On the upside, that wall was probably made from Australian iron ore...

Update:   Hey, the exact same joke was made on Mad as Hell last night.  I demand royalties!

A show in decline

I recently finished watching the Netflix cartoon show Disenchantment in its 3rd season, and I have to say, the quality of the writing and humour has dwindled away terribly.  

This was quite an enjoyable show for the first two seasons, although some episodes have always been better than others.  But the overall storyline of this season - it's just meandering and terrible.   

I see that I am not alone:

‘Disenchantment’ season three review: Matt Groening’s swords-and-swigging sitcom loses the plot

Disenchantment gets bogged down in plot and loses sight of jokes in “Part 3”

Disappointing.

What if they said "UFOs are real" and everyone just shrugged

That is, after all, pretty what has happened with the brief Pentagon UFO report.

Jazz Shaw, the right wing columnist who has been (for want of a better term) pro-UFO (and is just one of the Right wing figures who has been talking up this issue for the last couple of years) takes the "glass half full" view:

None of this should be taken to mean that the report was a dud. There were important admissions made by the ODNI on Friday. One of the first was that the vast majority of “UAP” incidents they studied “probably do represent physical objects.” They draw this conclusion from the fact that most were picked up using multiple avenues of sensory data, in addition to testimony from pilots and technicians who watch the skies for a living. So it’s not just swamp gas, “ball lightning,” or birds. And if you’ve seen one, you may not be crazy. (Or if you are, it’s not because of this.)

The next thing the ODNI conceded was that the vast majority of interesting cases they have been studying are truly “unidentified.” Out of 144 incident reports, they were able to conclusively attribute precisely one of them to a mundane event, specifically the downing of a deflating weather balloon. They don’t know what the rest of them are, and they’ve really been hunting for an explanation. Prior to the release of the report, the Pentagon had already stated that what people have been witnessing is not an example of secret United States government technology. (How much faith one places in their claims at this point is entirely up to the reader.) In the report, they went one step further, saying that they “currently lack data to indicate any UAP are part of a foreign collection program or indicative of a major technological advancement by a potential adversary.”

While some dedicated, skeptical journalists might latch onto the phrase “currently lack,” interpreting that to mean that the UFOs could still turn out to be Chinese or Russian, this reading seems dubious. As the report also notes, most of the reported sightings took place in controlled airspace, in the midst of our naval battle groups and even over military facilities in the middle of mainland North America. If there were the slightest indication that those things came from Russia or China and were showing up over our testing range in Nevada (it’s happened), there wouldn’t be a “concern over possible national security concerns.” We would already have the real-world, military equivalent of Will Smith up there in an F/A-18E Super Hornet shooting them down.

And on the Left - which includes most scientists eager to pooh-pooh the "aliens are watching us" theory - we have David Corn writing an interesting column in which he explains that even though he saw (with others) something that pretty convincingly fits a "true UFO" description as a 12 year old boy, he just can't buy into "aliens are visiting us" any more.    

David Corn's background (as it is with some others I have seen downplaying the Pentagon report) is that, as a child, he was seriously gullible on all UFO stuff - believing Erich Von Daniken's ancient astronaut guff, for example.  (I soon learned the truth about that, even though, like most other kids seeing it the first time, I initially found it a bit spookily credible.)

He's a good example of something I have long felt:  if someone has swung wildly from one side to another in the matter of politics, religion or (as it turns out) belief in UFO's, there's actually good reason to doubt their judgement.    It's not really a matter of saying that people shouldn't ever believe anything  firmly;  but all belief should be tempered by some scepticism of your own certainty.   Those who have swung wildly from one set of beliefs to the opposite - they don't fill me with confidence that they have an appropriate way of assessing their own thinking.   

So, what do I think of the report?    Of course, it is hard to know how to judge some of the cases when the material for them is still classified. And, as I have repeatedly said - I don't find the 3 videos alone all that convincing;  although I am also open to the suggestion that some of the debunking of them is more speculative than concrete.  (I understand that there are some pilots who have disputed some of the Michael West debunking, for example.)

I remain satisfied that the "tic tac" incident is one that is truly mysterious  and "real", and (to my mind) unlikely to explained by earthly technology.  It's been too long since it happened for the technology not to be revealed.  But sure, the "alien drone" theory is a stretch.  

That said, lately I get the feeling that, oddly, there may be collectively much more evidence for "alien drone" than we realise; it's just that when people face a weird incident, if it is only of short duration, they soon put it out of mind and don't press for anyone else to investigate, either.

David Corn's story, for example.   (I have also been impressed by stories I have read over the years of guys who woke up while camping to find their tent or cabin flooded with light from above, but with complete and unearthly silence - which of course means it was not likely to be a chopper or pranksters.  The light stays on for a length of time - making a meteor flash unlikely - and then blinks out in an instant.)   But these sort of incidents are not collected by anyone central.  There is no real  life Mulder.   The stories just turn up years later in magazines or on line when people want to tell of a mysterious life event that they never understood. 

So yeah, it's funny, but probably the government never needed to cover up what it knew in terms of sensor evidence for UFOs, or sightings by military people - it could just rely on people seeing something weird, shrugging, and getting on with life.

It's a theory, anyway.

So, so stupid

Food observations

*   Couscous is an underappreciated food.   I need to learn more about where it came from, how it's made, etc.

*   For a couple of years, I have been curious about the Coles branded pre-cooked lamb shanks in red wine sauce:

I finally tried them recently, and was pretty pleased.   35 minutes to re-heat in the oven, and the sauce was pretty nice.  A large amount of meat on each shank.   They cost $15 for 2 shanks, but cooking them yourself takes forever to get them very tender, and they're not very cheap raw either.  I will buy the pre-cooked ones again - at least if there is only two of us eating dinner.

*  I continue to be annoyed that veganism has seemingly totally replaced vegetarianism in popular culture.  Youtube is continually recommending vegan stuff to me (well, I do subscribe to a few channels, so it is my fault), but when I searched for "vegetarian recipes" on the weekend, the results barely showed two videos before reverting to vegan recipes again.     I want vegetarians to try to re-claim some of the popular imagination again.

But too much wokeness is the real problem in America

Sarcasm, of course:

Good thread

A test

 Is this working? 

That's odd.  Blogger isn't working properly in Firefox.   Did I change some setting?  Didn't think so...

Stop watching trashy reality TV

So Love Island has a particular reputation in England for ruining the emotional lives of participants.

I think the only reality TV format I have ever watched at length is My Kitchen Rules, and that was years ago now before the formula because too obvious and trashy.  I don't think I have ever watched any that involves romantic relationships developing - I have a natural aversion to watching people having such a private aspect of their emotional life broadcast to the world.  Even the more well intentioned ones, like the recent "Love on the Spectrum" - I saw some of it, but I have the same basic objection. 

Really, the format would die if people would not watch it.   But how to encourage people not to watch it?   Make better romantic fictional stories?   

A Big One coming

The ABC does these on line stories with graphics really well.   This one is about the high likelihood that there will soon be another big earthquake - this one centred on the West coast.

I think half of Auckland going under a new volcano would be more spectacular - and that is quite possible too.

Lying flat discussed

The best single column I've read about the Chinese government getting all panicky about the "lying flat" movement is this one by Matthew Brooker at Bloomberg.  Some parts:

It’s ironic (though perhaps inevitable) that, having adopted the methods of a market economy to achieve its goal of creating a moderately prosperous society, China now finds itself beset with an identifiably capitalist affliction. Opting out and doing nothing requires a base level of affluence that would be impractical in a country still trying to drag itself out of poverty. Yet beyond a certain point, material goals cease to satisfy human needs — a syndrome that is familiar in many developed countries.

Capitalism is a perpetual motion machine, driven by an inexorable logic of expansion. The profits of production are invested in more production, which requires ever-expanding markets to consume what is made. This gives rise to the advertising and marketing industries, whose job it is to convince consumers that fulfillment lies in more and better things. All this makes capitalism a prodigious generator of goods and services. It also tends to generate feelings of alienation and anxiety.

That’s because the answer to human happiness doesn’t lie in sating material desires (something that Buddhists have known for thousands of years).....

A Stalinist political system is a perpetual motion machine of another kind, fueled by paranoia. The motherland is surrounded by enemies, and the people must constantly redouble their efforts and unite behind their savior-leader to beat back the existential threats it faces. Having abandoned (or at least postponed) the Communist ideals of equality and solidarity, Xi has turned to nationalism and perceptions of a hostile world to reinforce belief in the necessity of the party’s leadership. “Universal values” such as democracy and human rights are a foreign plot designed to weaken and destabilize China; discussion of such pernicious influences has been banished.

What is intriguing about the “lying flat” wave is that it shows how similar the Chinese experience is when faced with the same conditions as other countries. Political control has its limits. For all Xi’s attempts to foster a sense of Chinese exceptionalism and reinforce Communist orthodoxy, society may develop in unexpected ways. It’s also a reminder that China has other traditions besides the rigid Legalist philosophy that characterizes Xi’s grip on power. Lying flat contains more than a hint of Daoism, which emphasizes harmony with nature. The Daoist poet Li Bai seems to have spent most of his time drinking wine and enjoying the company of friends; he reputedly drowned while leaning drunkenly out of his boat to see the moon's reflection in the river. The Communist press wouldn’t have approved.

 

 

 

About that excessive movie about excess

With reluctance, as I considered there was an excellent chance I would not like it, I watched Wolf of Wall Street on Saturday (on Netflix).   

And (surprise!), I didn't care for it.

That was pretty much going to be a certainty when Matthew McConaughey turned up unexpectedly in the first 10 minutes.   Actually, while this segment was pretty funny for its bizarre aspects, he still lived up to being my personal talisman for warning that the movie will be, at the very least, badly flawed.

My main problems with the movie?:

a.    it's excessively about crass excess - in such a way that it hurt the sense of realism.  I would say it  very often seemed more cartoonish than realistic.  Even apart from the scenes of carnal excess, which (as I expected) were extreme and many, I thought the whole trading floor atmosphere seemed over the top and fake.  Too many people in too small a place; too much noise; too much adoring love for their boss when they thought he was going.   The day after watching the movie, I did see on Youtube some video showing the real lead character (Jordan Belfort), both when the movie came out, and back in the 1990's.   These reinforced my impression that the artistic licence taken in showing this world went too far.  I appreciate that some people would have wanted to see the movie to see how outrageous the life of the rich and crass could be - but to me, it looked too unrealistic too often.

b.  It is way too long - both in so many individual scenes, and overall.   I read David Edelstein's review after watching it, and fully agree with this part:

In interviews, Scorsese’s brilliant editor Thelma Schoonmaker has said it was hard to cut the film down from four hours. Four hours?! As I watched, I kept thinking that every scene could be snipped at the halfway point, before yet another hot-dog monologue or leering shot of Belfort’s second wife, the startlingly pretty but soulless ­Naomi, the “Duchess of Bay Ridge,” played by Margot Robbie. I figured Leo must have been sitting in the editing room saying, “No, no, don’t cut here — my favorite line is coming up — 30 more seconds — okay, a minute — wait, let it run! It’s my Oscars scene!” But no, this was Scorsese’s design. Overkill is the ruling aesthetic.

c.  While I don't say it had to be more of a morality play, as it does fit into Scorsese's love of stories about corrupt men who think they have it made and then things start falling apart, there is one key scene which is problematic:  the one where the FBI agent (the best played character in the film, if you ask me, and I did think his scene on the yacht - invented for the movie - was well written and acted) is on the subway after seeing Belfort face justice at last.  As Edelstein writes:

The Wolf of Wall Street is three hours of horrible people doing horrible things and admitting to being horrible. But you’re supposed to envy them anyway, because the alternative is working at McDonald’s and riding the subway alongside wage slaves. What are a few years in a minimum-security prison — practically a country club — when you can have the best of everything?

I think Edelstein is going too far in saying Scorsese wants the audience to envy the characters on screen, but it is hard to interpret the subway scene as anything other than invitation to share a moment of doubt that maybe it's sad that more people don't get to live life to a drug addled, VD infected, lobster eating, full.   As I say, problematic.

d.  A dated gratuitousness to the display of female nudity.   I hesitate to raise this, because I can see an argument that it suits the movies and pop culture of the era in which it was set.   But I just couldn't avoid thinking about it after the scene near the end where the Swiss banker waits for his young lover under his bed sheets, but when she makes her appearance, it's like a deliberate pause for a bit of full frontal nudity before getting under the sheets, which then start flying about in a Benny Hill style caricature of sex.   That just struck me as the way it would have been done in a 1980's flick, but not these days.   Sure, earlier there was Leonardo's butt side on during a (again) pointlessly protracted sex scene, and there was a comedy flash of a (presumably) prosthetic penis; but in retrospect, I think it is fair to say that the whole movie looked dated in the way the flesh displayed was primarily female.   (Although - now that I think of it - was trying to get more gender balance in skin on display the reason for the odd scene in which the college band came into the workplace floor but with the guys wearing no shirts?   That just looked weird in its own way to me - I can't see the uber macho male brokers being impressed, and there were few females working there anyway.)  

So there you go.  My thoughts, in too much detail, probably.

  

 

He's back

Barnaby Joyce isn't smart enough to use a condom while having an affair with a staff member, yet thinks he knows better than scientists about climate change and the environment.   The only people his return will impress is the still substantial climate change denial camp in the National Party. 

And now he's back, to try to drag the Coalition away from doing anything too fast on CO2.   

I don't think Morrison's very sharp either - but perhaps just sharp enough to know that there is no future in being the government of climate change inaction.

Sure, Labor has its own problems in keeping everyone on board re this issue - but it really is the Coalition that deserves to fall apart over it.  Turnbull should have outright called for party schism over this while he was still leader ("if you want to argue the reality of climate change, get out of the Coalition").   While he  (Turnbull) seems a nice enough man, his lack of bravery on the issue at the time he could have forced it into some form of resolution means he was a failed PM.  Sorry.

China in space

I was watching a couple of videos about the first astronauts from China going to their new (partly built) space station.

The odd thing, it seems to me, is that the videos give the distinct impression that the astronauts really have nothing to do - it looks as if a couple are napping during the launch:

 

 And have a look at this short clip of the docking:   the astronaut capsule looks as if it is designed in such a way that they can't reach the control panel without using (what looks like) a walking stick: 

 

That's an odd look inside a modern spaceship, isn't it? 

 

 

Sounds fair

That's sarcasm.

This is extraordinarily ridiculous:

Magistrate Rodney Higgins, who created controversy in 2019 by embarking on a relationship with a court clerk 45 years his junior, has successfully claimed her $180,000 superannuation death benefit even though it was bequeathed to her struggling mother.

Mr Higgins, who earns $324,000 a year as a magistrate in Bendigo, made the successful claim on the death benefits of his late fiance Ashleigh Petrie after the fund, Rest Super, agreed with his argument that he was her de facto partner and therefore her “dependent”.

But the payout has been delayed because lawyers for Ms Petrie’s mother, whom The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have chosen not to name to protect her privacy, have been fighting the decision for 15 months. They have appealed the super fund’s position to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority.

The multi-decade age gap between Mr Higgins and court clerk Ms Petrie sparked frenzied media coverage in October 2019. Ms Petrie, 23, was hit by a car in the early hours of Monday, October 28, 2019, less than three weeks after the first story of her relationship was published in Melbourne’s Herald Sun.

Mr Higgins, then 68, and Ms Petrie were a couple for seven months and lived together for about four months prior to her death. They were engaged in September 2019. During her relationship with Mr Higgins, Ms Petrie nominated her mother as the beneficiary of her superannuation and life insurance.

But Mr Higgins has refused the mother’s pleas to share the money, citing his hurt that he was not given a portion of Ms Petrie’s ashes. Within months of the young woman’s death, Mr Higgins returned to his partner of 18 years, Lurline Le Neuf, whom he’d left earlier that year to be with Ms Petrie. They share a riverfront home in Shepparton.

Don't stand between Higgins a wallet you've spotted on the ground:  clearly, he'll bowl you over in the attempt to get it.

 

 

Yet more Tucker led conspiracy

Ah yeah, so the FBI organised the attempt to capture politicians and make them vote in Trump.   

Seriously, America is not going to be right in the head until the Murdoch empire decides to rein in its nutball, conspiracy promoting, evening line up.   

The Washington Post (link above) has the explanation as to why it's (of course) a complete crock.

A disappointing turn by Jon Stewart

Yeah, count me as disappointed that Jon Stewart should have turned up on Colbert's show to do a silly bit about it's obvious that the Wuhan virus lab must have been the source of the COVID virus.

His delivery was funny enough that the audience laughed, but Stephen Colbert's pointing out that he wasn't being all that logical - he should consider that maybe scientists do research at labs near where the viruses they are interested in occur naturally - was the bit of reasoning that needed to be said and the Right will ignore.

Stewart's bit has made him a hero to the wingnut right.  (Oh, now he's funny, that he's said something they can agree with.  Note that the Lefty Colbert audience still was laughing - showing perhaps that the reason Right wing comedians don't get laughs is because they are just not good at humour delivery, regardless of content.)

As Allahpundit tweeted:

And someone had a theory that, in retrospect, made some sense:

In expert commentary:

American neurophysiologist and radio host Dr. Kiki Sanford tweeted: “I saw the clip and am concerned to see Stewart promoting the conspiracy... even if it's just for laughs.” Sanford noted that she sees the joke Stewart was trying to make but said “it is at the expense of people who know a LOT about this kind of thing working really hard to figure out where the virus DID come from. The ‘well it must be’ narrative isn't science.” Others responded to Sanford’s tweet noting that Stewart’s segment was both “disappointing and tragic.”

I wouldn't be surprised if Stewart ends up doing a "it was just a bit, sorry" appearance about it, actually.  

Update:  the Washington Post's The Fix column has a good look at this, including noting journals and papers which had already detailed the Colbert retort.

So that's what's going on with avocados

So I'm not the only person wondering why we seem to have a huge supply of cheap, great quality, avocados at the moment.  The Guardian, favoured paper of those who love their avocado and crumbled feta on sourdough toast, tells me more about avocados than I thought I needed to know:

...this winter, Australians can afford to eat all the avo on toast they like, with the savoury green fruit selling for just $1 (55p, or 77c) each.

The eye-watering drop in price is due to a bumper crop – the result of good weather and new trees. Australia is home to three million avocado trees; half of those were planted in the last five years alone. The trees can take just three or four years to start bearing fruit.

“Avocado production is 65% higher this year since last year,” said John Tyas, CEO of Avocados Australia. “The planets have aligned and its phenomenal.”

For avocado lovers the good news just keeps coming. New technology developed this year by the University of Queensland could see 500 new trees produced from a one-millimetre cutting in future, compared to the single tree per cutting growers get now, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

“Like many people in the developed world, Australians didn’t really eat avocado 20 years ago,” said Tyas. [*]

He credits the local appetite for the spreadable fresh produce – technically a berry – with the fact that avocados can be grown year-round. Australians also eat avocados for breakfast – with the beloved and now ubiquitous “smashed avocado” – minced with a fork, seasoned and served toast – made world famous by Sydney chef Bill Granger.

 The country’s per capita avo consumption is 4kg a year – higher than the US at 3.6kg and way ahead of the UK’s 1.4kg.

Speaking of Americans and avocados, I think they get most of their's from Mexico, and there have been stories for a few years about Mexican drug cartels pushing into its avocado industry.  That's still a problem, according to this recent Al Jazeera report:

 

Pretty incredible: having to take up arms to guard your avocado orchard.  

Anyway, back to The Guardian:

Australian avocado production has more than doubled in ten years, from 40,000 tonnes in 2009/10 to nearly 90,000 in 2019/20 – at a value of almost half a billion dollars (A$493m). Of these, 80% were Hass avocados – with the much-maligned Shepard variety making up 17%. Just 5% of this is exported.

It is likely to double again in the next ten years, said Tyas.

The rest of the article says that we're trying to grow an export industry into Asia.  But fruit fly.

Anyway, looks like now I'll have to worry about not only carrots being too cheap in future.

*   This is an exaggeration, I think.  I have a clear memory of a discussion with someone where I worked in my late 20's about how much I liked avocado on toast for a quick lunch.   He said he liked that too.  Regretfully, this is now more than 30 years ago!

A good French film

Purely by accident (I searched Netflix for "90 minute movies" on Saturday night), I came across the French (Netflix produced) film from 2020 Lost Bullet.  It's very good.

It's a car action/corrupt cop film which is lean but moves along at a nice and engaging pace, with just the right number of narrative surprises; and is pretty impressive for the quality of some of the mini-Mad Max style road action too.  (I am completely uninterested in the post apocalyptic silly world of George Miller, and the obviously CGI nature of the Fast and Furious leaves me cold too;  but put some [relatively] realistic looking, small scale car action on the screen and it can still be entertaining.)

It's well worth a look.   Once again, it has a level of complexity and realistic enough characters, but on a modest budget, which makes me wonder why Australian films can't duplicate this.

 

On China and education

An opinion piece in the Washington Post argues that America, and the West generally I suppose, shouldn't be getting into a panic over a recent claims that Chinese high school education is beating the world:

As pointed out by several experts, such as Rob J. Gruiters, university lecturer at the faculty of education at the University of Cambridge, the China ranking is a sham. The 2018 PISA tests were given to 15-year-olds only in the cities of Beijing and Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, four of the most urbanized and affluent areas of the country. All 79 nations and political entities participating in PISA are asked to submit results that accurately represent their schools. China has not done that, but the people running PISA do little about it.

Tom Loveless, a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on international school assessments, summed up the situation after the 2018 PISA results were released:

“There is not one but two Chinas: one urbanized, mainly on the east coast, and rapidly growing in wealth; the other rural, in the interior of China or on the move as migrants, and mired in poverty. As a rough proxy, recent population numbers put the Chinese rural share at 41 percent. PISA assesses achievement of the first China and ignores the second.”

And the education standards in the poorer parts of the country sound pretty low:

Scholars rarely get a chance to look closely at rural Chinese education, but the available information is depressing. Loveless cited studies conducted from 2007 to 2013 showing cumulative dropout rates in rural areas between 17 and 31 percent in junior high schools. Only half of rural Chinese children went to high school and only 37 percent of that age group graduated.  A 2017 study revealed that in 27 provinces the average high school classroom had more than 45 students. In 12 provinces the average was more than 55. Loveless said the government’s official goal is no more than 56 students per classroom.