It's hard to find a likeable cult

About that Siberian cult leader who's been around a long time but has only now been arrested:

Torop, who lost his job as a traffic officer in 1989, claimed he experienced an “awakening” as the Soviet regime began to collapse. In 1991 he founded a movement now known as the Church of the Last Testament.

Several thousand followers live in a series of remote hamlets in the Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia. Converts to the cult have included professionals from across Russia as well as pilgrims from abroad.

“I am not God. And it is a mistake to see Jesus as God. But I am the living word of God the father. Everything that God wants to say, he says through me,” Vissarion told the Guardian in 2002.

Russian media reported that in the original ideology of the cult, Vissarion claimed Jesus was watching over people from an orbit close to Earth, and the Virgin Mary was “running Russia”, but later he declared himself to be Jesus.

His commune mixes a selection of rites drawn from Orthodox Christianity with environmental edicts and a series of other rules. Veganism is enforced and monetary exchange is banned inside the commune. Followers wear austere clothing and count years starting from 1961, the year of Vissarion’s birth, while Christmas has been replaced by a feast day on 14 January, his birthday.

 Well, I do like the idea of Jesus watching us from orbit - that's all a bit Philip K Dick-ish.   I don't care for the veganism, though.   I wonder where they stand on sex - cults are either rabidly against it and suggesting men lob off bits of their body, or excessively for it, it seems.   

Anyway, I think we can all agree - Russia has a history of being a weird place when it comes to religion.

 

Well, I thought it was funny

 

Sweden has a space corporation?

 This seems odd:  

China will lose access to two important and strategic space satellite-tracking stations in Australia, with their Swedish owners citing the "complexity" of doing business with Beijing.

The Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), owned by the Swedish Government, operates 11 satellite-tracking facilities around the world, including the Dongara and Yatharagga stations south of Geraldton in Western Australia.

The Dongara station is primarily used by US government agencies such as NASA.

 The Swedish government has built a satellite tracking facility in Australia that is used by NASA?   Why isn't Australia building them on Australian soil?

SETI still plugging away

Science magazine had an article a couple of weeks ago:  How big money is powering a massive hunt for alien intelligence.

 Some extracts:

SETI researchers are used to negative results, but they are trying harder than ever to turn that record around. Breakthrough Listen, the $100 million, 10-year, privately funded SETI effort Siemion leads, is lifting a field that has for decades relied on sporadic philanthropic handouts. Prior to Breakthrough Listen, SETI was “creeping along” with a few dozen hours of telescope time a year, Siemion says; now it gets thousands. It’s like “sitting in a Formula 1 racing car,” he says. The new funds have also been “a huge catalyst” for training scientists in SETI, says Jason Wright, director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, which opened this year. “They really are nurturing a community.”

Breakthrough Listen is bolstering radio surveys, which are the mainstay of SETI. But the money is also spurring other searches, in case aliens opt for other kinds of messages—laser flashes, for example—or none at all, revealing themselves only through passive “technosignatures.” And because the data gathered by Breakthrough Listen are posted in a public archive, astronomers are combing through it for nonliving phenomena: mysterious deep-space pulses called fast radio bursts and proposed dark matter particles called axions. “There are untapped possibilities here,” says axion searcher Matthew Lawson of Stockholm University.

Breakthrough Listen set out ambitious goals.  It would survey 1 million of the closest stars to Earth and 100 nearby galaxies using two of the world’s most sensitive steerable telescopes, the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the 64-meter Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Buying up about 20% and 25% of the time on those telescopes, Breakthrough Listen promised to cover 10 times more sky than previous surveys and five times more of the radio spectrum, and gather data 100 times faster. 

 There's a lot more in the article, which is a good read.

Some good news for a change

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s record of losing legal battles remained unblemished this week when the Connecticut Supreme Court denied three separate motions in a defamation lawsuit filed against him by Sandy Hook families.

The link to the story is here.

If ever a media figure deserves suing out of a job, it's him.

Comedy's a funny thing

I see that Schitt's Creek is winning Emmies, and it is widely praised by ABC types.  I have also seen warnings that the first episode is not a good guide to the rest of the series.   

I dunno - I have only seen small bits of it and I don't know from what season, but it didn't grab me.   It seems, shall we say, a sort of laboured sitcom writing which I don't care for.

Another widely praised show that feels that way to me - Parks and Recreation.    I guess it seems good natured, but the dialogue and characters just a bit too forced.

I have also re-watched a couple of Seinfeld episodes recently.   It really did become bad in its lack of connection to reality in the last season or two, and the laugh track seems extremely excessive by current standards.    

And OMG, Friends has started on Netflix and is up the top of the popular list already.  Seriously?   I always maintained it was a vastly over-rated show held up by basically likeable actors but so-so writing.  There were some occasional bits I liked enough to watch it semi-regularly, but I really am puzzled by how it has maintained its popularity.

I am sounding like a grump who is generally down on all popular sitcoms:  but I have given lots of praise to recent shows like Brooklyn Nine Nine and The Good Place, and I went through a list of older shows in a post in 2005.   (Gosh, I have been blogging for a long time.)   I just find it interesting trying to work out why I don't like some comedy sitcom writing, and what does work for me.

Update:   Oh!  I am not alone on Schitt's Creek failure to impress after all.  A "lefty" Australian cartoonist has given it her best shot, and still doesn't care for it:

I'm sorry to say, but as explained at length in a comment I make below, it seems to be yet another illustration of how a sitcom with a prominent gay character gets over-praised.

Yes, just glossed over

While America spins into increasing political turmoil, I choose to talk about....tiny houses

I must have mentioned before that I am a bit of a sucker for looking at tiny houses, mostly on Youtube now.  That New Zealand guys's Living Big in a Tiny House is a deserved success:  he's likeable, always positive, and been all over the world highlighting all types of tiny house.

I can imagine that, as a single man in my 20's, or during the early period of marriage, I could have happily lived in such a very small space.  (My wife was certainly used to living in what we would consider to be pretty much a micro apartment before she met me.)   There is also a lot of talk about how older single women, post divorce and (more likely than men) left with little money could do well in very small residences too.   Assuming you could get over zoning laws that prevent these residences being on their own tiny lot of land, I think it is sort of obvious that they could meet a part of housing market if they could be done well. 

But, let's go through the things that bother me in nearly every single tiny home I see:

*   why do I seem to be the only person in the world who keeps thinking:  "yeah, it's cute and all, but it's a box with windows and doors with no eves.  In wet weather you have to keep every door and window shut??"   Not to mention getting soaked while getting to or from a car.   Look at this as a typical example:

That Youtube channel does feature a lot of New Zealand tiny homes, and admittedly, when it's wet there it's probably not particularly hot and closing windows might not make you feel like you're your in a hot steam box, like it does in Brisbane in summer, when we get most of our rain.   But honestly, isn't any deck more useful covered, even in a cooler climate?

*  Loft bedrooms in which an adult cannot stand up.   That would wear thin pretty fast, I reckon.  My mind even strayed to wondering if some tiny home bedrooms limit couple's sex positions.  

*  Stairs with no rails, in spaces where if you fell off them you would hit your head on a kitchen bench.  Like this:

Years ago, I used to note death trap stairs in fancy schmancy Japanese architectural houses;  now I am continually amazed that adults who buy or build a tiny house can't imagine the risk in walking down stairs like that in darkness, ill health, or while even slightly drunk.  It's not that it's impossible to have a rail on a narrow stairway, for God's sake:

Isn't it just bleedingly obvious that this is ten times safer than that in the previous photo??

*  Permanent versus relocatable homes.   In Big Living, the host is, perhaps 90% of the time, showing people who have found someone else's land on which to park their (movable) tiny home.  (Usually, I assume, for a small occupation fee, although that is never discussed.)   Tiny homes built on trailers are, let's face it, pretty much just a fancy caravan, and Councils have never liked people using their land to live in caravans as the only residence.   For tiny houses to really make a difference, I reckon you have to get away from the permanently trailered ones, and get more into the idea that they are viable actual permanent homes on their blocks of land, without the ongoing bother of body corporate levies for strata title, too.   Sure, I have no problem with them being prebuilt units that are easily re-locatable, but leaving a "house" on a wheeled trailer permanently just isn't the same as a house sitting on the ground (or perhaps more likely, on stumps.)

When I Google the topic, I see that there has been a fair amount of discussion about town planning changes that may be necessary to allow the growth of tiny homes as permanent residences.  See this American article as an example.   

In this context, I have found some discussion of "pocket neighbourhoods", which are planned developments with small residences but usually sharing a common garden or other facilities.  From a Forbes article about them:

Pocket neighborhoods make up small clusters of houses in urban, suburban, or rural settings in which small-footprint homes are arranged around a shared common area. The closeness that is created in these communities encourages interaction among neighbors and is perfect for people who seek a stronger sense of community than is found in a conventional neighborhood. They want a more caring supportive, safer, and connected place to live.

This sounds nice, but is it really that different from what can be offered in a well planned strata title development in Australia?   I suppose it is, if there is a sense of ownership of (say) the shared garden.   Strata title can develop nice, free standing, small house settings with communal parkland, but it's always got pretty expensive body corporate levies - I suppose in part because no one wants wants to put in their own effort to maintain a communal facility, so they pay people to do it.   I would be curious to know how "pocket neighbourhoods" deal with this - I presume it is up to the owners to take more direct control of things like a communal garden, but what do you do if one or two owners couldn't care less about (or are simply unable to make) a contribution to it's upkeep?

 As for the shared garden ownership:  if you put part of the garden on each lot title, you have the issue of a crank owner wanted to keep the rest of the community off their patch.  Although I suppose you could deal with that just by everyone having an easement over every else's patch?   Or maybe, I don't know, you could have communal ownership via a "court company".   This is an idea that pre-dated strata title, and there are still subdivisions in Brisbane that work this way:   the central access road to each lot on the subdivision is owned by a "court company", and everyone who buys in that "court" gets a share in the court company when they buy the lot.  All the court company has to do is collect money to resurface the road when needed, and perhaps pay for public liability insurance.   But the court company doesn't have to deal with all the other stuff your body corporate has to worry about - enforcing by-laws, having an AGM, paying for a management company to look after it, etc.   I suspect the cost of running such a system is substantially less than that under a strata title system.  

Anyway, how small are non-strata lots allowed to be in (say) Brisbane?  As far as I can tell, just doing a quick Google, a small house lot can be 180 - 300m2, although I suspect most are at the higher end of that range.  What's the average floor area for a tiny house?    

Most of the trailer built ones seem to be a maximum of 8 m long by about 2.5 wide (see this company's, for example)  Let's be generous and call that 24 m2.  A single car carport is about 3 by 6 m, so another 18m2.  If you are not going to have a tiny home on wheels, you can go crazy with floor space, but according to Wikipedia, anything under 37m2 in floor area is considered a tiny house.  So, for a rough tiny house footprint, let's go with 30m2 of "house", plus 18m2 carport, plus covered outdoor area of (say) 8m2:  56m2 in total.  

So you should be able to fit three tiny households on the smallest residential lot in Brisbane, and have a few square metres of dirt for yard for each.  Of course, without some extremely careful planning, you might still be able to hear every conversation the neighbours are having in their bed at night, but people do live in some pretty quarters in existing caravan parks and seem to survive.

Speaking of caravan parks, when I Google "subdivision for tiny houses" I get links to articles like this one: 14 Liveable Tiny House Communities, but honestly, most of them just look like up market trailer parks.   And we do have mobile home parks in Australia already which have small, demountable houses sited permanently on rented lots.   My Mum used to live in one on the Gold Coast, and it was pretty nice.   But can't we work this out without the ongoing cost of rental?   My mother could afford it on the pension, but it didn't leave a lot of money left over for anything else.

So, that's what I want to know more about - successful town planning that allows for outright ownership of very small lots, perhaps with communal yards/gardens (and that avoids the cost of body corporate levies as far as possible).   

I'll come back to the topic later....

If I had my way, I'd tax them out of existence

We obviously have too many large vehicles being driven in the suburbs of Australia, too, and they drive me nuts when they can't do a tight turn in a shopping centre car park because of their turning circle.

Ergas at his most pretentious

I got to Henry Ergas' column in the Australian today via his twitter link to it, and what a special bit of irrelevant pretentiousness it is.   

Most of it is about a Greek play,and attacks Palaszczuk and Andrews for their handling of COVID-19, with hyperbole thrown in:

There is, for sure, a chance that they will succeed; the gods, who in Greek tragedy could always be counted on to mete out harsh justice, having long left the scene, little stands between us and the ancients’ presumption, amply justified by every page of political history, that some agents of government will use all the scope they have to entrench their position — including by acting brutally and immorally — unless they are prevented from doing so.

With the crisis removing many of those constraints, our democracy appears to have slipped closer to the edge of the precipice than one might have thought possible.

Not for the first time I say:  what a tedious wanker.   

He finally gets around to some modern political philosophising:

Judith Shklar, the Harvard professor whose lectures on ­Antigone and political obligation were recently published post­humously, captured them brilliantly. The liberalism we inherited from the 19th century, she wrote, was a “liberalism of hope” — the hope, most of all, that one could create the basis for human flourishing.

But these dark times, which offer so much room for manipulation and deceit, demand a renewed emphasis on the “liberalism of fear” that instead of concentrating on how to bring about the greatest good, focuses on averting the greatest ills.

Rather than striving for the utopian perfectibility of mankind, the liberalism of fear seeks to limit the damage, so that we can feel free because the government does not, indeed cannot, terrorise us — be it by handcuffing pregnant women for organising innocent protests or by denying to grieving families the solace of farewelling the dead.

I'm not even sure I can make sense of that last paragraph - but whatever.

The main point is one I have been repeating for years - twits on the Right like Ergas are too interested in culture wars to be able to actually recognise real and serious threat warnings from scientists, be it climate change or dangerous pandemics.  They discount "the greatest ills" because they would rather believe cranks and "do nothing" advocates because they imagine that scientists and politicians who take them seriously are only doing so in order to increase the role of government.  

And as for "danger to democracy" - I hardly notice much of what Ergas writes, but I have only ever seen him defend Donald Trump, which makes his claims of democracy under threat from 2 Australian Premiers all the more ludicrous.

 

Tip for those of us with ageing eyes

First, by way of background:   my eyesight is such that for most purposes I don't need to use reading glasses, although I do have a set that I occasionally use.   I like reading without glasses so much that when I had a cataract operation a couple of years back, I asked for the lens replacement to be a close focus one rather than the more commonly requested distance focus.  My reasoning is that I have been using glasses for distance for about 40 years, and find not having to use glasses in bed and at the computer to be useful. Unfortunately, the result with the new lens was not perfect, there's a bit of "ghosting" around letters.  Apparently, it is difficult for the pre-operation measurements of what an eye needs to be super precise.  However, my left eye, despite having the start of a cataract as well, still does close focus well enough that my brain seems to favour it when reading and working on the computer, and I can get away without glasses.  But super small print on products at the supermarket can still be a problem, and when you are counting calories for diet purposes, it can be annoying not being to read them properly.

 Now that I have bored everyone with the preamble, this is my tip I just realised:  instead of carrying around reading glasses all the time, there's a good chance your mobile phone camera can act as a de facto magnifier instead.   I just tried it with the "macro" lens on my camera, and it worked fine.

You can get magnifying glass apps for phones as well - but with these new phones with their super close focussing, you don't really need them. 

Maybe everyone else already though of this?   I don't think I have ever seen another shopper using their phone close to a label though...

All true

 

I would add:  you can imagine how the Right wing sites would have absolutely freaked out if Obama had done a similar thing in dividing up the parts of America on a life and death issue.   They freak out over imaginary slights from Google, for God's sake.

Will anyone retract their Rowling twitter pile on, I wonder?

So, Nick Cohen has actually read JK Rowling's new book, and is emphatic that the "she's an appalling transphobic" social media pile on against her is based on a completely misleading line in The Telegraph's review.

I think Cohen is a reliable writer - I strongly suspect he would be correct.

I have seen many Australian twitter people (journalists and opinion writers) join in with the "tsk, tsk, why does Rowling do this?" line.   Assuming Cohen is vindicated by other reviewers, I wonder if any of the twitter mob will ever retract, and allow for nuance in how people with sound credentials on the Left are allowed to think about this particular phenomena.

The madness on the American Right regarding the culture wars and politics is certainly the greatest danger to that country and the entire planet;  but it is extraordinary to watch the much smaller scale madness that is identity politics (at least in the West) taking the line that feminists with qualms about how transgenderism is best recognised and understood is turned into "you want us dead because you don't agree with us."  

Still sounds strong

I forgot to mention - I heard former politician and all round know-it-all Barry Jones on Radio National breakfast this morning, talking about the successful ozone layer protection action taken by governments in the 1990's.   He still has a strong voice, and obviously has all of his marbles too.

"How old must he be?" I thought, because he's one of those men who seemingly from a young age could pass for someone substantially older than his actual age.   He'll soon be 88, I see.   

I'm not sure that I would say he was very likeable as a politician/public intellectual - he seems a bit too much of an eccentric loner for that -  but he has always impressed as an earnest hard worker not inclined to extremes in politics, and I sort of admire him for that.    

Update:  here's an interesting and very recent article on Jones in the SMH.  I didn't realise he had been revising his dictionary of biography ever since his first draft in his 20's (!)

A zombie song

Just so you know that my days are not entirely devoted to fretting about Trump and conspiracy belief taking over the United States, on Saturday I listened to Spotify for the first time in months, and it chose a 2006 song for me which I might have heard before, but I'm not sure:  Re: Your Brains.   It's a very amusing lyric with a nice melody, and as such has a definite They Might be Giants vibe about it.  (No doubt, this is why Spotify knew I might like it.)  Reading about the songwriter/performer Jonathan Coulton, I see he is from Brooklyn and does indeed know TMBG (he's played with at least one of the Johns). 

It also seems that Coulton is/was very big in the nerd/gamer world, writing some songs used in some very popular games (which I have not played.)   Seems I should listen to some of his old stuff.

Anyway, I take it he doesn't do proper videos, but lets lots of people make their own.  This one, with deaf signing for the lyrics, struck me as pretty fun to watch:

Kim does something responsible

I don't really know a thing about her, but this is a surprising bit of socially responsible action on her part:

Kim Kardashian West announced that she will join two dozen celebrities in temporarily freezing their Instagram and Facebook accounts on Wednesday because the platforms "continue to allow the spreading of hate, propaganda and misinformation — created by groups to sow division and split America apart."

Why it matters: The announcement from such a high-profile user is likely to be a PR disaster for Instagram and Facebook, as well as a boost to the #StopHateForProfit campaign. Kardashian West is the seventh-most followed account on Instagram with 188 million followers. She currently has 30 million followers on Facebook.

 

They would prefer a dictatorship over a democracy, as long as the dictator said he was against abortion

Let's face it - it's the conservative Catholic inability to accept any moral ambiguity at all in terms of any abortion ever that leads them to prefer an authoritarian who treats the actually born like dirt, and who thinks it's cool that he's trusted by other murderous dictators, over a liberal Catholic candidate.  

It's pretty much the case that they would prefer a religious dictator (as long as the religion bans all abortion) over a democratically elected liberal.   (Not that I think many are actually dumb enough to consider Trump is actually religious - but they will take whatever scum they can, as long as he says - or lies - that he agrees with them on the matter of abortion.)

Agreed

Max Boot in the Washington Post points out the hysteria on the Right about America if Trump loses:

“The battle for the survival of the United States of America is upon us,” proclaims a hysterical cover story in Commentary. “The dissenters are being silenced. The buildings are burning, and the demands are ever growing.” We are living, the author argues, in “France in 1789, Russia in 1917, and China in 1949.” Derek Chauvin, the police officer whose brutality sparked nationwide protests, is “our own Gavrilo Princip,” the assassin who triggered World War I. This is “an American version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.”

In the Wall Street Journal, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, similarly suggests this is yet another Flight 93 moment. She compares the ideology of al-Qaeda to the “Wokeism” of progressives: “Islamists shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Death to America’; the Woke chant ‘Black lives matter’ and ‘I can’t breathe.’ Islamists pray to Mecca; the Woke take the knee. Both like burning the American flag.”....

Give me a break. And get a grip.

I’ve been criticizing “political correctness” for more than 30 years, ever since I was a student columnist at the University of California at Berkeley. Its excesses continue to irk me. But they are insignificant compared with the threat posed to our country by Trump and the malign forces that he has unleashed.

More than 90 percent of racial justice protests have been peaceful. The far right, not the far left, is responsible for almost all domestic terrorism. A recent study found that right-wing extremists perpetrated nearly two-thirds of attacks and plots in 2019, and 90 percent in the first four months of 2020.

Joe Biden has been clear in condemning violence whether of the left or right. As he said: “Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It’s lawlessness, plain and simple.” Trump, by contrast, employs racist and violent language to mobilize White voters. He won’t even condemn a supporter accused of killing two people in Kenosha, Wis. Trump warns of “anarchy” if Biden wins, but he is the one promoting lawlessness and disorder.

 

 

President Dunning Kruger Peale

When considering Trump's pronouncements on COVID-19 "just going away" and now this on climate change, people seem to be forgetting that he had a close connection to the original "Power of Positive Thinking" spin merchant Norman Vincent Pearle.  As NPR wrote in 2017:

KEITH: That is the voice of Norman Vincent Peale, the author of the best-selling book "The Power Of Positive Thinking," first published in 1952. In the late 1960s, he had a regular radio segment, which is where this audio comes from. He was also the longtime pastor at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan, which Trump attended with his family growing up. Peale even officiated Trump's first wedding.

TRUMP: Norman Vincent Peale - the great Norman Vincent Peale - was my pastor. "The Power Of Positive Thinking" - everybody's heard of Norman Vincent Peale. He was so great.

KEITH: That was Trump in July of 2015 at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit, talking about where he got his religious grounding.

TRUMP: I still remember his sermons. It was unbelievable. And what he would do is he'd bring real-life situations - modern-day situations - into the sermon. And you could listen to him all day long. 

 It is, of course, magical thinking, which is the last thing you want in a politician who has to deal with problems which are about more than mere psychology.

The extraordinarily shallow Trump

Fred Kaplan at Slate has an article about the new Woodward book on Trump which you should read in full.  I suppose it would be funny if it weren't so horrifying that, I dunno, 20% - 30% of Americans genuinely think he's a brilliant and charming fellow:  

When Woodward asks what it was like to meet Kim at their first summit in Singapore, Trump responds, “It was the most cameras I think I’ve seen, more cameras than any human being in history,” even more than he’d seen at the Academy Awards.

He then gives Woodward a poster-size copy of a photo of Trump and Kim shaking hands at the border separating North and South Korea. “This is me and him,” he tells Woodward, all excited. “That’s the line, right? Then I walked over the line. Pretty cool.” He goes on to brag that Kim “tells me everything. … He killed his uncle and put the body right in the steps where the senators walked out. And the head was cut, sitting on the chest. … Nancy Pelosi said, ‘Oh, let’s impeach him.’ You think that’s tough? This is tough.”

What a fanboy. No wonder Kim and every other dictator on earth plays the American president like such a wondrously easy mark.

At one point, when talking about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump tells Woodward, “It’s funny, the relations I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know? Explain that to me someday, OK?” Woodward writes: “That might not be difficult, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.”

Throughout the book, Woodward proclaims shock (though one wonders why) at how shallow Trump is. Asked about his strategy for dealing with the plethora of crises hitting him, Trump replies, “I don’t have a strategy,” except to “do a good job.” Trump says he knew that he and Kim would get along instantly, in the same way that “you meet a woman, in one second you know whether or not it’s all going to happen.”

Over and over, Trump plasters his pathological insecurity on marquee display. “I don’t think Obama’s smart,” he says, adding, “Hey look, I went to the best schools, I did great. … You know, they talk about the elite … they have nice houses. No, I have much better than them, I have better everything than them, including education.” His uncle, as he has said many times, was a brilliant MIT professor who knew about nuclear weapons—“so I understand that stuff,” the president says. “You know, genetically.”