Out of proportion?

neo-neocon: The danger of "proportionality" in war

The always readable Neo-neocon has a good post on the issue of proportionality in war. A key paragraph:

It's in the interests of those with less power, and fewer arms, to advance the doctrine of "proportionality." This evens the playing field, something like a handicap in golf, and makes the game better sport for those with fewer skills. The concept of proportionality comes, no doubt, at least partly from fear of a truly disproportionate response; from some sort of concern for the weak. But it also comes from a disproportionate concern that weaker, third-world countries shouldn't be disadvantaged in any way because of their weakness, that they should be allowed to attack a stronger nation with relative impunity because, after all, they're weaker; and, after all, they're "brown;" and, after all, the West is imperialist and guilty; and, after all...and on and on.

But go read it all, and watch some of the fireworks in the comments too.

A good essay on the trouble with Islam

To the death

I just found this recent essay from The Guardian on the question of Islam and terrorism, and it's very good.

The last paragraphs:

As I argued in a piece on Ken Loach's film The Wind that Shakes the Barley on Cif two weeks ago, ideology - uncompromising, appealing to purity of thought and action, murderous - is required to give real or imagined wrongs a framework, a cause and both a battle cry and a battle order. You must fight for something as well as against something. And one of the most powerful of such ideologies has been, in very different forms, an appeal to oneness: oneness of nation and ethnos (Nazism); one-ness of class and party (communism) and oneness of faith, state and thought (Islamism).

The ability to dehumanise large tracts of fellow human beings, because they are non-Aryan, or bourgeois, or non-Muslim, lends great strength to the cause: strength enough to cause adherents to gladly murder, and willingly die, for it.

Israel and it enemies

Aljazeera.Net - Lebanon divided over Hezbollah raid

Aljazeera explains the conflict within Lebanon on the role of Hezbollah in that country:

Dalia Salaam, a Lebanese Middle East analyst, says, "Hezbollah is currently the only political party in Lebanon fighting to save the country."

"The US and Europe should ask Israel to restrain itself. After all, no one, not even President George Bush or the Israeli government, can afford to escalate the situation."

But Ramzi Salha, a travel agent, says: "Whatever the agenda of Hezbollah is, it is not necessarily the agenda of the Lebanese people.

"They have not been designated by the Lebanese people to decide what is best for the country."

With the 22-year Israeli occupation over, many Lebanese say it is time for Hezbollah to lay down its weapons as demanded by UN Security Council resolution 1559.

Few are suggesting a return to war is coming, but Hezbollah's rivals are increasingly complaining that the only Lebanese group that was allowed to keep its weapons after the civil war has become more powerful than the state.

As you may expect, I also like Charles Krauthammer's article on the current situation. He highlights a point that has bothered me a lot over the years: the media's seeming amnesia about the fact that Israel only ended up with the occupied territories because it won the wars that attempted to eradicate it as a nation:

For four decades we have been told that the cause of the anger, violence and terror against Israel is its occupation of the territories seized in that war. End the occupation and the "cycle of violence'' ceases.

The problem with this claim was that before Israel came into possession of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Day War, every Arab state had rejected Israel's right to exist and declared Israel's pre-1967 borders -- now deemed sacred -- to be nothing more than the armistice lines suspending, and not ending, the 1948-49 war to exterminate Israel.

Finally, this Lebanese issue of having a heavily armed militia force that is separate from the government armed forces seems to be the same problem facing Iraq, Gaza, and probably other countries, for all I know. How do the people of these countries think that they can ever be properly governed when private armies are allowed to retain arms? Until this fundamental problem is rectified, unrest in the region will surely continue indefinitely.

Time for a Conservative government

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Health | IVF hurdle for single women and lesbians to be overthrown

From the above story:

Fertility clinics and NHS trusts will no longer be able to stop single mothers and lesbian couples having IVF treatment following a shake-up of embryology regulation expected later this year.

The public health minister, Caroline Flint, yesterday gave the clearest indication yet that a child's "need for a father" will be removed as a requirement before a woman undergoes fertility treatment.

A change of name from "fertility treatment" is deserved then, because a failure of "fertility" is not what they are "curing". How about, "Government insemination service" instead, at least for the NHS ones?

That's all it what ever about??

Novak-Rove exchange lasted 20 seconds - Yahoo! News

Good Lord, it was even more trivial than what anyone seemed to imagine:

Regarding Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip, Novak said he told Rove, "I understand that his wife works at the CIA and she initiated the mission." The columnist said Rove replied, "Oh, you know that, too."

"I took that as a confirmation that she worked with the CIA and initiated" her husband's mission to Africa, Novak said. "I really distinctly remember him saying, 'You know that, too.'"

"We talked about Joe Wilson's wife for about maybe 20 seconds," Novak said.

According to Rove's legal team, the White House political adviser recalls the conversation regarding Wilson's wife differently, saying that he replied to Novak that "I've heard that, too" rather than "You know that, too."

Leunig renews attempt to court the Palestinian readership

Cartoons - Cartoon - Opinion - theage.com.au

I'm surprised that Tim Blair doesn't seem to have a post yet about Leunig's latest cartoon.

Having a go at the suffering of children in war and conflict is a legitimate subject for a cartoonist. But Leunig's take suggests that the Israelis are targetting children deliberately.

Also, just how hard is it to be even handed when drawing a cartoon? Here's a suggestion: fold the paper in two, and one side draw some Hamas terrorists shooting a completely indiscriminate rocket into an Israeli city, and hitting a school. On the other side, draw a half dozen palestinian kids being killed as "collateral" in a reprisal attack (being careful to also show the dead adult terrorists who were actually the target.)

There, pithy point about children being unwitting target of terrorism and war is made; dishonest blaming of one side only for killing kids avoided. Is that so hard to do?

While we're at it, show children on one side being given guns to brandish on the streets, watching a neverending media glorification of matyrdom, and being taught that everyone in the neighbouring country (which has no right to exist) is a legitimate target until the neighbour State ceases to exist. On the other side show...oh, well maybe a bit of a problem finding the balance there.

Timothy Leary back from the grave

Independent Online Edition > Health Medical

A very odd story this:

Forty years after Timothy Leary, the apostle of drug-induced mysticism, urged his hippie followers to "tune in, turn on, and drop out", researchers at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, have for the first time demonstrated that mystical experiences can be produced safely in the laboratory.... For the US study, 30 middle-aged volunteers who had religious or spiritual interests attended two eight-hour drug sessions, two months apart, receiving psilocybin in one session and a non-hallucinogenic stimulant, Ritalin, in the other. They were not told which drug was which.
Note in bold the first thing to question about this study.

One third described the experience with psilocybin as the single most spiritually significant of their lifetimes and two thirds rated it among their five most meaningful experiences. In more than 60 per cent of cases the experience qualified as a "full mystical experience" based on established psychological scales, the researchers say. Some likened it to the importance of the birth of their first child or the death of a parent. The effects persisted for at least two months. Eighty per cent of the volunteers reported moderately or greatly increased well-being or life satisfaction. Relatives, friends and colleagues confirmed the changes.

Ooh, sounds all so inspiring. But then:

A third of the volunteers became frightened during the drug sessions with some reporting feelings of paranoia. The researchers say psilocybin is not toxic or addictive, unlike alcohol and cocaine, but that volunteers must be accompanied throughout the experience by people who can help them through it.

I just find it incredibly hard to believe that they could ever overcome the unreliability of such "therapy". Wasn't there enough work done on using hallucinogenic and other mind altering drugs (such as ecstacy) in the 1940's to 1960's to see that this is not a worthwhile way to go?

Japanese lesson of the day

The Japan Times Online - Porn 'anime' boasts big U.S. beachhead

From the above article:

The popularity of Japanese animation overseas was again highlighted in Anime Expo 2006 in California earlier this month, but a growing boom in the genre's pornographic segment is raising eyebrows among the world's fans of Pokemon and other less-graphic content.

"The best-selling product overseas now is a pornographic makeover of 'Gundam Seed,' " said Masuzo Furukawa of Mandarake Inc., referring to a popular Japanese animation....

The general intolerance toward pornographic animation and comic books in the West is another factor for overseas fans to seek out Japanese products, Furukawa said.

"Fans in America seek something special in this anime, and reading them is cathartic," he said.

The pornographic anime boom has even made the word "hentai" (perverted) recognizable among anime fans worldwide. Hentai is now used overseas to describe anime with strong sexual content.

Love the use of "cathartic" with respect to what is basically porn.

Einstein at home

Letters reveal Einstein's personal life - Yahoo! News

If, like me, you have never read an Einstein biography, this short article gives some brief insight into his private life:

Einstein is known to have had a dozen lovers, two of whom he married, Wolff said.

Most striking about the more than 1,300 newly released letters was the way Einstein discussed his extramarital affairs with his second wife, Elsa, and his stepdaughter, Margot, the archivists said.

Michanowski is mentioned in three of the newly unsealed letters.

In a letter to Margot Einstein in 1931, Einstein complained that "Mrs. M." — Michanowski — "followed me (to England), and her chasing me is getting out of control."

What was the attraction? One assumes it had more to do with fame and power than physicality. (Funny how the same in a woman makes most men nervous.) More:

Einstein's dalliances and abrupt, even cruel treatment of his first wife, Mileva, have been documented in biographies. He has also been portrayed as an indifferent father unwilling to take on the obligations of parenthood.

Gutfreund said the latest collection shows Einstein to have been more involved with and warmer to his first family than previously thought. Letter from the boys showed "they understood he loved them," he said.

What happened to the Einstein boys, I wonder. What a liability to have in science class in high school!

And Einstein himself got a bit sick of his own theory:

The father of the theory of relativity apparently did not want to be bound up with it eternally. In a 1921 letter to Elsa, Einstein confided, "Soon I'll be fed up with the relativity. Even such a thing fades away when one is too involved with it."

Second childhood indeed

BBC NEWS | Health | Dolls 'help Alzheimer's patients'

A couple of months ago I had to make a short visit to a retirement village/nursing home type of place. When I was leaving, I noticed an elderly woman in the sitting area nursing a teddy bear wrapped in a blanket.

I later mentioned this to my mother who said that she knew that soft toys were often used by nursing homes residents (or at least the ones with dementia).

The study above shows how important that such toys can have with dementia patients. "Second childhood" is a more accurate phrase than I had previously realised.

The always irritating Phillip Adams

Ethics the issue, not proclivities | Phillip Adams | The Australian

My very first post in this blog was about Phillip Adams "outing" Graham Kennedy on his radio show, while Kennedy was still alive. Adam's studio guest, Kennedy's long time close friend Noelene Brown, was invited by Adams to talk about this, and (to her credit) she flatly refused, saying it was a very private matter for Graham and she was not comfortable talking about it.

Mind you, Adams made it clear that he thought highly of Kennedy. He just seems to have a complete blind spot about respecting the right to privacy over the matter of sexuality. (Which is ironic considering that I recall one interview with Adams in which he explained how furious he was with media talk about his private life when he went through a divorce.)

Fast forward to today's Adams column (above.) Talk about disingenuous. While denying that Alan Jones' sexuality is important, and noting that that other media commentators (David Marr and Mike Carlton) had "distorted" the debate about Jone's biography by "outing" Jones, Adams then goes on to talk in detail about the aftermath of the "London incident" which was what originally brought Jone's sexuality into public discussion!

Adams even paints himself as something of a supporting hero, although it is hard to believe the teenage boy mentality that would lead Adams to send a message to Jones of the type he admits to:

Thus when an entire station was aghast at allegations of an incident in London I sent him a cheery message of support. Told him to keep his chin up. Said something Edna Everage-ish about British spunk.

(Adams says that Jones subsequently visited Adams home to explain the incident, so maybe Jones didn't take offence. I still wonder what others think of Adam's level of maturity, and would indeed like to see a biography of him.)

Again, Adams is completing ignoring any concept of a right to privacy, and in the process takes the opportunity of praising himself as the hero for being the one who wants society to better accept homosexuality. What a jerk.

Political Theatre

Take a note: it won't help Costello at all - Opinion - smh.com.au

Nothing much to say about Howard/Costello. All part of the political theatre, and not very edifying. If politicians did not spend so much time on internal party maneuvering they could devote a lot more time to policy and things that matter to their constituents.

As Gerard Henderson notes in his column above:

The fact is that there are few genuine friendships in politics - for the obvious reason that politicians are involved in a continuing contest for the top job.

Maybe true but kind of sad.

Now for something completely different: yowies, UFOs and bad smells

Yowieland

See the link for a Fortean Times article on yowie sightings in Australia. (For the foreign reader, a yowie is Australia's version of bigfoot.)

I have never had much interest in yowie stories, but one thing that interests me about them is the association of the beast with a foul smell. This is because when I was about 19, an acquaintance with whom I had sometimes been camping (in a group) in bush locations around South East Queensland told me that he had gone camping (with one or two other mates, I forget) and had been frightened by loud crunching sounds in the undergrowth in the middle of the night. What disturbed him most was the intense foul smell that he said accompanied the sounds. It was the smell in particular that make him frightened, and convinced him it was not just some sleepless kangaroo or other mundane explanation.

He was an odd character, but one that I would describe as pragmatic and not given to fantasy. I guess the belief that yowies smell bad might have been around generally then; I seem to recall that it was the first time that I had heard of it, and it was only later that I read of other people's accounts that did indeed mention the smell.

If scary crunchy sounds are caused by other animals (and I guess something as mundane as a cow or deer would make heaps of sound,) I am not sure what large (or small) animal in Australia is routinely accompanied by a bad smell. It is this relatively minor aspect of the story that makes it more convincing.

Interestingly, bad sulphurous type smells have been associated with paranormal phenomena of all kinds, even UFO's. (There are some who think yowies, bigfoot and other strange creatures are visitors from another dimension, hence the connection with the paranormal.)

I remember, again when I was about 19, glancing through a book on the interesting Kaikoura UFO sightings of 1978 by a journalist who was on the airplane. I seem to recall that he mentioned that after the incident, for several weeks at least, he would unexpectedly notice sulfurous smells around him. (I think he said it seemed the smell was on his skin, but it is a long time ago that I was furtively looking at the book in a shop.) At the time, I remember thinking that he was a bit of a nutter for drawing this connection. Perhaps I was a little unfair. (I also know that many people think it was squid boats lights that the planes were misidentifying. I don't know; I haven't read much about it to have a firm opinion.)

It does seem odd to me, though, for any modern story of UFOs (which most people have thought are just advanced technology) to be linked with a smell that a few centuries ago would have been taken to be evidence of demonic association.

All part of life's interesting oddities.

Kids today

man of lettuce: Kidults

A worrying story over at Man of Lettuce about some teen girls from families with more money than sense.

Imre on the gullible

Fellow travellers' tales | Features | The Australian

Interesting story by Imre Salusinszky on a conference looking at the phenomena of the Australian academic "fellow travellers" who went to the Soviet Union and loved what they saw.

I like this line best:

As for McAuley, Tasmanian critic Cassandra Pybus found his anti-communism such a puzzle in her 1999 book, The Devil and James McAuley that she was forced to put it all down to suppressed homosexual impulses.

Obviously.

An interesting test for hidden dimensions

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - Mini solar system could reveal hidden dimensions

I wonder, do readers like the way I can jump from talking crap (see last post) to theoretical physics?

Anyhow, the story above proposes an slightly odd sounding experiment to test for hidden dimensions. (Build a tiny version of a solar system and run it in space.) Neat.

Toilet humour to start the week

Foreign Correspondent - 04/07/2006: India - Untouchables

For those who missed last week's Foreign Correspondent, the link above is to a transcript of the story on toilets in India. (Or more particularly, about the lack of toilets there.)

Some extracts:

BORMANN: It’s staggering that in a country of one billion people 80 percent don’t have a toilet and most in cities and towns aren’t connected to a sewage system anyway. That’s eight hundred million people going in the open in rivers, under bridges, anywhere they might hope to get some privacy.

The footage showed that indeed there is little privacy there. Not much sign of toilet paper for the poor masses either.

The story showed the undertouchable woman whose job it was to clean out the "toilets" in some houses. These were accessed from an external hatch, with the poor woman covering the poop with some dust, putting it in a bucket, then going a short distance and putting in an open running gutter/drain in the street!

Oddly enough, said a woman from a charity that specifically is all about building toilets:

It’s not that this is a poor man’s problem, in many places people have the money to build houses but they do not think it necessary to create a toilet or to construct a toilet.

I don't mean to sound too impolite, but compared to the rest of the world, it's kinda taking a long time for this idea to catch on , isn't it?

The story also featured an odd man in a toilet museum. His funniest line was:

The day you give a clean toilet to a lady she will never go on the road to do this thing.

I'm pretty sure any man will go for the toilet over using the river, too.

India in many respects sounds a very interesting place to visit. I assume that smell is not one of them, though.

Colour and movement

Islamophobia and The Guardian

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Out of a cycle of ignorance

The link is to a Guardian column by American John Esposito, in which he complains about Western Islamophobia.

I don't have time to double check his take on the recent polling of Muslim nations, but I do recommend the reader's comments following the article for some very strong counterarguments. I like "Ryans" post in particular, which is a bit too long to copy here.

Rats supporting conservatives, again

news @ nature.com-Rats taking cannabis get taste for heroin-Study suggests cannabis-users may be vulnerable to harder drugs.

Here we go again. Nothing terribly conclusive about the above work, but yet again a case of drug research seemingly coming round to validate old fuddy-duddy conservative's long held suspicions about marijuana:

Neuroscientists have found that rats are more likely to get hooked on heroin if they have previously been given cannabis. The studies suggest a biological mechanism — at least in rats — for the much-publicized effect of cannabis as a 'gateway' to harder drugs.

The discovery hints that the brain system that produces pleasurable sensations when exposed to heroin may be 'primed' by earlier exposure to cannabis, say researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who carried out the study.

I note that one site criticises the report, but on some fairly spurious grounds:

But the article did not note that the problem with the “gateway theory” is that the vast majority of cannabis users never try harder drugs. While most illegal drug users start with the most widely available illegal drug — marijuana — most marijuana users start and stop with cannabis. Some 50 percent of high school students try marijuana before graduation, but just eight percent try cocaine, six percent try methamphetamine and less than one percent try heroin. This is why the Institute of Medicine, in a 1999 report on the use of marijuana as medicine, gave no credence to the gateway idea.

In fact, the news@nature report does talk about the role of social issues when you talk of "gateway drug". The point of the study was clearly stated as this:

There has long been a debate about whether exposure to drugs such as nicotine or marijuana might lead to harder habits. Many argue that the most important factors in the equation are social ones: people who get one drug from a dealer are probably more inclined to try another. But researchers are still interested to know whether there is any physiological effect that might additionally predispose users of so-called soft drugs to harder-drug addiction.

Fair enough. Seems to me to not be too much point in being nitpicky about what exactly the "gateway theory" means, if studies do confirm use of cannibis means greater addiction to harder drugs if you try them. (Even if it is only social reasons as to why you have the opportunity to try them.)

UPDATE: Futurepundit's post on this story points out that it should be no surprise. Early alcohol use is a clearly related to increased alcoholism in future too:

In results that echo earlier studies, of those individuals who began drinking before age 14, 47 percent experienced dependence at some point, vs. 9 percent of those who began drinking at age 21 or older. In general, each additional year earlier than 21 that a respondent began to drink, the greater the odds that he or she would develop alcohol dependence at some point in life. While one quarter of all drinkers in the survey started drinking by age 16, nearly half (46 percent) of drinkers who developed alcohol dependence began drinking at age 16 or younger.