Damn bacteria

In research of interest to all men of my age:

Scientists have discovered bacteria linked to aggressive prostate cancer in work hailed as a potential revolution for the prevention and treatment of the most deadly form of the disease.

Researchers led by the University of East Anglia performed sophisticated genetic analyses on the urine and prostate tissue of more than 600 men with and without prostate cancer and found five species of bacteria linked to rapid progression of the disease.

The study does not prove that the bacteria drive or exacerbate prostate cancer, but if work now under way confirms their role, researchers can develop tests to identify men most at risk and potentially find antibiotics to prevent the cancer from claiming thousands of lives each year.

Transgender in sports discussed

I ended up watching last night's episode of Insight on SBS, about the topic of transgender people in sport.

I was, of course, expecting a heavily pro-transgender slant; and certainly, there were a few transgender folk participating, but they were looking pained during most of the show because, to my surprise, it was really completely dominated by experts and (female) sports people who said yes, there is a real issue with fairness if you let transgender women who grew up as men dominate women's sport.   It was all very rationally discussed, and no shouting match about "transphobia" broke out at all.  It probably helped that it had two transgender women who were on the side of "yes, this is a problem."

I don't support unnecessarily inflammatory language on the transgender issue, but at the same time, those on the pro-transgender side of this debate are not going to win on this in the culture wars.

Long weekend report

I did very little, actually.  Good Friday, in particular, is always like the laziest public holiday on the calendar.   

It may not be a very seasonally appropriate thing, but I did finally finish reading Karen Armstrong's "biography" of Buddha.   I didn't realise that there was a (sort of) Judas figure in the story, getting upset about leadership succession plans, although this guy was more into direct action, trying to kill Buddha with a boulder and a drunk, aggressive elephant. (Road Runner cartoons came to mind when I read this.)  Anyway, the Wiki version of the longer story goes like this:

Shortly thereafter, Devadatta asked the Buddha to retire and let him take over the running of the Sangha. The Buddha retorted that he did not even let his trusted disciples Sāriputta or Moggallāna run the Sangha, much less one like him, who should be vomited like spittle, and he gave a special act of publicity about him, warning the monks that he had changed for the worse.^[10]

Seeing the danger in this, Devadatta approached Prince Ajātasattu and encouraged him to kill his Father, the good King Bimbisāra, and meanwhile he would kill the Buddha. The King found out about his plan and gave over the Kingdom into the Prince's control.

Ajātasattu then gave mercenaries to Devadatta who ordered them to kill the Buddha, and in an elaborate plan to cover his tracks he ordered other men to kill the killers, and more to kill them and so on, but when they approached the Buddha they were unable to carry out their orders, and were converted instead.

Devadatta then tried to kill the Buddha himself by throwing a rock at him from on high, while the Buddha was walking on the slopes of a mountain. As this also failed he decided to have the elephant Nāḷāgiri intoxicated and let him loose on the Buddha while he was on almsround. However, the power of the Buddha's loving-kindness overcame the elephant.

Devadatta then decided to create a schism in the order, and collected a few monk friends and demanded that the Buddha accede to the following rules for the monks: they should dwell all their lives in the forest, live entirely on alms obtained by begging, wear only robes made of discarded rags, dwell at the foot of a tree and abstain completely from fish and flesh.

The Buddha refused to make any of these compulsory, however, and Devadatta went round blaming him, saying that he was living in abundance and luxury. Devadatta then decided to create a schism and recite the training rules (pātimokkha) apart from the Buddha and his followers, with 500 newly ordained monks.

The Buddha sent his two Chief Disciples Sāriputta and Moggallāna to bring back the erring young monks. Devadatta thought they had come to join his Sangha and, asking Sāriputta to give a talk, fell asleep. Then the Chief Disciples persuaded the young monks to return to the Buddha.^[11]

The Buddha did not show any hatred or deceive, even after what Devadatta had done. Soon after, Devadatta got sick and realized that what he had done was wrong. He tried to go to the Buddha's place to apologize for what he did, but it was too late. On the way to see the Buddha, the earth sucked him into the Niraya Hell for his deeds.

 Huh.

In new recipe news:   I tried a chermoula chicken recipe pretty successfully.   Followed a version from a guy on Youtube but can't find it now.  From memory:  the marinade is about 15 g of parsley and corriander finely chopped, the flesh of a couple of small preserved lemons, four cloves of garlic minced, a couple of tablespoons (or maybe a bit more) of harissa paste, some olive oil, a teaspoon of ground cumin and ground ginger, supposed to be some saffron liquid but didn't have any, just a bit of water instead, a teaspoon or so of salt and some pepper.  Marinate the chicken.   Finely chop a coupe of onion and start cooking them in the tagine, with a bit more ginger powder.   Chicken and all marinade goes on top and cook for maybe 45 or 50 mins on low.  Add a handful of olives and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.  Cook covered for another 10 min, then take lid off and let the liquid reduce to a sauce.  Very nice.

There is also movement domestically, but I will post about that separately.

 

Philosophically amusing

This tweet, the humour of which you have to be old enough to be familiar with Columbo to get

OK, I have to expand the pics I guess:

Some in comments are disputing Kant made a mistake:

And more:

This is annoying

 

The Left and common sense, generally speaking

Allahpundit at Hot Air posts about Bill Maher and Josh Rogan (ugh) agreeing that Democrats have a "common sense" problem.   The things Maher cites are:   too much spending on the pandemic; "defund the police"; pregnant "men"; and looting is "not illegal".   

On the other hand, pro-Left people I like a lot on Twitter, like David Roberts, are continually complaining about how terrible the "two-sides" takes of mainstream media are, and yesterday he criticised the Republicans for being the ones who are obsessing about taking action to stop the tiny number of top trans sports competitors from competing.   Also, I have noticed Twitter commentary about how low Biden's approval rating is with young (under 35) Democrats, with people arguing on the one side that this proves the party needs to move Left and away from what oldies in the Party want, and others pointing out that the young don't vote much anyway, so what's the point of that.

Unfortunately, I think both sides have a point, but I do wish that the American Left could just acknowledge a few things as common sense, or "centrist" positions:

a.    allowing homeless people to camp on streets is bad for them, bad for other citizens, and should not be allowed.   Laws (and court decisions) saying otherwise and preventing them being moved on and streets cleaned, need to be changed.

b.    all theft is bad and needs to be prosecuted.

c.    the police do not need "defunding".  They need proper training.

d.    a guy with a penis and a man's build and man's voice who went through puberty and built a man's body before deciding he was really a woman, and then wants to compete and wipe the floor against all women in the sport they've been training at for years, is being a jerk.   He can call himself a woman, but if he had any decency, he wouldn't compete against them.   [And as for complaints that this happens in a tiny, tiny number of cases - yeah, that might be an argument against wasting legislative time on it, but it's not an argument against the basic breach of fairness that these cases entail.  It's like the significance of one fake tear at the end of Broadcast News - Holly Hunter was right to find that it mattered.]

I'll probably think of more things as the day progresses.

And, the usual rider:  I get annoyed with things that I think the Left are nutty about, but they pale into insignificance in comparison to the utterly globally dangerous anti-democratic and anti-science nonsense the American Right currently is unwilling to rid itself of.    This is why people like Rogan and Maher annoy me - if they had any sense of perspective, they would say something like "culture war  issues about racism and gender and sexuality and policing shouldn't be as important to voters as they are - I mean, let's face the reality, there is a large anti-democratic movement afoot in this country, dominated by conspiracy nonsense promoted by a poisonous circle jerk between Right wing media and Right wing politicians, and they're using culture war issues to their ends.   People shouldn't let them get away with that."

But no, their line is to give succour to the Christofascists by essentially arguing "well, those Lefties, they deserve to lose." 

 Update:   Actually, I thought Ross Douthat's lengthy column "How to Make Sense of the New LGBTQ Culture War" is pretty good.  Here is one section:

The concerns of some same-sex marriage advocates, meanwhile, are lucidly expressed by Jonathan Rauch in a recent essay for The American Purpose. Rauch argues that the push for gay marriage represented a triumph of moderation over radicalism within the gay community itself and worries that today’s transgender-rights activists are taking a different path.

Where the gay rights movement emphasized biological realities (“born this way,” etc.) and bourgeois aspirations (to monogamy and marriage), today’s gender-identity advocates promote “wild claims” about the social-constructedness of sex differences and dismiss any contravening evidence as “violence.” This risks backlash, it endangers all the accommodations to transgender rights that America is ready to offer — and it also arguably hurts many gay and lesbian young people, Rauch writes, since a system that encourages “tomboyish girls or effeminate boys” to “identify as the opposite sex” ends up confirming “all the hoary gender stereotypes that made generations of gay and lesbian people (and many straight people) miserable.”

And Rauch’s anxiety about gay youth here connects to the feminist concerns as well — specifically, the worry that normal anxieties of puberty, the particular challenges of girls’ mental health, are being addressed by the new theories not through a reconciliation with one’s body and biology but through an alienation from femaleness itself.

And, of course, I would put myself in the second category of possible reactions he describes to those surveys that show young people are enthusiastically now prepared to put themselves into the LGBTQ categories (although, mostly, the bi category):

The second interpretation: We shouldn’t read too much into it. This trend is probably mostly just young people being young people, exploring and experimenting and differentiating themselves from their elders. Most of the Generation Zers identifying as L.G.B.T. are calling themselves bisexual and will probably end up in straight relationships, if they aren’t in them already. Some of the young adults describing themselves as transgender or nonbinary may drift back to cisgender identities as they grow older.

So we shouldn’t freak out over their self-identification — but neither should we treat it as a definitive revelation about human nature or try to build new curriculums or impose certain rules atop a fluid and uncertain situation. Tolerance is essential; ideological enthusiasm is unnecessary.

Update 2:   I forgot to criticise Maher's criticism of the government reaction to Covid - I have argued from the start that the complexity of that event (and the ambiguity of conflicting medical evidence) should mean a great deal of charity is given to the range of government responses, within reason.  

More trans cautionary content

Just noticed this at Hot Air:

Today the LA Times published a story about transgender clinical psychologist Erica Anderson. Anderson is not only trans herself, she’s helped hundreds of teens who wanted to transition but now she’s publicly questioned whether or not some of the surge of teens announcing they are trans is in fact the result of influence by other teens.

She sounds quite sensible in her commentary.

As millions of teenagers across the U.S. went into quarantine in 2020, Anderson found herself meeting more and more parents who were startled when their children came out as trans. The UC San Francisco adolescent gender center where she worked saw a total of 373 new patients last year — up from 162 in 2019.

The teens tended to tell similar stories: They were in online school, had a lot of time on their hands and were spending more time on social media. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, and even video games, allowed teens to craft virtual identities that they could then try out in the real world.

Online, a stream of transgender influencers and activists told teens that if they felt uncomfortable with their bodies, or didn’t fit in, maybe they were trans. Some coached kids on how to bind their breasts, how to change their name and pronouns at school, how to push their parents for testosterone.

“To flatly say there couldn’t be any social influence in formation of gender identity flies in the face of reality,” Anderson said. “Teenagers influence each other.”

The big question of the day

The New York Times asks:

Is Nose Hair Essential to Fighting Off Colds and Other Viral Illnesses?

Expert advice on whether trimming or waxing your nose hairs might increase the risk of respiratory infections.

Short answer:  no one knows.   

A better take than that held by conservative Catholics

 

George's comment translates to "will she return the money now", as I gather she has been seen as very Putin friendly before.

Yet it's still tragic to see more moral clarity from this dubious character than that coming from the likes of Dover Beach and his New Catallaxy blog.   The common theme there is akin to the "leave Britney alone" meme:  his version is "But won't anyone think of poor Russia?".

He's an utter disgrace.   Monty used to think he could be reasoned with.

A modest trans suggestion

Oddly, I haven't noticed any Twitter meltdown over a trans cautionary opinion piece in Washington Post - but the article has attracted 2,669 comments so far.  Maybe the twitter reaction is there and I just haven't noticed it.

There was a Twitter trans meltdown over what I thought was a carefully argued opinion piece in The Age last week by Julie Szego.   It was, according to most people tweeting about it, another "anti-trans" piece.

Anyway, the Washington Post article in particular, about a guy who now thinks he probably transitioned prematurely at age 19, and was under the influence of trans people who "affirmed" his decision in on line chat rooms, made me wonder whether it would be worthwhile getting the new world of psychedelic psychotherapy involved for people with gender dysphoria.   

I mean, the apparent benefit of psychedelic psychotherapies is supposed to be along the lines of allowing the mind to re-set itself - to see things from a new perspective from that ingrained by past experience and ways of thinking.   Sounds to me like something which may cause re-assessment of anxiety over the nature of the body one finds oneself living in.

In fact, someone wrote an article about the potential use of this in 2019, which I have read before (and maybe I have already referred to it in a post, but I can't find it right now.)    The author only talks about it in a "gender affirming" context - in other words, it's in no way suggesting that it would done in a context of dissuading someone from transitioning.  But the second paragraph here does seem a tad ambiguous:

Psychedelic therapy can reduce identity threat and decrease its negative impact by allowing the client to heal and release internalized transphobia. MDMA is thought to support clients in working through traumatic content by increasing one’s ability to process using the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that produces higher level reasoning. Simultaneously, MDMA suppresses activity in the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, which is overly activated in people suffering from PTSD. Psychologically, the Model of Gender Affirmation is a framework for conceptualizing transgender people’s experiences of this healing process and its psychological and behavioral consequences (Sevelius, 2013). According to the theory, we can improve health outcomes for transgender people by increasing access to gender affirmation and/or reducing the need for gender affirmation from others, thereby decreasing identity threat. Psychedelic therapy has the potential to do both.  

With psychedelic therapy, we can increase access to gender affirmation in multiple ways. Ideally, the client experiences connection and affirmation from the therapists. The client may experience affirmation of themselves, as MDMA is known to increase one’s self-compassion and unconditional self-love. Psychedelic therapy that results in a mystical or unity experience can result in a sense of “divine blessing”, described as the experience of having God or one’s higher power communicate affirmation of the highest order (Eichenbaum, 2018). Overall, MDMA-assisted therapy can increase one’s sense of trust and connection, and for trans and gender diverse people who describe experiences of feeling like an outsider, these medicines may provide a pathway for reconnecting with oneself and others. In addition to increasing access to gender affirmation, psychedelic therapy may also reduce the need for gender affirmation from others. As a client experiences renewed connection with their body and self-compassion, they often come away with a visceral understanding that true affirmation must first come from within.

Why shouldn't some psychedelic form of "gender affirmation" end up working in favour of affirming the original gender?   At least sometimes.  

So yeah, seems to me that making this form of psychotherapy available to those who think all their problems are due to gender issues might be useful -  before they make the transition.   

Update:  Reading some more articles on pro-psychedelic sites, such as this one, it would seem that the general expectation is that tripping will usual affirm their "true", other gender identity, rather than making them realise that their body is not the "wrong" one.   And maybe that's right - I mean, it's a given that people who think they are transgender already think their real identity is buried inside them, so giving them a therapy that is (supposedly) going to given them better insight into their inner mind might just be a more usually a case of confirming what they are already primed to believe.   

I guess you would have to conduct the research to see if that's the case, or not.

 

 

A question for the future historians

One thing that keeps striking me as really odd is the way the USA and China both went basically nuts at pretty much the same time:

What I don't get is the degree to which China's inwards turn was a response to Trumpian "America First" policies, and how much was probably going to happen anyway.   

I mean, 6 or so years ago and I would have been happy to take one of the cheap package holidays Qantas had at that time, split between Shanghai and Beijing.

Now, it's hard to envisage the place becoming sane enough again within the next 6 years so as to make it a promising tourist destination.         

A good analogy, or not?

An interesting thread noticed on Twitter:

The best photos

I don't know where the photos might have first appeared, but I saw them on this tweet, and they are causing much amusement across the land, I'm sure:

Appalling

I'm feeling a bit guilty about saying Disney probably deserves some "woke" pushback, because, as with everything in the culture wars, the violent minded conspiracy world of the Right is a much, much bigger and more serious problem:

 

Phil has few fans

 

Wondering about anti-abortion laws

Is it just me, or does it seem to others too that the various US state's efforts to make abortion illegal (or at least, extremely restricted) is having less national pushback than might have been expected?   I mean, as someone who was around when Roe V Wade made it a big issue, I seem to recall that there was a really concerted cultural effort towards legalisation, with the topic frequently covered in liberal-sympathetic TV shows and movies as well as current affairs programs.  I am a bit surprised that we are not witnessing anything similar in scale in  response to the current situation. 

I suspect, but have never seen discussed, that a large part of the reason for this might be the "abortion pill"  and the ease with which it can be provided, possibly across State lines.   Maybe it is partly due to better use of contraception too, as well as teenagers delaying the start of a sex life?   

Or is it that we are just waiting to see some bad medical outcomes as a result of lack of abortion services, and then we will see media stories in which blame for deaths will be able to be directly related to these laws?   

It's a curious situation...

It is a big worry

The New York Times has an article about this very worrying aspect of current American politics:

The Growing Religious Fervor in the American Right: ‘This Is a Jesus Movement’

Rituals of Christian worship have become embedded in conservative rallies, as praise music and prayer blend with political anger over vaccines and the 2020 election.

 As it says:

The Christian right has been intertwined with American conservatism for decades, culminating in the Trump era. And elements of Christian culture have long been present at political rallies. But worship, a sacred act showing devotion to God expressed through movement, song or prayer, was largely reserved for church. Now, many believers are importing their worship of God, with all its intensity, emotion and ambitions, to their political life....

At a Trump rally in Michigan last weekend, a local evangelist offered a prayer that stated, “Father in heaven, we firmly believe that Donald Trump is the current and true president of the United States.” He prayed “in Jesus’ name” that precinct delegates at the upcoming Michigan Republican Party convention would support Trump-endorsed candidates, whose names he listed to the crowd. “In Jesus’ name,” the crowd cheered back.

The infusion of explicitly religious fervor — much of it rooted in the charismatic tradition, which emphasizes the power of the Holy Spirit — into the right-wing movement is changing the atmosphere of events and rallies, many of which feature Christian symbols and rituals, especially praise music.

“What is refreshing for me is, this isn’t at all related to church, but we are talking about God,” said Patty Castillo Porter, who attended the Phoenix event. She is an accountant and officer with a local Republican committee to represent “the voice of the Grassroots/America First posse,” and said she loved meeting so many Christians at the rallies she attends to protest election results, border policy or Covid mandates.

“Now God is relevant,” she said. “You name it, God is there, because people know you can’t trust your politicians, you can’t trust your sheriffs, you can’t trust law enforcement. The only one you can trust is God right now.”

And the deep irony that this movement has flourished behind the most clearly phoney Christian President, ever.

 

 

 

Canadians are different

I wouldn't have expected that local (and state) government in Vancouver would have such a very relaxed attitude to the retailing of magic mushrooms from prominent shops, but apparently they do:

 

Call me clueless

What's the bet that this guy is blitzing his school studies?   Talk about your perfect fit for the "Asian student over-achiever" category.  A very likeable performance, though:

 

Is Disney really keeping anyone happy these days?

It does feel a bit awkward, not feeling like I can really take a clear side on the culture wars engulfing Disney and the American Right.

Republicans are, of course, in the midst of a moral panic for political purposes, and they are an awful, awful party at the moment.   On the other hand, I don't think I have felt very sympathetic to Disney ever since Frozen indicated a clear change to an essentially anti-male perspective in their new stories.  If the company doesn't care to tell stories where relationships with men can work, I think they can expect a bit of a backlash from men who think about what they are watching.  I did complain before about the deliberate massive increase in female roles in the new Star Wars trilogy too - the last of which I still haven't bothered to watch.  (I don't mind a female being the lead protagonist - but it seemed the entire universe was under new, female, management, with no explanation given as to why.)

And just as the Star Wars universe has long lost its interest for me (nothing Star Wars on Disney + impresses me much, either), I have a hunch that the company may have more limited success in the next wave of Marvel movies and streaming content too.   

I've also noticed how Youtube is full of videos complaining about the trajectory of the theme parks - both in cost and ideas.   Their whole "interactive" Star War or Marvel areas of the parks look really underwhelming and cheesy to me.   And the very expensive hotel that is supposed to be like a star cruiser in which you partake in a story - I expect it will fail spectacularly.  (Oh, and they chose to pin hopes on new Avatar movies being successful too - brave, very brave.)

Am I just getting old?   Maybe - but as I say, dissatisfaction with the company and its entertainment choices seems to be shared pretty broadly at the moment, and not just from the Right.   It has a feeling of a company that has lost its way, as it has in the past, and is now pumping vast amounts of money into story worlds which I really don't think have the cultural "legs" that the company thinks they have.   

I know it's not going to back to what it was in the past - and not every story has to end with a successful heterosexual romance.   But it does feel to me to be making poor choices in so many areas at the moment.  

I hesitate to say it - I really do - but I guess what I am saying is that I think the company does deserve some anti-woke pushback; and even apart from that, it's making some really poor decisions as to stories, and story universes, they think they can make "stick" with the public.

This is just delightful

Go on.  Watch the happy life story of Ke Huy Quan (Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) in this interview with Jimmy Kimmel.  

Delightfully, he still sounds like he did as a 12 year old.   (I would have thought he was a bit younger in the movie, but Asians and their youthful appearance, I guess.)

 

Stalin stories

From a John Gray review of a book about Stalin's reading habits:

Stalin’s Library is an account of the dictator’s intellectual and political development, but the core of the book is a long chapter detailing his pometki – the markings he made in the volumes he read. Quite often these were expletives. “Piss off”, “scumbag” and “ha ha” were some of his favourites. The significance of these markings – and the chief value of Roberts’ book – is in what they tell us of the workings of Stalin’s mind.

Actually, he sounds like someone who comments at the old or new Catallaxy blogs.  

Some examples of his notations:

 Stalin borrowed from the Lenin Library, and failed to return, a Russian edition of the memoirs of the “Iron Chancellor”, Otto von Bismarck. In the introduction, written by a historian, Stalin underlined the observation that Bismarck always warned against Germany becoming involved in a two-front war against Russia and Western powers. In the margin he wrote, “Don’t frighten Hitler.” In a translation of the memoirs of a British diplomat, he highlighted Edward Gibbon’s statement that the Romans believed troops should fear their own officers more than the enemy.

Stalin was very interested in linguistics, apparently:

In linguistics, Stalin argued that languages were not class-based but ethnic and national in their origins. In time they would meld into a universal language, but that would happen only in a distant future when socialism had triumphed everywhere. In his role as what Roberts calls “editor-in-chief of the USSR”, Stalin edited articles on linguistics for publication in Pravda, as well as contributing to the paper himself. He criticised sharply the work of the Anglo-Georgian theorist Nikolai Marr (1865-1934) on the grounds that he adopted a “cosmopolitan” viewpoint that failed to respect national languages. 

And he really, really hated the "cosmopolitan" nature of the Esperanto movement:

Roberts praises Stalin’s “interpolations” in the linguistics debate as “a masterclass in clear thinking and common sense”. Maybe so, but Roberts tells us nothing of Stalin’s persecution of the clearest expression of cosmopolitanism in linguistics, the Esperanto movement. In 1925, one of the leading Esperantists, Alexander Postnikov, was executed after having been accused of spying. In 1936 there were mass arrests, with hundreds of members of Esperanto associations sentenced to long periods of exile. Leaders of the movement were shot, and it ceased to exist in the Soviet Union.

Well, I think we can safely say there would have none of the decades' long "phonics versus whole language" debate in Australia or the US if either had a leader like JS.

And while the stories of Stalin's cruelty are many, this one is especially mean:

The manner in which he orchestrated the execution of Nikolai Bukharin is revealing. Before his show trial, in which he was accused of plotting to assassinate Lenin and Stalin, Bukharin wrote to Stalin begging to be executed by poison rather than by a bullet in the back of the head. In response, according to a report by a former secret service officer cited by one of Bukharin’s biographers, he was given a chair so he could sit and watch as 17 of his co-defendants were shot, one by one, until his time came. Bukharin’s fear and horror were multiplied many times over. There can be no doubt that the proceedings were scripted by Stalin. This was not the instrumental savagery of a Machiavellian despot aiming to terrify the population into obedience. A gruesome performance enacted in secret, it was calculated cruelty for its own sake.

Gray also notes this:

Why so many intellectuals glorified Stalin is a nice question. Part of the reason must be that Stalin was himself an intellectual. During the Second World War he enjoyed mass popularity in Britain, where he was feted as “good old Joe”. But the cult of Stalin in the West was the work of intellectuals who saw in him what they would like to be themselves: leaders with the power to reconstruct society on the basis of their ideas. HG Wells, Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and others revered Stalin for this reason. Writing in the Thirties, the French poet and essayist Paul Valéry observed that “the mere notion that the life of men could be organised on a collective plan is enough to give birth to the idea of dictatorship”. More than communism, it was the dream of overseeing a social order they had constructed that attracted intellectuals to Stalin.

Homeless in America

I thought this opinion piece in the Washington Post, criticising advocates for the homeless as often letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, was well worth reading.  Los Angeles is about to try to end one particular encampment by offering them "tiny homes", but that doesn't keep everyone happy:

Despite the obvious benefits of getting people out of the cold (or heat), some homeless advocates want to hold out. This temporary housing, they say, distracts attention and funds away from long-term solutions. The city shouldn’t take apart encampments, some argue, but do more to make them sanitary. Critics also fear the portable homes will turn into slum-like housing, a modular twist on single-room occupancy units that once dotted urban skid rows, temporary in name only.

Several advocates have interrupted events such as mayoral forums and civic ribbon-cutting ceremonies in recent weeks, sometimes even cursing and hurling insults. Some have claimed — ridiculously — that because the temporary shelters enforce curfews and other rules, they amount to “carceral” conditions.

 The scale of the problem:

More than 40,000 people live on the streets of Los Angeles, according to data from January 2020, with another 25,000 or so in Los Angeles County as a whole. They are a sizable chunk of California’s more than 160,000 homeless people, a segment of the population whose struggles became more visible with the pandemic. Most desperately need some kind of help. A 2019 Los Angeles Times analysis of county data found that two-thirds suffered from mental illness or addiction. Others, such as Ramirez, are unable to keep up with L.A.’s soaring housing costs.

Yes, how you are supposed to deal with homeless folk while they are in the grip of chronic drug addiction/mental illness does seem quite the challenge: but surely just letting them live on the street in shanty encampments, whether or not they have a toilet to poop in, is wildly unlikely to be the solution.

Someone in comments makes the point that that is has long been the problem with homelessness in the US:

A 2019 Los Angeles Times analysis of county data found that two-thirds suffered from mental illness or addiction. Others, such as Ramirez, are unable to keep up with L.A.’s soaring housing costs.

It has pretty much always been thus. In the 1970s, those studying the issue of homelessness found that (roughly) a third of the homeless were mentally ill, about a third were operating with chronic drug/alcohol impairment, and and about a third were folks who were basically stable but something had come up that knocked them out of balance.

Obviously there's some cross-over among the groups, but that last group is by far the easiest to deal with. With some targeted assistance, they can generally get themselves back onto a fairly even keel. The first two groups need MUCH more active support systems.

How culture warriors cope when christo-fascists don't seem nice after all

This sad sack of a culture war conservative has been running "be wary of anti-Russian propaganda" for the whole of the Ukraine invasion:

Of course, there is pro-Ukraine propaganda around, there's no denying that; but the odds of dead civilians on the street being due to other Ukrainians would have to rank pretty low.

Overall, the sense of disappointment about the increasing difficulty of looking up to Putin as a culture war hero has been palpable.    

Low islands

This video from CNA about how the Maldives are dealing with sea level rise was quite interesting. I was  surprised at how heavily built on some islands are, despite their "barely above sea level" status.  I was also amused by the activist at the end who thought part of the answer was to learn to love the ocean, not fear it.   I guess if that's all that you will be living on in 100 years, that might be a tactic.  

Stupid watch

 

No Power movie

I had grave doubts I would like it, but I watched The Power of the Dog on the weekend anyway.

It confirmed my suspicions that Jane Campion is probably the most over-rated director of my lifetime - as far as I can tell, she wins awards for making dark, feminist, "outsider" stories (featuring sexual tension) that don't shy away from male nudity.   It's a very specific genre.   [Insert eye-roll emoji here.]

There are several problematic things about the film, all of which are covered well on any site which allows public comments.  I think my main objection is the lack of subtlety - the "problem" with the main character is telegraphed from early on, and it's then dealt with in increasingly obvious (and actually laughably unsubtle) ways in both dialogue and action.  And, to be honest, we don't really understand any other character at all well.  Why the new wife freaks out so early about her new household arrangements is never really made clear.  

It does have "liberal Hollywood award bait" written all over it, though.   It's just that I reckon there's no way it will have legs in cinematic history.

Update:  she is not without her high profile critics.  Philip Adams hates The Piano, for example.  And when an ABC breakfast host (Michael Rowland) says he couldn't stick with the Power movie, you know it's not just some Adam's personal grudge - her liberal credentials are just not enough for some even in ABC land. 

Update 2:  as I have said, there are plenty of people who don't like the film; mainly audience members, not professional critics.  But one critic did write, in a spoiler full review:

This is a serious movie for serious people, but it leans so hard into its seriousness that it almost emerges out the other side as camp.

The Earth seems kinda lucky

There's a really good article in Science talking about the Earth's inner core which starts:

Earth’s magnetic field, nearly as old as the planet itself, protects life from damaging space radiation. But 565 million years ago, the field was sputtering, dropping to 10% of today’s strength, according to a recent discovery. Then, almost miraculously, over the course of just a few tens of millions of years, it regained its strength—just in time for the sudden profusion of complex multicellular life known as the Cambrian explosion.

What could have caused the rapid revival? Increasingly, scientists believe it was the birth of Earth’s inner core, a sphere of solid iron that sits within the molten outer core, where churning metal generates the planet’s magnetic field. Once the inner core was born, possibly 4 billion years after the planet itself, its treelike growth—accreting a few millimeters per year at its surface—would have turbocharged motions in the outer core, reviving the faltering magnetic field and renewing the protective shield for life. “The inner core regenerated Earth’s magnetic field at a really interesting time in evolution,” says John Tarduno, a geophysicist at the University of Rochester. “What would have happened if it didn’t form?”

Indeed.  Is it possible that the answer to the Fermi paradox is that, while there may be plenty of planets rolling around the universe, few of them get or keep the type of protective magnetic field that Earth developed, pretty much at the right time?  

Other snippets from the article:

The ancients thought Earth’s center was hollow: the home of Hades or hellfire, or a realm of tunnels that heated ocean waters. Later, following erroneous density estimates of the Moon and Earth by Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley suggested in 1686 that Earth was a series of nested shells surrounding a spinning sphere that drove the magnetism witnessed at the surface.

Edmond was a bit ahead of his time.

Here's an illustration from it:

And more about the lucky timing of the revival of the magnetic field, due to the inner core forming:

All this complexity appears to be geologically recent. Scientists once placed the inner core’s birth back near the planet’s formation. But a decade ago, researchers found, using diamond anvils at outer core conditions, that iron conducts heat at least twice as fast as previously thought. Cooling drives the growth of the inner core, so the rapid heat loss combined with the inner core’s current size meant it was unlikely to have formed more than 1 billion years ago, and more than likely came even later. “There’s no way around a relatively recent appearance of the inner core,” says Bruce Buffett, a geodynamicist at UC Berkeley.

Tarduno realized rocks from the time might record the dramatic magnetic field changes expected at the inner core’s birth. Until recently, the paleomagnetic data from 600 million to 1 billion years ago were sparse. So Tarduno went searching for rocks of the right age containing tiny, needle-shaped crystals of the mineral titanomagnetite, which record the magnetic field’s strength at the time of their crystallization. In a 565-million-year-old volcanic formation on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, his team found the crystals—and convincing evidence that the magnetic field of the time was one-tenth the present day strength, they reported in 2019. The fragility of the field at the time has since been confirmed by multiple studies.

It was probably a sign that rapid heat loss from the outer core was weakening the convective motions that generate the magnetic field, says Peter Driscoll, a geodynamicist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “The dynamo could have been close to dying,” he says. Its death could have left Earth’s developing life—which mostly lived in the ocean as microbes and protojellyfish—exposed to far more radiation from solar flares. In Earth’s atmosphere, where oxygen levels were rising, the increased radiation could have ionized some of this oxygen, allowing it to escape to space and depleting a valuable resource for life, Tarduno says. “The potential for loss was gaining.”

Just 30 million years later, the tide had turned in favor of life. Tarduno’s team went to quarries and roadcuts in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma and harvested 532-million-year-old volcanic rocks. After analyzing the field strength frozen in the tiny magnetic needles, they found that its intensity had already jumped to 70% of present values, they reported at the AGU meeting. “That kind of nails it now,” Tarduno says. He credits the growth of the inner core for the field jump, which he says is “the true signature of inner core nucleation.”

Around the same time, life experienced its own revolution: the Cambrian explosion, the rapid diversification of life that gave rise to most animal groups and eventually led to the first land animals, protomillipedes that ventured onto land some 425 million years ago.

It just may be that the clement world they found owes much to the inner iron planet we’ll never see, 5000 kilometers below.

Huh.

About the Oscars more generally...

I didn't watch all of the Oscars this year, and I'm actually rather tired of the (annual) "why the show doesn't work anymore" analysis.   But I will add my two cents worth:

*    the redesign to have the nominees sitting at tables instead of rows of seats made it look cheaper and riper for trouble - even if the guests were not being served drinks and food, like at the Golden Globes or the (ugh) Logies.   Ironically, it was the ease with which this made getting to the stage which probably contributed to Will Smith doing his slap - if he had to get past a few sets of knees while sitting in a row he might not have bothered.

*   it really did seem very, um, black, this year, even apart from the Smith incident.   The "diversity is good and needs to be celebrated" theme - which has run for many years, I guess - does now seem to me to be getting a tad OTT.   

*   stars and celebrities have always been not necessarily the sharpest, and its true that social media now means we can now learn directly about some of their dumber views and sometimes sordid personal lives.  But before social media, there were gossip and movie magazines which gave us some insight.   A good performance in a movie remains a good performance, regardless of dumb or nutty personal views.

*   basically, the world is in a funk due to a multitude of issues and I guess we shouldn't be surprised if this spills over into everything.  

On a related Hollywood note:  lots of people this week are feeling sorry for Bruce Willis, and sure, it's sad to hear of anyone getting that type of disease.  But I thought his career followed a really remarkable trajectory of downwards likeability in the roles he chose.  He seemed a particularly embittered man after breaking up with Demi Moore - I still remember an interview show he did with Bob Geldorf as another guest, in which he basically said all relationships end in pain and unhappiness, so he was never going to have another, or something like that.

 

Recurring dream analysis needed

Years ago (gosh - 2006!), I posted about having recurring "I can levitate and I can prove it" dreams, in which I was not only thrilled that I could levitate, but I was also taking steps to prove to people it wasn't just a dream, only to wake up to the obvious disappointment.

This morning, it occurred to me that over the last year or so, I seem to be having a lot of spooky, dark, possibly haunted, house dreams.   Last night, I was in one in which a new family was living, and I was staying with them, after having sold the mansion to them because it was huge and creepy and empty at night, and I felt sure it was probably haunted.   As it turned out, they were travelling somewhere and it looked like I was being left alone in the house again, with considerable misgivings.  

I haven't even been watching any ghost or haunted house movies for a long time.   I do like the genre, when well done, but it sometimes feels that it's sort of got to the point where it's all been done as well as it can.   Although it's a few years ago that I watched it, I still think the best spooky movie I have seen - possibly ever - might be The Orphanage.  

Incidentally, I have often mentioned to my daughter, when we are looking at some huge mansion style residence either in real life or on Youtube, that I don't know I would want to live in a house so big that it could be being broken into at one end, and you would never know it from the other, because of the sheer distance involved.   (I know that common thieves will walk into even modest sized houses with unwisely unlocked doors and quietly take keys and stuff - I have an acquaintance to whom that happened recently, as it happens.  But I don't like the idea that something really bad could happen in one end of a house, and barely be heard from the other.)

Anyway, I don't know why haunted house dreams seem a popular feature in my sleeping brain lately.