Not entirely sure they've got their lines straight

I've been reading around the US right wing commentary about Charlottesville, and there's a bit of a struggle going on with getting their story straight.

First, I don't think I can really say that they aren't critical enough of Trump's lost opportunity of condemning white supremacists in clear terms.  No, to find someone supportive of Trump on this, you have to come to Australian Fox News wannabe Andrew Bolt.  Idiot.

Secondly, there are very few Right wing bloggers and culture warriors who aren't taking the opportunity to personally criticise the neo Nazi, white supremacists in strong terms.  Take Roger Simon:

Nevertheless, the types who surfaced in Charlottesville on Saturday are certainly human beings of the most repellent and disgusting sort, murderous too -- pretty much violent, evil sociopaths.  I wouldn't mind if they were all rounded up, put in a space ship, and sent on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri.

His article goes on to make a point I actually suggested in another post today:  while terrible that they exist at all in this day and age, people probably shouldn't think that the white supremacist movement has all that large a following in the US based on one riot where the numbers weren't as high as originally feared.  (And compared to the US last century.)

But, on the other hand, they can't help but try to find a way the Left, and the way to do is to blame identity politics for making sad nerdy white guys with trouble keeping a girlfriend fans of Hitler; who, let's face, really knew how to make white folk feel good about themselves.

So it is that Rod Dreher starts with the sort of criticism of Trump that Andrew Bolt can't bring himself to make:

On the Right, the story is fairly straightforward. Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and their ilk have to be condemned in no uncertain terms, and marginalized. The president’s coy rhetoric, dancing around these people for fear of alienating them, has to end.

Good.

He then goes on to note that God would not want people to become white supremacists either, and Churches shouldn't be shy about preaching that.

Good too.

And then, well, it goes off the rails: 

But none of this will matter at all as long as the Left refuses to oppose identity politics in its own ranks. As I keep saying here, you cannot have an identity politics of the Left without calling up the same thing on the Right. Left-liberals who want conservatives to stigmatize and denounce white nationalism, but conservatives who do so will be sneered at by white nationalists as dupes and fools who advocate disarmament in the face of racist, sexist forces of the Left.

When the Left indulges in rhetoric that demonizes whites — especially white males — it summons the demons of white nationalism.

When the Left punishes white males who violate its own delicate speech taboos, while tolerating the same kind of rhetoric on its own side, it summons the demons of white nationalism.

When the Left obsesses over ethnic, sexual, and religious minorities, but ignores the plight of poor and working-class whites, it summons the demons of white nationalism.

When the Left institutionalizes demonization of white males in college classes, in political movements, in the media and elsewhere, it summons the demons of white nationalism.

Um, I 'm no fan of the extremities of identity politics/political correctness, but it's still kind of ludicrous to argue that it causes people to become neo-Nazis and white supremacists (who, incidentally, threw in homosexual taunting into the ring too at Charlottesville too - did you see the video of the mob shout-chanting "F... you faggots"?  I did).

Look, the fact is that major discrimination in American has only been dismantled during the lifetime of someone like me - less than 60 years ago.   Of course issues of  disadvantage and how to address it are still going to live issues at this time.   And yes, there are important debates to be had as to the limits of the response, and that in some cases identity politics arguments are going to be worth criticising.

None of this should be sold as quasi justification for why White Supremacists should feeling more empowered these days.  The blame for that falls squarely on the ignorant President and his enablers, who for political advantage have drummed up populist white grievance and encouraged their self pity and sense of entitlement in matters of race and sex.

Update:   I was tempted last night to refer to blowhard Brendan O'Neill's similar line - he started a tweet with "The events in Charlottesville are the logical consequence of the politics of identity."   Which is, of course, exactly the line to take if you are a white person who wants to be completely dismissive of all attention to reasons why there are obvious race based differences in equality and income in a nation with a history of serious racism only dismantled relatively recently.  

He moved on to a second tweet arguing that Social Justice Warriors and White Supremacists are equivalent in both wanting to audition for social pity.   Again, a completely ahistorical analysis of the matter, which will (of course) actually be taken by (lets be honest and use a SJW term when it is valid) privileged white males as supporting their view that they are being hard done by. 

Evidence for that - look at the enthusiastic response it is receiving at Catallaxy - the last blog in the nation where you go to get serious and nuanced consideration of racism.  

Hilariously, CL takes the line that it is wrong of O'Neill to draw an equivalency between SJW and "moronic" white supremacists - because SJWs are much much worse.   They are communists who have killed massively more people. (A conclusion drawn by bringing in abortion  to the discussion.)    CL's answer to every allegation that the Right is wrong on something is to argue "but abortion!"

And let's end this with another

Shoutout to monty:   Catallaxy is routinely at its worst when matters of race and racism come up, and for goodness sake, you even have JC crapping on about how white men are at some disadvantage.

Furthermore, he claims "The left has won every cultural and economic battle since WW2.", which, given the massive economic growth the world has seen since then, he doesn't seem to realise would actually be an endorsement of the left.

You're dealing with the stupid, and the "routinely offensive when it comes to race" stupid.

I still think you give them encouragement by your appearing there, and should stop.

Another reason the Charlottesville rally was a worry

The armed militia who turned up got some media attention, and probably deserved more.  At Slate, Tom Perriello writes:

Saturday showed us a vision of a dystopian future that is the logical extension of our current gun laws. Not just gun ownership but AR-15s. Not just concealed carry but open carry. And not just the right to open carry even long guns but to dress in full military fatigues with accessories (earpieces, vests, insignias) to blur every line between legitimate law enforcement and a fully armed white nationalist militia. I have spent time in multiple conflict zones and still would not have known at a quick glance if bullets started flying which heavily armed men in camouflage and flak jackets represented law and order and which were armed terrorists. Donald Trump, who claims to be the hero of law enforcement, has issued no criticism of those who blur the line between public and private security forces, who blur the most sacred blue line between violence and force. Is there anything more vital of a commander in chief who claims to care about those who serve in uniform than to condemn those who fake the uniform?

That said, I feel it probably also deserves to be noted by way of balance that the images from the rally may well give a false impression of the numbers of white supremacist support in the nation.  I've noticed that estimates before the rally were that up to 6,000 may attend, but I think the final number ended up in the hundreds, rather than thousands.

Still, with the evening theatrics of burning torch rallies, not to mention the daytime armed  militia, they know how to look as intimidating as possible, and (of course) death and large scale injury was the actual result.

Paging moral midgets, paging moral midgets...

When even the National Review runs an editorial headed "Condemn the White Supremacists, Mr. President", you really have to think about the increasing moral midget qualities of Andrew Bolt, who posts in support of what NR calls Trump's 'thus-far mealy-mouthed “both sides do it”'.

Meanwhile, I expect Tim Blair is busy looking up what Jonathan Green or some feminist had to say about it, so he can respond with a resounding "ha, but he kills foxes, and she's a frightbat" response.

Update:  even someone writing at PJ Media, a right wing culture war site I hardly ever bother visiting any more, says this:

In fact, the sentiments expressed by the president were fine. But his failure to even mention the reason there was trouble in Charlottesville in the first place -- a demonstration by white supremacists -- raises questions about whether he has a real grasp of his job as president.

Trump has disavowed the alt-right and said he doesn't want their support. But they continue to embrace him and brag about how they elected him. The president of the United States does not need the stink of these people's support and condemning them in the most powerful terms yesterday would have cleared the air.

Evidently, Bolt can't see the problem with the omission that nearly everyone on the American Right can see.

The state of libertarianism

John Quiggin's post today about the current state of the US libertarian movement (he notes that one part of it has moved towards the Left - he's referring to the Niskanen Centre) is an interesting read.  The question is, though, how many libertarians are ever going to be inclined to follow that path.

As I (sort of) expected

What did I say after Trump more-or-less turned a Scout jamboree into a Trump Youth rally?:

Next up:  night time, fire torch lit rallies on the streets of some city or other..

OK, perhaps they weren't burning copies of the New York Times as I forecast, but there's no doubt they support Trump.  (Look at how few women you can spot in all the photos and videos of this event, too.  So far, I have spotted precisely one in that photo above.)

Trump is deservedly getting harsh attacks from all over the place for his woeful use of moral equivalence in response to the death of a counter protester at this white supremacist, neo Nazi rally (one at which, as many have noted, the participants nearly all feel confident enough of the political climate that they don't even worry about hiding their identity.)   The headline at this Slate piece sums it up well:

In Appalling Speech on Charlottesville, Trump Condemns Bigotry and Violence “On Many Sides”

Out of many noteworthy tweets, I'll post this one:

Meanwhile at Sinclair Davidson's Alt Right Supporter's blog, there's a hell of a lot of shrugging of shoulder's going on, and in fact it is only being discussed at all because monty brought it up.   Meanwhile Sinclair himself, showing his chronic moral immaturity (sorry, I can't read it any other way), shares a chuckle about nuclear threats to North Korea. 

Monty - trying to engage with the foolish and offensive is a losing strategy, and participation unavoidably gives the blog a sense of endorsement.  I, once again, think you are silly for appearing there at all.

I can feel my brain starting to hurt

A paper on arXiv:

The conception of reality in Quantum Mechanics

Disputes on the foundations of Quantum Mechanics often involve the conception of reality, without a clear definition on which aspect of this broad concept of reality one refers. We provide an overview of conceptions of reality in classical physics, in philosophy of science and in Quantum Mechanics and its interpretations and analyse their differences and subtleties. Structural realism as conception in philosophy of science will turn out to be a promising candidate to settle old problems regarding the conception of reality in Quantum Mechanics. We amend the analysis of three main interpretations and their relation to structural realism by three well-known informational approaches in the interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. Last we propose an additional class of structural realism supported by QBism.

In other movie news...

In Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Keshav (Akshay Kumar) isn’t expected to build a monument like the Taj Mahal that a Mughal emperor had built for his beloved wife, but a utility-friendly toilet for his bride (Bhumi Pednekar) who refuses to defecate in the open fields like the other women in his village.

I hope it's on SBS in due course.   The reviewer is having some fun further down:

The second half was decidedly a crash course on the existing government’s noble attempts at providing toilets across India and to highlight the narrow-mindedness among Indians who are shackled by cultural and religious beliefs.

But don’t give up on this film yet, because it has some golden moments scattered across it....

 The first half is smooth, but it’s the second half that gets constipated. The premise which is intriguing and novel becomes repetitive and laboured. Some of the scenes in the second half seems contrived to make the current government shine and sparkle. Keshav and Jaya’s domestic problem snowballs into such a stinker of an issue that the entire state seems to be involved towards the end. There’s a good chance that you may have lost interest and your steam by all that drama surrounding a toilet-building battle.

Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, which clocks 175 minutes ...

175 minute Bollywood extravaganza about defecating in India!   Hollywood should pay attention, as it is scratching around for new ideas....

Sending him nuts

Tony Abbott is going a bit loopy, if you ask me:

Tony Abbott has called for Australia urgently to consider a missile defence shield to protect against attack by nuclear-armed North Korea.

Kevin Rudd just blathers on, so it's silly to say Tony's not nuts because Kevin said the same.

And Malcolm should be shutting up on North Korea too, I reckon.  Or at least, not giving them reason to try an experimental lob of a missile in our direction.

I also see (via Jason) that Tony's hyperbole about same sex marriage has been contradicted by Chris Kenny.   I agree, Kenny's column is an unusually calm and measured one which I find hard to disagree with.  I'm sure that Kenny will go back to being a bloviating political twit tomorrow.

My only puzzle is whether I take part in the silly postal opinion poll, or "vote" against it.   I am half inclined to do something to amuse the counters, like vote "No" but ruin the ballot by writing on it something about how I don't want to see Tony Abbott hitching up with long time suitor David Marr.    And I wonder how many papers will be not counted because of the addition of a male genitalia squiggle.   Maybe men only do that if they are forced to vote.

A funny tweet

I see that mockery of Brendan O'Neill is popular:

A long, long way to go

Here's an article in Nature  that suggests that those science fiction stories where the brain is scanned in 20 minutes and then the mind it hosts is uploaded into a computer, or another person, are just a tad unrealistic.

Even under the most humdrum conditions — “normal lighting; no sensory cues; they're not hungry”, says Zlatic — her fly larvae can be made to perform 30 different actions, including retracting or turning their heads, or rolling. The actions are generated by a brain comprising just 15,000 neurons. That is nothing compared with the 86 billion in a human brain, which is one of the reasons Zlatic and her teammates like the maggots so much.

“At the moment, really, the Drosophila larva is the sweet spot,” says Albert Cardona, Zlatic's collaborator and husband, who is also at Janelia. “If you can get the wiring diagram, you have an excellent starting point for seeing how the central nervous system works.”

Zlatic and Cardona lead two of the dozens of groups around the world that are generating detailed wiring diagrams for brains of model organisms. New tools and techniques for slicing up brains and tracing their connections have hastened progress over the past few years. And the resulting neural-network diagrams are yielding surprises — showing, for example, that a brain can use one network in multiple ways to create the same behaviours.

But understanding even the simplest of circuits — orders of magnitude smaller than those in Zlatic's maggots — presents a host of challenges. Circuits vary in layout and function from animal to animal. The systems have redundancy that makes it difficult to pin one function to one circuit. Plus, wiring alone doesn't fully explain how circuits generate behaviours; other factors, such as neurochemicals, have to be considered. “I try to avoid using the word 'understand',” says Florian Engert, who is putting together an atlas of the zebrafish brain at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “What do you even mean when you say you understand how something works? If you map it out, you haven't really understood anything.”

Against smartphone panic

After that article in The Atlantic about teenagers being ruined or destroyed or laid waste, or something like that, by obsessive use of smart phones, I've been a bit more interested in the counter articles than the original one.

Is that just because I think smartphones are awesome?   I do dislike aspects of how they are used:  everyone sitting at a table just using their phones is a bad thing.   (And I find a lot of adults are as bad at that as their kids these days.)   But then again, if you talk about what you're reading on it (and other people look up to listen), it's not as bad as it could be.  And as for people not watching a performance  directly, but viewing it on their phone screens while they record it (always with such crappy sound quality that you can't really enjoy playback at home anyway), that is a stupid habit.

Anyway, here are the articles against moral panic:   one from Slate, and one from The Guardian. There are probably more out there, waiting to be found. On my phone...

The lesson: don't have Pepsi Max with your pizza

This article notes that it would seem that drinking a diet soda on a more or less empty stomach may not be so bad, but drinking one in combination with carbohydrates may be asking for trouble.

Complicated, our bodies...

Sounds rather "Rambo"

SHANGHAI

A Chinese action film that depicts the country's soldiers saving war-ravaged Africans from Western baddies soared to become China's all-time top box-office earner this week, headlining a summer of patriotic cinematic fare.

The wildly popular "Wolf Warriors 2" boasts the ominous tagline "whoever offends China will be hunted down no matter how far away they are", and millions of Chinese cinema-goers have lapped it up since the movie's release less than two weeks ago.

The blockbuster has raked in more than 3.4 billion yuan ($500 million) since debuting on July 27, according to unofficial China box-office trackers Maoyan, a leading ticket merchant, and other industry tallies.

Update:  Don't say that I don't put in effort for my reader[s] - here's the trailer from Youtube.  And yes, it does involve Chinese Rambo rescuing poor Africans from bad guy Caucasians.  Which, given China's recent inroads into African development, makes obvious propaganda sense.   I look forward to future Chinese attempts to right the dysfunctional governments of that continent.  They should have a crack at Afghanistan and the entire Middle East (save for Israel), too.



Update 2:  I'm a bit annoyed that the Youtube is stuck on the flipping the finger scene.  This blog usually has higher standards.  On the other hand, it is of interest, I suppose, that it would seem that this is universally used insult across nearly all nations now. 

About PSA

Simon Chapman writes pretty convincingly on the anti-prostate screening side in his article at The Conversation.  

Red light discussed

This article in The Conversation notes that women avoid walking through red light streets - streets with a lot of strip clubs or other forms of "adult entertainment", such as King Street in Melbourne - for fear of sexual harassment by drunk men.   That's pretty wise of them.

This may be unfair to women who have to divert from what might be the shortest route, but does this mean you shouldn't have red light streets at all? 

One of the weirdest things in Brisbane, I have long thought, is that there is a strip club right in the Albert Street part of the main pedestrian mall.  It's like 15 m from the dead centre of the mall.   It doesn't have lurid pictures outside, which is something to be grateful for, but I have still always thought that this is a very strange place to put this type of venue.  Yet it's been there for years and years.

Another oddity is the the old Grovenor Hotel on George Street.  Decades ago, it used to be a normal sort of pub (not that I ever recall going there), but for a long time now it has been a topless venue.  (including the ability to get a haircut from a topless woman.)   This used to be just across the corner from the Supreme Court (since demolished and re-located), but it's still just across another corner from the high rise home of the Justice Department and the DPP.    Again, this has always struck me as a bizarrely inappropriate place to running an adult entertainment venue.

Brisbane's actual red light district, such that it was, used to be in Fortitude Valley, but it was only ever a few venues, I think.  I get the impression driving through it now that it barely has an "adult entertainment" venue now at all.   It's more the scene for doof doof music clubs and party drugs.  Unfortunately it has proved strongly resisted to commercial revival in many respects - Chinatown had a lot of money spent on it, and yet it still feels like it is going through a protracted commercial death.   The McWhirter Centre, last time I visited it, felt like a complete failure as a retail centre.    I think I did see someone from the tattoo shop engaged in a drug deal, though.  

Anyway, my impression is still that strip clubs are best kept in one, small area, rather than having them in the middle of normal retail areas.  I don't think that these dubious enterprises should be "normalised" by being in ordinary retail or commercial districts.  

To be honest, in this day and day of internet pornography I don't know how or why strip clubs survive at all.    Brothels I understand (so to speak), but strip clubs when there is so much more explicit things to be seen on the net?   Very odd.   But if they are going to exist at all, keep them out of the way, I say.

Brilliant

You know that West Virginian governor who just swapped from being a Democrat to a Republican?  Well, sure seems that in doing so he boosted up the average Democrat politician IQ several points:

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice said Donald Trump is “really interested” in his plan to prop up Appalachian mining by giving federal money to power plants that burn the region’s coal.

Justice, a coal and real estate mogul elected governor last year as a Democrat, announced at a West Virginia rally alongside President Trump last week that he’s becoming a Republican. Justice has recently spent a “goodly amount of time" meeting one-on-one with Trump and has liked the feedback to his pro-coal proposal. The plan calls for the Department of Homeland Security to send $15 to eastern U.S. utilities for every ton of Appalachia coal they burn.

“He’s really interested. He likes the idea,” Justice said in a phone interview on Wednesday when asked about Trump’s reaction. “Naturally, he’s trying to vet the whole process. It’s a complicated idea.”

Google; Men; Women

Physicist Bee has a somewhat complicated (I suppose some would say "nuanced") take on the matter of Google sacking that guy Damore.    As for me, it's outraged that alt.right, so I find it hard to be believe Google can be completely in the wrong! 

I think the NYT article "The Alt-Right Finds a New Enemy in Silicon Valley" is pretty good, and it notes that some hope it may be the start of a sort of right wing internet (which I think would not be a bad thing, as the alt.right's base is not, I reckon, as big as it thinks it is):

There is a certain poetic justice in the alt-right, largely an internet-based political movement, turning against the companies that enabled it in the first place. Like most modern political movements, the alt-right relies on tech platforms like YouTube and Twitter to rally supporters, collect donations and organize gatherings. In that sense, Silicon Valley progressivism isn’t just an ideological offense to the alt-right — it’s an operational threat.

In an attempt to build a buffer against censorship, some alt-right activists have begun creating their own services. Cody Wilson, who describes himself as a “techno-anarchist,” recently opened Hatreon, a crowdfunding site that bills itself as a free-speech alternative to Patreon. Gab, a Twitter clone, was started last year after Twitter barred several conservative users. RootBocks, a right-wing Kickstarter knockoff, bills itself as “a crowdfunding site that won’t shut you down because of your beliefs.”

These companies are still tiny by Silicon Valley standards, but their supporters say that one day they could serve as the foundation for a kind of parallel right-wing internet where all speech is allowed, no matter how noxious or incendiary.

In another NYT report on the matter, they do point one pretty good sounding reason why he was sacked:

Mr. Damore’s comments also raised another issue around Google’s peer-review system. Employees at the company are expected to judge their colleague’s work in a peer-review process that is essential to deciding whether someone gets promoted. By expressing certain beliefs — such as that women are more prone to anxiety — the concern was that he could no longer be impartial in judging female co-workers.

For a company steeped in a rich history of encouraging unconventional thinking, the problem was not that he expressed an unpopular opinion, but a disrespectful one, according to Yonatan Zunger, who left Google last week after 14 years at the company to join a start-up.

“We have a long history of disagreement over everything from technical issues to policy issues to the most mundane aspects of building management, and over all, that has been tremendously valuable,” Mr. Zunger said in an email. “The problem here was that this was disrespectful disagreement — and there’s really no respectful way to say, ‘I think you and people like you aren’t as qualified to do your job as people like me.”

Good point.

My modest same sex marriage suggestion

While I think a compulsory plebiscite on same sex marriage, held at the next election as a way of minimising cost, is not a bad idea, it is hard to understand the point of a voluntary postal plebiscite on the topic.

It will, surely, simply be a deeply methodologically flawed attempt at gauging the public's opinion, at the enormous cost of $122 million.

If the Coalition were honest about it, why could they not acknowledge that a more reliable way of gauging public opinion would be to pay for, say, Newspoll, to devise an exceptionally large sample one off poll on the matter, with a simple question, so as to gauge public opinion nation wide within a very small margin of error.

The methodology could be devised so as to capture more than your standard landlines, no?

How much could that cost, really?    I would take a stab and say that it couldn't be more than $5 to $10 million. Wouldn't some department or other have the funds to commission it, without getting the sanction of Parliament?

So, savings of at least $110 million, and a more accurate outcome.   Much less for Labor to complain about.

What is wrong with this idea?

An exceptionally good optical illusion

Noticed at Boing Boing, which I rarely visit these days:

Impossible hurdles

I have a hunch that the Impossible Burger, if it's as good as people claim, will make lab grown meat hardly worth pursuing.    

But the NYT notes that the company is having trouble convincing the FDA that it should declare the key magic ingredient - it's blood tasting soy leghemoglobin - safe to consume.   Which is odd, given that they can sell the burger without that endorsement.

It wouldn't stop me from trying it.

By the way, one of the best fake meat things I tried in the last couple of years were some type of frozen nugget made from shiitake mushrooms.  They went very well in a butter chicken sauce, and had the firmer texture that is often missing from soy based fake meat (or Quorn, which is too expensive and also too soft).  They were from an Asian supermarket, but I haven't seen them there again.  I can't even remember where they were made.  Anyway, it's a pity, because I did like them.