Two years without trial for "blasphemy"

Saudi 'blasphemy' prisoner Hamza Kashgari tweets for first time after release | GulfNews.com

Don't think I had heard this story before:

A writer and newspaper columnist in the Saudi city of Jeddah, Kashgari in February 2011 tweeted a series of comments reflecting meditatively on the human side of the Prophet, and imagining a meeting between himself and the Prophet.

Religious conservatives in the kingdom called the tweets blasphemous. Clerics — one of whom posted a video on YouTube of himself weeping at the perceived insult to the Prophet — called for Kashgari’s death.

After fleeing Saudi Arabia to escape death threats, Kashgari was arrested in Malaysia. Saudi authorities jailed him for nearly two years without trial.

Yeah, well, good on you Malaysia. [/sarc].

(It's pretty obvious, given his release, that the tweets were not truly blasphemous.)

We already knew it, but again - Tony Abbott is a "say anything" flake

I didn't note this from a few days ago:

Mr Abbott also said the carbon tax was a socialist policy in disguise.

"Let's be under no illusions the carbon tax was socialism masquerading as environmentalism," he said.

"That's what the carbon tax was."

Rhodes scholarship or not, this man is a not very bright flake of a politician who will just take a "say anything" approach to policies - particularly on climate change - depending on the audience he is talking to.

I am completely unconvinced that he has good judgement in this or any other field.

Having said that, it is near impossible for any government to make only bad decisions.  Being a collective thing, some good policy will get through.

But there are no grounds at all to believe that it will be due to Tony Abbott's intellectual credentials or good judgement.

Government spending needed

Is Australia ready for 2.3 million more people?

Michael Pascoe makes a convincing case that, with significant population growth, it is not the time to be talking of small government:

Thus there's a difficult contradiction at the heart of the new government. It aspires to small government, but it is responsible for a growth country that requires greater public investment. There is a potentially dangerous faith that everything can be left to the private sector to fix, but our duopoly and oligopoly-riddled private sector doesn't make for the purest of market mechanisms.

How to feel inadequate

Restoring F. P. Ramsey | TLS

Can't say I had heard of FP Ramsey before, but this review in TLS says he was a rather important contemporary of Wittgenstein:

F . P. Ramsey has some claim to be the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. In Cambridge in the 1920s, he singlehandedly forged a range of ideas that have since come to define the philosophical landscape. Contemporary debates about truth, meaning, knowledge, logic and the structure of scientific theories all take off from positions first defined by Ramsey. Equally importantly, he figured out the principles governing subjective probability, and so opened the way to decision theory, game theory and much work in the foundations of economics. His fertile mind could not help bubbling over into other subjects. An incidental theorem he proved in a logic paper initiated the branch of mathematics known as Ramsey theory, while two articles in the Economic Journal pioneered the mathematical analysis of taxation and saving.

And here's the kicker:

Ramsey died from hepatitis at the age of twenty-six in 1930.

Something else of interest from the article is yet another illustration of the way intellectuals at that time seemed to all know each other.  It's particularly odd to hear of Wittgenstein upsetting Keynes' wife!:

Ramsey was by no means all work. As his celebrity grew, so did his circle of acquaintances. Readers of conventional 1920s memoirs will be pleased to find Virginia Woolf, Liam O’Flaherty, Kingsley Martin, Lewis Namier and other luminaries making appearances. Not everybody is shown in a good light, but it should be said that for bad behaviour Wittgenstein was in a league of his own. When Ramsey first met him in Austria, he had given away his vast inherited fortune, and was refusing all offers of financial assistance. This occasioned many practical difficulties, to which he would react like a spoiled child, falling out with well-meaning friends who tried to help him circumvent his problems. Somehow Ramsey and Keynes managed to remain in his good books and arranged for him to visit Britain in 1925. He turned up shortly after Keynes’s wedding to the ballerina Lydia Lopokova. Small talk was not Wittgenstein’s thing. He quarrelled badly with Ramsey and reduced Lopokova to tears with his furious responses to her friendly remarks.

Drunk authors, again

Hemingway hits the bottle | TLS

A few posts back, I mentioned the badly behaving famous writers of the first half of the 20th century.

Well, here's a review of a new book about their problems with alcohol.  A taste:

The reasons why these particular writers drank, or more precisely why they became dependent on alcohol, were inter alia weak, suicidal or resentful fathers (when Cheever was conceived his father’s first act was to invite the local abortionist to dinner), suffocating mothers, class anxiety, sexual anxiety (Cheever endured the dual burden of passing for both bourgeois and heterosexual), shyness, guilt, pram-in-the-hall pressures, disastrous role models (Dylan Thomas in the case of Berryman, who trailed his bad mentor through New York’s traditional stations of dissolution, the White Horse, the Chelsea Hotel; Hart Crane, the alcoholic poet and suicide, in the case of Williams), and a shared genius for self-sabotage. None of them drank to improve his writing, but addiction and recovery became for some an important theme, something to chronicle, and, moreover, had a subterranean but profound impact on their literary styles. Laing is acute about the warping impact alcoholism has on memory, a writer’s major resource. Reading Cheever, for example, she identifies “a persistent attribute of his work: a kind of uncanniness produced by radical disruptions of space and time”. Excess drinking might have contributed special effects to Cheever’s prose, but Laing refuses to romanticize this given the damage done. Similarly, after waxing lyrical about the landscape of Port Angeles, Washington, and empathizing with Carver’s view of Morse Creek as a “holy place”, she adds: “Watching water work through rock, you might come to a kind of accommodation with the fact that you’d once smashed your wife’s head repeatedly against a sidewalk for looking at another man”. 

Tea Party stupidity noted

A Very Expensive Tea Party 

The shutdown and debt ceiling brinkmanship did real damage to the economy. The immediate and direct costs are nicely summarized in a blog post by James H. Stock – an academic economist on the president’s Council of Economic Advisers. His assessment is that the effect is a

0.25 percentage point reduction in the annualized G.D.P. growth rate in the fourth quarter and a reduction of about 120,000 private sector jobs in the first two weeks of October (estimates use indicators available through Oct. 12th).

This is actually lower than the impact expected by some private-sector forecasters; after talking with people I trust, I would not be surprised if the overall impact ends up being closer to a 0.5 percentage point reduction in the fourth-quarter growth rate (annualized, as in the quotation from Mr. Stock.)
Does the country make up this growth later, for example because federal workers can now pay their bills? Probably not, because there is a persistent effect in terms of increasing uncertainty about public finances and about economic performance – and this will depress both some kinds of consumption and many forms of productive investment....

Members of the Tea Party movement express concern about the longer-run federal budget – and the potential negative impact of future debt levels. But their tactics are directly worsening the budget over exactly the time horizon that they say they care about.

Dami admiration

As prepared by my daughter, and posted while watching the X Factor final:

Krugman, Nordhaus, climate

It must be a weekend for reviews.

Paul Krugman has an excellent one of a new book by somewhat controversial climate change economist Nordhaus.

There are many interesting points made in the review, but I'll just extract some parts from the end about why Krugman thinks it is impossible to get Republicans, as currently constituted, to take climate change seriously:

The point is that there’s real power behind the opposition to any kind of climate action—power that warps the debate both by denying climate science and by exaggerating the costs of pollution abatement. And this isn’t the kind of power that can be moved by calm, rational argument.

Why are some powerful individuals and organizations so opposed to action on such a clear and present danger? Part of the answer is naked self-interest. Facing up to global warming would involve virtually eliminating our use of coal except to the extent that CO2 can be recaptured after consumption; it would involve somewhat reducing our use of other fossil fuels; and it would involve substantially higher electricity prices. That would mean billions of dollars in losses for some businesses, and for the owners of these businesses subsidizing climate denial has so far been a highly profitable investment.

Beyond that lies ideology. “Markets alone will not solve this problem,” declares Nordhaus. “There is no genuine ‘free-market solution’ to global warming.” This isn’t a radical statement, it’s just Econ 101. Nonetheless, it’s anathema to free-market enthusiasts. If you like to imagine yourself as a character in an Ayn Rand novel, and someone tells you that the world isn’t like that, that it requires government intervention—no matter how market-friendly—your response may well be to reject the news and cling to your fantasies. And sad to say, a fair number of influential figures in American public life do believe they’re acting out Atlas Shrugged.

Finally, there’s a strong streak in modern American conservatism that rejects not just climate science, but the scientific method in general. Polling suggests, for example, that a large majority of Republicans reject the theory of evolution. For people with this mind-set, laying out the extent of scientific consensus on an issue isn’t persuasive—if anything, it just gets their backs up, and feeds fantasies about vast egghead conspiracies.

 Nordhaus thinks that immediate action to start reducing carbon is important; but it would seem Krugman's hunch is that he is too optimistic in many respects.

This is also noted in Eli Rabbet's post via which I found the review:

 Of course, these models have both their uses and abuses like any model.  One of the problems, of course, is that damages are a non linear function of the warming and that is hard to capture if the economic world, the one we function in has never experienced such conditions.  For example, since progress, encapsulated as an increase in world GDP, is assumed to grow, one finds that economic damage in IAM models tends, shall one say, to be charitable, to be limited for even global warmings of 10 C.  There is a lot of misplaced confidence by practisioners of IAMism.

Yet another aspect of the War considered

Literary Review - David Cesarani on the disturbing role of women in the Nazi era

I was in the only newsagent I know that carries Literary Review this morning, and once again I found myself thinking how good a publication it seems.   I must put a link to their website at the side.

Anyhow, checking the site this afternoon, it's got a review of an interesting sounding book that takes a bit of a revisionist view of the role of women in Nazi Germany.  It's not pretty:

Making superb use of postwar investigations, interrogations and the transcripts of trials in both West and East Germany, Lower reconstructs the short, frequently brutal careers of 13 woman who served in the East, either on assignment or as volunteers. Some followed boyfriends or spouses, taking a job nearby or moving in with them. With a few exceptions, they took to genocide like little girls take to dolls....

Secretaries who typed up orders and instructions for ghetto clearances were already a species of 'desk murderer'. Yet some did more than just the paperwork. They joined the lads in the shooting, carousing with the killers in breaks between murder. Killing invaded sensual life. One woman recalled that after a day of executions men would return to base and require their female assistants to complete the after-action reports, leading to more than a spot of dictation. It was common for a secretary to become the girlfriend or mistress and then the wife of an SS man, sharing his bed and his murderous pastimes. In these relationships the boundary between the home front and the front line blurred. Already a racially determined process in the Third Reich - what Lower dubs 'racial mating' - marriages in the East 'became essentially partnerships in crime'. Handsome marital homes were available thanks to state-run pillaging, while slave labour provided a supply of (expendable) domestic servants. The power to kill heightened erotic experiences.

In some of the most shocking evidence that she has unearthed, Lower describes how race overrode supposedly natural maternal instincts. One woman, married to an SS officer, beat a Jewish child to death with her bare hands. Another, whose husband ran an expropriated estate, personally killed starving Jewish children who had escaped from a transport. She offered them sweets then shot them in the mouth. Her own child was three years old.

Update:   I just had a read of another review on the site: this one of a second volume of collected Hemingway letters.  I haven't really read any major work by him (at high school, we read "The Old Man and the Sea", but I think that is considered one of his less significant efforts) but it's always sort of fun to read about authors who behaved badly.   (And, indeed, it seems that all the big ones from the first half of the 20th century did.)  In that vein, I enjoyed these paragraphs:

The first volume of the Letters, closes with a disastrous setback to Hemingway's literary aspirations - the theft of all his manuscripts, left unguarded by his wife, Hadley, in a suitcase at the Gare de Lyon - and the second opens with another, no less crushing blow: Hadley's pregnancy. Fatherhood was an unwelcome cramp on Hemingway's style, as the intoxications of European travel and bohemian life in the Latin Quarter gave way to the sober prospect of parental responsibility. Plans were made to return to Toronto, where the couple quickly settled into a new apartment and Hemingway started work as a staff writer for the Toronto Daily Star.

The pall of domestic drudgery dogs Hemingway's letters of this time. He wrote to Gertrude Stein with news of the baby's birth, adding, 'The free time that I imagined in front of a typewriter in a newspaper office has not been. There hasn't been any time free or otherwise for anything.' To Ezra Pound he complained, 'I can't sleep just with the horror of the Goddam thing. I have not had a drink for five days.' He begged his friend to throw him the lifeline of a letter from Europe. The complaints continued even after the family's move back to Paris. 'We have been experimenting with living with a baby etc,' wrote Hemingway to Pound, apologising for the lack of correspondence. 'Hadley sick in bed for quite a while, me for a few days, baby hollers etc. Have tried to write but couldnt bring it off.'

Mawson reconsidered

Mawson doubts: hero or heel?

My handful of long time readers will recall my post about Heather Rossiter's enjoyable book about a (one time) cross dressing Antarctic explorer who was on the Mawson expedition.  (Heather made an appearance in comments too.   That's pleasing.) 

Those people may recall that I found the book's take on Mawson particularly interesting, given that it argued he was actually a bit of a jerk, as it seemed to me he has a fan base to this day.

In light of this, it's of interest to read of a new book that suggests Mawson night have eaten one of the two expeditioners who died on his trip away from the hut!

I only suggested that maybe there had been a bit of a push and shove fight on the edge of a crevasse that caused the first one to disappear.  I hadn't gone as far as to think he might have covered up cannibalism.

Good fun.

A corrective

Are Japanese people really having less sex than anyone else?

I was nearly going to link to the Slate article about young Japanese giving up not just on marriage, but sex, but I am sort of glad I didn't in light of this follow up which puts a more balanced view of the matter.

While it remains true that Japan does have a serious fertility decline, one can play up the weirdness of the culture a little too much.

Surprising news from inside your mouth

Well, I would not have expected this:

The bacteria in the human mouth – particularly those nestled under the gums – are as powerful as a fingerprint at identifying a person's ethnicity, new research shows.

Scientists identified a total of almost 400 different species of microbes in the mouths of 100 study participants belonging to four ethnic affiliations: non-Hispanic blacks, whites, Chinese and Latinos.

Only 2 percent of bacterial species were present in all individuals – but in different concentrations according to ethnicity – and 8 percent were detected in 90 percent of the participants. Beyond that, researchers found that each ethnic group in the study was represented by a "signature" of shared microbial communities.

"This is the first time it has been shown that ethnicity is a huge component in determining what you carry in your mouth. We know that our food and oral hygiene habits determine what bacteria can survive and thrive in our mouths, which is why your dentist stresses brushing and flossing. Can your genetic makeup play a similar role? The answer seems to be yes, it can," said Purnima Kumar, associate professor of periodontology at The Ohio State University and senior author of the study.

"No two people were exactly alike. That's truly a fingerprint."

Well, that's creepy...

Trick or Treat

All about performing masked monkeys in Indonesia.  (Have a look at photo 3 in the slide show in particular.)

Take in moderation

Death by caffeine really is a thing, if you're susceptible

A good explanation of death by caffeine here.

Questionable link

Are California's giant dead oarfish a sign of an impending earthquake disaster? | News.com.au

I don't recall reading before that oarfish had been caught off Japan in large numbers before its Tohoku earthquake.   But it was reported in the Japan Times in March 2010, so the fish being caught in unusual numbers, and the folklore part, is true.  But then again, the earthquake was March 2011, so these oarfish are pretty extraordinary if they can forecast earthquakes a full year ahead. 

As I was saying a week or two ago....

A deafening silence: the media's response to asylum secrecy

It is remarkable how complacent Australia’s media has been in response to the federal government’s brazenly cynical suppression of information about asylum seeker boat arrivals. There were a few indignant editorials and then the circus moved on.

Read the whole thing...

Kubrick's aliens

2001italia: 2001: The aliens that almost were

Here's a good article talking about all the trouble Stanley Kubrick (and Arthur C Clarke) went to in trying to come up with a credible cinematic alien for the climax of 2001.  

Of course, by not showing them at all, the movie suggests God-like mystery and power, which even goes beyond Clarke's so-called third law:  any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

It's just lucky that none of experimental aliens worked.

The return of mother possum....

She's been gone for many months, and the last possum visitor we had was a shy youngster who didn't hang around for long.  But today, the mother possum, easily recognized by the notch in one ear, was back.   Whether or not there is another baby in the pouch is not yet established.

Rubbing it in

A Push to Sell Testosterone Gels Troubles Doctors - NYTimes.com

The story starts:

The barrage of advertisements targets older men. “Have you noticed a recent deterioration of your ability to play sports?” “Do you have a decrease in sex drive?” “Do you have a lack of energy?”  

If so, the ads warn, you should “talk to your doctor about whether you have low testosterone” — “Low T,” as they put it. 

In the view of many physicians, that is in large part an invented condition. Last year, drug makers in the United States spent $3.47 billion on advertising directly to consumers, according to FiercePharma.com. And while ever-present ads like those from AbbVie Pharmaceuticals have buoyed sales of testosterone gels, that may be bad for patients as well as the United States’ $2.7 trillion annual health care bill, experts say.

Sales of prescription testosterone gels that are absorbed through the skin generated over $2 billion in American sales last year, a number that is expected to more than double by 2017. Abbott Laboratories — which owned AbbVie until Jan. 1 — spent $80 million advertising its version, AndroGel, last year.

Can anyone explain to me why Americans are so silly as to even allow such direct advertising of prescription drugs directly to the public?   Surely drug companies still make adequate monies from their products which are genuinely needed in those countries which do not permit such open advertising.

Old actor

Christopher Lee is 91.   Here he is receiving an award from an unrecognisable Johnny Depp.   (Depp must be one actor who can walk down the street with little fear of immediate recognition, his looks are so changeable from film to film.)