No nudes Buddha

Just one of those things one stumbles across on the internet:  an explanation as to why, despite India even back then having a tradition of asceticism involving nudity and little care for personal hygiene, Buddhism is not associated with such practices:

The Buddha mentioned that before his enlightenment he went naked which have led some to speculate that he was a follower of Jainism for at least some time (M.I,77). The âjãvakas and several other sects went naked and the Ekasàñaka ascetics only wore a small cloth over their genitals. Nakedness together with tearing the hair out, never cutting the hair and nails, allowing the hair become matted and never washing, were all believed to show an admirable detachment from the world.....

The Buddha made it a rule that monks should never go naked, even within their private quarters (Vin.II,121). He said: `Nakedness is unbecoming, unsuitable, improper, unworthy of an ascetic, not allowable and not to be done'(Vin.I,305). He objected to it on two grounds. The first was because like all austerities or surface changes, nudity does not lead to significant inner change. He said: `Not nakedness nor matted hair, not mud nor fasting, not lying on the ground, being unwashed or squatting on the heels will purify one who has not passed beyond doubt' (Dhp.141). He also objected to nudity because it contravened the norms of polite society for no good reason. Lady Visàkhà once saw some nuns bathing naked and commented: `Nakedness in women is ugly, abhorrent and objectionable'(Vin.I,293), which seems to have been the general opinion at that time. The Buddha wanted his monks and nuns to abide by the normal standards of decorum and good manners, the better to be able to communicate the Dhamma to others. He was also anxious that his monks and nuns should be distinct from those of other sects, inwardly but also outwardly. Because many of these other ascetics were either completely or partly naked or wore whatever they liked, the Buddha stipulated that his ordained disciples should wear a distinct and easily identifiable robe. 

 Sounds kind of sensible to me.  

Late summers

Brisbane did not have a terribly hot summer during December and January, but I had been commenting to people that my recollection seemed to be that high temperatures have in recent years been coming in late summer - February.

This year, it seems later still - record setting 41 degree days just west of Brisbane in mid March. 

Combined with the record breaking warm winter days in parts of Europe in February, this feels somewhat climate change-y to me.

Design issues

Slate writes that this may well be the cause of the Boeing 737 Max problem:

To maintain its lead, Boeing had to counter Airbus’ move. It had two options: either clear off the drafting tables and start working on a clean-sheet design, or keep the legacy 737 and polish it. The former would cost a vast amount—its last brand-new design, the 787, cost $32 billion to develop—and it would require airlines to retrain flight crews and maintenance personnel. 

Instead, it took the second and more economical route and upgraded the previous iteration. Boeing swapped out the engines for new models, which, together with airframe tweaks, promised a 20 percent increase in fuel efficiency. In order to accommodate the engine’s larger diameter, Boeing engineers had to move the point where the plane attaches to the wing. This, in turn, affected the way the plane handled. Most alarmingly, it left the plane with a tendency to pitch up, which could result in a dangerous aerodynamic stall. To prevent this, Boeing added a new autopilot system that would pitch the nose down if it looked like it was getting too high. According to a preliminary report, it was this system that apparently led to the Lion Air crash. 

If Boeing had designed a new plane from scratch, it wouldn’t have had to resort to this kind of kludge. It could have designed the airframe for the engines so that the pitch-up tendency did not exist. As it was, its engineers used automation to paper over the aircraft’s flaws. Automated systems can go a long way toward preventing the sorts of accidents that arise from human fecklessness or inattention, but they inherently add to a system’s complexity. When they go wrong, they can act in ways that are surprising to an unprepared pilot. That can be dangerous, especially in high-stress, novel situations. Air France 447 was lost in 2009 after pilots overreacted to minor malfunctions and became confused about what to expect from the autopilot.

The article notes that Boeing and Airbus basically split the commerical aircraft market between them.   Yet there was talk over the last few years of China trying to become a player too.  I wonder how that's going?   Oh - not so well:

Why China is no closer to rivalling Boeing or Airbus

At the risk of sounding a tad 4Chan...

I'm making my way through Umbrella Academy (on Netflix), and but after a promising first episode, the pace is too often dragging.     

In particular, I find it really starts to get more tedious whenever the two "sisters" are featuring heavily.  I realised this last night - the male members of this superhero family are all distinctive and interesting in their own oddball ways, and really make the females (especially mopey face Ellen Page) seem very dull in comparison.

Of course, it will probably turn out that Vanya will have a secret power that is, like, really powerful. But gee, she is written as a dull character.  As is her sister.

On the other hand, I am amused to see that culture warrior-ing against Captain Marvel has gotten nowhere, with the movie probably already over $500 million within days of release.  I might go see it, even though reviews are a little mixed.  As with all silly superhero stuff, my main question is:  is it funny enough?

Professor under attack

I see that Sinclair Davidson noted in his Open Forum yesterday that people have complained to his tertiary institution about various things:

That makes the complaints sound very ill founded, yet in the bigger picture, he deserves to be pilloried at every opportunity for running a blog full of offensive swill. 

Update:  typical example - from today, aviation expert "Tom":

Boeing’s mistake is selling its aeroplanes to Third World airlines employing Third World trash as pilots 

 Stand proud, Sinclair.  Stand proud.  

Sounds interesting

A very short review at Nature:

War Doctor
David Nott Picador (2019)
For more than 25 years, surgeon David Nott has lived periodically “in a liminal zone where most people have neither been nor want to go”: fields of war from Afghanistan to Bosnia. His memoir interweaves bold surgical feats on these sojourns in hell with his own psychological journey, a chronicle equally soaked in blood and insight. Now co-founder of a foundation training other physicians in this specialized work, Nott remains an important witness to the haunting human price of that modern triad: geopolitical instability, poor governance and ever more powerful weaponry.

Update:  an interesting, more detailed, review of the book appears in American New Statesman, by another author surgeon (who I think I heard interviewed on the ABC once.)  It opens as follows:

Most doctors do not want to be surgeons – indeed, many view them with a slight distaste, as a necessary evil. Surgeons are attracted to surgery by blood, by the excitement of operating and by the power over patients that comes with it, as well as by the technical challenges of the handwork involved. It is a power to help and to heal, but as with so many psychological truths, it is two-sided – the power can be attractive in its own right. All surgeons have to find a balance between these competing poles of altruism and egotism.

As with climate change denialism

David Frum tweeted this the other day:

and lots of people in comments noted that the same can be said about climate change denialism.  It gives them a thrill of being in the exclusive club of insiders who really know what's going on.

Is "paranoia" too strong a word for it?   Probably not, when the wingnut Right whips themselves into a frenzy about SOCIALISM and how its behind climate change; not to mention their idea that a vast network of scientists just deliberately and fraudulently adjust the temperature record to prove that climate change is real.   Firm belief in wildly improbable, or repeatedly disproved, conspiracy is paranoia.

Oh look - even Sinclair Davidson wants Labor to win the Federal election

Yet another - Weekend Update

*  It was my turn to cut my finger while cutting vegetables - I was experimenting with those stupid chef ways as to how to dice an onion.  Back to the old way, I think.

*  Watched "Get Out" on Netflix.   Look, it is very well made - very assured direction and acting, and the creepiness of the white family builds very nicely.   I can see how a key idea is satirically funny too, when written by a black comedian.   (Smart but physically bland white folk actually want to be sexy, physically powerful black folk.)  But really, when it turns out the big secret is actually like a cross between a Twilight Zone episode and The Man With Two Brains, it did lose me somewhat.  I read some reviews saying that the last act is a satire of 70's horror - but when the film works so well before that, a break into that kind of satire doesn't really make sense.  So I am not sure it really is meant to be that kind of satire at that point.   (I also read a user review claiming they were somewhat disturbed at the - largely black - excited audience reaction to the killings at the end.   If that is true, I would be a tad disturbed too.)   Anyway, it's interesting and worth watching - I suppose - but yes, did get way too much unreserved praise from the very liberal group that is mainstream American film critics.

*  Newspoll back to 54/46 TPP in favour of Labor.  Yay.  What changed in only a week?   I think it might be simply that with nearly all high profile Ministers leaving Parliament, the public doesn't see why it should support a side where everyone is leaving the sinking ship already.

Kant eat animals

It's a Philosophy Friday, with a rather good review by Thomas Nagel of a book by a Kantian academic on the matter of whether humans should be giving up on eating animals.

Kant thought we could eat them, because animals don't think as humans do, but this pro-Kant scholar Christine Korsgaard comes to a different conclusion.

Utilitarian ethics gets a look in as part of this review too.

Here are some extracts:

Since the publication of Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation in 1975, there has been a notable increase in vegetarianism or veganism as a personal choice by individuals, and in the protection of animals from cruel treatment in factory farms and scientific research, both through law and through public pressure on businesses and institutions. Yet most people are not vegetarians: approximately 9.5 billion animals die annually in food production in the United States, and the carnivores who think about it tend to console themselves with the belief that the cruelties of factory farming are being ameliorated, and that if this is done, there is nothing wrong with killing animals painlessly for food. Korsgaard firmly rejects this outlook, not just because it ignores the scale of suffering still imposed on farmed animals, but because it depends on a false contrast between the values of human and animal lives, according to which killing a human is wrong in a way that killing an animal is not.

Korsgaard deploys a complex account of morality to deal with this and many other questions. What makes the book especially interesting is the contrast between her approach and Singer’s. She writes, and Singer would certainly agree, that “the way human beings now treat the other animals is a moral atrocity of enormous proportions.” But beneath this agreement lie profound differences. Singer is a utilitarian and Korsgaard is a Kantian, and the deep division in contemporary ethical theory between these two conceptions of morality marks their different accounts of why we should radically change our treatment of animals. (Equally interesting is Korsgaard’s sharp divergence from Kant’s own implausible views on the subject. As we shall see, she argues persuasively that Kant’s general theory of the foundations of morality supports conclusions for this case completely different from what he supposed.)

To be honest, though, I'm not sure that Nagel's account of how utilitarianism views the matter would be agreed by all utilitarians:

Utilitarianism is the view that what makes actions right or wrong is their tendency to promote or diminish the total amount of happiness in the world, by causing pleasure or pain, gratification or suffering. Such experiences are taken to be good or bad absolutely, and not just for the being who undergoes them. The inclusion of nonhuman animals in the scope of moral concern is straightforward: the pleasure or pain of any conscious being is part of the impersonal balance of good and bad experiences that morality tells us to make as positive as possible.

But the existence or survival of such creatures matters only because they are vessels for the occurrence of good experiences. According to utilitarianism, if you kill an animal painlessly and replace it with another whose experiences are just as pleasant as those the first animal would have had if it had not been killed, the total balance of happiness is not affected, and you have done nothing wrong. Even in the case of humans, what makes killing them wrong is not the mere ending of their lives but the distress the prospect of death causes them because of their strong conscious sense of their own future existence, as well as the emotional pain their deaths cause to other humans connected with them.

Korsgaard, in contrast, denies that we can build morality on a foundation of the absolute value of anything, including pleasure and pain. She holds that there is no such thing as absolute or impersonal value in the sense proposed by utilitarianism—something being just good or bad, period. All value, she says, is “tethered.” Things are good or bad for some person or animal: your pleasure is “good-for” you, my pain is “bad-for” me. Korsgaard says that the only sense in which something could be absolutely good is if it were “good-for” everyone. In the end she will maintain that the lives and happiness of all conscious creatures are absolutely good in this sense, but she reaches this conclusion only by a complex ethical argument; it is not an axiom from which morality begins, as in utilitarianism.

And now we come to the really key part:

In Kant’s view, we impose the moral law on ourselves: it applies to us because of our rational nature. The other animals, because they are not rational, cannot engage in this kind of self-legislation. Kant concluded that they are not part of the moral community; they have no duties and we have no duties toward them.²

It is here that Korsgaard parts company with him. She distinguishes two senses in which someone can be a member of the moral community, an active and a passive sense. To be a member in the active sense is to be one of the community of reciprocal lawgivers who is obligated to obey the moral law. To be a member in the passive sense is to be one of those to whom duties are owed, who must be treated as an end. Kant believed that these two senses coincide, but Korsgaard says this is a mistake. The moral law that we rational beings give to ourselves can give us duties of concern for other, nonrational beings who are not themselves bound by the moral law—duties to treat them as ends in themselves:

There is no reason to think that because it is only autonomous rational beings who must make the normative presupposition that we are ends in ourselves, the normative presupposition is only about autonomous rational beings. And in fact it seems arbitrary, because of course we also value ourselves as animate beings. This becomes especially clear when we reflect on the fact that many of the things that we take to be good-for us are not good for us in our capacity as autonomous rational beings. Food, sex, comfort, freedom from pain and fear, are all things that are good for us insofar as we are animals.

I find this argument for a revision of Kant’s position completely convincing. Korsgaard sums up:

On a Kantian conception, what is special about human beings is not that we are the universe’s darlings, whose fate is absolutely more important than the fates of the other creatures who like us experience their own existence. It is exactly the opposite: What is special about us is the empathy that enables us to grasp that other creatures are important to themselves in just the way we are important to ourselves, and the reason that enables us to draw the conclusion that follows: that every animal must be regarded as an end in herself, whose fate matters, and matters absolutely, if anything matters at all.

 
I'm no doubt pushing the friendship if I cut and paste anything more, so go read the whole thing.

As I may have suggested before, I am started to worry that my brain and heart are becoming too easily persuaded against the interests of my taste buds and stomach that I should veer towards vegetarianism - or at least piscetarianism.   There is some way to go yet, though.... 

Roman army talk

At The Catholic Herald, a review of a book that is specifically about the Roman Army in the New Testament.

The interesting section from the review:

Units of the Roman army garrisoning Palestine at the time of Christ were not drawn from the famous legions. Use of the legions was limited to areas that were either of the greatest strategic significance, under ongoing threat or the scene of at least impending conflict. Less sensitive areas were garrisoned either by auxiliaries or by the armies of technically independent satellite states. Herod the Great and Herod Antipas were among those commanding satellite armies. Legionaries are to be encountered in portions of the New Testament which concern the travels of the Apostles. The “Roman soldiers” stationed in the Palestine of the Gospels were auxiliaries. These were, like legionaries, under the direct orders of the Roman government but, like satellite armies, they were recruited among men living in the area where they served and who did not hold Roman citizenship (a prerequisite for entry into the legions).

The Roman army in Palestine was, therefore, the army of a foreign imperial power without being an army of foreigners (the same combination later seen in the Indian Army of British India). Upholding imperial authority against possible rebellions was obviously among its purposes, but its normal daily functions were not those characteristic of an occupation force. Provision of labour for engineering work and policing were more typical of its responsibilities. In this, the auxiliary units serving in Palestine conformed to the standards of Roman soldiers elsewhere in an empire whose authority was generally acquiesced with.

Jews of the time were not, unlike later Christians, forced to participate in pagan rituals. Roman practices were not unusually brutal by the standards of the age. Depending on the disposition of local officials and military commanders, soldiers could either be little better than thugs running extortion rackets or upright administrators of justice.

This reminded me about Helen Dale's alt history novels:  I wonder, did they dealt with this accurately? 

Incidentally, I recently looked up the (not very many) reader reviews about the second book on some on line sites, and a prominent complaint was about the large number of  sex scenes: even more than the first book, apparently.  As I think I have said before, my impression overall is that, apart from a fan base of libertarians and assorted followers,  the books were not very well received. 

Plant compounds to the rescue

Any suggestions as to what may help stave off Alzheimers are welcome, I guess:

A diet containing compounds found in green tea and carrots reversed Alzheimer's-like symptoms in mice genetically programmed to develop the disease, USC researchers say.

Yay for fluoride

The Guardian has a story up about how Queensland is a good way to track the effectiveness of fluoridation of water:

Dentists and doctors in Queensland are reporting “extensive tooth decay” in parts of the state that refuse to add fluoride to the water supply, especially among children and the elderly.

One in four Queensland children admitted to hospital requires treatment for a dental condition, according to the most recent report by the state’s chief medical officer.

Indigenous children, many of whom live in communities without fluoride, have a staggering 70% rate of tooth decay. The rate is 55% among all Queensland children aged between five and 15.

The thing is, the State government has left it up to Councils to decide on the matter, with some not doing it citing cost concerns, but there are also anti-fluoride activists playing a role (or trying to) as well.  Which means you get evidence like this:

In Bundaberg, which does not have fluoride, the rate of tooth decay is about 2.5 times higher than the rest of the state. There were 244 admissions to hospital for dental conditions in the town last year. Across the state, the number is in excess of 4,000....

Neil Johnson, the foundation dean of the Griffith University dental school and an emeritus professor, has been involved in a long-running study of dental heath in a Cape York Indigenous community.

Fluoride was added to the water supply in 2006. About six years later, there had been “a considerable improvement” in the health of the community, and about a 40% reduction in tooth decay.

The family church

Some really interesting figures here at Vox about what's happening to religious belief in America.  Surprisingly, the Mormons are holding numbers, despite their conservatism on matters sexual:

One-quarter of Americans are religiously unaffiliated today, a roughly fourfold increase from a couple of decades earlier. Christian denominations around the country are contending with massive defections. White Christian groups have experienced the most dramatic losses over the past decade. Today, white evangelical Protestants account for 15 percent of the adult population, down from nearly one-quarter a decade earlier. By contrast, Mormons have held steady at roughly 2 percent of the US population for the past several years. And perhaps as importantly, Mormons are far younger than members of white Christian traditions.

At one time, sociologists and religion scholars argued that theologically conservative churches, which demanded more of their members, were successful because they ultimately provided more rewarding religious and spiritual experiences. This theory has since fallen out of favor as the tide of disaffiliation appears to be washing over conservative and liberal denominations alike. The Southern Baptist Convention, the heart of conservative Protestantism, has sustained 12 straight years of membership loses. Since 2007, the denomination has shed 1.2 million members.

But more than the rules, rituals, and rigorous theology, the success of the Mormon Church may have to do with their unrelenting focus on the family. Few religious communities have made the development and maintenance of traditional family structures such a central priority. Eighty-one percent of Mormons say being a good parent is one of their central life goals. Nearly three-quarters say having a good marriage is one of their most important priorities in life, and a majority of Mormons — including nearly equal numbers of men and women — believe that the most satisfying type of marriage is one in which the husband provides and the wife stays home.

 Actually, though, the article points out that the LDS Church can actively encourage an early sex life - as long as it is within marriage:

Recognizing the centrality of family, the LDS Church has not been shy about encouraging young Mormons to start families early. In 2005, the LDS Church leadership was actively encouraging college students to start families even before they graduated. More recently church elder M. Russell Ballard urged Brigham Young University students to not let educational goals lead them to postpone marriage. “You can accomplish both with hard work, sacrifice, and planning,” he said. “In fact, with a companion’s support, you can be more successful.” It’s a message that resonates with many Mormon college students. 

 The younger members are pressing somewhat for a more sympathetic approach to homosexuality, though:

In 2016, the LDS Church launched a website called Mormon and Gay featuring firsthand accounts of Mormons who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Importantly, the church remains opposed to same-sex marriage, but church leaders have adopted much more inclusive language when discussing LGBTQ members of the church. “It shows the church is taking a step in the direction of understanding and empathy,” Monson says.

Not a sign of a healthy, happy society

Axios posted this graph of American deaths by drugs, suicide and alcohol:

An obvious lesson:  clearly, apparent strong economic growth does not alone tell the full story of the state of well being of the American society.  

Trumponomics

The Washington Post notes:

Tax revenue for October 2018 through January 2019 fell $19 billion, or 2 percent, Treasury said. It noted a major reduction in corporate tax payments over the first four months of the fiscal year, falling close to 25 percent, or $17 billion.

As part of the 2017 tax cut law, the tax rate paid by corporations was lowered from 35 percent to 21 percent.

Spending, meanwhile, increased 9 percent over the same period.

The biggest increases were for defense military programs, which saw a 12 percent increase, and Medicare, which saw a 16 percent increase.

The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the deficit this year will reach close to $900 billion, because the government spends so much more money than it brings in through revenue....

During the tax cut debate in 2017, the White House promised that slashing tax rates would end up creating more revenue because it would allow the economy to grow at a faster clip. Economic growth did pick up in 2018, but Democrats have said the growth will be short-lived. So far, the growth has not come close to the levels needed to offset the $1.5 trillion in tax reductions that were part of the legislation.

The federal government is now more than $22 trillion in debt, largely representing an accumulation of all the money it has borrowed to finance programs in past years. A deficit is the one-year gap between spending and revenue, and the debt is the total amount of money owed by the government.

The cycle of abuse?

Slate seems to have become rather more "sex tabloid" in the last 12 months, if you ask me.  The site really highlights some weird personal sex advice questions - I don't why, it brings the quality of the place down.

However, there is still a lot of good stuff there.  Like this article about the widely believed "cycle of abuse", particularly in relation to childhood sexual abuse.   As Daniel Engber writes, the research on this isn't really very strong, often showing some relationship, but it's no where near as strong as the public likes to imagine:

Psychologist and criminologist Cathy Spatz Widom was the first to make some progress through the bramble. In 1989, she published data on the cycle of abuse with a novel methodology. Instead of looking retrospectively at criminals and delinquents, she started by picking out a group of victims of abuse, then following up throughout their lives to figure out what happened. She began her work by identifying more than 900 victims of abuse and neglect whose cases had been registered in the court system of an unnamed Midwestern city between 1967 and 1971. Then she set up a control group, matching up those victims as best as she could with people of the same age, race, and sex who attended the same schools and lived in the same neighborhoods. Finally, she pulled any official records of their delinquency, detention, or adult criminal activity across the next 20 years.

Using this much more powerful and better-controlled design, Widom was able to confirm that victims of childhood abuse are indeed at greater risk of becoming criminals. Perhaps more importantly, she showed that mere neglect—even in the absence of any violent physical abuse—was a noteworthy predictor of later criminal behavior. 

She kept following her subjects, who are now well into middle age, and also gathered information from their children. In 2015, Widom published several decades’ worth of further data. One of her papers in particular focused on the question of whether someone’s experience of childhood abuse can predict their sexual offending later on. While 4.5 percent of the people in the control group had been arrested for a sex crime, nearly twice as many—8.3 percent—of the people who had been victims of abuse or neglect went on to perpetrate such a crime. So there was a link, but the details didn’t fit the expected pattern of “monkey see, monkey do.” The people in Widom’s study who were abused as children in specifically sexual ways did not, in fact, appear more likely to get arrested for a sex crime later on; instead, it was the ones who were either neglected or physically abused who ended up at higher risk. 

That may have been a quirk of Widom’s data set. Among both groups who had been arrested for a sex crime, almost all of them—84 percent—were men. Yet her study included just two dozen male victims of childhood sexual abuse, of whom three went on to be sexual offenders. It may be that this sample was too small for a true effect to show up in her statistical tests.

There's more, and even a large Australian study gets a special mention:

A similar study, published in 2016, looked at records of childhood sexual abuse and sexual offending in a group of more than 38,000 Australian men. Among those who had been molested, just 3 percent went on to commit a sexual offense. That rate was much higher than what was found among the total population (0.8 percent), suggesting a cycle of abuse. But being victimized by other forms of childhood mistreatment was also associated with committing sexual crimes, and there were no clear signs of a special one-to-one relationship in which sexually molested children grew up to be sexual molesters. 

But really—it’s complicated. A paper published two weeks ago combined and analyzed findings from 142 different studies of intergenerational transmission of maltreatment. The study’s authors, led by the University of Calgary’s Sheri Madigan, concluded that there is indeed evidence for a “modest association” between someone suffering abuse and then perpetrating it, and that specific forms of abuse may be passed down in this way.

I think it very likely that part of the reason the cycle is so widely believed is because it is so often used as part of a plea in mitigation for men convicted of sexual abuse.   It is, after all, one of the very few claims a convicted sex offender can make towards showing that it is not just their own volition that was behind the crime, but a psychological issue that was not entirely their fault.

American chicken

David Frum has a good column up talking about the odd importance of American chicken processing to the Brexit vote.

Are Australian meat chickens similarly bathed in chlorine (or whatever it is)? 

It's kind of remarkable how American food and food processing has a kind of poor reputation for all sorts of reasons - e coli outbreaks on salad veges seem so common; but then chicken meat seems to have the opposite issue with too much chemical treatment.

An odd time to be talking Catholic virgins

Well, I continue to be annoyed/appalled that both pro and anti "Pell is innocent" forces continue to wage what seem to be PR wars.  I saw some of 4 Corners last night, and am baffled as to why no one there doesn't think that they will look vindictive if he is successful on appeal, and if nothing comes of the civil action either.   This is especially the case when we know the hung jury verdict of the first trial.

Of course, I am equally upset with the pro-Pell side slandering the accuser in the case too - as they are doing with wild abandon at Catallaxy.  

Anyway,  for some odd reason (perhaps to convince us that Catholics are too obsessed with sex), the ABC website has a story up about an Australian "consecrated virgin".   I wrote about these when I first heard about them last year - and everything I say in that post still seems appropriate.

More miscellaneous observations not worthy of their own post

*   I now know where I can buy a piece of vacuum sealed wagyu steak in Brisbane that sells for - wait for it - $229.99 a kilo.   Ask in comments if you want to know.   (Wildly unlikely anyone will, but hey...)

*   Yeah, this "Curious Kids" item in The Conversation deals with something that has puzzled me more and more over the years (as we have seen more and more video from the depths):  how come in these deepest of deep sea dives, where the submarine would be crushed like an aluminium can unless it was built to super-strength standards, you see pretty normal looking, non-armour plated fish and crustaceans doodling around?   How do their puny bodies operate under such pressure?    Seems the answer goes down to the midi-chlorian cellular level, but not in entirely understood ways.  Huh.

*  The Guardian has a piece on a traditional "third sex" kind of role in the Philippines  (similar to that seen in many other cultures):

Bakla is a Tagalog word that denotes the Filipino practice of male cross-dressing, denoting a man that has “feminine” mannerisms, dresses as a “sexy” woman, or identifies as a woman. It is an identity built on performative cultural practice more so than sexuality. Often considered a Filipino third gender, bakla can be either homosexual or heterosexual, and are regarded as one of the most visible LGBTQIA+ cultures in Asia – an intersectional celebration of Asian and queer cultures. 

The bakla were renowned as community leaders, seen as the traditional rulers who transcended the duality between man and woman. Many early reports from Spanish colonising parties referenced the mystical entities that were “more man than man, and more woman than woman”. Even today, many bakla in the Philippines retain high status as entertainers and media personalities.

When I was eight years old, on my first and only trip to the Philippines, I met my older cousin Norman. He had shoulder-length hair, wore lipstick and eyeliner, and would walk around in heels. His father affectionately called him malambut (Tagalog for “soft”); his siblings called him bading, but he told me he was bakla. He wasn’t an outsider; he was part of the family – my family – and being an eight-year-old who liked to sing karaoke and play dress-up, I didn’t give it a second thought. But on returning to Australia, I told all my friends about Norman and they scoffed – the early seed of masculinity training at play – and when I asked my parents what the word meant, my mum replied, “it just means … bakla”. It didn’t translate directly to English.

Later, I learned that many people problematically mistranslate bakla to “gay” in English. As an identity not tied to sex, the word does not correspond directly to western nomenclature for LGBTQIA+ identities, sitting somewhere between gay, trans and queer. As Filipinos moved to countries such as Australia and the United States, the bakla were mislabelled as part of western gay culture and quickly (physically) sexualised. Even worse, the word can sometimes be heard in Australian playgrounds, used in a derogatory way. When I was younger, we were banned from calling each other “gay”, so the boys accused each other of being “bakla” instead. It was quite confusing to my ears when hearing the word used in a negative way, its meaning truly lost in migration.

I've never made a study of this whole, third sex, cross dressing thing that pops up in various indigenous cultures, but it's curious how it turns up in some but not others.   (Also the different status levels that they hold in different cultures.)   It's funny how the modern equivalent is just making it big in the entertainment industry.   Would Bowie (and glam rockers generally) at their campiest height count as bakla? 

Now easier than ever to get into the country you never wanted to visit in the first place

From Gulf News:

Saudi Arabia’s cabinet has approved electronic visas for foreign visitors to attend sporting events and concerts, local media reported, as the world’s top oil exporter tries to diversify its economy and open up its society.

According to officials, the Saudi Arabia Visa application will only take a few minutes to complete online and there will be no need to go to an embassy or consulate.

Once the application is approved, it will be sent to the applicant by email.

This new move symbolises a change for the kingdom, which was known to be one of the most difficult countries to enter.

Further down the report:

As part of Prince Mohammad’s agenda, the kingdom has ended a nearly 40-year ban on cinemas, allowed music concerts, including performances by Western pop stars, and organised international sporting events. There are a number of tourist attractions being developed in Saudi Arabia, including Amaala and Al Ula.

I'd be rather curious as to which concert acts would ever be inclined to do a show in that country.  Madonna's farewell tour, perhaps?

Weekend update

*  My son cut his finger near the tip, deep and bloody enough to warrant a visit to the doctor.  No stitch, but gee, fingertips bleed easily.  It made me realise I've never cut myself bad enough to warrant a doctor's trip.  I wonder what percent of people get through life with no cut warranting a medical visit.

* I noticed that ABC radio host Richard Glover made a tweet about being a victim of sexual abuse (he was commenting about the George Pell matter.)   Given that he talks about his own life a lot in his books and columns, I was surprised I hadn't heard him claim that before, and Googling the topic I see that I missed that he had published an autobiography in 2013 which apparently dealt with it, but was mainly about his highly eccentric parents.  (I have a vague feeling I had heard him talking about his mother before.)  Anyway, I listened to an interview he did with Richard Fidler in which he talked about it, including briefly about a period of sexual abuse which occurred not as a child, but at 19.   He did have a unusual early life, yet he has had only one long term partner and two sons who he has written affectionately about for many years.   His life story is really one of resilience, then, as he makes plain in the interview.   Quite interesting, really.  

* Speaking of ABC radio personalities, it was hard not to be moved by the Good Weekend article about Red Symons and the difficult life issues he has recently faced.   (His son dying, after battling cancer on and off since he was 4;  his own medical crisis; losing his job for unclear reasons; and a marriage breakup - although that last one appears to have been of his own doing.)    

* Can't everyone stop talking about the Pell conviction until the appeal is heard?  4 Corners is going back to the topic again tonight, although I gather it may be more about the nature of the investigation and the Church's role, rather than on the details of the Pell cases.   Still, I think everyone should drop the topic until an appeal is heard.  

* Not this weekend, but the one previous, I heard a fair bit of a BBC radio documentary about the quite high success of machine learning to detect susceptibility to suicide attempts.   Here it is - "Predicting Suicide".   I see that this topic got some attention late last year, but I missed it.  I must find a good written article about it.

*  Crying "SOCIALISM!":   I continue to be dismayed that Right wing punditry and politicians in the US has convinced their "base" that any policy that would formally just have been called a centrist one favoured in successful, capitalist, social democracies as  PART OF THE TYRANNY OF SOCIALISM.   I think it's a mistake for young Democrats to deal with this misuse of the term by saying "well, if that's socialism, count me in!"    No, don't concede to the sloppy (or ridiculous) re-definitions of the pathetic excuses that now pass for Conservative intellectuals.   Here's an article that is a little helpful in that regard, from WAPO:   Five Myths About Socialism.   The only thing is, I don't think it really goes in hard enough, and still gets too tied up in definitions.  Someone in comments takes the line I am more inclined to argue:

The truth is it doesn’t matter whether socialism is good or bad for democracy because nobody in Washington with any kind of a voice is advocating actual socialism - ie government ownership of the means of production.  So most of this article is fluff.

I think it’s a huge error for AOC, Sanders and the rest to not use the true term for what they are advocating, which is social democracy, not true socialism.

Social democracy is characterized by a strong social safety net and a mixed economy in which both private and public actors operate, (with more or less government regulation of the market to avoid monopolies or price gouging, employment protections, and sometimes employee slots on boards of directors)  with private operators producing consumer goods, and public actors generally producing public goods such as education, public transportation, a functioning energy grid,  and management of the healthcare sector.  There are many examples of stable Western societies which practice social democracy in many different formats.  Even the United States for all one side’s religious worship of the god Market, is still  a mixed economy with free public education up to a point, some government-managed healthcare (Medicare) and a few oddball public operators like the Tennessee Valley Authority. Or state universities.

The key here is the term “democracy”.  As a matter of fact, there is no inherent conflict between socialism as such and democracy - the British had both for much of the 60s until they decided they wanted to try something else, which happened without revolution.  The reverse tends to be true:  dictators who gain power take control of the commanding heights of the economy and claim that what they are doing is socialism, when in fact it is theft.

But “socialism” has been such a bogeyman in this country for so long that it’s politically dumb to try to repurpose the term, inaccurately, to describe social democracy.  

Or this:

Why not begin the discussion with the generally accepted definition of socialism found in most dictionaries and economics books?

so·cial·ism - /ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/Submit noun -- A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

I lived in Sweden for over three years, a country that many people would consider socialist. It's not. Over 95% of businesses are privately owned in Sweden.

Sweden is a capitalist country with high individual taxes to pay for social programs. It's easier to start a business in Sweden than it is in the US. And business taxes are very low there, also. The government encourages the growth of private business.

Individual tax rates are high, topping out at 54%. Those high taxes are used to support excellent schools, excellent medical care and a social safety net which are values that the public supports.

And now for something completely different

From the BBC:   The 'caravans of love' visiting Spain's empty villages

It starts:

Spain is ground-zero for rural depopulation within the European Union. Over decades, millions have migrated to the cities to find jobs. Those left behind in villages are often elderly - or they are single men working in agriculture. So, how does a lonely Spanish shepherd find love?  

The possible answer:

Then Antonio heard about the Caravan of Women - or Caravan of Love, as it is sometimes known.
This is a commercial initiative bringing coach-loads of single women from Madrid to meet unattached men in the countryside at organised dinner-dances. Manolo Gozalo has been co-ordinating these excursions with his partner, Venecia Alcantara, since 1996.

I'm not surprised no one wants to live in rural Spain - from what I can gather on shows where chefs or other folk travel through the country, its centre looks pretty dry and featureless.   

In Australia, meanwhile, I guess we're more known for a movie about a group of drag queens travelling across the interior.   (I've never watched it - Australian movies are cringeworthy at the best of times, and intense campiness is a frequent reason why.) 

Psychic debunking discussed

For some reason, I've come across a few different places discussing the debunking of psychics:

* the New York Times Magazine section has a feature article describing the ways groups have "stung" celebrity psychics, mainly by setting up detailed, fake Facebook accounts and then "registering" as audience members at psychic shows.  All very interesting, and well worth cleaning your cache to read!

*  Michael Prescott looked at an old 1995 book by James Randi and finds it underwhelming.  (I've always been a bit leery of Randi, even though he's probably right 95% of the time.)

*  John Oliver has also devoted a large part of his show to debunking psychics.  Unfortunately, HBO geoblocks it to Australia, but I have found a low res version of the episode that someone has put up.  Haven't watched it yet, but he is always pretty good (I just wish he swore less):

When showmanship fails...

My cynicism about the value of high profile QCs known for combative style continues to gather supporting evidence.

Robert Richter has made a comment during his plea in mitigation which sounds spectacularly counterproductive to his goal:   

Richter’s renowned defence style was on full display, as he tried to argue with Kidd that there were “no aggravating circumstances” to one of Pell’s offences.

It was “no more than a plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating”, Richter said.

Kidd responded: “It must be clear to you by now I’m struggling with that submission. Looking at your points here – so what?”

More detail on his style during the trial:

In the aftermath of the verdict, Richter, one of the most well-known and expensive defence barristers in Melbourne, will be asking himself what went wrong. It was, by all accounts, his case to lose.

The answer may be in part that his courtroom style – at times confrontational and theatrical – is more palatable to jurors hearing cases involving criminal underworld figures than those considering harrowing crimes of child sexual abuse. His closing address was unwieldy. It lasted two days and referenced US television shows, Darth Vader and the Queen. There was even a PowerPoint presentation.

Richter closed by warning the jurors that if they convicted Pell: “You can’t can’t come back and say, ‘Oops, I’m sorry, I made a mistake.’” It may have appeared condescending.

By contrast the crown prosecutor Mark Gibson’s closing address took about one day, and was delivered with no theatrics. At times, it was almost dry. He took the jurors to direct quotes given by witnesses throughout the trial. He walked them step-by-step through what the victim said had happened. He told jurors they should find the victim was believable, an honest historian, describing as best he could horrific events that happened to him as a 13-year-old through the eyes of a man now in his 30s.

 And over at The Age's live blog of how today's sentencing hearing was going: 

George Pell has looked increasingly dejected as his defence lawyer's arguments have continued.

Pell has spent considerable amounts of time with his eyes closed, often taking off his glasses and running them across his head.

He seems tired and somewhat exasperated.

It would seem that some lawyers thought at the start that Richter was wrong for this sort of case:

 One lawyer I speak to suggests that Richter was a poor choice for the defence: he is said to be too old and too theatrical. (A former Supreme Court judge tells me Richter has a tendency to "talk a lot of bullshit".) He might even be too … male. Perhaps a woman would have been a more sympathetic option?

I think that view has been vindicated.

About The Alienist (again)

I haven't finished all of The Alienist on Netflix yet, and am still enjoying it enough, but I have realised what its style, which is often delivering what feels like a mini history lesson on New York in 1895, was reminding me of.

It's exactly the style of most of Michael Crichton's books:  not so great on characterisation; some rather stilted dialogue at times; but chock full of what is clearly the results of lots of scene setting research by the author.   That was a lot of the pleasure of his books, learning some new esoteric stuff in fictional form.   I would presume the book the show is based on must read similarly to Crichton.

One of the key things in the show is Teddy Roosevelt as a young-ish New York Police Commissioner - a job I never knew he had.  (Although, truth be told, I know next to nothing about him.)   This article gives a short account of his time in that job, and it sounds as if it was indeed fraught with conflict with the old guard in the police force, as it is in the TV show.

The ridiculous American health care system

Go read how a woman in Florida, bitten by a stray cat, got charged $48,512 by the hospital that gave her an anti-rabies injection.   (She didn't even see a doctor, and was 2 hours in the ER.)

And this was no clerical error!  Her insurance is paying for most of it - but still, it's absurd.

Defamation possibility?

Not for the first time, I have to wonder why Sinclair Davidson lets his ratbag site Catallaxy run comments that are clearly defamatory - or, shall we, at risk of being found defamatory.  The latest ones are from CL against the complainant in the Pell case.  At this stage of the court process (an appeal underway), and even if there is much commentary in the media about how many people are "surprised" at the second jury's verdict, is it really wise to be calling the complainant a outright liar on your website?  Although his name is suppressed, presumably his family and some colleagues know who he is, so obviously such claim can hurt his reputation.

And if any appeal does succeed, an acquittal does not necessarily mean something couldn't be found to have happened if you were applying a lower standard of proof than the old "beyond reasonable doubt" used at a criminal trial.   The fact that our criminal law is more about what can be proved to a certain standard, and not technically about whether it likely happened or not, surely means it's never a good idea to be accusing the complainant (even on a successful appeal) of being a liar.

Digital distraction

Vox has a good article in which a large number of psychologist types from the US talk about their views of what digital technologies are doing to our brains.  As the preamble says:

With so many of us now constantly tethered to digital technology via our smartphones, computers, tablets, and even watches, there is a huge experiment underway that we didn’t exactly sign up for.

Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, even Vox (if we’re being completely honest) are competing for our attention, and they’re doing so savvily, knowing the psychological buttons to push to keep us coming back for more. It’s now common for American kids to get a smartphone by age 10. That’s a distraction device they carry in their pockets all the time. 

The more adapted to the attention economy we become, the more we fear it could be hurting us. In Silicon Valley, we’re told more parents are limiting their kids’ screen time and even writing no-screen clauses into their contracts with nannies. Which makes us wonder: Do they know something we don’t? 

If it’s true that constant digital distractions are changing our cognitive functions for the worse — leaving many of us more scatterbrained, more prone to lapses in memory, and more anxious — it means we’re living through a profound transformation of human cognition. Or could it be that we’re overreacting, like people in the past who panicked about new technologies such as the printing press or the radio? 

To find out, we decided to ask experts: How is our constant use of digital technologies affecting our brain health?

I certainly worry about the shortening of attention spans - my own included.   At least I can make it through a 2 hour movie still without needing to look at my phone - it drives me nuts if I see my son in particular pick up his phone in the middle of a Netflix show I thought he was fully engaged in.  We do at least still tell each other off if the family is at the dinner table (at home) together and one picks up their phone - unless it is to find the answer to a specific question being asked.  

On the other hand, it's impossible not to feel that the online life leads to information that you wouldn't otherwise have received.   It is quite the two edged sword, given that I blame it for the woeful misinformation and fraud that has kept climate change denialism and other anti-evidence attitudes alive. 

The satellite phone in your pocket

This reminds me of my greatest pet James Bond peeve - the stupid "you need a gigantic antenna to contact your killer satellite" ending of Goldeneye. 

Mind you, this is almost as hard to believe: 

Last month I wrote about Ubiquitilink, which promised, through undisclosed means, it was on the verge of providing a sort of global satellite-based roaming service. But how, I asked? (Wait, they told me.) Turns out our phones are capable of a lot more than we think: they can reach satellites acting as cell towers in orbit just fine, and the company just proved it.

Utilizing a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, Ubiquitilink claimed during a briefing at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that pretty much any phone from the last decade should be able to text and do other low-bandwidth tasks from anywhere, even in the middle of the ocean or deep in the Himalayas. Literally (though eventually) anywhere and any time.

Surely not, I hear you saying. My phone, that can barely get a signal on some blocks of my neighborhood, or in that one corner of the living room, can’t possibly send and receive data from space… can it?

“That’s the great thing — everybody’s instinct indicates that’s the case,” said Ubiquitilink founder Charles Miller. “But if you look at the fundamentals of the RF [radio frequency] link, it’s easier than you think.”

The issue, he explained, isn’t really that the phone lacks power. The limits of reception and wireless networks are defined much more by architecture and geology than plain physics. When an RF transmitter, even a small one, has a clear shot straight up, it can travel very far indeed.

 OK, it's not exactly that you'll be speaking to Mum via satellite - continue reading the article for more details of what the system will be good for - but I'm still very impressed that my mobile phone can (in theory, and maybe soon in practice) hook up directly with a passing satellite.

Seeing the favourite band

On a last minute whim on Thursday night, only having realised a couple of nights prior that my favourite band were again going to be back in Brisbane, and having only recently started listening to them again, I went into this cool venue in the city (for the first time):

to see if any tickets were still available for They Might Be Giants.

There were!

So I joined the (no doubt somewhat older than usual) crowd in this venue (the Johns are both late
50's) waiting for the two set show to start:

And I was not disappointed. 

I've seen them twice before, but age has made these guys more likeable than ever, if you ask me.

There story is pretty remarkable for the music industry - having met in high school, going on to busking in Brooklyn as young adults, breaking into the college music scene and then just never stopping (they appear to be particular darlings of Hollywood with their songs turning up quite often  on television shows over the years; most recently with their famous version of Istanbul in the first episode of Umbrella Academy).   So 40-odd years of song writing, playing and touring together and there appears to never have been any drama between them.   They chat and make jokes on stage like they are genuinely each other's best friend.   Here they are (in blurry phone camera mode) doing their acoustic bit:

The show comprised songs from the 80's for the first set (meaning lots of live versions of songs from the first album - which I still listen to), and the second set was mainly songs from the teens.  (Recent ones, but a good selection of the better ones that recently convinced me they still had it in them.) 

The second night (Friday) they were doing another show with songs from the 90's and noughts - I think I've read they've written 600 or more songs, and done some covers too, so there is no shortage of material.

They seem to tour with some band members who have been with them a long time now - it was all good, charming fun with an appreciative audience.

Thinking about it, perhaps their long-lived success springs from them having just the right amount of fame and fans - if a music act grows too big, the fame and money surrounding the enterprise must almost inevitably cause strains and unhappiness.    TMBG, however, seem to continue to sell at least enough new music to continue touring every year (at least through America) at small-ish rock venues that are on a manageable scale and doesn't give any of them too big a head.   Sort of ideal, as long as they enjoy touring, at least:  but it feels as if they do.

Long may they live.

The Cardinal

As overseas sources had already indicated, it turns out Cardinal George Pell was convicted on one of the trials of child sex abuse.

I have never followed the story behind these charges all that closely, but the circumstances of this particular charge did always sound somewhat implausible to me.   The suggestion today seems to be that the defence team's decision to not have Pell give evidence worked strongly against him in the mind of the jury.  It does seem a surprising decision - I would not have expected that emphatic denials that anything like that happened could go too far wrong, even for someone who tends to sound a bit pompous.  OK, delete "a bit" - just "pompous".

My suspicion has long been that "star" barristers are not as effective as people like to think they are.  I see from the reports that Robert Richter QC used a Powerpoint presentation at trial:  people are so sick of that format, maybe that hurt the defence case!:

Richter used a PowerPoint presentation in the retrial during his closing address to the jurors, something he did not do in the first. One of the slides read: “Only a madman would attempt to rape two boys in the priests’ sacristy immediately after Sunday solemn mass.” 

Anyway, surely it isn't wise for anyone to be carrying on too much about this matter until it has gone to appeal - either Andrew Bolt in support of, or David Marr against, the Cardinal?   Just let the appeal process makes its path towards a clearer, final outcome is before us, hey?  

Update:  Frank Brennan details the reasons he was very surprised at the verdict.   Those like Marr who are acting like this is the end of the matter and that Pell is forever condemned are the ones at the most risk of looking foolish at the end of the day.

Something to get around to...

Don’t have time to exercise? Here’s a regimen everyone can squeeze in

Fox News jerks

As with Bill O'Reilly, when you get to listen how they carry on in private, Fox News hosts who like to present as "Mr Reasonable" on their shows turn out to be thin skinned, sweary jerks in private. 

I have never seen much of Tucker Carlson, but his face and style has always struck me as more irritating than Bill O'Reilly, for some reason.

But basically, seems you have to be a jerk in private to get your own show there.  (Would love to hear some tapes of Hannity's behind the scenes behaviour - it would be hard to believe there are no embarrassing ones.  I wonder why they have never come out?   Perhaps people fear his power too much?)

When the Nazis rallied in New York

NPR has an article up about the 1939 Madison Square Garden "Pro America Rally" which was really just a Nazi rally.  While having heard of it before, I'm not sure I had seen photos of what it looked like:

and this:

The speeches were quite something:

At Madison Square Garden, the rally opened with the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. The mood was jubilant. Attendees wore Nazi armbands, waved American flags and held aloft posters with slogans like "Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America." There were storm troopers in the aisles, their uniforms almost identical to those of Nazi Germany. "It looked like any political rally — only with a Nazi twist," said Arnie Bernstein, author of Swastika Nation.

The speeches were explicitly anti-Semitic, and tirades against "job-taking Jewish refugees" were met with thunderous applause. "They demanded a white gentile America. They denounced Roosevelt as 'Rosenfeld,' to say that Roosevelt was in the pocket of rich Jews," said Sarah Churchwell, author of Behold, America. In equal measure to the xenophobia, the speeches were loaded with American boosterism.

 There's a short doco in the article too which I haven't watched yet.  Seems like a bit of pretty forgotten history to me.

Update:  here's the 7 min video about it, well worth watching:

Field of Vision - A Night at the Garden from Field of Vision on Vimeo.

Climate change and slow moving weather

Over the last year or so, floods have been caused both in the US and Australia (if not elsewhere?) by slow moving weather systems.  On the radio this morning, I heard someone talking about the cyclone that hit Airlie Beach in March 2017, and it reminded me that it had taken a long time to pass over the town.

At the Conversation, there's an article explaining that there is a plausible link with climate change warming:

There does seem to be a plausible link between human-induced warming, slowing of jet streams, blocking highs, and extreme weather around the world. The recent Tasman Sea blocking high can be added to that list, along with other blocking highs that caused unprecedented wildfires in California and an extreme heatwave in Europe last year.

There is also a trend for the slowing of the forward speed (as opposed to wind speed) of tropical cyclones around the world. One recent study showed the average forward speeds of tropical cyclones fell by 10% worldwide between 1949 and 2016. Meanwhile, over the same period, the forward speed of tropical cyclones dropped by 22% over land in the Australian region.

Climate change is expected to weaken the world’s circulatory winds due to greater warming in high latitudes compared with the tropics, causing a slowing of the speed at which tropical cyclones move forward.

Interesting.

Suicide and mental illness

I had missed that Jesse Bering, who has written extensively for Scientific American and other  publications on homosexuality (he's gay himself) has a book out on suicide.  

There are many articles around about it, but I thought this recent column at Slate was pretty good.  The subtitle explains its main theme:

We’ve gotten too used to discussing suicide as a fleeting, temporary side effect of mental illness. We might better serve people in need if we could acknowledge the messier reality.

I think he makes his case out well. 

While I would say I have never felt the slightest bit like I could be susceptible to suicidal thoughts, I do find the topic of how and why some people do very interesting.   I also want my kids to think about it too - as I presume understanding the topic at a young age might empower them to recognize what is going on in their own head if ever they do start to feel that way?   Well, I hope that's a correct assumption.   Not that it really matters, because I have recommended both of my teenagers to read at least this short, clear article about how depression feels, but of course both react with suspicion as to why I am recommending it to them and won't read it anyway.    

About Fargo, season 3

I'm nearing the end of Fargo, season 3, on Netflix.

While it is, of course, watchable with the usual fine production values of the show, I really think this one has "jumped the shark" in that it is both way too uneven in tone, and too low in credibility, to be given too high a rating.

Even allowing for the Coen Brothers' oeuvre of deriving humour from very eccentric characters, this season seems to be indulging in eccentricity too much for its own sake.   The character of Varga, in particular, has been given features which don't seem to be there for any real reason;  but at the same time, you have to admire the actor David Thewlis for his talent at bringing to life such an intensely unpleasant, menacing character. 

The story itself is too meandering; too basically incredible.  It is often funnier than Season 2, because it is so over-the-top, but overall I think the former season was significantly better, even with the UFO.

Has no reader watched this show?

Meanwhile, in an alternative universe, Pt 2....

dover_beach (along with CL) is a long time, conservative Catholic at Catallaxy, who argues using a massive, near impenetrable fog of words, in much the same way as Feser, who he admires.  He obsesses continually about abortion, but will not support contraception as a means of reducing it.   He also clearly thinks the ends justifies the means when it comes to torturing and "disappearing" people to counter socialism.

Conservative Catholics, with their culture war based support of Trump, have really become the paranoid, conspiracy believing, parodies of formerly respectable Conservative intellectualism, and are the pits.

Meanwhile, in an alternative universe...

What I've been watching

Posting has been slow recently, but here are a few things I enjoyed and recommend, if it's available for viewing on a streaming service near you:

*  Secret Life of the Hospital:   a British one hour doco going behind the scenes of a large hospital, looking at the places other medical interest shows (real life or fictional) don't usually bother with.  I really like hospitals (and airports) for their complexity and high level of organisation, hence it was actually pretty fascinating to see how they deal with laundry (there must be a lot of money made by companies that manufacture such specialised, enormous machines) and sterilising both surgical instruments and entire wards (I liked the fumigating robot).   But the most fascinating thing of all was seeing how incredibly rough and ready a bone graft onto a spine looks.   It's basically ground up hip sockets from people who have had hip replacements (put through something that looks exactly like a hand turned meat mincer), and then the ground up bone is just poured over the titanium plates screwed into the spine and patted down.   That's what it looked like, anyway.   I am amazed at how the body recovers from surgery which can look so indelicate.  (The exposed spin looks particularly horrible - reminiscent of a split pig on a hook.)

*  Foreign Correspondent on Indonesian soccer:   who knew that, even at the completely "dry" venues (the drink on sale is iced tea) in Indonesia, soccer rioting is a continual, massive problem.   What is it about the game that causes loony, violent dedication amongst fans, anywhere in the world?   Is it the working class origins?  But of course the fans everywhere are of all levels of wealth now.  I would have guessed before seeing this show that if European venues catered to only completely sober fans, the crowd behaviour would always be good.  But no, it seems its just something about how gangs and tribalism coalesces around the game that seems to the problem.

* Umbrella Academy:   a new Netflix superhero show has started, with good reviews from the States, and we (son and me) watched the first episode last night.   I quite liked it, and will continue watching, but with a couple of reservations.  First, I find something annoying about mopey, po-faced Ellen Page.  Hard to explain what - I just tire of her looking unhappy in everything.   Second, the "conflicted family coming together for a funeral" feels remarkably thematically similar to Haunting of Hill House - even down to one sibling having written a book about her experiences and thereby annoying at least one other family member.   But it is stylishly made, I did like most of the acting, and I quite liked the set up (Armageddon is only 8 days away.) 

Americans and their orifices

Along with vaginal douching - a practice that, as far as I know, is a peculiarly American (and sort of stupid) idea - it would seem that using neti pots to rinse out noses is a fad that has taken off in the US and not (again, as far as I know) in any equivalent Western country.  Why do Americans take to the idea of washing out their internals so much? 

I suppose I should add "colonic irrigation" to the list.  Or did that start in Europe?   Neti pots are from India.  Even if washing out intestines started elsewhere, Americans always seem keen to pick up the idea that a good rinse out of any old orifice must be good for you.

A Trump "intellectual"

Hey, I last mentioned the "Flight 93 election" meme because rich but kinda dumb Peter Thiel quoted it with approval as a "powerful metaphor".

I was amused to read a recent article (found via a David Frum tweet - man, he tweets a lot, and often with good stuff) talking about the lack of intellectual seriousness of Michael Anton, the author of the essay that established the meme.