Furry friends for science

Animals in research: mice

There's quite an interesting article here at The Conversation regarding the extensive use of mice in scientific research.

I learnt that there is a sperm bank for mice in Australia.  You can visit the website here.

I wonder if they have tiny magazines available for use by the donors....

We believe (no we don't)

Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald notes that last week in Parliament, a motion was passed with no dissent on climate change:

The Parliament was debating a motion put by NSW independent Rob Oakeshott to try to clear that up: "That this House expresses full confidence in the work of Australia's science community and confirms that it believes that man-made climate change is not a conspiracy or a con, but a real and serious threat to Australia if left unaddressed".

Why did Oakeshott think it necessary? "I thought it was important to get everyone on the record. Some of the Coalition members run around the country playing to an audience of conspiracy theorists and deniers."

The record does show that about a quarter of the Coalition's federal MPs have, at some point, expressed disbelief or outright denial that man-made climate change is real.... 

But when the Oakeshott motion was put to the House, the sceptics were nowhere to be seen. No one spoke against it in the bright glare of full national scrutiny: "We accept the science, we accept the targets and we accept the need for a market mechanism; we just happen to clearly, absolutely, fundamentally disagree over the choice of those mechanisms," Coalition spokesman Greg Hunt said. Prime among them, the carbon tax.

And when it came to the vote, the motion was carried on the voices, without dissent. This is taken as a unanimous vote. It "positions the deniers and the conspiracy theorists where they should be - on the fringe," Oakeshott says.

Here's what's missing from Hartcher's column.  From Michelle Grattan last week:

The Nats are having their jamboree, AKA federal council, in Canberra tomorrow, as the party juggles trying to keep its own voice while singing in the Abbott choir.

A morning highlight was to have been an address by climate sceptic professor Ian Plimer, sponsored by a Gina Rinehart company, of which Plimer is a director. But now his place is set to be taken by another Gina man, CEO of Hancock Prospecting, Tad Watroba, who earlier thought he couldn’t make the function. ....
The fact Plimer was on the program to speak says heaps – the Nationals were not afraid of the signals it might send, despite Abbott trying to ensure the argument about climate change itself, as distinct from the carbon tax as a way of dealing with it, doesn’t become an issue. Can anyone imagine the Liberal federal council having a climate sceptic as a featured speaker?

Two bits of physics

There are a couple of interesting posts out there about physics:

1.  Lee Smolin is the subject of a short article (including a video) about his new book summarised as follows:

Time is real, the laws of physics can change and our universe could be involved in a cosmic natural selection process in which new universes are born from black holes, renowned physicist and author Lee Smolin said in a talk at the Institute of Physics on 22 May.

 His views are contrary to the widely-accepted model of the universe in which time is an illusion and the laws of physics are fixed, as held by Einstein and many contemporary physicists as well as some ancient philosophers, Prof. Smolin said. Acknowledging that his statements were provocative, he explained how he had come to change his mind about the nature of reality and had moved away from the idea that the assumptions that apply to observations in a laboratory can be extrapolated to the whole universe. The debate had sometimes taken a metaphysical turn, he said, in which the idea that time is not real had led some to conclude that everything that humans value – such as free will, imagination and agency – is also an illusion. "Is it any wonder that so many people don't buy science? This is what is at stake," he said.

2.   Bee at Backreaction talks about the multiverse, inflation and cyclic models.  A bit technical but worth it.

She also reviewed Lee Smolin's book the subject of the point 1, and did not care for it.  Physicists, I don't know.

The trouble with Chris

Christopher Pyne has, it seems to me, made it pretty clear in the last 12 months that he tells tactical lies if he thinks he will get away with it.

There are now three examples which indicate his lack of close intimacy with forthright truthfulness:

1.   His attempts to distance himself from the James Ashby complaint about Peter Slipper was full of denials which were proved completely wrong; and the "oh I forgot about that" excuses were just not credible.

2.   The explanation attempted as to why that Labor MP was given a pair (that her request had not specified it was her sick child she wanted to visit) was shown to be wrong by reporters as soon as it said it:

Mr Pyne said the leave was requested on Monday for Ms Rowland to be with a "ill family member"  but did not specify it was her child.

"Warren Entsch quite rightly thought … that he would like further information," he said.
When it was put to Mr Pyne by reporters that the letter from Ms Rowland to Mr Entsch clearly stated the leave was to be with her child he said he would be asking further questions.

"I might," he said.

"That’s not the information that I have been provided by the chief whip," he said.

Given the brazenness that would have to be assumed of this attempted excuse if he knew it was a lie, maybe I should give him the benefit of the doubt?  Well perhaps, but he does have pretty brazen form on the Ashby matter, and then we have this latest item just from this last week.

3.  Pyne was on breakfast TV (can't find a link, but it was shown on Insiders this morning) talking about a letter he had written to the Independents asking if they would support a no confidence motion in the government.  Trouble was, the letter had been given to The Australia, but was sent via email that arrived an hour or so after the TV appearance.   He was challenged by Albanese that the Independents had not received such a letter; Pyne made out that they had definitely been sent.

Once again, he has a set up whereby he can (I suppose) blame someone else for his misleading statements.

Even allowing for routine slipperiness from politicians, I just do not trust the guy.  I predict that, assuming an Abbott election win in September, Pyne will be the first Minister to come unstuck in some scandal involving dishonesty.

Recipes noted

Excuse me while I note some recent successful Saturday night recipes I've used in the last month, for my future reference:

* Salmon pilau:   I can't be bothered re-typing this, so I will scan it from my very old book of canned fish recipes.  (It will serve me well in the coming climate apocalypse.)  You don't really have to use Ally brand salmon, honest.  It went over pretty well with the family.  Perhaps needs a side salad too, though:

*  Smoked salmon pasta:

Sort of made this up myself:

Sauté a large finely slice leek in some olive oil til soft; throw in some diced red capsicum for a while too, and some snow peas or something else green at the end.  Pour in most of a can of evaporated milk, and a 185 g packet of hot smoke salmon and bring to boil and let reduce a bit.   Pour over a packet of cooked pasta.   Delicious.

Hot smoked salmon is the key here, but it is become more and more popular in supermarkets now.  (I don't think you used to see it at all in the supermarket until a couple of years ago, but maybe I just wasn't looking.)   Your normal smoked salmon goes too oily in flavour when heated in pasta. 

Served four easily.

*   Ham hock with spiced cabbage:  I really liked this recipe, but the kids were only so-so about eating apple with cabbage and ham.  As even my wife was non committal in her enthusiasm level, I may never get to cook it again.  I may have to start cooking for strangers, preferably very hungry ones.

When they can get it down to 10 minutes, I'll start

Forget the gym: Just 12 minutes' exercise a week is enough to stay fit, says study

(Pretty extraordinary, if 3, four minute bouts of exercise a week can help, though.)

More detail on a well known problem

BBC News - Radiation poses manned Mars mission dilemma

I keep saying Mars is not that more attractive a place to be than the Moon (assuming there is at least some water on the Moon.)   In fact, even if there isn't water on the Moon at suitable locations, why not crash an icy asteroid onto it?  If you can find one, I suppose.

The Hidden Shyamalan and the Glitter Cannon Baz

Well, this is amusing.   The LA Times has a story about how M. Night Shyamalan's involvement as director and co-writer of the new Will Smith science fiction movie After Earth has been completely ignored in all of the advertisements.    It has been fun over the years watching the increasingly dire reviews for Shyamalan's films, but it's almost getting sad when he can make a movie and the studio tries to hide his involvement.

And guess what:  the new movie is getting pretty bad reviews anyway.  Maybe not quite as dire as some of his past ones, but it still sounds like a movie that is not going to to do well.  

As for the new The Great Gatsby:  I love to hate Baz Luhrmann, even though I don't see his movies either.   Gatsby has had mixed reviews, but one very savage one which I imagine would reflect my sensibilities is to be found in Crikey.   Here's how it ends:

If you own a copy of The Great Gatsby, you don’t need to cough up hard-earned to see Luhrmann’s movie. The experience can be replicated quite easily at home.

Here’s what you do. Play hip hop loudly. Retrieve the book from your shelf and douse it with glitter. Get a (preferably gold painted) hammer and smash it repeatedly. Turn the music up louder. Throw on more glitter. Do it again. Do it harder. Do it faster. And don’t, whatever you do, pause to consider what the author of the book might think of the grisly, glittering mess around you.

Update:  Will Smith and his son are said to have given a very peculiar interview as part of the publicity for this movie.  (There also appears to be a Scientologist connection in the family, which I hadn't heard before.  Not that that worries me - I enjoy Tom Cruise movies nonetheless.) 

Infrastructure for what?

Is microeconomic reform on its way back? - The Drum - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Alan Kohler has been getting some inside gossip about what the Coalition is looking at doing in terms of microeconomic reform.  It gives a good summary of how we got to where we are, but as for future plans, this is the core:

The National Competition Council, which came out of the Hilmer reforms, still exists but it is no longer the barnstorming body it was under Graeme Samuel, when it critically examined 2,500 pieces of legislation in a few years and doled out money to state governments for privatisation and other reforms.

As I understand it, the Coalition will re-energise the NCC and offer to return company tax receipts from newly privatised state enterprises for 10 years.

This has been a particular issue for the Queensland Government in thinking about the privatisation of its electricity assets, adding to the difficult politics of it. The Labor Government in Canberra has so far refused to consider donating any tax receipts from those businesses back to the state once they are privatised. A Coalition Government will offer to do it for 10 years.

On infrastructure, I understand the Coalition is looking at several models, including some form of Government-guaranteed infrastructure bonds.

I have a few questions:

1.  privatising electricity seems to have been a fetish of right wing reform for some time, but what is the evidence that it has substantially helped those states which have already followed that path, and hindered those that haven't?  

2.  Infrastructure for what?   Martin Ferguson said mining represents 60% of export income, and it would seem everyone expects that to decrease.   Mining obviously needs specialised infrastructure, but if the growth in that is slowing, where are the big infrastructure projects that are identified as helping the economy?  (Apart from your generic things like improvements to roads and highways:  I guess that will always have some advantage to an economy, but not dramatically.)   I am particularly interested in infrastructure that will help export markets.   Are agricultural exports particularly hindered by anything at the moment? 

3.  If you want to talk dams, and in particular dams in the North, where are they going to go?   Why isn't the Ord River project taken as a definitive warning that it is not a case of "build it and they will come"?   And wasn't there some body that looked at Northern development years ago and concluded that the quality of soil and geographic restrictions on where you can dam in the north meant it wasn't really viable?  (Update:  here's one report from 2009 detailing the issues with northern agricultural development with irrigation.  I haven't read it carefully, but the conclusion does not sound very promising.)

4.  It does concern me that "niche market" ideas that Australia could develop and have started to develop in the last decade or so seem to be much more subject to rapid  fluctuations in demand and economic conditions than mining.   For example, we are supposed to be pretty good at higher education in the region, but if the economy tanks for a few years, those overseas students dry up very quickly.   Agriculture is at the whim of the weather and will boom in some periods, and then struggle badly in droughts; and in all likelihood, climate change is going to exacerbate the extremes.   Film production goes well for some years, but is very much at the whim of the strength of the Australian dollar and the level of government assistance (as well as the government assistance other countries give.)   Any industry which is essentially done using computers, the internet or telecommunications is very easily moved to any cheaper country where English is commonly used.   It is a worry that manufacturing is so much at the whim of the dollar.    I guess I just feel concerned about how you ensure that niche market ideas can avoid all these pitfalls.

Update:  Jessica Irvine talked about infrastructure a couple of days ago - but it still strikes me as kind of vague: 

We need something bigger, like a new boom in road, rail and public transport construction. ...

Australia needs an independent agency, on par with the Reserve Bank, with the power to decide infrastructure priorities.

Labor, to its credit, invented Infrastructure Australia. But it is hamstrung in important ways. It can only provide a cost-benefit analysis of projects submitted by governments. It can’t make recommendations on other projects, such as a second Sydney airport for example.

It consists of 12 board members, chaired by Sir Rod Eddington and including the Treasury Secretary, Martin Parkinson, but its support agency, the Office of the Infrastructure Co-ordinator, is run on a shoestring.

According to IA estimates, Australian governments have about $100 billion in assets that could be sold, like electricity, utilities, gas, to fund important infrastructure investments. Even a small portion of that would represent significant seed funding for a beefed-up national infrastructure agency.

Such an agency could, like any other business, have the ability to borrow to fund important work. Investors could purchase longer term (20-year or 30-year) bonds to fund its work.

Unfair competition

GM 'hybrid' fish pose threat to natural populations, scientists warn | Environment | guardian.co.uk

The offspring of genetically modified salmon and wild brown trout are even faster growing and more competitive than either of their parents, a new study has revealed, increasing fears that GM animals escaping into the wild could harm natural populations.

The aggressive hybrids suppressed the growth of GM salmon by 82% and wild salmon by 54% when all competed for food in a simulated stream.

 I am unconvinced there is a real need to be genetically modifying fish just to get them to grow faster. 

Stay away from the window

I was struck by lightning yesterday—and boy am I sore | Ars Technica

A fascinating first hand account here of being struck by lightning inside a house, through a window.  (He was sitting pretty much beside the window, it would seem.  Have a watch of the video too.)

I always shut windows during electrical storms.   People think I am a bit obsessive about it.  It is, in fact, simply a reasonable precaution.   

All about emergency doors on planes

Airline emergency exit doors: Who unlocks exit doors in an emergency? - Slate Magazine

Interesting.

But includes most chronic set of right wing whingers

Australia Tops 'Better Life' List - WSJ.com

From the article:

A fading mining boom may be taking the gloss off Australia's resource-rich economy but the country has retained the title of happiest industrialized nation in the world.

That's according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Better Life Index, which ranked the world's developed economies on criteria such as jobs, income, environment and health...

The OECD survey of 34 industrialized nations didn't award an overall top ranking. But if each of the 11 categories in the survey is given equal weight, Australia's cumulative rank rises to No. 1, according to the OECD website.

Obviously, the OECD survery does not include a category for "most chronic set of Right wing whingers who are convinced the country is in an economic and social disaster when it isn't", because that would have brought the overall rating down.  

Two things in the survey surprise me:

While the OECD survey found that Australians rank their life-satisfaction at 7.2 out of 10, higher than the average of 6.6, the reading is below levels recorded in Mexico, Norway and neighboring New Zealand.

What makes Mexicans so happy?  The image of the country we have now is one of economic stagnation and extreme danger from the drug trade criminals.   In fact, what makes New Zealander's happy?  A large number want to live here.

And the other thing, more on the upside:

While locals complain of living costs, Australian households on average spend 19% of their disposable income on keeping a roof over their heads, below the OECD's average of 21%. And 85% of Australian respondents said they were in good health, well above the survey average of 69%.

Our housing costs are not as expensive as everyone seems to think?  That's a surprise.   (And the health figures probably have something to do with universal health care, one suspects.   The Tea Party inspired nutters of Catallaxy like to call Medicare "socialism" and think it should be abolished.)

Chew chew

Excerpt of Mary Roach’s Gulp: How many times should you chew a bite of food? - Slate Magazine

I missed this article from Slate last month, all about "the great chewing fad" of the early 20th century.  

I had heard something about this before, but did not appreciate the full extent of the theory:

Fletcherism held a good deal of intuitive appeal. Fletcher believed—decided, really—that by chewing each mouthful of food until it liquefies, the eater could absorb more or less double the amount of vitamins and other nutrients. “Half the food commonly consumed is sufficient for man,” he stated in a letter in 1901. Not only was this economical—Fletcher estimated that the United States could save half a million dollars a day by Fletcherizing—it was healthier, or so he maintained. By delivering heaps of poorly chewed food to the intestine, Fletcher wrote, we overtax the gut and pollute the cells with the by-products of “putrid bacterial decomposition.”

Uh-oh.  Did someone test the "nicer by-products" idea.  Yes indeed: 

Practitioners of Fletcher’s hyperefficient chewing regimen, he wrote, should produce one-tenth the bodily waste considered normal in the health and hygiene texts of his day. And the waste was of a superior quality—as demonstrated by an unnamed “literary test subject” who, in July 1903, while living in a hotel in Washington, D.C., subsisted on a glass of milk and four Fletcherized corn muffins a day. It was a maximally efficient scenario. At the end of eight days, he had produced 64,000 words and just one bowel movement.

OK, the next section is the, um, highlight of the article:

“Squatting upon the floor of the room, without any perceptible effort he passed into the hollow of his hand the contents of the rectum,” wrote the anonymous writer’s physician in a letter printed in one of Fletcher’s books. “The excreta were in the form of nearly round balls,” and left no stain on the hand. “There was no more odour to it than there is to a hot biscuit.” So impressive, so clean, was the man’s residue that his physician was inspired to set it aside as a model to aspire to. Fletcher adds in a footnote that “similar [dried] specimens have been kept for five years without change,” hopefully at a safe distance from the biscuits.

 Heh.
 

Just hand over the paper to the IPA

I find it hard to envisage how the Australian newspaper could possibly be more intensely unbalanced that it has been in the last couple of months.

Today, for example, the opinion pieces are by Judith Sloan (right wing economist and Catallaxy blogger whose contributions have become increasingly light weight and pejorative, and who distrusts any economist or public servant who believes in climate change); Arthur Sinnodinos (Coaltion Senator, even though a relatively moderate one); Cassandra Wilkinson (former Labor adviser who seems to have re-invented herself as a pro-small government, culture war critic of Labor); Nick Cater [Murdoch journalist who has just written a book promoted by the IPA that seeks to re-establish a whole "culture war" reinterpretation of the last decade or so of Australian politics (when I reckon the culture war had became pretty irrelevant during the term of the Howard government.)]

I mean, honestly:  why doesn't Murdoch just hand over the editorship to John Roskam of the IPA and be done with?

Some Republicans get it...

Bob Dole: Ronald Reagan wouldn't make it in today’s Republican Party.

Former Senate majority leader Bob Dole doesn’t think he could make it in today’s Republican Party. And he doesn’t think he would be the only party icon who would have that problem. Republicans have changed so much over the past decade that even former president Ronald Reagan would no longer be welcome at the party. “I doubt it,” said Dole when Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked him whether “your generation as Eisenhower Republicans, moderate Republicans” could “make it in today’s Republican Party.” In fact, said Dole, “Reagan couldn’t have made it. Certainly Nixon couldn’t have made it, because he had ideas. We might have made it, but I doubt it,” reports the Hill.

Dole called on Republicans need to sit down and think carefully about the direction the party is heading, saying GOP leaders need to think of a broader plan to recover from the 2012 electoral losses. “I think they ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says ‘Closed for repairs’ until New Year’s Day next year. Spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas,” Dole said.  

Come back, Ken

Don't look now, the white elephants are multiplying

Gosh.  The normally reliably Labor supporting Kenneth Davidson has a column saying that the Coalition has better policies on the NBN and superannuation.

Actually, I suspect that many of the claims he makes regarding the NBN will be hotly disputed by tech people in the industry.   I doubt that this is a Davidson area of special knowledge, and this part of the column reads suspiciously like a list of questionable talking points prepared by some consultant who is against the NBN.

That said, I have always felt that the NBN is the riskiest of Labor's policies.  It's just that I have tended to be persuaded that enough people in the IT industry had come on side that it was probably was a worthwhile thing. 

How Misérable?

I never saw Les Misérables on stage - I have to be very, very sure that I will like something in a theatre before spending the same amount of money to get in which would let me see 12 or more movies - so I was curious to watch the DVD of last year's movie version tonight.

Man, those 19th century novelists loved their melodrama, didn't they?  It kept on reminding me of (not that I am overly familiar with his books) Charles Dickens.  Did they ever meet?  Yes, as it happens.  A wide reading blogger notes:

 In 1846, the thirty-four-year-old Dickens, having just written the chapter of Dombey and Son that ended poor Paul Dombey's life, wandered Paris with his best friend, John Forster, and called on Victor Hugo. Tomalin's account, which draws on Forster's biography of Dickens, shows Dickens to have been simultaneously impressed and amused:

Hugo made a profound impression on both of them with his eloquence, and Forster observed that he addressed "very charming flattery, in the best taste" to Dickens. Dickens thought he "looked like the Genius he was," while his wife looked as if she might poison his breakfast any morning; and the daughter who appeared "with hardly any drapery above the waist . . . I should suspect of carrying a sharp poignard in her stays, but for her not appearing to wear any."

Les Misérables was not published until 1862, but from the same blog I just linked to, there is an extract from the Goncourt Journals (written by two brothers - more about them below) which indicates that Hugo went through a lot of melodrama in his family:

 I started thinking about that family, about that father, that genius, that monster--about that first daughter who had been drowned, and that second daughter who had been carried off by an American and brought back to France raving mad--about those two sons, one dead and the other dying--about Mme Hugo, committing adultery with her son-in-law--about Vacquerie, marrying one daughter, sleeping with the mother, and practically raping his sister-in-law--and finally about that Juliette, that Pompadour of the poet's, still pursuing, with her kisses, at his late date, the dying son. A Tragic Family, such is the title the dying man gave a novel he once wrote--and such is the title of the Hugo family.

Gosh.  His Wikipedia article does not give much detail about his home troubles, but they do provide a photo from 1853:

Not your classically handsome French man, but he does remind me a bit of Gerard Depardieu.

Reading further in his entry, I see that he became a pretty fierce critic of Catholic clericalism, which makes the sympathetic treatment of the Church in the movie (and its general theme of redemption and - I think - grace) rather surprising.   Here's what Wiki says about his views:

Hugo's religious views changed radically over the course of his life. In his youth, he identified himself as a Catholic and professed respect for Church hierarchy and authority. From there he became a non-practicing Catholic, and increasingly expressed anti-Catholic and anti-clerical views. He frequented Spiritism during his exile (where he participated also in many séances conducted by Madame Delphine de Girardin),^[6][7] and in later years settled into a Rationalist Deism similar to that espoused by Voltaire. A census-taker asked Hugo in 1872 if he was a Catholic, and he replied, "No. A Freethinker"

 I'll have to dig further some other time as to why the book (I assume) treats its Catholic figures well. [See update 2 below.]

 Did I like the movie?   Yes, with some reservations.  On the up side, all of the actors did well, and even though Hugh Jackman routinely appears in material that simply does not interest me (and he always just seems to be too nice in interviews),  he really is very good in this.  (Strangely enough, I have just realised that my objectively hard to justify dislike of Jackman as a personality - which is seemingly shared by no one - is similar to the view a huge number of people are supposed to take towards his co-star Anne Hathaway.  I can't see what's wrong with her at all.)    It is also interesting to note that Helena Bonham Carter's approach of only taking roles that allows her to have insane hair continues. 

I see that the singing was filmed "live", which is a pretty remarkable way to make a movie musical.  As to the score itself, it sometimes drags a bit, but it grew on me as the movie progresses.

On the downside:  it's one of those movies which displays poverty via the personal grubbiness of characters to such an extent that it looks rather over the top and a caricature.   I am sure poor slums were squalid and that prostitutes did sometimes look pretty horrifically made up, but it is still hard to believe that the poor didn't wipe the grime off their faces or bodies every now and again, as they never seem to do in much of this movie.     

And, as I say, the plot is melodrama to the max, with continual co-incidences and ill fortune heaped upon ill fortune,  love at first sight, and characters racked by internal conflicts about which 20th century folk would have forgiven themselves within 24 hours, let alone 24 years.   Anthony Lane just found the thing too over the top, and includes some fantastically witty lines in his review: 

Valjean (Hugh Jackman) serves nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread: a punishment that he regards as unjust, though in fact it reflects well on the status of French baking. Had he taken a croissant, it would have meant the guillotine....

I was unprepared, having missed “Les Misérables” onstage, for the remarkable battle that flames between music and lyrics, each vying to be more uninspired than the other. The lyrics put up a good fight, but you have to hand it to the score: a cauldron of harmonic mush, with barely a hint of spice or a note of surprise. Some of Hooper’s cast acquit themselves with grace, notably Redmayne, and it’s a relief to see Sacha Baron Cohen, in the role of a seamy innkeeper, bid goodbye to Cosette with the wistful words “Farewell, Courgette.” One burst of farce, however, is not enough to redress the basic, inflationary bombast that defines “Les Misérables.”

 I can see where he's coming from, but I did find it affecting in parts, so I can't endorse his view.

Would I ever try to read the book?   Well, after reading the Wikipedia entry about it - definitely not.  I've commented here or at other places around the web how my late 20th century brain has trouble coping with the length of sentences in 19th century novels.   Sure, I can read them and understand them, but I just keep getting the mental equivalent of feeling I have run out of breath by the end.   If this explanation by Hugo in his preface is any guide, I have every reason to be fearful that the book is against me:

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.

Wikipedia also explains the layout of the book in great detail, noting that it is by no means a straight narrative.  In fact it sounds as if it makes the lecturing content of much of Moby Dick (or so I am told) minor in comparison:

More than a quarter of the novel—by one count 955 of 2,783 pages—is devoted to essays that argue a moral point or display Hugo's encyclopedic knowledge, but do not advance the plot, nor even a subplot...

I think I'll give it a miss.

And finally, what about the journal of the Goncourt brothers, about whom I have not heard.   They sound pretty interesting, and as if to again confirm the remarkably widespread effects of syphilis I was recently contemplating in another post, it got to one of them:

Born nearly ten years apart into a French aristocratic family, the two brothers formed an extraordinarily productive and enduring literary partnership, collaborating on novels, criticism, and plays that pioneered the new aesthetic of naturalism. But the brothers’ talents found their most memorable outlet in their journal, which is at once a chronicle of an era, an intimate glimpse into their lives, and the purest expression of a nascent modern sensibility preoccupied with sex and art, celebrity and self-exposure. The Goncourts visit slums, brothels, balls, department stores, and imperial receptions; they argue over art and politics and trade merciless gossip with and about Hugo, Baudelaire, Degas, Flaubert, Zola, Rodin, and many others. And in 1871, Edmond maintains a vigil as his brother dies a slow and agonizing death from syphilis, recording every detail in the journal that he would continue to maintain alone for another two decades.

 Oh well.   Put their journal on the list of things I might enjoy, but will never get around to.

Update:   I could have added that Charles Dickens had a life full of melodrama as well.  I was vaguely aware that he had a mistress, and was not exactly a good family man, but this short summary of his dark side as detailed by a recent biographer indicates it was much worse than I imagined.  (And no, I don't get all of my biography information from The Sun...).

This part struck me as interesting:

 The writer had always shown a genuine interest in helping prostitutes. He even set up a home to look after them. But Dickens also had a less than wholesome reason for seeking out their company. Claire said: “He almost certainly used prostitutes. Many men did in the 19th Century. They thought they needed regular sex to maintain ‘sexual hygiene’.

I can't say I was aware of that motivation in that century, and given the risk of fatal venereal disease, it's remarkable that the idea caught on.  I wonder - was it part and parcel of the idea that masturbation was a incredibly unhealthy activity?  [See update 3 below.] 

As for Victor Hugo and mistresses, here's a handy summary of his sexual exploits.   Talk about talking in code in those days:

Although both Hugo and Briard were married they began to see eachother. Their encounters did not remain private for very long however because On July fourth Hugo and Biard were found "in criminal conversation and in uncrumpled attire meaning that they were comitting adultery and were wearing no clothes. While his lover went to jail Hugo left the station a free man because he was pair de France and was thus immune to prosecution"

The site that this is from is entirely devoted to entries about the state of France at the time of Les Miséables.  It seems to contain quite a few interesting perspectives.

Update 2:   On the issue of sympathy to Catholicism in the film, this review by a Catholic indicates the musical takes quite a different tack to the novel:

Today, Les Misérables is the center of one of the most successful pop-culture phenomena of recent decades—and all because the material has been reworked in ways that Hugo himself would likely reject. His story of Jean Valjean—a man who spent 19 years in a French prison for stealing a loaf of bread—was not meant to be a Christian spiritual odyssey, but a individualist, humanistic one. Valjean's nemesis, the singleminded Inspector Javert, is an atheist in Hugo's novel; in the stage and film production of Les Misérables, he becomes a Christian believer who, unlike Valjean, never rises above the concept of duty nor embraces the Christian teaching on mercy toward others—or even, in the end, toward himself.

 Certainly, the cranky Catholic Church of the 19th (and 20th!) century had no time for the book:

As with anything pleading for social change, the novel acquired many conservative enemies who feared the social impact of the novel. Common reasons for banning it included displaying prostitution, murder, “portraying the Church as unimportant”, and glorifying the French Revolution.

All of Victor Hugo’s works- past, present, and future- were banned in 1850 by Tsar Nicholas I because of Hugo’s less-than-flattering depiction of royalty; his works were also listed on the infamous Index Librorum Prohibitorum- the Catholic Church’s list of books forbidden among members of the faith. Les Misérables was added to the Index in 1864, where it remained until 1959 because it was considered to be critical of the clergy and the papacy.

Update 3:  I haven't found much yet about the claim that 19th century men thought  "they needed regular sex to maintain ‘sexual hygiene’", and a page on the topic of sex and sexuality at the Victorian & Albert Museum website does not make it all that clear as to how ideas evolved through the century.  It does note briefly, however, the apparent influence of evolutionary ideas (and Darwin's famous book was published in 1859): 

By the 1870s and 1880s, evolutionary ideas of male sexuality as a biological imperative, which added fuel to many male writings on gender, were countered by those who argued that 'civilisation' enabled humans to transcend animal instincts. This view acquired a public voice through the Social Purity campaign against the sexual 'double standard', and for male as well as female continence outside marriage. Though female Purity campaigners were often ridiculed as 'new puritans' who had failed to attract a spouse, the movement did succeed in raising public concern over brothels, indecent theatrical displays and images of naked women in art - the reason why Victorian female nudes are idealised and air-brushed.

Private sexual behaviour is hard to assess, though there are many hints that 'considerate' husbands, who did not insist on intercourse, were admired, not least because of the high maternal mortality rate.

The site also says (without explaining why):  

Certainly, the 1860s were briefly as 'permissive' as the same decade in the 20th century, while the 1890s saw an explosion of differing and conflicting positions.

Yet it also says that "moral panic" about prostitution peaked in the 1850's and early 60's.  Confusing.

In any event, this page explains in readily digestible form an explanation of many of the different factor influencing prostitution in Victorian England.  One thing I didn't know - being a seamstress was one of the worst ways to try to make a living then:

Harriet Martineau (who supported herself as a seamstress during her literary apprenticeship) observed that “prostitution is fed by constant accession from starved or overwearied dressmakers.” (Logan)

This is what happens when young men can't drink or take a date to see a movie at the cinema

Saudi Arabians in 'sidewalk skiing' craze – video | Sport | guardian.co.uk

The Civil War briefly discussed

David's Bookclub: Battle Cry of Freedom - The Daily Beast

In this brief look back at a Civil War history book, David Frum notes as follows:

From time to time, we hear denials of the centrality of slavery to the Civil War. That's apologetics, not history. Slavery was always, always there: the war's fundamental cause, the war's shaping reality.

James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom is now, incredibly, 25 years old. The anniversary moved me to download the book in audio format and re-ingest it after the long lapse of time. What struck me most, on this rediscovery, is how brilliantly apt is McPherson's title. Both sides of the terrible conflict insisted that the war was a war for freedom. But what did "freedom" mean?

Jefferson Davis' message to [the Confederate] Congress on January 12, 1863, proclaimed the Emancipation Proclamation 'the most execrable measure in the history of guilty man.' Davis promised to turn over captured Union officers to state governments for punishment as 'criminals engaged in inciting servile insurrection.' The punishment for this crime, of course, was death.

(p. 566.)
Davis never carried out this threat. But captured black Union troops were often massacred - and sometimes sold as property. Confederates regarded the placing of weapons in black hands as itself a war crime, and a terrible one, justifying the most terrible retribution.

It's a wonder that it isn't repeated every 5 years or so, but I don't recall ever seeing Ken Burn's masterful Civil War series since it was first shown in - good grief - 1990.  I can't quite recall now what the historians on that show had to say about the centrality or otherwise of slavery to the war.