Greenaway warning

The Renaissance Man | The Japan Times Online

It had escaped my attention until now, but that director of unbearably pretentious arthouse films, Peter Greenaway, had a new film released late last year.

The Japan Times says it opens this way:

The opening scene of "Nightwatching" sees the painter [Rembrandt] stripped, beaten and screaming, questioning the meaning of art and life. It's a classic Greenaway treatment, for in his films, philosophizing and gore come hand-in-hand.

This has been a public service announcement to any man with a girlfriend interested in arthouse film.

Annabel on copyright

Talk to the hand if you want to use Hewitt's gesture - Opinion - smh.com.au

Annabel Crabb writes amusingly on sport and copyright this morning.

Curry ends political career?

Abe: I flushed career down toilet | The Daily Telegraph

Former Japanese PM Abe has gone into a lot of detail about suffering from ulcerative colitis since he was 17, and how it led to his resignation.

"To mention an indelicate matter, I rushed to the lavatory after having keen abdominal pains and saw the basin all red with tremendous bleeding," he said.

"Bleeding causes slight anaemia. More than anything else, though, you feel depressed as you see fresh blood every time you go to the toilet."

Abe said the illness usually made him "feel the need to relieve my bowels every 30 minutes".

Now that would make cabinet meetings a challenge...

But the heading for this post comes from this part of the story:

Abe said his health deteriorated in late August, when his stomach was upset by local food during his tour of India, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Sounds like it may be the first time a curry or chilli dish has led to a Prime Minister's resignation.

For Indiana Jones fans

Keys to the Kingdom: Entertainment & Culture: vanityfair.com

Vanity Fair has a long article on the upcoming Indiana Jones movie. And a long interview with Spielberg.

The main article notes that the new movie is set in the 1950's, and apart from featuring crystal skulls, Lucas himself suggests that story has more of a science fiction heart than a supernatural one. (There has been speculation that part of the movie is set in the alleged home of recovered UFOs - Area 51.)

This ties in with my long standing idea for Indiana Jones to be tied in with Close Encounters.

If this turns out to be the basis for the movie, I should write to Spielberg and ask for a royalty cheque. (I cannot recall clearly whether I actually posted this idea somewhere years ago in my very early days of using the internet. Let's hope so!)

Of interest

Late Night Live - 10 January 2008 - The Kennedy Brothers

Today I heard most of this repeat broadcast of Phillip Adams talking to David Talbot about his book on the Kennedy brothers.

I'm not entirely sure how much to trust the founder of Salon.com, but some of the information was new to me. For example, I hadn't heard before that a couple of people report that Lyndon Johnson, on Air Force One immediately after JFK's assassination, made a couple of comments to the effect that he feared it was a military coup.

Talbot also says that Robert Kennedy privately believed there was a conspiracy involved, but was waiting to get elected President before he could get to the bottom of it.

Pretty interesting.

But not here...

BBC NEWS | New nuclear plants get go-ahead

Colour me skeptical

Crean vows to act on trade deficit - National - theage.com.au

More Rudd government talk, but with considerable vagueness about the actual cure:

After 68 successive months of trade deficits, Mr Crean said that to get the trade balance back in the black, Australia needed faster growth in exports of services, and sophisticated manufactured goods, which had flagged in the past decade. "It's about investing more in infrastructure and skills, it's about innovation, and it's about having an integrated trade and industry policy approach."

Surely much of this is to do with the globalisation of the manufacture of sophisticated goods, which presumably was not that much of an issue the last time Labor was in power. I can't see it matters how much you skill up the Australian work force in the next 5 years; China is still going to be a cheaper place to make the same stuff, surely.

This will get Lambert going

Iraqi war death toll slashed by three quarters - health - 09 January 2008 - New Scientist

A much larger survey in Iraq than the notorious Lancet one estimates the loss of life at more like 150,000, not 600,000.

Tim Lambert is bound to get agitated over this, but it sounds like his unswerving defence of the Lancet study is now going to get harder.

The Boxing Day incident

The Dilbert Blog: There’s a Name for It

This Boxing Day post at Scott Adams' blog is well worth reading for a laugh.

Super soaker saves the world?

Solar Cells with 60% Efficiency?

Nuclear Engineer Lonnie Johnson, best known for his invention of the super soaker squirt gun, has recently designed a new type of solar energy technology that he says can achieve a conversion efficiency rate of more than 60 percent.

The super soaker had an "inventor"?

Williamstown, Melbourne

On the recent trip to Melbourne, apartment accommodation at a reasonable price was a bit hard to find in the city, and the family and I ended up staying at the old port area Williamstown.

In the late 1980's, I had lived in Melbourne for about 9 months, and although I was not particularly happy with my job and personal circumstances at that time, I was always impressed by Williamstown and rented an apartment there. It has a real English village atmosphere, with small pubs on many corners (some now shut, but many still operating,) gardens with lots of roses and lavender in front of the many century-old cottages, lots of tree lined streets, and a historic waterfront area that is full of sidewalk dining and bars. Some of the facades of the old commercial buildings could do with a bit of sprucing up, but the slightly worn aspect of the area I find part of its appeal.

You can either catch a train or ferry and be in the middle of Melbourne in well under the hour either way (about 30 minutes on the train.) By car it is a very easy drive up and over the Westgate bridge and you are in the middle of town.

On a nice sunny day, the waterside park at Nelson Place is surely one of the nicest places you could be in Melbourne; but if you stay in the area for a couple of days you can also enjoy the simple charm of an evening walk through the streets admiring the houses and their gardens, and stumbling on the occasional building of particular historic significance. You'll likely also likely find yourself near a small pub in which to take refreshment mid-way.

The photos that follow don't do it complete justice: I don't want to include any with the kids here. But if you are visiting Melbourne in nice weather, do yourself a favour and at least have one long day wandering around Williamstown.


Museum minesweeper HMAS Castlemaine (normally open only on weekends, though)


Williamstown marina.


Waterside precinct.


Old hotel (not sure what it is now)


The Williamstown timeball, built in 1852. Its use explained here.



An impressive house.

Bad haiku

As inspired by real life events in Melbourne:

Hat on, Austin gripped,
Hey, that pie was nearly free
More beers next time Tim.

Why I will never bother reading her

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

This passage, from a Time Literary Supplement review of a book about Stein & Toklas, is pretty amusing:

But just how “incomprehensible” is a work like The Making of Americans, Stein’s monumental, and largely unread, chef d’oeuvre? The sympathetic reader, the one who does not send the book windmilling across the room after finishing the first page, has two options. The first – which appears, incidentally, to have been the preferred tactic of Stein’s immediate circle – is simply to go with the flow of words, to luxuriate in a language unchecked by the stuffy conventions of realism or, for that matter, grammar. To use a trope Stein herself favoured, the words become the bold brushstrokes of a thoroughly modernist aesthetic, conveying moods, impressions and suggestions of form in place of narrative coherence or clear ideas. (While acolytes like Bernard Faÿ adored such airy expressionism, Picasso was apparently less indulgent – he was unable to sit through a reading of Stein’s “word portrait” of him, professing to its author that he couldn’t abide abstractions.)

Icky

eMJA: What’s hanging around your neck? Pathogenic bacteria on identity badges and lanyards

After previous studies finding harmful germs on doctors and nurses' neckties, stethoscopes and pens, an Australian study has been done to test ID cards and the lanyards that health care workers often keep them on.

The results were not good, especially for lanyards:

A total of 27 lanyards [out of 71 tested] were identified with pathogenic bacteria, compared with 18 badges. Analysing lanyards and badges as a combined group, seven had methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, 29 had methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA), four had Enterococcus spp and five had aerobic gram-negative bacilli. Lanyards were found to be contaminated with 10 times the median bacterial load per area sampled compared with identity badges. There were no significant differences between nurses and doctors in total median bacterial counts on items carried, but doctors had 4.41 times the risk of carrying MSSA on lanyards

The same edition of the Journal carries a fairly cranky sounding editorial that complains that we don't really need more studies showing where germs in hospitals can be found:

The United Kingdom has just mandated a “bare below the elbows” dress code in its hospitals.5 This means no more coats or even wristwatches, despite a lack of evidence that these items play a major role in transmitting MRSA. The UK Prime Minister has called for better cleaning of wards, in the belief that this is the key to controlling MRSA.5 While there is some merit in these proposals, they are focusing on elements that are minor compared with the most important one — how best to stop MRSA spreading via hands....

We don’t need more environmental-type studies without clinical endpoints. We need studies in which we intervene and show that the interventions reduce the number of people infected with MRSA.

Flaws will be found

Circumcision Doesn't Reduce Sexual Satisfaction And Performance, Says Study Of 4,500 Men

At last, a study that confirms what all sensible people guessed: circumcision is no big deal as far as change in sexual enjoyment for men is concerned.

You can safely bet, however, that the weird cult of the anti-circumcision movements on the Web will find flaws with the study.

Two Japanese stories

Here's a couple of Japan Times articles I didn't get to mention over the last couple of weeks.

First, there is a good article on the brief rise, and dramatic fall, of Christianity in Japan from 1549.

I have a book on the topic which I have never finished. One point the Japan Times article leaves out is that (according to the book) one difficulty in converting the Japanese was due to their distress at the idea that the souls of their deceased ancestors were condemned to Hell forever because they had been unlucky enough to not have heard about Christ before they died.

Anyway, the Japan Times article is a good read. It's interesting to note that one aspect of Japanese culture made the persecution of Christians that much easier:

As persecution intensified, the Jesuits were nonplussed by a Japanese trait they had not previously noticed. "They race to martyrdom," observed Father Organtino, "as if to a festival." The Christian view of suicide as sinful made few inroads against the traditional Japanese view of it as glorious.

The other JT article of note is one that details everything you ever wanted to know about Mt Fuji. This part in particular was new to me:

Fuji is said to be privately owned. Is that really true?

Surprisingly, yes, as far as the peak above the eighth station is concerned.

Fujisan Hongu Sengentaisha, a Shizuoka-based Shinto shrine, possesses an ancient document stating it was granted the parcel in 1609 by samurai warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu, who established the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603.

In 1957, the shrine sued for possession of the tract, citing a 1947 law returning state-held land to Shinto shrines that had previously held it.

In 1974, the Supreme Court upheld the claim, but transfer of the property rights wouldn't occur until 2004. Some national roads and the former meteorological observatory stayed under government jurisdiction.

HIV updates

Over the last week or so, the New York Times had 2 interesting articles about HIV.

One was an opinion piece by AIDS specialist Daniel Halperin, who worries that the large funding provided for HIV treatment in some African countries with relatively low rates of infection would be much better spent on basic health measures such as the provision of clean water. He writes:

As the United States Agency for International Development’s H.I.V. prevention adviser in southern Africa in 2005 and 2006, I visited villages in poor countries like Lesotho, where clinics could not afford to stock basic medicines but often maintained an inventory of expensive AIDS drugs and sophisticated monitoring equipment for their H.I.V. patients. H.I.V.-infected children are offered exemplary treatment, while children suffering from much simpler-to-treat diseases are left untreated, sometimes to die.

It seems to be basically the same point Lomborg has repeatedly made regarding getting priorities right.

The other article goes into detail about the medical complications that ageing HIV sufferers are increasingly facing. The outlook sounds pretty depressing, as they don't even understand what may be causing what illnesses. As I have said before, I would hope that HIV warnings to the young are including details of how the disease and its treatment compromise health in a major way, even if is not the immediate death threat that it used to be.

One foot on the floor, please

Guardian Unlimited: Why movie sex is better off faking it

This post at the Guardian's film blog was inspired by the (apparently) very real looking sex in Ang Lee's new film. The post makes this good argument against the increasingly common appearance of real sex acts in art house "R" rated cinema:

Sex changes in the presence of a camera, because it's no longer the business of the two people involved, but all about the third party - the viewer. What's always been dishonest about the likes of 9 Songs and The Brown Bunny is the slippery appeal to the audience that the sex is somehow scaling new heights of raw and fearless truth - when, in fact, it's just another performance sold as a non-performance, like everything else you see in a film. It's just that, rather than the strange, hairless, sheeny creatures of actual porn, you've got Tony Leung or Chloe Sevigny demonstrating their commitment to their craft. Not only is it all completely bogus, the results are usually far from erotic .... more importantly, they're not even dramatically potent.

In fact, the post reminds me of a general modern misapprehension about sex, perhaps particularly held by women, I suspect, that it is more revealing of true character than other day to day aspects of behaviour.

It is understandable that sex, particularly at the start of a relationship, can have a strong effect on each lover's perception of the other. But what I am questioning is the view held at an intellectual level that sex reveals "true" character.

The fact that the world's worst dictators, and probably a fair proportion of its worst criminals and murderers, have been married or in long standing sexual relationships, would suggest otherwise, wouldn't it? And surely everyone knows someone who ends up with a partner who is of bad or dubious character when not in bed with his or her partner.

There is every reason to suspect that the sex may be fogging the judgement of the partner, not enlightening it.

But do you need to have sex depicted explicitly in a film to realise this is true? Nah. Do you need to see an actor's genitals to understand the motivating role of sex in a character's life? Not at all.

I go further than the author of the post: story telling in modern cinema could be greatly improved if we went back to the almost non-depiction of the actual sex that existed in the cinema of (say) the 50's. Adults still understood when couples were lovers, without having to see them naked. The passionate kiss in the surf made the lust clear enough, didn't it? The sight of the train going into the tunnel at the end of North by Northwest was both funny and about sex. (Although that's not a trick you can repeat more than once, I suppose!) Adults knew that Black Narcissus was largely about repressed sexuality, and hardly a naked nun was to be seen.

The abandonment of the need for any degree of subtlety has worked against the interests of better story telling, and has lead now to the distracting stuff about whose breasts or penis are actually able to be spotted in the latest film.

Is there any spot on the censorship board coming up soon?

First Weird Science post of 2008!

Is time slowing down? - fundamentals - 21 December 2007 - New Scientist

This story, the bulk of which is unfortunately still behind the paywall, appeared in the Christmas edition of New Scientist, and seems to have attracted scant attention. It's certainly a novel idea, though.

Anyone with even a vague interest in astronomy knows that astronomers now believe the universe is currently expanding at an accelerating pace, and the nature of the "dark energy" behind this is the current major puzzle of physics and cosmology.

But, what if it is all an illusion, caused by Time itself slowing down?

What a great idea. Unfortunately, if true, it means that in billions of years the universe freezes.

Ha! And here you thought time stood still when you had to sit through a couple of Merchant Ivory films with your former girlfriend. It was just the universe preparing you for the real deal.

Update: here's a post from the nicely named "Daily Galaxy" blog which summarises what was in the New Scientist article.

I feel sleepy already

Comment is free: Blogging the Qur'an

The Guardian is going to spend a year "blogging the Koran". This opening explanation of what they are going to do acknowledges that it is a difficult book to read.

This came to mind when I recently watched Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for the first time, which led me to re-read the story in the Bible. (I am not sure whether I had ever read this section from beginning to end before.) It's a good story, and made me think about the simple pleasure of narrative that is to be found in many parts of the Old Testament.

As far as I know, there is no extended story telling in the Koran. Certainly, you come up pretty empty handed when you type in "great stories from the Koran" in Google.

Anyway, the first column in The Guardian about their experiment is of cultural interest at least.

It seems a curious feature, however, that good education results in the east asian cultures is sometimes thought to be due to large role of rote learning and increased use of memory that their language requires. However, the common exercise of children memorising an entire book in Muslim cultures does not have the reputation of having the same result.