Commentary from a hysteric, and some others

Want the most rabidly, over the top, Obama-is-the-Great-Satan-trying-to-destroy-the-United-States-which-he-hates commentary from an Australian academic?  Look no further than Steve Kates at Catallaxy, of course.

His calm and reasoned (hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha) post prompted by Putin's actions starts:

It’s not as if Obama’s intentions from the start were difficult to read. He’s a hard left ideologue whose greatest hatreds are for the civilisation of the West and in particular the country of which he is president. That there are revelations upon revelations as one by one, but ever so slowly, the truth begins to dawn on those fools who elected him, or the international mobs who supported him, is something like a revelation to me. Just how self-deluded can these people really have been.

And now, despite my confession yesterday that I have no understanding of this geopolitical slab of the world, I will still say that I am somewhat persuaded by the "well, what do you expect the West to do, anyway?" line.   I would guess, however, that Malcolm Fraser goes further down the "it's actually the West's fault" path than is really necessary.

Elsewhere in The Guardian, however, I am finding myself persuaded by this take:

As in practically every international crisis, the pundit class seems able to view events solely through the prism of US actions, which best explains Edward Luce in the Financial Times writing that Obama needs to convince Putin “he will not be outfoxed”, or Scott Wilson at the Washington Post intimating that this is all a result of America pulling back from military adventurism. Shocking as it may seem, sometimes countries take actions based on how they view their interests, irrespective of who the US did or did not bomb.

Missing from this “analysis” about how Obama should respond is why Obama should respond. After all, the US has few strategic interests in the former Soviet Union and little ability to affect Russian decision-making.

Our interests lie in a stable Europe, and that’s why the US and its European allies created a containment structure that will ensure Russia’s territorial ambitions will remain quite limited. (It’s called Nato.) Even if the Russian military wasn’t a hollow shell of the once formidable Red Army, it’s not about to mess with a Nato country.

The writer, Michael Cohen, goes on to argue that it is actually Putin who will lose out, long term, by this strategy:

But this crisis is Putin’s Waterloo, not ours.

Which brings us to perhaps the most bizarre element of watching the Crimean situation unfold through a US-centric lens: the iron-clad certainty of the pundit class that Putin is winning and Obama is losing. The exact opposite is true.

Putin has initiated a conflict that will, quite obviously, result in greater diplomatic and political isolation as well as the potential for economic sanction. He’s compounded his loss of a key ally in Kiev by further enflaming Ukrainian nationalism, and his provocations could have a cascading effect in Europe by pushing countries that rely on Russia’s natural gas exports to look elsewhere for their energy needs. Putin is the leader of a country with a weak military, an under-performing economy and a host of social, environmental and health-related challenges. Seizing the Crimea will only make the problems facing Russia that much greater.

For Obama and the US, sure, there might be less Russian help on Syria going forward – not that there was much to begin with – and it could perhaps affect negotiations on Iran. But those issues are manageable. Meanwhile, Twitter and the opinion pages and the Sunday shows and too many blog posts that could be informative have been filled with an over-the-top notion: that failure to respond to Russia’s action will weaken America’s credibility with its key allies. To which I would ask: where are they gonna go? If anything, America’s key European allies are likely to fold the quickest, because, you know, gas. And why would any US ally in the Far East want Obama wasting his time on the Crimea anyway?

You don’t have to listen to the “do something” crowd. These are the same people who brought you the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other greatest hits.

Noah's precedents

It seems the Literary Review website does not allow for an easy way to get to its past month's on line articles.   But I've found the link to a review from last month's page of a book called "The Ark Before Noah - Decoding the Story of the Flood."

I liked this part, as an example of an unusual academic reaction to a discovery:

...in the 1870s, George Smith identified two pre-biblical accounts of a hero divinely commissioned to build an ark and so save the denizens of the world from a cosmic flood. Reading The Epic of Gilgamesh for the first time 'after more than 2,000 years of oblivion', he rushed around, tearing off his clothes in a state of ecstasy resembling St Francis's embrace of his vocation.

I've never read much about the Epic of Gilgamesh, although I have a distinct memory that after he made True Stories, David Byrne was supposed to have said he thought it could be a good source for his next movie.  (I hope I didn't dream that!)    But further down in the Literary Review article, it's noted:

...the biggest difference the Hebrew version makes is to the moral framework of the myth: in Mesopotamian accounts, gods unleash the flood capriciously, or for no declared reason, or to eliminate a distractingly, irritatingly 'noisy' world that is becoming uncontrollably overpopulated. The Jews' God, by contrast, acted justly, to punish evildoers and spare the only righteous man.

 But the most interesting thing is that the earlier version of the ark was not boat shaped:

In the course of his investigation Finkel sheds much light on philological and literary problems of ancient Mesopotamian cultures, but one revelation dwarfs all others: in the earliest surviving description, the ark was round. The text is unambiguous on this point and includes detailed instructions for building a giant coracle out of more than 300 kilometres of coiled palm fibres, strengthening the structure with wooden ribs and decking, and coating everything in a waterproof mixture of pitch and lard. Finkel's painstaking and lively investigation of coracle-weaving traditions on the Euphrates makes the concept intelligible.

 Update:  this profile of the author appeared in Fairfax in February (actually, it's from the Daily Telegraph, I see), and it adds some detail that the round ark was not all that big:

''It was a coracle,'' says Finkel: a kind of round boat of rope around a wood frame. ''Half the people in Mesopotamia were professional boat people, so when someone told them this story, and said, imagine the biggest boat you ever saw, they must have asked: what did it look like?'' What is incredible is that the tablet has detailed instructions on how to build this enormous coracle, 21 metres across, 5.5 metres high, even down to the length of rope required.

Unbelief and the "happy atheist"

So, Adam Gopnik wrote an essay in the New Yorker recently about the loss of faith in religion, which I haven't read properly yet.

But I have read this Ross Douhart post about it, and think he makes a couple of interesting points about "the return of the happy atheist" (or maybe he's just expanding on some Gopnik's points, I'm not sure):

In a related sense, too, the fall of the Soviet Union and the intellectual collapse of Communism have actually been good for atheism’s credibility, in ways that weren’t necessarily apparent before the Berlin Wall came down. You might have thought, back when Kolakowski was writing, that the death throes of the world’s most famous atheist experiment would deliver the last rites to any remaining atheist utopianism as well. But actually, by sweeping the embarrassment of Communism off the world stage, 1989 and all that probably made it easier for atheists to be quasi-utopians again, because they no longer had to defend or explain away a dreadful, cruel attempt at a godless paradise on earth. With the U.S.S.R. gone the way of all flesh, they could simply say that their ideal society is “Sweden, but even nicer” — in which case the argument that atheism and human progress go hand in hand no longer seems so transparently contradicted by reality.

 And then, too, to the extent that any force has replaced Communism as an antagonist-cum-alternative to Western civilization, it’s been Islamic fundamentalism, which almost seems laboratory-designed to give the idea of atheism-as-Progress a new lease on life.

And this:

...I’d throw on, as well, the decades-long crisis for institutional religion in the West that the social revolutions of the 1960s ushered in. Mostly, as I’ve argued at length elsewhere, this crisis has sent people drifting into various quasi-Christian and spiritual alternatives rather than embracing atheism tout court. But among the intelligentsia, it does seem to have helped put to rest certain doubts about the association of unbelief with moral progress, by creating a landscape — particularly around issues related to sex — where all right-thinking people have decided that the Christian churches are on the wrong side of history once again.

An experiment begins...

Prevalence of high school seniors' marijuana use is expected to increase with legalization -- ScienceDaily

Large proportions of high school students normally at low risk for
marijuana use (e.g., non-cigarette-smokers, religious students, those
with friends who disapprove of use) reported intention to use marijuana
if it were legal, a new study reports.

A pretty accurate column

Why Are Jesus Movies Always Lame? - Yahoo News

Here's a couple of key parts from the above column, brought about because of the new movie "Son of God" (actually just put together from a mini series, I think) just released in the US:

Nothing makes Jesus more fictional than a movie. Some Christly movies are better than others. For instance, 1961’s King of Kings isn’t completely awful if you can watch past the plethora of Americanisms it commits and The Passion of the Christ has
a moment or two where Jesus comes to life if you’re able to block out
the violent way Mel Gibson beats and kills the story in the end. Still,
even the best Jesus movies fail to do the story justice. Even when the
acting is stellar and the production is spot on, the medium of film
seems incapable of translating the essence of Christ’s story, the true
reason the story has managed to survive generations.

Whether or not Christ’s story can survive Son of God and
Roma Downey remains to be seen. Few things cause the story of Jesus to
fall short of God’s glory like a factual cinematic portrayal acted out
by pretty Caucasians with British accents and bed-head walking joyfully
across barren landscapes to a dramatic symphony of flutes and strings.
At times, I swear I was watching the cast of Downton Abbey on vacation in Morocco. Among the long list of Christ-centric films that have been made in the last fifty years, Son of God—with its sexy Jesus who engages in cheesy “change the world” dialogue and seems to channel Harry Potter every time he performs a miracle—might end up being the chief of sinners.

 

The Opinion Dominion Zone of No Opinion (and Ignorance)

I can't be bothered working out the geopolitical history and intrigues of the Ukraine, Crimea and Russia:  I have to 'fess up here, but if you draw a large circle centred on the western side of Ukraine, most of the countries caught in it have histories about which I can say next to nothing.  Here, I'll even illustrate my personal zone of (pretty much) ignorance:

It's not that I even feel particularly guilty about this.   With some regions of the world, say China, parts of South America, etc, I usually think it would be good to improve my knowledge of the history of the place, and maybe one day I will.

No, with Eastern Europe, with its ethnic mixes and 2500 year history of armies marching in one direction or the other across it, I've just always felt it is a place that is too far away, too complicated, and too difficult to be bothered understanding.

Now, people's interests change as they age, and if you have an eternity in which to increase knowledge, well, then pretty much everything can be interesting for a time.  But so far, after 50 odd years or so, a desire to understand this part of the world has so far successfully eluded me.

Sorry.

Update:  Oh look.  I've found an interactive map of European history which, if I'm given 5 years to study, might start to diminish my ignorance of the Eastern parts in particular. 

Update 2:  the Sydney Morning Herald helps me at little, but mainly by confirming that I am not wrong when I say the history of Crimea is very, very complicated.   

To Canberra and back, Part 5

At this rate, I might never finish posts about the Christmas trip to Canberra. So, where was I?  I hadn't finished with Canberra.

The single most interesting and impressive place in Canberra?  The War Memorial, without a doubt.

Yeah, here we go, the classic photo:                                                                                           

And no, I don't know who that woman is.  I don't think she was the Asian woman who was posing in an inappropriate reclining position around the pond later while her shady looking boyfriend photographed her.  But I could be wrong.



Anyway, the museum part of the place is now vast and extensive and very, very impressive, and I say that even though the entire World War I side was closed for renovation.

The place seems to have quite a large emphasis on air power, which suits me.  Now that I think of it, it really is the Navy that is a bit short changed in exhibit space.  Well, it is hard to sail a ship up to Canberra, I suppose.

Here's the newest gallery, which features audio visual presentations on G for George, a Lancaster that survived WW2, the Sydney Harbour Japanese mini sub attack (one of the subs is there), and a Peter Jackson directed film on WW1 aviation:

The Peter Jackson film was very good and I only found out he directed it because I commented to one of the attendants about its high quality, and she told me.   He's a WW1 aviation enthusiast, apparently, owning a few planes of the era, and it was filmed using them in New Zealand (but some special effects make it look like a pretty convincing Europe.)

I said to the same attendant that I thought the whole place was much more impressive than the Imperial War Museum in London, which I found disappointing when I was there in the late 1980's.  She said quite a few people from England have paid the same compliment.

So, apart from there, everyone should go to the National Art Gallery.  Like all Canberra buildings, it doesn't do entry areas well.  (I noticed that about all buildings, including Parliament House - they don't have particularly impressive areas when you first enter them - you have to move around to get to larger, more open spaces.)   The collection seems pretty impressive, but for photos, the Rodin sculptures were at least able to be taken:

OK, so I'm just amusing myself now, but the grounds outside the gallery also featured many fairy wrens, which everyone likes, surely:

Off to the National Library everyone should go too, and we did see the very interesting Mapping Our World exhibition, which I see is closing in a week's time - get in quick.

And, especially if you have kids, Questacon is worth a visit, even if it is one of the few places in Canberra you have to pay to get into.   I took this photo outside:

only because I had noticed while in Coonabarabran, one of the most science intense places in country Australia, that someone had put quite a few "Beware the Chemtrails" style flyers around the town. Why anyone would think Coonabarabran and the distinctly underpopulated Newell Highway would be worth targeting for chemtrail attack is one of the mysteries that will have to remain unanswered. Googling around, I half suspect it may be the work of this absolutely nutty sounding New Age family who may, or may not, have established their hippy mini kingdom near the town by now.  If you look around their website, you'll see that there is not a paranoid alternative lifestyle conspiracy theory which they seem unwilling to promote.  If you can spare a few minutes, check out some of the awesomely nutty Youtubes they have made too. 

Or I could be wrong, and chemtrail fretting may be centred somewhere else in country New South Wales.  Can't say I've seen it get a mention on Queensland street posts, but then again, I don't go to many Queensland country towns.

Back to Questacon itself:  I'm a little cynical of how well these science for kids playgrounds really work in imparting science to the intended audience.  But it is a pretty good example of the genre, and the staff are enthusistic and I suppose I shouldn't be too harsh.   The shop had some pretty good stuff too.

By far the most ironic thing I saw there was this photo of our PM, who cannot be bothered having a science minister, still showing up to hand out a PM's Prize for Science.

 What a joke.

Anyhow, we're near the end but time for one of my scrolling panaoramas which probably annoy some readers.  This was taken at the National Arboretum, which is definitely a work on progress, but should, in 20 years time when the trees have grown up, be quite impressive.   It has nice views back to the city anyway:

Other random observations about the city now:

*  the city centre now has very decent shopping with an extensive shopping mall.  Probably still no good eating or nightlife, but at least if you live near the inner city you don't have to head out to Belconnen or Woden anymore for good retail.   About time.

*  there was some grafitti around, even in Manuka, and I am surprised it was not dealt with.   

*  the shambolic old public housing (I assume) flats on parts of Northbourne Avenue (the main road into the city) were looking bad 40 years ago when I first visited the place, and are a spectacular eyesore now.  Why haven't they been demolished?

But, as you can tell, I still think it is a great place to visit, and I'll try not to leave it another 20 years before heading back.    

For future reference

Sunday night eggs Recipe | Good Food

My version goes over well with the family, and fortunately the kids of are of an age where mild to medium chilli heat is quite acceptable.

Take some eggs out of the fridge and let them come to room temperature. 

Chop red capsicum and 2 red onions.  Fry in a deep sided frying pan in olive oil til softened, adding some garlic to taste in the last few minutes and a bit of salt.

Put in bowl, and use same frying pan to fry one substantial sized chorizo cut into slices.  When cooked both sides, throw in one can of chopped tomatoes (and support Ardmona and use "Rich and Thick" Classic, which already has tomato paste added to chopped tomatoes - it is good).  Add a few  few chopped fresh tomatoes.  Don't worry about de-seeding.

Sprinkle in at least half a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes.

Add back in the cooked onion, capsicum and garlic, and a drained can of butter beans. Throw in a generous amount of fresh oregano or basil, or whatever green herb you like with tomato.

Stir and cover and cook over low heat for 5 to 10 minutes, til some of the fresh tomato starts to release its liquid.

Make four "wells" in the mix and crack in an egg in each well, cover again and take a guess as to how long before the eggs are cooked to your satisfaction.  That is the hard part.  I'm going to have to start timing it to make sure the yolk is not completely hard.

Put the frying pan on the table and serve everyone an egg and generous amount of the tomato/bean/chorizo/capsicum/onion mix.   Put out lots of crusty bread, and encourage diners to use it to the clean the plates well enough that they don't need rinsing before going in the dishwasher.

Video watch

So, what did I see on Rage this morning that I liked?   This:



I know she's worked with David Byrne, and this video is very Byrne-esque, I reckon.  But in a good way.

Weight formula

I read somewhere on a forum this week that an old Dutch rule of thumb for your ideal weight is your height in metric less one metre.   Never heard of that before, but it works for my height, at least...

But I'd like my own planet....

Mormons clarify talk of personal planets | The Japan Times

Ridiculously unnecessary

BBC News - Three-person baby details announced

So some medical researchers with nothing better to do other than to try to find a find a way a whole 10 or so women a year in England can have a baby without mitochondrial disease have got some "draft regulations" which might allow them to do it.

I like this quote [/sarc]

Prof Doug Turnbull, who has pioneered research in mitochondrial
donation at Newcastle University, said: "I am delighted that the
government has published the draft regulations.

"This is very good news for patients with mitochondrial DNA
disease and an important step in the prevention of transmission of
serious mitochondrial disease."

Hey, Prof Doug:  here's an even easier step that we already know is guaranteed not to transmit the disease - don't have children.  Adopt one instead.

It's a ridiculously complicated bit of fiddling, with completely unforeseeable consequences for the health of children, that is only needed for a tiny number of couples.

These researchers need to be forced into something more useful.

A strange story of crank science from Eygpt

Egypt army 'AIDS detector' instead finds ridicule

As noted elsewhere, the "detector" looks an awful lot like the fake bomb detectors sold by a fraudster in England (now in jail) to Iraq.

I don't mean to sound rude, but is there something about desert nations and the heat that makes them particularly gullible?

So, someone else has noticed

Manly men v wimps: what's behind the macho language in Australian politics? | Ed Butler | Comment is free | 

So, someone else has noticed the nauseating way that right wing politics (including in News Ltd) has latched onto macho language to sell itself.  It's ridiculous.

Hawking considered

Hawking: Is He Really That Great? | TIME.com

A realistic, but sympathetic, look at the question of how significant a physicist Stephen Hawking really is.

Gosh, who do I believe?

Who do I believe:

a.  the 2011 "stagflation" flag waving economist who regularly shills for donations to his* prominent anti climate science "think tank" (even though its financials indicate it has a retained surplus of $1.5 million) who rubbishes climate scientists and gets a thrill every time he reads something about the "pause" in global average temperatures.  (The IPA's latest brilliant idea is for numbskulls to donate $400 to get their name on the back of a book about climate change with contributions by the sharpest scientific minds in the world:  Andrew Bolt, Delingpole, Monckton, Roskam, Watts, etc.   As someone says in comments "Can’t see much point in this. Looks too much like preaching to the choir."   Is the IPA finally reaching the limits of separating fools from their money?  The true scandal about this is that donations are tax deductible.)

You see, what really annoys me about Davidson is his disingenuousness - he is running the line now that people are only being reasonable in being reluctant to take economic action like carbons taxes or ETS's when they see that scientists are saying that there is a "pause" the causes of which are still being investigated.

He completely fails to mention in posts like that that he personally is actively involved in promoting in the public the complete disbelief  that climate change is a real and serious problem that deserves a politic response now.    And the people he helps promotes to the public (see his shilling of the IPA book) are not scientifically credible at all.  They aren't even scientists in most cases.

He is essentially, involved a vain project of arguing that because he thinks he's being reasonable, despite not believing a clear scientific consensus, everyone else who agrees with him is also being reasonable.

He claims "success" because he (and his buddies) manage to convince some fools to join him in his ideologically motivated foolishness.   That just intensifies the degree of foolishness on display.

or:

b.       Actual scientists:

US and British scientific academies said Wednesday there was a clear consensus that climate change is real and will have serious disruptive effects on the planet.

The US National Academy of Sciences and Britain's Royal Society said they were making the joint declaration in hopes of moving the public debate forward—to the question of how the world responds, instead of whether climate change is happening.

"It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing the Earth's climate," the joint publication said.

"The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, accompanied by sea-level rise, a strong decline in Arctic sea ice, and other climate-related changes."

The academies cautioned that science inherently cannot settle every detail and that debate remained on some specifics, including how much climate change is linked to extreme weather events.

But it said scientists were "very confident" that the world will warm further in the next century and that a rise by just a few degrees Celsius would have "serious impacts" that are expected to include threats to coasts and food production.

I also note that scientists and others are making an increasingly clear case that "the pause" is in fact rather illusory.

Have a look at David Appell's post in which he takes all the graphs from Tamino's recent post looking at how you can graph the recent temperature record.

Then note that the number of extremely hot days over land is still on the way up, regardless of what the global average has been doing for the last 10 to 20 years:

Extremely hot temperatures over land have dramatically and unequivocally increased in number and area despite claims that the rise in global average temperatures has slowed over the past 10 to 20 years.
Scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and international colleagues made the finding when they focused their research on the rise of temperatures at the extreme end of the spectrum where impacts are felt the most.
"It quickly became clear, the so-called "hiatus" in global average temperatures did not stop the rise in the number, intensity and area of extremely hot days" said one of the paper's authors Dr Lisa Alexander.
"Our research has found a steep upward tendency in the temperatures and number of extremely hot days over land and the area they impact, despite the complete absence of a strong El Niño since 1998."

The slow down in the global average surface rise seems to be increasingly well understood in terms of ocean winds and their effect on heat transfer in the oceans (which are warming) and the under-appreciation of the effects of volcanoes.  Neither of which can anyone really expect to be permanent features of the next century.

I just hope for the next El Nino to come sooner rather than later, for the sake of getting denialists further scientifically marginalised than they already are.

*  in the sense that he is a "senior fellow" of it - not that he personally runs or controls it

Cats and old folk don't mix so well

New Study: 'Remarkable' Deterioration in Memory Functions of Seniors Infected by Common Parasite Found in Free-roaming Cats

The person who wrote this story really, really doesn't seem to like cats, but the study he or she refers to really does show surprisingly serious results for old folk with toxoplasma gondi.

American defamation

Truth emerges after lies about Hoffman death

A pretty amazing story here of how easily the National Enquirer is duped.  Also - why did the fake guy do it?  Does the paper pay well for such stories, or was he just a nutter?

A look back at confession

Catholic confession’s steep price - Ideas - The Boston Globe

John Cornwall has written a book about the changing nature of the Catholic sacrament  of confession penance/reconciliation, and this article provides quite a few important details about confession of which I was unaware.  (Even though I don't know that Cornwall is always to be trusted, I take it he is not making up the basic historical points here.)

It is certainly true that confession is ignored by most Catholics these days.  It is a dramatic change from what it meant to be Catholic even in the 1960's.  And you know what - the parish priests seem hardly concerned at all.   I have rarely heard this dramatic change in practice as the subject of a sermon, for example.

I tend to blame its downfall on the widespread rejection of the Church's teaching on the Pill, but the societal changes in the views of sexuality more generally no doubt played a role too. 

Seeing this in orbit would creep you out...

I'm not sure if I read about this at the time or not:  an unneeded spacesuit (two actually) being kitted out with a radio and sent out from the International Space Station as "suitsats" in 2006 and again in 2011.

I certainly don't remember the short clip you can see at the link showing a suit leaving the station in what looks very much like a scene from Gravity.

What fun science.