Gotta pierce my eye, again

I didn't realise it was so long ago, but it was apparently in January 2018 that I had a cataract operation on my right eye.  The left had a much milder cataract but it has worsened:  interestingly, it seems they can get to a point where the suddenly get significantly worse in a short timeframe, and that's where I've been at for the last 6 months.

So, it's time to get the left eye done, this afternoon, and hopefully stop my brain from being confused about why it should ignore the looking-through-yellow-tinted-frosted-glass style of vision from one eye. 

See you later...clearer, too. 

Update: Success.   Seems I may be able to revert to reading and computer use without glasses, too.

Can I mention something that I often think: undergoing light anaesthesia is cool.  It's close to experiencing magic, I reckon.  Awake, awake, there's the slight tingle or warmth in that arm, I guess it will work: bam, awake in a different room.

The King of Buddhas, noted

Sometimes I watch low quality Buddhist videos for fun, but this one does show how simple the Pure Land style of Buddhism can be, with the "King of Buddhas" (a term I hadn't heard before) Amitabha Buddha having vowed to bring all who chant his name into the Pure Land upon death, which is almost the same as Heaven:

 

Perhaps I have written this before, but this simple formula does remind me very much of the "born again" strain of Protestantism which places a lot of emphasis on acknowledging Christ as your Lord and Saviour as the key thing to get right, and the importance of good works after that are given short shrift. 

So in that respect, it is unlike Catholicism.   But on the other hand, the countless number of Buddhas,  and bodhisattvas, and the way they are in a hierarchy and doing stuff to help people, not to mention the Pure Land itself as pretty much an Eastern decorated version of Heaven, does resemble the colour and flavour of Catholicism with its communion of saints, and its interest in angels and the hierarchy of Heavenly beings.  

It's this odd meld of two strains of Christianity that makes it interesting.

     

  

Why is the ABC trying so hard with this person?

I really don't understand why the ABC seems to be trying so hard to give high profile to drag figure Courtney Star, who I don't find particularly talented or engaging as an interviewer, presenter, or singer.  (OK, I have to admit, I haven't even seen the singing part of it: I'm making an assumption there.)  Yet he/she has been everywhere over the ABC for the last 12 months.  Like this video, one in a big series in which matters are discussed between his drag and non drag persona.

I don't know the preferred pronouns either, but it's like he/she/they has got incriminating photos of Ita Buttrose, or something...

Bugs we share

From Nature:

People living in the same household share more than just a roof (and pints of milk). Be they family or flatmate, housemates tend to have the same microbes colonizing their bodies, and the longer the cohabitation, the more similar these microbiomes become.

The conclusion — based on an 18 January study in Nature of the gut and mouth microbiomes of thousands of people from around the world¹ — raises the possibility that diseases linked to microbiome dysfunction, including cancer, diabetes and obesity, could be partly transmissible.

“This study is the most comprehensive look to date at when and why microbes transmit into the gut and oral microbiomes,” says Katherine Xue, a microbiome researcher at Stanford University in California. “New microbes can continue to reshape our microbiomes throughout our lives.”...

The analysis confirmed the strong link between the microbiomes of mothers and those of their children, particularly early in life. During an infant’s first year of life, half of the microbial strains in their guts were shared with their mothers. The extent of overlap decreased as children aged — but did not vanish. Older people, aged 50–85, still had gut microbe strains in common with their mothers.

Other family members were also an important source of gut microbes. After the age of 4, children shared similar numbers of microbe strains with their father as with their mother. And twins who moved away from each other shared fewer gut microbes the longer they had lived apart. Sharing occurred even between households in several of the rural-living groups: people from separate households in the same village tended to have more overlap in gut microbes than did people from different villages.

And this is a bit surprising:

The researchers also found that the extent of household sharing was no less in people from Westernized cultures than it was elsewhere. Ilana Brito, a microbiome researcher at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was surprised by that insight. She expected that microbiome transmission would be harder to detect in Western populations because of factors, such as better public-health infrastructure, that might impede spread.

Counting again

Further to my previous posts about the various attempts that have been made to count the number of gay (and generically queer) people in different countries, this recent news out of England about its 2021 census seems to have attracted little attention:

• The census question on sexual orientation was a voluntary question asked of those aged 16 years and over.
• In total, 44.9 million people (92.5% of the population aged 16 years and over) answered the question.
• Around 43.4 million people (89.4%) identified as straight or heterosexual.
• Around 1.5 million people (3.2%) identified with an LGB+ orientation (“Gay or Lesbian”, “Bisexual” or “Other sexual orientation”).
• The remaining 3.6 million people (7.5%) did not answer the question.

 A lot of the 3.2% million did put themselves down as bisexual or other, and I think we can safely assume (based on other surveys in Western countries) that this would include more women than men:

• 748,000 (1.5%), described themselves as gay or lesbian

• 624,000 (1.3%) described themselves as bisexual

• 165,000 (0.3%) selected “Other sexual orientation”

Apparently, they will be releasing more information about the gender of the respondents later this month.

Anyhoo, given that 7.5% didn't answer the question, it would seem plausible to add a significant number from that group into one of the "queer" categories, so I would still stick by my guesstimate from 2013 that the "true" figure in the Western countries that have done this research is that around 4 to 5% fall within the broad "queer" category, although it seems to have become clearer over the years that a lot of that is actually bisexuality which might not (or might, who knows?) play a significant role over a lifetime. 

But perhaps the biggest surprise is that in a country where gay celebrities seem so prominent (especially in their media and entertainment industry), the number of "pure" gay or lesbian willing to disclose it is under 2%.  They do seem to be disproportionately visible because of the sort of work they like to do.  (Same can be said about all Western countries, really.) 

Speaking of economics...what has happened to Jason Soon?

He hardly seems to have any online presence anywhere anymore...

Economics Explained seems OK...

I think I have not watched Google recommended videos from the Economics Explained Youtube channel before now because I assumed it might be something like that god awful PragerU channel.   But I finally watched a couple of the videos, and thought they were pretty mainstream and good.  For example, this one about capitalism and economics generally:

 

 And this one about Sri Lanka's problems in particular:

 

The latter doesn't spend much time on the issue they say they will discuss, about the inevitable inequality between nations, in terms of their ability to grow into wealthy modern economies, but maybe they will come back to that. But overall, I didn't find much to criticise or be suspicious about.

Get a grip

In my never ending quest to find the laziest way I can remain fit, there's this:

Want to know how well you’re aging? Check your grip strength.

A recent study of 1,275 men and women found that those with relatively feeble handgrip strength, a reliable marker of overall muscle quality and strength, showed signs of accelerated aging of their DNA. Their genes appeared to be growing old faster than those of people with greater strength.

The study, although preliminary, raises the possibility that visiting the gym or doing a few push-ups in our living rooms might help turn back the clock and make our cells and selves more biologically youthful, whatever our current age.

Strength also can be an augury of how long we’ll live. In a 2015 study of almost 140,000 adults in high-, middle- and low-income nations, reduced handgrip strength was closely linked to mortality in people of all incomes, predicting risks for early death better than blood pressure, which is often considered one of the best indicators of life span.

I think my grip is not bad, but I have never measured it properly...

 

Fairly unimpressed, or just getting old?

I tried watching the much praised first episode of The Last of Us on Binge last night.

I was deeply unimpressed.  OK, the first 5 minutes was pretty well done, but as I said to my son, the next 20 minutes of "the world is suddenly turning zombie and collapsing overnight" is stuff we've seen many times before and there was nothing novel or particularly interesting in how it happened in this story.

The rest of the show was heavy on dialogue, which I didn't think was particularly well written, and the main male and female character don't display much at all in the way of likeability.   I get that the developing dynamic between them is at the heart of the show, but I already don't care for them.

It just feels a very well trodden path of familiar tropes.

This is not a view widely shared amongst critics, although here is one exception.  On Twitter, it seems that many gamers are just ecstatic that the show follows the game so closely, with comparisons of the cut scenes from the game apparently looking at times exactly the same as the scene in the TV show.   Am I supposed to impressed about that?  Why? 

So, I wonder if this is a fair reaction, or a sign that I'm getting old(er)-age cynical of what anyone 30 years or more younger than me likes?    I'm not entirely sure...

 

Noel Coward's advice remembered

So, Renee Geyer has died.  I thought I might have posted briefly before about an autobiography (of sorts) that came out about her, but I see now that it predates this blog, so I probably didn't. 

It certainly confirmed her "bad girl" reputation, but as this review/interview with her explains, it was (somewhat refreshingly) not done in the often cloying "I was lost but am now redeemed" style of American celebrity autobiography.  

But I have a suspicion that the conservatives over at the ageing Australian reactionaries blog have forgotten about the extent of her unapologetically (shall we say) dissolute life:

So there are the stripped-bare stories of three near-fatal drug overdoses, six abortions and a collection of short-lived relationships.

"I've died three times," she writes. "Overdosed ... heart stopped beating ... blue in the face for 20 minutes ... had to be revived. That kind of dead."

Of the abortions, she says she was unlucky, with three of the pregnancies happening while she was using contraception.

Oddly, Googling her has also turned up that she sang the campaign song for the Liberals in the 1975 election (!)*, and got charged with threatening a  hotel receptionist (in racist terms) in 2015.  Had forgotten about that.  As well as the car crashes. 

She was an odd character, I think it is fair to say.

And the Noel Coward advice, of course, refers to this:

Regarding yours, dear Mrs. Worthington,
Of Wednesday the 23rd,
Although your baby
May be
Keen on a stage career,
How can I make it clear
That this is not a good idea? 

At least I suspect a quieter life out of the public eye could have been a happier one.  Although you never know, I guess.

* This site says that she later distanced herself from the Liberals and politics generally, saying she only did it for the money. 

Toilet talk

Well, it's really poop talk, but I didn't want that to be in the heading.

An article in the Washington Post "Ask a Doctor:  Are my bowel movements normal?" (gift link)  contains some enlightening information, such as:

A general rule of thumb is that anywhere from three bowel movements per day to three per week is within the range of “normal.” If we look at the numbers closely, stool frequency varies by geographic region, age, sex and cultural habits. In the United States, the majority of people who consider themselves to have normal bowel habits report having between 3-7 bowel movements per week. In eastern India, however, where more people are vegetarian and the typical diet is much higher in fiber, people have a median of 14 stools per week. In Italy, meanwhile, people tend to defecate once per day.

Women and older people tend to have less frequent stools.

Hmmm...that last point doesn't seem to apply to me, but I will spare you the details here.  Anyway, I do fit within the normal range.  I like the coy words here: 

Once-a-day bowel movement is great for many people. But the key to a healthy stool frequency is that however often it happens, it should be comfortable and occur in a socially appropriate context.

If you consistently have a bowel movement once a day, but to do so, you have to strain significantly, take four laxatives in the morning, and never feel like you’ve quite … evacuated … everything, then I’d say there is a problem...

Maybe you’re someone who has three bowel movements each day, but they’re soft and never feel so urgent as to disrupt important work meetings or stymie your agenda at happy hour. I’d say to leave it alone and consider yourself “normal.” But when the urge to poop occurs at frequent and inconvenient times, making you afraid to socialize for fear of an embarrassing call of nature, it’s worth talking to a physician about potential ways to address it.

So if you find that your bathroom habits are comfortable and don’t hold you back socially, then poop in peace, even if it’s not always precisely once per day.

As for the question of colour, this is the commentary:

Green: Don’t sweat it.

Yellow: No big deal.

Orange: Not worried.

Dark brown: Still not worried. If it’s not black like the hue of your TV screen and sticky, it’s probably not because of bleeding....

White: You have my attention. Bilirubin, the waste product found in bile, is what gives your poop its characteristic brown color. Without it, stools are pale. White or clay-colored poop could suggest a blockage, such as from a gallstone that is preventing bile from reaching your intestine. This should be discussed as soon as possible with your physician.

Silver: Do tell. There was a vivid case report about the stool of a patient with simultaneous gastrointestinal bleeding and bile duct blockage, leading to shiny silvery stool. But this would be exceedingly rare.

She doesn't mention something that caught my attention recently:  following Eric Idle's publicity tour where he talked about surviving pancreatic cancer (he was very lucky that it was caught very very early), I watched some English video about the warning signs, and a woman survivor said that, in retrospect, one of the first signs for her had been changes in her poop,  as explained at this website:

If your pancreatic duct blocks, you might develop a symptom called steatorrhoea. This means fatty stools. You may pass frequent, large bowel motions that are pale coloured and smelly, and are difficult to flush away. These bowel changes can mean that you are not absorbing your food properly. This can also cause weight loss.

Diarrhoea and constipation are also other possible bowel changes you can have.

I hadn't realised that could be a sign of pancreatic cancer before.  Now I'm happy when it doesn't float.  

 

 

 

Climate change denial doesn't seem great for health

I learn from reading the Australian blogs for ageing conservatives/reactionaries that Tim Blair had a heart attack at the start of this year (he did post about it but I don't bother checking even the headlines of his paywalled blog anymore); apparently Ian Plimer is unwell*; and Mark Steyn had two heart attacks in December (saying he didn't recognise the symptoms at first.)    Jim Molan died this morning, and of course, the late George Pell was a gullible fan of Plimer.

Of course, ill health can strike anyone, and I will touch the (probably fake veneer of) wood of my desk more than once while writing this post.  But, I see via (smoker) Currency Lad's ridiculous blog that Tim Blair started his post with:

I chose to ignore relatively mild early symptoms and instead filed this year’s predictions – which somehow didn’t include any personal cardiac catastrophes. Bit of a missed opportunity there.

Symptoms intensified on January 2. I was suffering, to use a medical acronym I’d soon learn, a full-blown STEMI.

It has stuck in my mind from years ago that Blair, in his column explaining his bout with colon cancer, said he ignored the initial signs for a very substantial period.

Mark Steyn explains that his first heart attack started just before his TV show started, but he went ahead anyway (and, to be fair, I know that it is indeed possible to not recognise the symptoms for what they really are.)  

But still - it seems to me that if you have pinned your whole public shtick on poo-pooing scientists' near unanimous warnings of the confirmed and dangerous phenomena of AGW, it doesn't exactly help your credibility to be happily explaining that you are good at ignoring other danger warning signs that are happening, like, 50 cm from your own brain.

Just sayin', as they say....

Update:   I see also from reading another ageing smoker, Roger Franklin from Quadrant in his areff incarnation at Catallaxy, who visit Tim in hospital, this:

We both agree his great challenge will be learning to write without a fag in the ashtray by the keyboard. His post suggests he’s on the way to mastering the art. 

Smoking and climate change denial are incredibly strongly co-related.   I would have thought that someone with colon cancer might also have given up on the habit already, but apparently not.

It's a very safe rule of thumb that if anyone likes to opine about issues of public safety and health, including on climate change, vaccines, or diet, and they are a proud smoker, you know with 95% certainty that their view can be safely ignored.   

* disseminated melanoma, someone has since said on the site.  

A bit of casual racism

A terrible story of American racism from the end of World War 2 in the Washington Post.   Here's a gift  link.

The basics:

About two weeks after the end of World War II in Europe, French women were serving U.S. soldiers coffee and doughnuts in a Red Cross tent in France. Two Black soldiers went inside to get some.

This was a breach of norms: In a segregated army, many White American soldiers did not want Black men talking to French women.

The Black soldiers — Allen Leftridge and Frank Glenn — were challenged by a White sergeant, according to a witness. When a White armed guard arrived, he fatally shot the two men. A third soldier — a White man just released from a German prison camp who was not named in documents related to the incident — was caught in the crossfire and killed, a newspaper from the time reported.

Now, there was a court martial, but they acquitted.  

On the most "generous" reading, a fight broke out and the guard acted in self defence;  but it remains hard to believe that he would have been so trigger happy in a fight with a white soldier.  Or, of course, that a white soldier would be in trouble for talking to a white woman.

An unusually satisfying ratatouille

Things that were cheap(ish) at the West End markets on Saturday included eggplants, tomatoes, capsicum and okra.  There were a couple of zucchini at home.  And a tube of this:

which I am finding is a much more handy way of having basil flavour ready to add to cooking, rather than buying a bunch of fresh basil leaves, using a third of then, and the rest rot away before getting to use them again.

All of this (save for the okra) suggested ratatouille, which can be a bit hit or miss in terms of flavour.  But I found this recipe, Southern Ratatouille, and it worked well.  I had no "poblano pepper" of course, so a teaspoon of chilli flakes substituted.  

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 small zucchini, sliced 1/2 inch thick
• 1 eggplant (about 1 pound), cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 small poblano pepper, chopped
• ½ red bell pepper, chopped
• 1 pound okra, stem ends trimmed
• 3 large tomatoes, seeded (see Tip) and chopped
• ¾ cup water
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• ½ cup chopped fresh basil

The garlic (minced through a garlic crusher) goes in last and doesn't get cooked out like it usually does, I think that might account for a significant part of the deeper flavour.

Another notable death - Paul Johnson

As it happens, it occurred to me just a day or two ago to check whether Paul Johnson was still alive, and saw that he was.   (Seems he might have been on his death bed at the time, though.)  Here's his obituary from the New York Times. 

I've read at least three of his early history books, as well as at least one collection of essays, and yes, he was influential on my views.  I think the first I read was his History of Christianity, which really served to enlighten me about how absurd (to the point of comical) some purportedly religiously motivated behaviour could be; and what a (let's say), obviously human enterprise the development of the religion had been.  (I found his history of the Jews heavier going, and much less of that has stuck with me.)    I think it might have been from Modern Times that I credit him with bringing to my attention the idea that capitalism and markets are basically an organic and natural feature of how humans like to organise themselves; and the contrary, high flalutin' theories of how the world ought to be, like Marxist economics, fail because they don't accord with this aspect of human nature.   This still seems true to me, even though I have learnt to deeply regret that free markets types can love money so much that they actively deny science for the sake of continuing profit.   (You know what I'm talking about, and it gets a mention below.) 

I think it obvious that in his swing from Leftism to Conservatism, he swung too far to the Right, especially when the American Republicans started idolising him.   (There is also, of course, the loss of face suffered when he was exposed as a long term adulterer, after often criticising that behaviour in others and writing a whole book - as entertaining as it is - about hypocrisy in the personal life of famous Leftists.)  

But I think in at least one respect, his Catholicism, he perhaps did become more progressive as he aged:  I remember being surprised in his book of essays that he opined that women being allowed into the Catholic priesthood was inevitable.  Now that I think of it, I think it might also be in that book that he made a comment about how the Church would have to deal with the fact that gay relationships can be as loving as straight ones, making their complete condemnation difficult.  (For some reason, I also remember how he wrote that he increasingly gave all living creatures a chance - preferring, for example, to open a window and try to chase a fly out of the room rather than immediately try to kill it.)  

Generally speaking, though, I have the impression from reviews that the quality of his historical works never really recovered after A History of the American People (which is discussed in this interesting article from 1998.)   On that great indicator of whether a person has retained reasonable judgement or not - his attitude to climate change - I still don't know whether he ever expressed an opinion.  I would be happy to know that he did accept the science on that, but it would not be at all surprising if he didn't.  (Or if he took a Thatcherite path of believing it initially, and then turning against it as being a Leftish plot.)

The above article about him indicates other personal faults beyond (hypocritical) adultery - heavy drinking, for one, but also having views on politicians seemingly determined by whether they had ever met, or praised, him.   Jacob Weisberg, who wrote the article, concludes this:

...it is hard to avoid the impression that he is a misunderstood man, at least in America. Johnson is much less a bitter ultraconservative than a professional provocateur, a controversialist. Creating outrages, he has learned, can be a good business.

That may be true, although I don't think it a feature of his earlier works, which will remain worth reading for a long time yet.   

 

 

  

Lab grown chicken does look pretty good

This video has been out for a couple of weeks, about a couple of well know American Youtubers tasting the product of the Singaporean company that is making (small) amounts of chicken "meat" from lab cultivated cells.

Despite my scepticism of lab grown beef as a potential, economically viable, product, I have to admit that this video is making me reconsider, at least with respect to chicken.  Two reasons - I'm not sure how they have done it, but the texture on one of these examples looks very much the same as real chicken meat (and I do expect that the texture would be easier to copy for chicken than for beef, just because chicken is a more uniform, and softer, meat.  I recently noted that lab grown salmon might be easier too, for the same reason.)  And secondly, it seems the company grows the cells in a plant based serum, whereas I don't know that they have achieved that in beef yet.  Anyway, here it is:

Technical issues after all

It seems I have to humble brag, again, but there's an article up at The Guardian about the technical issues with the troubled Sun Cable project which indicates that my hunch that this idea wasn't likely to fly was correct:

The problems are technical, economic and even geopolitical. Giving some observers solace is the presence of David Griffin, Sun Cable’s founder and chief executive, who is a veteran of the renewable industry. “He’s very competent at these kinds of things,” said one industry insider. “He loves obstacles, he loves challenges.”

Griffin will have many of these. Georgious Konstantinou, a senior lecturer in energy systems at the University of New South Wales, said the length of the cable alone makes the project “extremely ambitious”.

Konstantinou said a global desktop study done three years ago researching the feasibility of building power links between different regions was not promising for Sun Cable.

“It ended up with the Australian connections being way more difficult and way costlier than any of the other links that you would have around the world,” he said, adding the depth of waters to be crossed – such a 2km deep Timor trench – was a key issue.

“So when Sun Cable says ‘we can actually do that’, it makes you think what are the differences do they see compared to what everyone else is thinking?”

Konstantinou estimates energy losses even with the best high voltage direct current technology would be at least 15%. Boosters would also be needed to ensure voltage is maintained for the end users, such as Singapore.

Singapore itself is yet to commit funds or sign up as a customer. Sun Cable would need to offer the island nation an ultra-low price if it’s to rely on one supplier for 15% of its electricity, not least because it would need back-up in case of sudden failure, Andrew Blaker, an energy expert at the Australian National University, said.

“If you, in the space of half a second, took out 15% of Australia’s electricity supply, Australia’s grid might have a few problems,” said Blakers, who describes himself as “cautiously sceptical” of Sun Cable’s prospects.

Singapore’s Energy Market Authority declined to comment on Sun Cable’s administration. A spokesperson, though, told Guardian Australia the authority had “received more than 20 proposals to import electricity from countries including Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia and Thailand”.

“We remain on track to meet our imports target of 4GW by 2035,” she said.

Blakers said Sun Cable’s going to face “very stiff competition from similar projects located in northern Indonesia or on hydroelectric reservoirs in Borneo because they are within 50 to 500 or so kilometres across the shallow sea from Singapore”.

While the solar resource is “not quite so good” in those regions compared with the Northern Territory, “it’s still pretty good”, he said. “I just wish they would turn the cable around and send [the power] south” to markets in southern Australia.

Dylan McConnell, an energy expert also with UNSW, said the estimated cost and timing of the venture of $30bn seem unrealistic compared with projects being developed in Australia.

The proposed Marinus Link, for instance, involves a 250km HVDC link across Bass Strait at an average depth of about 60m. The combined capacity in two stages would be 1.5GW with a total of more than $3bn. Stage 1, at 750MW, would be built by 2028 on current plans.

“Sun Cable, on the other hand, is set to be almost 17 times longer, about twice as much capacity , and is through the Timor Sea,” McConnell said. “It’s also between two countries and through Indonesia’s territorial waters, and was apparently targeting ‘first delivery ‘ to Singapore in 2027.”

“It’s difficult to imagine how you might deliver that, alongside about 20GW of solar and about 40GW-hours of storage for [$30bn],” he said.

OK, so it seems the project is looking technically and/or economically dubious.

Which raises the question, how reliable is the judgement of Infrastructure Australia, which ticked off on it 6 months ago:

Infrastructure Australia has provided its endorsement for the economic benefits of the Australia-Asia PowerLink (AAPowerLink), which would export solar power from the Australian outback to Singapore via a submarine transmission link.

The endorsement ensures that the project can advance to third-stage, “investment-ready” status on Infrastructure Australia's priority list, opening the door for government funding.

   

 

 

   

An interesting take on George Pell

There's a very interesting personal take on Cardinal George Pell by John Allen, a journalist at the Catholic website Crux.

It's hard to summarise - but Allen obviously liked him, despite being fully aware of his combative character and being on the receiving end of criticism on more than one occasion.  Some extracts:

The last time I spoke to Pell was about three weeks ago. He’d called in part to see how I was doing in my recovery from esophageal surgery last fall, but, more to the point, to chide me for a recent article I’d written. I’d called Pope Francis “decisive,” and Pell was livid – the pope’s problem, he thundered, is that he routinely fails to act, with his dithering about the German “synodal way” the latest case in point.

Having done everything but call me brain-dead, Pell concluded by saying, “Well, take care of yourself … we need your voice. Even if you do sometimes muck it up, at least you’re paying attention.” He then hung up without waiting for me to reply.

(Following the normal rules of polite telephone interaction seem to be something Pell didn't feel obliged to follow, then.)

More:

I’ve known Pell since his days in Sydney. If memory serves, I think my first interview with him was during the “liturgy wars” in English-speaking Catholicism in the 2000s, when Pell led a new commission created in Rome to supervise the translation of liturgical texts into English.

I remember being stunned at how blunt he was, using peppery adjectives to describe a few of his opponents that would never see the light of day in a family newspaper. From that point on, we struck up a sort of symbiotic friendship – Pell loved getting the latest Roman gossip, and I always enjoyed his assessments of people and politics.

So, I take it that he was blunt and sweary in the discussion of his perceived enemies.

Some years later, Pell’s return to Rome after his legal battles in Australia more or less coincided with my return to living here full-time, which gave us the opportunity to see one another more frequently. Over conversations in his Vatican apartment – which, he informed my wife Elise and I, he had swept regularly for electronic surveillance, because the Vatican in his view has become a “police state” – or over meals at our house and in favorite Rome restaurants, Pell would share his ever-colorful assessments of personalities and issues, not to mention his often disparaging take on whatever I’d just written or said.

As the saying goes, George Pell was sometimes wrong, but never in doubt.

We can add a bit of paranoia to the later Pell character?  Mind you, in the Vatican, I suppose it might be deserved.

During one of our recent exchanges, Pell speculated that Pope Francis was suffering from an undisclosed illness related to his colon surgery in 2021 and that we’d have a conclave before Christmas. Since the holidays are over, I’d been meaning to call Pell to rib him about getting that wrong – sadly, now I’ll never have the chance.

To sum up, the George Pell I knew was brash, hilarious, opinionated and tough as nails. I never worked for him, but I know plenty of people who did, and they say he could be equal parts a bull in a China shop and the most caring father figure you’d ever meet. With Pell, literally, you got strong doses of both the bitter and the sweet.

Pell thought in “us v. them” terms, and it always irritated him that I try not to. Yet despite that, he took a genuine interest in my life and career … he was one of the first to call when I was in the hospital in October, and I was especially glad to have his prayers.

And finally:

Of course, I realize that Pell was strong medicine, and he wasn’t everyone’s cup of coffee. With such a polarizing figure, it’s hard to say anything that’s unassailably objective, but here’s my stab at it.

No matter what else one might conclude, from here on out Roman Catholicism is going to be just a little less interesting, a little more gray and dull, because George Pell isn’t around. He will be missed … by many, many, people, and certainly by me.

I think it fair to say from this description that:

a.    he can hardly be said to have a saintly character;

b.    he played (very human) power games, hard; and

c.    I would not have liked him if I had met him.    

More broadly, it is understandable how he is already the "patron saint", so to speak, for conservative Catholics who refuse to think that the Church needs any reform, at all, and yearn for the same power it used to hold over its members until the second half of the 20th century.

Not unexpected, but bad news nonetheless

As noted in The Guardian:

The world’s oceans were the hottest ever recorded in 2022, demonstrating the profound and pervasive changes that human-caused emissions have made to the planet’s climate.

More than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions is absorbed in the oceans. The records, starting in 1958, show an inexorable rise in ocean temperature, with an acceleration in warming after 1990....

Prof John Abraham, at the University of St Thomas in Minnesota and part of the study team, said: “If you want to measure global warming, you want to measure where the warming goes, and over 90% goes into the oceans.

“Measuring the oceans is the most accurate way of determining how out of balance our planet is.

“We are getting more extreme weather because of the warming oceans and that has tremendous consequences all around the world.”

Prof Michael Mann, at the University of Pennsylvania, also part of the team, said: “Warmer oceans mean there is more potential for bigger precipitation events, like we’ve seen this past year in Europe, Australia, and currently on the west coast of the US.” He said the analysis showed an ever-deeper layer of warm water on the ocean surface: “This leads to greater and more rapid intensification of hurricanes – something we’ve also seen this past year – since the winds no longer churn up cold sub-surface water that would otherwise dampen intensification.”

 

 

Yglesias gets the blogging star treatment

Gee, a lengthy article at the Washington Post about the successful career of Matt Yglesias.

He's OK, I think, and I do follow him on Twitter, but I would have preferred to read about the even more eccentric centrist Noah Smith.

Was I right?

It was barely 6 months ago that I expressed surprise that the very ambitious plan to send electricity from Australia to Singapore via undersea cable was apparently going to go ahead.

Today, the news:

Sun Cable, the company behind a massive solar farm and power export project planned for the Northern Territory, has gone into voluntary administration.

Mind you, the reasons for this seem a bit unclear, and perhaps are not due to technology issues?:

The company, whose major investors include billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes and Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest, provided a vague statement about why it collapsed:

"The appointment followed the absence of alignment with the objectives of all shareholders," it said. 

"Whilst funding proposals were provided, consensus on the future direction and funding structure of the company could not be achieved."

But there is this:

The ABC understands that Sun Cable's major investors, Mr Forrest and Mr Cannon-Brookes, had disagreements about the funding and direction of the company.

These included the significant amounts of cash that Sun Cable was spending, and its failure to achieve certain milestones — as required by its venture capital funding agreement.

I hope something successful arises from the financial ashes.

Moving on (Catholic Church edition)

So, with Cardinal George Pell dying suddenly, as well as Pope Benedict, it seems that the ageing doctrinal/social conservatives are being pushed out of the way by the inevitable march of time.  Mind you, I don't know that you can really call Francis significantly doctrinally different - he perhaps just gives the impression of being less judgemental in the application of doctrine.

I've been rather distracted with work and things, but it did seem to me that Benedict's funeral attracted a lot less media attention than your average passing of a Pope.  Seeing his body being carried around St Peters made the whole proceedings look a tad more, um, medieval? than I expected.   (I can't remember anything of the last Papal funeral, though.   I guess they just are never ratings winners.)   

As for people talking about Pell post mortem, there's going to be lots of embarrassing or dubious stuff said on both sides of the culture wars, for sure.  First off the rank, Tony Abbott:

"His incarceration on charges that the High Court ultimately scathingly dismissed, was a modern form of crucifixion; reputationally at least a kind of living death."

I have a hunch that Pell himself would not have liked the comparison to crucifixion - seems a bit trivialising of the travails of Christ.

As for the general state of the Church - we have the very curious problem that the US Culture Wars (and the permanent hot button issue there of abortion) has turned the local Church - apparently both clergy and the remaining practising lay members - more socially conservative than since about the 1960's (or so it seems to me.)  There was this recent report:

Research on Catholic clergy by the Austin Institute has found that younger Catholic priests and priests ordained in more recent years tend to be noticeably more conservative than older priests on a host of issues, including politics, theology and moral teaching. The Survey of American Catholic Priests has found that since the 1980s, successive cohorts of priests have grown more conservative, according to a 2021 summary report.

When asked for their convictions about a number of Catholic teachings (for example the Catholic Church’s “prohibitions of contraception, masturbation, homosexual behavior and suicide, the impossibility of women’s ordination to the priesthood, and the necessity for salvation of faith in Jesus”), Rocca wrote, “each successive 10-year cohort of priests supports church teaching more strongly than the one before it,” the Austin Institute found. “Those ordained in 2010 or later are the most conservative of all—and the least happy with Pope Francis, with roughly half disapproving of him….”

 The total number of priests in that country is, of course, still sliding downwards:

 As for the number of regularly practising Catholics:

So, the "increasingly conservative young priest" cohort is obviously not doing much to encourage Catholics to actually attend church and listen to them.

The problem in Australia, I expect, is not that there is the same level of conservative resurgence in young priests from here (and certainly not amongst the bishops), but the unintended importation of social conservatism via the use of priests from other (often developing) countries:

In order to make up for the shortfall, Australian bishops have adopted a policy of recruiting priests from dioceses and religious institutes mainly in West Africa (+80), India (+185), the Philippines (+93) and Vietnam (+88). Furthermore, it would be reasonable to assume that most of these priests have been brought to Australia on 3-5 year, possibly renewable, 457 ‘skilled worker’ visas.

That was written in 2018:  I wonder how many imports we still have?

Anyway, as is clear from the Right wing conservative Catholics who blog, they don't care that their Church is numerically diminishing, as long as they can be in charge of an anachronistic club that considers purity of doctrine more important than things like caring for people.  Hence the cruelty of Trump and Australian Right wing politicians to the likes of immigrants (or women) doesn't phase them.  It's why they don't like the current Pope, too: he's in danger of sounding too soft. They prefer the "Christian hard man" model, even to the extent of not being overly bothered by one of them (Putin) invading another country with the help of obscenely violent vigilantes.

They are blind to the long term reputational harm to the Church from their attitudes.    

So where the Church goes from here, it's extremely unclear.   I can't see that the mood is really right over the next decade for any changes that might make a difference - I mean, even the relatively modest step of allowing a married priesthood doesn't seem close to being on the cards, and rather than pressing for such changes in the West, a lot of people just chose to walk away instead.

Of course, as I have always also pointed out, denominations that flip the switch to progressivism don't find themselves surging in numbers either, and share a diminishing social influence.  

I keep wondering if there is some way to walk the fine line between integrity with most historical belief, with an appropriate modernisation in doctrine necessitated by the explosion in our understanding of the universe since (say) 1860; and would like to see the Catholic Church be the one to do it.

Can't see it happening any time soon, though.   

 

Simple but funny

This tweet today:

 

A bit of woo for you

Harry's recent disclosure of apparent mediumship type messaging from his late Mum reminded me that I had never mentioned a study recently published in the cheerily named "Omega - Journal of Death and Dying" which tried some "triple blinding" testing of non-professional mediums.  (The idea is to try to exclude the mediums source of information as being the sitter, either by direct clues from them, or from the theoretical possibility of mind reading.)

You can read the whole paper here.  This is the abstract:

The accuracy of information obtained by 28 self-claimant mediums related to 100 readings obtained with a triple level of blinding was examined across three indices: percentage of correct reading identified by the sitters, global score of readings and percentage of difference between correct and incorrect information.

All three indices showed statistical differences of the intended versus the control readings: correct identification 65%; global score: intended readings, mean = 2.4, SD = 1.5; control readings, mean = 1.7, SD = 1.2; percentage difference between correct and incorrect information: intended readings, mean = −7.9%, SD = 38.7%; control readings, mean = −27.3%, SD = 38%.

 

Our results using a very large sample, confirm previous results, supporting the hypothesis that self-claimant mediums are able to retrieve correct information about deceased people without knowing and interacting with the sitters having access with only to the deceased persons’ first name.

Trying to understand how it was done is much harder than it should be, however.  If I have it right, the  the "sitter" does not directly communicate with the medium, who is asked by a researcher to give two readings - one for a deceased person (identified only by a first name) and one "control" reading.    The researcher dealing with the medium doesn't know anything about the deceased person (or the sitter, I think). The sitter is later provided the two sets of information given at the reading (as categorised by the researcher) and rates their accuracy.

As indicated in the abstract, the result was that 65% of the time the sitter correctly identified the "intended" reading from the control.

But the thing that I don't quite understand is how the "control" reading works:

The mediums were contacted for the consultation by research assistant A (raA) who acted as proxy-sitter. On the day of the consultation, raA contacted the medium via either Skype or WhatsApp and gave her only the deceased’s first name (without the surname) as sent by raB. Italian first names did not convey any information about age and ethnicity.

The medium was required to provide oral information relative to the deceased, related to physical description of the person during life, any other information pertinent to the deceased’s identification by the sitter, and anything the deceased wished to communicate to the sitter. At the conclusion of the reading, raA electronically recorded each detail into a column, excluding generic information, for example “I love you” or “Don’t worry about me”, “I’m well”, etc., and sent them to raB. 

In a session, each medium was always asked to contribute two readings of pairs of deceased individuals of the same gender, male or female as the only common characteristic.   

So, I guess, the proxy sitter says "give me some identifying information for [real deceased] Jack" and then "can you give me another reading for another deceased male"?   But do they ask for exactly the same identifying type of information, or is there something different about what they ask for from a the "control" reading.   Because that would seem to me to be one way in which you could get a difference between control readings and the one directed to a named person. 

Or does the way they operate hide which reading is the control?   I mean, it could easily, if they just asked for a reading for (real deceased) Jack, and a reading for (not real) James.    

If I knew exactly how it was done, there is (shall we saw) at least the potential to be impressed - it does seem, as a gut reaction, that correct identification of the "intended" reading 65% of the time is pretty high above random guessing.

But I would really like some psychic skeptic to be observing the whole show before being satisfied there isn't some ready explanation. 

Friday miscellany

*  It's pretty depressing reading about the wild success of Covid anti-vax misinformation swirling around the internet.   This thread on Twitter, for example.   

* James Hansen and his research buddies think that climate sensitivity is worse (higher) than 3 degrees, and aerosols are giving a false sense of security (that's my paraphrase).  The paper is currently only a pre-print, and I haven't noticed much commentary on it yet, but it sounds a worry.    (If he is correct, it really makes it sounds like geo-engineering by putting more aerosols high in the atmosphere might be unavoidable, in the long run.)

* Joe Rogan continues to be a force for misinformation.   

* I can't help it - even I'm getting a tad interested in the Harry melodrama.   This latest bit, about a visit to a California medium, is interesting because it sounds like what has happened to quite a few people - amongst a lot of generic comfort messaging, there is one detail given which sounds convincing because of its peculiar specificity.  Unless, of course, the woman had been fed that story beforehand.  

I really like this short exercise movement

We just seem to keep hearing news stories about how short bursts of exercise are surprisingly effective.  Here's the latest one, in the Washington Post:

Here’s an easy and effective way to add physical activity to your daily routine during the new year: turn your exercise into a snack. New research shows exercise “snacks,” which consist of brief spurts of exertion spread throughout the day, can improve metabolic health, raise endurance and stave off some of the undesirable changes in our muscles that otherwise occur when we sit too long. “It’s a very practical approach” to physical activity, said Daniel Moore, an associate professor of muscle physiology at the University of Toronto in Canada, who led a 2022 study of exercise snacking and muscle health. The physiological benefits of activity snacks can rival those of much longer sessions of brisk walking or other, traditional workouts, the science shows. And they come in multiple flavors, from stair climbing to unobtrusive chair squats in your office. Such “snacks” require no gym membership, special shoes or other equipment; office attire is optional but okay, and the time commitment is minimal.

I will gift link the article.   

There was also this article in The Conversation, with a message I liked:

It’s OK to aim lower with your new year’s exercise resolutions – a few minutes a day can improve your muscle strength

These articles brought up an old memory - an episode of (1970's TV version) The Odd Couple in which Felix did an isometrics exercise, pushing his clasped hands back and forth, and said to Oscar that this worth more than the exercise he got from playing something or other.

Through the wonders of Google, and obsessive people who have done a podcast purely about reviewing a popular sitcom from the 1970's, I have quickly established that this was from an episode called "The Odd Decathlon" in which they got into a fitness challenge, brought on because Felix found out that Oscar's health insurance premium was half of his (despite Felix just having passed a health check with flying colours.)   (Oh, and the exercise Oscar claimed keep him fit was softball.)

I'm impressed with two things:

a.    that I remember an episode of a show that I probably last watched in the mid to late 1970s; and

b.    that Felix was probably right!  

Now excuse me while I stand up and down rapidly for 100 seconds.

Something about the universe watching itself

I see that the currently dysfunctional Twitter is still getting some interesting tweets.  This one, for example:

The comments following included a link to this tweet:

The paper linked to there is new, and here is the (not easy to follow!) abstract:

We recently showed that if a massive (or charged) body is put in a quantum spatial superposition, the mere presence of a black hole in its vicinity will eventually decohere the superposition. In this paper we show that, more generally, decoherence of stationary superpositions will occur in any spacetime with a Killing horizon. This occurs because, in effect, the long-range field of the body is registered on the Killing horizon which, we show, necessitates a flux of "soft horizon gravitons/photons" through the horizon. The Killing horizon thereby harvests "which path" information of quantum superpositions and will decohere any quantum superposition in a finite time. It is particularly instructive to analyze the case of a uniformly accelerating body in a quantum superposition in flat spacetime. As we show, from the Rindler perspective the superposition is decohered by "soft gravitons/photons" that propagate through the Rindler horizon with negligible (Rindler) energy. We show that this decoherence effect is distinct from--and larger than--the decoherence resulting from the presence of Unruh radiation. We further show that from the inertial perspective, the decoherence is due to the radiation of high frequency (inertial) gravitons/photons to null infinity. (The notion of gravitons/photons that propagate through the Rindler horizon is the same notion as that of gravitons/photons that propagate to null infinity.) We also analyze the decoherence of a spatial superposition due to the presence of a cosmological horizon in de Sitter spacetime. We provide estimates of the decoherence time for such quantum superpositions in both the Rindler and cosmological cases.

The paper itself talks about the cosmological horizon being a Killing horizon:

The event horizon of a stationary black hole is a Killing horizon [ 16– 18 ], so spacetimes with Killing horizons encompass the case of stationary spacetimes that contain black holes.  However, there are many cases of interest where Killing horizons are present without the presence of black holes.  One such case is that of Minkowski spacetime, where the Rindler horizon is a Killing horizon with respect to the Lorentz boost Killing field. Another such case is de Sitter spacetime, where the cosmological horizon is a Killing horizon.

One of the other authors thus tweets:

His thread perhaps gives a more general explanation of the potential importance of the idea:

And here are another series of tweets trying to explain:

Of course, I can't tell how much merit or significance there is to this idea.  I would guess Sabine Hossenfelder will get to it on one of her videos soon.   

Update:  it just occurred to me - does this mean that proximity to a black hole has an effect on quantum experiments?   If one is passing through your solar system, does it matter to a lab experiment?

Isn't two to three hours in dark crime world enough?

Hey it's my blog and I'll get to bleat about this again.  

We recently subscribed to Binge, which seems to have a surprisingly large range of the "classic" criminal underworld series of the last couple of decades, including The Wire and The Sopranos.  My son likes this genre, and sometimes I try the shows, sometimes I don't.

So that's how I found myself watching the first episode in the first season of The Wire last night.   Can't say I was overly impressed.  

Once again, my overall question is "why do people want to spend so much of their mental life in such depressing worlds?  Isn't watching well done movies featuring dank criminal underworlds once or twice a year enough?"

My secondary question is:  if the writers have not worked directly in the police or FBI, how can you really know how accurately they are portraying the atmosphere of the such workplaces?   Sure, anyone can go to a court and then know how to write a courtroom scene, but if you haven't worked in Baltimore police for several years, are people giving the show too much credit for atmospheric accuracy.

So who involved in the show had such real life experience?   According to Mental Floss:

The Wire had several writers whose work extended well beyond the television world. George Pelecanos, one of America’s most successful and well-respected crime fiction writers, wrote eight episodes of The Wire and served as a producer on season three. Richard Price, who has writing credits on five episodes, was already an accomplished writer before getting hired for the show, having written several novels and screenplays, including the critically-acclaimed 1992 crime novel Clockers, as well as the script for Spike Lee’s 1995 film adaptation of his book. Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone writer Dennis Lehane wrote three epsiodes.

But there is also this:

Probably one of the main reasons why The Wire rarely struck an inauthentic note was that producers David Simon and Ed Burns didn't have to fake their knowledge of the worlds they were exploring. Before breaking out with his book-turned-TV-show , Simon was a longtime crime reporter at The Baltimore Sun, which gave him an intimate knowledge of not only crime and institutional dysfunction in America's inner-cities, but also the troubles facing the newspaper industry. Burns, on the other hand, served as both a police detective and public school teacher in Baltimore before working on The Wire.

Oh - I see from IMDB that Ed Burns worked for 20 years as a Baltimore detective - so I can't fault him for lacking knowledge.   But even so - insiders, when they turn to fiction, can still exaggerate for dramatic effect.   So, I don't know - I'm still a bit dubious about this aspect of the show.

Anyway, I don't think I will watch more - maybe one more episode?  But really, I don't see the appeal of the show.    

So, so true

Molly Jong-Fast gives a succinct and accurate explanation of what the Republican party has become:

Republicans created a cult of personality around Trump. And now that Trump is off the main stage, the cult no longer has a personality. It’s just a cult with lots of zealotry but no actual tenets or beliefs. And even if McCarthy does eventually prevail, the chaos gripping the House GOP is just a symptom of a larger problem. The Republican Party isn’t really a governing party anymore. It’s an incubator for right-wing celebrities. Republicans didn’t even bother writing a new convention platform in 2020, relying on its reality television host’s demented charisma. And when that didn’t work, and Joe Biden decisively beat Trump, the majority of House Republicans tried overturning the election.

It’s not just Trump who Republicans are expected to take marching orders from, but right-wing media figures as well. After McCarthy failed three Speakership contests, Punchbowl’s Max Cohen tweeted, “Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, who’s poised to be chief deputy whip, on what could possibly swing the 19 Jordan voters: “We’ll see what happens when Tucker and Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro start beating up on these guys. Maybe that’ll move it.” Here’s a Republican Party so broken that it needs Tucker Carlson to help them whip votes.

This intrinsic weakness in the GOP allowed the base to run wild, embracing everything from anti-science stupidity to paranoid conspiracy theories. Perhaps, in 2015, Trump led the base. But by 2020, Trump had lost control of the monster he created. The base decided to reward social media stunts with small-dollar donations. Fox News and the right-wing internet ecosystem created a world of mini Trumps, little congressional bomb-throwers like Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Gaetz. More motivated by fame than governing, these members seem to want what Real Housewives want: to build their brands. These congressional Kardashians don’t have a governing principle beyond obstruction and attention, of which they’ve all been getting amid this week’s party meltdown. 

 

BTS as government conspiracy

Here's a somewhat amusing column by a writer who inadvertently started a conspiracy idea about K-pop, and has regretted it ever since:

I hope the fact that the South Korean government basically forced the band [BTS] to retire will put to rest the persistent rumor that K-pop in general, and BTS in particular, is funded by the Korean state as part of a cunning plan. A rumor that I am constantly asked to address. A rumor that I may have started.

Here’s the back story: In 2014, I wrote a book on the origins of Korean popular culture. BTS was barely a thing then. At the time, the only Korean performer the Western world knew was Psy, the guy who did “Gangnam Style” and whose video was the first to get a billion views on YouTube. Many people considered his success a fluke. I wanted to alert the world of the Korean pop cultural tsunami that was on the way.

One — just one — of my theses was that starting in the 1990s, Korean government officials mobilized to increase the soft power of their country by becoming a global pop culture exporter. South Korea was a pioneer in wiring a whole nation for broadband, with the aim of making Korean entertainment shareable with the world. A new subdivision within the Ministry of Culture was devoted to K-pop and other aspects of the Korean wave. In the early days, the ministry subsidized projects like paying for Korean dramas to be dubbed in other languages.

Immediately upon the book’s release, that idea — just one of many in the book — started to grow fangs. People heard what they wanted to hear, which was that the Korean wave was nothing more than a Potemkin wave: Korean deep state propaganda and a flimflam.

A website headline for a radio chat show misleadingly said that I — or rather “Euny Kong,” per the host — would be discussing how South Korea “manufactured cool en masse.” Another article claimed that according to Euny Hong, the popularity of all things Korean was government-fabricated.

Why did people latch onto this narrative? The answer is best encapsulated by something an editor told me when he rejected my book in 2013: The “Gangnam Style” video, he said, didn’t really get a billion views. The Korean government had hired 10,000 people to click on the video 100,000 times, he insisted. Like many other people I have encountered, he recoiled at the idea that a tiny, formerly destitute Asian country could have pulled off a global cultural coup without some kind of shenanigans.

And for every person who used me to gleefully take K-pop down a peg, there was at least one K-pop stan who wanted my head on a spike.