Looking back at this open-to-the-world diary, I see that I have read more Graham Greene than I had remembered. I also started one of his key novels - The Power and The Glory - more than a year ago, and after losing interest, picked it up again a month or so ago, and have been slowly finishing it.
It's odd, though, that I started reading him with a couple of his later, less well know, novels, and liked them. Yet the more I have read his best known works, especially the very overtly Catholic ones, the less I have come to enjoy him.
My basic problem is that, in his most famous early books, while often clearly "Catholic" in influence or theme, his views about the religion don't often ring particularly true, or profound, to me. His interest in the religion (since I don't know that he actively practised it for long), at least in his middle aged years, seems so very idiosyncratic and muddled (as I suppose befits someone who suffered poor mental health much of his life), that I don't feel he is providing anything much in the way of useful Catholic insight. Yet I felt in his somewhat later novel A Burnt Out Case he had a more normal and sympathetic religious take, from a jaded Catholic point of view.
In other words, it seems to me that when he was trying his hardest to "write Catholic", the less convincing I find him.
I think this is particularly clear when he is compared to Evelyn Waugh. In reading his books, I always felt that the Catholic influence was clear in an orthodox and comprehensible way, despite the author also being a bit of a jerk in real life. (No where near as big a jerk as Greene, though.)
I also got a feeling in some parts of The Power and The Glory that Greene was showing a deep lack of empathy to suffering, be it human or animal. I seem to recall reading his brief account of a pet dog of his dying after being taken on an exhausting hike, and thought it sounded like he had a distinct lack of empathy. And this novel has a particularly pathetic scene of dog suffering, too. Given the widespread view now that dangerous men usually have no sense of empathy with animals, it does make me wonder whether if people meeting Greene in real life ever felt like they were perhaps dealing with a borderline psychopath.
Maybe that's harsh, given the incredible number of women who were happy to sleep with him. (Although, as noted in my previous posts, a lot of them were prostitutes!)
Anyway, many years ago I bought (second hand) two volumes of the very famous Greene biography (the author of which I forget now), but I feel less inclined to ever get stuck into those. Or maybe there is a sort of perverse enjoyment in reading in great detail about what a peculiar man he was?
Anyway, I don't think I will try any more of his novels.
As the article notes, one obvious thing they can do for the next (final) movie would be this:
...as much as that video of Tom Cruise
jumping off a motorbike on a mountain cheered us all up in the depths
of Covid, there might also be a lesson to learn here. Why on earth would
any film choose to lead with repeated shots of the film’s biggest stunt
being executed? By the time the actual film came out, everyone assumed
that they’d already seen the best bit for free on YouTube. Next time,
Mission: Impossible should try saving some excitement for the actual
film.
Yes, we were all so familiar with the stunt by the time we were watching it in the cinema, it felt anti-climatic. (We also knew, from the "making of" nature of the publicity, that there was CGI involved in the version on the screen - to hide the fact that he was riding up a ramp.)
The final one should be shorter, punchier, and (ideally, but I know it won't happen) not be directed by McQuarrie.
Thousands rallied in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday in support of
Palestine, following smaller-scale protests across the country in recent
days. It was organised by local groups Viva Palestina Malaysia (VPM)
and MyCare, who have been behind humanitarian assistance from Malaysia, Al Jazeera reports.
Huge turnout, but a bit of scandal involved — attendees say they were
banned from using placards attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden (maybe reasonable, I’ve seen some
stuff that is yeesh) as well as chanting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ or ‘God Is
Great,’ which is a stretch in my opinion. You can’t tell people to
abandon a well-known, frequently used phrase because it’s misunderstood
elsewhere.
No such reports, as of yet at least,
from a government-arranged demonstration last night in Kuala Lumpur.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim told about 19,000 people that Malaysia
won’t be backing down: “It's a level of insanity to allow people to be
butchered, babies to be killed, hospitals to be bombed, and schools to
be destroyed... it's the height of barbarism in this world … We are with
the Palestinian people yesterday, today and tomorrow” he told the
crowd, as per Reuters.
WARSAW: A Polish bishop, whose diocese was reportedly the scene of a
sex party organised by priests at which Polish media say a male
prostitute collapsed after taking erectile dysfunction pills, has
resigned, the Vatican said on Tuesday (Oct 24).
The statement did not give a reason for the resignation of Bishop Grzegorz Kaszak, saying only that the pope had accepted it.
Was he (the bishop) invited?
Incidentally, this is something I would expect more from Western Europe, not stick-in-the-mud Poland.
I know that this (more or less underground?) revival of Leftist postmodernism within parts of academia has been going on for a number of years, but what with the surge of "decolonisation" talk as a result of the Voice referendum, and the Middle East conflict, it really seems to be out in the open now:
* I think Biden is doing a reasonable job in terms of response to the Middle East crisis. I have been wondering for many months, though, about why he looks so stiff when walking. I mean, he still rides a bike, I think, and looks younger than his age when he does so. But watching him walk, he looks older. In any event, whatever you think of him, and whatever (perhaps very strong) doubts you have about his running again because of age optics, surely if you have half a brain you would have to agree that we can at least give thanks that Trump and his weirdo crew are not the ones making difficult decisions at this time.
* The whole Middle East situation is, though, (and obviously), depressing.
* Elon Musk seems to have gone relatively quiet, which is good.
* I have a holiday coming up. Doing enough work before I go to cover the cost of it is worrying!
* I maintain my personal theory that a lot of the "food insecurity" crisis (at least in Australia) is caused by people who refuse to adjust their diet and purchases to take into account the continual variation in market prices. I mean, I shop for protein, fruit and vegetables for a few meals usually once a week, and simply don't buy certain vegetables when they are ridiculously expensive. But different things are cheap at different times of the year. This spring, strawberries and blueberries, in particular, have been really cheap for a good month. Capsicum were really cheap for a few weeks too - as were eggplant, and (as usual in spring) asparagus. Cans of tomatoes or chick peas can be on special for $1. And rice - really, do Australians eat enough rice? It goes such a long way in making a filling meal.
I don't know: maybe the national broadcaster needs to do a TV show devoted to showing dumb people what's cheap this week, and how to make it into a good and filling meal?
Even if he pulled the trigger (which seems to be what the "new evidence" relating to the gun must be about), why would a jury blame a guy who was obviously relying on the person he employed to provide a safe gun to use? I mean, if the armourer was some unqualified relative, or something, I could understand it, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Man, the news is pretty depressing at the moment, so a few videos in distraction...
First, this one by Arvin Ash is not about anything new, but it's just a good and clear explanation of how new particles are "discovered", but not actually seen, by particle accelerators:
Second, I knew that Mt Fuji had accommodation huts way up on the side of the mountain, at which the typical thing is to eat some dinner, get a bit of a sleep, and then continue to the top in time for sunrise. But until I watched the Chris Broad video about his recent ascent, I had no idea that the accommodation was so large, or for that matter, that there was so much built right on the top of the mountain, overlooking the crater. It's pretty amazing, really, and I am unclear as to how all the building material has made its way up there:
And finally: I am surprised to learn that Saudi Arabia has actually started some significant looking excavation work for the absolutely nutty "NEOM" city - "the Line" or whatever it's called.
I also learnt from this video that the country is building a ski resort on top of mountains where it barely snows!
I can imagine how ecstatic that the architects and engineers must be - money flowing like water to them to draw up the most grandiose of futuristic schemes, but likely confident that they don't have to worry too much about the necessary construction details, given the very high prospects of the most complicated parts never being built.
Noticed on Twitter, the non-binary aboriginal Professor (University of Sunshine Coast) who is currently in the USA doing stuff:
But "listening" means also making sure Sandy's feelings are OK, apparently:
Oh, and if you are wondering how the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University (with which O'Sullivan has a lot of connection) are taking the loss, the answer is "not well".
To investigate community approaches to rethinking colonial commemorations and their wider impacts
The description:
Every year protests against colonial commemorations are led by
Indigenous peoples. There are numerous cases where communities have
worked together to rectify commemorations which often represent violent
histories, in the hope to reconcile the past and imagine a shared
future. Little is known about the journeys undertaken for such efforts,
and what the wider impacts might be. This project will investigate case
studies in New Zealand, USA, Canada and Norway, noting that local-level
efforts have the potential for significant global benefit. The focus
will be on the approaches taken by these communities, the challenges and
lessons learnt, and resulting changes for both Indigenous and
non-Indigenous futures.
Sounds like there might be travel for Carlson for her to write a report that will achieve nothing of significance, to be perfectly honest.
It's back, but with an undiagnosed understanding of what happened.
And the loss of an Outlook .pst file which means a loss of about a year's worth of emails, although they will be mixed up in the inbox of another computer in the office. Inconvenient.
Anyway, I will finally be migrating to Exchange, which I understand means email history will never be at risk again.
For the first ever, in about 27 years of running my own business, I have had a computer crash in such a way that it seems to be preventing important data recovery off the drive. Some data has been recovered, but a really useful part of what's on there is proving difficult to retrieve.
This problem also seems related to a windows update.
This is...disappointing. I have had a great run of not having unexpected crashes. I did have a virus problem once, but it wasn't the worst kind.
Gee, how long will it take before we stop having to watch heads explode in columns and columns of over-wrought commentary on the (presumed) failure of the referendum before we can find any (even semi-prominent) commentator from the press gallery or the entertainment world (or academia - haha, just kidding) to make the following points:
* It was inherent in the proposal that a new level of bureaucratic organisation with an unknown price tag would be inserted into the already crowded field of who governments could listen in terms of policy advice on indigenous matters. What guarantee could anyone give that this would alter in any significant way the current outcomes?
* The argument that it "could do no harm" was spurious as it meant supporting an open ticket for the diversion of many millions of dollars every year in expenditure on advisory commissioners and support staff, a cost especially hard to justify when the proposal was that governments were not bound to act on its advice anyway, and could prefer the recommendation of already existing groups. To argue that it was groundbreaking, and vital, and at the same time say that it was "safe" for everyone to endorse because it couldn't bind government anyway was inherently contradictory.
* This was not the only way a constitutional right to involvement in government could have been proposed - see New Zealand, for example - and while the Yes campaign was based on the idea that it was the minimalist version most likely to succeed, if that turns out to be wrong, it should be taken more as a lesson of not putting all your eggs in one basket, rather than arguing Australians are racist and unreasonable and reject all ideas regarding recognition of aboriginal input in government policy. (Incidentally, at least a guaranteed number of indigenous seats within government - perhaps within the Senate? - would be something with a clear and limited cost.)
* Polling, and reporting, showed that the proposal was likely supported by a majority, but not an overwhelming one, of the "grass roots" indigenous people. Surely that should cause hesitation in the overblown condemnation of all of those on the "No" side?
* Indigenous disadvantage and issues are inherently hard to solve - governments simply can't and won't spend unlimited amounts of money, especially for services in the remotest areas. Nor can they force health or other staff to work in remote areas, especially if they face danger to their personal safety and are not respected if mistakes are made. The "Yes" campaign made a pretence of two issues - that governments had never been "listening" or trying to engage at community level to solve problems (demonstrably false for anyone with Google - and something illustrated by a recent string of reports about programs where community engagement, and government support, has shown good outcomes); and that inserting an advisory body in Canberra would "turn it around".
* None of this is to say that the "No" campaign by the Coalition was in any way admirable - it was in reality pretty cynical and disreputable. But in fact, the way polling is indicating that the Coalition is not significantly benefitting from the "success" of their campaign likely means that some significant number of the "No" voters were not particularly swayed by the Coalition's efforts. In other words - maybe reasonable people had reasonable reasons for not supporting this referendum regardless of wrong or stupid or racist statements made by some on the "No" side.
A short piece at the Jerusalem Post by a former editor argues that Israel has no choice but to send ground forces into Gaza, despite the undoubted losses the army will suffer.
What I don't really know in all the commentary swirling around is this: how feasible is it to remove Hamas from Gaza? I don't know anything about how they are organised, the actual level of popular support within Gaza, and even the answer to the question - where did all those missiles come from, anyway?
From the Washington Post (and the story includes a comment from a University of Queensland researcher - yay):
In a study released Monday, researchers identified what appears to be the largest solar storm to hit Earth, estimated to be larger than the Carrington Event by an order of magnitude. The storm occurred 14,300 years ago, but is evidence of a yet unknown dimension of the sun’s extreme behavior and hazards to Earth.
“It’s clear that if one of these events [occurred] today … this would be quite destructive on our energy network and also internet network,” said Edouard Bard, lead author of the study. “This would really freeze, in fact, all communications and [travel] would be totally disrupted.”
Unlike the Carrington storm, the 14,300-year-old event does not have ground reports of bright, dancing lights or changes in animal behavior. Instead, scientists found traces of the solar storm in ancient tree rings in the French Alps and ice cores in Greenland.
More:
This
14,300-year-old event appears to be bigger than any on record, but is
one of nine extreme solar storms to occur in the last 15,000 years,
discovered in tree rings over the past decade. These extreme events are
known as Miyake events, named after Japanese physicist Fusa Miyake, who
first discovered the radiocarbon spikes in tree rings in 2012. No Miyake
event has been directly observed, like the Carrington Event.
Pope
said these Miyake events seem to occur at random, about once every
thousand years. He estimated that could mean about a 1 percent risk of
such an event occurring each decade, which is a threat to power grids,
satellites and the internet.
“Even
if these Miyake Events occur once a thousand years … I think [it] is
pretty serious and definitely merits investment in understanding these
events and how to predict and mitigate their effects, if any,” said
Pope, who called it a really interesting study.
Yes, I wish some of the big tech companies could give us some reassurance that they have enough servers shielded that it's not like the entire digital record of the planet is going to be lost in such an event.
At the risk of sounding a bit obsessive on the matter of showing that it's ridiculous to think that the Voice would solve disunity and conflict within the indigenous community about government policy measures, I had to Google to remind myself who did, and didn't, support the Howard government initiated Northern Territory intervention that started in 2007. Wikipedia says:
I'm in agreement with the emphasis
on grog and policing. I'm in agreement with attaching conditions to
welfare payments. But the difference between the proposals that we've
put forward to the Government and the proposals announced by Minister
Brough, there is a difference in that we would be concerned that those
people who are acting responsibly in relation to the payments they
receive, should continue to exercise their freedoms and their decisions,
we should only target cases of responsibility failure.
Writing in February 2008, Aboriginal academic Marcia Langton
rejected arguments that the Intervention had been a "political ploy"
and argued that the policy in fact marked the death of a "wrong-headed
male Aboriginal ideology":[44][excessive quote]
There is a cynical view afoot that
the Intervention was a political ploy – to grab land, support mining
companies and kick black heads, dressed up as concern for children.
Conspiracy theories abounded; most were ridiculous.
Those who did not see the Intervention coming were deluding themselves.
It was the inevitable outcome of the many failures of policy and
the flawed federal-state division of responsibilities for Aboriginal
Australians. It was a product of the failure of Northern Territory
governments for a quarter of a century to adequately invest the funds
they received to eliminate the disadvantages of their citizens in
education, health and basic services. It was made worse by general
incompetence in Darwin: the public service, non-government sector
(including some Aboriginal organisations) and the dead hand of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) all presided
over increasingly horrible conditions in Aboriginal communities.
The combined effect of the righteous media campaign for action
and the Emergency Intervention has been a metaphorical dagger, sunk deep
into the heart of the powerful, wrong-headed Aboriginal male ideology
that has prevailed in Indigenous affairs policies and practices for
decades.
My hope is that, as the evidence mounts of the need for a radical new
approach, the shibboleths of the old Left – who need perpetual victims
for their analysis to work – will also be dismantled.
It is, as you might gather, an article about aboriginal figures who thought the intervention was wrong and damaging, and suggesting that it all went wrong because the government wasn't listening.
No mention about how the prominent leaders of "but we need a Voice because government isn't listening!" thought the government had done the right thing at the time....
Update:news this morning of polling (with a bigger sample size than earlier ones) indicating that support for the Voice even within the aboriginal community is hardly overwhelming:
The exclusive Resolve Strategic poll, published today by the Nine newspaper, put a variety of questions to First Nations voters.
“Our
latest poll now puts Indigenous support at 59 per cent using a more
robust sample of 420 people and a consistent methodology with those
polls,” pollster Jim Reed told The Age.
“This tells us that the
Yes vote has declined at much the same rate as [in] the general
population over the last year. It’s still in the majority, but certainly
not universal.”
Indigenous people make up about three per cent of
the population, so the sample size of the poll is an “over-sample” that
delivers a margin of error of 4.8 per cent, Mr Reed explained.
“We
can be pretty confident that the result reflects the reality that
Indigenous support is between 54 and 64 per cent,” he said.
Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry says his fear of “tremendous damage” to mental health if the Indigenous voice to parliament
is rejected by voters drove him to spearhead an open letter from two
dozen former Australian of the Year winners backing the change.
Gee, I'm no psychiatrist, but maybe it would be more useful to mental health to tell the people you are concerned about that they should take a No vote as being more about rejecting a proposed bureaucracy for dealing with their problems, and not a denial that they have issues that need to be addressed?
I feel a little sorry for Anthony Albanese, actually. I mean, there must have at least been a chance that the Coalition would support a Yes vote, and as such, you would expect low blowback on the PM if it failed.
Also, it is very unlucky to have timed it accidentally with apocalyptic events in the Middle East that really make having to vote on a matter that could end in mere symbolism (it is, after all, to set up a body that the government can ignore - or if annoyed enough, reduce to a one person office in Birdsville) look like small change that is hard to get excited about, in the scheme of things.
And, as I have been complaining, the hyperbole about the importance of a Yes outcome has only had the opposite effect from that intended - making many more cynical of the whole exercise, especially when there has been a significant number of indigenous voices on the No side. (Not just Mundine and Price, either.)
So, what do I think will happen if the vote is indeed No, as seems inevitable from the polling?
I don't think Albanese will lose that much political skin over it, to be honest. I think he might be seen as doing something he sincerely thought was the right thing to do, with the "it's our way or the highway" approach by the high profile activists such as Langton and Pearson bearing a high proportion of the blame for its failure.
His political judgement will be questioned as it does indicate a deaf ear as to how indigenous issues play out in the mind of the wider community, which is arguably more sharply attuned than academia, the non-Murdoch media, and corporate elites, to a lot of the Emperors New Clothes aspects of the last couple of decades of indigenous advocacy . (My posts here and here on the Dark Emu attempt to re-write history, and here, about things anthropologists used to write about, show what I mean. Also, as a few of my recent posts have argued, the whole premise of the Yes campaign has been that "listening" hasn't been happening, which is really a nonsense shown up by reading the ABC, or doing your own Googling.)
But even so, it's not like there is going to be any institutional attacks against him, because they all rushed to say they were completely onside! See this amazing list of professional bodies that said "Yes" is the way forward.
And furthermore, with a sort of delicious irony, I don't see Dutton getting any significant boost from Albanese's woes - he is just too naturally dislikeable for that, and it's also such a transparently cynical game to tell the nation they should vote No, and then blame Albanese for "dividing the nation". It's very close to a bully's "see what you've made me do" line that never works.
But, who knows, I could be wrong.
I also wouldn't be surprised if he (Albanese) lets it rest a while, and then reverses and does legislate a Voice organisation without the constitutional change first. I don't think he'll be punished for that, at least if the amount of money involved is shown to be relatively modest. It's the same as asking a leader in an election if they will stay in the job all of the next term - everyone knows they will say "yes", and everyone knows it's the type of promise routinely broken.
We will see...
Update: Oh my...Lidia Thorpe is now saying that the Voice ought to be legislated even if there is a no vote. Some strange twists in all of this...
What a day for seriously depressing headlines at the Washington Post:
That last story contains a table with interesting figures for the most overdose prone occupations:
No surprises in number 2, I guess.
Also, the relationship between higher education and not overdosing seems really strong.
But anyway - back to the simply depressing:
I don't know, but if the aliens taking snapshots of us are really about to stage an intervention, as so many loose nuts on Twitter seem to think now, this would probably be a good time to distract the world from other things...
I don't know: while it's appalling judgement for a politician to make a statement as simplistic as "I stand with Palestine" when its leadership has just carried out a terrorist attack aimed largely at civilians, I also feel that if an Israeli newspaper can say this:
then the pro-Jewish lobby outside of Israel should cut some slack to Westerners who dare say something similar...
Noel Pearson says he will walk away from
advocating for a “middle path” of compromise if the voice to parliament
referendum fails, claiming reconciliation would not be viable in the
event of a no vote.
The longtime Indigenous activist and
respected community leader says he would instead allow a new generation
of Indigenous leaders to chart a different path forward.
Pearson
said he fears “for the future of my people” if the referendum is
defeated on Saturday, making a late plea for voters to vote yes in
recognition of Australia’s history and avoid a failure he says would be
“ugly as sin”.
“We’re reduced to being told by the no campaign ‘leave it to the
politicians’,” Pearson told Guardian Australia. “My pitch to the
Australian people, is, ‘Guys, you know that will not work. You know that
relying on politicians will not work. It hasn’t worked in the past and
won’t work in the future.’”
Apart from the terrible events in Israel and Gaza, it's very depressing to read the MAGA reaction in America, where they live in a fantasy conspiracy world that means absolutely everything bad that happens in the world is the direct fault of Biden/Democrats/Leftists (basically, anyone who isn't in their cult of "our Leader would have prevented this".)
Also depressing to see how the MAGA blame game spreads like wildfire through Twitter/X, and the mainstream press kind of ignores it, for now.
Eggplant pasta casserole: bake chopped eggplant and at same time, halve a red capsicum and put it in the oven too. About 30 min at around 180 to 200 degrees. The capsicum skin will be able to be peeled off when it cools down.
Cut two chorizo sausages into discs and fry both sides. Take out and drain off some of the rendered oil. Fry up a chopped onion in the same pan, and a few cloves of garlic. Add around a teaspoon chili flakes.
Here's the bit I need to remember...I used 300g (dry weight) of penne pasta and wasn't sure how much sauce it needed. I used a 400 ml bottle of passata, maybe 100 ml of pasta water, and about half a can of crushed tomatoes. It worked out to be enough. So, about 600 to 700 ml of sauce.
Cook pasta, and while that's going, add the passata to the onions, throw in the chopped up baked capsicum and chorizo. I guess the eggplant could go in too, although I just added it to the casserole dish.
Anyway, the drained pasta goes in casserole dish and, of course, the tomato sauce with everything else goes in and mix it well. Some green vegetable wouldn't hurt...I actually used fresh broadbeans for the first time in my life, but their taste got a bit lost. I think broccolini would work well.
Makes quite a strong case, though. Some surprising parts:
Ohiosticks out — for all the wrong reasons. Roughly 1 in 5
Ohioans will die before they turn 65, according to Montez’s analysis
using the state’s 2019 death rates. The state, whose legislature has
been increasingly dominated by Republicans, has plummeted nationally
when it comes to life expectancy rates, moving from middle of the packto the bottomfifth of statesduring the last 50 years, The Post found.Ohioans have a similar life expectancy to residents ofSlovakia and Ecuador, relatively poor countries.
Like other hard-hit Midwestern counties, Ashtabula has seen a rise in
what are known as “deaths of despair” — drug overdoses, alcoholism and
suicides — prompting federal and state attentionin recent years.But here, as well as in mostcounties across the United States, those types of deaths are far outnumbered by deaths caused by cardiovasculardisease, diabetes, smoking-related cancers and other health issues for residents between35 and64 years old, The Post found.Between
2015 and 2019, nearly five times as many Ashtabula residents in their
prime died of chronic medical conditions as died of overdoses, suicide
and all other external causes combined, according to The Post analysis
of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s death records.
Most of the article is about two public health issues - tobacco taxes and car seat belt laws. Libertarians are bad for health.
There just doesn’t seem to be enough of the Solar System. Beyond
Neptune’s orbit lie thousands of small icy objects in the Kuiper belt,
with Pluto its most famous resident. But after 50 astronomical units
(AU)—50 times the distance between Earth and the Sun—the belt ends
suddenly and the number of objects drops to zero. Meanwhile, in other
solar systems, similar belts stretch outward across hundreds of AU. It’s
disquieting, says Wesley Fraser, an astronomer at the National Research
Council Canada. “One odd thing about the known Solar System is just how
bloody small we are.”
A new discovery is challenging that picture. While using ground-based
telescopes to hunt for fresh targets for NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft,
now past Pluto on a course out of the Solar System, Fraser and his
colleagues have made a tantalizing, though preliminary, discovery: about a dozen objects
that lie beyond 60 AU—nearly as far from Pluto as Pluto is from the
Sun. The finding, if real, could suggest that the Kuiper belt either
extends much farther than once thought or—given the seeming 10-AU gap
between these bodies and the known Kuiper belt—that a “second” belt
exists.
I like this bit of added mystery:
Just as intriguing as the new objects is the apparent gap between 50 and
60 AU, says Mihály Horányi, a space physicist at the University of
Colorado Boulder who oversees New Horizons’s dust counter. “One way or
another, something is responsible for maintaining that gap.” In other
solar systems, planets orbiting within a dusty disk carve gaps by
hoovering up material. But no large planet has been seen in the gap. The
gap could also be a relic from the Solar System’s infancy, caused by
waves of pressure in the disk.
Hey, I still like the idea that a very small, primordial black hole is rambling around the edge of the solar system.
There are currently 110 advisory
committees or groups that "develop policies and provide advice on
specific issues" registered on the federal government website.
Some
of them you might have never heard of, or even noticed were advising
the government, such as The National Blood Borne Virus and Sexually
Transmissible Infections Surveillance Subcommittee or the Foods for
Early Childhood Reference Group.
Each
group holds a number of experts in their field, such as the 31 medical
professionals who work for the aforementioned subcommittee on sexually
transmitted diseases.
The Voice is expected to work in the same way in that it would be set up to give advice to the government
Question: is the expectation that "advisory committees" would in future not just be approaching Government directly with recommendations, but also (or alternatively?) having to urge the Voice to take up the issue? Is the Voice going to be a "filter" for all, or most, or none, of the current groups on recommendations to government?
The Voice group itself is said to likely be something like this:
The government hopes the Voice
would be the first body designed with gender balance in mind and the
members peer elected on a national scale.
According
to a current proposal of the body, which is subject to consultative
change, something else that differentiates the Voice from any other
Indigenous advisory group is its geographical spread, of the proposed 24
members.
Two from each state
and territory — 16 all up, five from remote communities, two from the
Torres Strait and one representing Torres Strait Islanders on the
mainland.
Individuals would
serve four-year terms and would only be allowed to serve twice and two
full-time co-chairs would be elected by the members themselves.
Now, for this group to be effective, and to potentially be on the receiving end of submissions from more than 100 current groups, there is no doubt at all that it is going to have to have a substantial staff. What's the likely staffing ratio, and the travel costs? I see that in 2004, an ATSIC commissioner got $136,000 or so in total remuneration. Bringing that up to date, I would guess that $200,000 would be in the ballpark? Times 24, that's less than $5 million, but does it include travel expenses, which I assume will be substantial. But how many staff does it need? The total cost might not be huge, in terms of government expenditure overall, but it's still a diversion of funds.
All of which is to achieve - what exactly? Essentially a "feel good" exercise in empowerment.
The fundamental reason for seriously considering a "no" vote is that such an organisation would be, essentially, an expensive duplication of advocacy that is already happening - and at least in some cases - already achieving results.
The reason such bodies might work fine in some countries, but the same is likely to be an ongoing source of friction in ours, is because of the size of Australia, which results in the vast number of "first nations" competing for attention for very differing issues in different parts of the country.
In short - there are a lot of racist and bad reasons for arguing against it. There are also solid practical reasons for at least considering a "No" vote...
Update: May God forgive me for what I am about to do: cite a Quadrant article with approval -
As NPR reports, the disease is ridiculously widespread in parts of Africa:
For example, in Burkina Faso in West Africa, pretty much everyone
gets malaria. Last year, out of a population of 20-some million, about
half got sick. Halidou Tinto was one of
them. He leads the Clinical Research Unit of Nanaro in the country. His
six-year-old twins also fell ill with malaria this year.
"As
soon as [the children] are febrile or they complain about headache,"
Tinto says, "you have to think about malaria and treat them immediately.
And you can avoid any bad outcome of the disease."
The worst
outcome is death. Tinto says 4,000 people died of malaria last year in
Burkina Faso alone. In 2021, across Africa, it's estimated that 619,000
died of the mosquito-borne disease, most of them children.
"People are living with the disease," says Tinto. "But of course, we are not happy and we are not proud of this."
But on the "up" side:
They're the first vaccines designed to work against a human parasite.
The
first, called RTS,S, was unveiled almost two years ago. The second one,
recommended by the World Health Organization this week, is called
R21/Matrix-M and is intended for children between 5 and 36 months, who
are among the most vulnerable to the disease....
This is what makes WHO's approval of the second malaria vaccine such
welcome news. Tinto ran the clinical trials in Burkina Faso that led to
its recommendation. Across four African countries, these trials showed a
75% reduction in malaria cases in the year following vaccination of
young children.
"I am very, very happy," says Tinto, "and we are pretty sure this vaccine will have a big impact in term[s] of public health."
An increase in the cost of house insurance has been in the news lately, and this year, yes, I was surprised that my RACQ Insurance home and contents cover went up from about $2,000 last year to $2,400. (I have not made a claim on it for perhaps 8 years?)
I rang them and asked if there was a way to trim the policy cost (for example, flood cover was automatically in it, and my house is far, far above any conceivable flood line.) No, I was told, this is just standard, and (I didn't bother checking if this is true) they define flood to include all water entry, including from an overflowing roof, for example.
I did some online quote searching, and quickly found a company that would do the same cover (using the same cost of rebuilding, and the same contents cover as in the RACQ renewal.) It was about $1,800.
I then did another search, and found cover at $1,700.
RACQ Insurance cover my family's cars as well, and I recently had to put a claim through them, and they are very easy to deal with. Once, in the past, I even had to ring them on Christmas morning for some reason (I forget why - I think it might have been to do with whether my son was listed as an authorised driver for a car) and they were there, and able to deal with it immediately. So, generally, I like dealing with them.
But when it comes to house and contents, something seems to have gone seriously wrong with their financial exposure if they are $700 more expensive than some of their competitors....
* Elon's plaything is still kind of amusing because of the way my version of it has been chock full of the more nutty kind of UFO content in the last week. I'm not sure whether this is happening to everyone who uses "X", or just me because I do click on some of those tweets.
* Given Musk's boosterism to Right wing and Trumpian politics, there must be many, many users who would love to drop it, but the alternative app has still not appeared. What is the problem??
* The Republicans in Congress look, and are, a complete shambles. Newt Gingrich says creepy Gaetz must go. Gaetz leaves open the prospect of someone outside of Congress could be speaker. (The only thing stopping him suggesting Trump is presumably the amount of time Trump has to spend in court - but as if lazy Trump would take on a job that requires long hours and understanding stuff.) Even Fox News doesn't seem to know how to handle it.
Once again, I give credit to the ABC in telling a story that shows how government programs have been working with aboriginal communities for health improvement (as I showed last week has also been happening with rheumatoid heart disease.) This time it's improvement in trachoma rates.
On the pro-Voice side, it's being held as an example of why 'listening' works, and the implication being that the Voice will increase the amount of listening.
On the 'the Voice is completely unnecessary' side, we have the fact that, well, we didn't need the Voice to get these improvements. Now, I really do think Warren Mundine is a flaky guy, but his point on this story is pretty valid, even if he goes over the top in the claim as to how much money a Voice organisation is likely to cost:
Warren Mundine, one of leaders of
the No Campaign, said the success of trachoma demonstrated that
Indigenous people already had a voice and what was really needed was
better coordination of services.
"Through
the Voice process, we're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars
when that money can be better spent actually doing similar things that
this health project did," he said.
He
said the problems of housing, health and education were largely state
government responsibilities that would not be solved with a federal
voice to parliament.
While I would agree that the "no" side has the nuttiest people on it, I also am somewhat amused as to how on the "yes" side you have so many on the arts and entertainment industry showing themselves as stereotypically completely captured by emotional arguments that are full of hyperbole. I forget who I saw this morning saying "if you vote no, you want the indigenous gap to get worse". It's like they refuse to think more deeply about matters beyond sloganeering.
I'll be kind and first list the good points: yes, I think the acting is fine, and Cillian Murphy is aged very realistically in the multiple periods in which he appears. I like the fact that an incredible scientific and engineering undertaking is given attention in a widely watched movie, and that (as far as I can tell, in checking up on various websites since seeing it) the movie is mostly historically accurate. As a rider to that last point, though, it is a tad annoying to find out that a really important - virtually the pivotal - scene is an invention*. Still, it seems the truth is almost never palatable enough for dramatic re-creation if it's a bio-pic instead of a documentary.
OK, so for the bad points. And the first is really bad. I realised after perhaps 30 or 45 minutes that the orchestral soundtrack was always there, far from subtle, and would simply never shut up so we could have some dialogue experienced as in real life - in silence, or with just some ambient sound. It felt like there was barely 5 minutes of audio calm (specifically, no orchestra, or the various "jump booms" which happen every now and then) in the entire movie. At the half way point, I had already decided that it felt like the composer was using a hammer to try to beat me into submission.
Now, I know, lots of people on line have praised the score. But there are some on line who agree (and who complain that the audio mixing generally sometimes made dialogue a strain to hear. Even my son agreed with that.) Some examples of commentary I agree with:
Everyone talked like they knew they were in an Important Historical
Drama and the music was constantly insisting on emotions the film wasn’t
doing anything to earn....
The draining score was there to artificially inject superficial tension....
For me the sound was so unnecessarily loud that I literally facepalmed
during the movie. The sound mix was so brazen that it made me wish I’d
watched this on streaming with subtitles, it’s borderline disrespectful
to the audience to make a movie so loud. I’m amazed that Nolan gets away
with it. Surprising that the score doesn’t get an acting credit, it’s
so blatantly front and centre in so many scenes
And, by the way, given that I am something of a Nolan sceptic (while liking some of his films), I didn't realise that loud and peculiar audio mix that interferes with hearing dialogue has been a repeat feature of many of his films. There's an entire article about that here, from before Oppenheimer opened. This film has only confirmed the problem.
On a bigger point, and why I think the movie is interesting but far from great, is it felt more like an exercise in Nolan showing us how clever he is with his complicated and dense screenplay, rather than making something that could have been much more emotionally affecting. And from a dramatic structure point of view, while I understand that the back and forth can make for a more interesting way to tell a story, I still didn't understand why it needed to feel exhaustingly frenetic from the start, and to have a sense of urgency during parts of the story that, well, didn't need it. Arguably, I suppose, you could say that it does become less urgent in the last third - which is the opposite of normal dramatic structure, and does have the odd effect of making you wonder why the narrative has always been about a different character we don't really have any reason to be interested in.
In short, I don't think the dramatic structure works, and the movie would have been much better if it had some breathing spaces ever now and then, and let tension and urgency build more naturally. The climatic explosion, by the way, felt somewhat "flat" to me, and I was disappointed that one true detail that has fascinated a lot of people (Fermi throwing pieces of paper into the air to see how the blast wave affected them, and using this to come up with a reasonable estimate of the blast yield) didn't make it into the movie.
I see that of the major movie critics in America, Richard Brody in the New Yorker was about the only one who didn't like the film, pretty much on similar grounds that I've outlined:
Nolan cuts his scenes to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, and details
that don’t fit—contradictions, subtleties, even little random
peculiarities—get left out, and, with them, the feeling of experience,
whether the protagonist’s or the viewer’s. What remains is a movie to be
solved rather than lived.
Brody adds some interesting detail about the real Oppenheimer in this section:
...the film is so intent on making Oppenheimer an icon of conflicted
conscience that it pays little attention to his character over all. He
was a renowned aesthete with a bearing so charismatic that his students
would try to emulate it, but we get little more than a couple of artsy
name-drops to suggest that he has any cultural life at all. The
“overweening ambition” that Groves saw in Oppenheimer is never in
evidence, nor is there any mention of his chilling readiness to go along
with a plan (one that was never put into action) to poison German food
supplies with radioactive strontium. There’s no glimpse of the ailing
Oppenheimer, who was suffering from tuberculosis and joint pain even
while running Los Alamos. It doesn’t help that Murphy portrays
Oppenheimer as wraithlike and haunted, a cipher, a black hole of
experience who bears his burdens blankly as he’s buffeted by his
circumstances but gives off no energy of his own. The performance, no less than the script, reduces the protagonist to an
abstraction created to be analyzed. “Oppenheimer” reveals itself to be,
in essence, a History Channel movie.
That very last line is probably unfair - there's no way a History Channel movie would make the telling so complicated and with visual flair - but in terms of how it deals with character, I get his point.
I'll wrap this up tomorrow...
Update:
* well, as far as I can tell, it's invented. I'm talking about the "Stauss introduces Oppenheimer to Einstein" scene. It is clear that the content of the conversation is invented - Oppenheimer had never asked Einstein to check if the bomb would set the atmosphere on fire - but it has been harder to find any site which explains specifically whether or not the meeting with Einstein (while Strauss watched) happened at all.
OK, to finish up a couple of things which provide some interesting context -
b. a pretty good Youtube video showing what modern day Los Alamos is like, including the slightly surprising detail about the way radioactive waste has been buried all around the place:
Update 2: I'm pleased to see there are quite a few people on Reddit prepared to criticise the film as being underwhelming for them, for similar reasons I outlined. I haven't even mentioned the oddball scene that was tweeted about (in response to someone who said "see, no one is talking about Oppenheimer any more") as follows:
Ha. :)
(Quite a few people think the female characters are a bit unfairly treated - there was a lot more to both of them than their flaws, which are pretty much the only aspect that make it into the story.)
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