Unseasonal

I'm typing this in the midst of a big storm that has made it look like night outside, even though it is still 4.30pm.  The weather radar looks like this:

Actually, the storm outside is worse than that looks.

The last two nights, we have had storms starting about 1am - the first one had a lot of lightning and wind.

As a long term resident of Brisbane, I can honestly say this is unusual and unseasonal weather for May.  The odd autumn/winter storm in Brisbane can happen,  but they are not usually so strong, and you don't usually get a run of them over 3 days.   This is basically a summer storm pattern that's happening in May. 

Weather weirdening, I say.

 

Ancient China considered

This article in the Washington Post is rather interesting:

It’s a golden age for Chinese archaeology — and the West is ignoring it

It also gives a (very short) summary of ancient Chinese civilisations, including this (my bold):

The dominant narrative has presented the origins of Chinese civilization as rooted in a singular source — what is known as the Three Dynasties (the Xia, Shang and Zhou), situated in the Central Plains of the Yellow River valley in contemporary Henan Province, Shaanxi Province and surrounding areas. These dynasties lasted from roughly 2,000 B.C. to the unification of China, in 221 B.C.

In the late 1920s, Chinese archaeologists began to unearth what turned out to be the last capital of the Shang Dynasty (dating to circa 1250 to 1050 B.C.) near Anyang, in Henan province, right in the heart of the Central Plains. These excavations revealed a city with a large population fed by millet agriculture and domesticated animals; there were palace foundations, massive royal tombs, evidence of large-scale human sacrifice and perhaps most importantly, cattle and turtle bones used in divination rituals and inscribed with the earliest Chinese texts. The sophistication of the society that was revealed in these digs helped to solidify belief that there was a single main source of subsequent Chinese culture: This was its epicenter.

As I have said before, what was it with civilisations at that time and sacrifice (especially human sacrifice)?   

Anyway, the current excitement the article talks about is about further archaeological finds from a completely different site:

But finds at Sanxingdui and other sites since the 1980s have upended this monolithic notion of Chinese cultural development. The Sanxingdui discoveries, which are contemporary with the Shang remains, are located in Sichuan, hundreds of miles southwest of the Central Plains, and separated from them by the Qinling Mountain Range. The site is similarly spectacular. At Sanxingdui, we see monumental bronzes, palace foundations and remnants of public works like city walls — as well as the recently discovered, ivory, anthropomorphic bronze sculptures and other objects. Crafts reveal extensive use of gold, which is not much used in the Central Plains, and the agriculture is different too: Rice, not millet, was the foundation of the cuisine. In short, it seems clear that Chinese civilization did not simply emerge from the Central Plains and grow to subsume and assimilate the cultures of surrounding regions.  Instead, it is the result of a process whereby various traditions, people, languages, cultures and ethnicities have been woven together in a tapestry that is historically complex and multifaceted.

I suspected that CGTN would have coverage of the Sanxingdui site, and it does.   This travel show from a couple of years ago shows that it has a pretty flash museum which looks well worth visiting:

  

As the very first comment on Youtube says, the artefacts look rather Mayan-ish.  Or at least, one of the Mesoamerican cultures?    (The large scale human sacrifice is another similarity, of course.)

So yeah, I agree with the guy who wrote the WAPO article - Chinese archaeology is remarkable. 

Smoking through the lesions, at least it kept his hands busy

There's an article in the journal Pastoral Psychology from 2003 with an unusual (and to my mind, improbable) theory: 

I argue that the decline in moral disapproval of masturbation in the American religious culture over the last half-century is directly responsible for increased moral disapproval of homosexuality. Moral disapproval previously directed toward masturbators is being redirected instead toward homosexuals. 

Yet it's still interesting to read because to bolster his case, the author spends a lot of time showing how intense (and medicalised) the disapproval of masturbation had been in the couple of centuries before the mid 20th.   He talks about Kant's completely over-the-top condemnation, which I already knew about;  but there were things new to me too.   Sigmund Freud, for example:

As Menninger notes, Freud considered masturbation “the primary addiction,” and suggested that other addictions (alcohol, tobacco, morphine, etc.) are a substitute for and means of withdrawal from masturbation (p. 34). His physician-biographer, Max Shur, noted that Freud viewed his compulsive addiction to smoking, which he could not relinquish in spite of near-cancerous lesions in his mouth for which he submitted to many painful operations the last 14 years of his life, as a substitute for the primary addiction of masturbation (p. 34).

Hence the title of this post.

One might have expected that he would be calmer about the practice, but not really:  his condemnation is pretty much the same as used in religions (and Kant), and he had little sympathy for a son worried about it:

As Szasz shows, Freud did not view masturbation as a cause of mental insanity, but he did contend that neurasthenia (a condition whose symptoms include lack of motivation, feelings of inadequacy, and psychosomatic symptoms) may be traced back to a condition of the nervous system caused by excessive masturbation or frequent emissions (1984, p 349). Freud also considered masturbation “perverse” because “it has given up the aim of reproduction and pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of it” (p. 349). Thus, masturbation is problematic on moral grounds because it departs from conventional, genital, heterosexual intercourse aimed at procreation. Menninger notes that when one of Freud’s own sons came to him with worries about masturbation, he issued a strong parental warning against engaging in the practice, and this, according to another of Freud’s sons, led to an estranged relationship between them (p. 34). Szasz notes the absurdity of Gay Talese’s use of the term “this Freudian age” in a book published in 1980 that promoted “a therapeutic ideology of sexual salvation through masturbation” (1984, p. 336).

As for the medical approach to the activity, it remains bizarrely funny to read that cause and effect could be so ridiculously mixed up:

...in a recent article, “Remembering Masturbatory Insanity” (2000), he returns to the subject, noting that, from the very beginning of scientific medicine, masturbation (or “self-abuse”) was a handy scapegoat when medical practitioners could not identify the cause of a particular disease: “By the end of the 1700s, it was medical dogma that masturbation causes blindness, epilepsy, gonorrhea, tabes dorsalis, priapism, constipation, conjunctivitis, acne, painful menstruation, nymphomania, impotence, consumption, anemia, and of course insanity, melancholia, and suicide” (p. 2). 

As with witchcraft a couple of centuries before that, it sure made for easy diagnosis of a problem:  

 R. H. Allnott reported in 1843 that when one of his patients “entered the room with a timid and suspicious air and appeared to quail like an irresolute maniac when the eye was fixed steadily on him,” there was no doubt of the cause of the patient’s problems (p. 32). When Allnott “directly charged” the patient with masturbatory behavior, he would usually admit it.

And the attempts to help included surgery, which sounds very similar to a modern vasectomy, which I did not think had any particular influence on libido:

The medical journals of the late 19th century were replete with articles describing surgical and other procedures designed to eradicate masturbation. Writing in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1883, Dr. Timothy Haynes described a surgical procedure that he had developed for curing “hopeless cases of masturbation and nocturnal emissions.” Indicating that he has frequently been called upon to care for victims of self-abuse, his normal procedure is to help the “perverted” state of mind of the victims by counseling marriage and even, at times, the immorality of a mistress. But some cases are so utterly desperate, the individual so destroyed mentally and physically, that he began to wonder whether some help could be provided even at the expense of the procreative powers. Judging the scar of castration to be an intolerable stigma, he developed a less extreme surgical procedure, which involved removing parts of the spermatic duct. He would make an incision midway between the external inguinal ring and the testis. This incision provided access to the duct, from which a half inch was cut off, and the “slight” wound was then closed with a suture.

He claimed it worked in some cases - but one would have to guess it might be more an elaborate placebo effect.

As I have speculated before, it's hard to believe that all of the public was ever completely convinced of the harmfulness of the practice, despite an apparent uniformity of medicalised condemnation.  

This led me to another article, and a fairly esoteric one, about the cryptic mentions of masturbation (well, probably) in the diary of a 17th century Scotsman.   The more interesting part of it is the description of the legal and religious condemnation of the practice, which apparently technically carried the death penalty for a time, but no actual application of that law is known.   (Phew).   The writer points out that when Europeans started reading more, the educated could look at Greek and Roman literature as painting it as nothing remarkable, and...:

However, one snippet indicates Scottish tradition took bestiality very seriously:

It's not the death sentence I am so surprised about - it's the idea of someone being tried in secret at night and drowned "discretely" before (say) the parents knew why their son hadn't come home the day before.  Of course, it is unclear (given there were no records to be kept!) as to how often that may have happened.

That's a dark note to end on, but it's hard to know how to end a post like this.   Not a happy ending. (Ha ha.)

Update:   well, through the wonders of Sci Hub, I have now read an enlightening 1997 article about how Freud's Vienna Circle of psychoanalyists, meeting around 1907 - 1912, got into arguments about masturbation, with Freud having a major falling out with Stekel over his (Stekel's) take that it was basically harmless.    There's even a Freudian explanation for why Freud couldn't accept Stekel's views!:

The debate with Stekel continued in Freud’s mind: his conscience ordercd him to fight the temptation to resort to the bclief in the harmlessness of masturbation, because of the danger of “neurasthenia.” He was unable to free himself from this theory, which was in this respect, however, nothing but a justification of a taboo installcd in his childhood, by his father Jacob Freud, who had discovercd his son’s “self-abuse” and will have threatened him with castration if he did ever play with his genitals, according to Kriill (1986, IlOff, 142; cf. Oerlemans 1949, 44). Stekel had come close to the mainspring of Freud’s “onanism leads to neurasthenia” theory. Freud, however, in attempting to honor his fathcr, prevented himself from this insight by silencing his rebellious son” Stekel (cf. Kriill 1986, 1890.

Despite Freud's refusal to change his mind, the articles notes that by the late 1920's, most psychoanalysts had adopted Stekel's "meh, it's harmless" views.    I see that Freud didn't die until 1939, so I wonder if that irked him.

I'm with Tom and David

There are many comments supporting these guys.

The complicating thing tends to be women's fashion - it seems churlish to say that women cannot wear shoes which are largely "open" on an aircraft, as they are routinely worn as part of high class fashion.   Yet once you make that concession, it seems hard to tell slob men that no, thongs or sandals are not appropriate.   Couldn't the airlines at least go with "no thongs, under any circumstances"?

But the reason I am like David (always wear long pants and shoes and socks on flights - although I will go short sleeve shirt, especially on a short flight) is that I imagine it giving me the best protection from fire in the even of a crash.   

You may laugh, but the comments of some aircraft accident investigator I read in (I think) some science magazine (maybe Discover?) years ago stuck with me - he claimed that surviving a crash did seem to be strongly correlated with "paying attention to what you would do if there is a crash".   So, people who actually do things like think about their nearest exit and how many rows they would count before knowing they were at it really did seem to have the better chance of surviving.

Wearing cotton, which can stand a lot of heat, to cover most of my skin, seems the least I can do.

 
 

But some "woke" corporations and academics and are the real worry in the USA

 

In odd religious rock news ....

Who was the editor who added this subtitle to this article on BBC travel:

In recent years, the internet has been alight with speculation that a chart-like carving in Anuradhapura is a stargate: an ancient gateway through which humans can enter the Universe.

I think I can safely say that, no, the internet has not been "alight" with stargate in Sri Lanka speculation.  A bit more about what they are talking about:

Sri Lanka's sacred city of Anuradhapura is an unlikely place to be enmeshed in a fantastic tale of UFOs and otherworldly happenings. Locally known as Rajarata (Land of Kings), the Unesco World Heritage Site was the first established kingdom on the island (in 377 BC) and is at the heart of Sri Lanka's Buddhist culture. Today, it's one of the nation's most visited places, attracting devoted pilgrims from around the country to its ancient Buddhist temples and giant dome-shaped stupas.

But this holy city is also home to something far more curious. Here, in Ranmasu Uyana (Golden Fish Park), a 40-acre ancient urban park surrounded by three Buddhist temples, is a chart that's alleged to be a map to unlock the secrets of the Universe.

The carving is of interest, but "Stargate"?  I think not:

 

Here's a line drawing apparently showing the symbols more clearly:

Who knew the Stargate would be used by fish and turtles, and involve...umbrellas?  A bit reminiscent of "so long, and thanks for all the fish"?  

Anyway, in other religion related esoteria, the Times of Israel reports:

Saudi Arabia releases first-ever photos of holy Kaaba stone

With hajj pilgrimage limited due to COVID restrictions, kingdom publishes high-resolution images of al-Hajar al-Aswad, which believers say fell from heaven at time of Adam and Eve

Here's the photo:

 This looks a little different from this:

but it's hard to tell.

I don't really understand what I am looking at:  is the whole thing a bit of meteorite, or just the black bit in the middle that's been encased is something else?   This Islamweb site has some specific instructions about how to kiss or not kiss the stone.  Making kissy noises while doing so is out, apparently.

I did do an earlier post about the Kabba - which as I noted then, is venerated but people don't seem to exactly act in awe around it.   I suppose you could say the same about some of the frenetic Catholic processions that happen with venerated statues being paraded on their feast day in parts of Europe (or elsewhere).   I wonder how many people get to touch or kiss the rock each year?   Looks to be in no danger of wearing away, at least.

China and vaccine diplomacy

This PBS report about Serbia's success at vaccination (and its embrace of vaccine from anywhere - especially China's) was very interesting: 

 

Once again, I find myself (reluctantly) kind of impressed with China's push for world influence by selling themselves as the "good" guys who will just get things done.  

I don't know how the new isolationist sentiment of the American (and Australia) wingnut Right thinks their position is going to achieve anything other than increasing China's global standing.  

By the way, Serbia also knows a thing or two about crushing anti-vaxx ideas, which have transitioned from a thing of the nutty Left to have its new home in the Wingnut Right:

President Vucic has warned civil servants not to expect paid sick leave if they catch the virus and have not received a COVID-19 vaccination.   

and:

"All those... who received the vaccine by May 31 will get 3,000 dinars (25 euros, $30)," President Aleksandar Vucic told local media, adding that he expected three million to be vaccinated by the end of the month.

UK politics is complicated

So, much gnashing of teeth in The Guardian about Labour doing poorly in last week's elections.  Two bits of commentary:  this one in The Guardian reflects the same issues people talk about regarding Labor in Australia (the party not finding a big enough support base after the industrial working class has dwindled;  too urban, too "woke");   the other article in Financial Times points out that the pandemic has had a big influence, and people have rewarded the Conservatives for a "tough" response, and Boris retains a personal following.

While some of those factors can be seen in Australia, really, UK politics seems a weird beast all of its own.

*  the first past the post system dilutes opposition votes in a way they are not in Australia

*  Johnson (and I think, his party generally? - wait see my next sentence) does not follow the American and Australian wingnut Right on the major issue that is deemed a culture war one in those other countries - climate change.  Actually, no - it would seem from a survey done just last year that the Conservatives at the party level are rife with climate change denialism - is it just that Boris tends green and gives the impression that it isn't so much? 

*  Labour couldn't even make sense on Brexit - I can't see that anyone is declaring it a success (quite the opposite) - but the pandemic has overwhelmed public attention, and as its worst effects become clearer in the post-pandemic world, Labor can't really claim credit for warning against it because they chose a path of ambiguity instead.

In Australia, meanwhile, I think there is a large danger of Morrison riding on the coat tails of COVID back into office, even though he runs a pretty terrible government and is basically incompetent on so many issues.   (That gaff on China and Taiwan last week - just ridiculous.)   

Update:  a bit of commentary at the SMH is headed:

Little has gone right for the Morrison government, but it’s not clear much has gone badly wrong

I think the sentiment is right, in that COVID has largely distracted from a more objective assessment of how crook Morrison's judgement routinely is.

An underrated invention

I just threw out this portable gas cooker after what I think was probably close to 30 years of good and faithful, if very intermittent, service:

I am inordinately fond of these devises: they're just a lovely bit of industrial design, aren't they?  Simple, efficient and neat. 

I wonder who first came up with this style of tabletop, butane cartridge, design?  I've just spent about 20 minutes unsuccessfully Googling an answer to that.  They get a mention in a Wikipedia post about portable stoves generically, but nothing about the history of this particular design.   (It does tell us, though, that most butane cartridges come from South Korea, although an American company also makes them.   And apparently the American Coleman company did a lot with smaller gas cartridge cookers in the mid 20th century.)     

 

I don't think they were as popular as they are now when I bought this one.   It was, due to its age, probably not meeting current safety standards, but we did use it for a dining table hot pot one last time this week.  That's my version of living on the edge.

 

Update:   my research skills led me to search just "history of butane cartridges" and it shows up an article from the New York Times in 1983 praising:

....a remarkable new portable burner called the Cassette Feu (model A-7), made by a Japanese company, Iwatani. This powerful, cleverly designed device virtually simulates range-top cooking; it may keep me out of the kitchen much of this summer.

and there is a photo showing it is indeed this design of cooker.  

I did notice that company is still prominent in selling these.   

The Japanese website does not explain more, although it does mention that 2019 was the 50th anniversary of the Cassette Feu.   So, we're back to 1969? 

 

More Googling needed:   here, from the Los Angeles Times, 1986:

 

But for those who want more flavors than barbecuing could offer, the portable gas cooker provides an easy answer.

Fueled by a disposable butane canister, this little stove unit came to America from Japan, where it originated. “It was developed almost 15 years ago for on-the-table cooking for sukiyakis and shabu-shabus, " said Ken Semba, western region sales manager for Iwatani and Co., the distributor of Cassette Feu portable gas stove. He explained, “Since the gas hose was dangerous and the electric cookers didn’t give us enough heat for this type of cooking, the Cassette Feu, which stands for small flamer evolved.”

And someone's blog about Japanese food says:

While this product always seems to be around at my friends' homes, the first model came out only in 1969, from Iwatani. No wonder the company is still the biggest name in portable gas stoves.

So, it would seem a good chance that there is an unknown Japanese designer responsible for the basic idea.   He (for it surely would be) should be better known!

 

What is wrong with the Murdochs??

So, we all know that Rupert Murdoch was early in the line up to get vaccinated for COVID.   (In December, in England.)

I see that his Fox News boss son Lachlan, who has presumably direct ability to intervene in the editorial content of his network, gave money for an early COVID vaccine trial for health workers:

So why do they let their top Fox News star promote vaccine distrust to his (older) audience which is the most in need of vaccination???  

How is it possible to read this as anything other than a case of being opportunistic greed stomping all over their ability to do a public good? 

Solar wins

Noah Smith posted this the other day - a lengthy essay entitled Long Live the Sun by someone or other, but with lots of figures and easily understood arguments, explaining why solar power (to be vastly expanded and with battery backup) has won over nuclear already and it's not going to change.

A very green techno-optimistic take, but an encouraging one nonetheless. 

Maybe that's why Bill Gates is getting divorced - his wife might have thought he was wasting too much money on advanced nuclear technology that just isn't necessary?  

I'm very busy, but...

...just when my Youtube subs seem to be getting a bit stale, there's a flurry of things I liked watching:

*  From Chinese Propaganda Central (CGTN) I have noticed videos heavily promoting Hong Kong people to move next door to Shenzhen instead.   All part of the incredible effort the Party puts into manipulating people.   "Move away from your old, fuddy duddy, used-to-have-democracy-of-sorts, locality, and learn to enjoy how terrific we are in Real China."

But of more social interest - it would seem that the Party has decided to stop young single people from getting dissatisfied with life by endorsing de facto relationships as a perfectly valid option!   Look at this:

 

I don't know, but this seems to me to be quite a cultural move.

This reminds me: I have wondered before if an excess of single males might lead to an official softening towards gay relationships too - but the nearest she gets to that topic is referring to "diversity" in relationships.

Wait a minute - I have only started watching this Youtube channel a few months ago, so I should search for how it has dealt with gay relationships.   

To my surprise - they ran a series on the topic 3 years ago!    Looks as if a very sympathetic line taken, too.   Not much content since then though?   Still, given how nothing on this channel appears other than closely aligned with what the government wants its population to think, I think I can just about claim vindication. 

Also, if you want to see "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" updated in China, have a look at this:

Very macho, very military. Join the Party, sacrifice work hard for the motherland, and be glorious! Maybe the West needs to work on getting the country to develop a youth drug problem.   My modest proposal to limit China:  a new  Opium War, of sorts. [Sorry, children.]

*  Tom Scott taking the "emergency exit" from the top of a wind turbine was interesting:

 

*  Sabine Hossenfelder gives her ideas as to how to solve the dark matter conundrum (in short, the wrong physics speciality has been looking at it the whole time): 

 

* Finally, a happy physicist who doesn't look like your typical egg head explains how tiny neutrinos are:

Cleaning up

Got a skip on Friday for a long weekend clean up.   It feels like we are getting ready to move house, even though we aren't.   Also, its a bit of a worry when you nearly fill a skip and still think parts of the house look a bit cluttered.  But it is still only 2/3 full.

I'm pretty sure people have no idea how heavy old upright pianos can be.   The one which I have spent 2 days trying to figure out how to get into the skip was taken by my wife off a friend who was wanting to get rid of it, in the hope that it might be repairable.  (I was always sure it wasn't, at anything like a reasonable cost, and I was right.)  Hence it has been used as a (feels like) one tonne, immoveable shelf for something like 20 years.  I was more than happy to try to dispose of it.

It was a challenge: lots of unscrewing, sawing, spannering, kicking, and failed attempts to cut piano wire, which is extraordinary tough stuff.  Despite all of this, the extremely heavy cast iron (or whatever it is) harp like heart of it, still attached to the solidly built wood back, is lying flat on the ground in front of the house, behind a bush, waiting to see if I can figure out a way to drag it the last 5 metres to the skip (not to mention how to lift it into it.)

I'm seriously thinking of setting the wood alight, since if it was the metal alone it might be more easily handled.  This is probably illegal.   It might also alarm the neighbours, too.   But really, I'm running out of options.

I've always thought that taking apart a piano would feel a little uncomfortably wrong in some sense, like killing an animal.   (It certainly makes a lot of noise.)   But I'm pretty much over that.  If any animal worth eating was shaped like a piano, I wouldn't hesitate.  

Speaking of eating animals, I did a lot of it on Sunday, at a very authentic charcoal yakiniku place in the city.   It made me think:  while I have long been sceptical that lab grown meat is going to easily be made structurally into something that would have a realistic steak texture, perhaps there is a better chance of gluing cells together into a thin slice such as is used most commonly in yakiniku.   But then again,  it's going to be hard to do the fat in wagyu meat, thin slice or not.   

Gah, I think I have a splinter in my hand from that piano.  Its revenge, no doubt.

The Nordic key to happiness - modest expectations?

It's worth clearing your cookies to read this Slate article:

The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness.  It’s not hygge, the welfare state, or drinking. It’s reasonable expectations.

Well, it's a silly heading:  I don't see what's "grim" about that at all.

Anyway, a few extracts:

If there has been a downturn in the hygge industry in recent years, it may be because Finland, my home country, has surpassed Denmark in the World Happiness Report four years running. Denmark occupies the third place, after Iceland, in the most recent edition, released in March, and its distance to Finland is growing. As reported by multiple media outlets, the Finnish spiritual equivalent to hygge is something far less convivial and much more difficult to pronounce: kalsarikännit, which translates as “pantsdrunk,” refers to the practice of binge drinking home alone in your underpants. If this is a secret to happy life, let’s keep it that way: a secret.

Heh.

Apparently they don't look like the happiest people:

Nobody is more skeptical than the Finns about the notion that we are the world’s happiest people. To be fair, this is hardly the only global ranking we’ve topped recently. We are totally fine with our reputation of having the best educational system (not true), lowest levels of corruption (probably), most sustainable economy (meh), and so forth. But happiest country? Give us a break. As reported by a correspondent for the Economist, when a Cabinet member of the Finnish government was introduced at an international conference as “the representative of the happiest country in the world,” he responded: “If that’s true, I’d hate to see the other nations.”

Finland hasn’t always had such a blissed out international reputation. In 1993, when I was living in New York and still fresh off the boat, 60 Minutes featured a segment on Finland, which opened with this description of Helsinki pedestrians going about their business: “This is not a state of national mourning in Finland, these are Finns in their natural state; brooding and private; grimly in touch with no one but themselves; the shyest people on earth. Depressed and proud of it.” As far as facial expressions of the Finnish people, not much has changed since then. We are still just as reserved and melancholy as before. If happiness were measured in smiles, Finnish people would be among the most miserable in the world.

Anyway, the writer thinks the reason for their apparent happiness is this:

We should not ignore expectations, the other aspect of the formula used in the World Happiness Report. Consistent with their Lutheran heritage, the Nordic countries are united in their embrace of curbed aspirations for the best possible life. This mentality is famously captured in the Law of Jante—a set of commandments believed to capture something essential about the Nordic disposition to personal success: “You’re not to think you are anything special; you’re not to imagine yourself better than we are; you’re not to think you are good at anything,” and so on. The Nordic ethos stands in particularly stark contrast to the American culture characterized by “extreme emphasis upon the accumulation of wealth as a symbol of success,” as observed by the sociologist Robert K. Merton in the 1930s.

The Nordic countries provide decent lives for their citizens and prevent them from experiencing sustained periods of material hardship. Moreover, they embrace a cultural orientation that sets realistic limits to one’s expectations for a good life. In these societies, the imaginary 10-step ladder is not so tall, the first rung is pretty high up, and the distance between the steps is relatively short. People are socialized to believe that that what they have is as good as it gets—or close enough. This mindset explains why Finns are the happiest people in the world despite living in small apartments, earning modest incomes—with even more limited purchasing power thanks to high prices and taxes—and, unlike Iceland, having never even made it to the World Cup!

But - much the same can be said of Japanese society too, I think, about people being taught not to be too ostentatious about wealth (even though they do have a bit of a brand fetish);  but it ranks, next to famously stressed out South Korea, at No. 62 on the World Happiness Report rankings for 2017 - 2019, which you can see here.  (Australia is at No. 12.  Mexico (!) is at 24, and Singapore 31.)  

So, things are always a little complicated when assessing happiness.

Kimmel and the paranoid former crackhead

I think the Jimmy Kimmel/Mike Lindell interview is well worth watching for a few reasons:

*  I had no idea about Lindell's terrible history of addiction;

*  Kimmel continues to be the surprise "who would have thought someone involved in the cringe sexism of the Man Show was actually an intelligent quasi-liberal the whole time"?   Or perhaps his politics are libertarian lite - liberal, like Will Wilkinson?   I dunno, but he certainly recognises the appalling state of the Right in the form of Trump and the Republican Party.

*  Lots of comments following the video on Youtube are praising Lindell and saying he was brave and  has largely redeemed himself as sincere.  Depends on your perspective, I suppose, because I thought it showed him as a jittery character whose belief in election fraud is, as Kimmel said, entirely explicable by residual paranoia from long time (former) use of cocaine and crack.

Youth these days

This article in The Atlantic:

The Real Reason Young Adults Seem Slow to ‘Grow Up’

It’s not a new developmental stage; it’s the economy.

is a good read, and makes an interesting case that the age at which young people move out of home and start living independently is very much determined by a nation's economic situation at the time, and that the boom times of the 1950's made it unusually easy for American youth to start marrying earlier and living away from their parents.   So kids now taking a much longer time to leave home is more a return to previous historical norms.  

Seems valid enough, although by concentrating on economics, it doesn't take into account other factors that help account for young adults staying longer with the parents.  I'm thinking of the change in attitudes to sexual relationships, whereby in the West it is now considered completely unexceptional for a single, young adult child to have their girlfriend/boyfriend either live with them in the parents house, or at least stay over.   I'd be pretty sure that before that change, moving out of home, at least to a independent single life, was often motivated by wanting an active sex life that was hidden from the parents.   (I guess it would still be a motivating factor in many cases, because even if parents shrug shoulders about their adult kids sex lives now, it's not as if all adult children want their parents around their partner, or vice versa.  But still, it certainly happens in a not insubstantial number of households, and it is perhaps hard for younger folk to appreciate how scandalous this would have been in the average, even non-religious, household before, say, the 1970's?)

 

Forensics note

Science magazine has a short article that starts:

U.S. B-movie actress Lana Clarkson was found dead on 3 February 2003. She had been shot in the mouth at close range in the California mansion of record producer Phil Spector, who was later found guilty of her murder.

In his trial, the defense alleged that because Spector’s white jacket was stained with only 18 tiny drops of blood, he could not have been the perpetrator. Clarkson had to have taken her own life, they argued, for had Spector been the shooter, he would have been covered in blood. Now, a new study showing how muzzle exhaust moves drops of flying blood may explain why they were wrong.

When a person is shot, tiny blood droplets typically spray back in the direction of the shooter, a phenomenon known as “back spatter.” Traditionally, analysts assume blood travels along straight trajectories—but the reality is more complicated, with factors like gravity and aerodynamic drag also in play.

Inspired by the mystery of the Clarkson case, Alexander Yarin, an engineer at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and colleagues set out to pin down the exact physics involved. In an indoor firing range, they shot a foam cavity filled with pig’s blood with a 0.223-caliber long rifle—and filmed the resulting spray, which resembles that released by a person when shot....

Turns out that it's complicated by the gun's own muzzle gases:

As blood droplets coming from the victim encounter a vortex going in the opposite direction, they can get swept aside or along by the gas flow. They may even end up completely reversing direction, Yarin and colleagues report today in Physics of Fluids.  ....

This means such droplets can land behind the victim, along with the forward splatter from the bullet, Yarin explains. Depending on the position of the shooter, it’s even possible for their clothing to remain almost free of bloodstains. The team also found that muzzle gases can cause flying blood droplets to break up, changing the resulting spatter patterns that forensic experts have to interpret at crime scenes.

The findings are “world class,” says Daniel Attinger, a mechanical engineer from Iowa State University and a member of the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts. Based on the work, he argues, “It would make sense to revisit criminal cases involving gunshots where the assumption of straight trajectories has been made.”

To be honest, it sounds a bit surprising that it has taken them that long to realise this.  Or maybe they  knew it was inconclusive evidence, and hence Spector was convicted despite that relative lack of blood on his clothes?

Speaking of forensics - was it a TV or movie I saw recently which made passing reference to bite pattern forensics being considered widely discredited now?   I think so, but I can't remember what it was.  I know it has been a controversial field - as the case of the terrible murder of Diedre Kennedy showed us back in the 1980's.

As a field, I do tend to worry about its reliability.

My astronaut connection - a final mention

So, Michael Collins has died:

American astronaut Michael Collins, who was part of the Apollo 11 original moon landing crew and kept the command module flying while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon, has died at the age of 90, his family said on Wednesday.

Collins had cancer. He was sometimes known as the “forgotten astronaut” because he didn’t get to land on the moon, while Armstrong and Aldrin became household names.

Time for me to mention again, for probably the third and last time, that I was once briefly in the same room as him.

I'm sure I read his book too.  He was a very modest man.  

And the Right have gaslite themselves into thinking they're following the smart one

Trump yesterday:

 Biden today:

Can't get enough Kant, too

Spotted in Kinokuniya, Sydney:

Notice the book "Kant's Humorous Writings"?   Yeah, I didn't know he told jokes or anecdotes in his lectures, but apparently he did.   I doubt they were actually hilarious, but wasn't about to spend a lot of money to find out. 

Can never get enough free will

Well, yeah, it might be going over old ground that you and I have read before, but this "long read" in The Guardian about the philosophical and scientific argument about the existence of free will is very good.   

Buddhism gets a mention too, and as it happens, I decided to start reading Karen Armstrong's 2000 biography (of sorts, given the lack of clearly authentic source material) on its founder while I was in Sydney last weekend.  (I read her book on Muhammad too, many years ago.)   Stylistically, I think she's a very good writer.   I'm not always sure that some of her points are valid, but she's a pleasure to read at all times.

Anyway, the free will article mentions Buddhism in this context:

This is what Harris means when he declares that, on close inspection, it’s not merely that free will is an illusion, but that the illusion of free will is itself an illusion: watch yourself closely, and you don’t even seem to be free. “If one pays sufficient attention,” he told me by email, “one can notice that there’s no subject in the middle of experience – there is only experience. And everything we experience simply arises on its own.” This is an idea with roots in Buddhism, and echoed by others, including the philosopher David Hume: when you look within, there’s no trace of an internal commanding officer, autonomously issuing decisions. There’s only mental activity, flowing on. Or as Arthur Rimbaud wrote, in a letter to a friend in 1871: “I am a spectator at the unfolding of my thought; I watch it, I listen to it.”

There are reasons to agree with Saul Smilansky that it might be personally and societally detrimental for too many people to start thinking in this way, even if it turns out it’s the truth. (Dennett, although he thinks we do have free will, takes a similar position, arguing that it’s morally irresponsible to promote free-will denial.)

Not sure that I have thought about this much before, but I guess you would have to say that Buddhism is the religion most consistent with the free will sceptics, or disbelievers, or whatever they like to be called.   But then again, if you go to Mahayana Buddhism, with its bodhisattvas taking the similar role of the  Catholic equivalent of the Communion of Saints, you could hardly say that it's very consistent with a lack of free will.   

Mahayana Buddhism seems more fun to me, anyway.  That's how people choose religion, no?

 

A complete and utter jerk (not to mention, danger to civil society)

Following up from last week's media attention to the fact that rich college boy Tucker made a "joke" about supporting a murderer of gay politicians,  we get this today:

 

He is just an obnoxious jerk of the highest order.
 

Still talking about Sydney

Things I still like about Sydney after all these years:

*   The antique feeling about some of the old underground subway stations in the city - like St James - with the iron rails and such like.  It reminds me of the London Underground, except not built for hobbits.  (I was surprised when I went to London that I had not known beforehand their tube trains and tunnels - or some of them, at least - seemed so narrow and small, like they were not really built for modern sized humans at all.)

*   David Jones Elizabeth Street:  not sure when it was last refurbished, but it's looking very spectacular now - it's the most perfect example of what a classic, upmarket department store should look like, if you ask me, putting even many overseas examples to shame.  Yet, you can still buy a danish in their food court for less than $5, while thinking about how you would not buy the French cheese at $170 a kg, but it's nice to know its there, for when I win Lotto. 

*  A youthful feel about its East Asian-centric multiculturalism.  No doubt this comes partly from always staying in the inner city, and Chinatown being pretty close to Town Hall and Central; but the city always feels to me not just multicultural, but to enjoy a particularly energetic, youthful sort of multiculturalism.  Melbourne feels more like old people from other countries, and any of their young are all absorbed from the age of 3 into that mind meld that makes them think AFL is the only important thing in the universe, instead of the reality that it's an eccentric local religion. 

Sydney looking pretty good

I was last in Sydney when the George Street light rail was still under its lengthy and expensive construction. But now that it's finished, George Street is looking pretty nice, and the light rail is very convenient to use:

Mind you, they're still doing something to a section of George Street down near Chinatown.  Don't know what.

I also liked the newish looking precinct near the convention centre:

That new Ribbon building will look good when finished:

And what's this public depravity happening at Circular Quay:

Adam Creighton would be ecstatic with the number of people at The Rocks yesterday:

Not where we were staying:

But a nice view of cables outside where we did stay:

Anyway, a very pleasant trip, as Sydney in good weather always is.

An Australian Colbert

So, I'm in a hotel and watching BBC World news, and this guy Aaron Heslehurst turns up with  30 business Talking Business show.

He's Australian; I've never heard of him before; and both his appearance and his, shall we say, excitable and somewhat mannered delivery reminds me very much of Stephen Colbert in his Colbert Report incarnation.

It's very odd.  Has Colbert ever noticed him?  

The technology works

I still strongly suspect that its not worth the amount of orbital space that it's taking up, but I have to admit, even with it being far from complete, the download speeds people get from Musk's Starlink satellites is pretty impressive:

 

If you can be bothered watching - he easily gets 123Mbps without fussing too much about setting up the antenna.

In Australia, it apparently costs $139 per month.  And the equipment, about $800.

Blows out our NBN satellite service out of the water, it seems. 

I still don't like Musk personally, though...

More than a touch of "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

Look, it's not that I expect indigenous people to say they are grateful for European colonisation.   Of course, their experience is considered negatively.  But does it really help the cause of modern indigenous descendants to refuse to acknowledge that some things out of  a more technologically advanced Western culture were beneficial to them (at least, once they started being treated as people)?

Dumb, unhealthy, angry.... and happy?

Some stuff on Twitter has got me thinking about that favourite topic:  How the Right Got Consumed by the Culture Wars and Went Nuts.

This, for example:

And this:

That article by Richard Hanania (who I don't know) briefly makes the point that lots of research has shown that people who say they are on the Right are happier than those on the Left.   And I used to think that made sense when I was younger - the motivation to social change that is typical of the Left seemed to me to come mainly from people from unhappy family backgrounds.  

But the typical anger profile has, in large part, flipped now.   Sure, on the Left, there's lot of angry emotion over identity politics, but not all of it is ill founded.   And comedy has moved to be completely liberal dominated.  Happy people laugh more, don't they?

I wonder - is social research into happiness (which I suspect is actually quite a slippery thing to measure accurately) lagging behind the current state of the Right?   Because you sure as hell don't get the impression from social and Right wing media that the current Trumpy/Murdoch led American Right (and those Australians who align with it) has been happy for years.   A boiling pot of resentment that their ideas are not overwhelmingly accepted (by and large) by media, academia, big business and the public - yes.   A vast echo chamber of resentment and conspiracy mongering to explain why they find they find themselves in a minority - yeah.  

I note that some on the Right who were eulogising Rush Limbaugh recently said how much humour was a part of his early career - but I suspect that in the last decade, as with Right wing media generally, the attempts at humour became less important and got pushed out by anger, resentment and conspiracy.  

So, does it come down to the question - to what degree can you be angry all the time, and still count yourself as "happy"?      

Things to ponder over...

It does look like how science fiction imagined it

It is kind of surprising that the SpaceX Starship lunar lander could, apparently, be this big, going by this NASA illustration:

It does make the future look very much like it has the size imagined by science fiction writers and illustrators of the 50's and 60's.

Mind you, the Starship does not go from Earth to lunar landing.  I don't quite understand, really:

The agency’s powerful Space Launch System rocket will launch four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft for their multi-day journey to lunar orbit. There, two crew members will transfer to the SpaceX human landing system (HLS) for the final leg of their journey to the surface of the Moon. After approximately a week exploring the surface, they will board the lander for their short trip back to orbit where they will return to Orion and their colleagues before heading back to Earth.

The firm-fixed price, milestone-based contract total award value is $2.89 billion.

 So is the gigantic lander going to be re-fuelled - how?   

Took a while for it to get there, but India and COVID is bad

I wrote this a little over a year ago:

 And now:

And:

So, the prediction in the Science article that India might reach 300 million or more cases last year appears way out; but on the other hand, if they hit and maintain 300,000 cases a day, they are going to have a couple of million added each week.  (And also, really, how accurate are case numbers from that country, anyway?   There must be many not being diagnosed.)    Not to mention the problem of variants being spread.

And in Brazil, the news is also dire, with their local strain hitting more young people than old:

 When Covid first hit Brazil last February it was, as elsewhere, considered mainly a threat to the ageing or infirm. A year later, as Brazil grapples with by far the most traumatic phase of its epidemic, a troubling trend has emerged, as intensive care units fill with younger patients such as Castro, some seemingly battling more severe forms of the disease. An unusually high number of infant fatalities has also been reported with more than 1,000 Brazilian babies dying last year compared with 43 in the US.

Brazilians have been particularly shocked by the case of Paulo Gustavo, a 42-year-old television star who has spent the past month fighting for his life in a Rio ICU despite being previously fit and healthy. Last week, the Brazilian Association of Intensive Care Medicine said that for the first time, most Covid patients in ICU were under 40 – a finding echoed by frontline doctors.....

The explanation for the generational shift remains unclear, although some suspect a highly transmissible new variant linked to the Brazilian Amazon may be partly to blame. “It’s clearly connected to the P1 variant,” said Marcos Boulos, a infectious disease specialist from the University of São Paulo who believes the virus is now both spreading faster and hitting young people harder.

Boulos said the vaccination of older Brazilians partly explained the increasing proportion of younger patients in ICU. “But there’s no doubt young people are being [physically] more affected by this new variant. It’s unquestionable.”

“Sometimes … these young people will die after just a few hours or days with very acute, severe illnesses – and you won’t find any comorbidity or factor to explain why. It’s dramatic,” added Boulos, pointing to similar suspicions that the South African variant might be affecting the young more.

Makes me despise Adam Creighton all the more.  But just seeing his face tends to have that effect on me....