My son's starting to complain that I only ever want to watch foreign made shows on Netflix now, and he might have a point. It's starting to get hard to remember the last English speaking series we watched - probably Haunting of Hill House. [Update: how could I forget - it was Lost in Space, season 2.]
But this has been a great thing about Netflix, the variety of high quality foreign shows. I guess I could always have watched Nordic noir crime on SBS, but dark crime is a genre that doesn't hold much interest to me, generally speaking. And don't go pointing to my fondness of Babylon Berlin as hypocrisy - while lots of bad crimes happen, often in seedy settings, it also has Weimar politics, young Nazis, prostitution, drug addiction, cults, gay bars, military spying, lots of scenes confirming that German food has always been pretty crap, a rich sooky son with a haircut that really annoys me, and a nutty hypnotist whose radio show (my son said, wittily) is like an early successful podcast (for the alt.right of the day, I would add).
We finished watching the third season of BB last night, and I ended up enjoying it a lot, even though I still think it was not quite as satisfying as the first two seasons. Did anyone else notice how much Gereon seemed to get beaten up and injured in this season? It's a wonder he sticks with the job, really.
I am still dissatisfied with the unexplained mystery about his brother (or is he?) Anno. Actually, I think this Reddit theory about him might have something going for it.
Anyway, it seems they planned on season 4 to start being made later this year. I hope COVID-19 doesn't stuff that up.
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
When Lefties turn on their own
Well, as things go, this is all storm in a teacup, but I'll explain why I'm posting it.
Back in 2014 I wrote a mildly worded post about the surprising fact that, although a lot of people (including me) assumed Josh Thomas had picked up an accent from somewhere in England, he is from Brisbane. I think it fair to say he sounds nothing like someone raised in the western suburbs of my fair city (although I noted at the end of the post that I have had some odd comments about my own way of speaking too, years ago), and this has been the source of much puzzled speculation.
For some completely inexplicable reason, over the last few years when I look at Google stats on Blogger, this post is nearly always one of the top "most viewed" posts on the entire blog. (The other one is called "Lucky Snakes".) It would seem some mystery of the Google search algorithms as to why this happens. Maybe there are lots of comedians that people around the world think are using affected accents? But it seems a very odd topic to keep getting, I dunno, a hundred odd hits a day for.
Anyway, with Josh having been noted as making some (at least) insensitive comments on diversity in TV writing and casting back in 2016, I see that this has given people of the Left (as I assume most people who call out "racist!" on Twitter) permission to come out and say "And by the way, his ambiguous accent really annoys me". For example:
If you want to see some much more critical commentary on him, search Twitter for his name, or "Josh Thomas accent".
For what it's worth, I think the "racist!" attack on him is way overblown, and I say that as someone who doesn't find him funny and didn't like his show that Lefties generally swooned over.
But the mystery of his accent, and how Google directs people to my post about it, remains.
Back in 2014 I wrote a mildly worded post about the surprising fact that, although a lot of people (including me) assumed Josh Thomas had picked up an accent from somewhere in England, he is from Brisbane. I think it fair to say he sounds nothing like someone raised in the western suburbs of my fair city (although I noted at the end of the post that I have had some odd comments about my own way of speaking too, years ago), and this has been the source of much puzzled speculation.
For some completely inexplicable reason, over the last few years when I look at Google stats on Blogger, this post is nearly always one of the top "most viewed" posts on the entire blog. (The other one is called "Lucky Snakes".) It would seem some mystery of the Google search algorithms as to why this happens. Maybe there are lots of comedians that people around the world think are using affected accents? But it seems a very odd topic to keep getting, I dunno, a hundred odd hits a day for.
Anyway, with Josh having been noted as making some (at least) insensitive comments on diversity in TV writing and casting back in 2016, I see that this has given people of the Left (as I assume most people who call out "racist!" on Twitter) permission to come out and say "And by the way, his ambiguous accent really annoys me". For example:
For what it's worth, I think the "racist!" attack on him is way overblown, and I say that as someone who doesn't find him funny and didn't like his show that Lefties generally swooned over.
But the mystery of his accent, and how Google directs people to my post about it, remains.
Important issue of the day
The Washington Post notes:
The proof is in the pancakes: Adding lemon juice or vinegar to milk is a bad buttermilk substitute
A couple of points I would add - in the article, the writer compares pancakes she makes by adding vinegar to milk. I have done that too, but the slight smell of vinegar in milk is annoying. I only ever use lemon juice for this reason.
Secondly, she says that the vinegar added did not make her milk change consistency. As I think I have noted here before, I have found that the temperature of the milk seems to affect its ease of curdling with lemon juice. As I want it to thicken a bit, I warm the milk slightly in the microwave first, then add the lemon juice. This usually works.
Sure, using store bought buttermilk might be the ideal, but who remembers to do that?
The proof is in the pancakes: Adding lemon juice or vinegar to milk is a bad buttermilk substitute
A couple of points I would add - in the article, the writer compares pancakes she makes by adding vinegar to milk. I have done that too, but the slight smell of vinegar in milk is annoying. I only ever use lemon juice for this reason.
Secondly, she says that the vinegar added did not make her milk change consistency. As I think I have noted here before, I have found that the temperature of the milk seems to affect its ease of curdling with lemon juice. As I want it to thicken a bit, I warm the milk slightly in the microwave first, then add the lemon juice. This usually works.
Sure, using store bought buttermilk might be the ideal, but who remembers to do that?
Monday, June 15, 2020
My Starship scepticism
I see that, after the success of Elon Musk's rocket and capsule delivering a couple of astronauts to the ISS, Musk told his company that he wants to put "top priority" on the Starship development.
While congratulations are due to Musk and his engineers for the cool aspects of his Falcon rockets (especially the self landing boosters), I tend to have low trust in engineers who smoke pot during interviews, pick stupid names for their baby, and accuse blokes of being pedophiles just because they didn't want his useless assistance. And besides - that Starship looks so 50's science fiction retro, I've always had my suspicions that artwork has played too much role in its design.
For these reasons, I haven't been paying much attention to the whole Starship idea. I have noticed its test engines blowing up, of course. But I just had a look at the whole concept, via the Wiki page (which I assume Musk fan boys keep as accurate as possible.)
So here's my entirely amateur prediction - the Starship is going to have a very difficult time getting credibility. Why?:
* the Falcon rockets he's currently having success with are all using the very conventional kerosene and liquid oxygen fuel. Starship is based on using a new, never used in spaceflight before, liquid methane and oxygen fuel mix. So, that's why the engines keep blowing up. (It also explains why methane features so much in Netflix's Lost In Space, I guess.) Here's a Wired article explaining the advantages of a methane engine, and the difficulties in making ones which are meant to be re-useable at an unheard of rate compared to (say) shuttle engines. Also the nutty manufacturing rate Musk thinks he can reach:
* for the flights to Mars (and even the Moon), there is apparently no planning for radiation shielding. Musk thinks people will just take the risk and that's it.
I therefore reckon that there are going to be some spectacular failures in developing this pet project.
And his ideas as to how quickly Mars could be colonised are just nuts. He wants to get there but it will be more like a suicide mission if he gets his way.
While congratulations are due to Musk and his engineers for the cool aspects of his Falcon rockets (especially the self landing boosters), I tend to have low trust in engineers who smoke pot during interviews, pick stupid names for their baby, and accuse blokes of being pedophiles just because they didn't want his useless assistance. And besides - that Starship looks so 50's science fiction retro, I've always had my suspicions that artwork has played too much role in its design.
For these reasons, I haven't been paying much attention to the whole Starship idea. I have noticed its test engines blowing up, of course. But I just had a look at the whole concept, via the Wiki page (which I assume Musk fan boys keep as accurate as possible.)
So here's my entirely amateur prediction - the Starship is going to have a very difficult time getting credibility. Why?:
* the Falcon rockets he's currently having success with are all using the very conventional kerosene and liquid oxygen fuel. Starship is based on using a new, never used in spaceflight before, liquid methane and oxygen fuel mix. So, that's why the engines keep blowing up. (It also explains why methane features so much in Netflix's Lost In Space, I guess.) Here's a Wired article explaining the advantages of a methane engine, and the difficulties in making ones which are meant to be re-useable at an unheard of rate compared to (say) shuttle engines. Also the nutty manufacturing rate Musk thinks he can reach:
“Since they’re using so many of them on the Super Heavy vehicle, they’re going to have to be ramping up manufacturing to an absolutely insane pace,” says Dodd. “Elon’s talked about making one in 12 hours, which would be unheard of in the industry. Even if they make one a week that’s pretty impressive.”* the re-entry shield: the Wiki page says they are still probably going to be ceramic tiles. Sounds familiar? The same type of technology that NASA had so much trouble with? The spaceship part is then due to land vertically like a Falcon. The space shuttle landing as a glider seemed risky enough: humans trusting the retrorocket landing system to work perfectly every time is going to take a lot of trust in technology that is new, and is going to be a disaster waiting at every landing (compared to the relative simplicity of capsules descending by parachute).
* for the flights to Mars (and even the Moon), there is apparently no planning for radiation shielding. Musk thinks people will just take the risk and that's it.
I therefore reckon that there are going to be some spectacular failures in developing this pet project.
And his ideas as to how quickly Mars could be colonised are just nuts. He wants to get there but it will be more like a suicide mission if he gets his way.
Only the best speechwriters
Seems to me that, although they are obviously hitting his super fragile ego with their tweeting about his ramp walking abilities (honestly, it was not that bad), anti-Trumpers should be making more of a point of this embarrassing reference in his actual speech:
Update: Fred Kaplan at Slate gives a review of the terrible speech, which seems pretty obviously only held at all for Trump to be able to use in election ads.
Update: Fred Kaplan at Slate gives a review of the terrible speech, which seems pretty obviously only held at all for Trump to be able to use in election ads.
Google continues to educate me - this time about the ISS
I was aware that the International Space Station used gyros to adjust its position in orbit, but I never understood how complex maintaining the space station is. You certainly don't get to put one in orbit and just let it continue on its way without lots of monitoring.
This video gives a good explanation:
I also liked this little detail about the computer that monitors it:
This video gives a good explanation:
I also liked this little detail about the computer that monitors it:
The attitude control computer (GNC MDM) contains the software that does all of the necessary calculations for attitude control. It takes in the actual attitude and subtracts the commanded attitude to determine the error it needs to correct. It knows the rates of the ISS. That is very sensitive, so sensitive that we can tell when the crew wake up by watching the behavior of the CMGs as the crew start to move around the vehicle. The software also needs a set of user provided parameters such as the vehicle mass properties and inertia tensors. These are located in data slots called CCDBs (controller configuration databases). We have a stockpile of these CCDBs for different vehicle configurations. For example, if a Progress cargo vehicle arrives and docks to the Russian Segment, we will have a CCDB slot designed for that configuration. When it leaves, we will swap to another one.
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Recipe tried
Yes, this recipe which I posted about before for future reference:
is really nice. Not exactly a main evening meal on its own [what vegan recipe ever is :)], but I liked it a lot. I even bought a $4.50 pomegranate and felt that the dish really did need its sharpness. (My wife grumbled about the fruit's cost, but with sweet potatoes at only $2.50 a kg at the moment, we could afford it.) I also reheated half a potato in the microwave today for lunch [power level 7 for 2 minutes] and it came out nice, again.
I wish my family all liked it as much as I did. It's one of those dishes where they go "yeah, it's OK", but with insufficient enthusiasm that indicates they would not welcome it being made again any time soon.
is really nice. Not exactly a main evening meal on its own [what vegan recipe ever is :)], but I liked it a lot. I even bought a $4.50 pomegranate and felt that the dish really did need its sharpness. (My wife grumbled about the fruit's cost, but with sweet potatoes at only $2.50 a kg at the moment, we could afford it.) I also reheated half a potato in the microwave today for lunch [power level 7 for 2 minutes] and it came out nice, again.
I wish my family all liked it as much as I did. It's one of those dishes where they go "yeah, it's OK", but with insufficient enthusiasm that indicates they would not welcome it being made again any time soon.
Bad blood(s)
I recently posted a favourable review of Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman, so I was pretty keen to watch his Netflix film Da 5 Bloods, especially seeing it seemed to be getting very strong reviews.
It doesn't deserve them.
A four word description kept coming to mind while watching it - way too heavy handed. Practically everything in the movie can be so categorised: the history lessons (although no doubt worthy); the score (you'd swear it was a Spielberg-esque John Williams one at times); the amount of blood spray any bullet wound seems to cause (I still suspect gaming culture has caused Hollywood to go over the top in blood sprays); the other bits of violent dismembering (hard to speak more of that without being a bit of a spoiler); the dialogue which often feels less than naturalistic. Even the portrayal of the Vietnamese (and French!) felt a bit off to me.
It also feels as if the movie has been made 10 or 20 years too late. As one reviewer has noted, it would have made a lot more sense (in terms of how hard the guys must have expected their task to be) if they were doing it as younger men than the 70-odd year olds that they must be to have the movie set in the present day. Is it a screenplay that has been around 20 years waiting to be produced? That could explain it.
Having said it all this, it's one of those movies that is obviously so well intentioned that it feels mean giving it a strongly negative review. And I can say it never bored me; it is well filmed and looks like it had a significant budget; and I liked the aspect ratio changes to reflect different eras. But I just kept thinking - this is so heavy handed. And imitative in ways that seemed unnecessary and more distracting than useful.
It's very clear to me that the movie is getting strong reviews more for its (extremely) topical politics than its intrinsic success as a movie. And (even allowing for racists and contrarians giving it a zero), the audience reviews on websites I have seen are reflecting this, as they are on average well below the marks given by professional reviewers. I expect that this will continue, as more viewers rate the film on line. I've noted on Rotten Tomatoes that one reviewer predicts that it will not age well, and I strongly suspect that's right.
I don't agree with this bad review's complaint about how slow it is - as I have indicated, that didn't bother me - but overall, it still rings closer to my perceptions than the glowing reviews.
And you know why I have some confidence in my assessment - my son seemed to agree with any critical comment I made while watching it.
One final point - I often complain about violence in movies, but it isn't really at the heart of my dissatisfaction here, partly because I often felt it looked so overdone as to not be realistic. I do wish, however, that Lee did not put in the full clip of that famous Saigon street execution at the start of the film. He initially cuts away from it, but then goes back to show the full aftermath. My son seems to think that if that can be used in a movie or documentary, then no one ever has any reason to complain about movie violence of any kind. In a way he is almost right - but the answer is, no, it should not be used in movies.
It doesn't deserve them.
A four word description kept coming to mind while watching it - way too heavy handed. Practically everything in the movie can be so categorised: the history lessons (although no doubt worthy); the score (you'd swear it was a Spielberg-esque John Williams one at times); the amount of blood spray any bullet wound seems to cause (I still suspect gaming culture has caused Hollywood to go over the top in blood sprays); the other bits of violent dismembering (hard to speak more of that without being a bit of a spoiler); the dialogue which often feels less than naturalistic. Even the portrayal of the Vietnamese (and French!) felt a bit off to me.
It also feels as if the movie has been made 10 or 20 years too late. As one reviewer has noted, it would have made a lot more sense (in terms of how hard the guys must have expected their task to be) if they were doing it as younger men than the 70-odd year olds that they must be to have the movie set in the present day. Is it a screenplay that has been around 20 years waiting to be produced? That could explain it.
Having said it all this, it's one of those movies that is obviously so well intentioned that it feels mean giving it a strongly negative review. And I can say it never bored me; it is well filmed and looks like it had a significant budget; and I liked the aspect ratio changes to reflect different eras. But I just kept thinking - this is so heavy handed. And imitative in ways that seemed unnecessary and more distracting than useful.
It's very clear to me that the movie is getting strong reviews more for its (extremely) topical politics than its intrinsic success as a movie. And (even allowing for racists and contrarians giving it a zero), the audience reviews on websites I have seen are reflecting this, as they are on average well below the marks given by professional reviewers. I expect that this will continue, as more viewers rate the film on line. I've noted on Rotten Tomatoes that one reviewer predicts that it will not age well, and I strongly suspect that's right.
I don't agree with this bad review's complaint about how slow it is - as I have indicated, that didn't bother me - but overall, it still rings closer to my perceptions than the glowing reviews.
And you know why I have some confidence in my assessment - my son seemed to agree with any critical comment I made while watching it.
One final point - I often complain about violence in movies, but it isn't really at the heart of my dissatisfaction here, partly because I often felt it looked so overdone as to not be realistic. I do wish, however, that Lee did not put in the full clip of that famous Saigon street execution at the start of the film. He initially cuts away from it, but then goes back to show the full aftermath. My son seems to think that if that can be used in a movie or documentary, then no one ever has any reason to complain about movie violence of any kind. In a way he is almost right - but the answer is, no, it should not be used in movies.
Friday, June 12, 2020
Another unfortunate English childhood
I was reading a review of a new book about Charles Dickens by the (extremely prolific) writer AN Wilson, and was struck by this part near the end:
I see that Wilson wrote a column in 2011 in the Guardian about what the headmaster and his wife did, and how he escaped. It was appalling treatment, but it sounds as if he was not one of the boys sexually touched, even if tormented in other ways.
As Wilson came out of the experience to have a very successful life, is it OK to say that I find it blackly amusing to hear, once again, of the terrible reputation of what went on in British private schooling in the first half 20th century. I am reminded of the startling passage in Evelyn Waugh's autobiography about the brazen teacher who made an open statement of what he did with a student, only to leave the school shortly thereafter to continue a career of bouncing from school to school with sudden departures after preying on boys. (That's one thing the internet has, to its credit, help prevent.)
Why was this such a British thing? And one which the well-to-do were seemingly prepared to risk exposing their kids to by packing them off to boarding school? Well look here, it seems someone has written a whole book about that: Stiff Upper Lip: Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class. The Google preview of the book (I found it by googling Evelyn Waugh and pedophile teacher) contains this provocative explanation by his son Auberon written in the Spectator in 1977 (and one which I suspect his editor would not let him write today):
Well, good for Auberon, I guess. But I'm rather glad I was born here and not in an English family wealthy enough to consider boarding school.
Update: because I feel a bit guilty about this post, I'll add a link to another article at The Guardian about some anti-boarding school campaigning (not only for its poor reputation for sexual assault, but its general psychological harm to do with a feeling of parental abandonment) from 2014.
In his final chapter, he remembers first encountering episodes from Dickens at the age of eight or nine at his private school, which was “in effect a concentration camp run by sexual perverts”. The teacher who introduced him to Dickens was himself utterly sinister and Dickensian, the skill with which he impersonated Fagin and Squeers “all too convincing”. The shards of Dickens sustained his spirits among the privations and abuse visited on him by the paedophile headmaster and his monstrous wife, uninhibited sadists in Wilson’s vivid, detailed account.Wilson is 10 years older than me, so we are talking of a dire schooling situation in the 1950's, not from earlier in the 20th century.
I see that Wilson wrote a column in 2011 in the Guardian about what the headmaster and his wife did, and how he escaped. It was appalling treatment, but it sounds as if he was not one of the boys sexually touched, even if tormented in other ways.
As Wilson came out of the experience to have a very successful life, is it OK to say that I find it blackly amusing to hear, once again, of the terrible reputation of what went on in British private schooling in the first half 20th century. I am reminded of the startling passage in Evelyn Waugh's autobiography about the brazen teacher who made an open statement of what he did with a student, only to leave the school shortly thereafter to continue a career of bouncing from school to school with sudden departures after preying on boys. (That's one thing the internet has, to its credit, help prevent.)
Why was this such a British thing? And one which the well-to-do were seemingly prepared to risk exposing their kids to by packing them off to boarding school? Well look here, it seems someone has written a whole book about that: Stiff Upper Lip: Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class. The Google preview of the book (I found it by googling Evelyn Waugh and pedophile teacher) contains this provocative explanation by his son Auberon written in the Spectator in 1977 (and one which I suspect his editor would not let him write today):
Well, good for Auberon, I guess. But I'm rather glad I was born here and not in an English family wealthy enough to consider boarding school.
Update: because I feel a bit guilty about this post, I'll add a link to another article at The Guardian about some anti-boarding school campaigning (not only for its poor reputation for sexual assault, but its general psychological harm to do with a feeling of parental abandonment) from 2014.
In other American cult news (apart from the Trump one)
This sex and nudity cult is called "Carbon Nation"?? And what's this about "refraining from bathing"? Even nudists like to shower, don't they?
This happened in Hawaii:
Another site called "Cult News" goes into a lot of detail about this nutter and his beliefs:
Update: good grief, he has had a surprisingly big presence on Youtube as well as Facebook for years. An absolute rambling nut.
This happened in Hawaii:
Police have arrested 21 individuals in a pair of sweeps in Puna subdivisions related to Gov. Ige’s COVID-19 emergency proclamation....Googling more about "Nature Boy", I see from a 2017 article that his move into cult-dom was a relatively late career choice:
Social media posts have claimed that members of the “Carbon Nation” are on the Big Island. The group is referred to in numerous media accounts as a cult that has been kicked out of Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama.
Police confirmed the group’s leader, Eligio Lee Bishop, a 38-year-old self-professed cult leader known as “Nature Boy,” was among those arrested Thursday in HPP, but didn’t give the Tribune-Herald the names of the others arrested on the second day.
According to a Dec. 6, 2019, story in the Costa Rica Star, Bishop refers to himself as “God,” and the group “believes in nudism, polygamy, and refraining from bathing.”
The Costa Rica news outlet’s story also said Bishop “allegedly requires cult members to surrender all their money, credit cards, bank accounts, and pin numbers, in order to worship with the group.”
In 2009, he was arrested for forcible entry in Georgia. Two years later, he faced charges of theft and was arrested for aggravated battery. No charges were laid in the latter incident, he said. He was a model and an exotic entertainer, confessing in a Facebook video to having sex for money.
Attempting to avoid furthering a life of crime, Bishop attended school to become a barber. He filed for a business licence in 2014, opening his own shop in Georgia.
He also claims to have worked on the Mo'Nique Show — a talk show hosted by the Atlanta comedian of the same name.
In a Facebook post from June 2016, Bishop posed with a backpack, writing "the Ascension journey has begun." He was heading for Honduras, urging commenters on the post to let him be their "guide out of the hell realm."
His following grew over time. Now, he has more than 17,000 on Facebook.
Another site called "Cult News" goes into a lot of detail about this nutter and his beliefs:
Nature Boy preaches that the “end times” are near, and that he is the messiah. His rhetoric includes a theory about people of color living close to the equator. According to him, this is imperative for maintaining health and peace of mind. One must leave what he calls “Babylon” (America) and live a natural lifestyle in the Tropics. There, people must eat his version of a B6 diet, and defecate at the base of trees. There will be no need for a doctor or medication. In the world of Nature Boy, all disease is psychological.There's more, but it still seems that he into cult leadership mainly for the sex. As are most of the women followers, I assume. Although they do have to put up with men who don't wash.
Update: good grief, he has had a surprisingly big presence on Youtube as well as Facebook for years. An absolute rambling nut.
Some dinner
Looking at the 'real' reason for Trump's Dallas trip...
....you have to suspect that some of those half mill donors must be worried about getting value for money. Even the betting markets have finally turned against him.
....you have to suspect that some of those half mill donors must be worried about getting value for money. Even the betting markets have finally turned against him.
Chait on illiberal liberals
I think Jonathan Chait's column "The Still-Vital Case of Liberalism in a Radical Age" sums it up pretty well:
But presumably Chait would agree with me that, in the bigger picture of world problems (*cough*, climate change; *cough* economic policy) it is a relatively small issue.
The preconditions that permitted these events to go forward are the spread of distinct, illiberal norms throughout some progressive institutions over the last half-dozen years. When I wrote about the phenomenon in 2015, a common response was to dismiss it as the trivial hijinks of some college students, a distraction from the true threats to democratic values. It certainly was (and remains) true that the right poses a vastly greater danger to liberalism than does the far left. My own writing output reflects this enormous disproportionality. It is also true that the intended (if not always actual) target of the left’s illiberal impulses — entrenched systems of inequality — remain an oppressive force in American life, and that the cause to dismantle them is just.
Nonetheless, it is an error to jump from the fact that right-wing authoritarian racism is far more important to the conclusion that left-wing illiberalism is completely unimportant. One can oppose different evils, even those evils aligned against each other, without assigning them equal weight.Both American public opinion and many institutions have moved left on race and gender during this time. It is a positive change opening humane new possibilities for reform, but it has come along with some illiberal side effects. Over the last few weeks, as protests against the murder of George Floyd produced outrageous brutality against protesters, the good primary effect and the bad side effect seem to have advanced rapidly in tandem.Without rehashing at length, my argument against the left’s illiberal style is twofold. First, it tends to interpret political debates as pitting the interests of opposing groups rather than opposing ideas. Those questioning whatever is put forward as the positions of oppressed people are therefore often acting out of concealed motives. (Even oppressed people themselves may argue against their own authentic group interest; that a majority of African-Americans oppose looting, or that Omar Wasow himself is black, hardly matters.) Second, it frequently collapses the distinction between words and action — a distinction that is the foundation of the liberal model — by describing opposing beliefs as a safety threat.
Working from these premises, many reactions by the left that might seem bizarre to somebody unfamiliar with this world (say, an older or more moderate person who doesn’t work in academia or the progressive movement) can make perfect sense. Since criticism of violent protests is racist, and racism obviously endangers black people, an act as seemingly innocuous as sharing credible research poses a threat to safety.I could probably be accused of saying that the issues of illiberal colleges is one of "trivial hijinks of some college students" too, and I am happy to be gently reprimanded for that.
But presumably Chait would agree with me that, in the bigger picture of world problems (*cough*, climate change; *cough* economic policy) it is a relatively small issue.
We're having a moment
People, people: let's calm down a bit.
It's always tricky, judging where righteous anger turns into counter-productive acts of mere symbolism which start to ostracise maximum public support for worthwhile reforms.
But some of the things going on at the moment are starting look like they are tipping over that edge.
Update: on Aboriginal issues - I just managed to read Henry Ergas's column today in the Australian (you can get to it behind the paywall if you go to the link on his tweet.) I think he's going to cop some criticism for the way he gets to an end position that I have suggested many times.
Look at these paragraphs:
I just think it's counterproductive and insulting to suggest that following "the zeitgeist" of self - determination was the wrong thing to do over the last 70 years. I think it's even wrong to broadly suggest that government was wrong to support at least those substantial settlements where people did want to keep a connection to land.
But at the end of the day - yes I think it is fair to say that the problem is that living in a location, or even a cultural milieu (such a family with a long history of welfare dependence, even if within a town) with little or no chance of having a strong connection to the economy (not just in a financial sense, but in the broader human sense of the opportunities for a broader range of life experiences) causes boredom and a sense of lack of purpose. (Which leads to drug abuse, higher crime, and continues in a cycle.) But the trick is how to encourage people to get out of the situation, and the balance between self determination and policies to encourage people to make the choice to try something new.
This is a challenge for all indigenous peoples in the modern world. Cultural pride (and our respect for their mistreatment in the past) can take some a certain distance to self respect and good functioning in the modern world; but to be honest, the evidence is that, at least for the Australian situation, it's not going to be a universal panacea to their problems. I do wish well intentioned people would stop thinking that it is.
It's always tricky, judging where righteous anger turns into counter-productive acts of mere symbolism which start to ostracise maximum public support for worthwhile reforms.
But some of the things going on at the moment are starting look like they are tipping over that edge.
Update: on Aboriginal issues - I just managed to read Henry Ergas's column today in the Australian (you can get to it behind the paywall if you go to the link on his tweet.) I think he's going to cop some criticism for the way he gets to an end position that I have suggested many times.
Look at these paragraphs:
It was not indigenous Australians who destroyed thousands of Aboriginal jobs in country areas by suddenly raising the wages of cattle station labour in 1965; it was the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission.This annoys even me - someone who has never managed to find much interest in aboriginal culture. (So sue me: I find cities and technology of any kind more interesting than low tech hunter/gathering, or even low level farming if you want to believe Pascoe.)
Nor was it indigenous Australians who decided, just as the commission’s judgment was having its devastating effects, to massively subsidise remote Aboriginal settlements, condemning generation after generation to inadequate housing, an education scarcely worth having and a future shorn of jobs and hope; it was the Whitlam and Fraser governments.And it was not indigenous Australians who removed the prohibitions on the consumption of alcohol by, and the sale of alcohol to, Aboriginal people that had been in force throughout Australia since 1929.It was state and territory governments that, in keeping with the 1960s zeitgeist of self-determination, repealed those controls and decriminalised public drunkenness, plunging fraying Aboriginal communities into a spiral of alcohol-fuelled violence and helping to ensure that indigenous offenders are nearly three times more likely than non-indigenous offenders to be intoxicated when they commit their crimes.
I just think it's counterproductive and insulting to suggest that following "the zeitgeist" of self - determination was the wrong thing to do over the last 70 years. I think it's even wrong to broadly suggest that government was wrong to support at least those substantial settlements where people did want to keep a connection to land.
But at the end of the day - yes I think it is fair to say that the problem is that living in a location, or even a cultural milieu (such a family with a long history of welfare dependence, even if within a town) with little or no chance of having a strong connection to the economy (not just in a financial sense, but in the broader human sense of the opportunities for a broader range of life experiences) causes boredom and a sense of lack of purpose. (Which leads to drug abuse, higher crime, and continues in a cycle.) But the trick is how to encourage people to get out of the situation, and the balance between self determination and policies to encourage people to make the choice to try something new.
This is a challenge for all indigenous peoples in the modern world. Cultural pride (and our respect for their mistreatment in the past) can take some a certain distance to self respect and good functioning in the modern world; but to be honest, the evidence is that, at least for the Australian situation, it's not going to be a universal panacea to their problems. I do wish well intentioned people would stop thinking that it is.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Yay for the pangolin
The Guardian has reported:
Pangolin scales have been removed from an official 2020 listing of ingredients approved for use in traditional Chinese medicine in a move lauded by animal protection groups as a key step in stamping out trade in the scaly anteater, the world’s most trafficked mammal....Nice photo the article ran, too:
The news of the delisting from the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) pharmacopoeia, reported by China’s Health Times newspaper, comes after the country’s State Forestry and Grassland Administration (SFGA) raised the protected status of pangolins to the highest level last week, with immediate effect.
“I am very encouraged,” said Zhou Jinfeng, secretary general of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), who has long pushed for better protection of pangolins and for stopping the use of their scales. “Our continuous efforts for several years have not been in vain.”
In February, China’s National People’s Congress pushed forward a ban on the consumption of meat from wild animals, though there has been uncertainty as to what wildlife will still be allowed for use in TCM and the fur and leather industries.
JK explains
JK Rowling writes a detailed explanation of her interest in, and concern about, transgender issues. It's well written, and to my mind, well reasoned and convincing.
The rabid attacks on her are undeserved. She deserves more support from some prominent folk, and hope she gets it.
The rabid attacks on her are undeserved. She deserves more support from some prominent folk, and hope she gets it.
Some quick takes
* Yeah, this business of attacking statues: it's starting to get a bit too much of a "cultural revolution 2" vibe about it. It's not the end of the world if some ill deserving historical figure gets his bronze dumped in the river; but it's not as if it ultimately does much to achieve social reform, either. Moving Confederate hero statues in an orderly manner, though - that's OK. But kids - getting out and voting is much, much more important.
* Speaking of Confederate - the NASCAR decision to ban the flag is, I reckon, going to drive the wingnut Right berserk. Honestly, I would not be surprised if there is some nutter who goes on a shooting rampage over this. I have opined before that it's pretty incredible that it has taken this long for Americans to realise the insult that pride in that flag represents to such a huge slab of Americans. David Roberts recently tweeted:
and recommended this New Yorker piece by the great Adam Gopnik: How the South Won the Civil War. I haven't read it yet, but must do so soon, before the shooting starts again.
Or - am I misreading this? Is this cultural moment so strong (and polling indicates it is) that even the great majority of NASCAR fans will accept this?
* Ah, Sinclair Davidson: out there calling a private company's decision not to provide a movie as part of its product line "censorship". Who knew that a libertarian could be so post modern as to insist "censorship" means just whatever he wants it to mean, and those private companies had better agree with him and stop doing it. And so should the ABC, or it should be defunded!
He just makes the stupidest statements on issues involving racism, closely followed by issues of free speech and "censorship".
Oh, and to round it off: he's a complete loser on the matter of tobacco plain packaging. Ha.
* Speaking of Confederate - the NASCAR decision to ban the flag is, I reckon, going to drive the wingnut Right berserk. Honestly, I would not be surprised if there is some nutter who goes on a shooting rampage over this. I have opined before that it's pretty incredible that it has taken this long for Americans to realise the insult that pride in that flag represents to such a huge slab of Americans. David Roberts recently tweeted:
and recommended this New Yorker piece by the great Adam Gopnik: How the South Won the Civil War. I haven't read it yet, but must do so soon, before the shooting starts again.
Or - am I misreading this? Is this cultural moment so strong (and polling indicates it is) that even the great majority of NASCAR fans will accept this?
* Ah, Sinclair Davidson: out there calling a private company's decision not to provide a movie as part of its product line "censorship". Who knew that a libertarian could be so post modern as to insist "censorship" means just whatever he wants it to mean, and those private companies had better agree with him and stop doing it. And so should the ABC, or it should be defunded!
He just makes the stupidest statements on issues involving racism, closely followed by issues of free speech and "censorship".
Oh, and to round it off: he's a complete loser on the matter of tobacco plain packaging. Ha.
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
American policing noted
Essentially, it appears this was a classic "good guy with a gun" scenario. And once again, because the good guy was black, it didn't end well.
Store owner Kevin Penn was holding a robber at gunpoint while he waited for police to arrive on March 15. When they did, his lawyer tells AL dot com, he announced the gun, took out the clip and ejected the bullet in the chamber.As I type this, Decatur Police are reportedly holding a press conference to discuss the incident. Why didn't they do so in mid-March, when it happened? Because the public finally found out this weekend with the release of the video to social media by Penn's supporters....Within 4 seconds of officers entering Penn's store, one of them had punched Penn, breaking his jaw and knocking out several teeth, per the article.
Seeing Bradford running, police immediately assumed he was the shooter and shot at him 4 times, killing him. Only later was the public told he was not the killer, who was still on the loose. The officers' actions were later ruled "justified"Like many Alabamians, I'm reminded of another recent "good guy with a gun" scenario that ended even more tragically. E.J. Bradford, a black man, was fatally shot in the back by Hoover Police after pulling a gun to stop an active shooter at the mall on Thanksgiving Day 2018.
Bram, Walt and Dracula
Well, this is all amusingly odd. From a review of a book about Walt Whitman:
Bram Stoker wrote a fan letter to Whitman in which he seems to be angling for a date (‘I am six feet two inches high and twelve stone weight naked…’). Stoker proselytised zealously for Whitman’s work, which, even in bowdlerised form, struck British readers as an American offshoot of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘fleshly school’. Stoker did meet Whitman, but can’t have experienced his magnetism as entirely positive if we are to believe the claim that he went on to base the character of Dracula on the American poet.This made me realise that I knew nothing about Bram Stoker. According to Wikipedia:
Stoker was a deeply private man, but his almost sexless marriage, intense adoration of Walt Whitman, Henry Irving and Hall Caine, and shared interests with Oscar Wilde, as well as the homoerotic aspects of Dracula have led to scholarly speculation that he was a repressed homosexual who used his fiction as an outlet for his sexual frustrations.[17] In 1912, he demanded imprisonment of all homosexual authors in Britain: it has been suggested that this was due to self-loathing and to disguise his own vulnerability.[18] Possibly fearful, and inspired by the monstrous image and threat of otherness that the press coverage of his friend Oscar's trials generated, Stoker began writing Dracula only weeks after Wilde's conviction.[18][19]Here's a post at Brain Pickings with Stoker's first, gushing, letter to Whitman. It seems the bit about his weight is edited out? Another site gives us the full Stoker self disclosure:
I am six feet two inches high and twelve stone weight naked and used to be forty-one or forty-two inches round the chest. I am ugly but strong and determined and have a large bump over my eyebrows. I have a heavy jaw and a big mouth and thick lips—sensitive nostrils—a snubnose and straight hair. I am equal in temper and cool in disposition and have a large amount of self control and am naturally secretive to the world. I take a delight in letting people I don’t like— people of mean or cruel or sneaking or cowardly disposition—see the worst side of me.
Stoker included his physical description, because he surmised from Whitman’s works and his photograph that he would be interested to know the “personal appearance of your correspondents.” Wrote Stoker: “You are I know a keen physiognomist.”Actually, that article goes on to give details of 3 times Bram met Walt, and seems to deny that they went badly. So Walt may not be the inspiration for Dracula after all. Bram Stoker still sounds quite the oddball, though.
Some charming French content
France seems to have a lot of people who still use handkerchiefs - my kind of people. Of course, they might all be over 70, but who knows?
The children in the second part look particularly charming too. I maintain that, amongst caucasians, the people on the streets of Paris when I was there (a long time ago) were collectively the most attractive I have ever been amongst.
Transgender arguments
JK Rowling's tweets about the transgender issue, and Radcliffe's entry into the debate on the side of transgender activists ("a transgender woman is a woman") made me look up so called TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminism) articles. I found this from 2018 by Katheleen Stock in The Economist: Changing the concept of "woman" will cause unintended harms. Which is pretty much what Rowling argues. I think.
Here's a paragraph that struck home:
But what are the harms Rowling thinks self declaratory gender would bring? She's a bit vague on this, and runs the risk of being accused of arguing that biological females are just obviously losers if their life experience loses its distinctiveness by being forced to accept others into the club, so to speak; in much the same way that conservatives argued that recognising gay marriage would be an intrinsically damaging insult to heterosexual marriage. That in fact is what this Washington Post writer accuses Rowling of arguing. It was not a great argument against same sex marriage, and without some details, not an especially great one regarding trans declarations of gender too.
The Kathleen Stock article does try to give some more concrete examples:
* It will muddle understanding (basically, statistics) on problems biological women have long faced such as:
* The weakening of "safe spaces" for women, which she argues is a problem because of the history of violent men. [Bear in mind she is arguing against the idea that any man, no matter what state their body is in, can declare himself a woman.] I have previously written that the fuss about a man who thinks he's a woman having access to women's toilets is overblown - especially if they are already hormonally and at least part physically feminised. However, Stock does have a point that, if transgender activists want to be consistent, their "gender is what anyone declares it is" would allow testosterone filled wannabe male rapist a legal right to enter spaces, like toilets, where other women would be very uncomfortable if they knew his biology. It feels more like a hypothetical problem, but one which transgender activism just wants to ignore completely.
* The last example I will quote:
In my view, then, the points Stock makes have some merit, but you can see the arguments that will be deployed against them.
I think there are two very pragmatic ones that are more convincing:
a. the disadvantages birth women face when a transgender woman wants to compete in women's sports; and
b. the interest of potential or actual sex partners in knowing transsexual status.
The first point I won't write about - the unfairness to women athletes is obvious.
As to the second point: I'm not sure why we can't be honest and say that the transgender process is never a 100% complete physical transition, and the end result is, inevitably, a simulacrum of the physicality of the desired gender. If transgender ideology taken to its desired legal effect (that a man can legally alter gender to woman, for all purposes) means that no naive man who marries a transgender woman could ever claim he has been wronged by non disclosure of his partner's former gender, I would have to say there is something wrong with the ideology. This may sound like a hypothetical case if you are talking marriage, but no doubt there have been cases of a transsexual woman bedding a man who did not realise what he was getting into.
If everyone can understand why a man or woman going to bed with a partner might be upset if they find their partner has not first disclosed opposite gender genitals, or an imitation of such, well then they are accepting that self declaration is not the only thing that matters about gender and sex.
As to how to resolve this, I have been thinking lately that the idea of a "third gender" seems to have a lot going for it. It's acknowledging both a biological and psychic reality, isn't it? And as I have said before, it's pretty interesting that people who wanted to live as the other gender in those societies did not (as far as I know) spend a lot of time fretting about how their body must in all respects be altered to match their perceived gender, otherwise their life will be one of crushing depression and unhappiness.
The Wikipedia entry on third gender talks about it in the context of transgender, and some parts are pretty interesting:
If that's the argument, it doesn't solve anything.
So, what's my conclusion? I think Stock and the TERFs make some valid points, but they seem to skirt around the more fundamental arguments about why it's not unreasonable for people to consider the biology of bodies important - and that's something that trans people should be able to live with and not argue that it can be removed from moral and legal consideration by mere self declaration.
* On that odd point about paranormal abilities, I think it is well recognised that an above average number of male mediums in spiritualism are gay.
Here's a paragraph that struck home:
In public discourse, there’s a lot of focus on whether trans women should be counted as women. Whatever the ultimate answer, that’s obviously a reasonable question, despite trans activists’ attempts to count it as “transphobic”. But I think we should also ask whether self-declaration alone could reasonably be the only criterion of being trans. There’s little precedent elsewhere. In a superficially comparable case, such as coming out as gay, there is still another underlying factor, sexual orientation, that secures your membership. It’s not just a matter of saying that you are gay. And though, as in the notorious case of Rachel Dolezal, a person might “self-declare” that she is “trans racial”, it has seemed clear to nearly everybody responding to this case that such a declaration would be not only false, but also offensive to genuinely oppressed members of the race in question. There is no such thing as being “trans racial”; there is only thinking falsely that you are.This seems a good point about race. Even allowing for cases where a very small amount of biological ancestry is still sufficient for some Australians to be recognised as aboriginal, no one ever argues that it would be reasonable for someone with no biological descent at all to self declare aboriginal identity for any meaningful purpose. Why is race "protected" in this way, but sex or gender not? Both can be in a biological "inter" state, and both can be understood as having social construct elements too. Does it come down to how clearly you can see how open membership to "race" would dilute positive discrimination measures? Because if it does, that is what Stock argues for women (see below.)
But what are the harms Rowling thinks self declaratory gender would bring? She's a bit vague on this, and runs the risk of being accused of arguing that biological females are just obviously losers if their life experience loses its distinctiveness by being forced to accept others into the club, so to speak; in much the same way that conservatives argued that recognising gay marriage would be an intrinsically damaging insult to heterosexual marriage. That in fact is what this Washington Post writer accuses Rowling of arguing. It was not a great argument against same sex marriage, and without some details, not an especially great one regarding trans declarations of gender too.
The Kathleen Stock article does try to give some more concrete examples:
* It will muddle understanding (basically, statistics) on problems biological women have long faced such as:
....vulnerability to rape, sexual assault, voyeurism and exhibitionism; to sexual harassment; to domestic violence; to certain cancers; to anorexia and self-harm; and so on. If self-declared trans women are included in statistics, understanding will be hampered.She argues that its fine to collect stats as to how these same issues affect transwomen too, but they should be kept separate if you want a clear understanding. [Given the small number of transexuals, I'm not sure how much effect this could really have. But I guess there would be some examples where it is more significant than others.]
* The weakening of "safe spaces" for women, which she argues is a problem because of the history of violent men. [Bear in mind she is arguing against the idea that any man, no matter what state their body is in, can declare himself a woman.] I have previously written that the fuss about a man who thinks he's a woman having access to women's toilets is overblown - especially if they are already hormonally and at least part physically feminised. However, Stock does have a point that, if transgender activists want to be consistent, their "gender is what anyone declares it is" would allow testosterone filled wannabe male rapist a legal right to enter spaces, like toilets, where other women would be very uncomfortable if they knew his biology. It feels more like a hypothetical problem, but one which transgender activism just wants to ignore completely.
* The last example I will quote:
And changing the concept of “woman” to include self-declared trans women also threatens a secure understanding of the concept “lesbian”. Lesbians are traditionally understood as females with a sexual orientation towards other females. Again, the categorisation is socially useful. It helps members of the category understand themselves in a positive, distinctive way, despite living in a heteronormative society. It motivates them to create their own social spaces. It gives them special protections, as a discriminated-against minority; and access to special sources of charity funding.I don't know that I have much to say about that. In a non discriminatory world, the importance of lesbians, or gay men, having their own social spaces should be decreasing - and it's probably happening, given what I think is the decreasing number of gay bars and venues in many Western cities. But I can understand lesbians being a bit irked about transgender men moving into their "territory" so to speak.
In my view, then, the points Stock makes have some merit, but you can see the arguments that will be deployed against them.
I think there are two very pragmatic ones that are more convincing:
a. the disadvantages birth women face when a transgender woman wants to compete in women's sports; and
b. the interest of potential or actual sex partners in knowing transsexual status.
The first point I won't write about - the unfairness to women athletes is obvious.
As to the second point: I'm not sure why we can't be honest and say that the transgender process is never a 100% complete physical transition, and the end result is, inevitably, a simulacrum of the physicality of the desired gender. If transgender ideology taken to its desired legal effect (that a man can legally alter gender to woman, for all purposes) means that no naive man who marries a transgender woman could ever claim he has been wronged by non disclosure of his partner's former gender, I would have to say there is something wrong with the ideology. This may sound like a hypothetical case if you are talking marriage, but no doubt there have been cases of a transsexual woman bedding a man who did not realise what he was getting into.
If everyone can understand why a man or woman going to bed with a partner might be upset if they find their partner has not first disclosed opposite gender genitals, or an imitation of such, well then they are accepting that self declaration is not the only thing that matters about gender and sex.
As to how to resolve this, I have been thinking lately that the idea of a "third gender" seems to have a lot going for it. It's acknowledging both a biological and psychic reality, isn't it? And as I have said before, it's pretty interesting that people who wanted to live as the other gender in those societies did not (as far as I know) spend a lot of time fretting about how their body must in all respects be altered to match their perceived gender, otherwise their life will be one of crushing depression and unhappiness.
The Wikipedia entry on third gender talks about it in the context of transgender, and some parts are pretty interesting:
In a study of people in the United States who thought themselves to be members of a third gender, Ingrid M. Sell found that they typically felt different from the age of 5.[42] Because of both peer and parental pressure, those growing up with the most ambiguous appearances had the most troubled childhoods and difficulties later in life. Sell also discovered similarities between the third genders of the East and those of the West. Nearly half of those interviewed were healers or in the medical profession. A majority of them, again like their Eastern counterparts, were artistic enough to make a living from their abilities. The capacity to mediate between men and women was a common skill, and third genders were oftentimes thought to possess an unusually wide perspective and the ability to understand both sides.[42] A notable result of Sell's study is that 93% of the third genders interviewed, again like their Eastern counterparts, reported “paranormal”-type abilities.*[43]But of course, some gender theorists may say it's OK to have a third gender category - let's call it "non binary" - but the important thing is that people can move between whatever category that they feel is true to themselves. So a person should be free to self label as male, female, or non-binary/third gender.
If that's the argument, it doesn't solve anything.
So, what's my conclusion? I think Stock and the TERFs make some valid points, but they seem to skirt around the more fundamental arguments about why it's not unreasonable for people to consider the biology of bodies important - and that's something that trans people should be able to live with and not argue that it can be removed from moral and legal consideration by mere self declaration.
* On that odd point about paranormal abilities, I think it is well recognised that an above average number of male mediums in spiritualism are gay.
Don't forget climate change
What with all the disease, violence and protests, it's easy to overlook the bigger picture.
This study has very big implications for civil engineering (including what is presumably the difficult job of retrospectively increasing urban drainage to cope with peak flows):
From the report again (bear in mind the temperature scale is F, not C):
This study has very big implications for civil engineering (including what is presumably the difficult job of retrospectively increasing urban drainage to cope with peak flows):
Look at this graph:The likelihood of intense storms is rising rapidly in North America, and the study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, projects big increases in such deluges."The longer you have the warming, the stronger the signal gets, and the more you can separate it from random natural variability," said co-author Megan Kirchmeier-Young, a climate scientist with Environment Canada.
Previous research showed that global warming increases the frequency of extreme rainstorms across the Northern Hemisphere, and the new study was able to find that fingerprint for extreme rain in North America.
"We're finding that extreme precipitation has increased over North America, and we're finding that's consistent with what the models are showing about the influence of human-caused warming," she said. "We have very high confidence of extreme precipitation in the future."
From the report again (bear in mind the temperature scale is F, not C):
At the current level of warming caused by greenhouse gases—about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the pre-industrial average—extreme rainstorms that in the past happened once every 20 years will occur every five years, according to the study. If the current rate of warming continues, Earth will heat up 5.4 degrees by 2100. Then, 20, 50 and 100-year extreme rainstorms could happen every 1.5 to 2.5 years, the researchers concluded.
Tuesday, June 09, 2020
Nut noted
Yeah, I like highlighting how nutty and isolated in their own fantasy world are Australian wingnuts. So sue me.
This is the same guy, remember, who had to stop himself from freaking out over a teacher doing a foot tap instead of a handshake with his son. Lives in a deeply unpleasant mental landscape of continual outrage and theorising that his side is about to win the dis-aster that is the culture war. A nut, basically.
Keynes Vs Friedman
A biographer of Keynes has some interesting things to say about him, and the comparison with Friedman, in an interview at the Washington Post:
OK, here's the bit with the comparison:
...Keynes himself never wanted to be remembered as a deficit therapist. He was a social thinker who was concerned with the great problems of his day: war and economic depression. And I think he would be very troubled by the idea that government spending on anything at all became the hallmark of his legacy in the economics profession. ...
I think he would be perplexed by what we deem to be political battles in the United States. He thought economic policy was the central political battleground for social justice, and the way economics has become technocratized and hived off from mainstream politics as an arena for specialists would have both excited and frightened him. He would be terrified by the idea that central political questions about equality and inequality have become the terrain of experts who essentially rule in favor of inequality, regardless of which political party is in charge. Keynes viewed inequality as a very dangerous thing — it’s something that preoccupied him when he wrote “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” and “The General Theory” — his two masterpieces.
OK, here's the bit with the comparison:
The conventional understanding now places Keynes, a champion of stimulus, against Milton Friedman, who came after him and is seen as a champion of austerity. Is that a useful binary?I think we lose track of the fact that Friedman and Keynes had different social visions. They weren’t just arguing across the generations about which policies would best create the same desired result. They were arguing about what kind of world they wanted to live in. And the mathematicization of economics in the 20th century really obscures this deeper ideological conflict, often by design. Keynes wanted everyone to live in the Bloomsbury of 1913, having their hair cut by Virginia Woolf while drinking champagne and debating post-impressionism with Lytton Strachey. Friedman wanted to preserve these activities as the exclusive domain of the wealthy. Why be rich if you can’t live a better life than the masses? To which Keynes would counter: Who cares about the masses when you are drinking champagne with Virginia Woolf?So literal champagne socialism?It depends on which Keynes you’re talking to, but by the end of his life, I think that’s about right. Keynes had a complicated relationship with the word “socialism.” He was ferociously critical of the Soviet Union. But he also thought the socialist Labour governments in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s were much too timid and insufficiently committed to economic justice for working people. In the United States, we remember Keynes for deficit spending, but his most comprehensive policy victory was the establishment of the National Health Service in Britain. He was the financial architect of socialized medicine in the U.K.
The Republicans and "law and order"
An interesting long article at Politico about Republicans and their historical relationship with the "law and order" issue.
The subheading explains what it is all about:
The subheading explains what it is all about:
A punitive brand of conservatism embraced by Trump and some GOP hardliners is rapidly falling out of step with public opinion.
A big plug for psychedelic psychotherapy
This is in The Guardian:
* seems to be a lot of money involved looking for success, and while with a vaccine or drug treatment for a physical illness you can get very clear cut results, with a treatment of a psychological illness the boundaries of success are (I expect) a bit more rubbery (hence leading to overly optimistic claims of early success).
* the basic idea has been around a long time, with people like Cary Grant famously taking LSD in controlled psychotherapy. Did those early users really find it had a long lasting effect? Perhaps the other drugs being tried are better than LSD for this purpose, but I still suspect the issue will be how long term the effects may be.
* although the author of the piece is indicating it is only likely to be a treatment for the more serious cases of depression, as with medical marijuana, I suspect there is likely to be a drift towards use and prescription to people with less serious cases of illness.
* A bit of a warning of his over-enthusiasm - the claim about how this could be transformative "for society".
* the treatment featured on The Goop Lab? Hmmm.
I head the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, the first of its kind, supported by about £3m in philanthropic donations. For 15 years, my research has focused on how drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT and MDMA work in the brain, and how they may be useful in treating disorders such as depression. Like the present pandemic, a psychedelic drug experiences can be transformative – of the individual – and of society. Both illuminate the extent to which the condition of the world we inhabit is dependent on our own behaviours. And these, in turn, are a consequence of how we feel, think and perceive....As I have indicated before, I am not completely against the concept, but I remain cautiously sceptical for a few reasons:
The Centre was founded in April 2019. A few months later, Johns Hopkins University in the US announced a supersized version, floated by $17m. If you have read Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind or seen the first episode of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Netflix series, The Goop Lab (titled The Healing Trip), you may be aware that such developments reflect a rising interest, and investment, in the mental health application of psychedelic drugs.
* seems to be a lot of money involved looking for success, and while with a vaccine or drug treatment for a physical illness you can get very clear cut results, with a treatment of a psychological illness the boundaries of success are (I expect) a bit more rubbery (hence leading to overly optimistic claims of early success).
* the basic idea has been around a long time, with people like Cary Grant famously taking LSD in controlled psychotherapy. Did those early users really find it had a long lasting effect? Perhaps the other drugs being tried are better than LSD for this purpose, but I still suspect the issue will be how long term the effects may be.
* although the author of the piece is indicating it is only likely to be a treatment for the more serious cases of depression, as with medical marijuana, I suspect there is likely to be a drift towards use and prescription to people with less serious cases of illness.
* A bit of a warning of his over-enthusiasm - the claim about how this could be transformative "for society".
* the treatment featured on The Goop Lab? Hmmm.
A life considered
Youtube threw this up at me as a recommendation, and I am glad I watched it: a short film about a 107 year old American woman who is still as sharp as a tack, looking back at her life.
There is one rather big surprise that comes out of it, relating to her marriage, but I won't spoil it.
I watched it with my daughter, and at the end was happy to point out to her that her father had been right all along about the husband. The point being, of course, that if I don't like one of her future boyfriends, she should pay attention. She didn't say much in response...
There is one rather big surprise that comes out of it, relating to her marriage, but I won't spoil it.
I watched it with my daughter, and at the end was happy to point out to her that her father had been right all along about the husband. The point being, of course, that if I don't like one of her future boyfriends, she should pay attention. She didn't say much in response...
Monday, June 08, 2020
Local mental illness
The always interesting topic of mental illnesses which are specific to particular countries or cultures is given a detailed discussion at BBC Future.
We get the old favourite "koro" (fear of the penis shrinking away), and a description of an outbreak in Singapore in the 1960's. But we get a few other examples which I hadn't heard of before:
Then there is this problem, out of Cambodia:
We get the old favourite "koro" (fear of the penis shrinking away), and a description of an outbreak in Singapore in the 1960's. But we get a few other examples which I hadn't heard of before:
In the central plateau region of Haiti, people regularly fall sick with “reflechi twòp”, or “thinking too much”, which involves ruminating on your troubles until you can barely leave the house. In South Korea, meanwhile, there’s “Hwa-byung” – loosely translated as “rage virus” – which is caused by bottling up your feelings about things you see as unfair, until you succumb to some alarming physical symptoms, like a burning sensation in the body. Dealing with exasperating family members is a major risk factor – it’s common during divorces and conflicts with in-laws."Rage virus" seems to be the common affliction at Catallaxy, but I digress.
Then there is this problem, out of Cambodia:
“I would say that there are definitely instances where the meaning that is attributed to experiences actually changes biologically what that experience is,” says Bonnie Kaiser, an expert in psychological anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. She gives the example of the illness kyol goeu, literally “wind overload”, an enigmatic fainting sickness which is prevalent among Khmer refugees in the US.There's a lot more at the article, so go read it.
In their native Cambodia, it’s commonly believed that the body is riddled with channels that contain a wind-like substance – and if these become blocked, the resulting wind overdose will cause the sufferer to permanently lose the use of a limb or die. Out of 100 Khmer patients at one psychiatric clinic in the US, one study found that 36% had experienced an episode of the illness at some point.
Bouts usually proceed slowly, starting with a general feeling of malaise. Then, one day, the victim will stand up and notice that they feel dizzy – and this is how they know that the attack is starting. Eventually they’ll fall to the ground, unable to move or speak until their relatives have administered the appropriate first aid, which usually consists of massaging their limbs or biting their ankles.
Observed on Australia's "centre right" blog
If I were the Queensland Premier, I'd be getting the police to give Sinclair Davidson a call:
I mean, we know the quality of the deep thinkers there:
but it's still no excuse.
Woody Allen considered
I'm not exactly a fan of Woody Allen, as I consider most of his work to be overrated. Yet I did think Crimes and Misdemeanours was very good, and I can see why his two biggest hits (Annie Hall and Manhattan) were liked, even if they didn't speak much to me.
But I still find him interesting, and recommend this review of his autobiography at The Atlantic.
But I still find him interesting, and recommend this review of his autobiography at The Atlantic.
Surely a popular take
Why does no political party actually take this up as a policy? It is as clear as day that the government and community has for years been struggling to find nominees for the ridiculous number and category of awards that are given out.
Panic mode
Why is the populist, climate change denying, culture war fighting Right so bad at risk assessment? Look at Andrew Bolt:
He has no imagination for the effects of 2 or 3 degrees average global temperature on "civilisation"; but some (I think) unexpectedly violent rioting in London that defaces statutes and injures police and it's meant to be civilisation crumbling before our very eyes.
It is, I suppose, all part of the culture war mentality - that their version of the Right is the only side on the side of goodness and light and the rabble is always just barely kept from destroying civilisation. You see it at Catallaxy all of the time.
He has no imagination for the effects of 2 or 3 degrees average global temperature on "civilisation"; but some (I think) unexpectedly violent rioting in London that defaces statutes and injures police and it's meant to be civilisation crumbling before our very eyes.
It is, I suppose, all part of the culture war mentality - that their version of the Right is the only side on the side of goodness and light and the rabble is always just barely kept from destroying civilisation. You see it at Catallaxy all of the time.
A mustard cream sauce
Seems odd that I have never made one before last Saturday. (My wife has, but not me.)
There are a million recipes for it out there, but I settled on a simplified version of this, from Epicurious:
Worked fine. Not sure why the recipe says add a cup of cream and reduce to a cup. I reduced a bit more than a cup.
Anyway, it was very nice.
There are a million recipes for it out there, but I settled on a simplified version of this, from Epicurious:
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1/4 cup chopped shallots
- 1 cup whipping cream
- 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
- 1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill
Preparation
- Boil white wine and shallots in heavy medium saucepan over high heat until liquid evaporates, about 4 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-high. Add whipping cream and simmer until reduced to 1 cup, about 2 minutes. Add Dijon mustard, basil and dill. Simmer 2 minutes to blend flavors. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper.
Worked fine. Not sure why the recipe says add a cup of cream and reduce to a cup. I reduced a bit more than a cup.
Anyway, it was very nice.
Saturday, June 06, 2020
Why didn't this happen within 24 hours of his death?
Axios notes:
Minneapolis has agreed to ban the use of police chokeholds and will require nearby officers to act to stop them in the wake of George Floyd's death, AP reports.
On Twitter today
I thought this was witty:
And if I were someone like Greg "look, I've been to America lots of times and racism is not a big issue" Sheridan, I would feel more than a little ashamed after watching the clip at this tweet:
Friday, June 05, 2020
Conspiracy watch
* For those interested, Graeme is still making comments and I not letting any through, regardless of content. He is sure, though, that there is some sort of coup against Trump being organised by the you-know-who's. (Maybe that apostrophe is not technically correct? But it needs something...)
To what end? I don't think that matters to Graeme - it just always has to be the fault of the you-know-who's. Even if they are the beneficiaries of pro-annexation policies under Trump they still want him replaced, apparently. Huh.
* Poor old "my old friends won't talk to me anymore" Steve Kates is having another "the Left and the media! They're all constant liars and idiots and pure evil - why won't they engage me in genuine political debate?" moment. Of course, his post is headed by a Tucker Carlson clip, because Kates knows who to listen to as an objective and fair commentator on matters political. The other 95% of commentators on TV are just pure evil liars, don't you know? Their failure to support Trump and the Republicans is self evident proof of that.
Sinclair likes to let people post at his blog regardless of the embarrassment they cause themselves. Did he never see that ad about how "mates don't let mates drink and drive"? Sinclair gives them the keys, cuts the brake line, and gives the car a push towards the edge of the credibility cliff. What a pal.
* Conspiracy and cult membership at Catallaxy is popular, though. Again, it's a case of circles within circles, when you read things like this:
Oh I see. Hadn't worked that one out - perhaps because I don't have a streak of paranoia a mile wide?
And, of course, it is possibly the end of the world as we know it:
Yeah, the progressive Lefies of the police forces bashing with abandon, I guess.
To what end? I don't think that matters to Graeme - it just always has to be the fault of the you-know-who's. Even if they are the beneficiaries of pro-annexation policies under Trump they still want him replaced, apparently. Huh.
* Poor old "my old friends won't talk to me anymore" Steve Kates is having another "the Left and the media! They're all constant liars and idiots and pure evil - why won't they engage me in genuine political debate?" moment. Of course, his post is headed by a Tucker Carlson clip, because Kates knows who to listen to as an objective and fair commentator on matters political. The other 95% of commentators on TV are just pure evil liars, don't you know? Their failure to support Trump and the Republicans is self evident proof of that.
Sinclair likes to let people post at his blog regardless of the embarrassment they cause themselves. Did he never see that ad about how "mates don't let mates drink and drive"? Sinclair gives them the keys, cuts the brake line, and gives the car a push towards the edge of the credibility cliff. What a pal.
* Conspiracy and cult membership at Catallaxy is popular, though. Again, it's a case of circles within circles, when you read things like this:
And, of course, it is possibly the end of the world as we know it:
Yeah, the progressive Lefies of the police forces bashing with abandon, I guess.
Self fulfilling police protests
Things are getting very weird in the US. The original "black lives matter" justification for the protests seems to have broadened out to a general "why are all police jerks to everyone" raison d'etre due to the scores of videos of them unjustifiably roughing up protesters of any colour.
The latest example - the shove to the old guy in Buffalo who stumbles backwards and hits his head on the pavement (with blood obviously flowing out) - is very remarkable for the way the police just seem to look at him and don't jump in to offer immediate assistance.
But as if Trump would have any idea what to do to encourage widespread police reform. As I posted recently (and had not realised before), the police unions had campaigned against Obama for (what I have read) were relatively modest reform initiatives.
As someone had written earlier this week (at Vox I think), the most accurate way to view it is that the police are counter-protesters. Maybe they are getting really upset about how the ubiquity of phone cameras is interfering so much with their traditional tactics?
The latest example - the shove to the old guy in Buffalo who stumbles backwards and hits his head on the pavement (with blood obviously flowing out) - is very remarkable for the way the police just seem to look at him and don't jump in to offer immediate assistance.
But as if Trump would have any idea what to do to encourage widespread police reform. As I posted recently (and had not realised before), the police unions had campaigned against Obama for (what I have read) were relatively modest reform initiatives.
As someone had written earlier this week (at Vox I think), the most accurate way to view it is that the police are counter-protesters. Maybe they are getting really upset about how the ubiquity of phone cameras is interfering so much with their traditional tactics?
A unfortunate association
I've found I quite like Abbott's Village Bakery brand bread. It is thicker cut than your cheaper loaves, and has "body" too. Also seems to keep fresh quite a while.
But - every time I use it, I am reminded of Tony Abbott, which is off putting. I would suggest a change name, for the same of removing an unwanted association in the minds of (probably) more than one Australian.
Thank you.
But - every time I use it, I am reminded of Tony Abbott, which is off putting. I would suggest a change name, for the same of removing an unwanted association in the minds of (probably) more than one Australian.
Thank you.
Google is trying to educate me (and succeeding)
Because Google knows a disturbing amount about me, it knew that I was recently saying how I knew next to nothing about ancient Indian history. So when I was looking at recommendations on Youtube on my TV last night, it suggested a video about the Indus Valley civilisation.
Sure, this channel (Cogito) seems made for (I guess) kids at about an late primary school/early high school level, but if you know nothing about a subject, there's nothing wrong with starting there.
I thought it was pretty good, actually:
I wonder, though, if the language is still a mystery, whether some of the claims of how they lived are really accurate deductions from archaeology, or not.
I then saw that they also dealt with the old Indian king Ashoka, who I mentioned recently, so I got myself a short education about him too:
Ah, the internet being used for the forces of good instead of evil and misinformation. Warms the heart.
Sure, this channel (Cogito) seems made for (I guess) kids at about an late primary school/early high school level, but if you know nothing about a subject, there's nothing wrong with starting there.
I thought it was pretty good, actually:
I wonder, though, if the language is still a mystery, whether some of the claims of how they lived are really accurate deductions from archaeology, or not.
I then saw that they also dealt with the old Indian king Ashoka, who I mentioned recently, so I got myself a short education about him too:
Ah, the internet being used for the forces of good instead of evil and misinformation. Warms the heart.
Thursday, June 04, 2020
About "neck restraint" in policing
Earlier this week, I questioned why people in authority in the USA had not immediately banned (what I now know is called) neck restraints as part of policing. It's just obviously dangerous, no?
Well this article explains that, yes, it is considered dangerous and some police forces in the US had already banned it. Look at this figure:
It seems pretty ridiculous that there is such a lack of uniformity across the nation on this, for so long too.
Well this article explains that, yes, it is considered dangerous and some police forces in the US had already banned it. Look at this figure:
Since the beginning of 2015, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department have rendered people unconscious with neck restraints 44 times, according to an NBC News analysis of police records. Several police experts said that number appears to be unusually high.Minneapolis police used neck restraints at least 237 times during that span, and in 16 percent of the incidents the suspects and other individuals lost consciousness, the department's use-of-force records show. A lack of publicly available use-of-force data from other departments makes it difficult to compare Minneapolis to other cities of the same or any size....
More than a dozen police officials and law enforcement experts told NBC News that the particular tactic Chauvin used — kneeling on a suspect's neck — is neither taught nor sanctioned by any police agency. A Minneapolis city official told NBC News Chauvin's tactic is not permitted by the Minneapolis police department. For most major police departments, variations of neck restraints, known as chokeholds, are highly restricted — if not banned outright.This article goes into more detail on how a few different cities' police forces across the nation have dealt with the tactic.
The version of the Minneapolis Police Department's policy manual that is available on-line, however, does permit the use of neck restraints that can render suspects unconscious, and the protocol for their use has not been updated for more than eight years.
It seems pretty ridiculous that there is such a lack of uniformity across the nation on this, for so long too.
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