A vegetarian recipe noted

Eggplants are very cheap at the moment, and I don't know why, but I seem to be enjoying them more and more lately, especially as baking them with a light oil coating has solved the "oil sponge" problem that used to be a bit a pain if frying them.

I made this curry last night, in which they are the key ingredient, and it came out very well.  The technique was just to chop up a big eggplant into 2.5 cm cubes, coat in a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and bake at about 200 degrees for 30 min.  

The curry is made in the usual way - fry onion, add garlic and ginger, then the curry spices;  add stock, tomatoes, chickpeas and coconut milk and simmer for 20 minutes.  Add the baked eggplant and simmer another 10 minutes.  Garam masala is supposed to go in at the end, but I forgot.  

To stop link rot losing this, here are the ingredients:

• 1¼ pound (20 ounces) eggplant about 1 very large or two small (+ 1½ tbsp olive oil, ½ tsp salt, ¼ tsp black pepper for roasting)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 medium onion chopped
• 2 cloves garlic grated
• 1 teaspoon ginger grated
• 2 teaspoon curry powder
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds or ground
• ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon turmeric powder
• ½ teaspoon ground coriander
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 – 3 cups vegetable broth based on desired consistency
• 1 can (15 ounces) chickpeas or 1½ cups of cooked chickpeas
• 1 can (15 ounces) crushed tomatoes
• 1 can (14 ounces) coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon garam masala

Now, I did increase the curry powder to three teaspoons, and the red pepper flakes to about a teaspoon.  Instead of a whole can of coconut milk I used about 2/3 one of coconut cream.

The eggplant was the only fresh ingredient I used, but it was still great.  I guess I could try using fresh tomatoes next time, and perhaps add red capsicum too would be good.

I will definitely make again.

A completely unnecessary complication

The (rather dull, but harmless I guess) nerd Lex Fridman was all super excited earlier today about this:

My reaction, which only took about 5 seconds to occur to my sub-genius level brain:   "Oh, so you mean, you experienced something exactly the same as a high quality video call, but using - what? - twenty times the computer power??   Big advance...."

But:  I have scrolled quite a way down in the fanboy comments after this post, and still haven't found anyone making this point.   Instead we get many variations on this:

Excuse the shouting, but:

HOW??   YOU CAN ALREADY DO THIS OVER VIDEO!   IS NOT HAVING TO SHAVE OR COMB YOUR HAIR OR GET OUT OF YOUR PJ'S REALLY THAT BIG AN ADVANCE TO ONLINE MEETINGS?

 

Bones and bananas

Two somewhat surprising videos from Youtube today:

The first - I don't recall seeing this surprising ceremony from Madagascar before - where a huge number of people turn up to carry around the 7 year dead body of a beloved relative, in a very celebratory fashion.  (Although one child in it finds it pretty upsetting). 

 

And secondly - turns out that the bite of a spider in South America known as a "banana spider" was well known for causing priapism, and now the molecule derived from it is well on the way to being used in a ointment for erectile dysfunction (!):

Fanciful suggestion

As reported in The Guardian, Noel Pearson claims this:

Government ministers have spoken about the voice’s potential to bring together advice on complex, multi-disciplinary problems such as rheumatic heart disease, a little-known condition that the health minister, Mark Butler, described as “a disease of grinding poverty, poor environmental conditions, and not something the health portfolio can manage alone”.

Pearson called it “a problem only a voice can overcome”.

“It is a disease of the unlistened to. It is the disease of a people who have spoken, but have not been heard,” he said.

“No gets us nowhere when it comes to confronting rheumatic heart disease. Yes makes it possible.”

A Google search shows in fact a plethora of articles in medical journals and websites discussing the problem.   There are many recent articles, and to take one example from 2021:

A community-based program to reduce acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease in northern Australia

And by refining the Google search, you can see how much the problem was discussed, say, a decade ago.

Here's a screenshot of the first page when the topic is restricted to 2010 to 2012 search results:

 OK, so you might say "well, you are just proving that the problem was known, but the government wasn't listening to the aboriginal community about it."

The problem with that line is that Googling up the evidence of active government engagement to address the problem is also easy.  For example, here's a 32 page booklet from the Queensland government n 2018 with the title:

Here's some material from the Federal government National Indigenous Australians Agency (not sure the date, but it's after 2018):

The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan 2021–2031 (the Health Plan), released in December 2021, includes priority 5: Early Intervention; which emphasises place-based approaches that are locally determined such as preventing ARF from becoming RHD where needed, and promotes enhancing access to culturally safe and responsive, best practice early intervention (Objective 5.3). The Health Plan also supports community driven housing and infrastructure solutions (Objective 7.2) to consider targeted primordial intervention for housing-related medical conditions that are common to Indigenous Australian households, such as ARF and RHD, trachoma, and otitis media.

The Champions4Change Program has worked in partnership with RHD Australia since 2018 to meet a clear need for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-specific program that had self-determination and culture at its heart. The program is supported by nearly 60 Indigenous Australians with lived experience of ARF and RHD from 27 communities across Australia. The program was designed to privilege and promote the voices of its champions, to support them in their lives and work, and to put culture, Country and community at the centre of responses to RHD.

Gee, the bit in bold sounds quite a lot like "listening" to me. 

Some more material from the Feds:

The Australian Government is committed to ending RHD as a public health issue by 2030. To achieve this, the Australian Government is making significant investments to address ARF and RHD through:

• the Rheumatic Fever Strategy
• developing a vaccine against Strep A (funded through the Indigenous Health Research Fund).

The Rheumatic Fever Strategy includes:

• state-based register and control programs in the NT, WA, SA and QLD, to improve detection, monitoring and management of ARF and RHD
• developing clinical guidelines to prevent, diagnose and manage ARF and RHD
• developing resources and providing education and training for healthcare professionals, communities, and for individuals with these conditions and their carers
• piloting activities in high-risk communities to help prevent new cases of ARF
• national analysis and reporting on the data from state-based registers.

I could go on.

The point is, of course, that Pearson is engaging in pure rhetorical hyperbole when he says this is one example of a problem that "only a voice can overcome" because the indigenous are not being "listened to".

The truth, which it really doesn't suit him to acknowledge, is that the problem has been well recognized for well over a decade, governments have been actively working on programs to deal with it, and have been engaging directly with aboriginal organisations and advocates.

There is really no reason to believe that having another layer of indigenous representatives who say "you're not doing enough!" is going to achieve anything better.   

Antimatter not as exotic as it might have been

At the New York Times, a report on a physics experiment that shows antimatter is affected by gravity the same way as normal matter: 

In science fiction, antiparticles provide the power for warp drives. Some physicists have speculated that antiparticles are being repelled by gravity or even traveling backward in time.

A new experiment at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, brings some of that speculation back down to Earth. In a gravitational field, it turns out, antiparticles fall just like the rest of us. “The bottom line is that there’s no free lunch, and we’re not going to be able to levitate using antimatter,” said Joel Fajans of the University of California, Berkeley.

And:

Few physicists were surprised by the result. According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, all forms of matter and energy respond equally to gravity.

“If you walk down the halls of this department and ask the physicists, they would all say that this result is not the least bit surprising,” Jonathan Wurtele, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in an announcement issued by the university. It was he who first suggested the experiment to Dr. Fajans a decade ago. “That’s the reality,” Dr. Wurtele said.

“But most of them will also say that the experiment had to be done because you never can be sure,” he added. “The opposite result would have had big implications.”

A bit of a pity, really.  Anomalous results are more fun.

Panpsychism discussed

There's not much worth reading at Scientific American, I reckon, but I did enjoy this column about a recent meeting of science-y types debating panpsychism:

Is Consciousness Part of the Fabric of the Universe?

Physicists and philosophers recently met to debate a theory of consciousness called panpsychism 

As it happens, I agree that the basic criticisms are pretty strong:

Some point out that it doesn’t explain how small bits of consciousness come together to form more substantive conscious entities. Detractors say that this puzzle, known as the “combination problem,” amounts to panpsychism’s own version of the hard problem. The combination problem “is the serious challenge for the panpsychist position,” Goff admits. “And it’s where most of our energies are going.”

Others question panpsychism’s explanatory power. In his 2021 book Being You, neuroscientist Anil Seth wrote that the main problems with panpsychism are that “it doesn’t really explain anything and that it doesn’t lead to testable hypotheses. It’s an easy get-out to the apparent mystery posed by the hard problem.”

Perhaps I find these ideas more appealing:

Other ideas were batted around. The idea of cosmopsychism was floated—roughly, the notion that the universe itself is conscious. And Paul Draper, a philosopher at Purdue University who participated via Zoom, talked about a subtly different idea known as “psychological ether theory”—essentially that brains don’t produce consciousness but rather make use of consciousness. In this view, consciousness was already there before brains existed, like an all-pervasive ether. If the idea is correct, he writes, “then (in all likelihood) God exists.”

On cosmopsychism, it seems I missed this essay at AEON about it.  

All good fun to think about...

Update:  surprisingly, if you have Twitter and search it, there are a lot of comments being made about the article.  I liked this one, for example:

 

Unexpected news day

First, Dan Andrews resigns.  The guy drove Right wingers absolutely nuts - maybe it was his air of general unflappability - but it was kind of funny reading some of the conspiracies spun about him.  For my part, I don't generally spend much time thinking about politics at State level, and don't really have any strong opinion about Andrews as a person one way or another.   But it's hard to deny that he has been electorally (perhaps culturally?) very successful, and a significant part of turning his State around from a Liberal stronghold to a Labor one.

Secondly:  it's rare to read a news story of aberrant behaviour so appalling that it makes you feel queasy contemplating that there are people in the world who do this.  But this is one of those stories.   

I admit, I did google to learn some more background of the guy, who I hadn't heard of before.  I thought maybe he was a damaged incel all his life, but no, he has (had?) a wife.   No mention of children on line, though, which is undoubtedly a blessing, given that it is impossible to imagine how damaging it would be to learn this about your father.

  

Noted

 I don't really know this person - seems to be a relatively centrist farmer and rural advocate?   Seems to have put many tweets against the Voice on basically these grounds - lots of rural/remote Aboriginal people don't think a Canberra level Voice is actually the right way to get their concerns heard. 

Given that I have noted at least three ABC stories where the reporter has talked to rural/remote Aboriginal groups and found this same distrust and lack of support for the Voice, it seems to be true, and something simply not addressed by the creators of the Uluru statement, who just insist that it was the result of years of consultation, etc.

Onion humour

I don't feel the need to comment on Russell Brand - a search of the blog will show I've been disliking him for many years.  But this is funny:

 

Bad polls, for some...

Interesting couple of tweets:

 

Let's admire Singapore, again

I'm pretty sure Australia pioneered this mosquito control technique, and Singapore has taken it on board in a major way. Their mosquito breeding and release program is shown in this video from CNA, and it's more interesting than you might think.  Once again, Singapore looks so - competent - in the way they operate:   

So my Pezzullo cynicism was well founded

In a rare change for a Sunday night, I actually watched 60 Minutes because I saw on X Twitter that a major story about Pezzullo actively trying to influence Liberal Party internal politics was coming out.  

The major online articles about it are behind a paywall (that'll change by the morning), so I only have this one to link to at the moment.  It is a major scandal, and I can't see how Pezzullo could credibly last until the end of the week.   He ought to fall on his sword by midday tomorrow - or perhaps I should say "metaphorical sword", because he strikes me as the sort of person who would have a real one in his office with a Home Affairs logo on it.

I have long questioned his strange sway over both sides of politics - and have noted before that Bernard Keane has muttered darkly about him for years.  Good riddance.

This sounds ripe for satire, but no one would be game to try

This lengthy article in The Guardian about a huge amount of infighting going on at Melbourne University on the issue of aboriginal studies and who gets appointed to positions would clearly be grounds for some good satirical fictionalised treatment.   I'm casting my mind back to A Very Peculiar Practice, from the late 1980's, as the kind of thing I would like.  (I wonder how that would play now, if I rewatched it; I do remember enjoying it at the time.)   But the problem is, no one would be game to try this now.  Not unless it was very, very sympathetic to the Aboriginal characters.

Dare I say, I don't have any doubt at all that there are many positions in indigenous academia which deserve to be cut.   I mean, I read Sandy O'Sullivan's twitter feed just to aggravate myself, where I learn about all sort of esoteric talks and projects and overseas travel that are useful for keeping indigenous  academics talking amongst themselves about how important their work is, rather than engaging with he rest of us, which is (I suppose) some sort of benefit to society.  At what cost to more useful funding, though?

Here are some extracts:

The University of Melbourne has come under fire for appointing non-Indigenous academics to senior roles focused on Aboriginal studies, at the same time as acknowledging it is “ill-equipped” to handle allegations of institutional racism.

The fresh criticism follows the resignation of Dr Eddie Cubillo – a Larrakia, Wadjigan and Central Arrernte man – from his role as part-time associate dean and senior fellow at the university’s prestigious Melbourne Law School (MLS).

Cubillo continues to lead the university’s Indigenous Law and Justice Hub but alleged the law school was “the most culturally unsafe place” he’d worked.

In an email sent to staff last week, the deputy vice-chancellor (Indigenous), Barry Judd, said Cubillo’s experiences showed current processes were “ill-equipped” to deal with “the complex issues raised by allegations of racism in the workplace”.

“As an organisation we have to do better,” he wrote.

And:

The Indigenous Knowledge Institute, founded in late 2020 to advance Indigenous research and education, is headed by Aaron Corn, who is a “long-term collaborator” with Indigenous leaders.

A University of Melbourne (UoM) academic who wanted to remain anonymous said the appointment of a non-Indigenous academic as the inaugural head of a department wholly dedicated to Indigenous knowledge was “one of the big catalysts” for the recent exits of First Nations staff.

“There was no shortage of [Indigenous] talent and it wasn’t a one-off,” they said.

Zena Cumpston, a Barkandji woman and former research fellow at the university, said it was common for non-Indigenous “experts” rather than Indigenous academics to be placed in senior roles advising on community and teaching Indigenous subjects.

Cumpston quit in August last year. She said she experienced significant mental distress linked to her treatment at the university and said she felt that anyone who spoke out against hiring policies was “carved off as an individual problem”.

While she was in the science faculty, Cumpston was asked to join its Indigenous advisory body for no extra pay. She was shocked to find the advisory panel was mostly comprised of non-Indigenous academics.

“Our elders and communities have fought for these upper-level positions for decades – the fundamental basics of self-determination – and here’s a trend for positions with the word ‘Indigenous’ to be filled by ‘experts’, taking us back decades,” Cumpston said.

And:

Nic Radoll worked for seven months at the University of Melbourne as its Indigenous engagement and outreach coordinator before resigning late in 2022.

Radoll, a non-binary and queer Anaiwan person, said it was the “worst experience” of their career. They sent an email when resigning arguing Indigenous staff were under-appreciated and subjects were labelled as being “Indigenous-run” despite key decisions being made by non-Indigenous staff.

“When I raised issues … I was told that I ‘don’t exhibit any leadership qualities and will never go anywhere’ at the university,” they said.

“I was told to ‘reduce my expectations’ and that ‘it takes time to make change’ so I should just do what I get told to do. It’s a killer for mental health.”

Nic is interviewed on this Youtube video.  I feel mean in saying it, but yeah, "leadership qualities" are a bit hard to detect when you speak with that upwards inflection at the end of every second or third sentence.  

Now, to be fair, it's not only this area of academia I would cut back if I were Benevolent Dictator of Australia.

RMIT's Blockchain Innovation Hub is the Right wing equivalent of Indigenous academia - keeps them off the street, developing arcane terminology with which to convince themselves it's a field worth pursuing, and (thankfully) off the TV or anywhere else.

Update:  I note that Aaron Corn, who gets a mention in one of the extracts above, had a book out earlier this year co-authored with Marcia Langton.   That would indicate that she doesn't have a big problem with his being appointed to head the Indigenous Knowledge Institute.    

Update 2:   Oh good.  The professor is about to go on another junket, having just returned from a trip that took her to American and England:

Funny, tragic, or both?

 Or, as Charlie Pickering says:

TV news/breakfast TV impressions

I think watching a bit of breakfast TV, and also the commercial weekend news, gives a good idea of what the media thinks their audience is thinking.  Or is it that the media is forming the thoughts that they think they are reflecting?   

Anyway, some observations:

*   Channel 7, which I generally prefer amongst the commercials for news and breakfast TV, has been running pretty hard on "youth crime crisis" for quite a while now.  I worry in particular that it is going to be an election problem for Labor in Queensland;

*   Channel 7 also has the most shameless undisclosed commercial interests going on - with the Saturday/Sunday "how the real estate market is going" segments, featuring one or two agents, and usually scenes at an auction, clearly not there because it's news.  Also, the breakfast show this week have been promoting heavily Kylie Minogue's new album and Las Vegas shows - really quite a challenge, given that I can't see much of their typical audience is the ageing gay demographic that I think has been Minogue's "base" for a couple of decades.

*   ABC Breakfast - which is OK-ish, but tends towards both being too earnest and spending too much time on sport, is doing its best to give the Voice Yes vote a push, this morning featuring Paul Kelly and that Adam Briggs.  Briggs, who I find particularly annoying, was presenting himself as meek and moderate - pretty much the opposite of how he comes across on Twitter.   

*   I haven't been noticing all that much about the Voice on 7's breakfast TV.   But I only see bits and pieces, usually.   Both shows have segments that bore me. 

*   Both shows have been on the Qantas attack - it's the one issue that is pretty much uniting all sides of popular politics in Australia!

*   I used to be most annoyed with 7's Breakfast when it gave a platform for normalising Pauline Hanson or other right wing nutters - and on the other side I blame them for creating Kevin Rudd as a plausible leader at a time people within Labor already knew he was going to be a terrible boss.   Maybe I haven't been watching it in the right time slot, but I get the impression they are more careful now about who they let on to represent the Right, at least?

Yet again, the ABC seems to struggle to find remote Indigenous who want the Voice

The ABC has put up a story that looks at one pretty remote community and its problems with creating jobs:

Coming to work is voluntary and the men are not bound by a roster.

On the day he spoke to the ABC, Mr Mungee is one of four workers who have turned up to sort and heat-seal firewood packages.

"When I get up in the morning, when the people go past, that's when I ask some of the young fellas: 'Come, you want to work?', but they don't want to come for work," he said. 

"They're sitting and getting Centrelink money. They will only work when they see people working."

As with many other remote communities, unemployment has long been one of Yalata's biggest issues.

While nationally, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows unemployment is at near record lows, 2021 Census data shows First Nations Australians are still more than three times as likely to be out-of-work than non-Indigenous people.

The Australian Institute for Health and Welfare states the employment rate for Indigenous Australians in remote areas is about half that in major cities.

In Yalata, there are 66 jobs for approximately 425 residents.

That's up from 19 positions three years ago.

In other words, there's only jobs for 15 per cent of locals.

While they are trying to put a positive spin on the increase in job numbers, it's still a surprisingly honest report.  More:  

Locals say cultural considerations and changes to the Community Development Program (CDP), which required some people in remote areas to work a set number of hours to receive Centrelink payments, have contributed to the community's relatively low employment rate.

They say alcohol and drug misuse remain a problem, and not everyone regularly turns up to work.

The issues are indicative of the plight of the Aṉangu, who were displaced from their ancestral lands around Maralinga in South Australia's remote west in the 1950s to make way for a British atomic weapons testing range.

The community split between Ooldea and Yalata, with some families taking ownership of the Yalata Reserve in 1974.

While displacement from Maralinga may have created some problems, I doubt that there is any more economic activity possible in that old site compared to their current location. 

The article does mention some of their "farming land" and running sheep - but gee, the photos in the article make it look like far from ideal land for that.   

The boss out there tries to put some positive spin:

"There's some misinformation about Aboriginal communities, how they're fully supported by government handouts and things like that," Yalata Aṉangu Aboriginal Corporation CEO, David White, said.

"We're trying to destroy that myth and say: 'Yeah, we've had some handouts to try and get us off the ground, but we're trying to get off the ground ourselves'.

There's a long way to go, obviously.  

Anyhow, of most interest to me was this bit at the end of the article:

The value of self-determination has been a key theme of the Yes campaign in the lead up to the Voice to Parliament referendum, with supporters of the proposed constitutional change hoping it would ensure decision-makers take note of what can be achieved when change is driven from within.  

The ABC approached dozens of Yalata locals to ask what they thought about the proposed Voice, but only one – elder Bruce Williamson – was happy to share his views.

Other locals were unaware of the Voice or were reluctant to speak out.

"We put stories to the government, to Canberra, to help us. Help people," Mr Williamson said. 

"We ask the government from Canberra to put something good for us."

That's it!  It's not even clear from that that Bruce Williamson supports the Voice, or understands it.

So, yet again, the ABC is doing a good job at illustrating that the activists who are promoting the Voice have done a pretty poor job of convincing locals that it's really in their interests.

 

What a stretch

Hope for a more progressive future from the South East Asian Muslim countries fades further, with this surprising example:

An Indonesian court has sentenced a woman to two years in jail for posting a viral TikTok video where she said an Islamic phrase before eating pork.

Lina Lutfiawati, 33, was found guilty of "inciting hatred" against religious individuals and groups.

She also faces a $16,245 (£13,155) fine. Her jail term may be extended by three months if she does not pay up.

It is the latest in a series of cases involving controversial blasphemy laws in Muslim-majority Indonesia.

Lina Lutfiawati, who adopted the Indian name Lina Mukherjee due to her love of Bollywood movies, identifies as Muslim. The consumption of pork is strictly forbidden in Islam.

The lifestyle influencer, who has more than two million TikTok followers, also runs a business in India.

In March, she posted a video where she uttered "Bismillah" - an Arabic phrase that means "in the name of God" - before eating crispy pork skin.

At the time, she was travelling in Bali, a tourist hotspot in Indonesia that, unlike the rest of the country, has a majority Hindu population. Ms Lutfiawati said she tried pork out of curiosity.

The video got millions of views and was widely criticised, prompting another Indonesian to report her to the police for "knowingly eating pork skin as a Muslim".

Police charged Ms Lutfiawati in May for disseminating hateful information, saying it was an act of hostility over ethnicity, religion, and race.

How is it an "act of hostility", exactly? 

Similarly, this:

Indonesian police last year arrested six people after a bar promoted free alcohol - prohibited in Islam - for customers named Mohammed. 

 

A story somewhat short on solutions

Here, I'll gift link to an article at the New York Times looking at the economic problems of Ghana in particular, but it makes it clear that many African countries are in a similar boat. 

It's a bit concerning, though, that the article is pretty light on suggestions for change...

The sooner Musk leaves for Mars, the better

Have a read of this appalling story of Musk joining in on some completely unwarranted outrage farming on an old story, and how it affects the journalists involved.

What Musk doesn't seem to realise is that he isn't just some idiot in his basement tweeting away to no great effect; he's an idiot with an incredibly high profile and a nutty, semi-cultish following.   What's even more annoying, he doesn't make a living out of cult leadership and/or outrage farming, like Russell Brand or Musk's not-so-merry band of Tweeters such as Catturd or Cheong.   No, Musk does it just for free.

And no, I don't give any credit for the fact that he has allowed "Readers added context" following his tweet to explain (in mild terms) that this is a beat up.  It clearly didn't stop the harassment of the journalist and paper involved.

The practical problem for pro-trans activism

I think I only follow one anti-trans movement person on x/Twitter - Graham Linehan - and I have criticised him before for becoming obsessive on the topic.   It's also well known that Musk has anti-trans sentiment, given that he has fallen out with a daughter over it, so it may be that the algorithm actively promotes trans sceptic content.  So, I know that there is a reason I might be getting trans sceptic tweets pushed my way.

But still - I find it hard to believe that liberal, pro trans rights type people can use social media and not agree that there is some extremism and nuttiness on display in the community they never criticise.  

Without even going into the most extreme examples, such as the "transwomen" whose allegedly erotic selfies make it clear that they are that way because of autogynephilic transsexualism (something pro-trans hate, because conservatives can easily argue that those men are just acting on a fetish, and most people don't consider fetishes as warranting respect) - there is a lot of pretty intense level narcissism on display.  

I wonder sometimes if I am being unfair about this - it has become normalised that young people in particular will continuously post selfies in a way that I wouldn't say necessarily indicates narcissism - but I still find it hard not to conclude that anyone over 30 who feels the need to post selfies all the time has some serious insecurities.

And what about this?   He's running for the Greens in Scotland, apparently:

I can't believe that people would not think there is a deep level of attention seeking nuttiness on display here...

     

History is history, but you can dwell on it a little too much...

The ABC has a story up about the descendents of the Pinjarra massacre that happened in Western Australia in 1834:

In 1834, a band of soldiers, police and colonists led by Governor James Stirling, the leader of the Swan River Colony, attacked a group of Bindjareb Noongar people on the banks of the Murray River, killing many of them.

Estimates of the death toll vary, with official accounts showing the deaths of at least 15 Aboriginal people and one police officer.

However, Ms Martin, from the Bilya or "river tribe" of Bindjareb people, said her community had the number of Indigenous victims at more than double the official figure.

She said that was the type of truth-telling she wanted the Voice to facilitate.

Ms Martin said it was vital to put local leaders at the front of the process.

There is no context given, but there is a very lengthy Wikipedia entry that does (although the lack of citations for some claims is concerning).  Here's just a bit:

There had been numerous Aboriginal attacks on settlers in the preceding years. Notably, in February 1832, Private George Budge was ambushed by Bindjareb Nyungars, and speared to death near Peel’s garden. The following July, Sergeant Wood of the 63rd Regiment was speared and nearly killed.^[1] This was followed in July 1834 by the ambush and murder of Hugh Nesbitt, a servant of Thomas Peel and the wounding of Edward Barron.^[5] Following the Binjareb looting, by means of armed robbery, of the flour mill that provided rations to settlers and Noongars in the district, as well as the murder and mutilation of Nesbitt,^[5] Captain Frederick Irwin, the lieutenant governor in Stirling's absence, is said to have inflamed the situation by adopting a soldier's attitude to crush a warlike group of Aboriginals and reduce them to a state of subjection.^{[citation needed]}

I mean, there are many examples of such incidents around Australia, with Aboriginals disproportionately punished for their pushback against moves on their tribal lands.

But I have to wonder - in another decade, it'll be 200 years since this particular incident - if modern peoples can get over atrocities committed on a massive scale in the period 1939 to 1975 (<cough>, Germany, Japan, Americans in Vietnam), doesn't the call for "truth telling" for incidents 200 hundred years ago seem to be pushing that particular victim narrative a bit, um, unnecessarily hard?

It's a bit late to be prosecuting politicians and troopers from the time, too.

Anyway, interestingly, the report does give another example of indigenous folk who aren't convinced the Voice is a good idea, for practical reasons:

Opinions on the proposed Voice among other descendants of Pinjarra survivors are mixed.

Clarry Walley, who is a respected elder and figure in the Pinjarra community, said he was steadfast in his opposition to the Voice.

He said he was sceptical of the idea changes brought by the Voice would trickle down to smaller communities such as his own.

"I'll vote no," he said.

"It might make a difference for other people, but to some people, it's not going to make a difference. There's still going to be hardship and people are still going to be struggling, and it's not going to change that.

John Michael serves on the cultural advice committee for the Gnaala Karla Booja Aboriginal Corporation, which represents traditional custodians from a vast swathe of the state's south.

He said he was undecided about how he would vote in the Voice referendum.

He said he wanted more Aboriginal advice heard in the corridors of power, but like Mr Walley, wanted firm detail on what his community would get out of the Voice before he decided.

So, once again, a little to my surprise, the ABC provides the voices of local aboriginal elders who don't see the value in the exercise, which gives me "cover" to vote "no".   (Although, given the pretty gormless Warren Mundine's contradictory arguments, I would rather not vote at all.)

Update:  in terms of the total numbers of aborigines killed over time in reprisal killings, there is this estimate -

The research project, currently in its eighth year and led by University of Newcastle historian Emeritus Professor Lyndall Ryan, now estimates more than 10,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives were lost in more than 400 massacres, up from a previous estimate of 8,400 in 302 massacres. By contrast it is estimated that 168 non-Aboriginal people were killed in 13 frontier massacres.

The team developed a template to identify massacres and a process to corroborate disparate sources. They include settler diaries, newspaper reports, Aboriginal evidence, and archives from State and Federal repositories.

The project’s online map and database records the massacre site locations, details of the individual massacres and the sources corroborating evidence of the massacres.

Professor Ryan said new evidence, released today in Stage 4 of the project in partnership with The Guardian Australia, showed massacres intensified, particularly after 1860, a point in time when South Australia acquired the Northern Territory from NSW, Western Australia’s Kimberley region opened up and Queensland became a separate colony.

“More massacres happened in the period 1860 to 1930 than in the period 1788 to 1860,” Professor Ryan said.

“We find that the massacres are becoming better organised and there seems to be a more ruthless approach on the part of the perpetrators to the massacring of Aboriginal people.”

I don't know how good her work is, but the numbers are substantial, even if rubbery.   (

I will concede that any such killing that took place within the early 20th century is surprisingly recent - and carries with it the fact that they happened after Australia came into being.

Still, when it comes to terrible treatment of local people at the hands of colonists, I suspect the British in India would be hard to beat.  Even with the new nationalism in India, do the people really spend much time talking about apologies and reparations?

More "being super rich doesn't guarantee good judgement"

 

Quantum eraser confusion clarified - quantum retrocausality in trouble?

I had been wondering about this.

Towards the end of 2021, Sabine Hossenfelder had a video up in which she said that the claim that the (relatively famous) quantum eraser experiment showed retrocausality was mistaken.   Here's my post about that video.

I was a bit confused, though, as she has also sometimes referred favourably to the physics videos put up by Arvin Ash, and I knew he had long had one up following the line that the experiment did indeed show retrocausality.   So I wasn't sure which Youtube science content creator was right.  (Although, now that I check, I see that Arvin's background is more in engineering than physics.)

The question seems to have been resolved, though, by Arvin putting up a video in the last couple of days in which he agrees with Sabine, and concedes he was mistaken in his first video.   (Mind you, it's pretty understandable, given the claim in the first paper). 

Here's the video:

 

I tend to agree with many of the comments following:  it is a clearer explanation than that Sabine had given.    

Given that I have a soft spot for retrocausality as a concept, I'm a little disappointed.  But I don't think the idea is completely dead - probably just resting!

Colonisation: why is it so hard for the obvious to be stated?

So Jacinta Price is being criticised for this part of her speech yesterday (and I'm going by the way The Guardian has extracted it):

The senator’s speech criticised Indigenous bodies which she claimed sought to “demonise colonial settlement in its entirety and nurture a national self-loathing about the foundations of modern Australian achievement”.

Guardian Australia asked Nampijinpa Price to clarify whether she thought any Indigenous people were suffering negative impacts of colonisation, Price responded: “No.”

“A positive impact, absolutely. I mean, now we have running water, readily available food,” she said.

“No, there is no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation.”

Well, I think that last line is clearly ridiculous - in fact, you would hard pressed to find any indigenous group from around the world who you could say is suffering no negative impacts of colonisation.  It's pretty remarkable when you look at their situation in very diverse countries how their communities typically share problems of alcohol and drug abuse, high suicide rates, and economic marginalisation.

On the other side, though, the first sentence quoted above is a pretty accurate critique of how the pro-indigenous advocacy has become intensely about never acknowledging any good to come out of joining modernity - medicine, reliable food sources, travel, more opportunity for different experiences, etc etc.

I may have written about this here before, but I still think it is very telling how an exchange in an episode of Northern Exposure way back in the 90's caught my attention for how, even then, it reflected something that I felt had already become politically incorrect to say in Australia.   The lead character (the New York Jew Dr Joel) asked his laconic, indigenous helper Marilyn what she thought of her ancestors' land being colonised.  And her answer was along the lines "It comes with some good things, and some bad." I'm sure medicine got mentioned in the "good" - but I can't remember what else.  And I think in the bad was the loss of some traditions, although again, I can't remember the detail.

But the thing was that the show, which obviously had a "liberal" bias in its stories and general attitude, did not attract controversy in American for having an indigenous character state the obvious - there are advantages to having entry into the modern world as a side effect of colonisation.   Which is not to deny that there have been better and worse ways in which colonisation has happened in history.   

As I complained in my last post about the Voice, "the vibe" in indigenous advocacy seems to have moved to a completely negative and grievance based approach over the last 30 years, and it's not hard to imagine that this is having a negative effect on the attitude of the young indigenous towards respect of laws and property.   And the higher rate of indigenous youth crime is, I  have no doubt at all, a reason why in many regional parts of Australia, the "Yes" vote would be seen as rewarding the "wrong" attitude.

To go back to the title of the post:   why is it so hard for the both the Yes side, and the No side, to move from the unrealistic extremes on a key question of the effect of colonisation.

The correct answer - it has had a mixed effect of positive and negatives - is obviously true, and it would give confidence that people can reach a common ground if both sides can stop pretending that it's not.

Update:   Well, I think I have found the conversation on a Northern Exposure fan site.  It's not exactly the same as my 30 year old memory, but the gist is close enough, I think!:

Marilyn: Death, like the white man, wasn't happy in his own land. He didn't think his kingdom was big enough. He wanted more. One night, when the good spirit was asleep, Death attacked the world. He killed a lot of people, and he took the Chief's prettiest daughter as his bride. She pretended to be a good wife, but one day she secretly fed him a pumpkin seed. The pumpkin grew and grew inside death. Finally, he exploded, and a million pumpkin seeds covered the earth.
Joel: I still don't get it.
Marilyn: A lot of people died, but a good thing came out of it, too.
Joel: What was that?
Marilyn:: It's the same with white people. They cleared the forest, they dug up the land, and they gave us the flu. But they also brought power tools and penicillin and Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

---

Revisiting, briefly, My Kitchen Rules

Back in the last decade, I used to post every now and then about the current season of My Kitchen Rules, before getting thoroughly sick of the formula and the clear decision of the producers to make it increasingly about contestant bitchiness and conflict than cooking.   And then the show got rested anyway, due to the shame felt by having given tanned nutjob Pete Evans a TV profile for a decade, presumably.

But I see that it's back, and I have to admit, I have dipped my toe into it again.   

Not much though - it was obvious from the first episode that the old, shameful formula is still there.

So I'm not going to bother with talking about it much, but I did want to note two of the "too obvious" drama tactics the show uses:

1.   This season features, once again, an apparently upper middle class couple who might dress well and live in a nice house (perhaps with a flash boat tied up to their canal jetty), but their taste in food is relatively unsophisticated and verges on bogan-ish.  (This year's couple, for example, made a jaw dropping claim - for contestants on a cooking show - that the duck they were being served was the first time they had ever eaten it.  This did make me laugh, actually, as I tried to imagine the number of other viewers around Australia gasping at their lack of culinary adventure.)

But what's worse (for me, as resident and defender of this fair city) is that these couples are from Brisbane, or further north in Queensland.   I am pretty sure, if I were an obsessive with time on my hands, that I could show that this is at least the third time that such a couple have - suspiciously - been Queenslanders.  I have little doubt that the producers are from the southern "foodie" cities, and actively look for contestant applicants from up North who seem to think they know about food, but really don't: all the better for the rest of the country to laugh at.   (Seriously, I would love to be a fly on the wall during production meetings, to hear drama tactics discussed.)

2.   I have mentioned this before, but it seems they just can't give it a rest:   the ridiculousness of the way at least half of the teams, on their first home restaurant night, cook something they've cooked a hundred times before as their speciality, only to stuff it up completely.   "Oh, I don't know what's gone wrong.  It just didn't set/freeze/cook like it usually does."

The fact that they are cooking for a larger number of people is no excuse.   If you have normally cooked for 6, and have to do it for double that number, you can still do a dry run for cooking for 12, surely??

It becomes particularly hard to believe when it's a case of the team who liked to talk up their abilities, and are too harsh on the others' efforts, only to get their comeuppance when they try to cook their No 1 dish.   My eyes can't roll back far enough for the number of times we have seen this scenario.

On a side note, re-reading my old posts on past seasons, reminded me that I used to enjoy the episode reviews of comedian/writer Ben Pobjie.  I haven't thought about him for some years:  in 2017, I noted  that he seemed to be trying to break into stand up comedy with little (or limited) success, and had also made it clear he has some serious mental health issues.  

So, I just looked on Twitter to see if he is still active there.  He is, although it seems with not much of a following.  And he's still a bit of a worry - his current post includes a bit of mocking of RU OK day, which seems a bit odd, given his past (current?) problems.      

Anyway, it's not like I don't wish him well - I thought his writing on MKR could be very amusing indeed.  Hope he finds another niche, eventually. 

 

Thanks, Elon

 Also:

 

Alien humour

Things not going completely well in Portugal?

DW news has a short story up about a bit of a backlash apparently developing over the openness of drug use in Porto, Portugal:

 

 Of course, it's only a 5 minute report, so I can't claim it's very "in depth". But it's interesting nonetheless, given the amount of international fanboying (much of it superficial and inaccurate, I've always said) that has gone on for years about their approach to drug use.

He has form, as a rich jerk

For the full context, in case you haven't seen the news or social media in the last 24 hours:

I see that he is also interested in living until at least 100, using biohacks: 

The 41-year-old Gurner, valued at $929 million in The Australian Financial Review’s 2022 Rich List – and who billionaire Harry Triguboff has described as “the future” – has $10 billion worth of apartments under way, including on several sites across Collingwood.

He has grand plans for his $150 million, high-end health, wellness and anti-ageing brand Saint Haven. Another site is planned around Melbourne’s South Yarra before the end of the year and a third in Melbourne’s CBD, before plans for others in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, north shore and Sydney CBD...

Gurner says his clubs will be social and for networking, but put health and wellness at their core. That’s when he says that he wants to live to 100. It turns out Gurner has become increasingly obsessed about staying young, especially after his dad died from cancer and he came close to financial ruin in 2016...

Gurner says he is one of the guinea pigs for the club’s $250,000 biohacking, anti-ageing packages that include an annual full-body MRI, brain scans and monthly blood testing,

“I get about 250 different tests of my bloods which will say, ‘this month you’re deficient in [vitamin] D, your testosterone is up or down’. Then the physios, dieticians, doctors on call set my regime,” he says. “I take about 50 or 60 tablets a day. It’s always very specific to my latest results.”

I'm sensing some intense Peter Thiel vibes...

 

Floods noted

If you are on (stupid) X, it is worth looking at this tweet thread, as it contains some remarkable and dramatic video clips of recent floods around the world:

 Yeah, climate change is not something you can deal with by installing more airconditioning. 

Four Corners on the Voice

While there's no doubt at all that the ABC takes a very sympathetic approach to all indigenous issues, last night's Four Corners, which involved discussions with both pro and anti Voice referendum voices, was pleasingly balanced.     

Most surprising was the time given to regional local aboriginal activists who indicated that they were either going to vote no, or were sceptical of the whole idea, out of concerns that the Canberra based Voice  was going to work against local communities getting what they wanted.  In other words, they were saying exactly what I've been muttering here - the entire concept seems to about creating a new attempt at a bureaucratic filter to advice to government, which the local community organisations will need to convince on needs and issues, rather than their current ability to directly deal with government.    

These "no" voters were not, it seemed, on the radical Left, who are against it for being insultingly inadequate.  (One such person did feature, but was not given much air time.)

If anything (and I suspect that many Lefty journalists might have been grinding their teeth about this), the program really seemed to legitimatise a "no" vote for those who don't like the conservative "no" campaign, but just have objections to whole proposal on pragmatic grounds.   Like me...

Something good

Over the last week, I've been marvelling at how much bad/somewhat depressing news there seems to be around at the moment.   

So I will go out of my way to note that there is something that is cheering me up at least once a week - the new episodes of Futurama.  The revival of the show has been a clear success, and I find it hard to imagine anyone being disappointed with it.  [Update:  OK, I have checked some online reviews, and there are some people who are underwhelmed.  I would agree, it does sometimes feel a bit "fan-service-y", but I think in a good way.]

Last week's episode - a satire of the Covid pandemic - handled it very well, I thought, with good and clever jokes that both sides (the antivax conservatives, and the sane) could enjoy.  That's quite a fine line they managed to walk...

Excuse my scepticism...

....but seriously, doesn't this sound like an extremely bureaucratic arrangement, and one which I can readily imagine primed for internal fights and dissent?   From the Guardian, explaining in summary form how the Langton idea for the Voice is supposed to work:

• It will provide independent advice to parliament and government.

• It will be chosen by First Nations people based on the wishes of local communities.

• It will be representative of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

• It will be empowering, community-led, inclusive, respectful, culturally informed and gender balanced. It will also include youth.

• It will be accountable and transparent.

The voice will work alongside existing organisations and traditional structures.

The Calma-Langton co-design report recommended the national voice have 24 members, with gender balance structurally guaranteed.

The base model proposes two members from each state, the Northern Territory, ACT and Torres Strait. A further five members would represent remote areas due to their unique needs – one member each from the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales. An additional member would represent the significant population of Torres Strait Islanders living on the mainland.

Members would serve four-year terms, with half the membership determined every two years. There would be a limit of two consecutive terms for each member.

Two co-chairs of a different gender to one another would be selected by the members of the voice every two years.

The Calma-Langton model proposed a national voice with two permanent advisory groups – one on youth and one on disability – and a small ethics council to advise on probity and governance.

How would local and regional voices feed in?

The co-design report proposed 35 regions, broken down by state and territory. Communities and governments in each state and territory would jointly determine these.

Local and regional voices would provide advice to all levels of government to influence policy and programs, and advise the non-government sector and business.

The report outlines their roles, how they would be constituted and the principles they would embody, like cultural leadership, community-led design and empowerment.

There would be “a clear, two-way flow of advice and communication” between them and the national voice, the report said.

 

 

 

The "love bomb" approach

As most of the comments following this Tweet indicate, this approach to arguing for "Yes" is very unlikely to be effective:

 

A neuroscientist on her cannabis research

Oh look:  another neuroscientist from America in Science magazine basically saying what I've been saying for a number of years:

Although Hurd opposes the criminalization of cannabis use and possession, she believes legalization has come with underappreciated downsides. She’s concerned it has fanned a permissive culture and a perception that the drug is generally safe. “I am worried about how cavalier we’re becoming and that there is a cannabis smoke shop now practically, in some places, on every other block,” she says...

...she favors regulations that limit potency and using tax revenues from the sale of cannabis to educate people about the risks, and for treatment and research to help those harmed by its use.

You can read what her research has been about - mainly the dangers to children and adolescents who are increasing exposed to THC. 

At the very end, though, there is a box talking about the "good" component of cannabis and it's possible use in reducing other drug addictions:

Yasmin Hurd has spent much of her career documenting the harms caused by the psychoactive compound in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Ironically, she believes another cannabis ingredient, cannabidiol (CBD), could help break cannabis dependence. Her initial focus, though, is on testing it to help heroin users.

In a seminal study published in 2009, she showed CBD could reduce drug-seeking behavior in rats previously exposed to heroin, perhaps by reducing craving triggered by cues they had associated with the drug. “CBD could actually do the opposite of THC,” says Hurd, who heads an addiction research lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In 2019, she and her clinical team reported that compared with a placebo, a CBD capsule taken once a day for 3 days reduced drug cravings and anxiety in 45 human heroin users.

Why's the Bible down on dogs?

As usual, an enlightening and entertaining video from Religion for Breakfast, looking at the reasons why dogs are not generally positively referenced in the Bible.   (Worth watching for the brief section on Hittite puppy magic, too):

Yet more "Consider the Ring"

It turns out that Brisbane is not the only place about to stage a Ring Cycle.  As I have explained before [just search "Ring Cycle" in the side bar - I like most of my past posts about this], I'll be there in December, to see if my "sink or swim in 15 hours of dense Germanic storytelling" introduction to the artform pays off.   

But in this lengthy article in The Guardian, I learn that the Royal Opera House in London is about to stage it as well, directed by Australian Barrie Kosky, whose style is most often described as "flamboyant".  That's not a descriptor in the arts world that has natural appeal to me, although I guess that some would say these particular operas are intrinsically flamboyant, so what am I on about?

Well, all I can say is that I consider it a good thing that the Brisbane production is being directed by a Chinese guy who, as this video indicates, has a pretty grounded approach: 

 

I am, by the way, a bit bothered by the lack of media attention being given to this forthcoming Brisbane production, which has been delayed years by Covid.   I hope it gets noticed soon.   

Anyhoo, back to The Guardian article that talks again about the Cycle generally:

Wagner has never felt more culturally marginal than today, even though, paradoxically, many leading cultural franchises, from Lord of the Rings to Star Wars to Game of Thrones, are unthinkable without his influence. On the face of it, 2023 needs nothing so little as bombastic white-male-supremacist art composed by an antisemitic megalomaniac whom even one-time superfan Nietzsche came to see as a kind of cultural Covid. “Is Wagner a human being at all?” Nietzsche asked. “Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.”

Of course, such a paragraph means that it will be followed by several explaining why it is, in fact, still culturally relevant, including its constant re-interpretations:

Wagner at least thought he was issuing a deep, unified statement of cultural truths that could change how we live. “He felt there had to be some kind of drastic step taken in order to revolutionise the way people lived and their demands on life,” Wagner scholar Michael Tanner said. “Otherwise they would just sink to a level where they didn’t mind the fact that they were living so much less fully than they could do.”

Playwright George Bernard Shaw interpreted the Ring cycle as an allegory of the collapse of capitalism. But it is endlessly interpretable. It can serve not just as Marxist tract but as a Third Reich allegory; a sado-masochistic indictment of the have-yachts in the posh seats, or a Buddhist-inflected music drama in which the high body count suggests the death of the ego that Wagner thought, in line with his beloved philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, was desirable.

Richard Jones, director of two-fourths of ENO’s current Ring, favours something like the last account: “Ultimately it’s about the idea of self-renunciation. It’s like great Greek drama. Since it was first performed in 1876, there has never been a period when it wasn’t germane to the contemporary world,” he told the Guardian when his cycle opened in 2021.

Certainly, Wagner supposed his music drama would offer quasi-religious experience in the ancient Greek manner. “His idea was that a sufficiently potent new art form, such as he was perhaps uniquely able to write, would, by being experienced, communally change people’s consciousness,” said Tanner. “You would emerge a different person.” Wagner even built a temple to this cult in the form of Bayreuth’s opera house.

Yes, the radio interview I heard when the Brisbane production was announced did note that many claim that  viewing a Cycle production is life changing.   One has one's doubts that this will be way I react, but I'm willing to go through the experiment.