Saturday, February 25, 2006

Cranky

Does complaining about lack of attention help ensure I don't get it?

This week, I thought I made a few decent posts. Just scroll down the page to find them; they are all still here. The one about last weekend's Sydney Morning Herald I thought important in particular. (I even shot off an email to Media Watch about it, and Tim Blair. So far, not an answer from either.) David Williamson's rejoinder to all the rubbishing he got over his "ship Australia" article was noted here, and (to my great surprise) no one else I regularly read has even mentioned his article. Do I have any decent judgment about what other people are interested in?

No one who visits here has commented on anything for quite a while. A brief surge of visitors from Evil Pundit's recent kind reference has dwindled away. Maybe I get 20 hits from visitors on a good day, but many of those are clearly "accidents". I have some regular visitors, but I think maybe barely a half dozen link here. I am only a couple of months off a year of pretty regular posting.

It is much harder to get well established in the blogosphere than I thought.

Now, back to normal programming.

UPDATE: Well, a couple of days after this post, and a first mention ever of this blog at Tim Blair's. (Yay!) Maybe I should stop bitching now.

On Iraq

The Australian: Mike Steketee: Richer, harsher decade [February 25, 2006]

From the above article, a reference to Iraq (as usual, bold is my emphasis):

The war has spawned more terrorism, including an increased risk to Australia. It has produced a fundamentalist Islamic government in Iraq and helped ensure another one in Iran. And full-scale civil war in Iraq seems likely, according to a report by the independent International Crisis Group.

Getting a bit ahead of ourselves, Mike.

Of course, things are not looking great in Iraq, but then again one thing I have not noticed addressed is the simple question of whether there are enough arms available on the Sunni side for them to form an army as such. If they don't have them now, how are they going to get them? Are there enough Sunni's in the re-established Iraqi security forces to split off and take weaponry with them? Isn't the presence of the US and other forces going to help prevent that?

In all the talk (especially on the Left) of how bad it is that Iraq may now face a civil war, didn't the anti-war crowd think that the West should just allow Saddam's regime to collapse one way or another, quite possibly with what would amount to an all out civil war at that time? In that scenario, it would have been the case that the Sunnis would have been fully armed; Shites may needed to be supplied from outside.

Is there no one out there saying that, even if it is now a sort of civil war, the US presence may work to moderate its development? Isn't a slow burning type of conflict easier to put out than a full blown one?

I don't necessarily agree with Vodkapundit's take on a possible civil war, but it is interesting. (In short, an all out war may have its benefits in the long run anyway.)

Also from vodkapundits site, he has some photos from a pro-Danish protest in America. This one is particularly good:



Update: It would appear from this Slate summary that the New Republic argues along the lines I suggested (that US forces are now likely to moderate any civil war, and need to stay.)

Friday, February 24, 2006

Huffington Post jumps the shark too

While always over the top in its derision of anything Republican, it seems that the bloggers at Huffington Post have gone completely off the planet recently.

Witness this post by Huffington herself. She had appeared on Fox News with Ann Coulter and did not appreciate the way she was treated. (You can link throught to video of the appearance at Arianna's post.) In response, she does a very mature post comparing Ann Coulter to crack addiction for the likes of (conservative journalist) Hannity, including a stupid photoshopped image of what he would look like as a crack addict after a few years. Well, that makes me appreciate your arguments much more, Arianna.

(Incidentally, while she seems to have some notoriety in America, I did not know of her until she started her blog. I also did not know until now that she sounds vaguely like Zsa Zsa Gabor, which means nothing but just made it a little harder for me to take her seriously.)

As for Ann Coulter, (who has recently been disowned by more right-ish bloggers for her referring to Arabs as "ragheads,") she is obviously a deliberate provocateur, and as such she shouldn't be taken too seriously. I tend to find her use of humour pretty sharp, and not unlike PJ O'Rourke in his earlier days. There is a sense of playfulness behind this type of goading of Liberals. Left wing commentators and humourists, on the other hand, seem rooted in sour over- earnestness, and a fundamental assumption of the absolute worst motives behind everything the Republicans do.

However, I have not actually read much of Ann Coulter, and it is quite possible that I would not like her if I did.

Back to Huffington Post. Last week, Peter Daou ran the startling line that in fact the media was running a right leaning bias in its reporting of the Cheney hunting accident. He listed so-called examples and challenged right wing bloggers to counter this with their own examples to show that it was left leaning bias. Apparently the initial response was slow (Daily Kos somewhere noted this too and seemed to take it as a sign of right wing defeat on the issue.)

Of course, the truth was that any even slightly middle-of-the-road person could see that it was a such a ridiculous proposition (and Daou's own examples were so tenuous) that to bother answering it would be like arguing with the insane. Is he unaware of sites like Newsbusters (and many others) which daily list the examples he is seeking?

If you have lots of time to waste..

Boing Boing: Lovingly scanned and OCR'd copy of The Scientific American Boy

The above link is about a 1907 boys' own adventure type book available from Project Gutenburg (it would seem said project may be running out of more useful things to do!) I like this comment by Boing Boing:

It's also the good fortune of the gang that one of the boys nearly drowns in a swimming accident, because it gives their chaperone, the kindly "Uncle Ed" ("one of those rare men who take a great interest in boys and their affairs") a chance to demonstrate the art of artificial respiration on the unconscious boy.

South Park jumps the shark?

SBS drops South Park episode on the Pope - TV & Radio - Entertainment

I happen to have seen the controversial bits of the South Park episode discussed above (featuring a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding what is apparently meant to be menstrual blood) on the internet. (I forget where; I am sure it is not hard to find.)

The fundamental problem with it is that it is just not funny or clever. It is something you would expect if a 14 year old boy was in charge of the show. (From what I recall, some teenage boys find jokes about menstruation screamingly funny. Don't ask me why.) There is obviously a "that is so bad we can't put it in - aw let's do it and see the reaction" reasoning behind this part of the episode.

There are many categories of apparent humour on South Park. Stupid-funny, gross out humour, satire of what kids find funny (such as the kid's shows featuring never ending fart jokes,) satire of adult behaviour towards kids, etc etc.

While I have never been a big a fan of the show, it is sometimes clever, and even a semi-serious intent can be seen beneath it sometimes. (In fact, you can say that about part of the story in the Virgin Mary episode.) But adding the sequence with the statue and the Pope was purely gratuitous and made no sense as satire at all. I fail to see how any adult, of religious persuasion or not, could think it was amusing.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

On divorce in Japan

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Japan retired divorce rate soars

The article above notes the increasing rate of divorce in Japan amongst those married for 20 years or more. The reason is "retired husband syndrome":

Marriage guidance counsellors are warning newly retired couples not to spend extended amounts of time together - recommending day trips over cruises.

The author of self-help book "Why Are Retired Husbands Such a Nuisance?" said it is dangerous for a couple to go on overseas trips after the husband retires....

The BBC's Jonathan Head in Tokyo says many wives increasingly resent how little their husbands contribute to home life and are seeking divorce when, after retirement, the men show no sign of changing their habits....

Japanese people also tend to live longer, so when a man retires at 65 the wife may be thinking "I still have 20 or 30 more years with this person", our correspondent says.

I am sure that this is not unheard of in Western countries too. Has it been the subject of detailed treatment in a good movie in the last 20 years?

More off topic: While you are at the BBC website, have a look at this photo series about some homeless folk in Osaka. Seems the homeless in Japan are much more into self help than the homeless here.

This just made me think. Many of the homeless you see in Australia would appear to be that way due to drug or alcohol addiction and/or mental illness. In Tokyo, there are now a few homeless to be seen, mainly (in my limited experience) in train stations. (They make shelters to sleep in from cardboard boxes, but often are still "polite" enough to remove the shoes and leave them at the entrance to their cubby holes.) However, the homeless you see look more like economic refugees, as they do in that BBC report. Given that Japan does not exactly have a reputation for sympathy to mental illness, and given the huge population of Tokyo, where do those who are homeless due to mental illness end up? They don't seem to be on the street, and nor do chronic alcoholics (at least not in the daytime!)

Hamas

lgf: Hamas to Israel: We'll Nuke You

If you missed this from a couple of days ago, follow through the LGF link above to see a Hamas website (cached version) showing how sensitive and tactful that organisation can be to the religious symbols of other faiths. (A graphic showing a Star of David consumed in mushroom cloud.)

I notice that the English version of the website seems to have a lot less on it than the arabic version (especially in terms of video available.) Must look into what's on the Arabic video some day.

David Williamson rejoins the culture wars

The Australian: David Williamson: Culture, yes, but please, not in their backyards [February 23, 2006]

I guess this will be blogged about in many places, but let this be an early entry on the piece.

I love it when the Left complain about the "shrillness" of conservative commentators. It's an excuse for not engaging in the actual detailed criticisms of their writing, I think. Furthermore, Williamson says some of the commentary against his controversial Bulletin piece reflected a "fascist attitude." (Well, he calls that "perhaps an overstatement", while immediately saying that ridding themselves of artists is exactly what fascists usually do.) Oh, that's not shrill at all, I suppose David?

He claims that his Bulletin piece was "mildly satiric". It doesn't read that way to me, at least if you expect satire to have an element of humour to it. While he is entitled to use a cheap fun cruise in the South Pacific as a metaphor for Australia generally not caring enough about its sustainability in the future, the main part of the article that most people found offensive (and rather bizarre) was his sneering at the passengers for not being there for cultural enlightenment. (Unlike those on a British cruise he had been on from Hong Kong to Vietnam, which sounded for all the world like a specialised educational cruise.)

David, you're a dill if you don't recognise why that comparison was stupid and offensive.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Fight cancer - drink up your Pepsi Max (or Diet Coke if you must)

TCS Daily - Those Dirty Rats

A fascinating article above about a fairly recent study on aspartame safety, which apparently got a mention in the New York Times earlier this month.

I take it that the NYT indicated that the study meant there was still some lingering doubt about aspartame and cancer. But the article above points out the defects of the study, and concludes on this surprising note:

Here's what's even stranger: the rats with the highest survival rates at 104 and 120 weeks, at 55% and about 29% respectively, were the rats that ate the most aspartame – the equivalent of 1,750 cans of diet soda a day. And the longest living rat of all consumed the equivalent of 175 cans a day. In short, the control rats died first; the heavy aspartame consumers lived longest.

Looks like if you want to increase your odds of living a long life, be prepared to burp.

Update: this post at Captain's Quarters gives more background on what the Times article claimed.

Life for women in Saudi Arabia

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Veil power

The above link is to a very interesting article in The Guardian about the glacial pace of change for women in Saudi Arabia. Everything in it is interesting. Some highlights:

More than half the kingdom's university graduates are female and yet women account for only about 5% of the workforce.

The social complexities of women working and doing business arise from one basic idea: that men are uncontrollably attracted to women and that women are natural temptresses, even if they try not to be. The Saudi solution, therefore, is to keep them apart as much as possible unless they are related by blood or marriage. Whatever the official line, though, a younger generation are increasingly finding ways around this...

Somehow, our conversation turns to the subject of parties. "Saudis love to celebrate," Mrs B says. "We party big-time."

Men and women, of course, do their partying separately. Men's parties tend to be dull affairs. In Riyadh, male partygoers just sit around, Mr A says. In Jeddah they play cards. In Ha'il (in the north), they may do a bit of sword-dancing. Then they go home, usually by midnight. "The point is that you should always be sad," Mr A grumbles.

Women's parties are a different matter, and often carry on until 4am with dancing, female DJs and sometimes all-woman bands.

Well, no wonder only 5% of the women work; they must all be sleeping in after their late night all girl dancing parties.

And the actual changes that have been made recently:

Although women still cannot vote or drive, the last few years have brought important changes, even if they stop well short of equality. Women can now officially exist in their own right with their own identity cards, rather than being included on the card of their husband or father. Travel restrictions have been eased, allowing them to get blanket permission from a male relative for travel abroad, rather than needing separate permission for each trip. They can also own businesses instead of having to register them in the name of a wakil, an authorised male representative or proxy.

Their very own identity cards! Only needing permission one time from a male relative to travel abroad! (I wonder if said male relative can revoke it.) Woo hoo.

Some vaguely optimistic news from Gaza

The Australian: Most Hamas voters don't want to destroy Israel [February 22, 2006]

In view of the overwhelming Hamas victory, the response to a question about the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was surprisingly moderate. Only 10 per cent said they wanted to see a Palestinian state including the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, which is Hamas's long-term aim. Twenty-two per cent supported a bi-national Jewish-Arab state on this territory, but 58 per cent opted for the two-state solution.

How odd..

The Australian: Memories of Soviet queues feed Russia's salt panic [February 22, 2006]

This is an odd story about how important salt is to Russians. Is there a new export market there for us?

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

The Jewish Blood libel today

The Officers' Club: Hamas' Blood Feast

See the link above for a short Officers' Club post about the Jewish blood libel (the belief that Jews kill kids and teenagers for the use of their blood in rituals.)

As the post notes, it would seem that the belief is still current in the Middle East, which is indeed a worry.

For more detail on the history (and current belief in) the idea, see the Wikipedia entry here. See the section on the modern Arab references to it in particular. I wonder if any polling has been done in Middle Eastern countries to see how widely the population believes it.

Monday, February 20, 2006

For Muslim suicide terrorists - a major disappointment may be in store

Right Reason: The Prophet (PBUH) and Violence

The link above has lots of interesting reading about Mohammed and violence.

But, in comments someone also quotes from a 2002 article in the New York Times (which is extracted at some length.) This is the good bit:


Scholars like Mr. Luxenberg and Gerd-R. Puin, who teaches at Saarland University in Germany, have returned to the earliest known copies of the Koran in order to grasp what it says about the document's origins and composition. Mr. Luxenberg explains these copies are written without vowels and diacritical dots that modern Arabic uses to make it clear what letter is intended. In the eighth and ninth centuries, more than a century after the death of Muhammad, Islamic commentators added diacritical marks to clear up the ambiguities of the text, giving precise meanings to passages based on what they considered to be their proper context. Mr. Luxenberg's radical theory is that many of the text's difficulties can be clarified when it is seen as closely related to Aramaic, the language group of most Middle Eastern Jews and Christians at the time.

For example, the famous passage about the virgins is based on the word hur, which is an adjective in the feminine plural meaning simply "white." Islamic tradition insists the term hur stands for "houri," which means virgin, but Mr. Luxenberg insists that this is a forced misreading of the text. In both ancient Aramaic and in at least one respected dictionary of early Arabic, hur means "white raisin." Mr. Luxenberg has traced the passages dealing with paradise to a Christian text called Hymns of Paradise by a fourth-century author. Mr. Luxenberg said the word paradise was derived from the Aramaic word for garden and all the descriptions of paradise described it as a garden of flowing waters, abundant fruits and white raisins, a prized delicacy in the ancient Near East. In this context, white raisins, mentioned often as hur, Mr. Luxenberg said, makes more sense than a reward of sexual favors.

Talk about major disappointment in the afterlife....

Update: sorry, in the first version of this post I referred to the NYT article as being "recent". It would appear it is from 2002. Also, the story reminded a little of "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" by biblical scholar John Allegro, who claimed in his 1970 book of that name that Jesus was a complete fabrication dreamt up by some fertility cult types who were really into tripping out on magic mushrooms. Much of his argument was based on philology too (meaning some New Testament words have a hidden derivation from other words - about mushrooms mainly.) This theory was, to put it mildly, not widely accepted, and appears to have been a 1970's flash in the pan which I assume most readers have never heard of. I like this comment about the theory found here:

"Mr. Allegro's reputation as a man of judgment and learning, already widely questioned, is likely to be shattered by this curious publication. His new book reads like a Semitic philologist's erotic nightmare after consuming a highly indigestible meal of hallucinogenic fungi." Dr. Chadwick referred to Mr. Allegro's "bizarre hypothesis", to "rich indulgence in the wildest flights of uncontrolled fantasy", to "uncanny decipherment" and to a "luxuriant farrago of nonsense"

Anyway, the theory outlined in the New York Times article above does not appear to be anywhere near as dubious as Allegro's. I am just mentioning the latter to be fair.

One other point: Christianity has been under this sort of attack for a long time indeed. The New York Times article points out that Mr Luxenburg is a pseudonym, and he had a lot of trouble finding a publisher. One wonders how he would go with finding a publisher today.

Backdate: OK, seeing the article was from 2002, this was hardly breaking news, and I see that Tim Blair, amongst others, mentioned it back then. Sorry if you've heard this one before, but it had escaped my attention (either that or I had simply forgotten it.)

But, while Googling the topic, I found this article from The Guardian in 2002 that addresses the Islamic idea of paradise, including the "white raisin" possible misinterpretation, in great detail. I think I may have read it before, but before I blogged. It is worth repeated not just because it is salaciously funny, but because on some TV show recently I did hear a Muslim man or woman saying that the suicide bombers know that that marriage and life in Paradise are so much better than that on earth, of course they don't mind suicide. (In other words, this is a serious motivation for young men):

Modern apologists of Islam try to downplay the evident materialism and sexual implications of such descriptions, but, as the Encyclopaedia of Islam says, even orthodox Muslim theologians such as al Ghazali (died 1111 CE) and Al-Ash'ari (died 935 CE) have "admitted sensual pleasures into paradise". The sensual pleasures are graphically elaborated by Al-Suyuti (died 1505 ), Koranic commentator and polymath. He wrote: "Each time we sleep with a houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [ie Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetising vaginas."

!

Andrew Bolt on "greenhouse mafia"

Herald Sun: Sneaky green mafia [17feb06]

I did not see all of last week's Four Corners program, but enough to make me a bit suspicious.

Andrew Bolt notes in the article above that the main informant on one aspect of this has questionable objectivity on the issue. Go read his article if you have not already.

One of the matters mentioned in the report that raised my suspicion was about sea level rises and "environmental refugees". See this part of the transcript:

DR BARRIE PITTOCK, CLIMATE CHANGE EXPERT: I was asked to talk about the science of climate change, the impacts and the possible adaptations. But I was expressly told not to talk about mitigation, not to talk about how you might reduce greenhouse gases.

JANINE COHEN: One of the subjects was the impact of rising sea levels. Dr Pittock says he wanted to write about how this could lead to the displacement of millions of people in the Pacific Islands and parts of Asia who might be forced to seek refuge in Australia.

DR BARRIE PITTOCK, CLIMATE CHANGE EXPERT: They don't want that highlighted because it brings in another contentious issue into what is already a contentious issue. But it is an issue. It's one of the possible consequences of global warming. And I think it should be part of the background to deciding what to do about it.

And further into the show:

KEVIN HENNESSY, CSIRO IMPACT GROUP: Certainly, environmental refugees does impact on government policy. The sort of thing that I could say as a scientist, is that with sea level rise there may be people inundated in places like Tuvalu in the Pacific. And that would be an issue that needs to be considered by government policy. But I certainly can't go beyond that as a scientist.

As I noted in a previous post here in January, the latest research indicates a rise of perhaps 30 mm in a decade, but even then the rate of sea level rise has gone up and down over the last century. Indeed, actual measurements in Tuvalu reported in 2000 (see my other post on this topic) indicated a much smaller rate over the previous 25 years of less than a mm per year, no acceleration of the rate, and that levels can also drop dramatically if there is an El Nino weather pattern.

To me, it sounds as if CSIRO scientists may have taken quite a sensationalist approach to this issue if they are talking about millions being displaced, or even Tuvalu having to be evacuated, at least over the next few decades. There should be lots of caveats added to any discussion of sea level rises and global warming.

Cute robot doing minor task

Honda Worldwide | New ASIMO Video

See the link of a flash video of Honda's robot doing a vital robot task - moving coffee 5 m down a corridor.

(Actually, I'm only pretending to be cynical. It really is impressive.)

There's another video of it running, which is perhaps even more "human" looking.

Conflicts on global warming again?

LiveScience.com - Greenland Dumps Ice into Sea at Faster Pace

So the above article notes that the Greenland glaciers are falling into the sea at a much faster rate. But it ends with this observation:

The only way to stem the loss of ice would be for Greenland to receive increased amounts of snowfall, according to Julian Dowdeswell of the University of Cambridge, who wrote an accompanying article.

It doesn't mention what the other article said.

But over at Tech Central Station, they have a story that points out this:

Another paper on this subject was published by Science just last year. Ola Johannessen did not consider direct ice lost by glaciers into the ocean but instead only focused on elevations changes. Johannssen showed that increasing snowfall in Greenland was leading to greater ice accumulations than had previously been measured and this was acting to slow Greenland's contribution to sea level rise. It was conspicuously ignored in this new report...

Why would Science publish this paper with no reference to Johannessen's earlier paper showing that Greenland is accumulating ice at a rate of about 5.4±0.2cm/year? Johannessen even used data from some of the same satellites. What's more, Johannessen used real data and Hanna et al., cited by Rignot, used a model of surface melt.

Consider what would have happened had the latest study included the ice and snow gains observed by Johannessen (and ignored the losses modeled by Hanna et. al.). Johannnessen's increase of 5.4cm/year averaged over Greenland converts to about 75km3/year. Rignot and Kanagaratnam could have subtracted Johannessen's gains. If they had done so, the total volume of ice loss from Greenland would only have become positive during the last 5 years, totaling 17km3 in 2000 and 92km3 in 2005. This translates to a sea level rise contribution of 0.04mm in 2000 and 0.23mm in 2005 -- values much less dramatic than those they published.


All very interesting. Don't expect most of the media to go into such subtleties though.

Birthday time in North Korea

Japundit - We'’re going to a party party!

As with everything about Kim Jong Il, above is a funny/scary story on his birthday last week.

Cartoon riots of a different kind..

Economist.com - Cities Guide

From the above article:

In January the park switched to a system in which entry tickets are valid for six months, as opposed to a specific date. But this move meant that on several occasions during the national holiday many people with valid tickets were left standing at the gates, when the park reached its 30,000-person capacity. Tourists who were turned away then tried to storm the park.

Not exactly on topic, but I also wonder, what are fun or theme parks in the Middle East like? Do any exist at all? Are there Muslim cartoon characters on TV in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia? Comedic ones I mean, not serious ones encouraging matyrdom or some such.

Some googling about this could be fun, but needs to wait for another time.

Some interesting observations on Arab culture

FrontPage magazine.com :: Brought Up To Hate by Nonie Darwish

I don't get around to checking Frontpage all that often, but the above article is interesting, if adding nothing particularly new.

Have a look at the article writer's website Arabs for Israel too. I suspect that it would not get much of its traffic from Iran or Saudi Arabia. Still, nice to know that such sites exist.