Conservative Catholic culture wars

It was remiss of me to not post about two recent events of note:

1.    That crank, the (former) former gay, self-promoting, conservative (Trad?) US Catholic Michael Voris has resigned/been sacked from his own organisation for some unspecified moral impropriety which remains undisclosed, but if you want a fast way to lose money, put it on "nothing to do with gay sex".  Here's my 2013 post in which I criticised him and his ilk - it reminded me that I hadn't looked up that Father Z character for a long time too.  He's still blogging, I see.  (I think he's not allowed to do much within the church, so he has a lot of time on his hands?)   

Look, the state of the American Catholic church with its willingness to play footsy with Trump is still dire.  Pew reported in 2021:

White Catholics, meanwhile, follow yet another pattern. About six-in-ten White Catholics who attend Mass monthly or more often (63%) supported Trump in the 2020 election, while 36% supported Biden. Less frequent Mass attenders expressed less support for Trump (53%) and more support for Biden (47%).

 But at least there is now some pushback from the Pope himself.

I could be wrong, but my impression overall is that the Trad/conservative Catholic Right has peaked in influence in the US and the West generally.  That's a good thing, in my opinion.  

However:

2.    The recent kerfuffle about "blessing gay couples" shows that it's not as if the rest of the Church really has any idea where it is going, and continues to get tied up on not knowing how to handle the issue of sex and sexuality.   Pope Francis does seem to delight in making statements that sound as if they are sympathetic to a change in attitude, while issuing instructions that don't really make any technical difference at all.   Look at the convoluted explanation given at the Vatican News website about the thinking behind allowing priests to give a spontaneous blessing to a gay couple:

The third part of the Declaration (paragraphs 31-41) opens then to the possibility of these blessings that represent a sign for those who “recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of his help—do not claim a legitimation of their own status, but who beg that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy Spirit” (par. 31).

These blessings should not necessarily become the norm, the Statement notes, but entrusted to “a practical discernment in particular circumstances” (par. 37).

Although the couple is blessed but not the union, the Declaration notes that what is blessed is the legitimate relationship between the two people: in “a brief prayer preceding this spontaneous blessing, the ordained minister could ask that the individuals have peace, health, a spirit of patience, dialogue, and mutual assistance—but also God’s light and strength to be able to fulfill his will completely” (par. 38).

So - it's OK to bless the "legitimate" aspects of the relationship, while always bearing in mind that there is no way the relationship status can be "legitimised" per se.   Rather, it needs to be healed.

I think it fair to say that gay couples asking for a blessing are not wanting it to be one which conveys the message that their relationship is fundamentally flawed and against God's will - yet really, that is what is still what the Pope is at pains to retain.   

Anyway,  the Church will continue to be full of contradiction and tension on this, and teachings which  most laity won't follow, and I don't really know the way to resolve it all, short of something which would cause a permanent structural fracturing. 

Ghostly interest returns, and what is their significance?

Good thing I read The Guardian, otherwise I would have no idea that (according to one person, at least), discussion of ghostly experiences is in vogue again, probably due to a podcast series.   (In fact I had been meaning to comment here in recent months that I really miss reading about any good, spooky, real life stories of ghosts or similar experiences.  It seemed to me that interest in the supernatural was in fact at a particular low point, perhaps crowded out by some pretty stupid and gullible stuff on UFOs that has been dominating Twitter/X.)

From The Guardian article in question:

Everybody seems to be talking about ghosts right now. I turn up to dinners with friends, we’re talking about ghosts. I sit in the office, the conversation is dominated by ghosts again. I’m scrolling through Facebook groups and reading ghost stories that I then try to tell my boyfriend about (he ignores me). It feels as if ghosts are suddenly having a moment, a strange little resurgence into the mainstream. I think ghosts may be in vogue.

As for how and why ghosts have started to creep into polite conversation, there is a clear culprit. A few months ago the Amazon-owned podcast network Wondery published Ghost Story, a seven-part series hosted by the journalist Tristan Redman. Ghost Story focuses on a murder that occurred two generations ago in Redman’s wife’s family and, by absolute coincidence, took place in the house next door to where Redman grew up.

Redman details unnerving and inexplicable experiences that he had in his childhood bedroom and explains that his investigation into his wife’s family story was launched by news that two families who had lived successively in the house after his own family moved out had also experienced similar – seemingly paranormal – activity.

Apparently Redman tries to take a rational approach to it all and is all the more convincing because of that.   Certainly sounds like something that I should listen to.

The article writer then considers generally why ghosts have appeal:

Stress can increase our awareness of the little bumps and quirks of life that we may have previously walked past without a second thought. And of course it is entirely possible that talking about ghosts with friends primes us to pay attention to the dark corners of our apartments that previously felt perfectly comfortable and didn’t have to contain malevolent spirits or anything. This could be a rather self-perpetuating cycle.

But it’s also fair to say that telling ghost stories can be a simple comfort and form of escapism that we shouldn’t completely denounce. After all, many of us grew up in cultures where ghosts were part of the spiritual landscape and, in the vast universe of bizarre things to believe in, ghosts have to be among the most benign and least politically bothersome. They don’t lend themselves particularly well to the construction of conspiracy theories, they don’t have any troubling racist undertones and they’re not going to lead people to attempt an insurrection at the Capitol Building any time soon.

We should always remain vigilant about the emergence of pseudoscience and perhaps Carl Sagan would argue that even humouring ghost stories is a slippery slope towards a total collapse of scientific knowledge. But I think we can all agree that people can be much more discerning than that and, in the troubling year of 2023, maybe we all deserve a few ghost stories, as a treat.

Fair enough, I guess.

But I think it underplays the actual significance that any proof of a supernatural realm would entail.

I mean, I have always felt that given the way the scientific materialist view of the world has no explanatory framework at all for the existence of supernatural events, whether they be ESP, psychokinesis, reincarnation or an un-embodied entity (be it poltergeist or someone's soul), this makes any credible evidence that anything paranormal or supernatural exists incredibly significant.  It would blow a gigantic hole in the current scientific (and psychological?) way of understanding the universe.

I mean, the absolute most that science can try to squeeze into its current framework is retro-causation and the weird nature of time as possible explanation of what might otherwise be considered ghostly events.   (See the movie Interstellar - that aspect was the only thing I thought somewhat interesting and  novel in that grossly over-rated film.)

Because it (scientific materialism) has no framework at all for explaining how a personality could survive death and live in an invisible world and sometimes appear within ours (the multiverse ideas really don't allow it either - given their absolute quarantining of the different universes), this is actually a great incentive to pay attention to any evidence of ghosts.   And while an Occam's Razor approach to personal anecdotes (to conclude that a ghost story is more likely an invention or mistake than something "real") is generally very wise, I hate the way that it means (for many people) that they simply refuse to believe that there could ever be anything to personal experiences that seem inexplicable without something supernatural.  

I did try explaining this in a conversation with an old (atheist) girlfriend decades ago, and her response was "well, if ever there was proof of life after death, it still wouldn't be supernatural - it would just mean that there is a part of nature that we didn't realise was there.  So it still doesn't mean that there's a God or anything."    While this is technically true, especially on the point of God (see Buddhism), this still struck me as a massive attempt at "cope" for how mindblowing proof disembodied personalities should be for the scientific materialist.

I have the feeling I may have made a similar explanation to this before, but perhaps in not as much detail.   But it is why any credible sounding story of a paranormal or supernatural event gives me a bit of a thrill to this day, and why I feel somewhat disappointed when it seems there that parapsychology had hit a dead end in terms of convincing proof of anything that can't fit into the current paradigms.

Now, to find that podcast....

 

Various thoughts, sacred and profane, I guess you could say

*   I've finally gotten used to reading at length on a tablet - specifically my cheapo Lenovo 10.6 inch model that I've had for a year - and I see now that you can pick one up for $80 less than when I bought it.  (Now costs $247.)   The thing that has made a small but significant difference was downloading books in .epub format and reading them on the Google Play Books app.  (I've previously only tried reading .pdf format books on various .pdf reader apps - it was OK, but the Play Books app with an .epub book just works so well, especially if reading a book full of footnotes.)   And a 10.6 inch screen tablet is just the right weight and size for single page reading.  I've never been interested in a Kindle due to the inadequate screen size.  

*  So, what have I been reading?   I finished the (admittedly short) book on Pure Land Buddhism;  had a quick scan through "No Self - No Problem" (about neuroscience "confirming" Buddhist ideas of "no self") but it felt a bit dated, even though it is only from 2018;  and have been reading large slabs of "Nietzsche and Buddhist Philosophy" - which was found via a question to an AI search engine which took me to a forum on Buddhism and someone who recommended it.   It is pretty interesting, to be honest, despite my long term scepticism of paying much attention to Nietzsche's ramblings.  

*  There are various threads from this recent reading (and Youtube viewing) swirling around my brain, and I feel the need to try to "pin down" some of it by compiling a long essay/post for it to fit together.   But there's always a distraction around the corner.  This sense of stumbling around towards an important key insight has only been going on for about 40 years, though, so obviously I don't believe in hurrying such things!  (It also reminds me a bit about reading Philip K Dick's VALIS trilogy back in the 1980's - was some insight that all made sense of Life, the Universe and Everything about to be revealed?  Not really, as it turned out, but the possibility of it was part of the fun...)

*  As for other things I did over the Christmas/New Year break - nothing much, as the weather here was storms (mostly) only interrupted by a couple of days of debilitating heatwave (37 or 38 degrees with high humidity.)   Fortunately, my part of Brisbane didn't get significant damage, although some suburbs not too far away did (from storm wind, mainly.)   I feel very sorry for the residents of Mount Tamborine, which is a very pretty part of the world but has suffered the worst destruction from which it looks likely to take many months to recover.  

*  The most enjoyable thing I watched on Netflix over the break - don't laugh, but it was the Puss in Boots - The Last Wish.   This entry in the Shrek universe, so to speak, got very good reviews at the time, and it really is well written and surprisingly mature in theme.   (I see someone called it a "meditation on the inevitability of death" - which I suppose it is, as told by fairy tale characters who end up feeling more "real" than most recent superhero characters!)  

*  Summer breaks are about the only time I watch any bits of quiz shows on TV, and I have to say that I don't understand how The Chase has lasted this long.  It certainly must be cheap to make, given that the impression from my occasional viewing is that they must only have to pay anything to a contestant once every year (or two?)    I don't understand the appeal of a show in which the chances of winning seem so remote.    

And as for the other puzzling quiz show - I have been meaning to say ever since it began last year that the advertisements for "The 1% Club" on channel 7 are pretty remarkable because of the way the host (a comedian, apparently) comes across as an old fashioned jerk with dated material.  (A lot about bad marriages, and general put downs that feel like slightly warmed over insult comedy of the Don Rickles variety.)   Surely this won't work, I thought.  Yet to my great surprise, I see from the latest advertisements that the show is a ratings hit, and it seems they aren't lying.   Now that I look into it more, I see that in fact the Daily Mail ran a story when the show first started about the host being derided on social media as having no charisma.  (For once I agree with that august journal.)  Yet people are watching it.

Maybe it's me - I've never enjoyed "serious" quiz shows, really (the ones with contestants playing for money);  but it still seems to me that they have become worse as the decades progress.   (I last derided one in 2016 - the truly pointless and dull Pointless.) 

And now when I Google the recent shows, I see a common theme - they are all Australia versions of shows originating in England.   Ah well, that fits in with the general degradation of all cultural content coming out of that country over the last 30 or 40 years.

      

 

 

New Year amusement

Andrew Mark Henry is the guy who makes great YouTube videos at Religion for Breakfast.

New City

While I knew that Augustine wrote about the City of God, I didn't realise that the Buddhists (or at least, the Pure Land ones) had the City of Doubt.  

Here's Charles B Jones, writing about the various theories behind the core Pure Land practice of reciting the name of Amitabha Buddha (nianfo), with this passage:

Still, as noted above, one’s frame of mind while doing the invocations mattered a great deal. No one ever proposed that the mere oral repetition of the name brought one to rebirth even if one did not believe in it. Faith seemed to matter, though many authors pointed out that the sūtras spoke of a place just outside the Pure Land called the “City of Doubt” (Ch.: yicheng) where those who performed nianfo without complete conviction went. From there they would see the Pure Land and develop enough faith to attain rebirth in it after a while. (There is, however, a story in the Chinese sources about a parrot who achieved rebirth simply because it imitated its owner’s nianfo.)

Recent tweets of note

I would greatly enjoy watching Timbo lose again.

Meanwhile:

I liked this response:

And as for Dr Jamal's bio, if my eyes could roll any further into the back of my head, I would be seeing my frontal lobes:

And yeah, in America:

He's right: the academic world of "anticolonialism" is the biggest nonsense since postmodernism, or is really just the same thing trying out new clothes. (I'm tempted to add "like a young transexual, whose views have also unknowing been derived from postmodernism".)

I mean, have a look at this tweet posted with approval by the same twit Noah mocked:

His bio:

This AI image generation game has some way to go...

Given my recent interest in Buddhism, I thought it would be fun to bring him into Christmas this year, so I asked Dall-E to make "photo realistic image of Santa Clause in an arm wrestle with Buddha", and got this (amongst other images):

 I'm not entirely sure why Buddha looks like Ricky Gervais a bit, so I had another go.  This time I specified that both Buddha and Santa Clause were to be photo realistic people.  That produced these horrors:

I think Buddha's suddenly got boobs - not a sentence written very often in the history of the planet, I'm sure.

Moving on, I tried asking Dall E to generate one showing Australian economist Sinclair Davidson trying to plant a kiss on Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart, but she's resisting.   (She's been in the news lately, and odd things cross my mind.)  The results were...less than satisfactory:

Clearly, Dall E has a generic idea of what an economist looks like, and receding hairline, suit and tie are key features.  It also has no idea who Gina Rinehart is, and what's worse, it didn't even follow my prompt that she was resisting.

Finally, I tried describing the apparent features of some of more disreputable types who hang out at Catallaxy (or New Catallaxy) blogs with a series of prompts which I won't repeat in order to not upset John :). (You're not who I was trying to target - you're reputable!)   But this is what I got:

I reckon JC would be pretty amused, actually.

The Chinese and ghosts

It's not exactly a Christmas-y topic, but this long recent article in The Guardian about modern China, funerals and fear of ghosts is an interesting read.    The author notes this:

In 2013, I began interviewing people who worked in China’s urban funerary sector and visited funeral homes and cemeteries in many Chinese cities, with a particular focus on Nanjing and Hong Kong. I found that funerary practice in urban China differed considerably from that in rural locales. In general, people in rural areas appeared less afraid of death, dead bodies and places of burial than people living in cities.

I was interested to read that the same tradition existed in China as Japan - that the deceased could be kept at home for a couple of days after death (now in refrigerated casket) while family visited and stayed overnight with them.   Nowadays, though, the room to keep the body company is a service often provided by funeral directors.   The article notes that in China urban residents in a nice new apartment block would be horrified if a family tried to do that in the building. 

There's also this:

Urban funerary professionals often told families how to counter the ghostly energy, considered “yin” in the yin/yang dichotomy, that permeates places like funeral homes and cemeteries. This yin energy can be countered with yang activities, including drinking warm, sugary liquids, going to places that brim with people, or performing a fire-stepping ritual. In Shanghai and other cities, places for stepping over fire are built into the exits of funeral homes.        

After observing a funeral in Nanjing, I watched a funeral professional light a small grass fire on a metal platform they had set up in the parking lot. The mourners all stepped over the fire before leaving to absorb yang energy and counter the yin that comes from spending time around the dead. I never saw such a ritual at a rural funeral.

 Huh.

Culture notes

The new Aquaman movie is getting some very bad reviews - and this, along with the fact that Marvel has also well and truly reached a creative dead end, would seem to indicate we really are at the end of a very long cycle of comic book derived movies which was fun at its peak, but has run its course*.   (See also the death of Star Wars as showing that franchises do have a natural life and simply cannot be extended forever.   Perhaps Bond is an exception of sorts?)

This feels like a Very Good Thing, except that it also makes me a bit nervous as to the seeming lack of  alternative ideas may be out there for studios to hang their hat on.     It's very hard to imagine what kind of new genre or innovation could arise to get people excited again.   I mean, there was something pretty unique about the cultural excitement that the first Star Wars movie generated, as a science fiction-y/fantasy world with a distinct look that felt new and full of promise.  And for quite a long time after that, just the look of new movies (not only in science fiction, but also the amazing clarity of new animation that the first Toy Story brought) was often a very significant drawcard of its own.   Now, computer generated visuals are too easily made and they simply don't draw a crowd on their own.

Still, one hopes there is a new "school" of creative types out there somewhere who have ideas worth committing to a big screen.

*  I also want to extend my criticism to the idea of the more adult orientated "graphic novels" as a story source for movies.  I have very rarely found movies based on such material to be very good, although it's hard to put my finger on why.   The latest example - which I didn't even realise until I read a review - was the Netflix movie "The Killer" with Michael Fassbender.   It got some very good reviews, but I found it dull,  very pretentious, and unconvincing.   (Apart from the ten minutes featuring Tilda Swinton.  I wish I could work out why I find her acting so magnetic, but it just is.)

Various defamatory thoughts

*   It's been kind of amusing looking sometimes at Twitter threads on the Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial, as the perception of how it was going seems to have always been entirely polarised between those who say "brilliantly for Bruce" and "brilliantly for the defendants".   Personally, I have no idea what the outcome will be, except to note that it would be a very weird one if he makes any substantial money out of it, given the amount of lies he told, and especially if he is convicted of a separate rape.   I mean, it's a pity that a decision is being made now, and not being delayed for another year or two, I reckon!

*  As for Linda Reynolds suing for defamation, and seeking a freeze order on Higgin's assets - she was an ineffective member of one of the worst recent governments, and doesn't seem to have ever taken to heart the saying "if you can't get stand the heat, get out of the kitchen".   Taking action like this hurts her long term reputation, rather than help.  Isn't that obvious?  

*  There seem to be quite a few comment pieces out in the US media providing arguments that the Supreme Court could plausibly use to overturn the Colorado court's decision that Trump can't run, and as such, I have my doubts that it will stand.   But who knows?  I mean, one columnist in National Review, who argues that the decision is wrong, still links to another commentator (who he respects) who has written that it is correct.  

*  Yeah, who exactly came up with this "gravy day" thing to celebrate the imaginary national fondness for a Paul Kelly song that I hadn't even heard of until a few years ago when someone on the ABC started talking about it?  Oh, SBS says someone on Twitter seems partly responsible:

A popular parody account called The Gravy Man on social media platform X is thought to have helped popularise the day. Since 2015, it has posted sweary updates about collecting royalties for the song and other memes about it.  

I do get the impression there is a bit of a backlash going on about this, and not just because he is now in pro-Palestinian bad books because he appeared with Deb Conway.   C'est la vie.

* It's pleasing to see that Rudy seems to have no hope of avoiding making very large payouts to the women whose lives he upturned.  

Why do Americans seems particularly prone to jumping on dubious health solutions?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I get the impression that Americans seem particularly prone, for some reason, to rush to the ease of taking a tablet/medicine as a way to deal with a health/lifestyle issue rather than putting in alternative effort.   Recent example:  Ozempic.  But you get the feeling from Right wing grifting that vitamins and supplements are an especially easy sell in that country too.   (Maybe I'm wrong - it's not as if the supplement market isn't huge in Australia too;  but the political grifty aspect of it in the US seems pretty unique.)  

Is it down to a more laissez faire attitude to capitalism and marketing, such that direct-to-consumer drug marketing is actually common on TV there?   Who knows, but it feels odd.  (It has also always seemed odd to me that Americans were so susceptible to a plague of fentanyl addiction.)

Anyway, these thoughts are brought to mind by this, pretty gobsmacking, article in NPR:

What do you do when you can't get your kids to settle down to go to sleep? For a growing number of parents, the answer is melatonin.

Recent research shows nearly one in five school-age children and adolescents are now using the supplement on a regular basis. Pediatricians say that's cause for alarm.

"It is terrifying to me that this amount of an unregulated product is being utilized," says Dr. Cora Collette Breuner, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.

Melatonin is a hormone produced by your brain that helps regulate sleep-wake cycles. It's also sold as a dietary supplement and is widely used as a sleep aid. 

Lauren Hartstein, a postdoctoral researcher who studies sleep in early childhood at the University of Colorado, Boulder, says she first got an inkling of melatonin's growing use in children and adolescents while screening families to participate in research.

"All of a sudden last year, we noticed that there was a big uptick in the number of parents who were regularly giving [their kids] melatonin," Hartstein says.

Hartstein and her colleagues wanted to learn more about just how widely melatonin is being used in kids. So they surveyed the parents of nearly 1,000 children between the ages of 1 to 14 across the country. She was surprised by just how many kids are taking the supplement.

"Nearly 6% of preschoolers, [ages] 1 to 4, had taken it, and that number jumped significantly higher to 18% and 19% for school-age children and pre-teens," she says.

As Hartstein and her co-authors recently reported in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, most of the kids that were using melatonin had been on it for a year or longer. And 1 in 4 kids were taking it every single night.

Breuner says that kind of widespread use is deeply troubling for several reasons. She says because melatonin is easy to find on store shelves, people assume it's just as safe as taking a vitamin. But melatonin is a hormone, and she says there's no real data on long-term use in children. She notes there are concerns that it could potentially interfere with puberty and glucose metabolism, among other things, though research is lacking.  

Black hole sun, for real?

Ooh, it's been a long time since there was an interesting new story about the possible role of micro black holes in the universe.  But here is one for my Christmas gift, in Science magazine:

Are tiny black holes hiding within giant stars? 

Some extracts:

Ordinary black holes are born in the deaths of gigantic stars, when their massive cores collapse and become so dense that even light can’t escape their gravitational pull. But in 1971, famed physicist Stephen Hawking proposed another possible origin. In the thick soup of particles present moments after the big bang, certain spots might have been dense enough to collapse and create black holes ranging in size from the microscopic to the incredibly huge.

If numerous and pervasive enough, these primordial black holes could function as the dark matter that knits the cosmic web together with its gravity and is thought to make up 85% of the matter in the universe. Astronomers have searched for them by looking for flashes that would arise when they pass in front of a distant, bright object and magnify its light like a lens. None have been spotted so far. But if a primordial black hole was tiny enough, with a mass roughly that of an asteroid and a diameter as small as a hydrogen atom, the flashes would be too dim to be picked up in such surveys.

Bellinger and his colleagues decided to consider the consequences of a universe in which dark matter was made entirely of such teensy black holes. On average, they found, one should be zipping through the Solar System at any given time. Some ought to occasionally get trapped within the gas clouds that give birth to stars, ending up in the center of a newly formed star. “I thought it would be kind of funny to put a black hole inside of a star and just see what happens,” Bellinger says.

The researchers found that the black holes would sink to the star’s core where hydrogen atoms undergo fusion to produce heat and light. At first, very little would happen. Even a dense stellar core is mostly empty space. The most microscopic of the black holes would have a hard time finding matter to consume and its growth would be extremely slow, Bellinger says. “It could take longer than the lifetime of the universe to eat the star.”

But larger ones, roughly as massive as the asteroid Ceres or the dwarf planet Pluto, would get bigger on timescales of only a few hundred million years. Material would spiral onto the black hole, forming a disk that would heat up through friction and emit radiation. Once the black hole was about as massive as Earth, it would produce significant amounts of radiation, shining brightly and churning up the star’s core like pot of boiling water. “It will become a black hole–powered object rather than fusion-powered object,” says study co-author Matt Caplan, a theoretical physicist at Illinois State University. He and his colleagues have dubbed these entities “Hawking stars.”

To cool off, the exterior layers of a Hawking star would puff out, forming a red giant—the expected fate of the Sun as it gets older. But a red giant with a primordial black hole in its center would be slightly cooler than one that reaches that stage through normal means.

The European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite has spotted about 500 such anomalously cool giant stars, known as red stragglers, Bellinger says. To figure out whether these might actually be hiding a black hole, he says, astronomers could tune in to the particular frequencies at which the stars vibrate.

The only odd thing about this article is that it fails to talk about Hawking Radiation, which I thought would be a pretty significant issue affecting the life of a black hole which has been around since the dawn of time, and with a size of hydrogen atom.

I used to (many years ago) post a lot about micro black holes, out of concern that the LHC might accidentally make one with unclear consequences for the Earth.   If I recall correctly, there was considerable uncertainty as to the final fate of micro black holes - whether they would evaporate away to leave a remnant of some kind, or not.   

I should start scrolling Arxiv again, or my own old blog entries, to refresh my memory as to what people had thought about primordial black holes being able to account for dark matter.  (I'm pretty sure this is not an entirely new suggestion.)

The depressing story of current Israeli leadership and the West Bank

There was a good episode of Foreign Correspondent about this in October, just after the Hamas attack, telling the same story, but here is a gift link to David Ignatius writing about it at length in the Washington Post.   

There seems a very sharp divide between commentators who think we just have to forget about a two state solution now as being impossible to achieve (there was an interview with a former Australian ambassador from earlier this year re-played on Late Night Live recently, and he is in that camp), and those who still argue that it is impossible to see a resolution without some form of two state system that "works".  David Frum, for one, has a twitter thread up arguing there is nothing to be done other than work with the Palestinian Authority as the "security partner" for Gaza.  

On a side note:  whenever I see video of the West Bank, I am always pretty amazed at how arid and unappealing the land looks as a place to live.  It's surprising to me that anyone makes any sort of farming life out of it, but apparently they do.  I guess my "why does anyone - Jewish or Muslim - want to live there anyway??" reaction is even higher for the Arabian peninsula countries, but I see that the total population there is about 80 million, which is quite a few to suggest they would be better off moving...

 

The Chinese and architecture

For all I know, this Youtube channel may be operated by an "influencer" funded by the Chinese government.  (Certainly, the comments following the videos nearly all read like pro-China propaganda.)

That said, I am still pretty amazed at the modern architecture these videos display from China.   I will post two examples:

 

 This second one looks in parts like a CGI generated skyline - perhaps the high definition video helps with that impression. But it's (apparently!) all real, in part of Shanghai, even if part of this development is still not complete yet: 

 

Seeing these videos also made me think about examples of dramatic architecture from Singapore, and how it is mainly an ethnic Chinese place as well.   What has drawn China (and the Chinese?) to these very impressive feats of modern architecture?    

I see a post at a website from 2017 called "Chinese architecture - spectacular or eccentric?" includes this paragraph:

For years, China has been an architect’s playground, with lucrative funding and interest in foreign ‘starchitects’ giving rise to imaginative buildings. In 2016, China’s State Counceil released new urban planning guidelines. According to the document, “odd-shaped’ buildings” — or “bizarre architecture that is not economical, function, aesthetically pleasing or environmentally friendly” would be forbidden in the future. The document follows a 2014 call by Chinese President Xi Jinping for less “weird architecture” to be built.

I'm not sure that this call worked.  And it seems a pity, in that distinctive architecture is, generally speaking, awesome. 

I don't care for Bill Maher, but on this he's basically right

While it seems there is no doubt that Netanyahu long ago pre-emptively abandoned a two state solution, and as such has only made matters worse, I still think the points the irritating Bill Maher makes in this video are correct:  the Lefty "anti-colonial" quakery that ignores everything about history other than "but Palestinians were forced off their land" and pretends that a victory over Israel is a possibility, no matter how many times it has been tried and lost, is basically ridiculous and positively harmful to any resolution.   The decades of intense anti-Semitic brainwashing that has taken place within Gaza, such that young men can take joy in the killing of the innocent children, is routinely glossed over:

 

As someone in comments says after the video:

The problem is, at first, other big Arab nations like Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia gave hope to the Palestinians that they will support them in their fight to oust the Israelis from their land. When they realised that it wasn’t going to be possible, they withdrew their support. Now Iran has stepped in and has filled that vacant space, fighting the western order and especially the US, by proxy. If Iran also pulls its support, will the Palestinians finally realise their predicament? 11

All Rung out (and out of bad puns, too)

So, what did I think of Götterdämmerung at QPAC last night?

I think the staging was very, very good, and the performances fine; but out of the 4 operas, I think I found Siegfried the best in performance for both orchestra and voices.   

My previous summary of the plot (after going through it on Youtube) is pleasingly accurate: but I do have to say that I've firmed up in the feeling this opera is a bit of a cheat on Wagner's part, in that they only talk about Valhalla going up in flames, we don't go there to actually watch it.   I mean, I feel we ought to at least get a cameo of Wotan with his hair on fire; but no, he and the rest of his dysfunctional household burn up off stage.   

But musically, it's still pretty satisfying.   

Now what can I say about the whole experience of a Ring Cycle?   I was convinced to see it due to a radio interview I heard by accident with some guy announcing it 4 years ago.  (I assume it was someone from Opera Australia).  I still remember some comments he made - one being that people think it's a "heavy" experience, but it's not: he said he has spoken to audience members at the end who would say they could immediately sit through the whole thing again.   I think he's right about that - for a story that is peak operatic melodrama (and  basically a doomed love story, as I guess most opera is) it doesn't really feel depressing or tiring at the end.   If I were the idle rich, I wouldn't mind seeing at least a "highlights" reel again next week, from a different seat too!

The opera guy also called it a "life changing" experience.   That is a little over the top, but it is certainly a unique one, with plenty to think about, as my many posts have indicated.   And I am very happy to have experienced it.

As a coda:  one peculiar thing I haven't yet mentioned - I was sitting in short row of 4 seats on the second balcony, so naturally you do find yourself making some small talk with them.  The guy right next to me (I was at the end of the row) was previously from England, and used to go to Covent Garden a lot.  He indicated he had been a bit disappointed with opera choice in Australia, but he would sometimes go to Sydney to see one, and come back the next day.  He was probably  in his 70's, and while chatting I found out that he lives in a very expensive newly developed area on the river.  The other two guys were also older (well, maybe 60's and 40's- probably a gay couple I suspect.)  The odd thing though was none of these 3 ever applauded. 

Curious about his lack of applause, I asked the English guy (before the start of the second opera) what he thought of the first, and he said something like "well I had read all the hype, and was a bit disappointed.  But then I thought about it more and how difficult it is to sing this opera, and perhaps I was a little tough."  I said that my impressions from the reviews on line was that the first opera had the most mixed response, but reviewers appeared to increasingly like the other three as the cycle went on.  

He then left 20 minutes early at the end of Die Walkure (the second one) to catch the ferry home!  I found out last night that he had missed the third opera (yay, an empty seat beside me) because he had to go to Sydney for some work or other and was delayed in his return - he is presumably semi retired.   As for the other two dudes in my row - they left early during the 3rd opera to catch a train, so I got separately interrupted at the climatic part of not one, but two operas!   Last night one of them commented to me that "oh well, we probably didn't miss much, did we?"

And then last night, when most of the audience is on its feet - I swear that no one in my row of unduly disgruntled old blokes clapped for even a second!

This, I thought, is just rude.   I really felt like asking the guy next to me if he familiar with the phrase "whingeing Pom", and if Australian opera isn't up to his standards, he can shove off with his money back to London and I don't have to hear his nose whistle during quiet parts of a musical again.  (I haven't mentioned that yet, have I?)  

How did I end up sitting in the one, short, row in the theatre with what seemed like the only 3 audience members who appeared to be continually unimpressed/uninterested, but kept coming back anyway?  

I guess it goes to show that it is "not for everyone" - or just that annoying people can turn up at the opera.

Anyhow, apart from an update I will make for an earlier post, this should be the end of my Ring cycle posts.  Maybe.  :)

The ring singularity

Ha ha.  In this explanation of a paper that Sabine Hossenfelder seems pretty excited about, regarding whether or not black holes have to have a singularity at their centre, there's a diagram showing a "ring singularity".

I'm soon off to my own Ring singularity - Götterdämmerung - starting at 4pm, and ending at 10.40pm. Yes, seeing all of a Ring Cycle takes some commitment.

One minor point that I hadn't realised before - that Kerr of rotating black hole fame is a New Zealander - and still at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.   Huh.  I would have assumed he was from a famous British or US university.

This disgraceful episode in US history

I've said it before, but I really despise anyone who thinks Trump election conspiracies are in any way excusable, when they have and had such dire real life consequences for innocent people:

Ruby Freeman, a former Georgia election worker, sat in a federal courtroom on Wednesday and told a jury: “Giuliani just messed me up, you know.”

She was referring to Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was sitting a few feet from her, as she described how her life has been upended since Dec. 3, 2020. That was the date Mr. Giuliani, then the personal lawyer to President Donald J. Trump, directed his millions of social media followers to watch a video of two election workers in Fulton County, Ga., asserting without any basis that they were cheating Mr. Trump as they counted votes on Election Day.

The workers were Ms. Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss.

Ms. Freeman, who is Black, recounted what followed: a torrent of threats, accusations and racism; messages from people who said she should be hanged for treason, or lynched; people who fantasized about hearing the sound of her neck snap.

They found her at her home. They sent messages to her business email and social media accounts. They called her phone so much that it crashed, she said.

The harassment got so bad that the F.B.I. told Ms. Freeman she was not safe in the home where she had lived for years. She stayed with a friend until she felt she put that friend at risk after law enforcement officials told her they had arrested someone who had her name on a death list.

Ms. Freeman’s name had become a rallying cry across conservative news outlets, embodying a conspiracy theory that Trump supporters embraced as they tried to keep him in office.

“This all started with one tweet,” Ms. Freeman said on Wednesday, the third day of a trial to determine what compensation she and Ms. Moss deserve from Mr. Giuliani. Judge Beryl A. Howell previously ruled that Mr. Giuliani spread lies about them, intentionally inflicted emotional distress on them and engaged in a conspiracy with others as he led the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office.

And look at the idiotic lawyer for Giuliani:

Ashlee Humphreys, a professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism who testified as an expert witness for the plaintiffs, told the jury that the price tag for repairing the damage done to their reputations would be between $17.4 million and $47.4 million.

Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley IV, has said that size of damage award would be the civil equivalent of the death penalty — a description Judge Howell called “hyperbolic.”

So long, the Drum

The ABC has abruptly cancelled The Drum, a show which I would sometimes watch, mainly to marvel at how dull it could be. 

I feel mean for saying it, but of the hosts, I always found that Julia Baird (or should I say, Dr Julia Baird: it would seem she likes the title to be used) has a particularly dull and unappealing screen presence.  I always found something about Ellen Fanning much more likeable.  (She's also reading weekend news in Brisbane now, too.)

But the main problem with the show has been finding decent panel members.   Most were very, very ordinary, and without any particular expertise in the topics being discussed.  

It kind of surprises me that it has stuck around as long as it has...

The Ring effect

So I saw Siegfried (number 3 in the Ring Cycle) last night, and as you might guess, I have yet more thoughts:

*    some commentary I have read and posted before about viewing a Ring cycle indicated this, and I reckon it's clearly true:   it's a cumulative experience that feels a little like your brain being re-wired by music and light.   This might be a particularly true of this digital video heavy production, where the colour intensity is often very strong, and for the most part, pretty mesmerising.  I have never been bored or at risk of falling asleep, and the biggest physical effect on me was being really tired the day after Die Walkure.   

*    Is it because of that effect that I felt last night's performance, from both singers and orchestra, was particularly good?   My doubts about the orchestra disappeared, and I don't think I was alone - the applause at the end was the strongest and most sustained out of the three so far.   

*    Having said this - I still don't know that the dynamic between aunt and horny nephew in the last 15 or 20 minutes really makes a lick of psychological sense.   But the puzzle over whether the story makes sense is part of the fun - pondering whether it's just nuts, or hiding a deep psychological truth (and of whom - Wagner personally, society, Schopenhauer?) that's lurking beneath the lurid?   

More later...

Update:

On the matter of incest, from an interesting short piece in the New Yorker:

The “Ring” is more than a refashioning of myth; from the outset, Wagner intended an allegorical assault on modern capitalist society. In that light, taboo relationships assume a different character: they voice a defiance of bourgeois restrictions on sexuality. In a crucial scene in Act II of “Die Walküre,” which I discussed in an article for the magazine in 2011, Wotan debates changing mores with his wife, Fricka. The god has tried to create a freely acting hero who can win the Ring back from the dragon Fafner without violating prior contractual arrangements. Fricka argues that the union of the twins exposes the corruption of his scheme. Wotan replies: “Age-old custom / is all you can grasp.” He is undoubtedly speaking for the composer, who conducted scandalous affairs, had a fetish for satin, and welcomed gay men into his circle. Wotan’s defense of rebellious love in the face of cold morality resonated with listeners who had to suppress their natural urges and conform to norms, often by way of sham marriages. Early campaigners for gay rights considered Wagner an ally, if not one of their own.

The love of Brünnhilde and Siegfried carries a particularly forceful message. While the pairing certainly has its peculiarities—Lévi-Strauss says that Brünnhilde is a “supermother” to Siegfried, having protected him since birth—its depth of feeling stands in contrast to the calculated marriage contracts of “Götterdämmerung,” in which Brünnhilde becomes an object of exchange. Wagner was no feminist, yet he had many feminist fans, who took inspiration from such ungovernable female characters as Brünnhilde, Isolde, and Kundry, in “Parsifal.” The turn-of-the-century Wagner soprano Lillian Nordica, a campaigner for women’s rights, once said that the world of the stage was the “only place where men and women stand on a perfect equality where there is true comradeship.”

Update 2:   a good blog entry by someone from Melbourne summarising a whole book called Wagner and the Erotic Impulse.  More than you ever needed to know, like this:  

In the chapter titled Pathologies Dreyfus explores Wagner’s reputation for degeneracy of which his love of silk and perfume, which Dreyfus call fetishes, was considered a part. I’ve read before that he liked sumptuous silk and velvet clothing as well as expensive house-hold accoutrements but didn’t know the extent of it. Or how it influenced his music.

Wagner was first named as having a pathological condition in a widely read denunciation in 1873 in which he was accused of moral degeneration in both his use of language and his personal behaviour including his affair with Cosima von Bulow. He was accused of delusions of grandeur and moral insanity and an unnatural increase in sexual desire as evidenced by the erotic element in Tristan und Isolde where he glorifies adultery and Die Walküre where he glorifies incest. 

 Next came Nietzsche who having first been an admirer became increasingly vitriolic in his criticism of Wagner who he said represented the quintessence of decadence. The Wagnerian opera causes Nietzsche to break out in a disagreeable sweat as opposed to Bizet’s more agreeable Carmen which makes him feel happy, … patient, … settled. Nietzsche is particularly opposed to Wagner’s attempts to find redemption and his misunderstanding of love. He prefers Carmen which reflects the real nature of love which is the “deadly hatred of the sexes!” and where the act of murdering a gypsy constitutes the only conception of love … worthy of a philosopher”. 

Ha!   Good old, mad old, Nietzsche, hey?!

Anyway, back to degenerate Wagner:

The final section in this chapter looks at Wagner’s longstanding fetish for wearing and surrounding himself with soft fabrics, especially satin and silk, without which he found it difficult to compose music. Nietzsche knew all about this because he had been inveigled from time to time, when friendly with Wagner, to purchase such products. Wagner spent a fortune, mostly other peoples’ money, on pink textiles and rose scented fragrances. This first came publicly to light with the publication in June 1877, a year after the first Ring performance, of a series of letters to his Viennese milliner. These included his detailed requirements, including sketches, for pink satin dressing gowns with flounces, satin undergarments, silk quilts and upholstery and curtains and much more. He had rooms furnished completely in silk, including walls and ceilings. He also required warmth in his clothes so his pink dressing gowns were quilted. There is also evidence that he had women’s dresses made up for him. All of this was very important to his compositional process. And there are lots of references to flowers and pleasing perfumes in the works of which the most explicit are the Flower-Maidens in Parsifal.

Oh my.   

So, just how gay sympathetic was he?   As with everything about this strange guy, it's apparently complicated:

The final chapter, Homoerotics, considers Wagner’s surprising regard for same-sexual love; which also surfaces in his operas. Wagner was friends with many men and women who lived openly in same sex relationships; this in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He notes how Parsifal in particular was viewed as sympathetic to homosexuality.

Overall he contends that Wagner was also accepting of same sex relationships as well as deep friendships between men. Dreyfus then considers in detail the relationship between Wagner and his great protector King Ludwig II of Bavaria. This includes extracts from the passionate letters the King wrote to the composer and Wagner’s responses that were more muted in tone and passion but equally crammed with pretentious prose. Nevertheless he suggests Wagner was infatuated with the young King as indicated by a public poem dedicated to Ludwig that was published in 1864. Even allowing for poetic hyperbole Dreyfus finds that the correspondence between the two leaves an extraordinary impression of infatuated friendship.

However Wagner’s tolerance did not extend to the acceptance of carnal sodomy or pederasty. Their homoerotics – those of the Greeks – must be sharply distinguished from our homoerotics, and in this statement one can most likely detect the perfectly understandable line Wagner drew between his awareness of classical same-sex love and his own configuration of Freundesliebe.