The subtlety of strangeness

OK, it's been a while since I posted anything about the paranormal, or general "woo", and let's start with a source I rarely link to - the New York Post.

While it seems that the paper publishes plenty of credulous sounding "Republican politician says there's something to this UFO business" stories,  they also have a sceptical wing which explained in this piece in March 2023 that several of the current big names in "the Pentagon knows!" news were tied up with the rather dubious claims made for Skinwalker Ranch.    I didn't know that.

I have said before that I don't find Luis Elizondo a very credible sounding character, and any Youtube clips of the guys at Skinwalker Ranch have never impressed me much.   (I think Mick West recently ridiculed them for mistaking a fly going across a camera's field of vision as a UFO.)  

On the other hand, two different stories I have read about generally "spooky" events illustrate what I think could be called the sometimes odd subtlety of the evidence of paranormal events.   

The first:  actress Heather Mitchell has been doing media talking about a prediction made by a fortune teller which quickly did (most people would say) seem to be fulfilled.   It's a nice story, and you can read about it in the extract from her memoir in The Guardian.    

The second story is in this short Youtube video, about someone who had a door in a room in a historic building slam behind him, with no obvious explanation.   He seems nonetheless quite un-phased by the question of whether or not it was a ghost doing something ghosts are not generally supposed to be able to do.   If it had happened to me, in the way he describes, I'm pretty sure it would have freaked me out for a good few days, at least:

Back to retrocausality, again

 Oh good:  a long essay at Aeon about how retrocausality might be the explanation for quantum entanglement.

It's not the easiest read, it seems - although I have had to just skim through it today...

Not an appealing lifestyle

It's fair to say that pre-colonial indigenous Australia had a PR problem in terms of their lifestyle which modern academia and education departments have spent the last 40 years trying to undo.  Out with the "primitive Stone Age nomadic life" and in with the "spiritual custodians of the land living in harmony with nature and each other for millennia, until Europeans ruined it."

True, there is the "who are we to judge on their quality of life when English kids were being sent to work in cotton mills for 14 hours a day so their little fingers could clean the deadly machinery?" argument.   On the other hand, at the risk of sounding all Pauline Hanson, the good thing about having stuff like writing, laws, national government and improving technology is that living conditions can be improved for everyone pretty quickly, when you put your mind to it.   

So, I've been perusing some anthropology sources lately, to remind me of what used to be noted commonly, even up to the later half of the 20th century, about some aspects of pre-colonial aboriginal life.   Now, Quadrant loves to cite this sort of material, often from the initial observers, but they can carry a question mark as to objectivity, so I've looked for later stuff.

Which led me to this issue - why didn't they have larger families, given the lack of contraception, girls marrying at a young age, etc.   This article "The Determinants of Fertility Among Aborigines" is from 1981, so I presume it is free of some earlier prejudices, and relatively sympathetic.   

All possible explanations are looked at, but these two aspects caught my eye the most:

 

 

Then there is the issue of male practices.  I mean, I knew a little about sub-incision of the penis, but hadn't realised that it was something of a repeat exercise for gaining blood for ritual purposes.  I thought it was supposed to be good to be a man in such societies, but didn't realise that it meant voluntarily cutting into your penis again and again: 

Now that I think of it, there is some irony that we usually associate the modern anti-circumcision movement with Left leaning types, who also are the most sympathetic to Noble Savage-isms, which has as part of its baggage sub-incision.  

As for the infanticide:  do we judge Sparta too harshly for killing the weak at a young age, or other societies which let unwanted babies die?  (It was quite a common practice in Japan in the feudal Edo period too, apparently.)

I would say we accept that different societies had moral systems which were influenced by their physical and intellectual environment - but we don't really dispute, if we are honest, that it's good that certain cultural practices are dropped.   Is it too much to ask that we be allowed to say the same about pre-colonial indigenous society here?

  

When your local police chief goes nuts

This crime story from America is noteworthy just for how improbable it sounds - a former police chief sent to jail for a decade of dealing with people who upset him by setting their cars and houses on fire.  

 

 

That culture war movie

I posted not so long ago about the odd intensity of the culture war around Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and how the "bro" movie reviewers (who despise the active feminisation of franchises like Star Wars under Disney - and producer Kathleen Kennedy in particular) have been trying very, very hard to ensure the movie is not deemed a success.

That campaign has continued apace, with that Critical Drinker guy seemingly betting his entire reputation on the film failing.  (He has now seen it and called it "an embarrassment" - but I'm not going to watch any review until after I have seen it.)

While I am indeed nervous as to whether I will like the movie or not, I am slightly encouraged by the general review score of the movie increasing over the last couple of weeks.  No one is calling it the greatest movie ever, but there are enough saying they think it somewhat better than Crystal Skull, and a more-or-less fitting enough send off, that I am slightly hopeful.

Going into a film with low expectations (especially with sequels) is always a good idea,though.   I remember fondly, for example, how blown away I was by seeing Empire Strikes Back with no real expectations as to quality.   I was busy at university at the time, and had barely read a review (which were only available in magazines and newspapers - so it wasn't as if you could easily read many anyway).  I was therefore completely delighted with how spectacularly good it was - and how it deepened the themes from the original.   It's also an odd aspect of that film that in fact the original reviews were not as strong as you might expect for a film that soon became universally credited as the best in the series. 

It does seem to me obvious that these guys are just trying too hard to will Dial to fail.   But given that the trailer looks decent enough; the amount of press that an uncharacteristically cheerful Harrison Ford has been giving (perhaps recognising that there is a need to counter an internet culture war campaign against the movie); and it not being a professional critic disaster:  I suspect it will in fact be a box office success. 

  

Age issues continue in China

Noted in the New York Times:

When Sean Liang turned 30, he started thinking of the Curse of 35 — the widespread belief in China that white-collar workers like him confront unavoidable job insecurity after they hit that age. In the eyes of employers, the Curse goes, they’re more expensive than new graduates and not as willing to work overtime.

Mr. Liang, now 38, is a technology support professional turned personal trainer. He has been unemployed for much of the past three years, partly because of the pandemic and China’s sagging economy. But he believes the main reason is his age. He’s too old for many employers, including the Chinese government, which caps the hiring age for most civil servant positions at 35. If the Curse of 35 is a legend, it’s one supported by some facts.

“I work out, so I look pretty young for my age,” he said in an interview. “But in the eyes of society, people like me are obsolete.”

China’s postpandemic economic rebound has hit a wall, and the Curse of 35 has become the talk of the Chinese internet. It’s not clear how the phenomenon started, and it’s hard to know how much truth there is to it. But there’s no doubt that the job market is weak and that age discrimination, which is not against the law in China, is prevalent. That is a double whammy for workers in their mid-30s who are making big decisions about career, marriage and children.

“Too old to work at 35 and too young to retire at 60,” said a viral online post — meaning that people of prime working age lack prospects and older people may need to keep working as the government is considering raising the retirement age. The post goes on: “Stay away from homeownership, marriage, children, car ownership, traffic and drugs, and you’ll own happiness, freedom and time.”

 

 

Not exactly the Gettysburg address

I wonder - how many people have bothered reading the "Uluru Statement from the Heart", which is the basis for the whole Voice referendum.  I mean, lots of "Yes" vote advocacy refers to its importance and the number of aboriginal groups who backed it.  

The link to it is here.

It is very short.

And - to be frank - I am pretty surprised at its low quality as rhetoric.  

What's more, I kind of suspect that the "Yes" advocates don't really want it widely read, because it goes on about indigenous sovereignty, "that co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown".   And how the Voice is only the start of a process, as they also want treaties and "truth telling".   

While it is true that I have heard some "Yes" politicians talk about the need for the Voice before the treaty process can begin, the larger impression I think the "Yes" side wants to give is that the Voice is a small change that will more or less "settle things down" in terms of aboriginal activism.  "They just want this modest change" type of message.   The statement undercuts that.

The statement also spends a lot of time on the issue of incarceration:

Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately
criminal people. Our children are aliened from their families at unprecedented rates. This
cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.

These dimensions of our crisis tell plainly the structural nature of our problem. This is the
torment of our powerlessness.

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own
country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

Hmmm.   At a time when we want indigenous youth to respect property law, and find more meaning in life than via joy riding stolen cars or following their parent's abusive use of alcohol or other drugs, I'm not at all convinced that the messaging that the entire community are powerless is the right one to be promoting.   

Having said that, I don't doubt that historic institutional disadvantage has long term consequences.   So it's not like I am against (relatively) generous funding for aboriginal support.  (Subject to the proviso that I wish aboriginal leadership would accept that communities - black or white - with no connection to economic activity in their region are ever likely to be thriving.)

But at the end of the day, for the leadership to be messaging to their own communities all the time that they are still "powerless" is not helpful.  

Flash floods and infrastructure

I've been saying for years and years - the costs of dealing with the increase in intensity of rainfall under climate change is likely to be one of the largest under-rated costs of AGW for urban areas over the next few decades. 

Here's some vindication for that hunch in the New York Times:   

Intensifying Rains Pose Hidden Flood Risks Across the U.S.

In some of the nation’s most populous areas, hazardous storms can dump significantly more water than previously believed, new calculations show.

That's a gift link, but here is some more "that's exactly what I've been saying" from the body of the article:

The calculations suggest that one in nine residents of the lower 48 states, largely in populous regions including the Mid-Atlantic and the Texas Gulf Coast, is at significant risk of downpours that deliver at least 50 percent more rain per hour than local pipes, channels and culverts might be designed to drain.

“The data is startling, and it should be a wake-up call,” said Chad Berginnis, the executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, a nonprofit organization focused on flood risk....

The nation is set to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into new and improved roads, bridges and ports in the coming years under the bipartisan infrastructure plan that President Biden signed into law in 2021. First Street’s calculations suggest that many of these projects are being built to standards that are already out of date.

Matthew Eby, First Street’s executive director, said he hoped the new data could be used to make these investments more future-proof, “so that we don’t spend $1.2 trillion knowing that it’s wrong.”....

NOAA began publishing Atlas 14 in 2004, which means that any drains, culverts and storm-water basins built since then might potentially have been sized according to standards that no longer reflect Earth’s present climate. But plenty of America’s infrastructure was laid down even earlier, meaning it was designed to specifications that are probably even more obsolete, said Daniel B. Wright, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Certainly, updating Atlas 14 is something that needs to be done,” Dr. Wright said. “But the problem is huge, in the sense that there are trillions upon trillions of dollars of things that are based on horribly out-of-date information at this point.”

 

A quick (scientific) reminder of the path to the atomic bomb (and some thoughts about a certain movie coming)

All Knowing Google (Youtube submind) recommended this video to me on the weekend, and in light of the upcoming Oppenheimer movie, I thought it was a really interesting summary of the gradual (and then rapid) development of the science about nuclear fission as it suddenly matured just before the start of World War 2:

 

 

I didn't know that the "dangerous science" thing was such a continuing Curie family business.  

As for Oppenheimer:  I have found the trailers for it oddly unengaging, and the actor playing the title character has a peculiar, glassy stare which I find off putting.   Suitable for scientific genius, perhaps, but still a worry if you want to be engaged with a character.

While I have enjoyed some Nolan films, his script writing can be terrible (I thought Interstellar was shockingly bad, for example), and apparently this one he wrote (for the first time) in the first person.   So I have concerns about the script, and how it can manage to bring much tension to the question of "will this bomb cause a reaction that will end the world?" when we already know the answer.   Also, Nolan has been saying that he agrees the film is close to horror - and it has an American R rating - but if it is due to depictions of the horror of Hiroshima, for example, I'm not sure if audiences will feel it necessary to go there.

Anyway, I should get around to watching Tenet one day, too.

 

I'm not sure it proves the need at all...

Noticed this tweet this morning:

I again feel I have to apologise for being cynical on this issue - but doesn't the fact that there are 145 apparently successful aboriginal community led health services a strong sign that governments already understand the principle of the importance of aboriginal involvement in services to them?

The latest in conspiracy addled brains

John H - how do you manage to sometimes comment there and resist the urge to tell the host he's become a MAGA moron?   (I would ask the same of monty - if he visits here sometimes?)

Do I, or do I not, wish to be an "AI ghost"?

Part of me - probably the vanity part - thinks it would be cool if my descendants (assuming there are any - grandchildren are never a certainty these days) wanted to see me as an AI ghost.   But, yeah, still a bit creepy, too:

We’re on the cusp of technology that will at last let you live forever. You’ll be more beautiful, too, and stay young. It will make you kinder, if you prefer. And would you like to speak Finnish, as well?

Of course, you won’t be you, really, but an AI version. Sorry, it’ll just be friends and family enjoying those eternal good looks.

Columnist Bina Venkataraman knows this is coming because it’s already here, at least for deepfake performances from long-dead celebrities. But the tech is getting better every day, and soon it will be reanimating Grandpa alongside Elvis.

So, Bina writes, we should prepare: “At a minimum, consider putting your wishes regarding an AI avatar into your will.”

 The first link, by the way, is a gift link.  The one in the quote might be behind the paywall.

Lasers for internet

I think I posted about this once before, but if I did, it is obviously still an idea being advanced:

Optical data communications lasers can transmit several tens of terabits per second, despite a huge amount of disruptive air turbulence. ETH Zurich scientists and their European partners demonstrated this capacity with lasers between the mountain peak, Jungfraujoch, and the city of Bern in Switzerland. This will soon eliminate the necessity of expensive deep-sea cables.  ....

The backbone of the internet is formed by a dense network of fiber-optic cables, each of which transports up to more than 100 terabits of data per second (1 terabit = 10¹² digital 1/0 signals) between the network nodes. The connections between continents take place via deep sea networks—which is an enormous expense: a single cable across the Atlantic requires an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. TeleGeography, a specialized consulting firm, announced that there currently are 530 active undersea cables—and that number is on the rise.

Soon, however, this expense may drop substantially. Scientists at ETH Zurich, working together with partners from the space industry, have demonstrated terabit optical data transmission through the air in a European Horizon 2020 project. In the future, this will enable much more cost‑effective and much faster backbone connections via near-earth satellite constellations. Their work is published in the journal Light: Science & Applications.

The downside:  yet more satellites cluttering up near Earth orbit.

Things improved a lot over 100 years

From a brief book note on the Nature website:

Ending Epidemics

Richard Conniff MIT Press (2023)

In 1900, one in three people died before the age of five. By 2000, this death rate was down to one in 27, and one in 100 in wealthy countries. This astonishing revolution has attracted surprisingly little attention, notes Richard Conniff. Instead, there is a “stubborn, stupid sense that we have somehow become invulnerable” — epitomized by opposition to vaccines. Conniff’s highly readable history of epidemic diseases and vaccinologists, from the first description of bacteria in 1676 to the eradication of smallpox in 1978, combats this worrying vulnerability.

 

On the collaborative nature of film making

An interesting article here from NYT about the guy who has worked for years with Wes Anderson as his key grip (responsible for making the camera move.)

It's a bit of a lesson in how behind the scenes collaboration is so important in getting any distinctive looking film made.

   

The role of trust in society

With the issue of organised (or disorganised) lawlessness gaining more and more publicity in places as diverse as San Francisco and Alice Springs - and a common realisation that if it is too widespread, you can't easily arrest your way out of the problem of a large scale civil disobedience of laws we used to assume everyone people would value - I have been waiting for some serious voices to be raised about the matter of trust (and justice) in society.   

But it seems no one wants to talk about it.

And given that there is a large component of race politics involved, I would think we need the involvement of multicultural leadership on the issue.   

This is what worries me about the rhetoric around the Voice to Parliament referendum.  Some on the "pro" side (and the more radical indigenous side which says "no" because it is not empowering enough) are setting up for a very corrosive message against trust in this society if the referendum fails.   This seems to me to be exactly the wrong messaging needed right now.

 

 

Schiff does well

From one report about failed investigator Durham's appearance before committee yesterday:

In a subsequent exchange with Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), Durham misled the committee about another key element of the Trump-Russia scandal. McClintock observed that the “central charge in the Russia collusion hoax was that Trump campaign operatives were in contact with Russian intelligence sources.”

Replying to that remark, Durham said, “There was no such evidence.”

But when Schiff got to question him, this is how it went:

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: Mr. Durham, just so people remember what this is all about, let me ask you. The Mueller investigation revealed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a sweeping and systemic fashion, correct?

SPECIAL COUNSEL JOHN DURHAM: That is correct.

SCHIFF: And Russia did so through a social media campaign that favored Donald Trump and disparaged Hillary Clinton, correct?

DURHAM: The report says yes.

SCHIFF: Mueller found that a Russian intelligence service hacked computers associated with the Clinton campaign and then released the stolen documents publicly. Is that right?

DURHAM: That report speaks for itself as well.

SCHIFF: Mueller also reported that though he could not establish the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, he also said, quote, "a statement that the investigation did not establish certain facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts," and also appears in the report, doesn’t it?

DURHAM: There is language to that effect, yes.

SCHIFF: In fact, you cited that very statement in your own report, did you not, as a way of distinguishing between proof beyond a reasonable doubt and evidence that falls short of proof beyond a reasonable doubt?

DURHAM: Correct.

SCHIFF: As an illustration of this, both Mueller and congressional investigations found that Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort was secretly meeting with an operative linked to Russian intelligence named Konstantin Kilimnik, correct?

DURHAM: That is my understanding, yes.

SCHIFF: And that Manafort, well, chairman of the Trump campaign, gave that Russian intelligence operative the campaign's internal polling data. Correct?

DURHAM: That's what I’ve read in the news. Yes.

SCHIFF: And that Manafort provided this information to Russian intelligence while Russian intelligence was engaged in that social media campaign and the release of stolen documents to help the Trump campaign, correct?

DURHAM: You may be getting beyond the depth of my knowledge, but.

SCHIFF: Well, let me say very simply. While Manafort, the campaign chairman for Donald Trump, was giving this Russian intelligence officer internal campaign polling data, Russian intelligence was helping the Trump campaign, weren’t they?

DURHAM: I don’t know that.

SCHIFF: You really don’t know those very basic facts of the investigation?

DURHAM: I know the general facts, yes. Do I know that particular fact myself? No. I mean, I know that I’ve read that in the media.

SCHIFF: Anywhere, Mr. Durham, that Mueller and congressional investigations also revealed that Don Jr. was informed that a Russian official was offering the Trump campaign, quote, "very high level and sensitive information," unquote, "that would be incriminating of Hillary Clinton was part of," quote, "Russia and its government support of Mr. Trump." Are you aware of that?

DURHAM: Sure, people get phone calls all the time from individuals who claim to have information like that.

SCHIFF: Really? The son of a presidential candidate gets calls all the time from a foreign government offering dirt on their important opponent. Is that what you’re saying?

DURHAM: I don't think that’s so unique in your experience.

SCHIFF: So you have other instances of the Russian government offering dirt on a presidential candidate to the presidential candidate's son, si that what you’re saying?

DURHAM: Would you repeat the question?

SCHIFF: You said that it’s not uncommon to get offers of help from a hostile foreign government to a presidential campaign directed at the president's son. You really stand by that, Mr. Durham?

DURHAM: I'm saying that people make phone calls making claims all the time, that you may have experienced.

SCHIFF: Are you really trying to diminish the significance of what happened here and the secret meeting that the president's son set up in Trump Tower to receive that incriminating information and trying to diminish the significant significance of that, Mr. Durham?

DURHAM: I'm not trying to diminish it at all, but I think the more complete story is that they met and it was a ruse and they didn’t talk about Mrs. Clinton.

SCHIFF: And you think it's insignificant that he had a secret meeting with a Russian delegation for the purpose of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton? And the only disappointment expressed in the meeting was that the dirt they got wasn't better. You don’t think that’s significant?

DURHAM: I don’t think that that was a well-advised thing to do.

SCHIFF: Oh, not well advised. All right. Well, that’s the understatement of the year. So you think it’s perfectly appropriate or maybe just ill-advised for a presidential campaign to secretly meet with a Russian delegation to get dirt on their opponent? You would merely say that’s inadvisable?

DURHAM: If you’re asking me what I'd do and I hope I wouldn’t do it, but it was not illegal, was it? It was stupid, foolish, ill advised.

SCHIFF: Well, it is illegal to conspire to get incriminating opposition research from a hostile government that is of financial value to a campaign. Wouldn’t that violate campaign laws?

DURHAM: I don’t know. I don’t know all those facts to be true.

SCHIFF: Well, your report. Mr. Durham doesn’t dispute anything Mueller found. Did it?

DURHAM: No. Our object. Our aim was not to dispute Director Mahler. I have the greatest regard, high regard for Director Mueller. He's a patriot.

SCHIFF: We only distinguish between his investigation and yours is he refused to bring charges where he couldn’t prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And you did? I yield back.

Runs in the family

Well, when I say "runs in the family", at least his uncles.  (I haven't bothered Googling yet whether his Dad is known to have had affairs.  It would hardly be surprising if there is at least one or two - I more or less assume it for any politician on any side in the 1960's.)   

Anyhow, isn't it funny that the Right wing Murdoch used to be happy to run this stuff against him 10 years ago, but now that he's seen as a conspiracy sprouting "spoiler" asset to the MAGA crowd, are they giving him better coverage?:

RFK’s sex diary: His secret journal of affairs

Can safely predict this is one way I'm not going to die

Surely I can't be alone in not knowing (or forgetting?) that tourist trips to more than 3 km under the Atlantic were available?  

Actually, looking at the company's website, it seems they don't exactly sell it as a "tourist trip":

Expeditions will be conducted respectfully and in accordance with NOAA Guidelines for Research Exploration and Salvage of RMS Titanic [Docket No. 000526158–1016–02], and comply with UNESCO guidelines for the preservation of underwater world heritage sites.

Qualified explorers have the opportunity to join the expedition as Mission Specialist crewmembers whose Training and Mission Support Fees underwrite the mission, the participation of the science team, and their own training. Each team of 6 Mission Specialists will join the expedition for a 10-day mission (8 Days at Sea). The entire expedition is comprised of 5 mission legs.

Or is there another tourist venture apart from that?

Anyway, I can't imagine anything worse than being in a tiny, potentially malfunctioning sub at the bottom of the ocean.   Somehow, suffocating in space seems a more attractive option, although I'm not entirely sure why...

A pretty stunning examination of oddball psychology

As it happens, I heard this Background Briefing radio documentary yesterday about a stunningly unprofessional approach taken by a psychologist doing "family therapy".   I was appalled at what it revealed.

What's worse, she is one of the scores of psychologists around Australia who write key reports for the Family Court in child disputes. 

I can safely predict that there will be scores of lawyers, too, who will feel that their doubts about the whole system being so swayed by (allegedly) objective psychologists now has some well publicised  vindication.  (Not that all psychologists are as bad as this one, of course; and really, it is hard to say what alternative system could be implemented.   Perhaps a panel of "experts", with a broader range of life experience than  psychologists?)