Monday, January 30, 2017
Sunday, January 29, 2017
A lack of moral seriousness
Yeah, it's all just a big culture war game to the likes of Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt.
Blair writes of Trump's refugee (temporary) immigration ban: "Leftist media will be entertaining today." Yes, that's what really matters for a writer whose sole output is anti-Left wing snark.
Bolt gets obsessed with media calling it a Muslim ban, and gets totally on board with the claimed justification - to work out better "vetting procedures" from certain countries - while not showing any interest at all in what the current procedures are, or wondering how it could be at all possible to get perfect vetting from a war torn nation, or for people who have come (for example) via living in a tent in a desert refugee camp for the last 3 years. He is completely in the tank for Trump on this, because it aligns with his own contemptuous disregard for refugees, despite the West's role in helping generate more globally by its attempted Middle East interventions.
Bolt is the most dishonest and disgraceful writer on immigration matters in Australia today - continually blaming government for letting in thoroughly deserving refugees (be they Muslim or not) in the event that any of them, or their children, commit a crime even years after their arrival. Governments are supposed to be able to tell which 10 year olds will be a 17 year old thief, apparently.
Neither of them are morally serious on this, or indeed on climate change, another topic of long term consequence on which they prefer to play the short sighted fool and culture war warrior.
Blair writes of Trump's refugee (temporary) immigration ban: "Leftist media will be entertaining today." Yes, that's what really matters for a writer whose sole output is anti-Left wing snark.
Bolt gets obsessed with media calling it a Muslim ban, and gets totally on board with the claimed justification - to work out better "vetting procedures" from certain countries - while not showing any interest at all in what the current procedures are, or wondering how it could be at all possible to get perfect vetting from a war torn nation, or for people who have come (for example) via living in a tent in a desert refugee camp for the last 3 years. He is completely in the tank for Trump on this, because it aligns with his own contemptuous disregard for refugees, despite the West's role in helping generate more globally by its attempted Middle East interventions.
Bolt is the most dishonest and disgraceful writer on immigration matters in Australia today - continually blaming government for letting in thoroughly deserving refugees (be they Muslim or not) in the event that any of them, or their children, commit a crime even years after their arrival. Governments are supposed to be able to tell which 10 year olds will be a 17 year old thief, apparently.
Neither of them are morally serious on this, or indeed on climate change, another topic of long term consequence on which they prefer to play the short sighted fool and culture war warrior.
La La Landed
My wife and I saw this much talked about movie yesterday.
I think it's very good for 3 main reasons:
1. Emma Stone is utterly charming and fantastic and they should just send her to Oscar now and tell the other contenders there is really is no point in them coming to the ceremony.
2. It's very pleasingly directed, and avoids, in large part, the annoying over-editing of dance sequences that has afflicted modern musicals for so long. I only read up on director Damian Chazelle after seeing the movie - 32 years old and obviously very talented. (He co-wrote 10 Cloverfield Lane too - quite a genre difference there!)
3. The dancing is just right for this type of movie, in that it doesn't overwhelm with technical virtuosity in the way that Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly always seemed to be dancers trying to act (this movie is the reverse), and it shows how well non professional dancers can do if they practice enough. I think it makes the viewer feel capable of sharing in dance, too, even if it's never attempted.
It's not a perfect film - personally, I think the final interaction between Stone and Gosling should have been more intense, and some of the music tends to the bland. Would I have been happier with a less melancholy story? Perhaps, but it is what it is, to quote from the recent episodes of Sherlock.
It's well worth seeing.
I think it's very good for 3 main reasons:
1. Emma Stone is utterly charming and fantastic and they should just send her to Oscar now and tell the other contenders there is really is no point in them coming to the ceremony.
2. It's very pleasingly directed, and avoids, in large part, the annoying over-editing of dance sequences that has afflicted modern musicals for so long. I only read up on director Damian Chazelle after seeing the movie - 32 years old and obviously very talented. (He co-wrote 10 Cloverfield Lane too - quite a genre difference there!)
3. The dancing is just right for this type of movie, in that it doesn't overwhelm with technical virtuosity in the way that Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly always seemed to be dancers trying to act (this movie is the reverse), and it shows how well non professional dancers can do if they practice enough. I think it makes the viewer feel capable of sharing in dance, too, even if it's never attempted.
It's not a perfect film - personally, I think the final interaction between Stone and Gosling should have been more intense, and some of the music tends to the bland. Would I have been happier with a less melancholy story? Perhaps, but it is what it is, to quote from the recent episodes of Sherlock.
It's well worth seeing.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
More leaking - like a sieve
Isn't it truly remarkable that a recording of a behind closed doors Republican meeting (dealing with the huge practical difficulties of repealing Obamacare) should be leaked to the Washington Post, so early in this administration?
There is some internal turmoil going on in that party, the extent of which will no doubt be the subject of many future books.
There is some internal turmoil going on in that party, the extent of which will no doubt be the subject of many future books.
The last Sherlock
We watched the last Sherlock last night.
Many readers from The Guardian didn't like it. I thought it wasn't too bad, actually. Rather too James Bond in the settings (both the prison island, and then the house surely reminded people of Skyfall?). Thematically, it reminded me a bit of a minor Graham Greene novel too - Doctor Fischer of Geneva.
It was all very improbable all round, of course, but improbable done with good intensity and directorial flare, most of the time. (The shot of the jump out of the Baker Street flat was very poor, though.)
I would be happy to see the show continue, actually, now that its biggest mistake - the silly story arc of Mary - is well and truly gone, as is Moriarty.
Many readers from The Guardian didn't like it. I thought it wasn't too bad, actually. Rather too James Bond in the settings (both the prison island, and then the house surely reminded people of Skyfall?). Thematically, it reminded me a bit of a minor Graham Greene novel too - Doctor Fischer of Geneva.
It was all very improbable all round, of course, but improbable done with good intensity and directorial flare, most of the time. (The shot of the jump out of the Baker Street flat was very poor, though.)
I would be happy to see the show continue, actually, now that its biggest mistake - the silly story arc of Mary - is well and truly gone, as is Moriarty.
Friday, January 27, 2017
Only took a week...
I'm a bit surprised that the Trump sit down interview of a couple of days ago, in which he continued obsessing about his popularity, has not gained more immediate international attention for the worrying signs it displayed about Trump's basic psychological state. Obviously, you don't want a guy with control of a stockpile of nuclear weapons to be one who is impervious to facts and capable of such self aggrandising obsessions.
But it's clear that a huge part of the problem is the people around him - particularly the unhealthy looking Stephen Bannon, who is obviously either behind, or completely supportive of, Trump's paranoia with how the media presents him. Here he is, quoted by the NYT:
I have been writing for years that, as a pretty safe rule of thumb, if anyone remains a climate change denialist, their judgement on pretty much anything else can't be trusted.
But it's clear that a huge part of the problem is the people around him - particularly the unhealthy looking Stephen Bannon, who is obviously either behind, or completely supportive of, Trump's paranoia with how the media presents him. Here he is, quoted by the NYT:
“The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong,” Mr. Bannon said of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there.”“The mainstream media has not fired or terminated anyone associated with following our campaign,” Mr. Bannon said. “Look at the Twitter feeds of those people: they were outright activists of the Clinton campaign.” (He did not name specific reporters or editors.)“That’s why you have no power,” Mr. Bannon added. “You were humiliated.”“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,”“I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”
Yes, just what you want. An unstable, vindictive culture warrior who won't accept that the Trump victory was, in fact, very narrow, advising a vain, insecure man-child who stumbled into a presidency he didn't really expect.
Are Republican politicians worried about Trump? According to Carl Bernstein, some are:
Bernstein said discussions going on in Washington this week were “unlike anything I have seen in 50 years as a reporter”.Are Right wing commentators in Australia commenting about this at all? Of course not - the likes of Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair are still just concentrating on how bad Lefties are for the extremely low level of protest violence and making some nasty signs about the Pres. God knows how they would have coped in the truly violent hothouse political and social environment of the US in the late 60's and 70's.
“I am hearing from Republicans, and other reporters are as well, that there is open discussion by members of the President of the United States’ own party about his emotional maturity, stability,” he said.
I have been writing for years that, as a pretty safe rule of thumb, if anyone remains a climate change denialist, their judgement on pretty much anything else can't be trusted.
Well, this has been supplanted by a even more reliable rule: if a person can't see the danger in Donald Trump's behaviour and statements, he or she is just blinded by culture war foolishness and is completely unreliable on all matters requiring sound judgement.
Thursday, January 26, 2017
My suggestion for a new Australia Day date
I'm starting to think that, like 1950's Catholic CL, Sinclair Davidson is man living in the wrong era - he's a throw back to somewhere, probably pre-war England? (Don't get me started on dover beach - he's an escapee from the 13th century.)
I say this because the way he writes, he seems regretful about missing out on historical chances to physically be able to put the boot into Leftists; perhaps he's a re-incarnation of some upper middle class Englishman in a suit, out on the street to try to wallop unionists during the General Strike.
Not for the first time, I also find his meaning unclear. Writing on Ian McFarlanes' opinion that we should just go and change the date we celebrate Australia Day, he says "caving in to lefty demands is always and everywhere a mistake" while simultaneously acknowledging there are some good arguments for moving it. So good arguments should never win if they are held by "Leftists" who will be seen to be getting their way if you agree? He probably doesn't mean that, but his clarity is, as is often the case, missing.
In any event, his silly post has encouraged me to look around at potential alternative dates for Australia Day, and there is a list at SBS of various dates that have been proposed, and their reasons.
Of course, the obvious one (1 January, when the nation became official) is out for the simple of expediency of it already being a holiday, and one with too many hangovers to do any nationalistic ceremonies.
But it has occurred to me - if Anzac Day is now considered a remembrance of the day the nation first felt all grown up, but it of itself cannot bear a further burden of celebration, why not just make the next day - April 26 - a follow up holiday where we celebrate the nation that it had become? (I see that candy at Catallaxy has come close to that - suggesting that Anzac Day be beefed up into also being Australia Day - but I can't see that working.)
As far as I can tell, there is nothing of particular significance one way or the other to make people question the date for having a particular partisanship to one group or another - which is the problem with going for things like changing it to the date that aboriginals got certain rights.
The benefit - we get two public holidays in a row - this alone will convince many it is a worthy change.
The only downside - it may fall too close to Easter some years. But hey, we can handle that.
I say this because the way he writes, he seems regretful about missing out on historical chances to physically be able to put the boot into Leftists; perhaps he's a re-incarnation of some upper middle class Englishman in a suit, out on the street to try to wallop unionists during the General Strike.
Not for the first time, I also find his meaning unclear. Writing on Ian McFarlanes' opinion that we should just go and change the date we celebrate Australia Day, he says "caving in to lefty demands is always and everywhere a mistake" while simultaneously acknowledging there are some good arguments for moving it. So good arguments should never win if they are held by "Leftists" who will be seen to be getting their way if you agree? He probably doesn't mean that, but his clarity is, as is often the case, missing.
In any event, his silly post has encouraged me to look around at potential alternative dates for Australia Day, and there is a list at SBS of various dates that have been proposed, and their reasons.
Of course, the obvious one (1 January, when the nation became official) is out for the simple of expediency of it already being a holiday, and one with too many hangovers to do any nationalistic ceremonies.
But it has occurred to me - if Anzac Day is now considered a remembrance of the day the nation first felt all grown up, but it of itself cannot bear a further burden of celebration, why not just make the next day - April 26 - a follow up holiday where we celebrate the nation that it had become? (I see that candy at Catallaxy has come close to that - suggesting that Anzac Day be beefed up into also being Australia Day - but I can't see that working.)
As far as I can tell, there is nothing of particular significance one way or the other to make people question the date for having a particular partisanship to one group or another - which is the problem with going for things like changing it to the date that aboriginals got certain rights.
The benefit - we get two public holidays in a row - this alone will convince many it is a worthy change.
The only downside - it may fall too close to Easter some years. But hey, we can handle that.
...makes it harder to believe she won't be around
The post title refers to both:
a. the current use of a slowed down version of "Flame Trees" on a road safety ad on TV here at the moment. I can't find a link to it, which is odd. Are all songs capable of haunting melancholia if the tempo is slowed appropriately? I don't know - but I think it's remarkably effective.
and
b. the death of Mary Tyler Moore. I've long said her 70's show is the best long running sitcom ever made, both funny and endearing because of the realism of the characters. (OK, Ted pushed the boundaries of realism, although I am sure I have read of media insiders who disagree.) It also showed a sense of balance about how life was changing - I thought the way in which Lou Grant's wife left him, not out of anything he had done wrong, but just out of a feeling that for her own growth she needed it, was a particularly poignant example of the more-or-less unintended hurt that women's inevitable increasing independence could cause. And Mary herself could be a bit depressed about her lack of long, deep relationships - do you remember the scene where she did a mental calculation of the huge number of "dates" she had been on since she was 17? I wonder though - that obit from the NYT I linked to calls her character "neurotic": I wouldn't say that, and I wonder if the obit is attracting criticism for it?
I only have the vaguest memories of her on the Dick Van Dyke show, but it was a popular in our household in the 1960's, and I do remember enjoying it.
With the importance of her shows from a feminist perspective, it's some sort of irony that she has died at the start of a period of retro anti-feminism under Trump and Republican dominated congress. I'm not impressed by the crassness of some young comedians (or aging rock stars) who give the impression that sexual promiscuity is to them to be the most important aspect of modern feminism, but I hope Moore took some encouragement from the women's marches last weekend. (I assume she was a Democrat voter - I would be dismayed if she wasn't!) I also hope she can come and haunt the ghastly Kellyanne Conway, whose role in Trump promotion is a betrayal to her gender, not to mention Catholicism.
a. the current use of a slowed down version of "Flame Trees" on a road safety ad on TV here at the moment. I can't find a link to it, which is odd. Are all songs capable of haunting melancholia if the tempo is slowed appropriately? I don't know - but I think it's remarkably effective.
and
b. the death of Mary Tyler Moore. I've long said her 70's show is the best long running sitcom ever made, both funny and endearing because of the realism of the characters. (OK, Ted pushed the boundaries of realism, although I am sure I have read of media insiders who disagree.) It also showed a sense of balance about how life was changing - I thought the way in which Lou Grant's wife left him, not out of anything he had done wrong, but just out of a feeling that for her own growth she needed it, was a particularly poignant example of the more-or-less unintended hurt that women's inevitable increasing independence could cause. And Mary herself could be a bit depressed about her lack of long, deep relationships - do you remember the scene where she did a mental calculation of the huge number of "dates" she had been on since she was 17? I wonder though - that obit from the NYT I linked to calls her character "neurotic": I wouldn't say that, and I wonder if the obit is attracting criticism for it?
I only have the vaguest memories of her on the Dick Van Dyke show, but it was a popular in our household in the 1960's, and I do remember enjoying it.
With the importance of her shows from a feminist perspective, it's some sort of irony that she has died at the start of a period of retro anti-feminism under Trump and Republican dominated congress. I'm not impressed by the crassness of some young comedians (or aging rock stars) who give the impression that sexual promiscuity is to them to be the most important aspect of modern feminism, but I hope Moore took some encouragement from the women's marches last weekend. (I assume she was a Democrat voter - I would be dismayed if she wasn't!) I also hope she can come and haunt the ghastly Kellyanne Conway, whose role in Trump promotion is a betrayal to her gender, not to mention Catholicism.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
Leaks and lies
Yes, it isn't surprising that there is confirmation that Trump himself pushed his press secretary to come out lying about how many people were at (or watched) the inauguration; but what is surprising is the apparent number of White House insiders who have been leaking to the media so soon after the inauguration.
As for the reason Trump would do this - Tyler Cowan's Bloomberg column is getting a lot of attention, and deservedly so:
As for the reason Trump would do this - Tyler Cowan's Bloomberg column is getting a lot of attention, and deservedly so:
By requiring subordinates to speak untruths, a leader can undercut their independent standing, including their standing with the public, with the media and with other members of the administration. That makes those individuals grow more dependent on the leader and less likely to mount independent rebellions against the structure of command. Promoting such chains of lies is a classic tactic when a leader distrusts his subordinates and expects to continue to distrust them in the future.But read the whole thing...
Another reason for promoting lying is what economists sometimes call loyalty filters. If you want to ascertain if someone is truly loyal to you, ask them to do something outrageous or stupid. If they balk, then you know right away they aren’t fully with you. That too is a sign of incipient mistrust within the ruling clique, and it is part of the same worldview that leads Trump to rely so heavily on family members.
In this view, loyalty tests are especially frequent for new hires and at the beginning of new regimes, when the least is known about the propensities of subordinates. You don’t have to view President Trump as necessarily making a lot of complicated calculations, rather he may simply be replicating tactics that he found useful in his earlier business and media careers.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Against pill testing
Those of a libertarian bent tend to support the idea of pill testing at places where youth gather to do things like listen to doof doof music so tedious that they must take mind altering illicit drugs in order to enjoy it for more than 10 minutes.
Yet, as I have seen argued before, this is a position motivated more by ideology than evidence that pill testing is effective. [I'd link to my previous post about it, if only Google wasn't so pathetic in its erratic indexing of this blog.]
The latest article explaining this was at the SMH today. Basically, the testing is far from being very accurate, and even if does identify a substance that is safe at small doses, it can't tell what the dose is.
Sounds pretty convincing to me, even if I have an ideological position against recreational drugs generally.
Yet, as I have seen argued before, this is a position motivated more by ideology than evidence that pill testing is effective. [I'd link to my previous post about it, if only Google wasn't so pathetic in its erratic indexing of this blog.]
The latest article explaining this was at the SMH today. Basically, the testing is far from being very accurate, and even if does identify a substance that is safe at small doses, it can't tell what the dose is.
Sounds pretty convincing to me, even if I have an ideological position against recreational drugs generally.
Silly trivia
On the one hand, when we went through an election campaign in which Trumpkin wingnuttery was full of things like slowed down video of Clinton allegedly having seizures, and a minder who was supposed to be walking around with an injector in hand, ready to sedate her at a moment's notice, I'm inclined to cut the anti Trump side a bit of slack when it comes to their now obsessing over silly things like Melania Trump's facial expression at one point of the inauguration.
But really, to be overanalysing her, and young Barron Trump, is really below the media, including Slate, isn't it?
But really, to be overanalysing her, and young Barron Trump, is really below the media, including Slate, isn't it?
Monday, January 23, 2017
The double slit with a twist: an important quantum experiment?
Just browsing through arXiv, as you do when there is not much on TV, and found a paper from last week by a group of Chinese researchers which sounds very significant. Here's the abstract:
The cartoon they refer to is this:
I'm guessing that there might be a dispute over their interpretation of their experiment, but we'll see. I'd be a bit surprised if this doesn't make it into science journalism soon...
Are quantum states real? How to think about this the most important, most fundamental and most profound question in quantum mechanics still has not been satisfactorily resolved, although its realistic interpretation seems to have been rejected by various delayed-choice experiments. The heart of the matter comes down to what can describe physical reality if wavefunctions cannot. Here, to address this long-standing issue, we present a quantum twisted double-slit experiment, in which orbital angular momentum degree-of-freedom is employed to 'mark' the double slits (mimicked by spatial light modulators). Besides providing a which-slit observation interface, by exploiting the variable arrival time ascribed to the subluminal feature of twisted photons, the behavior of a photon during its time in flight is revealed for the first time. We found that the arrival time of photons does not accord with the states obtained in measurements, but agree well with the theoretical predictions calculated from their wavefunctions during the propagation. Our results demonstrate that wavefunctions describes a realistic manner of quantum entities' existence and evolution rather than only a mathematical abstraction for only providing a probability list of measurement outcomes. This finding makes an important update in understanding the role of wavefunctions in the evolution of quantum entities, inspires a new insight on nonlocality and wave-particle duality, and reminds us there is a neglected powerful resource for quantum science needing revisit.As is common in such papers, the introduction and (this time) even the conclusion are fairly comprehensible, and you don't have to follow the maths in between. Here's their surprising conclusion:
I'm guessing that there might be a dispute over their interpretation of their experiment, but we'll see. I'd be a bit surprised if this doesn't make it into science journalism soon...
Inadequate Google blog searching, revisited
Why does this happen???
This morning I noted how I couldn't find a post I was sure I had made here using Google Advanced search (wherein I searched the word "tempura" in my blog site - both www.opiniondominion.blogspot.com and www.opiniondominion.blogspot.com.au. I also dropped the "www", in case that made a difference. I tried other words I thought likely in the post too, such as "batter").
Nothing came up. Nothing came up when I tried it last night, too.
Nothing came up trying Bing.
I had to resort to doing a word search in a backup copy of the entire blog (opening the .xml backup file in Notepad.)
And here it is: the post from 2015 - a fairly lengthy post which uses "tempura" many times, even in the title, not to mention "batter".
Having found the post on the backup, I even tested Google Advanced Search by cutting and pasting the short sentence "The history of tempura as a Japanese mainstay is interesting" and told it just to search the blog address - and still nothing.
Why does this happen??
I still see in a site counter I sometimes check, for example, that someone has visited the blog because they searched "lucky snakes", and I had a post of that title many years ago. I can also Google (not even Advanced Google) for "ox tail opinion dominion" or similarly for "paella" and I can get the posts I made where I have recorded recipes.
So why is Google so erratically unreliable about search within a Blogger blog? Even using Advanced Search???
I've been complaining about this for years - and I am puzzled as to why it happens.
This morning I noted how I couldn't find a post I was sure I had made here using Google Advanced search (wherein I searched the word "tempura" in my blog site - both www.opiniondominion.blogspot.com and www.opiniondominion.blogspot.com.au. I also dropped the "www", in case that made a difference. I tried other words I thought likely in the post too, such as "batter").
Nothing came up. Nothing came up when I tried it last night, too.
Nothing came up trying Bing.
I had to resort to doing a word search in a backup copy of the entire blog (opening the .xml backup file in Notepad.)
And here it is: the post from 2015 - a fairly lengthy post which uses "tempura" many times, even in the title, not to mention "batter".
Having found the post on the backup, I even tested Google Advanced Search by cutting and pasting the short sentence "The history of tempura as a Japanese mainstay is interesting" and told it just to search the blog address - and still nothing.
Why does this happen??
I still see in a site counter I sometimes check, for example, that someone has visited the blog because they searched "lucky snakes", and I had a post of that title many years ago. I can also Google (not even Advanced Google) for "ox tail opinion dominion" or similarly for "paella" and I can get the posts I made where I have recorded recipes.
So why is Google so erratically unreliable about search within a Blogger blog? Even using Advanced Search???
I've been complaining about this for years - and I am puzzled as to why it happens.
Very witty
Following on from the lying (and pro-Life Catholic - the prime example of the disgraceful low standards of conservative Catholics in supporting Trump) Kellyanne Conway's comments yesterday, this has appeared on twitter:
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)