Ngo-ing, Ngo-ing, Gone

So, Andy Ngo has left Quillette abruptly (or not, see next sentence) after evidence comes out of his lack of reporting when he sees right wing activists planning a confrontation at a bar.  Claire Lehmann says it's all a co-incidence (she says he actually had already left before this story came out) and he has gone onto "bigger projects".    (Sounds suspiciously like one of those standard cover statements when you don't want to go into detail - along the lines of "resigned to spend more time with his family".)

What's the bet that he might be getting a more permanent role with Fox News?  He'll fit right in.

Kids being different

There's a more-or-less reasonable piece up at The Atlantic about the issue of kids who grow up to identify as gay/bi/queer, which makes a point that I don't recall reading much about before:

Numerous studies have shown that children who eventually come out as gay, lesbian, or bisexual—scientists call them pre-homosexual, or pre-GLB kids—demonstrate more childhood gender nonconformity in their speech, body language, and choice of activity than their pre-straight contemporaries do. These reports have also produced evidence of a “dosage effect”: The more gender nonconformity someone shows in childhood, the more likely they will identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual as an adult.

“The link between childhood gender conformity/nonconformity and adult sexual orientation is one of the strongest relationships between a childhood trait and an adult ‘phenotype’ that’s been demonstrated in all of psychology,” Richard Lippa, a psychology professor at California State University at Fullerton, told me via email. While the link is not foolproof––not all tomboys will be lesbians; not all boys in dresses will be gay––Lippa says it is “quite strong.” (The scientific calculus for transgender people, he says, is “more complex.”)

Kids—especially pre-GLB kids—need room to explore their own identities. Yet because society presumes queerness to be inherently sexual, adults think that a preteen who plays up his gender nonconformity could not possibly be doing so voluntarily. Critics instead see adults in and aligned with the LGBTQ community as sexualizing children by exposing them to what a National Review writer calls a “deeply and perversely erotic subculture.” Conservative media have accused Wendy Napoles of endangering her son. After news reports indicated that Desmond’s performances had caught a convicted pedophile’s eye (as if it’s a young boy’s fault that pedophiles exist), some people called child protective services on her. But the people who have deemed drag too risqué for preteens have yet to support alternative ways in which queer kids like Desmond can publicly express themselves without fear.

I am not surprised at what the studies say - it fits in anecdotally with what a lot of parents and gay adults have said about recognizing they were "different" from a young age - but I didn't really know it had been studied much.

I think those paragraphs I quote help illustrate why sexuality/gender is a pretty confusing issue to understand for a lot of us:  it's not just a matter of which gender people might sexually respond to - it also brings up whole puzzle of why some gay/queer folk might be very gender conforming in most respects other than their sex life, and others aren't.   In particular, I find it hard to understand the drag queen thing - a combination of something like a transexual who is happy to stay in their male body, but likes to act not just female, but as a particular version of the opposite gender - the dramatic diva.  Not sure I will ever get my head around that.   And because I think a lot of adults have trouble understanding it in adult form, it feels strange seeing a pre-pubescent boy acting out that way too.

So sure, I don't want kids who feel different to suffer unduly if they don't want to follow "traditional" gender behaviour; but on the other hand, don't particularly feel that it is a good idea to encourage kids to do what feel likes attention seeking behaviour. 

I might write more later... 

Feeling Germanic

Careful readers - or at least Tim T - will recall that I was off to see a performance of (amongst other pieces) Richard Strauss's An Alpine Symphony on Saturday night.

What a blast that piece of music is - a 50 minute, single movement musical rendering of a hike through the Alps, with an afternoon thunderstorm and all.   The normal Youth Orchestra (playing at QPAC) was boosted by extra brass, the huge organ in the concert hall (which I had never heard played before), not one but two harps, and extra percussion stuff (cowbells, sheet of metal, rolling barrel thing for making wind sound) all crammed in onto a completely packed stage.  Not only that - at the end, a bunch of extra brass players came on stage to take a bow - I didn't know where they had been, but my daughter explained later that they had played off stage to create a certain effect (!).   It was, quite likely, the biggest assembled orchestra I have seen, in fact.    

So, there was certainly no lack of volume: it blasts away at times with something approaching rock band volume, which made for quite a different experience from the normally restrained volumes of most classical pieces at that venue.

Interestingly, though, I read in the program that the piece when first performed was not overly enthusiastically received, with some saying it was too "cinematic".   I get the impression that the less-than-completely-enthusiastic reception to certain works of famous composers is not an uncommon thing in classical music history - I assume Tim knows about that more reliably than me.   Anyway, more explanation about the symphony is set out in this neat piece at The Conversation, if anyone is interested.

So, after feeling entertained by this Germanic power classic, I was reminded that Wagner's Ring Cycle is coming to Brisbane next year, and I have found out that C reserve seats up in the balcony stratosphere are $380 for the entire cycle. 

Now, I have never been to an opera in my life, and it would be kind of ridiculous to start my experience of them with (as the QPAC website explains)  a 15 hour epic performed over 4 nights.   But hey, it's the very ridiculousness of the idea that is perversely tempting me to do it.  And when you divide the cost into the hourly rate,  it's quite the opera bargain!  (At least for the cheap seats - the premium ones are $2,200.   I trust that a glass of champagne before and during intervals might be included in that.)

I heard someone from (I think) Opera Australia spruiking it when it was announced, and he was saying that it sounds like a heavy experience, but it really isn't - he claimed that he has had so many people say to him at the end that they could happily go back and watch it all over again.  He called it a "life changing experience", which seems a bit of an opening to making a Hitler-ian joke about it making people want to invade neighbouring countries, but I am sure that is not what he meant.

Anyway, I have my doubts I will do it, but I am (at least a bit) tempted.

Update:   I should have guessed - there are lots of amusing takes on the net about what it is like to go through the Cycle.    I think ClassicFM's The 18 Stages of watching Wagner's Ring Cycle is pretty funny.   More encouraging, and still witty, is How Crazy Do You Have to Be to Sit Through 15 Hours of Opera.   On a more serious note, but still with the occasional funny line:

The director Achim Freyer once informed me that sleeping during Wagner simply means listening on a different level.

is this piece at the Washington Post.

Stranger Things 3 noted

Just finished Stranger Things 3.

I'm feeling a tad "over" the show.   If I recall correctly, my initial reaction to the first episodes of the first series was that it felt odd to have a show that was so transparent in the deliberate imitation of scenes from movies of the era.   Eventually, I was won over by the pretty charming characters, and the general good humour of the show.

The second series was continued harmless fun, I thought; but with the third series, the too obvious lifts from 1980's movies (and not just in passing:  the Terminator character was so important to the whole season) started to bother me again.   I was feeling too distracted by noticing which better movies they are copying.

The whole premise (and details) of this season was also pushing it too far into the ridiculous:  a secret underground Russian base is one thing, but the depth and extent of their lair was pretty silly.   And really - I know 1980's hair was bad, but honestly, the helmet hair of two of the guys really seems to be taking it to extremes that I do not recall.

That said, because I think the main characters are well acted, and still pretty charming, I would still watch the 4th series.  But if El gets her powers back, when will she start first putting a tissue up her nose to deal with the inevitable nosebleed?  

Something to keep in mind

Treatable disease often mistaken for Alzheimer's

Not sure I would want to visit the US right now...

Washington: A Jamaican national was detained for nearly three months in the United States after bringing in bottles of honey from the Caribbean island that customs agents mistakenly believed to be liquid methamphetamine.

Leon Haughton had visited family back in Jamaica every Christmas since taking up residence in Maryland about a decade ago, the Washington Post said Friday, retracing his Kafkaesque entanglement in US customs and immigration bureaucracy.

Haughton's long ordeal began December 29 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport when customs agents had a dog sniff his bags.

Inside they found three bottles duly labeled as honey that Haughton, a 45-year-old father of three, uses to sweeten his tea.

According to the charging document, the agents suspected him of transporting liquid methamphetamine, and placed him in detention.

Laboratory results from Maryland took more than two weeks to arrive: they were negative. Haughton thought that was the end of it. He was wrong.

The bottles were sent to a second laboratory in Georgia after the first was judged to be insufficiently equipped to analyze the liquids.

Although he had a green card granting him legal residence in the United States, Haughton's arrest set in motion a detention process with the US immigration service.

His lawyer had enormous difficulty contacting immigration authorities - and for good reason.

The US government had been partially shut down as a result of a budget impasse between President Donald Trump and Democrats over his demand for funding to build a wall on the border with Mexico.

Here's a link to the story at Gulf News.

Excessive recipe excessively funny

The recipe video at this tweet has just about the funniest comments thread that I can ever recall on Twitter.  

I liked the hamburger with pickles clip in the comments thread too...

Channel News Asia, for good and not quite so good

As I have explained before, I really like watching the weekly highlights from Channel News Asia, in part for its stories about the rest of Asia, but also because of the upbeat, optimistic tone of stories about Singapore.

I'm not cynical about how, it being government owned, it's not as if the positive spin is coming from a completely independent viewpoint.  For example, I like the way it continually runs stories that encourages the multicultural tolerance that the nation island depends on.  In propaganda terms, I've realised it's like the polar opposite of Fox News:  a news and current affairs service devoted to national unity and optimism - the type of channel a benevolent dictator might desire - rather than the cynical, money grubbing operation of an ageing husk of a media billionaire designed to enrich him further by sowing division and rabid partisanship.

That said, I was a little taken about by a recent story which seemed to display a much more cynical line.   While I have seen sympathetic stories about migrant workers there before, this one about a Bangladeshi guy who got some fame for a book of poetry, and then (pretty much) let it go to his head, seems to be designed to carry the message "migrant workers - you are here to do hard labour, and don't forget it".

(Mind you, the guy does come across as having a somewhat overinflated view of his artist talents.  I have my doubts that he would have known the spin the CNA story would take, though, when he was co-operating with them.  And the comments that follow the video on Youtube show that I am not the only one who thought this video was unusually mean-spirited and seemed like a warning to migrant workers.)

The only other thing I don't like about CNA is that I can't embed their Youtube videos.

Update:  I was wrong - I can embed their videos, just my old computer at home (Vista powered) won't let me.  Here's the story I was talking about:

A devil of a Sunday

An interesting story at the Catholic Herald, about the head Jesuit upsetting Catholic exorcists:

An international organization of Catholic exorcists said Thursday that the existence of Satan as a real and personal being is a truth of Christin doctrine.

“The real existence of the devil, as a personal subject who thinks and acts and has made the choice of rebellion against God, is a truth of faith that has always been part of Christian doctrine,” the International Association of Exorcists said in an August 22 press release.

The organization’s release came in response to recent remarks on the devil from Jesuit superior general Fr. Arturo Sosa, SJ, which the organization called “grave and confusing.”

The exorcists said they released their statement to provide “doctrinal clarification.”

Sosa made headlines earlier this week when he told Italian magazine Tempi that “the devil exists as a symbolic reality, not as a personal reality.”

The devil “exists as the personification of evil in different structures, but not in persons, because is not a person, is a way of acting evil. He is not a person like a human person. It is a way of evil to be present in human life,” Sosa said.

Citing a long history of Church teaching on the nature of Satan, including several citations from Pope Francis and his recent predecessors, the exorcists’ organization said that Catholics are bound to believe that Satan is a real and personal being, a fallen angel.

The beginning of the end?

Allahpundit's take on Trump's "hereby order" tweets (and continuing trade war, as well as his attacks on his own appiontees) seems pretty accurate to me.  For example:

Like a Twitter pal said, imagine throwing a fit because Denmark refused to sell Greenland to you and touting the fact that an ally said Israelis love you like you’re the second coming and having those things *not* be your most alarming statements of the week....

He’s never going to accept that the Fed is independent from partisan politics by design, but he could at least restrain his scapegoating of Powell by not comparing him unfavorably to communist China’s supremo, a guy who operates actual concentration camps. Trump’s willingness to speak warmly about the world’s worst bad guys while excoriating domestic politicians in the most acidic ways has lost most of its power to shock after his bromances with Putin and Kim Jong Un, but not all of it.

But wait. He was saving the Big Crazy for his response to China’s new retaliatory tariffs on American imports

“Our great American companies are hereby ordered.” Every day brings new material for a game of “What if Obama said it?” but purporting to order U.S. companies not to do business with China is championship-round stuff. I wonder which White House advisor got stuck explaining to him that he doesn’t actually have the power to do that. Just like I wonder when we’re going to start hearing about sanctions on China, which would be like dropping an atomic bomb on the economy....

This past week is going to get its own chapter in all of the self-serving post-Trump “I never really liked him” memoirs written by his cronies eager to rehabilitate their image once he’s gone. 

Look, the Trump cultists are never going to abandon him - you can see that on Twitter and comments rubbishing Allahpundit's take - but there is surely a substantial number of GOP congress people who can be pushed past their support of convenience for him into actually starting to talk about a replacement less obviously profoundly ignorant and flighty (I'm being very restrained with my descriptions) with someone like Pence, perhaps?

About conspiracy theories

The TLS looks at the rise of modern conspiracy theory belief:

Much of the work of modernity involved escaping the conspiracy of history itself, in which people are damned and doomed from the start. What they strove to become, instead, were people with a future; persons, bearers of rights, of sovereignty, with control over their destinies; citizens in secular nation states. They also understood themselves as objects and organisms, subject to natural laws. Nineteenth-century intellectuals offered all manner of secular explanations for misfortune in the realm of the physical and biological sciences, from the modelling of the weather to the germ theory of disease, and in the realm of the emerging social sciences, from economics to eugenics. This change coincided with rising rates of literacy and the growth of public schooling: the democratization of knowledge. By 1881, when Guiteau shot Garfield, rules of evidence – ideas about the relationship between facts and arguments, ideas once confined to courts of law and chemical laboratories – had spilled out to the new profession of journalism and the new popular genre of detective fiction. Suddenly, everyone had a theory, about almost everything. The misery of humanity became a crime everyone could solve.

The most popular scapegoat, it turns out, is other people. Between the mid-eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, a period during which emerging nation states sorted the world’s peoples into “nationalities”, most conspiracy theories in the US and Western Europe involved threats to the nation by people who weren’t so easily sorted. The most notorious of these theories concerned an alleged international conspiracy of Jews, people with ties across national borders. “Pulling the strings behind the scenes, dominating the new system of modernity, the Jew becomes the cause of every catastrophe”, claimed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which first appeared in Russia in 1903, was distributed throughout the US by Henry Ford in the 1920s, and assigned as a textbook in German schools from 1933. Much the same claim appeared in The Jewish Peril, a pamphlet issued by the British government in 1920 and written, in part, by Nesta Webster, who tied the Jewish conspiracy to the Bavarian Illuminati of the eighteenth century.

Arguably, there is just this one conspiracy theory, an endlessly recycled version of antisemitism, as the political scientist Thomas Milan Konda suggests in Conspiracies of Conspiracies: How delusions have overrun America. The Jewish conspiracy theory served as the template for nearly all that followed, from anti-communist and anti-homosexual panics and purges to race-based nationalism and xenophobia of every stripe, down to Islamophobia, the demonization of refugees, and the detention of immigrants. In the 1930s, the American fascist and disciple of Nesta Webster, Elizabeth Dilling – the founder of the Patriotic Research Bureau and author of the Red Network (which branded even the YMCA a communist front) – delighted audiences with her fake Yiddish accent, at a time when critics of FDR denounced the New Deal as the “Jew Deal”. By way of a mysterious “hidden hand”, the theory alleges, Illuminati or Jews or Bolsheviks or communists or gay people, or whoever, secretly run most national governments and aspire to world domination. “There are 200,000 Communist Jews at the Mexican border waiting to get into this country”, the housewife and America Firster Agnes Waters announced in 1942. “If they are admitted they will rape every woman that is left unprotected.”

 I have comments moderation on, and its wildly unlikely that any of Graeme's ones will get through.

Everyone liked Tim, except...

Tim Fischer was a genuinely likeable politician, as all the kind words from everyone following his death show.

I was amused to read at Catallaxy how the only regular left wing participant there, the Vietnamese war conscript veteran often referred to as "Numbers", noted how veterans suffered more blood cancer than  the rest of their population cohort, only to have others in thread pooh-pooh the suggestion.  Then on TV I saw that Tim himself said he had been told by a specialist that exposure to war time chemicals had probably stuffed up his immune system.   So much for the collective smarts of Catallaxy.

And I also was reminded, by clown rodeo leader Sinclair Davidson himself, that he considered Fischer an anti-Semite, no doubt for his criticisms of Israel's treatment of Palestine, and his general friendliness with Arab countries in the region.  

Just add that to the list of SD's views which are so eccentric that mainstream commentators just go "uhuh" and move on.  It probably doesn't top his all time "seriously?" comment re Adam Goodes:

But is it racist? Many individuals are having a go at me on twitter for questioning whether calling an Indigenous man an “ape” is actually racist and not just rude. For many people it seems self-evident that is is racist. But nobody can say how or why. The “best” story I’ve heard is that Social Darwinism ranks “people of colour” below animals.

but comes pretty close.

Green finance success?

I take it from this report that the Gillard established Clean Energy Finance Corporation might be sold into private hands means that it has been a success:

Private investment funds are circling Australia's Clean Energy Finance Corporation hoping for a sale of the $10 billion government-owned organisation, as its head flags a major shift in how taxpayer funds are used to support the booming industry.

In an interview that will spark debate over whether the fund should be privatised like its counterpart in Britain, CEFC chief executive Ian Learmonth said he would shift his focus to strengthening the grid's reliability because banks had become more comfortable financing large-scale wind and solar projects....

The CEFC was established under the Gillard government in 2012 to spur investment in the sector while it introduced a carbon pricing scheme. Touting Australia's clean-energy credentials to Pacific leaders, Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week called it "the world's most successful green bank"....

Mr Learmonth said as the utility solar and wind-power renewables market had matured, more private capital had flowed in. The CEFC earned $350 million last year from maturing loans, which have been written on a commercial basis allowing for a transfer to private entities if required.

I bet that Liberals were not predicting a success when it was established.  

Composer more modern than I knew

Last night I learned (because my daughter was doing an assignment on him) that Richard Strauss (not Johann) lived from 1864 to 1949;  I didn't realise he was a 20th century figure.   

And this weekend, I get to listen to his An Alpine Symphony, a "tone poem" which my daughter actually likes.   (She plays a lot of different composers in her youth orchestra, but seems to not care much for a lot of the pieces selected.  She has a particular dislike of Mozart, for some reason.)

I also didn't realise that the 2001: A Space Odyssey piece from Also sprach Zarathustra was just the opening fanfare to a piece that goes 30 minutes.

There is much I do not know...

Twin beds more common than I knew?

Someone in England has written "A Cultural History of Twin Beds", which indicates that they were not that uncommon in the earlier part of the 20th century.   Here are the highlights:

Her key findings reveal that twin beds:

• Were initially adopted as a health precaution in the late nineteenth century to stop couples passing on germs through exhaled breath.
• Were seen, by the 1920s, as a desirable, modern and fashionable choice, particularly among the middle classes.
• Featured as integral elements of the architectural and design visions of avant-garde Modernists such as Le Corbusier, Peter Behrens and Wells Coates.
• Were (in the early decades of the 20th century) indicative of forward-thinking married couples, balancing nocturnal 'togetherness' with a continuing commitment to separateness and autonomy.
• Never entirely replaced double beds in the households of middle-class couples but, by the 1930s and 1940s, were sufficiently commonplace to be unremarkable.
• Enjoyed a century-long moment of prominence in British society and, as such, are invaluable indicators of social customs and cultural values relating to health, modernity and marriage.

The backlash against twin beds as indicative of a distant or failing marriage partnership intensified in the 1950s and by the late 1960s few married couples saw them as a desirable choice for the bedroom.