Not missing Johnno

Seeing Brisbane's been in the news, it seems an appropriate time to note that I finished reading David Malouf's "Johnno" on the weekend, which many regard as the quintessential literary novel about my home town.

I can see why people like the book's atmospheric description of Brisbane of the 40's and 50's. (Actually, it perhaps ends in the early to mid 60's - it's not made clear.)   It certainly paints a picture of a city that has quite a bit of "Southern Gothic" about it, which is not exactly how I remember it as a child.  But then again, the city did take a long time to start developing strongly - I remember sewerage  being installed at home in about '65, and we were only about 9 km or so from the the GPO.   So perhaps his description is accurate, just that I never experienced it.

One small point I did note with particular interest was Malouf's description of Brisbane's icy, cutting winter winds.   In fact, I am pretty sure that global warming has taken care of that, as I do remember  August winds as a child being much colder than I have experienced in the last decade or two.

But as for the story more broadly, I have to say I was very underwhelmed.   The main problem is that I think the book fails completely to explain why Dante (the semi-fictional Malouf) continues into adulthood to be bothered sharing time with Johnno.   I mean, the titular character is really painted as quite a dangerous, permanently immature loon, without any particular redeeming features that I could detect.  Dante is a thoughtful loner, and while you can understand why as a child he might be attracted to Johnno's inordinate self confidence, it really doesn't wash when they become adults and Johnno's thoughts and behaviour become more boorish and self destructive.   [Spoilers ahead] The ultimate revelation  (which I knew was coming, thanks to a review of the book)  of his unresolved feelings towards Dante gives a partial psychological explanation of some of the earlier episodes in the book, and explains why Johnno kept wanting Dante to see him, but it does nothing to explain why Dante would indulge him.   There seems to be no sense of fun for Dante in anything they do together.

According to Wikipedia, Malouf really doesn't like it when people call it a "gay" novel, and I can understand why, as it handles ambiguity of the narrator's sexuality in a pretty mature, matter of fact way that appeals a lot more than the intense identity politics of sexuality that has developed since the novel was written in the mid 70's.   Yet there is little doubt that Johnno's character shows elements of game playing (with women and prostitutes especially) which is hard to see other than as arising from internal conflict about sexuality.   To the extent that it seems to suggest that Johnno not facing up to his true desires is what drove him nuts, yes, it is a "gay" novel.   Sorry, David.

The book also reminded me a bit uncomfortably of "My Brother Jack", a vastly overrated Australian novel about which I can remember very little, except for one evocative passage near the beginning, and the fact that it also dealt with an outgoing character who is ultimately revealed as not the success he thinks he is.    

I can't say I have ever read an Australian novel that I have considered a complete success.  But then again, it's not that I've gone looking very hard.   I've only tried one Tim Winton and was unimpressed.   I think I started something by Peter Carey once - I can't remember what now.   As with Australian film, I just don't find our home grown material terribly interesting or convincing.

The anti intellectual Right

Pope Francis and the G.O.P.’s Bad Science - The New Yorker

... They have Inhofe, who, beginning in January, will possess the authority to interfere with nearly any scientific initiative that the Obama Administration introduces.  You can find the particulars of  his position on climate change, and scientific research generally, in his 2012 book, “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.” Inhofe frequently invokes Genesis in his battle against science because, well, he is a humble man: “My point is, God’s still up there,’’ he has said. “The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is, to me, outrageous.”

So a man who believes that the international scientific consensus is a “hoax” will be in charge of the committee that approves funding for scientific programs in a nation desperately in need of  improving its scientific literacy. If anything, the appalling Cruz is worse; he won’t address evolution directly, but he is an energetic climate skeptic, an opponent of NASA funding, and, of course, the man who, last year, almost single-handedly shut down the government of the United States, which, as Scientific American has pointed out, caused serious and permanent damage to American science.

The article goes on to illustrate that this is a modern sickness of the Right of American politics:

Political leaders never used to care who scientists voted for or whether they believed in God. Scientists were not seen as Democrats or Republicans. (This change did not begin with Cruz and his Luddite colleagues.) In 2006, I wrote a piece for The New Yorker on the Bush Administration’s war on science. It noted that “Vannevar Bush was a conservative who opposed the New Deal, and not quietly. Yet President Roosevelt didn’t hesitate to appoint him, or to take his advice. In 1959, after Dwight Eisenhower created the position of science adviser, in the wake of Sputnik, the Harvard chemist George B. Kistiakowsky assumed the post. Jerome Wiesner, a Democrat who subsequently became president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sat on the Science Advisory Committee—which met each month with Kistiakowsky and often with the President. When John F. Kennedy took office, Kistiakowsky and Wiesner simply switched roles.” None of that would be conceivable today.

He's lost Alan Jones, hey?

One term Tony may be looking more likely if this morning's extract of an interview with Alan Jones is anything to go by.  As reported in her Guardian blog by Kathrine Murphy:

More lightning coming?

Lightning May Increase with Global Warming - Scientific American

More lightning in Australia, given our bush's propensity for burning, would not be a great outcome.

Why I liked the G20 meeting

*  I don't think anyone really, honestly, thinks Tony Abbott came out of it looking particularly good. I mean, even Dennis Shanahan in Saturday's Australian didn't think he started off well:

In a close encounter with leaders only, the Prime Minister appealed for frankness and drew a global scene of the need for economic growth and job creation.
Yet, curiously, addressing leaders facing crises of massive proportions with huge unemployment, inflation, territorial disputes, violence and financial stagnation, Abbott detailed his own difficulty in getting university fee reforms and a Medicare $7 co-payment through the Senate.

Of course, by today, Dennis has returned to grovelling form:

It is fair to say that Abbott delivered in overall stylish form.

But any momentary doubt of Abbott from Dennis is rather like Margaret and David expressing a reservation about an Australian film that they still want you to see - you know the problem is much bigger than is being admitted.

*  Who could not enjoy the irony of record breaking November heat in many parts of South East Queensland on the weekend our esteemed host and his "I hate wind turbines even from 10 km away, and no I do not believe climate change could ever detract from economic growth" side kick were wanting to keep free from discussion of climate change?  (I can also assure readers that, with the nearest suburban weather station to my house recording 42 degrees today,  it was extraordinarily hot for November in Brisbane.)

*  And who could also not enjoy Obama going over Abbott's head to put the issue not only on the meeting's agenda, but front and centre in public discussion?.  There has been the odd twitter suggestion that Abbott was very annoyed with the speech.   I don't know if that's true, but if he was, that would be very pleasing.

*  More irony this afternoon when Abbott had to announce a G20 position that sits very uncomfortably with his own government's policies:

We reaffirm our support for mobilising finance for adaptation and mitigation, such as the Green Climate Fund.

Hey Tony, what was the policy you took to the last election?  Oh, that's right:

Within the first sitting fortnight of Parliament, the Finance Minister will introduce legislation to shut-down the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. 

Good thing for you, Tone, that Palmer and the Greens have (so far) prevented you from enacting that one, hey?   Otherwise you might have looked like a 100% hypocrite on the matter, rather than just the 95% one you presently are.

*  Despite it being hosted by a PM who has now arguably achieved the status of international, not just national, embarrassment, it appears that the group did make some worthwhile moves on various issues.   One positive summary is to be found here.  No doubt there will be some more worthwhile analysis soon.

Update:  Gee, someone at The Australian is really annoyed with Obama.  Greg Sheridan's usual suck up to old pal Abbott is today headed:  With friends like Barack Obama ... treatment of Tony Abbott capricious and reckless.

Update 2:   Tim Blair puts right wing spin, and maturity, on full display:

That’s not quite how things worked out. Yesterday Abbott dragged climate alarmism into the street, gave it a solid kicking, and ignored the screams of Obama and other cash-craving carbon crybabies:

Oh noes! Shirtfronting jokes break out everywhere.

Andrew Bolt must be absolutely furious.   And/or looking like the biggest right wing bloviating goat in the country.   Wait, wait:  those two things are not mutually exclusive.

Bill Leak, whose cartooning has taken on a distinct right wing edge in the last few months in particular, much to the delight of Boltian blowhards at Catallaxy, managed to fit a "shirtfront" joke into his cartoon today:

and now I'm reading that David Cameron made a shirtfront joke to Parliament! Andrew, isn't this absolutely outrageous? I mean the way Bill Leak and Cameron have joked about something the ABC joked about the other night? 

They're OUT OF CONTROL Andrew, I'm sure you'll agree.

Oh, and Malcolm, you look a bit of a ninny too.

Go G20, and Brisbane

Well, it's a public holiday in Brisbane, as they wanted world leaders to see Brisbane city as some sort of ghost town, I presume.   I haven't been into the city centre all week, but with all the barricades set up everywhere I am seeing on TV, it has the distinct look of overkill.*  Still, having a dozen world leaders killed due to a ramming Commodore would be a bad look, I suppose.   Someone on local ABC radio yesterday rang up with a bit of alleged insider gossip, saying that his very reliable medical practitioner's daughter had told him that 2,000 body bags had been procured to be on standby.  Given that it would just about take a jumbo jet crashing into the convention centre to cause that much need for them, I somehow have my doubts about the figure cited by this "friend of a friend" source.

Speaking of the convention centre - that's were it's happening, and as I'm sure I've said before, I am inordinately fond of that gigantic venue.   It is, I was told by my own friend of a friend who works there, a very successful centre for attracting international conventions, but it also does mid sized concerts very well, in addition to the massive Lifeline second hand book sales twice a year.   If nothing else, I trust everyone visiting Brisbane says they like that building.   I did, however, just hear on breakfast TV that some foreign journalists go food poisoning last night - I hope the Convention Centre doesn't wear the blame.

As for publicity for Brisbane,  The Guardian is the wrong paper to be running a sardonic column on "what you need to know" about the place, given the number of wanky comments we all knew it would attract about what an uncultured and bor-ing city it is.   It did attract one comment which I can endorse, though, and I am pleased to see that it has now been pushed to the top:


Personally, I recommend Hoo Ha Bar over the Scratch, and the biggest craft beer outlet that I know of - Archive at West End always has a good, if slightly expensive, range.  (It actually is in handy walking distance to the convention centre.  I hope it does well with the foreign correspondents.)

As for Brisbane culture generally - I am reliably informed (by listening to ageing but well connected and cool dudes like Richard Fidler on ABC, now a Brisbane resident) that the city has a lively music and arts culture, even if I don't personally partake of it.   I was even pleased to see a new mid sized live music venue open last weekend in an old hangar building in the Valley, although I am not sure I am ever likely to get there.   Maybe when I hit my late mid-life crisis, or something.

In any event, even without seeking out performances while here, any visitor to the city must surely be impressed with the arts precinct at South Bank.   They are great and very active galleries, with lots of parking and a good outlook over the city.  I am not completely convinced, to put it mildly, about some of the aesthetic decisions the city centre has taken over the past decade (the new, plastic looking City Council building is an eyesore, if you ask me, although not as spectacularly as  bad as Federation Square in Melbourne), but other parts of the city are developing very well.   Teneriffe is perhaps already the coolest area for rich urbanites, and it is only going to get better.

So, anyway, I like the city and excitement of all these foreign aircraft coming here so much that I'm heading down the coast, to watch it on TV from there, as well as fish, swim and use a Sevylor inflatable canoe that I purchased in about 1986 by my reckoning.  Who knew that they would last so long?  It only has the smallest of holes that need patching.   That boat deserves a post all of its own.


*  [I thought Brisbane was not the sort of city to be home to many anarchists - any who were alive during the Joh reign left for Southern cities decades ago.   Would many travel back here to protest?  We'll see.] 

Down the road

I recently suggested that Pope Francis, if driven out of Rome as an Antipope , should take his seat of power down to Copacabana.   (An aging Barry Manilow can write the music for his arrival.)  

But now I see that there is perhaps reason to move a bit further down the road:  to Abrico.   A nudist Antipope on the beach at a rave - that's the sort of speculation you are only likely to read on this blog....

Niki and Andrew sitting in a tree...

Niki Savva,  one of the slightly less annoying conservative commentators, heaps praise on Andrew Robb in The Australian today.   In real life, he must present as something different than he did on Kitchen Cabinet:

Robb, personable and good humoured, has been on 22 overseas visits in the portfolio (13 to Japan, South Korea or China) and is a firm believer in personal contact.

Personable and good humoured?   Pity his face never seems to match his alleged temperament.

Surely the public realises that free trade agreements aren't forged in one year by one new Minister?  One would hope that they appreciate Labor's lead up work.  Unless of course there are bad aspects to the agreements, then the Coalition deserves all the blame.  (Heh)

Why do they still exist?

I can sort of see some the reasoning behind the world revolutionary zeal behind anarchism when it started a couple of centuries ago - I mean, there was an awful lot wrong with an awful lot about how the world was operating at the time, and hey, any dramatic change may have seemed like a probable improvement.

But come any G20 meeting, and we get the gormless anarchist "movement" back in the news:

Meanwhile, police have said they are not aware of a group of activists on social media calling on lone wolves to infiltrate G20 protest groups to 'fight and destroy governments'.

Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart has told The Courier-Mail that police are aware of a number of anarchist organisations active on social media.

I mean, seriously guys and girls, have a look at the most anarchic countries around the world at the moment.  Permanent revolution still looks like a good idea, does it? 

Why not put your signs down and your silly masks and grow up by getting involved with genuine political parties?  

Smart drug not so smart

'Smart' drugs won't make smart people smarter

Apparently, there's a drug around called Modafinil (used for promoting wakefulness) which students think will help them with exams.  But research by a Dr Ahmed Mohamed at the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (?!) begs to differ.

Unfortunately, given the photo of the shirt the good doctor is wearing, I'm not entirely sure I should trust him.  It would put me off performing well in a laboratory setting.

Fessing up

It's an interesting story, this one about the Mormon leaders coming clean about Joseph Smith having up to 40 wives.   Still, he only did it reluctantly, we are re-assured:

The essay on “plural marriage” in the early days of the Mormon movement in Ohio and Illinois says polygamy was commanded by God, revealed to Smith and accepted by him and his followers only very reluctantly. Abraham and other Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives, and Smith preached that his church was the “restoration” of the early, true Christian church.

Most of Smith’s wives were between the ages of 20 and 40, the essay says, but he married Helen Mar Kimball, a daughter of two close friends, “several months before her 15th birthday.” A footnote says that according to “careful estimates,” Smith had 30 to 40 wives.

The biggest bombshell for some in the essays is that Smith married women who were already married, some to men who were Smith’s friends and followers.

Bit hard to see why he thought God wanted him to take his pal's wives too.   But all's fair when you've got a hotline to the Almighty, I guess.

I see that even modern Mormon women have something to worry about:  being given a wife number on entering Heaven:

There remains one way in which polygamy is still a part of Mormon belief: The church teaches that a man who was “sealed” in marriage to his wife in a temple ritual, then loses his wife to death or divorce, can be sealed to a second wife and would be married to both wives in the afterlife. However, women who have been divorced or widowed cannot be sealed to more than one man.

Kristine Haglund, the editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, said that while she found the church’s new transparency “really hopeful,” she and other women she had talked with were disturbed that the essays do not address the painful teaching about polygamy in eternity.

“These are real issues for Mormon women,” Ms. Haglund said. “And because the church has never said definitively that polygamy won’t be practiced in heaven, even very devout and quite conservative women are really troubled by it.”

Update:    William Salatan says the Mormons will have a revelation about "accepting homosexuality" eventually.  

Live coverage excitement

OK, I know it must be hard to have someone talking to camera for the whole 6 or 7 hours or something that it going to take the Rosetta lander to descend to the comet, but as I write this, it is on its way down and this is the exciting scene (with no audio) from the ESA live feed:

Keane on The Australian

I like the opening description of The Australian in Bernard Keane's column today:

The Australian’s smear campaign against the Prime Minister hasn’t had a lot of new material lately. Having devoted months and acres of newsprint to investigating the minutiae of what Julia Gillard did in the 1990s and not turned up a single actual claim of wrongdoing, the brains trust at Holt St must be ruing that after such a big investment of resources in smearing her, all they got for their troubles was a few points’ fall in her approval rating.

Still, The Oz didn’t get where it is today — a dying paper for angry old conservative men — without a willingness to flog a dead horse. So today, it carried over 1000 words on the AWU matter about how there’s “a prima facie case that she could have been charged”, by one Terry O’Connor.

Big Piketty vindication for the US?

An astonishing graph at The Economist, in an important article about a new study suggesting Piketty was certainly right about the US, at least:



Gee, that "trickle down" idea from the 1980's has worked out a treat.

Go ahead and shrug your shoulders, libertarians.

Update:  from the blog post at the LSE by Saez and Zucman on their work:

The growing indebtedness of most Americans is the main reason behind the erosion of the wealth share of the bottom 90 percent of families. Many middle class families own homes and have pensions, but too many of these families also have much higher mortgages to repay and much higher consumer credit and student loans to service than before. For a time, rising indebtedness was compensated by the increase in the market value of the assets of middle-class families. The average wealth of bottom 90 percent of families jumped during the stock-market bubble of the late 1990s and the housing bubble of the early 2000s. But it then collapsed during and after the Great Recession of 2007-2009.  (See Figure 2.) Since then, there has been no recovery in the wealth of the middle class and the poor. The average wealth of the bottom 90 percent of families is equal to $80,000 in 2012—the same level as in 1986. In contrast, the average wealth for the top 1 percent more than tripled between 1980 and 2012.

How can we explain the growing disparity in American wealth? The answer is that the combination of higher income inequality alongside a growing disparity in the ability to save for most Americans is fuelling the explosion in wealth inequality. For the bottom 90 percent of families, real wage gains (after factoring in inflation) were very limited over the past three decades, but for the top 1 percent real wages grew fast. In addition, the saving rate of middle class and lower class families collapsed over the same period while it remained substantial at the top. Today, the top 1 percent families save about 35 percent of their income, while bottom 90 percent families save about zero.

If income inequality stays high and if the saving rate of the bottom 90 percent of families remains low then wealth disparity will keep increasing. Ten or twenty years from now, all the gains in wealth democratization achieved during the New Deal and the post-war decades could be lost. While the rich would be extremely rich, ordinary families would own next to nothing, with debts almost as high as their assets.

What should be done to avoid this dystopian future? We need policies that reduce the concentration of wealth, prevent the transformation of self-made wealth into inherited fortunes, and encourage savings among the middle class. First, current preferential tax rates on capital income compared to wage income are hard to defend in light of the rise of wealth inequality and the very high savings rate of the wealthy. Second, estate taxation is the most direct tool to prevent self-made fortunes from becoming inherited wealth—the least justifiable form of inequality in the American meritocratic ideal. Progressive estate and income taxation were the key tools that reduced the concentration of wealth after the Great Depression. The same proven tools are needed again today.

 Update 2:   ah, I see it was Saez & Zucman who Cato and the WSJ were attacking mid year about their figures for calculating wealth.  This working paper release presumably gives the details of what was in the powerpoint presentation Piketty was referring people to. 

A libertarian makeover

Well, I used to assume on appearance alone that Julie Novak of the IPA was a lesbian (come on, I surely wasn't alone); and maybe she is, I'm not sure, but it turns out that she is also a former he.  Didn't see that coming.

So this is the second transgender libertarian-ish economist that we know of - Diedre McCloskey being the other.  I think it is well known that men who go transgender often chose quite macho careers - the military, mountain climbers, engineering - the theory being that it is an over reaction in compensation to their inner desire to be feminine.   As I think it would be fair to say that aggressively free market, libertarian ideas are the most "macho" form of economics there is (and God knows, its followers at Catallaxy routinely question the masculinity of males who they perceive as being of the Left), I think we can likely expect most transgender economists to come from that side of the fence.   Davidson does seem to really like kilts;  I'm now suspecting it's part of the softening up process for an announcement...

In any event, it changes nothing about my attitude towards Novak's work and her opinions:  they're routinely doctrinaire, predictable, full of fetishistic adoration of free markets and complete disdain of government. Best ignored, as a male or female.

Update:  I see McCloskey was saying much the same in 1999:

''There is this romantic idea among men that they are free agents in the marketplace, without any ties except to their individual selves,'' Ms. McCloskey said. ''While men think of themselves in metaphors of competition, there is an assumption among women that we are together, helping each other survive.'' She added: ''I was an aggressive, assertive male, and I felt comfortable. Now I am ashamed because that was so very macho.''