Robert Manne writes a good response to Bolt's appalling immigration column, noting how he got some numbers wrong.
I see that Bolt was complaining about Bernard Keane's take that his talking about the numbers of Jewish folk in Caulfield was anti-Semitic. Manne says (reasonably) that Bolt was not trying to be anti-Semitic (given Bolt's anti Muslim attitudes, you can't credibly believe he was intending to suddenly take offence against Jews). But you still have to wonder - what on Earth did Bolt think he was achieving in pointing out the number of Jews living in a suburb? He may well like Jews (or at least, those who support their current Right wing government), but pointing to any group and implicitly complaining about how they like to cluster together still points to bigotry against a class - immigrants of any kind!
Tuesday, August 07, 2018
Monday, August 06, 2018
Mission Impossible 6
Saw it on the weekend.
I liked it, and it kept coming back to my mind on Sunday. (That's generally a good sign of a movie getting under your skin a bit.) I do have some minor criticism about it, though.
A number of times, I thought the cinematography looked a little murky, for some reason. I read today it was shot on 35 film, not video. I wonder why. I thought the digital editing required to remove safety ropes was much easier on video? Does this account for it not looking as sharp as I expect from movies now? Was it just less than ideal projection in the cinema I saw it in?
As for the set pieces: I'm starting to think that the series best visceral thrill sequence may always be Tom swinging on a rope on the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol. I still think it's just great movie making every time I see it, and it plays extremely well with everyone's sense of vertigo. MI:6 is more about chase and action, and while the climatic set piece was, of course, impressive in its way, I think as a sequence (particularly with the cutting back and forth to the situation on the ground) it wasn't quite as well constructed as it could have been.
Interestingly, despite its references to events in the prior movies, the story also did not really feel like it was designed as the end for the series. Which is good, because my dream would be that Spielberg signs on to director for the last one.
I liked it, and it kept coming back to my mind on Sunday. (That's generally a good sign of a movie getting under your skin a bit.) I do have some minor criticism about it, though.
A number of times, I thought the cinematography looked a little murky, for some reason. I read today it was shot on 35 film, not video. I wonder why. I thought the digital editing required to remove safety ropes was much easier on video? Does this account for it not looking as sharp as I expect from movies now? Was it just less than ideal projection in the cinema I saw it in?
As for the set pieces: I'm starting to think that the series best visceral thrill sequence may always be Tom swinging on a rope on the Burj Khalifa in Ghost Protocol. I still think it's just great movie making every time I see it, and it plays extremely well with everyone's sense of vertigo. MI:6 is more about chase and action, and while the climatic set piece was, of course, impressive in its way, I think as a sequence (particularly with the cutting back and forth to the situation on the ground) it wasn't quite as well constructed as it could have been.
Interestingly, despite its references to events in the prior movies, the story also did not really feel like it was designed as the end for the series. Which is good, because my dream would be that Spielberg signs on to director for the last one.
As I say, gone completely stupid...
Andrew Bolt this morning:
I like the way he (or someone) takes the opportunity to re-publish the "foreigners are here to devour our country" cartoon that would not be out of place in a pro White Australia newspaper from 100 years ago.
Speaking of inane, unjustifiable posts, I see that Sinclair Davidson thinks "luvvies" are being hysterical when they complain about Trump's "enemy of the people" repeat line about the Press. Note how he does not repeat the line:
Anyway, he then goes on to claim press "hypocrisy" because the media (and "luvvies" generally) didn't get up in arms a few years back when Bob Green was complaining about the "hate media" (being the Murdoch press) were running a constant campaign against a carbon tax, as they still, undoubtedly, would.
The clip of Bob Green shows a man who calmly complains about the Murdoch press, yet never calls it (like Stalin and Hitler did) the "enemy of the people". There is nil comparison with the repeated rallying call of Trump, to which his dumb ass, heavily armed, cult followers respond with applause. It's a false equivalency, a case of the Right's "whataboutism" which fails the test of history and common sense.
And speaking of Right wing politics generally, I liked Greg Jericho's column on the weekend:
A virus of odious ignorance has infected conservative thinking – and politics
I like the way he (or someone) takes the opportunity to re-publish the "foreigners are here to devour our country" cartoon that would not be out of place in a pro White Australia newspaper from 100 years ago.
Speaking of inane, unjustifiable posts, I see that Sinclair Davidson thinks "luvvies" are being hysterical when they complain about Trump's "enemy of the people" repeat line about the Press. Note how he does not repeat the line:
The luvvies are outraged – how dare President Trump criticise the press? Our democracy is at risk! Although to be fair, their democracy might be at risk; however the democracy where people turn up on election day and vote for a representative is doing just fine.Who knows what that third sentence qualifier means - lack of clarity is something I find he often specialises in.
Anyway, he then goes on to claim press "hypocrisy" because the media (and "luvvies" generally) didn't get up in arms a few years back when Bob Green was complaining about the "hate media" (being the Murdoch press) were running a constant campaign against a carbon tax, as they still, undoubtedly, would.
The clip of Bob Green shows a man who calmly complains about the Murdoch press, yet never calls it (like Stalin and Hitler did) the "enemy of the people". There is nil comparison with the repeated rallying call of Trump, to which his dumb ass, heavily armed, cult followers respond with applause. It's a false equivalency, a case of the Right's "whataboutism" which fails the test of history and common sense.
And speaking of Right wing politics generally, I liked Greg Jericho's column on the weekend:
A virus of odious ignorance has infected conservative thinking – and politics
But sigh, no. Conservatives have been rendered so bereft by climate change that anything carrying even the slightest taint of an environmental impact is viewed with distrust. And so the plastic bag ban quickly became a new focus of the culture wars.Exactly.
It’s all rather odd, but fits perfectly within a strain of thought that has decided the way forward is to ignore evidence and instead pursue an ideology of wilful ignorance.
It has led to the point where there are barely any conservative commentators worth reading or listening to. It’s not that there are no intelligent conservative thinkers, but the lunacy of climate change denial and distrust of expertise has so infected the conservative media that prominence is now almost exclusively given to those for whom a worldwide conspiracy is more believable than reports by multiple universities and public agencies.
What’s more, their realisation that they can spout their views free of supportable evidence on this issue has also led to an unlocking of all manner of views they once kept hidden, but which now come forth with great delight.
Saturday, August 04, 2018
For people who like deadpan NZ comedy
I see that with little fanfare, SBS has started showing Wellington Paranormal, a TV series made in the same style as What We Do in the Shadows.
If you liked the movie, and a lot of people did, you will find this pretty hilarious too. Here's the opening scene from episode 1 that someone has put on line. It gives you a good idea of the style of humour:
I see some people are putting full episodes on Youtube. I watched it on SBS on Demand.
If you liked the movie, and a lot of people did, you will find this pretty hilarious too. Here's the opening scene from episode 1 that someone has put on line. It gives you a good idea of the style of humour:
I see some people are putting full episodes on Youtube. I watched it on SBS on Demand.
The Iran street
I think it very, very unlikely that the Trump/Bolton tactic on increasing pressure on Iran is going to lead to a good outcome. I would say disaster is much more likely. But, to be honest, in that part of the world, it never pays to be too certain.
But have a read of this cautiously written article at the (now very depleted) Christian Science Monitor.
But have a read of this cautiously written article at the (now very depleted) Christian Science Monitor.
A strange outing
I have rarely seen gay "celebrity" Todd McKenny on TV - I'm not one for such kitchy shows as Dancing with the Stars, or Boy for Oz, whatever else he has been on. But I always thought there was something dislikeable about him (not the sexuality per se - he's just one of those people, gay or straight, that has an air of something that makes me not trust them. I've always put Eddie Maguire in that category, too.)
Anyway, he's in the news this week for a very strange outing.
Back in the 1980's, I remember Simon Gallaher being the subject of one of the old fashioned "gay marriage" rumours with Mike Walsh. (It was a sister in law who swore someone she knew was at "the wedding".) I always thought this type of rumour was odd, and they do seem to be very much of that period - I think there a similar rumour around Jim Nabours? Yes, I know he was gay, but the point is more that it seemed that people wanted to believe the profane unnaturalness of homosexuality by insisting that gay men were having secret mock marriages, in the same way a devil worshipper's black mass was supposed to mock the real thing, I guess.*
Anyway, I had little interest in the topic, other than categorising it as likely urban myth (it was always a friend of a friend who had seen the real thing), but felt a little sorry for Gallaher. Later, when I read that Gallaher was married and had children, I assumed that my suspicion had been confirmed.
But now McKenny, who seems not to get on with his sister much, decided, with no forewarning, to tell the world that he had been in a gay relationship with Gallaher for 5 years, before he married his sister.
The SMH says that Gallaher and his wife are far from happy:
It's an odd story that presumably rarely happens - but it does give some justification for my dislike of Todd.
* Actually, I should tread carefully on this topic, since I do feel that gay marriages which stylistically imitate straight marriage - such as two women who wear classic wedding dresses - do look weird because of the imitation aspect. Should come up with something novel for what is, after all, a completely historically novel invention.
Anyway, he's in the news this week for a very strange outing.
Back in the 1980's, I remember Simon Gallaher being the subject of one of the old fashioned "gay marriage" rumours with Mike Walsh. (It was a sister in law who swore someone she knew was at "the wedding".) I always thought this type of rumour was odd, and they do seem to be very much of that period - I think there a similar rumour around Jim Nabours? Yes, I know he was gay, but the point is more that it seemed that people wanted to believe the profane unnaturalness of homosexuality by insisting that gay men were having secret mock marriages, in the same way a devil worshipper's black mass was supposed to mock the real thing, I guess.*
Anyway, I had little interest in the topic, other than categorising it as likely urban myth (it was always a friend of a friend who had seen the real thing), but felt a little sorry for Gallaher. Later, when I read that Gallaher was married and had children, I assumed that my suspicion had been confirmed.
But now McKenny, who seems not to get on with his sister much, decided, with no forewarning, to tell the world that he had been in a gay relationship with Gallaher for 5 years, before he married his sister.
The SMH says that Gallaher and his wife are far from happy:
Simon Gallaher called McKenney a "headline whore"; his wife, Lisa, called her brother a "douche bag". Simon declined to say more when PS made contact this week, except that it was "time to move on". His wife told friends: "We all have to just duck the fallout now.It seems unclear, from that article, whether Galaher's sons knew of his relationship with their uncle.
It's an odd story that presumably rarely happens - but it does give some justification for my dislike of Todd.
* Actually, I should tread carefully on this topic, since I do feel that gay marriages which stylistically imitate straight marriage - such as two women who wear classic wedding dresses - do look weird because of the imitation aspect. Should come up with something novel for what is, after all, a completely historically novel invention.
Friday, August 03, 2018
Why would Paul do it?
He's a good sport, I suppose, but he really looked as if he might be wanting to throw up at the end:
I try to be polite, but really...
Sinclair Davidson turned up in comments here recently: whether that means he reads this blog regularly, semi-regularly or only when he gets a mention, I don't know. (Actually, he gets a mention here pretty often, so the last two categories are pretty close.)
Now, this may not be quite on a par with the gobsmacking, how-could-he-possibly-ask-that-question, reputational harm of asking why calling an aboriginal man an ape was (or even, could be) racist; but for a person obsessed with free speech, it comes very close.
I'm talking about his post today in which he pretty much defends Trump repeatedly calling the media "the enemy of the people". OK, let's be generous to Trump and note that after his daughter said they weren't, he tweeted that he didn't mean all, just a "large percentage" of the media that spreads "fake news".
Davidson notes in comments to his post that this is what he understood Trump to mean - "just CNN and some others."
Some others, hey?
Cue his mate Andrew Bolt - who will soon be dying his hair red so as to feel ever closer to the very soul of Pauline Hanson after his "I hate the way immigrants cluster together - it makes me feel yucky and uncomfortable and I don't like it" column yesterday - has attempted a similar, pathetic defence of Trump as not condemning all media as "enemy of the people" - just the media that criticises him.
I mean, honestly, Bolt's post itself notes that Trump has specifically cited and attacked as "fake news purveyors" the New York Times, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, the Washington Post, Associated Press, MSNBC, "and so on". That's all three of the big broadcast media networks in the US! We all know what Trump means - any media which has criticised him and his administration, and in particular, reported on Russian collusion, is peddling "fake news", is not to be believed, and is "the enemy of the people".
It's a serious joke that Davidson cannot see, or excuses, the authoritarianism inherent in any President labelling the professional establishment media (we're not talking some internet bozo like Alex Jones or Jim Hoft) as "an enemy of the people" - and I would say that regardless of the size of the media element that is so labelled. In Trump's case, it's virtually all of the media save for Fox News, Breitbart and the Washington Times - all of which, while privately owned, are so close in allegiance to Trump that they are effectively the same output as State media.
You thought a man who hails from South Africa might have a better idea about racism than he did, and a better nose for authoritarian rhetoric?
You thought a frequent defender of free speech might have qualms about a President who wants his followers to completely ignore, and worse - consider their enemy, all media free speech which has reporting and opinion said President doesn't like?
Well you would be wrong.
But illustrating again the embarrassing intellectual and moral joke that the Right, whether conservative or libertarian, has become in Australia? You would be right.
PS: it's clear what this is about - it's in the extracted commentary in Sinclair's post explaining that CNN has to realise that the rage of the Trumpkins is just them finally having their chance to let the media finally hear their frustration with their product.
Yes, it's the media's own fault for not respecting enough the views of the Right - or the Trump right, or whatever. It's the "but you don't take me seriously enough" cry of the people who believe that climate change is a massive conspiracy, Obama was a Muslim born in Africa and the Worst President in History, that Hillary is a murderous harpy, etc, etc.
In Sinclair's case, I think he may be having trouble coping with not getting enough respect from the media, even though he campaigned for years in his own way against climate change, made a big and wrong warning on Keynesian spending after the GFC leading to stagflation in Australia, and completely voluntarily opened himself to ridicule on the matter of the use of "ape" in a racist context.
Maybe if he owned up to errors instead of blustering past them, he might get more media respect and be less inclined to want defend dangerous authoritarian sentiment? Just a suggestion.
Update: for those who seem to need educating, or reminding: in the Guardian this morning: 'Enemy of the people': Trump's phrase and its echoes of totalitarianism
Now, this may not be quite on a par with the gobsmacking, how-could-he-possibly-ask-that-question, reputational harm of asking why calling an aboriginal man an ape was (or even, could be) racist; but for a person obsessed with free speech, it comes very close.
I'm talking about his post today in which he pretty much defends Trump repeatedly calling the media "the enemy of the people". OK, let's be generous to Trump and note that after his daughter said they weren't, he tweeted that he didn't mean all, just a "large percentage" of the media that spreads "fake news".
Davidson notes in comments to his post that this is what he understood Trump to mean - "just CNN and some others."
Some others, hey?
Cue his mate Andrew Bolt - who will soon be dying his hair red so as to feel ever closer to the very soul of Pauline Hanson after his "I hate the way immigrants cluster together - it makes me feel yucky and uncomfortable and I don't like it" column yesterday - has attempted a similar, pathetic defence of Trump as not condemning all media as "enemy of the people" - just the media that criticises him.
I mean, honestly, Bolt's post itself notes that Trump has specifically cited and attacked as "fake news purveyors" the New York Times, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, the Washington Post, Associated Press, MSNBC, "and so on". That's all three of the big broadcast media networks in the US! We all know what Trump means - any media which has criticised him and his administration, and in particular, reported on Russian collusion, is peddling "fake news", is not to be believed, and is "the enemy of the people".
It's a serious joke that Davidson cannot see, or excuses, the authoritarianism inherent in any President labelling the professional establishment media (we're not talking some internet bozo like Alex Jones or Jim Hoft) as "an enemy of the people" - and I would say that regardless of the size of the media element that is so labelled. In Trump's case, it's virtually all of the media save for Fox News, Breitbart and the Washington Times - all of which, while privately owned, are so close in allegiance to Trump that they are effectively the same output as State media.
You thought a man who hails from South Africa might have a better idea about racism than he did, and a better nose for authoritarian rhetoric?
You thought a frequent defender of free speech might have qualms about a President who wants his followers to completely ignore, and worse - consider their enemy, all media free speech which has reporting and opinion said President doesn't like?
Well you would be wrong.
But illustrating again the embarrassing intellectual and moral joke that the Right, whether conservative or libertarian, has become in Australia? You would be right.
PS: it's clear what this is about - it's in the extracted commentary in Sinclair's post explaining that CNN has to realise that the rage of the Trumpkins is just them finally having their chance to let the media finally hear their frustration with their product.
Yes, it's the media's own fault for not respecting enough the views of the Right - or the Trump right, or whatever. It's the "but you don't take me seriously enough" cry of the people who believe that climate change is a massive conspiracy, Obama was a Muslim born in Africa and the Worst President in History, that Hillary is a murderous harpy, etc, etc.
In Sinclair's case, I think he may be having trouble coping with not getting enough respect from the media, even though he campaigned for years in his own way against climate change, made a big and wrong warning on Keynesian spending after the GFC leading to stagflation in Australia, and completely voluntarily opened himself to ridicule on the matter of the use of "ape" in a racist context.
Maybe if he owned up to errors instead of blustering past them, he might get more media respect and be less inclined to want defend dangerous authoritarian sentiment? Just a suggestion.
Update: for those who seem to need educating, or reminding: in the Guardian this morning: 'Enemy of the people': Trump's phrase and its echoes of totalitarianism
Another medical study to believe in
Both long term abstinence and heavy drinking may increase dementia risk
People who abstain from alcohol or consume more than 14 units a week during middle age (midlife) are at increased risk of developing dementia, finds a study in The BMJ today.Good to know I am hitting a happy medium.
David Murray, goose
It seems to me from reading this article in the AFR, regarding AMP wannabe saviour David Murray, that he typifies the rule of thumb I've been pointing out for years: if someone, no matter what success they may have achieved in life thus far, does not believe the science of climate change, then their judgement about everything (even their claimed area of expertise) is not to be trusted.
I'm sorry: that's just the way it is.
I'm sorry: that's just the way it is.
So much for nuclear power being the saviour for climate change
Quite surprising, this:
Shut reactor: Ringhals, Sweden. Reuters reports that the water is too warm for reactor cooling in the sea off Sweden and Finland, and the River Rhone is too warm in France.
“Utility Vattenfall, which operates seven reactors in Sweden, shut a 900 megawatt (MW) PWR unit – one of the four located at its Ringhals plant – this week as water temperatures exceeded 25 degrees Celsius.”
“France, like much of Europe, is experiencing scorching weather in its southern regions, and forecasts show temperatures hitting 40 degrees Celsius (104°F) in the Rhone valley area. EDF’s nuclear plants along the Rhone use the river’s waters to regulate the temperature of their reactors, discharging warm water back into the waterway.”
National trends to avoid
* The BBC says that South Korea is having a spy cam porn epidemic. Sorry to say it, but wouldn't most people have guessed that Japan might be more prone to that? Maybe politeness wins out there.
* I hesitate to post this, and mean no disrespect to Indians generally, but it's not every day that you read about a social media outcry related to the gang rape of a pregnant goat.
* Claims from Japan that a university dealt with the "problem" of gender balance amongst doctors by marking down entrance exam results from females.
* Back to India, and I don't think I have posted before about the reports that fake rumour spreading on WhatsApp in particular is being blamed for stupid lynchings and riots:
* I hesitate to post this, and mean no disrespect to Indians generally, but it's not every day that you read about a social media outcry related to the gang rape of a pregnant goat.
* Claims from Japan that a university dealt with the "problem" of gender balance amongst doctors by marking down entrance exam results from females.
* Back to India, and I don't think I have posted before about the reports that fake rumour spreading on WhatsApp in particular is being blamed for stupid lynchings and riots:
For several days, messages warning about child-lifters on the prowl had pinged on smartphones in Rainpada, a tribal hamlet in Dhule district, 400 km northwest of Mumbai. Then, on July 1, the villagers saw a group of seven tribal nomads from the Davri Gosavi community speaking to a child. A group of around 20 locals, certain these were the child-lifters the WhatsApp video had warned of, pounced on them and began beating them before locking them up in the local gram panchayat office. Two men managed to flee.
Soon after, a mob numbering in the hundreds- most had converged on Rainpada from adjacent villages for the weekly market- broke into the office and beat up Bharat Bhosale, Dadarao Bhosale, Bharat Malve, Appa Ingole and Raju Bhosale using whatever they could find- rods, sticks, stones and logs of wood. Two police officers who arrived on the scene and tried to intervene were also attacked. Bharat, Raju and Dadarao died on the spot. Malve and Appa succumbed to their injuries en route to the hospital.
The Dhule incident was only the latest in the series of WhatsApp-transmitted lynchings across the country this year leading to the deaths of 30 people. If technology is a double-edged sword, India felt its sharp edge, the high-speed network's ability to misinform and inflame. Sixteen such cases have been reported since May 10, from Maharashtra to Tripura.
Netflix news
* Finished Lost in Space a few weeks ago. I didn't mind the last episode, which moved faster than some in the series, and I would say that the show has just enough going for it for me to look at the second series, whenever it comes out. I have a fear that the science is only going to get worse, but I'll give it a try.
* Finished Babylon Berlin last night. What a satisfying, high class potboiler of a show that has been. Some characters did seem ridiculously hard to kill, and the close call of one of them in the second last episode was upsetting. I'm betting on the nephew becoming an enthusiastic member of Nazi Youth, by the way. It really deserves all the praise it has received. A third series is on the way, apparently, and I hope it can keep up the standards, with more Nazis this time.
* Tried Dark, another German series, for a couple of episodes, but it seemed a bit too Stranger Things except with time travel. My son and I both felt it wasn't really worth continuing with.
* Will finish the first and only (on Netflix) series of Frankenstein Chronicles soon. Quite enjoyable and a clever idea behind the series, I think. Like I said before, good to see syphilis finally get a prime role in a TV series, given how many people it did affect in real life. And one thing I was always noticing: how cold it seemed for the actors throughout the series. Even in indoor scenes, there were so many times they characters were puffing steam as they spoke. I would have assumed that film lighting would have heated the place up, but maybe they were doing it with less lights than normal, and during a really cold winter.
* Need more recommendations for series. The Alienist, perhaps?
Update: I see that The Alienist has less than enthusiastic reviews. The oddly named Peaky Blinders, (could they have possibly picked a name - and images - more likely to obscure what the series is about?) though, seems very well reviewed. I think it has been on ABC but I've never watched it. Seems that should be the next thing to try.
* Finished Babylon Berlin last night. What a satisfying, high class potboiler of a show that has been. Some characters did seem ridiculously hard to kill, and the close call of one of them in the second last episode was upsetting. I'm betting on the nephew becoming an enthusiastic member of Nazi Youth, by the way. It really deserves all the praise it has received. A third series is on the way, apparently, and I hope it can keep up the standards, with more Nazis this time.
* Tried Dark, another German series, for a couple of episodes, but it seemed a bit too Stranger Things except with time travel. My son and I both felt it wasn't really worth continuing with.
* Will finish the first and only (on Netflix) series of Frankenstein Chronicles soon. Quite enjoyable and a clever idea behind the series, I think. Like I said before, good to see syphilis finally get a prime role in a TV series, given how many people it did affect in real life. And one thing I was always noticing: how cold it seemed for the actors throughout the series. Even in indoor scenes, there were so many times they characters were puffing steam as they spoke. I would have assumed that film lighting would have heated the place up, but maybe they were doing it with less lights than normal, and during a really cold winter.
* Need more recommendations for series. The Alienist, perhaps?
Update: I see that The Alienist has less than enthusiastic reviews. The oddly named Peaky Blinders, (could they have possibly picked a name - and images - more likely to obscure what the series is about?) though, seems very well reviewed. I think it has been on ABC but I've never watched it. Seems that should be the next thing to try.
A TV confession
There's much high minded horror from folk both Left and Right being expressed at the idea of an ALF re-boot. But I have a confession: I found the original series quite likeable. I thought the exasperated acting of both the father and mother was pretty amusing, and ALF himself had some funny lines.
Am I the only person who didn't find it cringeworthy? (And I say this as a person who, as a child, could never bear to watch family bland comedy like The Brady Bunch, or even worse, The Partridge Family. Or later, the horrible Full House, or the terrible Good Times. But ALF, it was harmless and amusing.)
Am I the only person who didn't find it cringeworthy? (And I say this as a person who, as a child, could never bear to watch family bland comedy like The Brady Bunch, or even worse, The Partridge Family. Or later, the horrible Full House, or the terrible Good Times. But ALF, it was harmless and amusing.)
A life of Graves
I only had a vague idea about the life of Robert Graves - I knew he had been through World War 1, and did poetry and novels. Literary Review has open access (for a while) to a review of a new biography of him, and I'm a little amused to see that he fits into two of my favourite stereotypes:
a. English literary figures of the early 20th century who had at least some degree of homosexual experience as a young man (don't you get the impression it was virtually compulsory for that line of work?); and
b. famous literary figures of any nation having extremely messy and complicated love lives, full of adultery and what not. (Again, appears compulsory.)
Some extracts:
(Sorry Tim, Jason et al. I must be the equivalent of tone death to that particular literary form.)
a. English literary figures of the early 20th century who had at least some degree of homosexual experience as a young man (don't you get the impression it was virtually compulsory for that line of work?); and
b. famous literary figures of any nation having extremely messy and complicated love lives, full of adultery and what not. (Again, appears compulsory.)
Some extracts:
Graves finished his school career a precociously published poet and Charterhouse’s welterweight boxing champion, his broken nose recording that feat all his broken life.And you know what? The short extracts of his poetry that appear in the article do absolutely nothing to dispel my life long instinct that poetry is bunk...
He enrolled on the call to arms, weeks after leaving school, putting off Oxford for a short while, or so he thought. One in three Carthusians who joined up with him never heard the armistice bells – those bells which, as literary legend has it, were ringing when the telegram announcing Wilfred Owen’s death was delivered....
Having been timidly homosexual for twenty years, Graves rushed into postwar matrimony and Abrahamic fatherhood. He was ‘clumsy’ in physical love, his first wife, the artist Nancy Nicolson, discovered. She declined to accept his surname. But the paths that family, guardians and class had laid down for him before the war were resolutely not taken. He dickered with Oxford. For a while he made do as a village shopkeeper. He mainly survived on scroungings from his family and fellow writers – John Masefield, Sassoon, T E Lawrence. Prose potboilers, he discovered in the mid-1920s, kept the wolf from the door so he could get on with what mattered: poetry. Good-bye to All That, like the later Claudius saga, was devised with the same aim in mind.
It was also in the 1920s that Graves embarked on a second union, this time with the American poet Laura Riding. The result was not division but enlargement – a sexual ‘trinity’. ‘Sick Love’ is one of Graves’s finest meditations on guiltless sexual promiscuity: ‘O Love, be fed with apples while you may,/And feel the sun and go in royal array,/A smiling innocent on the heavenly causeway’.
It wilfully echoes the biblical Song of Solomon: ‘Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.’ Solomon reputedly had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. Polyamory, Graves believed, on his own, less Solomonic scale, was helpful to the poet. Dutiful monogamy, another of his poems asserts, is a double death sentence:
Call it a good marriage:The polygamous love bed, Graves later discovered, leads to different dead ends. But there was more stimulus for singing along the way.
They never fought in public,
They acted circumspectly
And faced the world with pride;
Thus the hazards of their love-bed
Were none of our damned business –
Till as jurymen we sat on
Two deaths by suicide.
Graves’s life was, in every sense, chaotic, but purposely so. He believed that ‘tranquillity’ (the Wordsworthian recipe) narcotises true poetry. The poet, like the kettle, must boil to produce. A few weeks before Graves started on Good-bye to All That, Riding enlarged the ménage to quatre with an Irish literary adventurer. It went all wrong and she jumped out of a fourth-floor window in Hammersmith. Graves followed suit. Both survived.
(Sorry Tim, Jason et al. I must be the equivalent of tone death to that particular literary form.)
Thursday, August 02, 2018
This is appalling
Good thing I had already shifted Andrew Bolt's link on my blogroll to it's special category "Gone completely stupid and offensive".
This is truly appalling stuff, harking back to the Asian immigration scare claims of Hanson in the 1990's. And look at the editorial cartoon with it - the foreign hoard coming here to devour our land. Pathetic.
Turnbull should be on the news tonight calling this out - Bolt personally, and the pathetic paper:
This is truly appalling stuff, harking back to the Asian immigration scare claims of Hanson in the 1990's. And look at the editorial cartoon with it - the foreign hoard coming here to devour our land. Pathetic.
Turnbull should be on the news tonight calling this out - Bolt personally, and the pathetic paper:
Maybe when I'm retired?
A tweet about someone's nice looking home baked sourdough loaf led me to a site with a post called "Beginner's Sourdough Bread".
The process just looks ridiculously fiddly and time consuming, when I can go buy a very nice loaf from a specialist bakery for $6 or $7. Mind you, I don't have a specialist bakery near me, but who knows, that may change.
I think getting into home sourdough making must be something only the retired (or the house-spouse) can have the time to do.
The process just looks ridiculously fiddly and time consuming, when I can go buy a very nice loaf from a specialist bakery for $6 or $7. Mind you, I don't have a specialist bakery near me, but who knows, that may change.
I think getting into home sourdough making must be something only the retired (or the house-spouse) can have the time to do.
Ocean acidification is not going away
Ocean acidification only pops its head up occasionally in the media now as a dire threat from increasing CO2 in the atmosphere: probably because it is such an incremental change that it doesn't have the ring of immediate alarm about climate change as do heat waves, floods or fires.
But it's not going away, even if it is pretty difficult to study. (Replicating the effect in laboratory settings turned out to be a lot trickier than initially realised.)
There's a new study out on how it affects ocean areas with naturally venting CO2. I'm sure we've seen similar studies in other places, but it confirms that the future of the coastal areas under high CO2 is more likely green and slimy with less biodiversity:
But it's not going away, even if it is pretty difficult to study. (Replicating the effect in laboratory settings turned out to be a lot trickier than initially realised.)
There's a new study out on how it affects ocean areas with naturally venting CO2. I'm sure we've seen similar studies in other places, but it confirms that the future of the coastal areas under high CO2 is more likely green and slimy with less biodiversity:
To assess the likely ecological effects of ocean acidification we compared intertidal and subtidal marine communities at increasing levels of pCO2 at recently discovered volcanic seeps off the Pacific coast of Japan (34° N). This study region is of particular interest for ocean acidification research as it has naturally low levels of surface seawater pCO2 (280–320 µatm) and is located at a transition zone between temperate and sub-tropical communities. We provide the first assessment of ocean acidification effects at a biogeographic boundary. Marine communities exposed to mean levels of pCO2 predicted by 2050 experienced periods of low aragonite saturation and high dissolved inorganic carbon. These two factors combined to cause marked community shifts and a major decline in biodiversity, including the loss of key habitat-forming species, with even more extreme community changes expected by 2100. Our results provide empirical evidence that near-future levels of pCO2 shift sub-tropical ecosystems from carbonate to fleshy algal dominated systems, accompanied by biodiversity loss and major simplification of the ecosystem.A report on the study explains:
They found that while a few plant species benefitted from the changing conditions, they tended to be smaller weeds and algae that blanket the seabed, choking corals and lowering overall marine diversity.
These species, and some smaller marine animals, are thriving because they are more tolerant to the stress posed by rising levels of CO2.
Jason Hall-Spencer, Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Plymouth, said: "Our research site is like a time machine. In areas with pre-Industrial levels of CO2 the coast has an impressive amount of calcified organisms such as corals and oysters. But in areas with present-day average levels of surface seawater CO2 we found far fewer corals and other calcified life, and so there was less biodiversity. It shows the extensive damage caused by humans due to CO2 emissions over the past 300 years and unless we can get a grip on reducing CO2 emissions we will undoubtedly see major degradation of coastal systems worldwide."
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
Jim Holt looks at the Greeks
The Jim Holt whose science and other articles and essays I've praised since I started this blog? Yes, it would seem that that Jim Holt, who I have not noticed on line for quite a while, has written an entertaining review of a new translation of an old book by Diogenes Laertius, a third century (CE) writer through whom, apparently, we know some details about the famous (and not so famous) Greek philosophers of yore.
DL (no, I was not familiar with him either) apparently has been much ridiculed by later philosophers for his writing skills and choices. Holt starts:
His style of biography is summarised this way:
DL (no, I was not familiar with him either) apparently has been much ridiculed by later philosophers for his writing skills and choices. Holt starts:
Poor Diogenes Laertius. He gets no respect. A “perfect ass”—“asinus germanus”—one nineteenth-century scholar called him. “Dim-witted,” said Nietzsche. An “ignoramus,” declared the twentieth-century classicist Werner Jaeger. In his lyric moods he wrote “perhaps the worst verses ever published,” an anthologist pronounced. And he had “no talent for philosophical exposition,” declares The Oxford Companion to Philosophy.
His style of biography is summarised this way:
In all, over eighty individual figures get entries—including one apparently rather clever “lady-philosopher,” Hipparchia the Cynic. (A couple of female students of Plato are also mentioned, one of whom is reported “to have worn men’s clothes.”) The author typically says something about the philosopher’s family origins and his teachers, then moves on to anecdotes about his life and apothegms expressing his opinions. We are furnished with details of his sex life, the more scandalous the better. Letters (some spurious) and wills are quoted, and the philosopher’s written works are listed. These stacks of titles, sometimes extending over several pages, are extremely valuable, since the works in question (like the aforementioned dialogues of Aristotle) have generally vanished. Finally, we are given an account, or several alternative accounts, of the philosopher’s death, often with an ironizing comment by the author in what he calls “my own playful verses.”Holt then explains that Hegel and the philosopher I love to malign, Nietzsche, disagreed about the matter of the importance of how philosophers live their lives:
The principle of selection for these biographical materials is simple: cram in everything, without regard to plausibility or philosophical relevance. Physical details are abundant, if not always consistent. We are told of Zeno the Stoic, for example, that “he was lean, longish, and swarthy,” but also that he was “thick-legged, flabby, and weak”; also that “he delighted…in green figs and sunbathing.” Plato is “weak-voiced” but mocked for his “long-windedness.” Aristotle had thin calves and small eyes, wore fine clothes and lots of rings, and “spoke with a lisp.”
In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel judged the work of Diogenes Laertius harshly. “A philosophic spirit cannot be ascribed to it,” he declared; “it rambles about amongst bad anecdotes extraneous to the matter in hand.” What is important, Hegel argued, is not that a philosopher lived in such-and-such a way and said this or that; rather, it is how the philosopher fits into the evolution of human consciousness toward truth.That's probably enough cutting and pasting, go read it all.
After Hegel, the reputation of Diogenes Laertius suffered a sharp decline among both classicists and historians of philosophy—as witness the abusive quotations I opened with. Yet one abuser, Nietzsche, later turned into a passionate (if ambivalent) defender. As a philologist, Nietzsche had contempt for the sloppy scholarship that went into Lives. But as a philosophical subversive, he had two motives for championing the work. The first was his hatred of Socrates’s moral optimism—a precursor, he thought, to slavish Christian morality—and his preference for what he saw as the darkly “tragic” worldview of the pre-Socratics. From the materials that Diogenes Laertius had preserved on figures like haughty Heraclitus and Etna-leaping Empedocles, Nietzsche hoped to recapture a sense of pre-Socratic tragic grandeur in Greek culture. His second motive for championing Lives was a more general one. Whereas Hegel insisted that the biography of a philosopher was irrelevant to his conceptual contribution, Nietzsche took the opposite view: bios is the ultimate test of logos. He wrote:
The only critique of a philosophy that is possible and that proves anything, namely trying to see whether one can live in accordance with it, has never been taught at universities; all that has ever been taught is a critique of words by means of other words.Now, one is loath to put oneself in the position of adjudicating between Hegel and Nietzsche. In this case, however, I think it is safe to render a verdict, if a disappointingly bland one: they are both partly right.
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