When touching equals molesting

BBC News - How teenage hugs angered Islamic authorities in Malaysia

You have to watch the video to get a good idea of the neurotic control "Sharia authorities" wish to exercise over sexuality. 

What a good idea...

Saudi Arabia should 'curb marriages within relatives', says genetics researcher | GulfNews.com

Some extraordinary figures in this report:

Riyadh: A scheme to curb marriages within relatives in Saudi Arabia is
being intensified with a compulsory pre-marriage medical tests now
broached to cut the high rate of genetic diseases among the population.

Dr Ayman Al Sulaiman, a genetic researcher and consultant at King
Faisal Hospital in the capital Riyadh, told Saudi TV that a 2004 survey
showed endogamy (marriage between close kin of the first or second
degree or even in the same family) in Saudi Arabia was around 53 per
cent. Now, that figure has climbed to 67 per cent....

In 2014, the head of the Embryology Unit in Al-Ahsa Maternity and
Children Hospital, Dr. Nihad Al-Kashi, blamed endogamy for up to 70
percent of fetal abnormalities in Saudi Arabia's Al-Ahsa region,
according to an Arab News report.

Dr Al Sulaiman said Saudi population faces genetic diseases no other
country has and has one of the highest  genetic disease rates in the
world, estimated at one per 1,000. This compares with one per 4,000 in
the United States and one per 8,000 in Japan.

"This means the ratio of genetic diseases in Saudi Arabia is almost eight times that of Japan,” he told Saudi TV.

Camel love

The deep bond camels share with their owners | GulfNews.com

Winning a camel race may fetch you huge prize money and luxury cars,
“but more than the money, it is the prestige attached to owning the
fastest camels that matters”.

Camels, he said, represent the prestige of a tribe. “We will go to any
extent to retain that honour. We will even die for them. There have been
instances in the past where tribes have fought wars over camels. If
someone from one tribe took away a camel belonging to another, the onus
was on the owner to bring it back, whatever the cost, even if he had to
pay with his life,” Al Ameri said.

Moochers Against Mooching strike again

The IPA gets into mooching again, putting its hand out for money to pay for fellow anti-mooching moocher ("Send me Money - I am defending myself in a defamation case and my fees are extraordinary") Mark Steyn to come out to Australia.

Well, thank God it's not tax deductible this time.

Historical rice

From a review of a new book "Rice - A Global History":

The role of rice in supporting population growth in ancient China is explored in some depth. The arrival of short-growth-season rice varieties into Song Dynasty China, for instance, marked the beginnings of a green revolution. Unfortunately, Marton overlooks the regional complexities of the process — the gradual domestication of perennial wetland grasses in the Yangtze valley, and their subsequent adaptation to temperate China and to drier ecologies in the mountains of Southeast Asia². The story of the wild rices of India is also passed by. The hybridization of these varieties with Chinese rices, potentially around 4,000 years ago, led to an explosive expansion of agriculture and population growth in India. It was the lowland irrigated forms from India that went on to fuel urban expansion in places like Thailand over the past 2,000 years². While these stories are missed, other aspects of rice's cross cultural journey are highlighted. Each of these translocations led to new recipes, culinary fusion and diversification, as nicely illustrated by 16 recipes selected from historical cook books the world over. As Marton states “Rice is frequently the white canvas on which culinary cultures are painted.”

Marton pays particular attention to the establishment of rice in the Americas, starting in the sixteenth century. Here, traditions of cultivating rice can be traced back to west Africa. Whether initially smuggled by enslaved Africans or intentionally brought over by European settlers, the African rice crop made the tropical lands of the Caribbean and the waterlogged soils of the Lower Mississippi productive enough to support dense populations that then turned their attention to the cultivation of non-subsistence crops like sugar and cotton in less waterlogged soils. The demand for sugar and cotton drove demand for more slaves, and more mouths to feed meant more rice had to be planted. Later, rice became an export commodity in its own right. Marton explains how the growing demand for rice in European urban centres like London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries came to be met increasingly by American colonies; Africans with inherited cultures of growing rice were in high demand at the time to ensure high profits for their masters. Today, the rice-based dish gumbo, that came out of Louisiana in the eighteenth century, serves as a clear example of the history of rice in the region; the dish takes its name from the linguistic root for the vegetable okra in the African Bantu languages, and is a melting pot of African, French, Spanish and Italian culinary influences.

 Rice certainly has played an important role in lots of places, then;  more broadly than I had realised.

Around the world on sunlight

Solar plane set for landmark round the world flight

It carries one pilot, and will take 25 days to fly around the world (but landing at several places along the way.)

Going around the world without landing would be more impressive, but I guess 3 weeks of food is quite a lot to carry...

A coupla questions...

Regarding Islamic State, the repulsive movement which seems entirely based on it attracting enough young male psycho/socio-paths from around the world to keep it going:

a. why are the efforts to financially starve this group seemingly taking so long to have any effect?  Or does the demand for a $200 million ransom mean that it is starting to have effect?

b. is there a lack of co-operation from certain countries in this approach to the problem?  If so, shouldn't we know?  What would be the point of the West tip-toeing around that issue?

How "no-go" are "no-go" zones?

The Origins of Fox's Favorite Muslim No-Go-Zone Myth - The Atlantic

Here's a detailed look at the oft repeated claim that Muslims have created "no-go" zones within European cities. It's interesting to see that Daniel Pipes once regretted calling them such, but apparently has recently used the term again.  A bit of opportunism there, perhaps?

Slate also weighed in on the matter, with one of its contributors saying she lived in what Fox designated such a zone in 2007, and she found it fine.

It's good to see this being addressed, as I always suspected there was some Pauline Hanson style exaggeration going on.

Recent TV viewing

This week's episode of James May's Toy Stories, featuring his effort to make an Action Man doll break the sound barrier, was particularly entertaining.  It seems to be up at Dailymotion, and is presumably on the SBS site for viewing too for a couple of weeks yet, too.

David Attenborough's quick run through animal evolution which finished last night on ABC was also good.  Many parts of China that he was in looked quite beautiful.   Perhaps this was a repeat, but I hadn't seen it before.

American Liar noted

I hadn't paid attention to the Chris Kyle story until the controversy over American Sniper, so I am a little surprised to learn about how he has been shown up as a self aggrandising liar, at least with respect to his exploits in America after returning from Iraq.

I wonder if the exposure of this, shall we say, problematic aspect of his character led Spielberg to drop the project?  Or did it only gain ground after he was shot?

Update:  from a Slate movie critic reflecting on the movie:

The falsehoods in American Sniper are dangerous because a lot of audiences leave the theater thinking that Chris Kyle was a role model. I’ve actually gotten emails from military vets who were also troubled by the film. A lot of them are even harsher on Kyle than I’m comfortable being, in part because I’ve never served and in part because I was once attacked by Glenn Beck’s online army after poking holes in Lone Survivor. But American Sniper convinces viewers that Chris Kyle is what heroism looks like: a great guy who shoots a lot of people and doesn’t think twice about it. Watching American Sniper, I kept wondering who Kyle himself had been imitating. Sylvester Stallone? John Wayne? Or the ultimate irony, Clint Eastwood himself as Dirty Harry?

ABC doing pretty well compared to Rupert's baby

Oh, so Rupert's pride and joy, The Australian, is doing its boss's bidding and attacking ABC TV for going from 11% of the national audience to 10.8%.  Quelle horreur!  I can likely put that down to a few things:  too many QI repeats, even for people who don't mind Stephen Fry;  many BBC shows being rather dull of late or being sold off to Foxtel already; and Australian comedy and light entertainment production being in a bit of a slump (seems to me to be little in the way of young new talent for years now.) 

But how is The OZ doing in popularity, given that about 90% of comments following the ABC story say its because the network is now so Left wing in current affairs?

According to Morgan, across all platforms, from 2013 to 2014 it lost 5.7% of its readership.

Makes the ABC's ratings loss look trivial.*

Being a magnet for one eyed, right wing dummies doesn't seem to pay off, hey Rupe?

*   (Although, to be scrupulously fair, 10.8/11 x 100 = 98.18, so the ABC's loss calculated the same was is about 1.8%.   Still, only a third of the OZ's loss.) 

More atonement made easy

I found another brief reference to an atonement method in the book Israelite Religion - this time a Greek ceremony, and with an odd connection with figs.

I have Googled the topic and found a couple of descriptions in books.  First, from "Problems with Atonement"

And in another book (The Impact of Yom Kippur on Early Christianity)

I'm not sure if there is any connection with Jesus cursing a fig tree because it wasn't bearing any fruit.

And as to why figs were deemed particularly significant in Greek purification/atonement rituals:  this site makes some observations, and uses a lot of big words, but it still seems rather unclear.

Whether it has anything to do with the fact that, if one eats a significant amount of figs at one sitting, one will feel nearly empty of all intestinal impurities within about 24 hours, remains another mystery...

Some seriously deranged thinking going on here...

Man who suffered failed penis enlargement operation 'murdered prostitute' | Daily Mail Online
 [I did recently post about penile enlargement operations, and - separately - about a famous author's chronic habit of blaming women for his strong sex drive which seemingly disgusted him.   The moral of this news story may therefore be that it's lucky that Tolstoy didn't have modern cosmetic surgery available to him.]

PS:  I think I deserve some sort of recognition for - I suspect - creating the first piece of writing in the history of the universe to link Tolstoy with penile enlargement surgery.  

When Harry reviewed Richard

I see that last week, Harry Clarke (at his temporary blog) posted a review of a book by Richard Tol.

Given that Harry only recently pointed out at his old blog where his temporary blog was located, I was surprised to find that Tol himself had already appeared in comments complaining about Harry's rather mildly worded review. 

This suggests Tol likely spends a fair amount of time Googling up his own name for references to him, no matter where they appear.

It also appears that Harry does not know of Tol's reputation for attacking people he disagrees with.   Harry should do some searches for references to him at Rabbett Run, and And Then There's Physics, and elsewhere.

And elsewhere, I see Tol weighing in on a ATTP post about Matt Ridley's complaining column in The Times that he's unfairly attacked for being a "lukewarmer". 

I think Richard has too much time on his hands

That'll go over well...

Pope Francis planning to address joint session of Congress, organizer says | TheHill: Pope Francis is planning to address a joint session of Congress and visit the White House during a trip to Washington, D.C., in September, one of the archbishops organizing the pontiff’s trip said.

Clint Eastwood is not all bad...

....he did, after all, improvise the "empty chair" bit at the 2012 Republican convention, which  moderates at the venue found an embarrassment, including Mrs Romney and Romney aides.    Democrats lapped it up as showing a weirdly out of touch party that had to attack "imaginary Obama" instead of the real one, as Jon Stewart put it.   I have no doubt that it hurt the party far more than it helped.   Thanks, Clint.

But as a director (and, even more chronically, as an actor) he has no talent.   I know that even liberal movie critics don't agree - but I simply do not understand the ways in which his direction is supposed to be impressive.  My prediction is he won't be used as an example in movie schools of the future, in the way many of his contemporaries will.

So the unexpected opening success of American Sniper has me wondering what is going on.  His recent films have not been clear box office hits, and there are quite a few reviews of it by liberal critics which indicate it has a somewhat morally ambiguous take on the effect of violence on the lead character.  (The fact that Spielberg was once intending to direct it also surely indicates this.)

Yet films which show such ambiguity are not normally $90 million openers.   

And there have been articles noting that far Right wing nutters are coming out of it tweeting that it has given them a strong urge to kill Arabs (no doubt with their own gun collection.)   Certainly, some reviewers think it is too celebratory of violence, but as I say, opinion seems divided.

I therefore suspect that what is going on is best summed up in this article from The Guardian, whether or not her take on Kyle's character is accurate (I haven't read enough to have an opinion):

Adds Scott Foundas at Variety: “Chris Kyle saw the world in clearly demarcated terms of good and evil, and American Sniper suggests that such dichromatism may have been key to both his success and survival; on the battlefield, doubt is akin to death.”

Eastwood, on the other hand, Foundas says, “sees only shades of gray”, and American Sniper is a morally ambiguous, emotionally complex film. But there are a lot of Chris Kyles in the world, and the chasm between Eastwood’s intent and his audience’s reception touches on the old Chappelle’s Show conundrum: a lot of white people laughed at Dave Chappelle’s rapier racial satire for the wrong reasons, in ways that may have actually exacerbated stereotypes about black people in the minds of intellectual underachievers. Is that Chappelle’s fault? Should he care?

Likewise, much of the US right wing appears to have seized upon American Sniperwith similarly shallow comprehension – treating it with the same unconsidered, rah-rah reverence that they would the national anthem or the flag itself. Only a few weeks into its release, the film has been flattened into a symbol to serve the interests of an ideology that, arguably, runs counter to the ethos of the film itself. How much, if at all, should Eastwood concern himself with fans who misunderstand and misuse his work? If he, intentionally or not, makes a hero out of Kyle – who, bare minimum, was a racist who took pleasure in dehumanising and killing brown people – is he responsible for validating racism, murder, and dehumanisation? Is he a propagandist if people use his work as propaganda?

That question came to the fore last week on Twitter when several liberal journalists drew attention to Kyle’s less Oscar-worthy statements. “Chris Kyle boasted of looting the apartments of Iraqi families in Fallujah,” wrote author and former Daily Beast writer Max Blumenthal. “Kill every male you see,” Rania Khalek quoted, calling Kyle an “American psycho”.

Retaliation from the rightwing twittersphere was swift and violent, as Khalek documented in an exhaustive (and exhausting) post at Alternet. 

In any event, I won't be seeing it, at least until it's free on TV.   It's important that the purity of my disdain for Eastwood is not sullied by the risk that he has made a film I might like (even though I think there is a very small chance of that.)

Update:  another article that argues that the movie shows moral complexities (even if it greatly simplifies the particular war in question) is here. 

Update 2:  gee, this review of the book the movie is based on (via one of the links above) makes it sound like poison to a liberal.  It certainly would seem the movie accurately reflects Kyle's simplistic world view; perhaps it increases the sympathy for his post war troubles beyond what the book achieves.  But if so, is that a good thing, or a bad thing? 

That big?

Two undiscovered planets as big as Earth ‘could be on edge of solar system’ | Science | The Guardian

About 18C Racial Discrimination Act

I see that Tim "Selfie" Wilson continues his jihad against s18C of the RDA in a lengthy column in The Australian.

I also see that Mike Carlton has taken offence at his mention in the column, too.  I would have thought he has grounds for a defamation action, but I could be wrong.   I hope some lawyer volunteers to act for him, though, even if he is annoying much of the time. 

I don't really understand Wilson's ability to run around continually trying to drum up support for policy changes which are not entirely consistent with the policy position of his workplace, the HRC.   (Well, I think that's what's going on, anyway.)

The media attack on his boss, Triggs, has also been a disgrace.    Sure, her finding of compensation being warranted to a detainee kept confined for years after he served his criminal sentence sounded high, but the finding that his detention was in breach of international convention was hardly surprising to most lawyers who have commented on it.

The Right seems to think that you're an immigrant, you can be kept detained indefinitely if you have committed a serious crime, even after serving the sentence.  (They are displaying exactly the same nonchalance about the situation on Manus Island, which is likely to turn very ugly soon, by the looks.)  

But back to 18C:   one of the odd things about it is that I see no compelling evidence that Tim's buddy Sinclair Davidson is worried about its use against him for hosting a blog that becomes chock full of the most inflammatory comments about Islam and Muslims after every terrorist attack.

And as for Wilson's argument that he's worried that aboriginal attitudes against gays can't be discussed freely because of 18C - what a completely bogus point.   As someone at Catallaxy (how odd - something useful from that blog!) has pointed out - the topic of aboriginal tradition being used as a self justification for completely unacceptable sexual behaviour was thoroughly canvassed in The Australian in a column in 2007.  Did 18C prevent that being published?  

Wilson and his buddies selfservingly exaggerate the operation and effect of 18C - and they have little in the way of actual cases to point to where it has interfered with a topic getting discussed in the media.

But, that's right, Andrew Bolt got taken to court over a column and his paper had to print a statement to run with the offending columns.   (And we don't know who paid for Andrew's legal costs.  But it was stressful for him.  Very, very stressful.  And so s.18C must go.)

Poor Rupert

Rather unbelievable that Rupert Murdoch should tweet complaining about the tax he pays in New York, isn't it?   I take it he means 55% - and the outpouring of sympathy in tweets following is very amusing to behold.

Oh no it's Alan Jones

I don't normally listen to 4BC, but this morning it happened to be on in the car, just in time for me to hear its new morning host (Alan Jones on relay from Sydney - groan), but it was interesting to hear him telling the world that no one can believe a word the lying liar Campbell Newman says.  (Jones actually went through the campaign launch speech and mocked all of his promises.)

It's all to do with Jones being against farm land being lost to miners. 

I didn't listen long enough to get to the point of understanding who Jones thinks Queenslanders should vote for, though....