One of the great things about not being an American is that I can shrug my shoulders and say "I dunno" on the matter of when it is or isn't right the right time for the US to get out of wars in the "always in conflict" parts of the world.
Hence, I really don't know if it is a good idea for Trump to be pulling out troops from Syria.
Sometimes I wonder why your average Australian wingnut thinks they know enough to have a solid opinion on this. But that's the nature of wingnuttery - it's not as if they have good reason to justify 90% of their opinions, so why should they be well informed on this one too?
Anyway, given Trump's general unreliability (to put it mildly), it certainly wouldn't be surprising if it was a bad plan.
A few weeks ago, I attended the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, Calif., where panel after panel of defense experts dutifully discussed Important Issues such as gray zone warfare, the defense industrial base and the future of U.S. policy toward Syria. It all seemed disconnected from reality, as if the defense cognoscenti were living in an alternative universe where they can generate policy options in the expectation that a wise and well-informed president will choose the best of the lot. That is not the situation we are in. We are at the mercy of an ignorant and impetuous president who, as Jeffrey Toobin quipped, “is unfit to run a charity in New York State but fit to control nuclear weapons that could destroy the world several times over.”
At one time, the world hoped that an Axis of Adults could constrain the juvenile in the Oval Office, but such naive expectations have been dashed repeatedly. Syria offers the latest example of the futility of expecting that lower-level officials can consistently save the world from the commander in chief.
Of course, ever since Vietnam, everyone has grounds for wondering whether Generals' advice about these matters is always wise.
I have been arguing in comments to my post earlier this week about how it is ridiculous to argue that having a second Brexit referendum, now that people understand the choice properly, would be a "betrayal of democracy".
I am pleased to read this morning a lengthy post by Simon Wren-Lewis arguing that the matter of how the country got to its present position has, in fact, been a circumvention of democracy.
I think Homer likes most of his commentary. What's wrong with his argument on this topic?
OK, time for the spoiler filled commentary on the Red Room - the key aspect, really, of the final episode of the Haunting of Hill House.
My take: I quite liked the idea, but am a little dubious about the execution.
The key thing that makes little practical sense is this: how did the children not recognize the room from its location within the house? The problem is that it is shown as having one door, at the end of a corridor - yet Steve (for example) in the final episode still seems to say that it was the door that had never been opened; yet he was also in there a lot of the time as a child.
The obvious and simplest way around this would be to show the room having a second entry, and then only reveal the distinctively shaped red door as the alternative entry in the final episode. That would leave some plausibility, would it not?, that the rambling layout of the house meant that the kids found their own entry into the room, and possibly without ever realising that it was the Red Room that their Dad could not enter. Or, they might have recognized it as the Red Room, but have liked it for its privacy.
The more complicated explanation, which I think the storm episode perhaps sort of established, was that the house could deceive the occupants as to its own layout, and hence have provided access to the room for the kids without them realising where they were. But that seems to me to be more elaborate than was really necessary.
Why don't I have a job as a script doctor, hey?
Anyway, I don't want to sound too negative. Overall, I quite liked the final episode. I particularly liked some of the twists - the way it first looked worrying like the whole series could have been just Steve writing another book; and the reason why the sister was so sensitive to her husband's potential adultery.
Once again, the subtlety of some of the creepiness was very pleasing - I am thinking in this episode of the way the Tall Man ghost bends down to peer into the face of Steve, while he looks away.
I did like how the series still leaves open the possibility that the black mould is the source of madness within the house. And the whole idea that it was recognised by the caretakers wanted it preserved as a place where they could keep visiting their poor daughter - that sort of made sense (and added some of the bittersweet aspect that was to be found in The Orphanage.)
So yeah, overall, it ended up being pretty satisfying. Well worth watching.
* As everyone else on line who has talked about it has already said, the third season of The Good Place got off to a shaky start, particularly with Australian audiences cringing at the attempts at our accent. But by episode 4 or 5 (I forget which) it regained its mojo and has some very funny writing again. (And, co-incidentally, left Australia.)
I don't really understand how anyone could not like this show. Terrifically smart, very funny, and a charming cast.
* Fargo, second season. I've finished it and the big question is: how did I feel about the UFO? In a way, it didn't bother me - its re-appearance was foreshadowed often enough. But it certainly did make for an oddball conclusion. To be honest, I thought that part of the last episode was way, way too close to Raising Arizona (with its dream of the future), so that I feel that the peak episodes were closer to the middle of the series. Despite feeling a slight let down with the ending, overall, it was really great viewing, and I'll watch the third season too. (My son watched the first season alone, and says he thought it was a bit better, but I find it hard to believe I could find any episodes better than some in this series.)
* Norsemen: have finished watching the second series. Still very funny. I see that a third series is being made. Good. Have more people found it yet, I wonder?
* Am wanting to finish the last, apparently controversial, episode of Haunting of Hill House before Christmas. The show has sucked me in, despite its flaws. Expect a review of the ending soon.
* I wrote recently that Jason Momoa seems so likeable on TV chat show appearances that I am tempted to see the kind of ludicrous Aquaman, and I did try watching the first episode of Frontier, a Canadian series in which he stars. It had some exceptionally badly written exposition dialogue within the first 10 minutes; so bad that both my son and I said "this is not good" and chose to discontinue. Maybe it gets better?
“Of the many factors that make up your worldview, one is more fundamental than any other in determining which side of the divide you gravitate toward: your perception of how dangerous the world is. Fear is perhaps our most primal instinct, after all, so it’s only logical that people’s level of fearfulness informs their outlook on life.”
That’s political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler, writing in their book Prius or Pickup, which marshals a massive trove of survey data and experimental evidence to argue that the roots of our political divides run so deep that they make us almost incomprehensible to one another. Our political divisions, they say, aren’t about policy disagreements, or even demographics. They’re about something more ancient in how we view the world.
Hetherington and Weiler call these worldviews, which express themselves in everything from policy preferences to parenting styles, “fixed” versus “fluid.” The fixed worldview “describes people who are warier of social and cultural change and hence more set in their ways, more suspicious of outsiders, and more comfortable with the familiar and predictable.” People with a fluid worldview, by contrast, “support changing social and cultural norms, are excited by things that are new and novel, and are open to, and welcoming of, people who look and sound different.”
What’s happened in recent decades, they argue, is that politics in general, and our political parties in particular, have reorganized around these worldviews, adding a new, and arguably irreconcilable, difference into our political divisions. That difference is visible in everything from what we think to where we live to how we shop, but it’s particularly apparent in how hard it is for us to understand how the other side views the world.
It's undeniable that the Trump campaign was based on ludicrous fear-mongering; but Klein is still skeptical about some of how this is meant to work, asking twice why this has happened when the world has actually become safer. (And that's objectively true too, given that we don't live in a Cold War of the kind we did in the first half of my life, and the murder rate has dropped dramatically in so much of the world.)
I didn't find the answer completely satisfying. You can go read them yourself.
But I did think the authors are right on this point -
The problem starts with conservative leaders.
The simple fact is that Republican leaders more often traffic in falsehoods than Democratic leaders do — climate change denial, birtherism, suggesting voter fraud is rampant, and more. These are not positions of the conservative fringe. The president of the United States himself has embraced all these falsehoods. If Democratic leaders were similarly likely to push false narratives, more Democrats would believe them.
Conservative media amplify these falsehoods. This is what links what leaders say and do to what the public believes. Liberals tend to rely on a range of liberal and mainstream news sources. Conservatives tend to rely on a much smaller number of highly ideological sources. According to a 2014 Pew study, consistent conservatives expressed the same level of mistrust of ABC News as consistent liberals did of Sean Hannity.
Hence, conservative Americans are more likely than liberals to believe falsehoods about the other side. For example, Democrats were about 12 points more likely than Republicans to say that the Bush administration directed flooding to parts of New Orleans during Katrina. But Republicans were 34 points more likely to believe Obama was born in Kenya than Democrats and 32 points more likely to believe that Obamacare included “death panels.”
That doesn’t mean that there is no biased thinking among liberals. They, too, are more willing to support or oppose a policy because it is or isn’t being carried out by their team. But skepticism about basic facts does, in fact, differ markedly by party and ideology.
He came across as down to earth (for a monarch in waiting), and very hard working. His sons talked about how he eats dinner very late (although I did not hear how late), and then works at his desk often til midnight, and sometimes falling asleep on his papers, waking up with one stuck to his nose. They obviously think the world of him, and their main wish seems to be that he could slow down and spend more time with their young families. (Yeah, I know, Harry doesn't have a kid just yet.)
He drives the much of the Right nuts for his environmental concerns, and somewhat quaint interests in organic food and (I suppose) older styles of living.
But he certainly seems smart and passionate, self-effacing and as such, very likeable. Pretty much what you need in a future monarch, I think.
John Quiggin's post (and the following comments) predicting a revocation of Brexit early in 2019 makes for interesting reading.
Does sound plausible to me.
I again heard Theresa May on the radio this morning saying that another referendum would be a betrayal of democracy, or some such nonsense.
I still can't get my head around how politicians like her can't get their head around how context matters. The people would actually understand what is at stake now. They obviously did not at the time of the first referendum.
This is more interesting than you might first expect - a very good explanation at the BCC about concrete (including its history) and its problematic nature vis a vis CO2 production. I mean I knew that using it created a lot of greenhouse gases, but not this much:
Cement is the most widely used man-made material in
existence. It is second only to water as the most-consumed resource on
the planet.
But, while cement - the key ingredient in
concrete - has shaped much of our built environment, it also has a
massive carbon footprint.
If
the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest
emitter in the world - behind China and the US. It contributes more CO2
than air fuel (2.5%) and is not far behind the global agriculture
business (12%).
I haven't been much motivated to see any movies recently, and I've noticed that a few major releases have had so-so reviews. Bohemian Rhapsody has 48% on Metacritic. The latest Harry Potter prequel 53% (but only 38% on Rottentomatoes.) I was curious to see how they have fared at the box office.
Well, Box Office Mojo seems to indicate that Harry Potter movies are virtually critic proof, at least for international box office - it'll end up making more than $600 million internationally, which must be enough to turn a profit even with a $200 million budget. (Not much, though, given that I think the rule of thumb is still that most movies have to make more than 3 times budget cost before getting into clear profit.) But there is still rental and streaming money to be made from it.
Every woman who has seen it thinks Bohemian Rhapsody was fantastic, and box office would indicate a lot of men have seen it too - $635 million and still making $4 million last weekend in the US alone. All on a $52 million budget? That's a hugely profitable hit. I was never a big fan of Queen's music - I remember thinking when it came out that the titular movie song and video was kind of kitschy, but some other songs were OK. I think Freddie's life was interesting and a bit sad, but I don't feel I need to see a movie about it.
Speaking of movies big with females in particular: A Star is Born has made nearly $200 million in the US, but only $177 million overseas. With a $36 million budget, that's still a solid hit, and one I have no interest in.
I see the Dr Seuss movies are ridiculously popular in the US - $239 million just in the US for the latest Grinch movie.
Anyway, I am slightly embarrassed to say, but the latest animated version of Spiderman has received such good reviews that I am now inclined to see it. I am also toying with seeing Aquaman when it comes out - it would seem to have a fair bit of the humour I find essential for enjoying a superhero movie, and really, that Jason Momoa has such a ridiculous amount of charisma in any of his TV appearances, I sort of want the movie to succeed to reward his likeability.
This article from Business Insider, talking about what future cities may start looking like as temperatures continue to rise, gives Dubai as an example. Apparently, a huge amount is already interconnected, airconditioned buildings and shopping malls, and it's going to get bigger:
Dubai is getting so good at simulating the outdoors inside that its next megaproject is dedicated to just that. Dubai Square, set to become the world’s largest mall, is built around a four-lane “boulevard” that mimics a wide city street, a piazza, and an entertainment center for concerts and theatre shows. It will even have the Middle East’s largest Chinatown.
This is what its supposed to look like:
Um, that looks ridiculously difficult to aircondition efficiently, even if the roof has got some heat reflective film on it. (It must, surely?) But even if it does, isn't there a risk of it frying some other buildings, or otherwise raising already hellish temperatures in the outside of the city?
Update 2: this helps explain why I am still leery about visiting the place - Man arrested for bringing witchcraft items into UAE. My rule of thumb is "Do not visit countries where the government believes in black magic, witchcraft or sorcery. It is too easy for anyone there who you look at the wrong way to claim you are a sorcerer and must be arrested."
At the risk of sounding like I am on anti-Catholic, anti-Marian binge this Christmas, given my recent cynical post about Mary's house being flown to Italy: this article, from The Daily Beast of all places, actually seems pretty accurate.
But it does come up with some legendary Marian stories which I had not heard of before, and some of it is surprising. (Not the first part, about the rumour of a Roman soldier - that is pretty well known. The last story though - wow.)
From the time of the early Church, there were those who questioned Mary’s virginity. Some rabbinic and ancient Roman sources suggest that Jesus was the son of a Roman soldier named Panthera. According to these early critics, Mary concocted the story of the virgin birth in order to conceal the fact that she cheated on her betrothed with a member of the oppressive military force that was subjugating her people. The particular explanation is actually pretty unlikely, if only because as a resident of Nazareth Mary would have rarely (if ever!) come into contact with Roman soldiers; nevertheless ancient Christian readers took it seriously.
A second-century story known as The Protoevangelium of James fills in a lot of the gaps in Mary’s biography. It tells us about Mary’s childhood, that she had special status as a dedicated virgin, and that she was 16 when she conceived Jesus. In this version of the nativity story Joseph doesn’t just accuse her of disgracing herself, he responds to Mary’s statement that she hasn’t “known” a man by asking her, “Where did this thing in your womb come from then?”
But Joseph is a believer in comparison to woman named Salome. Salome, who meets a midwife who examined Mary, declares, “As the Lord my God lives, unless I insert my finger and investigate her, I will not believe that a virgin has given birth." Mary prepares herself for the gynecological exam and Salome performs the test. Her hand literally catches on fire, and it takes the appearance of an angel (as well as some strong statements of contrition from Salome) before she is healed.
The rest of the article, about the idea of the Immaculate Conception, is pretty good too.
Update: it just occurred to me, that story of Salome and her burning hand could form the basis of a very novel Christmas card illustration...
Actually, I didn't realise that Vitamin B12 was such an issue for vegans and vegetarians. Or this problem with veganism:
Bone health is a concern for long-term vegans. Vegans are consistently reported to have lower intakes of calcium and vitamin D, with resultant lower blood levels of vitamin D and lower bone mineral density reported worldwide. Fracture rates are also nearly a third higher among vegans compared with the general population.
I reckon that the most I could ever tolerate would be a pescetarian diet, and despite disliking aspects of the milk and egg industry, I couldn't give them up.
Many people living in Queensland's capital may assume they're far away from a dangerous snake encounter, but the numbers suggest they're more likely than their country cousins to suffer a snakebite.
According to figures released by Queensland Ambulance, Brisbanites are more likely to be bitten by a snake than residents in the outback.
A total of 156 people were bitten by venomous snakes across the Metro North and Metro South areas, which make up the Brisbane region, in the 12 months to November 18 this year.
There were 96 on the Sunshine Coast, while outback areas such as the North West region had 11 cases, and the South West just four instances.
More people live in the south-east corner of the state than in other regions, but even as a proportion of population Brisbane is over-represented in snakebites.
University of Queensland snake expert Bryan Fry said in addition to more people, Brisbane and south-east Queensland have more semi-rural areas, which are perfect for brown snakes.
"Brown snakes thrive in disturbed habitat, so you can find more brown snakes around semi-rural habitation than you can in the wild," Professor Fry said.
I suppose it's (sort of) good news that you rarely read of anyone dying of venomous snakebite around here - but that is still a hell of a lot of people being bitten.
As you might expect, that's not the house itself, but an excessively ornate, um, housing for a house.
Inside, the "real thing" looks like this:
which, I dunno, looks a little more solid than I expected from a 2,000 something year old house from Israel.
The bright looking figure in the first interior is the Our Lady of Loreto statue, which is a bit more famous than I knew. You can watch this rather pious video about the house, and the statue, here:
As to the matter of how the house got there, the Catholic Herald article (and the video) indicate that the house might have been by boat, not by Angel Air, by a family with an a name which contributed to the legend:
In 1900, the pope’s physician, Joseph Lapponi, discovered documents in the Vatican archive, stating that in the 13th century a noble Byzantine family, the Angeli family, rescued “materials” from “Our Lady’s House” from Muslim invaders and then had them transported to Italy for the building of a shrine.
The name Angeli means “angels” in both Greek and Latin.
I am suspicious: it sounds too much like a late rationalisation.
As for the air borne house tradition, it has been depicted variously as looking like this:
or this:
I don't know the artists behind either depiction, but the second one puts me in mind of Dorothy's house crushing the Wicked Witch, because at first glance I assumed the guy underneath was a devil. But on second thoughts, he looks like he's just helping out, except for some reason he's nude. If he is an angel, I didn't realise Heaven was "clothing optional" for them.
Anyhow, this is the second time this week that I have been contemplating the rather idiosyncratic fervour European Catholics can hold towards Mary and statues representing her. The first example was Mary Beard talking on Civilisations about the annual ceremony around a statue in Seville:
I'm interested in the matter of why some European countries, particularly those with the Romance languages, seemed to develop centres of intense Marian devotion, and often around statues which are treated as holy. (It's also interesting to contemplate why it also spread readily to countries like Mexico and the Philippines, too. Remember the photos of the crazily dangerous looking procession I posted earlier this year? It was centred on a statue of Jesus, admittedly, but still a case of statue centred fervour.) I always get the feeling there are sociological reasons for it which I don't know about. My general impression is that England and Germany, pre-Reformation, were just not into it in that big a way. Or was an uptick in Marian worship something of a reaction to the Reformation?
Anyway, the first video above says that the flying house story is the reason why Our Lady of Loreto is the patron saint of aviation:
Yes, she is the patron saint of pilots, airmen and flight attendants as per declaration of Pope Benedict XV on March 24, 1920. The pontiff approved a special blessing: "O merciful God, You have consecrated the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the mystery of the Word Incarnate and placed it in the midst of your children. Pour forth your blessing on this vehicle so that those who take an aerial trip in it may happily reach their destination and return safely home under Mary's protection."
That seems a pretty weak reason to get a "patron" job, if you ask me. By now, hasn't there been any pilot or flight attendant who has attained sainthood after a career in, you know, actual flying?
I've no handy way to end this post, except to note that, in English speaking countries, this type of worship seems increasingly odd and hard to understand, especially given the rapid decline in the importance of Marian worship in our version of Catholicism over the last 60 odd years.
Abu Dhabi: In 10 years, we’ll be able to learn French by swallowing a pill, claims Dr Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and co-founder of the MIT Media Lab.
“We are looking for ways to interact directly with the neurons, reaching the brain from within and not through the eyes, which have become outdated instruments,” the man who invented the touchscreen and predicted the most important technological revolutions of recent years, told the audience at the majlis of His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, on Wednesday.
The 75-year-old co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and its director of over 20 years, said that over the next decade, we will increasingly see direct brain interaction. It will emerge in two and very different ways: from the outside and the inside of the head.
I think that the latest season of Mad As Hell (it finished last night) was just about the funniest I can remember.
I've said it before, but I'll say it again - it's a really crack team of comedy actors (and writers) on the show at the moment.
I always enjoy their jabs at the ABC itself too - their little parodies of ABC television drama always strike me as accurate and funny. (Well, I rarely dip my toe into ABC drama, but I have found it pretty awful whenever I did.)
I know that articles about it do keep appearing in the media, but I really get the feeling that the current era of the Stupidest, Most Narcissistic President in History, and the Dumbest, Most Shoot-Itself-in-the-Foot Economic Idea Britain Ever Had (Brexit) keeps sucking the oxygen away from really serious public attention to climate change. Here's Foreign Policy, for example:
I mean, it is impossible for the media and the public to not get sucked into talking about Trump trying on reality TV meetings with Democrats; his never ending stream of idiotic tweets; his looking completely out of depth at international meetings; leaks still confirming that he's impossible to brief properly; his campaign associates going to jail; the prospect of impeachment or at least post-Presidential term charges; even his wife thinking dark red Christmas trees look cool (and not like something out of The Shining.) It's the most idiotic and chaotic trainwreck of an administration that anyone has ever seen or is likely to see again, I reckon.
And as for Brexit - a complete populist Right fantasia that, like Trump, barely got over the electoral line, but since it did, has been like a black hole sucking all interest away from the crucially important matter of climate change.
Of course, the populist Right is popping its head up elsewhere too - from Brazil to Eastern Europe - but I just don't see that there is any long term future in it as a movement. All of the leading politicians are some sort of combination of buffoon and fascist lite; all tend to be culture war obsessives and interested in blaming as many problems as possible on immigration. But it's at heart a reactionary movement, and not one with a credible long term intellectual or policy basis.
So, I predict it will all fizzle soon enough - but it's an incredible distraction that is, literally, endangering the planet.
Vox has an interview with a journalist (Laura Krantz) who did a podcast episode this year about Bigfoot, and apparently it's pretty good. (I am slow to get into listening to podcasts - I think it's because I can decide quicker visually if an article is of interest, and I don't like having to wait for 10 or 15 min before deciding if an audio presentation is really worth continuing with.)
Here's part of the interview:
I keep coming back to the eyewitness accounts, the firsthand accounts
that people have had. A lot of the people that I ended up talking to
about their experiences were pretty sober, upstanding citizens. They’d
spent a lot of time in the woods. They’ve worked for Fish and Wildlife.
They worked for the Bureau of Land Management.
These are people who are accustomed to being outside, and
had a lot of experience and expertise with wildlife. And then they had
this experience of being scared, shocked, just blown away by something
they’d seen. Those were very, very hard for me to dismiss. I still can’t
dismiss them, because it’s clear that they saw something that really
rattled them.
The thing that I’ve been most dismissive of — it’s hard
to be completely dismissive because I wasn’t there, I didn’t see what
was going on, but people talk about seeing Bigfoot “cloaking,” or
vanishing into the ether. And those kinds of accounts I’m a little more
like, “Erm... I don’t know about that.”
She explains later, she really can't give the spooky Bigfoot idea any credence:
I did steer clear of the Bigfoot as magical, paranormal, supernatural
stuff, because that was a lot harder for me to come at objectively. And
my feeling was that if I couldn’t address it objectively, I shouldn’t do
it.
Yeah, sounds like I should listen to the show. Even though if there is no DNA evidence, the paranormal route is really the only one you can take, isn't it?
But the other thing I learned from this article was the Bigfoot conspiracy, which I don't think I knew of before:
The flip-side of that is that there’s this conspiracy theory that the
logging industry knows that Bigfoot is real, has seen Bigfoot, and goes
out of its way to make sure bodies are disposed of, and that any
knowledge of it is kept buried. Because if Bigfoot is seen to be real,
it’s gonna make the stuff that happened with the spotted owl [in which
logging in some areas was halted to preserve an endangered owl’s
habitat], look like a picnic.
Sounds like there could be a fun movie plot in there somewhere!
