Don't bother, it won't...

The New York Times:

What if Dance Could Save the World? 

Mind you, I think poetry has an even smaller chance.  :)

An odd detail

Of course, drug taking at raves is not something which marks anyone as a deserving target of an appalling terrorist attack.   But I still don't like the drug taking aspect of raves.  From The Guardian, an Israeli (I think) talking about the attack on 7 October:

Nadav Hanan was at the smaller of the dance stages at the Nova dance festival in southern Israel when Hamas attacked.

It was the beginning of an extended nightmare for the 27-year-old that saw him zigzag more than 15 miles of rough ground barefoot, surviving seven ambushes by Hamas attackers along the route to safety.

“It was after 6am. It was the peak of the party,” Hanan recalled in a bar in the Israeli city of Rehovot last month. “A lot of people time their drugs to kick in for sunrise at these parties. It should be one of the best moments.

“The people at the main stage couldn’t see what was happening but we had a clear view of Gaza. We could see Iron Dome [the Israeli anti-missile defence system] working. I knew the party was over.”

 

An unusual hotel problem in Singapore

I'm thinking of having a quick trip to Singapore soon, and have been checking out the cost of budget hotels.  I've learnt to avoid Hotel 81, as it seems that many Singaporeans treat it effectively as their "love hotel" chain, where rooms can be hired for a couple of hours.  (While that may make little difference to me in my room, at least if the walls are soundproof enough, it would indicate a lot of housecleaning goes on all day, which can make the corridors untidy.)  

There are many Ibis budget hotels, though, and one is a bit out of the way but close to the big Vivo shopping centre which I visited last time.  (It's just across from Sentosa Island, too - which I have yet to actually visit.)

Anyway, two reviews of this particular hotel make complaint about the wild chickens of Singapore waking them up!:

Rooms are tiny, overpriced, and the chickens wake you up every morning at 3 am. Staff is friendly, but that is the only thing good.

And:

Dont stay here if you want to sleep. There are dozens of wild chickens and at least 6 roosters that start around 4am every day, they will drive you crazy.  

The hotel replies to the last comment with this:

 Many of our guests have found the fowls to be interesting as our natural surroundings provide a very different vibe away from city. This is the first time we have received a feedback from our guests that they found them to be noisy.

I have posted before about my surprise at seeing attractive wild chickens even around the very built up Tanjong Pagar area.  They are pretty, but yeah, I would prefer not to be woken up by them...

Depressing but interesting

That's how I would describe this lengthy New York Times Magazine article about the controversial topic of how ethical it is to let treatment resistant anorexia patients go onto to "palliative care" instead of forcing treatment.

But one aspect of the disease surprised me:

And the sickest of patients can still get better — even after decades of failed treatment. One study of adult patients with anorexia, published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in 2017, found that nine years after the start of their illness, only 31.4 percent had recovered — but that by 22 years, the recovery rate had doubled to 62.8 percent. “These findings,” the study’s authors wrote, “should give patients and clinicians hope that recovery is possible, even after long-term illness, suggesting that even brief periods of weight restoration and symptom remission from anorexia nervosa are meaningful and may be the harbingers of more durable gains to be made ahead.”

I didn't know that...

And people mock me for my fear of lightning

I really dislike being outside if there is any lightning happening, and close house windows too during storms even if the rain is not coming in.  I've always said though that my precautions are just sensible, and it's likely that more people are hurt by lightning than is commonly realised.  (News stories of people hurt by lightning often get little attention, compared to roofs blown away or trees on houses that makes for more visual news stories arising out of storms.)   Here's some evidence to back me up:

Over the weekend, Queensland Ambulance Service transported two patients to hospital after being struck by lightning within hours of each other, one while inside a car at Burpengary on the Bruce Highway and one in Eudlo while on an excavator.

In late December, two patients were taken to Mareeba Hospital in a serious condition after being hit while at a private residence.

In mid-December, a 10-year-old girl was taken to Sunshine Coast University Hospital in a critical condition after being struck — the following day a man was taken to Gold Coast University Hospital after he was struck in Biggera Waters....

Mr Kirkby — who has worked in lightning protection services for more than 20 years — said while it was rare for people to be struck directly, there was still a significant risk of injury and death.

"This is one of the biggest fallacies out there, only three to five per cent of all statistics are people that are struck directly," he said.

"The majority of the injury and fatality statistics are from people that have been exposed to indirect strikes [when] the ground becomes highly electrified from a nearby lightning strike or if you're touching something which has been electrified."

My grandmother got a shock via her landline telephone, in fact, although as far as I know it led to no long term injury.   (One good thing about mobile phones replacing landlines is that this must happen much, much less often now.)

Conservative Catholic culture wars

It was remiss of me to not post about two recent events of note:

1.    That crank, the (former) former gay, self-promoting, conservative (Trad?) US Catholic Michael Voris has resigned/been sacked from his own organisation for some unspecified moral impropriety which remains undisclosed, but if you want a fast way to lose money, put it on "nothing to do with gay sex".  Here's my 2013 post in which I criticised him and his ilk - it reminded me that I hadn't looked up that Father Z character for a long time too.  He's still blogging, I see.  (I think he's not allowed to do much within the church, so he has a lot of time on his hands?)   

Look, the state of the American Catholic church with its willingness to play footsy with Trump is still dire.  Pew reported in 2021:

White Catholics, meanwhile, follow yet another pattern. About six-in-ten White Catholics who attend Mass monthly or more often (63%) supported Trump in the 2020 election, while 36% supported Biden. Less frequent Mass attenders expressed less support for Trump (53%) and more support for Biden (47%).

 But at least there is now some pushback from the Pope himself.

I could be wrong, but my impression overall is that the Trad/conservative Catholic Right has peaked in influence in the US and the West generally.  That's a good thing, in my opinion.  

However:

2.    The recent kerfuffle about "blessing gay couples" shows that it's not as if the rest of the Church really has any idea where it is going, and continues to get tied up on not knowing how to handle the issue of sex and sexuality.   Pope Francis does seem to delight in making statements that sound as if they are sympathetic to a change in attitude, while issuing instructions that don't really make any technical difference at all.   Look at the convoluted explanation given at the Vatican News website about the thinking behind allowing priests to give a spontaneous blessing to a gay couple:

The third part of the Declaration (paragraphs 31-41) opens then to the possibility of these blessings that represent a sign for those who “recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help—do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit” (par. 31).

These blessings should not necessarily become the norm, the Statement notes, but entrusted to “a practical discernment in particular circumstances” (par. 37).

Although the couple is blessed but not the union, the Declaration notes that what is blessed is the legitimate relationship between the two people: in “a brief prayer preceding this spontaneous blessing, the ordained minister could ask that the individuals have peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue, and mutual assistance—but also God’s light and strength to be able to fulfill his will completely” (par. 38).

So - it's OK to bless the "legitimate" aspects of the relationship, while always bearing in mind that there is no way the relationship status can be "legitimised" per se.   Rather, it needs to be healed.

I think it fair to say that gay couples asking for a blessing are not wanting it to be one which conveys the message that their relationship is fundamentally flawed and against God's will - yet really, that is what is still what the Pope is at pains to retain.   

Anyway,  the Church will continue to be full of contradiction and tension on this, and teachings which  most laity won't follow, and I don't really know the way to resolve it all, short of something which would cause a permanent structural fracturing. 

Ghostly interest returns, and what is their significance?

Good thing I read The Guardian, otherwise I would have no idea that (according to one person, at least), discussion of ghostly experiences is in vogue again, probably due to a podcast series.   (In fact I had been meaning to comment here in recent months that I really miss reading about any good, spooky, real life stories of ghosts or similar experiences.  It seemed to me that interest in the supernatural was in fact at a particular low point, perhaps crowded out by some pretty stupid and gullible stuff on UFOs that has been dominating Twitter/X.)

From The Guardian article in question:

Everybody seems to be talking about ghosts right now. I turn up to dinners with friends, we’re talking about ghosts. I sit in the office, the conversation is dominated by ghosts again. I’m scrolling through Facebook groups and reading ghost stories that I then try to tell my boyfriend about (he ignores me). It feels as if ghosts are suddenly having a moment, a strange little resurgence into the mainstream. I think ghosts may be in vogue.

As for how and why ghosts have started to creep into polite conversation, there is a clear culprit. A few months ago the Amazon-owned podcast network Wondery published Ghost Story, a seven-part series hosted by the journalist Tristan Redman. Ghost Story focuses on a murder that occurred two generations ago in Redman’s wife’s family and, by absolute coincidence, took place in the house next door to where Redman grew up.

Redman details unnerving and inexplicable experiences that he had in his childhood bedroom and explains that his investigation into his wife’s family story was launched by news that two families who had lived successively in the house after his own family moved out had also experienced similar – seemingly paranormal – activity.

Apparently Redman tries to take a rational approach to it all and is all the more convincing because of that.   Certainly sounds like something that I should listen to.

The article writer then considers generally why ghosts have appeal:

Stress can increase our awareness of the little bumps and quirks of life that we may have previously walked past without a second thought. And of course it is entirely possible that talking about ghosts with friends primes us to pay attention to the dark corners of our apartments that previously felt perfectly comfortable and didn’t have to contain malevolent spirits or anything. This could be a rather self-perpetuating cycle.

But it’s also fair to say that telling ghost stories can be a simple comfort and form of escapism that we shouldn’t completely denounce. After all, many of us grew up in cultures where ghosts were part of the spiritual landscape and, in the vast universe of bizarre things to believe in, ghosts have to be among the most benign and least politically bothersome. They don’t lend themselves particularly well to the construction of conspiracy theories, they don’t have any troubling racist undertones and they’re not going to lead people to attempt an insurrection at the Capitol Building any time soon.

We should always remain vigilant about the emergence of pseudoscience and perhaps Carl Sagan would argue that even humouring ghost stories is a slippery slope towards a total collapse of scientific knowledge. But I think we can all agree that people can be much more discerning than that and, in the troubling year of 2023, maybe we all deserve a few ghost stories, as a treat.

Fair enough, I guess.

But I think it underplays the actual significance that any proof of a supernatural realm would entail.

I mean, I have always felt that given the way the scientific materialist view of the world has no explanatory framework at all for the existence of supernatural events, whether they be ESP, psychokinesis, reincarnation or an un-embodied entity (be it poltergeist or someone's soul), this makes any credible evidence that anything paranormal or supernatural exists incredibly significant.  It would blow a gigantic hole in the current scientific (and psychological?) way of understanding the universe.

I mean, the absolute most that science can try to squeeze into its current framework is retro-causation and the weird nature of time as possible explanation of what might otherwise be considered ghostly events.   (See the movie Interstellar - that aspect was the only thing I thought somewhat interesting and  novel in that grossly over-rated film.)

Because it (scientific materialism) has no framework at all for explaining how a personality could survive death and live in an invisible world and sometimes appear within ours (the multiverse ideas really don't allow it either - given their absolute quarantining of the different universes), this is actually a great incentive to pay attention to any evidence of ghosts.   And while an Occam's Razor approach to personal anecdotes (to conclude that a ghost story is more likely an invention or mistake than something "real") is generally very wise, I hate the way that it means (for many people) that they simply refuse to believe that there could ever be anything to personal experiences that seem inexplicable without something supernatural.  

I did try explaining this in a conversation with an old (atheist) girlfriend decades ago, and her response was "well, if ever there was proof of life after death, it still wouldn't be supernatural - it would just mean that there is a part of nature that we didn't realise was there.  So it still doesn't mean that there's a God or anything."    While this is technically true, especially on the point of God (see Buddhism), this still struck me as a massive attempt at "cope" for how mindblowing proof disembodied personalities should be for the scientific materialist.

I have the feeling I may have made a similar explanation to this before, but perhaps in not as much detail.   But it is why any credible sounding story of a paranormal or supernatural event gives me a bit of a thrill to this day, and why I feel somewhat disappointed when it seems there that parapsychology had hit a dead end in terms of convincing proof of anything that can't fit into the current paradigms.

Now, to find that podcast....

 

Various thoughts, sacred and profane, I guess you could say

*   I've finally gotten used to reading at length on a tablet - specifically my cheapo Lenovo 10.6 inch model that I've had for a year - and I see now that you can pick one up for $80 less than when I bought it.  (Now costs $247.)   The thing that has made a small but significant difference was downloading books in .epub format and reading them on the Google Play Books app.  (I've previously only tried reading .pdf format books on various .pdf reader apps - it was OK, but the Play Books app with an .epub book just works so well, especially if reading a book full of footnotes.)   And a 10.6 inch screen tablet is just the right weight and size for single page reading.  I've never been interested in a Kindle due to the inadequate screen size.  

*  So, what have I been reading?   I finished the (admittedly short) book on Pure Land Buddhism;  had a quick scan through "No Self - No Problem" (about neuroscience "confirming" Buddhist ideas of "no self") but it felt a bit dated, even though it is only from 2018;  and have been reading large slabs of "Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy" - which was found via a question to an AI search engine which took me to a forum on Buddhism and someone who recommended it.   It is pretty interesting, to be honest, despite my long term scepticism of paying much attention to Nietzsche's ramblings.  

*  There are various threads from this recent reading (and Youtube viewing) swirling around my brain, and I feel the need to try to "pin down" some of it by compiling a long essay/post for it to fit together.   But there's always a distraction around the corner.  This sense of stumbling around towards an important key insight has only been going on for about 40 years, though, so obviously I don't believe in hurrying such things!  (It also reminds me a bit about reading Philip K Dick's VALIS trilogy back in the 1980's - was some insight that all made sense of Life, the Universe and Everything about to be revealed?  Not really, as it turned out, but the possibility of it was part of the fun...)

*  As for other things I did over the Christmas/New Year break - nothing much, as the weather here was storms (mostly) only interrupted by a couple of days of debilitating heatwave (37 or 38 degrees with high humidity.)   Fortunately, my part of Brisbane didn't get significant damage, although some suburbs not too far away did (from storm wind, mainly.)   I feel very sorry for the residents of Mount Tamborine, which is a very pretty part of the world but has suffered the worst destruction from which it looks likely to take many months to recover.  

*  The most enjoyable thing I watched on Netflix over the break - don't laugh, but it was the Puss in Boots - The Last Wish.   This entry in the Shrek universe, so to speak, got very good reviews at the time, and it really is well written and surprisingly mature in theme.   (I see someone called it a "meditation on the inevitability of death" - which I suppose it is, as told by fairy tale characters who end up feeling more "real" than most recent superhero characters!)  

*  Summer breaks are about the only time I watch any bits of quiz shows on TV, and I have to say that I don't understand how The Chase has lasted this long.  It certainly must be cheap to make, given that the impression from my occasional viewing is that they must only have to pay anything to a contestant once every year (or two?)    I don't understand the appeal of a show in which the chances of winning seem so remote.    

And as for the other puzzling quiz show - I have been meaning to say ever since it began last year that the advertisements for "The 1% Club" on channel 7 are pretty remarkable because of the way the host (a comedian, apparently) comes across as an old fashioned jerk with dated material.  (A lot about bad marriages, and general put downs that feel like slightly warmed over insult comedy of the Don Rickles variety.)   Surely this won't work, I thought.  Yet to my great surprise, I see from the latest advertisements that the show is a ratings hit, and it seems they aren't lying.   Now that I look into it more, I see that in fact the Daily Mail ran a story when the show first started about the host being derided on social media as having no charisma.  (For once I agree with that august journal.)  Yet people are watching it.

Maybe it's me - I've never enjoyed "serious" quiz shows, really (the ones with contestants playing for money);  but it still seems to me that they have become worse as the decades progress.   (I last derided one in 2016 - the truly pointless and dull Pointless.) 

And now when I Google the recent shows, I see a common theme - they are all Australia versions of shows originating in England.   Ah well, that fits in with the general degradation of all cultural content coming out of that country over the last 30 or 40 years.

      

 

 

New Year amusement

Andrew Mark Henry is the guy who makes great YouTube videos at Religion for Breakfast.

New City

While I knew that Augustine wrote about the City of God, I didn't realise that the Buddhists (or at least, the Pure Land ones) had the City of Doubt.  

Here's Charles B Jones, writing about the various theories behind the core Pure Land practice of reciting the name of Amitabha Buddha (nianfo), with this passage:

Still, as noted above, one’s frame of mind while doing the invocations mattered a great deal. No one ever proposed that the mere oral repetition of the name brought one to rebirth even if one did not believe in it. Faith seemed to matter, though many authors pointed out that the sūtras spoke of a place just outside the Pure Land called the “City of Doubt” (Ch.: yicheng) where those who performed nianfo without complete conviction went. From there they would see the Pure Land and develop enough faith to attain rebirth in it after a while. (There is, however, a story in the Chinese sources about a parrot who achieved rebirth simply because it imitated its owner’s nianfo.)

Recent tweets of note

I would greatly enjoy watching Timbo lose again.

Meanwhile:

I liked this response:

And as for Dr Jamal's bio, if my eyes could roll any further into the back of my head, I would be seeing my frontal lobes:

And yeah, in America:

He's right: the academic world of "anticolonialism" is the biggest nonsense since postmodernism, or is really just the same thing trying out new clothes. (I'm tempted to add "like a young transexual, whose views have also unknowing been derived from postmodernism".)

I mean, have a look at this tweet posted with approval by the same twit Noah mocked:

His bio:

This AI image generation game has some way to go...

Given my recent interest in Buddhism, I thought it would be fun to bring him into Christmas this year, so I asked Dall-E to make "photo realistic image of Santa Clause in an arm wrestle with Buddha", and got this (amongst other images):

 I'm not entirely sure why Buddha looks like Ricky Gervais a bit, so I had another go.  This time I specified that both Buddha and Santa Clause were to be photo realistic people.  That produced these horrors:

I think Buddha's suddenly got boobs - not a sentence written very often in the history of the planet, I'm sure.

Moving on, I tried asking Dall E to generate one showing Australian economist Sinclair Davidson trying to plant a kiss on Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart, but she's resisting.   (She's been in the news lately, and odd things cross my mind.)  The results were...less than satisfactory:

Clearly, Dall E has a generic idea of what an economist looks like, and receding hairline, suit and tie are key features.  It also has no idea who Gina Rinehart is, and what's worse, it didn't even follow my prompt that she was resisting.

Finally, I tried describing the apparent features of some of more disreputable types who hang out at Catallaxy (or New Catallaxy) blogs with a series of prompts which I won't repeat in order to not upset John :). (You're not who I was trying to target - you're reputable!)   But this is what I got:

I reckon JC would be pretty amused, actually.

The Chinese and ghosts

It's not exactly a Christmas-y topic, but this long recent article in The Guardian about modern China, funerals and fear of ghosts is an interesting read.    The author notes this:

In 2013, I began interviewing people who worked in China’s urban funerary sector and visited funeral homes and cemeteries in many Chinese cities, with a particular focus on Nanjing and Hong Kong. I found that funerary practice in urban China differed considerably from that in rural locales. In general, people in rural areas appeared less afraid of death, dead bodies and places of burial than people living in cities.

I was interested to read that the same tradition existed in China as Japan - that the deceased could be kept at home for a couple of days after death (now in refrigerated casket) while family visited and stayed overnight with them.   Nowadays, though, the room to keep the body company is a service often provided by funeral directors.   The article notes that in China urban residents in a nice new apartment block would be horrified if a family tried to do that in the building. 

There's also this:

Urban funerary professionals often told families how to counter the ghostly energy, considered “yin” in the yin/yang dichotomy, that permeates places like funeral homes and cemeteries. This yin energy can be countered with yang activities, including drinking warm, sugary liquids, going to places that brim with people, or performing a fire-stepping ritual. In Shanghai and other cities, places for stepping over fire are built into the exits of funeral homes.        

After observing a funeral in Nanjing, I watched a funeral professional light a small grass fire on a metal platform they had set up in the parking lot. The mourners all stepped over the fire before leaving to absorb yang energy and counter the yin that comes from spending time around the dead. I never saw such a ritual at a rural funeral.

 Huh.

Culture notes

The new Aquaman movie is getting some very bad reviews - and this, along with the fact that Marvel has also well and truly reached a creative dead end, would seem to indicate we really are at the end of a very long cycle of comic book derived movies which was fun at its peak, but has run its course*.   (See also the death of Star Wars as showing that franchises do have a natural life and simply cannot be extended forever.   Perhaps Bond is an exception of sorts?)

This feels like a Very Good Thing, except that it also makes me a bit nervous as to the seeming lack of  alternative ideas may be out there for studios to hang their hat on.     It's very hard to imagine what kind of new genre or innovation could arise to get people excited again.   I mean, there was something pretty unique about the cultural excitement that the first Star Wars movie generated, as a science fiction-y/fantasy world with a distinct look that felt new and full of promise.  And for quite a long time after that, just the look of new movies (not only in science fiction, but also the amazing clarity of new animation that the first Toy Story brought) was often a very significant drawcard of its own.   Now, computer generated visuals are too easily made and they simply don't draw a crowd on their own.

Still, one hopes there is a new "school" of creative types out there somewhere who have ideas worth committing to a big screen.

*  I also want to extend my criticism to the idea of the more adult orientated "graphic novels" as a story source for movies.  I have very rarely found movies based on such material to be very good, although it's hard to put my finger on why.   The latest example - which I didn't even realise until I read a review - was the Netflix movie "The Killer" with Michael Fassbender.   It got some very good reviews, but I found it dull,  very pretentious, and unconvincing.   (Apart from the ten minutes featuring Tilda Swinton.  I wish I could work out why I find her acting so magnetic, but it just is.)

Various defamatory thoughts

*   It's been kind of amusing looking sometimes at Twitter threads on the Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial, as the perception of how it was going seems to have always been entirely polarised between those who say "brilliantly for Bruce" and "brilliantly for the defendants".   Personally, I have no idea what the outcome will be, except to note that it would be a very weird one if he makes any substantial money out of it, given the amount of lies he told, and especially if he is convicted of a separate rape.   I mean, it's a pity that a decision is being made now, and not being delayed for another year or two, I reckon!

*  As for Linda Reynolds suing for defamation, and seeking a freeze order on Higgin's assets - she was an ineffective member of one of the worst recent governments, and doesn't seem to have ever taken to heart the saying "if you can't get stand the heat, get out of the kitchen".   Taking action like this hurts her long term reputation, rather than help.  Isn't that obvious?  

*  There seem to be quite a few comment pieces out in the US media providing arguments that the Supreme Court could plausibly use to overturn the Colorado court's decision that Trump can't run, and as such, I have my doubts that it will stand.   But who knows?  I mean, one columnist in National Review, who argues that the decision is wrong, still links to another commentator (who he respects) who has written that it is correct.  

*  Yeah, who exactly came up with this "gravy day" thing to celebrate the imaginary national fondness for a Paul Kelly song that I hadn't even heard of until a few years ago when someone on the ABC started talking about it?  Oh, SBS says someone on Twitter seems partly responsible:

A popular parody account called The Gravy Man on social media platform X is thought to have helped popularise the day. Since 2015, it has posted sweary updates about collecting royalties for the song and other memes about it.  

I do get the impression there is a bit of a backlash going on about this, and not just because he is now in pro-Palestinian bad books because he appeared with Deb Conway.   C'est la vie.

* It's pleasing to see that Rudy seems to have no hope of avoiding making very large payouts to the women whose lives he upturned.