Back to the definition issue

I would have guessed that there was little to be added to the whole argument about the invention of "homosexual" as a category of person, given that it has been well publicised in recent decades. 

But this article at the BBC talks of the invention of "heterosexuality", which is a somewhat different take on the matter.  I thought it interesting, despite my low expectation from the title...

Not just me (again)

I see that Crikey has been keeping count of the extraordinary number of words The Australian has devoted to Bill Leak.

I guessed, in my last post about this, that Leak had been eulogised 49 times.  I was actually pretty close - I think it must be up to 44 now.  (Crikey cites 43, but there might be another one today.)

Surely Leak himself would be finding this over the top...

Spooky Spanish

Hey, finally I found a movie on Stan that I consider above a B grade.

It's the 2007 Spanish haunted house movie The Orphanage.

I had vaguely remembered that it had good reviews when released, and I see now that it scored 87% on the semi reliable Rottentomatoes.

I agree with most of the review extracts I can see at Rottentomatoes - it's frequently suspenseful, surprising, and so well crafted.     It's hard to describe the ending without giving anything away - but it hits with quite an emotional punch.

I think it's pretty rare to find a scare movie that is emotionally resonant - although, I must say, I think that that was the reason that Poltergeist was so successful.  You really did feel the emotion between the parents and the daughter in that film, too.  [And, I will add, that there is one sequence in the film which some might say is very derivative of Poltergeist - but I found it entirely forgiveable. In fact, now that I think of it, thematically  the movies are perhaps a bit similar in a more general sense, too.]

Identity disclosed

I was getting my daily dose of nonsense from looking at the Catallaxy open thread today, when I noticed that one of the regular thread presences, "memoryvault", mentioned having published 3 books, by title.

This made it easy to Google him, and it would appear that memoryvault is Peter Sawyer.  Maybe that's been disclosed there before* - it is not as if I read every single thread or comment, but this is new to me.

Now, there were hints previously (from the oddball commenter Fisk, I think) that  MV had been involved in nutty Right wing politics a few decades ago, and yes, I see that he is the subject of some material on the 'net.  I'm not sure of the author of this piece talking about far right politics in Australia in the 80's and 90's, but here's what he (or she) writes about Sawyer:

Soothsayers and false prophets made the message propagandistically immediate.  Peter Sawyer, a sacked Social Security employee, became an oracle.  Sawyer rose to fame upon insisting a conspiracy existed at the ‘Deakin Centre’ to use super-computer departmental linkages to re-formulate the ‘Australia Card’.[55]  In 1987 he predicted Aboriginal revolution:

The real weapons for the Great Black Revolution arrived quietly in WA some months ago.  7,000 AK47 Russian assault rifles, plus ammunition.  These were shipped in on false documents prepared by Fuller Firearm Group of … Sydney.  Transfer of funds was arranged through Mr. Laurie Connell’s Merchant Bank, Rothwells and they are currently …  stored … around various warehouses owned by Mr. Alan Bond.[56]

Panic was recorded in some rural centres.[57]  Sawyer drew large audiences in many Queensland towns[58] and was vociferously endorsed by Sydney radio personality Brian Wilshire, who subsequently authored ‘conspiratology’ books himself.[59]  Sawyer suggested black revolution was a plot of the United Nations to permit military intervention in Australia.

Sawyer’s wild tales utilized ex-CPA member Geoff McDonald, whose Red Over Black, described ‘Land Rights’ as a communist/United Nations conspiracy.[60]  ‘Pro-mining’ McDonald, who had been patronized by Bjelke-Petersen, Ruxton, the LOR and Liberal-National branches, travelled throughout Australia during 1979-85, predicting violence.[61]  Nonetheless, Sawyer’s star-gazing outdid  McDonald and even Eric Butler, who denounced him.[62]

Googling around further led me to a 2010 comment on an Andrew Bolt thread, where it would appear that Sawyer was doing a Trump - talking about himself without disclosing it:

 Memory vault

Yes, of course MV/Sawyer would have been an early climate change denier - in fact, denial of climate change is really the only thing that absolutely all threadsters on Catallaxy have in common now.   It is the one issue that they will never argue about, which shows what a sheltered home for the easily fooled it has become.

Anyway, I wonder how many of the old timers there are aware of the extraordinary wrong-ness of Sawyer's previous political warnings...

*  Update:  yes, it was disclosed before, by Sawyer on Catallaxy, back in 2015.  In fact, now that I read the disclosure in 2015, I think I had seen that before, but what I had never bothered doing was Googling his name to see what he was known for, politically.

Being a politician used to be a much tougher gig..

An article in this week's Science magazine starts:

Don't worry, you're almost certainly real (and so is everything else)

I've never been really taken with the idea that the universe is just a computer simulation running on some advanced intelligence's computer.   I don't know - just always seemed a bit redundant to argue that instead of looking at reality at every single level from quarks to galaxy clusters, we're looking at someone's super computer simulation that's good enough to make every single level from quarks to galaxy clusters look, feel and behave real. 

And I see that I'm in good company - physicist Bee at Backreaction has a ranty post complaining about the whole idea, too.   Here are some of her key paragraphs:

If you try to build the universe from classical bits, you won’t get quantum effects, so forget about this – it doesn’t work. This might be somebody’s universe, maybe, but not ours. You either have to overthrow quantum mechanics (good luck), or you have to use qubits.

Even from qubits, however, nobody’s been able to recover the presently accepted fundamental theories – general relativity and the standard model of particle physics. The best attempt to date is that by Xiao-Gang Wen and collaborators, but they are still far away from getting back general relativity. It’s not easy.

Indeed, there are good reasons to believe it’s not possible. The idea that our universe is discretized clashes with observations because it runs into conflict with special relativity. The effects of violating the symmetries of special relativity aren’t necessarily small and have been looked for – and nothing’s been found.

For the purpose of this present post, the details don’t actually matter all that much. What’s more important is that these difficulties of getting the physics right are rarely even mentioned when it comes to the simulation hypothesis. Instead there’s some fog about how the programmer could prevent simulated brains from ever noticing contradictions, for example contradictions between discretization and special relativity....

And this section made me smile:

Stephen Wolfram (from Wolfram research) recently told John Horgan that:

“[Maybe] down at the Planck scale we’d find a whole civilization that’s setting things up so our universe works the way it does.”

I cried a few tears over this.

The idea that the universe is self-similar and repeats on small scales – so that elementary particles are built of universes which again contain atoms and so on – seems to hold a great appeal for many. It’s another one of these nice ideas that work badly. Nobody’s ever been able to write down a consistent theory that achieves this – consistent both internally and with our observations. The best attempt I know of are limit cycles in theory space but to my knowledge that too doesn’t really work.

Again, however, the details don’t matter all that much – just take my word for it: It’s not easy to find a consistent theory for universes within atoms. What matters is the stunning display of ignorance – for not to mention arrogance –, demonstrated by the belief that for physics at the Planck scale anything goes. Hey, maybe there’s civilizations down there. Let’s make a TED talk about it next. For someone who, like me, actually works on Planck scale physics, this is pretty painful.

To be fair, in the interview, Wolfram also explains that he doesn’t believe in the simulation hypothesis, in the sense that there’s no programmer and no superior intelligence laughing at our attempts to pin down evidence for their existence. I get the impression he just likes the idea that the universe is a computer. (Note added: As a commenter points out, he likes the idea that the universe can be described as a computer.)

So put away your Matrix movie DVDs (I never really got past the first one anyway - it might have them that put me off the simulation idea.)  Go out and smell the (real) roses.

Rats -v- Mice

There are some charming descriptions of rats from medical researchers in this article explaining how they are becoming more popular as the preferred animal model (over mice) for certain research (autism is the one discussed in detail.)  For example:

In a shoebox-sized cage on their own floor in the Anderson Building at the Baylor College of Medicine, two little white mice with pink ears and skinny tails scurry over a bedding of corncob strips. They run from corner to corner, now and again standing on hind legs to press their paws against one of the cage’s clear plastic walls. Occasionally, they bump into each other and take a sniff. Mostly, they do their own thing.

On another floor of the same building, larger cages hold white rats that can’t seem to stay away from each other. They pounce, wrestle and roll. It’s impossible to avoid the comparison: They act like puppies.

“You can actually grab the rats and put them in your hand and treat them exactly how you would treat a puppy,” says Surabi Veeraragavan, a behavioral geneticist at Baylor in Houston, Texas. Regular handling, she says, helps rats get used to the scientists who study them. “You can put them on your shoulder, you can put them on your arms; they will go to sleep right away. You can pet them and play with them.”

Holding a rat can be like cradling a baby, adds Rodney Samaco, the molecular geneticist who leads the Baylor team. “They like to put their head in the crevice of your elbow,” he says. They practically purr. “You tickle their stomachs; they like that.”

“They love that!” says Veeraragavan.

The Baylor team also studies mice, which were there long before the rats and still outnumber them. But when Samaco and Veeraragavan talk about the lab’s mice, their words are less affectionate: The mice are less social, their behaviors simpler; they aren’t nearly as cute.

If you put a mouse on your arm, as you would a rat, it wouldn’t end well, says Samaco. “They would look very nervous,” he says. “Then, they would bite you.”

See - it's not just me who finds them cute...

Made me laugh

I was going to comment "surely Roxette are only 20 years old, tops." But no, formed in 1986 (!)

Comments on a Lady

My wife and I saw the Julie Andrews directed revival of My Fair Lady last night.

I had gone in with relatively low expectations - I said to my wife it was not really a favourite musical of mine - so I can say I enjoyed it more than I expected.    It is a pretty lavish looking production; all of the actors do very well; the orchestra seemed good, and has quite a lot of work (OK, maybe not as much as the poor musicians who have to do Les Mis); and while the lead actress does sound exactly like Julie Andrews, it didn't come across to me as a studied imitation.

That said, the first (very lengthy) half is more enjoyable than the angsty second half.

And the main issue anyone probably has with the show is one which is not really its fault - as with Pygmalion, its ending is not really satisfying, and it arrives rather abruptly.

If my memory of the play from high school is correct, Shaw added an explanation at the end that Eliza went on to marry dumb Freddy - but it is not part of the play.  Nor is it part of the musical.

Viewed through the modern eye, the ending has the feeling of a return to an abusive relationship - a problem I think we are more sensitised to now than when the play and musical were created.  Which had me thinking, how would a theatre playwright end this sort of story today?

Here's the best I could come up with, so far:  Henry Higgins turns out to be gay, and ends up marrying Colonial Pickering; perhaps with Eliza as the celebrant (her new found career.)    I mean, come on - this is hardly a stretch from all of the talk from Henry about great men are.  :)  And, in fact, thematically, it fits quite well into Shaw's point about morality having nothing to do with divinity, but is, rather, a mere social construct.

If Julie Andrews wants to create real waves with this production, she now knows how to do it.  (I have read that she is in fact in Brisbane, and I think will be at the official opening of the show on Sunday night.  Cool, we are blessed with royalty.)

Update:  interested readers might care to look at this article from The Telegraph, that discusses the issue of the ending of the play, and musical, in some detail.

Day 7, and The Australian's art department is ready for tomorrow's eulogy (number 49 in a series) on Bill Leak...

 

Controversy about the Pope, again (and I missed a conservative Catholic disclosure)

Pope Francis Sneaks Leftovers To False God Moloch At Back Door Of St. Peter’s Basilica

VATICAN CITY—Quickly scanning the alley to make sure no one would see him with the scraps he had placed on a spare offering plate, Pope Francis reportedly stepped out the back door of St. Peter’s Basilica late Wednesday night and slipped leftovers to the false god Moloch. “I know I should be forsaking him, but what am I supposed to do, let the poor thing starve?” said the pontiff, cooing in Aramaic as he fed uneaten portions of chicken casserole to the bull-headed Canaanite god of child sacrifice. “Maybe it’s heretical of me, but just look at the guy—he’s nothing but skin and bones and horns. If I don’t take care of him, who will?” Reached for comment, the heathen idol Moloch expressed appreciation for the leftovers, but confirmed he could only be fully satiated by consuming the flesh of a living man-child set forth in offering upon a burning pyre.

 From The Onion, but they might have lifted it from Church Militant.

Hey, speaking of Church Militant - I haven't looked at what the man with the hair, Michael Voris, had been up to for quite a while, but I just went and had a look at a Wikipedia page about him.  Turns out that nearly a year ago,  he declared he had lived with  gay guys during his 30's - and slept with women too.  But he's celibate now (he's never married), and he's devoted his chastity to the Blessed Virgin or something, so he's free to condemn homosexuality. 

I wonder if that disclosure has affected his subscriptions...

Update:   I had forgotten how strongly I had criticised Voris and his ilk back in 2013.   I always thought his "never married" status was a bit suspect - especially for a man with a Robert Redford hairstyle, but I was too polite to mention it back then.  

Move to Brisbane

The problem with government getting too involved in trying to push people to where government thinks they should live is that it rarely seems to work.   Decentralisation of government departments just irritates people, for example, despite a fondness for the idea by both Whitlam and (now) Barnaby Joyce.

But with all the talk of the extraordinarily high housing prices in Sydney and Melbourne, and the impossibility of young adults to get into the real estate market there without family help, it does seem to me that governments, or someone, should be putting more effort into emphasising the very high affordability of housing and units within a 45 min commute of Brisbane.   (Such a commute being nothing in the larger cities.)

Here is a photo of Raby Bay marina, at Cleveland, which is on Moreton Bay:

It has a string of decent restaurants, a bar or two, and is at the end of the train line which, admittedly, does seem to take a long time (1 hour 25 min) to get into the city compared to the car commute which Google puts down as low as 40 min.

But look, you can buy a two bedroom, two bathroom, one car apartment in this block for $319,000.  (!)

Or in Cleveland (the suburb Raby Bay is really part of) for $595,000 (list price) a four bedroom, modern airconditioned house:

Over on the west side of the city, and now near a rail line as well, at Forest Lake for "offers over $439,000":

Commute time to city:  25 minutes (outside of peak hour) and 24 km away.  The train commute from the train station at nearby Richlands - 30 min.

I mean, really:  do people from Sydney know how cheaply they can buy in Brisbane compared to Sydney?

Maybe the Queensland government and Brisbane City Council should run advertisements down there:  "Sure, you might be lowering your expectations, but you'll also be lowering your mortgage by up to 500%."...

That tax return

John Cassidy at the New Yorker looks at the matter of the Trump tax return (partial) leak. 

It is a curious thing - the leak has largely worked in Trump's immediate favour, raising suspicion that he was in fact behind it.  It lets him claim that he has been a good tax paying citizen (once, 12 years ago, at least), and to huff and puff about illegal leaks used by the press.

But in the longer term, it raises questions about the sense of Republican policies to remove the very tax that led to Trump paying a realistic amount:

According to the return, which Johnston also posted on his Web site, Trump and his wife, Melania, had taxable income of about a hundred and fifty-three million dollars in 2005, and he paid about $36.5 million in federal income tax. That’s an effective tax rate of about 23.9 per cent, which is a long way from the zero per cent that many people, myself included, had speculated about last year.

Almost as noteworthy was the fact that most of the tax Trump paid was captured by the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is a backup tax designed to insure that people with a lot of deductions don’t entirely escape taxes. Because Trump took a write-down of more than a hundred million dollars in 2005, his initial tax liability was just $5.3 million. If not for the Alternative Minimum Tax, which he and other Republicans want to get rid of, his effective tax rate would have been about 3.5 per cent. Because he was liable to the A.M.T., he was forced to pay an additional thirty-one or so million dollars.

And, it also raises suspicions as to why only one return is leaked - do the rest of them since then look much, much worse for the Trump image? 

Ethics, Monsanto style

From NPR:

Two years ago, a U.N.-sponsored scientific agency declared that the popular weedkiller glyphosate probably causes cancer. That finding from the International Agency for Research on Cancer caused an international uproar. Monsanto, the company that invented glyphosate and still sells most of it, unleashed a fierce campaign to discredit the IARC's conclusions.

New details of the company's counterattack came to light this week. Internal company emails, released as part of a lawsuit against the company, show how Monsanto recruited outside scientists to co-author reports defending the safety of glyphosate, sold under the brand name Roundup. Monsanto executive William Heydens proposed that the company "ghost-write" one paper. In an email, Heydens wrote that "we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak." Heydens wrote that this is how Monsanto had "handled" an earlier paper on glyphosate's safety....

The emails also offer hints of a friendly relationship between Monsanto and a senior regulator at the Environmental Protection Agency, Jess Rowland. The EPA was already doing its own assessment of glyphosate's health risks, but after the U.N. report appeared, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention apparently was considering launching its own study.

In late April, 2015, Rowland called a regulatory expert at Monsanto, Daniel Jenkins, to ask who at the CDC was working on the glyphosate study. Jenkins reported on the conversation in an email to his colleagues. He wrote that Rowland "told me no coordination is going on and he wanted to establish some saying 'If I can kill this I should get a medal."

Trouble in Steyn-land

Even if you only casually follow what Mark Steyn is up to now, you might be aware that he tried to make a mark in American Right wing cable TV, only to have his show ended very abruptly, with consequent litigation.

Given that every Right wing commentator in this wide brown land thinks he's terrific, they should be reading this vicious attack on his behaviour by those who had to work with him on the set.

If you think he's a complete jerk for his behaviour towards climate scientists, as I do, you'll find plenty to indicate that his jerk-like behaviour appears to extend well beyond climate science attacks: 

Steyn generally went out of his way to avoid dealing with the crew at all, they say. “We only one time had a meeting with the staff and Mark,” Kullman recalls. “There are many staff members who never even spoke to him.”

Crew members say Steyn often refused to rehearse segments, showed up at the studio minutes before filming was scheduled to begin, and occasionally declined to show up at all, leaving crew members, some of whom had commuted hours to the studio, in the lurch.

Kullman remembers driving two hours through blizzard conditions only to discover that Steyn had canceled the day’s shoot. In a sworn statement, another crew member recalled Steyn emailing employees late at night telling them to come to the studio the next morning for an unscheduled shoot. “When we showed up, Mark Steyn canceled the shoot.”

 Sounds rather like Kevin Rudd, no?   There's more:

“Mark Steyn was incredibly disorganized, often did not show up on scheduled production days, and snuck out of the studio so that nobody would know his whereabouts,” another declaration recalls. “Because of this conduct, it would take a week to shoot an episode instead of the designated day.”

The crew was never given a production schedule, they say. They often didn’t know what they would be shooting until the day of the shoot. Because Steyn would frequently show up last-minute, they were forced to figure out content on the fly. When the inevitable hiccups in production occurred, Steyn would berate crew members who say they simply did not know what he wanted.

On two occasions, those tirades ended with Steyn firing an employee on the spot, according to Kullman’s sworn statement. “Anyone at any moment felt like they could have been fired by him,” he added in his interview.

And this is the funniest part:

When cameras weren’t rolling, crew members say Steyn was almost entirely inaccessible. His offices were on the second floor of the studio facility, and they say Howes, who is Steyn’s publisher in addition to being his spokesperson and an executive on the show, instructed crew members not to approach him there—and, when he entered the studio, not to make eye contact.

Gas explainer

I thought this fairly lengthy explanation of what has happened with Australian gas (and why we don't seem to have enough here - or enough at a good price) was pretty good.  A key paragraph:

It seems that, in gas as in electricity, over-cooked forecasts for demand have justified excessive spending and therefore ensured higher prices. This is precisely what the gas cartel wants: the spectre of shortages whipping up prices. They have been doing it for years.

Culture wars noted

*  Talk about your over-compensation.   Days after his death, News Ltd folk are still singing the praises of  the outstanding work and character of Bill Leak, and how terrible it is that some Lefties have been calling him a racist and celebrating his death.   (True, some Lefties have been behaving badly:  but I still say that News Ltd rush to praise him in every respect smacks of a guilty conscience.  I find it hard to believe that Paul Kelly, for example, wasn't cringing at some of Leak's output in the last few years.)

*  Coopers Beer says sorry:   I still don't really understand the connection between the brewery and the Bible Society - but the company says it didn't approve (or know about?) the video which not only seemed to associate the company with the Society and conservative views on gay marriage, but with the Liberal Party.   One comment from a pub noted the Party connection in particular - and it is a peculiar thing for a brewer to find itself apparently being aligned with a political party.

But curiously, I had noticed even before Coopers was in the news that a current ad for Bundaberg Rum on TV seemed heavy on showing support for the gay community, and (I think) gay marriage.   Bundaberg Rum - from a Queensland farming town not too far from Queensland's Bible Belt (around Gympie), an area not exactly known for its progressive attitudes.  And rum I always thought of a blokey, man's man type drink - not a spirit that would be big in gay pubs.   But, not having ventured into a gay pub recently (not that I can ever recall being in one) perhaps I'm wrong about that?  Or is it just an advertising executive's idea of how to expand its base?   Anyway, I thought it odd.

Perhaps this will all balance itself out in the alcohol drinking community as a whole - some Bundy drinkers might be a bit put off buying a "gay" drink? 

Anyway,  don't these product boycotts have a way of not working, when the conservatives/Lefties go out of their way to buy the product to annoy the SJWs/conservatives?  I wouldn't sweat about it too much if I were Coopers.

And personally, I don't mind most Cooper's beers, and gay pubs refusing to stock it is hardly going to affect my attitude to drinking it.

All this will pass...

Update:  let's go to the threadsters of Catallaxy to note their reasonable and balanced approach to the Coopers storm in a stubbie.   First, DB, who lives in New York, happily (as far as I know), with a wife who he has said works in the fashion industry and therefore knows lot of gay folk:  facts all of which, one would have thought, may have made him realise that legal gay marriage does not cause the end of civilisation.    But, here he is, commenting on the (somewhat stilted) apology video put out by Coopers:

OMG. The Coopers hostage video is unbearable to watch. I could just imagine a cage and a can of Ronson just to the side, off-camera. The Waffen-SSM is just like the Terminator, it cannot be reasoned with, but unlike the Terminator, it is a creampuff, that can be smashed if you simply stand up against it. Which is why they opposed a plebiscite that would involve organised opposition against it and a free vote of the people. And they must be smashed.

 And CL, the other uber Catholic of Catallaxy:

Not sure if he's endorsing stoning or just jail...

But I'll end with the usual disclaimer:  I actually don't support gay marriage either; it's just that I'm not going to panic about it.

Pepsi endorsed

I really like the new Pepsi Max Vanilla.  

That is all...

Alien conjecture

A planet sized radio source to power a light sail is causing mysterious fast radio bursts? 

I'm finding that a bit of a stretch...

A quick Spielberg

I think this is good news:

Just last week, it was announced that 20th Century Fox and Amblin Entertainment were quickly rounding up talent for director Steven Spielberg’s The Post, a film about the Pentagon Papers controversy which will star two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump, Captain Phillips) and three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady, Florence Foster Jenkins). Now, Deadline is reporting that the timely film about the importance of a free press is being fast-tracked for a May start date in order to complete the picture for an Oscar-qualifying release, likely in late December of 2017.

The Post is clearly looking to capitalize on the story’s zeitgeist-tapping potential amid the current administration’s attacks on the press, and may even signal a whole wave of socially-relevant films from major studios. The May start date gives the film only eight months from cameras rolling to release, though the speedy Spielberg previously completed his 2005 Best Picture-nominee Munich in a mere six months. This also means that the director’s sci-fi flick Ready Player One will have the honor of being released three or four months AFTER The Post in March of 2018, despite having finished filming months ago. Spielberg will finish work on both films this year while also continuing his meticulous search for a child actor to star in The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara with Mark Rylance and Oscar Isaac. He also has the fifth Indiana Jones movie starring Harrison Ford for Disney, which has a July 19, 2019 release date.

At the rate Harrison Ford seems to get into accidents these days, I hope he makes it to the studio.

I also repeat my call for the perfect ending to the Indiana Jones films: an aging Indy is added as one of the astronauts taken on board the mother ship at the end of Close Encounters.

I will accept very modest reimbursement for the idea, as well as meeting Steven Spielberg at the Premiere.

Call me, Steven...