The culture wars have become very, very weird

I refer to two things:

*  Milo Yiannopoulos and his Australian tour, which I see is presented by Penthouse (Australia and NZ).   (Why?)   This is a screenshot of his sales site:

Who on earth would pay $90 plus, let alone $295, to meet this twit?    And the meet and greet starts at 11.45 pm.  ? 

I like the way the venue is secret 'til a week out, meaning that the "sold out" shows may be the 30 seat conference room in the back of the CBD Ibis Hotel, for all we know.

And yet, because he talks about how terrible "SJW's" and feminists are, he has the support of crossover conservatives/alt.righters, and Andrew Bolt, regardless of his apologia for older gay men who "mentor" young teen gay guys, as he plainly did in the now infamous interview that took an unusually long time to be publicised.  (Not that he's apologising for that any more, as far as I can tell.)

* Roy Moore in the US.   It seems hard to credit that there could be more evangelical support for him, after the first round of allegations about his unusual habit, as a 30 something year old, of dating/sexually assaulting teenage girls.   Maybe, after the latest claim, from a woman who says she is a Trump voter, they will actually start to wonder?    Or is it more that, the ways things are currently perversely working, a sex video of him with a 16 year old could only help strengthen evangelical support?    (After all, the Lord's mother might have only been that age, I can hear them say.) 

Talk about a religious group shooting their moral credibility in the foot over the last couple of years.

Axios says Rand Paul is the only Senator still endorsing him (!).   Maybe he has concussion or something affecting his judgement, or is it just a example of why libertarians can't get much of a foothold in the US government when their figureheads are lacking common sense?

The funniest thing was the report a day or two ago that Breitbart (read "Bannon") sent out two reporters to Alabama to try to discredit the claims, when in fact since then the reports have become worse and worse.

Fail, Bannon.   A complete fail.

Yet more disarray

Another Senator gone (Lambie). 

I think an election clean out of the entire Parliament is feeling more warranted every day...

Today's Freudian trivia

From a very short book review in Nature:

Sigmund Freud's first paper involved the dissection of eels in an attempt to locate their testes. To his frustration, Freud failed to find any.

I encourage all readers to attempt to slip that into workplace or household conversation today.

Update:  because I'm curious, I had to look up more about Freud's hunt for (eel's) testicles.  Here it is:

As they say with young people, Freud may not have known enough to know how futile this task would be when employed by a nondescript Austrian zoological research station. It was his first job, he was nineteen-years-old, and it was 1876. He dissected approximately 400 eels, over a period of four weeks, and he worked in an environment that the New York Times described as “Amid stench and slime for long hours”. His ambitious goal was to write a breakthrough research paper on the animal’s mating habits that had confounded science for centuries. One has to imagine that a more seasoned scientist may have considered the task futile much earlier in the process, but an ambitious, young nineteen-year-old, looking to make a name for himself, was willing to spend long hours slicing and dicing these eels, hoping to achieve an answer that could not be disproved.

Unfortunate for young Freud, and perhaps fortunate for the future of Psychology, we now know that eels don’t have testicles, until they need them. The products of Freud’s studies must not have needed them at the time he studied them, for Freud ended up writing that his total supply of eels were “of the fairer sex”. Freud did write that research paper over time, but it detailed his failure to locate the testicles. Some have said that he correctly predicted where the testicles should be, and that he argued that the eels he received were not mature eels. The result was that he did not find the testicles, and he moved onto other areas as a result. The question that anyone reading the psychological theories Freud would write later in life, has to ask, in conjunction with this knowledge, is how profound was this failure on the rest of his research into human sexual development? 

 The blog writer goes on with a lot of questions about whether Freud's obsession with human psycho-sexual development was a case of unconscious over compensation for being unable to locate eel's testicles.   It's an interesting thought...

A lyric misheard for a very long time

Something else happened on the weekend - after hearing someone singing it live, I realised that I had misheard the chorus and title of a rather popular pop song as "Valerie" instead of "Out of Reach".  The song's only been out since 1999, give me a break.   I thought it sounded an odd way of singing "Valerie" but I genuinely had no inkling that it was actually 3 words, not one.   

I see that at least one other man in his 50's had been hearing it the same way.   Maybe it's a Dad thing.

The great inconsistency

It occurred to me over the weekend:   don't zombie cultist Trump worshippers, like Steve Kates, find that their simultaneous beliefs that:

a.   Trump is right and doing God's work in wanting a better relationship with Russia (well, Putin) because Russia/Putin and the US could do good work together;  AND

b.   that Hilary Clinton and the FBI and Obama did the worst possible thing in the world and should be locked up because they let the Russians get control some (overinflated) amount of US uranium

are not exactly consistent, at least with respect to the view of Russia inherent in those positions?

I hope that's a real tweet..

I suppose that, as the world ends, at least we'll be laughing grimly about how it happened...

Update:  so sue me, I hadn't been following this fake twitter thing closely.  Still pretty funny.

Just vote Liberal Democrats and shut up

Another day, another Tim Blair whine about the ABC operating on government money.

Look, there is at least one Party with pretensions to power that wants the ABC privatised as soon as possible - the Liberal Democrats.   Given that the fact that ABC funding support is seemingly the most important, gut wrenching issue in the daily life of Tim Blair, why doesn't he just continually support the Leyonhjelm outfit for this reason alone (if not others - Blair really wouldn't seem to have any issue with that party's policies, I reckon), and blog about something else.   

Can't we just start over again?

News this morning that, as usual, One Nation (seems the party motto should be:  "You don't have to be nuts to run for us; but if you're running for us, you're nuts") is cracking up due to internal conflict just helps confirm in my mind that the public likely thinks this Parliament is such an enormous mess it really needs an election to sort it out. 

First, what went on in One Nation, from the Australian, so I probably can't link to it:

One Nation’s newest senator Fraser Anning has defected within hours of being sworn-in, causing a major upset for Pauline Hanson who now has just three votes in the chamber.

Senator Anning’s shock move follows weeks of internal party tensions and revelations Senator Hanson had wanted him to resign to allow for the return of Malcolm Roberts.

A long-time supporter and friend of Senator Hanson’s, Senator Anning replaced Mr Roberts as a Queensland One Nation MP after the High Court found last month that the latter was ineligible to sit in parliament because he was a dual British citizen when he nominated.

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm, who with Australian Conservatives senator Cory Bernardi escorted Senator Anning into the upper house this morning for his swearing in, said he was aware Senator Anning had been “under pressure to resign” to make way for Mr Roberts.

If Senator Anning had resigned, he would have created a casual vacancy that could have been filled by Mr Roberts.

Secondly:   Turnbull is copping the fallout of the citizenship issue, and I suspect it's because sounding aggro about it when you already are not polling well is not a great look.

He would, it seems clear, lose any election held now, and perhaps by a reasonably wide margin; but if he is interested in how history may view him more favourably, as a PM who selflessly let the public sort out the mess via a new election with candidates who are all unequivocally entitled to be there, a trip to the Governor General to call one would be the way to do it.

Weekend events

Good and not so good news from the weekend:

*   we've had an Emile Henry ceramic tagine - one of these -

for a couple of years, and while they are not cheap, I realised yesterday (when I finally got around to cooking in it - instead of my wife) that they are a real pleasure to use.    It fries off like a nonstick surface, and I'm not sure why (very even heat conduction?) but there was very little heat sticking of stuff on the bottom even when it has been on the gas burner for 50 minutes without stirring.  (I didn't really mean to not stir for that long, but anyway...)

The recipe for a Moroccan style lamb tagine worked out really well too, based on a Jamie Oliver version on a Tefal website.  I adjusted a bit and record it here for my future reference:

About 400 - 500 g lamb shoulder diced
One teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, cumin and coriander
One big onion - red, brown, I doubt it matters much (diced of course)
Couple of garlic cloves sliced
A fresh red chilli sliced
Tablespoon of honey
Can of tomatoes
Can of chick peas
About 30 g of dried apricots (it's only about 4 or 5 whole dried ones)
40 g of black olives
Vegetables - I used a carrot and a capsicum, both cut into big chunks, but his recipe used eggplant.  Whatever.  I think anything is going to work.
Italian parsley (I didn't have any, but Jamie's recipe involves some cooked in it, and some on top as garnish)

Method:  lamb gets mixed with the spices and honey (and some salt and pepper), then fried off in some olive oil to brown in the tagine  Add onion,  chilli and other vegetables and cook off for another 10 or 15 mins or so.  Add tomatoes, a tomato tin full of water, the chickpeas (including some of the liquid from it - I used perhaps half.) and tear up the apricots and throw them in, with the olives too.  Check salt level and add a bit more (probably).

Simmer covered for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Served with couscous with roasted flaked almonds and some finely cut up dried apricot and lemon juice through it.

It was really nice.  But then again, everything cooked in this thing seems to come out nice.  Maybe tagines share the magical powers of wood serving platters, which make all food taste better.   They just do, OK?

Update:   out of curiosity, I had a look at a "products review" website for this brand of ceramic tagine, and found quite a few people complaining that it suddenly cracked and was thereby rendered useless.   Hope ours doesn't suffer that fate.

*   I've praised Mark Dapin as a magazine features writer before, and his article in Good Weekend on Saturday was particularly interesting.   He meets up with an old university friend who has finally revealed his sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest/teacher as a teenager.

It's really remarkable,  the way the stories of the life ruining effect of teenage sexual abuse are so often so similar: the subsequent drug or alcohol abuse, depression and relationship problems, etc.   Mark's friend's explanation of the ambiguities of the emotions at the time adds another aspect I hadn't really realised - as a smart, sensitive teen, he actually liked being groomed, as it involved making him feel special and warranting the attention of someone intellectually sophisticated and part of the adult world.   That makes sense, I guess, although not every abuse victim is groomed in exactly that way, of course.  And it doesn't stop it from causing decades of later turmoil, perhaps with that irreconcilable ambiguity and conflict of emotions being the thing at the heart of why it is so often so psychologically damaging.   I think it's an interestingly complicated issue, this matter of how exactly it is that such experiences have such long lasting, detrimental psychological effects, and I wonder if  abuse victims might be particularly suited to the one of the schools of psychoanalytical "talking therapies".   

*  Watched Korean zombie movie Train to Busan on Saturday night.    The zombies are definitely in the World War Z style of more-or-less instant conversion as soon as bitten, which is kinda silly even in the fictional universes where zombies exist, I reckon.   But I got over that and enjoyed World War Z more than I expected, but enjoyed Train less than I expected.   Too much traumatised child at the end; and one thing bothered me - modern trains don't go so dark inside when going through tunnels.  That was a plot contrivance that was not realistic, if you ask me.   (Yes, here I am, being pedantic over realism in an "instant zombie" movie.)

South Korean ways of living seem so, so similar to those in Japan don't they?   I found it interesting from that point of view.

* I seem to have one eye ageing unusually rapidly - so much so that it already is developing a cataract, and quite quickly too.   Will be booking in to see a specialist ASAP, as the hazing effect of the cataract is already noticeable and there is no point in getting new glasses until that is fixed.   The optometrist asked if I had ever injured that eye, as the type of cataract at my age is more often from injury; but no, I don't recall ever getting punched in that eye, or any other injury.  Just one of life's mysteries.

I've also learnt that looking at images of cataract surgery makes it look remarkably unpleasant, for something done so routinely (and in day surgery.)

Where is the dark matter?

Well, it really is a bit of a depressing time to be a research physicist, it seems.  From Nature News:

Physicists are growing ever more frustrated in their hunt for dark matter — the massive but hard-to-detect substance that is thought to comprise 85% of the material Universe. Teams working with the world’s most sensitive dark-matter detectors report that they have failed to find the particles, and that the ongoing drought has challenged theorists’ prevailing views.

The latest results from an experiment called XENON1T at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, published on 30 October¹, continue a dry spell stretching back 30 years in the quest to nab dark-matter particles. An attempt by a Chinese team to detect the elusive stuff, the results of which were published on the same day², also came up empty-handed. Ongoing attempts by space-based telescopes, as well as at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, have also not spotted any hints of dark-matter particles.

The findings have left researchers struggling for answers. “We do not understand how the Universe works at a deeper and more profound level than most of us care to admit,” says Stacy McGaugh, an astrophysicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

The article explains some of the details of the searches, then gets to this point:

Future generations of detectors based on the same principle as XENON1T are already in the works, and will be needed if physicists are to finally close the window on WIMPs. But the particles’ continuing no-show is making theorists more open-minded and has allowed other theories to gain prominence, says Hooper. Perhaps dark matter consists of exotic axion particles, which are akin to strange, massive photons. Theorists are also looking at whether dark matter might not interact with known particles at all, but exist in a “hidden sector”, he says.

 The "upside down world" of Stranger Things, perhaps?

(There's always  MOND theories of gravity, but they have their problems too, apparently.)

Something I didn't see coming...

No pun intended in that post heading:  it really is surprising, isn't it?, this outpouring of people prepared to speak out now about the bad, unwanted, sexual conduct of Hollywood and media stars, the most recent being a high profile comedian and a Senate candidate.   (I have never seen Louis CK apart from briefly on some chat shows - I have no idea whether his comedy would appeal to me or not, although I have always suspected the latter - and now I feel I don't have to spend time checking.)

I trust Steven Spielberg never gets caught up in this.

Speaking of possibly the last nice guy in Hollywood who never put the hard word on a starlet (I'm hoping!), the trailer is out for his new, hurriedly made movie.   I haven't watched it with the sound on yet, so I don't know what I think:

 

This man teaches at a tertiary institution..

I see that Steve Kates says he gave a "presentation" on the first anniversary of Trump's election.    Not sure where, but I presume it looked something like this:

And here's a pic Steve's wife took of him before he left to go give his little talk:

He's put his speaking notes up at you-know-where, and I'll extract some highlights:

Who are the enemies he is dealing with and what are the central issues?

fanatical and ignorant opposition

• SJW are far left anti-capitalist, anti-free institutions
• the left in the US and across the world is no longer about provisioning the welfare state but is out and out communist and totalitarian
• Antifa is representative of the mindset

I wonder if he was stocking up on canned beans and bottled water for the collapse of civilisation last weekend went Antifa brought down the United States?

Anyway, here's more of his insights:

far-far left media
• malevolent, ignorant and totalitarian at heart
• utterly oppositional in everything they say or write
• stand for nothing other than a series of empty clichés
• tweet-storms is Trump’s modern means to outflank the media

 Yes, Kates genuinely believes Trump tweeting is a clever thing for him to do to "outflank" the malevolent, ignorant, media.   Paranoid much.

And finally:

personal qualities

• tough minded and clear headed
• understands business and the operation of a market economy
• a strong believer in education and learning
• has a high regard for the study of history

I keep saying he's an out and out cultist - and a nasty one who thinks those who disagree with him on politics are e-vil.

Aren't they just a tad embarrassed?

I see that via Hot Air that there was much right wing mocking of USA Today putting up an infographic about the AR15 showing that, amongst other various modifications (a 100 round drum magazine, for God's sake), there were also other rare ones, such as a chainsaw bayonet.

Allahpundit himself thought this was all very funny.   But he then ends the post with the realisation (and a Youtube video that confirms it) - the chainsaw bayonet really exists.  

Kingdom revisited

I think this is a scene from Helen Dale's Kingdom of the Wicked:

[Actually, I saw that movie, with my father, surprisingly, at the cinema when it came out in 1973.  He didn't mind it, too, despite its somewhat hippy vibe.]

More taxes

Robert J Samuelson in the Washington Post:

The truth is that we can’t afford any tax reduction. We need higher, not lower, taxes. What we should be debating is the nature of new taxes (my choice: a carbon tax), how quickly (or slowly) they should be introduced and how much prudent spending cuts could shrink the magnitude of tax increases.

To put this slightly differently: Americans are under-taxed. We are under-taxed not in some principled and philosophical sense that there is an ideal level of taxation that we haven’t yet reached. We are under-taxed in a pragmatic and expedient way. For half a century, we haven’t covered our spending with revenue from taxes.

Of course, there are times when borrowing (that is, budget deficits) is unavoidable and desirable. Wars. Economic downturns. National emergencies. But our addiction to debt extends well beyond these exceptions. We have run deficits with strong economies and weak, with low inflation and high, and with favorable and unfavorable productivity gains.

Since 1961 — and I admit to having reported this fact before — federal budgets have been in surplus in only five years. And these surpluses have invariably coincided with long economic booms that swelled government tax revenue: 1969, following the long boom of the 1960s; and 1998 through 2001, reflecting the “tech boom” of the 1990s.

We resist the discipline of balancing the budget, which is inherently unpopular. It’s what Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute calls “take-away politics.” Some programs would be cut; some taxes would be raised. Americans like big government. They just don’t like paying for it.

Borrowing is easier. It’s largely invisible to most Americans, creating the illusion of “something for nothing.” This liberates Republicans to peddle more tax cuts. Their tax cut would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years. A more realistic figure is $2.1 trillion, claims the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Democrats are little better. They advocate more entitlement spending, despite CBO’s estimate of $10 trillion in deficits under existing policies over the next decade.