Not impressed

Svengali of spin

Interesting profile of Mark Textor that, to my mind, paints a picture of a political jerk.

An amusing review

There's a review of a memoir about Jorges Luis Borges in this month's Literary Review that begins:

For rather a short book (259 pages of large print and generous spacing), Norman Thomas di Giovanni's odd memoir of Jorge Luis Borges includes a surprisingly large number of pages devoted to urination.

It made me laugh quite a bit...

Industrial scale blackmail

I'm not surprised it happens (Filipinos attempting blackmail of cyber "boyfriends" by recording some embarrassing on line video), but I am surprised at the apparent scale of it:

Operating on an almost industrial scale from call centre-style offices, such cyber-blackmail agents are provided with training and offered bonus incentives such as holidays, cash or mobile phones for reaching their financial targets.

Bad.  

First Dog noted

I quite like today's First Dog on the Moon cartoon re the Commission of Audit.   (As it happens, it's the first one since he moved his kennel to The Guardian that I thought was up to standard.)

Does he care if it is copied here, I wonder?

Attempted indoctrination fail

Interesting article at the Atlantic about how children who are brought up in very politically doctrinaire homes often rebel and adopt the opposite position as adults:

It’s understandable that parents with strong beliefs would feel it is their duty to see their children adopt those beliefs. But, however well-meaning these efforts are, they may be in vain. A study recently published in the British Journal of Political Science, based on data from the U.S. and U.K., found that parents who are insistent that their children adopt their political views inadvertently influence their children to abandon the belief once they become adults. The mechanism is perhaps surprising: Children who come from homes where politics is a frequent topic of discussion are more likely to talk about politics once they leave home, exposing them to new viewpoints—which they then adopt with surprising frequency.

The study, led by researcher Elias Dinas, also shows that these changes are especially likely to happen during the college years. Conservative culture warriors have warned for years that universities are outposts of liberal indoctrination—and the study seems to confirm at least some of that warning.

“Extreme parental views of the world give children a clear choice for being with the parents through agreement, or against parents through disagreement,” says Carl Pickhardt, an author and child psychologist. “Thus extremely rigid views of right/wrong, trust/distrust, love/hate can be embraced by children who want to stay connected to parents, and can be cast off by children who, for their own independence, are willing to place the parental relationship at risk.”

Another potential holiday destination to give a miss

Brunei introduces Islamic sharia penalties, including death by stoning for adultery

Not that I would be expecting to break the law if I went there, mind you. But no one should reward such a place with tourism.

Competition isn't everything

Why the Audit Commission is wrong on its biggest call

Michael Pascoe's column on the Right wing's obsession with going back to the future regarding the Federal system in Australia sounds right to me.  (And I say that as someone who grew up in Brisbane who can remember sewerage only being installed in the family home about 8 km from the city in the mid 1960's.)  Here's the relevant section:

The idea is that, if the states are given more responsibility and control of their own revenue and expenditure without federal interference, they will compete to offer the best services most
efficiently, thereby achieving improved outcomes at a lower cost. Market forces to the rescue and, praise the Lord, smaller Federal Government.

The real world is different. There are some practical problems for a start. Peter Hartcher reports that, according the report itself, the proposed reform of federation would increase overall government spending and the tax burden by $5 billion a year. Tasmanian and Bank of America Merrill Lynch chief economist, Saul Eslake, has explained that the poorest states with the lowest incomes would have to have the highest rates of tax to deliver comparable services. Neither are desirable outcomes.

Worse is the reality of what happens when our states compete: it tends to be a race to the bottom.

If you're ideologically driven by a dislike of taxes and government, Joh Bjelke-Petersen could well be your hero. He abolished death duties in Australia by dropping them in Queensland and boasting about running the lowest-taxing state. That may have been an incentive for a temporary rise in the number of people who thought Queensland was a good place to die, but the other states soon copied the move.

And while Queensland claimed the "lowest taxing" title, it also provided the worst or near-worst services, especially in education.  Queenslanders ended up getting what they paid for - a backward state with a diminished long-term future - until other premiers brought it up
to the national speed....

This is not just an Australian phenomenon. The United States, spiritual home of the ideologically-driven right, is the model of competitive federalism. The result is a sadly divergent society suffering growing inequality – and that's before getting into the issue of rising education costs and debts. To be born in Mississippi means, on average, that you're a loser in the American lottery. Competitive federalism tends to keep the poor poor and the rich richer.

Putting the boot into the IPA

Propagandists masquerade as think tanks to push spurious science

What a good way to start the morning - some serious kicking of the Institute of Paid Advocacy (and to a lesser extent, the CIS).

Just your average ideologically driven Coalition wish list

Lateline - 01/05/2014: Audit Commission report

Like most other people, I'm sure, I had forgotten completely until I was watching Lateline last night that the incoming Howard government had a similar "Commission of Audit" back in 1996.  Amusingly, many of the things recommended in that report have turned up again in this new one.

These reports can, to large extent, be ignored as being just a part of Coalition government tactics.  Have a read of this part of the transcript from last night, and snigger away at how things haven't changed much over 20 years:

(1996)

BOB OFFICER, ARCHIVE: It's my pleasure to present this report.

TOM IGGULDEN: ...came not long after the last Coalition government was sworn in, the last Liberal treasurer took the same approach to the recommendations.

PETER COSTELLO, FORMER LIBERAL TREASURER, ARCHIVE: This is not a statement of government policy.

TOM IGGULDEN: The recommendations in 1996 were also broadly similar to today's...

(Excerpt from 1996 National Commission of Audit 1996)

VOICEOVER:  A Medicare upfront payment for each visit to the doctor. The total replacement of university funding with scholarships, student fees and bequests. And a tougher approach to adjusting pensions.

TOM IGGULDEN: ...few were ultimately taken up...

(Excerpt from 1996 National Commission of Audit 1996)

VOICEOVER: Means testing nursing home care and the handing over to the states of key areas such as health and education.

TOM IGGULDEN: ...despite the warnings of a budget crisis to come, especially in health.

BOB OFFICER, ARCHIVE: That program is not sustainable in its current form.

Creepy stories

I've read of the "phone call from the dead" genre of (alleged) true life ghost stories before, but never found any examples particularly convincing.   However the three listed in this post, (including one I missed recently in the Sydney Morning Herald!) give me the creeps, somewhat.

Complaining again about a show I won't watch? Hey, it's my blog...

I am no fan of the fantasy genre, so there was never much chance I would want to watch Game of Thrones.  When I heard that it was relentlessly violent (especially with beheadings - I've always felt queasy contemplating those), had a fair bit of swearing, and was full of gratuitously explicit porn-like sex scenes, the chances of my watching it, ever, even if someone sent me a set of boxed DVDs, approached zero.  Call me old fashioned (I do point out a conservative inclination in the title, you know) but the dark moral atmosphere which some fiction generates is a matter of concern to me, and I think it is problematic that it is not a matter of concern for so many people in Western society now.

Hence, it is with a sense of some schadenfreude that I read about the controversy that a recent rape scene had swept through the show's fans.

There seems to be a bit of a push back over the initial outrage many felt at a scene which involves (as I understand) the incredibly-dangerous-for-men-to-really-believe old trope of a rape that starts as a rape but is supposed to not be rape by the end.* It's not real life, complains the (routinely sweary herself) Helen Razer:  stop talking about it.  Oddly, she does acknowledge that the controversy was really kicked along by the director's attempt to justify the scene as not really being rape, yet she still thinks it is not worth talking about.  And what's more, since Razer wrote her post, the actress involved has also made comments indicating that she agrees with the director.  I really don't agree with Razor's argument that incredibly popular fiction that deals with rape in a highly dubious moral manner doesn't matter. 

It has always seemed to me to be a "traditionally" Left wing thing to downplay the influence of fiction on real life, and hence not to care, or really think about, the message either consciously or subliminally conveyed by a story.  These days, after much reading of a certain blog over the years, it seems to me that the libertarian right has adopted much the same attitude.  Come to think of it, the cultural grandmother of much of what passes for  libertarianism in the US, Ayn Rand, had a recurring thing about forced sex in her novels which makes most modern women feel queasy.  George RR Martin, on the other hand, is a life long Democrat, supporting my initial claim.

In any event, I was happy enough with this post about the issue of depictions of rape in fiction by a male author and blogger unknown to me, and whose work I may not even like:

The discussion then must be: well, why is this a problem? Rape exists in fiction. And it has to be allowed to exist in fiction. It’s a rough, tough, terrible topic, but to ignore it is all the more sickening — to sweep it under the rug and not shine a line in that dark space is basically to deny it in reality, as well. One of fiction’s chiefmost strengths is that it allows us to bring up these things  and make us feel something about them — it’s addressing them, making us deal with it, and it’s being real about it.

That said, as storytellers, it’s vital to think about what we’re putting out there. There exists a mode of thought that says authors have zero social responsibility, and I’d argue that’s technically true in the same way that nobody anywhere has any social responsibility to anyone. We’re all basically just animals in a zoo, but what makes us human is thinking about the ramifications of our actions. And what makes us smart storytellers and capable authors is thinking about the ramifications of our stories. That doesn’t necessarily mean not putting scary stuff on the page (or on the screen). It just means being mindful of consequence.

He then makes it clear that the main consequence he is concerned about is how women who have been victims of rape or sexual assault will feel when they watch the show.   Well, that's a valid enough point, although I would have thought that (as he makes clear in a paragraph I quote below) as the show features an awful lot of rape, women who have a problem with that would probably have given up watching long ago.

But his point becomes more general about the use of rape in fiction and in the show more generally:

The problem, as I see it, with the rape scene in GoT, is many-fold.

First, it’s done in a world where rape is basically as common as horses. It’s referenced damn near every episode. Women are victims. Men are rapists. It’s practically becoming a thesis of the world. The worst thing done to women is rape. Rape, rape, rape. The show is getting rapey as shit. (More notable perhaps because the books aren’t quite so?) At this point, that’s drifting toward fetishistic and gratuitous — in part because it seems to revel in its statement.

Second, it’s more a trope than it is an actual thing. It’s lazy, cheap, short-shrifted. It’s code meant to again invoke that grayness of the characters — “Oh, look, even the most powerful can be laid low, and even those characters you like are basically pieces of shit.” The rapist-and-victim message, again. Really, we can’t do any better?

Third, it feels out of character and is a change from the book — a change that makes these characters worse and weaker than they have demonstrated in the past (at least, I’d argue).

Fourth, the rape was soft, weak, almost as ineluctable as gravity — the strong woman just sort of gives into it (and here you’ll want to discuss the was she really raped? question again but once more please be aware of the persistent lack of consent given) and makes rape look less like a violent act and more like a fact-of-life. (And it really is a fact-of-life in the GoT world, which is troubling in how it reinforces that “women = victims, men = rapists” vibe.)

The point I’m making is, if you’re going to deal with rape in your fiction, please give it weight and consequence. Do not let it drift toward being a lazy, cheap trope.

That sounds pretty reasonable to me, and one not based on what people will call my nanny-ish inclination to tell people to stop watching dark stories on TV or movies, or an excessively feminist viewpoint.

Its not as if I suspect that the show is going to lead to incestuous rapes that would otherwise not have happened; but it does sound awfully like it is yet another modern, much praised show, in which main protagonists act very badly indeed, and yet they are played as engaging characters.  And not just for 2 hours of moral bleakness in the cinema, but for scores of hours to dwell with them.

I don't see that as something to celebrate.   If the rape scene has led to people dropping the show, that a happy consequence, I reckon.

Update:   good to see a story in the New York Times that notes that many people are starting to make the same disgruntled observations about the use of rape in the show and books as outlined by Chuck Wendig above.  I expect nothing much will be done, however, as long as people keep watching it in large numbers.


* I am reminded of the controversy a few decades back that Robert Heinlein, who got more and more eccentric in his fictional dealings with sexuality, faced when a female character in one of his books (if I remember it correctly) dealt with rape by deciding to get what enjoyment out of it she could, while simultaneously vowing to kill the rapist.  

My $3 clean skin shopping appears safe (and a fast food complaint)

Minimum alcohol price not in the public interest, says health agency | World news | theguardian.com

By the way, according to one calculation, Australia is the fourth most expensive country to live in.  It would seem to me they are giving inadequate weighting to the cost of cheap wine. 

But, by way of cost of living related complaint:   I have become unhappy with McDonalds.

A price increase at my local one maybe 6 months ago seems to have made it significantly more expensive, and I have become really tired of the stuffing around with the menu.   The higher quality items taken as a meal now are all over $10, even for the "small" version.   The price differential between a small meal set and a medium one is tiny (about 50c?) which is typical of the obesity inducing pricing structure of fast food outlets generally, I guess.

The only "good" value there now is in the cruddy end of the menu - "burgers" which are only meat, bacon and sauce, for example.

Sure, they have introduced chicken salads which are better than they were before, but after their introductory lower price, their regular price just doesn't seem particularly good value. 

And basically, they just keep moving menu items around too fast.   The burger with beetroot, for example, will reappear for a mere 6 weeks (or so it seems) and disappear again.   And some items appear once and never re-appear again.  (My wife and I both liked a "mexican" burger on a corn bun with avocado some years ago - it has never come back to my knowledge.)

I admired the way the company re-branded itself a good few years ago now with the store upgrades to include the coffee shop sections, but with the main menu being mucked around the way it is, and the expense that now makes it hard to get away with an under $10 meal, it has lost its appeal.

I suspect I can't be the only person feeling this way.  I would be curious to see how their profit is going.

Serious pteropod effects already found (and how Conservative American pundits don't have a clue)

It was only recently that I referred to pteropods as the "canary in the coal mine" for ocean acidification.

Well, they have started to suffer already in one part of the world's ocean:

A NOAA-led research team has found the first evidence that acidity of continental shelf waters off the West Coast is dissolving the shells of tiny free-swimming marine snails, called pteropods, which provide food for pink salmon, mackerel and herring, according to a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B 

Even though these waters are naturally more acidic from local upwelling, it does not augur well for the future: 

"We did not expect to see pteropods being affected to this extent in our coastal region for several decades," said William Peterson, Ph.D., an oceanographer at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center and one of the paper's co-authors. "This study will help us as we compare these results with future observations to analyze how the chemical and physical processes of ocean acidification are affecting marine organisms."

Richard Feely, senior scientist from NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Lab and co-author of the research article, said that more research is needed to study how corrosive waters may be affecting other species in the ecosystem. "We do know that organisms like oyster larvae and pteropods are affected by water enriched with CO2. The impacts on other species, such as other shellfish and larval or juvenile fish that have economic significance, are not yet fully understood."

 While we're speaking ocean acidification, I was surprised to read recently that conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg had said Republicans should take some environmental issues more seriously, such as ocean acidification.   Many people pointed out that you address both climate change and acidification the same way - by tough action to cut back on fossil fuels - but that is something  about which he is not keen.

Goldberg has had to clarify that he was talking more about geoengineering - such as grinding up mountains of limestone and throwing into the ocean.

Of course, Goldberg has probably not read this recent paper which did not dismiss entirely the possibility of geoengineering, but noted:

The use of ocean-based enhanced weathering [128] could more directly counter ocean acidification, increasing atmospheric CO₂ drawdown through the addition to the ocean of either bicarbonate [129], carbonate minerals [130], calcium hydroxide [131] or combining the addition of liquid CO₂ to the ocean with pulverized limestone [154]. All these approaches, however, involve the transport and processing of considerable bulk of materials, with associated energy costs, in order to achieve globally significant climate benefits. The land-based production of Ca(OH)₂ would also require additional CO₂ sequestration effort (to avoid additional CO₂ release), while the various processes proposed for ‘liming the ocean’ could themselves cause large-scale ecosystem damage, by locally raising pH beyond organisms’ tolerance limits and/or decreasing light penetration, through precipitation effects. 

They also consider ocean fertilization and note its likely problems and limited prospect of large scale CO2 sequestration.

Their conclusion:

The potential for some CDR techniques would seem to warrant further consideration. Nevertheless, strong and rapid mitigation measures, to stabilize atmospheric CO₂ at near-current levels, would provide the policy action most likely to limit ocean acidification and its associated impacts.

The lesson:  even when Republican pundits start trying to sound more open to environmentally friendly policies, they actually have no idea.

Floods increasing, at least in some places

Analysis of the recent rainfall and floods in England indicate that increased warming has increased flooding risk there somewhat.   (A one in a 100 year flood down to one in 80 years, but that's only with .8 of a degree rise and likely at least another 1.2 degrees to go - if not more.) 

As I have noted before, this attribution work is really difficult, and takes a lot of computer crunching, but I don't see much reason to doubt its conclusions.

The other caution in the article is this:

Dr Schaller notes that the results must be understood in context, and are specific to the UK in winter. "It all depends on the region and season considered. Climate change might increase, decrease or have no effect at all on flood events," she told the BBC.

"Hirabayashi and co-workers, for example, showed that floods are expected to decrease with climate change in Central Europe. So our results are only valid for the southern UK and for winter months."

Sorcerers don't have human rights, apparently

In something approaching a whole metaphorical forest being in the eye of a critic, The Independent notes the hide of Saudi Arabia criticizing Norway for its human rights record.

Meanwhile, back in the desert country, sorcerers are beheaded, government internet critics are arrested, and a fierce argument continues over whether women should be allowed to drive. 

Mini black holes under review

For those interested, here's a paper looking at mini black holes, noting that:

a. there is no evidence that they have been produced at the LHC thus far (mind you, its next run is - I think - at about double the previous energy);

b. searches for them from cosmic ray collisions in the atmosphere might have a better chance;

c. there are a lot of reasons why they might never be found - there are a lot of things not understood at that scale.

The IPA convenes emergency meeting to discuss push back to Abbott's increased tax plan

I'm pretty sure that's Sinclair Davidson in the middle. He hasn't been posting much lately.

What I learnt from My Kitchen Rules

*  Presumably, "deconstructed" (by which I mean "easier to make") versions of classic dishes are all the rage at high class restaurants (none of which I have been to for at least 12 months);

*  Presumably, the other half of the menu at such restaurants comprises "confit" items;

*  No one with a family would ever bother wasting an entire tin of olive oil on a confit dish, and who can be bothered standing there for 20 minutes with a thermometer anyway?;

*  even snooty women with disturbing mouths that keep reminding you of the Joker (once this has been pointed out to you) are capable of reproduction;

*  Ben Pobjie can be very, very funny

Mixed Spielberg news

I've been getting depressed waiting on Steven Spielberg to decide on his next movie project.  It's been a long time since he was filming Lincoln.

Of course, I was rather underwhelmed to read that he has committed to making a live action version of Dahl's BFG, which I have never read but assume to be rather slight. 

There has also been news that he may make a Cold War era film with Tom Hanks - that sounds a bit more promising, but I have grown fairly cool on Hanks, despite a pretty good turn he did as Captain Phillips.

Most promising of all, however, is that there is a script being developed by Tony Kushner for a recent book about the fascinating Egardo Mortara kidnapping case from Italy in the 1800's.  Now that's potential meaty material for a good Spielberg film.   I thought Kushner did a really good job on the Lincoln film, so here's hoping Spielberg takes this on.

As an aside, I don't really know what is coming up for the American summer movie season that is only weeks away.  Now that I check a list - wow, there is really little to be excited about.

Poor little rich country

BBC News - Has wealth made Qatar happy?

From the link:

Local media report that 40% of Qatari marriages now end in divorce.
More than two-thirds of Qataris, adults and children, are obese.

Qataris benefit from free education, free healthcare, job
guarantees, grants for housing, even free water and electricity, but
abundance has created its own problems.

"It's bewildering for students to graduate and be faced with
20 job offers," one academic at an American university campus in Qatar
tells me. "People feel an overwhelming pressure to make the right
decision."

In a society where Qataris are outnumbered roughly seven-to-one by
expatriates, long-term residents speak of a growing frustration among
graduates that they are being fobbed off with sinecures while the most
satisfying jobs go to foreigners.