A good review of a Neil Armstrong biography

The New Yorker: The Critics: Books

Every week I am enjoying the book reviews in the New Yorker. Here's another good one - this time about a biography of Armstrong, that contains some stuff I had never heard before. Actually, the reviewer doesn't like the book much, but as usual with New Yorker reviews, the amount of info in the review is very interesting in itself. Here's a little bit:

"The two astronauts managed to “pat each other on the shoulder” when the L.M. touched down, but once they were outside Aldrin didn’t take any real pictures of the mission’s leader. The only decent still photograph of Armstrong on the moon was taken by Armstrong himself: he appears as a reflection in Aldrin’s visor. Aldrin now apologizes for his neglect, but blames the distraction of a surprise phone call from Richard Nixon to the lunar surface. Asked to consider the matter, Collins says it “never entered my mind that there was some nefarious plot on Buzz’s part to exclude Neil from the photo-documentation of the first lunar landing. It just never occurred to me. Maybe it should have.”"

I saw Collins lurking in the National Air and Space Museum book shop (in Washington) when he worked there in the 1980's. (I think he realised that someone had recognized him, and made a quick exit.) Makes me sound very old..

A little bit more on Latham

Magic fell from his fingertips, but my old boss is now sick [September 26, 2005]

In the interview above, Julia said "To have taken Labor from that position to the position of early 2004 where, we'd have to concede, magic just fell from his fingertips . . . "

Oh yeah?

The Australia also reported (but only in its gossip column) that Latham was pressing his publisher to arrange a National Press Club lunch deal for him. Please, please let them agree. It would one unmitigated spray at his audience from beginning to end, with journalists attacking back when they can get a word in. Trouble is, he would likely just avoid clear answers to serious questions (like Galloway.) Still, could be entertaining, in a slightly sick way, at least.

Terror in Iraq

The Australian: Masked gunmen murder teachers [September 26, 2005]

See link to another appalling incident of internal terrorism in Iraq.

I am curious to see if the trial of Saddam has any effect on this. Maybe not, but still I would like to see it get finally going as soon as humanly possible.

Inventive new use of the word "initiative"

Tel Aviv ignores Hamas' initiative to cease attacks on Israeli targets

From a pro-Palestinian news site, the above link starts like this:

"Gaza - The Israeli occupation authorities totally ignored Hamas' initiative to cease its commando raids on the Israeli territories from Gaza, which the Islamic Movement, said it was taken to foil Likud party leaders' plans to exploit the Palestinian blood in achieving political gains."

I suppose they had to attack first so that they could take "the initiative" of stopping, then to complain about the Israeli's not believing them.

My all time favourite line about the Palestinians is how "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." I would have to go looking to see who is first credited with saying that...

Update: apparently that quote is attributed to Abba Eban in 1978, and he was referring to Yassar Arafat.

Under the sea

First Undersea Restaurant

See the above link for a short story and a nice pic of an undersea restaurant in the Maldives (just opened in April, but I haven't seen in on any TV travel show - yet). Looks very cool.

Dog

My dog. Not the best pic, what with the shadow and all. But she seems to be smiling...

Some Latham stuff

As you might expect, Clarke & Dawe's take on Latham is an instant classic. See it here if you missed it last night. (I heard it replayed twice on ABC local radio today.)

The simplest, but most accurate, cartoon about the diaries is probably this one here.

On a more serious note, you would have to wonder about how dire his mental state would be if his wife ever leaves him, given how much he goes on about the joy of being with his kids. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it seems hard to believe that the contents of the diaries could do anything other than harm his wife's opinion of him. (To be fair, I have not read it, because I don't want to financially reward him.) But even if everything else in the book is not so bad, Andrew Bolt's list of the worst bits is bad enough. It would seem from some of the extracts that he is, in many respects, incredibly shallow. This extract quoted in Bolt's column floored me:

"Anderson found his own (Christian) faith as a young man when he accidentally killed his sister with a misdirected cricket shot to the head.

"Poor old Ando, he should have just played a straight bat and ignored all this pagan idolatry, masquerading as religion, all those kiddie-fiddlers masquerading as priests."

But of course, before the election, he was having to pretend to be not hostile to religion.
Look at this Compass interview from last year. Some extracts:

"Mark Latham:
No I don’t find it in religion myself. It’s more just in the interaction between people, the desire to be a social animal, a social person, a social being. And you’re really wanting to live your life with positive messages from other people. You couldn’t live your life in isolation. Our whole existence I think comes from the gratification of helping others and then having that assistance reciprocated. And it’s that two-way flow of helping people that – a caring for people, loving for people, that I think gives us the greatest joy in life. "

Geraldine Doogue:
So it’s a sort of humanism?

Mark Latham:
Yeah, I’m a humanist, yeah that’s a good description of my philosophy. It’s the human desire to want to be part of society. What does that mean? It means a society where we build self-esteem by helping others and then having that assistance reciprocated. "

I may be wrong, but it seemed to me he only just realised he was a humanist when Geraldine suggested it....

And he certainly knows how to spread the love around at the moment.

"Geraldine Doogue:
You were also in the past, I’ll quote you: “I’m a hater”. This was 2002. “Part of the tribalness of politics is to really dislike the other side with intensity”.

Mark Latham:
Yeah, that was an interview with Maxine McKew where we were talking about public housing cuts and the abolition of the better cities program in my electorate. And I started talking about how I hated what the government had done in policy terms to disadvantage my own constituency. So I suppose it flowed into a more personal description that I wouldn’t repeat now and probably wrong to express it that way at the time. I think you can have strong emotions in politics but it’s best to stick them, keep them to outcomes that matter for other people rather than the things about yourself. Probably hating others is a very corrosive thing in public life and a sign they might have got the better of you."

Irony of the highest order...

"Geraldine Doogue:
Do you see yourself as a Christian?

Mark Latham:
No, I’m agnostic. I think there’s a force, a spiritual world beyond the material. But I’m not in a position to define it, let alone put it into a certain form of religious practice.

Geraldine Doogue:
Are you curious about it?

Mark Latham:
Yeah I am, I am. I’m curious about it and at different times in my life I feel like I’ve had maybe an inkling of a connection to it...."

I saw this on TV, and thought at the time that he looked extremely unconvincing as he said it. I had more than an inkling of an attempt to suck up to the Compass audience.

What a pathetic character to have come within a few percentage points of being our PM.

I am hoping some blogger will extract further appalling bits from the book, so I don't have to buy it.

Helios Airways crash

Salon.com Technology | Ask the pilot

Speaking of "Ask the Pilot", as I did in the last post, I have now seen his article (link above) about the likely cause of the Helios crash. Seems a case of pilots not recognizing the pressurization alarm for what it was. As he explains, it is still hard to believe the pilots could not work this out. (Also, as I mentioned in an earlier post, even if the pilots passed out, couldn't a flight attendant have had a chance at reviving them? I suppose it depends on how long it took an attendant to go into the cockpit. And for that matter, I suppose they lock the cockpit now.) All very interesting...

Dumping it

How Do You Dump Fuel From a Plane? - Just turn on your fuel dumping system.

An aviation term that I didn't fully understand is dealt with at the above Slate link.

The Salon "Ask the Pilot" column is a pretty good source of aviation info for the general reader too. Only trouble is, you have to be seen walking through a Bush Derangement Zone to get to it.

Ye Olde Pregnancy Test

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Pregnancy test link to frog fall

The link above contains this bit of medical history, about which I have never heard before:

"In the 1930s and 40s, live female Xenopus frogs were used widely in Europe, Australasia and north America in pregnancy testing.

A sample of the woman's urine was injected under the frog's skin; if the woman was pregnant, a hormone in her urine caused the frog to ovulate.

Alternative tests involved male frogs and toads, which produced sperm in response to the human hormone gonadotrophin.

Thousands of Xenopus were exported from Africa each year, potentially carrying Batrachochytrium with them, and - perhaps through occasional escapes - delivering it to the habitats of other continents, where it could inflict major damage on amphibian species that were more vulnerable. "

(Luckily, home testing kits today do not involve any combination of frog and pee at all!)

And the relevance of this: it may have the source of the fungus that is now widely believed to be decimating frog populations in many parts of the world. (The idea that frog researchers have also inadvertently been spreading it while on field trips has also been suggested.)

All you ever wanted to know about sex - weevil sex

Male weevils give females the gift of youth� Insects slow down their consorts' biological clocks.

You can't help but like a science article which contains a subheading "magic ejaculate", can you?

Or this line: "insect ejaculates are a soup of proteins and peptides that are immensely complex."

How do they even collect weevil ejaculate for study? Tiny little condoms?

Drinking with baby on board

Key Neural System At Risk From Fetal Alcohol Exposure

The study linked to above indicates that even quite low level drinking during pregnancy looks to be dangerous for the baby's brain, at least in monkeys.

I suspect that Australian doctors, who are currently far from consistent on this point, will probably have to swing around eventually to strongly recommending no alcohol at all during pregnancy.

Bad Existentialists

I don't care much for French philosophers of the modern variety, and I have never read Sartre or De Beauvoir, but I knew a little of their "open" relationship and the suspicion that, despite all the philosophical window dressing, De Beauvoir was a smart woman who didn't recognize she was still a victim of sexist adventurism on Sartre's part.

This week, a book review in the New Yorker has a good long discussion about their relationship. (New Yorker book reviews, I am finding, can be very good reading.)

The article reminded me of Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals", a very readable and amusing biographical examination of the contrast between the public pronouncements of various "intellectuals" and their private lives. I can't find my copy right now, but I don't think Sartre got a chapter. I remember Marx did, and it was very enlightening.

Anyway, the book review points out that Sartre was not exactly the best physical specimen:

".. she fell in love with Sartre, once she got over the physical impression he made. Sartre was about five feet tall, and he had lost almost all the sight in his right eye when he was three; he dressed in oversized clothes, with no sense of fashion; his skin and teeth suggested an indifference to hygiene. He had the kind of aggressive male ugliness that can be charismatic, and he wisely refrained from disguising it. He simply ignored his body."

I wonder how often he bathed..

De Beauvoir explained their pact to each have affairs, but always tell the other about it, as follows:

"One single aim fired us, the urge to embrace all experience, and to bear witness concerning it. At times this meant that we had to follow diverse paths—though without concealing even the least of our discoveries from one another. When we were together we bent our wills so firmly to the requirements of this common task that even at the moment of parting we still thought as one. That which bound us freed us; and in this freedom we found ourselves bound as closely as possible. "

Yadda yadda.

So off they went, having an extraordinary number of affairs, it seems, and even though she denied it to interviewers while alive, it turns out from her posthumously published letters that De Beauvoir jumped into bed with many women too. It also turns out, by the sounds of it, that they were both unpleasant people:

"The most appalling discovery, for many readers, was what '“telling each other everything'” really meant. The correspondence was filled with catty and disparaging remarks about the people Beauvoir and Sartre were either sleeping with or trying to sleep with, even though, when they were with those people, they radiated interest and affection. Sartre, in particular, was always speaking to women of his love and devotion, his inability to live without them—every banality of popular romance. Words constituted his principal means of seduction: his physical approaches were on the order of groping in restaurants and grabbing kisses in taxis. With the publication of '“Letters to Sartre,'” it was clear that, privately, he and Beauvoir held most of the people in their lives in varying degrees of contempt. They enjoyed, especially, recounting to each other the lies they were telling."

Reminds me of a certain ex politician of current note, too.

People become (quite rightly) upset when clergy or other prominent Christians are revealed to be hypocritical in their personal lives, especially in the field of sexual activity. Books like "Intellectuals", and this story of a couple of pop philosophers of the 20th century, serve to remind us that purely secular figures, many of whom claim to be modern rebels against the strictures of religious conservatism, also often turn out to be extremely hypocritical in private, and to deserve no great respect.

There's lots more in the review, go read it quickly while it is still up on the site.

Cat from hell sent to heaven

In Slate, the story of cat so bad it had to be put down. Maybe its brain controlling tricks just weren't working....

North Korea blinks?

News From KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY of DPRK

So, it appears to be a satisfactory outcome for all concerned in that North Korea will (apparently) come back on board the nuclear non-proliferation train.

I am waiting to see how this is sold on the DPRK news site, linked to above. As of the time of writing this, the news service did not indicate much chance of success. Part of it read (sorry, no permanent link available):

"Laporte, commander of the U.S. forces in south Korea, when interviewed by American media recently, disclosed that the United States is "modifying its military strategy in the direction of depending on ultra-modern weapons to cope with the possible outbreak of military conflict with north Korea." Rodong Sinmun Friday says this in a signed commentary.
It goes on:
Multi-faceted dialogues and cooperation are now brisk between the north and the south of Korea and the six-way talks are under way to settle the nuclear issue and put an end to the military confrontation for the purpose of building confidence. The reckless remarks made by him against this backdrop, hinting at setting out a new military strategy, cannot be construed otherwise than a revelation of the U.S. design to chill the atmosphere of inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation and provoke a war of aggression on the Korean Peninsula at any cost." etc.

Kim Jong's spin doctors will be working hard tonight.

I am also wondering what the American Left's take will be. Somehow it will be twisted into anti-Bush.

More on Latham

Latham had a real spray on Radio National this morning, clearly exasperating Fran Kelly as most of his responses did not address the questions she asked anyway.

I am a little worried that my initial reaction to the Enough Rope interview posted below indicates too much sympathy for him. I didn't mean to suggest that it was solely a late realisation of the value of his family life that made him leave politics; it would seem it was just as much a realisation that he was never going to get his way with a large proportion of his fellow party members who he held in contempt for various reasons.

The fact that he is so sensitive to rumours of sexual misdeeds (and goes on and on about unpleasant it was having to deny them to his wife) suggests that he does in fact have some such stuff in his past that he is guilty about.

I wonder what his wife thinks about the diaries. The extracts over the weekend suggests such a nasty, unpleasant streak that I would have thought he should worry that, even if he has been completely faithful to her, she may have a sudden insight into his character that may shake the marriage anyway.

More to come from the full publication today.

It's Spring and the microbes are singing....

On the Radio National Religion Report last week, a story about the new "season" for the Uniting Church, called "A Season of Creation". Over the next few weeks, there will be Forrest Sunday, River Sunday, and (in other years, apparently,) Storm Sunday.

Lets look at some of the suggested liturgies for this.

"Minister: Christ, we come into your presence today to worship in this sanctuary called Earth.

Congregation: A planet filled with your presence, quivering in the forests, vibrating in the land, pulsating in the wilderness, shimmering in the rivers.

Minister: God, reveal yourself to us in this place, and show us your face in all creation.

Congregation: Holy, holy, holy, Earth is filled with GodÂ’s presence."

Hmmm. Reflecting on God's majesty via the majesty of nature is no issue. But the form of expression here is pretty cringeworthy, isn't it? What with all the "vibration" words. And asking God "to show his face in all creation" is a bit of a risk, as some of his creation may well illustrate the issue of "natural evil", which is a not insignificant one for many people, causing some to lose their faith entirely.

Worse to come:

"Rev. Rowena Harris: We invite the farmlands to sing with us.

Congregation: Wheatfields, orchards and vineyards, red gums, gardens and wetlands.

Minister: We celebrate the song of the soil.

Congregation: Sing soil, sing.

Rowena Harris: We invite the ground to stir deep below.

Congregation: Lifegiving microbes restoring the soil, beetles and worms preparing our food.

Minister: We celebrate the song of the soil.

Congregation: Sing, soil, sing."

It's one thing to sing with St Francis of Assisi "all creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing..." when it stirs imagery of anthropomorphic creatures praising God (think "The Lion King"). But this liturgy seems to invite microbes to join in. Just the good ones, or is smallpox invited too?

Now a bit of group apology:

A small piece of rosemary, eucalyptus leaves or some other fragrant symbol of remembrance may be given to the people as a reminder of our past connection with creation.

As we rub this fragrant symbol in our hands we remember the countryside
where we have worked and played.

"O God, we thank you for the beauty of creation and the gift of
land.

We remember and confess how we have poisoned and polluted the soils in our
garden planet.

Christ, once buried in Earth, hear our cry.

We regret that we have forgotten Earth and treated this garden planet as a
beast to be tamed and a place to be ruled.

Christ, the hope of all creation, we lament our failings."

A Confession. A symbol of how we have poisoned the soils of our land may be
raised in the sanctuary. This symbol may be bleached animal bones or some
other symbol meaningful to the local community. This symbol may be
deposited on the red soil of the Earth bowl in the sanctuary.

"We have killed living soils with excessive chemicals, turned fertile fields into
lifeless salt plains and cleared rich lands of wildlife.

Christ, the source of all life, we are sorry. We are sorry."

Sounds like it might build up to include some nudity and ritual sex under the full moon. But no, despite a careful look through the Season of Creation web site, I can't find any.

The John Howard point about apologies is pertinent here: there isn't a hell of a lot of point in apologising for a "wrong" you haven't done yourself. The most that a city reared person can apologize for is eating fruit from a farmer who may have, or may not have, failed to followed good farm management advice or laws.

These are just a few extracts from some of the liturgies, but with every one I read I have issues.

Clearly, there is have no problem with Christians liking trees and (some) animals. Everyone does. While most of "evolutionary psychology" is a crock, it's probably a fair call to say that a certain fondness for nature is in built into our genes.

Catholics have St Francis of Assisi, and even had a decent go (via Teilhard de Chardin) at trying to absorb evolution into its theology. For the protestants, the Bible has sufficient comments about nature to enable arguments that humans were both given nature to "rule" over (presumably to eat and use it) and to protect it. But the details of any theology of ecology are rather like a Rorschach Test, telling us more about the people doing the theology than the nature of God.

The biggest problem I have with putting Nature on a pedestal, from either a Christian or secular environmentalist perspective, is that it contains a specious assumption that there was a "perfect" nature to start with. But such an idea is really only consistent with Creationism and a belief in a pre-Fall paradise on earth, which are hardly likely to be matters of belief which the great majority of Uniting Church people (and no secular environmentalist) would accept.

If you don't believe in creationism, you presumably accept the scientific history of the Earth which shows, at best, an extreme callousness on the part of the Almighty towards the preservation of species. The earth and its inhabitants has been hit by "natural" environmental disasters so many times, how can you argue that the particular state that humans have found it in for the last 50,000 years or so is the "ideal" state that has to be preserved? Indeed, the environment has even changed a lot (without human intervention) over that period that humans have been around to know it.

A corollary to this assumption is that, if only we would leave it alone, all of nature would be fine. At its most extreme, some environmentalists love trees and animals so much they would prefer to see humankind fizzle out so that Mother Nature could do its own thing, as it would until the next asteroid hits the planet and kills hundreds or thousands of its species in one foul swoop.

(I should mention that the only other way of seeing God's hand in the past destruction is to think that it was done to allow humans to evolve. Guess I have to grant that it is possible, but only in the same way I have to grant that full blown creationism, including the making of those decoy fossils in the earth to allow the devil to tempt us into believing evolution, is also possible. In other words, it's possible, but exceedingly unlikely, that God would push asteroids into the earth as a way of preparing it for humans. Even if he did, he clearly hasn't bothered to prevent other natural disasters from killing humans since we arrived on the scene, which seems a bit mean.)

In short, I believe that the only really credible way of viewing nature for the modern person is (if Christian) to assume that God does not interfere, or if he does, it has become all but impossible to discern when or how. (An exception for the resurrection has to be allowed.) For the modern atheist, the logical view is the environment is ever changing and "nature" can't be trusted to ensure our well being.

So how can anyone come up with a convincing practical theology of environmentalism? God must want us to eat some living things, and Jesus seemed pretty keen on sheep and feasts too. So, his rule can't be all "hands off".

Where are the limits of interference in God's book? I don't believe there are any.

As I said before, not everything idea life has to be based on your religion, and it is perfectly acceptable to argue certain environmental matters on aesthetics alone. There are also pragmatic reasons for preserving species (the widest of which is probably not to destroy any species because you can never quite tell in what way it may become useful in future.) But working out what God today ordains you can eat or not eat, let die out or preserve is impossible. Does God want us to preserve all deadly viruses and parasites?

So let's leave it as a secular issue. And be skeptical of environmentalism in its semi-religious aspects, because at its core, it has an idealizedd view of nature that does not bear scrutiny. It appeals because the aesthetics of nature make everyone feel that more of "untouched" nature would have to be good, but plays scant regard to the practicalities of humans needing shelter, food and "things". It is also easy to love a tree; they rarely hurt you, and when they do it is really your fault for standing too close anyway.

For a Christian church to want to identify itself with such a movement is therefore missing the main point of Christianity, which is all about the eternal salvation of humans and relationships between humans. Encouraging church goers to become highly involved in environmentalism would be making the same mistake as encouraging them to spend all their time on social justice issues: it makes membership of the church more dispensable because secular humanists can be just as devoted (often more devoted) to such causes as church goers. It would, despite the belief that it makes the church more "relevant" to modern people, have precisely the opposite effect.

So give up on this stuff, Uniting Church. It will only hasten your demise.

Telegraph | News | Robert Wise

Telegraph | News | Robert Wise

Film director Robert Wise, most notable for the Day the Earth Stood Still, and the Sound of Music, died this week. Some stuff I didn't know about him is at the Telegraph story above.

I still haven't seen all of the first Star Trek movie, because it was a bit tedious after all, but I will always remember Pauline Kael's wry comment about how odd it is that it ends "not with a bang, but with a bang". (I think I am remembering that correctly!)

Latham warning!!!!

If you are reading this right now (10.35 pm 15 Sept), the ABC seems to now be running the Latham Enough Rope interview. Quick, run to the TV.

Update: I generally share Currency Lad's take on the interview. Despite his childish and churlish nature, I felt a little sorry for him, and some degree of respect for his getting out of a game that he finally realized (only took 25 years or so!) was not for him.

Half pushed into the leadership before he was ready, and then with a sudden illness that surely made him think about how much life he may have left to enjoy with his children (especially given his own father's early demise,) he had strong personal reasons to regret his ascent - as he did, almost immediately.

I sympathized with his comment about how most political relationships are shallow, as (I expect) would many people who have ever had even the slightest involvement with any political party.

To be a successful party politician, an interest in policy formulation and good government unfortunately has to be tied to an acceptance of the frequent pettiness and personality basis of internal party politics. The ALP federally is the current "star" victim of this, but the Liberal Party (especially in my part of the world) also has such longstanding and complex personality-based internal wars that it makes active involvement by someone not interested in such histories and clashes extremely unappealing.

What I am saying is that I understand Latham's cynicism of party politics. Unfortunately, though, people being people, democracies are always going to be like this to one degree or another, and it does seem strange for Latham to take so long to have "had a gutful" as he might say.

That said, he obviously has such a spectacular blind spot for self criticism, and was in other ways so clearly temperamentally unfit for the PM job, he wasn't a bullet dodged by the Australian public; he was more like a nuclear meltdown narrowly averted.

Just another day in Gaza

World News Article | Reuters.co.uk

The above story (about the collapse into semi riot of Palestinan "celebrations" over Israel leaving Gaza) would be funny if it weren't so worrying.

What a mess the Palestinian Authority is in. From the article:

"A speech by an Abbas aide calling for an end to armed chaos was marred by Fatah gunmen parading across the stage and firing assault rifles in the air. This prompted Hamas activists to walk out from what had been billed as a show of Palestinian unity.

The rally ended in disorder when devoutly Muslim refugees dominating the crowd of several thousand stoned the stage in protest at a rap music band's failure to stick to nationalist songs. The performers fled, gunmen firing over their heads."

And more:

"Abbas's biggest challenge in Gaza will be subduing militant factions and motley armed gangs, many of them affiliated with his fractured Fatah movement. They refuse to disarm, but Abbas hopes to co-opt them with security and public service jobs."

They'll probably end up as public servants with guns. That ought to keep the queues at the unemployment office in line.