Tougher than expected

Frozen moss buried in Antarctica for more than 1,500 years starting to grow again in laboratory - Science - News - The Independent

Nietzsche considered

New Statesman | The ghost at the atheist feast: was Nietzsche right about religion?

Jason, have you already read this review?  It's interesting.

I can never quite work out why Nietzsche is popular.  I see that John Gray in this review says Nietzsche was not, ultimately, taking a tragic view of life.  I don't know enough about him to work out if this makes sense or not, but here's the key argument:

...neither the Christian religion nor Nietzsche’s philosophy can be said to express a tragic sense of life. If Yeshua (the Jewish prophet later known as Jesus) had died on the cross and stayed dead, that would have been a tragedy. In the Christian story, however, he was resurrected and came back into the world. Possibly this is why Dante’s great poem wasn’t called The Divine Tragedy. In the sense in which it was understood by the ancients, tragedy implies necessity and unalterable finality. According to Christianity, on the other hand, there is nothing that cannot be redeemed by divine grace and even death can be annulled.

Nor was Nietzsche, at bottom, a tragic thinker. His early work contained a profound interrogation of liberal rationalism, a modern view of things that contains no tragedies, only unfortunate mistakes and inspirational learning experiences. Against this banal creed, Nietzsche wanted to revive the tragic world-view of the ancient Greeks. But that world-view makes sense only if much that is important in life is fated. As understood in Greek religion and drama, tragedy requires a conflict of values that cannot be revoked by any act of will; in the mythology that Nietzsche concocted in his later writings, however, the godlike Superman, creating and destroying values as he pleases, can dissolve and nullify any tragic conflict.

As Eagleton puts it, “The autonomous, self-determining Superman is yet another piece of counterfeit theology.” Aiming to save the sense of tragedy, Nietzsche ended up producing another anti-tragic faith: a hyperbolic version of humanism.

Oh yes, wouldn't the Right love this

Here's an interesting short article on why Finland seems to have such a successful education system.

It paints a picture of educational philosophy that is, for the most part,  the complete opposite of what our current Right wing commentariate thinks about education:  an intense commitment to equality to access to education up to and including tertiary education; teachers who are very highly paid and very highly educated (masters degrees!) in how to teach, a national curriculum, small class sizes, and my favourite part for making the Judith Sloans of the world shake their heads in disgust:

School should be where we teach the meaning of life; where kids learn they are needed; where they can learn community skills. We like to think that school is also important for developing a good self-image, a strong sensitivity to other people’s feelings … and understanding it matters to take care of others. We definitely want to incorporate all those things in education.

Gee, I wonder what they teach about global warming and environmentalism?   All of the readers of Catallaxy would rather home school than put them through the Finnish system, I expect. (Several of them like the idea of home schooling in Australia because our education systems dares teach accurately on environmental topics, and tolerance of gays.)  I wonder if home schooling is illegal in Finland?

About the only thing the stoopid Right would like is a high emphasis on vocational training. 

Renaissance nudity

I happened to catch some of  Radio National's The Body Sphere today, and the section in which an Italian Renaissance art historian [Jill Burke] discussed attitudes to nudity at that time was particularly interesting, and amusing.   Here are some things of which I was not fully aware:

There's a kind of golden age of acceptance of the nude in art in Florence in the 1480s when Botticelli's painting his Venuses and these get very popular. Then there's a big swing, a big kind of religious turn in the 1490s, when some of these nude drawings, nude paintings are burned. The Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497, 1498 in the Piazza della Signoria just where the David was later to be displayed. And the David itself when it was first put up in Florence, he had a little kind of garland of leaves to cover his private parts. So even though you might think that it was all very acceptable, it was always a little bit problematic because of the potential of art to arouse erotic feelings in the viewer.

Burke then comments that as for public nudity, some males doing certain types of work might be seen nearly naked; but as for women, it was all very taboo, unless they needed to be punished:

They'd also have these kind of shaming rituals in some Italian cities where women who'd been caught for adultery would have to run round the city with no clothes on being pelted by vegetables, that kind of thing. But actually for what you might call respectable women, it would be shocking to see women naked.

Even bedroom activities were the subject of anti-nudity instruction:

They were told to have sex with their clothes on. There's a lot of religious texts and sermons that talk about women never allowing their husbands to see them naked. So, there's a Franciscan preacher called Bernardino Siena who in the early 15th century said to women in a sermon, 'It's better to die than let yourself be seen naked.' And that was by husbands, not in public. And there are other handbooks for married life. There's one by a man called Cherubino da Siena, again early 15th century, that tells both men and women that they shouldn't see each other naked, that's it's okay to touch areas but it's not okay to see them. So it's that kind of thing; on an official level no, they weren't meant to have sex naked, but what they actually did…I suspect that they really did have sex naked.

And as for the use to which what we might now consider "high brow" nude art was put; well, the erotic potential was not lost on its owners:

Jill Burke: From what we know, the evidence that we have from inventories is that these paintings would have been kept in the bed chamber. Often they were covered in some way, either with curtains…or there's another kind of nude that's very early, actually, that was on the underside of the lids of wedding chests…

Amanda Smith: The cassone…

Jill Burke: Cassoni, yes, that you'd keep clothes and things in. And you'd lift the lid and there's a reclining nude. Often they'd come in pairs and there'd be a naked man on one side and a naked woman on the other side. Again, whether this kind of almost taboo nature…you can imagine opening a chest or pulling aside a curtain might raise the erotic charge of these paintings.

Amanda Smith: But having that sort of naked image on the inside lid of a cassoni, for example, I mean was that to get the bride fired up as she, you know, pulled out her nightie?

Jill Burke: I think it probably was, yes, to get the couple kind of 'in the mood'. There's also a belief in the Renaissance that if you look at pictures of beautiful men that you're more likely to conceive a beautiful boy baby. So there's almost this kind of magic thing attached to it.

Burke's segment was too short.  But there is more at the transcript on the website.

A couple of Krugmans

Paul Krugman has two posts of interest up:

*  one about worries about private debt in China.

* the other is about increases in life expectancy in the US being not all that it seems.  I assume he won't object to my reproducing it in full:

I was pleased to see this article by Annie Lowrey documenting the growing disparity in life expectancy between the haves and the have-nots. It’s kind of frustrating, however, that this is apparently coming as news not just to many readers but to many policymakers and pundits. Many of us have been trying for years to get this point across — to point out that when people call for raising the Social Security and Medicare ages, they’re basically saying that janitors must keep working because corporate lawyers are living longer. Yet it never seems to sink in.

Maybe this article will change that. But my guess is that in a week or two we will once again hear a supposed wise man saying that we need to raise the retirement age to 67 because of higher life expectancy, unaware that (a) life expectancy hasn’t risen much for half of workers (b) we’ve already raised the retirement age to 67.

I wonder whether the Australian increase in life expectancy is more evenly spread across income levels.   Given our system of health care, you would certainly expect so.   (But of course there is a big disparity between aboriginal and non aboriginal life expectancies, even though I don't think that is something that is relevant to the Krugman argument.) 

Two odd thoughts on Flight 370

1.   Someone somewhere on the internet has probably already said it, but the situation as it has developed keeps striking me as something very like the opening of a James Bond film.   Sure, it's usually military or similar items being snatched or destroyed by an evil genius who does not make his plans public, but close enough. [Update:  Ah yes, I see today that James Fallows in The Atlantic perhaps made the James Bond connection a couple of days ago.]

2.   The discussion about the relative paucity of radar cover across the globe indicates that there may be more room for UFOs of the nuts and bolts variety to be cruising around the Earth than I would have thought.  Radar sightings of UFOs are pretty sparse; visual/radar sightings even more so.  There is the occasional muttering around that NORAD has had radar tracks of pretty inexplicable things (very fast objects doing very fast turns, for example) but I don't know at what height and perimeter it can be expected to see things.  It certainly appears that there is plenty of space over plenty of parts of the globe that something could sneak in if it did not want to be detected.

Needs better drawings

Death Is Wrong, the transhumanist kids’ book by Gennady Stolyarov.

Slate has a look at a book for kids promoting transhumanism. 

If the cover is anything to go by, the author could not afford a good illustrator. 

To Canberra and Back, Part 7

We're on the last legs now.  From Jenolan Caves we headed up north to Taree, via Katoomba:

I don't know when I was last in Katoomba - perhaps I had been there briefly once as an adult, but I think I may have just driven through on the way to my adult visit to Jenolan Caves.  I wanted to show the family the famous view, but even at midday, this was all that you could see:

  

 

I was reduced to going into the souvenir shops and pointing to postcards and saying to slightly skeptical family that it really looked spectacular if it weren't for the cloud:

(Apologies to Australian readers who didn't really need the illustration.)

I felt sorry for the busloads of Chinese tourists who being delivered to stare into the fog for a few minutes, before being shuffled into what looked like a lacklustre cultural show featuring suburban people of aboriginal descent.  (I'll slip into slight condescension mode and mention again that an interest in Australian aboriginal culture, no matter how it is presented, is something which still eludes me, and I really have my doubts it interests the average Chinese tourist either.)

Anyway, on we drove, descending out of the Blue Mountains and skirting Sydney as we hit the road north.  Lunch was at a McDonalds. 

I've always liked the motorway north out of Sydney to Newcastle; the way it carves through some hills and the high bridges over which (unfortunately) the driver only gets a brief scenic glance.

And in fact the road right through to Taree was pretty good most of the way.  

Taree was chosen to overnight just because of its distance.  It seemed a pretty nondescript town; I prefer some of the more northern big river towns of New South Wales.  More about them later.

A serious problem

Given that the last month in Australian media has been full of appalling stories of pedophilia (apart from the Morecombe case itself, there are the terrible allegations from several women about - alleged - comic actor Robert Hughes, and the extraordinary case of the Cairns based gay couple who acquired a baby with the explicit purpose in mind,)  I thought I would look around for recent commentary on the whole issue of pedophilia and recidivism.

This one from Harvard Medical School in 2010 is pretty good.  The problem is, as the title says, there is pretty widespread pessimism about how it can be treated with any sufficient degree of certainty that you can prevent recidivism.   This is a real nightmare for those in the justice system, and the community more generally. 

Look at Cowan himself.  After serving 4 years for a second rape of a boy, and being sent by his parole office in Darwin to Queensland so that could do a sexual offenders program, he apparently got into an evangelical Church and met his wife there, with whom he had two children (one before he killed Daniel, one after.)  He certainly looks clean cut and reformed in this street interview in Brisbane in which he proclaimed he was a new man.  For any psychologist dealing with him, this must have sounded like the best possible type of support group to help ensure he did not re-offend.  Yet the urge to sexually assault boy strangers was strong enough that he acted on it.

The thing is, what confidence should the public have in sexual offender programs delivered through the justice system?   The Harvard article above notes this about recidivism:

Estimates of recidivism vary because studies define this term in different ways. One review found recidivism rates of 10% to 50% among pedophiles previously convicted of sexual abuse, although this could include anything from an arrest for any offense to reconviction on a crime against a child. One long-term study of previously convicted pedophiles (with an average follow-up of 25 years) found that one-fourth of heterosexual pedophiles and one-half of homosexual or bisexual pedophiles went on to commit another sexual offense against children.

This would indicate the recidivism rate for someone like Cowan is extraordinarily high, and his case is far from atypical.

Are judges kept fully aware of the research on the topic?

And what about the style of treatment and its efficacy that is attempted in the sexual offender programs in Australia?   I see there is a 2010 Queensland study on the sexual offender program, but it is only for about 409 released from 2005 to 2008 - a pretty small sample size over a very short period.  (The report acknowledges these shortcomings;  it also notes that for offences against children, there is often a substantial delay before the offence is reported.)

The report finds that the program seems to have a positive effect (in that those who did the program have a somewhat lower recidivism rate for sexual offences), but obviously the study is looking at a very short period.    The parts that discuss sexual offence recidivism rates generally are of interest. On the "down" side:

Despite a great deal of research effort devoted to the question, knowledge concerning the dynamic risk factors associated with sexual offender recidivism (otherwise referred to as criminogenic needs) remains limited. Some of the psychological characteristics commonly targeted for improvement in sexual offender programs (e.g. sexual preoccupations; impulsivity; intimacy problems) tend to be only weakly (even if significantly in a statistical sense) associated with sexual offender recidivism. Other common treatment targets (e.g. denial; victim empathy) have recently been shown, on average, to be unrelated to sexual offender recidivism (Hanson & Morton-Bourgon, 2005).

 On the (slightly) more positive side:

A meta-analytic review of sexual offender recidivism studies, involving more than 80 separate studies and almost 30,000 sexual offenders, found an average sexual recidivism rate of 13.7% over an average time at risk of five to six years (Hanson & Morton-Bourgon, 2005). In that meta-analysis, rates for nonsexual violent recidivism were 14.3%, and for ‘any’ recidivism 36.2%. For the present evaluation, the average time at risk of two years and five months was a little less than half the average observation period for the studies included in Hanson and Morton-Bourgon’s meta-analysis. Notwithstanding jurisdictional variations in crime reporting.  and recording, it would be reasonable to expect that over the next two or three years observed recidivism base-rates for the Queensland offenders would be more similar to international averages.

But what about for longer periods?   This passage seems to me to be written with unwarranted optimism, given the number quoted:

Notwithstanding the limitations of official recidivism data, it seems clear that a significant proportion (perhaps the majority) of convicted sexual offenders do not go on to commit further sexual offences, even without treatment. Studies that have followed sexual offenders for 20 years or more still tend to find sexual recidivism rates well below 50% (Hanson, 2000; Janus & Meehl, 1997). This raises further questions about the universal need for specialised sexual offender treatment.    

What's missing, of course, is more specific figures for the rate of pedophiliac recidivism.

From reading the Harvard commentary, and this Queensland report with its hesitation about how effective these programs really are, it would seem reasonable to conclude  that the rate of recidivism for pedophiles is significantly higher than for sexual offenders against adults, and is very likely to stay that way even if they undergo a sexual offender course.

More pessimism can be taken from the psychologist who actually treated Cowan.   While he considers sexual offender programs do help (and while ever they have some effectiveness, I wouldn't argue against them - except to the extent that they may give unwarranted confidence to judges when sentencing,) he freely admits you can never really know if someone will re-offend:

He says evidence suggests such programs are effective when they are "well designed and well implemented".

"But there are never any guarantees for individuals, and when you're dealing with high-risk offenders in the first place there's bound to be some recidivism among that group," he said.

"The difficulty is predicting who among that group is and isn't likely to go on to commit further offences."

He says sex offenders often display no observable behavioural features apart from the offences they commit.

"In fact for many sex offenders, the most unusual thing about them is that they have committed sex offences," he said.

"We know that in retrospect, but it's obviously very difficult to know in prospect."

It seems to me that if the long term recidivism rate for guys like Cowan is around 50%, and if sexual offender programs have only ever been shown to have modest effects (say, reducing re-offense by pedophiles to 40%?) this is a really significant matter which must be taken into account in terms of how both sentencing and the terms on which they should ever be released back into the community.

(If any psychologist thinks my guesstimate figures in that paragraph are  wrong - let them come out and be specific about what figures they know about.)

So how is the justice system supposed to deal with these offenders?    The judge in the Cowan case has been criticised for making the observation that an unintended consequence of tougher sentencing for sex offenders is that it can give them a greater incentive to kill their victim.   This makes some intuitive sense, but really, it has got to be balanced with the actual evidence about the rate of recidivism.   What I find particularly hard to credit is that second offence sentences for sexual assaults on children should take this effect into account. 

The Courier Mail is running hard on the previous judges being too lenient in sentencing.   I generally am wary of such media campaigns for various reasons, but it is interesting to note that there was an appeal by the Prosecution which failed against the 7 year (with non parole of 3 1/2 years) sentence for Cowan's second offence in Darwin.  The point is that, reading around on the topic, there do appear to be grounds to be concerned that judges may have an inadequate appreciation of the recidivism rates for this particular type of offender.  If the media can play a role in highlighting this, I don't have a problem with that.

But even then, longer sentences for early offences is not the only issue.   The community hates the idea of released repeat offenders of any age being anywhere near them, and who can blame them, really?  Chemical or physical castration if issued as a punishment by the State feels either too medieval, or "Clockwork Orange," to most liberals, I assume, but it is interesting to see it is still a live issue as a voluntary measure in the United States, and chemical castration is a recently introduced punishment in Korea.  

(One argument noted against physical castration is that men can seek to counteract its affects by testosterone patches - which are presumably not so hard to get your hands on these days.)

The article about the Korean situation notes the 50% recidivism rate for pedophiles:

Surgical castration reportedly produces definitive results, even in repeat pedophilic offenders, by reducing recidivism rates to 2% to 5% compared with expected rates of 50%. Chemical castration using LHRH agonists reduces circulating testosterone to very low levels, and also results in very low levels of recidivism despite the strong psychological factors that contribute to sexual offending (10). Chemical castration has some advantages over surgical castration. First, although chemical castration is potentially life-long for some offenders, it might allow sexual offenders to have normal sexual activity in context with psychotherapy. Second, some sexual offenders may voluntarily receive chemical castration. Third, chemical castration may be a more realistic restriction than electronic ankle bracelets or surgical castration. Fourth, unlike surgical castration, the effects of anti-libido medication are reversible after discontinuation. Finally, the general public may feel relieved knowing that sexual offenders are undergoing chemical castration.

 I'm not at all sure that the public thinks the reversibility of chemical castration is an advantage, but at least chemical castration (I assume) avoids the issue of physical castration being countered by testosterone.

I do not have a conclusive view on this, but I would not reject a serious discussion about the voluntary use of chemical castration as a precondition for release of offenders such as Cowan, regardless of their age.

Update:   I see that a New South Wales Parliamentary committee is said to be already considering chemical castration as a sentencing option.   This report notes that civil libertarians were unhappy with the suggestion, but interestingly, the opinion of one important group of professionals sounds quite sanguine and practical about it:

But the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists president-elect, Louise Newman, believes chemical castration, which works as long as the patient stays on the medication, should be considered for the more "hard core" sexual offenders.

"It's certainly not a cure or a way of reducing all risk, but it might be seen as a useful component of treatment or management for some of these very difficult cases, where we're unlikely to see response to other methods," Professor Newman told ABC News Online.

"They're not commonly used at all and they are not needed other than in the fairly difficult group of very severe offenders."

The drugs impact on liver function, so those undergoing the treatment usually have their health checked regularly.

Professor Newman says that although some sex offenders have a good chance of recovery, there will always be a small group of people who will continue to pose a risk to the community.

"There's always some risk of reoffending and obviously someone can offend in various ways," she said.

"Clearly there is a group of people for whom risk is significant and they might have ongoing and really severe difficulties in managing their impulses.

"Containment and monitoring of those sorts of people might actually be necessary to ensure community safety."

 I could not think of a more ideal candidate for having his release on parole subject to a lengthy mandated period of chemical castration than Cowan on his second sentence.  Of course, this would presumably have stopped a relatively young man from marrying and having kids as he did, but look at what it could have stopped.

I also see from Wikipedia that, surprisingly, in the United States, California was the first state to introduce it as a punishment for child molestation.  It is a mandatory if going on parole after a second offence.  The article notes about 7 other states have "experimented" with it; I am a little surprised that it has not been used more widely in some of the more conservative states. 

The Wikipedia story also lists quite a few European nations that have implemented it since about 2010.  There would seem to be a bit of an international movement towards accepting it as useful particularly for repeat offenders against children.

It seems to me that it is time for it to be discussed in more detail in this country, too.

Don't forget "expensive"

BBC News - Viewpoint: Does Singapore deserve its 'miserable' tag?

I've always quite liked my short stays in Singapore, although the last one was maybe 8 or so years ago now (I think.)

I am told by someone who was holidaying there recently, though, that it really has become expensive.

The interesting thing is that, as far as I can gather (since I don't bother reading that much about American libertarians) Singapore has developed a bit of a fan club amongst at least a subset of those of that political persuasion.  Certainly, I think the country has a reputation for a self sufficiency of its people.

According to the article though, that self sufficiency seems to have progressed into lack of empathy with strangers.   If it is a society that does reflect libertarianism, I am not exactly surprised.

The old "I'm just being reasonable" line

I see Sinclair Davidson is again running with the old "I'm just being reasonable" line in which he seeks to downplay his active promotion since at least 2007 of public disbelief in the seriousness of climate change.

Here are some of his cute lines today:

To the extent that we all agree that CO2 emissions are a problem, and we want to do something about those emissions, then theory tells us that the least-cost solution would be to impose a tax on CO2 emissions...

So, a person who is an high ranking member of the IPA, and who runs a blog with contributors who are all openly dismissive and hostile towards climate change as a serious issue is suggesting that he agrees that "CO2 emissions are a problem"?   Or is there some subtle interpretation I am missing out on here?

Well, the next paragraph notes that some people don't agree that there is a CO2 problem at all - (yeah, like every single contributor to his blog.)

Would Sinclair like to explain whether he is within the some people, or would he prefer to keep it somewhat  vague so he can try to distance himself from his fetid IPA colleagues when, as is widely expected by the scientists he routinely seeks to discredit, the next change in the Pacific sees the temperature increase its rate of climb? 


I think I have known the answer to that one for quite a while now.

Reason for optimism?

The Economist has a short article on the potential for "distributed generators" and large scale batteries to beat down things like big coal.  It starts:

WHO needs the power grid when you can generate and store your own electricity cheaply and reliably? Such a world is drawing nearer: good news for consumers, but a potential shock for utility companies. That is the conclusion of a report this week by Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, which predicts that ever-cheaper solar and other renewable-energy sources, combined with better and more plentiful batteries, will allow many businesses and other electricity users to cut the cord on their electricity providers.

Tesla Motors, an American maker of electric cars, recently said it will build a “gigafactory”, which by 2020 will turn out as many lithium-ion batteries as the whole world produced last year. These batteries can do more than power cars; they can also store electricity which is produced when it is not needed, and discharge it when it is.

Is everyone fed up with Andrew being fed up, yet?

You know, I think Andrew Bolt might be playing the martyr line to such a tiresome degree that even his supporters may be wavering in their loyalty.

I was going to write something about how, if you don't want to be labelled a racist (even if in error), it probably helps to not spend so much time rubbishing aboriginal activists, arguing that every single "stolen generation" claim is bollocks,  and pointing at and deriding pale skinned people who claim aboriginality. 

But the opening paragraph in a wry Guardian opinion piece (semi sarcastically imploring Bolt not to quit) sort of summed up the situation well:

There is a classic scene in The Simpsons parodying the borderline un-parody-able Fox News, wherein the network’s news helicopter is emblazoned with the slogan “Not racist, but #1 with racists”.

It was the first thing that sprang to mind upon reading about poor, maligned Andrew Bolt and his claim that, so hurt by an accusation of racism by Marcia Langton on Q&A, he didn’t turn up to work on Tuesday (freeing him up to write a cheeky 14 posts on his blog, happily).

What? You mean no productivity crisis either?

One graph that completely contradicts Australia's 'productivity crisis' | Business Spectator

Last week, I noted there was no wages growth crisis in Australia.

As Kohler points out, the Australian government is also happy to tell foreign investors that there is also great crisis in productivity either.

I just heard that unemployment was steady at 6%.  Not great, but not a crisis either.

And all of this happening while we still have a carbon tax, and no certainty it will be gone in July.

Odd, that.  [/sarc, of course.]

History: A medieval multiverse

History: A medieval multiverse

This somewhat interesting look at the theories of a medieval scholar and bishop includes this bit:

The possible existence of more than one universe was indeed a live issue
of the period, and a highly contentious one — appearing, for example,
in the Papal edict of 1277 that banned a list of scientific teachings.
But it was a debate that Grosseteste apparently chose to avoid. None of
his surviving treatises discusses the possibility of other forms of
universe, however close he came to implying it in his cosmogony.

I wonder what else was covered in that Papal edict of 1277.

Catholic conundrums

Pope Francis at one year: Why intense focus on the papacy is bad for the Catholic Church

I quite like this article, particularly when it talks about the problems the Catholic Church faces in trying to resolve the contradictions which came out of Vatican 2.  (The fundamental one, which was brought into sharp focus in the minds of tens of millions of Catholics because of the Church's contemporaneous  rejection of the Pill, was the renewed emphasis on individual conscience, while insisting that a good Catholic conscience cannot disagree with the Church's pronouncements on matters such as contraception.)

This passage rings true:

These divisions, and the disputes they provoke, are mind-numbingly
familiar. What is a “faithful” Catholic to think about artificial birth
control; homosexuality and same-sex marriage; divorce; the exclusively
male, celibate priesthood; the possibility of electing bishops; the role
of the laity, especially women, in church decision-making; the
relationship between popes and bishops; religious pluralism; and clergy
sexual abuse and the unaccountability of the hierarchy? These and other
questions go to the heart of Catholic self-understanding, yet a church
notorious for valuing discipline and unanimity remains deeply divided on
all of them. Catholics on both sides of every issue claim to be the
true heirs of the Second Vatican Council. All agree that Vatican II
promulgated the most authoritative understanding of the church’s
teachings. Yet they read the council’s documents in diametrically
opposed ways.

How is that possible? The answer lies with the documents themselves.
On the one hand, the proclamations of Vatican II opened startling new
possibilities for how Catholics might engage both one another and those
outside the church: “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the
anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in
any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and
anxieties, of the followers of Christ,” the bishops insisted at Vatican
II, in an unprecedented spirit of ecumenism. At the same time, however,
the council effectively reaffirmed the Catholic absolutism of the past.
The distinguished Lutheran theologian George Lindbeck, an official
Protestant observer at Vatican II, described the resulting dilemma as
one in which “radical and fundamental ambiguities in the most
authoritative” statements promulgated by the council—including those on
papal infallibility, relations with other Christians, and the challenge
of reconciling Catholic tradition with the Bible—enabled those on
different sides of every neuralgic issue to find ample textual support
for their interpretations. “When the supreme law of the land directly
authorizes rival, perhaps contradictory, positions and provides no way
of settling the disputes,” Lindbeck concluded with genuine regret,
“conflict becomes inevitable and, unless changes are made in the supreme
law, irresolvable.”

Little has changed in the nearly 40 years since Lindbeck offered his assessment.

That Groucho Marx club quip comes to mind

The Society of Mutual Autopsy  -  Mind Hacks

The brief explanation:

In October 1876, twenty Parisian men joined together as the Society of
Mutual Autopsy and pledged to dissect one another’s brains in the hopes
of advancing science. The society acquired over a hundred members in its
first few years, including many notable political figures of the left
and far left. While its heyday was unquestionably the last two decades
of the century, the society continued to attract members until the First
World War. It continued its operations until just before World War II,
effectuating many detailed encephalic autopsies, the results of which
were periodically published in scientific journals.

Andrew Bolt, professional martyr

I see that Andrew Bolt's self assigned job (although encouraged with much hand holding by the IPA and, I suspect, News Ltd itself) as professional martyr continues unabated.  Today, complaining that Marcia Langton was mean to him, he writes:

I could prove that my banned articles argued against racism and racial division by republishing them - but the Federal Court has ruled that I may not. Mein Kampf can be published, but my articles fighting racism cannot.

The articles remain (and as far as I know, have always been) available on his own blog, although they are headed by a notice required by the Court that it had made findings that they were inaccurate.  

As for Langton, she may (for all I know) have been exaggerating as to the effect Bolt's comments on Misty Jenkins, but Bolt is also being disingenuous if he is claiming he was not having a go at her for identifying as aboriginal.  The quote in Q&A:

Page four has a feature on Dr Misty Jenkins, a blonde and pale science PhD who calls herself Aboriginal and enthuses: “I was able to watch the coverage of Kevin Rudd’s (sorry) speech with tears rolling down my cheeks ...

Given that we know the question of self identification of aboriginality has been a strongly contested matter even with aboriginal circles, and has been commented on by other right wing figures even in the Australian without there being any legal consequences, the matter has always been not that Bolt deals with the issue, but how he goes about doing it.

Andrew is not big or sensible enough to recognise this, and right wing activists (with who knows what corporate backing) are happy to see him play the role.  All a bit sad for Bolt, really.   As with his gullible acceptance of climate change denialism, he just really continues to prove he's not so smart.

(Oh sure, getting rich on his Fox Lite media performances, no doubt.   But showing himself to be dumber by the day.)

In related news:   it's amusing to read today that the IPA is stamping its feet over the prospect that the Abbott government is not going to repeal s18C in its entirety.  Fairfax writes:

 The dispute is likely to get worse, especially if Senator Brandis introduces, as some expect, a new criminal offence of racial vilification. IPA executive director John Roskam said he would rather there were no changes to the law than a new criminal ban on hate speech. He also said it had ''got back to me'' that Senator Brandis had been criticising the IPA in private conversations.

Oh noes!  A politician who might be rather sick of the bullying blowhards and culture warriors of the IPA (see Sinclair Davidson publicly suggesting that Brandis shouldn't be re-elected if he doesn't toe the IPA line) says he doesn't appreciate their attitude.   How surprising.

Great moments in American "rights" law

Watching what American courts get asked to determine as matters arising from their legislated approach to rights provides some excellent reasons for never going down that path:

The US Supreme Court on Monday let stand an appeals court ruling that seventh- and eighth-grade students in a Pennsylvania school district have a free speech right to wear bracelets proclaiming “i ♥ boobies!”

School officials had asked the high court to take up the case and reverse the ruling to allow administrators more leeway to censor messages worn by students at school. The high court turned aside the appeal without comment.

The bracelets were designed to build awareness of the struggle against breast cancer, and wearing them became a fad among a group of 11- to 14-year-old middle-school students in the Easton Area School District in eastern Pennsylvania.

Rupert knows everything

Has anyone been paying attention to Rupert Murdoch's twitter account lately?   He's taken to making some very big (and very, very dubious) calls:

On Sunday:

 777crash confirms jihadists turning to make trouble for China. Chance for US to make common cause, befriend China while Russia bullies.

Why bother investigating when you can just give Rupert a call?

On 1 March (following the mass stabbing in China):

Obama should all Chinese President following today's incident and say " we both have the problem of Muslim terrorism. Can we work together?"

So, the US has a role to play in dealing with Chinese internal Muslim issues?  What - looking at ways to stop the spread of knives amongst terrorists?  

On religion:

Pope Francis appoints brilliant Cardinal Pell from Sydney to be no.3 power in Vatican. Australia will miss him but world will benefit.

Um, no.  A small rump of hard core conservative right wing Australian Catholics will be sad to see George disappear into the Vatican in a low public profile job.   The large majority of church attending Catholics, including priests and bishops, will be happy to see his pompous style go.  

On the weather, now that he has no young wife with liberal friends:

Wild winter in US, UK, etc. no respectable evidence any of this man made climate change in spite of blindly ignorant politicians.

Rupert confirms he is old and has jumped the shark.   It also sounds like he sits around watching Fox News all day.  I wonder if his new squeeze is already searching the internet for high end nursing homes in Manhattan?