppose, that it would seem that this is universally used insult across nearly all nations now. 

About PSA

Simon Chapman writes pretty convincingly on the anti-prostate screening side in his article at The Conversation.  

Red light discussed

This article in The Conversation notes that women avoid walking through red light streets - streets with a lot of strip clubs or other forms of "adult entertainment", such as King Street in Melbourne - for fear of sexual harassment by drunk men.   That's pretty wise of them.

This may be unfair to women who have to divert from what might be the shortest route, but does this mean you shouldn't have red light streets at all? 

One of the weirdest things in Brisbane, I have long thought, is that there is a strip club right in the Albert Street part of the main pedestrian mall.  It's like 15 m from the dead centre of the mall.   It doesn't have lurid pictures outside, which is something to be grateful for, but I have still always thought that this is a very strange place to put this type of venue.  Yet it's been there for years and years.

Another oddity is the the old Grovenor Hotel on George Street.  Decades ago, it used to be a normal sort of pub (not that I ever recall going there), but for a long time now it has been a topless venue.  (including the ability to get a haircut from a topless woman.)   This used to be just across the corner from the Supreme Court (since demolished and re-located), but it's still just across another corner from the high rise home of the Justice Department and the DPP.    Again, this has always struck me as a bizarrely inappropriate place to running an adult entertainment venue.

Brisbane's actual red light district, such that it was, used to be in Fortitude Valley, but it was only ever a few venues, I think.  I get the impression driving through it now that it barely has an "adult entertainment" venue now at all.   It's more the scene for doof doof music clubs and party drugs.  Unfortunately it has proved strongly resisted to commercial revival in many respects - Chinatown had a lot of money spent on it, and yet it still feels like it is going through a protracted commercial death.   The McWhirter Centre, last time I visited it, felt like a complete failure as a retail centre.    I think I did see someone from the tattoo shop engaged in a drug deal, though.  

Anyway, my impression is still that strip clubs are best kept in one, small area, rather than having them in the middle of normal retail areas.  I don't think that these dubious enterprises should be "normalised" by being in ordinary retail or commercial districts.  

To be honest, in this day and day of internet pornography I don't know how or why strip clubs survive at all.    Brothels I understand (so to speak), but strip clubs when there is so much more explicit things to be seen on the net?   Very odd.   But if they are going to exist at all, keep them out of the way, I say.

Brilliant

You know that West Virginian governor who just swapped from being a Democrat to a Republican?  Well, sure seems that in doing so he boosted up the average Democrat politician IQ several points:

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice said Donald Trump is “really interested” in his plan to prop up Appalachian mining by giving federal money to power plants that burn the region’s coal.

Justice, a coal and real estate mogul elected governor last year as a Democrat, announced at a West Virginia rally alongside President Trump last week that he’s becoming a Republican. Justice has recently spent a “goodly amount of time" meeting one-on-one with Trump and has liked the feedback to his pro-coal proposal. The plan calls for the Department of Homeland Security to send $15 to eastern U.S. utilities for every ton of Appalachia coal they burn.

“He’s really interested. He likes the idea,” Justice said in a phone interview on Wednesday when asked about Trump’s reaction. “Naturally, he’s trying to vet the whole process. It’s a complicated idea.”

Google; Men; Women

Physicist Bee has a somewhat complicated (I suppose some would say "nuanced") take on the matter of Google sacking that guy Damore.    As for me, it's outraged that alt.right, so I find it hard to be believe Google can be completely in the wrong! 

I think the NYT article "The Alt-Right Finds a New Enemy in Silicon Valley" is pretty good, and it notes that some hope it may be the start of a sort of right wing internet (which I think would not be a bad thing, as the alt.right's base is not, I reckon, as big as it thinks it is):

There is a certain poetic justice in the alt-right, largely an internet-based political movement, turning against the companies that enabled it in the first place. Like most modern political movements, the alt-right relies on tech platforms like YouTube and Twitter to rally supporters, collect donations and organize gatherings. In that sense, Silicon Valley progressivism isn’t just an ideological offense to the alt-right — it’s an operational threat.

In an attempt to build a buffer against censorship, some alt-right activists have begun creating their own services. Cody Wilson, who describes himself as a “techno-anarchist,” recently opened Hatreon, a crowdfunding site that bills itself as a free-speech alternative to Patreon. Gab, a Twitter clone, was started last year after Twitter barred several conservative users. RootBocks, a right-wing Kickstarter knockoff, bills itself as “a crowdfunding site that won’t shut you down because of your beliefs.”

These companies are still tiny by Silicon Valley standards, but their supporters say that one day they could serve as the foundation for a kind of parallel right-wing internet where all speech is allowed, no matter how noxious or incendiary.

In another NYT report on the matter, they do point one pretty good sounding reason why he was sacked:

Mr. Damore’s comments also raised another issue around Google’s peer-review system. Employees at the company are expected to judge their colleague’s work in a peer-review process that is essential to deciding whether someone gets promoted. By expressing certain beliefs — such as that women are more prone to anxiety — the concern was that he could no longer be impartial in judging female co-workers.

For a company steeped in a rich history of encouraging unconventional thinking, the problem was not that he expressed an unpopular opinion, but a disrespectful one, according to Yonatan Zunger, who left Google last week after 14 years at the company to join a start-up.

“We have a long history of disagreement over everything from technical issues to policy issues to the most mundane aspects of building management, and over all, that has been tremendously valuable,” Mr. Zunger said in an email. “The problem here was that this was disrespectful disagreement — and there’s really no respectful way to say, ‘I think you and people like you aren’t as qualified to do your job as people like me.”

Good point.

My modest same sex marriage suggestion

While I think a compulsory plebiscite on same sex marriage, held at the next election as a way of minimising cost, is not a bad idea, it is hard to understand the point of a voluntary postal plebiscite on the topic.

It will, surely, simply be a deeply methodologically flawed attempt at gauging the public's opinion, at the enormous cost of $122 million.

If the Coalition were honest about it, why could they not acknowledge that a more reliable way of gauging public opinion would be to pay for, say, Newspoll, to devise an exceptionally large sample one off poll on the matter, with a simple question, so as to gauge public opinion nation wide within a very small margin of error.

The methodology could be devised so as to capture more than your standard landlines, no?

How much could that cost, really?    I would take a stab and say that it couldn't be more than $5 to $10 million. Wouldn't some department or other have the funds to commission it, without getting the sanction of Parliament?

So, savings of at least $110 million, and a more accurate outcome.   Much less for Labor to complain about.

What is wrong with this idea?

An exceptionally good optical illusion

Noticed at Boing Boing, which I rarely visit these days:

Impossible hurdles

I have a hunch that the Impossible Burger, if it's as good as people claim, will make lab grown meat hardly worth pursuing.    

But the NYT notes that the company is having trouble convincing the FDA that it should declare the key magic ingredient - it's blood tasting soy leghemoglobin - safe to consume.   Which is odd, given that they can sell the burger without that endorsement.

It wouldn't stop me from trying it.

By the way, one of the best fake meat things I tried in the last couple of years were some type of frozen nugget made from shiitake mushrooms.  They went very well in a butter chicken sauce, and had the firmer texture that is often missing from soy based fake meat (or Quorn, which is too expensive and also too soft).  They were from an Asian supermarket, but I haven't seen them there again.  I can't even remember where they were made.  Anyway, it's a pity, because I did like them.

Re: North Korea

This story:

North Korea now has a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can be mounted on a missile, according to an analysis by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, the Washington Post reports. North Korea has claimed to have this capability for some time now, and for planning purposes, U.S. military commanders had already been working under the assumption that those claims were true. However, Tuesday’s revelation is a much stronger confirmation.

seems a little conveniently timed, doesn't anyone think?

I see that the Right, at least in the form of Trump supporting Ace of Spades, is already getting comfortable with the idea of a pre-emptive nuclear strike:

A pre-emptive nuclear strike is not a great option, but we're out of great options, and now down to only the less-bad ones.

So, all we need now is for ageing Rupert Murdoch to email the producer of Fox and Friends  that they should run a "US should strike first" line, and Trump will be reaching for the phone to the Pentagon.

I see one expert in Time says it might be best to do nothing:

As things stand, neither diplomacy nor sanctions seem likely to derail the North’s nuclear program. So regime change looks more and more attractive. But better that it come from within. Given Kim’s reckless habits—drinking and driving are two of his favorite pastimes—a self-inflicted biological solution is more than possible. So is the chance that an insider will finally get angry enough to take him out, never mind the consequences.

Update:    Uh-oh.  Fox News already getting on talking heads seemingly suggesting pre-emptive strike (possibly nuclear) not such a bad idea:

On Fox Business, Trish Regan interviewed former Lt. Gen. Ralph Peters, a military pundit, on the next steps the administration should take. “I don’t want this to be a war,” he said. “I don’t want it! Nobody in their right mind wants it. But we cannot allow North Korea to have an array of missiles, an arsenal of missiles, of nuclear-tipped missiles that can hit the United States. If it comes to that, I would hit them first and hit them hard knowing that it will be bloody and ugly if we do so."

Message to Jason, future Buddhist

Or, you could become a Buddhist. A lot less sweat and pain involved.  Not to mention very little risk of concussion. *

Speaking of Buddhism (I fear people are thinking that I am at risk of conversion to it due to a fondness for Monkey King movies from Hong Kong/China), there's a book out by Robert Wright called "Why Buddhism is True" which is attracting some attention. 

There's a short interview with him at NPR.

In his new book, Why Buddhism is True, Wright makes the case that some Buddhist practices can help humans overcome the biological pull towards dissatisfaction.

"I think of mindfulness meditation as almost a rebellion against natural selection," he says. "Natural selection is the process that created us. It gave us our values. It sets our agenda, and Buddhism says, 'We don't have to play this game.' "

He says:

Certainly when you think about the logic of natural selection, it makes sense that we would be like this. Natural selection built us to do some things, a series of things that help us get genes into the next generation. Those include eating food so we stay alive, having sex — things like that.

If it were the case that any of these things brought permanent gratification, then we would quit doing them, right? I mean, you would eat, you'd feel blissed out, you'd never eat again. You'd have sex, you'd, like, lie there basking in the afterglow, never have sex again. Well, obviously that's not a prescription for getting genes into the next generation. So natural selection seems to have built animals in general to be recurrently dissatisfied. And this seems to be a central feature of life — and it's central to the Buddhist diagnosis of what the problem is.

Well, I think I have a bit of a problem with this.   It seems to me that you can respond to a recurrent bodily desire (the satisfaction of which gives pleasure) in one of two ways:  resenting the fact that the desire keeps returning, or celebrating the repeated satisfaction of it.   (Assuming you can satisfy it.)

I tend to think Buddhism's attitude is too much like the former, whereas other religions take the more physical life affirming view.   Sure, you can say that Christianity or (say) Hinduism thinks asceticism has spiritual value too, but I don't think you could ever say that it thought it was for everyone.  With Buddhism, I'm always getting the feeling that it thinks people are fooling themselves if they feel good after, say, a good meal and good sex.  (No doubt, some Buddhist would argue I'm completely misunderstanding it.)

The other fundamental problem I've always had with Buddhism is that it seems in its purist form to be a philosophy which de-emphasises the value of charity and help to others.    I know Buddhists will argue about that too, but I'm not so sure.  It seems a philosophy primed for the argument "hey, poor starving person, you need to realise that your desire for a full stomach is an illusion - I will help you meditate to overcome your hunger pains"  instead of getting in and helping them build a better farm.
Wright is perhaps on stronger grounds when he notes some similarity between Buddhism and cognitive therapy (a therapy I've always thought sounded sensible and valuable):

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works by kind of interrogating people about the logic behind things like fears and anxieties, like, Is there really much of a chance of you projectile vomiting while speaking to a crowd? You've never done it before. ... So there's a suspicion there about the logic behind feelings.

Well, in Buddhism there's a suspicion of the logic behind feelings more broadly, I would say. But as a practical matter, Buddhism works at the level of feeling. They don't interrogate the logic explicitly, but you deal with the feeling itself in a way that disempowers it. And there's a kind of bridge between cognitive therapy and Buddhist practice in evolutionary psychology; because evolutionary psychology explains that, indeed, a lot of the feelings we have are not worth following, for various reasons. They may have literally been designed to mislead us to begin with by natural selection. ... We live in an environment so different from the environment that natural selection designed us for that we have these counterproductive feelings, like fear of public speaking. So evolutionary psychology gives a back story, explaining why it is that we so often are misled by feelings ... and then Buddhist meditation tells us what to do about that.

*  For other readers:  comment made as a result of his tweet that he felt this article came uncomfortably close to describing the reasons for his own "athletic obsessions".   

Speaking of poisonous social media

The threads of Catallaxy work as a form of social media, where (as I have taken to repeating), the foolish and obnoxious find comfort in other people who share their foolish and obnoxious views, or at the very least,  not call them out for it.  

I've mentioned their fondness for armed revolution fantasies before, and I see they're (OK, to be fair, some) are still at it:

I've called out nutty Bosi before - an ex SAS twit who would not be out of place in one of the US armed militia fantasy clubs that thought they would liberate the nation when Obama started kicking their doors in to confiscate every gun in the land.

Yes, please publish your violent fantasy paper on Catallaxy.   Free speech and all that, hey Sinclair...

Young adult fiction eats itself

There's a long, interesting article at The Vulture about the silly, silly modern political correctness in social media campaigning about young adult novels that dare to have characters that say something offensive to current PC sensibilities.  

The article shows how one precious dill led an attack on a novel by selecting particular un-PC lines, and completely ignoring the bigger picture - that the novel is about a character recognising and coming out of intolerance.  But gullible followers of said dill use social media to join in the attack without even reading the book and understanding they are being mislead.   I like the way one agent comments:  

“None of us are willing to comment publicly for fear of being targeted and labeled racist or bigoted. But if children’s-book publishing is no longer allowed to feature an unlikable character, who grows as a person over the course of the story, then we’re going to have a pretty boring business.”

This is an area ripe and overdue for ridicule and satire, is it not?   But have the PC Left enough power to even prevent that?  I doubt it.

One thing I do know - you don't cure the madness of lefty, over precious social media crowds via a counter attack by mad, more than happy to offend, alt.right social media crowds.  If anything, that surely is counterproductive.   There is something very poisonous and corrosive about social media campaigning, no matter which side it is coming from.   Social scientists will be studying this for many years yet, I bet.

Fanciful thinking on elevators

So, architects, at least, are thinking about what could be done if elevators went away from steel cabled up and down things, to something more like the "go anywhere" deal on the Starship Enterprise.

All sounds very cool, but I would have thought that the destruction of the World Trade Centre, and recent London and Dubai fires, are making the idea of living or even working on (say) the 100th floor less attractive than ever.  Not sure that I had realised how high a building going up in Jeddah was going to be:

Today there is a 1,000-meter (167-story) building under construction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Even taller buildings are possible with today’s structural technology.

Cohen talks Taleb

I see that Nick Cohen gets stuck into Taleb's ridiculously aggressive, alt.right style behaviour towards Mary Beard, and it's a good read.

I am amused to see one twitter comment about it:

A load of old rubbish

Good title for a post about last night's depressing 4 Corners program on waste and recycling failures in Australia, no?

[By the way, that new ABC reporter continually reminds me of Daria.  She does come across as a tad over-earnest, if you ask me.]

But if you want to watch an episode full of men looking uncomfortable during interviews, you should watch it.   The guy from NSW EPA looked particularly guilty, if you ask me; and the other stellar shonky bit of government seemed to be the Gosford council.   And who knew that there are mountains of broken glass in warehouses around Australia, or that Ipswich, a town with an image problem even before last night,  had seemingly become the dumping ground for much of the rest of Australia's unwanted rubbish?

The odd story of the Rabbit God

It always seems to me that the historical Asian take on male homosexuality had a much higher emphasis on romanticism than much of the modern Western image of it:   if you ask me, it's not like a gay pride parade featuring drag queens, men and lesbians in leather, and many guys in speedos and feathers can be easily said to be emphasising romanticism over in-your-face eroticism/fetishism.  I think you still see this in Asian countries today, with oddities like straight Japanese women who are fans of young men in love manga and anime.

Further evidence of the importance of romance in Asian thoughts on homosexuality comes from this article that I stumbled across yesterday, from Taipei, where gay marriage had a sudden and unexpected legal endorsement recently.  There's a small Taoist temple there, to cater for gay men:

All religions address both spiritual needs and issues of here and now. New deities and even new religions often emerge to address needs or during times of social change. The founding of the Gay Rabbit God Temple in Taipei is one such example.

About five years ago (2005), a Taoist priest made spiritual contact with the Rabbit God and decided that should five same sex couples approach the temple for prayers or spiritual help, he will establish a temple dedicated to the Rabbit God.

Although at that time, they did not have specific programs for gay couples, five couples did indeed turn up. The priest took this as a sign and officially established the Rabbit Temple.

More on the background to this god, here:

The god isn't very well known, nor commonly worshipped, but he is based on an historical figure. According to the Tale of the Rabbit God that appears in the Zibuyu (子不語), a collection of supernatural stories written by Qing Dynasty scholar and poet Yuan Mei (袁枚, 1716-1798), Hu Tianbao (?#32993;天保) was an official in 18th-century, Qing Dynasty China. He fell in love with a handsome young imperial inspector of Fujian Province, but because of the inspector's higher status, Hu was afraid to reveal his feelings. After Hu was caught peeping at the inspector through a bathroom wall, he confessed his admiration for the inspector, who had him beaten to death. One month after his passing, the story goes, Hu appeared to a man from his hometown in a dream, claiming that the king of the underworld had appointed him the Rabbit God. As such, his duty was to govern the affairs of men who desire men. In the dream, he asked the man to erect a shrine to him.

As a priest, Lu often heard complaints from homosexual Taoist adherents that there was no god to answer their prayers. Believing one of his missions is to tend to the needs of people alienated from mainstream society, he set out to revive the forgotten deity.

 As his research suggests, Hu was an upper class historical figure who lived in Fujian from the late Ming Dynasty to the early Qing Dynasty. However, according to Michael Szonyi, associate professor of Chinese history at the department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard, the Rabbit God is a pure invention of Yuan, the poet, since the image of the rabbit deity doesn't appear in any other sources from Fujian.

While some aspects of the story may be fabrications, the existence of the cult of Hu Tianbao in Fujian in the 18th century is well documented in official Qing records.

This priest reckons the Rabbit God is a particularly helpful one, if you treat him respectfully:

The Rabbit God is perceived to be an affable deity, Lu said, who is willing to assist his followers in every aspect of life. Since he works for Cheng Huang (城隍), the City God, he has both the erudition and social network in the spiritual world to solve any problem mortals have, according to Lu.

Homosexuals may have an edge in the spiritual world because, "Hu Tianbao is rather self-abased both because of the way he died and the somewhat belittling title of rabbit. So if you are willing to believe in him, he will be much more grateful and work harder than other deities," Lu said.

There are several methods of worshipping, asking for and receiving answers from this divine being, but sincerity is what counts most, Lu said. For this reason, followers should address the god as Ta Yeh (大爺), or master, rather than Rabbit God. Then, those with needs can write down their names, addresses, birthdays and prayers on pieces of paper money and burn them to make sure the messages are sent to heaven.

Well, I thought it was interesting, anyway.

Gay peace for our time

Isn't it odd how everyone (well, the media and conservatives) are waiting for Turnbull to emerge and make a "peace in our time" speech regarding same sex marriage.  I'd do a photoshop, if I had time.

I do feel a bit sorry for Malcolm - he is genuinely being wedged every which way, by conservatives in his party, Labor and the Greens, his own gay party members, and more moderate voices too (with the fairly silly idea of a postal plebiscite), all on an issue that the population at large doesn't rate as very important, but which the media is happy to devote plenty of attention to.    It must be very, very annoying.  

Dangerous sea creatures great and small

First, the large:

Six men are lucky to be alive after a whale threw their boat metres into the air in the Whitsundays.

The group was returning from a reef fishing trip on Saturday afternoon, when the large humpback breached underneath the 8.5-metre aluminium vessel, near Gloucester Island.
The impact of the collision with the whale and the water was so great that those on board were violently thrown around the boat, with two men knocked unconscious.

And then, the small - the Melbourne sea lice attack.   That really is a surprising story, but apparently sea lice can be particularly ferocious down there.   There will be few toddlers allowed to play in the water near Melbourne for a while, I imagine.

Dressed against global warming

Graham Lloyd's favourite "climate scientist" Jennifer Marohasy had this photo in The Australian last week, on top of one of Lloyd's dire pieces about the controversy of one thermometer which needs checking when it records very cold minimums:

It's a bit transparent, isn't it?:  she's trying to disprove global warming by showing how much she has to dress up on a really cold day.  And is that a dead animal around her neck?

She looks at a tad batty, if you ask me.

Monkey Kings

SBS Viceland (I still don't really understand that change) showed The Monkey King 2 last week, and it's still able to be watched on SBS on Demand.

This is at least the second Chinese film I have seen lately that features at some point a massive heavenly Buddha intervening on Earth.  It would seem that the government doesn't have a problem with such ideas being promulgated in cinema, which I suppose shows how technically communist states have moved on a bit.

I find something rather watchable about movies loosely based on the Monkey King story now.  I'm even tempted to read the book.    I knew someone once (an Australian but from an Asian family) whose secret ambition in life was to produce a movie that did proper justice to the book Journey to the West.  He evidently has not achieved that.

Update:  One thing about Buddhism - if a Catholic were to become one,  the Mahayana version is surely the type to which he or she should feel more affinity (given the Communion of Saints idea is not a million miles away from bodhisattvas being able to help):

Mahayana Buddhism agrees with Theravada Buddhism that the human problem is suffering; it holds the Four Noble Truths as fundamental. But whereas Theravada holds out the ideal of the individual striving alone on the Eight-fold Path towards nirvana, Mahayana adds helpers who provide shortcuts and assistance out of compassion for those who are suffering. These helpers are called bodhisattvas, and are beings who have worked towards enlightenment and nirvana. But rather than enter nirvana, once they are able, they turn around and bring their store of wisdom, power and merit to help others along the same path. This simple idea has a number of ramifications for the goal of humanity.

1) All human beings participate in the Buddha's nature; that is to say, all humans have the essence of Buddha within themselves. Thus the goal of Mahayana Buddhism is for everyone to realize their true Buddha nature. This goal is the same as attaining nirvana (the Theravadan goal), but it is focused on the Buddha and each person's imitation of the Buddha, rather than on the release from samsara.

2) The Buddha was a bodhisattva. In contrast to the Theravadan view, Mahayana holds that the Buddha (i.e., Gautama) did not just attain nirvana. At the point at which he could have extinguished his existence in samsara, he instead returned to this world and taught other people how to attain nirvana. If he had not, then humanity would not know how to attain it. It was Buddha's compassion for the suffering of humanity that motivated him to remain in this life and to teach and preach for forty more years. Thus, the Buddha used the merit, power and wisdom he gained while striving for enlightenment to help others. He was a bodhisattva.

3) Since humans should imitate the Buddha, the Mahayana ideal is to become a bodhisattva and help others. The Theravadan ideal of the arhat is seen as too selfish, too focused on the individual, and thus without benefit for humanity in general. By emphasizing that the goal is to be a bodhisattva, Mahayana shows that it cares about the rest of humanity as a whole, not just as individuals.

4) Once a person becomes a bodhisattva, then they have the ability to help people towards nirvana and enlightenment. They may create new paths to higher stages that can be accomplished by lay people as well as monks. In fact, many forms of Mahayana focus on the laity, almost to the exclusion of interest in the sangha. Pure Land is a good example of this. Amitabha Buddha (who was initially a monk, then a Bodhisattva, and finally attained Buddha-hood) created a "pure land"--a paradise--in the "west" (i.e., in the Buddha-fields). He vowed that anyone who would call on his name could enter this land. There they could remain, or they could strive towards enlightenment, which would be much closer.

Something wrong with Taleb

Mary Beard talks about being under attack from the alt.right, and Nassim Taleb's jumping into the fray, not on her side.

Look, I don't care how smart he might be in some areas - I think it is very clear from his twitter feed and many of essays that he has some serious personality issues.   He's a thin skinned jerk, in other words.

The Atlantic had a look at the matter, and questions Taleb's reliance on DNA evidence.

Yet more Dunkirk

I was interested to watch the 2017 documentary "Dunkirk:  The New Evidence" on SBS last night.

It's pretty good.   A couple of things relevant to the movie:

*  the town of Dunkirk was a lot more damaged in real life than the movie depicted;
*  the RAF was a lot more hated on the ground than even Nolan indicated - there was an interview with a veteran who still seemed to be resentful of them after all these years.  Yet the biggest point the documentary made was that the RAF was working hard both over the channel, and far behind enemy lines preventing a lot of German planes getting to the beach;  it was just that those stuck on the beach could not see what was going on high and skies and quite some distance from them.

I recommend it.   See SBS on Demand.

An optimistic take on education

In an endeavour to get a teenage son interested in what he might do in tertiary education and future employment, my wife and I dragged him along to two recent University open days in Brisbane: last Sunday, it was QUT (Gardens Point), and today it was the University of Queensland.

We sat in on a few talks at each, and wandered around marvelling (well, I did anyway) at the astounding amount of student friendly services (by way of food and other facilities) that are available at Universities like these today.

I am old enough that I actually went to QUT before it was officially a university - back in the late seventies, early eighties.  Facilities then included one cafeteria (of dodgy quality - I rarely ate there), a licensed club that I didn't actually join (I was pretty much only a weekend drinker, and I wasn't in the clique of students who immediately took up membership), and a cinema which I recall going to once, and having to leave before the movie finished to catch a train.  It was pretty basic.

The QUT campus is now dramatically different, and to my mind, extremely attractive.  Old Government House (which I seem to recall being under near continuous restoration back in my day) is still at its heart, and is now always open as a heritage site and a very attractive one at that. 

It now has some great looking buildings and student facilities around it (I should have taken photos,) and the entire campus, though small in area, is full of trees and green spaces to a much greater degree than it did 35 (gosh) years ago.

The University of Queensland is, by contrast, not as different from those days, by my reckoning.  Sure, it also has much better student facilities, but the look of the campus, which still has very large amounts of open space around it, has not changed to the same extent.

But apart from appearances, I have to say that the impression gained from each talk we attended was a very positive one of the tertiary sector.  Sure, I guess Universities don't care for their worst lecturers or academics to be talking to the public and potential students at these events, but I still came away with the feeling that there is a much greater degree of professionalism in how universities teach and manage themselves these days.

I also have continually had that feeling when interacting with my kids' State high school.   I went to a pretty ordinary one in a working class area, but I doubt it was all that unusual for the way it seemed some pretty disinterested teachers could still make a living putting in what seemed the bare minimum effort.

That's really not the impression I get now - nearly all teachers in the State school system do genuinely seem much more professional and more enthusiastic than in my youth.     

I won't say that I don't have some misgivings about modern education:  I'm sure I posted before about how it seems to me that maths education is too heavily "verbal" in primary school these days; and I also think that there is a tendency for high schools to chose too many "young adult" novels that don't have lasting qualities in english.

But by and large, I think the education system has improved a great deal over my life time, and all the kvetching about it from the Right (and sometimes the Left) seems very undeserved.

Another radio station mystery

Apart from the creepy shortwave numbers radio stations, BBC Future has a story about another mysterious radio signal from Russia:

In the middle of a Russian swampland, not far from the city of St Petersburg, is a rectangular iron gate. Beyond its rusted bars is a collection of radio towers, abandoned buildings and power lines bordered by a dry-stone wall. This sinister location is the focus of a mystery which stretches back to the height of the Cold War.

It is thought to be the headquarters of a radio station, “MDZhB”, that no-one has ever claimed to run. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades, it’s been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone. Every few seconds it’s joined by a second sound, like some ghostly ship sounding its foghorn. Then the drone continues.

Once or twice a week, a man or woman will read out some words in Russian, such as “dinghy” or “farming specialist”. And that’s it. Anyone, anywhere in the world can listen in, simply by tuning a radio to the frequency 4625 kHz.

A good read.

Well deserved jail for those eyebrows

That American case of the girl who texted her "boyfriend" to stop trying to back out of killing himself (it is truly an awful thing to read about) is going to jail, but not for long enough.   But I noticed one peculiar thing about her - what is up with those eyebrows?   (I half suspect they are an attempt at looking at least half crazy as a sentencing aid.)

Nazis and Ice

Well, I knew there was some Nazi interest in esoteric mystical or supernatural ideas, but I can't say that I have heard of World Ice Theory before.   All very odd.

Yes, he's as bad in private as in public

That is surely the key thing to take away from the leaked Trump phone call transcripts (as well as the fact that there must be very worried people within the government in order for the leak to happen at all).  As The Guardian writes:

Such documents should have been very closely held, accessible to only a few senior officials. Their publication reflects the intensity of the war inside the White House between rival factions – and a reminder that, for all his well-advertised toughness, the new chief of staff, John Kelly, is going to find it very hard to impose discipline on an institution that is dysfunctional from the top down.

It is quite possible that the leaker was motivated by anxiety about the national security implications of Trump’s erratic leadership – that the leak is a cry for help from inside the administration.

The transcripts of his conversations with Enrique Peña Nieto and Malcolm Turnbull show the president to be no more coherent in private than he is public: ill-informed – even about a major attack on US soil – and narcissistic to the point of absurdity.

Everything's fine

Watching members of the Cult of Trump is like a permanent run of that dog in a fire cartoon.  Here's a reliable tell:  if they refer to the Mueller investigation as the "Wussia" investigation, and claim it is dead, or a nothingburger, (or even - is going to backfire on the Democrats), they're pretty much a political idiot.  [Hi, JC.]

Axios is reporting today rumours that the investigation is going into Trump finances,  and there is a grand jury.   Over at Vox, the temporary FBI head had apparently warned a bunch of his people that they are potential witnesses. 

The Atlantic summarises all of this, and notes that the investigation is sure to run into 2018, possibly the following year too.

But yeah, sure:  there's nothing to the "Wussia" investigation.

But can he stop him watching Fox and Friends?

So, John Kelly recognizes the problem, but I have my doubts he can solve it:

When new White House chief of staff John Kelly huddled with senior staff on his first day at work, he outlined a key problem in President Donald Trump’s White House that he planned to fix: Bad information getting into the president’s hands.

Kelly told the staff that information needed to flow through him – whether on paper or in briefings –because the president would make better decisions if given good information.

I like this summary of Trump's bad sources:

In the West Wing, many of the president’s most controversial decisions have been attributed to bad information, partially because the president is easily swayed by the last person he talked to – or the last thing he read.

For example, he accused President Barack Obama of tapping his phone line in Trump Tower after seeing comments from a conservative talk show host and a Breitbart News article. He has often posted some of his most controversial tweets while watching Fox News and stewing. He has sometimes seemed to view television accounts of the news as fact more than information from people armed with classified information. He has made decisions about legal matters or major policy decisions while consulting with some aides – only to reverse them after talking to family members or friends, who he dials late at night.

He has been given information of dubious quality, from stories by GotNews.com, a blog written by a right-wing provocateur named Charles Johnson to segments from segments of debunked documentaries. He has, at times, listened to real estate friends about legislative strategy while ignoring Speaker Paul Ryan or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

By limiting information, and making it go through proper channels, Kelly is “ensuring Trump doesn’t make his decisions based on some bullshit he watched at midnight or on Breitbart,” said Chris Whipple, who recently wrote a book on the chief-of-staff role.

I reckon all that will happen is that Hannity or someone like him will turn on Kelly, and tell Trump that he is giving Kelly too much control, and he'll be gone.

President in Fantasyland

Cattle would like you to read this article

Quite a surprising claim:

If Everyone Ate Beans Instead of Beef

With one dietary change, the U.S. could almost meet greenhouse-gas emission goals

...
Recently Harwatt and a team of scientists from Oregon State University, Bard College, and Loma Linda University calculated just what would happen if every American made one dietary change: substituting beans for beef. They found that if everyone were willing and able to do that—hypothetically—the U.S. could still come close to meeting its 2020 greenhouse-gas emission goals, pledged by President Barack Obama in 2009.

That is, even if nothing about our energy infrastructure or transportation system changed—and even if people kept eating chicken and pork and eggs and cheese—this one dietary change could achieve somewhere between 46 and 74 percent of the reductions needed to meet the target.

Ridiculous conspiracy belief, continued

I'm waiting for someone like Graham Readfearn to write a detailed post about the current Graham Lloyd crap articles in support of Jennifer Marohasy's and Jonova's paranoid conspiracy claims about the weather bureau fudging temperatures.

Lloyd is just the pits as an environment "journalist", and has been for years.   Look at the ridiculous way he frames the matter of one low temperature reading discrepancy noted by a "bush meteorologist": 

BoM strongly rejects any suggestion of manipulation.

Nonetheless, the handling of temperature data is a red-hot issue with claims and counterclaims dogging the world’s premier meteorological agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA in the US, and Britain’s Met Office.

Reports of the latest controversy at BoM have quickly and widely circulated around the world.

Yes, by Right wing culture warrior idiots who believe that deliberate conspiracy within weather bureaus and scientific organisations is a more credible explanation more than CO2 is causing temperature increases.

To disbelieve AGW now is just a special branch of conspiracy belief, and has been for some time.

And why can otherwise functioning people not recognize that they are being conned by a mere handful of contrarian amateurs into believing conspiracy? 

Update:  Nick Stokes made a comment at WUWT, where the foolish are hi-fiving each other about how this is another wound to the climate change  conspiracy:

The greatest Presidency, ever

From a Politico story about the full transcript of a recent WSJ interview with Trump, comes this snippet:

At one point, Trump seemed annoyed that one of The Wall Street Journal reporters in the room called the reaction to his July 24 Boy Scouts speech “mixed.”

“There was no mix there. That was a standing ovation from the time I walked out to the time I left, and for five minutes after I had already gone. There was no mix,” Trump said.

He added: “And I got a call from the head of the Boy Scouts saying it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them, and they were very thankful. So there was — there was no mix.”

The chief of the Boy Scouts subsequently apologized for the political nature of the speech.

At what point does chronic, pathological, ridiculous exaggeration become a sign of a serious disorder rendering someone unsafe for high office?   Because he's been doing this since day one ("biggest inauguration crowd, ever") and there is no sign it is letting up and that reality is sinking in.

Update:  I see someone on Twitter is saying that the Boy Scouts are saying no such phone call was even made.(! if true.)

Nurse!

Urgent sedation needed again for winner of the  Happiest Outback Entertainer of the Year award, who comments regularly at Catallaxy:

So, Tired of the winning yet?
Australia is going down.
What Australians put up with is way beyond what most people do in other countries.

[rant about how bad things are in some remote aboriginal communities - which is probably true, but  the next bit] -

Some people think we should have socialism good and hard to get it over and done with, so we can rebuild.
Looking at Australia, you must come to the conclusion that we will all be living in the violence and condition of socialist oppression that you see in remote aboriginal Australia.
There will be violence and misery on a grand scale, as has been occurring in aboriginal communities for years....

From the aboriginal experience and looking at everything from Marxist indoctrination and the level of totalitarian control already exercised on us, we won’t come back from even a full term of Malcom let alone Shorten.
The insanity and corruption are real and all logical thinking will be replaced by emotions of envy and entitlement.
Countries do come back from socialism.
But only after complete and utter devastation.

 Update:   the happy catastrophist is also discussing the prospect of same sex marriage with a foolish libertarian type who has turned up on Catallaxy to support it:

The gay activism which is Marxist hatred of the west using gays as a victim group, is quite noticeably bringing down our civilisation, which is it’s aim, and with which envy and entitlement (displayed in your first paragraph) is used.
Your blindness to this, due to emotion over maturity and any recognition of what gave rise to the civilisation that gave you so much, will definitely cause our civilisation to collapse, as is starting to happen.
We will then be replaced by a civilisation that will throw you off the top of the nearest building.
Or burn you alive.
You f.....ing entitled idiot.

 "..emotion over maturity..." - lolz, as the kids say.

Conservatives and same sex marriage

I find it hard to believe that the conservatives in the Coalition who are apparently chattering about a challenge to Turnbull's leadership if he allows a conscience vote on same sex marriage think they are on a winner here.

I've said before, I think a plebiscite is a good way to resolve a matter of unusual social and cultural consequence - yet I don't doubt that it will go in favour of gay marriage.   But having achieved it that way does give a clear societal endorsement to the change - and conservatives won't be able to claim it is just a result of elitist, out of touch, politicians (or judges) knowing what's right for society.  From that point of view, I think SSM activists should endorse the policy too.   And I think my view on this is reflected in public support for a plebiscite.

Having said that, all sensible people can see how it is going to pan out if a plebiscite is run at the next election, and as such, why should sensible people lose sleep if a government changes tactic and just says "lets vote on it now - the polling is clear on how a plebiscite will go, and has been for years - it can be a conscience vote, and we can stop talking about it and think about other issues."

Those who think it deserves to be an issue to bring down Turnbull just aren't sensible.   But they are likely to be completely unable to read the evidence on climate change, too, and make sensible responses to that as well.  They just love pushing hopeless causes against the evidence, for culture war reasons.  

I think a conservative push to oust Turnbull on this issue would just backfire on them in a spectacular way - confirming in the public's mind that the Liberals are a party at internal war with itself, just as the Rudd/Gillard wars harmed Labor.

Ethicists and pets

Boy, The Guardian (based as it is in a country renowned for its fondness of dogs) is asking for trouble when it runs a piece in which ethicists question the morality of pet ownership.

(Yes, there are many critical comments following.)

While there are lines in it which appear close to "peak Guardian", some points are valid enough.  In fact, it starts with someone noticing live baby rats on sale in a pet shop being available for snake food.   (I do think there is something inherently strange, cruel and unnecessary about keeping reptiles as pets if they can only be fed live mammalian food.)  Also, despite repeated discussion of the issue in the media, the breeding of dogs with inherent health problems just to match some pedigree "ideal" is pretty ridiculous.

So, I don't doubt that there are ethically questionable issues with some pets.  

But, as my wife said after we lost our first dog a couple of years ago, "dog people" have trouble being happy when they try living without a dog.   And there is no doubt that dogs can have a fantastically comfortable and mutually rewarding life with humans.

But (and I think I have read and perhaps blogged about this before),  attitudes to pet keeping haven't always been the same:

Widespread petkeeping is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the 19th century, most animals owned by households were working animals that lived alongside humans and were regarded unsentimentally. In 1698, for example, a Dorset farmer recorded in his diary: “My old dog Quon was killed and baked for his grease, which yielded 11lb.” However, in the 19th and 20th centuries, animals began to feature less in our increasingly urban environments and, as disposable income grew, pets became more desirable. Even as people began to dote on their pets, though, animal life was not attributed any intrinsic value. In Run, Spot, Run, Pierce reports that, in 1877, the city of New York rounded up 762 stray dogs and drowned them in the East River, shoving them into iron crates and lifting the crates by crane into the water. Veterinarian turned philosopher Bernard Rollin recalls pet owners in the 1960s putting their dog to sleep before going on holiday, reasoning that it was cheaper to get a new dog when they returned than to board the one they had.

Actually, I'm a tad skeptical of that last story.  It just doesn't ring that true - or at least, I would expect, would be a pretty rare attitude to find amongst pet dog owners of any era.  

Anyway, worth a read...

Update:   I asked my pet sheepskin at lunchtime what she thought of the article, and she wasn't impressed:

Mosquito reduction by bacteria

Nature reports on a clever, relatively natural, way to reduce mosquito populations.

There is a caution towards the end of the article against killing off mosquitoes everywhere - they are part of a food chain, after all.  

Getting confused by the number of generals

I'm starting to lose track of the reputation of the Generals Trump has appointed around him.

I thought initially that Kelly was the thoughtful, monk like one - but no, that is Mattis.  McMaster has apparently been shouted at by Trump, but apparently convinced him to stick to the Iran deal.  So maybe he's OK?

But Kelly - well, he apparently doesn't doubt intelligence on Russian meddling, and was critical of the Trump firing of Comey, but on the other hand has been using Trumpian style fear rhetoric about immigrants.

I have my doubts he is going to last, somehow...

Ice problems

This article explains how use of methamphetamine is bad for the health, generally.

Cult watch

Do economics students who go to RMIT realise that one of the lecturers has become a full blown cult member?  Steve Kates yesterday, making his undying confidence in Trump and all who surround him very clear:

You know, she may not even have wanted him at the birth. But if you are the kind of loon who thinks we should not be thankful that Trump is president because his Communications Director prioritises his work in the White House over attending the birth of his child then you should drop political commentary....

[After listing various international problem headlines]:

I have no idea how to solve any of this, but I do believe that there is no one I’d rather have thinking these issues through than Donald Trump.

Kates' family members should be thinking seriously about some intervention.

Amongst the fellow cultists at Catallaxy, I see that some are a little bit shaken by the 10 day reign of "The Mooch" .    Kates won't be:  it will all be for the greater good, somehow.

As for the "misanthrope mutual support club" vibe of Catallaxy threads, I see that it's time for confessions from one of the more depressive figures there:

Bizarrely, I think he makes a living as a travelling entertainer in country regions.   Farmers can be a miserable lot at times, maybe that's how it works.

I feel a bit guilty for doing this, as it does feel like mocking people who actually need help.   But  as I argued before, it's doing them harm, the way misanthropes and denialists of various shades are finding comfort in company at that blog.