Wonders and Marvels missed, until now

From somewhere or other on the web, I recently found a link to the esoteric history blog Wonders and Marvels, which describes itself as "A community of curious minds who love history, its odd stories and good reads".

It lives up to that description: it's a great read, and regularly updated too.  How have I not known about it for so long?

Here is one example:  a post about whether the excessive swearing in Deadwood was historically accurate.  The writer, who loved the show, notes that it had the feel of the West down pat, but the swearing was not accurate.  Amusingly, she writes:

It is hard for us today to imagine the shock value of words like damn and hell a century ago. Many contemporaries of Twain censored themselves thus: d—n, dang, dam, dadburn, blank, even text-messagey acronyms like D.O.G. (danged old galoot).

In an illuminating essay entitled Deadwood and the English Language, Brad Benz quotes Nunberg (again) who writes that if the characters in Deadwood had sworn in a manner authentic to the period, they’d sound like Yosemite Sam. This is surely why Milch took the decision to sacrifice historical accuracy on the altar of dramatic license in this one aspect, in order to give us a sense of the barely subdued violence and rebelliousness of the people of Deadwood. I reckoned this meant that today’s F-word was equivalent to olden days’ D-word.

 And further: 

In the foreword of his book The F-Word, Jesse Sheidlower writes that the word f–k wasn’t even printed in the United States until 1926 in a WWI diary. Even then, it was not used as an expletive but rather in its verbal sense, for the act of intercourse.

The only instances of the F-word I have found from the 1860’s are in the Journals of Alfred Doten, where he uses the word in the verbal sense written in a code of his own devising. (The word appears as vcuk, not very opaque.) Doten and Twain were colleagues moving in exactly the same circles, so Twain must have known it. But Doten’s usage confirms that the F-word was NOT used as a swear word back then.

Well, that's odd then.  Certainly by World War 2, at least amongst the British, it seems it was in common use as a swear word.  (I cite Spike Milligan's autobiographies as authority for that.)  I guess I would have to read the book lined above to find out how it came into common use.

Anyway,  there you go:  I can object to the swearing in Deadwood not just on aesthetic grounds, but on the basis that it is historically inaccurate.    Stupid writers.

Lapierre explains

The NRA’s pathetic excuses for opposing universal background checks. - Slate Magazine

I didn't realise that NRA's Lapierre used to support compulsory criminal background checks for gun shows - 14 years ago.  Now, they oppose it.  That makes sense?  No.

Bernard's right

Media coverage of Gillard election date | Crikey

Bernard Keane complains (as did Barrie Cassidy on Insiders on the weekend) that journalists seizing on the announcement of an election date as if it means this is an immediate election campaign are just nonsensical:

...many journalists just don’t seem to have been able to process what has happened regarding the election date. They are convinced we are now in an election campaign — a “record-breaking seven-month election campaign” as The Australian described it this morning or “a marathon 227-day campaign for both leaders” as another Australian columnist called it. That’s by no means News Ltd bias — an ABC journalist declared Australia “set for its longest federal election campaign on record”; it was an “extended election campaign”, Fairfax journalists said. Others settled, a little less disingenuously, for the term “unofficial election campaign”. 

That misconception might be understandable for the UK Telegraph but not for local hacks. One journalist asked the PM on Saturday about a “sort-of faux caretaker principle that applies because of the announcement of the election date so far in advance” (public servants, of course, would love nothing more than to spend the next eight months doing nothing but tweaking their election briefs and surfing the internet).
 
But you can see the appeal: framing everything through an “election campaign” prism makes journalism easier. Election coverage is, at least the way it is normally done now, easier than regular coverage, because it focuses exclusively on politics — who’s up, who’s down, who’s stumbled, who’s made a gaffe, what do the polls say, who has strayed off-message, who will win. It’s an excuse to abandon content in favour of race-calling.

Framing everything within an election narrative means anything unexpected, or unusual, that doesn’t fit the narrative, either gets ignored (the PM’s speech) or treated, reflexively, as a stumble/gaffe/debacle/disaster. Thus the government was said to be in “chaos”, and “disarray”, suffering “body blows”, because two long-planned resignations were announced on the weekend (Nicola Roxon a “body blow”? Really?).

A very dubious claim

Lefty nonsense: When progressives wage war on reason - opinion - 04 February 2013 - New Scientist

I haven't heard of the pair who wrote this opinion piece for New Scientist, but I reckon they're numbskulls.

First they start with a story of a minor but ineffectual environmental program by Democrats (biodegradable utensils for the cafeteria in Congress), then they acknowledge the anti-science credentials of the Right (climate change, stem cell research, creationism).

They then make this claim:

Progressives are just as bad, if not worse. Their ideology is riddled with anti-scientific feel-good fallacies designed to win hearts, not minds. Just like biodegradeable spoons, their policies often crumble in the face of reality and leave behind a big mess. Worse, anyone who questions them is condemned as anti-science.

We have all heard about the Republican war on science; we want to draw attention to the progressive war on reason.....

For example, progressive activists have championed the anti-vaccine movement, confusing parents and causing a public health disaster. They have campaigned against animal research even when it remains necessary, in some cases committing violence against scientists. Instead of embracing technological progress, such as genetically modified crops, progressives have spread fear and misinformation. They have waged war against academics who question their ideology, and they are opposed to sensible reforms in science education.

This is a big, big stretch.   In fact, it's ridiculous.  The anti-vaccine movement is minuscule compared to the number of people on the Right who think climate change is a socialist conspiracy.  Of course anti-vaccine people are a danger to themselves and others, but the harm they can realistically cause society overall (given that I doubt they have really convinced substantial numbers of the dangers of vaccines) is nothing compared to the potential dangers of climate change. 

Animal research?   Seriously, just how big a crisis is it for science that activists push for more and more alternatives to animal testing?   There's an association in America just about Laboratory Animal Science which claims a membership of 12,000, and I recently noted that in New York tens of thousands of lab mice and rats drowned in a university basement when the former hurricane hit.  Sounds like animal testing is under real threat - not.

GM food?   Human biology at the molecular and genetic level, and the imprecise way genes are inserted into food (and from sources which would not arise naturally) make caution about GM reasonable.  The benefits from it are also likely oversold, I reckon (same as with stem cell research, and for similar reasons - it is hard to fully understand what at going on at the cellular level).  

I am not totally against GM research, particularly if it is for increasing the nutritional value of some foods.  But there are clear signs that some major GM work is not well thought through and has economic motives which don't necessarily coincide with environmental health.  The best example - the weed war which was pretty obviously going to be the likely outcome of Roundup tolerant crops.  Recent stories on that are here and here.

I see that these guys have a book to sell on the topic of lefties and anti science.  No wonder they are exaggerating.

A harder rain is gonna fall...

Increases in extreme rainfall linked to global warming

In the most comprehensive review of changes to extreme rainfall ever undertaken, researchers evaluated the association between extreme rainfall and atmospheric temperatures at more than 8000 weather gauging stations around the world.

Lead author Dr Seth Westra said, "The results are that rainfall extremes are increasing on average globally. They show that there is a 7% increase in extreme rainfall intensity for every degree increase in global atmospheric temperature. "Assuming an increase in global average temperature by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century, this could mean very substantial increases in rainfall intensity as a result of climate change."

Dr Westra, a Senior Lecturer with the University of Adelaide's School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering" and member of the Environment Institute, said trends in rainfall extremes were examined over the period from 1900 to 2009 to determine whether they were becoming more intense or occurring more frequently. "The results show that rainfall extremes were increasing over this period, and appear to be linked to the increase in global temperature of nearly a degree which also took place over this time.

So, it seems the impression I've been getting from recent media accounts of rainfall extremes is correct.

Good to know.

Ross explains

Why voters believe the economy is in trouble

I think Ross Gittins' explanation here of the difference between perceptions and reality regarding the Australian economy is accurate.

The other huge perception issue that Labor faces is that the Gillard government has been in continual crisis due to its narrow numbers in Parliament.  In fact, it seems to me that it is only on the asylum seeker issue that it has not been able to achieve what it wanted to legislatively.

Of course, the one perception issue on which people are right is that New South Wales Labor had been rotten for years.  I don't really see why Federal Labor should be punished for that*, but everyone expects they will.

*  just as I don't see that the Federal Liberal Party necessarily deserves to suffer for the Queensland LNP being a dysfunctional wreck for much of the last 10 years, although admittedly not in a way which has financially profited members... 

Dramatic irony and the pro gun lobbyists

OK, I'll admit it:  I'm one of those who is aware that people are supposed to use "irony" incorrectly all the time, but have trouble remembering its proper meaning.  Checking on the web, though, I see this sub-category for its use:

dramatic irony

noun

irony that is inherent in speeches or a situation of a drama and is understood by the audience but not grasped by the characters in the play.

and that seems a good description for what is going on in the gun control debate every time I read about a perfectly law abiding gun owner who is killed by someone in their family (or of their acquaintance) with a legal gun.

The Sandy Hook killings - Mom killed by her son using her rifles, before going on his school shooting spree.  The family in New Mexico killed by their 15 year old son/brother, all with the weapons his parents legally owned.  (And it seems he had intentions of a bigger killing spree, as with Sandy Hook.)  The latest news on the weekend:  relatively famous military sniper Chris Kyle shot on a rifle range by someone he obviously trusted enough to be handling a rifle near him.

Now, not all ex-military figures are against tighter civilian gun control.  But what were Chris Kyle's views?  As shown on this recent interview, it seems he pretty much accepted the right wing/NRA meme machine on gun control right down the line, even to the point of talking about how much more crime is in Australia because of the John Howard gun laws (yeah, sure) and suggesting that everyone having a 30 round magazine is quite reasonable and if they seek to stop that, well, that's just the slippery slope and soon they'll be disarming Americans entirely.  He may have done his military job well, but when it comes to civilian policy, he had no insights of value.

Here's the thing:  the pro-gun lobby in the US up on the stage just don't seem to "get" the fact that the audience (well, the sensible part of it at least) is in on:  when it comes to the big picture, they are actually making their lives more dangerous by being around guns all the time.   This seems to be so well established in the US and yet is completely ignored every time the NRA and gun loving right wing blogs run some story of how a brave law abiding citizen blew away a home intruder.  Never - and I mean never - do they go on to mention the other side of the ledger:  the number of law abiding citizens who were killed or threatened by someone in the family when a dispute escalated because of the availability of guns.  Nor the amount of accidental shootings in homes and suicides.

Mother Jones  has been collecting some counterpoints to the NRA arguments, and I'll copy some of them here: 

Myth #5: Keeping a gun at home makes you safer. Fact-check: Owning a gun has been linked to higher risks of homicide, suicide, and accidental death by gun.
• For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home.
• 43% of homes with guns and kids have at least one unlocked firearm.
• In one experiment, one third of 8-to-12-year-old boys who found a handgun pulled the trigger.

Myth #6: Carrying a gun for self-defense makes you safer. Fact-check: In 2011, nearly 10 times more people were shot and killed in arguments than by civilians trying to stop a crime.
• In one survey, nearly 1% of Americans reported using guns to defend themselves or their property. However, a closer look at their claims found that more than 50% involved using guns in an aggressive manner, such as escalating an argument.
• A Philadelphia study found that the odds of an assault victim being shot were 4.5 times greater if he carried a gun. His odds of being killed were 4.2 times greater.

Myth #7: Guns make women safer. Fact-check: In 2010, nearly 6 times more women were shot by husbands, boyfriends, and ex-partners than murdered by male strangers.
• A woman's chances of being killed by her abuser increase more than 7 times if he has access to a gun.
• One study found that women in states with higher gun ownership rates were 4.9 times more likely to be murdered by a gun than women in states with lower gun ownership rates.

Now, if it was only the gun loving folk who were getting killed by virtue of their being unaware of this (or, more likely, having heard of such studies but refusing to believe them), well that would simply be a case of shaking one's head at their foolishness.

The trouble is, of course, that legal guns go on to kill other people too.  People who don't have a choice.  Like at Sandy Hook.

UPDATE:   Slates notes that maybe - just maybe - the NRA is starting to lose ground when its creepy leader is getting hostile interviews on Fox News:

If the National Rifle Association can’t even count on Fox News for a friendly interview, does that mean there's been a shift in the debate? On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace interviewed National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre and wasn’t shy about calling him out on his arguments. The interview got particularly heated when Wallace brought up the controversial advertisement that criticized President Obama for providing armed security for his daughters but opposing armed guards in all schools, reports Talking Points Memo. (Video after the jump.)

"They also face a threat that most children do not face," Wallace said of Obama's daughters.

"Tell that to the people in Newtown," LaPierre responded.

"You really think that the president's children are the same kind of target as every other school child in America?" Wallace said. "That's ridiculous and you know it, sir."

Hope for some of my readers yet...maybe

The Tablet - Review: The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology

There's quite a good summary of the controversy within the modern Catholic Church regarding its view of the potential for salvation for those outside of the faith.  It starts:

For most of history, Christians thought that the vast majority of people would go to hell. The gate of Heaven is narrow. In the twentieth century, hell fell into disrepute. Christians, including many Catholics, began to think that most people will be saved. God is merciful and loving. Dante would have turned in his grave. He knew who was going to hell and even to which region in hell.

Vatican II does not contain a single reference to hell even when speaking of eschatology. Karl Rahner claimed that the most significant teaching of the council was its “salvation optimism”. Lumen Gentium (LG), the council’s decree on the Church, was the key. It overturned centuries of salvation pessimism: all non-Catholics (which included other Christians, religious non-Christians and non-religious groups such as atheists) could be saved if they were ignorant of the Gospel and they sought God, or the truth, in their conscience. This was a dramatic development of doctrine. Some protested that it was actually discontinuous with previous teachings – and a minority claimed the council invalid. Others have sought to balance this emphasis with what critics have called a neo-Augustinian theology, foreign to the council. The debate continues.  

 This line further down caught my eye:

Bullivant, who teaches theology at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, London, charts atheism’s complexities and types. He claims that the doctrine of invincible ignorance came into full play at the council and finally allowed the Church positively to appraise certain forms of atheism, when before it could only condemn them.

 Heh.  I didn't realise the Church had developed a special doctrine to describe the Catallaxy blog.

One of the books reviewed in the post argues that the LG decree has been read too often without its qualifications:

They ignore the first chapter of Romans, which is pessimistic. They ignore the footnote referring to Aquinas, which indicates that this salvation is only a “possibility”, not a reality. LG 16 ends with the necessity of missionary work and paragraph 17 develops that theme as an introduction to the decree on missionary activity, Ad Gentes.

That “rather often” suggests a salvation pessimism that was accepted by the Fathers and is not part of a neo-Augustinian plot after the council. 

 It seems to me that a large part of the problem here is that (as far as I know) the Catholic Church has no detailed position regarding what goes after death.   (With good reason, too, given the paucity of detail on the matter in all of the Bible.)  If you assume that most people go to Purgatory, and from there retain the possibility of changing and accepting things they have rejected in life, then that allows a way for ultimate salvation of nearly everyone, doesn't it?   I wonder what atheists would do in Purgatory:  keep interpreting the apparent evidence of their after-death survival in a science fiction way, perhaps?

Old stories and new ideas

Time flies, doesn't it?  I see now that it was back in June 2010 that I first mentioned my wife bringing home some Twilight Zone (the original TV series) DVDs from the Council library on the hunch that I liked the show.  I did, and watched a few episodes with my kids (my son in particular.)

Well, my wife recently repeated the exercise, with a different set of DVDs, and my son remains quite keen on watching it with me.  It pleases me that he likes it, given that I think it still stands up as intelligent entertainment with a substantially more literary aspect to it than what passes for most family friendly TV entertainment today.  Reading the Wikipedia article about the franchise,  I see how important Rod Serling was, not just as producer, but as a writer for the show.   Apparently Warner Brothers still has the rights to 92 episodes written by him, and Leonardo DiCaprio has expressed interest in making a full length movie from one or other of them. By co-incidence, my son also recently saw for the first time the original Planet of the Apes movie, and I spotted Rod Serling as a co-writer of it.  The Wikipedia account of his life indicates he was a pretty interesting character. 

(By the way, another old show, of a decidedly different character, which my son and I have been watching together over summer are the repeats of Red Dwarf on ABC2.  I had not realised how old the original series is - it started in 1988.  I always thought the show was pretty good in a cheerfully low brow science fiction comedy way, and I was annoyed that the new series shown by the ABC just before Christmas seemed to arrive with no fanfare at all, so I missed some of it.  Anyway, happily, my son finds the old series very entertaining.)

But back to the main point:  I have nearly always enjoyed anthology TV series.  I am not sure when TZ was shown on Australian TV; as the first series was made in 1959, it is possible they aired before I was a TV viewer.  In fact, there may not even have been a TV in the house at the time.  (Talk about making me feel old, telling you this!)  Broadcasts in magnificent black and white only started in Brisbane in about 1959,  and my mother has told me that my father resisted getting a TV initially.   Her ordering one without prior approval from the (now long defunct) Waltons Department store caused a bit of a scene at home, with Dad telling her that he would tell the delivery man to take it back.   He didn't live up to the threat, however; the delivery went smoothly, quickly followed by my father becoming the most dedicated television viewer in the household. 

So, the first anthology series I can recall is The Outer Limits, which had a more consistently science fiction bent than TZ.  While I remember it creeping me out quite a bit, no particular story sticks in my mind from my childhood viewing.

Fast forward to the 1980's TV revival of Twilight Zone, which I see now followed the movie (which itself was really only worth watching for the brilliant remake of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.)   But I remember enjoying much of the revived TV series.  The 1980's then also brought us Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories, some of which really were excellent, even if the series had a tendency to indulge too often in whimsy.

All in all, I miss such series, and presume that it is a combination of expense and the difficulty of coming up with consistently good and novel stories which prevents them from ever lasting more than a few seasons at a time.

Speaking of story ideas, I recently stumbled across Writepop, which claims it has more than 1,000 story ideas for science fiction which anyone is welcome to use.   While there are only one or two lines that explain the premise, if I were a student who had a fiction writing assignment, I think I would find this a very useful starting point. (A recent half baked idea of mine featuring time travel and the Bible does not seem to have been covered before, I am happy to say.  Now I only need another 91 ideas to match Serling.)

I see that the site io9, which I think I have only ever briefly seen before, has many articles on writing science fiction, and seems to be a generally interesting place to spend time.   It's good to find new corners of the web for a change.

The (very) late review of Brave (and animation talk generally)

The kids and I never got around to seeing Brave at the cinema, but we watched it at home last night on DVD.

What a seriously flawed movie for Pixar.

The first problem is a technical one:  it could just be our LCD TV is a particularly bad one for low light, but a movie like this which takes place about 2/3 at night (and then often inside a gloomy castle) is hard to enjoy at home without a lot of attempts at re-adjusting contrast and brightness. In fact, I never achieved a satisfactory adjustment.    I suspect a lot of people trying to watch it at home would find this.  The one thing that is really visually eye-catching, though, (when you can see it) is the main character's red hair.  It moves and bounces so realistically that it almost gives the impression of a doll being filmed rather than watching a purely animated effect.

But the big problem is the story.  To my mind, it makes no emotional sense at all.  To summarise:  a well intentioned Queen does the usual thing:  wants to find a husband for her strong headed daughter via an arranged marriage from competing clans.  Mother and daughter argue; daughter is led by magic lights to witch who gives her a magic pie to "change her mother".  Said pie turns mother into a bear.  (?  Why a bear in a fake medieval Scotland?)  Mother and daughter spend a night learning how to get to know each other better - as daughter and bear.  Mother (still as a bear) communicates that she was wrong; daughter makes speech about breaking tradition and everyone "writes their own story".  A bit more to do about the King not realising his wife is a bear, and then bear turns back into mother. Daughter and parents continue living together.

There's a little more to it than that, which I won't bother explaining, but really, this story just doesn't work.  In Brother Bear (a much better Disney film involving people transforming into animals) the "victim" of the transformation had a lesson to learn, and the whole idea of people being able to change into an animal had some resonance in the Inuit tribal setting.   It just doesn't seem to fit into any traditions of Scottish folklore that I've heard about (not that I'm any expert on that, and maybe someone will prove me wrong.)  But what's more - it just didn't seem fair that it was the mother alone who had to undergo the trial in order to learn a lesson.  

Of course it's not the first time that Disney animation has been thematically about a strong daughter finding her own way in life; but this daughter never struck me as a particularly sympathetic character.  Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian probably summed it up well:

Now, in some respects, it is interesting and unusual not to have a conventional love interest, but what we are offered instead is something oddly regressive, binding Merida into the family unit just when she was making that bid for independent adulthood, and we don't learn anything very interesting about Merida or her mum. There was a time when Pixar movies worked gloriously for adults, teens, tweens, small kids, everyone; this one is unsatisfying for all ages.

Interestingly, the Guardian also had a historian briefly talk about the film.  From this, I learnt that some aspects of design in it were more realistic than I expected, but also that bears were not around in Scotland since prehistoric times. 

Now that I've finished complaining about that bit of animation, I saw Rise of the Guardians with the kids over the holidays, and it was a much better experience.   Although it was odd in parts (why the Easter rabbit should be furry version of Crocodile Dundee is beyond me), but there were sequences in the film that did have that emotional effect that was missing in Brave - the explanation of the origin of Jack Frost in particular.   Overall, the movie worked a treat with the audience I was with, even though it is probably fair to call it a more kids-centric film than many others made by Pixar or Dreamworks films.   I see that it only made $100,000,000 in the US (although twice that amount overseas.)  This really counts as under-performing for its quality, and if you are in the market for buying a DVD for some kid you know, I can guarantee this one would please them.  (Not that it is out yet, I expect.)  

It is amazing in its own way, isn't it, when moving illustrations (together with the musical cues, I suppose) can move us emotionally.  As I have said before,  I would be very thrilled to be part of a team that made a successful animated film.

And finally, quite a few places have been putting up this Disney Oscar nominated short Paperman and praising it.  I think it is pretty good, and again shows the sort of magical realism story that is done so well by the medium:

In Utah news

Well, that's kinda amusing.  When following someone's link to the Salt Lake Tribunal on an unrelated matter, I found that it must be one of the few news websites in the world that has a permanent story category heading for "Polygamy". 

A slight improvement for witches

More curbs on Saudi religious police powers | GulfNews.com

Riyadh: Saudi Arabia has set new limitations on the powers of its notorious religious police, charged with ensuring compliance with Islamic morality but often accused of abuses, its chief said on Tuesday.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice “once had much expanded powers, but with the new system... some of these powers, such as interrogating suspects and pressing charges,” will be restricted to the police and public prosecution, Shaikh Abdul Latif Abdel Aziz Al Shaikh told AFP.

The religious police may still arrest those carrying out “flagrant offences such as harassing women, consuming alcohol and drugs, blackmail and the practice of witchcraft,” Shaikh said of the new law approved by the cabinet.

However, the cases of such people will be referred to the police and brought to justice, as the religious police will no longer have the right to determine charges against them, he said.

Looking back at 50's science fiction movies

Nuclear monster movies: Sci-fi films in the 1950s were terrifying escapism. - Slate Magazine

Not a bad review of the themes within the genre here.   A pity they don't mention Earth Versus the Flying Saucers - one of my favourites.

I like the section headed "That women are scary" in particular.   (It reminds me of one of the best laughs in Monsters Vs Aliens.)

It was probably carrying kimchi and a Samsung smart phone

South Korea launches satellite to join global space club : Nature News Blog

Bedrooms and penicillin

Syphilis and the Sexual Revolution � First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

Hadn't heard this theory before:

It may have been penicillin, not the Pill, that triggered the sexual revolution, a new study indicates. Hypothesizing that “a decrease in the cost of syphilis due to penicillin [which, in 1943, was found to treat syphilis effectively] spurred an increase in risky non-traditional sex,” the Emory University economist Andrew Francis discovered evidence that “the era of modern sexuality originated in the mid to late 1950s,” prior to the debut of oral contraceptive pills in 1960. (Full PDF here.)

How much do we really know with any accuracy about sexual behaviour on the big scale in previous centuries, though?   I mean, we know there were a heap of prostitutes in Victorian London, but who was their typical customer, and what was happening in the rural areas in the meantime?   You can say the same about any similar period, really:  we may know from both fiction and non fiction written at the time that certain societies may have been more libertine about certain things for certain periods, but without modern methods of crunching numbers,  it's surely always very hard to be certain about population wide behaviours.

More about marriage and kids

Don't mention the M-word - The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Jeremy Sammut suspects that academics in Australia are too devoted to supporting "family diversity" to come out and admit that marriage has the best outcome for kids, and single parenthood the worst.

I suspect that he may be right.

I have complained about this before:  if governments want to promote good outcomes for kids, they should really be promoting marriage.  Not de facto relationships.  Unfortunately, as the government saves money by treating welfare recipients living together as if they were a married couple, it seems hard to find a way for the government to encourage people into marriage via how benefits work.

And of course, if they did find a way to do this, we would go through the same boring "but why are you discriminating against us just because we don't have a piece of paper:  are you doubting we love each other?" arguments that we got in the 1970's when recognition of de facto relationships really got a kick along.  

I wonder if anyone really has come up with plausible ways government can encourage marriage.

The Prime Minister getting married to her long term partner would, of course, be a good first step!

Update:  someone in the Atlantic warns against promoting marriage by painting too rosy a picture about it.  Fair enough too.

Simplified forecasts for global temperature

Global Temperature Anomaly Forecasts, January 2013 | Climate Abyss | a Chron.com blog

Last year, climatologist John Nielson-Gammon came up with a sort of simplified graphical way of looking at the global temperature trends, and made some predictions from it.

It only works if there is an underlying global warming, and he's expanded it now to update his predictions.

The method looks pretty convincing, and (so far) works.

I meant to post about it back then when he came up with this, but I don't think I did.  It is well worth looking at.

David Byrne admiration post (again)

I see that David Byrne was in Australia a couple of weeks ago for a few shows with St Vincent, a nice young woman with whom he did his most recent musical collaboration.  They didn't come to Brisbane, and I didn't care too much for a couple of the songs I briefly heard on the 'net, but I see they still got good reviews.  Actually, as long as he throws a few Talking Heads songs into any show, I think he will always get admiring reviews:  there just seems to be an enormous well of public affection towards that back catalogue from everyone in the age range of 25 to 65.  (With good reason, I might add.)

But the main reason for the post is to link to the great series of posts he has put up on his journal following his visit.

I've recommended this before:  he is a great writer with eclectic interests, and whether he's covering his visit to MONA in Hobart, watching Spanish experimental theatre doing Verdi at the Sydney Opera House, eating a Moreton Bay bug and (in particular) his long account of the eccentric interests of  Percy Grainger, he is always a great pleasure to read.  

I think I read he is 60 now, but that charisma and strong voice is still there.   I shouldn't be embarrassed about finding him so appealing - just read the comments after nearly any Youtube video and you can tell how much people like him.   

So, to end my annual renewal of devotion to Mr Byrne, a couple of videos.   First, a video of one of the songs he did with St Vincent which I only found tonight and don't mind at all.  It shows him making the odd moves which people like (even though black and white makes him look older):



And secondly, just a short interview where he talks a bit about Talking Heads and how he views collaboration:



And finally - no, seriously, this time - his book published last year "How Music Works" sounds interesting and had some enthusiastic reviews too.

So much for self defence and guns

I haven't looked at the links provided, but I expect this is quite right:

IWF's Gayle Trotter testified at today's Senate hearing on gun safety, and unsurprisingly claimed that guns make women safer. She apparently seems to believe most violence against women resembles Buffy the Vampire Slayer facing down a gang of vampires: 

“Guns make women safer,” Trotter argued, because they eliminate the advantage violent criminals might have in size and strength. “Using a firearm with a magazine holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, a woman would have a fighting chance even against multiple attackers.”

The conservative claim, made by Trotter, that guns are an "equalizer" is about as serious a misrepresentation as you can muster when it comes to violence against women. Most violence against women is perpetrated by men the victim knows in situations that are intimate or social, where guns aren't usually out. If someone during a domestic violence incident scrambles for the gun, it's rarely going to be the person who doesn't want this situation to get more violent....

The fact of the matter is that more guns put women in danger. The Harvard Injury Control Research Center has found that states with more guns have more female violent deaths. Their research also found that batterers who owned guns liked to use them to scare and control their victims, and would often use the gun to threaten the victim, threaten her pets or loved ones, clean them menacingly during arguments, or even fire them to scare her. The Violence Policy Center's research showed that in 1998, the year they studied, 83 women were killed by an intimate partner for every woman who used a gun in self-defense. Futures Without Violence compiled the statistics and found that guns generally make domestic violence worse, both by increasing the likelihood of murder and also by creating situations where abuse is more violent, controlling, and traumatic.

People convicted of domestic violence aren't allowed to buy guns, a sensible reaction to the realities of domestic violence and guns. Unfortunately, the private sale loophole makes it easy enough for a man who wants to stalk or control a woman to get the weapon to do so. If Trotter were truly concerned about preventing violence against women, she would be demanding an immediate closure of this loophole that allows batterers to avoid background checks when trying to buy guns. But she's too busy imagining that women might have to fend off the zombie apocalypse to worry about the real dangers that ordinary women face in this country every day. 

As seen on Baden-Powell's bookshelf

This refers back to a 2004 Christopher Hitchens article on the "mildly Fascist" Baden-Powell.  If I had read it before, I had forgotten this bit:

If Baden-Powell had had his way, the Boy Scouts might have formed close ties with the Hitler Youth. In 1937, he told the Scouts' international commissioner that the Nazis were "most anxious that the Scouts should come into closer touch with the youth movement in Germany." Baden-Powell met with the German ambassador in London and was invited to meet the Führer himself, though the war prevented him from visiting the Third Reich. But he continued to admire Hitler's values, writing in a 1939 diary entry that Mein Kampf was "a wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc."

As Hitchens reports, Baden-Powell also seemed to tacitly approve of the Nazi attitude toward homosexuality. When the head of his international bureau told him that a German scout leader had been sent to a concentration camp, Baden-Powell dismissed it by saying the scoutmaster had been taken away for "homosexual tendencies."

I know that the scout movement still contains some learning about their founder's life and good deeds.  They seem to skip over what was on his bookshelf, though.