Interesting Links for 31-07-2018

[andrewducker]

Germany gripped by #MeTwo racism debate

(tags: racism society germany )

Fear of litigation is a key factor in decision to perform C-sections

(tags: childbirth lawsuit healthcare )

People ask for evidence of Labour antisemitism...

(tags: Labour Jews )

Calls for Corbyn ally on Labour's ruling body to be suspended after claiming antisemitism row was invented by Jewish 'Trump fanatics'

(tags: Jews labour )

Terraforming Mars harder than you'd think

(tags: mars )

Inside the World of Racist Science Fiction

(tags: scifi racism republicans )

Shockingly, people think God looks like they do

(tags: religion psychology )

Rates of Sexual Harassment in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

(tags: harassment women academia science engineering medicine )

I continue to doubt that there ever was a Jesus

(tags: history Jesus religion christianity )

Wanted: more male psychologists

(tags: psychology men )

ArdaCraft - Middle Earth in Minecraft

(tags: Minecraft lotr )

Religious revelation and the origin of Lord of the Rings

(tags: lotr religion history )

Possibly the world's ugliest baby

(tags: sharks theft babies )

An Empire of Stars - How Britain beat the odds to independently achieve space flight, and then abandoned it on the very same day.

(tags: uk space history )

Comments

An Empire of Stars

[channelpenguin]

WOW, awesome and sad all at once. Stuff I never knew. Excellent, thanks.

Re: An Empire of Stars

[dewline]

Damn. Before the Industrial part of the US Military-Industrial complex messed up Canada's Avro Arrow operation, the UK was ripped off first...

[dewline]

What the Devil are they playing at in their several factions at the UK Labour Party these days?

[danieldwilliam]

I've always tended to the view that Jesus actually existed. Mostly on the grounds that it seemed more likely than not that a legend would grow up around an actual person rather than a person entirely invented.

I tend not to think about it too much. I think I am more concerned about the historicallity of Shakespear than Jesus.

[andrewducker]

I've assumed Shakespeare probably existed.

But it's not something I know much about.

[danieldwilliam]

The existence (or otherwise) of Shakespear is a curious bit of business.

There are about 4 alternative candidates, Francis Bacon, de Vere- Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Derby and Kit Marlowe (having faked his own murder with the assistance of the head of Elizabeth's secret service.

Or some combination of those 4, plus or minus others.

To me the theories seem to turn on the assumption that a middle-class boy without a university education could not have written perhaps the best drama ever so therefore someone else, someone posher, must have written them.

Having walked round his house in Stratford Shakespear, if he didn't write the plays, seems to have done very nicely out of them.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question

[calimac]

The existence of Shakespeare would be a different question than whether the man, who existed, wrote the plays.

The idea that only a posh aristocrat could have written great literature is, when put plainly, sufficiently absurd as to defeat itself.

[danieldwilliam]

Aye, and indeed.

I'm really not sure what the basis or driver for the authorship question is.

There doesn't seem to be question to answer.

It doesn't strike me as implausable that a single person called Shakespeare wrote great plays. It's not as if he were an illiterate peasant farmer who turned up in London and free-styled Hamlet at court the next day. He was middle class kid and had been to grammar school. It took him years to establish himself. And I think the theatre and the play writing process was different then than it was in Victorian times. Although perhaps not that different to how it is today. I don't think plays were written fully formed by some "writer", who was separated in time and space and concept from the production and performance or from the personal politics of the theatre company.

More fundamentally, one of the strengths of the British system of social class was that it was more flexible and allowed more mixing and cross-fertilisation than other systems (like France). People with money, people with influence and people with talent were faciliiated in getting together.

[major_clanger]

Ah, what Kyle Kallgren sums up as the "BUT HOW CAN FALCON IF NOT POSH?" fallacy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3uYipLshD4

[danieldwilliam]

I'm wondering if I can start a PG Wodehouse authorship question.

[calimac]

I once came across somebody who was quite seriously trying to start a Mozart authorship question. Apparently Mozart didn't know how to compose and was dependent on this other guy secretly shipping him all of his music. The other guy was Italian, and so was the proponent of this theory.

[danieldwilliam]

What was the motive for the Italian person using Mozart as a front?

I can see why an Earl might not want to be associated with the actual business of a theatre.

[calimac]

I do not recall a motive being given for the guy. But I might not remember everything.

My role in the discussion consisted of trying to nail down the proof that this guy had Mozart works before Mozart composed them. Eventually the proponent's spokesman admitted they didn't have any proof.

The original discussion vanished with the bulletin board it was on, but if you want to get into the gruesome details, some of them are preserved on a Wikipedia talk page.

[danieldwilliam]

That is some discussion going on there.

[calimac]

As a foreigner, and an American at that (traditionally considered by Brits to be irony-impaired), I lack sufficient background knowledge and consequent ability to pick up cues, and can't figure out whether the tweetstorm on Labour antisemitism is sincere or sarcastic. There are passages that seem to require each of those interpretations.

Similarly puzzled by the reviewer's reaction to the "Jesus did not exist" book. Can't figure out whether the reviewer agrees or not.

[danieldwilliam]

Who knows? We're looking at an artifact of a fight between and within factions of the UK left and the Labour Party. Many of the people involved in the fight will not be aware which faction they are in. Some will be acutely aware.

As a Brit, a political activist and a person from a left-wing tradition and the son of someone who signed up for the Six Day War I've no idea what's going on.

There are clearly some anti-semites in the Labour Party.

Anti-semitic tropes have been used by the left just as they have been by the right. The idea that the world is run by a secret conspiracy of Jewish capitalists has some rhetorical appeal at both ends of the political spectrum depending on whether you emphasis the Jewishness or the capitalism of the conspiracy.

Many people on the left are concerned about the treatment of Palastinians and some of them struggle to separate the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, from Israeli nationalism, from the state of Israel, from the people of Israel, and from Jews around the world.

People are unsure if the very question "Does the Jewish lobby have disproportionate influence?" is itself anti-semitic.

At the same time accusations of anti-semitism are useful if you are a Labour supporter who is against Corbyn's leadership or in the Conservative Party press office.

And these things are tribal and esoteric.

And I think several people are piling in because they enjoy a good fight. Or at least watching a good fight.

[agoodwinsmith]

My reading of the Jesus thing is that he basically agrees with the author, but thinks to author is too snarky for his own good.

[danieldwilliam]

The anti-semitism row I think demonstrates one of Corbyn's key weaknesses as a 21st century political leader. He appears to have little interest or aptitude for the theatrical elements of retail politics.

If he were better at Prime Minsters Questions so that every week he was seen demolishing May over Brexit in the Commons or had hounded Chris Grayling out the Transport ministry over Northern Rail there would be no room for the media, and therefore people, to be talking about anti-semitism in the Labour Party.

[andrewducker]

Less room, but still some, I think.

I do wish he was better at the theatrics though.

[danieldwilliam]

Depends how good he was as the theatrical bits.

If he were able to put a cabinet minister at risk of a sacking every month I think that would excite the press enough that the narrative would change.

I'm not sure if he's interested in creating that sort of narrative or just bad at it. When I'm feelling charitable towards him I think he's focusing on re-building the broad social movement of the early 20th Century with the Labour Party as the political wing of that strategy. And I don't think this is necessarily the wrong strategy or doomed to failure, but it is slow, and it is alien to how things are done today.

When I am feeling less charitable I think he's just not very good, over promoted and in the wrong job.