Not from a Pulp Magazine: Indian Temple Gold Edition

1. An ancient temple in India has treasure vaults filled with gold and gems, and is popularly believed to be protected by snakes and a god's curse.

2. The government in India is encouraging temples to deposit their gold in banks, so that it can be lent out at interest and help the economy by expanding credit.

3. Unfortunately, the rumored snake guardians and divine protection were not enough to prevent the theft of 266 kg of gold from Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala.

Addendum: Video with pictures of some of the treasures housed in the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple.

"Destino" (1946/2003)

This short animated film was a collaboration between Salvador Dali and Disney animator John Hench. The short began production in 1945-1946, but was only completed in 2003, based on the original storyboards and one test animation (the turtle sequence).

The Huffington Post has a story about the friendship between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali.

Politics and Primary Education

Quoth the headline: "Kansas could put teachers in prison for assigning books prosecutors don't like."

Perhaps the only way to keep politics out of the schools is to keep the government out of schools. Who's with me?

Didn't think so, but perhaps that's because you're a hypocrite! (Yes, you!) Conservatives and liberals alike need to remember that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

David Simon on the Two Americas

David Simon is right that there are two Americas, but this is nothing new (the use of the word 'now' is misleading), and it doesn't relate to capitalism specifically.

Consider: Switzerland is a capitalist nation, but Simon's analysis of America's two nations wouldn't apply there in quite the same way, would it?

No, the original cause of the two Americas is the racial caste system set up after the enslavement of Africans in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

Flash Gordon (1980)

On the one hand, I appreciate the film's retro-future look, inspired by the Golden Age of science fiction, together with its fantastic and gaudy design, seemingly inspired by 70s rock album covers. But the writing, direction, and production are terrible.

It turns out the director is Mike Hodges of "Get Carter" (1971) fame. This is a shocker, since "Get Carter" is one of the best British gangster films ever.

The Wikipedia entry for "Flash Gordon" does contain an exculpatory quote from Lorenzo Semple, Jr. (the writer of the picture): a lot of the film's problems were caused by the fact that both he and producer Dino de Laurentis dithered between whether they wanted to make a humorous, campy film or a more "serious" action film (it ended up doing neither well, of course).

Surprisingly, the film was profitable, making more than twice its budget.

Here is the hawkmen battle scene:

The infamous football fight scene:

The China-Russia Alliance

The birth of a new anti-Western alliance: China and Russia are rivals in Central Asia, but otherwise they have a lot of common interests, and seek to create an alternative to the current U.S.- and Europe-dominated world order. This short article in the Los Angeles Times provides some insightful analysis.

On the one hand, China, Russia, and other nations should certainly be able to make a contribution to the international order. On the other hand, the governments of China and Russia are currently very corrupt and authoritarian, so one fears the contribution that they are currently poised to make.

On a related note (via Marginal Revolution), a recent Harvard and MIT study maps out China's ideological spectrum. In brief:

Individuals who are politically conservative, who emphasize the supremacy of the state and nationalism, are also likely to be economically conservative, supporting a return to socialism and state-control of the economy, and culturally conservative, supporting traditional, Confucian values. In contrast, political liberals, supportive of constitutional democracy and individual liberty, are also likely to be economic liberals who support market-oriented reform and social liberals who support modern science and values such as sexual freedom. 

This is notably different from the ideological spectrum in the United States, in which conservatives often support free markets and individual liberty (at least rhetorically). I wonder if Russia has a similar ideological spectrum to China. In any case, the authoritarian side is quite powerful in both China and Russia, which could bode ill for the new world order which they seek to create.

Easter Legends

Portrait of Bede from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493

An article on NPR's website which is dedicated to informing you about "What You Didn't Know about What You Already Know about Easter" contains a major error of its own. The article incorrectly attributes a story about the origins of Easter to the 8th century English monk Bede. In the story, a girl prays to the goddess Eostre for the sake of a wounded bird; the goddess Eostre descends to the girl upon a rainbow, and turns the wounded bird into a hare (thereby healing it, evidently), which thereafter lays colorful eggs once a year.

This is an urban legend; Bede never told this story. The NPR story quotes the story, claims the story is from Bede's The Reckoning of Time , and cites a website written by the University of Florida's Center for Children's Literature. The Center for Children's Literature website does contain the story, but does not attribute it to Bede--nor to any other source.

Bede does state that the English name for the holiday Easter comes from the name of the month sacred to the goddess Eostre, but mentions neither hares, nor colorful eggs, nor girls praying to save wounded birds. As far as I can tell, the story is a modern invention, but I have not yet discovered its origin.

Johannes Gehrts, Ostara, 1884

Genetic Clustering in the U.K.

A recent gene study of native Britons shows, among other things, that Celtic Britons do not have a common ancestry.

Britons in the "Celtic fringe" of the West Country, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland can be divided into half a dozen or more distinct genetic clusters. They don't show a common genetic profile compared to other Britons from England. The current genetic clustering of native Britons thus predates the arrival of the Celts. The clustering also shows that Angles and Saxons intermarried with the native Britons they encountered, rather than replacing them when they arrived in the island in and around the 5th century CE.

This is a fairly common pattern throughout history; compare the Aryan migration into southern Asia, and the Spanish conquest of Central and South America. In both cases, there was a transfer of language and culture (by the Indo-Aryans and Spanish, respectively), without a wholesale replacement of the native population.

This type of study could potentially answer many historical questions about population movements; I hope similar studies are performed all around the world.

The Original Buddhist Primer

The parable of the blind men and the elephant, from Udana 6.4

For those interested in Buddhism, the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Pali Canon is often overlooked, but contains some really important texts, including the Khuddakapatha or "Short Passages." According to Thanissaro Bhikkhu (one of the translators of the text), the Khuddakapatha was probably originally used as an introduction to Buddhism for novice monks and nuns.

It is surprising how different the Khuddakapatha is from contemporary introductions to Buddhism. Among other things, the Khuddakapatha emphasizes the importance of making merit, includes a list of the 32 parts of the body, and includes instructions for metta ("loving-kindness" or "goodwill") meditation, but not for mindfulness of breathing (which nowadays is commonly the first meditation technique taught to novice meditators).

In addition to the Khuddakapatha, other important but often-overlooked texts from the Khuddaka Nikaya include the Udana, Itivuttaka, and Sutta Nipatha. In terms of their importance for understanding early Buddhism, these should probably be among the first texts one reads, but I am just now getting around to them.

The Khuddaka Nikaya does contain one text which is very popular and widely-read the Dhammapada. Indeed, the Dhammapada is probably the most frequently translated Pali text. Given the popularity of the Dhammapada, and to a lesser extent of the Jataka or birth tales of the Buddha, it is somewhat strange that the other texts of the Khuddaka Nikaya are but seldom translated, read, or discussed. Credit must go to Thanissaro and to the Thai Forest Tradition generally for helping to put the spotlight on these relatively neglected parts of the Pali Canon.

Workers of the World, Invest!

Or, Socialist (in the sense of 'worker-owned') Capitalism: An Immodest Proposal.

This is from David D. Friedman's Machinery of Freedom, a libertarian classic from 1973 (still in print, and now in its third, revised edition) currently being reviewed by the incomparable Scott Alexander of the blog Slate Star Codex.

Alexander highlights the following passage from Friedman's book for our consideration, which, though I have read the book, I had quite forgotten about:

How much would it cost workers to purchase their firms? The total value of the shares of all stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1965 was $537 billion. The total wages and salaries of all private employees that year was $288.5 billion. State and federal income taxes totalled $75.2 billion. If the workers had chosen to live at the consumption standard of hippies, saving half their after-tax incomes, they could have gotten a majority share in every firm in two and a half years and bought the capitalists out, lock, stock, and barrel, in five. That is a substantial cost, but surely it is cheaper than organizing a revolution. Also less of a gamble. And, unlike a revolution, it does not have to be done all at once. The employees of one firm can buy it this decade, then use their profits to help fellow workers buy theirs later. 

When you buy stock, you pay not only for the capital assets of the firm—buildings, machines, inventory, and the like —but also for its experience, reputation, and organization. If workers really can run firms better, these are unnecessary; all they need are the physical assets. Those assets—the net working capital of all corporations in the United States in 1965—totalled $171.7 billion. The workers could buy that much and go into business for themselves with 14 months’ worth of savings.

As Alexander points out, under current conditions it would probably take longer for this to work, but the general idea still seems sound.

Of course, from Friedman's point of view, this is mostly a thought experiment to show that the workers actually benefit from the expertise of the owners of capital and the employees they hire to manage their capital and their workers. But, even if Friedman is correct about this, if his underlying argument is sound (perhaps a big 'if'!), then it seems that workers could still just purchase stocks in firms or otherwise become owners of capital themselves through saving and investing, thus de facto obliterating the distinction between workers and capitalists.

Of course, as many people have already pointed out, this has already partially happened, since a greater percentage of the population have investments in private corporations through their benefits packages etc., but Friedman's proposal suggests that this process could be greatly expanded and accelerated.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

I recently watched "Uncle Boonmee" for the first time. I have wanted to watch this film since its release, but never quite got around to watching it until now.

It has an art film sensibility, but is totally respectful towards its characters and audience. The film provides insight (or seems to) about Thai folk beliefs on reincarnation and the afterlife, and on the role of Buddhism in Thai popular culture.

The film's theme is (largely) the great matter of life and death, not just the afterlife per se.

Easy Rawlins TV Series?

I just learned that, a couple of years agom there was a project in the words for a TV series based on Walter Mosley's famous black private detective character Easy Rawlins, but that NBC ultimately decided to take a pass. This is unfortunate, and hopefully another similar project will see the light of day--preferably one produced by HBO, Netflix, or Amazon, rather than by NBC or another network, however.

To my mind, "Devil in a Blue Dress" (1995) was a fantastic film, and is a proof of concept of an Easy Rawlins TV series.

More on Patrick Stuart's Ships-Only Analysis of the Star Trek Feature Films

In an earlier links post, I noted that Patrick Stuart has given a systematic analysis of the first ten Star Trek feature films based solely on shots containing spaceships. (He covers the fifth through the tenth films in part two, here.)

On a certain social network which shall not be named, my dear childhood friend Mike Spasoff rankled at the following claim made by Stuart towards the beginning of his two-part analysis:

It was interesting to see the seismic effect that CGI had on the storytelling of the series. 

Short version - it fucked it up.

I agree with Mike that it is foolish to criticize all CGI as inferior to all practical effects (for such I take to be the substance of his cavil). However, there are three qualifications which Stuart makes to his claim about CGI, which considerably limit the scope of his claim, but which also make his claim more interesting thereby: (1) He says this is the "short version." :) (2) He is talking about the effect of CGI on "storytelling" specifically. (3) He is talking about the effect of CGI on storytelling "in this series" specifically.

On the other hand, after reading through the rest of Stuart's two-part review, it does seem that his main critique of the CGI versions of the space ships is that they simply don't look as real or convincing as the practical models (for example, he refers to the CGI renderings as having a "plastic" look to them). And he's right. But in his in-depth analysis, Stuart doesn't really explicitly clarify the effect that the shoddy CGI had on the storytelling. Still, I think he is on to something.

In general, I especially appreciated Stuart's discussion of (1) the difference between the scale of the space shots in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and the later films, and (2) the use of "azteking" (a kind of techno-patina) in the shots of the Enterprise in the later films. Regarding (1), his point is that the later films go for a less accurate and "lazier" medium scale, rather than for shots in which things are far away and small or close up and huge, which (he argues) is more representative of what things would actually be like given interstellar travel (ahem).

Alice Dreger's Straight Talk (Ahem) on Sex and Gender

Tom Bartlett, in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, reviews Alice Dreger's recent book on the desultory effects of political correctness in the sciences. And Barron Lerner does likewise at Forbes. 

For background, here is an article in the Pacific Standard from 2014 by Alice Dreger in which she says interesting things about sex and gender (not just the usual yada, yada, yada). (Short version: sex and gender are partially socially constructed, but not entirely, and social justice warriors ignore this at their peril. I should note that Dreger does not use the politically loaded / emotionally charged term 'social justice warrior', but this is my 'short version' of her article, so I feel some creative license on my part is permissible. Gosh darn it; this explanatory note has now effectively rendered the adjective 'short version' false, or at least highly misleading, which gives me reason to rewrite the initial sentence so it no longer includes the politically loaded catchphrase 'SJW' in my description of Dreger's thesis. But I lack the motivation to do so. Sigh. Political debates are draining, dispiriting, and lead to a deep-seated psychospiritual ennui, beneath the superficial adrenaline rush of engaging in an in-group/out-group conflict. But what is to be done? You can take the primate out of the savanna, but you can't take the savanna out of the primate. Because the primate is not socially constructed like that. At least not entirely.)

The Hard Problem

UT philosopher Galen Strawson reviews Tom Stoppard's new play, "The Hard Problem"--via a catty tour through the 400 year history of philosophical debates about the mind-body problem.

It’s what Hilary needs to do, in Tom Stoppard’s new play The Hard Problem. She challenges her amorous tutor Spike to explain consciousness and insists that “when you come right down to it, the body is made of things” – she means physical things – “and things don’t have thoughts.” There is, however, no good reason to think that this last thing is true, and overwhelming reason to think it’s false.

D'oh!

By the way, if you're looking for an actual review of Tom Stoppard's play--I'm joking. This is not that. But this is still worth reading, you deluded fool, you.

Meet Aleksandr Dugin, the Intellectual Godfather of Russia's New Right

Crooked Timber offers a profile of Aleksandr Dugin, Russia's influential New Right / Eurasianist ideologue.

His geopolitical playbook makes for some scary bedtime reading.

And it appears that President Putin is a fan, in that he has proven to be a careful student of Dugin's playbook, judging by his actions in Ukraine and elsewhere; here is the wikipedia summary of Dugin's geopolitical strategy for Russia:

Military operations play relatively little role. The textbook believes in a sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services. The operations should be assisted by a tough, hard-headed utilization of Russia's gas, oil, and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries.

Here is a recent Wilson Center Occasional Paper on Mr. Dugin. And here is a Vice.com profile from 2014.

One thing I cannot figure out is why he uses Michael Moorcock's Sign of Chaos as a symbol of his movement:

Blogs vs. Social; or, Old Internet vs. New

I often cross-post Facebook updates to this blog, which has gotten me thinking about the relative merits of social network websites and apps on the one hand, and blogs and the Old Internet on the other.

Even though they are considered unfashionable, blogs provide a much better medium for providing multiple links as references, for presenting sustained argument and analysis, and for facilitating complex discussions between multiple commentators and across blogs.

Discussion boards are also great for long-form dialogue and multi-way discussions.

Social networks should be viewed as an enhancement or addition to blogs and discussion boards, rather than as a total replacement for them. Social network websites and apps seem harder to search and harder to thoroughly scan or scroll, and content is often blocked from the wider Internet through privacy settings. When I do Google searches related to software debugging or gaming, for example, I often turn up discussion board posts and blog posts, but rarely social posts.

In addition, posting content on social websites or apps effectively releases control of the content to the companies which own the websites and apps. Now, there is no reason why a DIY or open source social network couldn't arise and replace the privately owned, for-profit ones, but this has not yet happened, so de facto going social means going corporate, at least for now. This has given rise to the Indie Web movement, with its advocacy of syndicating content to social networks from independently owned and operated blogs and websites. 

In any event, obsession with the new for the sake of the new, together with ever-shortening attention spans, have evidently caused people to look down on blogs and boards, despite their excellent functionality and comparative advantage with respect to some kinds of communication. It's as if every time we get a new tool, people feel compelled to throw out the old ones, instead of just adding the new one (social) to the box beside the others (blogs and boards).

This reminds me of how people have become strangely insensitive to issues of quality and archivability of data (whether audio, visual, or video) with the advent of streaming. I'm not saying that iTunes, Netflix, Amazon or other forms of streaming are bad because of their poorer quality; it's just that people treat streaming as a one-size fits all solution for their data needs, without realizing that there are trade-offs. CDs, DVDs, and BluRay have superior quality and archivability to streaming, and also give the owner greater control over the data, at least in certain respects. For example, with a Netflix subscription, there's no guarantee you'll be able to access the same content tomorrow that you can access today (it's for this reason that I often used to ruefully refer to this service as "Netflux").

At least, with the Indie Web movement, people are aware of some of the problems with social, and starting to do something about it. My dream is to see strong open source social networks, and to see them integrated with blogs, boards, and the other still useful tools of the Internet of Yore.

Dialogue between Yuval Noah Harari and Daniel Kahneman

This is a fascinating, thought-provoking dialogue about the future of humanity, but it's heavy on speculation, and light on evidence. 

For example, here is Yuval Noah Harari speculating about a future in which advances in technology have rendered most humans worthless as workers:

Yes, the social side is the more important and more difficult one. I don't have a solution, and the biggest question maybe in economics and politics of the coming decades will be what to do with all these useless people. I don't think we have an economic model for that. My best guess, which is just a guess, is that food will not be a problem. With that kind of technology, you will be able to produce food to feed everybody. The problem is more boredom, and what to do with people, and how will they find some sense of meaning in life when they are basically meaningless, worthless.

Harari makes a lot of assumptions. The fundamental assumption is that many or most people will not find ways to make their labor a useful complement to the labor of machines and computers.

This assumption is present in most discussions about Our Robotic Future, or Our Future after the Singularity. And for all I know it may be true. But surely it isn't the only possible scenario. By analogy, the Industrial Revolution didn't render manual laborers obsolete--it just required them to gain the skills necessary for working with machines in factories.

Now, there's certainly no guarantee that many or most workers will be able to gain the skills necessary to make their labor valuable in Our Robotic Future. And Tyler Cowen and other economists have presented evidence that income inequality is currently on the rise precisely because only some workers have managed to gain the skills and training necessary to make their labor a useful complement to the labor of computers. But I don't see a discussion of this or other evidence by Harari and Kahneman, which makes most of their comments pretty speculative.

How the Federal Government Has Restricted the Rights to Freedom of Speech and Assembly

According to this article in the Los Angeles Times, since the days of the Selma march, the federal government has effectively banned large-scale protests on federal land, and federal court rulings have permitted states and cities to forbid the use of public property for the purpose of exercising the rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

I'm not sure what the implications of this are, but they don't seem good.

Granted, there could be very good reasons for the government to want to limit the exercise of the rights to free speech and assembly, but there's a real risk that the rights will be removed of any substance on account of these rules and rulings.

How wrong the Federalists who opposed the original Bill of Rights have proved to be. If memory serves, they argued that the Bill of Rights was unnecessary, because the Constitution does not permit the government to treat people in the ways explicitly forbidden by the Bill of Rights. Not only was the Constitution alone insufficient to protect the rights of the people, the government has effectively restricted and limited many of the explicitly enumerated rights, and often times has fought tooth and nail to restrict and limit such rights, until being constrained by the rulings of federal courts.

I am not actually a civil rights fanatic, as some libertarians and civil libertarians are, but nevertheless there is much wisdom in the attempt to systematically limit the exercise of government authority; and the Bill of Rights has turned out to be a useful means to this end, although by no means a perfect or optimal one.

What's disturbing is just how easy it appears to be for the government to gradually hollow out or remove the substance from our de jure rights, rendering them quite feeble de facto.

What's in a Word?

Rand Paul is proposing allowing same-sex couples to marry in all but name, through having contracts that are legally equivalent to marriage, but which are not called 'marriage'. 

It's extremely interesting to me that the debate over same-sex marriage has essentially devolved into who has the right to use the word 'marriage' to refer to their committed romantic relationships. It's as if the word 'marriage' has some magic power, some alchemy, that must not be let into the wrong hands.

I suppose it highlights the fact that politics is largely concerned with signalling commitment to values, including sacred values, rather than actually achieving measurable results or benefiting society in meaningful ways.

Another reason why I find myself so often to be simply Against Politics.