Two coming science fiction films that aren't superhero guff - Hoorah

First:



Frankly, I'm not entirely sure about this.  Sure, likeable leads, but remember:  the ridiculous oversize clean splendour of the interiors of the spaceship in The Martian really, really bothered me (as did the gargantuan one in Sunshine, too, to a degree).   So can the lush enormity of the convention centre sized rooms in the interstellar ship in this one be forgiven if it's set sufficiently far in the future?  Yeah, maybe.  We'll see. 

And then there is this one,  of which I read favourable comments after it was shown at the recent Toronto Film Festival:



May be quite OK, by the looks.

For gluttons for journalistic punishment...

....try reading Andrew Sullivan's tedious explanation as to why he had to (and how he did) de-tox himself from the internet; but if that's not enough, go to Australia's writer who put the "self" into self indulgent political/social commentary to such an extraordinary degree she's unreadable* - Helen Razor on the Lionel Shriver/identity politics debate.

* unless you've done an Arts degree in Left Wing Verbosity for Obscurity's sake, I suppose

A research suggestion

Paramedics in need of support instead face bullying in NSW Ambulance service

This article about a paramedic who found that one particularly gruesome job sent him into PTSD made me wonder:   will there any detectable de-sensitising effect on younger paramedics who come to the job already used to playing the most gruesome computer games?

Sensitivity to game violence seems to be an age related thing - I know I find clips of it I see on Good Game or elsewhere disturbing enough, and just don't understand why people aren't repulsed by it;  but young people just seem to take it in their stride.

If there is anything to it have a desensitising effect, then one would think it might show up in young people (men particularly) who are becoming paramedics now.

Go to it, psychologists.  (Even if we don't really expect the first study to be replicated!)

Just saying...

Interesting to read last week about new estimates of the number of legally married gay couples in the US.

As explained in the New York Times, it's actually not as easy as you might think to know the number of married gay couples across the nation:

One reason it’s hard to get a fix on the marriages is that detailed marriage records are not tracked at the federal level. They’re managed by counties and states, which report the count of marriages and not much else. The Census Bureau isn’t always a lot of help either. Methodological problems like sample size and false positives have long plagued census estimates of this relatively small group.

But a new research paper published by the Treasury Department on Monday has found an interesting way around these problems: tax records.

By linking the tax returns of same-sex couples who filed jointly in 2014 with their Social Security records, researchers are able to give us the most accurate picture of same-sex marriages to date. And their estimate is this: In 2014 there were 183,280 same-sex marriages in America, roughly a third of 1 percent of all marriages.

Of course, implicit in this estimate is the assumption that all married couples file their returns jointly. But as a proxy for that, it’s pretty good. The Treasury Department estimates that 97.5 percent of married couples who file taxes file them jointly.

The article goes on to note a reason why it might be a bit of an underestimate.  On the other hand, Census estimates are likely to be way over.   (This report from last year says survey and census date indicated 390,000 married gay couples - a very big difference.)

Another report from 2014 said census date indicated 252,000.

And the LA Times, confusingly, said last year that:

About 780,000 Americans were married to same-sex partners before the high court's decision, according to Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute, who analyzed the Gallup data. That number has now risen to about 972,000.

Even if you say that you divide that number by two to get the number of gay marriages, that would be about 480,000!

In fact, the tax estimate now seems to be thought to be pretty accurate, so the real figure might be much closer to 200,000.

As to what percentage that represents of gay cohabiting couples:  well, who knows how accurate the estimate for that figure is.   One of the links above says there were 1.2 million adults living in same sex domestic partnerships (that's all? - out of 242 million adults?).  So if that means 600,000 "partnerships", does that mean 1 in 3 chose to marry?

But, going forward, you would have to allow for the initial rush that legalising gay marriage causes, when old couples who have wanted to marry finally do.   Taking that into account, I think it still seems a fair guess that clear majority of cohabiting gay couples are not going to marry.

While I'm sure people will say "so what?  - that's not reason to not allow those who want to", but as my post title says, I'm just saying.... that people seem to be often overestimating the number of gay couples who do want to go through with marriage.

And as for the effect of gay marriage on gay mental health - it seems mean spirited to point it out, but sorry,  there's not exactly strong reason to believe it will be remove higher rates of suicide amongst gay and lesbians.  This report, from the Netherlands, with its 12 years of gay marriage and famously liberal attitudes to sex education, euthanasia laws and soft drug use, still indicates high rates of suicidal thoughts amongst gay youth.   Anti gay marriage sites like to point out studies like this one from Sweden, where gay married men still seem to have a 3 times higher suicide rate.  Again, this seems mean spirited, but when an argument is based a lot on anticipated emotional reaction to a legal change, facts are still worthy of consideration, aren't they?  

Gay marriage activists make the obvious point that the symbolism of legal recognition of gay marriage can only help with societal and family acceptance of gay folk, and thereby reduce suicide;  but honestly, I think they're overestimating the extent of likely positives outcomes.  It seems to me that the process over the last 20 or 30 years of recognizing gay partnerships as civil unions (either by being registered as such, or those jurisdictions which have simply allowed them to be treated the same as a de facto heterosexual marriages), legislating  against workplace discrimination, and high profile media, sporting and other personalities coming out as gay, have collectively had a much greater chance of modifying gay suicide rates than the final step of gay marriage.


Update:   part of the reason for this post is that my 13 year old daughter recently told me that her favourite high school teachers are all gay (3 male teachers - although one or more of them I think are not her permanent teachers.)    This led to her asking what I thought of gay marriage, and her obvious annoyance when I said I did not support it.

I didn't try to launch into a detailed explanation - but there is no doubt that most teenagers and supporters see this through an emotional prism that is not very interested in numbers and an independent look at the psychology of the issue.

And, as usual, part of the problem with not supporting it is that it is embarrassing to sound aligned with those who really do take the opportunity to insult and demean homosexuals per se - such as many of the losers who comment at Catallaxy.

But I'll still try to stake out a position that I think is reasonable....

Update 2:   But I have to admit, the re-framing of the question of gay marriage to one of "marriage equality" has been brilliant marketing.  

Right wing paranoia is surely part of the explanation

Gun inequality: US study charts rise of hardcore super owners | US news | The Guardian

New survey, part of most definitive portrait of gun ownership in
decades, shows just 3% of American adults own half of guns in the US.

Good news, I guess, is that the percentage of owners (per population) overall has dropped a little.  Bad news:  some of the remaining owners are massively paranoid.

Public transport success

Gold Coast light rail study helps put a figure on value capture's funding potential

Interesting to see here a study quantifying an increase in land values after the opening of the quite successful Gold Coast light rail.  But this idea of financing transport (or other infrastructure) projects via extra taxes on adjacent land which receives its benefit just seems very fanciful, if you ask me.  Ken Parish at Club Troppo wrote a couple of lengthy posts about it (in a positive light) with respect to a Sydney/Canberra/Melbourne high speed rail.  Apparently, the idea goes, lots of people will be happy to move to the middle of the countryside, known to be hotter in summer and colder in winter than the coast, as long as they can hop on a high speed train and be in a big city within an hour.  Just seems silly to me...

As to how to get money out of the increased value on properties if they are lucky to have a good rail system built near them, the article above suggests a simple way would be to levy land tax on them at a low rate, and removing the exemption on "owner occupied" real estate.   That would be an ongoing impost.  I wonder if an  simpler way would be to levy an excess on stamp duty on purchases in the area.  Or how about estate duties, no exemptions, but at a low rate hardly anyone would object to?   Has anyone looked at the effect of no exemption 1% death tax on every single inheritance.   (OK, lets say ones with a value over $100,000.)?

Anyway, the Gold Coast rail seems a bit of a blow to the pro-road infrastructure obsession of many small government types. 

Nice and clear explanation from Gavin

Why We Don’t Know If It Will Be Sunny Next Month But We Know It’ll Be Hot All Year | FiveThirtyEight

They just do?

Why Do Some People Hate Poetry? - The Atlantic

Never been particularly interested in, or partial to, poetry.   I also doubt that this is all that worthy of much analysis.  It's a contrived style of writing/communication that just misses the mark, for me.  Some people can listen to classical music, even the most "pop" pieces, and not be moved a bit.  Meh.   

Can't please all the viewers all the time

ABC's John Howard on Robert Menzies documentary dismissed as 'propaganda'

If you're watching a documentary hosted by Howard about his political hero Menzies, and with a stated aim to put a more positive spin on the era than is common in most Left influenced commentary, it seems a bit silly to complain about it.

I found it better than I expected:  I think it gave a reasonably good (if brief) treatment of the issue of how Communism faired in Australia at the time, which I found particularly interesting. 

I also liked how clear much of the archival film was.  (Digitally restored, I would assume.)

As I have noted before, when you're watching historical film in colour instead of black and white, it really does seem to make the past seem not as distant as it otherwise can feel. 

A very complicated issue

Child sex abuse doesn't create paedophiles

I think one of the most useful things in this article is the acknowledgement of the difficulty of conducting research in this area:

Our current understanding of the victim-offender cycle in child
sexual abuse comes from studies based on interviews with incarcerated
sex offenders or those in treatment programs, or self-report measures.
These are inherently unreliable methods, which fail to get to the bottom
of a sex offender’s victimisation history.

Another problem with these studies lies not with the offenders
themselves, but with the researchers’ “expectancy biases”. Those
interviewing sex offenders, for instance, may ask about childhood sexual
abuse and note its presumed significance to the offender’s criminal
history. They may end up putting more emphasis on this link than other
(perhaps more causative) factors.

Given the recent controversy about the difficulty of reproducing almost any study in psychology, it is good to see this acknowledged...

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.