Like a Twitter pal said, imagine throwing a fit because Denmark refused to sell Greenland to you and touting the fact that an ally said Israelis love you like you’re the second coming and having those things *not* be your most alarming statements of the week....Look, the Trump cultists are never going to abandon him - you can see that on Twitter and comments rubbishing Allahpundit's take - but there is surely a substantial number of GOP congress people who can be pushed past their support of convenience for him into actually starting to talk about a replacement less obviously profoundly ignorant and flighty (I'm being very restrained with my descriptions) with someone like Pence, perhaps?
He’s never going to accept that the Fed is independent from partisan politics by design, but he could at least restrain his scapegoating of Powell by not comparing him unfavorably to communist China’s supremo, a guy who operates actual concentration camps. Trump’s willingness to speak warmly about the world’s worst bad guys while excoriating domestic politicians in the most acidic ways has lost most of its power to shock after his bromances with Putin and Kim Jong Un, but not all of it.
But wait. He was saving the Big Crazy for his response to China’s new retaliatory tariffs on American imports
“Our great American companies are hereby ordered.” Every day brings new material for a game of “What if Obama said it?” but purporting to order U.S. companies not to do business with China is championship-round stuff. I wonder which White House advisor got stuck explaining to him that he doesn’t actually have the power to do that. Just like I wonder when we’re going to start hearing about sanctions on China, which would be like dropping an atomic bomb on the economy....
This past week is going to get its own chapter in all of the self-serving post-Trump “I never really liked him” memoirs written by his cronies eager to rehabilitate their image once he’s gone.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
The beginning of the end?
Allahpundit's take on Trump's "hereby order" tweets (and continuing trade war, as well as his attacks on his own appiontees) seems pretty accurate to me. For example:
Friday, August 23, 2019
About conspiracy theories
The TLS looks at the rise of modern conspiracy theory belief:
Much of the work of modernity involved escaping the conspiracy of history itself, in which people are damned and doomed from the start. What they strove to become, instead, were people with a future; persons, bearers of rights, of sovereignty, with control over their destinies; citizens in secular nation states. They also understood themselves as objects and organisms, subject to natural laws. Nineteenth-century intellectuals offered all manner of secular explanations for misfortune in the realm of the physical and biological sciences, from the modelling of the weather to the germ theory of disease, and in the realm of the emerging social sciences, from economics to eugenics. This change coincided with rising rates of literacy and the growth of public schooling: the democratization of knowledge. By 1881, when Guiteau shot Garfield, rules of evidence – ideas about the relationship between facts and arguments, ideas once confined to courts of law and chemical laboratories – had spilled out to the new profession of journalism and the new popular genre of detective fiction. Suddenly, everyone had a theory, about almost everything. The misery of humanity became a crime everyone could solve.I have comments moderation on, and its wildly unlikely that any of Graeme's ones will get through.
The most popular scapegoat, it turns out, is other people. Between the mid-eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, a period during which emerging nation states sorted the world’s peoples into “nationalities”, most conspiracy theories in the US and Western Europe involved threats to the nation by people who weren’t so easily sorted. The most notorious of these theories concerned an alleged international conspiracy of Jews, people with ties across national borders. “Pulling the strings behind the scenes, dominating the new system of modernity, the Jew becomes the cause of every catastrophe”, claimed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which first appeared in Russia in 1903, was distributed throughout the US by Henry Ford in the 1920s, and assigned as a textbook in German schools from 1933. Much the same claim appeared in The Jewish Peril, a pamphlet issued by the British government in 1920 and written, in part, by Nesta Webster, who tied the Jewish conspiracy to the Bavarian Illuminati of the eighteenth century.
Arguably, there is just this one conspiracy theory, an endlessly recycled version of antisemitism, as the political scientist Thomas Milan Konda suggests in Conspiracies of Conspiracies: How delusions have overrun America. The Jewish conspiracy theory served as the template for nearly all that followed, from anti-communist and anti-homosexual panics and purges to race-based nationalism and xenophobia of every stripe, down to Islamophobia, the demonization of refugees, and the detention of immigrants. In the 1930s, the American fascist and disciple of Nesta Webster, Elizabeth Dilling – the founder of the Patriotic Research Bureau and author of the Red Network (which branded even the YMCA a communist front) – delighted audiences with her fake Yiddish accent, at a time when critics of FDR denounced the New Deal as the “Jew Deal”. By way of a mysterious “hidden hand”, the theory alleges, Illuminati or Jews or Bolsheviks or communists or gay people, or whoever, secretly run most national governments and aspire to world domination. “There are 200,000 Communist Jews at the Mexican border waiting to get into this country”, the housewife and America Firster Agnes Waters announced in 1942. “If they are admitted they will rape every woman that is left unprotected.”
Everyone liked Tim, except...
Tim Fischer was a genuinely likeable politician, as all the kind words from everyone following his death show.
I was amused to read at Catallaxy how the only regular left wing participant there, the Vietnamese war conscript veteran often referred to as "Numbers", noted how veterans suffered more blood cancer than the rest of their population cohort, only to have others in thread pooh-pooh the suggestion. Then on TV I saw that Tim himself said he had been told by a specialist that exposure to war time chemicals had probably stuffed up his immune system. So much for the collective smarts of Catallaxy.
And I also was reminded, by clown rodeo leader Sinclair Davidson himself, that he considered Fischer an anti-Semite, no doubt for his criticisms of Israel's treatment of Palestine, and his general friendliness with Arab countries in the region.
Just add that to the list of SD's views which are so eccentric that mainstream commentators just go "uhuh" and move on. It probably doesn't top his all time "seriously?" comment re Adam Goodes:
I was amused to read at Catallaxy how the only regular left wing participant there, the Vietnamese war conscript veteran often referred to as "Numbers", noted how veterans suffered more blood cancer than the rest of their population cohort, only to have others in thread pooh-pooh the suggestion. Then on TV I saw that Tim himself said he had been told by a specialist that exposure to war time chemicals had probably stuffed up his immune system. So much for the collective smarts of Catallaxy.
And I also was reminded, by clown rodeo leader Sinclair Davidson himself, that he considered Fischer an anti-Semite, no doubt for his criticisms of Israel's treatment of Palestine, and his general friendliness with Arab countries in the region.
Just add that to the list of SD's views which are so eccentric that mainstream commentators just go "uhuh" and move on. It probably doesn't top his all time "seriously?" comment re Adam Goodes:
But is it racist? Many individuals are having a go at me on twitter for questioning whether calling an Indigenous man an “ape” is actually racist and not just rude. For many people it seems self-evident that is is racist. But nobody can say how or why. The “best” story I’ve heard is that Social Darwinism ranks “people of colour” below animals.but comes pretty close.
Green finance success?
I take it from this report that the Gillard established Clean Energy Finance Corporation might be sold into private hands means that it has been a success:
Private investment funds are circling Australia's Clean Energy Finance Corporation hoping for a sale of the $10 billion government-owned organisation, as its head flags a major shift in how taxpayer funds are used to support the booming industry.I bet that Liberals were not predicting a success when it was established.
In an interview that will spark debate over whether the fund should be privatised like its counterpart in Britain, CEFC chief executive Ian Learmonth said he would shift his focus to strengthening the grid's reliability because banks had become more comfortable financing large-scale wind and solar projects....
The CEFC was established under the Gillard government in 2012 to spur investment in the sector while it introduced a carbon pricing scheme. Touting Australia's clean-energy credentials to Pacific leaders, Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week called it "the world's most successful green bank"....
Mr Learmonth said as the utility solar and wind-power renewables market had matured, more private capital had flowed in. The CEFC earned $350 million last year from maturing loans, which have been written on a commercial basis allowing for a transfer to private entities if required.
Composer more modern than I knew
Last night I learned (because my daughter was doing an assignment on him) that Richard Strauss (not Johann) lived from 1864 to 1949; I didn't realise he was a 20th century figure.
And this weekend, I get to listen to his An Alpine Symphony, a "tone poem" which my daughter actually likes. (She plays a lot of different composers in her youth orchestra, but seems to not care much for a lot of the pieces selected. She has a particular dislike of Mozart, for some reason.)
I also didn't realise that the 2001: A Space Odyssey piece from Also sprach Zarathustra was just the opening fanfare to a piece that goes 30 minutes.
There is much I do not know...
And this weekend, I get to listen to his An Alpine Symphony, a "tone poem" which my daughter actually likes. (She plays a lot of different composers in her youth orchestra, but seems to not care much for a lot of the pieces selected. She has a particular dislike of Mozart, for some reason.)
I also didn't realise that the 2001: A Space Odyssey piece from Also sprach Zarathustra was just the opening fanfare to a piece that goes 30 minutes.
There is much I do not know...
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Twin beds more common than I knew?
Someone in England has written "A Cultural History of Twin Beds", which indicates that they were not that uncommon in the earlier part of the 20th century. Here are the highlights:
Her key findings reveal that twin beds:
The backlash against twin beds as indicative of a distant or failing marriage partnership intensified in the 1950s and by the late 1960s few married couples saw them as a desirable choice for the bedroom.
- Were initially adopted as a health precaution in the late nineteenth century to stop couples passing on germs through exhaled breath.
- Were seen, by the 1920s, as a desirable, modern and fashionable choice, particularly among the middle classes.
- Featured as integral elements of the architectural and design visions of avant-garde Modernists such as Le Corbusier, Peter Behrens and Wells Coates.
- Were (in the early decades of the 20th century) indicative of forward-thinking married couples, balancing nocturnal 'togetherness' with a continuing commitment to separateness and autonomy.
- Never entirely replaced double beds in the households of middle-class couples but, by the 1930s and 1940s, were sufficiently commonplace to be unremarkable.
- Enjoyed a century-long moment of prominence in British society and, as such, are invaluable indicators of social customs and cultural values relating to health, modernity and marriage.
Innovation in Malaysia
Noted at CNA:
One Condoms has introduced the limited-edition “super sensitive” rendang-flavoured condoms to commemorate Malaysia’s upcoming independence day on Aug 31.I perceive certain practical issues with the whole flavoured condom thing - especially if it is on the spicy side. But the readers can contemplate that without my assistance.
This is the fourth release in the company’s quirky Malaysian series, which began in 2016 and includes flavours such as nasi lemak, teh tarik and durians.
According to the Malay Mail, the condoms will only be available on the market for a limited period. The site quoted a statement released by One Condoms manufacturer Karex that the idea behind the local flavours is to break the stigma and get people comfortable to talk about sex.
“The end game is simple — pleasurable sex in a safe holistic way which is the ultimate objective of our iconic Malaysian series, now proudly in our fourth year.”
Yeah, sure
Once again, there is no conservative hyperbole too far for Sinclair Davidson's Catallaxy blog - which seems to escape attention for things like action under the Racial Discrimination Act, defamation or (I wonder?) contempt of court only because people think ratbags are not worth pursuing. Real clever strategy, Sinclair [sarcasm]: let the entire blog be a joke so that conservatives can say anything offensive and you can shrug your shoulders.
The latest example, by a "guest post/rant" by the Pell obsessed uber-conservative Catholic CL, in a lengthy diatribe against an ABC journalist, is this comment about the need for the High Court to fix the Pell conviction:
And this:
Isn't it also simply offensive to describe the jury - any jury - that way?
Mind you, this is the same character who has been outright claiming for months since Pell's conviction that the accuser is an outright liar and fabricator. While I have no problem with people doubting that a conviction is reasonable, common decency alone would suggest that someone who have no direct experience of hearing a witness (or knowledge of a jury) should not start publicly attacking their character and motivation simply because the outcome was not what they thought it should be.
In the bigger picture, I also note that Sinclair and his nutty crew spend much of their time rubbishing the low ratings and national importance of the ABC in order to argue for its defunding, but when it comes to Pell, the story switches to writing as if every juror has obviously been watching and reading the ABC's spin on the matter.
But put on the "I just run a clown show in my spare time" defence, Sinclair, and it'll be OK.
The latest example, by a "guest post/rant" by the Pell obsessed uber-conservative Catholic CL, in a lengthy diatribe against an ABC journalist, is this comment about the need for the High Court to fix the Pell conviction:
If ever there was a case in need of High Court correction, this is it. The future of the Commonwealth depends on it.Um, yeah. I'd like to hear how.
And this:
....a second jury of dupable vigilantes eager to convict the self-same but, by then, notorious George Pell and an appeals court which this morning raised preposterous hearsay to the level of DNA and CCTV.Hearsay? I don't think this scintillating dissector of judicial wrongs even knows the first thing about the legal terminology.
Isn't it also simply offensive to describe the jury - any jury - that way?
Mind you, this is the same character who has been outright claiming for months since Pell's conviction that the accuser is an outright liar and fabricator. While I have no problem with people doubting that a conviction is reasonable, common decency alone would suggest that someone who have no direct experience of hearing a witness (or knowledge of a jury) should not start publicly attacking their character and motivation simply because the outcome was not what they thought it should be.
In the bigger picture, I also note that Sinclair and his nutty crew spend much of their time rubbishing the low ratings and national importance of the ABC in order to argue for its defunding, but when it comes to Pell, the story switches to writing as if every juror has obviously been watching and reading the ABC's spin on the matter.
But put on the "I just run a clown show in my spare time" defence, Sinclair, and it'll be OK.
Religious, cow related, lynchings in India
I've posted on the topic before, but this article at NPR seems a good summary of the situation in India, with Hindu nationalism, and its belief in sacred status of cows, leading to lynchings against (mainly) Muslims. Some highlights:
Since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party won power in India five years ago, lynchings of the country's minorities have surged. In February, Human Rights Watch reported at least 44 such murders between May 2015 and December 2018. Hundreds more people have been injured in religiously motivated attacks.
Most of the victims are Muslims, members of the country's largest religious minority. They comprise about 15% of India's 1.3 billion people. Other victims include lower-caste Hindus and Christians.
Most of the attackers are devout Hindu men, known as "cow vigilantes," who take it upon themselves to enforce beef bans. Some of them claim ties to the BJP. Last year, a BJP minister met with a group of men convicted of a lynching and draped them in flower garlands.
....
Article 15 of India's constitution prohibits discrimination based on religion. Human rights groups are lobbying for the creation of a specific hate crimes law, but none exists in India yet.
....
Before he died, Khan was able to describe his attackers to police. Six men were arrested. Charges against them were dropped, then reinstated, and the case remained in limbo for two years — until last week, when a court acquitted all of them, citing lack of evidence.
Instead, Khan was charged posthumously with cow smuggling. Police say he didn't have a permit to transport cows across state lines. Khan's two sons, who were with him that day, await trial — and if convicted, face the possibility of up to five years in prison.
"It's like they are trying to erase us — erase all of my people," Jaibuna says in the muddy courtyard of their family farm.
....
Some Indian analysts say the situation in India is comparable to the post-Civil War period in the United States, when many white people looked on as black people were lynched.
"The similarities with the American lynchings of the late 19th century are striking," says Prabhir Vishnu Poruthiyil, a business professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay who has studied corporate India's lack of response to hate crimes.
"Most of the upper-middle class that populate[s] the corporate classes, they're also upper-caste Hindus," Poruthiyil explains. "Even if they don't agree with the lynching itself, they might be OK with the idea of stopping cow slaughter. It's a slippery slope."
As a child in Mumbai, Ayyub survived Hindu-Muslim riots in 1992 and 1993, which killed several hundred people. But she says what's happening now feels worse, because it's not a "spur of the moment" outpouring of anger. There are very specific targets.
"Now lynchings are organized on social media," Ayyub says. "People send messages to each other, saying, 'Hey, this household has beef in their fridge, let's go attack them."
More about high rise building insurance
I noted earlier this week that people (including me) were generally unaware that the compulsory insurance against structural defects that is taken out by builders constructing houses did not apply to strata structures over 3 levels high.
I see some history of this is in an article at the ABC, which also indicates that high rise apartments are very profitable for developers (at least, if they can sell them all):
I see some history of this is in an article at the ABC, which also indicates that high rise apartments are very profitable for developers (at least, if they can sell them all):
Prior to 2002, this insurance was a mandatory feature of all domestic building contracts.
HIH Insurance Limited, a major provider of Home Warranty Insurance, was placed into administration in March 2001 and left the insurance market.
In 2002, in response to a failure from other insurers to fill the gap left by HIH, State Governments agreed to exempt builders from providing this type of insurance in buildings above three stories.
For high-rise builders, who don't need to qualify for this insurance and also had the incentive of rising land prices, speculative apartment developments started to look like attractive investments as they didn't need to qualify for this kind of insurance.
Take the now infamous Opal Tower.
Publicly available documents put the cost of this development at around $215 million. If all 392 apartments were sold at their advertised price of between $800,000 and $2.5 million each, the developers have potential to make a profit on this project of around $165 million dollars, or a 77 per cent return on their investment.
Or take the Prima Pearl skyscraper in Melbourne.
The builder was paid $230 million, to build 680 "designer" apartments. Labour and materials worth $338,000 was used per home and each sold for an average cost of $1,000,000.
Quite the tidy profit for its developer. Shame about the creaking.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
He really, really wanted to buy Greenland.
It is truly a presidency impossible to parody.
President Trump responded to Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen‘s message to the United States that Greenland is not for sale by tweeting Tuesday evening that he's postponing their scheduled meeting. A White House spokesman later clarified that the president's entire trip to Denmark had been canceled, per AP.Economic genius and cult member Steve Kates was fully on board. Of course.
The Pell decision
Sinclair Davidson's Sheltered Home for Obnoxious Old Conservatives is, of course, going off about the Victorian Appeal Court upholding George Pell's conviction by a 2 to 1 majority.
I would have thought that anyone, on the Left or the Right, would be wise* to be cautious about this whole affair. It seems clear that the witness must have been pretty convincing in his evidence; but also everyone knows juries have made mistakes and (obviously) different lawyers and judges can disagree about whether there is a clear enough mistake to overturn the decision.
In short, the judicial system is imperfect, but it is what it is and there is no way of being absolutely certain here as to whether its findings accord perfectly with what really happened.
If, by some extraordinary circumstance, it later became perfectly clear that the convictions were wrong (I think the only likelihood of that would be a confession of the victim that he invented it), it's not going to be the biggest injustice in the nation's history. Pell will serve about the same time in jail as Lindy Chamberlain, and I think the lack of evidence and outright carelessness of the investigation and expert witnesses and prosecution collectively in that case would still stand as a worse case of injustice.
* That excludes the dumb, culture war blinded people of Catallaxy, naturally.
I would have thought that anyone, on the Left or the Right, would be wise* to be cautious about this whole affair. It seems clear that the witness must have been pretty convincing in his evidence; but also everyone knows juries have made mistakes and (obviously) different lawyers and judges can disagree about whether there is a clear enough mistake to overturn the decision.
In short, the judicial system is imperfect, but it is what it is and there is no way of being absolutely certain here as to whether its findings accord perfectly with what really happened.
If, by some extraordinary circumstance, it later became perfectly clear that the convictions were wrong (I think the only likelihood of that would be a confession of the victim that he invented it), it's not going to be the biggest injustice in the nation's history. Pell will serve about the same time in jail as Lindy Chamberlain, and I think the lack of evidence and outright carelessness of the investigation and expert witnesses and prosecution collectively in that case would still stand as a worse case of injustice.
* That excludes the dumb, culture war blinded people of Catallaxy, naturally.
Bigger than the Pell verdict
It actually is, on Twitter, at the moment:
Many of the despairing thread comments and memes cursing Sony are funny. I like this one, which I have seen before:
But I see on other threads that some are saying that Disney was being too greedy in the cut it wanted. Also, that they still might reach a deal yet.
Worrying times indeed. :)
But I see on other threads that some are saying that Disney was being too greedy in the cut it wanted. Also, that they still might reach a deal yet.
Worrying times indeed. :)
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Get Happy
Another Netflix recommendation - and this one is new and really good.
Happy Jail - a short documentary series about the jail on Cebu, in the Philippines, which became famous for the dancing prisoners a decade or so ago.
The jail - which is actually a remand jail, apparently, but people (of both sexes, and quite a few gays) can be there for many years at a time - still thrives on dancing, and is bizarrely now run by an ex-convict who is friends with the new local governor. (He didn't start the dancing stuff - that was by a previous prison boss who spends much time rubbishing the new regime.)
It doesn't dwell on the dancing per se - although, given that they practice virtually continuously, there are lots of shots of that. What makes is so fascinating is the way the whole place runs: the facilities are appallingly crowded and ramshackle, and the prison is to an extraordinary extent sort of self managed. I doubt there will ever be another documentary where the prisoners seem so happy to be being filmed.
It's extremely well made, and at half an hour per episode, doesn't wear out its welcome.
It continually makes me feel how oddball the Philippines is - fervently religious, full of terrible poverty, in-fighting, corruption, drugs; and people who really like to sing and dance through it all. It manages to make the place look both attractive and repulsive at the same time.
Highly recommended.
Happy Jail - a short documentary series about the jail on Cebu, in the Philippines, which became famous for the dancing prisoners a decade or so ago.
The jail - which is actually a remand jail, apparently, but people (of both sexes, and quite a few gays) can be there for many years at a time - still thrives on dancing, and is bizarrely now run by an ex-convict who is friends with the new local governor. (He didn't start the dancing stuff - that was by a previous prison boss who spends much time rubbishing the new regime.)
It doesn't dwell on the dancing per se - although, given that they practice virtually continuously, there are lots of shots of that. What makes is so fascinating is the way the whole place runs: the facilities are appallingly crowded and ramshackle, and the prison is to an extraordinary extent sort of self managed. I doubt there will ever be another documentary where the prisoners seem so happy to be being filmed.
It's extremely well made, and at half an hour per episode, doesn't wear out its welcome.
It continually makes me feel how oddball the Philippines is - fervently religious, full of terrible poverty, in-fighting, corruption, drugs; and people who really like to sing and dance through it all. It manages to make the place look both attractive and repulsive at the same time.
Highly recommended.
In which I get to talk about syphilis again
It's been a while since I've re-visited the topic of syphilis (recent visitors can see how fascinating I find the topic by searching the blog in the sidebar), but a book review in Nature gives me an excuse to marvel at its historic devastation again. The book is How the Brain Lost its Mind: Sex, Hysteria, and the Riddle of Mental Illness. Sounds fun.
Here are some extracts from the review, looking more at the syphilis side:
(I had remarked in an earlier post that it seems surprising that it took so long for medicine to confirm syphilis led to madness.) Back to the general effects on psychiatry after this:
Here are some extracts from the review, looking more at the syphilis side:
In the nineteenth century, neurosyphilis was one of the most ubiquitous and fatal forms of degenerative mental illness known to psychiatry. Termed general paralysis of the insane, it was widely supposed by early practitioners to be caused by bad heredity, ‘weak character’ or moral turpitude. That changed in 1913, when Japanese bacteriologist Hideyo Noguchi, working at Rockefeller University in New York City, found traces of Treponema pallidum — the spiral-shaped bacterium responsible for syphilis — in the brains of deceased people with general paralysis. At the time, as many as one-third of patients in mental hospitals had symptoms that could now be clearly traced back to syphilis (A. M. Brandt Science 239, 375–380; 1988).
(I had remarked in an earlier post that it seems surprising that it took so long for medicine to confirm syphilis led to madness.) Back to the general effects on psychiatry after this:
...the discovery that general paralysis was a symptom of a sexually transmitted disease galvanized subsequent generations of psychiatrists. They embarked on a quest, still largely unfulfilled, to find biological foundations for other mental disorders, especially grave conditions such as schizophrenia. Only later would it become clear, as the authors point out, that neurosyphilis is “an unsuitable model for anything clearly unrelated to infection or inflammation in the frontal and temporal lobe regions”....
The age of Freud was also the age of syphilis. Freud, and psychoanalysis more generally, focused on suppressed sexual fantasies and traumas because, for patients then, the shameful and terrifying spectre of syphilis hung over every sexual encounter like “the sword of Damocles” ....
The history of neurosyphilis bequeathed a tendency to indulge in excessive reductionism. That of hysteria encouraged a tendency to indulge in excessive psychologism. And both psychiatry and neurology were left the poorer. As the authors argue, the majority of patients seen by practitioners in both fields are afflicted with what they call “in-between states” — forms of distress informed by both biology and biography. The book is in this sense a plea for neurology and psychiatry to repair ruptures, join forces and do justice to the experiences of their patients.
Just a joke? [insert nervous laugh]
Fake Chinese police cars spotted in Perth and Adelaide amid pro-Hong Kong ralliesSome joke...
Authorities are investigating after fake Chinese police cars were spotted in Adelaide and Perth amid pro-Hong Kong demonstrations across Australia, but the owner of one of the cars has told police it was a "joke".
Construction problems in Australia
That was a pretty great Four Corners last night on the abrupt realisation in Australia that our apartment construction industry was in a huge mess. Some takeaways:
* How do libertarians and their "always de-regulate and privatise compliance checks" attitude live with themselves? It seems pretty clear that a large part of the problem, if not the single largest part, is the looser regime that State governments allowed for certification, going back about 20 or more years ago.
* Of course, greedy developers play their part too. What about this tweet after the show, which has a ring of truth about it:
* There was also the surprise of the guy from an engineer's association saying that, apart from in Queensland (yay), technically, anyone in the other States can call themselves an engineer. I had heard someone saying this before, and recently mentioned it to someone who owns a family company that builds houses and the occasional apartment or townhouse block. He thought that didn't sound right, but it apparently is.
* I was also speaking to a solicitor recently, who has been around a long time, and he wasn't aware that the compulsory insurance run by the Queensland Building and Construction Commission for house builders (and which gives cover for 6 1/2 years for structural faults) does not apply to buildings over 3 levels high. Apparently, this is the case pretty much everywhere in Australia, but it seems a safe bet that for decades, people buying off the plan units have not been aware that they are much, much more certain insurance position if they build a house, or buy a new townhouse with only two levels, than if they buy even a 5th floor apartment.
* The show did indicate that some changes Queensland has made (to the QBCC inspection regime) are better than what exists in other States. Again, yay for Queensland I suppose.
* Going back to regulation - some Asian woman said something along the lines of "we thought Australia did regulation well, so we thought apartment buying was safe". Yeah, well - shows what happens when you go too far into self regulation. Libertarians and their desire to let the market sought it out (you know, dodgy builders will get a bad rep and that will solve the problem) has probably stuffed up the Australian market for off the plan for some years now. Also - see Boeing and self certification in the USA.
* The other big issue, not covered in the program, is the matter of insurers getting cold feet about cover for engineers and certifiers, not to mention builders themselves. I am pretty sure that part of the issue for poor apartment owners can be fights between different insurers as to which is really responsible - I mean, the body corporate itself will have insurance for things like fire and storm damage, but if you have a big water ingress problem from the first storm after it is built, that insurer is likely going to be looking at blaming design, construction or certification, which brings in up to three other insurers to fight amongst themselves as to who was really at fault. That is, assuming the builder has any insurance at all - as the show indicated, some will just organise their corporate finances such that they can easily close down the company that built it if it looks at risk of a multi million dollar claim.
* I am aware of one high rise apartment block in inner city Brisbane years ago that had some design fault or other, which meant that body corporate levies for something like a normal sized 2 bedroom unit there went up to around $10-$11,000 per annum. (I think to fund the legal action against the builder/designer.) As that sort of litigation can take years, it meant people who wanted out couldn't easily sell the apartment with those levies.
* Why has this mainly been an issue for residential apartments? I don't recall hearing of an office block with the same level of problems. I guess residential apartments have a lot more plumbing and fiddly bits, but still. It would seem something about the apartment building business is particularly rotten.
* How do libertarians and their "always de-regulate and privatise compliance checks" attitude live with themselves? It seems pretty clear that a large part of the problem, if not the single largest part, is the looser regime that State governments allowed for certification, going back about 20 or more years ago.
* Of course, greedy developers play their part too. What about this tweet after the show, which has a ring of truth about it:
* I was also speaking to a solicitor recently, who has been around a long time, and he wasn't aware that the compulsory insurance run by the Queensland Building and Construction Commission for house builders (and which gives cover for 6 1/2 years for structural faults) does not apply to buildings over 3 levels high. Apparently, this is the case pretty much everywhere in Australia, but it seems a safe bet that for decades, people buying off the plan units have not been aware that they are much, much more certain insurance position if they build a house, or buy a new townhouse with only two levels, than if they buy even a 5th floor apartment.
* The show did indicate that some changes Queensland has made (to the QBCC inspection regime) are better than what exists in other States. Again, yay for Queensland I suppose.
* Going back to regulation - some Asian woman said something along the lines of "we thought Australia did regulation well, so we thought apartment buying was safe". Yeah, well - shows what happens when you go too far into self regulation. Libertarians and their desire to let the market sought it out (you know, dodgy builders will get a bad rep and that will solve the problem) has probably stuffed up the Australian market for off the plan for some years now. Also - see Boeing and self certification in the USA.
* The other big issue, not covered in the program, is the matter of insurers getting cold feet about cover for engineers and certifiers, not to mention builders themselves. I am pretty sure that part of the issue for poor apartment owners can be fights between different insurers as to which is really responsible - I mean, the body corporate itself will have insurance for things like fire and storm damage, but if you have a big water ingress problem from the first storm after it is built, that insurer is likely going to be looking at blaming design, construction or certification, which brings in up to three other insurers to fight amongst themselves as to who was really at fault. That is, assuming the builder has any insurance at all - as the show indicated, some will just organise their corporate finances such that they can easily close down the company that built it if it looks at risk of a multi million dollar claim.
* I am aware of one high rise apartment block in inner city Brisbane years ago that had some design fault or other, which meant that body corporate levies for something like a normal sized 2 bedroom unit there went up to around $10-$11,000 per annum. (I think to fund the legal action against the builder/designer.) As that sort of litigation can take years, it meant people who wanted out couldn't easily sell the apartment with those levies.
* Why has this mainly been an issue for residential apartments? I don't recall hearing of an office block with the same level of problems. I guess residential apartments have a lot more plumbing and fiddly bits, but still. It would seem something about the apartment building business is particularly rotten.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Vaping mystery
I would have thought that the pro-vaping lobby would have some misgivings about their position until doctors work out what is causing serious lung disease amongst vapers in the USA.
But I have noticed no sign of that in Australia. I see that Terry Barnes, former Liberal health adviser, is still running a pro-vaping line in the interests of reducing smoking rates.
I know he can claim some academic support - but I think it very likely that within a few years, it will be seen to have been misplaced.
I am surprised that people cannot apply some common sense to this issue, and judge that it is unlikely to be a healthy thing to coat your lungs regularly with the liquid needed to deliver nicotine. Less unhealthy than smoking? Presumably so, but the key thing should be how much it helps smokers quit - and the research on that is still early. Even if it helps more smokers quit, it would need to be a substantially higher number than other nicotine replacement methods in order to justify the health risks associated with vaping. As to how much higher - that is just a judgement call, and for me, it is one the vaping industry is unlikely to pass, especially taking into account how many young users it attracts. It is not as if the industry wants only ex-smokers as users, after all.
But I have noticed no sign of that in Australia. I see that Terry Barnes, former Liberal health adviser, is still running a pro-vaping line in the interests of reducing smoking rates.
I know he can claim some academic support - but I think it very likely that within a few years, it will be seen to have been misplaced.
I am surprised that people cannot apply some common sense to this issue, and judge that it is unlikely to be a healthy thing to coat your lungs regularly with the liquid needed to deliver nicotine. Less unhealthy than smoking? Presumably so, but the key thing should be how much it helps smokers quit - and the research on that is still early. Even if it helps more smokers quit, it would need to be a substantially higher number than other nicotine replacement methods in order to justify the health risks associated with vaping. As to how much higher - that is just a judgement call, and for me, it is one the vaping industry is unlikely to pass, especially taking into account how many young users it attracts. It is not as if the industry wants only ex-smokers as users, after all.
Heinlein believed
...in an afterlife, so it would seem from a 1968 letter that Michael Prescott has posted.
I am not sure I am all that surprised - I would say he always showed interest in other dimensions (a bit like in the Flatland scenario), and alternative universes, and perhaps his afterlife interests were connected with that. (In other words, a belief that if we understood science better we could work out where "Heaven" is.)
I am not sure I am all that surprised - I would say he always showed interest in other dimensions (a bit like in the Flatland scenario), and alternative universes, and perhaps his afterlife interests were connected with that. (In other words, a belief that if we understood science better we could work out where "Heaven" is.)
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Portland is still there
Today I had read this very anti Ngo article at Jacobin: Portland's Andy Ngo is the Most Dangerous Grifter in America, then had a look at his twitter feed during the anticipated confrontation between out of town Right wing provocateurs and local Antifa, many of whom are unsavoury looking characters in their own way.
And yeah, I have to say, it is clear Ngo isn't a real journalist. He was tweeting short clips (taken by others - I assume he did not turn up this time, which is no doubt a good idea in his own self interest), without context, and giving the uniformly worst possible interpretation against Antifa in all cases. He's as much as a journalist as, say, John Pilger was when doing his completely one-sided takes. In other words, just a biased commentator with a camera.
Anyway, it seems there wasn't as much drama at Portland as people feared, even though there were arrests. I did see on Twitter that one of the Right wing organisers of their intervention said it was a success because it got Trump's attention on Twitter.
Yeah, right. A real sincere exercise in free speech.
Portland is still there, and Andy Ngo is still doing his part to encourage wingnuts into thinking the US is going to collapse because of Liberals, rather than because it has a narcissistic, dumb, wannabe authoritarian President with an enabling Party behind him.
Update: the Daily Kos version of events during the day. Because you would have no idea what was happening if you relied on Andy Ngo.
And yeah, I have to say, it is clear Ngo isn't a real journalist. He was tweeting short clips (taken by others - I assume he did not turn up this time, which is no doubt a good idea in his own self interest), without context, and giving the uniformly worst possible interpretation against Antifa in all cases. He's as much as a journalist as, say, John Pilger was when doing his completely one-sided takes. In other words, just a biased commentator with a camera.
Anyway, it seems there wasn't as much drama at Portland as people feared, even though there were arrests. I did see on Twitter that one of the Right wing organisers of their intervention said it was a success because it got Trump's attention on Twitter.
Yeah, right. A real sincere exercise in free speech.
Portland is still there, and Andy Ngo is still doing his part to encourage wingnuts into thinking the US is going to collapse because of Liberals, rather than because it has a narcissistic, dumb, wannabe authoritarian President with an enabling Party behind him.
Update: the Daily Kos version of events during the day. Because you would have no idea what was happening if you relied on Andy Ngo.
Milk under attack
On a busy Brisbane street this morning, the anti dairy folk are out:
This is a busy street, just outside the Ekka. Which, I now realise, is almost certainly why they are here.
This is a busy street, just outside the Ekka. Which, I now realise, is almost certainly why they are here.
I haven't been into the Ekka this year, or last year. I wonder if the vegans have much of a presence yet? Given the increase in vegan products I've been noticing in supermarkets (Coles brand smoke flavoured tofu, for example), there must be some vegan promotion in there.
Now I'm imagining late night fights there between big-hatted cow cockies and tofu stall holders.
I must go next year and find out...
Limited truth in advertising
Just saw this flyer:
Checking Wikipedia, I find that this now comprises just one original member..the drummer. Rather like Ringo going on tour and calling himself The Beatles, no?
Checking Wikipedia, I find that this now comprises just one original member..the drummer. Rather like Ringo going on tour and calling himself The Beatles, no?
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Friday, August 16, 2019
Finger workout
This one's for reader Tim, who is interested in all things German, I think:
German finger wrestling pulls a crowd in Bavaria
Churchill, on the other hand, might have kept Britain safe that way.
The articles has lots of photos of men in traditional get up, pulling fingers.
German finger wrestling pulls a crowd in Bavaria
Competitors, who are matched in weight and age, sit opposite each other and pull on a small leather loop using just one finger. The winner is the one who pulls his opponent across the table. As in other forms of wrestling, those taking part must put in lots of training. Squeezing tennis balls and lifting heavy weights with just one finger are both part of the routine. To emerge triumphant, technique and physical strength are important, as is a high pain threshold.
Fingerhakeln is traditional in Bavaria and in Austria. Its origins are unclear but it is believed to have started as a way of settling arguments.I thought at first, if only Hitler had been prepared to settle disputes with a good fingerhakeln session. But then I thought of poor old Roosevelt being flung across the table, and America going all Man in the High Castle.
Churchill, on the other hand, might have kept Britain safe that way.
The articles has lots of photos of men in traditional get up, pulling fingers.
Does it make cream too?
More on that company that wants to get fake milk made using milk protein from GM yeast:
whey way. (Ha ha).
Anyway, I am curious as to whether this can be a success. Isn't raising yeast in gigantic bio-reactors pretty efficient, and economical?
After working at MassBiologics less than a year, Pandya quit in 2014 to found Perfect Day with another vegan biologist, Perumal Gandhi, also now 27. Their Berkeley, California, company has developed a technology to insert a DNA sequence into microflora like yeast that produces casein and whey proteins that are identical to those found in cow’s milk. Rather than create its own line of grocery store items, Perfect Day, which has raised $40 million from investors, is selling its proteins to large food manufacturers to turn into mayonnaise, protein bars, baby formula and cookies.I don't really understand - do those proteins make cream? Because milk only tastes good because of the cream. (If you're going to drink skim milk, you may as well go with unsweetened almond milk.) And the article does not involve any actual taste test of a milk product made this
Anyway, I am curious as to whether this can be a success. Isn't raising yeast in gigantic bio-reactors pretty efficient, and economical?
Good grief
WSJ reports:
The idea of the U.S. purchasing Greenland has captured the former real-estate developer’s imagination, according to people familiar with the discussions, who said Mr. Trump has, with varying degrees of seriousness, repeatedly expressed interest in buying the ice-covered autonomous Danish territory between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.Maybe Peter Thiel told him it was a good idea? He's nutty enough to think it might make a good future Libertarian Land. I have no idea why Trump himself would come up with the thought...
In meetings, at dinners and in passing conversations, Mr. Trump has asked advisers whether the U.S. can acquire Greenland, listened with interest when they discuss its abundant resources and geopolitical importance and, according to two of the people, has asked his White House counsel to look into the idea.
Some of his advisers have supported the concept, saying it was a good economic play, two of the people said, while others dismissed it as a fleeting fascination that will never come to fruition. It is also unclear how the U.S. would go about acquiring Greenland even if the effort were serious.
Yay for science thwarting vegans
Have I mentioned before that I'm pretty dismayed how veganism has seemingly completely trumped vegetarianism in the alt. normal diet marketplace of ideas? I mean, really: the idea of giving up cheese, or eggs, is a huge ask for many people, me included. And besides, I would be pretty sure that it is much, much easier to get a load of essential vitamins from your food if you include dairy, eggs, and the occasional not-very-sentient source of protein. (Say, prawns and oysters - I am never going to worry too much about upsetting their farmed friends by taking them out of the sea.)
But I can see why vegans argue about not wanting to support the egg industry, which involves killing huge numbers of day old rooster chicks. (Why they wouldn't eat ones from their own backyard, though - that seems way too purist to me.)
So I am happy to read about the big effort to find a way to deal with the problem, by not even allowing the rooster eggs to hatch:
Look at how hi-tech one method of achieving this is:
But I can see why vegans argue about not wanting to support the egg industry, which involves killing huge numbers of day old rooster chicks. (Why they wouldn't eat ones from their own backyard, though - that seems way too purist to me.)
So I am happy to read about the big effort to find a way to deal with the problem, by not even allowing the rooster eggs to hatch:
Modern laying hens have been bred to produce huge numbers of eggs, but their brothers are useless. They don't put on weight fast enough to be raised for meat. So hatchery workers—specialized "sexers"—sort day-old chicks by hand, squeezing open their anal vents for a sign of their sex. Females are sold to farms. Males—roughly 7 billion per year worldwide, according to industry estimates—are fed into a shredder or gassed.
Sorting males from females before chicks hatch at 21 days wouldn't just avoid the massacre. Hatcheries would no longer need to employ sexers, they wouldn't waste space and energy incubating male eggs, and they could sell those eggs as a raw material for animal feed producers, the cosmetics industry, or vaccine manufacturers. The United Egg Producers, a U.S. cooperative, says it wants to be cull-free by 2020, and the German government has said it will outlaw the practice. "Everyone wants the same thing, and the right piece of technology could solve this right now," says Timothy Kurt, scientific program director at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) in Washington, D.C.
Look at how hi-tech one method of achieving this is:
One contender is the technology behind the respeggt eggs, which sorts them based on sex hormones. Funding from governments and industry has prompted an abundance of other ideas—from laser spectroscopy to MRI scans to genetic engineering. And next month, FFAR will announce seed funding for six finalists—selected from 21 entries from 10 countries—for an Egg-Tech Prize competing for up to $6 million for a workable method.Next thing we need work on - how to make milk other than from an udder. What happened to this artificial cow's milk that is made from GM yeast? Deserves another post, probably.
Almuth Einspanier, a veterinary endocrinologist at Leipzig University in Germany, and her colleagues laid the groundwork for the respeggt brand. They found that by day 9 of development, female embryos produce a hormone called estrone sulfate that can be detected reliably in fluid that builds up in the egg—"essentially the embryo's pee," Einspanier says. The German grocery chain Rewe and HatchTech, a Dutch hatchery equipment supplier, founded Seleggt, a spin-off based in Cologne, Germany, to market the technique. The company built a robot that fires a laser to open a hole in the shell much smaller than a pinhead. It sucks out a minuscule drop of the fluid and adds it to a solution that turns blue in the presence of the female hormone. Female eggs go to the incubator and male eggs are sent off to be frozen and processed into powder for animal feed.
To be added to the international "everything in Australia wants to kill you" files
I have to admit, that is an unusual and somewhat disturbing story, even for Australia.An elderly couple have been badly injured trying to break up a fight between their dog and a goanna in north Queensland.The 72-year-old man underwent surgery after being bitten by the goanna while his wife was treated for her injuries at the Proserpine Hospital.
The couple's dog was killed during the attack.
No surprise
Of course, climate change deniers are thrilled; but honestly, I don't think anyone sensible should ever have held high hopes that this was a useful energy idea:
World’s first solar road fails to meet expectations
Roads need constant maintenance and get covered in dirt - they are about the last place I would expect it to make sense to lay thousands of solar cells.
World’s first solar road fails to meet expectations
Roads need constant maintenance and get covered in dirt - they are about the last place I would expect it to make sense to lay thousands of solar cells.
Overcompensating
The reporting about the attractive young woman killed in Sydney by a nut a couple of days seemed odd to me from the start. I mean, no one thinks a sex worker deserves death, but most people (surely including the parents of such a good looking and apparently smart young woman) would feel it is shame, at least to some degree, that she did that to make money. Certainly I do - I'm one of the few people who strenuously objected to Pretty Women being a de facto glamorisation of prostitution at the time it came out.
But the reporting on this woman seemed to be overcompensating from the start to promote her as a fantastic person, loved by all, who travelled the world and just happened to make a living via prostitution (sorry, sex work.) And the print reporting has been full of warnings from some sex worker advocate telling people that she deserved to be able to work safely and without fear (duh) and people shouldn't look down on her because of how she made a legitimate living, etc etc.
It all seemed very much a case of the media trying to pre-empt anything less than fulsome praise for the women in every respect of her life - as if mere sympathy was not going to be enough.
As I say, I found it distinctly odd.
But the reporting on this woman seemed to be overcompensating from the start to promote her as a fantastic person, loved by all, who travelled the world and just happened to make a living via prostitution (sorry, sex work.) And the print reporting has been full of warnings from some sex worker advocate telling people that she deserved to be able to work safely and without fear (duh) and people shouldn't look down on her because of how she made a legitimate living, etc etc.
It all seemed very much a case of the media trying to pre-empt anything less than fulsome praise for the women in every respect of her life - as if mere sympathy was not going to be enough.
As I say, I found it distinctly odd.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Comment moderation off
Graeme - nothing about Jews. No sweary insults. Or back into moderation we go.
About that nuclear powered missile
That recent explosion in Russia is believed to have been caused by work on a nuclear powered missile:
Everyone has probably heard of US military investigations into nuclear powered aircraft during the Cold War. [That Wikipedia article I just linked to says there was also a proposal for nuclear powered airships too (!).] The thing is, what could really have changed about nuclear fission reactors to now make them attractive for a cruise missile? Is it just that you don't have to worry about shielding a human crew from radiation in a missile?
And I thought the point of normal cruise missiles was that they could skim so low that they were really hard to detect and track, although I guess airborne radar from above, particularly over the ocean, must have a chance.
Anyway, as I say, no expert here, but I wonder if Putin is the victim of believing some crank engineer/scientist's pet project that more sensible people in the field overseas think is impractical and a waste of time.
I haven't even posted about this proposed weapon before, because it always sounded so unnecessary, expensive and impractical. (I'm not engineer, but sometimes you hear an idea and think "if that was possible, and useful, it would have been done by now.")The explosion happened on a military missile test range and was carried out by engineers from Russia’s Federal Nuclear Center, under the state atomic agency Rosatom.Putin has touted the missile as having almost “unlimited” range and it is a centerpiece of a new generation of nuclear weapons that he has been saber-rattling at the West in an attempt to look tough at home and force the U.S. to negotiate with him on arms control abroad.The missile is believed to be a ramjet, which propels itself by sucking air in, heating it and pushing it out behind it. To heat the air constantly, the missile would carry essentially a miniature nuclear reactor. Outside experts though are skleptical that Russia is close to getting the missile operational. The U.S. tried to develop similar missiles in the 1960s but abandoned the idea as impracticable.
Everyone has probably heard of US military investigations into nuclear powered aircraft during the Cold War. [That Wikipedia article I just linked to says there was also a proposal for nuclear powered airships too (!).] The thing is, what could really have changed about nuclear fission reactors to now make them attractive for a cruise missile? Is it just that you don't have to worry about shielding a human crew from radiation in a missile?
And I thought the point of normal cruise missiles was that they could skim so low that they were really hard to detect and track, although I guess airborne radar from above, particularly over the ocean, must have a chance.
Anyway, as I say, no expert here, but I wonder if Putin is the victim of believing some crank engineer/scientist's pet project that more sensible people in the field overseas think is impractical and a waste of time.
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Back to Les Miserables
This:
is the very nice, comfortable and acoustically great theatre at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, where my wife and I saw them putting on the ever popular Les Miserables today.
I see it's been 6 years since I wrote my extensive post on the show (and Victor Hugo), after seeing it in for the first time in its movie version. (I'll pat myself on the back - it's great reminding myself sometimes of what I found out in previous research on a topic.)
After that, I saw the show live at QPAC, and noted that I found it more moving in parts than the movie.
Well, increasing familiarity seems to be making it worse for me, as now I feel on the verge of tears every (I don't know) 10 minutes of this show. One song*, particularly well sung, did cause tears, but I think it was manfully hidden from knowledge of everyone in the theatre, wife included.
I could just be succumbing to the tendency of older men to cry more easily, although that's not exactly an idea I welcome. I was thinking often during the show of the Hong Kong residents singing Do You Hear the People Sing as a protest song over recent weeks, and was very much hoping I would not come out of the theatre to hear news of major military against them. Maybe these thoughts kept me more emotional than normal.
In any event, as you imagine, a show put on by enthusiastic young music students should be pretty high quality, and it was. Tickets were about half the cost of the cheapest seats in a professional show too. I must watch out in future for what other musicals they put on each year.
Update: don't think I previously linked to this blog summary of the real life events the second half of the musical is based around.
* not that anyone's asking, it was Bring Him Home in the second half.
is the very nice, comfortable and acoustically great theatre at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, where my wife and I saw them putting on the ever popular Les Miserables today.
I see it's been 6 years since I wrote my extensive post on the show (and Victor Hugo), after seeing it in for the first time in its movie version. (I'll pat myself on the back - it's great reminding myself sometimes of what I found out in previous research on a topic.)
After that, I saw the show live at QPAC, and noted that I found it more moving in parts than the movie.
Well, increasing familiarity seems to be making it worse for me, as now I feel on the verge of tears every (I don't know) 10 minutes of this show. One song*, particularly well sung, did cause tears, but I think it was manfully hidden from knowledge of everyone in the theatre, wife included.
I could just be succumbing to the tendency of older men to cry more easily, although that's not exactly an idea I welcome. I was thinking often during the show of the Hong Kong residents singing Do You Hear the People Sing as a protest song over recent weeks, and was very much hoping I would not come out of the theatre to hear news of major military against them. Maybe these thoughts kept me more emotional than normal.
In any event, as you imagine, a show put on by enthusiastic young music students should be pretty high quality, and it was. Tickets were about half the cost of the cheapest seats in a professional show too. I must watch out in future for what other musicals they put on each year.
Update: don't think I previously linked to this blog summary of the real life events the second half of the musical is based around.
* not that anyone's asking, it was Bring Him Home in the second half.
Why compromise on abortion makes sense
Religions are free to develop their own views on the matter of abortion, and their members make their own decisions whether to follow or ignore their Church's teaching. (It being widely known that many churchgoing women still opt for abortion.) And personally, I have long adopted what might be called a precautionary approach to the matter: this is a difficult topic, and I don't know where precise lines should be drawn in any objective sense, but I share most people's moral intuition that a late term abortion of a likely viable and healthy baby is a very serious matter and should have some exceptional justification if it is to happen at all, but a newly conceived embryo warrants a different set of moral concerns. (As I will argue below, conservative anti-abortionists will say that they are above any line drawing, but by their actions and advocacy, they really aren't.) My approach is that if there are moral ambiguities to taking an action, people should usually err on the side of not doing it. Hence, in a broad sense, I would say that I am more against abortion than for it.
But what about the question of how governments should view it, in light of the mixed views held by different voters? The abortion debate in the US is hotter than ever, with a renewed push for the overturning of the clear compromise position of Roe v Wade, despite it having maintained pretty popular survey support. In Australia, we have had, for no very clear reason, a burst of recent State legislative activity to decriminalise abortion, but which in effect is changing nothing of the practice of abortion which has been in place for many decades. (Conservatives who are in a rage about it seem to think legislators need to pointlessly keep prohibitions which everyone knows are virtually never used.)
Here's a pragmatic suggestion: if both extremes of an issue have a problem with maintaining consistency, doesn't that make it obvious that a compromise between the two is the more justifiable outcome if you're trying to work out a legal framework? And there are inconsistencies.
First: on the pro-Life side - as many have noted, if they serious about every embryo being treated with the same value as a fully formed human, they should be calling fertility clinics which routinely dispose of unwanted, viable embryos as detention and execution centres for human life.
They don't. Quite a few opinion pieces have made this point - here at the New Republic for one.
And if you put it in a utilitarian context of the trolley problem, who seriously would argue that it is would be better to switch the track to save the potential lives of (say) a hundred frozen embryos (of which, treated properly, a large proportion could be brought to term in families that would welcome them), over that of even one elderly woman past the prime of her life?
This article about the new Alabama law with a specific exemption for IVF embryos notes that pro-Life politicians are simply pragmatic on this:
The reluctance of the pro-Life movement to press for equal treatment for all embryos shows they recognise this sentiment and know they will not easily convince people they are wrong. Hence they will live with the inconsistency in their law making.
Second: on the pro-choice side, the reaction against the conservative attempts to ban abortion has lead to calls for women to be forthright in praising abortion as a normal and good thing. Rather than even conceding that they should be rare, as with the old Clinton-ian formulation, they argue that there should be no apologies for having one. They are usually "empowering". See the Shout Your Abortion site for examples of this genre.
The inconsistency I have lately been thinking about is the comparison with the increasingly powerful animal rights lobby. Public concern about the treatment of farm animals, and the associated uptake of veganism, is taking off in a surprisingly sudden way. While climate change concern is part of the motivation, I would be pretty confident that social media promotion of scenes of animal suffering has also had a very large effect.
I am not immune from concerns about animal treatment, and nor are all empathetic humans, even if it doesn't stop us from eating meat or using animal products.
But the point here is that if a vegan won't eat eggs because the egg industry kills healthy young rooster chicks by putting them through a grinder, how could they not have concerns about a healthy, viable fetus being at risk of death because the mother made a late decision that she does not want the baby? A well developed and healthy fetus is undoubtedly living, as is a chick. Why is it a moral concern as to the premature death of one, at the will of humans who deem it unwanted, but not the other?
When you look at protesting young, pro-choice women, surely it would be a good bet that it would contain a disproportionate number of dedicated vegans motivated by wanting to reduce animal suffering, and not cause the premature death of any creature for human benefit. Surely there is an inconsistency if you think a woman's choice is unquestionable when it comes to late term abortion, but not if it is about whether she should eat an egg for breakfast?
To my mind, the inconsistencies show that neither extreme should be treated as having a fair take on the matter, and legislators should not follow either extreme.
This is what makes the compromise position argued in Roe V Wade such a popular approach. A reminder:
I can see some conservative arguing that my whole position relies too much on moral intuition, which can be so flexible as to be unreliable. Indeed, death of unwanted new born babies by exposure was apparently a not uncommon practice in some places: it is a bit hard to know, though, how their moral intuitions felt about it at the time.
The problem for conservative reasoning about abortion is that it seems to not align with common women's intuition about at least early pregnancy - I know my Catholic mother was annoyed to have fallen pregnant (again - she had 7 children) with me, and said she took hot baths that she hoped might end it early. My eldest sister laughed at the story when it was told - and I was a bit taken aback at the time. (I still don't think it's the best idea to tell your kid that you had really hoped for miscarriage at first!) My sister in her life had fallen pregnant unexpectedly while single while living overseas - I know for a fact that she had the option for legal abortion but she didn't take it.
But I later reflected on how this showed that many (probably most) women, even from a Catholic background, do not automatically feel any maternal connection with an unexpected embyro attached to their uterus. Perhaps especially after having all the children they expected to have?
And I have to say, I find effort to argue against that common women's intuition feels like one of those cases where men (in particular) philosophise themselves into positions against common sense - Kant going on about masturbation being worse than suicide, for example.
So no, I think this is an area of human experience where human, particularly women's, intuition has to be given attention, and moral intuition is a reasonable approach. And as I say, this should lead to a compromise position in terms of public policy, regardless of how you would feel about your own decision.
But what about the question of how governments should view it, in light of the mixed views held by different voters? The abortion debate in the US is hotter than ever, with a renewed push for the overturning of the clear compromise position of Roe v Wade, despite it having maintained pretty popular survey support. In Australia, we have had, for no very clear reason, a burst of recent State legislative activity to decriminalise abortion, but which in effect is changing nothing of the practice of abortion which has been in place for many decades. (Conservatives who are in a rage about it seem to think legislators need to pointlessly keep prohibitions which everyone knows are virtually never used.)
Here's a pragmatic suggestion: if both extremes of an issue have a problem with maintaining consistency, doesn't that make it obvious that a compromise between the two is the more justifiable outcome if you're trying to work out a legal framework? And there are inconsistencies.
First: on the pro-Life side - as many have noted, if they serious about every embryo being treated with the same value as a fully formed human, they should be calling fertility clinics which routinely dispose of unwanted, viable embryos as detention and execution centres for human life.
They don't. Quite a few opinion pieces have made this point - here at the New Republic for one.
And if you put it in a utilitarian context of the trolley problem, who seriously would argue that it is would be better to switch the track to save the potential lives of (say) a hundred frozen embryos (of which, treated properly, a large proportion could be brought to term in families that would welcome them), over that of even one elderly woman past the prime of her life?
This article about the new Alabama law with a specific exemption for IVF embryos notes that pro-Life politicians are simply pragmatic on this:
The fertility industry didn’t support the Alabama bill, nor did it lobby for an exemption, says Sean Tipton, spokesman for the Birmingham-based American Society for Reproductive Medicine. It didn’t need to, he says: Politicians recognized that the popularity of fertility treatments was preventing anti-abortion laws from passing.The pro-Choice side say, with justification, this:
Abortion-rights advocates call the exemption both outrageous and cynical. “When I heard Chambliss say it was for embryos in the woman’s uterus, it really highlighted what this is really about,” says Barbara Ann Luttrell, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Southeast. “It’s not about the embryo.”Most people intuit that an embryo, by virtue of its form, does not warrant the same legal status as a more fully formed foetus or new borne baby. While it has the potential to become a fully functioning human, and warrants a different ethical attitude towards it than other human tissue for that reason, it goes against most persons intuition to treat it the same as a fully fledged human.
The reluctance of the pro-Life movement to press for equal treatment for all embryos shows they recognise this sentiment and know they will not easily convince people they are wrong. Hence they will live with the inconsistency in their law making.
Second: on the pro-choice side, the reaction against the conservative attempts to ban abortion has lead to calls for women to be forthright in praising abortion as a normal and good thing. Rather than even conceding that they should be rare, as with the old Clinton-ian formulation, they argue that there should be no apologies for having one. They are usually "empowering". See the Shout Your Abortion site for examples of this genre.
The inconsistency I have lately been thinking about is the comparison with the increasingly powerful animal rights lobby. Public concern about the treatment of farm animals, and the associated uptake of veganism, is taking off in a surprisingly sudden way. While climate change concern is part of the motivation, I would be pretty confident that social media promotion of scenes of animal suffering has also had a very large effect.
I am not immune from concerns about animal treatment, and nor are all empathetic humans, even if it doesn't stop us from eating meat or using animal products.
But the point here is that if a vegan won't eat eggs because the egg industry kills healthy young rooster chicks by putting them through a grinder, how could they not have concerns about a healthy, viable fetus being at risk of death because the mother made a late decision that she does not want the baby? A well developed and healthy fetus is undoubtedly living, as is a chick. Why is it a moral concern as to the premature death of one, at the will of humans who deem it unwanted, but not the other?
When you look at protesting young, pro-choice women, surely it would be a good bet that it would contain a disproportionate number of dedicated vegans motivated by wanting to reduce animal suffering, and not cause the premature death of any creature for human benefit. Surely there is an inconsistency if you think a woman's choice is unquestionable when it comes to late term abortion, but not if it is about whether she should eat an egg for breakfast?
To my mind, the inconsistencies show that neither extreme should be treated as having a fair take on the matter, and legislators should not follow either extreme.
This is what makes the compromise position argued in Roe V Wade such a popular approach. A reminder:
The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: during the first trimester, governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.[6The matter of how Australia implement a sense of compromise is an interesting issue of itself: obviously, requiring more doctors to be involved in approving a late term abortion has an element of that. There was an argument appearing in The Conversation today that there should be no gestational limits on abortion, and the argument was put more convincingly than I expected. As is often the case with abortion, it would seem the practice tends to override the letter of the law:
There is no evidence that legal restrictions on second and third trimester abortions reduce the number of abortions that occur later in pregnancy. In fact, based on the most recent statistics, the proportion of abortions performed after 20 weeks in Canada, which has no gestational cut off, is half that in Queensland, which has a 22 week cut off (0.66% compared with 1.34%).But overall, I am not convinced that it should be left unregulated.
I can see some conservative arguing that my whole position relies too much on moral intuition, which can be so flexible as to be unreliable. Indeed, death of unwanted new born babies by exposure was apparently a not uncommon practice in some places: it is a bit hard to know, though, how their moral intuitions felt about it at the time.
The problem for conservative reasoning about abortion is that it seems to not align with common women's intuition about at least early pregnancy - I know my Catholic mother was annoyed to have fallen pregnant (again - she had 7 children) with me, and said she took hot baths that she hoped might end it early. My eldest sister laughed at the story when it was told - and I was a bit taken aback at the time. (I still don't think it's the best idea to tell your kid that you had really hoped for miscarriage at first!) My sister in her life had fallen pregnant unexpectedly while single while living overseas - I know for a fact that she had the option for legal abortion but she didn't take it.
But I later reflected on how this showed that many (probably most) women, even from a Catholic background, do not automatically feel any maternal connection with an unexpected embyro attached to their uterus. Perhaps especially after having all the children they expected to have?
And I have to say, I find effort to argue against that common women's intuition feels like one of those cases where men (in particular) philosophise themselves into positions against common sense - Kant going on about masturbation being worse than suicide, for example.
So no, I think this is an area of human experience where human, particularly women's, intuition has to be given attention, and moral intuition is a reasonable approach. And as I say, this should lead to a compromise position in terms of public policy, regardless of how you would feel about your own decision.
Davidson hosting incitement to murder now?
The latest legislative moves to decriminalise abortion in an Australian state have sent the conservatives of Catallaxy over the edge, with one long time participant repeating this often:
Clean up your toilet, Sinclair; it's reeking.
More on Brexit - and Right wing clowns in politics
I see on Axios that the UK speaker says he won't let Johnson suspend parliament as a way of avoiding it passing an extension to the Brexit deadline. That's nice of him.
But also, the article ends noting that John Bolton is a strong supporter of a no deal Brexit.
Even leaving aside the clownish behaviour of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in the UK, and Trump in the US, shouldn't it give the libertarian-ish/classic liberal supporters of Brexit like J Soon and H Dale misgivings that a very, very serious US figure who they presumably feel is disastrously wrong in his interventionist inclinations is a strong supporter? I get the feeling that they have simply abandoned the rule of thumb about judging people (or ideas) by the company they keep.
And going back to clowning - why does the nutty Right and its causes attract this type so much now? Look at Monckton and Delingpole on climate change, for example - they seem to think that acting the clown lends credibility to their cause. Of course, thousands of words have been written about Johnson's use of clowning - so I'll say more about that. Farage is a genuine upper class twit: he doesn't have to act it out.
It's all part of a culture war attitude, I guess - that they want to point at Lefties as being so serious and earnest that they are not to be taken seriously. The point is valid on some matters of identity politics, but when it becomes pretty much your whole shtick, it becomes an obvious PR mask for lack of detailed understanding on complex and serious matters. Look at Tim Blair for a local example.
But also, the article ends noting that John Bolton is a strong supporter of a no deal Brexit.
Even leaving aside the clownish behaviour of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in the UK, and Trump in the US, shouldn't it give the libertarian-ish/classic liberal supporters of Brexit like J Soon and H Dale misgivings that a very, very serious US figure who they presumably feel is disastrously wrong in his interventionist inclinations is a strong supporter? I get the feeling that they have simply abandoned the rule of thumb about judging people (or ideas) by the company they keep.
And going back to clowning - why does the nutty Right and its causes attract this type so much now? Look at Monckton and Delingpole on climate change, for example - they seem to think that acting the clown lends credibility to their cause. Of course, thousands of words have been written about Johnson's use of clowning - so I'll say more about that. Farage is a genuine upper class twit: he doesn't have to act it out.
It's all part of a culture war attitude, I guess - that they want to point at Lefties as being so serious and earnest that they are not to be taken seriously. The point is valid on some matters of identity politics, but when it becomes pretty much your whole shtick, it becomes an obvious PR mask for lack of detailed understanding on complex and serious matters. Look at Tim Blair for a local example.
Consitutional crisis coming?
This discussion of whether England is about to face a constitutional crisis [or should that be - a "no constitution crisis":)]regarding steps the Johnson government could take to force a no deal Brexit even in the face of a no confidence vote in Parliament in September is all very interesting. I bet the Queen is asking for advice already on how to deal with the situation should it happen.
I would be advising locking Johnson in the Tower of London - he would get a thrill from the notoriety.
I would be advising locking Johnson in the Tower of London - he would get a thrill from the notoriety.
If it bends, it's funny; if it breaks it's not...
That line from Crimes and Misdemeanors often comes to mind when trying to work out why some TV shows or movies work for me, and others don't. (And yeah, I know we're meant to take it as more fatuous than serious.)
Case in point: Amazons The Boys. I gave up at about the 30 minute mark.
I have often explained how I can only enjoy the superhero genre if it doesn't take itself too seriously - otherwise the silliness of the scenarios just leave too much rationality in my subconscious objecting that it's a waste of time.
But I realised while trying this latest show (essentially, a black humour quasi-satire - pretty much a bloody, sweary adult version of The Incredibles, now that I think of it) that I can't warm to any scenario in which superheros are too engaged in the world, whether or not its done for humour. In other words, it's one thing for a superhero to live a private life in his downtime; it's another, way less credible thing to have them fully engaged in the world, as they are in the scenario in The Boys. One bends, the other breaks.
Someone might say, what about The Avengers? Well, I haven't even watched all of those movies (and hence was surprised how much I liked Infinity War) but I think they are still allowed a private life, even if the identity is not so secret. And Ironman is more a technological hero than a superpower one.
Anyway, the first episode of The Boys was not engaging me - I thought it was too talky, and could just tell I wasn't going to buy into its world. I see since viewing that it that Seth Rogan had a producing hand in it, further convincing me that nearly nothing he has touched holds any appeal to me.
Case in point: Amazons The Boys. I gave up at about the 30 minute mark.
I have often explained how I can only enjoy the superhero genre if it doesn't take itself too seriously - otherwise the silliness of the scenarios just leave too much rationality in my subconscious objecting that it's a waste of time.
But I realised while trying this latest show (essentially, a black humour quasi-satire - pretty much a bloody, sweary adult version of The Incredibles, now that I think of it) that I can't warm to any scenario in which superheros are too engaged in the world, whether or not its done for humour. In other words, it's one thing for a superhero to live a private life in his downtime; it's another, way less credible thing to have them fully engaged in the world, as they are in the scenario in The Boys. One bends, the other breaks.
Someone might say, what about The Avengers? Well, I haven't even watched all of those movies (and hence was surprised how much I liked Infinity War) but I think they are still allowed a private life, even if the identity is not so secret. And Ironman is more a technological hero than a superpower one.
Anyway, the first episode of The Boys was not engaging me - I thought it was too talky, and could just tell I wasn't going to buy into its world. I see since viewing that it that Seth Rogan had a producing hand in it, further convincing me that nearly nothing he has touched holds any appeal to me.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Secular stagnation
A nicely explained economics piece here at NPR.
Fast-forward to 2013, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, fresh from his stint as director of the National Economic Council in the Obama administration, resurrected the term at a speech at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. And he has been warning the world about it ever since.Sounds very plausible. But still not sure about this:
Secular stagnation, he says, "may be the defining macro-economic challenge of our times."
Like Hansen in the 1930s, Summers points to declining population growth as one source of stagnation. But he also points to other factors. A big one: Our economy might require less investment than it used to. Think Kodak (the old economy) vs. Instagram (the new economy). Kodak required factories and assembly line workers and trucks and film and film developers and a bunch of other resources to give us photography. Instagram basically needs just an office with laptops and a few hundred smart workers. It needs much less investment.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of savings out there looking for a return, and there don't seem to be enough investment opportunities to sop it all up. As we explained in last week's Planet Money newsletter, a shortage of investment relative to a glut of savings is why we're now in the upside-down world of super-low interest rates.
Summers warns that this world of disappointing growth and super-low interest rates means it will be hard for traditional tools, like the Fed's cutting of interest rates, to rescue us from future recessions. And it could mean the only way we'll get solid growth is if the government attaches the rocket boosters of deficit spending and cheap credit to the economy. Even then, it might look just OK-ish.
Secular stagnation does have an upside, actually: Low interest rates mean it's supercheap to borrow. That includes for the government. Not only that, but the government might be able to rack up big deficits and give us tons of cheap credit and not cause runaway inflation. That's why respected folks like the former chief economist of the IMF, Olivier Blanchard, are discarding the old rules and saying that deficits don't matter like they used to.
Secular stagnationistas are arguing that now is the time to spend big, on things like roads, bridges and a Green New Deal. That's one way to increase investment in the economy and get us out of this hole. Of course, many disagree. They have faith that new technologies in the pipeline will expand industry, increase investment and productivity and rescue us from stagnation.
Another Netflix review
A surprising benefit of Netflix has been watching foreign language series and seeing how good they can be - for example, the terrifically engaging Babylon Berlin; Norwegians poking fun at their Viking heritage in Norsemen; Norwegian political drama in Occupied. I've tried German Stranger Things-ish territory in Dark, but didn't find I liked it enough to stick with it; I have heard people praise the Danish series The Rain too, and it's OK, but I am not that big a fan of the post apocalyptic quasi-zombie genre. In any event, these shows are often interesting in a cultural way - what they show us about how other people live.
Which brings me to a recommendation to try the Indian series Typewriter.
I would describe it as a curry flavoured combination of Goosebumps, an Enid Blyton "Four Go on an Adventure!" style book, and the recent Netflix updating of The Haunting of Hill House.*
The show is set in the Goa area of India, and there is not a crowded street, wandering cow, or poor person to be seen. The characters are middle class (at a minimum), and the school the kids go to is Catholic (given the Portuguese history of the place, that is not surprising.) The thing is, it really looks nothing like what I thought a show set in any part of India should look like. Maybe this is just my ignorance of Indian movie and TV shows - I doubt many are based around the lives of the struggling poor living in cramped conditions - but I still find the look of the show surprising.
And as for the use of language - I had no idea that Indian folk could move in and out of English so often that it can even be within the one sentence. (Not just throw in some English nouns or exclamations, but starting a sentence in - I presume - Hindi and finishing it with a whole English phrase.) I find that really intriguing. I mean, the Norwegians in Occupied use English often too, at least when needing a common language with (say) a Russian. But this complete mixing up of languages in Typewriter - it makes this poor monolingual Australia feel even more incompetent for his lack of ability to mind-shift into a different language than do the multi-lingual Europeans.
The other peculiar thing is that the story and script seems to swing from very child friendly (and somewhat corny) to inappropriately adult at a rapid pace. It will move from the kids getting up to mischief with a dog that understands instructions as improbably as did Rin Tin Tin (dating myself much, hey?), to adults swearing and making sex jokes as if they are in a different show.
It is basically a haunted house story, with bits of black magic and people up-to-no-good thrown in. In episode two, some of it even starting giving an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom vibe: not that this bothered me. As long as it feels creepy at times (and large, quiet houses are pretty easy to make feel scary on film, even in daylight) I'm happy enough. The acting is uneven, but as I say, so is the writing.
Maybe the show will start to stretch the silliness too far and teeter into un-watchability, but so far, I'm enjoying it not because it's terrific, but for the way it's all so mixed up.
* My son thought calling it "curry flavoured" would be a bit racist - perhaps he meant stereotypical - but I know someone who recently travelled to India and said, at least going by the hotel food she got sick of, they really do have virtually every meal as a variation on a curry.
Which brings me to a recommendation to try the Indian series Typewriter.
I would describe it as a curry flavoured combination of Goosebumps, an Enid Blyton "Four Go on an Adventure!" style book, and the recent Netflix updating of The Haunting of Hill House.*
The show is set in the Goa area of India, and there is not a crowded street, wandering cow, or poor person to be seen. The characters are middle class (at a minimum), and the school the kids go to is Catholic (given the Portuguese history of the place, that is not surprising.) The thing is, it really looks nothing like what I thought a show set in any part of India should look like. Maybe this is just my ignorance of Indian movie and TV shows - I doubt many are based around the lives of the struggling poor living in cramped conditions - but I still find the look of the show surprising.
And as for the use of language - I had no idea that Indian folk could move in and out of English so often that it can even be within the one sentence. (Not just throw in some English nouns or exclamations, but starting a sentence in - I presume - Hindi and finishing it with a whole English phrase.) I find that really intriguing. I mean, the Norwegians in Occupied use English often too, at least when needing a common language with (say) a Russian. But this complete mixing up of languages in Typewriter - it makes this poor monolingual Australia feel even more incompetent for his lack of ability to mind-shift into a different language than do the multi-lingual Europeans.
The other peculiar thing is that the story and script seems to swing from very child friendly (and somewhat corny) to inappropriately adult at a rapid pace. It will move from the kids getting up to mischief with a dog that understands instructions as improbably as did Rin Tin Tin (dating myself much, hey?), to adults swearing and making sex jokes as if they are in a different show.
It is basically a haunted house story, with bits of black magic and people up-to-no-good thrown in. In episode two, some of it even starting giving an Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom vibe: not that this bothered me. As long as it feels creepy at times (and large, quiet houses are pretty easy to make feel scary on film, even in daylight) I'm happy enough. The acting is uneven, but as I say, so is the writing.
Maybe the show will start to stretch the silliness too far and teeter into un-watchability, but so far, I'm enjoying it not because it's terrific, but for the way it's all so mixed up.
* My son thought calling it "curry flavoured" would be a bit racist - perhaps he meant stereotypical - but I know someone who recently travelled to India and said, at least going by the hotel food she got sick of, they really do have virtually every meal as a variation on a curry.
Dear Reader/s (updated)
I'm sorry, but I had to Google the topic of how I got notified of a comment awaiting moderation. (I thought I might get an email, but no.)
I see now that some have been making comments that have been stuck in moderation. I have approved some.
I will consider un-moderating comments if it seems Bird has gone, or will abide by the rules.
I see now that some have been making comments that have been stuck in moderation. I have approved some.
I will consider un-moderating comments if it seems Bird has gone, or will abide by the rules.
Soft on Boris
I watched Four Corners on Boris Johnson last night, and thought it was pretty soft on him. There was lots of generic talk about criticisms and scandals both personal and professional, and how he is a polarising figure; but next to no details on his career, and the inaccuracies in the Brexit campaign he effectively headed. So it was rather disappointing - more like some lightweight commercial current affairs take on the matter, such as you might see on 60 Minutes.
And gee, Alexander Downer carries big bags under his eyes now. Aged 67, I see. Bad genes, or does too much time on the champagne diplomat circuit cause that?
And gee, Alexander Downer carries big bags under his eyes now. Aged 67, I see. Bad genes, or does too much time on the champagne diplomat circuit cause that?
Monday, August 12, 2019
An alternative gay rights history
Not exactly a topic I spend much time thinking about, but a review at the TLS notes a book which argues that, at least for the US:
Anyway, the article goes on to note that underground gay business was quite big business:
“Gay commerce”, writes David K. Johnson, “was not a byproduct of the gay movement but a catalyst to it”. This is the somewhat heretical thesis of Buying Gay: How physique entrepreneurs sparked a movement....
Johnson makes the case that, in the 1950s and 60s, erotic gay magazines (many of which began life thinly disguised as bodybuilding manuals), pen pal clubs and directory guides (to gay bars and businesses) played a crucial role in the formation of a nascent political movement for legal equality and social reform. These outlets created the conditions for the eventual decriminalization of homosexuality, which began on the state level in 1961 and culminated in 2003 with the Supreme Court ruling Lawrence vs Texas, which overturned same-sex sodomy laws across the land.I think I have read this before - how bodybuilding in the mid 20th century had a very large gay following. I suspect that this might have changed by the time of (say) Arnie - when championship bodybuilding looked (as it still does to my eye) distinctly weird, and too grotesque to have much of a gay vibe about it. Perhaps steroid boosted muscles de-gayified the hobby?
Anyway, the article goes on to note that underground gay business was quite big business:
Bob Mizer did indeed have dreams, but he was also intent on making them reality. A frequent spectator at body-building competitions (where much, if not most, of the audience was discreetly composed of gay men), he started a photography business in 1945, the Athletic Model Guild (AMG), with a casting call placed in the back of a weightlifting magazine ostensibly aimed at heterosexual men. The response – from both potential models and, later, consumers of his beefcake photographs – was immense. Imitators and innovators, unleashed by capitalism’s animal spirits, soon followed Mizer’s lead to vast financial success.....I won't extract all of the the parts explaining the aggro action taken against these businesses, except to note this description of one of the key players:
From its founding in 1955, the Grecian Guild – which, in addition to publishing a magazine, organized gatherings in an early form of gay community-building – appealed to ancient traditions of same-sex desire, as did the homophonic Adonis Male Club, a pen-pal service set up in 1959, which allowed men and women to come out to an empathetic stranger, share experiences and advice, and arrange dates. As homosexuality remained illegal, such outfits relied on coded language (“artistic”, “musical” and “temperamental” being euphemisms of choice).
... US Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield (a cross between J. Edgar Hoover and Mary Whitehouse) described the Adonis Male Club as “one of the most vicious, filthy, and widespread operations” in the country.All interesting in its own way. A right wing gay character like "look at me" MP Tim Wilson would lap up this pro-capitalism take on gay rights. Someone else can tweet it to his attention.
Mass hysteria noted
Hey, there's a great long read (with plenty of photos) at the BBC site: The mystery of screaming schoolgirls in Malaysia.
Apparently, Malaysia has a long history of episodes of mass hysteria - interestingly, going back to before the recent-ish period of increased conservative Islamic influence on the country:
It is explained:
Apparently, Malaysia has a long history of episodes of mass hysteria - interestingly, going back to before the recent-ish period of increased conservative Islamic influence on the country:
Incidents in Malaysia were particularly prevalent among factory workers during the 1960s. Today it largely affects children in schools and dormitories.The girls (as it usually is) see it as a supernatural phenomena - seeing a ghost or feeling possessed of an evil spirit. Scary (and pre-Islamic) ghost folklore plays its role:
Robert Bartholomew spent decades researching the phenomenon in Malaysia. He calls the South East Asian country "the mass hysteria capital of the world".
"It is a deeply religious and spiritual country where many people, especially those from rural and conservative states, believe in the powers of traditional folklore and the supernatural."
But the issue of hysteria remains a sensitive one. In Malaysia, cases have involved adolescent girls from the Malay Muslim ethnic majority more than any other group.
"There's no denying that mass hysteria is an overwhelmingly female phenomenon," says Mr Bartholomew. "It's the one constant in the [academic] literature."
Malaysia's fascination with ghosts dates back centuries and is deep-rooted in shamanic tradition and South East Asian folk mythology.Unfortunately, as the article indicates, conservative Islam is perhaps not the most helpful religion ina society beset by strong supernatural beliefs:
Children grow up hearing stories about dead infants called toyol - invoked by shamans using black magic - and other terrifying vampiric ghosts like the pontianak and penanggalan, vengeful powerful female spirits that feed on the living.
Trees and burial sites are common settings for these eerie tales. These locations stoke fears that feed into superstitious beliefs.
He abides by the teachings of the Koran, Islam's holy book, and also believes in the power of Jinn - spirits in Middle Eastern and Islamic cosmology that "appear in a variety of shapes and forms".
"We share our world with these unseen beings," Zaki Ya says. "They are good or bad and can be defeated by faith."Anyway, I was also a bit amused to see in the article this photo:
It is explained:
A more controversial approach comes from a team of Islamic academics in Pahang, the largest state in peninsular Malaysia.All of this reminds me: Jason, does your family coming from this part of the world help explain your somewhat hysterical right wing content lately? I'll be recommending you buy one of these kits if you keep tweeting with apparent approval Right wing numbnuts.
Priced at a hefty 8,750 Malaysian ringgit (£1,700; $2,100), the "anti-hysteria kit" they offer consists of items including formic acid, ammonia inhalants, pepper spray and bamboo "pincers".
A not so late movie review
Saw The Invitation this weekend - the 2015 movie which I had wanted to watch for a while but my son resisted during our usual Saturday evening argument over what to view on Netflix. (I was pumping for the Chinese save the planet movie The Wandering Earth, which has belatedly turned up on Australian Netflix, but for some reason I can't fathom he is against it.)
Anyway, The Invitation is a very fine, dread filled movie experience: well acted, well made in a one house setting that makes me wonder why Australian movies in one place look cheap to me, but American movies that do the same do not. Also turned out it was kind of topical, given some of the discussion around Tarantino's latest plot.
It is of the "dinner party from hell" genre, but one that plays on the question of what is really going on quite well, inserting just enough doubts at key points in a pretty clever script.
Recommended. It did make me feel pretty sick with dread for much of the way, though. (Reminded me a bit of 10 Cloverfield Lane in that sense.)
Update: out of curiosity, I just checked what this movie made when it had a cinema release. A paltry $232,000 in the US apparently (and maybe got no international release?) - pretty unbelievable, given its quality and generally good reviews. I don't know where I had heard about it - I thought maybe it on At the Movies, but that show wound up before it was released. Maybe on the Radio National review show?
Anyway, The Invitation is a very fine, dread filled movie experience: well acted, well made in a one house setting that makes me wonder why Australian movies in one place look cheap to me, but American movies that do the same do not. Also turned out it was kind of topical, given some of the discussion around Tarantino's latest plot.
It is of the "dinner party from hell" genre, but one that plays on the question of what is really going on quite well, inserting just enough doubts at key points in a pretty clever script.
Recommended. It did make me feel pretty sick with dread for much of the way, though. (Reminded me a bit of 10 Cloverfield Lane in that sense.)
Update: out of curiosity, I just checked what this movie made when it had a cinema release. A paltry $232,000 in the US apparently (and maybe got no international release?) - pretty unbelievable, given its quality and generally good reviews. I don't know where I had heard about it - I thought maybe it on At the Movies, but that show wound up before it was released. Maybe on the Radio National review show?
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