Yet more Black Panther skepticism

First:   I call on Jason Soon to tell us what you thought of the movie.  [Please].

And then read the skeptical analysis of the race politics of the movie (not so dissimilar from the take on it in Boston Review I posted about before) which has appeared in Esquire.    Some bits:

When it comes to Killmonger, Black Panther’s politics are not especially liberatory, especially since the film’s title (not to mention its Oakland bookends) evoke the revolutionary politics of Angela Davis, Huey Newton, Elaine Brown, and the Black Panther Party. While often hilariously anti-colonial in characters’ laugh lines, Black Panther’s major plot wants the audience to root for T’Challa largely because as the legitimate male son; he has a respectable blood claim to Wakanda’s throne—and what is a more colonialist ideology than upholding the divine right of kings?....

Killmonger wants to use Wakanda’s weapons to stop the suffering of Black people globally, and we, the audience, are manipulated into rooting against this because we live in an ideology in which nonviolence is always expected of Black people no matter what. As James Baldwin wrote, “The real reason that nonviolence is considered to be a virtue in Negroes… is that white men do not want their lives, their self-image, or their property threatened.” I could not bring myself to root against Killmonger’s desire to help the Black diaspora any more than I could begrudge him wanting to take the throne of his child of the man who’d killed his father. 

But most disappointing was how Killmonger was morally positioned in contrast to the white CIA agent, Everett Ross (Martin Freeman). Coogler sets up the audience to dislike Killmonger because he was made to kill many people by the U.S. military; meanwhile, after saving a Wakanda woman’s life, Ross was turned into your friendly neighborhood CIA agent. Every scar on Killmonger's hot, shirtless torso is for someone he’s taken out—including many Black people. It is Ross (while using Shuri’s technology) who actually stops Killmonger’s crew from exporting weapons from Wakanda to help Black people....

While the audience was positioned not to forgive American-bred violence in Killmonger, we were positioned to forgive it in Agent Ross.

 The rehabilitation is also a kind of absolution of American imperialism, granting cover to how the CIA (in our Wakanda-less world) has been arming African countries and playing them against each other for decades. Meanwhile, when Killmonger chooses death over help from T’Challa and talks about the middle passage, he doesn’t speak of becoming enslaved in terms of America—but as something the African nation of Wakanda might do to him. It was painful to see Africa and an African American pitted against each other this way, while a CIA agent was redeemed.

Intriguing black hole research

A paper came out in January talking about that old black hole chestnut - the breakdown of physics inside of them, and the cosmic censorship idea that we'd never know about it anyway.

Here's an explanation of the paper from some physics site I'm unfamiliar with, and I'll extract the first couple of paragraphs:

Is the future predictable? If we know the initial state of a system exactly, then do the laws of physics determine its state arbitrarily far into the future? In Newtonian mechanics, the answer is yes. Similarly in electromagnetism: if one knows the initial state of the electric and magnetic fields exactly, then Maxwell’s equations determine their state at any later time. In quantum mechanics, if the initial wave function is known exactly, then Schrödinger’s equation can be used to predict the wave function at any later time. However, new research by Vitor Cardoso from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, and colleagues [1] suggests that this predictability of the laws of physics can fail in general relativity. The researchers find that it might be possible for a star that undergoes gravitational collapse to form a black hole containing a region in which physics cannot be predicted from the initial state of the star.

General relativity asserts that spacetime is dynamical, with its dynamics dictated by Einstein’s equation. Just as the initial state of a particle is specified by its position and velocity, an initial state for spacetime is specified by the geometry of space at some instant of time, as well as by its rate of change. Given such initial data, a fundamental theorem in general relativity [2] states that there is a so-called maximal Cauchy development. This is the largest spacetime that is uniquely determined by the initial data. But is it all of spacetime? In other words, could the maximal Cauchy development be a subset of a larger spacetime? By definition of the maximal Cauchy development, this larger spacetime could not be predicted from the initial data. This scenario would represent a failure of determinism: one would not be able to use the initial data to predict the state of spacetime arbitrarily far into the future.

 Another article trying to explain it (and I suspect, not as accurately) is here.

One thought that is not mentioned in either paper - could this potentially tie in, in any way, with the idea that our universe is actually inside of a black hole?    If so, could it be a way in which our universe is not deterministic?   Just a thought....

Olde time surgery

Everyone gets a laugh out of historical tales of ridiculous self surgery, don't they?   From a review of a book that sounds like gory fun:

Arnold van de Laar, the Dutch surgeon, opens this fascinating history of surgery with the tale of a 17th-century blacksmith who had been so sorely disappointed with the botched operations performed by the scalpel-wielders of his day that he took matters into his own hands and cut a 4oz stone from his own bladder while his wife was at the shops.

Today, with decent hygiene, bladder stones are rare, but then they were rife. From a simple urine infection, they would grow like pearls inside oysters, pressing on the sensors that prompt urination while impeding the act. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, would have counselled any doctor against attempting to remove one, as the operation was more likely to kill the patient than the stone itself. But the pain drove sufferers to seek the relief offered by professional "cutters", even though the procedure had a 40pc mortality rate.

It was only after two cutters had failed to remove 30-year-old Jan de Doot's stone that he decided to do it himself. He made a surgical knife in his own forge, then instructed his apprentice to hold his scrotum out of the way as he made three, deep horizontal slits in his own perineum, and extracted a stone larger than a chicken's egg. De Doot succeeded where the experts had failed, and became famous for his extreme DIY.

Um, I assume there was a mirror involved too?  Might have to buy the book to find out...

Update:   Oh - Wikipedia has an entry on the self-surgeon, who is obviously better know than I kenw.   The story first appeared in a book in 1672!    I still don't understand how this surgery was done, though.  And the assistant scrotum holder in the original is apparently his brother, although it might be that his brother was also an apprentice, I suppose...

Oh, please

I also can't stop reading breathless, ecstatic commentary on how Black Panther is going to change everything.  Latest example, in Slate:  What Black Panther could mean for the Afrofuturism Movement. 

Apparently, watching fantasy physics about fantasy materials is going to encourage black kids to get into STEM.    OK, I might have to concede Star Trek might have had an influence on making science education cool, but Marvel level fantasy physics having the same effect?    Can't see it.

And most of the article just reads like fantasy to me.

Hard to avoid watching the car wreck

That's how I feel about reading about the Right wing reaction to the latest mass shooting in America - it pretty much nauseates me as offensive both to reason and emotion, but can't stop looking.   

The latest:   as Jason Wilson writes in the Guardian, they're attacking the very idea that teenagers who survive a school shooting should be paid any attention.   Because, you know, teenagers.   Even Ben Shapiro, barely out of braces himself, is taking that approach.  

The line between emotional and rational decision making is, as it happens, in the matter of gun control, one where the emotional does deserve extra weight.   Because you can rationalise away legislative responses to almost any tragedy if you want to, and gun rights nutters are highly motivated to do so.  The easiest way - routinely deployed - make the perfect  the enemy of the good.    It's a rational argument in its own way - you need emotional clout to say "stop deploying what you think is a 'rational' response to repeated death and mayhem, when there are sensible things that could be done."  

Second point:  Trump's response is only to call again for banning bumpstocks - not even implicated in the latest killing.    At this rate, he'll contemplate increasing the age for buying AR-15s after another 6 mass shootings by teenagers.

Third point:  a lot of discussion happening about how the attitudes of under 35's towards gun control is not as "liberal" as you would expect.    Vox has a good article about it, but one thing I reckon would be important about this - the way polling is conducted on this issue is, I suspect, particularly open to uncertainty, given the speed with which recent shootings drop out of the public mind, and the very vagueness with some of the terminology such as "gun control".    Hence it is an issue where politicians are entitled to take a lead and not just try to work out a response based on imprecise readings of what steps a majority would approve.   But of course, politicians on the Right are the least likely to want to make any effort at all.  

American gun paranoia at work

I had heard of this before - the guns rights organisations in the US are paranoid about the idea of the government having an easy to search, computer based system for tracing ownership of guns used in crimes.  The result - a mountain of paper and microfiche records that are searched through (surprisingly, sometimes still successfully.)

This great national embarrassment - borne of simple paranoia that if the government knows who has a gun, they'll come and take it off you - is explained in detail, with photos, here at GQ (of all magazines.)  

Call for assistance

Can someone with time and better photo editing skills than me please convert this using Barnaby Joyce and Malcolm Turnbull's faces?:

I guess it has to be Barnaby on the left.   Julie Bishop is in the background...

OK, well my pathetic, hurried abilities have to go on display again:

King t'Urnbull confronts Killmarriager

 

Just not getting this...

I don't want to go on too much about the chronic over-rating of Black Panther, but I did forget to mention in my review that I didn't even find it visually very interesting.  Hence comments like this one, to be found on Wired, leave me gobsmacked:

Visually, no other Marvel movie has ever come close to Black Panther—the lush Wakandan landscapes, the vibrantly colored costumes, even the wearable tech was beautiful. And that moment where the Royal Talon Fighter dips below the veil and we get an aerial look over the Golden City? Jawdropping.

Um, convincing looking fantasy cities, either functioning or dystopian, are a dime a dozen in movies these days, Marvel made or not.   In fact, I was distinctly underwhelmed by the first appearance of the Wakanda city - it had African touches, but seriously, it was nothing groundbreakingly impressive, which the lead character had led us to expect.  

And as for the interior of the vibranium mine where the (underwhelming) climatic fight between the two main characters took place - it was one of those examples of complete CGI background gone too far, and looking unconvincing for it.    A bit like the climatic setting of the last Guardians of the Galaxy movie, now that I think of it.  Completely fake backgrounds have a way of making me too aware that the fighting is happening in front of green screen, and as such, there is no tension that they might fall off that (obviously unreal) high platform, for example.  

Angry woman

I don't usually bother watching QandA on ABC anymore, but it happened to be on in the background last night, and I noticed when an angry aboriginal woman started going on in a shouty way about sovereignty not being conceded, the government should shut up and list to aboriginal voices, stop failing them dismally, and spend more money on them, etc.

It seems to me, following the Australia Day marches, that there is something of a revival of aboriginal "sovereignty talk" amongst aboriginal activists.   Has this come via some influential adviser, or something?    Because, after Mabo, I thought all mainstream activists had given up on this type of talk.   But it seems to be back with a vengeance.

And I can't see how it is going to help.

Last night's activist, Shareena Clanton, an actor who I have not heard of before, at one point made the point that it was aborigines themselves who were making the change to improve themselves, and then listed a bunch of relatives who were educating themselves and getting good jobs.   

Well, good.   But sort of undercuts the "it's outrageous that you're not spending enough money on my people" line a bit, doesn't it?

Aboriginal advocacy is becoming more strident, but I suspect it could do with a bit more plain speaking about the practical difficulties of dealing effectively with (in particular) disadvantage for remote communities with little economic tie to society....

Don't mention the war - still

Victor Venema, a Dutch climate scientist with a blog who works in Germany, has a short post up noting that Germans are treated by other nationalities as if they personally started World War 2.  And many Germans feel guilt about it, no matter how many decades after the war they were born.

I didn't really appreciate that this was still such an issue, but apparently it is...

Dark side hidden

Interesting story at Hot Air, about the couple who Florida shooter Nikolas Cruz was living with after his adoptive mother died.

Sounds like they were good to him and tried to be very responsible about his guns.

A few lessons from this can perhaps be drawn:

*  Better background checks may have had no effect
*  An FBI field officer may well have been satisfied that he wasn't a real threat despite saying stupid things on social media.
*  What may have had an effect - his not being able to own assault rifles at all, especially at his age and given his mental issues which people close to him did not realise were so deep.

Trendy drug taking

So, someone at Vox writes about his ayahuasca taking retreat at Costa Rica.

It sounds like a rather expensive, New Age-y sort of place, with 4 nights of drug taking, with lots of crying (and puking) and apparent insight which nonetheless seems to have worn off after a few weeks back in normal land.

I remain unconvinced that the benefits some people feel from the experience are worth it.   While open to the idea that people with certain specific psychological issues might benefit from controlled usage of certain psychedelics, my overall impression is the experiences usually give an emotional insight that is later seen as a false dawn.   

The Right Wing hand wave machine

Wow.  PJ Media has an article "When Will We Have the Guts to Link to Link Fatherlessness to School Shootings?" 

Geez, Cruz's adoptive father died of a heart attack a few years ago.   His adoptive mother died in November.    The evidence is she tried to get police to help control her son - if so, she was presumably well intentioned.   (I have seen some idiot on twitter say that it always comes down to bad parenting.)

So seems a tad pointless to be raising that as an issue now, unless the proposal is that loners with no father in the house can't have guns.  Yeah, sure, how likely is that the real intention of the article?    And anyway, what about the mother who has guns in the house - which shooting was it where the guy used his Mom's (legal) guns?  There are so many it's hard to keep count.

This and that

*   Given certain articles appearing in the Right wing media, it would appear a vague hope that the Florida shootings may actually result in some legislative changes for gun control.   I bet it will not extend to banning the sale of military looking semi-automatics, though.   The fantasy that the gun nuts of American need to be ready to save the country from invasion, or the next Democrat President, is too strong.

*  Yes, the Left wing does take too much time taking offence, and this article at The Atlantic gives a good example.  So does Mary Beard, who is a perpetual target of alt.righters, but also found herself on the receiving end of some Lefty attack.   She can't win.    Social media, especially Twitter, with its required compression of thoughts leaving little room for nuance, is so often to blame.   The Professor should probably stay off it.

*  In one of the very, very few critical readings of the politics of Black Panther, someone writing in the Boston Review has a problem with how the conflict in the movie is resolved:  BIG SPOILER BELOW, if you intend seeing it:

By now viewers have two radical imaginings in front of them: an immensely rich and flourishing advanced African nation that is sealed off from white colonialism and supremacy; and a few black Wakandans with a vision of global black solidarity who are determined to use Wakanda’s privilege to emancipate all black people.

These imaginings could be made to reconcile, but the movie’s director and writer (with Joe Cole), Ryan Coogler, makes viewers choose. Killmonger makes his way to Wakanda and challenges T’Challa’s claim to the throne through traditional rites of combat. Killmonger decisively defeats T’Challa and moves to ship weapons globally to start the revolution. In the course of Killmonger’s swift rise to power, however, Coogler muddies his motivation. Killmonger is the revolutionary willing to take what he wants by any means necessary, but he lacks any coherent political philosophy. Rather than the enlightened radical, he comes across as the black thug from Oakland hell bent on killing for killing’s sake—indeed, his body is marked with a scar for every kill he has made. The abundant evidence of his efficacy does not establish Killmonger as a hero or villain so much as a receptacle for tropes of inner-city gangsterism.

In the end, all comes down to a contest between T’Challa and Killmonger that can only be read one way: in a world marked by racism, a man of African nobility must fight his own blood relative whose goal is the global liberation of blacks. In a fight that takes a shocking turn, T’Challa lands a fatal blow to Killmonger, lodging a spear in his chest. As the movie uplifts the African noble at the expense of the black American man, every crass principle of modern black respectability politics is upheld.

In 2018, a world home to both the Movement for Black Lives and a president who identifies white supremacists as fine people, we are given a movie about black empowerment where the only redeemed blacks are African nobles. They safeguard virtue and goodness against the threat not of white Americans or Europeans, but a black American man, the most dangerous person in the world.

Actually, I think he has a point.   Surely the better way to resolve this would be to have Killmonger either repent, or kill himself either deliberately or accidentally  (as an example of radical violence, no matter how well intentioned, consuming itself.)  

Maybe when all the hype has died down, this type of re-assessment of the dubious lessons of the film will become more widely accepted.  At the moment, it is all swept away by some strange, very peculiarly American, I reckon, excitement about an all black movie.

*  The Catholic Church's slow moving crisis of revised understanding of its authority and conscience (its been going on since the 1960's) is getting very close to the top when an American Cardinal is making statements as reported here.

A couple of questions about the FBI (and the appalling Republicans)

With the news this morning that the FBI got a very specific tip off about concern over the guy who went and shot up the Florida school (and the information did not get passed down to their Florida office), I am curious about two things:

*  Just how many tip offs are received each year in a nation so brimming with private fire arms? 

*  What can the FBI do anyway, unless the guy under scrutiny turns out to have an illegal fire arm or to be so nutty he can be forced into immediate psychiatric treatment?

I see that at least partial answers are at this article at PBS:

FBI assessments are routinely opened after agents receive a tip, which could be sparked by something as simple as noticing odd activity in a neighbor’s garage or a classmate’s comments. Agents routinely face a challenge of sifting through which of the tens of thousands of tips received every year — and more than 10,000 assessments that are opened — could yield a viable threat.

And as to what they can do - as I expected, often it will turn out to be "nothing":

FBI guidelines meant to balance national security with civil liberties protections impose restrictions on the steps agents may take during the assessment phase.

Agents, for instance, may analyze information from government databases and open-source internet searches, and can conduct interviews during an assessment. But they cannot turn to more intrusive techniques, such as requesting a wiretap or internet communications, without higher levels of approval and a more solid basis to suspect a crime.

“It’s a tricky situation because sometimes you get information regarding individuals and they may be just showing off, blustering,” said Herbert Cousins Jr., a retired FBI special agent in charge.

A vague, uncorroborated threat alone may not be enough to proceed to the next level of investigation, according to Jeffrey Ringel, a former FBI agent and Joint Terrorism Task force supervisor who now works for the Soufan Group, a private security firm.

Many assessments are closed within days or weeks when the FBI concludes there’s no criminal or national security threat, or basis for continued scrutiny. The system is meant to ensure that a person who has not broken the law does not remain under perpetual scrutiny on a mere hunch —- and that the FBI can reserve its scarce resources for true threats.

Had he had pledged his allegiance to the Islamic state, for example, investigators might have had enough evidence to proceed with a more intrusive probe.

Tips like the one that came in about the Florida gunman are among countless complaints that come into the FBI daily with varying degrees of specificity.

“How many of these do you expect the FBI to handle before it becomes the Federal Bureau of Complaints,” said Hosko. “They could spend their entire workforce tracking down internet exchanges that never going to go anywhere.”

And, as the article earlier says, some recent high profile killers were looked at by the FBI, who decided nothing could be done:

In the last two years, a man who massacred 49 people at an Orlando nightclub, another who set off bombs in the streets of New York City and a third who gunned down travelers at a Florida airport, had each been looked at by federal agents but later determined not to warrant continued law enforcement scrutiny.

Of course, we all know that Trump and Republicans will make big claims about how this Florida killing was the FBI's fault, because it helps in their self serving PR war with the bureau,  and because it provides yet another way to claim mass shootings are about poor enforcement of current laws, despite the fact that so many of them are done with legally purchases assault weapons, or mental health, even going back to decrying liberals for 'de-institutionalisation', as if it would be easy to lock away every loser with a gun collection on mental health grounds.

Amongst other stuff I thought worth reading after the Florida shootings, I liked this piece by James Fallows pointing the finger at the very specific role of Mitch McConnell, old turtle head, on preventing a reasonable set of gun law reforms proposed by Obama after Sandy Hook.

And speaking of Obama, just have a read of this Fact Check piece on the claim that Obama "flip flopped" on gun control.  The short answer is that he didn't, and when you read the quotes from Obama, it's hard not to impressed that he was so consistent and reasonable on the whole issue.   There used to be a moral adult in the office.

And another responsibility avoiding line the Right is now taking - saying that Democrats used to control congress and why didn't they pass control then?   Two points I thought are pertinent:

*   just how much of a good argument is it to say "the other side were too cowardly to risk votes to bring in gun control."   It's pretty much arguing "if they were cowards, we can be cowards too."

*  there have more and more school shootings since then anyway.    The reason for action becomes more apparent, and it's a cop out handwave to say "well they didn't do anything so we won't either."

Update:  look at the information in this tweet going around: