Another bad idea endorsed by Facebook

Turning up on Twitter yesterday - a lengthy NBC report about the rise of vigilante groups in the US that "catfish" adult sex predators (of children/ teens) and then publicly shame them.

I hadn't heard of this phenomena, but in concept it's been around for a while - even NBC itself apparently doing it a decade ago!:

POPSquad is one of dozens of similar online groups across the country unified by what they say is a mission to expose and shame people they allege are or could become sexual predators, according to an NBC News review of these groups on Facebook. The idea isn’t new — the NBC News “Dateline” show mined the same territory in its special series, “To Catch a Predator,” from 2004 to 2007. Ratings soared, and the network described it as a public service, but in three years the series was over, after drawing negative news coverage, advertiser wariness and a lawsuit from the family of a target who killed himself, which was later settled, with both parties saying only that it had “been amicably resolved."

There have been several copycats of “To Catch a Predator,” including Ontario construction worker Justin Payne, who ensnared dozens of men by 2015. In British Columbia, Ryan LaForge made a name (and a criminal record, pleading guilty to two counts of assault) with his group, Creep Catchers, and in Michigan, Zach Sweers caught potential predators under the name “Anxiety War” until 2016, when he settled two civil lawsuits from targets.

Now, thanks in part to social media, these groups have multiplied rapidly in recent months, propelled by a rabid and growing fanbase, according to law enforcement officials and Facebook data.

The NBC News review found more than 30 similar operations on Facebook across 23 states. Most have formed in the last year, finding an audience and influence on Facebook, where hundreds of thousands of users like and follow them, watch videos of their stings and support their efforts with donations and the purchase of branded merchandise.

Gawd, American media comes up with some patently bad ideas at times.

I have always disliked the idea of vigilante justice, and this is no exception.   While I have no objection at all to police forces setting up on-line predators, I think it is very clear that the motivation of those heading these private groups is one in which they get a power (and publicity) thrill from their activities, and that is obviously a dangerous thing. 

A criminologist quoted in the article goes a bit more high minded about it:

These online hunters are tapping into a hunger for vengeance, said Steven Kohm, a cultural criminologist at the University of Winnipeg.

“Criminal justice used to be emotional and participatory,” Kohm said. “Over the last 100 years, it’s become mostly hidden and dominated by professionals. People are yearning to reconnect with the punitive emotional core of the justice system. These groups focusing on the pedophile, a universally reviled category, helps them connect with the lost aspect of the justice system.”

Maybe:   I'm more inclined towards my own theory.

I mean, look at the background of the guy who started the POPSquad:

Erdmann, who is thin and covered in tattoos, runs POPSquad from an abandoned factory in Bristol, Connecticut. He and four volunteer team members work in an office lit by black lights and security monitors to catfish potential predators, edit videos and maintain the POPSquad website.

A former self-described “hustler,” and staple of the early-aughts Connecticut rap scene, Erdmann later hyped WakeUpNow, a Utah-based multilevel marketing company that targeted the hip-hop community. He is currently on probation for an unrelated 2016 felony drug conviction and now makes money from selling original music along with POPSquad hats and sweatshirts, and soliciting donations from his followers.

“I've been an entrepreneur for a long time,” Erdmann said. "I’m using the same entrepreneur skill sets that I was when I got into trouble, but not the same products. I create the product now."  

Yeah, great motivation I can see there.

What's worse, look at the mealy mouthed justification Facebook gives for hosting these groups:

Facebook told NBC News that it is aware of these groups and does not ban them outright, although much of what they do appears to violate Facebook’s rules against shaming or cyberbullying.

“We want people to use Facebook and our products to raise awareness about threats to public safety, including those who may pose harm to children,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News. “However, we do not want people to use Facebook to facilitate vigilante violence. That’s why we have policies against threatening real-world harm and to protect people’s privacy if they are being publicly shamed. We will remove content that violates these policies when it is reported.”

Facebook does not allow posts that “reveal personally identifiable information" or amount to cyberbullying, the spokesperson said. The company reviews posts when they are flagged.

After an inquiry from NBC News, Facebook temporarily suspended several predator hunter accounts, removed some individual posts and deleted at least one group entirely. Some groups voluntarily removed their own pages to escape what they saw as a purge. POPSquad appeared to be unaffected.

Facebook really is the pits.

First physics post of 2019

Gee, Bee Hossenfelder feels pretty triumphant about how arguments from "naturalness", which predicted the Large Hadron Collider would surely find some sign of new physics, have hit the wall hard since it appears very likely that that only thing the LHC will be good for is finding the Higgs boson. 

Here's her post: How the LHC may spell the end of particle physics. 

I see she has also just posted against panpsychism - the somewhat silly idea that all matter is conscious, just some of it more conscious than others.  Not a bad read.

Before Christmas, I noticed a paper on arXiv called Non Locality versus Modified Realism: Convivial Solipsism. 

I see that the author - who I have never heard of before - has been plugging away at this idea for some time now.   It's a somewhat intriguing proposal, I think - hard to describe, but much of the paper was able to be followed.   I may be wrong, but I had the feeling that it was more sensible than Many Worlds interpretation - although still weird.  This particular paper was about its usefulness in restoring "locality" to quantum mechanics.    The abstract:

A large number of physicists now admit that quantum mechanics is a non local theory. EPR argument and the many experiences (including recent loop-hole free tests) showing the violation of Bell's inequalities seem to have confirmed convincingly that quantum mechanics cannot be local. Nevertheless, this conclusion can only be drawn inside a standard realist framework assuming an ontic interpretation of the wave function and viewing the collapse of the wave function as a real change in the physical state of the system. We show that this standpoint is not mandatory and that if the collapse is no more considered as an actual physical change, it is possible to recover locality.

Spider-verse reviewed

Perhaps not worth spending too much time on this, but here goes:

*  yes, the animation is continuously impressive, and very clever in concept and execution.  This is the main reason for an adult to see the movie.

*  The story is OK:  I do get the feeling, though, that American critics really go a bit overboard for the father-son reconciliation themes that seem to be a speciality of Phil Lord, who wrote the (also somewhat overrated) Lego Movie.  Rottentomatoes give this 97% though?   A bit extreme.

*  I think the very silly additions (the anime Spider girl, and Spider-ham) were a bit funny, but I think the movie would have been better tonally without them.

*  The worst aspect, by far, was the ridiculous character design of Kingpin; especially when his family was portrayed in the same realistic human fashion as all other characters (Spider-ham and anime girl excepted.)   His wife and son were shown driving in a car which he would have had trouble getting one buttock into.  I really do not understand this decision - it broke any sense of semi-realism in every scene in which he appeared.

* Some of the climatic fight animation was too cluttered for its own good.

*  This post sounds crankier than intended - I don't regret seeing it at all, as I do get quite a kick out of gorgeous, innovative looking animation.  (Unfortunately, the novelty does wear off - Pixar style semi-realism was, for a while, a big motivation to see anything they put out.   That's no longer the case.)     There was also plenty of genuinely good humour in a movie that, like all Spiderman movies really, are good-natured at heart.   So, I don't want to discourage anyone who might be interested from seeing it - it's just that I like to think about how I would improve movies (or TV series.)  And I really did dislike the Kingpin design.

Two returns

Happy New Year, all.

I've been on overseas holiday, hence the blog hiatus.    A holiday post will follow soon - I like writing them, as a form of (hopefully) digitally permanent on-line diary.    I guess other people might use Facebook for that, but here I get to protect privacy to some extent.   

As for another return, I have been reading about the comedian Louis CK.   

I know next to nothing about his style of work, except that I suspected  that I would not like it for the usual reasons I dislike most modern stand up comedy:   the puzzling expectation that a torrent of swearing you would not tolerate in your home (or even at a bar) is funny; the introspection that often embarrassingly discloses a troubled personality beneath the jokes.   I did see him interviewed on Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars show, and he seemed relatively normal, but I still had my doubts.

Anyhow, the first news stories about his surprise "set" at a comedy club were about him mocking the Florida school kid advocates for gun control.  I listened to the recording (via a Twitter link) and found it more about mocking young adults for being too serious about everything today:  that they don't know how to have fun like in his day when he was doing drugs, sleeping around and other stupid stuff.  That's what youth is meant to be about, you know?  What's more, they try to tell others how to speak too, with identity politics probably a bigger target than gun control advocates.

The swearing and crudity of it was beyond my (not optimistic) expectations, and I found it completely unfunny.  As many on Twitter were saying, he was sounding more like a coarse Right wing comedian (maybe an extreme version of PJ O'Rourke's old writings celebrating in a libertarian spirit his youthful stupid behaviour - and certainly unoriginal.  Many in twitter noted the similarity to a set on Youtube by some other male - I think Right wing - comedian I had never heard of with the same "kids of today - what's wrong with them, they're so annoyingly against fun" shtick.)   

But, I thought later, is it possible that Louis was not really "punching down" - as many on Twitter accused him - but mocking his own "old man" attitude?   Some said that his old act always did involve coarse attacks, but in a self aware way.   I don't know, I'm not going to research his old work to find out - but I doubt this explanation.

Today, and the primary reason for this post, is that I read a Slate article which excerpts much more from this stand up set, and it really shows that it was appalling in its entirety.  

Because I don't like repeating swearing on this blog, it's hard to cut and paste anything from the article quoting Louis, but I find the analysis completely convincing, and am utterly puzzled as to how any audience could find him funny.   Has the sudden disclosure of his weird exhibitionist behaviour towards women broken his comedy mind?   But what excuse does the audience have?

Go read the Slate article if you want to be appalled at what some people will laugh at today.

Update:   The Atlantic explains some of the nature of his old comedy act/persona, and is equally appalled at the nature of the leaked "new" Louis CK.  A key section:

Over the years, C.K.’s comedy evolved, as any comic’s will, but at their best and most well known, his jokes were about interrogating himself as a means of interrogating American culture. As C.K. shuffled uncomfortably on stages and sets, clad in rumpled T-shirts and slouchy dad jeans, he served as his own act’s useful idiot: C.K., author and character at once, played the privileged guy who—he’d be the first to admit it—didn’t fully deserve his privilege. It was classic observational humor, bending its lens to examine the warped terrain of C.K.’s own psyche, and while it was winking and postmodern and self-hating and self-elevating, it also contained an implied transaction: Hearing C.K.’s confession would offer, for his audience, its own kind of reconciliation. His performed selfishness could seem, in its twisted way, generous.

But while offense, in that sense, has always been an element of C.K.’s comedy—offense as a means of inflicting discomfort, and thus, the promise went, of illuminating awkward realities—offense, now, is all there is. The layer of alleged truth-telling is entirely missing from the new material. C.K.’s new set, according to its leaked version, doesn’t merely punch down; it stomps, pettily, to the bottom. None of it is smart or brave; it is simply cruel. And yet it tries to justify itself by suggesting that C.K. himself has been the recipient of cruelty. One of the key moments of the leaked set comes when someone, either by walking out or by shooting him a look, seems to question C.K. as he complains about being unable to use the word retarded. C.K. responds with a rant:

    What’re you gonna take away my birthday? My life is over; I don’t give a shit. You          can, you can be offended—it’s okay. You can get mad at me. Anyway.

It’s an old story: The guy who abused others, claiming his own victimhood. 

Merry Christmas, Reader/s

That's what happens when you elect a fragile narcissist

The WAPO sums it up:

Trump has shown time and again that he cares way more about his supporters and his good standing with them than he does about the Republican Party. That has made him an impossible negotiating partner.

When it seemed as if Trump might cave, the right-wing media piled on. Ann Coulter called him “gutless,” and Breitbart News noted Trump’s walk-back of promises from the 2016 campaign (like the fact that “the big, beautiful wall” is now concrete slats). Moreover, Trump’s loyal foot soldiers on Capitol Hill are urging him to reject the spending deal, warning of the major damage it would cause Trump with his base and his 2020 reelection bid. In fact, the leaders of the Freedom Caucus are going to the White House on Thursday afternoon to deliver that message.

Adoration from his base is Trump’s lifeblood. The threat of losing his supporters' affection is enough to make him throw the rest of the GOP and the federal government under the bus. As soon as he started getting criticized by them, he yearned to appease them.

A similar dynamic played out over immigration earlier this year when Schumer offered Trump a deal: funding for his border wall in exchange for a path to citizenship for “dreamers,” the undocumented immigrants brought to America as children. Schumer believed Trump was on board, but as soon as Trump received pushback from his supporters, he turned down the deal.

Which, in a way, is how we got here. Trump never sticks with one line of thinking. His positions are constantly shifting, and he doesn’t provide any lawmakers on Capitol Hill any guidance of where his head is at any moment. The Senate passed a short-term funding bill Wednesday night believing he would sign it and woke up the next morning to find out he wouldn’t.

To be or not to be (in Syria)

One of the great things about not being an American is that I can shrug my shoulders and say "I dunno" on the matter of when it is or isn't right the right time for the US to get out of wars in the "always in conflict" parts of the world. 

Hence, I really don't know if it is a good idea for Trump to be pulling out troops from Syria. 

Sometimes I wonder why your average Australian wingnut thinks they know enough to have a solid opinion on this.  But that's the nature of wingnuttery - it's not as if they have good reason to justify 90% of their opinions, so why should they be well informed on this one too?

Anyway, given Trump's general unreliability (to put it mildly), it certainly wouldn't be surprising if it was a bad plan.

Max Boot, former conservative who has turned big time against Trump, and the American Right generally, thinks it is a big mistake.  His piece starts:

A few weeks ago, I attended the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, Calif., where panel after panel of defense experts dutifully discussed Important Issues such as gray zone warfare, the defense industrial base and the future of U.S. policy toward Syria. It all seemed disconnected from reality, as if the defense cognoscenti were living in an alternative universe where they can generate policy options in the expectation that a wise and well-informed president will choose the best of the lot. That is not the situation we are in. We are at the mercy of an ignorant and impetuous president who, as Jeffrey Toobin quipped, “is unfit to run a charity in New York State but fit to control nuclear weapons that could destroy the world several times over.”

At one time, the world hoped that an Axis of Adults could constrain the juvenile in the Oval Office, but such naive expectations have been dashed repeatedly. Syria offers the latest example of the futility of expecting that lower-level officials can consistently save the world from the commander in chief.

Of course, ever since Vietnam, everyone has grounds for wondering whether Generals' advice about these matters is always wise.

Let's see how it plays out.

Brexit and democracy

I have been arguing in comments to my post earlier this week about how it is ridiculous to argue that having a second Brexit referendum, now that people understand the choice properly, would be a "betrayal of democracy".

I am pleased to read this morning a lengthy post by Simon Wren-Lewis arguing that the matter of how the country got to its present position has, in fact, been a circumvention of democracy.

I think Homer likes most of his commentary.  What's wrong with his argument on this topic?

Into the Red Room

OK, time for the spoiler filled commentary on the Red Room - the key aspect, really, of the final episode of the Haunting of Hill House.

My take:  I quite liked the idea, but am a little dubious about the execution.

The key thing that makes little practical sense is this:  how did the children not recognize the room from its location within the house?   The problem is that it is shown as having one door, at the end of a corridor - yet Steve (for example) in the final episode still seems to say that it was the door that had never been opened; yet he was also in there a lot of the time as a child.

The obvious and simplest way around this would be to show the room having a second entry, and then only reveal the distinctively shaped red door as the alternative entry in the final episode.  That would leave some plausibility, would it not?, that the rambling layout of the house meant that the kids found their own entry into the room, and possibly without ever realising that it was the Red Room that their Dad could not enter.  Or, they might have recognized it as the Red Room, but have liked it for its privacy.

The more complicated explanation, which I think the storm episode perhaps sort of established, was that the house could deceive the occupants as to its own layout, and hence have provided access to the room for the kids without them realising where they were.   But that seems to me to be more elaborate than was really necessary.

Why don't I have a job as a script doctor, hey?

Anyway, I don't want to sound too negative.   Overall, I quite liked the final episode.  I particularly liked some of the twists - the way it first looked worrying like the whole series could have been just Steve writing another book; and the reason why the sister was so sensitive to her husband's potential adultery. 

Once again, the subtlety of some of the creepiness was very pleasing - I am thinking in this episode of the way the Tall Man ghost bends down to peer into the face of Steve, while he looks away.

I did like how the series still leaves open the possibility that the black mould is the source of madness within the house.  And the whole idea that it was recognised by the caretakers wanted it preserved as a place where they could keep visiting their poor daughter - that sort of made sense (and added some of the bittersweet aspect that was to be found in The Orphanage.)  

So yeah, overall, it ended up being pretty satisfying.   Well worth watching.

Netflix reviews

*   As everyone else on line who has talked about it has already said, the third season of The Good Place got off to a shaky start, particularly with Australian audiences cringing at the attempts at our  accent.  But by episode 4 or 5 (I forget which) it regained its mojo and has some very funny writing again.   (And, co-incidentally, left Australia.)

I don't really understand how anyone could not like this show.   Terrifically smart, very funny, and a charming cast. 

*  Fargo, second season.   I've finished it and the big question is:  how did I feel about the UFO?   In a way, it didn't bother me - its re-appearance was foreshadowed often enough.  But it certainly did make for an oddball conclusion.  To be honest, I thought that part of the last episode was way, way too close to Raising Arizona (with its dream of the future),  so that I feel that the peak episodes were closer to the middle of the series.   Despite feeling a slight let down with the ending, overall, it was really great viewing, and I'll watch the third season too.   (My son watched the first season alone, and says he thought it was a bit better, but I find it hard to believe I could find any episodes better than some in this series.)

* Norsemen:  have finished watching the second series.  Still very funny.  I see that a third series is being made.  Good.   Have more people found it yet, I wonder?

* Am wanting to finish the last, apparently controversial, episode of Haunting of Hill House before Christmas.  The show has sucked me in, despite its flaws.   Expect a review of the ending soon.

*  I wrote recently that Jason Momoa seems so likeable on TV chat show appearances that I am tempted to see the kind of ludicrous Aquaman, and I did try watching the first episode of Frontier, a Canadian series in which he stars.   It had some exceptionally badly written exposition dialogue within the first 10 minutes; so bad that both my son and I said "this is not good" and chose to discontinue.   Maybe it gets better?

American politics, yet again

This is a pretty good exchange between Ezra Klein and of the guys who has written a book about this:  

“Of the many factors that make up your worldview, one is more fundamental than any other in determining which side of the divide you gravitate toward: your perception of how dangerous the world is. Fear is perhaps our most primal instinct, after all, so it’s only logical that people’s level of fearfulness informs their outlook on life.”

That’s political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler, writing in their book Prius or Pickup, which marshals a massive trove of survey data and experimental evidence to argue that the roots of our political divides run so deep that they make us almost incomprehensible to one another. Our political divisions, they say, aren’t about policy disagreements, or even demographics. They’re about something more ancient in how we view the world.  

Hetherington and Weiler call these worldviews, which express themselves in everything from policy preferences to parenting styles, “fixed” versus “fluid.” The fixed worldview “describes people who are warier of social and cultural change and hence more set in their ways, more suspicious of outsiders, and more comfortable with the familiar and predictable.” People with a fluid worldview, by contrast, “support changing social and cultural norms, are excited by things that are new and novel, and are open to, and welcoming of, people who look and sound different.”

What’s happened in recent decades, they argue, is that politics in general, and our political parties in particular, have reorganized around these worldviews, adding a new, and arguably irreconcilable, difference into our political divisions. That difference is visible in everything from what we think to where we live to how we shop, but it’s particularly apparent in how hard it is for us to understand how the other side views the world.

It's undeniable that the Trump campaign was based on ludicrous fear-mongering;  but Klein is still  skeptical about some of how this is meant to work, asking twice why this has happened when the world has actually become safer.   (And that's objectively true too, given that we don't live in a Cold War of the kind we did in the first half of my life, and the murder rate has dropped dramatically in so much of the world.)

I didn't find the answer completely satisfying.  You can go read them yourself.

But I did think the authors are right on this point -

The problem starts with conservative leaders.

The simple fact is that Republican leaders more often traffic in falsehoods than Democratic leaders do — climate change denial, birtherism, suggesting voter fraud is rampant, and more. These are not positions of the conservative fringe. The president of the United States himself has embraced all these falsehoods. If Democratic leaders were similarly likely to push false narratives, more Democrats would believe them.

Conservative media amplify these falsehoods. This is what links what leaders say and do to what the public believes. Liberals tend to rely on a range of liberal and mainstream news sources. Conservatives tend to rely on a much smaller number of highly ideological sources. According to a 2014 Pew study, consistent conservatives expressed the same level of mistrust of ABC News as consistent liberals did of Sean Hannity.

Hence, conservative Americans are more likely than liberals to believe falsehoods about the other side. For example, Democrats were about 12 points more likely than Republicans to say that the Bush administration directed flooding to parts of New Orleans during Katrina. But Republicans were 34 points more likely to believe Obama was born in Kenya than Democrats and 32 points more likely to believe that Obamacare included “death panels.”

That doesn’t mean that there is no biased thinking among liberals. They, too, are more willing to support or oppose a policy because it is or isn’t being carried out by their team. But skepticism about basic facts does, in fact, differ markedly by party and ideology.

Charles the worker

Pretty much by accident last night I saw about 20 minutes of Prince, Son & Heir: Charles at 70 on the ABC. 

He came across as down to earth (for a monarch in waiting), and very hard working.   His sons talked about how he eats dinner very late (although I did not hear how late), and then works at his desk often til midnight, and sometimes falling asleep on his papers, waking up with one stuck to his nose.   They obviously think the world of him, and their main wish seems to be that he could slow down and spend more time with their young families.  (Yeah, I know, Harry doesn't have a kid just yet.)

He drives the much of the Right nuts for his environmental concerns, and somewhat quaint interests in organic food and (I suppose) older styles of living. 

But he certainly seems smart and passionate, self-effacing and as such, very likeable.  Pretty much what you need in a future monarch, I think.

Brexit prediction

John Quiggin's post (and the following comments) predicting a revocation of Brexit early in 2019 makes for interesting reading.

Does sound plausible to me.

I again heard Theresa May on the radio this morning saying that another referendum would be a betrayal of democracy, or some such nonsense. 

I still can't get my head around how politicians like her can't get their head around how context matters.   The people would actually understand what is at stake now.  They obviously did not at the time of the first referendum.

And no Homer, you're just wrong on this one.

All about cement (and its CO2 problem)

This is more interesting than you might first expect - a very good explanation at the BCC about concrete (including its history) and its problematic nature vis a vis CO2 production.   I mean I knew that using it created a lot of greenhouse gases, but not this much:

Cement is the most widely used man-made material in existence. It is second only to water as the most-consumed resource on the planet.

But, while cement - the key ingredient in concrete - has shaped much of our built environment, it also has a massive carbon footprint.

Cement is the source of about 8% of the world's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, according to think tank Chatham House.

If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world - behind China and the US. It contributes more CO2 than air fuel (2.5%) and is not far behind the global agriculture business (12%).

Box office observed

I haven't been much motivated to see any movies recently, and I've noticed that a few major releases have had so-so reviews.  Bohemian Rhapsody has 48% on Metacritic.   The latest Harry Potter prequel 53% (but only 38% on Rottentomatoes.)    I was curious to see how they have fared at the box office.

Well, Box Office Mojo seems to indicate that Harry Potter movies are virtually critic proof, at least for international box office - it'll end up making more than $600 million internationally, which must be enough to turn a profit even with a $200 million budget.  (Not much, though, given that I think the rule of thumb is still that most movies have to make more than 3 times budget cost before getting into clear profit.)    But there is still rental and streaming money to be made from it.

Every woman who has seen it thinks Bohemian Rhapsody was fantastic, and box office would indicate a lot of men have seen it too - $635 million and still making $4 million last weekend in the US alone.  All on a $52 million budget?   That's a hugely profitable hit.   I was never a big fan of Queen's music - I remember thinking when it came out that the titular movie song and video was kind of kitschy, but some other songs were OK.   I think Freddie's life was interesting and a bit sad, but I don't feel I need to see a movie about it. 

Speaking of movies big with females in particular:  A Star is Born has made nearly $200 million in the US, but only $177 million overseas.   With a $36 million budget, that's still a solid hit, and one I have no interest in.

I see the Dr Seuss movies are ridiculously popular in the US - $239 million just in the US for the latest Grinch movie. 

Anyway, I am slightly embarrassed to say, but the latest animated version of Spiderman has received such good reviews that I am now inclined to see it.   I am also toying with seeing Aquaman when it comes out - it would seem to have a fair bit of the humour I find essential for enjoying a superhero movie, and really, that Jason Momoa has such a ridiculous amount of charisma in any of his TV appearances, I sort of want the movie to succeed to reward his likeability. 

But we'll see... 

Dubai as the airconditioned city

This article from Business Insider, talking about what future cities may start looking like as temperatures continue to rise, gives Dubai as an example.   Apparently, a huge amount is already interconnected, airconditioned buildings and shopping malls, and it's going to get bigger:

Dubai is getting so good at simulating the outdoors inside that its next megaproject is dedicated to just that. Dubai Square, set to become the world’s largest mall, is built around a four-lane “boulevard” that mimics a wide city street, a piazza, and an entertainment center for concerts and theatre shows. It will even have the Middle East’s largest Chinatown.

This is what its supposed to look like:

Um, that looks ridiculously difficult to aircondition efficiently, even if the roof has got some heat reflective film on it.  (It must, surely?)   But even if it does, isn't there a risk of it frying some other buildings, or otherwise raising already hellish temperatures in the outside of the city?

Update:  this article, also at Business Insider, I visited outlandishly wealthy Dubai, known as the 'city of gold,' and was surprised by how much fun you can have even without billions,  makes Dubai sound like not a bad place for a tourist to visit at the moment.   Not sure I am entirely convinced...

Update 2:  this helps explain why I am still leery about visiting the place - Man arrested for bringing witchcraft items into UAE.   My rule of thumb is "Do not visit countries where the government  believes in black magic, witchcraft or sorcery.  It is too easy for anyone there who you look at the wrong way to claim you are a sorcerer and must be arrested." 

More Mary legends

At the risk of sounding like I am on anti-Catholic, anti-Marian binge this Christmas, given my recent cynical post about Mary's house being flown to Italy:  this article, from The Daily Beast of all places, actually seems pretty accurate.  

But it does come up with some legendary Marian stories which I had not heard of before, and some of it is surprising.  (Not the first part, about the rumour of a Roman soldier - that is pretty well known.  The last story though - wow.)

From the time of the early Church, there were those who questioned Mary’s virginity. Some rabbinic and ancient Roman sources suggest that Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier named Panthera. According to these early critics, Mary concocted the story of the virgin birth in order to conceal the fact that she cheated on her betrothed with a member of the oppressive military force that was subjugating her people. The particular explanation is actually pretty unlikely, if only because as a resident of Nazareth Mary would have rarely (if ever!) come into contact with Roman soldiers; nevertheless ancient Christian readers took it seriously.

A second-century story known as The Protoevangelium of James fills in a lot of the gaps in Mary’s biography. It tells us about Mary’s childhood, that she had special status as a dedicated virgin, and that she was 16 when she conceived Jesus. In this version of the nativity story Joseph doesn’t just accuse her of disgracing herself, he responds to Mary’s statement that she hasn’t “known” a man by asking her, “Where did this thing in your womb come from then?”

But Joseph is a believer in comparison to woman named Salome. Salome, who meets a midwife who examined Mary, declares, “As the Lord my God lives, unless I insert my finger and investigate her, I will not believe that a virgin has given birth." Mary prepares herself for the gynecological exam and Salome performs the test. Her hand literally catches on fire, and it takes the appearance of an angel (as well as some strong statements of contrition from Salome) before she is healed.

The rest of the article, about the idea of the Immaculate Conception, is pretty good too.

Update:  it just occurred to me, that story of Salome and her burning hand could form the basis of a very novel Christmas card illustration... 

Sensitive vegans

Nothing gets a vegan more uptight than being told that their diet runs a very real risk of malnutrition.  

Have a read of this article from The Conversation:  Vegan diets are adding to malnutrition in wealth countries, and the comments from upset vegans following.

Actually, I didn't realise that Vitamin B12 was such an issue for vegans and vegetarians.   Or this problem with veganism:

Bone health is a concern for long-term vegans. Vegans are consistently reported to have lower intakes of calcium and vitamin D, with resultant lower blood levels of vitamin D and lower bone mineral density reported worldwide. Fracture rates are also nearly a third higher among vegans compared with the general population. 

I reckon that the most I could ever tolerate would be a pescetarian diet, and despite disliking aspects of the milk and egg industry, I couldn't give them up.   

Brisbane more dangerous than I knew...

I would never have guessed that there are this many venomous snake bites around Brisbane:

Many people living in Queensland's capital may assume they're far away from a dangerous snake encounter, but the numbers suggest they're more likely than their country cousins to suffer a snakebite.

According to figures released by Queensland Ambulance, Brisbanites are more likely to be bitten by a snake than residents in the outback.

A total of 156 people were bitten by venomous snakes across the Metro North and Metro South areas, which make up the Brisbane region, in the 12 months to November 18 this year.

There were 96 on the Sunshine Coast, while outback areas such as the North West region had 11 cases, and the South West just four instances.

More people live in the south-east corner of the state than in other regions, but even as a proportion of population Brisbane is over-represented in snakebites.

University of Queensland snake expert Bryan Fry said in addition to more people, Brisbane and south-east Queensland have more semi-rural areas, which are perfect for brown snakes.

"Brown snakes thrive in disturbed habitat, so you can find more brown snakes around semi-rural habitation than you can in the wild," Professor Fry said.

I suppose it's (sort of) good news that you rarely read of anyone dying of venomous snakebite around here - but that is still a hell of a lot of people being bitten.

An improbable, vaguely Christmas related miracle

An article at The Catholic Herald caught my eye:  Did angels really carry the Holy House of Mary to Loreto, Italy?  So did the photo accompanying it:

As you might expect, that's not the house itself, but an excessively ornate, um, housing for a house.

Inside, the "real thing" looks like this:

which, I dunno, looks a little more solid than I expected from a 2,000 something year old house from Israel.

The bright looking figure in the first interior is the Our Lady of Loreto statue, which is a bit more famous than I knew.  You can watch this rather pious video about the house, and the statue, here:



As to the matter of how the house got there, the Catholic Herald article (and the video) indicate that the house might have been by boat, not by Angel Air, by a family with an a name which contributed to the legend:

In 1900, the pope’s physician, Joseph Lapponi, discovered documents in the Vatican archive, stating that in the 13th century a noble Byzantine family, the Angeli family, rescued “materials” from “Our Lady’s House” from Muslim invaders and then had them transported to Italy for the building of a shrine.
The name Angeli means “angels” in both Greek and Latin.

I am suspicious: it sounds too much like a late rationalisation. 

As for the air borne house tradition, it has been depicted variously as looking like this:

or this:

I don't know the artists behind either depiction, but the second one puts me in mind of Dorothy's house crushing the Wicked Witch, because at first glance I assumed the guy underneath was a devil.  But on second thoughts, he looks like he's just helping out, except for some reason he's nude.  If he is an angel, I didn't realise Heaven was "clothing optional" for them.

Anyhow, this is the second time this week that I have been contemplating the rather idiosyncratic fervour European Catholics can hold towards Mary and statues representing her.   The first example was Mary Beard talking on Civilisations about the annual ceremony around a statue in Seville:



I'm interested in the matter of why some European countries, particularly those with the Romance languages, seemed to develop centres of intense Marian devotion, and often around statues which are treated as holy.  (It's also interesting to contemplate why it also spread readily to countries like Mexico and the Philippines, too.   Remember the photos of the crazily dangerous looking procession I posted earlier this year?  It was centred on a statue of Jesus, admittedly, but still a case of statue centred fervour.)    I always get the feeling there are sociological reasons for it which I don't know about.   My general impression is that England and Germany, pre-Reformation, were just not into it in that big a way.  Or was an uptick in Marian worship something of a reaction to the Reformation?

Anyway, the first video above says that the flying house story is the reason why Our Lady of Loreto is the patron saint of aviation:

Yes, she is the patron saint of pilots, airmen and flight attendants as per declaration of Pope Benedict XV on March 24, 1920. The pontiff approved a special blessing: "O merciful God, You have consecrated the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the mystery of the Word Incarnate and placed it in the midst of your children. Pour forth your blessing on this vehicle so that those who take an aerial trip in it may happily reach their destination and return safely home under Mary's protection."

That seems a pretty weak reason to get a "patron" job, if you ask me.  By now, hasn't there been any pilot or flight attendant who has attained sainthood after a career in, you know, actual flying? 

I've no handy way to end this post, except to note that, in English speaking countries, this type of worship seems increasingly odd and hard to understand, especially given the rapid decline in the importance of Marian worship in our version of Catholicism over the last 60 odd years.