A public service post, for those outside of North America

This is what Red Vines are:

Well, now that I understand that, I can see more clearly how flawed Margot's judgement was right from the second sentence.

A complicated life

A few months back, I posted about the fight that took place between Max Eastman and Ernest Hemingway, caused by the latter not caring for a book review by the former.

I knew little about Eastman, but I see there's a review of a biography about him at Reason, which begins:

"It doesn't cheapen the aims of this biography or the ambitions of its subject," writes Christoph Irmscher, "to describe what follows as a story largely about sex and communism." What follows is the life of Max Eastman—poet, nudist, women's suffragist, war resister, socialist editor, and finally a self-described "libertarian conservative."

He makes today's "libertarian conservatives" seem rather boring.  

But then again, boring is sometimes more praiseworthy than "incident filled."   I see from another review of the same book that his sex life was ridiculously active:

When he was young these affairs could be sexy and glamorous. As he aged, they came to seem sad and compulsive. “My love, I would give my soul to lie in your arms tonight,” he wrote to the 24-year-old Florence Deshon in 1917, when he was 34. Twelve years later, at the age of 46, he was making a version of the same speech to the 17-year-old painter Ione Robinson, a protégé of his second wife. A decade later, now 56, he wrote to the 18-year-old Creigh Collins: “I want to sit all day in the big arm chair with your head warm between my knees, and poetry, poetry floating around me on your young voice as though thrushes carried its meaning to my ear.” A year later he impregnated his secretary, the 25-year-old Florence Norton. When she asked for his help in getting an abortion, “Max provided a doctor’s address but otherwise became ‘hysterical’ and essentially abandoned her.” While she was getting a “painful, nauseating abortion,” Eastman was at his house in Croton-on-Hudson, safely back in the orbit of his wife.  

But here is why he is remembered from his early, pro-Communist days:

The list of things Eastman did that mattered on the left, from about 1910 to 1940, is staggering. He published John Reed on the Bolshevik Revolution and Randolph Bourne against the war. He smuggled Lenin’s last testament out of Russia, and translated Trotsky into English. He stood up to the U.S. government, and won, when they tried to imprison him for spreading sedition in The Masses. He was one of the earliest American Trotskyists, and then one of the most important skeptics and rejecters of Trotskyism. He was also, in everything he did, an important symbol to many of a certain way of being and acting.

Then he swung around:

After breaking with the socialist left, Eastman didn’t cease to be good-looking or charismatic, but the easy alignment between his persona and his politics broke down. He began writing for Reader’s Digest, perhaps the least revolutionary of American publications. He articulated a more conservative politics, in defense of the un-romantic virtues of liberal democracy against the revolutionary claims of socialism. He became a cautious defender of Joseph McCarthy, and a scourge of left-wing and liberal intellectuals whom he believed were wrong on communism and the Soviet Union.

A bit like Steve Kates, who says he went from youthful hippy Lefty to intensely uncritical Trump lover, but about 10 times more interesting.

That story

Well, noticing one of the first recommendations on Twitter of the short story "Cat Person" in the New Yorker, I did read it yesterday. And yes, it does show how memorable and good a short story can be.

There's an interview with the writer, who is probably stunned at how suddenly famous her story is, at the magazine too.   She sounds pretty sensible.  Read it after the story.

I probably found the young woman more annoying and blameworthy for her post coital predicament than the author intended.  But yeah, the last word is a killer as far as the guy is concerned.

Must limit reading

I see that tweets after the first screening of The Last Jedi are extremely positive.  However, I am reluctant to look too much into comments anywhere about this film in case of spoilers.  Unfortunately, I think it was on a Reddit thread that I learned the fate of Han before I saw Force Awakens.

Official reviews in the mainstream press are usually safe.  I will just scan them as they become available.

Less rubbish please

NPR reports that China has played a huge role in recycling American rubbish, but its coming to an abrupt end:

The U.S. exports about one-third of its recycling, and nearly half goes to China. For decades, China has used recyclables from around the world to supply its manufacturing boom. But this summer it declared that this "foreign waste" includes too many other nonrecyclable materials that are "dirty," even "hazardous." In a filing with the World Trade Organization the country listed 24 kinds of solid wastes it would ban "to protect China's environmental interests and people's health."

The complete ban takes effect Jan. 1, but already some Chinese importers have not had their licenses renewed. That is leaving U.S. recycling companies scrambling to adapt.

I think most people my age sense that the increase we've seen in the use of plastics in food and beverage containers since we were kids seems excessive, but we've figured that a large recycling industry was taking care of it.   But now it seems the recycling industry is in crisis, and perhaps its time for a big return to less use of plastic, in particular.

Touchy feely

Here's a column on what I think is an interesting topic:   men touching men (nonsexually, Jason:  nonsexually.)

I can't say that I've ever regretted the matter of not hugging another male since - well, since forever - but the way in which things changed culturally in America over a 100 years or so (not sure about Australia) is at least interesting.  And I have thought that the fear of homosexuality from casual contact of any kind - a pat on the shoulder even - was ridiculous:

...many men self-police their hands around each other. In younger men this manifests in the ubiquitous “No homo!” response if they accidentally touch another guy, and in older men it translates into the same awkward discomfort (read: fear) that I, and many men, experience when faced with reaching out to another male, even an intimate. Yet these reactions are a relatively modern phenomena. Men shared the same bed with strangers in early American taverns, and scholarship is unearthing letters — including ones from Abraham Lincoln — revealing how men sometimes nurtured same-sex friendships that were more emotionally and physically intimate in nonsexual ways than the relationships they shared with women. Some 19th-century tintypes, such as those collected in the book “Bosom Buddies: A Photo History of Male Affection,” illustrate this.

I thought the way it's put in this paragraph is funny:

The psychologist Ofer Zur notes that for most 20^th- and 21st-century American men, physical contact is restricted to violence or sex. As the sociologist Michael Kimmel, who studies masculinity, said in an email, touch between straight men can occur only when physical contact “magically loses its association with homosexuality” — as happens in sports.

As for contact with children, some claim it is very significant:

The fear that girds the lack of platonic touch among American men also fuels the destructive force of their hands, a 2002 study in the journal Adolescence found. Dr. Field was the lead author of the study, which looked at 49 cultures. “The cultures that exhibited minimal physical affection toward their young children had significantly higher rates of adult violence,” she said. But “those cultures that showed significant amounts of physical affection toward their young children had virtually no adult violence.”

 I wonder how Japan figures into that.  It's a country famous for not kissing children, but perhaps there is a lot of physical intimacy made up in the much more likely scenario of sleeping in the same room with parents until a quite advanced age.

Mind you, if that study was accurate, you would imagine that some European countries - perhaps Italy in particular? - where parents seem very affectionate to children and even men seem much more physically affectionate with other men, should be the least violent places on the planet.  But I'm not sure that holds true.

Update:  speaking of the situation with male friendship in the 19th century, I think I failed to note at the time the somewhat interesting article by Frank Moorhouse a month or so ago in which he discussed the intense male friendship that Henry Lawson had, and also his somewhat effeminate characteristics which were commented on at the time.   A bit of a surprise, given the physical look of the guy and the content of his fiction, I think.  But Moorhouse (himself gay or at least bisexual?)   seems to make a decent argument that Lawson's alcoholism was to do with unresolved sexuality.  Or is it a case of overenthusiastic claiming of someone to the gay clubhouse, as modern gays are sometimes inclined to do?

IQ problem

A column in The Guardian notes this:

Research published in the journal Intelligence, a very intelligent publication, has found having a superior IQ is a “risk factor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities”. These results are based on a survey that researchers from Pitzer College, in California, and Seattle Pacific University sent to Mensa members. To join Mensa, you have to score in the top 2% of the population on an approved intelligence test, which normally means an IQ of 132 or higher (the average being around 100). You also, I imagine, have to have a higher than average Insufferable Quotient – but that is beside the point. The survey found Mensans were more likely than the rest of the population to have conditions such as mood and anxiety disorders, allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases.

This isn’t the first study to deduce that a great mind can weigh heavily upon someone. As the researchers note, “it is hardly a new notion that unusually high rates of adult psychopathology are displayed among some of the most eminent geniuses”. But while the research may not be revolutionary it is revelatory in relation to the current political situation. People are always wondering why Donald Trump is so temperamental and now, I think, we have the answer: his disordered moods are a result of his oversized IQ. Sad!

Obviously, the writer is not really taking the argument very seriously, and besides, the research can probably be criticised as not being about people with high IQ generally, but about those with the sort of personality who want their IQ recognized by something like joining Mensa.   But I had not realised how often Trump had claimed high IQ:

 We know that Trump has a high IQ, possibly even higher than mine if I’m being modest, because he never shuts up about it. In 2013, for example, he tweeted: “I’m a very compassionate person (with a very high IQ) with strong common sense.” He followed these pearls of wisdom with another tweet, a month later, saying: “Sorry losers and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest – and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.” In fact, he has tweeted about his IQ at least 22 times. In October, he also responded to reports that the US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, had called him a “moron” by telling Forbes that he would beat Tillerson in an IQ test.

Says something about his narcissistic, needy personalty.  

Certainly, the lengthy New York Times piece about how he spends a huge amount of each day following TV coverage about himself (which is summarised at Axios) shows a personality you really don't want in a politician:

"Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals."

Yet this, of course, is precisely what appeals to a an element in the Right: it's the same psychological attitude I've commented on from time to time as being on regular display at Catallaxy, both in its nutty collection of commenters but also at times in Sinclair Davidson himself (and now, to an extreme extent, in Trump cultist Steve Kates.)  .   As with Trump, though, it doesn't come from a position of strength; it in fact signals resentment at being on the losing side of historical changes in everything from culture, the influence of religion on society, to economic theory.  To the extent the GOP is currently getting its way is but a temporary aberration - the damaging consequences of their attitude to everything from tax policy to climate change is entirely predictable and there is no serious view in the collective body of experts that their policies can be sustained.   

The NYT summarises Trump this way:

As he ends his first year in office, Mr. Trump is redefining what it means to be president. He sees the highest office in the land ... as a prize he must fight to protect every waking moment, and Twitter is his Excalibur. Despite all his bluster, he views himself less as a titan dominating the world stage than a maligned outsider engaged in a struggle to be taken seriously.

I wonder if Trump knows about Catch 22:  if your main obsession as a politician is to be taken seriously, you can't (and shouldn't) be taken seriously.    
  

For want of proof of gay

Many surprising details are to be found in this Good Weekend article about how the Australian Administration Appeals Tribunal tries to work out whether those claiming refugee status due to being gay are faking it:

While no one is suggesting the Tribunal's job is straightforward – having to decide, for instance, whether the approximately 100 asylum seekers who apply for a protection visa each year on the basis that they're gay are telling the truth – there are criticisms about Tribunal officials' lack of qualifications and training in refugee issues. Tribunal officials have long been accused of judging applicants based on a slew of Western gay stereotypes, such as effeminate manner or dress. In one notorious case, an applicant was deemed not gay after failing questions about Madonna, Bette Midler, Oscar Wilde and Greco-Roman wrestling. The man barely spoke English and was mystified by the topics. "I don't understand it," he said to his interviewer. "I'm sorry."....

More recent cases don't give great reason for comfort. Last year, a man from Bangladesh was rejected in part because he was unable to correctly pronounce or spell the name of a Sydney gay club he'd visited called the Stonewall, according to Tribunal documents – which incorrectly referred to the nightclub as a "day venue". In a similar 2014 case, an asylum seeker was told he wasn't gay because, although he described having two monogamous relationships, he hadn't "explored his homosexuality" by going to Sydney's gay bars, and had little knowledge of Oxford Street.

Questions about sexual encounters can centre on who is the "top", and who is the "bottom", or the use of lubricant. Some desperate applicants even resort to offering videos or images of themselves having sex to prove their case. Some officials consider this material and others reject it. Because there are no guidelines for dealing with LGBTQI applicants, a Tribunal member is at liberty to ask pretty much any question they wish, for this is no court room.

The article points out that there have been clear cases of migration agents telling claimants how to fake being gay, so it is a very tricky issue.  

But honestly, doesn't this seem a weird thing for the Tribunal to admit is taken as a source of information?:

In the past, the Tribunal has been criticised for using sources like the Spartacus International Gay Guide as a source for determining whether a country is hostile to LGBTQI people. The annual guides are designed for tourists and rarely focus on conditions outside the major cities, let alone the situation of ordinary people living in these countries. Recent cases have involved Tribunal members using online gay travel guides to Turkey, Lebanon and Nepal: Neil Grungras says these sources are totally inadequate for determining how safe or unsafe a country is for LGBTQI people.

When I approached the Tribunal for a statement, I was astonished when they mentioned the Spartacus publication, which is targeted at white gay men, as a reliable source of information on anti-homosexual persecution. It said in a statement: "Members invariably take into account a broad range of information about the conditions of an applicant's country of origin when making a decision; this includes publications such as the Spartacus International Gay Guide."

Sounds to me like they really need some serious re-consideration of how to deal with these cases.

Seems a nice guy

Interesting to read some autobiographical detail from Rick Stein in this interview that turned up in Fairfax.

It would seem that his pleasant on screen persona is not fake. 

Speaking of guns...

I am not inclined to watch the video of the poor guy in Arizona who was shot while trying to comply with bizarre shouted instructions of the police.   I accept, given the wide condemnation of the shooting by even Right wing outlets (HotAir, and National Review - but I don't see it on Breitbart, oddly enough), that it is an appalling case of police killing, but a dumbass jury (which yes, did see the video) nonetheless acquitted all involved.

But - if writers from the Right are going to condemn it (and they should - no doubt) - I do wish they might comment in their pieces about something glaringly obvious:   American police are ridiculously trigger happy because gun laws ensure a huge number of concealed carry guns on the streets.  

And the NRA wants to make more that way - with the legislation passed in the Senate this week that would force all States to be dragged down to the concealed guns laws of the most gun happy of the States. 

It's a guaranteed way to make sure that police will shoot more people whether armed or not.

After Sandy Hook

The consequences of a bigger interest in guns (either to buy, or perhaps even just getting existing ones out to clean) might account for a surge in post Sandy Hook gun deaths:

A surge in gun buying in the months immediately following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, corresponded with an increase in accidental gun deaths in the United States, one-third of them in children, according to an analysis published today in Science.

About 60 additional unintended shooting deaths, roughly 20 of them in children, occurred in the 5 months after the shooting, conclude the study’s authors, economists Phillip Levine and Robin McKnight of Wellesley College in Massachusetts. For all of the 2012 calendar year, there were 545 accidental shooting deaths, or about 45 per month, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So a 60-death bump in a 5-month period is a considerable one.

Some researchers have been very critical of the study, but this is all discussed in detail at the Science Magazine article. 

Some nuance on Jerusalem

The Lowy Institute's blog is always a good place for some calmly reasoned discussion of foreign affairs matters, and its take on the Jerusalem declaration by Trump is typically nuanced.

However, I am more convinced by Thomas Friedman's criticisms of it:

Trump could have said two things to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. First, he could have said: “Bibi, you keep asking me to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. O.K., I will do that. But I want a deal. Here’s what I want from you in return: You will declare an end to all Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, outside of the existing settlement bloc that everyone expects to be part of Israel in any two-state solution.”...

 Trump also could have said, as the former United States ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk suggested, that he’d decided “to begin the process of moving the embassy to western Jerusalem, but at the same time was declaring his willingness to make a parallel announcement that he would establish an embassy to the state of Palestine in East Jerusalem” — as part of any final status agreement. That would at least have insulated us from looking like we made a one-sided gesture that will only complicate peacemaking and kept the door open to Palestinians.

Friedman's bigger point is that Trump claims to be a "deal maker", but in fact, as with trade, he is just tearing things up with no sign of deals to come.  He just gives advantage away, then leaves it others to hopefully put together something better from the broken pieces.

Seems to me to be a very valid criticism.   (Could be applied to Brexit and the Right wing generally - cut taxes on the rich, work out what to do about lost revenue later, for example.  Try to destroy Obamacare, work out what to replace it with later.)   It's what happens when "winning" a culture war is all you worry about.  

Deep South

Hotair has a story about some Alabama focus group comments regarding Roy Moore, and some of the quotes are astonishing:

Actual quote: “Forty years ago in Alabama, there’s a lot of mamas and daddies that’d be thrilled that their 14-year-old was getting hit on by a district attorney.” That’ll make a fine epigraph for the 2017 chapter in American history textbooks.

And:

 There’s a reference to George Soros and his scheming too, which is in keeping with Moore’s own talking points. A few days ago he cast aside the warning to judge not lest ye be judged and told American Family Radio of Soros, “No matter how much money he’s got, he’s still going to the same place that people who don’t recognize God and morality and accept his salvation are going. And that’s not a good place.” Occasional pronouncements on who is and isn’t destined for hellfire will be a fun bonus of Senator Moore’s congressional tenure.

(To be fair, Hotair does then go on to point out that the polls at the moment are wildly erratic as to which of the two candidates is really in the lead.   It's not a certainty that he will win, but with the disgusting turnaround of Republicans, Trump and all key conservative media to support him, I think most now expect he will win.) 

As other articles sometimes remind us, even before the unusual adult interest in young teenage girls came to light, Moore was a terrible candidate based on his judicial behaviour and fundamentalist views.

Scrooged re-visited

I was pleased to see that Netflix has the 1988 Bill Murray Christmas comedy Scrooged available, and I re-watched it last night, probably for first time since viewing it on VHS tape in perhaps '89 or '90.

After Groundhog Day, the obviously best thing he has done, I reckon Scrooged is the second best movie Murray has ever been in. 

I don't quite understand why so it got some (although not uniformly) really bad reviews - at Rottentomatoes the summary of the Variety review is "An appallingly unfunny comedy, and a vivid illustration of the fact that money can't buy you laughs."  (The original review is no longer at the link, so I can't see any more.)  

Well, I liked it the first time I saw it, and it made me (and my son) laugh quite a lot last night  Murray does "obnoxious guy redeemed" very well; Carol Kane's violent fairy act is eccentric and very funny for it;  and was Bobcat Goldwhait ever better?  It even felt strangely relevant to America today, with its mocking of gun laden violence entertainment in the first 5 minutes, and even featuring a crack about Trump Towers! 

I had also completely forgotten that Karen Allen played the love interest, and her open, smiling face is given lots of screen space in a way that makes you feel that she simply must be a charming, lovely person in real life.  She was never exactly classically beautiful;  maybe her looks and voice just always hit a sweet spot of "potentially accessible imaginary girlfriend" to the average male viewer?

Anyway, a happy re-visit to a pretty good movie.

More famous than I knew

I knew Adam Gopnik could be a fine essayist, and I have linked to his work several times over the years.

But I didn't really know anything about his personal life, and just how famous he actually is.

This has been corrected by this interview in The Guardian today.  

I also went via there to read his lengthy 1998 essay on undergoing 6 years of Freudian psychotherapy in New York.   Yes, it's an amusing, humane and interesting read, like all of his writing.  He's great.

Colbert on Moore

Stephen Colbert's recent piece on Roy Moore was pretty funny:

The Empire secret

The best part of this amusing Jimmy Kimmel chat with Last Jedi cast members is Mark Hamill's explanation of how they kept "I am your father" a secret in Empire Strikes Back.  

Hmmm

I'm surprised this isn't a bigger story in Australian media today: 

President Trump has scheduled a physical health exam for early next year at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and will share the results with the public, the White House announced Thursday, a day after Trump's slurred speech sparked concern about his health.

Trump slurred his words during a policy address Wednesday about Israel, inspiring media speculation that he may have had a dental or health problem. But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that Trump simply was suffering from a dry throat.

Having just watched it, I'm going with the loose denture theory, myself.

Barnaby's split

So, Barnaby Joyce has confirmed separation from his wife, but not the circumstances leading to it.

Tony Windsor had suggested something which sounded like it could be due to unwelcome drunken advances towards a young female staffer.  Given the current situation with sexual workplace harassment being so much in the news, if it turns out that the media know more details and the situation was something that could be classified as harassment, but they are sitting on it due to their squeemishness about talking about politician's sexual affairs, I think it will look pretty stupid of them.

Similarly, if anyone of them is sitting on more material about Abbot/Credlin which only comes out in 20 years time, that would be wrong, too.

I think it is OK for journalists to leave out talking about relationship breakdowns, generally speaking, as not being relevant to politician's jobs, but there are times when such relationship issues are genuinely in the public interest.

Friday space

Some space themed stories for a Friday:

*  it's interesting to read recent astronaut memoir author Scott Kelly talk about how he has struggled all his life with writing at any length.   I guess that means many of us can say we can do something better than a famous test pilot/astronaut.  

*  apparently, the next international joint space project might be a space station orbiting the Moon.   This article at Nature suggests some science that could be done from there, outside of the Earth's magnetic field, but it avoids mentioning the obvious - that means potentially risky human exposure to much larger amounts of radiation.   (The story at the previous link about Scott Kelly notes the he received about 10 chest X rays worth of radiation per day, and that's in the somewhat safer for radiation low earth orbit.)  

Surely the radiation issue would make for a tricky design.  Even relatively short stays by astronauts would have some danger unless there is a radiation proof corner of the station they can shelter in during solar storms.   (They were worried during Apollo that a strong solar flare could fry all of the astronauts.)   Perhaps it would be a good place to test active radiation shields.  Somewhere around the house in a box I think I still have copies of an old article from the 1980's talking about such shielding, but I don't know how much research has gone into their design.   

*  I seemed to have missed news about the creation of the first "virtual nation" in space:

Later this week, Earth will communicate for the first time with a nation based solely in space. If you consider a tiny cubesat about the size of a toaster to be a nation, that is.

The small satellite goes by the name Asgardia-1 and makes up the entirety of the territory of the virtual nation of Asgardia, the pet project of Russian/Azerbaijani scientist and businessman Igor Ashurbeyli, an entrepreneur and investor with a Ph.D. in engineering. In his mind, Asgardia planted its flag in space when it launched from NASA's Wallops Island last month aboard an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo spacecraft.

"From a legal standpoint, the satellite is the first sovereign territory of Asgardia nation," Ashurbeyli told me over the phone via a translator. ....

The digital nation in a box will then begin orbiting Earth, and when it starts transmitting about 30 minutes later, the self-proclaimed "space kingdom" will be the first off-earth territory to be officially open for business.

Asgardia is an unusual diplomatic, legal and philosophical experiment. For now, anyone can become a citizen by simply signing up online and agreeing to accept the official constitution, which adopts an official policy of pacifism and gives Ashurbeyli the first term as "Head of Nation," among other things.

He explains that each Asgardian citizen is also entitled to up to 300 kilobytes of storage on Asgardia-1. Asgardians are encouraged to upload photos, personal documents and other digital trinkets to establish their virtual residency in space.

Given recent publicity regarding what (some) men like to suddenly show to strangers, I do have to wonder   if any nerd has yet put a photo of you-know-what appendage in orbit. 

Link to the Asgardian home page is here.   I wonder if eventually they'll be issuing passports?  Well, that's the plan:

Could you please explain passports and IDs?

We are working on creating the Parliament, creating the government, and creating the banking system and the national currency SOLAR. The ID card at this point is the card that will be a fully protected, chip-integrated card that would eventually allow you – when they are available – to receive services Asgardia will provide, and to operate within the currency system.

We will start issuing passports as booklets for traveling only when we have reached the recognition with other states as a state that they recognize Asgardia’s passport as a valid document for crossing national borders. We are very realistic, this is a long-term goal.

IDs and passports would only be received in person. We are now asking everyone, and it’s at your own discretion, to fill in your profile. This data needs to be correct. When you decide to claim your documents, you would be asked to present yourself to the ambassador of Asgardia or a consul or a national representative (this title has not been decided upon yet). Documents are taken very seriously. In the long run, it is planned to have six permanent embassies around the world, per number of continents.

I am tempted to get in early.  Having a planetary passport might come in handy during an alien invasion, perhaps...