A bit more about Shriver's talk

Further to the discussion about Lionel Shriver's talk in Brisbane about cultural appropriation, there is a "portrait" article in the Saturday Paper by Maxine Beneba Clarke that I think is really remarkable for the poor impression it leaves of her own judgement and behaviour - and it would appear she is completely unaware of this.   Seriously, an Australia Left aligned literary figure or ABC commentator who isn't completely devoid of common sense really needs to call her out.  (I'm thinking someone like Richard Fidler or Jennifer Byrne - or her Book Show regulars - could do this well.)  When will it happen?

From the other end of the literary/politico spectrum, Helen Dale has weighed in, which is unsurprising given that she's viewed herself as victim of Lefty literary types for decades.   Her Facebook comment, advising of a lengthier commentary to come, shows all the warning signs of why I think she is not particularly wise to step into the fray.  First, there is this:

I wrote an entire novel founded on cultural appropriation.

Well, yes:  can't deny that, I suppose.  But the on-going problem came from much more than mere literary cultural appropriation - it came from telling lies about her personal cultural background.  If her point had been that it was only published because she found no positive responses until she pretended it was not a case of so-called appropriation, then it could readily have been made in spectacular fashion if she had voluntarily disclosed this in one of the many post publication interviews/festival appearances.   (And do remember - the criticism of the content of the novel at the time came from both Left and Right.)

Secondly, she has never been one to not blow her own trumpet, despite the fact that I don't think she has had anything she has been writing published since:  

Shriver is transparently a better writer than her critics. I was and am transparently a better writer than my critics. Such is life.

Edit suggestion:  "a transparently better writer than some of my critics" makes you sound less egocentric, and is very likely accurate too, given the breadth of criticism you faced.

But to be fair, the main problem here is one on the academic and literary Left, and I don't think they're responding well.

Trumpian commentary

As I have complained before, there comes a point where media commentary about how much of a worry a Trump presidency would be becomes counterproductive to said media's desire not to support him.

I think we're going through another period of that, with the current tightening of the polls.  Media - calm down.  Stop talking about him so much.

With my usual disclaimer that I don't really follow US elections all that closely,  I remain very confident of my prediction that he will not win it: based on demographics, the reports of a very late start to organising voter turnout, very poor polling on personal qualities, and the unlikelihood of demonstrating policy competency in the forthcoming debates with Clinton.  If anything, as we have seen in the last couple of days, with his stupid talk of Clinton and guns, improved polling is likely to increase his cockiness into saying stupid, off the cuff, things. 

There are now, though, two uncertainties on the Clinton side:  does loser boy Assange really have something bad on her that he is saving up for maximum impact (although I am starting to doubt that); and would coming down with another coughing fit really be enough to cause an orange buffoon to be elected?  (The latter shouldn't - people can cough for all sorts of unimportant reasons - but we're talking a pretty weird electorate here that could even consider Trump as a President.)

Speaking as I was about historically inaccurate movies

Sully is the perfect fantasy for the post-fact era of the Brexit and Trump.

I dislike Clint Eastwood and his movies, so I was never destined to see this one anyway.

But, as this Slate article explains, it's a movie that had to invent conflict, and the one used aligns perfectly with the "vibe" of Trump voters.  All the more reason not to see it...

Sunday Prisma

Not saying this example is particularly beautiful, but it reminds me very much of the type of illustration that used to be common in cheaper educational books in the 60's, and perhaps into the 70's....

Hitler and Henry: a hate story

Struggles with Mein Kampf – TheTLS

Good article here discussing the recent re-publication of Mein Kampf (in a very heavily annotated version) in Germany.

But had I read this before?:

 Henry Ford’s The International Jew: The world’s foremost problem (1920),
the editors emphasize, exerted a formative influence on the intellectual world of National Socialism in the early 1920s. Hitler called Ford an “inspiration” and kept his photograph above his desk.

Here's some more about Henry Ford's intense anti-Semitism:

In the period from 1910 to 1918, Ford became increasingly anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor and anti-Semitic. In 1919, he purchased a newspaper, the Dearborn Independent. He installed Charles Pipp as editor and hired a journalist, William J. Cameron, to listen to his ideas and write a weekly column, “Mr. Ford’s Page,” to expound his views.

Ford wanted to assert that there was a Jewish conspiracy to control the world. He blamed Jewish financiers for fomenting World War I so that they could profit from supplying both sides. He accused Jewish automobile dealers of conspiring to undermine Ford Company sales policies. Ford wanted to make his bizarre beliefs public in the pages of the Dearborn Independent. For a year, editor Pipp resisted running anti-Jewish articles, and resigned rather
than publish them. Cameron took over the editorship and, in May 1920, printed the first of a series of articles titled “The International Jew: The World’s Problem.”...

A few months after the series began, Ford’s operatives introduced him to a Russian émigré, Paquita de Shishmareff. She showed Ford a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, now well-known as a malicious forgery created by the Russian czar’s secret service at the turn
of the century that purportedly recorded a series of lectures by a Jewish elder outlining a conspiracy to overthrow European governments. Ford passed the Protocols to Cameron, and the Independent turned its attention to bringing this “blueprint” for world domination to the
public.

The Independent charged that the national debt was Jewish-inspired to enslave Americans, and that German Jewish financier Paul Warburg had emigrated to America “for the express purpose of changing our financial system” by creating the Federal Reserve. The paper labeled Jews an “international nation” with had an unfair advantage in business over Christians, who relied on individualism to get ahead. The paper even described American Jewish aid for oppressed Jews overseas as part of the conspiracy.

For seven years, the Independent continued to run anti-Semitic articles until the target of one series, California farm cooperative organizer Aaron Sapiro, sued Ford for libel. Sapiro was the third  Jew to sue Ford for libel, and the first to get to trial. Ford refused to testify, and apparently staged an automobile accident so he could hide in a hospital. The judge finally declared a mistrial, but Ford decided to settle out of court. Jewish leaders had called for a boycott of Ford motorcars, and his fear of slumping sales might have played a role in Ford’s decision to put the Sapiro case behind him.

Wow.  The lesson being, as it is today with climate change:  being a rich industrialist is no protection against being a complete and dangerous nutball conspiracist on matters outside of their limited expertise.

Update:   I should explain - I'm sure I had read something before about Ford's anti-Semitism; it's just that I didn't realise that he so was intensely involved in publicising it that even Hitler was an admirer.   Here's another source, talking about how Ford spread the word, so to speak:

What separates Ford from other people who were publishing anti-Semitic material during this time?
There are lots of small town newspapers that publish scurrilous anti-Semitic material, so it wasn't unusual in that way. But what's notable about The Dearborn Independent is that it was also spread through the Ford Motor dealerships. And so that there'd be stacks of them in a dealership in California, dealership in Massachusetts, a dealership in Iowa. In some places, the dealership would actually put copies of the newspaper in the car, so that when you drove off with your Model T, there you had on the seat next to you a copy of The Dearborn Independent.

And because The Dearborn Independent was published by Ford, it meant that other newspapers would pick up on what he said, and if only in reporting on an article that appeared in The Dearborn Independent, it meant that it got much greater currency than if it had just been a small-town newspaper in some equivalent sized town in Wisconsin or Montana. But this was Henry Ford's newspaper, and pretty much anything Henry Ford did was news.

What Henry Ford says, people stop and listen. There are people who talked about him as a potential presidential candidate in the 1920s. Some local tavern keeper makes a anti-Semitic remark over the bar, well, nobody cares. Somebody may listen, and maybe repeat it, but it has a very limited span. But Henry Ford's ability to gain a national audience with his words made him a very dangerous person.

Breeding friendly foxes

Russian geneticist repeats dog domestication with foxes in just fifty years

A Russian geneticist, the BBC is reporting, replicated the process that led to the domestication of the dog, with foxes, over the course of just fifty years. Curious about the means by which dogs became domesticated, Dmitry Belyaev began a breeding program in the late 1950's aimed at replicating the process using foxes....

Foxes were chosen based on their behavior in the presence of humans. Those that showed slightly more tolerance of humans were brought back to their Novosibirsk lab to serve as the start group. From there, the foxes were mated, and once again, those cubs that showed the most tolerance for humans were kept as part of the experiment while the others went on to become fur coats.

This process was repeated for a half-century—the research pair found that within just a few generations, the foxes had begun to lose their wildness and mistrust of humans. The fourth generation, they reported, showed traits that we see in modern dogs, such as tail wagging, seeking human contact and licking people. Over the course of 50 years, the foxes became friendly, their behavior nearly indistinguishable from domestic dogs. They changed physically, too; their ears drooped and their legs and snouts became shorter and their heads got wider. And it was not all on the outside—their adrenal glands became more active, resulting in
higher levels of serotonin in their brains, which is known to mute aggressive behavior.

Today, the foxes are still being bred, but they are also being sold as pets to help pay for the cost of the research center.

Here's a link to the longer BBC story, but I am looking for some video of friendly foxes.  Here's one, from 2013:



I think I have read about this before, but I watched a French kid's film about foxes last weekend on SBS on Demand, so I was interested..

I am officially amused

Given my Android/Samsung allegiance, this did really did make me laugh:

iPhone 7 launch in Denmark

Prisma, again

Just in case anyone is late to the story: I'm having fun running various photos from my recent Japanese holiday through the Prisma app.

Sick presidents

It's kinda topical, but let's not even discuss the evidence that Reagan had clear signs of developing dementia during his second term, and go back further to FDR.   There's a review of a new book about his last months up on the New York Review of Books, and here are a few extracts:

Roosevelt is entering his sixties when Lelyveld’s story begins, and he is still fighting his own body’s attempts to betray him. Sixty was older then than it is today, and after twelve years in the presidency his appearance sometimes left visitors alarmed. In his memoir of interviewing him that year, Turner Catledge, a respected reporter for The New York Times, recalled that at first glimpse of the president he was so “shocked and horrified” that he had an impulse to turn and walk out. He felt he was “seeing something I shouldn’t see,” he wrote, describing the president with a “vague, glassy-eyed expression” and mouth “hanging open,” a man who “would lose his train of thought, stop and stare blankly at me.”...

Yet old friends and family were now disturbed by visible signs of frailty. His hand shook when he lifted his coffee cup. His shirt collars seemed to be much too big. Ed Flynn, Democratic boss of the Bronx and one of FDR’s oldest political friends, had been keeping a professional eye on him lately and exercised friendship’s privilege by telling him that he no longer had the stamina for the job and ought to quit. There was also a somber opinion from Dr. Frank Lahey, founder of the Lahey Clinic, who had examined him. Lahey had left a memorandum that was kept from public disclosure until Roosevelt had been dead for sixty-two years. Maybe that was because it revealed doctors playing fast and loose with the presidential medical news back in the 1940s. Lahey wrote that Roosevelt was unlikely to survive another term, and that the president had been so informed. The note was dated July 10, 1944. The next day Roosevelt announced that he would run for a fourth term.....

Interviewed years later, Bruenn [a cardiologist belatedly brought in to care for the President] said Roosevelt was in “God awful” condition at their first meeting. His examination notes described “a diseased heart” that had “become enlarged and shifted away from its normal location in the chest.” The president’s face was “very grey,” indicating a possible oxygen deficiency in the blood. His blood pressure was “a worrisome 186/108.” All the evidence pointed to “an alarming enlargement of the heart, induced by chronic high blood pressure.” Bruenn’s notes said, “heart was enormous.”

His diagnosis was “acute congestive heart failure,” specifically “left ventricular heart failure.” Lelyveld observes that this would have been explosive political news in 1944 and may explain why it was kept from the public for twenty-six years.

What a jerk

‘You think this is easy?’: Trump questions Clinton’s health at Ohio rally | US news | The Guardian: “You think this is easy?” Trump asked. “In this beautiful room that’s 122 degrees. It is hot, and it is always hot when I perform because the crowds are so big. The rooms were not designed for this kind of crowd. I don’t know, folks. You think Hillary Clinton would be able to stand up here and do this for an hour? I don’t know.”

The Republican nominee later went on to add of his Democratic rival, “Now she’s lying in bed, getting better and we want her better, we want her back on the trail, right?”

He didn't "question" her health, he taunted her about it.

The reviews are in

Just noticed a comment by CL at Catallaxy regarding Pauline Hanson's speech in the Senate yesterday (the one where she rails against Muslims, immigration generally, Halal food, foreign investment, free trade, the Family Court, and welfare bludgers) that reads:

It is funny, warm and just plain real. The stand-out oration of the new Parliament.

Of course he likes it.  He's a sad refugee from the 1950's, longing for a return to that decade, as is Hanson.  (Although I note the irony that twice divorced Pauline may well have found herself stuck in one of her unhappy marriages were we to emulate the 1950's divorce system today.)

Good, but just a tad late

Hillary Clinton’s new doctor’s letter, annotated - The Washington Post

Unlike Trump's ridiculous doctor's letter, the Clinton one today released about her health is detailed, reads well, and explains a lot.  Pity it wasn't done, say, last Saturday; and that there wasn't then special provision made for Hillary to sit down during the ceremony, under shade.

There has been some very ridiculous media coverage of this matter - even by the liberal press - but there remains no doubt that a pre-faint disclosure of mild pneumonia would have prevented some of it.  (Of course, there would also have been a downside to this too - Trumpkin nutters, who will never believe she isn't on her death bed, would have said she's a Typhoid Mary by going out in public, regardless of what her doctor says.)

The Shriver incident

Lefty identity politics and emphasis on victimhood can obviously be a silly pain, especially at Universities, and it seems there is finally some mainstream push back against "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" in the US. (And perhaps here, given the complete lack of the media defence of the s.18C aboriginal claimant in the QUT case.)  I tend not to dwell on this a very serious matter - I suspect that most students can get by happily enough by ignoring the activists on campus, just as I used to ignore whatever the socialist students called themselves back in the late 70's and early 80's when I did my degree for free.  (I lucked out during that window of opportunity.)  

But I'm a bit surprised to not see more publicity given to the recent  kerfuffle at the Brisbane Writers Festival, when Lionel Shriver got stuck into the silliness of recent complaints about cultural appropriation. 

It apparently did not go over well with many in the audience, and an account of the talk and its aftermath made it into the New York Times. 

Now, I've dissed Shriver a bit before:  she is on the eccentric side (although I think she freely admits that), and I thought her complaint that people treat libertarians (as she claims to be) as kooks was wrongheaded, given that many of her stated positions in the same article were not actually typically libertarian.  But The Guardian printed her entire Festival speech, and really, it is extremely hard to see what's objectionable in it.  (I suspect that she might pay to be a bit more skeptical of the details of some of the reports of "cultural appropriation" incidents on US universities; but that's just my hunch that the media sometimes exaggerates the degree of seriousness of individual incidents.  But this is a minor quibble to what is basically a well argued case.)

And, let me say, that the readers of The Guardian do themselves much credit by also (as far as I can see) agreeing with her by a substantial majority. 

What I think is lacking is enough admission by writers and literary figures who are Left inclined (and gee, probably 90% of them are) that some of their fellow authors and commentators have just gone too far, and need to come back to something approaching common sense.  But can't say I'm noticing much of that...

Message to J Soon

Jason, took you a while to notice that Megan McArdle article, but it was discussed at several places at the time, with scientists noting that the comparison between economic models and climate models is not really  valid, and she doesn't understand climate feedbacks either.

I suggest you read ATTP's post on it, and this, and the comments following.

As he says, the "lukewarmer gambit", being the last refuge of people who don't want action taken (usually for purely ideological reasons), is a still a "rejection of evidence" position, tarted up as if it's "just being reasonable here":

This is wrong on many levels. Firstly climate models don’t assume large positive feedbacks; the level of positive feedbacks is an emergent property of the models. It’s one of the things these models are trying to determine. Secondly, climate models are not the only reason why we think that feedbacks could be positive and large. Palaeoclimate estimates of climate sensitivity are also in line with estimates from climate models.

Finally, even the energy-balance models preferred by Lukewarmers do not rule out high climate sensitivity, and this seems to be the main problem; anyone who says “warming is likely to be mild” is essentially dismissing evidence that suggests otherwise. The discussion that we should be having is what we should do if climate sensitivity is high enough that our continued emission of CO₂ could lead to substantial changes in temperature, the hydrological cycle, and extreme events. If one group has already decided that this is unlikely, and that we shouldn’t base policy on this possibility, what else is there to discuss?

As with your false equivalence attempt on the doctor who came up with his own oddball Hillary health conspiracy:  stop doing that (false equivalence).  The Right wing conspiracy stuff about Hillary's  health has been massive, relentless (and ridiculous) and given a high profile on Fox News for many months, convincing large numbers of dimwits.  They haven't been "concerned" about Hillary's health - they've been exploiting everything out of context, from a photo after a slip on stairs to a joke head movement slowed down on video with scary music to argue she has everything from dementia to Parkinson's to HIV.  It has, truly, been "tinfoil hat" material.  And as for the doctor and his poisoning tweet - he's only getting attention because he is famous for other high profile work, the article is brief, and I don't think the paper is doing much to suggest it should be taken seriously.

I would argue with you on twitter, but I'm not keen on the word limits...

Update:  another bit of blog commentary on the McArdle shrug shoulder attitude of "sure, I don't dismiss it could be a major problem, but it might not be too, and no one will go for a carbon tax; so what can you do?

Chemicals under their skin

One in five tattoo inks in Australia contain carcinogenic chemicals

Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.  But I would say that, wouldn't I...

Employment in Japan

Japan is so crazy about mascots that ‘fluffy toilet character’ is a real job - The Washington Post

Amongst the many amusing facts in this story:

The mascot industrial complex is so huge in Japan that the Finance
Ministry launched a campaign last year to cut the number of mascots to
save unnecessary spending.

There are no official figures, but
Masafumi Hagiwara, a researcher at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and
Consulting, estimates that there are about 4,000 local
­government-related mascots in Japan. The prefecture of Osaka alone had
about 92 mascots, but it gave pink slips to 20 of them during the
Finance Ministry’s campaign.

An additional 6,000 characters are probably at central government agencies, companies and other organizations, Hagiwara said.

That makes “mascot” a viable career choice in Japan. The day rate for a mascot is about $100.

Yes, I'll stop eventually...

A timing issue

Babies Take Longer To Come Out Than They Did In Grandma's Day : Shots - Health News : NPR

The typical first-time mother takes 6 1/2 hours to give birth these
days. Her counterpart 50 years ago labored for barely four hours.

That's the striking conclusion of a new federal study that compared nearly 140,000 births from two time periods.

Well I didn't know that. Possible reasons are included in the article. 

Why continue?

I hope there is someone in the media tonight who can explain why it is that the Senate couldn't just adjourn for the day (or until the afternoon) if it had no business to deal with.  It would seem that this is simply not an option, as it would be for any other organisation holding a meeting where the participants unexpectedly had nothing ready to discuss or vote on, but why is that so?

Sex and death - topics of abiding interest

A brief history of the afterlife | History Extra

This article from August summarises a new book from a Queensland academic about a topic that has been mentioned here a few times recently.  Good reading.

At the bottom of this History Extra page, there were links including to one article on sex, which lead to another, etc.  They make for some entertaining reading, and I learnt a few things on the way:

A brief history of sex and sexuality in ancient Greece

A brief history of sex and sexuality in Ancient Rome

(Can't say I had heard of the rumours of Julius Caesar "living as a girl" in the court of King Nicomedes when he was a young man.   There's a good, fairly detailed explanation of this rumour - which seems more just about him being the "passive" partner of the King, in a .pdf at this link.)

 Georgian Britain - sex in high places


I think I should be spending more on the History Extra site.