One of the things I've noticed after having cataract surgery in one eye is the colour difference between the "old" eye and the new lens one. The un-operated eye (which I was told does have some early cataract development, but is no where near the stage that it needs an operation) shows the world in what looks like a warmer light, whereas in the newly lensed eye things look whiter, perhaps bluer. The difference reminds me very much of that between a "warm" toned LED or CF house light, and a "cooler" one, with its crisper, bluer light.
The ophthalmologist said yes, a cataract is like a yellowing of the lens, not just a clouding.
So people with slowly progressing cataracts start seeing the world in warmer, yellow-er tones, and don't realise it. (Well, I didn't.) I see that this has been discussed in the context of famous artists who developed cataracts, too.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Spotted at Aeon
That Aeon website has a pretty fascinating collection of essays up at the moment.
First, for the high minded: a very good one about the "occult roots" of the idea of a fourth dimension and how it was mooted for a long time as a quasi-scientific explanation for the existence of a spirit world which we just can't perceive.
This is topic I've long been interested in, but this essay does a particularly good job of explaining how the idea was greeted by scientists, including Einstein. Its explanation of how time became treated as a real fourth dimension, and Minkowki's work which Einstein reluctantly adopted, is not overly detailed, but enlightening.
Secondly: for the more low minded, an explanation of medieval ideas of the importance of sex for health, with the most interesting aspect being the widespread idea that celibacy was pretty much as bad for you as having too much sex.
Anyway, all pretty fascinating.
First, for the high minded: a very good one about the "occult roots" of the idea of a fourth dimension and how it was mooted for a long time as a quasi-scientific explanation for the existence of a spirit world which we just can't perceive.
This is topic I've long been interested in, but this essay does a particularly good job of explaining how the idea was greeted by scientists, including Einstein. Its explanation of how time became treated as a real fourth dimension, and Minkowki's work which Einstein reluctantly adopted, is not overly detailed, but enlightening.
Secondly: for the more low minded, an explanation of medieval ideas of the importance of sex for health, with the most interesting aspect being the widespread idea that celibacy was pretty much as bad for you as having too much sex.
On the other hand, medieval medical authority held that too little sex presented a medical problem: celibacy was potentially detrimental to health, particularly for young men. Long-term celibacy meant the retention of excess semen, which would affect the heart, which in turn could damage other parts of the body. The celibate might experience symptoms including headaches, anxiety, weight loss and, in the most serious cases, death. Although celibacy was highly valued as a spiritual virtue in medieval society, in medical terms the celibate was as much at risk as the debauchee.The writer goes on to note that women were also considered at dire risk from prolonged celibacy, but oddly, through the quirk of their understanding of what was going on in bodies, it seems that some medical authorities were keener to endorse what sounds like masturbation as a cure for celibate women, rather than for celibate men. (!)
King Louis VIII of France, for example, insisted on remaining faithful to his wife while fighting in the Albigensian Crusade of 1209-29. Conventional opinion attributed his death to the resulting celibacy, making him the most famous victim of death by celibacy. According to the 12th-century Norman poet Ambroise, abstinence claimed many victims:
By famine and by maladyFor most crusaders, sexual abstinence was (at most) a temporary inconvenience, to be endured only until they returned home and were reunited with their wives. But for medieval Europe’s many priests, celibacy was a lifelong state, and this could leave them facing a difficult choice. Thomas Becket’s doctor urged him to give up celibacy for the sake of his health, telling him that the celibate life was incompatible with his age and complexion, but the saint disregarded the physician’s advice. Becket lived for many years after this (and ultimately died a martyr at the hands of an assassin), but other bishops were less fortunate. An unnamed 12th-century archdeacon of Louvain, having struggled to remain celibate for a long time, was promoted against his will to the bishopric of the same city. For a month, he abstained from all sexual activity, but soon his genitals swelled up and he became seriously ill. His family and friends urged him to secretly ‘take a woman to himself’, but he was determined to resist temptation. Within days, he was dead.
More than 3,000 were struck down
At the Siege of Acre and in the town
But in pilgrims’ hearing I declare
A hundred thousand men die there
Because from women they abstained.
’Twas for God’s love that they restrained
Themselves. They had not perished thus
Had they not been abstemious.
Anyway, all pretty fascinating.
Why IPA and Australia Day?
I see that many on Twitter have noted that the IPA funded poll on whether people want Australia Day moved from January 26 to be a clear case of "respondent training" to get the desired result. Very hard to dispute that when you see the questions:
I was more interested in the question of why this is a matter the Institute of Paid Advocacy would be interested in at all.
I strongly suspect the answer can be found here:
I was more interested in the question of why this is a matter the Institute of Paid Advocacy would be interested in at all.
I strongly suspect the answer can be found here:
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
The happy economics of craft beer
I don't know exactly what's going on in Australia, but I hope the figures show a similar happy story to that in America.
A new craft beer place has opened within a kilometre or so of my suburban house, but I haven't been to it yet.
A new craft beer place has opened within a kilometre or so of my suburban house, but I haven't been to it yet.
No, nothing vaguely authoritarian about that at all
Axios notes:
In an Oval Office meeting shortly after former FBI Director James Comey was fired, President Trump asked then-Acting Director Andrew McCabe who he voted for in the 2016 election, the Washington Post reports. McCabe reportedly said he did not vote and later said he found the conversation "disturbing," one U.S. official told the Post.
China and government control
Quite a surprising story in The Conversation about a Chinese "Social Credit System". It starts:
While many are planning trips to their home towns to attend family reunions, millions more Chinese citizens have been blacklisted by authorities, labelled as “not qualified” to book flights or high-speed train tickets.And continues:
This citizen ranking and blacklisting mechanism is a pilot scheme of China’s Social Credit System. With a mission to “raise the awareness of integrity and the level of trustworthiness of Chinese society”, the Chinese government is planning to launch the system nationwide by 2020 to rate the trustworthiness of its 1.4 billion citizens.
It is a question Chinese authorities have been exploring for more than 10 years. When the plan of constructing a Social Credit System was first proposed in 2007, the primary goal was to restore market order by leveraging the financial creditworthiness of businesses and individuals.On the other hand, do the right thing, and get rewarded:
Gradually the scope of the project has infiltrated other aspects of daily life.
Actions that can now harm one’s personal credit record include not showing up to a restaurant without having cancelled the reservation, cheating in online games, leaving false product reviews, and jaywalking.
Most pilot cities have used a points system, whereby everyone starts off with a baseline of 100 points. Citizens can earn bonus points up to the value of 200 by performing “good deeds”, such as engaging in charity work or separating and recycling rubbish. In Suzhou city, for example, one can earn six points for donating blood.OK, this is very dangerous idea; but on the other hand, I find the idea of punishing certain people - for example, 90% of threadsters at Catallaxy - for bad behaviour on the internet quite appealing.
Being a “good citizen” is well rewarded. In some regions, citizens with high social credit scores can enjoy free gym facilities, cheaper public transport, and shorter wait times in hospitals. Those with low scores, on the other hand, may face restrictions to their travel and public service access.
A nice Spielberg interview
At The Guardian. I like the opening part, about M Night Shyamalan claiming (just after the success of The Sixth Sense) that he had worked out the secret of Spielberg's success, but wouldn't tell the interviewer what it was. Hah.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Misunderstanding St Paul
I don't know a lot about theologian David Bentley Hart, but he seems to have been creating a bit of a stir lately with his own translation of the New Testament (which most reviewers seem to find interesting, if not always convincing -see discussion here and here), and with recent essays, such as this one from only a couple of weeks ago, discussing what (he argues) is the modern lack of understanding of St Paul's core world view.
The key paragraphs:
The key paragraphs:
Questions of law and righteousness, however, are secondary concerns. The essence of Paul’s theology is something far stranger, and unfolds on a far vaster scale. For Paul, the present world-age is rapidly passing, while another world-age differing from the former in every dimension – heavenly or terrestrial, spiritual or physical – is already dawning. The story of salvation concerns the entire cosmos; and it is a story of invasion, conquest, spoliation and triumph. For Paul, the cosmos has been enslaved to death, both by our sin and by the malign governance of those ‘angelic’ or ‘daemonian’ agencies who reign over the earth from the heavens, and who hold spirits in thrall below the earth. These angelic beings, these Archons, whom Paul calls Thrones and Powers and Dominations and Spiritual Forces of Evil in the High Places, are the gods of the nations. In the Letter to the Galatians, he even hints that the angel of the Lord who rules over Israel might be one of their number. Whether fallen, or mutinous, or merely incompetent, these beings stand intractably between us and God. But Christ has conquered them all.
In descending to Hades and ascending again through the heavens, Christ has vanquished all the Powers below and above that separate us from the love of God, taking them captive in a kind of triumphal procession. All that now remains is the final consummation of the present age, when Christ will appear in his full glory as cosmic conqueror, having ‘subordinated’ (hypetaxen) all the cosmic powers to himself – literally, having properly ‘ordered’ them ‘under’ himself – and will then return this whole reclaimed empire to his Father. God himself, rather than wicked or inept spiritual intermediaries, will rule the cosmos directly. Sometimes, Paul speaks as if some human beings will perish along with the present age, and sometimes as if all human beings will finally be saved. He never speaks of some hell for the torment of unregenerate souls.
The new age, moreover – when creation will be glorified and transformed into God’s kingdom – will be an age of ‘spirit’ rather than ‘flesh’. For Paul, these are two antithetical principles of creaturely existence, though most translations misrepresent the antithesis as a mere contrast between God’s ‘spirit’ and human perversity. But Paul is quite explicit: ‘Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom.’ Neither can psychē, ‘soul’, the life-principle or anima that gives life to perishable flesh. In the age to come, the ‘psychical body’, the ‘ensouled’ or ‘animal’ way of life, will be replaced by a ‘spiritual body’, beyond the reach of death – though, again, conventional translations usually obscure this by speaking of the former, vaguely, as a ‘natural body’.Interesting...
Sort of glad I missed online dating
I stumbled across this link today, and suspect it's been pretty popular, given how high it was when I Googled about Elaine from Seinfeld.
It's by a 40 something woman who details some of her worst online dating meet ups. (She says she's never had a good date, despite trying several different sites.) The details of how strange men can be is pretty hair-raising. Here's a slightly edited version:
It's by a 40 something woman who details some of her worst online dating meet ups. (She says she's never had a good date, despite trying several different sites.) The details of how strange men can be is pretty hair-raising. Here's a slightly edited version:
For instance, I exchanged several long emails with the Furniture Restorer. We seemed to have a lot in common, but within five minutes of meeting face to face, he uttered an anti-Semitic comment. It hadn’t occurred to me to say: “I’m glad you like kayaking, mushroom pizza and the Band, but do you happen to hate Jews?”I guess the big question is - how many unpleasant/strange women are out there in the online dating world? I saw on Reddit today an example that was being widely mocked:
My date with the Logistics Manager wasn’t memorable for what happened during the 25-minute coffee interlude, which had stretches of awkward silence, but for what happened afterwards. I shook his hand and catapulted out of there, pointedly not saying, “It was lovely meeting you.” An hour after our deadly dull date, he sent me a text with a vulgar sexual suggestion.
Ummm . . . No thanks.
As I’ve tried the different dating sites, I’ve revised my dating profile, hoping that this version will catch the eye of Mr. Right. I tried a lighthearted tone, with a bit of humour and ended up meeting the Contractor at 11 a.m. one summer Sunday. He told me he had been to a party at a friend’s the night before and had stayed over. Fair enough. But he was still quite drunk when we met. He took a king can of beer out of his knapsack and chugged it there on the street.
Next, I tried a more serious, academic tone and that led to lunch with the Computer Programmer. There was a little basket on the table, filled with those little plastic creamers. This dude peeled the creamers open one by one and drank them....
But those dates don’t even come close to what I call the “Elaine Date.” If you watched Seinfeld, you may remember an episode where Elaine tells Jerry that her date “took it out.” Yup. That happened.
The Runner Up for awful/bizarre dates was when I went for lunch with the X-Ray Technician. He revealed himself to be a furry . . . I don’t even know how to explain that, other than to say he was covered in more plush than a truckload of teddy bears. He wore a spotted giraffe hoodie, with pointed ears and a mane, and matching socks. And he wore a tail. Yes, a furry tail. ...
I had one profile that was rather long-winded and very detailed about my values, my political leanings and about what I was looking for. It attracted a lawyer with a foot fetish who said he would buy me as many shoes as I wanted, provided I let him suck my toes. And then there was the Comedian who forewarned me that no sex by the third date was a deal breaker. ...
My final date was with the Advertising Guy. We did the usual coffee thing, which by that time already seemed like more effort than it was worth. During our hour-long cappuccinos, Ad Guy emptied the contents of his Dockers pockets and gave me a detailed commentary on everything he carried: screwdriver, tissues, pocket knife, measuring tape, Purell, Band-Aids, wrench set, hammer, magnifying glass, eyeglass repair kit, two HMV gift cards, a poem to his mother, fire starter, antiseptic wipes, allergy pills, pen, notepad, Starbucks gift cards, family photos, TTC tokens, elastics . . . As he displayed each item, he’d say something like: “This comes in handy,” or “You never know when you might need these.” At the end of the “inventory,” he read me the poem he had written for his mother. While I appreciate family bonds, reciting maternal verse was not the way to win me over.
Sunday, January 21, 2018
A poke in the eye
Not entirely sure that I should have watched this YouTube of a procedure I'll be having tomorrow, but it at least shows how eyeballs can take quite a lot of poking around in them.
Update: that was interesting. All seems OK, so far.
Update: that was interesting. All seems OK, so far.
About The Post
It seems a fair guess that Spielberg decided to make The Post because you can imagine every single element being utterly disdained by Trump:
* key character: a woman forced by circumstance to make her own way in a male dominated corporate world, and succeeds;
* said woman makes an important right (not Right) decision in the public's interest, contrary to what the powerful men in the White House want;
* lying politicians undone by a whisteblower and dedicated reporters willing to take risks;
* a talk heavy story - hardly any guns or fights at all.
The perfect anti-Trump movie! It's hilarious to think that the White House asked for a screening (not sure if it was given); I suspect Trump would have just said "no thanks" if told it was on, or walked out after 10 minutes claiming boredom.
I thought it was very good - not earth shatteringly remarkable, but a well directed, largely well acted, and (from what I can gather) only mildly fictionalised recreation of an important moment of US history of particular resonance to politics today. There are one or two pretty static bits of background exposition near the start, but the story picks up speed and ends up quite engaging and satisfying.
Even though it shares the same inevitability of Bridge of Spies, in that it is a true story and we pretty much know the ending, I thought it was significantly better than that movie, which I really felt had no surprises or complexity of any kind. I remain a bit puzzled as to why so many reviewers praised it so highly.
One other point of comparison with Bridge: this may seem minor, but there was something about the look of the rooms and streets in that film that seemed to me to look too much like a fake recreation of the era. (Not sure that any other viewer in the world was thinking about art direction as I was, but there you go.) On the other hand, The Post somehow looked to my eye to be much more convincingly of its day. There, I've made some art director happy. Unless it was the same person for both movies, of course.
Spielberg's use of hand held camera in some sequences is, as usual, fluid and not unsettling as it is with some other directors. He just knows how to add subtle interest to scenes via camera movement and framing. I think, to be objective, that there were a couple of "overtalking" scenes between characters that did not ring true (I think Spielberg used to do this in some of his earlier movies), but this is a very minor quibble about a movie in which, in large part, my Spielberg admiration was amply satisfied.
* key character: a woman forced by circumstance to make her own way in a male dominated corporate world, and succeeds;
* said woman makes an important right (not Right) decision in the public's interest, contrary to what the powerful men in the White House want;
* lying politicians undone by a whisteblower and dedicated reporters willing to take risks;
* a talk heavy story - hardly any guns or fights at all.
The perfect anti-Trump movie! It's hilarious to think that the White House asked for a screening (not sure if it was given); I suspect Trump would have just said "no thanks" if told it was on, or walked out after 10 minutes claiming boredom.
I thought it was very good - not earth shatteringly remarkable, but a well directed, largely well acted, and (from what I can gather) only mildly fictionalised recreation of an important moment of US history of particular resonance to politics today. There are one or two pretty static bits of background exposition near the start, but the story picks up speed and ends up quite engaging and satisfying.
Even though it shares the same inevitability of Bridge of Spies, in that it is a true story and we pretty much know the ending, I thought it was significantly better than that movie, which I really felt had no surprises or complexity of any kind. I remain a bit puzzled as to why so many reviewers praised it so highly.
One other point of comparison with Bridge: this may seem minor, but there was something about the look of the rooms and streets in that film that seemed to me to look too much like a fake recreation of the era. (Not sure that any other viewer in the world was thinking about art direction as I was, but there you go.) On the other hand, The Post somehow looked to my eye to be much more convincingly of its day. There, I've made some art director happy. Unless it was the same person for both movies, of course.
Spielberg's use of hand held camera in some sequences is, as usual, fluid and not unsettling as it is with some other directors. He just knows how to add subtle interest to scenes via camera movement and framing. I think, to be objective, that there were a couple of "overtalking" scenes between characters that did not ring true (I think Spielberg used to do this in some of his earlier movies), but this is a very minor quibble about a movie in which, in large part, my Spielberg admiration was amply satisfied.
Late comments on the Last Jedi
Yes, I know you've all been waiting for my opinion on this. No? I don't care, you're getting it anyway.
I thought it was just OK. Let's do this in dot form, and I guess you might not want to read it if you still haven't seen it:
* For a movie for which I had taken much effort to avoid reading spoilers, I found there was a disappointing lack of important ones. And did everyone like me suspect that Leia was going to be killed off (perhaps via a late re-write), given the unfortunate demise of Carrie Fisher? Speaking of her, I have to note this, if I haven't before in this blog: her voice/accent in both Force Awakens and this one did bother me. In the original movies, I thought she strived for something a bit mid-Atlantic (it helps to sound a bit British if you are playing royalty, after all.) But in the revivals, she has sounded like she had spent the intervening years is some smoky New York bar roughening up her throat. I didn't care for the effect.
* It's a more than a bit embarrassing to admit, but I do get some of the alt.right-ish backlash against the number of women in the movie. What's been going on in the Resistance? Did they start sacrificing men to some volcano or something? Were the members of the Rebellion who didn't bother turning up at the end all guys who got sick of the positive discrimination policies under Leia? "Ha! I got overlooked for promotion 6 times for ethnic girls who kept flunking their X Wing course before they lowered the standards, and you think I'm coming running when you need me?"
Really, I quite liked the multi-cultural-ing of Force Awakens, and Rogue One, and didn't mind that they had female leads, but with the increase in the number of women in (what seems) every single scene in Last Jedi, I thought the politically correct motivations are starting to look just too obvious. That, along with the key theme that "men are too impulsive and gun happy to understand strategy and are going to get us all killed", and even the morally ambiguous position of Luke Skywalker through most of the film, all indicate a serious case of over-compensation for the lack of female roles in the first three movies. (By which I mean, movies 4 to 6.) In fact, not that I care at all about the prequels, but I would guess the amount of female presence in the Star Wars series if graphed would look something like this:
* I'm not convinced that Rian Johnson is all that good a director, particularly of light sabre fight scenes. I thought the whole confrontation with Snook's henchmen was very underwhelming, with a set that looked too simple and fight choreography that had too many silly, unnecessary spins and twirls. I think JJ Abrams did a substantially better job in Force Awakens.
[Gee, this is coming out way more negative than I anticipated.]
* What did I like? Some of the jokes were pretty good, and I don't mind the general theme of Luke having a crisis of confidence, given that the Jedi just keep on seeming to stuff things up with some of their decisions. Mark Hamill was pretty good in the role. I guess I don't even mind the theme that you don't want to let old style, fundamentalist religion bog you down to seeing what's right and good. But that also leads to the main problem with the film:
* The on-going problem with the series is that it can't seem to decide on the nature of the Force, or give a coherent account of it in terms of evil. Yes, it has a theodicy problem.
It is almost certainly not worth over-analysing a nebulous term written by a young director with a vague idea of inserting a mystical element into his fantasy universe, but when you read articles like this one (a semi defence of the awful idea of the Force as mediated by Midi Chlorians) you can see that writers and viewers of the movies have been trying to make sense of it, but failing.
This article in The Atlantic discusses the substantial change in the nature of the Force in this latest movie. I suppose that, in principle, I don't mind the democratising idea that anyone can be a Jedi (or use the Force), but it does just seem to come out of nowhere, doesn't it? I mean, if the series had done something like have a Buddha or Christ figure who, at some sort of universal level, had come to bring the Force to all, that would make sense? But the sort of burbling on by Luke, Rey and even Yoda (although I was pleased to see him, and in puppet form), just didn't do near enough to clear up the change. Or the nature of the Force.
Another in depth discussion of the movie by David Roberts explains that he felt the movie kept indicating it wanted to make a clean break from a good/evil dichotomy, but eventually pulls back from it. I'm not sure I agree - I think the movie just leaves the nature of the Force vis a vis good and evil more confused than ever.
I don't know whether this will ever be capable of proper resolution. I fear it would take some character to sit down and give a 20 minute lecture to clear up the matter, and it's not going to happen.
* But anyway, it's not completely forgettable, like the prequels. It's probably fair to say I enjoyed it at the time of viewing more than this analysis would indicate, but some movies do suffer a bit when you think about them too much.
I thought it was just OK. Let's do this in dot form, and I guess you might not want to read it if you still haven't seen it:
* For a movie for which I had taken much effort to avoid reading spoilers, I found there was a disappointing lack of important ones. And did everyone like me suspect that Leia was going to be killed off (perhaps via a late re-write), given the unfortunate demise of Carrie Fisher? Speaking of her, I have to note this, if I haven't before in this blog: her voice/accent in both Force Awakens and this one did bother me. In the original movies, I thought she strived for something a bit mid-Atlantic (it helps to sound a bit British if you are playing royalty, after all.) But in the revivals, she has sounded like she had spent the intervening years is some smoky New York bar roughening up her throat. I didn't care for the effect.
* It's a more than a bit embarrassing to admit, but I do get some of the alt.right-ish backlash against the number of women in the movie. What's been going on in the Resistance? Did they start sacrificing men to some volcano or something? Were the members of the Rebellion who didn't bother turning up at the end all guys who got sick of the positive discrimination policies under Leia? "Ha! I got overlooked for promotion 6 times for ethnic girls who kept flunking their X Wing course before they lowered the standards, and you think I'm coming running when you need me?"
Really, I quite liked the multi-cultural-ing of Force Awakens, and Rogue One, and didn't mind that they had female leads, but with the increase in the number of women in (what seems) every single scene in Last Jedi, I thought the politically correct motivations are starting to look just too obvious. That, along with the key theme that "men are too impulsive and gun happy to understand strategy and are going to get us all killed", and even the morally ambiguous position of Luke Skywalker through most of the film, all indicate a serious case of over-compensation for the lack of female roles in the first three movies. (By which I mean, movies 4 to 6.) In fact, not that I care at all about the prequels, but I would guess the amount of female presence in the Star Wars series if graphed would look something like this:
(Sorry I misspelt Abrams)
[Gee, this is coming out way more negative than I anticipated.]
* What did I like? Some of the jokes were pretty good, and I don't mind the general theme of Luke having a crisis of confidence, given that the Jedi just keep on seeming to stuff things up with some of their decisions. Mark Hamill was pretty good in the role. I guess I don't even mind the theme that you don't want to let old style, fundamentalist religion bog you down to seeing what's right and good. But that also leads to the main problem with the film:
* The on-going problem with the series is that it can't seem to decide on the nature of the Force, or give a coherent account of it in terms of evil. Yes, it has a theodicy problem.
It is almost certainly not worth over-analysing a nebulous term written by a young director with a vague idea of inserting a mystical element into his fantasy universe, but when you read articles like this one (a semi defence of the awful idea of the Force as mediated by Midi Chlorians) you can see that writers and viewers of the movies have been trying to make sense of it, but failing.
This article in The Atlantic discusses the substantial change in the nature of the Force in this latest movie. I suppose that, in principle, I don't mind the democratising idea that anyone can be a Jedi (or use the Force), but it does just seem to come out of nowhere, doesn't it? I mean, if the series had done something like have a Buddha or Christ figure who, at some sort of universal level, had come to bring the Force to all, that would make sense? But the sort of burbling on by Luke, Rey and even Yoda (although I was pleased to see him, and in puppet form), just didn't do near enough to clear up the change. Or the nature of the Force.
Another in depth discussion of the movie by David Roberts explains that he felt the movie kept indicating it wanted to make a clean break from a good/evil dichotomy, but eventually pulls back from it. I'm not sure I agree - I think the movie just leaves the nature of the Force vis a vis good and evil more confused than ever.
I don't know whether this will ever be capable of proper resolution. I fear it would take some character to sit down and give a 20 minute lecture to clear up the matter, and it's not going to happen.
* But anyway, it's not completely forgettable, like the prequels. It's probably fair to say I enjoyed it at the time of viewing more than this analysis would indicate, but some movies do suffer a bit when you think about them too much.
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Some Trump Youtube mockery
I found this Colbert clip, talking about the details of a Trump affair that it seems everyone during the campaign had forgotten about, to be particularly hilarious:
Which reminds me of this bit of art that was on twitter recently:
While I was on Youtube, the Trump mocking parody songs of Roy Zimmerman, who seems to have around for a long time, but I hadn't heard of him before.
He's a pretty good singer, and even if you think at first that the look or lyric is not so clever, each song usually gets to one or two lines that are very funny indeed. For example, you have to get to the chorus in this one:
Or this, where one line in the middle is very LOL:
Which reminds me of this bit of art that was on twitter recently:
While I was on Youtube, the Trump mocking parody songs of Roy Zimmerman, who seems to have around for a long time, but I hadn't heard of him before.
He's a pretty good singer, and even if you think at first that the look or lyric is not so clever, each song usually gets to one or two lines that are very funny indeed. For example, you have to get to the chorus in this one:
Or this, where one line in the middle is very LOL:
Friday, January 19, 2018
About Hillary
The other night, I saw a repeat run of The Graham Norton Show featuring Hillary Clinton, when she was promoting her book about the loss of the election.
As noted in this piece of commentary, she came across as nice, sharp and emotionally together. I kept thinking "this is the woman about whom the Right wing internet idiot machine kept finding so called "experts" to claim that she was virtually on death's door during the campaign. Aren't they embarrassed to see this?" But I've never heard anyone from that side express any regret about that conspiracy nonsense...
As noted in this piece of commentary, she came across as nice, sharp and emotionally together. I kept thinking "this is the woman about whom the Right wing internet idiot machine kept finding so called "experts" to claim that she was virtually on death's door during the campaign. Aren't they embarrassed to see this?" But I've never heard anyone from that side express any regret about that conspiracy nonsense...
Thursday, January 18, 2018
Rough figures on Apple
So, Apple is boasting that it's going to pay $38 billion in tax when it brings its overseas pot of money back to the US. (Ireland and Europe sound worried that this means they miss out on the tax they've been chasing from Apple for years - showing that they've been played for suckers, I reckon.)
Trump and Republicans are crowing that this is what happens when you reduce corporate tax rates by 40% (from 35% to 21%).
But wait a minute: how much tax does the US collect annually from companies? According to this site, in 2015, it was $342 billion, roughly. So, using that figure, a 40% drop in the amount of tax collected due to Trump's new rates would mean revenue of $205 billion in lieu of $342 billion. A drop of $137 billion (!).
Add in $38 billion from Apple, and that brings revenue back up to $243 billion, still down to 71% of the tax collected in 2015.
Let's be (what I suspect is) generous and allow other companies paying (say) a further $30 billion in tax on monies coming home to the US. That would bring it up to $273 billion, or 80% of the 2015 tax revenue.*
Of course, Apple investments in the US should generate more personal income tax from workers, (and payroll taxes?) so there will be some improvement on that side of the ledger.
But, don't these rough figures indicate that the gain to US revenue by big, but one-off, repatriated profit tax payments like those from Apple will come no where near making up for the lost revenue from a permanent massive corporate tax rate cut?
* My guestimate might not be far off - according to this article, it's been estimated that repatriation taxes could bring in $338.8 billion, but over ten years. If it was spread evenly, that would be $34 billion or so a year.
PS: Incidentally, any renewed investment by Apple in the US is, I would imagine, hardly likely to benefit the ageing, white, non college educated Trumpsters in rustbelt areas who find it hard getting work, or well paid work. What's the bet that Apple will in fact, soon enough, be pressing Trump to ease up on his anti migration vibe so to let in the skilled foreign workers that they need for their new investment?
And Slate points out how people are easily misled by Apple PR machine, when they are spouting "billions and billions":
PPS: I know that tax, especially (it seems) the US tax system, is complicated, and it's likely I'm missing something significant. It is just "rough figures" after all...
Trump and Republicans are crowing that this is what happens when you reduce corporate tax rates by 40% (from 35% to 21%).
But wait a minute: how much tax does the US collect annually from companies? According to this site, in 2015, it was $342 billion, roughly. So, using that figure, a 40% drop in the amount of tax collected due to Trump's new rates would mean revenue of $205 billion in lieu of $342 billion. A drop of $137 billion (!).
Add in $38 billion from Apple, and that brings revenue back up to $243 billion, still down to 71% of the tax collected in 2015.
Let's be (what I suspect is) generous and allow other companies paying (say) a further $30 billion in tax on monies coming home to the US. That would bring it up to $273 billion, or 80% of the 2015 tax revenue.*
Of course, Apple investments in the US should generate more personal income tax from workers, (and payroll taxes?) so there will be some improvement on that side of the ledger.
But, don't these rough figures indicate that the gain to US revenue by big, but one-off, repatriated profit tax payments like those from Apple will come no where near making up for the lost revenue from a permanent massive corporate tax rate cut?
* My guestimate might not be far off - according to this article, it's been estimated that repatriation taxes could bring in $338.8 billion, but over ten years. If it was spread evenly, that would be $34 billion or so a year.
PS: Incidentally, any renewed investment by Apple in the US is, I would imagine, hardly likely to benefit the ageing, white, non college educated Trumpsters in rustbelt areas who find it hard getting work, or well paid work. What's the bet that Apple will in fact, soon enough, be pressing Trump to ease up on his anti migration vibe so to let in the skilled foreign workers that they need for their new investment?
And Slate points out how people are easily misled by Apple PR machine, when they are spouting "billions and billions":
The press release predicts that between its “current pace of spending with domestic suppliers and manufacturers—an estimated $55 billion for 2018—Apple’s direct contribution to the US economy will be more than $350 billion over the next five years.” In other words, Apple will keep buying stuff from other U.S. companies. This is not a patriotic act of charity. Apple is literally saying it will continue business as usual. That alone accounts for $275 billion of its $350 billion forecast.
As for the rest of that total? In a mystifying bit of self-aggrandizement, the company is counting its $38 billion repatriation payment as another “direct contribution” to the U.S. economy. This is money they are required to pay by law. “A payment of that size would likely be the largest of its kind ever made,” the company helpfully notes. This is only true because Apple spent years making money hand-over-fist while doing everything in its power to avoid taxes.Finally, we get to the company’s actual plans to invest in the U.S. Here, we learn that “Apple expects to invest over $30 billion in capital expenditures in the US over the next five years and create over 20,000 new jobs through hiring at existing campuses and opening a new one,” which will initially “house technical support for customers.”
PPS: I know that tax, especially (it seems) the US tax system, is complicated, and it's likely I'm missing something significant. It is just "rough figures" after all...
Catching up on some links
Some stuff that interested me over the Christmas period:
* Tim Lott at The Guardian complained that modern writers of "literary fiction" no longer interest him because they are bad at plot and basic storytelling. I suspect there is something to that.
* Did you see the story ABC TV news was running over Christmas about the terrible situation with potable water in Jakarta? It was startling how bad the situation was in the city, and now I can't find the link. Must be there somewhere, I would expect. But Googling around shows me that the situation has been bad for a very long time, with the problem being pinned by some on the water utility being privatised 20 years ago. That has now been undone due to litigation, and it's the government's direct problem again. Private companies don't always do it better, it seems...
* Good advice: Don’t listen to Gwyneth Paltrow: keep your coffee well away from your rectum
* Yet another The Guardian link: about a trend to keep bodies of deceased loved ones at home for a period of mourning and how funeral directors help facilitate it. (There's a cold plate the body is put on.) It's a bit of a tribal thing for many, but I think it does make some psychological sense that it would help the mind process the loss.
* I sort of like folk Catholicism for its liveliness and its cultural interest, but does it have to be as dangerous as a photo essay at The Atlantic (showing a massive procession in the Philippines from a couple of weeks ago) indicates? Two examples:
* Tim Lott at The Guardian complained that modern writers of "literary fiction" no longer interest him because they are bad at plot and basic storytelling. I suspect there is something to that.
* Did you see the story ABC TV news was running over Christmas about the terrible situation with potable water in Jakarta? It was startling how bad the situation was in the city, and now I can't find the link. Must be there somewhere, I would expect. But Googling around shows me that the situation has been bad for a very long time, with the problem being pinned by some on the water utility being privatised 20 years ago. That has now been undone due to litigation, and it's the government's direct problem again. Private companies don't always do it better, it seems...
* Good advice: Don’t listen to Gwyneth Paltrow: keep your coffee well away from your rectum
* Yet another The Guardian link: about a trend to keep bodies of deceased loved ones at home for a period of mourning and how funeral directors help facilitate it. (There's a cold plate the body is put on.) It's a bit of a tribal thing for many, but I think it does make some psychological sense that it would help the mind process the loss.
* I sort of like folk Catholicism for its liveliness and its cultural interest, but does it have to be as dangerous as a photo essay at The Atlantic (showing a massive procession in the Philippines from a couple of weeks ago) indicates? Two examples:
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Thought this was the case
I had thought that this was the case - as so many friends and relatives have been to Japan in the last decade, whereas it had not seemed to be that big a destination for Australian tourists 25 years ago.
Here's an article at the ABC putting numbers on my suspicions, and confirming them. Australian and Japanese tourist numbers have changed dramatically:
Here's an article at the ABC putting numbers on my suspicions, and confirming them. Australian and Japanese tourist numbers have changed dramatically:
Well before China's economic growth drove its citizens to seek out Australian beaches and koala cuddling sessions, it was Japanese tourists filling the pockets of operators in the 1980s and '90s.
The peak was in 1997 when more than 814,000 made the journey south.
Two decades later, in 2016, the number was basically half, with only 417,900 making the same trip.
By comparison, in 1997 some 101,460 Australians made the trek to Japan, of which just 41,520 were tourists.
By 2016 the number had sky rocketed to 445,237 — of which 398,193 were tourists. That's a 959 per cent increase in the number of Australians taking a holiday in Japan over just two decades.
Do NOT let this guy on Fox News Breakfast
So, some dude from the University of Waterloo (where? Ontario I see) has an article on The Conversation seemingly advocating that the next year is a good time for the US to carry out a "surgical" nuclear strike on North Korea:
Properly used, nuclear munitions can result in a minimum of radioactive or long-term contamination, or mass destruction —far lesser consequences than if North Korea actually detonated one of their crude nuclear weapons.Do us a favour, Rupert, and don't get him on Fox News morning show and have Steve Doocebag nod approvingly.
So, it's just intense personality and character defects, then?
Surely I can't be the only person to be somewhat disappointed that Trump isn't on the way out due to cognitive issues? (Come on - it's not like I'm wishing ill on a saint - or even your average sinner. He's an obnoxious, racist, dumb, narcissistic, serial adulterer from way back. Willing to pay off his casual sex partners just before an election, too. It's rumoured there were many other payments made.) Mind you, the test he underwent is the simplest one (which is of the kind I saw the doctor give to my Mum when she was developing dementia):
At the president’s request, Jackson said that he reviewed a number of cognitive tests and then administered the Montreal Cognitive Assessment during Trump’s first presidential physical exam on Friday afternoon at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The 10-minute exam is designed to detect mild cognitive impairment, generally in older patients. Trump answered all 30 questions correctly, Jackson said.I can't get to comments at the Washington Post, but I wonder what other doctors are saying about the test as a general reliable guide to mental functioning...
The test includes asking a patient to name several animals, draw a clock with the hands at a certain time, copy a cube and recall a short list of words, among others. Jackson said he has “no indication whatsoever that he has any cognitive issues.”
Monday, January 15, 2018
Galaxy positioning system
Oh my - seems like only a year or so ago that I was posting about pulsars being proposed as a sort of GPS system for spaceships in the solar system or beyond - but it was 2012!
Last week, in Nature, it was reported that they can indeed be used that way:
Last week, in Nature, it was reported that they can indeed be used that way:
From its perch aboard the International Space Station, a NASA experiment has shown how future missions might navigate their way through deep space. Spacecraft could triangulate their location, in a sort of celestial Global Positioning System (GPS), using clockwork-like signals from distant dead stars.
Last November, the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) spent a day and a half looking at a handful of pulsars — rapidly spinning stellar remnants that give off beams of powerful radiation as they rotate. By measuring tiny changes in the arrival time of the pulses, NICER could pinpoint its location to within 5 kilometres.
It is the first demonstration in space of the long-sought technology known as pulsar navigation. One day, the method could help spacecraft steer themselves without regular instructions from Earth.....The team plans to repeat the experiment in the coming months, hoping to reduce the margin of error to one kilometre or less.
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