Boring content not about Covid

Once, maybe twice, a year we get to eat off our Spode fancy schmancy dinnerware.  The ones with this pattern:

I must admit, I like how the busyness of the design encourages much staring and trying to work out what is going in the scene.

I'll crop for you:

We seem to have cows in the water, to the consternation of a man and woman (I think) on the shore.  But what's going with the figure on the right, sitting on a box, and behind what exactly?

Maybe a priest? Or woman?  Sitting behind what looks like a fake rock face, like what they would build for a film.  Or is it something my brain just hadn't made sense of yet?

In fact, a lot of the design looks a bit Escher-esque, no?  Like this:

I'm not sure all of those angles make sense.  And now that I think of it, it's perhaps a tad Dali-esque too. 

Anyway, maybe everyone else knows about this pattern, as it's more famous than I knew:

The Blue Italian design was launched by Josiah Spode II in 1816, and this decorative vignette provided the perfect showcase for his father’s revolutionary blue underglaze transfer printing process. It depicts a classic Italianate landscape – although the origins of the scene remain a mystery, as no single place in Italy seems to match the various elements.

And Country Life magazine explains what's going on:

And so it was that, when Blue Italian was launched in 1816, it couldn’t have met with a more eager audience. Its Imari Oriental border of exotic flowers and scrolls gave a nod to the industry’s history, but within dwelt a fairytale as pretty as a picture. The scene is the Italian countryside: a shepherd and his lady tend their flock by a river that meanders lazily past a picturesque ruin, two lovers hold hands on the riverbank and, beyond, the river curves dotingly around a tiny chapel towards a medieval castle on high.

Trees and flowers permeate the landscape, both earth and sky, as if Man and his soft-edged edifices are there merely by Nature’s benevolent wish, and clouds scud overhead, reminding us that blue and white come in so many beautiful hues.

The "lovers holding hands on the riverbank" certainly don't get much prominence. 

The details of the design seem obscure enough that you could probably make a stupid Da Vinci Code style story out of it - it's a map to a hidden treasure somewhere in Italy, with the involvement of the Church (I'm going with the figure sitting on the mystery box being an Italian-ate priest.)

You can thank me later, Hollywood.

Crappy parts of the world explored in detail

Over the break, I did have the chance to watch a fair bit of longer Youtube content, and caught up with recent ones by Indigo Traveller, the New Zealand guy who seems to make a good living now out of his independent, on the ground, documentaries about the current situation for ordinary people in some of the poorest and most troubled countries on the planet.   

The recent series he did on Nigeria was really remarkable, and I strongly recommend it.  I thought the over-water slum of Lagos looking pretty unique - although I still don't really understand how it came to be created, sitting above 4 or 5 feet of filthy water.  

West Side Story: exquisitely directed, very flawed musical

Well, I have much to confess about lack of background knowledge:  I've managed to never watch a production of Romeo and Juliet of any kind, on screen or stage.  I only know the story from summaries, as I'm not the sort of person to read Shakespeare for fun.  Nor have I seen the original West Side Story in full - I started watching it once, and thought the finger clicking street dancing was a little silly.  Maybe I saw a bit of later dancing, but never watched it all.

So, I come to the Spielberg movie with a moderately clean slate, which leads me to say this - I actually get why it hasn't found a young audience.   The musical is a period piece of its day, based on a play with a story that surely must only convince by the poetry of its language rather than the probability of its plot.  I mean, I certainly hope  Shakespeare does a better job of convincing his audience that the love at first sight of this couple is plausible.  (I don't deny that people do say they "knew at first sight", so perhaps I shouldn't be so dismissive, but I have a deep preference for the slow burn romance over the instant "I knew he/she was for me" any day of the week.  In fact, let's mention now the deep irony that Robert Wise directed for the screen both WSS and The Sound of Music, the latter featuring the most utterly charming and convincing "falling in love during a dance" sequence that I know of in a movie - the crucial  difference being that the second Maria had known this dude by being a part of his household for at least months before the ball.  In West Side Story, it's more a case of seeing each across the crowded dance floor, a 60 second dance like a pair of mating birds, and that's it.  I know which I find more convincing.)

For me, the musical is flawed in other ways - I thought a key dramatic song A Boy Like That, which I was hearing for the first time, is both musically and lyrically a real dud.  In fact, that song is related to the biggest single thing that doesn't help the musical: Bernardo (who is killed by Tony/Romeo) being turned into Maria's brother instead of her cousin, as in the original Shakespeare.   Sure, Maria seems to have a tense relationship with him, but she still seems to love him as a brother, making her instant forgiveness (and more!) of Tony much harder to understand.    

OK, so I am full of criticisms - but despite all of this,  the movie infected my dreams in the way that a good movie does - and all because it is exquisitely directed.

The dance numbers in particular - as I wrote before, I knew from as early as 1941 that he should be able to do them well, and honestly, the amount of pleasure I got from the way any dancing is directed and editted in this film was pretty immense.

So, it makes for a weird conflict in terms of recommending the film  - I completely understand if you don't think it's a good musical, that it has a silly story, and even the actor playing Tony being the weakest of the stars (the women are uniformly terrific, and the other male leads really good too - and obviously ridiculously talented) - but you should see it anyway and be in awe of how it is put together.  If you're lucky, it will give you some nice musical dreams afterwards, too.

On some end notes:   the movie is remarkable for attracting highly political partisan commentary from both the nutty, Trumpian Right ("it's too Woke!") and the identity politics obsessed part of the Left ("it still trades on racial stereotypes - this musical should be forgotten!").   I think the attempts to drag it into more modern relevance were quite OK - and I find it hard to fault Spielberg and Krushner's liberal, inclusive, instincts.  I thought occasionally that the lack of subtitle for some Spanish was a bit harmful to understanding, but as an artistic decision, I basically have no problem with it.   The lack of youth appeal, as I said above, goes back to the faults in the musical itself.  Oh, and young women (like my daughter) wanting vengeance on Ansel Elgort for sexting a girl while he had a girlfriend.)  

The politics of Leonard Bernstein, and of America post WW2, were the subject of a very interesting article at Slate last month, and I strongly recommend reading it to give context to the musical.  

 Update:  I watched this lengthy discussion of the two movies last night, and it goes into a lot of interesting history of the musical itself, how Hollywood treated stars who couldn't sing well enough, and casting decisions.   (The bit about Natalie Wood being lied to as long as possible that her recorded songs were going to be used was pretty amazing.)   All very interesting:

The Christmas handyman report

It's been an odd Christmas break - seems I have done both a lot, and little. The family stayed at home, a decision which, given the showery, definitely not good beach weather, was a very wise for this year of an accurately predicted wetter summer. I suppose I should pity the people paying (at least) $1800 for a week in a seaside apartment only to be looking at the showers rolling in again, but instead I uncharitably just kept feeling upbeat that I was not in the same boat. 

The (sort of) downside of staying at home was the decision to spend a lot of the break on cleaning things in the house that hadn't been cleaned for years, as well as doing certain maintenance that I had been putting off for months, if not longer.

Hence, the ancient fat encrusted (well, sorry, but on certain internal parts, it was true) rangehood got dismantled and replaced, more or less successfully, by me.  (It works fine, but there remains something about the fit which makes me suspect I have done something wrong, but I can't see how it's possible.  I think unless it's pointed out to a visitor, it would not be noticed.  I certainly didn't til the next day!)

 I also replaced a lot of sealant around sinks and benchtops in the kitchen, one bathroom, and laundry, with the guidance of handyman Youtube.  I think I managed to make it look pretty neat and almost, but not quite, professional.  It's the sort of thing you definitely get more confident with the more you do it.  (I also didn't realise how much sealant you waste even when doing it "right".)

Curtains that hadn't been washed for (I think) 18 years (God, we sound a lazy household) were successfully cleaned, dried between showers and re-hung without falling apart, and windows, flyscreens and security grills cleaned thoroughly both inside and outside.  There was one window in particular that was, to my mind, mysteriously filthy on the inside.  It was behind a curtain behind the TV and near the modem and wifi router, but it seemed as filthy as an outside window that hadn't been touched for 20 years.  Could electrostatic effects from the electrical equipment be behind this?   

This has taken up a large amount of time, even with the occasional, reluctant, bits of assistance from 2 adult children.  And we haven't even started on the upstairs yet!  Or the outside, which badly needs attention.  I might get something done today, as weeds growing out of the mulch in the gutter above the garage is not a good look.  I did put up some replacement clothesline, though, this time with wirecore which hopefully cannot sag as quickly as your standard line does, with Youtube teaching me a new knot that turned out to be useful. 

I think I have made 6 or 7 trips to Bunnings over the period to achieve this - not being a handyman by inclination means frequent realizations of not having the appropriate tool or equipment.  As well as rangehoods not coming with the recommended carbon filters.    

And for entertainment - very little happened.   Both kids went off to their own parties on New Years Eve, and we didn't have people over either.  I heard distant fireworks from bed at midnight, and was cool with it.  

I did go see West Side Story, and it deserves a post of its own.  

But yeah, I'm feeling somewhat satisfied with successful handyman stuff.  Gee, before you know it, I'll be into woodwork for recreation, like ageing men often seem to.  (Not likely.)

As the photo says...

Something happier for Christmas

There's a new full length and very recent concert recording of The Messiah up on Youtube, and although I haven't listened with headphones yet, the quality sounds very good.   I haven't seen this live for a couple of decades:

 

 

What a difference a State makes

 

Oh no - another month of indoor masking and staying away from crowds too much for handle for the libertarian/conservative set?

Noted on Twitter:

If Gray suffers a coronary, or Jason falls off his bike, they might appreciate not being "ramped" at a hospital in the ambulance, and having staff actually able to deal with them promptly.  Not to mention people needing on going care and treatment for cancers, etc.

Or do they think that because everyone's going to get it, the (generally young and relatively fit) nurses and doctors that catch it but have a mild dose should just continue coughing on patients for the good of the nation?  Even if they think "the patient will catch it eventually anyway", don't they think it would be better to catch in the future, after the patient has got over their current illness?   Do they think making staff who cough or sneeze and test positive stay at home for the 1 to 2 weeks to test negative is unreasonable? 

I can see a very plausible case as to why virtually every nation on the planet, regardless of vaccination rates, is temporarily, at least, tightening restrictions in light of Omicron, even though it looks increasingly clear that it will kill a much smaller percentage of patients than Delta.

And yes, it may well represent the beginning of the end of the severe effects of the pandemic.

But I see no problem at all with not wanting all of the Omicron cases to pile up at too fast a rate because of the obvious potential to cause the heathcare system to be severely understaffed (and possibly, not enough ICU beds) in the near term. 

I wonder how rich Steve Kates is

What does Steve Kates, the ageing crank Trump cultist and only economist in the world who truly understands where economics all went wrong (just ask him), think of how his bete noire (Keynes) made heaps of money from good investment strategy?

An article at The Conversation talks about it, and concludes he would not have invested in Bitcoin.  I certainly would hope not!

A simple question

Why would Putin be worried about Ukraine from a security point of view anyway?:

Russia doesn't want conflict with Ukraine but Western powers must provide Moscow with "unconditional security guarantees", President Vladimir Putin has said.

Speaking at his annual news conference, Mr Putin said the US has missiles at "Russia's doorstep" and the "ball is in the West's court" in relation to security in the region.

Which country in the West would actually want Russia?   For what?  Their gas?  As if that would be worth the trouble of war.    

Update:  the Guardian offers some kind of analysis.   And the gas supply issue is complicated - but I still don't really see the security aspect well explained anywhere.

A reason for caution

An article at Nature today indicates that if a "high risk" person gets very sick from the Omicron version of Covid, it may well be harder to treat:

Strained hospitals bracing for a COVID-19 surge caused by the quickly spreading Omicron variant could face another grim possibility: preliminary experiments suggest that most of the antibody treatments for the disease are powerless against Omicron^1,2,3,4.

Doctors use artificial versions of natural antibodies to stave off severe COVID-19 in high-risk people who are infected with the coronavirus. But a slew of publications posted on preprint servers report laboratory evidence that Omicron is totally or partially resistant to all currently available treatments based on these monoclonal antibodies. The publications have not yet been peer reviewed, but some of the companies that manufacture antibody therapies already concede that their products have lower potency against Omicron than against other variants.

I guess the question still is - how many high risk people are going to get seriously sick from it in the first place. 

Update:  this seems a really good Twitter thread on the good news/bad news about Covid which (as the doctors says) is enough to make your head spin.  It includes more detail about the antibody therapies above, as well as the supply issues for other new treatments which seem pretty insurmountable. 

The deep irony (and/or stupidity)

Those of a libertarian/conservative bent who are carrying on most about the "totalitarianism" of public health decisions regarding Covid (see the awful Richard Hanania, for example - I think I have to unsubscibe from his Twitter feed because he seems to tweet about 200 times a day and every second or third one is appalling) are also likely to be Trump apologists and not concerned at all about the detailed revelations of a  plan to actually fraudulently get reinstated as President in what would have been a stunning totalitarian overturn of democracy normally associated with some lawless tinpot regime.

Which, I should add, is not to say that governments are above criticism for some of their Covid decisions.

Proteins are pretty incredible

I guess this aligns with my recent post about card shuffling and the mind boggling mathematics of the number of possible outcomes.  

Proteins have the same feature.  From a Science magazine article, nominating AI work on working out protein structures as the breakthrough of 2021:

Proteins are biology’s workhorses. They contract our muscles, convert food into cellular energy, ferry oxygen in our blood, and fight microbial invaders. Yet despite their varied talents, all proteins start out with the same basic form: a linear chain of up to 20 different kinds of amino acids, strung together in a sequence encoded in our DNA. After being assembled in cellular factories called ribosomes, each chain folds into a unique, exquisitely complex 3D shape. Those shapes, which determine how proteins interact with other molecules, define their roles in the cell.

Work by Anfinsen and others suggested interactions between amino acids pull proteins into their final shapes. But given the sheer number of possible interactions between each individual link in the chain and all the others, even modest-size proteins could assume an astronomical number of possible shapes. In 1969, American molecular biologist Cyrus Levinthal calculated that it would take longer than the age of a universe for a protein chain to cycle through them one by one—even at a furious pace. But in nature, each protein reliably folds up into just one distinctive shape, usually in the blink of an eye.

All about Mary

Oh, here's a summary of Christian (mainly Catholic and Orthodox) beliefs regarding Mary.

I knew all of it, but not in the precise detail given here.    For example:

The early centuries of the Christian tradition were silent on the death of Mary. But by the seventh and eighth centuries, the belief in the bodily ascension of Mary into heaven, had taken a firm hold in both the Western and Eastern Churches.

The Eastern Orthodox Greek Church held to the dormition of Mary. According to this, Mary had a natural death, and her soul was then received by Christ. Her body arose on the third day after her death. She was then taken up bodily into heaven.

For a long time, the Catholic Church was ambiguous on whether Mary rose from the dead after a brief period of repose in death and then ascended into heaven or was “assumed” bodily into heaven before she died.

Belief in the ascension of Mary into heaven became Catholic doctrine in 1950. Pope Pius XII then declared that Mary

was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.

I am curious as to how Pope Pius XII could be so certain of this detail.   How exactly does the Holy Spirit whisper this level of detail?

Anyway, does it mean that she didn't die at all?   Apparently, that remained an open question, but a more recent Pope said:

On 25 June 1997 Pope John Paul II said that Mary experienced natural death prior to her assumption into Heaven. 

OK, well still seems to me there is room for speculation on how soon after the death the rise into the sky happened.  I mean, it could have quite the surprise for those preparing the body for burial.

Or does "ascend into heaven" have to mean a sky ascension  such as that of Christ?   Could it be done by the body just disappearing into the higher dimension of heaven?  I know that art has favoured the former, but a more subtle form of "ascension" might be easier for the relatives to handle.

I didn't know this, too:

Indeed, Mary is mentioned more often in the Qur'an than in the New Testament.

 Huh.

Update:   OK, so this (Catholic) University of Dayton site (also called "All about Mary") cites one of the earliest writings (perhaps back to 5th century) about what is supposed to have happened, and it went into a lot of detail:

This text, more commonly known as Transitus (passing on, crossing over) Mariae, and attributed to Melito of Sardes tells of Mary's homegoing in detail:

In the presence of the apostles gathered around her bed, also in the presence of her divine Son and many angels, Mary died and her soul, rose to heaven, accompanied by Christ and the angels. Her body was buried by the disciples. Difficulties developed among certain of the Jews who wished to dispose of her body. Various types of miracles occurred to convince them to honor Mary's body. On the third day, Christ returned. At the request of the apostles the soul of Mary is reunited with her body. Accompanied by singing angels, Christ brought Mary to paradise.

So, that's where the Eastern Church's "dormition of Mary" comes from.   

And I see from reading this article that I was getting confused in my post - that the doctrine is definitely the assumption of Mary, not the ascension:  although I still think it fair to say that artist representations make it look like an physical rising into the sky:

It is essential and significant to note the distinction between the resurrection and ascension of Christ, who rose up, in contrast to Mary who is assumed or taken into heaven. The early poetry on the Assumption of Mary, which originated and circulated widely in the Eastern Church, expresses this difference and parallelism.

Anyway, the Transitus was pooh-poohed, for some reason, by a Pope soon after:

In the early sixth century, a papal decree, Decretum Gelasianum, classified the Transitus Mariae writings as apocryphal, but this did not hinder the wide distribution of well over thirteen-hundred manuscripts throughout the West. In England, it was known well before the thirteenth century and is one of the first poetic texts written in early English. There are many versions among the hand copied manuscripts. The Transitus Mariae was incorporated into the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. It is also incorporated into a text known as Vita BVM et salvatoris rhythmica (The rhythmic life of the BVM and redeemer), written in the mid-thirteenth century. These later texts add many embellishments to describe Mary's entry into heaven. All the saints and angels come to greet her and do her homage as her Son crowns her queen. These texts are gathered uncritically from various sources, but they nevertheless express faith-filled devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

On the question of how, nearly 1,900 years later, it could be declared as dogma, is explained as follows:

The proclamation of the dogma was part of a plan of Pope Pius XII to honor Mary. He appealed to the faith of the Church as partial basis for the definition. As O'Carroll writes:

"The faith of the Church had been manifest in different ways. Between 1849 and 1950, numerous petitions for the dogma arrived in Rome. They came from One hundred and thirteen Cardinals, eighteen Patriarchs, twenty-five-hundred-five archbishops and bishops, thirty-two-thousand priests and men religious, fifty-thousand religious women, eight million lay people. On May 1, 1946 the Pope had sent to the bishops of the world the Encyclical Deiparae Virginis, putting this question to them: 'More especially we wish to know if you, Venerable Brethren, with your learning and prudence consider that the bodily Assumption of the Immaculate Blessed Virgin can be proposed and defined as a dogma of faith and whether in addition to your own wishes this is desired by your clergy and people.' When the replies were collated, it was found that twenty-two residential bishops out of 1181 dissented, but only six doubted that the Assumption was revealed truth--the others questioned the opportuneness." (p. 56)

Pius XII considered this response as a "certain and firm proof" that the Assumption is a truth revealed by God.

So this paints it as if it was more or less by popular demand - but the "8 million lay people" is surely a tiny fraction of the overall number.  Look at these counts of the global Catholic population over a century:

 

This graph doesn't give us the totals for 1950, but adding them up, it looks like it might have been around 400 - 500 million?:

Well, this puts the significance of the number of laity petitioning for the doctrine - and it seems it was 8 million over the course of a century - making the total at any one time a tiny fraction of the actual laity.

If dogmatic doctrine can be made by popular demand of a small fraction of the most conservative laity (and a bigger group of bishops and priests), can they be reversed by a more overwhelming popular vote in future?  But these are the knots that the Church has tied itself into unnecessarily.

 

Indoor mask wearing

 I agree.   Seems to me that at this highly uncertain stage as to the effect on our health system of an incredibly transmissible disease, it's just common sense to adopt even marginally beneficial practices which carry no huge burden - such as making mask wearing in shops and public transport mandatory.   (And I mean, it doesn't even raise the trickier issue of mask wearing in schools at the moment - school's not in for another month, by which time Omicron will be better understood.)

Update:  two articles explaining the idea that used to be considered mainstream common sense, until paranoid conservatives more interested in culture warring than living decided it wasn't.   

Update 2:  Katharine Murphy on the Morrison spin politics of mask mandates is very good.   I cannot wait to see the back of him as PM. 

Update 3:

He doesn't hold the hose, you know.

Ancient Christian bling

This ring looks like it would have been expensive:

Quantum needs imaginary numbers

I hadn't realised this was a contentious issue before:

Imaginary numbers are what you get when you take the square root of a negative number, and they have long been used in the most important equations of quantum mechanics, the branch of physics that describes the world of the very small. When you add imaginary numbers and real numbers, the two form complex numbers, which enable physicists to write out quantum equations in simple terms. But whether quantum theory needs these mathematical chimeras or just uses them as convenient shortcuts has long been controversial. 

In fact, even the founders of quantum mechanics themselves thought that the implications of having complex numbers in their equations was disquieting. In a letter to his friend Hendrik Lorentz, physicist Erwin Schrödinger — the first person to introduce complex numbers into quantum theory, with his quantum wave function (ψ) — wrote, "What is unpleasant here, and indeed directly to be objected to, is the use of complex numbers. Ψ is surely fundamentally a real function."

Schrödinger did find ways to express his equation with only real numbers alongside an additional set of rules for how to use the equation, and later physicists have done the same with other parts of quantum theory. But in the absence of hard experimental evidence to rule upon the predictions of these "all real" equations, a question has lingered: Are imaginary numbers an optional simplification, or does trying to work without them rob quantum theory of its ability to describe reality?

Now, two studies, published Dec. 15 in the journals Nature and Physical Review Letters, have proved Schrödinger wrong. By a relatively simple experiment, they show that if quantum mechanics is correct, imaginary numbers are a necessary part of the mathematics of our universe.

 

 

A simple problem with Covid

I've been meaning to note that I read a thread on Twitter recently, perhaps from an overseas doctor, which made the somewhat under-appreciated point that a big problem COVID presents, especially with the wildly transmissible Omicron, for hospital managers is the lengthy period positive testing staff have to be away from work.  Hence, even with modest increases in actual COVID patients in a hospital, it may still be really suffering from inadequate staff for all of their patients.

Certified

I've mentioned before the frenetic Twitter commentator Richard Hanania, who got recommended by a couple of well known internet intellectuals and seems to have thereby picked up a heap of followers.

But, seriously, the guy is a certifiable creepy libertarian sociopath, if you ask me.  And look, it might be a cheap shot, but he has a face that would fit so well with being a Batman villain - he's got a Joker vibe going even without makeup.

The latest evidence:

This take completely ignores that Right Wing media (Fox News particularly) has combined undying support of Trump with vaccine/Covid scepticism for a year or more now.   There is no reason to think they are going to start believing Trump on this issue - they are going to put it down to "something Donald likes to bullshit about, but we like him anyway."  They know they still have "and just like that, Covid will go away" Trump from 2 years ago.

Worse:  

He is, like so many at Catallaxy, sure that there is a masculinity crisis ruining the world.   It's a view often held by incels, of which it would hardly be surprising Richard is a member.  There is also considerable irony in him calling others "twitter dorks".

 

Yeah, just being a smug jerk. 

OK, so this doctor's recommendation sounds over the top and ripe for ridicule.  Problem is, Richard's reaction sounds like he wants to blow up her apartment and practice and would think he is doing the world a good.

Sociopath who thinks we understand Omicron enough to know it's safe to spread.  We do not.   In a month or two, we will know how dangerous it is.  But it's foolish in the extreme to be like him.

 

He doesn't have to manage hospitals and health systems - so all good!   Richard's happy that people want to avoid him - a very reasonable reaction, given he doesn't care if he gives someone else a disease that might kill them.   

Comment that made me laugh:

Japanese content

First, France 24, of all channels, has a short but good report on the decline of the Yakuza in Japan:

 

And secondly, quite a charming short video by young Japanese guy Shunchan, in which he surprises his grandparents with a visit after quitting his salaryman job. (He's not your typical Japanese!) My daughter keeps saying "is he gay?" based on his often somewhat Korean boy band-ish fashion sense, but he has clearly indicated in previous videos that he isn't.  I always feel a bit sorry for him, as a guy who can't really work out what he wants to do in his life, but he has a very likeable Youtube persona.