Nick Pope sounding more or less reasonable

BBC - Future - My time as a UFO investigator for the government

Liberal intellectuals and criticism of Islam

Paul Berman and Michael Walzer in Defense of Kamel Daoud – Tablet Magazine

Interesting in light of the terrorism this week, especially.

Ryan sneaks away from Rand

Paul Ryan's bizarre speech was a de facto endorsement of Donald Trump - Vox

As this article notes, it may be considered something of a "plus" for Republicans to have one of them coming out and admitting that analysing poverty using Ayn Rand terminology is wrong (and politically stupid, too); on the other hand, Ryan can't bring himself to denounce Trump's offensive language re women and race/nationality.

And this reminds me, Krugman ripped into Ryan the other day, too; although it was largely a matter of  repeating a complaint  he has made many times before.   

The likeable Pratt

Chris Pratt does come across as ridiculously likeable in this video made around the set of Guardians of the Galaxy 2.  Another reason to watch is to see how young and geeky the director looks.

Superhero dud?

I see that my least anticipated film of the year, that Batman/Superman CGI baloneyfest, is getting distinctly mixed reviews.Therefore, for one of my readers who knows who he is:

: )

Indonesia has rhinos?

Sumatran rhino sighted in Indonesian Borneo for first time in 40 years | Environment | The Guardian

I'm only vaguely aware of the type of mammals that exist through that part of the world, it seems.  

IPA director praises IPA mouthpieces

I didn't know Janet Albrechtsen was a Director at the IPA.   No wonder I sensed no reason to read her for the last few years.

It's funny reading her heaping praise on Paterson and Wilson as new Liberal Party recruits to Parliament, followed by a comment below:

Thanks Janet for the objective and inspired journalism.

Was Jon having a laugh?

More European terrorism

I can't think of much else to say about the Brussels terrorism attack, apart from repeating the sentiment I expressed after the Paris attack.  

I also see that it is, as usual, driving some on the Right nuts. 

The latest from Katesland

It's very entertaining watching Steve Kates (whose reviews of kids films lead his grandchild to comment "Daddy, Grandpa is scaring me") ramp up the love for Donald Trump.  Today's entry:

For a change, a conviction politician in the mould of Margaret Thatcher, but someone, also like her, who can get things done and is every inch a conservative.

I wonder if Sinclair Davidson now avoids him in the staff room at lunch?

Disbelief in the ancient world

Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World review – disbelief has been around for 2,500 years | Books | The Guardian

This is quite an interesting topic:  the forms that doubt, agnosticism and/or atheism took in the ancient world.  Here are some extracts from the review:

Classical scholars may turn to Whitmarsh’s book, as I did, with
questions about whether the term “atheism” is really the right one for
discussing pre-Judaeo-Christian religious doubts and resistance to
religion. It is an academic commonplace to distinguish between the
“orthopraxy” of Graeco-Roman religion – the focus on collective rituals,
sacrifices and festivals – and the “orthodoxy” of modern monotheistic
religions. No ancient Greek or Roman ever recited a Creed. Besides, in
classical Greek, the word atheos (“not-god”) is usually used to
mean “godless” or “against-the-gods”, rather than a person who does not
believe that gods exist. But Whitmarsh builds a case that stories about
“battling the gods” are actually ways of articulating doubts about
traditional religious teaching. He argues that classicists have gone too
far in presenting ancient religion as primarily concerned only with
action, not faith. As he rightly notes, this historical claim relies
heavily on public sources, such as inscriptions, which may teach us a
lot about ritual practices but much less about what individual
worshippers thought was true and false. Public documents can only give
the “official, ideologically sanctioned versions of events”. For this
reason, much of Whitmarsh’s work is a careful teasing out of the
literary and philosophical sources, including those that exist only in
fragmentary form, as he searches for hints of people in antiquity who
questioned the gods’ existence.

The ancient Greeks certainly did not assume that the gods are likable or
lovable, and hostility to the gods is a familiar trope in Greek
literature. The Homeric poems –
which were never treated with the reverence afforded to the holy books
of the Islamic or Jewish traditions, but which were by far the best
known texts of Graeco-Roman antiquity – depict anthropomorphic gods who
are very much of this world, and who interact with humans, even fighting
with them on the battlefield. Battling the gods was a common enough
trope in the Greek imagination that they had a word for it: theomachia.
One might think that stories about gods as threats to humans must imply
a strong belief in their existence. But Whitmarsh argues that theomachy
stories express “a kind of atheism, through the narrative medium of
myth”. One key example is the archaic tale of Salmoneus, who claimed to
be Zeus, demanded sacrifices to be offered to himself, and created
thunder by dragging kettles around behind his chariot. Whitmarsh
suggests that this story raises disturbing questions for believers in
the gods: “If gods can be fashioned by mortal imitation, how real can
they be?”

 (Go on Jason - you know you want to link to that review.)

What the heck?

The Australian reports:

Indigenous journalist and author Stan Grant has been in talks with the Liberal Party about running for the marginal western Sydney seat of Parramatta.
The move would be a coup for the Liberals and could prove a potential upset to sitting Labor MP Julie Owens, who has held the seat since 2004 but had her margin reduced to 1.3 per cent at the last election.

After watching Grant on Julia Zemiro's Home Delivery recently, I had intended posting about how intensely annoying I find him.  He's a bit like an aboriginal version of Michael Ware: so earnestly self-involved I have trouble listening to them for more than 10 minutes.

Is the Liberal Party on some sort of mission to recruit all of the most annoyingly self assured, but actually intellectually vapid, personalities in Australia? 

Tipping points are back?

Risk of multiple tipping points should be triggering urgent action on climate change

My impression is that concern about climate change tipping points has been out of fashion in the IPCC  for some years, and that those who have been worried about things being worse than they seem (such as Hansen with his papers) have been rather pooh-poohed by others.

But they are still possible, and still worth considering, even if I am again dubious about the attempt to economically value them.

Privacy and clean cars

The Atlantic has an article about how smart, self driving cars are likely to mean the final nail in the coffin of privacy.

The one thing they don't mention, though, in the context of a future fleet of shared self driving vehicles, is the matter of people doing rude things in them and how you could stop that without some serious privacy infringement.  (I'm sure I posted about that recently, but again Google is failing me.)   I sort of want to claim to be one of the first people to anticipate that problem; but then again, I'm not sure it's something to want to get credit for.   After all, it would appear that it has not yet occurred to American teenagers, since in a recent survey they don't appear all that keen on automated cars.

In other self driving car news - Wired has an article about infrastructure changes that self driving cars will likely need.  (It's not big a list, though.)

The persecuted Ted

This is the first clip I have watched of Samantha Bee on her new TV gig, and I'm not sure I like her delivery.  But nonetheless, this clip about how amazingly unpopular Ted Cruz is with his fellow Senators still has many funny bits:

A lovely piece by Jericho

I no longer see my daughter's Down's Syndrome, I only see a beautiful girl called Emma | Greg Jericho | Opinion | The Guardian

More Bolt than you could possibly handle

Andrew Bolt is going to do 4 nights a week on Sky News??   Gee, are there that many people willing to be interrupted in interviews to keep it going?   And bear in mind his TV audience couldn't really stay with him once a week over the long run, let alone 4 times a week.

A rather strange decision by a cable network I don't get to see anyway, and (I would guess), an unhealthy workload for Andrew.

Nurse!

Good Lord.  I think the world's foremost free market economist from RMIT (the one who knows that 95% of other economists don't understand the subject) may be on the verge of needing a compulsory rest in a peaceful white room somewhere.  Here's his reaction on viewing Disney's current hit animated animal film Zootopia:

It is impossible to describe how depraved this film is. In every way worse than I could have imagined. It makes you understand how Europe and America have ended up with civilian invasions for which there are almost no psychological defences across the culture. Here is the final line of the film which is its ultimate message, superseding even the often-repeated mantra that “anyone can be anything”. These words are the actual point:

“Trust – and make the world a better place.”

We are a generation of naive and guileless fools, and if you are looking for the evidence, the 99% critics approval with the audiences at 95% tells you a great deal about what you need to know.
Not recommended, although the 108 minutes passes easily enough if you are curious about understanding how intellectually defenceless and inanely stupid our culture has become.

Mind you, I haven't seen the movie yet.  Somehow, though, I can't see it provoking anything like the same reaction.
 

Testing the limits of my enjoyment

As readers might be able to tell, I like science.   Always have.  Read a lot of kids' science books in primary school, sometimes, for example, spending pocket money on buying a new "How and Why" book - remember those?  And people gave me children's encyclopaedias as a gift, or books about space.  (Happily, even in Year 8 I got a spacey book from school as some sort of achievement prize.  I think I'm remembering this right - I still have it on the shelf and should check.)

This is by way of background to explaining that I have taken particular enjoyment in helping my kids with their school science.   Honestly, for parents like me, I wouldn't mind if the school could just sent me the assignment and cut out the middle child.  (I'm joking - sort of...)

But this weekend, my patience on this was tested.  

My son had to a write up of an experiment on Newtons laws of motion (so far, so good); but the experiment set up was this:  rolling two different sized (different weight) marbles down a slope and measuring the time taken.  Not only that, but it was done on four different surfaces (carpet, wood, pipe, and some non slip mat.)

He did this at school, and got some results.  (I had to learn about Excels charting functions to make him do the bar charts better though.   Now we both know.)

But the problem is with the interpretation and discussion section.

Let me assure you, dear reader, that any time spent Googling the topic such as "does a heavier ball roll down a slope faster than a lighter ball" will quickly show you that this is a topic that causes massive confusion, and is actually very complicated and well beyond the simple "Newtons three laws of motion."   (If you think I'm exaggerating, go have a look.   It's a topic that is much worse than the more straight forward "why do objects fall at the same rate under gravity in a vacuum.")

It really drove me a bit crazy trying to work out what my son could legitimately and accurately say regarding this, given the relatively light exposure to Newton that a Year 10 student gets.  I think I came up with some useful suggestions, but did the silly teacher really have to complicate this further by the use of different surfaces? 

This is by far the worst science assignment my son's teacher had ever me work on, and I expect better next time!

Well, that makes voting for Bill Shorten easier...

So, Wilson got pre-selection by 142 to 140 votes.   Reminiscent of the start of the Tony Abbott climb to the position of Most Embarrassingly Weird Prime Ministership since Federation, really.  I expect pretty much the same of Timbo's parliamentary career.

Watching Joan

Wow, that Luc Besson 1990's Joan of Arc (on SBS tonight) looks absolutely fantastic, and is very enjoyable in its over the top sort of way.   I see that Besson made it after the truly awful Fifth Element, yet it was that film which was his critical and commercial success.   How wrong is that?