Life in Pyongyang

NPR talks to an American back from a recent second visit to Pyongyang, who says that life seems relatively normal, at least in that city:

On what has changed since Lee's last trip to North Korea

I have to point out that I've only been in Pyongyang, which is the showcase capital. This is a city of elites, and so I'm only getting that side of the picture. It's like only going to Manhattan, rather than seeing the rest of the United States.

That said, it's surprising given what we hear about the sanctions how things have progressed. Everybody has a smartphone — sometimes two. Everybody is on their phones. They're all playing video games. They're doing what we do with our cellphones as well, they're checking the news, messaging their friends.

There's quite a bit more English, which is interesting. English is the main language that children learn here. There's certainly a lot more cars, which is surprising given the concern about fuel shortages.

I did some shopping today ... and it's just amazing the kinds of products that they have on the shelves. [That] certainly wasn't the case when I started coming to North Korea. So, in some ways, life has improved for the people of Pyongyang.

That said, I think that things are still incredibly difficult in the countryside. They have a chronic food shortage, and that's only going to get worse, of course, with the tightened sanctions.

I didn't expect that bit about English, either.

And even with state controlled media, it seems they are not being whipped into a frenzy (or if the attempt is being made, it's not working?):

It's amazingly calm. You would be surprised at how calm things are here, and I have to say that like most North Koreans, I've been largely cut off from the screaming headlines that we've been seeing. I didn't have Internet access for several days. And, as you probably know, most North Koreans don't have Internet access. They get their news from their own state media, so unless they read about it in their own state media, or see it on the evening news, they're not very aware of it.

To be honest, it's remarkable, we are not seeing people who are preparing for war. They've had a month, really, of some big anniversaries. They celebrated May Day. I did go to a May Day celebration in the park, where they were singing and dancing and drinking.
But they're getting ready now for a busy season of rice planting in May, so they're gearing up for that. They are completely unfazed, it seems, by all the rhetoric that we're hearing overseas.

Plain packaging win (it seems)

Are there tears in the Sinclair Davidson, Tim Wilson and John Roskam households this morning?

Because Sinclair may have to put his passport back in the draw after getting some international invites to talk at tobacco sympathiser meetings about how plain packaging doesn't really work (the signs are that governments just don't believe him);  Tim looks likely to have been proved completely and utterly wrong in every respect  about his warnings while he was on the tobacco funded IPA's payroll; and similarly John Roskam's institute might get less funding from tobacco and have to go asking for Gina for more.  

Because - it looks very likely that the WTO has decided that Australia (and any other country that wants to do it) can do plain packaging on tobacco and not be an illegal barrier to trade.

Yes, laugh out loud

It's not that often that I do laugh out loud at a short tweeted video, but the one here, which looks like it has been retweeted a huge number of times already,  really does look so bizarre I could not help it.

Self serving mush

Gee, Chris Kenny is a political commentator well worth ignoring, isn't he?   Here is the start of his excuse making ramble in The Australian today on the state of politics:

Wandering around the US last month I was reminded about the less than compelling place that partisan politics has in our daily lives. 

Even in the Democrat heartlands of California and Hawaii, whether in the big cities or the back blocks, Americans didn’t mention politics or their new President unless I raised the topic. They were — to use a phrase — relaxed and comfortable; just getting on with their lives.   [My note:  it's hardly common in any country, is it, to ask a tourist to discuss what they think about your country's politics?]

 This, of course, should be no surprise and it merely confirmed my instincts as I mulled over what we are told are tectonic shifts in the political mood in Western liberal democracies.

Brexit, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and even Pauline Hanson are often characterised as evidence of a far-right, populist upsurge. This analysis often veers into patronising or demeaning references to the voting public.   [Yes Chris - protestor bashing, redneck rallies for Trump spouting know lies were just typical examples of all political rallies from the last 50 years, hey?]

If this were true, what could be the trigger? Why would this be happening? And where will it take Australian politics? [Gee, what might Chris think is the reason - oh yeah, the Lefty political/media class has gone completely nuts and out of touch.  Like the significant majority of American voters for actually voted for Hillary, I suppose, you moron.]

Perhaps much of the political/media class has misjudged what is going on. Maybe this is less a case of the public mood shifting than voter realisation that the political/media class has shifted from a once centrist axis.

 And so on and so on.   A predictable worthless commentator if ever there was one.

Yet another post about the Guardians 2 movie I didn't care for much

Oddly, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 opened overseas a week ahead of the USA, and hence there are some reviews from there only coming out now.

I found myself just about in complete agreement with the very mixed review in the New York Times, and was happy to read this out to my son over breakfast, citing vindication for the comments I had made to him about the Yondu killing spree section of the film:

At times, Mr. Gunn’s ambitions badly backfire. Like the first movie, this one is jammed with action-driven sequences, some wildly bloated and most of them cartoonish. For one fight, though, he cranks the music and lets the screen bleed as the ostensible good guys kill one villain after another, the casualties falling to the sound of a head-bobbing song. Tonally, the episode feels unpleasantly sour and wrong for this young series, which is best when it goes light; it’s a bummer watching another director attempt the kind of smiling sadism that not even Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino can always pull off.

Interest piqued

I'm far, far from being a Christopher Nolan fanboy, but I have to admit, the new trailer for his forthcoming Dunkirk has a very pleasing look of realism about it.  (In reality, there probably will be plenty of CGI in it, but if you can't tell, it doesn't matter.)



Of course, it may look great but still have no emotional connection to the audience, and he did write it himself (which is a warning sign, given he and his brother did the God awful dialogue in Interstellar.)   But the claim is that Dunkirk is actually light on dialogue.

We shall see....

Nothing if not inconsistent

Are Republican congressmen (well, there was barely a female to be seen) just not that bright?   Because I thought the optics of them guffawing over their Obamacare repeal at the White House was clearly bad - especially when the long term consequences look certain to hurt the poor and give tax cuts to the rich.   There will be no excuse that they did it with some sort of regret, but it just had to be done as an economic necessity, as other Right wing policy sometimes sells itself.  No - the history books will show they celebrated, essentially just because they finally got enough on their own side to vote for an ideologically driven, but socially harmful, law.  Congrats, boys...

And as for Trump:  well, we know he's an narcissistic, immature idiot who just thinks a win's a win and that's all that matters.  But to go from celebrating with Ryan to praising the Australian health system??   Could he possibly be any more intellectually inconsistent?   Well, I guess it takes an intellect, first of all...

Adam throws a tantrum

Adam Creighton, being of a libertarian mind, cannot bring himself to support the idea that banks or investors should base decisions on taking the largest environmental issue the world has seen into account.   Libertarians are stupid this way - either they are greedy rich grubs who spend part of their squillions protecting their income by ridiculing the idea that there is any problem with CO2 at all (see Koch brothers), or even if they do believe that climate change is real and that the precautionary principle means there should be action against it, they can't be bothered being concerned about nothing much being done about it (because "big government", or "I hate Hillary Clinton," or something..see Nassim Taleb.)   And if it's a matter of it taking harm to a mining company to help ensure coal burning stops adding to CO2 - well of course that's offensive, because "you're stopping someone making money".

Hence Adam spends his time criticising Westpac today, because it said it won't finance Adani.

Given that it seems most economists think that Australian banks are relatively well placed financially, I am not at all confident that Adam's criticises are accurate or fair.   Some of his criticisms are obviously ideological, and I would need someone with a better understanding of banking systems and regulation to parse it before I trusted his assessment.

An entry exam too far

Last weekend, I posted about the rather extraordinary story of romantic deception that was in the SMH magazine.

Today, we have a more oddball tale of deception in what sounds more or less like a private pre-spy school in Washington DC.  (Who knew they existed?)

Long story short - a guy ingratiates himself with staff at such a school, and with retired spies more generally, with stories that he used to work in some agency or other, killing bad guys and so on.  Some young male students fall for his stories that he may be recruiting them for his still active covert group, but some of the training involves visits to his apartment.  (Uh-oh.)

Then, Levin began inviting his protege back to his Arlington apartment building to practice drawing a weapon — shirtless. Soon, the man said, Levin began fondling him and giving him prostate exams, telling him the inspections were key to his recruitment. Levin also washed him in the shower, according to the alleged victims’ lawsuit, which was filed by lawyers Tamara Miller, a former Justice Department deputy chief, and Peter Masciola, a retired brigadier general.

Although Levin told him that he was free to refuse, the Arlington man said he did not want to imperil his candidacy for the clandestine organization or risk losing out on government jobs.

About the same time, Levin had persuaded a second young student at the Institute of World Politics to get in the shower, under similar pretenses, the lawsuit says.

The whole story is interesting though, because of the way it suggests that retired spies don't really talk in detail to each other about places they worked for, and what they did.  Which makes it conveniently easy to concoct a past.

As someone in comments after the article says:

The general impression, from reading this story, is that there are a bunch of stupid people in the IC.

(I also how hope that the pun in the title to this post is now appreciated.)

Two other points about Guardians 2

*   The Washington Post has an article noting that the movie really doubles down on the use of retro pop music, and it did feel a tad excessive compared to the more restrained use in the first movie.  The article criticises this whole genre of movie as getting a bit lazy:

When needle drops have been curated carefully and deployed judiciously, they can enhance a film’s atmosphere and its characters’ unspoken feelings. Too often, though, they’re lazy ploys to earn the audience’s buy-in, or to signal the connoisseurship and impressively arcane tastes of the filmmaker. Music that should be used to convey added layers of environmental and emotional information is instead used simply for nostalgia appeal and self-congratulation.

Yes, I concur.

*  Has anyone else yet mentioned that Ego's origin story seems to draw on the idea of a Boltzmann Brain?  Let me Google it - yes, someone at IMDB has already commented on this.  (It is very hard to be first on the internet!)

Speaking of China

The BBC is reporting that morning in Beijing currently looks like this:

Makes me want to cough just looking at it.

And how bad is the air quality?  Spectacularly bad:

Beijing's environmental agency said that as of 11:00 local time (03:00 GMT), the PM2.5 reading - which measures pollution in the form of small breathable particles - was 500 micrograms per cubic metre.

The WHO says the maximum safe level should be 25 micrograms per cubic metre.

A good survey of the rise of China

This review of a book on Asia's rise contains an interesting summary of what has been going on with China.   Some things of note:

Asia is the world’s largest continent and home to 4.4 billion people. But its story is disproportionately about China’s economic growth. Beijing’s official statistics are notoriously unreliable, but by most reckonings, China became the world’s largest economy (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP) in 2014. What isn’t so well known is how astonishingly fast the end came for the 140-year reign of the American economy as the world’s largest. According to numbers Rachman cites, China was just 12 percent of the size of the US economy in 2000 and only half as big as late as 2011. Such meteoric growth has been enough to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty, finance the US deficit, and still allow China to increase its military spending at double-digit rates every year for two decades....

Rachman links China’s newly aggressive policies to President Xi Jinping, noting that the month after he took office “Chinese military aircraft entered Japanese-controlled airspace for the first time since 1958,” and that in his first eighteen months Xi “paid more official visits to the People’s Liberation Army than his predecessor had done in a decade.” Xi has paid equal attention to building public support for his newly assertive policies, bolstering decades of Communist Party propaganda that China, at long last, is claiming its rightful place as a world power after more than a century of foreign humiliation.

This “aggrieved nationalism” coexists with an equally strong feeling of insecurity within the Chinese government—a dangerous mixture. The Communist Party’s legitimacy no longer rests on ideology but on economic growth, which is slowing. The Party is convinced that the West fomented the string of so-called color revolutions demanding democratic governance that took place during the 2000s—from Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan to Lebanon and Iran. It fears and expects similar subversion in China. Outrage at elite corruption was a common feature of these movements, and corruption is rampant in China. So Xi has launched a vigorous campaign against it—conveniently jailing many of his political opponents. The difficulty, as Rachman points out, is that “arresting more than one hundred thousand people…risks creating political instability by another route.”

Scenic Norway

This photo appeared on Reddit recently, noting the unusual and spectacular setting for a soccer field in Norway.   (I am interested in what the buildings on the point beyond the field are, as well.  Looks like a lighthouse keepers house?)   No wonder there seems to be a surge of interest in Norway as a scenic wonderland.

Another rule of thumb

A politician (or political adviser) unduly obsessed with immigration and how it's wrecking the place (and allegedly so unfair on those already here) is never a good sign.

The case in point:  Steve Bannon.

The trouble with wisdom teeth

Forgot to post this last week: an article explaining why so many of us moderns need our wisdom teeth out:

Sarah Zhang: I’d like to begin with where your book ends, which is the modern scourge of impacted wisdom teeth. Our ancestors had wisdom teeth, they did not have dentists, and they did not have so many problems. Aside from possibly being over-diagnosed, why are impacted wisdom teeth a uniquely modern problem?

Peter Ungar: It’s a uniquely modern problem because we don’t grow our jaws long enough to accommodate our teeth. It turns out that nature has selected our jaw length on the basis of what it expects us to be doing during the period of time the jaw is growing. The more frequently you put force on the jaw, the longer the jaw grows. Nature has to guesstimate how long your jaw should be for teeth of a given size. Today we don't achieve that because we’re eating mush as kids.

I don't think my diet was particularly mushy, but these things are relative, I suppose...

Inheritance taxed

Adam Creighton does something relatively useful today (don't worry, he's bound to say something stupid or otherwise objectionable tomorrow) by doing some straight reporting on what a visiting Japanese banker says:

He said Japan’s “40 to 50 per cent inheritance tax (on) wealthy people” helped keep a lid on inequality in Japan, which made politics more stable. It capped house price growth too. “Here people have a strong incentive to buy a house for kids, whereas less so in Japan,” Mr Yoshizawa said.

He also said the financial sector could learn from Japanese banks, which have not been caught up in fraud and mis-selling scandals that have cost major US and European investment banks up to $320bn in fines since the financial crisis.

“In Japanese culture staff have a long-term commitment first of all. And the compensation system is flat,” he explained. “There’s less incentive to make a quick result.”

Colbert should apologise

While it is, of course, ridiculously hypocritical that anyone on the alt.right (or even those who decline to criticise them) should criticise Colbert for using an insult because they say it is politically incorrect, it's still true that Colbert should apologise to his audience for using an insult that no one should use.

There's nothing politically correct about my attitude to this:  I've always disliked the insult because it is juvenile and can be readily be taken by any truly homophobic and violent gay basher to be sympathetic to their attitude.

Update:  reading my link above, which seems to suggest that Colbert should never use any form of gay jibe for the relationship between Trump and Putin, I think that is a step too far.  There are fine lines to be drawn here, to be sure, but I don't really have a problem with a comedian mocking Trump and Putin by pretending they are gay lovers, especially given their reputation as uber heterosexuals (and in Putin's case at least, outright homophobic.)    But an insult based specifically on a homosexual sex act is different - it suggests (as Putin himself presumably thinks) that a particular sex act itself is degrading, but only when done by two men.  By specifying it as being about a homosexual sex act, it is too easily read as either directly or indirectly mocking homosexuality itself.

I suspect Colbert will apologise.

Ketamine and depression

It's pretty surprising how people use drugs for their hedonistic pleasure, but it takes so much effort for scientists to properly understand what said drug is doing in the brain. 

Not very funny

Here's another thought that I choose to speak in the open here:   there seems to me to be a disproportionate number of gay people in stand up comedy in Australia at the moment.

I could be completely wrong - stand up comedy has never been my thing, really.   The modern version is too crude, and (with few exceptions) involves too much self disclosure and seems too much of an attempt at self therapy. 

But on the ABC, you get to see comedians on panel shows and that's where I have the impression there seem to be a lot of gay stand up comedy.

And the trouble is, I don't find any of them particularly witty or funny.  I don't think it's a gay bias thing - I've always found Stephen Fry can be funny and witty, although I think some people do go over the top in their admiration of him.  Ellen Degeneres - well, I think she is a bit over rated, but she can be witty and a basic likeability is undeniable.  

But Tom Ballard - I find him hard to warm to.  Rhys Nicholson - can't see the wit there.  Josh Thomas - maybe he doesn't count as a stand up comic, but I was very underwhelmed by what I saw of his dramedy TV show.  Hannah Gadsby - surely a case of attempted public therapy, lasting years and years now.   Seems uncomfortable in anything I see her on.

But perhaps I should warm more to Gadsby, as she has decided to give up stand up and actually sounds as if she has reached a sensible position about gay identity:

The knotty complexities of the contemporary identity conundrum has been one of the thoughts weighing heaviest on Gadsby.

"I've come to realise I don't like the word queer, for myself at least, because it takes that concept of identity beyond sexuality, in my mind. I guess I was born under the star of Nanna. I realise at the moment there's quite a lot of pressure to declare how you identify, particularly in the LGBT community, so to be totally honest, I probably identify as 'Grandma'," she reveals. "The idea of Queerness - with a capital Q - is about making a statement, so I don't identify as that because I never set out to go, 'Oh I want to be different.' When I was a kid, being not normal was incredibly dangerous and unsafe, but I was powerless to change that, so I was just, y'know, not normal, in a sort of generic, none specified way. I desperately didn't want to stand out. I think that's why I've always been friends with old ladies - even though I'm not that old."

 To be fair, I should point out that I have no idea whether I would find stand up by many of our straight comedians very satisfying, either.  But I did watch some of a Kitty Flanagan stage show on Stan, and she was OK.   I like Tom Gleeson's comic persona of the moment, too.  

Not sure why so much of the younger set seems to be gay, though...

Lukewarming danger

I liked this article at New Republic, making it clear that scientists have been warning of the disingenuousness (and therefore danger to good policy) of the lukewarmer argument on climate change for years.   It is right that should be an outcry against the New York Times hiring one.  

Modern thoughts in Mongolia

I enjoyed last night's Foreign Correspondent - Mongolia - The Last Eagle Hunters. 

Apart from making me wonder, yet again, at how humans have this remarkable ability to learn to love the landscape and lifestyle in some of the most desolate looking places on Earth, the thing that really caught my attention was how these isolated people were expressing thoughts that were more modern than what you'll spot on some Western conservative websites.

The two examples of that - the 55 year old who said he remembered childhood winters were snowier and colder than they are now, and he thought that global warming probably meant that winters there would not be like that again.   Yes - global warming accepted as true by a nomadic, dirt poor Muslim who has probably never been on the internet.    Way to go, internet, to enable the conning of large slabs of the population of the West.   (I think I have read that you similarly won't get any arguments about global warming from the Inuit in Canada.)

The second example - the 12 year old girl (well, around that age anyway) who was learning to be an eagle hunter, expressing the view that girls who apply themselves can do anything a boy can do. This is location where most women are married off by about 19 and become homekeepers.  

Modernity is indeed spreading.

In praise of LED lights

Every time I use LED lights, I'm pretty amazed.   Use the torch app on a mobile phone on a really dark path - it seems ridiculously bright for such a tiny source.   Put a bulb in a lamp and leave it on overnight - it's still just a little bit warm to the touch in the morning.   Take a modern torch using 3 or 4 LEDs - impressively brilliant beam with quite long battery life.

It bothers me a little that, like the computing power and location finding utility in a mobile phone costing even only one or two hundred bucks, LEDs are a technological marvel that people just instantly get used to without thinking about the stunning results science and engineering have delivered literally into their  hands.

Think about your LEDs when you use them, and encourage your children to do so, too.  And get unimpressed responses from them if they are teenagers.  But you have to try...

More than you needed to know

The BBC is running an article originally from The Conversation - all about the physics of defecation.  (There's a phrase you don't hear often in a lifetime.)  A highlight (if that's the appropriate word):

What else did we learn? Bigger animals have longer feces. And bigger animals also defecate at higher speed. For instance, an elephant defecates at a speed of six centimeters per second, nearly six times as fast as a dog. The speed of defecation for humans is in between: two centimeters per second.

Together, this meant that defecation duration is constant across many animal species – around 12 seconds (plus or minus 7 seconds) – even though the volume varies greatly. Assuming a bell curve distribution, 66 percent of animals take between 5 and 19 seconds to defecate. It's a surprisingly small range, given that elephant feces have a volume of 20 liters, nearly a thousand times more than a dog's, at 10 milliliters. How can big animals defecate at such high speed?

The answer, we found, was in the properties of an ultra-thin layer of mucus lining the walls of the large intestine. The mucus layer is as thin as human hair, so thin that we could measure it only by weighing feces as the mucus evaporated. Despite being thin, the mucus is very slippery, more than 100 times less viscous than feces.

During defecation, feces moves like a solid plug. Therefore, in ideal conditions, the combined length and diameter of feces is simply determined by the shape of one's rectum and large intestine. One of the big findings of our study was that feces extend halfway up the length of the colon from the rectum.

Putting the length of feces together with the properties of mucus, we now have a cohesive physics story for how defecation happens. Bigger animals have longer feces, but also thicker mucus, enabling them to achieve high speeds with the same pressure. Without this mucus layer, defecation might not be possible. Alterations in mucus can contribute to several ailments, including chronic constipation and even infections by bacteria such as C. difficile in the gastrointestinal tract.

Guardians 2 noted

I went off to see Guardians of the Galaxy 2 yesterday.

Unfortunately, I have to say I was pretty underwhelmed.   I didn't think the story had much narrative push to it, and was a bit silly even for a silly, not to be taken seriously, comic book story;  there was one sequence which reminded me a little too much of Tarantino trying to make mass slaughter cool;  baby Groot was too transparently cute; and the look of the film really moved into CGI overload, if you ask me. 

It's not terrible, but in a way it reminded me of the second Men in Black film - not a great story, and not enough original elements to make it feel like it wasn't just trying to get more money from its audience.  (Although I think MIB2 was more enjoyable than this film.)

Perhaps number 3 will have a better story and script?  MIB3 did...

The extremely broad brush of Philippa Martyr

I think Philippa Martyr is an interesting character: conservative in her Catholicism, but with an interest in spiritualism and mental illness; a fan of Evelyn Waugh; prone to exaggeration and likely more fragile underneath than her cheery on line persona indicates.  (She is, or was, a smoker:  I've often noticed over the years that this is a sign of underlying nervousness.) 

She's turned up again in Quadrant, that hoary, next to unreadable, magazine with her take on the findings of the Royal Commission into institutional child abuse (with respect to the Catholic Church), and her piece seems to show some genuine shock and regret at the extent of the abuse revealed.  (She also seems to be particularly down on the bureaucracy within the Church at the moment, given her own knowledge - as a witness - of a recent investigation into a priest having an affair with an adult woman.)

But, being who she is, she does go on to try to pin as much of it as she can on there being too many homosexuals in the priesthood.   And in doing so, she makes some pretty broad, dubious, statements.  The prime example:

The first uncomfortable fact is that since ancient Greece, countless texts demonstrate that the culture of male homosexual activity in the West largely revolves around adult men sexually enjoying boys and adolescent males. There are novels, non-fiction, poetry, plays, memoirs, histories, documentaries, interviews, and other texts in abundance, the most recent example being that which caused Milo Yiannopolous’s very public downfall.[22] They all provide a very similar picture: close-knit communities with their own rules of sexual engagement which are often at odds with those of the dominant culture; initiation, secrecy, substance abuse and violence. Male youth has always been the most powerful and desirable currency in this sexual world, and the younger, the better.[23]

Well,  that seems to me to be convenient exaggeration:  that last line "the younger, the better" in particular.

I'm no expert, but my impression is that in all of the cultures where homosexual interactions between adults and youth have been more or less accepted, none extended to viewing prepubescent boys as being an appropriate target for adults.*   In fact, Philippa earlier in the article says she is concentrating mainly on the 30 to 40% of victims who were teenagers, not boys, as being ones targeted by homosexual priests.   Why then, in that sloppy paragraph quoted above, talk as if gay men have always aimed at the very youngest possible targets, which is (obviously) boys?

If her point is simply that post pubescent teenagers have always been a target of homosexual attention, well, there is an element of truth in that, but it's a case of a generalisation too far.  True, she can cite the Greek pederasty/mentoring system (also seen in cultures such as Japan), the history of sex tourism of older white men to Europe in past centuries (or South East Asia more recently) for youthful males, even the "rent boy" reputation of The Wall in Sydney, and so on.    There's no doubt that those activities show the attraction of some gay men to youth.    

But on the other hand, what proportion of total sexual encounters in history between men have been with partners of roughly equal age, or at least, with both clearly adults?  Really, who would know?  And anyway, let's face it - heterosexual sex tourism, and use of prostitutes and pornography has a strong bias towards youth, too.  

Certainly, Philippa cites a surprisingly useless study to support her case - one in which a mere 192 adults had to rank the sexual attractiveness of 15 facial photos of various ages.  Big deal.  (She does encourage the reader to look at a particular table in the paper, which apparently "speaks volumes".  What it shows is a mystery, as there appears to be no version on line.)

In any event, I would take a guess that, if anything, the social normalisation of homosexuality in the West has led to significantly less targeting of youth by older men than previously.   There are so many more outlets for sexual gratification now that there is little need to exploit a youth to satisfy it.   And surely it's clear that the pro-pederasty organisations that, a few decades back, used to seek sympathy and understanding via media appearances have pretty much given up on that undertaking now.  Acceptance of homosexuality between adults has not translated into any slippery slope acceptance of relationships between men and young teenagers.

Philippa, after claiming that homosexual men are invariably attracted to youth,  notes that some seminaries in Australia in the late 60's to the 80's did become known for an unusually high proportion of gay seminarians and staff.  I don't actually dispute that this was true - we even have Tony Abbott's experience in a seminary seems to back that up!  So, the argument goes, get rid of the homosexual priest and you get rid of (some) child abuse.

While there is a sense in which that is obvious (a priesthood of pure, 100% heterosexuals - if there was any way of objectively assessing them as such - may presumably result in a lesser proportion of sexual abuse of teenage guys), it still smacks of scapegoating for a few reasons:

a.   I would bet that the age of many of the abuser priests of the 70's and 80's was such that they went through seminaries prior in the 50's and early 60's, before the apparent increase in gay seminarians post Vatican 2;

b.  it ignores what might have attracted a man with same sex attraction to the seminary in the first place, and that the then conservative views against homosexuality may have contributed to it.  For example, young men who were fearful of their same sex  attraction , and thought institutional celibacy would keep it under control;  or those resigned to their sexual feelings but seeing that the priesthood was one way in which they could attain a certain social status despite of it.  A third possibility (and one I think quite likely):  young men who had not resolved their sexual feelings via much experience at all at the time they entered the seminary, and only later identified they were indeed attracted to men.   (Perhaps because of opportunistic encounters, which they then went on to repeat.)

c.  Philippa explicitly says that homosexual men are not suited to the priesthood; no ifs, no buts.  (Of course, she is supported by Pope Benedict's policy introduced in 2005.)   Her statement:

As to same-sex attraction, I wish I could say that men in this situation would make fine priests, but I can’t. The psychological strain placed upon a priest makes him vulnerable, and he cannot afford to have to struggle with a deep-seated sexual attraction to other men in addition to everything else. I think many people personally know priests who are in this situation, and their priesthood is rarely a happy one. The Church’s ruling on ineligibility for ordination is a sound and compassionate one, not just for the men themselves, but for those who may be at risk of being exploited by them covertly in the future when they can’t cope.

Way to tell homosexuals that they just aren't capable of keeping it in their pants, so to speak, the way all righteous heterosexual priests can.  Isn't this line a bit odd coming from a woman who just went through an investigation of a straight priest breaking his vow of celibacy?

The thing is, if it isn't already abundantly clear - conservative Catholics have an investment in defending the matter of clerical celibacy, despite it being not a doctrinal matter at all.  Why?  Because "conservative".   It's reminiscent of the numbskullery of a crusty surgeon who complain that he (it's usually a he) went through hellish, ridiculous and objectively unsafe work hours and personal abuse when he went through training 40 years ago - and so trainees today should just toughen up and face the same.  Evidence that it just doesn't make sense anymore (such a high suicide rate) is, as far as possible, ignored, in favour of blaming someone else for just not being tough enough. 

In any event, one suspects that the overall loss of credibility of the Catholic Church on all matters pertaining to sex likely means that there are now few same sex attracted young men who would even consider becoming a priest, whether or not Benedict had made his rule.    They likely no longer feel any guilt about it, can have a good career in virtually any field while being openly gay, and so the motivations they formerly might have had to consider an all male career path have gone.   

Philippa, and other conservative Catholics who blame gay priests for child abuse are ignoring the bigger picture re the whole issue of celibacy its harmful effects on disencouraging good people from considering the priesthood, not to mention the widespread rejection of the entire way the Church thinks about sexuality.

Back to MKR

Of course I watched last night's grand final of My Kitchen Rules.  I now have to update my recent commentary about the show:

*  My big oversight on what this year's recipes indicate is "in":   PICKLING.   Did an episode go by in which at least one contestant wasn't pickling some vegetable or other as an accompaniment ?  Oh. Actually, now that I think of it - last night's grand finale might have given it a well earned rest.   And perhaps the cooking on board ship episodes?   Alright, let's just say that approximately 95% of episodes featured pickled something.  It seemed a tad excessive, to me.

* I've been meaning to complain about this for years:  isn't it obvious to every contestant that to get not only nutty carnivore Pete Evans on side in a big way, but every other chef judge, is to get a dirt cheap big bone, bake it and bung it on the plate as marrow.   They always gush about how delicious that is, yet it takes absolutely no technique to speak of, and for me, the idea of eating marrow alone is just unpleasant.   (I suspect it is what gives pressure cooked osso bucco a delicious sauce, as often the marrow has melted out into the liquid, but still, the gelatinous fatty look of it by itself just puts me off.)   The power of marrow on this show's judges, however, just seems ridiculously out of proportion to what it is.   Last night's winning team had probably worked this out, but their main course of veal, marrow and hardly any vegetables didn't look particularly attractive to me.   Of course, it won raves from the judges.  .

*  As for last night's final:  everyone liked the Indian mother and daughter as people, but I get the feeling that the intense India-centric aspect of every single dish they could cook perhaps put them behind.   (Yes, I know, last year's winners were those Indonesian sisters who did everything Asian, as did the "hashtag" team  - who advertisers seemed to absolutely adore - this year.  But if I were to assess South East Asian cooking versus Indian cooking, I would say that the SE Asian cuisine has at least some more variation  in flavour profiles and techniques than does Indian.)

And as for Amy and Tyson, the winners:   poor old Tyson gave the impression of being a socially challenged shut in who puts all his pent up energy into thinking up odd flavour combinations and innovative ways with offal.   If he has a job, I would guess it's as a backroom public servant (they likely don't trust him with direct interaction with the public.)* So it felt like letting him win was somehow right in the big picture:  he has the potential anger profile of a new Gordon Ramsay and seems perfectly suited to the unsocial hours and isolation of being a chef.

But, despite all of that - many of the dishes he and his sister put up were basically unappealing to the average person, I reckon.   Sweetbreads last night!  Didn't they do brains early on?   Putting pickles on dessert?  No, sorry, give me the good curry from the other team, any day.


*  my usual disclaimer:  this impression of his personality outside of the TV show could, of course, be completely wrong.   (Although any 20 something year old who does no social media of any type whatsoever is, well, unusual.)

Successfully smoking fish

Given how much I like eating smoked fish (or smoked anything, really), it's a wonder that I haven't previously tried hot smoking trout in the Weber kettle barbecue.

I think the reason was that the only curing recipe in the Weber official cookbook I have involved a dry cure in lots of salt.  That always seemed to me to be unduly wasteful (even though salt is pretty cheap), and I have never given it a try.

But today, I googled around and found this American guy's* straight forward recipe, involving a salt and sugar curing brine, and gave it a try tonight on rainbow trout fillets.   (Two trout, filleted, gives a satisfying one big smoked fillet per person.) 

It worked a treat.

For my future reference:

One quart of water is close enough to 950 ml.   The brine of 2 tablespoons of salt, and a 1/4 cup of brown sugar, worked fine.  I had the fish in it for about 4 hours, but I suspect longer might have been better.  (The saltiness was OK, but could have perhaps gone longer.)

For cooking - used about 22 pieces of charcoal (I think), and two good handfuls of soaked hickory chips.  One handful still only smokes for about 15 minutes, so I put second handful on after that.  Total cooking time was 45 minutes.

.*  it seems he is particularly fond of pressure cookers, like I am, so I should read his site more. 

Back to Laffer

Quartz magazine succinctly describes what's wrong with the Laffer curve:

The problem is, this tidy arc of cause and consequence doesn’t exist in the real world. Sure, extremely high tax rates douse economic activity. But there’s no reason to assume the relationship between tax revenue and tax rates is perfectly U-shaped. And the equilibrium point at which a government collects the most revenue possible without dragging down the economy is impossible to know—and varies by country. There was no reason in 1974—or, for that matter, now—to think the US was on the curve’s “prohibitive” half (many economists put the inflection point for the highest marginal tax rate at around 70%). In fact, without detailed data, you can’t tell where on Laffer’s curve (or non-curve) you are at all.

Laffer’s general idea of supply-side stimulus can sometimes work. Cutting tax rates that primarily benefit rich people shifts wealth from the middle classes to the rich. That might sound unfair, but in developing countries where there’s not enough money to fund the investment needed to spur growth, a Laffer-style policy could (temporarily) help stimulate economic expansion by channelling wealth to potential investors.

But this scenario is not applicable to the US. Private investment tends to ebb and flow with the business cycle; when demand is feeble, so is investment. Cutting taxes on America’s rich isn’t going to encourage them to invest more—they already have plenty to spend and aren’t spending it. Worse, by shifting wealth from middle class families to the moneyed few—a group that is able to consume far less than the working masses—this sort of policy suffocates demand even more. Slowing demand drags on growth, causing debt and unemployment to rise.

A classic of the romantic deception genre

Wow.  As stories of romantic deception by compulsive liars go, the confessional, true life account of Stephanie Wood in today's Good Weekend magazine in the Sydney Morning Herald is a great one.

I can't quite work out, though, whether I should feel just a little bit guilty over enjoying it so much.    But I suppose it's the same as reading about a serial killer husband who kept his secret from his wife - it's the curiosity about how the deception was exposed, and how extensive it turned out to be, that is the hook. 

Looking on the bright(er) side

A couple of weeks back, I wondered out loud whether we really have the right impression about how the black American population is doing economically. 

Well, here's an article in the New York Times that shows that, at least, the black upper middle class is acting doing better and better.   And the education trends aren't looking bad, too:

The most important trend driving African-American gains at the top can be found in the data on higher education. Between 1980 and 2016, the percentage of African Americans over the age of 25 who had completed a four-year college education tripled from 7.9 percent to 23.9 percent.

Top-flight colleges and universities have played a crucial role in the growth of a black upper middle class.

According to a January 2016 report in the Journal of Blacks In Higher Education, eight highly selective universities (Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Emory, Vanderbilt, Duke and the University of Pennsylvania) and five highly selective colleges (Amherst, Pomona, Barnard, Wesleyan and Williams) had freshmen classes with 10 percent or more African-Americans in them. Many of these selective schools had notably high black graduation rates, ranging from 83 to 96 percent.

What a way to run a Presidency

From Politico:

One key development: White House aides have figured out that it’s best not to present Trump with too many competing options when it comes to matters of policy or strategy. Instead, the way to win Trump over, they say, is to present him a single preferred course of action and then walk him through what the outcome could be – and especially how it will play in the press.

“You don’t walk in with a traditional presentation, like a binder or a PowerPoint. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t consume information that way,” said one senior administration official. “You go in and tell him the pros and cons, and what the media coverage is going to be like.”

Downplaying the downside risk of a decision can win out in the short term. But the risk is a presidential dressing-down—delivered in a yell. “You don’t want to be the person who sold him on something that turned out to be a bad idea,” the person said.

Advisers have tried to curtail Trump’s idle hours, hoping to prevent him from watching cable news or calling old friends and then tweeting about it. That only works during the workday, though—Trump’s evenings and weekends have remained largely his own.

So how do the aides come to work out the "preferred course of action" before they put it before the boss?  Especially given a lot of them are in high conflict?

Adam and morality

So Adam Creighton urges caution about the (apparent) Trump tax plan working out all that great.

He likes the company tax cuts, but is doubtful about any economic benefit from the personal tax cuts. This line, though, shows what a jumble of thoughts he is:

The moral case for cutting taxes — “hands off my money” — is stronger than the economic case. On the other hand, the Trump plan could ratchet up inequality — already severe — to levels not seen since ancient times.

So he is acknowledging that inequality, at too severe a level, is immoral?   Which makes quite a puzzle of his years long finger pointing, in the Australian context, of the number of households not paying any net tax.  

Send us your women

Ah, the Faroe Islands - I don't think I had even heard of them before a Foreign Correspondent story a few years ago.

Anyway, the BBC has a story about how quite a few men there are getting their wives from the much, much warmer climes of South East Asia:

There are now more than 300 women from Thailand and Philippines living in the Faroes. It doesn't sound like a lot, but in a population of just 50,000 people they now make up the largest ethnic minority in these 18 islands, located between Norway and Iceland.

In recent years the Faroes have experienced population decline, with young people leaving, often in search of education, and not returning. Women have proved more likely to settle abroad. As a result, according to Prime Minister Axel Johannesen, the Faroes have a "gender deficit" with approximately 2,000 fewer women than men.

This, in turn, has lead Faroese men to look beyond the islands for romance. Many, though not all, of the Asian women met their husbands online, some through commercial dating websites. Others have made connections through social media networks or existing Asian-Faroese couples.

For the new arrivals, the culture shock can be dramatic.

Officially part of the Kingdom of Denmark, the Faroes have their own language (derived from Old Norse) and a very distinctive culture - especially when it comes to food. Fermented mutton, dried cod and occasional whale meat and blubber are typical of the strong flavours here, with none of the traditional herbs and spices of Asian cooking.

 Fermented mutton!   I suppose it couldn't be worse than those Scandinavian swollen cans of fermented fish that make people vomit at the very smell.  Or could it...?

Thank God they're not in the 60's

This is the sort of story I'm reluctant to post about, because trivia doesn't really deserve it.

But Michelle Grattan's headline has it right:  Abdel-Magid Anzac row is a storm over not much.

Is it ever.

Now I perfectly understand that people, especially on the Right-ish side of politics, may not like her views as a sort of politically correct Muslim.   I hardly pay her any attention, but she was one of the ninnies who complained bitterly about Lionel Shriver's not unreasonable criticism of the anti-cultural appropriation set in Brisbane last year, after all; so yeah, she's probably quite the annoying twit.

But the reaction to her ANZAC Day tweet by Right wing culture warriors in the Murdoch press, and politicians, was ridiculously out of proportion.   It demonstrates:

a.   a complete sanctimonious and un-selfaware hypocrisy, when they complain about Lefties, like her, going out of their way to take offence on matters such as identity politics.  I mean, yeah, way to show people how to not completely over-react to a mild political comment promptly apologised for in any event;

b.  as Grattan argued, a complete lack of historical  perspective as to how ANZAC Day was directly criticised in the past, before it underwent its remarkable transformation into a "sacred" day.   I mean, I like the way it is respected now, but I never lost sleep as a young man if there was routine cynicism of it from certain anti-militarism circles.  Thank God Blair, Bolt, Devine, etc etc were still kiddies at the height of anti-establishment protest of the 60's and early 70's.   They would have been bursting blood vessels at the news every single night.

c.  a complete lack of proportion in terms of priorities for any politician who used it as the flimsiest grounds on which to attack the ABC for, I don't know, not being Fox News or Russia Today.

Equality in Japan

Gee, another good long read today - this one in The Guardian about the very low amount of economic inequality across Japan, the reasons for it, and how that may be changing.

Transhumanism and Christianity

There's a long essay here by a woman who lost her faith in Christianity, and then moved her faith, so to speak, to transhumanism.

I hadn't really much thought about the parallels between transhumanism and (some) religious ideas before (and perhaps Jason Soon was the first to mention them to me), but this essay makes them clear and it is a very good read.  Here is a key section:

Of course, mind uploading has spurred all kinds of philosophical anxieties. If the pattern of your consciousness is transferred onto a computer, is the pattern “you” or a simulation of your mind? Another camp of transhumanists have argued that Kurzweil’s theories are essentially dualistic, and that the mind cannot be separated from the body. You are not “you” without your fingernails and your gut bacteria. Transhumanists of this faction insist that resurrection can happen only if it is bodily resurrection. They tend to favor cryonics and bionics, which promise to resurrect the entire body or else supplement the living form with technologies to indefinitely extend life.

It is perhaps not coincidental that an ideology that grew out of Christian eschatology would come to inherit its philosophical problems. The question of whether the resurrection would be corporeal or merely spiritual was an obsessive point of debate among early Christians. One faction, which included the Gnostic sects, argued that only the soul would survive death; another insisted that the resurrection was not a true resurrection unless it revived the body. For these latter believers — whose view would ultimately become orthodox — Christ served as the model. Jesus had been brought back in the flesh, which suggested that the body was a psychosomatic unit. In contrast to Hellenistic philosophy, which believed the afterlife would be purely spiritual, Christians came to believe that the soul was inseparable from the body. In one of the most famous treatises on the resurrection, the theologian Tertullian of Carthage wrote: “If God raises not men entire, He raises not the dead. . . . Thus our flesh shall remain even after the resurrection.”

There is much, much more in the essay setting out the pre-history of transhumanism, so to speak.   It's also good in that it points out that Christians, with their disdain for humans "playing God" with biology (and, I think, rather appropriately, for fear of inadvertent suffering that such experimentation risks), are perceived by some transhumanists as the enemy of transhumanist progress.

I'm certainly a skeptic when it comes to the idea of uploading mind into a computer - it makes for good imaginative stories in science fiction, but Kurzweil's optimism about when it could be achieved is just over the top.   On the other hand, if he is right, I didn't realise that a comment I made here once, that a reason for keeping this blog running is so that it might aid my virtual resurrection in the distant future, is an idea directly derived from Kurzweil:

“I do plan to bring back my father,” Ray Kurzweil says. He is standing in the anemic light of a storage unit, his frame dwarfed by towers of cardboard boxes and oblong plastic bins. He wears tinted eyeglasses. He is in his early sixties, but something about the light or his posture, his paunch protruding over his beltline, makes him seem older. Kurzweil is now a director of engineering at Google, but this documentary was filmed in 2009, back when it was still possible to regard him as a lone visionary with eccentric ideas about the future. The boxes in the storage unit contain the remnants of his father’s life: photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, and financial documents. For decades, he has been compiling these artifacts and storing them in this sepulcher he maintains near his house in Newton, Massachusetts. He takes out a notebook filled with his father’s handwriting and shows it to the camera. His father passed away in 1970, but Kurzweil believes that, one day, artificial intelligence will be able to use the memorabilia, along with DNA samples, to resurrect him. “People do live on in our memories, and in the creative works they leave behind,” he muses, “so we can gather up all those vibrations and bring them back, I believe.”

I've just got to get some of my DNA details embedded into this blog somehow, and I'll be back!

Anyway, go read the essay.

Stopping the Singapore health care fantasy

Well, I don't think I have ever read a better explanation of the Singaporean health care system than that by Ezra Klein at Vox.

And what is excellent about it is that it makes something clear that I've been muttering here for a couple of years - it's actually kind of ridiculous that some of the the American Conservative or Libertarian Right keep talking about it as if it is something Americans can emulate.  As Klein explains carefully, all they are doing is pointing to one or two elements of it, the ones that align with their personal responsibility ideology, while completely ignoring the big picture that it only can work that way in Singapore because of an enormous amount of government control and intervention.   (And not only that, but it is comparing what one tiny city State can achieve when it is setting up a system from scratch, in a population with high trust in government, and laws which control many things somewhat relevant to heath services - such as high taxes on alcohol, the low use of cars and preventing gun ownership.) 

I think it is really a fantasy that America will be able to emulate Singapore in any substantial way at all, and the reason why is because of the fundamental ideology of the same American Right that keeps on oo-ing and ah-ing about how good Singapore looks.  (I should add - there is also the practical matter of whether it is really in any way practically possible to un-do the long standing American system completely enough to be able to revamp it in the image of Singapore.)

It's also somewhat akin to my other complaint of even longer standing - about the libertarian inclined who have been simplistically praising for years the Portuguese decriminalisation of drug use, while completely ignoring that the system there (with its potential to force users into rehabilitation) is quite contra libertarianism.  Sure, the American Right might learn one lesson from that - that their beloved compulsory sentencing and such like is too harsh and probably counterproductive for small time users - but they are also the side of politics least likely to endorse (or fund) compulsory rehabilitation services on principle.

Things I've learnt this year from MKR

Time for my annual confession that the only reality TV competition cooking show I watch is My Kitchen Rules, and each year I learn something about current culinary fashion.  (Saves me going to expensive restaurants to find out.)

In previous years, it was that putting a shambles of dish components on the plate and calling it "deconstructed" was a thing.  That silly idea seems to have well and truly gone.  I get the impression it is now viewed with cringing embarrassment that it ever was a fashion.

In other years, using the sous-vide method to cook virtually any protein seemed to be very in fashion.   Or maybe it was just one team that was obsessed with it - I'm not sure. 

I get the feeling, from this year's show, that confit is also perhaps not as "in" as it was recently.  Sure, there was some confit going on this year, but nothing at all like the ridiculous number of times it was used only a season or two ago.

As for what's "in" this year:  there is (apparently) a huge revival in the use of the pressure cooker - which is something I'm very pleased to see, because some of my nicest meals come out of one, yet I had the impression that many people are scared to use them.

The only novel thing I've noticed is the use of smoking gun by the somewhat creepy brother/sister team.  Didn't know they existed.

As for the show's format - its patent and obvious manipulation [in terms of editing, and (what one might call) the character arcs that are built into a season*] are so familiar but I think still work almost because of the predictability.  My theory is that it makes the audience feel smarter, this understanding of how they are being manipulated.**   However, I do feel that this year they went too far into the "relationship crisis" storylines, and the gormless "seafood king" and his long suffering wife felt just rather too mean and manipulative of the couple.

The show  still rates well, I see, and I'll still watch it next year.  (Not that every single episode is worth viewing - I have to miss a few "home restaurant" instalments each year, otherwise it is too much.)


*  surely everyone's noticed that one of the initial baddies turns out to more or less a sympathetic girl or guy by the end? 

** or is it like TV wrestling, where it's not clear how much of the audience realises that it is a willing participant in a pantomime?

Tidying up the links

I've been doing some blog roll tidying up, and note the following:

*  added STAT, which is pretty good health and medicine site from the US

*  added Crux, which seems to have decent Catholic commentary (not entirely sure where it fits on the conservative/liberal spectrum, though.)

*  io9 link was recently changed by Gizmodo so it redirected to Australian Gizmodo - so I've changed the link to take you to US Gizmodo, where at the top is the link to io9. 

* added the site for the Society for Psychical Research, which has been revamped and holds a lot more reading material and news than it ever used to.  Despite the old fashioned name, it has always been a very reputable source for information on most things paranormal.

* fixed up the link to Asahi Shimbun, for Japanese and Asian news.

There are probably some more links sites I should delete because I just rarely use them, but they can stay for now.

Update:  nearly forgot - have added Axios, with its unique short, sharp and fast style.   

A very cold war (and some Trump and Hitler stuff)

I like to post unfamiliar war time stories on ANZAC Day, but before I get to the main part, I wanted to quote this section out of a recent New York Review of Books article Lesson from Hitler's Rise, which uses a new-ish biography of Hitler's rise to compare and contrast with Trump.   (It's pretty well done, really, and spends more time on the differences than the similarities.)   This part, about who Hitler was initially impressing electorally, was not something I was really aware of:

However, while both men created coalitions of discontent, their constituencies were quite different. The first groups to be taken over by Nazi majorities were student organizations on university campuses. In their electoral breakthrough in 1930, the Nazis won the vast majority of first-time voters, especially the youth vote. Above all, the Nazis vacuumed up the voters of other middle-class parties, and women of different social backgrounds voted in roughly the same proportions for the Nazis as men.

The two groups among whom the Nazis were relatively unsuccessful were Germany’s religious-block voters (in this case Catholics voting for their own Center Party) and blue-collar industrial workers (who more often shifted their votes from the declining moderate Social Democrats to the more radical Communists rather than to the Nazis). Still, the Nazis drew votes much more broadly across German society than any of their rival class- and sectarian-based parties could boast with some justification to be the only true “people’s party” in the country.

That's a pretty big difference with Trump right there:  most polling shows Trump approval is way low with young adults, although I see that one poll in March found that youngsters in "Trump country" (countries that flipped to Trump, and in which he had big winning margins) gave him the highest approval of all age groups. Just goes to show, I suppose:  have too many young people without a job and they'll vote for any idiot.

Anyway, back to the main story.  On a whim, I Google "World War 2 and Antarctica", and, apart from links to various nut sites about Nazi bases and UFO's down there, I found a few links to Operation Tabarin, in which, late in the war, the British sent a small navy crew (14) on a couple of (presumably) small ships to go and re-establish British claim to some cold islands down around Antarctica.

Wikipedia has a short entry about it (which includes the claim that there was concern in 1941 that the Japanese might seize the Falkland Islands, either as a base or just to hand them over to Argentina to encourage their support of the Axis.)

But more interesting is the account in The Telegraph in  2014, which includes comments by the last surviving member of the crew, George James.   As it explains:

For 70 years, little has been known about this most peculiar episode of the Second World War. Even the men involved never quite knew what they were doing there, improbably told that their secret mission, codenamed Operation Tabarin, was designed to deter German U-boats from lurking in Antarctic waters. 

However, the author of a book about it explains that it was actually all about putting Argentina back in its place:

“By 1941, Argentina quite rightly thought the war was going the way of the Axis powers,” said Stephen Haddelsey, the book’s author. “Would Britain have either the will or the resources to challenge them if they staked a physical claim to the territories? They thought not.”

So, in early 1942, the Argentines sent a ship to Deception Island, a tiny volcanic whaling station in the South Shetlands, where they flew the Argentine flag and buried a cylinder with a formal note proclaiming their territorial rights.

When the Colonial Office heard of this, however, our mandarins’ response was not at all what Argentina had predicted. The War Cabinet was determined to respond, to protect vital revenues in the region and prevent a precedent being set that might encourage incursions elsewhere in the Empire.

The war was still at too delicate a point to provoke outright conflict with Argentina, however, especially as Britain was dependent on substantial cargoes of beef from South America. So the U-boat myth was put about to provide cover for the operation.

George James, that ageing crew member, says:

“A few reasons were put out. We were told it was to do with the Germans but when it came to it, the first party to go down were mainly scientists,” said Mr James. “Now that’s not going down to fight off Germans, is it?”

The crew’s first months in the Antarctic, where the average temperature is minus 10 degrees centigrade, were tough. They moved from island to island constructing rudimentary bases from timber and depositing a handful of scientists at each. But they spent most of their time adjusting to the conditions.

“It was completely alien to all of us,” said Mr James. “Life was in the raw. It was hard going at times but it was a bit of a thrill to think you were there. It was a magical place – we’d be breaking through the ice with ice cliffs on either side.”

It was a very lonely wartime operation:

The war was at its height but there was no conflict here. There were no Argentines to be seen, and Mr James had to face another enemy entirely. “I was once chased along a beach by a sea leopard, with its mouth wide open,” he said. “The penguins would get a bit shirty, too, and have a nip at your legs.” On one occasion, a colony of 10,000 penguins took over one of their bases, entirely surrounding it. Rather than face them down, the crew built another hut. 

And as for the poor Argentinians:

At last, a year into the mission, the Scorseby spotted its first – and only – Argentines, defending their meteorological station on Laurie Island, part of the South Orkneys. Yet the crew could not have had a more hospitable reception. Six of the original Argentine party of 10 men had died, and were buried by their fellow men with wooden stakes behind the hut. After being cut off with no supplies for 18 months, they were delighted to meet the advancing Brits.

“They were lovely to us,” explained Mr James. “They came down to the beach to meet us, crying. We gave them cigarettes and edam cheese. The wireless operator got so excited that he put his arms round me. He took all the badges off his uniform and gave them to me.”

In fact, boredom was a much more persistent danger. “It upset some people a lot. One man got quite scary about it and tried to influence the skipper to turn back. But that didn’t happen, of course.”

Better than being shot at, I suppose; on the other hand, probably not the type of service to make you feel you had been particularly useful to the war effort.

About that juicer

The Atlantic has a somewhat amusing report on the Juicero embarrassment.  I liked this paragraph in particular:

And what is the Press? The official description reads like something manufactured by NASA to drill asteroids for root vegetables. The website promises a “bead-blasted aluminum door” constructed with “aircraft-grade aluminum and precision-forged gearing components” to generate “4 tons [of] potential pressing force,” with a “suite of sensors scans” connected to the internet so that “you have the latest updates,” all optimized through “multiple iterations of miniaturization.” And all this for what? A thing that squeezes a bag?

I notice that on supermarket shelves "cold pressed" juice is all the rage.   Yet I would have thought the worst aspect of that Juicero system is that the bags to be squeezed only have an 8 day fridge life.  (Well, I think you keep them in the fridge.) 

The Obnoxious Right (cont.)

Gee, why does the National Review give space to Kevin Williamson, whose attack on Chelsea Clinton is ridiculously nasty, if you ask me.

But I see that he has previously been noted here as being stupidly hyperbolic - the last time it was about Obama.

Way to make a technology fan feel guilty

From the Catholic Herald:

Global demand for metallic ores used in mobile phones is thwarting efforts to end war and violence in Congo, an African priest has said.

Any person who possesses a mobile phone or other electronic device with components derived from such “conflict minerals” is benefiting from bloodshed, said Fr Richard Muembo, rector of a Congolese seminary firebombed earlier this year.

“Anyone who uses modern technology nowadays is in some way using the blood of the Congolese people,” he said in an interview with the United Kingdom branch of Aid to the Church in Need, a pontifical foundation helping persecuted Christians.

“Looters from all over the world come here to exploit the country,” the priest said in a statement by the charity yesterday.

Fighting in Congo is being perpetuated by a struggle over access to such ores as coltan, from which niobium and tantalum are extracted, he suggested. The ore is used in the production of batteries for smartphones, computers and GPS devices.

I suspect he's right this time...

Adam says "Better the dimwit than full employment, broadly available health care, and a President who has a clue about foreign affairs"

Adam Creighton has that typical problem of small government loving quasi libertarians:   he believes in a magic formula of lower taxes and small, low regulation government, and that's all that matters.

Because, any twit reading this who would go along with his line "I know Trump is not very likeable, but he's better than if Clinton had won" - answer me this:   what is the reason you think Clinton would have done anything dramatically different from the path Obama was following, and why was that path (with good overall employment figures, a budget coming under control, a good attempt at broadening affordable health care, environmental regulation that had a chance of modifying CO2 emissions, and a cautious approach to Syria and the Middle East) such a disaster if it had continued?

Sure, the country wasn't going perfect under Obama, but lower taxes and pointing to Right wing think tanks "freedom index" is not a magic cure all.  Furthermore, as Trump has already shown, he is no foreign policy isolationist (a fact already made clear in his campaign, if you had paid attention) and he is a dumb BS artist who has no idea who to listen to on a whole range of issues.   Sure, some better policy or other will happen while he is President - it is virtually impossible for government to do everything wrong under any President.   And companies may be rubbing their hands together in anticipation of more money flowing in soon.   But try thinking longer term and bigger picture, hey?

Update:  the other Creighton perennial is the repetition of the way, way oversimplified matter of the number of taxpayers not paying net tax.   It's like he has a permanent chip on his shoulder that his own tax rate is too high because not enough of the rest of you are paying tax at all. 

He is, basically, one of the shallowest of economics analysts, and just because he occasionally ends up at a slightly different position from his free marketeer mates doesn't change that.

That's a lot of submarines

Something I had missed in the discussion about North Korea and its ability to wage war, until I heard an expert on Radio National this morning, is that it has a really large conventional submarine fleet:

A substantial number of these sailors serve in the KPN’s submarine fleet, which is one of the world’s largest. In 2001, North Korea analyst Joseph Bermudez estimated that the KPN operated between fifty-two and sixty-seven diesel electric submarines. These consisted of four Whiskey-class submarines supplied by the Soviet Union and up to seventy-seven Romeo-class submarines provided by China. Seven Romeos were delivered assembled, while the rest were delivered in kit form. Each Romeo displaced 1,830 tons submerged, had a top speed of thirteen knots and was operated by a crew of fifty-four. The Romeo submarines were armed with eight standard-diameter 533-millimeter torpedo tubes, two facing aft. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was filmed touring and taking a short voyage on a Romeo-class submarine in 2014.

 Sure, the article argues, the models are considered obsolete, but they are still capable of sinking an American ship or two, or more.  As the article says:

North Korea’s reliance on submarines exposes a harsh reality for the country: U.S. and South Korean naval and air forces are now so overwhelmingly superior that the only viable way for Pyongyang’s navy to survive is to go underwater. While minimally capable versus the submarine fleets of other countries, North Korea does get a great deal of use out of them. Although old and obsolete, North Korea’s submarines have the advantage of numbers and, in peacetime, surprise. Pyongyang’s history of armed provocations means the world hasn’t seen the last of her submarine force.

Computer says "No. I can't explain"

Have a read of this article at MIT Technology Review:  The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI.

It's about "deep learning" in AI, which is explained this way:

Artificial intelligence hasn’t always been this way. From the outset, there were two schools of thought regarding how understandable, or explainable, AI ought to be. Many thought it made the most sense to build machines that reasoned according to rules and logic, making their inner workings transparent to anyone who cared to examine some code. Others felt that intelligence would more easily emerge if machines took inspiration from biology, and learned by observing and experiencing. This meant turning computer programming on its head. Instead of a programmer writing the commands to solve a problem, the program generates its own algorithm based on example data and a desired output. The machine-learning techniques that would later evolve into today’s most powerful AI systems followed the latter path: the machine essentially programs itself.

But the odd consequence of this is that it can be impossible (or next to impossible?)to tell how exactly a particular decision was reached by a computer system that has used this method to teach itself.

I was surprised to read (if the article is accurate) that is already being experienced with a medical program:

In 2015, a research group at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York was inspired to apply deep learning to the hospital’s vast database of patient records. This data set features hundreds of variables on patients, drawn from their test results, doctor visits, and so on. The resulting program, which the researchers named Deep Patient, was trained using data from about 700,000 individuals, and when tested on new records, it proved incredibly good at predicting disease. Without any expert instruction, Deep Patient had discovered patterns hidden in the hospital data that seemed to indicate when people were on the way to a wide range of ailments, including cancer of the liver. There are a lot of methods that are “pretty good” at predicting disease from a patient’s records, says Joel Dudley, who leads the Mount Sinai team. But, he adds, “this was just way better.”

At the same time, Deep Patient is a bit puzzling. It appears to anticipate the onset of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia surprisingly well. But since schizophrenia is notoriously difficult for physicians to predict, Dudley wondered how this was possible. He still doesn’t know. The new tool offers no clue as to how it does this. If something like Deep Patient is actually going to help doctors, it will ideally give them the rationale for its prediction, to reassure them that it is accurate and to justify, say, a change in the drugs someone is being prescribed. “We can build these models,” Dudley says ruefully, “but we don’t know how they work.”

I don't know whether to be happy or scared if AI systems are developed with mysteriously good predictive abilities for something as troublesome as an illness of the mind.

On the other hand, perhaps this provides a basis on which a theist can avoid those tricky theodicy  issues (the matter of why a good God allows so much evil.)   Like this:  "Hey, we've got computers churning out correct answers and we don't understand how, and you expect a clear explanation as to what's going on in the Mind, or Plan, of God?  Huh." 

Seriously, I can't believe it

X-Files is returning.

Can't they just end the show with both of them being alien abducted, and leave it at that?  

As someone at Vox writes:

The problem is that even though the 2016 miniseries had its moments, fully half of it was an absolute disaster, with three episodes that served as reminders of why the show eventually left the air in the first place.

What a country...

I see, via Japan Times, that there was another recent public beating to death of someone accused of blasphemy in Pakistan.   And where exactly?  At a university, of course!:

With the sudden fury of a flash storm, images of an angry mob lynching a young man to death at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, Pakistan, broke across the news cycle and social media platforms to chilling effect April 13. Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old journalism student at the institute, had been attacked after a series of accusations that he had posted blasphemous content online following an argument with a group of fellow students. Whether he had done so or not was irrelevant — the insinuation of wrongdoing was enough.

From the moment the allegations were made he was as good as dead. Everything that took place afterward was a brutal formality in a country long driven by a mindset that allows people to kill with impunity whenever they perceive their religious sentiments have been offended. And so it proved in this case also.

The savagery of the assault was captured in chaotic video footage taken on mobile phones, which showed the crowd shouting “Allahu Akbar” and stomping on Khan’s lifeless body — the final rites of a slaughter in which the victim was stripped naked, clubbed, beaten and shot....

Since then, it has emerged that there is no evidence Khan committed any blasphemy at all. According to some claims, anger against the student might have been whipped up by the university itself after his comments on a television interview about how the institute was being run. It could be that Khan’s only crime was to expose the failings of a few university officials rather than abuse the prophet of Islam.

The writer goes on to note that the problem is deeply embedded in the culture:

Debate on the subject is as good as dead, and those who might choose to enter this Sisyphean undertaking are at risk of being killed themselves. Unsurprisingly, no leading lawmakers or public figures dare comment for fear of the assassin’s bullet.

Moreover, for all the incalculable grief the blasphemy laws continue to cause, there is a great deal of support for the legislation among average Pakistanis, as if the loss of life is a reasonable price to pay to uphold the sacred.

Moves to revise the laws have been rebuffed by public outcry and street protests, forcing the hand of the administration. When Salman Taseer was murdered, his killer Mumtaz Qadri was hailed as a “ghazi,” a warrior, and over 100,000 people attended Qadri’s funeral after he was executed for the crime.

I think this would have to count as within the bottom few countries on the planet that I would chose to visit.   (Perhaps we can exclude certain virtually lawless Horn of Africa states - I'm not sure you can even treat them as serious tourist destinations - although, I see now, that a company will take you to Mogadishu.) 

Actually, if you want some mild amusement, you can read the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation website, which looks stylistically like it was last updated around 2000.  And some of the information seems about as old.  For example, in customs information:

Tourists are allowed to bring in following items without duty;
Personal clothing, hand bags travel goods and toiletries;
medals trophies or prizes;
jewelry not exceeding Rs.1000/-;
01 watch and 01 travelling clock;
spectacles and physical aid;
01 cigarette lighter and 02 fountain pens;
01 pen-knife and similar items of personal use;
01 electric iron and 01 electric shaver for men or 01 hair dryer for female tourist;
01 still camera and 10 rolls of film;

01 sub-standard cinematography camera with projector and two rolls of films;
01 pair of binoculars;
01 portable musical instrument;
01 portable sound recording apparatus;
01 portable typewriter;
01 invalid chair in use;

Yes, you don't want the country flooded with illegal foundation pen imports, rolls of camera film, and your cinematography camera needs to be "sub-standard"?

Even Japan requires common sense

Japan is an incredibly safe feeling place to visit, but even so:

A self-employed man in his 40s was robbed of ¥40 million in cash during a daylight mugging in Tokyo’s busy Ginza district Friday afternoon.

According to the Metropolitan Police Department’s Tsukiji Police Station, the mugging, believed to involve three men, took place on Suzuran Street in Chuo Ward.

A man hit the victim in the back and kicked him in the stomach before grabbing his bag filled with ¥72 million in cash, police sources said. Some of the cash fell out during the attack.

 Proof, I suppose, that there is no where in the world where it is a good idea to walk down a street carrying $875,000 AUD in cash in a bag.

(Odd how the story does not address why the victim was carrying this money around.)

A dream with an obvious interpretation

I was watching 24 Hours in Emergency last night on SBS, due to a lack of anything else to watch.

As far as reality medical TV shows go, it seems reasonably well done, if (naturally), intrusive of privacy.  But I was interested mainly in the story of a guy who in hospital after falling 40 feet from a tree, onto concrete, but lived to tell the tale.

In talking about his life generally, he explained that his mother had died when he was young - I forget the age, but it might have been around  3-5, I think, because he indicated he didn't really understand what was going on when the police arrived and the rest of the family started crying.  She had been killed by a drunk driver when at a petrol station.  (He said she was standing in front of her own car, and the drunk driver's car rear ended the car and it ran her down.)

Anyway, the son (now in his 20's?) said that a year after his Mum died, he started having recurring nightmares in which a dump truck would unload on - or run over? - a flower, and he would wake up feeling really devastated.

That seems to me to be an unusually clear case of a dream which seems to validate either Freudian or Jungian dream analysis as meaningful.  

I don't mean that I am completely cynical of dream analysis as an exercise - but cases where the dream has such an obvious hidden meaning, and one where it would seem the mind is sort of protecting itself from a full imagining of what happened,  I would still think are a bit unusual.