I do wonder if it's the only thing that has stopped it being nuked, though

 

I know prominence given to deaths is subject to all sorts of odd influences, but still...

...I am a bit bothered when media seems to be giving bigger prominence to Matthew Perry's unexpected death than to the equally unexpected HURRICANE THAT INTENSIFIED RAPIDLY TO BECOME INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS AS IT SMASHED INTO A MAJOR MEXICAN CITY AND HAS KILLED AT LEAST 39 PEOPLE.

From Science:

Early Wednesday morning, Hurricane Otis became the strongest storm in recorded history to strike the Pacific coast of Mexico. The Category 5 hurricane made landfall near Acapulco, where its heavy rain and 265-kilometer-per-hour (kph) winds unleashed massive landslides and knocked out power lines, killing at least 2 dozen people and causing widespread devastation.

But just 2 days earlier, meteorologists doubted whether Otis—then a tropical storm—would even achieve hurricane status. Forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center expected the storm to undergo “gradual strengthening,” with most computer models predicting maximum wind speeds of about 100 kph. Instead, as Otis careened toward Mexico’s coastline, its winds increased by 180 kph in 24 hours, a record amount of “rapid intensification.”

So many books...

It was only via a Tweet today that I learnt about Anna's Archive.

It's this:

About

Anna’s Archive is a non-profit project with two goals:

1. Preservation: Backing up all knowledge and culture of humanity.
2. Access: Making this knowledge and culture available to anyone in the world.

Preservation

We preserve books, papers, comics, magazines, and more, by bringing these materials from various shadow libraries together in one place. All this data is preserved forever by making it easy to duplicate it in bulk, resulting in many copies around the world. This wide distribution, combined with open-source code, also makes our website resilient to takedowns. Learn more about our datasets.

We estimate that we have preserved about 5% of the world’s books.

Access

We work with partners to make our collections easily and freely accessible to anyone. We believe that everyone has a right to the collective wisdom of humanity. And not at the expense of authors.

I have tried it to find something I thought pretty esoteric (1960's juvenile science fiction partly set in Australia which I read as a child, but which is little known now) and all of the books were there.

I also tried looking for a recent book on Pure Land Buddhism, and it was there!

I may (or may not) have downloaded the latter, and I may (or may not) have found that it was easy and quick.

I am impressed.

 

 

Final thoughts on Graham Greene

Looking back at this open-to-the-world diary, I see that I have read more Graham Greene than I had remembered.  I also started one of his key novels - The Power and The Glory - more than a year ago, and after losing interest, picked it up again a month or so ago, and have been slowly finishing it.

It's odd, though, that I started reading him with a couple of his later, less well know, novels, and liked them.  Yet the more I have read his best known works, especially the very overtly Catholic ones, the less I have come to enjoy him.

My basic problem is that, in his most famous early books, while often clearly "Catholic" in influence or theme,  his views about the religion don't often ring particularly true, or profound, to me.   His interest in the religion (since I don't know that he actively practised it for long), at least in his middle aged years, seems so very idiosyncratic and muddled (as I suppose befits someone who suffered poor mental health much of his life), that I don't feel he is providing anything much in the way of useful Catholic insight.   Yet I felt in his somewhat later novel A Burnt Out Case he had a more normal and sympathetic religious take, from a jaded Catholic point of view.  

In other words, it seems to me that when he was trying his hardest to "write Catholic", the less convincing I find him.  

I think this is particularly clear when he is compared to Evelyn Waugh.  In reading his books, I always felt that the Catholic influence was clear in an orthodox and comprehensible way, despite the author also being a bit of a jerk in real life.  (No where near as big a jerk as Greene, though.)

I also got a feeling in some parts of The Power and The Glory that Greene was showing a deep lack of empathy to suffering, be it human or animal.   I seem to recall reading his brief account of a pet dog of his dying after being taken on an exhausting hike, and thought it sounded like he had a distinct lack of empathy.  And this novel has a particularly pathetic scene of dog suffering, too.  Given the widespread view now that dangerous men usually have no sense of empathy with animals, it does make me wonder whether if people meeting Greene in real life ever felt like they were perhaps dealing with a borderline psychopath.

Maybe that's harsh, given the incredible number of women who were happy to sleep with him.  (Although, as noted in my previous posts, a lot of them were prostitutes!)   

Anyway, many years ago I bought (second hand) two volumes of the very famous Greene biography (the author of which I forget now), but I feel less inclined to ever get stuck into those.   Or maybe there is a sort of perverse enjoyment in reading in great detail about what a peculiar man he was?

Anyway, I don't think I will try any more of his novels.            

Movie problem noted

Hey, I wasn't wrong:  the Guardian notes that box office for the latest Mission Impossible movie was underwhelming, despite heaps of critical praise.  (A bit too much praise, in my opinion.)   

As the article notes, one obvious thing they can do for the next (final) movie would be this:

...as much as that video of Tom Cruise jumping off a motorbike on a mountain cheered us all up in the depths of Covid, there might also be a lesson to learn here. Why on earth would any film choose to lead with repeated shots of the film’s biggest stunt being executed? By the time the actual film came out, everyone assumed that they’d already seen the best bit for free on YouTube. Next time, Mission: Impossible should try saving some excitement for the actual film.

Yes, we were all so familiar with the stunt by the time we were watching it in the cinema, it felt anti-climatic.  (We also knew, from the "making of" nature of the publicity, that there was CGI involved in the version on the screen - to hide the fact that he was riding up a ramp.)   

The final one should be shorter, punchier, and (ideally, but I know it won't happen) not be directed by McQuarrie.

 

Points noted

Also, hasn't Anwar Ibrahim been a major disappointment, even allowing for the fact that Malaysian politics is a complete mess:

Thousands rallied in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday in support of Palestine, following smaller-scale protests across the country in recent days. It was organised by local groups Viva Palestina Malaysia (VPM) and MyCare, who have been behind humanitarian assistance from Malaysia, Al Jazeera reports. Huge turnout, but a bit of scandal involved — attendees say they were banned from using placards attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden (maybe reasonable, I’ve seen some stuff that is yeesh) as well as chanting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ or ‘God Is Great,’ which is a stretch in my opinion. You can’t tell people to abandon a well-known, frequently used phrase because it’s misunderstood elsewhere.    

No such reports, as of yet at least, from a government-arranged demonstration last night in Kuala Lumpur. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim told about 19,000 people that Malaysia won’t be backing down: “It's a level of insanity to allow people to be butchered, babies to be killed, hospitals to be bombed, and schools to be destroyed... it's the height of barbarism in this world … We are with the Palestinian people yesterday, today and tomorrow” he told the crowd, as per Reuters.

In Catholic news...

WARSAW: A Polish bishop, whose diocese was reportedly the scene of a sex party organised by priests at which Polish media say a male prostitute collapsed after taking erectile dysfunction pills, has resigned, the Vatican said on Tuesday (Oct 24).

The statement did not give a reason for the resignation of Bishop Grzegorz Kaszak, saying only that the pope had accepted it.

Was he (the bishop) invited? 

Incidentally, this is something I would expect more from Western Europe, not stick-in-the-mud Poland.

Some psychology studies sound fun

This article at PhysOrg got my attention:

Inducing auditory hallucinations in a lab environment without using drugs

It all involves a poke in the back, which makes people start to sense a person is behind them, which leads to hearing a voice too (!).

The human imagination is indeed very powerful, it seems.

Yep, "decolonising" is (relatively suddenly?) all over the place

I know that this (more or less underground?) revival of Leftist postmodernism within parts of academia has been going on for a number of years, but what with the surge of "decolonisation" talk as a result of the Voice referendum, and the Middle East conflict, it really seems to be out in the open now: 

Glass data storage still seems to be a thing

I see that I posted about storing data on quartz, effectively forever, on quartz back in 2014.

It seems that Microsoft is looking into optical storage on glass in a major way:

 

As people in the comments following the video are noting, it makes Kubrick look very prescient, what with HAL's main data bank looking like this:

Random observations

*   I think Biden is doing a reasonable job in terms of response to the Middle East crisis.  I have been wondering for many months, though, about why he looks so stiff when walking.  I mean, he still rides a bike, I think, and looks younger than his age when he does so.  But watching him walk, he looks older.   In any event, whatever you think of him, and whatever (perhaps very strong) doubts you have about his running again because of age optics, surely if you have half a brain you would have to agree that we can at least give thanks that Trump and his weirdo crew are not the ones making difficult decisions at this time.

*  The whole Middle East situation is, though, (and obviously), depressing.  

*  Elon Musk seems to have gone relatively quiet, which is good.

*  I have a holiday coming up.   Doing enough work before I go to cover the cost of it is worrying!

*  I maintain my personal theory that a lot of the "food insecurity" crisis (at least in Australia) is caused by people who refuse to adjust their diet and purchases to take into account the continual variation in  market prices.   I mean, I shop for protein, fruit and vegetables for a few meals usually once a week, and simply don't buy certain vegetables when they are ridiculously expensive.   But different things are cheap at different times of the year.  This spring, strawberries and blueberries, in particular, have been really cheap for a good month.  Capsicum were really cheap for a few weeks too - as were eggplant, and (as usual in spring) asparagus.  Cans of tomatoes or chick peas can be on special for $1.   And rice - really, do Australians eat enough rice?  It goes such a long way in making a filling meal.  

I don't know:  maybe the national broadcaster needs to do a TV show devoted to showing dumb people what's cheap this week, and how to make it into a good and filling meal?

   

Stimulating

Surgery-free brain stimulation could provide new treatment for dementia

New Mexico seems an oddball place

I can't get my head around why prosecutors are so keen to see Alec Baldwin suffer:

Special prosecutors say they plan to present the New Mexico Grand Jury with a criminal case against Alec Baldwin in the fatal shooting of the cinematographer on the movie set of Rust.

Even if he pulled the trigger (which seems to be what the "new evidence" relating to the gun must be about), why would a jury blame a guy who was obviously relying on the person he employed to provide a safe gun to use?  I mean, if the armourer was some unqualified relative, or something, I could understand it, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Some distraction needed

Man, the news is pretty depressing at the moment, so a few videos in distraction...

First, this one by Arvin Ash is not about anything new, but it's just a good and clear explanation of how new particles are "discovered", but not actually seen, by particle accelerators:

 

Second, I knew that Mt Fuji had accommodation huts way up on the side of the mountain, at which the typical thing is to eat some dinner, get a bit of a sleep, and then continue to the top in time for sunrise. But until I watched the Chris Broad video about his recent ascent, I had no idea that the accommodation was so large, or for that matter, that there was so much built right on the top of the mountain, overlooking the crater. It's pretty amazing, really, and I am unclear as to how all the building material has made its way up there: 

 

And finally: I am surprised to learn that Saudi Arabia has actually started some significant looking excavation work for the absolutely nutty "NEOM" city - "the Line" or whatever it's called.

I also learnt from this video that the country is building a ski resort on top of mountains where it barely snows! 

I can imagine how ecstatic that the architects and engineers must be - money flowing like water to them to draw up the most grandiose of futuristic schemes, but likely confident that they don't have to worry too much about the necessary construction details, given the very high prospects of the most complicated parts never being built.  

Oh dear

Noticed on Twitter, the non-binary aboriginal Professor (University of Sunshine Coast) who is currently in the USA doing stuff:

But "listening" means also making sure Sandy's feelings are OK, apparently:

 

Oh, and if you are wondering how the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University (with which O'Sullivan has a lot of connection) are taking the loss, the answer is "not well".

The head of  the Department, Bronwyn Carlson, was recently funded by the Winston Churchill Trust to do this project:

To investigate community approaches to rethinking colonial commemorations and their wider impacts

The description:

Every year protests against colonial commemorations are led by Indigenous peoples. There are numerous cases where communities have worked together to rectify commemorations which often represent violent histories, in the hope to reconcile the past and imagine a shared future. Little is known about the journeys undertaken for such efforts, and what the wider impacts might be. This project will investigate case studies in New Zealand, USA, Canada and Norway, noting that local-level efforts have the potential for significant global benefit. The focus will be on the approaches taken by these communities, the challenges and lessons learnt, and resulting changes for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous futures.

Sounds like there might be travel for Carlson for her to write a report that will achieve nothing of significance, to be perfectly honest.

Update:   More Sandy:

Sandy's work at the moment:

Laptop's back

It's back, but with an undiagnosed understanding of what happened.

And the loss of an Outlook .pst file which means a loss of about a year's worth of emails, although they will be mixed up in the inbox of another computer in the office.  Inconvenient.

Anyway, I will finally be migrating to Exchange, which I understand means email history will never be at risk again.

 

Computer issue

For the first ever, in about 27 years of running my own business, I have had a computer crash in such a way that it seems to be preventing important data recovery off the drive.  Some data has been recovered, but a really useful part of what's on there is proving difficult to retrieve.

This problem also seems related to a windows update.  

This is...disappointing.  I have had a great run of not having unexpected crashes.  I did have a virus problem once, but it wasn't the worst kind.  

Oh well.

Get a grip (and let's try to make the "practical and reasonable No" case)

Gee, how long will it take before we stop having to watch heads explode in columns and columns of over-wrought commentary on the (presumed) failure of the referendum before we can find any (even semi-prominent) commentator from the press gallery or the entertainment world (or academia - haha, just kidding) to make the following points:

*   It was inherent in the proposal that a new level of bureaucratic organisation with an unknown price tag would be inserted into the already crowded field of who governments could listen in terms of policy advice on indigenous matters.   What guarantee could anyone give that this would alter in any significant way the current outcomes?   

*  The argument that it "could do no harm" was spurious as it meant supporting an open ticket for the diversion of many millions of dollars every year in expenditure on advisory commissioners and support staff, a cost especially hard to justify when the proposal was that governments were not bound to act on its advice anyway, and could prefer the recommendation of already existing groups.     To argue that it was groundbreaking, and vital, and at the same time say that it was "safe" for everyone to endorse because it couldn't bind government anyway was inherently contradictory.

*  This was not the only way a constitutional right to involvement in government could have been proposed -  see New Zealand, for example - and while the Yes campaign was based on the idea that it was the minimalist version most likely to succeed, if that turns out to be wrong, it should be taken more as a  lesson of not putting all your eggs in one basket, rather than arguing Australians are racist and unreasonable and reject all ideas regarding recognition of aboriginal input in government policy.    (Incidentally, at least a guaranteed number of indigenous seats within government - perhaps within the Senate? - would be something with a clear and limited cost.)

*   Polling, and reporting, showed that the proposal was likely supported by a majority, but not an overwhelming one, of the "grass roots" indigenous people.   Surely that should cause hesitation in the overblown condemnation of all of those on the "No" side?

*   Indigenous disadvantage and issues are inherently hard to solve - governments simply can't and won't spend unlimited amounts of money, especially for services in the remotest areas.   Nor can they force health or other staff to work in remote areas, especially if they face danger to their personal safety and are not respected if mistakes are made.   The "Yes" campaign made a pretence of two issues - that governments had never been "listening" or trying to engage at community level to solve problems (demonstrably false for anyone with Google - and something illustrated by a recent string of reports about programs where community engagement, and government support, has shown good outcomes); and that inserting an advisory body in Canberra would "turn it around".    

*   None of this is to say that the "No" campaign by the Coalition was in any way admirable - it was in reality pretty cynical and disreputable.   But in fact, the way polling is indicating that the Coalition is not significantly benefitting from the "success" of their campaign likely means that some significant number of the "No" voters were not particularly swayed by the Coalition's efforts.   In other words - maybe reasonable people had reasonable reasons for not supporting this referendum regardless of wrong or stupid or racist statements made by some on the "No" side.

Claim and counterclaim

I think McGorry as a psychiatrist should actually be ashamed of putting out that messaging.

Gaza - limited options

A short piece at the Jerusalem Post by a former editor argues that Israel has no choice but to send ground forces into Gaza, despite the undoubted losses the army will suffer.

What I don't really know in all the commentary swirling around is this:   how feasible is it to remove Hamas from Gaza?   I don't know anything about how they are organised, the actual level of popular support within Gaza, and even the answer to the question - where did all those missiles come from, anyway?