The culture wars have become very, very weird

I refer to two things:

*  Milo Yiannopoulos and his Australian tour, which I see is presented by Penthouse (Australia and NZ).   (Why?)   This is a screenshot of his sales site:

Who on earth would pay $90 plus, let alone $295, to meet this twit?    And the meet and greet starts at 11.45 pm.  ? 

I like the way the venue is secret 'til a week out, meaning that the "sold out" shows may be the 30 seat conference room in the back of the CBD Ibis Hotel, for all we know.

And yet, because he talks about how terrible "SJW's" and feminists are, he has the support of crossover conservatives/alt.righters, and Andrew Bolt, regardless of his apologia for older gay men who "mentor" young teen gay guys, as he plainly did in the now infamous interview that took an unusually long time to be publicised.  (Not that he's apologising for that any more, as far as I can tell.)

* Roy Moore in the US.   It seems hard to credit that there could be more evangelical support for him, after the first round of allegations about his unusual habit, as a 30 something year old, of dating/sexually assaulting teenage girls.   Maybe, after the latest claim, from a woman who says she is a Trump voter, they will actually start to wonder?    Or is it more that, the ways things are currently perversely working, a sex video of him with a 16 year old could only help strengthen evangelical support?    (After all, the Lord's mother might have only been that age, I can hear them say.) 

Talk about a religious group shooting their moral credibility in the foot over the last couple of years.

Axios says Rand Paul is the only Senator still endorsing him (!).   Maybe he has concussion or something affecting his judgement, or is it just a example of why libertarians can't get much of a foothold in the US government when their figureheads are lacking common sense?

The funniest thing was the report a day or two ago that Breitbart (read "Bannon") sent out two reporters to Alabama to try to discredit the claims, when in fact since then the reports have become worse and worse.

Fail, Bannon.   A complete fail.

Yet more disarray

Another Senator gone (Lambie). 

I think an election clean out of the entire Parliament is feeling more warranted every day...

Today's Freudian trivia

From a very short book review in Nature:

Sigmund Freud's first paper involved the dissection of eels in an attempt to locate their testes. To his frustration, Freud failed to find any.

I encourage all readers to attempt to slip that into workplace or household conversation today.

Update:  because I'm curious, I had to look up more about Freud's hunt for (eel's) testicles.  Here it is:

As they say with young people, Freud may not have known enough to know how futile this task would be when employed by a nondescript Austrian zoological research station. It was his first job, he was nineteen-years-old, and it was 1876. He dissected approximately 400 eels, over a period of four weeks, and he worked in an environment that the New York Times described as “Amid stench and slime for long hours”. His ambitious goal was to write a breakthrough research paper on the animal’s mating habits that had confounded science for centuries. One has to imagine that a more seasoned scientist may have considered the task futile much earlier in the process, but an ambitious, young nineteen-year-old, looking to make a name for himself, was willing to spend long hours slicing and dicing these eels, hoping to achieve an answer that could not be disproved.

Unfortunate for young Freud, and perhaps fortunate for the future of Psychology, we now know that eels don’t have testicles, until they need them. The products of Freud’s studies must not have needed them at the time he studied them, for Freud ended up writing that his total supply of eels were “of the fairer sex”. Freud did write that research paper over time, but it detailed his failure to locate the testicles. Some have said that he correctly predicted where the testicles should be, and that he argued that the eels he received were not mature eels. The result was that he did not find the testicles, and he moved onto other areas as a result. The question that anyone reading the psychological theories Freud would write later in life, has to ask, in conjunction with this knowledge, is how profound was this failure on the rest of his research into human sexual development? 

 The blog writer goes on with a lot of questions about whether Freud's obsession with human psycho-sexual development was a case of unconscious over compensation for being unable to locate eel's testicles.   It's an interesting thought...

A lyric misheard for a very long time

Something else happened on the weekend - after hearing someone singing it live, I realised that I had misheard the chorus and title of a rather popular pop song as "Valerie" instead of "Out of Reach".  The song's only been out since 1999, give me a break.   I thought it sounded an odd way of singing "Valerie" but I genuinely had no inkling that it was actually 3 words, not one.   

I see that at least one other man in his 50's had been hearing it the same way.   Maybe it's a Dad thing.

The great inconsistency

It occurred to me over the weekend:   don't zombie cultist Trump worshippers, like Steve Kates, find that their simultaneous beliefs that:

a.   Trump is right and doing God's work in wanting a better relationship with Russia (well, Putin) because Russia/Putin and the US could do good work together;  AND

b.   that Hilary Clinton and the FBI and Obama did the worst possible thing in the world and should be locked up because they let the Russians get control some (overinflated) amount of US uranium

are not exactly consistent, at least with respect to the view of Russia inherent in those positions?

I hope that's a real tweet..

I suppose that, as the world ends, at least we'll be laughing grimly about how it happened...

Update:  so sue me, I hadn't been following this fake twitter thing closely.  Still pretty funny.

Just vote Liberal Democrats and shut up

Another day, another Tim Blair whine about the ABC operating on government money.

Look, there is at least one Party with pretensions to power that wants the ABC privatised as soon as possible - the Liberal Democrats.   Given that the fact that ABC funding support is seemingly the most important, gut wrenching issue in the daily life of Tim Blair, why doesn't he just continually support the Leyonhjelm outfit for this reason alone (if not others - Blair really wouldn't seem to have any issue with that party's policies, I reckon), and blog about something else.   

Can't we just start over again?

News this morning that, as usual, One Nation (seems the party motto should be:  "You don't have to be nuts to run for us; but if you're running for us, you're nuts") is cracking up due to internal conflict just helps confirm in my mind that the public likely thinks this Parliament is such an enormous mess it really needs an election to sort it out. 

First, what went on in One Nation, from the Australian, so I probably can't link to it:

One Nation’s newest senator Fraser Anning has defected within hours of being sworn-in, causing a major upset for Pauline Hanson who now has just three votes in the chamber.

Senator Anning’s shock move follows weeks of internal party tensions and revelations Senator Hanson had wanted him to resign to allow for the return of Malcolm Roberts.

A long-time supporter and friend of Senator Hanson’s, Senator Anning replaced Mr Roberts as a Queensland One Nation MP after the High Court found last month that the latter was ineligible to sit in parliament because he was a dual British citizen when he nominated.

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm, who with Australian Conservatives senator Cory Bernardi escorted Senator Anning into the upper house this morning for his swearing in, said he was aware Senator Anning had been “under pressure to resign” to make way for Mr Roberts.

If Senator Anning had resigned, he would have created a casual vacancy that could have been filled by Mr Roberts.

Secondly:   Turnbull is copping the fallout of the citizenship issue, and I suspect it's because sounding aggro about it when you already are not polling well is not a great look.

He would, it seems clear, lose any election held now, and perhaps by a reasonably wide margin; but if he is interested in how history may view him more favourably, as a PM who selflessly let the public sort out the mess via a new election with candidates who are all unequivocally entitled to be there, a trip to the Governor General to call one would be the way to do it.

Weekend events

Good and not so good news from the weekend:

*   we've had an Emile Henry ceramic tagine - one of these -

for a couple of years, and while they are not cheap, I realised yesterday (when I finally got around to cooking in it - instead of my wife) that they are a real pleasure to use.    It fries off like a nonstick surface, and I'm not sure why (very even heat conduction?) but there was very little heat sticking of stuff on the bottom even when it has been on the gas burner for 50 minutes without stirring.  (I didn't really mean to not stir for that long, but anyway...)

The recipe for a Moroccan style lamb tagine worked out really well too, based on a Jamie Oliver version on a Tefal website.  I adjusted a bit and record it here for my future reference:

About 400 - 500 g lamb shoulder diced
One teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, cumin and coriander
One big onion - red, brown, I doubt it matters much (diced of course)
Couple of garlic cloves sliced
A fresh red chilli sliced
Tablespoon of honey
Can of tomatoes
Can of chick peas
About 30 g of dried apricots (it's only about 4 or 5 whole dried ones)
40 g of black olives
Vegetables - I used a carrot and a capsicum, both cut into big chunks, but his recipe used eggplant.  Whatever.  I think anything is going to work.
Italian parsley (I didn't have any, but Jamie's recipe involves some cooked in it, and some on top as garnish)

Method:  lamb gets mixed with the spices and honey (and some salt and pepper), then fried off in some olive oil to brown in the tagine  Add onion,  chilli and other vegetables and cook off for another 10 or 15 mins or so.  Add tomatoes, a tomato tin full of water, the chickpeas (including some of the liquid from it - I used perhaps half.) and tear up the apricots and throw them in, with the olives too.  Check salt level and add a bit more (probably).

Simmer covered for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Served with couscous with roasted flaked almonds and some finely cut up dried apricot and lemon juice through it.

It was really nice.  But then again, everything cooked in this thing seems to come out nice.  Maybe tagines share the magical powers of wood serving platters, which make all food taste better.   They just do, OK?

Update:   out of curiosity, I had a look at a "products review" website for this brand of ceramic tagine, and found quite a few people complaining that it suddenly cracked and was thereby rendered useless.   Hope ours doesn't suffer that fate.

*   I've praised Mark Dapin as a magazine features writer before, and his article in Good Weekend on Saturday was particularly interesting.   He meets up with an old university friend who has finally revealed his sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest/teacher as a teenager.

It's really remarkable,  the way the stories of the life ruining effect of teenage sexual abuse are so often so similar: the subsequent drug or alcohol abuse, depression and relationship problems, etc.   Mark's friend's explanation of the ambiguities of the emotions at the time adds another aspect I hadn't really realised - as a smart, sensitive teen, he actually liked being groomed, as it involved making him feel special and warranting the attention of someone intellectually sophisticated and part of the adult world.   That makes sense, I guess, although not every abuse victim is groomed in exactly that way, of course.  And it doesn't stop it from causing decades of later turmoil, perhaps with that irreconcilable ambiguity and conflict of emotions being the thing at the heart of why it is so often so psychologically damaging.   I think it's an interestingly complicated issue, this matter of how exactly it is that such experiences have such long lasting, detrimental psychological effects, and I wonder if  abuse victims might be particularly suited to the one of the schools of psychoanalytical "talking therapies".   

*  Watched Korean zombie movie Train to Busan on Saturday night.    The zombies are definitely in the World War Z style of more-or-less instant conversion as soon as bitten, which is kinda silly even in the fictional universes where zombies exist, I reckon.   But I got over that and enjoyed World War Z more than I expected, but enjoyed Train less than I expected.   Too much traumatised child at the end; and one thing bothered me - modern trains don't go so dark inside when going through tunnels.  That was a plot contrivance that was not realistic, if you ask me.   (Yes, here I am, being pedantic over realism in an "instant zombie" movie.)

South Korean ways of living seem so, so similar to those in Japan don't they?   I found it interesting from that point of view.

* I seem to have one eye ageing unusually rapidly - so much so that it already is developing a cataract, and quite quickly too.   Will be booking in to see a specialist ASAP, as the hazing effect of the cataract is already noticeable and there is no point in getting new glasses until that is fixed.   The optometrist asked if I had ever injured that eye, as the type of cataract at my age is more often from injury; but no, I don't recall ever getting punched in that eye, or any other injury.  Just one of life's mysteries.

I've also learnt that looking at images of cataract surgery makes it look remarkably unpleasant, for something done so routinely (and in day surgery.)

Where is the dark matter?

Well, it really is a bit of a depressing time to be a research physicist, it seems.  From Nature News:

Physicists are growing ever more frustrated in their hunt for dark matter — the massive but hard-to-detect substance that is thought to comprise 85% of the material Universe. Teams working with the world’s most sensitive dark-matter detectors report that they have failed to find the particles, and that the ongoing drought has challenged theorists’ prevailing views.

The latest results from an experiment called XENON1T at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, published on 30 October¹, continue a dry spell stretching back 30 years in the quest to nab dark-matter particles. An attempt by a Chinese team to detect the elusive stuff, the results of which were published on the same day², also came up empty-handed. Ongoing attempts by space-based telescopes, as well as at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, have also not spotted any hints of dark-matter particles.

The findings have left researchers struggling for answers. “We do not understand how the Universe works at a deeper and more profound level than most of us care to admit,” says Stacy McGaugh, an astrophysicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

The article explains some of the details of the searches, then gets to this point:

Future generations of detectors based on the same principle as XENON1T are already in the works, and will be needed if physicists are to finally close the window on WIMPs. But the particles’ continuing no-show is making theorists more open-minded and has allowed other theories to gain prominence, says Hooper. Perhaps dark matter consists of exotic axion particles, which are akin to strange, massive photons. Theorists are also looking at whether dark matter might not interact with known particles at all, but exist in a “hidden sector”, he says.

 The "upside down world" of Stranger Things, perhaps?

(There's always  MOND theories of gravity, but they have their problems too, apparently.)

Something I didn't see coming...

No pun intended in that post heading:  it really is surprising, isn't it?, this outpouring of people prepared to speak out now about the bad, unwanted, sexual conduct of Hollywood and media stars, the most recent being a high profile comedian and a Senate candidate.   (I have never seen Louis CK apart from briefly on some chat shows - I have no idea whether his comedy would appeal to me or not, although I have always suspected the latter - and now I feel I don't have to spend time checking.)

I trust Steven Spielberg never gets caught up in this.

Speaking of possibly the last nice guy in Hollywood who never put the hard word on a starlet (I'm hoping!), the trailer is out for his new, hurriedly made movie.   I haven't watched it with the sound on yet, so I don't know what I think:

 

This man teaches at a tertiary institution..

I see that Steve Kates says he gave a "presentation" on the first anniversary of Trump's election.    Not sure where, but I presume it looked something like this:

And here's a pic Steve's wife took of him before he left to go give his little talk:

He's put his speaking notes up at you-know-where, and I'll extract some highlights:

Who are the enemies he is dealing with and what are the central issues?

fanatical and ignorant opposition

• SJW are far left anti-capitalist, anti-free institutions
• the left in the US and across the world is no longer about provisioning the welfare state but is out and out communist and totalitarian
• Antifa is representative of the mindset

I wonder if he was stocking up on canned beans and bottled water for the collapse of civilisation last weekend went Antifa brought down the United States?

Anyway, here's more of his insights:

far-far left media
• malevolent, ignorant and totalitarian at heart
• utterly oppositional in everything they say or write
• stand for nothing other than a series of empty clichés
• tweet-storms is Trump’s modern means to outflank the media

 Yes, Kates genuinely believes Trump tweeting is a clever thing for him to do to "outflank" the malevolent, ignorant, media.   Paranoid much.

And finally:

personal qualities

• tough minded and clear headed
• understands business and the operation of a market economy
• a strong believer in education and learning
• has a high regard for the study of history

I keep saying he's an out and out cultist - and a nasty one who thinks those who disagree with him on politics are e-vil.

Aren't they just a tad embarrassed?

I see that via Hot Air that there was much right wing mocking of USA Today putting up an infographic about the AR15 showing that, amongst other various modifications (a 100 round drum magazine, for God's sake), there were also other rare ones, such as a chainsaw bayonet.

Allahpundit himself thought this was all very funny.   But he then ends the post with the realisation (and a Youtube video that confirms it) - the chainsaw bayonet really exists.  

Kingdom revisited

I think this is a scene from Helen Dale's Kingdom of the Wicked:

[Actually, I saw that movie, with my father, surprisingly, at the cinema when it came out in 1973.  He didn't mind it, too, despite its somewhat hippy vibe.]

More taxes

Robert J Samuelson in the Washington Post:

The truth is that we can’t afford any tax reduction. We need higher, not lower, taxes. What we should be debating is the nature of new taxes (my choice: a carbon tax), how quickly (or slowly) they should be introduced and how much prudent spending cuts could shrink the magnitude of tax increases.

To put this slightly differently: Americans are under-taxed. We are under-taxed not in some principled and philosophical sense that there is an ideal level of taxation that we haven’t yet reached. We are under-taxed in a pragmatic and expedient way. For half a century, we haven’t covered our spending with revenue from taxes.

Of course, there are times when borrowing (that is, budget deficits) is unavoidable and desirable. Wars. Economic downturns. National emergencies. But our addiction to debt extends well beyond these exceptions. We have run deficits with strong economies and weak, with low inflation and high, and with favorable and unfavorable productivity gains.

Since 1961 — and I admit to having reported this fact before — federal budgets have been in surplus in only five years. And these surpluses have invariably coincided with long economic booms that swelled government tax revenue: 1969, following the long boom of the 1960s; and 1998 through 2001, reflecting the “tech boom” of the 1990s.

We resist the discipline of balancing the budget, which is inherently unpopular. It’s what Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute calls “take-away politics.” Some programs would be cut; some taxes would be raised. Americans like big government. They just don’t like paying for it.

Borrowing is easier. It’s largely invisible to most Americans, creating the illusion of “something for nothing.” This liberates Republicans to peddle more tax cuts. Their tax cut would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years. A more realistic figure is $2.1 trillion, claims the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Democrats are little better. They advocate more entitlement spending, despite CBO’s estimate of $10 trillion in deficits under existing policies over the next decade.

This blog needs a photo

Seems to me there are too many words without enough graphic relief here lately.

So here, found via Reddit's Earth Porn thread, an unusual landscape in Peru:

There's an article in Forbes about this place.  

Makes the "coloured sands" on the beach north of Noosa in Queensland look inadequate...

Update:  I see from this travel site that these mountains have become a tourist destination only in the last couple of years, and the guy writing the post says to be very aware of photoshoped photos,  and that it is a terrible place to visit.    He sounds traumatised by his experience, just about.

Not all gun nuts...

This thing about assault weapon bans in the US:   regardless of how functionally it may be difficult to define an assault weapon, I reckon if it were any country other than America, no one would complain about a government that took a completely visual, somewhat arbitrary approach and had a committee that looked at photos of semi automatics and said "yes, that one looks so much like a military weapon - it's banned from future sale.  This one - functionally the same, but looks like a hunting rifle - can be sold with max magazine of 10".   Or for that matter, had the ability to ban gun makers from advertising weapons in such a way that their look appears military. 

Oh boo hoo, it would interfere with gun manufacturers right to make money by selling guns on the basis that they'll let the owner look like a pretend soldier.   I mean, look at some of the advertising, it's absurd.

And it's good to be reminded that some Americans with a military background think so too:

One of President Donald Trump’s nominees for a top Pentagon job just said he thinks it’s “insane” that civilians can buy assault rifles — just like the shooter in Sutherland Springs, Texas, was able to do.

“I’d also like to, and I may get in trouble with other members of the committee, just say how insane it is that in the United States of America a civilian can go out and buy a semiautomatic assault rifle like an AR-15,” Dr. Dean Winslow, the nominee for the Department of Defense’s top health affairs job, said during his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee today....

Trump’s feelings go against those of some senior retired generals. In 2013, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal — who commanded America’s elite troops worldwide and troops in Afghanistan — came out in support of gun control. "I think serious action is necessary," he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe in 2013. 

"Sometimes we talk about very limited actions on the edges and I just don't think that's enough,” he continued. “The number of people in America killed by firearms is extraordinary compared to other nations. And I don’t think we’re a bloodthirsty culture, and so I think we need to look at everything we can do to safeguard our people.”

Kingdom not come?

 I have been trying to follow the success or otherwise of Helen Dale's recently published alternative history (Jesus as terrorist in technologically advanced Roman world) novel "Kingdom of the Wicked".    Must be about a month since her Australian book tour, duly attended by her libertarian,  and not so libertarian, pals (Mark Barnisch seems to be under her spell, when he's not busy tweeting like a teenager about having meals and drinks on his returns to Brisbane); and she got some free publicity in the media too.

I have not yet been able to find any mainstream media review, which I find a little curious.   But maybe they have a backlog of reviews to get done and it's coming.

On Amazon, there was an initial review by someone who said he read it quickly, and liked it, but it did contain qualifications, such as it being very lewd in parts (a nice, old fashioned word that makes me think the reviewer is over 60), and this:

The names and titles are also a bit cumbersome to someone not especially familiar with the language. That said, even without the glossary, most meanings are evident from context. Finally, the story is quite complex, and readers with attention issues will probably have trouble enjoying the story if they are unable to follow it.

That was the only review for the first few weeks, but now one has appeared by Katy Barnett - the legal academic, long term friend and co-blogger of Dale.  Unsurprisingly, it also gives the book 5 stars, and while it does admit that she was a "beta reader" of the book from the start, her review contains some curious qualifications too:

It follows that this is not an *easy* read, although it is compelling. If you are likely to be offended by the idea that Jesus could be arrested as a terrorist, or by sexually explicit or violent scenes, this is probably not the book for you. However, if you are interested in law, history, questions of morality and in being challenged, you will enjoy this book. My husband found the names and concepts confusing, but I did not have any problems as I am a lawyer and a history graduate.

Look, I think it's telling if the two 5 star reviews - one by an enthusiastic friend who has encouraged the author from day one - both have to warn people that it's not an easy story to follow, and having two degrees is an advantage to understand it!   This does not augur well for the general reception of the book, it you ask me. 

It's a wonder Sinclair Davidson hasn't gushed about the novel yet, given he seems to consider Dale to be a literary goddess and all round genius.   A David Leyonhjelm piece at Catallaxy in which he spoke about the book went over like a lead balloon in that conservative dungeon (Jesus as terrorist doesn't play well with them - not that I can really blame them for their skepticism about that).  But at least it gave forum to some anti Dale visitors, one of whom obviously doesn't follow the recent career path of her and Leyonhjelm closely:

I went to uni with Helen and knowing she was your staff member has just lost the last shred of respect I had for you.
BTW Helen claimed to have a lot of ‘degrees’ and expertise in things back in those days too. 

Anyhow, I await a review to appear somewhere other than Amazon to see whether my impressions from the first two are widely shared...

Update:  just after I post that, I notice that young economist Mark Koyama has said the book is "highly recommended".     We'll see...

The hypocrisy

Yeah, so Trump (and a bunch of Republicans) want to talk about mental health being the problem, not the country being full of semi automatic guns available for the mentally unwell to buy (background checks from private sellers are not necessary in more than half of the States).

What was that early thing Trump did that eased up on the mentally unwell not getting onto the national system?  This:

President Donald Trump quietly signed a bill into law Tuesday rolling back an Obama-era regulation that made it harder for people with mental illnesses to purchase a gun.

The rule, which was finalized in December, added people receiving Social Security checks for mental illnesses and people deemed unfit to handle their own financial affairs to the national background check database.

Had the rule fully taken effect, the Obama administration predicted it would have added about 75,000 names to that database.

President Barack Obama recommended the now-nullified regulation in a 2013 memo following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which left 20 first graders and six others dead. The measure sought to block some people with severe mental health problems from buying guns....

Trump signed the bill into law without a photo op or fanfare. The president welcomed cameras into the oval office Tuesday for the signing of other executive orders and bills. News that the president signed the bill was tucked at the bottom of a White House email alerting press to other legislation signed by the president.

The National Rifle Association “applauded” Trump’s action. Chris Cox, NRA-ILA executive director, said the move “marks a new era for law-abiding gun owners, as we now have a president who respects and supports our arms.”

Just one random thought today

You know how awesome I think smartphones are?   No?, well, they are incredible pieces of technology and everyone should say that aloud to their family over dinner at least once a week - I try to.   (I don't like incredible technology going unappreciated.)

On a "not quite as stunning as a mobile phone, but why don't more people think about this" note:   why aren't people more amazed at how far the remote garage door opener on their keyring can send a signal to the opener?   I mean, gosh, look at the tiny battery that's powering the thing, but when I'm walking the dog I am often approaching the house from the front from quite a distance (there's a park there), and it's very surprising how far the tiny, tiny energy of the radio "ping" can be picked up at the garage.   I've just checked using Google Maps (right click where you want to measure from, and chose "measure distance"):   70 m!

And it does this heaps of times before the battery dies, and you pick up a new one that comes from China on Ebay for 9 bucks or something.

All amazing...

Cat amongst the physicists

Oh - Backreaction has a post up about Popper and particle physics and how it's all gone wrong.

Good read, even if she has an unreasonable dislike of phys.org as a website!

More thoughts random

*  I'm pretty busy this week, but I get the impression from Twitter and scanning the press that the Texas church shooting is not causing as much national grief in the US as from other mass shootings because:

a. American Conservatives have the idea that it's sort of holy to be shot during Church, and
b.American Progressives have the idea that it was probably a bunch of white folk who all supported the gun accessibility that led to their deaths,  so meh.

I could be wrong...

*  The Atlantic notes how Google publicises fake news and hoaxes after mass shootings.  Yes, finally, the world realises after the election of Trump, we have a misinformation problem.  

Honestly, I'm starting to feel at least half sympathetic to  the Chinese solution to misuse of the internet.   And if Alex Jones were locked up in jail until he promised to stop making absurd inflammatory claims - I for one would not shed a tear.   

*  I see that poor old Tom at Catallaxy thought it was a dead cert that the Texas killer was antifa.  Yet he thinks he knows so much more than the "leftard" media.  Gullible means never having to say you're stupid.

* I also see some pretty strong snark from Sinclair Davidson in a comment to a Steve Kates post about free trade and Trump.   It's time the whole blog was shut down, really. 

*  Oh, Tom at Catallaxy writes:  

JC, big slabs of the FBI are still Deep State never-Trumpers appointed under Obambi. FFS, Mueller as FBI director was the Clinton bagman who buried the investigation of Uranium One.
Everything I’ve seen in the past month tells me the FBI’s investigation of the Las Vegas shooter is a sham.

Uhuh.  Internet, paranoia, wingnuts.  It's a dangerous combination.  Good thing Tom keeps himself locked away in a shed and gets up at 3 am every day to find right wing cartoons for his fanclub.   What a life...

Random thoughts

*   Who invented crispbread, and it is old or new?   This crossed my mind as I enjoyed some from Germany on the weekend.   Wikipedia indicates that it's a Nordic thing, either 500 or 1500 years old (the article is confusing),  but the oddest thing is this:

It was made as round wafers with a hole in the middle so the bread could be stored on sticks under the roof.^[4]

Why under the roof??

*  Steven Kates is like the perfect example of my rule of thumb:  do not trust anyone's judgement if they used to be a rabid Left/Right winger and subsequently became a rabid Right/Left winger.   His cult membership of the Church of Trump now leads him to see nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all, with a President insisting that his Justice Department must prosecute his former political opponent (the chants of "lock her up" during the campaign - and after - presumably don't bother him at all).   He is completely gullible to anything he hears via Fox News or Breitbart, clearly does not look deeply into issues, and has no qualms if the US ends up a tinpot dictatorship, as long as it is Trump's.

*  Slate runs an opinion piece by someone arguing that the gay community condemning Spacey for using his "gay" disclosure when he apologised for what might have happened (OK - what almost certainly did happen) many years ago to the 14 years old who (unwisely) went alone to his party are actually feeding an unwarranted "gay pedophile" panic that used to just be confined to the heterosexual side.   That's a brave opinion, but I suspect it is more or less right, although complicated by the fact that further disclosures have indicated that Kevin has had appalling workplace gay sexual harassment history anyway, so he is far from deserving sympathy for anything.   But in the big picture, while there are probably figures out there somewhere, as I have said before, I suspect that the normalisation of the gay lifestyle in the West has probably lessened the amount of predatory behaviour towards youth, not increased it.   But, who knows, it could be a wrong guess.  (I mean, it sure could be argued that the sexual revolution obviously did nothing to decrease workplace sexual harassment in at least Hollywood through the 70's, 80's and 90's.   But is media a business especially prone to power plays in sex?)

*  Texas would probably be the State most likely to resist gun law changes regardless of the number of mass shootings that happen there.   It's sad and tragic, but I am sure there will be some sentiment around to the effect "well, what did you expect?"    And wingnuts will freak out about how insensitive it is to say such a thing.   The NRA will come out with a proposal for a new scheme for no sales tax for Churches buying guns for self protection, or some such thing...

Update:  what did I say about Texas?:

Asked by Fox News what can be done to stop the insanity and carnage that is happening time and time again in multiple shootings, Paxton  [Texas Attorney General] replied:

“This is going to happen again.”
I wish some law would fix all of this.”
“All I can say is in Texas at least we have the opportunity to have conceal carry,” he explained. “And so … there’s always the opportunity that gunman will be taken out before he has the opportunity to kill very many people.”

I see that it is reported that a local armed resident did fire at the guy - after he walked out of the Church leaving bodies everywhere.   Yeah, that helps:

Texas officials just held a press conference about the deadliest mass shooting in the state, and revealed that a local resident fired back at the shooter who killed 26 people at a small town church ... and then gave chase before the gunman was found dead.

A rep for the Texas Department of Public Safety gave a blow-by-blow account of what went down Sunday morning in Sutherland Springs, TX where a gunman opened fire at the First Baptist Church.

He says the gunman, reportedly ID'd as Devin Kelley, was dressed in all black tactical gear when he opened fire on the church -- using an AR assault-style rifle -- from the outside and then continued inside. When he walked out again, a local resident engaged him with his own rifle, causing the gunman to flee.

Thor viewed

Not being a fan of the more serious Marvel movies, I haven't seen the first two Thor movies.  (Well, I once  caught a bit of the first one on TV, and it seemed dull to me.) But Marvel comedy can be a lot of fun, and so it was off to see Thor: Ragnarok yesterday with my son.

We both liked it a lot.

The most surprising thing, really, is that the studio let director Taika Waititi have his way so completely in the use of his very distinctive voice, accent and humour in the character Korg.   I see from this article that Korg didn't actually have that much to do in the original script, but his role kept getting larger.  He is, without doubt, the funniest single thing in the movie.   (Funnier than the Goldblum role, actually.)

I liked the movie's visual style too.  It's not that I'm a fan of trippy fantasy art of the type sometimes found on surfer dudes vans in the 1970's (I think more than one review has referenced that style), but when it's done well in cinema, as it is here, it can be distinctive and memorable.  (The dreamy, short remembrance of the Valkyries on flying horses fighting Hela is perhaps a highlight of impressive CGI.)   And for all of the comedy, it did have some heart towards the end, rather in the same way the first Guardians of the Galaxy felt surprisingly serious in its opening with the death of Peter's mother.

So yes, a pleasing film that will be a major hit for all of the right reasons.

It also goes to show that you can film CGI heavy films anywhere - in this case,  the Gold Coast and Brisbane.  It is remarkable how little physical set needs to get built (see this article), but I  also wonder at the end of these movies about how much each special effects artist gets paid - hundreds scroll by, and even with a one or two hundred million dollar budget, it must get split up into pretty small fractions. 

As for the way Marvel has been not afraid to go into comedy, whereas DC Comics movies have such a dark reputation, I was amused by this in Christopher Orr's review:

...we now have Thor: Ragnarok, which is perfectly acceptable as an action movie but moderately inspired as a comedy. (This may well be the future of the entire superhero genre—see also: Spider-Man: Homecoming—which means that DC Comics and Warner Bros. will probably catch on in about five years.)

Having seen the shorts yesterday for the coming Justice League movie, it looks dour and only with the slightest laughs, as usual.   I have no interest in seeing it at all...

Trolleys and embryos

I see via And Then There's Physics, which led me to Michael Tobis's blog, which linked to another blog called Scary Mommy, which noted in a series of tweets in October by a science fiction writer called Patrick Tomlinson, that he had posed a trolley problem scenario with the alternatives being saving a 5 year old child or a vat of 1,000 frozen embryos.   (It's not exactly the same as the classic "trolley", since it just a question of which you save from the burning fertility clinic, given that you can't carry both.   It removes the issue of taking a positive action - throwing someone off the bridge, or hitting the switch to divert the train from one track to another - that will lead to the sure killing.)  The point is to show anti-abortionists that, at heart, they surely can't perceive embryos as every bit as worthy of "life" preservation as a person already living as an independent human.

I just mention this because I first thought "hey I came up with that idea maybe 4 or 5 years ago."  I noted here in 2015 that I had put the argument up at Catallaxy perhaps a couple of years previously.

But then I went back and noted that Tomlinson said he has been using the argument for about 10 years.  Oh well.  Another case of originality fail.

I still think it's a great argument.  

I don't like abortion, instinctively.  But I can clearly see that the religious argument that it is a case of life from fertilization that warrants the same protection as all human life makes no intuitive sense, too. 

Modern humans have been around a while

I don't find this topic all that interesting (it's a tad too complicated and rubbery, and I'm under no obligation to find every branch of science interesting, am I?), but a new paper in Science suggests an age range for modern humans that means they were stumbling around the place before building much for quite a long time:

Southern Africa is consistently placed as a potential region for the evolution of Homo sapiens. We present genome sequences, up to 13x coverage, from seven ancient individuals from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The remains of three Stone Age hunter-gatherers (about 2000 years old) were genetically similar to current-day southern San groups, and those of four Iron Age farmers (300 to 500 years old) were genetically similar to present-day Bantu-language speakers. We estimate that all modern-day Khoe-San groups have been influenced by 9 to 30% genetic admixture from East Africans/Eurasians. Using traditional and new approaches, we estimate the first modern human population divergence time to between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago. This estimate increases the deepest divergence among modern humans, coinciding with anatomical developments of archaic humans into modern humans, as represented in the local fossil record.

I see from various websites that the previous estimate was a mere 200,000 years, so this pushes it back somewhat. 

So, this is how the world ends?

Geez, I don't like sound of this:

Mail-Order CRISPR Kits Allow Absolutely Anyone to Hack DNA

Experts debate what amateur scientists could accomplish with the powerful DNA editing tool—and whether its ready availability is cause for concern

It's from Scientific American, and ends with an unknown number of DNA hacking scientists saying it's nothing to be to be too worried about: 

Finally, what about the nightmare scenario: Is CRISPR so easy to use that we need to worry about biohackers—either accidentally or intentionally—creating dangerous pathogens? Carroll and others think that the danger of putting CRISPR in the hands of the average person is relatively low. “People have imagined scenarios where scientists could use CRISPR to generate a virulent pathogen, ” he says. “How big is the risk? It’s not zero, but it’s fairly small.” Gersbach agrees. “Right now, it’s difficult to imagine how it’d be dangerous in a real way,” he explains, “If you want to do harm, there are much easier and simpler ways than using this highly sophisticated genetic editing technique.”

Scientists in fields like this have an incentive to downplay risk, so if they actually use words like "relatively low", it doesn't exactly fill me with confidence...

Won't be on the talk show circuit for a long, long time

Yet more details of workplace predatory harassment of (now former) talk show darling Kevin Spacey has come out:

Eight current and former employees of Kevin Spacey's show "House of Cards" have accused the actor of sexual harassment and, in one case, assault, CNN reports. A former production assistant alleges that Spacey sexually assaulted him during an early season of the show. Other accusers told CNN Spacey's behavior, including inappropriate comments and nonconsensual touching, was "predatory" and caused a "toxic" work environment.

I've never watched House of Cards, and I can't say that I have ever found Spacey an appealing screen presence (not just because he plays a bad character, either), so it's not as if this is shocking because I liked him before.   But he has been a popular figure with the audience whenever appearing on the likes of Colbert or other late night chat shows.  I expect it will be some years before we see him on one of those again.

But what does feel kind of shocking is that such behaviour, which has become so verboten in your average workplace for decades now, has not been addressed in such a high profile and (yes) largely liberal by reputation industry.   (Mind you, the culture around key figures at Fox News was clearly toxic as well, and so well tolerated that million dollar contracts were renewed.  Conservative media does not really have grounds to gloat.)   

It's just odd to think that, when young Ms Smith from accounts at a small company 30 years ago could (and often did) deal effectively with her predatory boss if she wanted to, entertainment industry folk have been putting up with it for many decades since then.

Gone, the revolution

I don't think there has been as much written in the media about the centenary of the October Revolution as I expected.

There wasn't a bad interview with a couple of experts on Radio National last night - but I am not sure who's show it was on.

There was one Guardian column about it a few days ago, but I can't quickly find it again.  I was sort of expecting that outlet to be overrun with quasi sympathetic articles , but it hasn't really happened.

I see that Henry Ergas has a column in The Australian:  I doubt it's all that interesting.  The Weekend OZ may well be full of conservatives decrying it:  we shall see.

So I'm down to noting a very lengthy review of Kotkin's two volume biography of Stalin in The New Yorker, which covers the Revolution succinctly, as well as Stalin's later actions, and it's a very good read.

One minor detail amuses, in the section which discusses signs early on that Stalin would become (shall we say) a problem:

They had had some intimations: they knew he could be rude, and they even knew he could be psychologically cruel. During his Siberian exile, he had briefly lived with Yakov (Yashka) Sverdlov, a fellow-Bolshevik and later the titular head of the Soviet government, but the two broke up house because Stalin refused to do the dishes and also because he had acquired a dog and started calling him Yashka. “Of course for Sverdlov that wasn’t pleasant,” Stalin later admitted. “He was Yashka and the dog was Yashka.”

 There are many bits of information in the review which I either didn't realise, or had forgotten when I last read a long review of a book on Russian history.   For example, after a brief summary of the Terror of the late 30's..:

The numbers are hard to fathom. According to the best current estimates, Stalin was responsible for between ten and twelve million peacetime deaths, including victims of the famine. But the most hands-on period of killing was the Terror of 1937 and 1938. At its height, fifteen hundred people were being shot every day. Most of the victims were ordinary citizens, caught up in a machine that was seeking to meet its quotas. But the Communist Party, too, was devastated—in many provinces, first secretaries, second secretaries, third secretaries all gone. Entire editorial staffs were erased. The officer corps of the Army was devastated. Five hundred of the top seven hundred and sixty-seven commanders were arrested or executed; thirteen of the top fifteen generals. “What great power has ever executed 90 percent of its top military officers?” Kotkin asks. “What regime, in doing so, could expect to survive?” Yet this one did.

there is this:

In addition to everything else the Terror did, it greatly weakened the country’s international position. Stalin’s justified fear of the coming war made this war only more likely. The French and the British, contemplating a stand against Hitler over Czechoslovakia in 1938, did not feel they could count on the now depleted Red Army. Worse still, the Terror made Stalin an unacceptable ally for the British in 1939. Kotkin shows that Stalin’s first choice in the months before the war was not Hitler but Chamberlain. He sent detailed terms to Britain for a military alliance. Chamberlain was not interested, and Kotkin, refusing the benefits of hindsight, doesn’t blame him. Stalin had just murdered hundreds of thousands of his own citizens, staged show trials of his former comrades, and carried out purges of putative socialist allies in Spain. Hitler would eventually overtake him, but as of 1939 Stalin had killed more people by far. He was, as Kotkin says, “an exceedingly awkward potential partner for the Western powers.”

I didn't know about the approaches to Chamberlain.

The 20th century had a lot going on, to put it mildly...

Researching the vampire cure

Nature reports that a small study on infusing young blood into people with mild to moderate dementia has finished, and found some possible benefit, but it seems pretty slight.

The offspring remain safe from requests for blood, for now.  

Seriously...

Headline at Vox:

Rick Perry actually tried to argue that fossil fuels can help fight sexual assault

This is not the Onion.

Gay in Egypt

An interesting take on the matter of gay sex and gay identity in Egypt, and in Islam more generally, has appeared in The Spectator.  He starts by talking about the recent police arrest there of 60 allegedly gay men, found by scanning social media, and continues:

Obviously, that’s 60 too many. We should recall, though, that Egypt is a country of 95 million people, and those arrested mostly deny being gay. So either the police were not making much of an effort to round up the queers, or — more likely — there are in fact almost none in Egypt.

Of course, that’s not the same as saying that there are no Egyptian men who engage in gay sex.As someone who lived in the country for more a decade, is fluent in Egyptian Arabic and has written a book on the country that includes a chapter on male prostitution, I can testify quite emphatically that the exact opposite is true. And therein lies the rub, as it were.

Western correspondents filing dispatches about gay persecution in Egypt and the wider region are ignoring the more nuanced reality. Just as predictably, bigots determined to show how Islam restricts sexual freedom are also having a ball. But the latter especially are wide of the mark. The Koran singles out sex between men as a transgression, but uniquely in the Islamic holy book, proscribes no punishment. And there must be four independent witnesses to the act of anal intercourse (all other forms of gay sex seem to have escaped Allah’s attention). So it’s just a warning not to have sex in the middle of the street. Even then, for those caught, social rehabilitation is encouraged.  

Not sure if the author counts himself as bi or gay, but he certainly gives the impression that he thinks the far from unusual inclination of young arab men to want to bed attractive young guys (while simultaneously chasing women) is quite OK:

In Tunisia, two friends came round for dinner. A Justin Bieber special started on the cable TV channel, and I reached for the remote to turn it off. ‘What are you doing?’ one of them screamed. ‘Leave it on — that boy is so do-able.’

As with the Saudi, the Tunisians had not given any indication that they were ‘gay’. In fact, they spent the rest of the evening using my computer to chat with a French women one had hooked up with a few months earlier when she was holidaying there. Like most of the young, unmarried Arab men I befriended over the decades, they knew a gorgeous boy when they saw one, but would have considered it absurd to attach to such desire an all-consuming social identity symbolised by the rainbow flag.....

The commotion will blow over and Egyptian boys, like Arab boys everywhere, will get back to banging each other like rabbits as they have been doing for millennia. It would take more than the rantings of an MP to eradicate such a deeply entrenched tradition. The golden rule, though, will remain: discretion is the name of the game. And that’s the lesson the rainbow flag activists should now take on board.

 I'm sure that this pragmatic attitude (you can do gay stuff, but just keep it discrete) is considered appalling by Western gay activists who are all consumed with the importance of gay identity.  And I can understand the objection when gay identity can mean risking jail.    But I wonder if, in the long run, there will be a move back in the West towards the more ancient view that gay sex didn't have to equate with gay identity?

A late for Halloween story

At Catholic website Crux, the story of the Curse of St Peter.  Rather like an early, papal version of the Curse of Tutenkamun, actually.   

Opioids and libertarians, again

Jonah Goldberg in National Review makes some sense:

Think of the opioid crisis as the fruit of partial legalization. In the 1990s, for good reasons and bad, the medical profession, policymakers, and the pharmaceutical industry made it much easier to obtain opioids in order to confront an alleged pain epidemic. Doctors prescribed more opioids, and government subsidies made them more affordable. Because they were prescribed by doctors and came in pill form, the stigma reserved for heroin didn’t exist.

 

When you increase supply, lower costs, and reduce stigma, you increase use. And guess what? Increased use equals more addicts.

A survey by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that one-third of the people who were prescribed opioids for more than two months became addicted. A Centers for Disease Control study found that a very small number of people exposed to opioids are likely to become addicted after a single use.

The overdose crisis is largely driven by the fact that once addicted to legal opioids, people seek out illegal ones — heroin, for example — to fend off the agony of withdrawal once they can’t get, or afford, any more pills. Last year, 64,000 Americans died from overdoses. Some 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War.

Kevin undone

Gee, if the account of Kevin Spacey's tactics for chatting up/groping men at news.com.au today is accurate, the long standing feeling from interviews that he is, well, creepy seems very justified. 

If he were to admit they are true, the only way I can see Spacey try to defend himself would be to argue that gay men have always been more blunt and direct when seeking sex (which would be true) - but it is refreshing to see that younger gay men are prepared to come out now and say that they don't welcome power plays in sex, just as women don't.   Acknowledging that gay men can be as sleazy as straight men is, in an odd way,  a good thing for normalising attitudes towards gay folk, as I can't help but feel that there has been an exaggeration implicit in the promotion of same sex marriage that everything is fine in the world of gay relationships apart from that issue.  For other human issues relating to relationships and decent behaviour to be acknowledged from the community is therefore a good thing.    

Convictions noted

That Western Australian case of the two nutty women who murdered an 18 year old Asperger's guy for a thrill kill has resulted in their conviction, as was entirely predictable.   Their attempts at blaming each other were exceptionally implausible. 

CCTV footage showed the teenager leaving the shops with the accused pair and security footage from their home showed the three entering the Broughton Way house around 10.30am.

"Mr Pajich did not ever emerge from that house alive," state prosecutor James McTaggart said in his opening address to the jury....

Mr Pajich's body was discovered around a week later buried in the pair's backyard garotted with multiple stab wounds to his chest and neck.

The home's loungeroom had a large section of carpet cut out, concealed by a couch, and police found multiple blood stains and knifes at the property.

Both women denied murdering Mr Pajich and blamed each other.

Lilley claimed she was unaware Mr Pajich had been killed and that Lenon must have murdered him and concealed the crime while she was taking a three-hour nap in the next room.

Lenon however admitted witnessing Lilley stab Mr Pajich to death, claiming she helped conceal the crime out of fear.

Bear in mind this:

Both originally lied to police and told detectives they had not seen Mr Pajich the day he went missing but later admitted he had visited their home.

During the trial, the jury heard how Lilley was obsessed with serial killers and knives, and had told a friend she wanted to kill someone before she turned 25.

She often referred to herself as SOS, a serial killer character she created for a book she wrote as a teenager in 2007.... 

Lilley, who took the stand for five days during the trial, claimed messages between her and Lenon about killing someone were role-play for a new book she was writing.

She claimed she was in character when she wrote Lenon a long message 13 days before the murder.

"I feel as though I cannot rest until the blood or the flesh of a screaming, pleading victim is gushing out and pooling on the floor, until all the roads and streets are streamed red and abandoned, and the fear in the back of everyone's minds and on the tongue of each human that's left standing is SOS," it read.

"I cannot shift this belief that the world has become not only ready for me, it needs me to be ready."

Lenon replied: "It's definitely time. I am ready. You are ready".

They should stay in jail for a very long time.  Preferably til dead...

Yet more murder

Gruesome murder is back in the news again this week.

I don't think that a likely serial killer in Japan is getting quite as much publicity as I expected.   Seems to have been pushed out of the headlines a bit by the goings on in Washington.  

Update:  the details appear to involve a very (sad to say) Japanese set of circumstances, involving loneliness, social media, suicidal desire, the quasi romantic (well, to some people - women especially perhaps) idea of doing it with someone else, and even the suggestion of disturbing sex.  Just awful:

Police suspect Shiraishi found suicidal women on the Internet and pretended that he also wanted to kill himself, posting, “Let’s die together.”

After they showed up, he invited them to his apartment where he killed them and took about 500,000 yen ($4,390) in total from the bodies, according to police.

Further information on his “obscene purposes” was unavailable.

According to police, the first victims were an unmarried couple.

In August this year, Shiraishi had a meal with the couple with whom he had become acquainted through Twitter.

On a later day, he invited the woman to his apartment, where he killed her, according to police.

The woman’s male acquaintance, unable to contact her, asked Shiraishi if he knew where she was. Shiraishi also invited him to the apartment and killed him, police said.

Shiraishi told police he killed most of the nine people when he met them in person for the first time.
Some of the nine people had posted suicidal messages on the Internet, and Shiraishi promised to meet them directly after exchanging messages online.

The Black Death (or sickness, at least)

I don't mind licorice, but don't eat it often.   I had read before that eating large amounts was not good for your health, but Vox explains in more detail:

According to the Food and Drug Administration, if you eat 2 ounces of black licorice — the equivalent of about four Twizzler vines — daily for at least two weeks, you could wind up in the hospital with an irregular heartbeat or even heart failure. 

That’s a lot of licorice — maybe more than most licorice lovers eat in a day. But the FDA is onto something: Licorice root contains a medically active compound called glycyrrhizin acid, and researchers have been discussing its potential health complications for years. Glycyrrhizin can elevate a person’s blood pressure, leading some to experience abnormal heart rhythms, lethargy, even congestive heart failure. Glycyrrhizin can also interfere with other medications and supplements, the FDA warned.

“No matter what your age, don’t eat large amounts of black licorice at one time,” the agency said, adding that people over 40 with a history of heart disease or high blood pressure seem to be most at risk of black licorice-related health complications.

Speaking of other teams...

Time to let the other team try

I still find Malcolm Turnbull likeable as a person, with his steadfast cheerfulness while the evidence continues to pile up around him that he and his Ministers are, shall we say, basically incompetent at this thing called "governing".  

So, seriously, isn't it time for an umpire or someone (electorate of New England, hello?) to tell him and his team that it's really time to take a break and give the other team, who could hardly do any worse, a go?   I mean, it just gets embarrassing after a while, watching the flaying about.

Rupert wants Donald

Who knows what's going on in the ageing mind of Rupert Murdoch, but people have been noticing how the Wall Street Journal is now agitating in defence of Trump and using all of the same "must get Hillary!" distraction squirrels as on Fox News and The New York Post, and up to and including hosting a piece arguing that Trump should just pardon everyone now, including himself!

It is all purely a coincidence that each Murdoch outlet is running the same line, I'm sure:

Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor and vice president of The Wall Street Journal, declined to comment. Mark Cunningham, the New York Post’s Executive Editorial Page Editor, also declined comment. Both did not answer questions regarding whether Murdoch had any input in editorial direction.

“There is a general flabbergastedness about the drift of the edit page,” said one former senior Wall Street Journal editor. “What is fascinating to a lot of people is, why are they now coming around to being sycophants to Trump, aping some of these things that are part of the Republican echo chamber?”

Given that these Murdoch outlets are actually encouraging Trump to get rid of Mueller, how dangerous has Rupert become to the rule of law and good governance?    "Very" is the obvious answer, surely.  

Murder talk (for Halloween)

I've noticed that the prosecution case in Perth against a couple of weird women has concluded, and the details are of the most chilling kind - a thrill kill by a woman with a nutty obsession with both serial killers and kinky sex:

Over the past month, the court has heard allegations of how Ms Lilley, a young woman obsessed with knives and serial killers, and Ms Lenon – a mother-of-three with a history as a “submissive” in Perth’s BDSM scene – had built a close relationship, referring to each other by ‘pet names’.

Ms Lilley was referred to as SOS – which was also a serial killer character in a book she had written in her teens, and also the name of an American serial killer who had murdered eight victims in the mid 70s’.

Ms Lenon was known as ‘Corvina’, a name she had adopted through her participation in bondage and sado-masochistic sex.

The state alleges after the two women met and moved in together, along with Ms Lenon’s younger children, they teamed up to carry out a ‘thrill kill’ on a vulnerable target.

That target, according to the state, was Mr Pajich, who was known to Ms Lenon through a shared attendance at a Kwinana college and his friendship with her teenaged son Cameron.

The 18 year-old was also on the autism spectrum, and according to Mr Taggart “still inhabited a child’s world”, including a passionate interest in computer games.

It was that interest which the state says Ms Lenon used to lure Mr Pajich to the Orelia house she shared with the 26 year-old Ms Lilley, who worked as a nightfill manager at Woolworths in Palmyra.
“Trudi Lenon delivered Aaron Pajich right into Jemma Lilley’s hands and together they murdered him,” Mr McTaggart said.

“These two ladies took Aaron Pajich’s life in a way that was as brutal and violent as could possibly be imagined.”

The motive, Mr McTaggart said, was Ms Lilley’s “life’s objective” to kill someone before she was 25 years-old, which she had revealed to a friend some years before.

 While it appears clear that they had some sort of sexual kink relationship, I'm not sure whether they count themselves as lesbians or not.

In any event, it got me thinking of other thrill kill nutty lesbian cases:   Brisbane had its famous one in  the "lesbian vampire killer" murder in 1991 - the main protagonist is now living in the community on parole.  

There was also the famous New Zealand case that was the subject of the Heavenly Creatures film.   (OK, not a thrill kill exactly, but a weird, obsessively relationship between young women none the less.)

Now, we're obviously not talking a huge sample here, but in comparison to male gay couples, apart from the famous Leopold and Loeb murder from way back in 1924, I can't say I have heard of any gay couple murders which are in the "thrill kill" category.

Sure, serial killers are almost always male, and presumably often kill for all sorts of demented reasons, but my point is that it seems that the shared idea of a kill, based on weird fantasy motivations, might be more of a female/lesbian thing than a male thing?  

I notice that some people complain of lesbians being too readily portrayed as obsessive killers in Hollywood -  I don't really know as it is a genre of film that generally doesn't interest me. 

But, given the grotesque examples of some lesbian murderers, I have to say I'm not all that surprised.  If any reader wants to set me straight with true stories of male couples murdering for the weirdest motivations, let me know...

I'm with Tony

Oh - tough guy cook and travel writer Anthony Bourdain is making a pretty transparent attack on Tarantino for working with Harvey Weinstein for so many years and doing nothing about his knowledge of Weinstein's uber sleaze behaviour.

I've never liked Tarantino or his movies, so good.   Mind you, Bourdain acts it up a bit too much for my liking too, but he's OK in small doses.    

Why Trump is interested in the JFK case

Great column by Adam Gopnik about the release of additional papers on the JFK assassination.

He starts:

The release last Thursday of previously classified, or at least unseen, government files of all kinds relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy is being heralded as Donald Trump’s decision—though it was simply his decision not to prevent their release, which had long been scheduled. In fact, at the last minute, Trump listened to requests from the intelligence services not to release some three hundred of the remaining three thousand files. But that decision raised more suspicions, so on Friday night the President tweeted, “I will be releasing ALL JFK files other than the names and addresses of any mentioned person who is still living.”

And here are the best paragraphs:

The pretense last week was that, in releasing the files, Trump took action on behalf of the American people, in the pursuit of openness. But Trump acts in his own interest, and his pursuit of apparent openness has as its real end the undermining of public institutions and practices which depend on professionalism, independence, and trust. Trump was likely prodded to speak out about the files by Roger Stone, one of the figures from the fringes of American life whom the President has brought to the center. Stone wrote a book titled “The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ.” Last week, his profane rants got him suspended from Twitter, but he still appears to be in touch with Trump. Stone has warned of the “deep state,” the new villain of right-wing paranoia—well, an old villain, newly restored to primacy. The thinking in this case seems to be that, if Trump’s followers can be persuaded that no one in the “permanent government” should be trusted, they can perhaps be more easily persuaded not to trust the institutions of the state when, say, they pursue charges against anyone associated with his campaign. The implicit, and increasingly explicit, argument here is: Don’t listen to special counsels who worked for the F.B.I.; those are the guys that withheld all those documents  about the J.F.K. assassination.

As David Frum has pointed out, what Trump’s surrogates really mean by “the deep state” is the rule of law. The idea that there are civil servants or functionaries within the government whose chief trait is loyalty to the Constitution and to the ongoing administration of the state is intolerable to the autocratic mind. So, if those other actors question challenge the White House, they must be taunted, demoralized, and, if possible, dismissed.

In time for Halloween - Holy Bowels

Yeah, we've all read about incorrupt corpses of various saints before, but this article in The Atlantic is a good summary of the topic.  I liked this detail:

Despite (or perhaps because of) the respect accorded to the saintly dead by medieval Christians, they were rarely allowed to rest in peace. As soon as a holy person died, his or her corpse would be scrutinized for signs of sanctity by those who prepared it for burial. When Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, died in 1200, his viscera were removed from his body, which was taken a long distance for burial. Some among his household were initially uncomfortable with this plan, but they warmed to it when the episcopal bowels provided first proof of their owner’s holiness. As the bishop’s chaplain Adam of Eynsham reported in his biography of Hugh, Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis, “no water or stool was found, and they were as clean and immaculate as if someone had carefully washed and wiped them.”

Certain cynics dismissed the results as the inevitable consequence of the dysentery that plagued Hugh in his final days, but others claimed it a miracle. 

 The reason the lack of decay was seen as significant is explained here:

The insistence on the lifelike qualities of these corpses comes from the Christian tradition that “the saints are not called dead but sleeping,” as St. Jerome once put it. They were expected to possess lifelike qualities even in death. Pink and white coloring, for example, was thought to be a sign of readiness for the resurrection: Their intact, lifelike bodies would literally stand and walk, just as Jesus had done.

 But an obsession with sexual purity was apparently part of the interest in post mortem lack of normal decay, too:

 The medieval mind also connected bodily integrity with virginity. The condition of corpses was thought to reflect individuals’ conduct during their lifetimes. Rapid decay was indicative of sin, whereas miraculous preservation signified sexual purity. This was especially true if a well-preserved corpse oozed sweet-smelling balsam. White corpses, too, were strongly associated with white lilies, a common symbol of virginity. Sexual purity was one of the most important qualities for a would-be saint, but it was also one of the hardest attributes to prove. The discovery of a perfect corpse could provide evidence that few would dare to question.

Blade Runner 2049 in three words (followed by many more)

Trying too hard.

Let me expand:   it's visually fantastic, we can all agree.  Everyone likes the flying cars again, I'm sure. The acting is fine, too.

But, here the slide in my opinion begins:  musically -  loudly pretentious is probably the best description.  (The Vangelis score in the original was just 80's pretentious.)   And I should have guessed, given its fondness for the sudden blare:  Hans Zimmer worked on the soundtrack.  He'll get an Oscar for Dunkirk: a really remarkable and crucial-to-the-movie score; but lots of people complain about aspects of his work on other Nolan films, and I can understand why.

As for my overall rating, I would have to call it a failure.   Not a completely unworthy failure, but a failure nonetheless.

It's OK, I suppose, to try to explore to a deeper extent the themes of the original, but this movie does it mainly by some protracted, serious, very serious, dialogue exchanges which go on too long and don't linger in the mind as to their cleverness or emotional punch.  The impression left with me was that the screenplay was just trying too hard for intellectual seriousness. 

In fact, having watched  three of director Denis Villeneuve's films now, I recognise this as a constant theme in my reaction to his work - he's visually stylish, but always leaves me cold in any emotional connection to the material.   I'm not entirely sure how he achieves that, but despite liking visually what I saw on screen for much of Sicario, Arrival and now this one, by the end of all I felt I had not really been convinced by the human story in any of them.

In this one, the Ryan Gosling character is played sympathetically, but somehow, there is no real emotional punch to watching his woes.   Actually, now that I think of it, the audience probably felt the most sympathy for his software girlfriend character rather than to any  than any flesh and blood one.   That's interesting, but not a good thing. 

For Blade Runner, the problem is probably that its core story is not really worth dwelling on, beyond a quick narrative hit and run.  In fact, re-watching the original cinema released movie last weekend, I was quite surprised at how quickly it went.  And that works fine for Philip K Dick movies, since he wasn't really about plausible science scenarios: just speculative ones allowing him for a one story, or one novel, take on his favourite themes of identity, memory, reality and sanity; all reflecting his own long ongoing issues with his drug addled mind.

Just as everyone agrees that it was a mistake to try to expand on the original implausibilities in The Matrix for a further two movies (massive numbers of comatose humans as alien battery banks: yeah sure),  I reckon it's not a good idea to dwell on the concept of vat growing quasi-humans to adulthood for the purposes of dangerous deep space or general slave work, not to mention giving them fake memories.   Maybe I'm just particularly resistant to the concept:  readers may recall that there was one well regarded science fiction movie that completely left me cold when I found out that that was the explanation.  

But dwell on this scenario is what the people who made this movie are trying to do, and it also felt very much like they were hoping to get a third one out of it too.   However, I see that the director and Ryan Gosling say that there are no definite plans for that.  Given the relatively poor box office, I think a third is now unlikely, and that's not a bad thing.

In fact, one thing that does surprise me is that the slowness and quasi pretentiousness of some of the key scenes were not recognized by the studio, and that they funded it in its current form.   It just seems to me that it should have been obvious on paper that it would not have wide audience appeal.    I fully understand why it has not drawn in the crowds despite mainly positive reviews.  

Again, the movie looks a million bucks, as they used to say before inflation, and all credit to some imaginative production design work.  I didn't fall asleep (Hans took care of that) but I was consciously wishing more than once that the plot would move faster, and (mainly) that it would make me feel more.

Update:  Deborah Ross at the Spectator didn't care for it either, and shares my skepticism of the scenario:

Thirty years later, we now have Ryan Gosling as our blade runner, K, in a world where replicants are still produced, this time by Wallace (Jared Leto), a mogul who sits atop a vast corporation and talks a lot of New Age gibberish. I think he’s meant to be evil, but he just seems like the worst kind of yoga teacher. You do have to wonder why anyone still has any faith in replicants, given their troublesome history, or why they are made so lifelike. They’d be much more useful slaves if, say, they had multiple arms shaped like shovels, plus you’d also be able to spot them a mile off. Just saying.

Spoiler warning:   Thinking about it overnight - what is the point of making replicants with a sex drive, anyway, if you never want them to be able to reproduce?   I suppose there could be a class of prostitute replicants for the sex industry, but why should someone like K have one at all?    Honestly, the basic scenario just makes less and less sense the more you think about it....

Alien asteroid

Interesting astronomy news:

Astronomers have spotted some kind of outer space rock that's the first visitor from outside of our solar system that they've ever observed.

The discovery has set off a mad scramble to point telescopes at this fast-moving object to try to learn as much as possible before it zips out of sight.

"Now we finally have a sample of something from another solar system, and I think that's really neat, " says Karen Meech, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, "and so you'd love to see if it looks like stuff in our solar system."

It's long been assumed that an interstellar object like this one should be out there, because giant planets in forming solar systems are thought to toss out bits of space crud that haven't yet glommed into anything. But this is the first time scientists have actually found one.

The mysterious object is small — less than a quarter mile in diameter — and seems to have come from the general direction of the constellation Lyra, moving through interstellar space at 15.8 miles per second, or 56,880 miles per hour.

But there's no tension in this - it was spotted on the way out of the solar system, not on the way in (when we could all have speculated as to whether it was actually an alien spaceship):

"The orbit is very convincing. It is going so fast that it clearly came from outside the solar system," says Paul Chodas, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's whipping around the Sun, it has already gone around the Sun, and it has actually gone past the Earth on its way out."