Learning languages

Quite a helpful article here discussing the pros and cons (mainly the cons) of using the popular "learn a foreign language" app Duolingo. 

I've been tempted to try it, but never have.

In praise of spaghetti carbonara

I hadn't made my own spaghetti carbonara for a long time 'til last Saturday, but I thought this recipe worked pretty well and was similar to the last I had used from an old cookbook.   (Cookbook publishers must be hating the internet and its effect on sourcing recipes.)

I tend to like to a drier carbonara - some people prefer a wetter version.  It does seem to me that people can get very snooty about the right way to do this dish, a bit like those people who insist that country X's food here is nothing like the real thing when you actually go there.   (I usually find this is a greatly exaggerated claim.)

In any event, isn't it the case that Italians don't eat pasta as a main meal in quite the way we do?  I wouldn't mind betting that this may have changed in recent years too.

I like the way you can be non-trad with the recipe - adding some fresh asparagus and small sized bits of broccoli worked well on Saturday, and using just bacon was fine.   Many people like to add mushrooms too, it seems, and I would have if there were any in the refrigerator.

Left over reheats surprisingly well in the microwave too.

So yeah, I should make it more often.

William Goldman

Famous screenwriter/novelist William Goldman has died.   You know, I don't recall knowing what he looked like until now, despite having read a few of his books.

I had forgotten that he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - a film which, incidently, I felt was vastly over-rated when I saw it as a child.  (My mother was a big Robert Redford fan - I think I was tagging along with her when I saw it.  Not sure if my father was there too.)   I wonder if I would feel differently about it as an adult?   I still have this gut feeling that it was very lightweight and trivial. 

Anyway, Goldman interested me more for his books about the industry, and I suspect that he might have become slightly dismayed that, despite "nobody knowing anything" in Hollywood, studios have become pretty good at knowing what franchise material will make a killing in the first week or two, regardless of critical reception.   (Although, I guess, that Solo movie's failure almost certainly came as a surprise.)

As spotted on Twitter

A fair few anti Taleb comments follow the tweet, too.

Death by social media

The BBC has been trying to tally up how many people in India have died as a result of social media spreading false rumours.  And one appalling story is told in detail:

Across India mob attacks are on the rise, fuelled by false rumours on WhatsApp and social media. According to the BBC's analysis of incidents between February 2014 and July 2018, at least 31 people have been killed and dozens more injured. These are the incidents the BBC was able to verify, many more have been reported.

Many of the false rumours warn people that there are child abductors in their towns, driving locals to target innocent men who are not known to the community. A total of 25 men, 4 women, and two people of unknown gender have died. Here is a timeline of those incidents the BBC has verified.

In one striking example, a video clip shared on WhatsApp went viral in India in June 2018, with tragic consequences. In the clip, a man on a motorbike appears to be kidnapping a child from the street. The messages that accompanied the video as it was shared from phone to phone alleged that the incident had occurred in Bangalore and warned the community to be on the lookout for “potential child-lifters”. Vigilante mobs formed and killed an estimated 10 people.

But the outrage overshadowed the true story.

The clip was in fact part of a safety video produced by a child welfare group in Pakistan. At the end of the original video, the supposed “kidnapper” returns the child to his friends and holds up a sign that reads “It takes only a moment to kidnap a child from the streets of Karachi.” This was edited out in the viral version.

Another bad, high profile, Netflix movie?

The Guardian reviewer really dislikes a new Netflix movie with some big star power in it.  [Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, Jacki Weaver (!)]

Seems to me that, for a company that plans on being such a major player in movie content, they have to do something about quality control, fast.

Dutch tradition considered

I didn't know about the Dutch "Black Pete" controversy.  An interesting article at The Guardian.

Freud, Jung, sex

Quite a nice summary in this Aeon essay about how Jung and Freud's professional and personal relationship started and broke up.

Jung is deservedly the more interesting character and theorist.  And yeah, it's true:  Freud went off the rails over sex. 

Washington intrigue

So, articles are being written about Trump's foul mood on the trip to Europe (he was very aggro with poor old Theresa May on the phone before he even landed - and it would seem that the only person he was really happy to see was Putin).   Only the most foolish cult followers could think that the trip was a success for Trump in any respect.   Hello, Steve Kates?

The other big issue is his chronic staff in-fighting, with Politico noting that, apart from the Homeland Security Secretary about to get the chop for not being rabid enough, economic and trade advisers  Kudlow and Navarro are fighting:

And earlier in the day, Trump’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, lashed out at White House trade adviser Peter Navarro after Navarro, a trade protectionist, took aim at Wall Street and corporate influencers pushing a less aggressive stance against China. Navarro did Trump a “great disservice,” Kudlow told CNBC.

...not to mention the oddity of Melania choosing to go public in order to ensure someone is sacked. 

As Politico says:

“It’s like an episode of ‘Maury,’” one former Trump aide observed to POLITICO as the spectacle unfolded. “The only thing that’s missing is a paternity test.”

Ha. 

I think I overlooked mentioning before that it had been noticed, but not widely reported, last week that Rupert Murdoch had a meeting Mitch McConnell:

SPOTTED BY NYT’S NICK FANDOS (@npfandos): “An empty Capitol, but Mitch McConnell is receiving visitors. Rupert Murdoch in this case.” A photo of Murdoch walking into McConnell’s Capitol office … Also in the shot: Robert Thomson, the CEO of News Corp. (h/t Bill Grueskin)

Given that Murdoch appeared in Australia just before Turnbull was dumped, it's easy to read this a possible message being delivered to the GOP that Rupert was not going to let his companies (or at least, all of them) promote or protect Trump any more.  (And as I noted last weekend, the WSJ did run an important anti-Trump article - I think after the McConnell meeting?) 

Perhaps there is a connection between the Murdoch meeting and Trump's foul weekend mood?   Did he get word of Murdoch telling his editors it's time to put pressure on Trump to go?   I hope so!

It's a wonder that the Murdoch visit didn't attract more speculation in the press along those lines - sure there were people on Twitter wondering out loud, like me,  but I'm not sure the mainstream media has touched it.

Only in Japan...No, wait - Taiwan

Taiwan grandpa catches 'em all playing Pokemon Go on 15 cell phones

A photo of him and his set up:

I wonder what eccentric interest I might indulge in after retirement.   Suggestions welcome...

Why on Earth would Morrison think being mini-Trump is a good idea?

In case you hadn't noticed, flaky PM Scott Morrison spent last week on a high profile, campaign style tour of Queensland, wore a lot of caps, tried to look as "blokey" as possible, and sounded off about Muslim community and terrorism.  All very mini-Trump in appearance (although, actually, probably putting more effort to mix with the public than Trump - who just flies into a rally and flies out again.)

And his Newpoll numbers are just getting worse - on Monday, had blown out to 55/45 TPP.

Why would Morrison think that appearing or sounding like Trump is a good idea?   He seems to have no sense of what goes over well in the Australian public.  

Social media paradox

A study in which some young folk were required to limit social media (and others weren't) showed that those that were in the "limit" group were feeling less lonely and depressed:

Each of 143 participants completed a survey to determine mood and well-being at the study's start, plus shared shots of their iPhone battery screens to offer a week's worth of baseline social-media data. Participants were then randomly assigned to a control group, which had users maintain their typical social-media behavior, or an experimental group that limited time on Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram to 10 minutes per platform per day.

For the next three weeks, participants shared iPhone battery screenshots to give the researchers weekly tallies for each individual. With those data in hand, Hunt then looked at seven outcome measures including fear of missing out, anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

"Here's the bottom line," she says. "Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness. These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study."

Hunt stresses that the findings do not suggest that 18- to 22-year-olds should stop using social media altogether. In fact, she built the study as she did to stay away from what she considers an unrealistic goal. The work does, however, speak to the idea that limiting screen time on these apps couldn't hurt.

"It is a little ironic that reducing your use of social media actually makes you feel less lonely," she says. But when she digs a little deeper, the findings make sense. "Some of the existing literature on social media suggests there's an enormous amount of social comparison that happens. When you look at other people's lives, particularly on Instagram, it's easy to conclude that everyone else's life is cooler or better than yours."

It's not a huge study, and given the state of psychology at the moment, I half expect no one else will be able to replicate it!   But, I want it to be true.

Ooh...pilot sighted UFOs

I'm pretty sure it will turn out to be a misperception of a breaking up meteor or space junk, but I could be wrong...

The Irish Aviation Authority is investigating reports of bright lights and UFOs off the south-west coast of Ireland.

It began at 06:47 local time on Friday 9 November when a British Airways pilot contacted Shannon air traffic control.

She wanted to know if there were military exercises in the area because there was something "moving so fast".

The air traffic controller said there were no such exercises.

The pilot, flying from the Canadian city of Montreal to Heathrow, said there was a "very bright light" and the object had come up along the left side of the aircraft before it "rapidly veered to the north"....

The pilot said he saw "two bright lights" over to the right which climbed away at speed.

Fox News propaganda

Amazing story at WAPO:

A father of a Parkland school shooting victim appeared on “Fox & Friends” over the weekend and suggested, without evidence, that Democrats registered the accused shooter to vote from jail as part of an effort to steal Florida’s election.

“It just shows you how despicable these Democrats are that they’ll stoop that low to go into the prison, the jail, and register these criminals,” said Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was one of 17 people Nikolas Cruz allegedly shot and killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February. “It’s never been done in 20 years.”

Citing a “tip from deputies at the jail,” Pollack said the plan failed because Broward County — which is now involved in a recount battle that could swing Florida’s Senate and gubernatorial elections — failed to send the inmates their ballots in time to vote.

“They probably shouldn’t be voting anyway,” Fox’s Katie Pavlich remarked after listening to Pollack’s accusations, which neither she nor her two co-hosts challenged at any point, although they contradicted all public evidence.

There was a kernel of truth at the heart of the segment and the spiraling social media outrage that accompanied it: Nikolas Jacob Cruz really did register to vote in July, listing his home address as the county jail where he awaits trial after police say he confessed to the mass shooting.

He registered as a Republican, which “Fox & Friends” didn’t mention.

There is nothing suspicious or mysterious about what Cruz did from his cell. In general, jail inmates are constitutionally entitled to register and vote before their trials, assuming no prior convictions or legal disqualifications. Broward County records show that in 2016 and previous elections, several inmates did exactly that from the same jail where Cruz now sits.

Funny..sort of

Rep. Steve King dared a conservative outlet to release audio of him calling immigrants ‘dirt.’ It did.

The Weekly Standard released the recording at the center of an article describing King’s comments after a Twitter fight with the newly reelected Iowa Republican, who had accused the magazine of lying and fabricating the story.

A poor excuse

A pretty searing take down of Trump's performance in France over the weekend by Fred Kaplan at Slate.   Interesting to see that some simply do not believe the excuse about the presidential helicopter not being able to handle flying in a moderate amount of rain.   I mean, isn't this supposed to be the way the President escapes out of Washington just before an asteroid/nuclear strike/alien attack occurs?  If it's drizzling, he has to stay in the White House bunker instead? 

Update:  Allahpundit at Hot Air also notes Trump bunked out of visiting Arlington on his return, when it was the Veterans Day holiday.   Something seems wrong...

Update 2:  Jennifer Rubin lists all of the ways things are suddenly going wrong for Trump, and speculates that he's "cracking".    (I think it is obvious that the Paris trip was a PR disaster, which even his supporters recognize.)

Authoritarianism and Trump

This is a pretty good, lengthy thread from Twitter looking at explanations of why authoritarianism is appealing to some, and how it is reflected in the Trumpian politics of the US at the moment.

Update:  I am constantly amazed, when reading Catallaxy threads, at how support for Trump is tied up with over-the-top, apocalyptic pessimism about the end of the glorious rein of the West and all that is good and proper in it.    It's all about retreat (see Brexit too) into a hermetically sealed cultural, philosophical and even economic world, in which the Righteous will look after each other and - maybe - save the world from itself.    Very backwards looking, in the worst ways (they are, essentially, impervious to evidence) and even though they continually obsess about "winning" and "destroying" their perceived enemies, it's more like the cry of the vanquished that is having trouble coming to terms with reality.

Sorry, I have said this all before - perhaps I just enjoy trying to find pithier ways of putting it.

Odd bits from the end of the War

I was listening to a good radio documentary on the ABC about World War 1 and its effect on Australia.   Some things that got a brief mention that I don't recall seeing depicted in TV, movies or fiction books before:

*  the food riots in Melbourne caused by great cost of living increases during the war (and affecting food in particular).  Here's a bit I found elsewhere about that:

The cost of living issue and the associated food riots caused two months
of turmoil in Melbourne during September and October 1917. Recent work
by John Lack adds to our understanding of the significance of these riots by
tracing the reasons particular commercial establishments and places of work
were targeted and demonstrating the deep-seated, class-based resentments
about economic injustice that preceded the war and were aggravated by it.161
This embedded anger underpinned the extensive involvement of Melbourne
workers in the Great Strike of 1917, which, as a number of historians have
argued, was driven by ordinary workers, especially the unskilled at the grass
roots of the labour movement, rather than their leaders.162 While the strike
about the introduction of the Taylorist timecard system began and remained
centred in New South Wales, by early September more than 20,000 workers
in Melbourne were also affected – a third to a half of them actually on strike
or locked out and the rest stood down or on short time. The wharf labourers
were already out over the cost of bread, but now added a refusal to handle
black goods (goods handled by non-union labour) to their cause. As the
mainstay of the Victorian strike – first out and last back – they comprised
over a quarter of the state’s strikers. 

*  the impossibility of a fast return of soldiers to not only Australia, but all Allied nations.  (They said there just were not enough ships in the world to get soldiers back home within a year.)   On that topic, I see this today:

Despite the war being over, and Australian troops not constituting part of the Allied occupying force in Germany, it was to be a long time before many Australians would return home. The day after the armistice, Private A. Golding wrote:

They told us we would be another 12 months in France.

Repatriation to Australia was organised by Lieutenant General Sir John Monash, on a first come, first go basis.

While awaiting transport, some men took advantage of the opportunity to travel around France and Britain- one of the incentives for enlisting in the first place. A few hundred Australian servicemen went on to serve in Russia as part of a British force fighting Bolshevik forces. Some light horse units also helped with suppressing an Egyptian nationalist revolt in early 1919.

Had I heard about Diggers fighting Bolshevik's before?  Maybe.   Surely there would be some good material for a story there.

* that some returning soldiers jumped overboard from their ships, probably (in come cases) from the stress of the thought of having to explain to wives or family that they had contracted a venereal disease.   On that topic, I also note an article today about a book written all about the Australia experience with VD during that war:

Two of Australia's Victoria Cross recipients had been sent home with VD and at least six men on board The Wiltshire – that ship of shame – ended up being highly decorated. Initially, army regulations made it difficult for men who had committed acts of misconduct, including contracting VD, to be awarded medals but this was later retracted: around 15 per cent of the entire AIF contracted VD.

How this fits with the overall statistics amongst allied soldiers depends on who you ask. Dunbar says: "Some people like to think that Australian soldiers caught more VD than those in other combatant countries and other people say they caught less. I think it depends on the extent to which the person you are talking to upholds the myth of the heroic digger."

It would be a challenge for any writer to make an entire book on sexually transmitted diseases appeal to a wide audience, but Dunbar's sensitive probing of the human psychology and social mores involved transcends the First World War experience and is a timely reminder of the damaging effects of glossing over our human flaws.

Another late, late movie review

The Pianist, the Roman Polanski directed World War 2 movie is on Netflix, and now I've seen it.

It's a fine movie, based on the true story which Wikipedia makes it easy to compare with the screenplay.   (You know I always like looking up where such movies diverge from the real story.)

It would seem that the movie is quite close to the book, with relatively few embellishments.  

I am curious as to why the movie underplays Szpilman's suicidal thoughts while living in permanent hiding for a couple of years.   Indeed, the movie certainly offers no internal thoughts of the main character at all - which makes for a kind of realism but does make it very emotionally cool in most  respects.   Don't get me wrong - the depiction of casual cruelty by Nazis to Jews is just about as effective as that in Schindler's List - but I guess I still feel it's a pity there was no way devised to give us any of Szpilman's internal dialogue.   

The comparison with Spielberg's film is inevitable.   Of course, List is often criticised for its made up ending (in which Schindler has an emotional breakdown), and I have always felt this was fair enough (the criticism).  But even without that, it is a more emotional (and devastating) film.  Its most famous scene (the lost little red-dressed girl) was highly emotional but, importantly,  made sense of Schindler's motivation.   I presume it was an invention too, but one that worked completely convincingly, unlike the final scene with him.

So it's interesting - both films have an "issue" with emotion - just from the opposite direction.

But both are very good.  (I don't think Schindler's List will ever be beaten as the definitive film of the Holocaust, despite the issue discussed herein.)

Melbourne and violence

Melbourne seems to be having a particularly bad run with immigrant related violence over the past few years.   It would seem that yesterday's inner city attack by a radicalised Muslim could have been much worse if explosions from gas bottles had occurred.   But then again, why was the vehicle burning like that in the first place?   Were some gas bottles opened?   In any case, when I saw the video of people filming the scene, I though to myself that there is no way I would have hung around that close to the vehicle in case there was an explosion.   Must have been worrying the police trying to catch the guy, too. 

I half-watched the Four Corners show this week on the issue of African youth gang violence, and the degree to which it is or isn't being blown out of proportion.   I feel a bit of a fence sitter on the issue:  the show was good in that it didn't shy away from personalising the story both from the perspective of victims, and of young black guys unfairly caught up in the backlash.   It's one of those cases where  you can say both that it's silly to pretend it isn't a problem but still dislike the way the Murdoch media treats it as a problem.

Anyway, I've long been curious as to why this seems to centre on Melbourne.  Some Brisbane suburbs are known for the African immigrants but as far as I know there is no significant issue with youth gangs here.   And now that I check, Sydney had nearly as many Sudanese migrants as Melbourne, at least in 2011. 

Melbourne is a great place for eating and for people with ridiculous obsession with sports;  it's now just so-so for cultural pursuits, I reckon.   But all of those things are indoors (I'm counting sitting in a stadium as indoors) and I assume of marginal interest to current African youth.   If you aren't involved in those three things during the long, grey winters of that city, I think it probably is a pretty boring place.   Sydney and Brisbane don't have the same winter grey doldrums that Melbourne has.

So yeah, I'm going out on a limb and blaming gang violence on crappy weather.  But as time goes on and younger family members get absorbed in that Melbourne Borg of the footy and cricket (God help them), it will reduce. 

Hey, it's a theory.