A certain country's reputation for a mature and relaxed attitude to sex takes a hit

I've been meaning to post about the extraordinary rape case in France, in which a husband of mature age set up a scheme in which his wife would be heavily sedated, and then men invited online to have sex with her.

What seems particularly unbelievable is the number of men willing to participate (83 potential participants, of whom 50 are being tried for rape.)   I mean, France is supposed to be the country where people fall in love and have sex at the drop of a hat, and affairs are (more-or-less) common, with mature couples and friends being prepared to "look the other way" as long as it is discreet and doesn't interfere with family life.   A reputation for what might be called a relaxed, or mature (well, that's debatable, I know), attitude towards sex - and hence a country where happy consensual sex is easy to find.

Not the country of scores of desperate and hard up men online looking for invitations to have sex with a sleeping wife!   I mean, what's the appeal of sex with an inactive partner anyway?  

I had wondered whether some of the accused would claim that they thought she was just acting and part of the "game" when she was sleepy or groggy during sex, and it would seem from the report I have linked to, some are trying it on.    Yet it seems the husband himself has pleaded guilty, so I don't know that his take on what happened is going to help anyone.

Meanwhile, in Queensland we've just had the law changed to put a positive obligation to know there is consent to sex.   The government website gives these illustrations of when there will be a problem:

The new consent laws outline some of the circumstances where there will be no consent. These include where someone…

• did not say or do anything to communicate consent;
• does not have the cognitive capacity to consent;
• is so affected by alcohol or another drug they are incapable of consenting or withdrawing consent;
• is unconscious or asleep;
• participates in the act because of force, a fear of force, harm of any type or a fear of harm of any type, whether to the person or another person, animal or property, and regardless of whether it was a single incident or part of a pattern of behaviour;
• participates in the act because of coercion, blackmail or intimidation, regardless of when it occurs or whether it is a single incident or part of an ongoing pattern;
• participates in the act because the person or another person is unlawfully confined, detained or otherwise deprived or their personal liberty;
• participates in the act because the person is overborne by the abuse of a relationship of authority, trust or dependence;
• participates in the act because of a false or fraudulent representation about the nature or purpose of the act, including about whether the act is for health, hygienic or cosmetic purposes;
• participates in the act with another person because the person is mistaken about the identity of the other person  or participates in the act with another person because the person is mistaken they are married to the other person;
• is a sex worker and participates in the act because of a false or fraudulent representation that the person will be paid or receive some reward for the act;
• participates in the act with another person on the basis that a condom is used for the act and the other person does any of the following things before or during the act: does not use a condom; tampers with the condom; removes the condom; or becomes aware that the condom is no longer effective but continues with the sexual act (‘stealthing’).

I can imagine that this will cause some difficult cases in future, if the law survives a change of government. 

A very, very comedy career

Apropos of nothing, have a look at this obituary in The Guardian about a British comedy writer, director and occasional performer who worked on an extraordinary number of shows since the 1960's with an extraordinary range of comedians.   

I think it must be fairly rare to find someone who can work with so many different types of comedian?

Given the current state of British comedy, which I think has been pretty dire for quite a long time (with only rare exception), we need more like him. 

Musing about the American election

It seems to me that this is surely one of the most difficult Presidential election to predict with any great certainty because of so many factors pulling in different directions:

*   national polling and enthusiastic rallies indicate high motivation for Democrat supporters to get out and vote - particularly for women, for whom the gap between support for Trump and Harris is so wide;

*  on the other hand, the US papers are full of stories of different Republican states cutting out large numbers of registered voters off the voter enrolments,  and it seems very hard to know how many of those were "legitimate" (deceased people, for example), and how many are real acts of disenfranchisement that might have a disproportionate effect on Democrats;

*  on the third hand, it's hard to see a Trump/Vance campaign tactic that is working for them - I think we can safely say that the attack on Haitians has not gone well, given the amount of mocking on line it has generated, not to mention the Republican Governor of Ohio saying he's "saddened" by it in a column in the New York Times!   It's clear they don't want Trump coming to town to stir up more trouble unnecessarily, and I expect it won't happen;

*  there are also very odd things like Georgia saying every vote has to be counted by hand, with likely delays in declaring the winner and that providing time for dubious legal challenges, and other states reducing dramatically the number of voting places.   Again, you would have to suspect that these work against Democrat voters, who are more likely to be younger workers who need the most convenient time and place to voter due to their working hours.   Older Americans, who are more likely to vote for Trump, can more easily waste time getting to a voting booth.   But how big an effect can this have?

I think everyone can agree - this American system of leaving voting arrangements up to each individual state is just a crazy mess.   If they can't bring themselves to have a national electoral commission to run elections uniformly across the nation, can they at least do something that seems so obvious to Australians watching:   mandate nationally that voting day is a Saturday, where working hours and time to access a polling station is much less likely to be a problem for most people?  

Update:  One other thing I forgot to mention - the Democrats apparently have a heap more money to spend on advertising, and we've been reading for months about the Republicans being poorly organised in many states.  But as I just don't understand the complicated system there (the parties seem to have to do so much work just to get people registered to vote and then to vote) I don't know how important these factors are.

Should I go to the Ninth?

I see that the Queensland Symphony Orchestra is putting on Beethoven's 9th Symphony in November.  It seems to me that it is pretty rarely performed these days, and I suspect the orchestra knows that putting on the infrequently played big classics attracts an audience, as they have 3 performances for sale - on two evenings and a Saturday afternoon.   Actually, I see now that they are not doing a Christmas performance of The Messiah this year (they did it at Easter instead), so they are probably seeing if the semi-religious reputation of this piece is a successful replacement.   Still, they would only do The Messiah once at Christmas, so running the 9th for 3 performances is still pretty surprising to me.

Should I go?   I'm not at all familiar with it, apart from having heard the orchestral version of the "Ode to Joy" final movement a couple of times.   (Even then it was probably only on TV.  I remember watching it with my late father, probably as a teenager, and both of us being a bit disappointed that it's not really much like the sped up 3 minute pop versions that have been popular over the years.)

The question is therefore what are the other three movements like, and should I listen to them before the concert, as I did when I had years - due to Covid - to get ready for the Ring Cycle.  

I see from Googling the topic that not everyone enjoys it - there is a Medium essay about a person who complained about 100 years ago that its popularity is undeserved (although by the end, it sounds like it was a bit of a troll too):

On July 21st, 1927, an anonymous person going under the name “J.M.C.” sent a scathing review of a recent performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by the New York Philharmonic into the newspaper The World. In this review, JMC begins by describing how bored the audience looked while the piece was being performed, with many members supposedly whispering, looking around, and reading through the programs. JMC’s claims don’t end here, as they then assert that the piece is simply one that “everybody praises and nobody likes” and that it is only famous because people see it as profound because of its religious themes, especially given that he did not believe that Beethoven was not particularly religious otherwise. They maintain that people only go to concerts because of a feeling of religious obligation and the idea that they must conform to those around them. They end, quite exaggeratedly and obviously satirically, with the statement “I move you that a law be passed making performances of the Ninth Symphony illegal. It is an affront to the memory of Beethoven to keep playing it over year after year”.

On the other hand, someone on Reddit writes:

The Ninth embodies the best of Beethoven's work. It's a musical journey that enraptures you. I first listened to it when I was 12 and just beginning to explore "classical" music. At the time, I thought the Ninth Symphony was just the Ode to Joy melody. To my surprise, when I popped the CD in and started listening to the first movement, I heard something altogether different. It was one of those pieces that forced me to sit down and listen intently, partly because I was looking for the melody I had originally wanted to hear, and partly because I was so intrigued by the music and its twists and turns as it developed and recapitulated themes throughout in ways that still surprise me when I listen now.

 I think I should probably go see it....

The blogger then wrote this

There's a somewhat interesting article at the Washington Post about intellectual humility, and how it's generally a good thing.

But this paragraph is what prompted the post title:

Step outside yourself. In a 2021 study, Grossmann and his colleagues assessed 149 adults who wrote diary entries about the most significant thing that happened that day for a month. But some participants wrote in the third person, from a less egocentric perspective, while the control group subjects wrote in the first person.

After the month-long experiment, those who wrote in the third person had more growth in wise reasoning, including intellectual humility and open-mindedness, compared with pre-diary assessments.

And they were later less likely to report negative feelings about the people who they felt transgressed against them, Grossmann said.

 

 

 

Slow to learn

Without going into the question of the morality/legality of this type of operation....:

Second wave of Lebanon device explosions kills 20 and wounds 450

.... I find it a bit hard to credit that any male in Hezbollah thinks it's a good career move to work for them.  They are outsmarted and successfully targeted by Israel no matter where they are.   

It's probably also the first time the equivalent of a supply officer - usually the last person in a military organisation you would expect to be in major trouble - to be fearing for his life.  (From the boss, I mean.)

Floods everywhere

 The New York Times notes something I had been meaning to post about:

Chad. Vietnam. Austria. The American South.

In very disparate regions of the world, extreme rainfall in recent weeks has killed thousands of people, submerged entire towns, set off landslides and left millions without power. It’s a harbinger of the wild weather events that are a hallmark of climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, and it is highlighting the need to urgently adapt, in rich and poor countries alike.

Bursts of extreme rainfall are making both coastal and riverine flooding more dangerous and unpredictable.

“Extreme events are getting stronger everywhere, so we should expect floods to be bigger regardless of where we are,” said Michael Wehner, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “There is no question that these kinds of floods all over the world are getting worse.”

Sorry to mention again, but I started saying years ago that increased flooding was likely going to be the first effect of climate change as a really bad thing (economically and socially) that really caught people's attention.  

Today I learned -- WD-40 was for rockets

I can thank a random-ish recommendation from Youtube for this - a short explanation that WD-40 was created for a specific need for the Atlas missile/rocket.  The video also features an explanation of the very odd design of the Atlas rocket which I hadn't realised before.  (I always thought it was a cool looking thing, though, with the side guidance thruster/rockets.  It looks very inspiration for Thunderbirds designs, I reckon.)  Enjoy:

The ridiculous Trump supporters

Chait explains it pretty well in a column that's free to read for a limited time.  [Oh, I just checked, it seemed behind a paywall again (at New York Magazine).  Sorry.  Lucky I grabbed these bits when I did]:

Numerous conservatives have responded to the Sunday incidents by reminding their audience of Trump’s remarks from the debate, which they treat as prophetic. What Trump said was, “I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me. They talk about democracy. I’m a threat to democracy. They’re the threat to democracy.”
The very remarks they are citing include Trump calling his opponents a threat to democracy gives the game away. The fact that they’re proud of this line, rather than embarrassed by it, reveals the utter lack of principle behind it. “What will it take for these demented partisans to lower the temperature?” demands Devine with a comical lack of self-awareness.....

The Trumpist notion that any political or journalistic activity disadvantageous to Trump is a form of subversion is itself evidence of his authoritarianism. Trump has advocated for this idea consistently since his appearance on the political scene, describing all of his opponents as criminals, denouncing peaceful protesters as mobs, and calling any reporting he dislikes “election interference.” He does this so routinely it barely even attracts notice anymore. In recent weeks he bizarrely claimed Harris was using artificial intelligence to fake the appearance of a crowd at her rally and demanding her disqualification (“She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE”). He has said criticizing judges who issue favorable rulings for him ought to be a crime (“Playing the ref with our judges and justices should be punishable by very serious fines and beyond that”). Needless to say, Trump does not believe it should be a crime for him to denounce judges who make rulings of which he disapproves.....

Supporting liberal democracy requires simultaneously affirming the right to engage in legal, peaceful activity while opposing violent and criminal actions. Trump upholds neither side of the equation. He considers all speech or political activity against him to be criminal and any activity on his behalf, whether or not it is illegal or violent, to be legitimate. He believes all these things because he is an authoritarian at heart. The impulse to stop his critics from accurately describing his political project is not a defense of democratic norms but the precise opposite.

 I think it could be put more succinctly, though:   it's rank self serving hypocrisy by people with zero self awareness.

Some decent Twitter humour

The "every legal scholar" bit

An explanation of the Trumpian exaggeration lie regarding liberal scholars who wanted Roe overturned.

On psychics

This documentary, described in the article as a sympathetic take on why people see psychics (and why psychics do what they do), sounds pretty interesting to me.   I assume it will turn up on one of the streaming services pretty soon.

On reaching the "Beatle" age

That would be - 64.   It's a number that makes it difficult (very difficult!) to cling to the idea that I'm merely "upper middle age", and a recent bout of unexplained shoulder bursitis in a joint that has never had a problem before makes the gradual deterioration of bits and pieces of the body undeniable.

But hey, lots of things still interest me, the family is (mostly) healthy and (mostly) happy, and (maybe) there's another 25 - 30 years of relative good health, and thinking about stuff, to go.   (That's how long most on my mother's side have lived, anyway.  Not all in the greatest of health, though.)

I have felt a bit odd lately thinking that I am of an age at which I feel I can write off ever visiting certain places - Africa has never held much interest, for example, although that new museum in Egypt does look good.   I guess if you live forever, you would just never write off a continent as a place you would never visit, like I am starting to now.

So, what am I trying to say - getting into my 60's has finally made me start to think that I'll die one day?   Yes, I suppose that's true, which seems a bit of a downer on which to end a birthday post.  Instead, I can amuse myself by imagining that AI has probably already reached a good enough level that, if fed this entire blog, a reasonable simulation of me could go on blogging forever.  Or, at least, until Google stop supporting Blogger...:)

The debate

I can't watch the Trump/Harris debate (just winding up now as I type), but on Twitter and elsewhere, it seems Harris supporters are very, very happy with her performance.   I think I can safely say that Trump clearly has not won when, according to a couple of the Hot Air staff, this will be seen as a draw.  (That is, they're not bragging about a Trump triumph - the best they think they can say is "draw".)

This is good, and something of a relief.  

Update:  the TV coverage I just saw from the US is very clear that Harris won.   Also, the Taylor Swift endorsement is attracting attention.   Trump needs to start looking for apartments in Moscow, I think.

A sweet night of baroque

After going to the Ring Cycle last year, I'm no longer afraid of going to a concert of arias in a language I don't understand, and for some reason (slow sales, presumably), QPAC emailed a few weeks ago offering cheap but good seats ($59!) in the concert hall for the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra's "Handel's House".  I went (with my wife) last night.

I've a soft spot for Handel, and baroque music generally, which, now that I think of it, may be partly due to Lurch playing the harpsichord in The Addam's Family!

While being vaguely aware of the ABO, I've never seen them before, and they were great.   The concert featured a guest Japanese soprano singing Handel arias I was unfamiliar with, but her voice was pure and she looked lovely.  I went to the concert with modest expectations, but it was better than expected.

The arias were broken up with other pieces, included a Vivaldi concerto and one a violinist/composer I never heard of before - Pisendel.  I see that he was a contemporary of Handel, Bach and Vivaldi, and his violin concerto last night was lively and immediately likeable.   

Should I mention the guy one seat away from me who was continually using his phone during the first half?   Sure, he had the light on (probably) as low as possible, but I could see he was actually texting in the middle of the concert.  Then would stop.  Then a few minutes later turn the phone on again.  And he was in about mid 30's - absolutely old enough not to have the fried attention span of every single person under the age of 30.  The problem for me is, once noticing the fidgeting fingers out of the corner of my eye, it was impossible to stop noticing it.

Anyway, it was dealt with by an usher in the second half.  I managed to get my way without any direct confrontation.  Yay.   

But back to the concert.  I see now that it has already played in Sydney and got good reviews, so my musically uneducated gut reaction was pretty accurate.  Yay, again.

Back to the Monkey King

I explained back in 2020 that I had started reading an abridged version of Journey to the West, but I confess, I kept forgetting to go back to it and may have stopped at about 90 pages in.   I was reading it on Scribd, which I wasn't using enough to justify the subscription, so cancelled it.   

But Sun Wukong keeps appearing on Twitter ads at the moment because of a high profile Chinese video game that's just been released, and I thought I should go back to the book and resume the story.  I found via nefarious means a downloadable copy of the same abridged version in epub format and have started again.

(Incidentally, I was reading books on my cheapo Lenovo tablet using Google Books, but I had this bad feeling that you can never trust Google to keep a service going, and didn't really understand where it was storing the books anyway, so I looked at other reader apps for Android.  Turns out there are plenty, and I have been using eBoox, which seems fine.  It goes and finds books whereever they have ended up in your tablet's drive, which I like.)

So, this is all preamble to noting that Youtube referred me to a young Chinese woman's channel in which she visits various scenic spots, and again makes me annoyed that so much of the landscape there looks fantastic but I am not sure I am up to visiting it out of concern of accidentally ending up in jail for 3 years for something inconsequential.   (Incidentally, I wonder what will happen to Western tourists in China if ever they start an invasion of Taiwan.  That worries me, too.) 

And now for the Monkey King connection:  this video she did, of a truly spectacular waterfall seemingly in the middle of nowhere, reminded me of his initial home in the "water curtain cave" - the entrance to which was concealed behind a waterfall:

Just gorgeous, although there seems a good chance of spraining your ankle while walking the rough path to get to this particular viewing site.    

While Googling around this topic, I came across this Journey to the West information site, which explains the appeal of the character generally: 

...Sun Wukong can be used as a great model for positive ambivalence in media, moving away from set limits of a single stereotype and rather being a constant motion of new ideas and new identities. Monkey has been changed from a mischievous monkey to a revolutionary hero to a post-modern rebel against authority throughout the years. But even throughout the constant changes and interpretations, people never lose sight of what the nature of Sun Wukong is: rebelliousness, variability, optimism, and persistence. 

Monkey is a transcending character as he is able to mediate contradictions within his own design, one being his gold-banded staff, a symbol of breaking barriers, and his golden filet (fig. 3), a symbol of limits. These two simple but prominent pieces of iconography immediately tell audiences who the character is supposed to be and what they are about.

Seems a fair take.  In one other post, we get this, much more hair-raising, bit of information:

The earliest mention of the name “Sun Wukong” that I’m aware of appears in an early-15th-century zaju play. It depicts the character as a sex-crazed maniac who kidnaps a princess to be his wife, tries to seduce Princess Iron Fan, and later gets erectile disfunction when his golden headband tightens while trying to have sex with a young maiden in the Kingdom of Women.

But, apparently I can expect no sudden shock of sexual antics in Journey:

He serves as a physical manifestation of the “Mind Monkey” (xinyuan, 心猿), a Buddho-Daoist philosophy denoting the disquieted thoughts that keep Man trapped in the illusory world of Saṃsāra (see the material below figure three here). This phrase is also surprisingly associated with sexual desire.

Despite the association above, Monkey shows no interest in sex throughout the entire novel. This may be a response to the highly sexualized Sun Wukong from the zaju play.

So, there you go.   I should do some work now...

Update:   It's hard to resist the temptation to follow the link to an article about Sun Wukong's lack of interest in sex.   And here it is:   

Lust, Caution, and Enlightenment
A Reexamination of Su Wukong’s Sexuality in Xiyou ji 

The abstract does make it sound an intriguing read, especially since I have posted before about how some Buddhists have thought sex (even of the pederast kind) could sometimes bring horny people to enlightenment:

The formation of the character of Sun Wukong has remained one of the most controversial issues in the field of Xiyou ji studies. While acknowledging that different strands might have fed into the image of Sun Wukong in the sixteenth- century novel Xiyou ji (Journey to the West), this paper calls attention to complex and sometimes contradictory representations of Sun Wukong’s sexuality and explores the mechanism of displacement that subtly operates in the novel and reveals itself through such representations. It further demonstrates the dual function performed by the displacement of Sun Wukong’s sexuality: on the one hand, it connects Sun Wukong to the image of the lustful ape in the white ape tradition; on the other hand, such displacement allows him to utilize and transcend his desire by experiencing the process of awakening to kong 空 by means of se 色 on his path to enlightenment. Therefore, a reexamination of Sun Wukong through the lens of sexuality helps draw together these two seemingly separate aspects and reveals a narrative in which Sun Wukong’s sexual desire not only encodes his hidden past associated with the white ape tradition but also generates significant meaning in light of the Buddhist context, that is, the notion that erotic encounters and fulfillment of sexual desire can be integrated into the Buddhist journey to enlightenment.

 Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a free copy of the paper on the net.  Must look harder...

Not a great start to the week

I see lots of depression on US twitter about the latest NYT poll indicating Trump improving slightly in the polls, to be nationally 1% higher than Harris in popular vote.  

It could just be me with an invalid hunch, but if the battleground States are pretty much tied, as the polls indicate, I would have thought that Democrat enthusiasm to get out and vote may still win the day.   

But it's hard not to disagree with this sentiment:

It's also a worry that so much weight is being put on the "debate" this week - mainly because Trump benefits from the "he's special" status he gets from his followers and the media - he is never held truly accountable for the ridiculousness of what he says, unlike the Democrat side.

Anyhoo:   I am also waiting for the counter to this silliness from Musk:

 I'm betting there is absolutely no way that crewed missions to Mars are going to be ready in that timeframe, due to life support systems for a colony being in no way ready for another 20 or 30 years.   (That's my hunch, anyway.)

Trump and tariffs - just ridiculous

If there is one thing as clear as day, and has been for years (do a Google search), is that no one has been able to get into Trump's head how tariffs work!     

He repeated it again in an answer he gave yesterday to the Economic Club of New York, which apparently was a room full of people too polite to follow up his answer with "Sir, that first part, about tariffs - is just plain wrong":

Some Twitter people are legitimately complaining that the NYT "sane washed" his answer: 

Even the Washington Post doesn't make it clear the fundamental problem with Trump's answer with this headline:

Trump offers confusing plan to pay for U.S. child care with foreign tariffs

while The Independent offers a blunter assessment in the link to its report, but didn't explain it properly in the actual article:   

It takes someone in comments at the WAPO to make the obvious point, and I find it incredibly annoying that journalists do not automatically make it whenever Trump says "foreign governments pay tariffs":

Indeed.   It seems the Los Angeles Times is the one outlet that makes the point bluntly, even though the article itself is behind a paywall.   (Incidentally - the LA Times digital access for $60 - US - for a year is one of the best value online subs around - I'm seriously tempted.)   Anyway, from the Google search:

It's very frustrating to think that MAGA people don't understand that their cult leader doesn't understand - because they won't read the MSM, and the Fox News's of the world won't make the point because it would be too embarrassing to tell their audience.

Twitter is awful now (continued)

This morning, the "For You" side of my Twitter featured tweets of the photo of the extended Walz family* wearing "vote Trump" T shirts about every 15 or so tweets, I reckon; yet I would have scrolled about 60 tweets before I even saw mention of the Georgia school shooting.   And it continues to be barely mentioned.   But now that I check - I just got an Alex Jones tweet about vaccinations in my "For You" column!! 

As so many now lament, Twitter used to be good for quick comments and links to stories about breaking news, even at the local level.  If you were sitting in a big storm and wondered how other parts of the city were going, you could search and expect to get a dozen or two recent tweets from fellow residents commenting on it.  Now, that hardly works.  

And no competitor has taken its place in that role.  Sad....

*   By the way, I discovered later in the day that this was a gigantic nothingburger - the family were "distant cousins" - descendants of Tim Walz's grandfather's brother - and Walz's sister said they didn't know them at all when growing up.   

A pretty rare Wordle

I don't play it every day, and have never before posted about any particular game, but the steps on the way to the solution today seem pretty unusual to me: 

Wordle 1,173 3/6

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🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩