Yet more reason to visit Singapore

The most surprising thing I saw on CNA on the weekend:  in Singapore, a man has a shop that sells ants for hobbyists:



"Just Ants" is the name of the shop. 

I used to enjoy brief stints of ant keeping as a child, but never knew how to get a queen.  If only I was a child in Singapore, now.

So, not a bad week for the Democrats...

Seems most mainstream commentary gives Biden's acceptance speech the thumbs up;  there were notable other highlights (none of which I have got around to watching yet);  we are going to get to see if Steve Bannon's visage deteriorates even further when he is in prison with no access to skincare  products.   (Or do we learn the secret of his homeless bum looks is that he has always used whatever the American equivalent of a bar of Solvol might be for his morning facewash?) 

All in all, not a bad week for the Democrats and the hope of putting the country back on some sort of more even keel.

Mind you, the real scandal should be that there is still, probably, support for Trump in the 40 something percent range.

And the scandal about that should be that no one is talking seriously about how to undo the Right wing media information bubble that has led  the Right to gas-lit itself into such idiocy that they would defend an outright authoritarian, corrupt, intensely dumb President because he's their authoritarian, corrupt, intensely dumb man who (they think) "owns the libs".  

The US is going to have to do something about that if they want to have hopes of pulling back from a the artificial and poisonous reality maybe a full third is fully living in, with another 15% or so half way in.

It is utterly, utterly ludicrous that Right wing culture war spivs are trying the "no, you're the ones dividing us" line in light of the appalling content of the Trump campaign, the likes of which the press - and any serious pundit - should never have helped "normalise" by not calling it out at the time.

How is Murdoch playing this one?

So, Fox News is running interviews now in which the latest White House spokes-liar is throwing out the quasi-deniability line for Trump re QAnon, while running on the split screen the actual beliefs of QAnon:

Is this an attempt by Fox News to message to Trump that, no, it would be best if he did actually disavow QAnon?   Or an attempt to gain more Trump base following for QAnon - because, let's face it, brainwashing the disenchanted-with-life-white-elderly is the raison d'etre for the network, and why stop at things like "Russiagate is a hoax"?

What will pathetic Trump Cultists like puzzled dog face Tucker Carlson and smarmlord Sean Hanitty do about this tricky problem?   Keep pushing that of course their ticket to riches doesn't know what QAnon is about, despite other parts of the network running stories like the above?

Time will tell.

 

New age category needed

I have a numerically significant birthday looming, and as I was saying to my daughter recently, I'm not happy with current age categories.

I think we can all agree that adolescence virtually extends to 25 now;  youth probably covers up to almost 35, maybe 40?   "Middle aged" is probably firmly set as 40 (or 45?) to 60.

But here's my key complaint:  what do you use for (say) 60 to 75?

"Old" probably starts at 75; maybe 80.   But there seems a serious gap in naming categories between 60 to 75.

"Seniors" benefits start being talked about from 55.   But the problem is, it extends from there to 115.  

I don't know - you would think those so keen on identity politics would spend more time on this issue.  :)

Imre being stupid

Lots of notice being given to Trump's refusal to criticise QAnon, which we all know he will not do any time soon because they fantasise him as a hero of epic proportions.  

Disappointing to see the relatively sensible Imre take this Trump forgiving attitude on the matter:

First:   Trump always denies knowledge of wrongdoing when he wants to avoid disavowing someone who deserves it.  Of course he knows about QAnon.   He's re-tweeted them several times - if he doesn't know how ridiculous and dangerous their conspiracy mongering is, that is a disgrace in itself.

Secondly:   how utterly ridiculous to criticise a journalist for inviting a President to disavow support for an extreme and dangerous and stupid conspiracy.  

Thirdly:  no, it is never acceptable to say a violence fantasising conspiracy "has its heart in the right place", which is what Trump was trying to convey.    Yes, if you don't condemn such a thing, you are helping validate them.

If Imre can't condemn Trump for his weasel worded endorsement that he will later claim was not an endorsement (probably the next time some nut goes on a QAnon bender with his gun), he wants his head read.

More on hearing voices, locally

As noted in my previous post, this week's Insight re-ignited my interest in how cultural factors might influence the experience of hearing (and dealing with) voices in the head, a common feature of schziophrenia.

I seem to have missed, or forgotten, the reporting around this study in 2014:  an anthropologist who found that it seemed relatively common for people from Indian and Ghana to find the voices "playful" or entertaining; whereas all of the Americans found them nasty and unpleasant.

Here's part of the report in Stanford news (my bold on the bits about India):

For the research, Luhrmann and her colleagues interviewed 60 adults diagnosed with schizophrenia – 20 each in San Mateo, California; Accra, Ghana; and Chennai, India. Overall, there were 31 women and 29 men with an average age of 34. They were asked how many voices they heard, how often, what they thought caused the auditory hallucinations, and what their voices were like.

"We then asked the participants whether they knew who was speaking, whether they had conversations with the voices, and what the voices said. We asked people what they found most distressing about the voices, whether they had any positive experiences of voices and whether the voice spoke about sex or God," she said.

The findings revealed that hearing voices was broadly similar across all three cultures, according to Luhrmann. Many of those interviewed reported both good and bad voices, and conversations with those voices, as well as whispering and hissing that they could not quite place physically. Some spoke of hearing from God while others said they felt like their voices were an "assault" upon them.

The striking difference was that while many of the African and Indian subjects registered predominantly positive experiences with their voices, not one American did. Rather, the U.S. subjects were more likely to report experiences as violent and hateful – and evidence of a sick condition.
The Americans experienced voices as bombardment and as symptoms of a brain disease caused by genes or trauma.

One participant described the voices as "like torturing people, to take their eye out with a fork, or cut someone's head and drink their blood, really nasty stuff." Other Americans (five of them) even spoke of their voices as a call to battle or war – "'the warfare of everyone just yelling.'"

Moreover, the Americans mostly did not report that they knew who spoke to them and they seemed to have 
less personal relationships with their voices, according to Luhrmann.

Among the Indians in Chennai, more than half (11) heard voices of kin or family members commanding them to do tasks. "They talk as if elder people advising younger people," one subject said. That contrasts to the Americans, only two of whom heard family members. Also, the Indians heard fewer threatening voices than the Americans – several heard the voices as playful, as manifesting spirits or magic, and even as entertaining. Finally, not as many of them described the voices in terms of a medical or psychiatric problem, as all of the Americans did.

In Accra, Ghana, where the culture accepts that disembodied spirits can talk, few subjects described voices in brain disease terms. When people talked about their voices, 10 of them called the experience predominantly positive; 16 of them reported hearing God audibly. "'Mostly, the voices are good,'" one participant remarked. 

While this doesn't seem all that many subjects, it's still fascinating. Interestingly, though, the anthropologist didn't seem to think that it was religiosity per se which made the difference.  (Although by that, does she mean how intensely religious they are in practice and interest?  Because as noted above, they seem to be religious in the sense of just accepting a supernatural spirit world):

Why the difference? Luhrmann offered an explanation: Europeans and Americans tend to see themselves as individuals motivated by a sense of self identity, whereas outside the West, people imagine the mind and self interwoven with others and defined through relationships.

"Actual people do not always follow social norms," the scholars noted. "Nonetheless, the more independent emphasis of what we typically call the 'West' and the more interdependent emphasis of other societies has been demonstrated ethnographically and experimentally in many places."

As a result, hearing voices in a specific context may differ significantly for the person involved, they wrote. In America, the voices were an intrusion and a threat to one's private world – the voices could not be controlled.

However, in India and Africa, the subjects were not as troubled by the voices – they seemed on one level to make sense in a more relational world. Still, differences existed between the participants in India and Africa; the former's voice-hearing experience emphasized playfulness and sex, whereas the latter more often involved the voice of God.

The religiosity or urban nature of the culture did not seem to be a factor in how the voices were viewed, Luhrmann said.

"Instead, the difference seems to be that the Chennai (India) and Accra (Ghana) participants were more comfortable interpreting their voices as relationships and not as the sign of a violated mind," the researchers wrote.

The research, Luhrmann observed, suggests that the "harsh, violent voices so common in the West may not be an inevitable feature of schizophrenia." Cultural shaping of schizophrenia behavior may be even more profound than previously thought.

The findings may be clinically significant, according to the researchers. Prior research showed that specific therapies may alter what patients hear their voices say. One new approach claims it is possible to improve individuals' relationships with their voices by teaching them to name their voices and to build relationships with them, and that doing so diminishes their caustic qualities. "More benign voices may contribute to more benign course and outcome," they wrote.

The Atlantic had a story about this too, ending with a story of the success (for some people) of not ignoring the voice, but developing a kind of relationship with it:

In an article for the American Scholar, Luhrmann describes one such patient, a 20-year-0ld Dutch man named Hans, whose inner voices were urging him to study Buddhism for hours each day. He cut a deal with his demons, telling them he'd say Buddhist prayers for one hour per day, no more, no less. And it worked—the voices subsided and he was able to taper his dose of psychosis medications.
At one support group for schizophrenic patients, Hans said a new, "nice" voice he had been hearing recently threatened to get mean.

"This new voice seemed like it might get nasty," Luhrmann writes. "The group had told [Hans] that he needed to talk to it. They said that he should say, 'We have to live with each other and we have to make the best of it, and we can do it only if we respect each other.' He did that, and this new voice became nice."

Call me too cautious, perhaps, but I have spoken to both my young adult children about the show, and the key message that if ever they do start hearing voices, don't try to keep it a secret and deal with it alone, but tell others what is happening and seek some assistance.

 

Voices heard

I strongly recommend last night's Insight episode on SBS, which featured a variety of people who suffered from hearing voices in their head, explaining how it started, how they got help, and whether they are now over the problem.   A psychiatrist and psychologist were also there (the latter having made a special study of the field.)

It was terribly interesting, the variety of their experiences.   One clear message that came out of it is that they all took quite some time to admit to anyone else what was happening, and the psychologist and psychiatrist both made the point that it is far better to tell someone and get help earlier, as that makes it likelier that treatment will be a success.

Another aspect of interest was the Indian woman who made reference to "cultural practices" in her family's homeland being helpful to deal with the problem.  She alluded to the belief in the "spiritual world" but didn't elaborate.   Taking an educated guess, I assume that Indians may have less reluctance to seek support from family and friends because they share a belief that the cause probably is an external and "real" spirit attack, not something purely internal which carries a stigma of weakness (and therefore shame) in the West.   (I am sure I have read years ago that mental health outcomes are surprisingly good, on average, in India* due I think to cultural factors, and I must look up whether it is for the sort of reason I am speculating about.)


*  Yes - here it is - a post from 2007.   The link to the journal no longer works, though.   I may be able to track it down, and I want to read more on the topic anyway.  Will likely update soon...

Russia tapes may well exist

In Slate reporting on the Senate Intelligence Committee report we read this:

What the report says: Discounting the infamous pee tape allegation made in the Steele Dossier, the committee said it investigated and was unable to corroborate “three general sets of allegations” around “compromising information” Russians were said to have been collecting about Donald Trump. The report goes into some fascinating details about claims surrounding Russian kompromat efforts and about Trump’s previous trips to Russia without providing much in the way of hard evidence. It notes that Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen exchanged texts with a Georgian friend and associate days before the election about efforts to stop “tapes from Russia” after a “person in Moscow was bragging had tapes from Russian trip.”

What we already knew: Cohen’s text exchange with his Georgian friend was actually a footnote from the Mueller report and it didn’t lead anywhere. Also notably, the Senate Intelligence Committee reported that it was “aware of a realistic and well-sourced, but fake, video of someone who looks like Trump portraying him in a situation consistent with the uncorroborated allegations” of a pee tape from the Steele Dossier. If you read Ashley Feinberg’s reporting in Slate last year, though, you would have already been aware of this as well.

Yes, I read that Slate report at the time about the faked "pee tape" - it was quite surprising, the degree of care with which the tape was made; as is the matter of how little attention mainstream media seemed to give it.

In other tweets, I have seen mention of evidence that some hotel worker claiming he overheard conversation about Trump being compromised by a woman he saw during one Moscow trip.

It would not be at all surprising if there was some tape or other taken in Russia with kompromat possibilities.

Always suspected he was over-rated

Of course, people in the thread following this argue for more nuance, but it's interesting...

Not for the claustrophobic

Oh look:  that Smarter Every Day guy has another video up about his visit to a nuclear submarine, and this time he gets to explain how torpedoes get shot out of the tube, which he proceeds to crawl down (while the sub is underwater, no less).  Better him than me:

How Republicans and Trump cultists argue that black is white

Paul Waldman's column in the Washington Post details the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is controlled by Republicans, and explains the absurdity of Republicans still saying "no collusion":

So here’s what we’re left with. The person running the Trump campaign had a close associate who is a Russian intelligence officer, with whom he was sharing confidential campaign information as Russia mounted its effort to help Trump get elected.

As part of that effort, Russia broke into Democratic systems, then passed damaging information to WikiLeaks for carefully timed release. The president’s longtime friend had a line into the “leak” part of Russia’s hack-and-leak, through which he learned the subject and timing of upcoming leaks and kept Trump personally informed.

If that’s not “collusion,” what is?

Republicans will reject this verdict. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting chair of the committee, insisted that “the Committee found absolutely no evidence” that Trump or his campaign “colluded with the Russian government.”  

But he was using a torturously narrow definition of “collusion” to exonerate Trump.

That definition says that only a carefully planned, coordinated and executed criminal conspiracy counts as “collusion,” and anything short of that does not. But as we now know — through copious evidence collected by the special counsel’s team, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and journalists — the Trump campaign eagerly accepted the help provided by Moscow.

The campaign’s efforts were slapdash and chaotic. But to whatever degree this didn’t rise to an even more serious level, it doesn’t appear to have been for lack of trying.

Yet to this day, the position of Trump, his attorney general, the conservative media and most of the GOP is that the entire Russia investigation was a hoax, a scam, a ruse. When the FBI learned that the Kremlin was trying to sabotage our election, they want us to believe, the bureau should not have bothered to investigate.

 Update:  or, as Kasparov tweets:

End Times

Further to recent post about religious eschatology, I see that Nature has a review of a book by an astrophysicist discussing the possible ways the universe could end:   Big Crunch, Heat Death, Big Rip, or perhaps the most disconcerting one because it could presumably happen at any time, vacuum decay.  

The review notes this:

The latest measurements point to a Heat Death, but a Big Crunch or Big Rip are within their uncertainties.

Yeah, I thought that was still the case, but seems to be underappreciated in pop science writing - a reversal into a Big Crunch, which at least has that satisfying feeling of a dramatic climax (as well as possibly satisfying Hindu and Buddhist belief in a cyclic universe, not to mention a possible Tiplerian Omega Point), is not yet completely written off.   

As for vacuum decay:

The final doomsday scenario that Mack describes is extremely unlikely: vacuum decay. A tiny bubble of ‘true vacuum’ could form, owing to instability in the field associated with the Higgs boson. That might happen if, say, a black hole evaporates in just the wrong way. Such a bubble would expand at the speed of light, destroying everything, until it cancels the universe. Vacuum decay might already have begun in some distant place. We won’t see it coming.

The possibility of vacuum decay happening as a result of the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider was one reason to fret about the wisdom of operating it, as I used to note in posts which are still on the blog.   Fortunately, it would seem that the universe is not constructed in such a way that the LHC could cause much damage.

Yup

Beirut blew up because a Russian "businessman" ran out of money

Interesting to read this explanation of how Beirut came to be holding onto a ridiculously dangerous cargo due to a failure of a Russian "businessman".

 A bit more about him in The Independent:

The figure of Igor Grechushkin features prominently in the first two links of that hapless chain. A rough-and-tumble businessman from Khabarovsk in the far east of Russia, Grechushkin was on Thursday confirmed as the Rhosus’s owner by Russian state media.

Greatest country

Contextless misuse of statistics noted

We all know Trump and the GOP is going to go full throttle on claiming that there is a "tremendous" jobs recovery from the rapid loss caused by GOP confusion and politicisation of the COVID response, but it's also becoming a Right wing meme that the police are going pro-Trump again because they are being killed on the job at a higher rate.

So we get this misleading headline at ABC news (the American one):

Police officers killed surge 28% this year and some point to civil unrest and those looking to exploit it 

Shoop became the 32nd U.S. law enforcement officer shot to death this year on July 13, marking a 28% jump in felonious officer deaths over the same period in 2019, according to data from the FBI. 

But a Twitter thread about it turns up this graph:

Speaking of the South...

On the weekend, I also finished watching Tiger King, including the "after show" interviews with some of the key figures.

Probably hard to add anything new to what people have already said about it, but there is this - it was hard to tell whether Joe's flamboyant style of gayness ever hurt his business in a conservative state.  Was it a a case of American conservatives making toleration exceptions for showbiz gay - like Liberace, or Siegfreid and Roy, perhaps?  I thought it a bit funny that the young-ish campaign manager guy (who says in the after show that he also is gay) blamed Oklahoman hatred of gays for Joe's poor electoral performance in the governor race - seemingly discounting the "nutjob" factor a bit too much, I reckon.   (The campaign manager seems to be still mentally scarred by the experience - but he had extremely questionable judgement in getting involved in the first place.)

The after show was also good for seeing the "cleaned up" version of John Finlay - the heavily tattooed husband who appeared shirtless and meth-mouthed in every interview.   Oddly, he seemed to claim he had no problem with appearing shirtless - I would have guessed it was the documentary directors trying to make him look as bad as possible.   I also thought the story the (rather odd) producer guy told in the after show was very telling - about how Joe took in a woman's old horse and promised to give it a good remaining life, only to immediately go and shoot it and feed it to the tigers when she left.

I hope the success of the show does not lead to documentary makers seeking out ever greater collections of bizarre characters to follow, though. 

Funny movie noted

Until this last weekend, I had never caught up with Will Ferrell's 2006 movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and I have to say that I found it very funny.   It seemed to me to strike something of a sweet spot in terms of its comedic silliness and quasi realism; and while it no doubt did mock some aspects of the South, it didn't paint it as a Redneck nightmare zone.   No doubt the co-operation of the NASCAR organisation helped make sure it was (kind of) respectful.

I do worry a bit about Will Ferrell, though:  seems to me that he peaked in the decade 2000 - 2010.  (I see that Elf, which I think most people would probably regard as his best movie, was in 2003).  His movie choices in the last decade, however, seems to have included many more duds than hits.

Eschatology considered

I did another speed reading quick hit on the University of Queensland library yesterday (I've explained before why I do this), and the book of choice was this:

Eschatology - what a great word.  And such an important subject in religion, particularly Christianity.

But the chapter I sped through was on Buddhist eschatology, and it was interesting in its own way.

I guess I hadn't realised that it (naturally, coming from that place) had picked up the Indian idea of  cyclical creation and destruction.   I hadn't thought much about Hinduism and its obsession with that topic until recently watching both Sacred Games on Netflix (the second series became very messy, a bit ridiculous, and hard to follow, with an unsatisfactory ending) as well as this cartoon summary of key Hindu belief on Youtube:



So getting back to Buddhism:  there was a lot of interesting stuff in the chapter on its eschatology, but I was not able to copy it and the book does not seem to be on Scribd, so it is hard to remember it all.

Ideas that I hadn't realised before:  that it's long been a Buddhist belief that Buddhism would eventually no longer exist (one of the few religions with a prediction of its own extinction, I would bet);  that there can only be one Buddha in a world (universe - I think), hence you have to wait for the next cycle of destruction and creation to get another.   Maitreya is the Buddha to come - and as one page I did take a photo of says:

A vast span of time was expected to pass between the death of Sakyamuni Buddha and the coming of Maitreya, who would not appear until just after the next cycle of progress reaches its peak.  Once again, scholastic writers have attempted to calculate the time involved, with the most common being a figure of 5.6 billion years.

 A long time between drinks, so to speak.  

I'm not sure whether any branch of Buddhism, in light of modern understanding of the universe, thinks that it's not only one Buddha per entire universe.   Any scope for the equivalent of multiple incarnations of Christ on other, alien inhabited planets, I wonder?   (An idea which CS Lewis was sympathetic to.)   I'm not sure that Buddhists have ever given much thought to aliens.

The chapter did mention how the Indian sourced religions have taken some heart from modern cosmological theories of the universe cycling between Big Bang and Big Crunch - "see, we sensed that thousands of years ago!" they can say.   (And really, the 5.6 billion years figure is at least on the right scale of talking about cosmological time.)   But then, as with Christianity, the latest idea of a universe continually expanding into eternal darkness doesn't help much.

There was other interesting stuff - one Buddhist text with the Buddha sounding like a very sexist fellow with very low regard for women stepping out of their place (although as with so much Buddhist source material, how close it is to the words of the actual Buddha is anyone's guess.)

Anyway, all interesting stuff.  I see the book is available for around $80.   It is Father's Day soon...

Update:  I suppose I should state the obvious - the chapter I read was not very long, and tried to give a "big picture" view of eschatology in Buddhist belief, and I may have got some of the details wrong and be contradicted by those who know more about the many complicated variations on Buddhist belief within its branches.

I think the Wikipedia entry on it and eschatology is not very good - it seems to be bits and pieces without trying to give an overview in context.   However, the entry on Maitreya is better, and I didn't realise that there had been so many claimants to the title (including stupid old con man L Ron Hubbard):

The following list is just a small selection of those people who claimed or claim to be the incarnation of Maitreya. Many have either used the Maitreya incarnation claim to form a new Buddhist sect or have used the name of Maitreya to form a new religious movement or cult.

• In 613 the monk Xiang Haiming claimed himself Maitreya and adopted an imperial title.^[24]
• In 690 Wu Zetian, empress regnant of the Wu Zhou interregnum (690–705), proclaimed herself an incarnation of the future Buddha Maitreya, and made Luoyang the "holy capital." In 693 she temporarily replaced the compulsory Dao De Jing in the curriculum with her own Rules for Officials.^[25]
• Gung Ye, a Korean warlord and king of the short-lived state of Taebong during the 10th century, claimed himself as the living incarnation of Maitreya and ordered his subjects to worship him. His claim was widely rejected by most Buddhist monks and later he was dethroned and killed by his own servants.
• Lu Zhongyi (1849-1925), the 17th patriarch of Yiguandao, claimed to be an incarnation of Maitreya.
• L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the belief systems Dianetics and Scientology, suggested he was "Metteya" (Maitreya) in the 1955 poem Hymn of Asia. Numerous editors and followers of Hubbard claim that in the book's preface, specific physical characteristics said to be outlined—in unnamed Sanskrit sources—as properties of the coming Maitreya were properties with which Hubbard's appearance supposedly aligned.

So, just as Christianity has had its problems with wannabe leaders claiming to be a new version of (or related to) Christ, so has Buddhism.  Not sure any of them caused as much trouble as Hong Xiuquan, though - 10 million deaths by the self proclaimed brother of Christ!

Pretty much how I feel

Yes, it annoys me that journalists who work outside of the Murdoch workplace still treat their politically moderate mates who work inside of Murdoch as if there is nothing disgraceful about the fact they still work there.

It's gone on for too long.  The absolute tipping point for me was, I reckon, this cartoon that appeared with a Bolt column a couple of years ago:

Did any Murdoch journalist resign over that cartoon more suited (as I said in my post) to something like the Bulletin circa 1920?   Not that I heard. 

Journalists:  I don't care if your mate still manages to fit in some moderate commentary in the Murdoch press.  It should be socially unacceptable for anyone to accept a dollar by working for an outright racist, anti-democratic outfit (which is what the Murdoch American network is in its enabling of Trump and his cronies.)

Their friendship should be shunned.