More mystery needed

About a week ago, Noah Smith tweeted a little nostalgically about this:

...and I am also sympathetic to the view that it's a little sad that there seems less mystery around lately.  Yes, I know, so much of it was silly, but as someone said in response, it was a bit of an early education in empiricism to read debunking books on the likes of von Daniken and the Bermuda Triangle.   With UFOs, though, I was never satisfied with the debunking efforts, and while Hynek may have been gullible about some cases, I always found his books pretty persuasive.   

On the definite downside in the current mystery Noosphere:  it seems that terrible, cheap and trashy American "ghost hunter" reality shows have really killed the credibility of ghosts and haunting stories.   (I know these shows have never been really popular in Australia, but I see bits of them on Youtube and elsewhere, and they are awful.  American cable TV still seems to have a lot more space to fill up with trash than we do in Australia.)  Same for bad shows about celebrity mediums.   I haven't seen a medium make a convincing looking "hit" with a reader for a long, long time.

And it's not just TV or Youtube:  it seems that I haven't even read a good first hand account of any ghost or mediumship story in an online newspaper or magazine for a very long time.   

This is a real pity.   I love a good story of that kind from a person who found it unexpected and hard to explain.   But you just get the feeling lately that the souls of the departed may be too depressed by all the fakery going on that they can't bother appearing to anyone anymore!

On the upside, of course, we have seen a real and major revival of UFO speculation, with the US Navy story which, I admit, is very cool and interesting.   Of course, drones and Starlink launches are making for many, many fake events, but there still is enough real mystery about the military related events to keep a good level of excitement there.  And revisiting some older cases is still pretty interesting.

I also somehow recently again came across this story from 2018, which I don't think I have mentioned before.   It's hard to believe, but it is seems it is still possible for a large white jet aircraft to be flying over California and Oregon and to have no one know where it ended up.  (It was tracked on radar, had no transponder working, was sighted by commercial pilots at some distance, and F 15s were sent up to try to identify it.)   I mean, really:  how is that possible that they lost track of it.  But it appears they did.  

One other persistent mystery, although again it is more of a technological than a paranormal one, is the Havana syndrome.  I don't think I have ever gotten around to commenting on it, but I saw a clip this weekend of a doctor explaining what happened to him when he visited Cuba, and again it's a case of a first hand account by a credible sounding person being surprisingly convincing.   I am inclined to think that there is a real phenomena there. 

Update:   I suppose the better heading for the post might be "Paranormal mystery down; technological mystery up".  

While I do like technological mystery, paranormal ones have always struck me as having potential to be truly revolutionary.   I mean, convincing proof of an afterlife, or even ESP, would blow the current state of scientific materialism out of the water; proof of observation by alien UFOs - not at all, really.  Hence I am a little disappointed if evidence for paranormal events seems to be fading. 

I think I would pass on being the first to try this...

Odd headline from Science magazine:

RoboCap: Robotic mucus-clearing capsule for enhanced drug delivery in the gastrointestinal tract 

The story:

Here, we describe the development of the RoboCap, an orally ingestible robotic drug delivery device that locally clears the mucus layer, enhances mixing, and topically deposits the drug payload to enhance drug absorption (Movie 1). The RoboCap’s rotational and churning movements are generated by surface features designed to interact directly with small intestinal (SI) plicae, villi, and mucus. We hypothesize that drug bioavailability will be significantly greater when delivered with the RoboCap compared with standard oral delivery. We test the efficacy of the RoboCap in delivering two model peptide drugs, vancomycin and insulin, through Franz cell diffusion and in vivo testing in swine.

There is a video embedded in the article which I can't copy, but the commentary to it sometimes strikes me as inadvertently funny.

Oh, another unhappy poet

Put this in the drawer marked "Reasons all parents of teenagers should be happy if their child says they don't have any interest in writing poetry":  a review of a new book about TS Eliot enlightens me about his unhappy personal life.   Sure, sure, there must have been happy famous poets - just that they seem to be in the serious minority:

In 1915 Eliot proposed to Vivien Haigh-Wood, partly out of desire for sexual experience, which he was too shy to seek in other ways. Following “the awful daring of a moment’s surrender/Which an age of prudence can never retract,” the young poet found himself shackled to a needy, fragile woman he grew to dislike, then pity and finally loathe. He would turn for love and sympathetic understanding elsewhere....

This second half of Crawford’s biography begins with a brief account of Eliot’s short-lived, unsatisfactory affair with the rich, notoriously promiscuous Nancy Cunard. Soon, though, this unhappy husband found his thoughts returning to the girl he had left behind in America, Emily Hale. In due course, Eliot and Hale embarked on an intense correspondence that would continue for more than 20 years. Any guise of mere friendship was soon abandoned: “I would literally give my eyesight to be able to marry you. … If I ever am free I shall ask you to marry me.”  ...

His eventual commitment to an exceptionally austere Anglicanism revolutionized Eliot’s later life but ruined Hale’s. The bonds of matrimony, he repeatedly told her, were sacrosanct. There could be no divorce. Nonetheless, the two would meet occasionally during the interwar years — both in America and in England — for what seem to have been afternoons of decorous yearning. Hale would long cherish the remembrance of their few kisses ...

Both Vivien and Eliot almost continually suffered from an array of illnesses. Hers included intestinal inflammation, shortness of breath, influenza, shingles, emotional and mental instability, and drastic weight loss — at one point she was down to 80 pounds — while Eliot ran his wife a respectable second with recurrent colds, bronchial trouble, seriously decayed teeth (five were extracted on one dental visit), a hernia that required a truss, surgery on his finger and frequent periods of nervous exhaustion. He also drank impressively, as many as five gin drinks during dinner...

Crawford estimates that in 1925 alone the couple spent a third of their income on doctors, medicines, and stays in hospitals or sanatoria. During the ’30s, Eliot arranged for the increasingly troubled Vivien — at one point he wondered if she might be suffering from “demonic possession” — to be cared for in various rest homes, and in 1938 he signed papers committing her to an asylum. With typical Prufrockian cowardice, he did this by letter while out of the country. He never saw her again....

Then, get this!:

...in 1947, Vivien died. At this point the now-free Eliot suddenly recoiled at the prospect of actually marrying Hale, to whom he wrote, “I cannot, cannot, start life again, and adapt myself (which means not merely one moment, but a perpetual adaptation for the rest of life) to any other person.” Hale was crushed but hoped he’d change his mind.

He went on, at age 68, to do this, after lodging with " wheelchair-bound bibliophile John Hayward."

Eliot’s bedroom was flamboyantly ascetic: a single bed, an ebony crucifix, a bare lightbulb hanging from a chain. Very early one morning in 1957, though, Hayward’s “lodger” announced — without warning, through a letter — that he wouldn’t be back the next day or, indeed, ever. The 68-year-old Eliot had proposed — via letter! — to his adoring 30-year-old secretary, Valerie Fletcher, and been accepted. In due course, Hale received her own letter, disclosing this ultimate betrayal. For the final years of his life Eliot was soppily besotted with his new young bride, and the two grew inseparable. He died in 1965 at age 76.

Sounds quite the cad.

How's the current Russian holy war going

Of course, it was utterly predictable:   Putin would have know that if he brought transexualism into his ranty "Russia will rise again against the evil and corrupt West" speech justifying the invasion of Ukraine, American and Australian Right wing culture war reactionaries would be impressed with that, and ignore broader matters like, you know, how wars of conquest should no longer be a thing.  And sure enough, the disgusting and madly ignorant (of anything other than arcane Catholic history) Currency Lad could not resist but repeat Putin's words with approval.

He might, if he had any credibility as a Catholic at all, question the issue of how a key figure of the Russian Orthodox Church has tried to turn it into a Holy War - promising that soldiers killed on the battlefield of Russian expansionism would automatically have their sins forgiven.    And I see there was a rally in Moscow (with a bussed in crowd, but still) which featured this rally cry:

I would have thought a Catholic should have concerns about this, but you know, as long as Putin joins in with the moral panic about transgenderism*, all is forgiven.  Or at least, not worth making a song and dance about.

 

[* an issue on which it is possible to believe - as I do - that there are nutty and unreasonable pro-trans activists, and conservatives who have taken up the issue in true "moral panic" style that sounds at times as if they think kids are at risk of being put under the knife even without consent.]

Confucius is (literally) big in China, again

As the dear reader may know, I like both big statues and watching clips from CGTN to keep on top of what is "in" with the  Chinese government at the moment, hence this recent clip of a Confucian centre at his birthplace caught my eye:

 

(And, seriously, once again I find myself wishing China had a more "normal" regime to which Westerners could feel safe visiting, because it's clear there are many, many awesome looking places to see. That library looks fantastic, although I doubt it caters to English readers.)

I thought that this video might have appeared because the statue, or accompanying centre, was new; but I see online that the statue (if not the whole centre) was opened 6 years ago.  I must have missed that.

CGTN has lots of videos up endorsing the philosopher, including a stream of the recent, annual, "Grand Ceremony of Worship of Confucius" featuring lots of costume and dance and a precision that makes you worry for the wellbeing of anyone who might make a mistake. 

Anyhow, this got me thinking that I was pretty sure Confucianism was on the outer for quite a while in China, but clearly the Party has revised its view of him.  I could watch a CGTN produced forum  discussion about this*, but instead, I went to extremely erudite Religion for Breakfast channel to watch his video the Confucian revival:

 Well worth watching, as is virtually  every single video he puts out.  My only complaint is that sometimes I think his delivery is so rapid and dense, I can tell I won't remember much of it, as it is too fast to process.

 

*  I haven't watched much of it, except I am amused to see it does say the worship ceremony has it origins from the 1980's! 

Their conspiracy paranoia makes them a danger

Update:  Sharlet later deleted the Tweet, explaining that he was being targeted by morons saying "if you're against capital punishment for pedophiles, you must be one."  

Makes the wingnut theory look rather improbable

Noted on Axios:

NATO formally labeled the mysterious leaks in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines detected earlier this week the result of deliberate sabotage and warned that such attacks would be met with a collective response from the organization.

Driving the news: "All currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage," the North Atlantic Council said in a press release Thursday.

    "Any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response," the statement added.

    "NATO is committed to deter and defend against hybrid attacks," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted, noting that the "sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines is of deep concern."

Would be most surprising if one or more members of the organisation actually hasn't admitted to the others that they did it.  

The most incredible storm surge video you are likely to see

This is really remarkable stuff:

 

Friday nudism update

The history of nudism as a social movement of the 20th century (and its relative decline even though one might have expected otherwise with the sexual revolution) has always interested me - go and use the search bar at the side to find my previous post, if you want..

For more on this topic, there is an essay up at Aeon (which will require you to get past the "begging for donations" page which appears half way through it, but if you guess where the "X" is on the top right hand side, you can close it and continue.)

It explains the "high minded" attitude of (some) intellectuals of the early 20th century that it was a society changing, morally uplifting, movement:

The New York sociologist Maurice Parmelee was one US visitor who became a convert to the cause. His much-reprinted book Nudism in Modern Life: The New Gymnosophy (1929) developed a theory of nakedness for an Anglophone readership. He claimed that ‘gymnosophy’ – his preferred term, as an ancient Greek word combining nakedness and wisdom – ‘stands for simplicity, temperance and continence in every phase of life. It is useful in the rearing of the young,’ he claimed, ‘in the relations between the sexes, and in promoting a democratic and humane organisation of society. Consequently,’ he argued, ‘the implications of gymnosophy extend far beyond the practice of nudity alone, for it connotes a thoroughgoing change in the outlook upon and mode of life.’

For Parmelee, and those who followed his line of thinking, nudism was libertarian, democratic and humanitarian. He claimed it would deliver a more egalitarian world, destroying class and caste systems, and establishing gender equality. Nudism, he asserted, ‘is a powerful aid to feminism, because it abolishes the artificial and unnecessary sex barrier and distinction of dress. The gymnosophic movement is,’ he believed, ‘the logical continuation and consummation of the woman’s movement, for it at last brings woman into the man’s world and man into the woman’s world, so that they can see each other as they really are.’ Parmelee’s study was illustrated with black-and-white photographs of naked white German youths assuming expressionist dance poses or boldly leaping for joy in the open air.

But, of course, the rise of readership of nudist magazines indicated that they were being bought for reasons other than moral uplift:

By the early 1930s, several nudist periodicals could be purchased cheaply from British newsstands, from the short-lived monthly Gymnos, which styled itself as ‘For Nudists Who Think’, to the longer-lasting quarterly Sun Bathing Review. Both were populated with high-brow articles written by physicians, psychiatrists and clergymen who detailed the physical, mental and spiritual messages of the movement....

Sun Bathing Review particularly promoted its status as ‘copiously illustrated’, which ensured it a readership of 50,000 by its second issue, far more than the quantities of practising nudists at the time.  ...

By the end of the 1930s, nudist membership was at an all-time high in Britain, with around 40,000 members. New nudist magazines were launched, boasting readerships of more than 100,000 per issue; evidently, more people liked to look on than to join in. In wartime, nudists found new justifications for their cause, when sun and air were reconceived as ‘unrationed benefits’, and public health was a national priority.  The photographic nude also took on new meanings in a wider culture where pin-ups were achieving popularity as imports from the US....

Nudes were perceived as a national tonic under wartime conditions, and their viewing was restorative. But nudists were aware that there could be right and wrong ways of looking. A quiz in Sun Bathing Review in 1945 asked: ‘How Good a Sun Bather are You?’ To pass the test, readers were expected to be able to identify the Sun’s actinic and abiotic rays, the relative merits of artificial sunlamps, and a list of foods containing Vitamin D. ‘Good’ nudists were those who understood the practice intellectually. But highly educated members worried that readers were looking at depictions of flesh for less than scholarly aims. The experimental psychologist J C Flügel, for example, had warned a 1938 meeting of the Sex Education Society that ‘even the editors of our nudist magazines must admit that most of their readers are attracted by a sexual interest in the pictures’.

I've always found this funny:  the dedication in the magazines themselves, and in censorship bodies, to the pretence that nudist magazines were only being read, or bought by, the "high minded" nudist.   

The essay ends on a point about the apparent retreat from nudism acceptance on significant parts of the internet: 

A hundred years after the first tentative attempts to establish nudism as a collective cause in Britain, some of the founders’ ambitions may seem wrongheaded, quaint or merely curious. But as I assembled my recent book on the subject, Nudism in a Cold Climate: The Visual Culture of Naturists in Mid-20th-Century Britain (2022), the echoes of their claims were still everywhere to be heard. A book about nude photography with a nude on the cover still cannot be sold on most bookselling platforms in the 21st century. Facebook and Instagram will not allow uncensored images from the book’s contents to be shown, even those with historic retouching or otherwise concealed pubic areas. Breasts and buttocks, deemed harmless a century ago, are now forbidden by social media moderators, our new censors. Nudists have long argued that seeing the bodies of others would open minds from repressive tradition and lead to a fairer world based on knowledge. The 50-year moral battles that were won for photography in print in the 1970s are still being fought on social media more than 50 years later.

 

 

 

Harassment on ice

The news story this morning:

Australians sent to work in Antarctica have complained about a widespread and predatory culture of sexual harassment with unwelcome requests for sex, taunting, displays of offensive pornography and homophobia.

surprises me a little, because I would have assumed that the problem would have been recognised and dealt with by strong leadership (and psychological assessment) long before now.   I mean, I assume that all people go through a selection process that includes psych assessment, and I would also assume that part of that would include questions like "How do you think you will handle the isolation and the effect that it may have on your sex life?  Do you expect to find a sexual partner there?"

In fact, I have a recollection of reading somewhere, many years ago, a woman who had gone there who said something like "You just go there expecting to face some competitive sexual tension amongst the men until you chose one of them to sleep with.  Then it settles down."   It surprised me for its pragmatism, but I thought "well, it would seem there are some well know issues for women who go there."

Is it perhaps that women have simply decided they do not have to put up with that anymore - perhaps an ongoing effect of the MeToo  movement?

I prescribe a ban on Fox News

This from NPR:

This experience – of farmers grappling with suicide – is devastatingly common. Farmers and ranchers are nearly two times more likely to die by suicide in the U.S., compared to other occupations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

I wouldn't mind betting that, if it was allowed to be studied, a ban in rural regions from watching Fox News would lead to an improvement in suicide rates.  

Media poison

I continue to be gobsmacked that the Murdoch family exert no editorial control over Tucker Carlson and are happy to watch him destroy any hope of anything resembling national unity on any issue, and that there isn't more consternation about it amongst the US political class.    

The latest example:

Tucker Carlson Fuels Suspicion U.S. Behind Nord Stream Sabotage

What a pure propagandist for Putin.  All so that Fox News can continue to demonise Joe Biden and Democrats.  And Rupert and Lachlan (and Carlson) can make a dollar. 

I mean, go back 30 or 40 years, and if any high profile media figure were speculating nightly against US interests, you would have had politicians from both sides cautioning about how damaging (or at least "unhelpful") unfounded speculation is.  I mean, it might not have been out of the question that someone on TV could have questioned if the US might have secret operations underway, but we all know Carlson and his gullible audience doesn't work that way - suggest a conspiracy, and they will believe it.

Yet I can tell from the Australian Right wing nutoverse that Carlson is very influential here as well.    

All part of how the Right has gone nuts, as my blog heading says. 

 

A serious Samsung battery issue?

Why am I posting about this - I haven't had a Samsung phone for years.

I just thought it was interesting that a big Youtube phone/tech vlogger like this would bring this up - knowing that the company (which no doubt values the amount of publicity he gives them, and perhaps pays for some of it) would absolutely freak out over the damage to its reputation that this story could bring.

Yay for fantasy failures

As far as I can make out, the Tolkien Rings of Power series is being very widely derided and has very few viewers expressing enthusiasm for it on social media. (I noticed some left leaning some pushback on  the "it's Tolkien gone woke" rubbishing - which, to be honest, what most criticism is about - but I don't think the defenders have found much to be enthusiastic about as it has progressed.)

The Game of Thrones prequel seems to be pulling big numbers, but while I could be wrong, it still seems to be lacking the audience enthusiasm that the original series had.   Apparently, it jumps ahead suddenly by 10 years, involving recasting some key characters - a rather "brave" move. I see on Metacritic the audience rankings are unusually equally split between positive and negative.

This, for a person who does not rate fantasy as a genre at all highly, is a Good Thing.   Apart from The Witcher, I'm not sure that there is any other recent fantasy series viewed as a success.   (I don't care for it at all, either.)  I guess the audience numbers staying high might mean something for more Game of Thrones content, but didn't the audience stay with it even during the terrible last season?   I mean, audience enthusiasm has to count for something...

The lesson I hope studios take from this is "stop making fantasy series - they're expensive and risky."

Krugman on the British pound

I can gift you the whole article.  I will extract just this bit, though:

So why the sudden run on the pound? One answer I liked came from the City of London economist Dario Perkins, who declared that the problem with the budget wasn’t that it was inflationary but that it was “moronic,” and that an economy run by morons has to pay a risk premium.

But while I like the idea of a “moron” premium, there may also be a more concrete concern. I’ve been in correspondence with other City of London economists, and they have expressed doubts about whether the bank will actually be willing to tighten enough to offset the inflationary impact of Trussonomics.

Cuba and that social change

I meant to post about this the other day:

Cubans have approved gay marriage and adoption in a referendum backed by the government that also boosted rights for women, the national election commission has said. 

More than 3.9 million voters voted to ratify the code (66.9 per cent), while 1.95 million opposed ratification (33 per cent), Alina Balseiro Gutierrez, president of the commission, said on state-run television on Monday.

I guess it shouldn't be a surprise - given that nearly all of Latin America has moved pretty rapidly towards recognition of gay relationships, and gay marriage:

Over the past decade, Latin America has stood out for its recognition of LGBTQ+ rights. Outside of the Caribbean, the majority of countries in the region have decriminalized same-sex sexual acts between consenting adults. In Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador and Mexico, LGBTQ+ individuals are constitutionally protected from discrimination based upon sexual orientation. Elsewhere, many of the region’s constitutions now include broad non-discrimination clauses that offer some protection to LGBTQ+ citizens. Since 2010, eight countries have approved laws prohibiting discrimination based upon sexual orientation.

Latin America has also made impressive progress on marriage equality. In 2010, Argentina became the first country in the region to approve same-sex marriage; 20,000 same-sex Argentine couples have since married. In 2013, neighboring Brazil and Uruguay followed suit, and later Colombia (2016), Ecuador (2019) and Costa Rica (2020). In 2019, the Mexican Supreme Court declared bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. In Chile, President Sebastián Piñera vowed earlier this month to advance a marriage equality bill stalled in congress since 2017.

But I still don't quite understand what it is about Latin America culture that has apparently made it so amenable to the change, especially given that there is a range of (sometimes odd) politics in the region.   

If Noah doesn't like Singapore, I'll be very disappointed

This on Twitter:

 prompted many responses, including this one, which I can endorse (although I haven't been a film at the Projector):

I would still go for staying at Tanjong Pagar over Katong, just for ease of wandering down to Chinatown.  And add not only going to the Pinnacle (although finding the ticket office to get to the roof was not so easy, a few years ago), but up to the roof top garden at CapitaSpring, as per my previous post.

That specifically American thing

It would seem that Noah Smith shares the peculiar American aversion to hanging out washing to dry:

 

 

I would love to know how much America could save in power generation if people actually only used the dryer as a last resort.   (Which is, I think, still how most Australians - at least if they live in a house or townhouse - view clothesdryers.)   

I have posted about this before...

The question on many people's minds

 She would likely have a history of dogwhistle anti-Semitism, though, if she is one.  I haven't yet seen anyone point that out, but I haven't gone looking hard either.

Interesting, though, that I have noticed that mad-as-a-cut snake Cassie, the Jewish woman who accuses anyone who makes even the mildest criticism of Israel wrt to its treatment of Palestinians of being virulent anti-Semites, has not appeared on Currency Lad's blog posts to join in the conservative swoon over her election.   Just when I do want to know her opinion on something, she doesn't give it!

Update:   seems we have found the one Australian conservative-ish commentator has his concerns:

Update 2:   The Guardian ran an article about her and fascism some weeks ago:

But let’s be clear. Meloni is not a fascist. She will not command armies of black-shirted armed groups and she will not look to overturn liberal democracy. Beyond those basics, the signs are extremely worrying – for Italy, Europe and democracy. Meloni and Salvini are populists in the Viktor Orbán, Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen mould. They have built their success on promises of huge and regressive tax cuts, nationalist anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric (with elements of Great Replacement theories) and anti-EU and anti-euro narratives. Much of this has been played out on social media, where Meloni and Salvini are expert players, unlike Berlusconi, who has never moved beyond television as his favourite medium.

While Meloni officially, and angrily, denies any connection with fascism, the base of her party contains many activists and others often quaintly referred to as “nostalgic” for Mussolini’s regime. Examples of these links (slogans, statues, salutes) are common and often dismissed as “folklore” – not serious, or mere window dressing. Councillors for Meloni’s party have often been seen giving “Roman salutes”, praising Mussolini and indulging in open racism. The carefully produced moderate image Meloni has cultivated for years does not always seem to have been communicated to the base of the movement.

Moreover, Italy is a country where the memory wars have been raging for decades, often around moments linked to the Second World War and the upheavals of the 1970s. It is clear that the rehabilitation of that past, the idea that “Mussolini did a lot of good things”, will gain further credence with Meloni as prime minister. Salvini, however, is perhaps the more dangerous personality. His tenure as interior minister was marked by a chaotic migrant “policy” that involved illegally blocking refugee boats from docking in Italian ports. He is likely to have a major ministerial role in any new government.

Salvini and Meloni have both been rapidly backtracking on their past links with, and support for, Vladimir Putin since the invasion of Ukraine. Despite this, Italy’s foreign policy promises to be much softer on Moscow after the election. Berlusconi has continued, in the meantime, to be a mouthpiece for his old friend and ally throughout the Ukrainian crisis. It is easy to dismiss the former prime minister as a joke figure, but his influence remains powerful, not least within his huge media empire.

She's a loose cannon (to put it generously)

So, the Lidia Thorpe who was aggressively against commemorating the Queen's death:

At the intersection of Flinders and Swanston streets, Greens senator Lidia Thorpe, her hands covered in fake blood to highlight the impact of colonisation, addressed a seated crowd of about 500 people.

“You want to mourn the coloniser who brought the pain and the genocide and the murders here to our people. Shame,” Thorpe said. “The Crown’s boot is on our neck and we’re sick of it. And we are here to fight for our rights as the first people of these lands.”

was, only last year,  also so abusive to other aboriginal activists she doesn't agree with (on what, we don't know) that her Chief of Staff resigned:

Greens senator Lidia Thorpe’s former chief-of-staff says he was scared and appalled by her outburst in a meeting with two Indigenous community leaders at Parliament House last year, calling her behaviour among the most unprofessional conduct he has ever witnessed.

The claims by Thorpe’s ex-top adviser reinforce the account of the meeting by Aboriginal elder Aunty Geraldine Atkinson, aged in her 70s, who has previously alleged the tirade of abuse levelled at her by the senator distressed her so much she sought medical attention from the parliamentary nurse.

It's the fact that the party absorbs such immature, aggressive nutters that puts me off ever being able to support them, regardless of whether their policies have their heart in the right place, or not.

A comparison that might surprise

Because I'm kind, I will gift to my ever diminishing number of readers this opinion piece in the Washington Post that argues that, even with a new, pretty far Right leader in Italy, the country is probably going to be in better economic shape than England, with it's "let's try trickle down tax cuts - again!" nutty new leader:

Britain has replaced Italy as Europe’s problem economy 

 

Sabine in The Guardian now!

Sabine Hossenfelder continues on her quest to publicly annoy a huge slab of theoretical physicists in a piece in The Guardian today:

It has become common among physicists to invent new particles for which there is no evidence, publish papers about them, write more papers about these particles’ properties, and demand the hypothesis be experimentally tested. Many of these tests have actually been done, and more are being commissioned as we speak. It is wasting time and money.

Since the 1980s, physicists have invented an entire particle zoo, whose inhabitants carry names like preons, sfermions, dyons, magnetic monopoles, simps, wimps, wimpzillas, axions, flaxions, erebons, accelerons, cornucopions , giant magnons, maximons, macros, wisps, fips, branons, skyrmions, chameleons, cuscutons, planckons and sterile neutrinos, to mention just a few. We even had a (luckily short-lived) fad of “unparticles”.

All experiments looking for those particles have come back empty-handed, in particular those that have looked for particles that make up dark matter, a type of matter that supposedly fills the universe and makes itself noticeable by its gravitational pull. However, we do not know that dark matter is indeed made of particles; and even if it is, to explain astrophysical observations one does not need to know details of the particles’ behaviour. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) hasn’t seen any of those particles either, even though, before its launch, many theoretical physicists were confident it would see at least a few.

Talk to particle physicists in private, and many of them will admit they do not actually believe those particles exist. They justify their work by claiming that it is good practice, or that every once in a while one of them accidentally comes up with an idea that is useful for something else. An army of typewriting monkeys may also sometimes produce a useful sentence. But is this a good strategy?

Obviously, she thinks it isn't.  I like this (semi- serious?) explanation, too:

I believe the biggest contributor to this trend is a misunderstanding of Karl Popper’s philosophy of science, which, to make a long story short, demands that a good scientific idea has to be falsifiable. Particle physicists seem to have misconstrued this to mean that any falsifiable idea is also good science. 

 

Famous astronomer death noted

Oh, I missed that Frank Drake, of SETI and Drake equation fame, has died:

Often called the father of SETI — the search for extraterrestrial intelligence — Frank Drake made the first attempt to detect radio transmissions from life beyond Earth in 1960. He spent decades advancing SETI’s technology and philosophy. Drake was collaborative and helped others to pursue a high-risk, fringe topic whose fruits he might not live to see. He helped to legitimize SETI and pushed humans to address the ultimate question: are we alone?

In 1961, Drake, who has died aged 92, led the first scientific workshop on the search for alien civilizations. To prompt discussion, he wrote on a blackboard several factors — such as the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars with planets and the chance that those planets harboured life. Multiplied together, these yield an estimated number of communicative, technological civilizations. Six decades later, this calculation — the Drake Equation — remains a scaffold for discussions in the field.

 

Countries with cursed politics

I had to stop following Adam Creighton on Twitter because he is just too intensely annoying.  Of course, he may also just be an attention seeking troll much of the time - something we all like to see in allegedly serious economic/political commentators for allegedly important papers [sarc] - or is it that we can fairly imagine Adam if he had lived in the 1930's would have been telling us that Hitler and Mussolini should be given a fair chance, even though they're a little Right of centre?:

Mind you, as explained in this article in The Conversation, strongly Right wing politics in Italy have not exactly ever disappeared, and this woman has the problem of trying to work in a coalition of fellow Right wingers which may not be sustainable.  I didn't even realise this until now:

Enter Berlusconi. He was pushed to resign in 2011 during the sovereign debt crisis in favour of technocrat Mario Monti and was convicted on a number of charges related to prostitution and tax fraud.

He completed community service and was banned from Parliament, but this ban was lifted by a judge in 2018. 

He may be poised to be the kingmaker of the coalition. Running as a more responsible, pro-EU statesman and centrist than his partners, he could have a large say in the direction of governance and policy if the election results are tight, and could threaten to remove his support at a moment’s notice.

Given that there has been relatively recent interest in the USA politics as to the moderating political effects of voting systems other than First Past the Post, I wondered if this had something to do with Italy's terrible politics.  I'm not the only one:

But, the situation is very complicated there.  As AP notes:

FEWER LAWMAKERS

Many lawmakers won’t be reelected — regardless of their legislative record — simply due to math. Since the last election, a reform has been passed aimed at streamlining Parliament and make its operation less costly to taxpayers. In the upper chamber, the number of senators drops from 315 to 200, while the lower Chamber of Deputies will number 400 instead of 630.

PINBALL POLITICS

Just about everyone agrees Italy’s electoral law is complicated, including lawmakers who created it. Of the total seats, 36% are determined by a first-past-the post system — whoever gets the most votes for a particular district wins. The remaining 64% of the seats get divvied up proportionally, based on candidate lists determined by parties and their alliances.

Lawmakers have likened the proportional part of the electoral system to a game of pinball, particularly in the Chamber of Deputies. Under the “pinball effect,” a candidate who, say, came in first in a specific district could see another candidate who finished second elsewhere suddenly shifted to her or his district, knocking the first-place candidate out of a seat.

Confused? So are many voters. Except for in the first-past-the-post contests, many Italians are essentially voting for alliances and parties, not candidates, and don’t have a direct say in determining their specific representative in the legislature.

What an awful system!  

The other countries that I keep thinking about their cursed politics are the United Kingdom and Malaysia.   I mean, in the UK, FFP seems largely to blame, but how unlucky was the entire country to have such a strange and dubious character as Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Labour while Brexit was being debated.   (He's now an ineffective "having it both ways" weirdo on Ukraine too, I see.)  

As for Malaysia - one day I will get around to trying to understand why its politics is so cursed, too, but not today...

 

Time for some Thiel rubbishing

He gave an interview much noticed on Twitter:

Singaporean Buddhism (Part 1)

So, I went back to the (not very old, but already pretty famous) Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple in Singapore this last trip, and this time went upstairs to the museum and rooftop section (as well as the floor that contains the actual Buddha's tooth.   Allegedly.)

The 3rd floor is a museum full of old and new Buddhist artworks, including a row of somewhat unnervingly lit wax models of significant past Buddhist leaders from Singapore and nearby areas.  Like this guy:

 Oh, I just noticed the reflections in that shot. Sorry.  Anyway, I imagined it being a creepy place in which to be accidentally locked in at night.  Not that wax models of deceased monks should be scary, but the lighting is spooky...

A lot of the artwork is impressive (some pieces very old), although many are modern and some seems a little peculiar:  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyhow, the main temple hall room downstairs, which is very pretty and looks like this:

OK, maybe I took a better pic last time:

I now know features this:

I had posted about Maitreya once before, but guess I didn't realise some temples were devoted to him?   That's the funny thing about Buddhism for the casual Western tourist - it's routinely not at all obvious what version of Buddha, or bodhisattva, which a statue represents, or to which a temple is devoted.  Got to do your research.

One other thing I only recently learnt about Buddhism (or parts of it) was the (shall we say, "fanciful") belief that cremated holy people left behind crystal like beads amongst their cremated remains that were taken as a type of relic that shows their sanctity.  There are many examples shown in the museum section of this temple, and I thought I took a photo, but maybe out of politeness in not wanting to look too sceptical, I didn't.  Anyway, in the very upmarket Buddhist magazine Tricycle, there's a good article about this belief, which comes out of both Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, apparently, and it ends on this note:

There was no doubt that those who had witnessed Geshe Lama Konchog’s cremation believed the relics to be genuine; to them they were precious objects, weighty with meaning. I have decided that the Buddhist world, like the Christian, is divided into two camps: the Protestants, who regard relic worship as superstitious, silly, unintelligent, and to be put firmly into the basket of “idolatrous practice” and avoided at all costs, and the Catholics, for whom the numinous and the mystical are an essential part of their practice. Many thousands of people from around the world, including the United States, have visited relic exhibitions and have testified to finding the experience spiritually uplifting. For them, these small shining sharira encapsulate the hope that transformation of the very physical body is possible–as well as the immaterial mind. Venerating a holy object, be it an image or a relic, is seen by many as an invaluable part of spiritual practice, bestowing countless blessings, opening the heart, and lessening one’s pride.

And I suppose I should mention the Buddha Tooth relic itself, which is up on the 4th floor, behind a glass wall and sitting in a display stupa of around 320kg(!) of gold, and no photos are allowed.   You are not super close, but can make it out (I think! - see further comment below), and like other Buddha's tooth relics I had seen on the internet, it didn't look at all human to me.  It seems too big (although it would seem that the believers' answer to this can be that they have been scientifically shown that these tooth relics continue to grow!).  I thought it looked more like a horse tooth.  And now I read, in the same Tricycle article extracted above, this:

Buddhist relics, like their Christian counterparts, have their own history of fraud.

Skeptics point to Dr. Alois Anton Fuhrer, the German archaeologist who found the Buddha’s birthplace at Lumbini. In 1895, Dr. Fuhrer was caught selling horse teeth as relics to Burmese monks. Another tooth purporting to come from the Buddha himself was recently examined by the Natural History Museum in London and found to belong to a pig. I heard tell of sharira that were no more than mites of dust collected on religious pictures, and small gems thrown into the ashes of funeral pyres by conniving clergy to fool the faithful. There is even a story of a temple parrot that left sharira—he’d apparently imbibed the Buddha’s teachings!

 Oh, and here's a sceptical article from Straits Times in 2007:

Mr Yap Kok Feng, a paralegal executive, wrote to Lianhe Zaobao recently claiming that the relic looks nothing like a human tooth.

When contacted, he said that he had shown a picture of it to dentists who believe it to be a herbivore's.

One of them, Dr Pamela Craig, a senior lecturer at the School of Dental Science at the University of Melbourne, told The Sunday Times she had examined photographs and compared the tooth with teeth from various animal skulls in her comparative dental anatomy department.

'There's absolutely no possibility that it is a human tooth,' said Dr Craig, who specialises in human and animal oral anatomy.

'I'm almost certain that it belongs to a member of the Bos species, probably a cow or a water buffalo.'

Dr Craig said human teeth should be rounded with a short crown and a comparatively longer root, but the picture clearly shows a long crown and a shorter root.

'In this case, looking at a photo is clear enough because it's so obvious that it's not a human tooth. It's like comparing a pear and an apple.'

The Sunday Times also showed a picture of the tooth to four other dentists, including two forensic dental experts. All said the tooth could not have come from a human.

'This is an animal 'cheek tooth', that is, a molar at the back of the mouth,' said Professor David K. Whittaker, a forensic dental specialist at Cardiff University in Britain.

And I'm not sure about this last bit about when it can be seen:  I'm pretty sure I could see it:

The tooth relic was supposed to have been discovered by a Myanmar monk, the late Venerable Cakkapala of Bandula Monastery, in 1980 while restoring a collapsed stupa at Bagan Hill in Mrauk-U, Myanmar.

He gave the relic to Venerable Shi Fazhao, the abbot of both the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Golden Pagoda Buddhist Temple in Tampines in 2002.

The public can see the tooth only twice a year - on Vesak Day and the first day of Chinese New Year.

So, there you go.  Lots of member of the public donated a lot of money and gold to build a suitable  resting place for a relic that doesn't even look like what it is meant to be?    Not sure that I would be impressed.

As with the Catholic approach to things like the Shroud of Turin, you can always fall back on the old "does it really matter if a venerated object is genuine or not, as long as it helps the spirituality of the believer" defence.  That Tricycle article ends on that note:

At the end of my search into the meaning of Buddhist relics, I was reminded of an old Tibetan tale. A devout old woman asked her trader son if he would bring her back a tooth from the Buddha when he traveled to India. The son forgot all about his mission until his return home, when in desperation to please his mother he picked up a tooth from a dead dog he found rotting by the wayside. The mother’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude and wonder when he presented it to her, and she promptly put it on her small altar and everyday made obeisance to it. In time the tooth began to emit a strange, beautiful light. Even a dog’s tooth, if revered enough, will glow. 

Anyway, up on the roof of the Temple, they continue the modern Singaporean tradition of having a well maintained entire garden up there, and a prayer wheel in a pagoda:

 

It's lush and peaceful, and although there were couple of young women taking what looked like "influencer" style photos of one of them, we were pretty much alone in the quiet, walking above the floor with a 320 kg gold stupa worth (grabs my calculator and checks today's price) about $26 million. Someone should do a heist movie about it.  

It's well worth visiting.

Catholic conservatives still making excuses for their culture war hero, Putin

Ha!   I've been checking out the post-Catallaxy Catallaxy blogs, the two most "successful" of which are both run by conservative/reactionary Catholics Dover Beach and Currency Lad.   Here's the latest from the latter, after watching Jordan Peterson claiming last night on Piers Morgan's unwatched show that it's ridiculous to suggest Putin could lose the war:

This is worth watching for Peterson’s ‘don’t interrupt me again’ death stare alone. Morgan couldn’t resist less than 20 seconds in. As one of the more thuggish propagandists of mandates and masks (to say nothing of Zelenskyite malarkey about Ukrainian ‘democracy’), the increasingly unwatched Morgan is one to talk about lies and “terrifying his people.” My reading of Joe Biden is that he is an amoral weirdo and far more dangerous to the world than the Russian. 

What a world!   Where "conservative" reactionary Catholics have become so brainwashed in the culture wars, they prefer to support the authoritarian who murders and imprisons his opponents, and mutters about using nuclear weapons in an expansionary territorial war, because he's cosy with the Russian Orthodox and is down on the gays!

Dover Beach is no better - his comments have continually shown a "rah rah Russia" attitude to this war, and like Peterson, he's still holding out hope that the latest Putin move will mean a rapid Russian victory.

The other amusing thing about the Dover Beach blog is how clear it is how much most of the commentators really dislike each other.   The open threads are just never ending wars between characters who live online,  and gradually, the number of participants who go completely nuts increases over the years.  

Currently, it's "Custard" is showing how he has gone completely down the Qanon-ish rabbit hole, and while he is not exactly getting any support, the old timers there simply do not appreciate something I have tried to tell them many, many times:   they are in fact all major "conspiracy theory" believers in their complete denial of climate change - and now, in their "Trump probably really won the elections" belief too.   Once you swallow one or two clear conspiracy theories, really, what is stop you going whole hog?  They feel alone and abandoned in the Australian political landscape* because they are conspiracy theorists who refuse to face up to facts.   Instead, they would prefer to just endless stew in their certainty that they are right and have a true "insider" status.   The internet, Murdoch family and American Republicans are largely to blame, of course, for this epistemic crisis.  

 

* well, save for Pauline Hanson, who actually does have views most of them would support, but I suspect it might be that they consider themselves too smart to identify with someone who appears bogan-ish and less educated than them, they would find it embarrassing to admit she is one of them.

So that's where the Queen went...

Maybe these videos turned up on a lot of people's Youtube recommendations, but it was interesting last week that a British guy who edits a history magazine and runs a Youtube channel had a huge number of hits for his quickly produced video explaining what the Royal crypt under the chapel at Windsor Castle looks like.  (I would like to know more about the mechanism by which the coffin disappears into the floor - like who designed it, and when.)   It's well worth watching anyway, and I didn't know the story about the re-discovery of Henry VIII's coffin - I'm rather surprised they lost track of it:

 

His follow up video about the design of royal coffins was good too:

 

Yet more Singapore snaps

This holiday was more a case of looking around some local areas.  Tanjong Pagar area has some good hotels, and is close to many mid range cafes, but it also has a quite "local" feel, as it has a substantial amount of government built HDB flats; and directly across the road from Amara Hotel, some quite "local" shopping.  (Including a laudromat that does a $5 wash, and about another $5 to dry.  Better than returning home with a bag full of dirty clothes.)  

Here's the local mid Autumn festival party, with lots of families in a park in front of the MRT station:

 

Don't expect much from the local smallish hawker centre, though - it's upstairs and very basic - but there are lots of other options all around it. 

In particular, by happy coincidence, the 100AM shopping centre which actually adjoins the Amara has, since our last visit, turned into pretty much a "little Japan" for Singapore, with an extensive number of Japanese cafes and restaurants, and cheap goods outlets (Don Don Donki) which also do fresh food.   The cost was reasonable, too.  Look, nice looking chicken teriyaki bento boxes for $7.90 (reduced in the evening to $6.32).  

 

 

 

 

 

In fact, my entire impression this trip was that food and drink in Singapore seemed cheaper than last time.   This (very large) meal of stingray, squid, seafood fried rice and some asian veg cost (from memory) $54, with two large bottles of Tiger beer for $7 each.  (From a shop on the footpath, pretty much):

A pint of Tiger at the Lau Pa Sat hawker centre - even apart from the satay, it's one of the best in Singapore:

 

was $9 - very comparable to Australian prices.  There was craft beer for $11, although I didn't try it, but again, that price is fine.  (Wine is still hideously expensive, so don't expect to drink it while there.)   

So yeah, just as in Japan, there are plenty of cheap to moderate priced eating options, and for a country that has an expensive reputation, you can do very well for very modest prices as long as you don't want to eat at high end places.   

 

 

 

 

So, apart from that, we went to Katong area to walk around and look at the famous street of pretty, Peranakan style houses:

These are private homes, and literally is only one short street full of these ultra coloured ones, but the whole area has a nice, somewhat upmarket, relaxed local vibe, and I would have no problem staying there for a night or two:

 

(It has an extraordinary number of pet and pet grooming shops - owning nice dogs is definitely a status thing now in Singapore):

 How's this for a fancy bed, btw:

And how's this for a fancy looking small bar:

Actually, that's back near Chinatown/Tanjong Pagar, where the charming streets look like this:

and this:

And if you keep wondering around, you end up at the Buddha's Tooth Temple, which deserves a post of its own...

A few random things about Singapore

*  Anyone who has been to Japan knows that, despite it being pretty cold in much of it during winter, the country as a whole is mad for isotonic (sports) drinks.  You can barely walk 25 m in any city or town without coming across a vending machine with Pocari Sweat, or Aquarius (or various other brands.)    Yet it occurred to me in Singapore this trip that, despite it being probably the most sweat inducing major city in the world, they don't have a similar obsession with sports drinks, despite my feeling an actual need for them.   There is one brand that is common - 

 and it's not bad.  (Made in Malaysia.  I see you can buy it pretty cheaply here too.)

Anyway, my point is - if ever there is a country where you should consider putting an isotonic drink in your day backpack, instead of mere water, this is it.

* Again, in contrast to Japan, you are not even meant to take a sip of a drink (or, of course, any form of food) while on a subway (MRT) platform, or while in the train itself.   (I know they aren't subways, but Shinkansen or other long distance trains in Japan can feature vending machines for beer.)   Anyway, the end result in Singapore is subway stations that are absolutely spotless.  I just find it hard to believe there could be any cleaner ones anywhere in the world.  But if you are thirsty, better drink your 100 Plus before you enter the subway station.

*  Also speaking of the MRT, you now don't even have to buy a ticket or card, as long as you have a Visa card with a chip in it.  Just use that to tap on and off, and it works fine.  (I also saw people using their phone too, presumably with NFC.)   The charge turned up on our Australian bank account in very short order - within an hour or two I think.   Systems in Singapore just work with great efficiency.  Having to wait more than 4 or 5 minutes for the next MRT train on a main line is a rarity.

And it's extremely cheap to use compared to Brisbane fees in particular.   But the best deal, as a tourist, is still to just buy a Tourist pass card for $20 for 3 days unlimited travel on the MRT and bus network.   (Plus a $10 refundable deposit.)   You can renew it for a further 3 days too, and they don't even bother asking to see a passport anymore to issue this.    This is just extraordinary good value and very convenient.  The only odd feature about is that, while you can buy it at many of the MRT stations, some have peculiar hours that their ticket office is open.   There is no uniformity there, and it pays to check on line as what time the local office will be open.

*  Tourist sim cards are also cheap and convenient too.  $12 for a week with 100 GB of data, the M1 company one can be bought from 7 Eleven.   Easy to register and great value. 

* Mask compliance!   Just before this trip, Singapore relaxed its mask wearing rules, so that they are now only required on public transport, and waiting places for public transport.   I'm not sure what other airlines are doing now, too, but Scoot certainly required masks be worn the entire flight.   

And there was absolutely 100% mask wearing compliance on buses, the MRT and Scoot.   On the street, and in shops, I would guess that the slim majority were now unmasked, but there were a substantial number of people who just have gotten so used to it, they keep masks on everywhere.  

I was stopped getting on board a bus once because I had forgotten to put the mask in my shirt pocket onto my face - and fair enough.   But as a person who thought that Western Right wing endless whinging about whether masks were really effective or not, and elaborate hand wringing about the effects on kids in school, or oxygen levels in the blood, or whatever other dubious reason people could come up with for complaining about what an imposition on liberty it was, I was happy to be in an entire nation state in which they just stoically get on with following rules intended for the common good without complaint.

I would be happy to live in a society like that...