Kayla calms down

There are more important stories in the world, but the bizarre one of the fake gigantic boob wearing Canadian teacher deserves an update.

According to the Daily Mail, he has turned up at his new school looking very conventionally male, which makes all of the warnings about it respecting his "gender expression", and taking a lot of security precautions, seem a bit odd.

It also further adds to the mystery as to whether he was on a massive troll at the other school.  But he did also go skydiving and walking down the street in his fake boobs, so who knows?

Or did a flurry of parental objections to the new school make them tell him that he just can't show up dressed like an idiot?

The tabloids also love to repeat that he had claimed his breasts were real - when does lying on something so obvious move from (what?) creative performance to a sign of clear instability you don't want in a profession like teaching?

 

Sharks and inflatables don't mix

I had never heard of inflatable catamarans before:

 Three people have been rescued in the Coral Sea off the coast of Cairns, after their catamaran was damaged during several shark attacks.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) coordinated the rescue early Wednesday morning roughly 835km off the coast of Cairns, after receiving a distress beacon.

In a post to social media, the crew, who were on a round-the-world expedition called Russian Ocean Way, which they were documenting online, said they were first attacked by sharks on 4 September, leaving the rear left “cylinder” of their nine-metre inflatable catamaran damaged.

I wonder what the sharks were thinking, though.  I mean, I give orcas some credit for intelligence when attacking sail boats - but I wouldn't have thought sharks would keep attacking a boat.  Well, unless the crew had been particularly slack about throwing food scraps overboard, I guess.

So, I'm using Ivermectin to fight face bugs

Here's a story of a personal nature.

Since about my early 40's I've had mild rosacea on my face from time to time.   For those who don't know, it presents as red spots or rashes, and it's sometimes described as an adult form of acne, but it doesn't look like your typical adolescent acne with pimples that have a definite life cycle.   Rosacea type acne is more like annoying red spots or small lumps that never fully come to a head, but just linger for a long time.   I should hasten to add, my case has always been pretty mild, never covering any substantial area, and I'm not sure whether anyone would really identify me as having a problem with it, as it has been well controlled by low dose antibiotics which I might take for a month or two, then wait to see how it goes, as well as a topical prescription cream called Rosex. 

I saw a doctor for a renewed script for the antibiotic (doxycycline) this week, and I explained that I recently had to keep taking it because it was only taking a week or so after finishing a 30 day course to find I was getting rosacea type red spots/lumps on my nose - one of the worst places to get them, as it can give a real WC Fields look.   Going back onto the antibiotic would clear it up again within a week or so, but I wasn't sure if it really was a good idea to be almost continually on any antibiotic.   (Doctors and pharmacists had told me before it is very well tolerated - and in fact it's recently been in the news as a potential wonder drug for helping stop the spread of STI's!)  

Anyhow, the GP said, after checking on line, that while it is thought to be very safe to be on long term, some think it is best to have breaks of a month or two to let your gut microbiome re-establish.  (It seems to have no effect on my digestion at all, but yes, given all the interest in recent years as to the effect of gut microbiome on our general health, this is the issue that I had been wondering about.)

I then went to another doctor at a skin clinic to have something else looked at, and we talked about the antibiotic issue too, but he suggested I could try another topical cream other than Rosex, which I had never found as good as being on a course of antibiotics.

He didn't tell me what the alternative cream was, so I was somewhat surprised to find at the chemist that it's the MAGA crowd's wonder drug - Ivermectin!

I had never heard of it as a treatment for rosacea - but it definitely is.  It's also been used, in lotion form, for head lice.

I had no idea it was used externally for parasites, as well as for internal ones, at least in animals.

So, why does it work for rosacea?   

The thing is, it seems the cause of rosacea is not well understood, but yes, I had read before that there was a suspected role, at least in some people, of that the ugly, ugly demodex mite that a lot of us have on our faces, especially as we age:

Newborns don’t have Demodex mites. In a study looking for them on adult humans, researchers could detect them visually in only 14% of people.

However, once they used DNA analysis, they found signs of Demodex on 100% of the adult humans they tested, a finding supported by previous cadaver examinations.

By the way, I also had never read up on the origins of Ivermectin before, either, but it is recent, and derives from a microorganism found in Japanese soil, or all places: 

Discovered in the late-1970s, the pioneering drug ivermectin, a dihydro derivative of avermectin—originating solely from a single microorganism isolated at the Kitasato Intitute, Tokyo, Japan from Japanese soil—has had an immeasurably beneficial impact in improving the lives and welfare of billions of people throughout the world. Originally introduced as a veterinary drug, it kills a wide range of internal and external parasites in commercial livestock and companion animals. It was quickly discovered to be ideal in combating two of the world’s most devastating and disfiguring diseases which have plagued the world’s poor throughout the tropics for centuries. It is now being used free-of-charge as the sole tool in campaigns to eliminate both diseases globally. It has also been used to successfully overcome several other human diseases and new uses for it are continually being found. This paper looks in depth at the events surrounding ivermectin’s passage from being a huge success in Animal Health into its widespread use in humans, a development which has led many to describe it as a “wonder” drug.

So yeah, I'm fairly surprised to find that I'm now using a small amount of the Right wing ratbags' favourite drug, in cream form, on my nose every morning.   It seems to be helping (in that I am not taking doxycycline at the moment, and am pretty much keeping red spots off my nose) so far, but it's a bit too early to tell.  

Another way to burn money

I've always been skeptical of Richard Branson's Virgin Galatic joy ride space plane, and now I see that someone at The Spectator claims that it is wildly unlikely to ever be profitable, and will (economically, if not physically) crash and burn in the relatively near future.

 

A problem in Africa

Here's another gift link from the NYT, about how African countries find it difficult to raise the investment needed for solar power and other clean energy.

Political instability would have to have a lot to do with that.

And on that topic - does anyone really have good ideas as to how to deal with that, in the African context?  

A bottleneck, or not

The NYT version of the science story last week that maybe we (in the generic sense) barely made it through a population bottleneck:

Researchers in China have found evidence suggesting that 930,000 years ago, the ancestors of modern humans suffered a massive population crash. They point to a drastic change to the climate that occurred around that time as the cause.

Our ancestors remained at low numbers — fewer than 1,280 breeding individuals — during a period known as a bottleneck. It lasted for over 100,000 years before the population rebounded.

“About 98.7 percent of human ancestors were lost at the beginning of the bottleneck, thus threatening our ancestors with extinction,” the scientists wrote. Their study was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

If the research holds up, it will have provocative implications. It raises the possibility that a climate-driven bottleneck helped split early humans into two evolutionary lineages — one that eventually gave rise to Neanderthals, the other to modern humans.

But:

But outside experts said they were skeptical of the novel statistical methods that the researchers used for the study. “It is a bit like inferring the size of a stone that falls into the middle of the large lake from only the ripples that arrive at the shore some minutes later,” said Stephan Schiffels, a population geneticist at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Watch this space, I suppose.   I suspect it's an idea that won't hold up - but that's just an uninformed hunch.

 

Crabb on the Voice referendum (and my general bleat about the matter)

I quite liked Annabel Crabb's article on the Voice, as it does explain the difference with the 1967 referendum, and pretty much acknowledges that it's legitimate that the public is confused about the new referendum. 

I see on the increasingly trashy X (my God, I'm getting a lot of Right wing, MAGA guff thrown at me now, but the clear successor to it is still not apparent) that the Lefty pro-Voice folk whose tweets make it through to me are very impressed with the new advertisement featuring John Farnham's song and think it might just turn things around for them.   I'm way less convinced - I thought the ad featured some odd acting by the (I think) key male actor, who seems to stare in puzzlement at the TV while it features some key pro-aboriginal moments in history.  I would have to watch it again to fully understand the narrative it's trying to show in that actor.  

Personally, I'm still conflicted about it all.

On the one hand, I don't want to be on the side of Peter Dutton and the cynical No case which is playing this for party political advantage.   I also don't want to be seen as on the Lidia Thorpe radical side against it.

On the other hand, I am very cynical about many of the presumptions of the Yes case - primarily, that governments have not been listening for the last several decades to the myriad of aboriginal organisations; and that adding another layer of bureaucracy in terms of who the government needs to listen to is likely to achieve any significant change.  (It will, to be very cynical, probably increase the income of a class of aboriginal activist who are already firmly entrenched in the roles of advice to government.)   

Then there is "the vibe" - the Yes case is nominally painted as a racially unifying act, but the general "vibe" of aboriginal activism over the last 30 years seems to me to be moving in the opposite direction.  It has  included attempts at rehabilitating (really, romanticising) the pre-colonial lifestyle and conditions; increasingly common power flexes over matters such as access to national parks because of claims of sacred or special status (including over sites never previously the subject of such talk); increasing and sometimes opportunistic claims to aboriginality by persons with either little (or no provable) actual evidence of aboriginal ancestry; and (if you believe the signs held by young activists at any rally) a denial of the very legitimacy of the Australian government and land ownership in toto (it's "unceded land", after all.)   Similarly, the "welcome to country" fits right into a view that it's not really the land of everyone, but somehow still theirs.  

I reckon the general trajectory of aboriginal activism has moved away from something like a late 1960's multicultural view of everyone working together co-operatively, with opportunity being open to all, to an increasingly divisive attitude centred on a type of identity politics that concentrates on grievance rather than opportunity. 

As I have said before, Noel Pearson used to be an activist who leant towards the "must take responsibility for our advancement" attitude, and he occasionally still makes some noises along those lines, but I think it fair to say that such a conservative-ish attitude is far in the minority.       

To flip back again - to complain about the general attitude - the "vibe" - of recent decades of indigenous advocacy is not to deny that historical institutional racism casts a very, very long shadow, and deserves forms of compensation and assistance to those who are economically disadvantaged from it.

But I don't see that this means we have to pretend that all claims are true or useful:    I'm not of a postmodern view that terms are open to a change of meaning at a whim, such as I complained about in my recent post about the Dark Emu agenda.   And I do think that academia has played a gullible and often unhelpful role in this game of grievance amplification. 

So, I don't know what to do.

If I vote yes, it will be in the expectation that it will further entrench the inherent conflicts across indigenous advocacy, and result in a likely greater waste of money than under the present system, and be taken as a general support for a trajectory in advocacy that I do not support. 

If I vote no, it may be taken as support of the radicals who I really do not want to support.

I think just leaving the ballot blank is an option, but that feels a bit too much like sitting on the fence, too.

Suggestions, anyone? 

Update:   Noel Pearson is now arguing that if the Voice is established it would mean:

... Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders would no longer be able to say, “it’s the government’s fault” for failing to improve educational outcomes, as well as housing and health policies for remote communities.

But how does that make sense when the government is not bound to follow the advice of the body, and (as I have said from the start), what is bound to happen is that on the most contentious issues, the Voice will make a recommendation and there will immediately be dispute about whether it is the right recommendation from within aboriginal activism.   

I mean, I can give credit for Pearson still pushing a line that it's important for the indigenous to take responsibility for some of the problems that befall them, but there is just no reason to believe the argument that the Voice is a way to end "blame the government".

Competing theories

I also saw someone on Twitter/X say "what if there's a Pentagon cabal that is worshipping the aliens?", and I have to admit, that could form a fun basis for a screenplay.  

What if that's only because they don't want us to know they are conscious?

 (I haven't read the paper yet - I'm not entirely serious...)

Tactics changed

I heard Noel Pearson on Radio National this morning, gushing how the "Yes"to the Voice side is coming from the side of Love.   You can read about the message here:

Pearson rejects Voice rage, says Yes side must ‘maintain the love’

This, it seems pretty clear, is an attempt to reset his advocacy from his (and Langton's, and quite a few others) position that (my paraphrase, of course) "to vote No is essentially a racist position that ruins everything about race relations forever, and so we will justifiably hate you and this country forever more."

 

The two Naomi's

Well, at least I'm glad to know I'm not the only person in the world to sometimes get a little confused between Naomi Klein and (now, generic mad woman) Naomi Wolfe.

Klein has written a whole book about it, as explained in this New York Times article, which I'll gift link.

Hard to tell who is most nuts here

I see the bizarre Canadian story about the mega fake boob wearing teacher is back in the news because (as hard to believe as this is) it seems he has been employed at a different school, which has warned parents they have to respect his rights to his "gender expression", and the school will take special security precautions (which sound inconvenient for the kids) because of the expected protests.

In any comments following articles about this, there are people who still suspect this is a massive troll by the teacher, who has at least once been photographed going about his normal life as a  male and without the ridiculous fake boobs.  (He has also, apparently, given all types of explanations as to them being "real".)

I guess, as a troll, it might be considered successful - the total apparent sincerity of the new school board showing that they have zero common sense and are complete ideological captives on such an issue is astounding.  

But even so, how nutty do you have to be to carry out such a troll for so long?

 

 

They would last less than 6 months

Axios notes:

Trump open to Vivek Ramaswamy as vice president 

I reckon that their working relationship would be lucky to last 6 months.  Look at the history of other nuts who have tried to be on Team Trump.

By the way - Vivek is so crazy I don't have any substantial fear of him every support much beyond the MAGA (plus nutty technocrat billionaire and their fanboys) crowd.   

I think Nikki Haley is capable of broader appeal - but as the last post notes, can she really get past changing her view of Trump every second week?

She is one of many, but that is no excuse

Here's a column by Frank Bruni at NYT pointing out the "pathetic" history of Nikki Haley's continual flip flopping on her support/condemnation of Donald Trump.

It's not just the intellectual dishonesty, it's the moral cowardice, and it applies to so, so many Republicans like her.

On our way to an AI Pope

At the Catholic Herald, a big claim in the first sentence here:

As an AI-based app currently in the beta phase, Magisterium AI “could be a game changer for the Church”, Sanders said.

The app is an AI that is trained by using a limited number of Church documents and which, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard, can be used to generate human-like text on specific content that could be used by anyone from church scholars and academics, canon lawyers, students seeking well-sourced information to assist in studies, and anyone curious about church teaching.

According to Sanders, the difference between Magisterium AI and ChatGPT is that “our AI is trained on a private database of only Church documents”, and therefore there is less chance the AI will “hallucinate”, which is tech jargon for “make stuff up”.

Further down:

The app, launched earlier this year, currently has around 2,580 magisterial documents in its knowledge database, and the list is growing....

Magisterium AI is currently partnering with the Orientale, which contains the largest library on Eastern Christianity, to digitise the library’s contents and add the documents it contains to the app’s database so the AI can train on them and make them available to users across the world.

I look forward to hearing from the new, future AI PopeBot.

 

I get to amuse myself about Kant, again

First. please read the footnote to this blog entry back in 2010.

Then, I offer as further evidence in support of my proposed Kant fan fiction/screenplay:

I don't recall reading that before.

The billiards bit is at least confirmed here:

He was a sober and quiet student, not engaging in the frivolous activities common to university students.^[9] Yet Kant was no drudge either. He enjoyed playing billiards, and did so with such skill that he and his companions often won small sums of money to help defray the cost of living. 

And the card playing is mentioned here:

He would stay up late drinking wine and playing cards with his friends. He’d sleep late and eat too much and host big parties.

It wasn’t until he turned 40 that he dropped it all and developed the routine life he later made famous. He said that he developed this routine at 40 because he realized the moral implications of his actions and decided that he would no longer allow himself to waste the precious time or energy his consciousness had left.

I don't want to know that he dropped his time wasting ways at 40, though.  In my screenplay, that's when he hit the higher class gambling dens and pleasure houses of Europe, as a Prussian James Bond, before becoming the uber-prude we all know and love.  ;)

 

Krugman connects the dots

Paul Krugman writes:

Recently Dr. Peter Hotez, a leading vaccine scientist and a frequent target of anti-vaxxer harassment, expressed some puzzlement in a post on X, formerly Twitter. He noted that many of those taunting him were also “big time into bitcoin or cryptocurrency” and declared that “I can’t quite connect the dots on that one.”

OK, I can help with that. Also, welcome to my world.

If you regularly follow debates about public policy, especially those involving wealthy tech bros, it’s obvious that there’s a strong correlation among the three Cs: climate denial, Covid vaccine denial and cryptocurrency cultism.

I’ve written about some of these things before, in the context of Silicon Valley’s enthusiasm for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But in the light of Hotez’s puzzlement — and also the rise of Vivek Ramaswamy, another crank, who won’t get the G.O.P. nomination but could conceivably become Donald Trump’s running mate — I want to say more about what these various forms of crankdom have in common and why they appeal to so many wealthy men.

The key thing is, success can easily lead to over-estimation of your ability to understand complicated stuff:

Success all too easily feeds the belief that you’re smarter than anyone else, so you can master any subject without working hard to understand the issues or consulting people who have; this kind of arrogance may be especially rife among tech types who got rich by defying conventional wisdom. The wealthy also tend to surround themselves with people who tell them how brilliant they are or with other wealthy people who join them in mutual affirmation of their superiority to mere technical drones — what the tech writer Anil Dash calls “V.C. QAnon.”

So where does cryptocurrency come in? Underlying the whole crypto phenomenon is the belief by some tech types that they can invent a better monetary system than the one we currently have, all without talking to any monetary experts or learning any monetary history. Indeed, there’s a widespread belief that the generations-old system of fiat money issued by governments is a Ponzi scheme that will collapse into hyperinflation any day now. Hence, for example, Jack Dorsey’s 2021 declaration that “hyperinflation will change everything. It’s happening.”

Now, I’m quite willing to admit that monetary economics isn’t as solid a science as epidemiology or climatology. And yes, even noncrank economists argue about some big issues much more than their hard-science counterparts.

But economics nonetheless is, as John Maynard Keynes wrote, “a technical and difficult subject” — one on which you shouldn’t make pronouncements without studying quite a lot of theory and history — although “no one will believe it.” Certainly people who think they understand climate better than climatologists and vaccines better than epidemiologists are also likely to think they understand money better than economists and to believe in each case that experts telling them that the world doesn’t work the way they think it does are engaged in some kind of hoax or conspiracy.

He adds near the end:

Thanks to the tech boom, there are probably more wealthy cranks than there used to be, and they’re wealthier than ever, too. They also have a more receptive audience in the form of a Republican Party whose confidence in the scientific community has collapsed since the mid-2000s.

All sounds like a good enough explanation.

Literally, a brainworm

I guess this story will further cement Australia's reputation for all things dangerous: 

Woman complained of forgetfulness and depression before doctors pulled out an 8cm roundworm normally found in pythons

It's kind of interesting that her earlier symptoms were to do with digestion, though:

It was a fairly regular day on the ward for Canberra hospital infectious diseases physician Dr Sanjaya Senanayake, until a neurosurgeon colleague called him and said: “Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe what I just found in this lady’s brain – and it’s alive and wriggling.”

The neurosurgeon, Dr Hari Priya Bandi, had pulled an 8cm-long parasitic roundworm from her patient, prompting her to call on Senanayake and other hospital colleagues for advice about what to do next.

The patient, a 64-year-old woman from south-eastern New South Wales, was first admitted to her local hospital in late January 2021 after suffering three weeks of abdominal pain and diarrhoea, followed by a constant dry cough, fever and night sweats.

By 2022, her symptoms also included forgetfulness and depression, prompting a referral to Canberra hospital. An MRI scan of her brain revealed abnormalities requiring surgery.

The urban doom loop is a worry everywhere

I'll gift a link to this Washington Post article talking about concerns as to whether commercial building values in inner cities are (due to Covid forcing us how to do remote working) going to drop so badly that it will stuff up the economy.

This was a worry I was muttering about early in the Covid pandemic - because it was pretty remarkable how quickly everything was able to keep ticking over despite the dramatic drop in the number of people who needed to be in the inner city.   And it's not as if turning office blocks into apartments or hotels is an easy thing to do in most cases.

It's a tricky thing, though, in the sense that if you're worried about transport's contribution to greenhouse gases, remote working is a great thing.  Is that why John Quiggin is (I think) not worried at all about this as a major problem?

But half empty city buildings - it still feels lonely, and wrong.

Update:  Anecdotal evidence, but still - 

By the way, as far as Brisbane is concerned:   seems to me that it might turn out to be a case of lucky timing that the inner city is having major transport and facility upgrades for the Olympics over the next decade.    They should make the inner city more appealing place to visit, if not work, I would have thought?

I guess "being swallowed by a whale" is not really a thing...

Slate has stepped away from it's first person "this is my weird sex life" stories (why does this magazine spend so much time on these often hard to believe, click baity advice columns?   I only occasionally click on them - honest) to print the account of one of the women who accidentally ended up in the mouth of a feeding humpback whale a couple of years ago.   I'm pretty sure I saw the video about it at the time. 

From the story, there is this fact, which I don't recall being in my brain before (my bold):

...if you slow it down just a little bit, you can see us sliding right into the whale’s mouth as he closes it and the only thing sticking out of the mouth is my right arm. I guess it happens to sea lions a lot and those kinds of animals because whales and sea lions are feeding on the same fish. The throat of a whale is about the size of a grapefruit. Anything that’s larger than that just kind of comes out. Thank goodness for that. We were in more danger of drowning or being squashed.

Has this been answered yet?

Who ordered or arranged the completely over the top police/security escort to Trump's arrest in Atlanta last week?

 Many people were commenting on Twitter about how ridiculously extreme it seemed.  And even if there had been early concerns about the number of pro (or anti) Trump protesters who might be outside the courthouse, you would deal with that with police on the ground, not on motorcycles and in SUVs.

I am amongst those who suspect it was arranged by the creepy MAGA element within the local police force, in a "we ride with him as a sign of support"type vibe.   

But has any journalist looked into that yet?

 

Two interesting videos on Chinese ghosts

The first is by Singaporean content creator Sneaky Sushii, who for some reason has done a series of videos with a supernatural theme, even though he presents himself as an all round skeptic.  (He's also not Buddhist or Taoist - I suspect based on his appearing dressed as a bishop in an old video that his family might be nominally Christian.)   

There are two interesting things about the video:

1.    that in a modern city like Singapore, they do brightly lit, drive in ghost concerts in their Chinese cemeteries;

2.    in the comments following the video, so many of his young fan base praise him for his great bravery in going into the cemetery at night and trying to find a ghost to communicate with (indicating how Singaporean young folk still firmly believe in the supernatural, even if otherwise not so religious.  Well, I doubt they are conventionally religious, anyway. A bit like the Japanese, I expect.)

Anyhow, the video:   

 

The second video is a useful educational background on the history of the Chinese ghost festival, from the great Religion for Breakfast Youtube channel. Not much to say about this, except that as always, he does a really good job. 

 

 

Oh, actually I do have something further to say. He points out in the video that the festival's most important date this year falls on 30 August. This does actually explain why at my work, a matter due to settle that day, involving a Chinese buyer, has been brought forward to 29 August. I guess every year I should keep track of the date, just in case it affects other Chinese I'm dealing with...

Aren't they pathetic?

On the one hand, the reaction to Trump's poseur mugshot from a bunch of delusional men for whom he (bizarrely) represents a strong man:

In the real world, as reflected on Reddit:

Update:  Another delusional culture war wannabe warrior who's won over by a criminal striking a pose.  

Another update, cos these made me laugh:

Assessing the flakey phony candidate

Well, a certain gullible, populist Trumpy type might find it mesmerising - the rest of us, not at all.

I even find him more annoying that De Santis and his faux "let me be Queen of Camelot, please" wife.

Update:  more twitter commentary:

Update 2:  this is probably true, given the sophistication of Trumpists:

Anyway, the Trumpiest of Trumpsters on line already don't trust him.  

Two has-beens having a chat

They are both awful and deserve each other:

 

This also puts me in mind of Jonestown - cult leaders are often into encouraging belief in their gullible followers that someone is out to kill them. 

The polypill for salvation

The idea of the cardio vascular system polypill for the general promotion of longevity doesn't seem to be in the news much lately,  although I still see there are fans.

In any case, I've been thinking comparative religion again, and strategies for making sure you stand the best chance of getting into Heaven (or something like it) from your death bed.

This has particularly been brought to mind by the simple formula offered in Pure Land Buddhism, which is from Amitabha's 18th vow:

If, when I attain Buddhahood, sentient beings in the lands of the ten directions who sincerely and joyfully entrust themselves to me, desire to be born in my land, and call my Name, even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain perfect Enlightenment. Excluded, however, are those who commit the five gravest offences and abuse the right Dharma.

Just to be clear, let's check the list of the 5 greatest offences:

The first one is killing your father. The second is killing your mother. The third is killing someone who seeks the way of awakening. The fourth is physically injuring the Buddha. The fifth is disturbing the peace and harmony of the Sangha community. Any one of these is considered a serious offense in Buddhism, so in the 18^th Vow, Amida Buddha also admonishes us never to commit them.

 Well,  I think I can manage to avoid those.

So, to make it clear, Pure Land Buddhists believe that, for most people, being able to recite Amitabha's name 10 times is a guarantee to re-born into the Pure Land, which sounds a cool place:

Sukhavati is expressively described in the Pure Land sutras as being a joyous world, soft and glowing, filled with the music of birds and the tinkling of trees adorned with precious jewels and garlands of golden bells. Amitabha sits on a lotus in the midst of a terraced pond, attended by the bodhisattvas (“buddhas-to-be”) Avalokiteshvara and Mahasthamaprapta. The newly dead enter into lotus buds, which unfold when the occupants have become entirely purified and have attained enlightenment. Many are said to be reborn on Earth after leaving Sukhavati to become bodhisattvas working toward the liberation (moksha) of all sentient beings.

The exact way to recite Amitabha's name depends on which language you follow, as explained at this Wikipedia page (and also this page). 

I like the Sanskrit version which is easy to remember.  Form the last link:  " 'Namo Amitabha Buddha' which literally mans 'Homage to the Amitabha Buddha ' or 'I seek refuge in the Amitabha Buddha'."

Anyway, this is taking me a long time to get to the point:   for someone who remains open to the possibility of entry into an afterlife, but doesn't know which religion gets it right, what's the best practice on a death bed?

I would guess as follows:

a.    recite "Namo Amitabha Buddha" ten times;

b.    have a Catholic priest handy and make a confession; or if that's not possible, at least make your own mental confession, and recite ten Hail Mary's and the Lord's Prayer;

c.    to cover the evangelicals, cry out "I accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour!", I guess?

d.    I was thinking about now making a bad taste joke about doing something that would count as matyrdom for a Muslim, but that is hotly contested as a legitimate part of their religion.

e.    As for Hindu's, it seems they believe you'll be reincarnated one way or the other, and there is this  advice on an American website (the last surprising bit is my bold):

The condition of one’s consciousness at the moment of death is considered very important in determining the state of the next life. Because of this, it’s traditional for Hindus to die at home, where they can be more easily surrounded by family and friends who can help create a spiritual atmosphere conducive in helping a soul depart the body in an auspicious manner. Of course, as it’s become more and more common for people to die in hospitals — whether out of necessity or choice — loved ones strive to create a spiritual environment as best as possible. 

The goal of the departing is to die while concentrating on a preferred mantra that invokes the presence of the Divine. Because it’s common for the dying to lose control of their faculties, including the ability to focus, loved ones provide support by singing prayers and hymns, and also reading from scripture. As a person becomes fully unconscious and stops breathing, indicating death’s arrival, a family member will usually softly chant the preferred mantra in the person’s ear. 

Pouring a few spoons of water from the Ganges — a river in India considered to be sacred — into the mouth also brings auspiciousness. The personified deity of Ganga is worshipped as a Divine being, hence her presence at the time of death helps to ensure a soul’s transition to a spiritually favorable next life.

 So, I guess to be safe, you carry around a vial of Ganges water when you get to old age?

Anyhoo, that's my "polypill" procedures suggestions for guaranteed salvation.

Don't say I'm not a useful blog...

Pure Land and Christianity

I've been reading some interesting stuff about the origins of the story of Amitabha Buddha, the Sutras for which seem to date within the range of perhaps 150 - 400 CE.  

The story moved from India to China, and later to Japan, with the religious doctrine morphing along the way.  This is something I hadn't known before:

Karl Barth, one of the great theologians of the twentieth century, does a wonderful comparison in Church Dogmatics between Reformed Christianity and Pure Land Buddhism as taught by Honen and Shinran.

He surveyed the religious traditions of the world in search of doctrinal parallels to Christianity and concluded that it was the Japanese Pure Land tradition that provided “the most exact, comprehensive, and plausible ‘pagan’ parallel to Christianity” (Barth 1961, 1,2: 342). He expresses some shock at the depth and specificity of resemblance, commenting that the Pure Land thought of Hōnen and Shinran, in particular, “parallels not so much Roman or Greek Catholicism but rather, of all things, the Christianity of the Reformation, and therefore confronts Christianity with the question of its truth precisely in its form as a consistent religion of grace” (2).

 Update:   Google has turned up an extract of a book with a chapter about the rise of Pure Land Buddhism, but I can't even see who the author is.  Nevertheless, this section about the various arguments for how it arose is of interest:

I have to say, it is interesting to note that a major evolution within Buddhism was going on at the same time as the various strains of Christian belief were also in competition.   And both end up with a (kind of) Trinity, as well.  

I mentioned once before that it is in fact quite likely that Indian Buddhists had travelled to the Middle East region before and around the time of Christ.

As for Christians heading East, I don't believe I have noted this before:

In A.D. 781, a Christian monk named Jingjing composed an inscription of roughly 1,800 Chinese characters on a large stone tablet, called a stela, which would become one of the richest sources of information ever discovered about early Christianity in China.

According to the stela, unearthed in the early 1600s, Christianity came to China in A.D. 635, when a Nestorian monk named Aluoben entered the ancient capital of Chang’an -- now modern-day Xi’an -- in central China. His arrival must have been the source of some excitement because the e mperor sent his minister of state to greet the guest and bring him to the palace. Although we do not know where Aluoben came from or why he visited China, some scholars believe that he arrived from Persia and was part of an important foreign delegation. Whatever the case, the Tang emperor issued an imperial edict three years later allowing Aluoben to build a monastery in Chang’an and to settle there with a handful of missionaries.  

By the time Aluoben’s story was commemorated in stone almost 150 years later, the Old and New Testaments had been translated into Chinese, and monasteries had been founded in several cities throughout China. But in 845, an imperial edict limited all foreign religion, including Christianity. The edict triggered a period of persecution, and, by the end of the Tang Dynasty in 907, Christianity had all but disappeared from China.

A significant presence did not reappear until the 13th century, when Mongols conquered China and founded the Yuan Dynasty.

 It would be neat to find some Christian influence on the development of Mahayana Buddhism in Indian in the second century, but seems like no one has found evidence of such visitors...

A likely story

Actually, I have liked the idea that "greys" are future evolved humans for quite a long time.  I don't know who first had that thought, though.

I know, I will ask Perplexity!

Oh damn, it claims not to know either.  It notes that there is some recent content along those lines on Youtube (and a whole book published about it in 2019), but I wonder if it goes back to some obscure science fiction writer.     

Update:   See, this is why I keep a blog: so I can search it to remind myself of things I already knew!

Back in 2013, I had a post noting that the Time Travellers from the Future theory seems to go back to the 1950s, and one (apparently real) guy in particular.  (Googling his name, I just came up with another page about it.)  

Mind you, this guy is supposed to have said Roswell was real (as in, involved aliens of some kind), which I don't believe at all.

So yeah, people with high gullibility seem to go for the "from the future" theory.   I still like it as a fun idea, though.

Yay for lush Singapore

This 15 minute PBS show about how Singapore deliberately chose to go green and lush in its urban environment is a good explanation of why I love visiting there.  It's basically like a techno/green, capitalist/socialist vision of how the future should look (and work):

 

I also gather from the enthusiastic comments following (mostly from Americans) that a lot of people hadn't realised that the place looks like this now.   And its nice to see that so many who have visited it are big fans of the place, like me.

And a final comment: it's a little amusing to watch the poor host start to show clear sweat on his shaved head during the interview with the Chinese woman architect/planner who looks cool and composed throughout.  I guess it has something to do with acclimatisation.   (He could also have taken his coat off.)

In which I dare readers to try and not be impressed with an AI product...

I was killing time yesterday when I looked at Google Play for any new apps to play with on my phone, when I saw one called Perplexity.   It had very high ratings, so I tried it.

What is it?:   

Perplexity AI is an answer engine that uses large language models to provide precise answers to questions.

Sure, I have fiddled with ChatGPT and marvelled at some of its imagined information.  But a search engine with an LLM that provides footnoted links to the sources of its information?   

I'm finding it very, very impressive.  I'm not saying it's guaranteed to be 100% accurate, but it's pretty much blowing my mind as to how quickly it gathers information from several sources, bundles together a summary from all of them, writes it up coherently, and presents a further series of questions that might be useful to go into the topic deeper.

I guess I used to be amazed at the speed of search engines generally when they first came out.   But now the systems work like someone scanning a half dozen websites related to a question asked in a normal human sentence, pulling bits of content from each of them, and writing a coherent summary, all in about 2 or 3 seconds.  

I see now that you can use it (free) on the web too, at https://www.perplexity.ai/  (But it doesn't save a history of your previous questions, like the app does, until you "clear history".)   

Go on, try it....

Appalling story of hospital mal-administration

It is truly shocking to read the BBC article that came out after Lucy Letby's conviction for murdering 7 babies (and trying to kill 6 others).   It starts:

Hospital bosses failed to investigate allegations against Lucy Letby and tried to silence doctors, the lead consultant at the neonatal unit where she worked has told the BBC.

The hospital also delayed calling the police despite months of warnings that the nurse may have been killing babies.

The unit's lead consultant Dr Stephen Brearey first raised concerns about Letby in October 2015.

No action was taken and she went on to attack five more babies, killing two.

Further down in the report (my bold):

We spoke to the lead consultant in the unit - who first raised concerns about Letby - and also examined hospital documents. The investigation reveals a catalogue of failures and raises serious questions about how the hospital responded to the deaths.

Dr Brearey says he demanded Letby be taken off duty in June 2016, after the final two murders. Hospital management initially refused.

The BBC investigation also found:

• The hospital's top manager demanded the doctors write an apology to Letby and told them to stop making allegations against her
• Two consultants were ordered to attend mediation with Letby, even though they suspected she was killing babies
• When she was finally moved, Letby was assigned to the risk and patient safety office, where she had access to sensitive documents from the neonatal unit and was in close proximity to senior managers whose job it was to investigate her
• Deaths were not reported appropriately, which meant the high fatality rate could not be picked up by the wider NHS system, a manager who took over after the deaths has told the BBC

 It just seems incredible that hospital management clung for so long to "it's just a coincidence" that the rate of death (and near death) of neonatal babies had soared in that unit, and all happened when Letby was on shift:

Before June 2015, there were about two or three baby deaths a year on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital. But in the summer of 2015, something unusual was happening.

In June alone, three babies died within the space of two weeks. The deaths were unexpected, so Dr Stephen Brearey, the lead consultant at the neonatal unit, called a meeting with the unit manager, Eirian Powell, and the hospital's director of nursing Alison Kelly....

...by October 2015, things had changed. Two more babies had died and Letby had been on shift for both of them. ...

And it wasn't just the unexpected deaths. Other babies were suffering non-fatal collapses, meaning they needed emergency resuscitation or help with breathing, with no apparent clinical explanation. Letby was always on duty.

I can't imagine how some of the families of babies who died late in her killing spree must feel...

 

 

 

Something I didn't know "was a thing"

 I mean, I knew that, generally speaking,the Taiwanese were pretty keen on all things Japanese and considered their occupation as being pretty benevolent.  But I didn't know this...

The urge to go for a spin has deep genetic roots (so it seems)

I was very surprised to hear from my son yesterday that he went on (what to me is) the most terrifying looking carnival ride at the Brisbane Ekka.  This one:

As you can probably tell, it spins around the central axis while the ends also spin.  Nauseating.

He did survive, but said he'll never go on it again.  

I'm pretty chicken when it comes to fast rides, and am not a fan of the falling sensation.   But by a coincidence, this week's Science magazine has a charming story about how the urge to voluntarily engage in unusual, repetitive motion goes back a long way down the chain of evolution:

Nearly everyone has fun on a carousel—including, possibly, fruit flies. Scientists observed some flies embarking on a spinning platform voluntarily and repeatedly, suggesting the animals may find the movement appealing for some reason, according to a study posted on the bioRxiv preprint server earlier this month.

“The flies are fulfilling all the criteria of play as we understand it in other animals,” says Samadi Galpayage, a behavioral scientist at Queen Mary University of London who discovered  bumble bees play with objects and who was not involved in the work. “There isn't really an alternative explanation so far. Whether that’s [evidence of] fun in itself—that’s the next question.”

Sergio Pellis, a behavioral scientist at the University of Lethbridge, says he finds the study—which has yet to be peer reviewed—“very exciting.” If confirmed, he notes, it would add to the small but growing pile of evidence for play in invertebrates—and would be the first instance of a type called “locomotor play” in these animals. Locomotor play involves the movement of one’s own body, such as running, jumping, or swinging. It’s different from object play, as bees have been observed doing, or social play, which has been observed in certain wasps and spiders.

The idea behind the study was inspired, ultimately, by a duck. Years before co-author Wolf Hütteroth became a neurobiologist, he remembers one day seeing a lone duck floating down a fast-moving river. Just as the animal was nearly out of sight, it flew back upriver, alit on the water, and floated back down—over and over again. “I never stopped wondering what motivated the duck to perform such curious behavior,” he says.

In February 2016, Hütteroth attended a symposium where researchers were discussing whether insects can act with intention. He pondered how to test whether flies would do something similar to the rapids-running duck.

He and Tilman Triphan, a colleague then at the University of Konstanz, decided to build a carousel of sorts. They’d offer male laboratory fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) the chance to hop onto a spinning section of floor in a stress-free, if otherwise unexciting, environment. He didn’t think the flies would actually go for it. “My expectations were extremely low,” he says. Some of the flies ignored the contraption. But a small group of them acted as if they’d just discovered Disneyland. 

Triphan and Hütteroth—who have both since moved to the University of Leipzig—report in their preprint that a subset of the flies spent 5% or more of their time on the turning wheel. When the researchers put two disks in the arena that alternated spinning every 5 minutes, some flies spent their time bouncing back and forth between whichever carousel was spinning.

Towards the end of the story, there's another "play" behaviour that I didn't need to know about:

Pellis notes there has been resistance to the idea that animals outside of mammals engage in play. He recalls research in the 1970s on roughhousing in cockroaches, for example, that would immediately be considered an example of play if puppies were doing it.

Maybe Mortein suppressed publicity about that research, because I sure don't remember it...

 

Buddhists and meat

An article at The Conversation looks broadly at the matter of which Buddhists eat meat.  Don't think I knew this (about the convenience factor of Muslims in Tibet):

Geography is a crucial factor in explaining why Tibetans have traditionally been big meat-eaters. Rice, vegetables and fruit were impossible to cultivate at the high elevations of the Himalayan mountains and plateaus. Altitude combined with the inaccessibility of much of Tibet thus prevented a diverse source of nutrition and so goat or yak meat, and various milk products, all high calorie foods, ensured survival.

To get around the direct responsibility for killing, Tibetan villages traditionally had resident Muslims who butchered the animals. Understandably, some might suggest this was a rather convenient arrangement.

It continues with the excuse making:

Meat-eating in the Theravadin tradition may have been justified partly because of legal precedent or permissibility. Firstly, the monks are required to dutifully accept whatever food is given to them by the laity to avoid attachment to any particular tastes, so if somebody offers meat to a monk, he has to consume it.

Secondly, a monk is allowed to consume meat if it is deemed “pure” on three grounds: if the killing of the animal has not been witnessed or heard by that monk and if it is not suspected to have been killed on purpose for them.

But perhaps the "best" rationalisation is the one given here:

Buddhism presents two conflicting views. All sentient beings deserve compassion and have Buddha-Nature. However, humans are a higher life-form by virtue of their capacities to pursue ethical and meditational practices leading to enlightenment.

The inherent Buddha Nature of any animal or even insect is the same as that of a human being. Nonetheless, some Buddhists would argue that meat-eating is acceptable for health as long as the energy gained from the dead animal is dedicated to pursuing an ethical life, which ultimately benefits all sentient beings.

Indeed it is said in the tantric tradition of Buddhism, that when a highly realised teacher eats meat it serves to benefit the dead animal in the next life. Within the context of tantric ritual practice, both meat and alcohol are consumed. However, a tiny meat morsel, as well as a finger-dip of alcohol, is sufficient.

Buddhist meat-eaters thus invoke a very particular form of human exceptionalism grounded in metaphysics and in the spiritual aspirations and capacities of humans.

 

 

 

 

A new addiction

I mean, I learnt today about a drug addiction which surprised me - to ether.

This was, apparently, significant in Ireland and then (mainly) Eastern Europe, back in the day.   There's a Wikipedia article about it, but I learnt about it from this Youtube video:

 

Interesting points on the latest Trump indictments

From the Washington Post:

The prosecution of Trump and the others in Fulton County will stand out for one distinct reason: Unlike the federal trials (unless the rules change), it should be televised.

That will seemingly bring a measure of transparency to the high-stakes proceedings and create appointment viewing — just as the House Jan. 6 committee hearings did last year but potentially with even greater numbers.

But unlike the other trials, that spectacle is less likely to play out when it matters politically. The many defendants and Trump’s already crowded legal calendar make this a strong candidate for getting delayed past the 2024 election. Willis says she will ask for a trial date within six months, but that’s ambitious.

That doesn’t mean it won’t matter politically. As noted above, the charges against Trump allies could matter when it comes to how the federal prosecution takes shape. Trump’s attacks on witnesses could create problems under Georgia’s witness intimidation laws, which allow bail only if there is “no significant risk of intimidating witnesses.”

And there remains the possibility of Trump’s winning the 2024 election and facing this trial as a sitting president.

I think it would be pretty hilariously disastrous for Republicans to be insane enough to endorse Trump as a candidate while he is in jail awaiting trial.

Surely, if he ends up in jail because he refuses to stop deriding and trying to intimidate witnesses and judges, at least some of the lickspittle politicians who have sold their souls to MAGA might have to actually say "this is painful to admit, but we need another candidate"?  

The state of the world

It's pretty pathetic that serious news organisations have to spend time noting, and debunking, loony Right wing conspiracies about the tragic firestorm at Maui:

Hawaii wildfires: 'Directed energy weapon' and other false claims go viral

Male mice not as sex obsessed as you might expect

In a somewhat interesting article, it seems that they have identified a, shall we say,  one stop "horny centre" in the brains of male mice:

Researchers have singled out in lab mice a brain region that controls sexual interest, libido, mating behavior and pleasure, said senior researcher Dr. Nirao Shah, a professor of psychiatry and neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, in California.

This region uses sensory input from the environment to recognize the sex of another mouse—"Aha, this is a female, maybe I can mate if she's willing," Shah said. 

More details:

For their experiments, Shah's team used adult virgin male mice that had not seen a female mouse after being weaned at about 3 weeks of age. That way, the brain activity and behavior they observed would not have been shaped by social influences. 

Well, as long as there is no risk that lack of knowledge of female mice doesn't encourage mice to try mounting other males, I suppose?   To continue:

The researchers meticulously mapped the brain cells and connections that compose this particular circuit, called the preoptic area of the hypothalamus (POA).

Earlier work by the research team had found they could turn on and off male mice's recognition of an unfamiliar female mouse by manipulating neurons that communicate to the POA from the amygdala, which is the seat of human emotion.

The specific signals came from a part of the amygdala called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, or BNST.

"We had no reason to believe that this POA region would not only control the act of mating, but also regulate the desire to mate or regulate the pleasurable feelings elicited by mating," Shah said.

"In principle, those three aspects of sexual behavior—the act of mating, the physical act itself, the urge to mate and the pleasure that accompanies it—those could be embodied in different brain regions," he added. "But what we found is that the POA has these attributes."

There is more detail in the article (including speculation that humans might have a similar centre, but apparently it hasn't been investigated much).   But the most amusing bit about the study is this:

In this new study, the researchers zeroed in on a small set of genetically distinct BNST neurons that secrete a slow-acting signaling protein, or peptide, called Substance P.

The scientists also found another small set of neurons in the POA that carried receptors for Substance P, essentially forming a connection with the BNST neurons.

The POA neurons ramped up their activity when stimulated by the Substance P-secreting BNST neurons. And about 10 to 15 minutes after that happened, male mice would go through their full sequence of mating behavior—mounting, penetration and ejaculation. 

I'm starting to feel sorry for the mice now:

Directly infusing the peptide to the POA accelerated mating behavior; in fact, direct activation of the circuit even led to mating with inanimate objects, the findings showed.

Stimulation of the POA also cut short the mice's refractory period, or the stretch of recovery time required before full sexual drive and capability is restored after ejaculation. 

Any guess what the refractory period for your average male mouse is?:

For the mice used in this study, the normal refractory period is five days. But directly stimulating the POA with Substance P prompted male mice that had just ejaculated to immediately repeat their sexual mating routine.

"It took one second or less for them to resume sexual activity," Shah said in a news release. "That's a more than 400,000-fold reduction in the refractory period."

Well, give the reputation of mice to reproduce at fantastic rate, I'm surprised that the males take five whole days to get interested in sex again.  

The article does not the obvious thought:  if there is anything like the same system in adult men, and a way to deliver Substance P to the right spot in the brain, it sounds like it'll make Viagra seem a relatively primate attempt at enhancing performance...