Phytoplankton: we have not a clue

The New Neo Posted on by

Phytoplankton have been proliferating in the North Atlantic when they were predicted to be doing the opposite, and we haven’t a clue why. Nor do we know whether the increase is beneficial or harmful.

Here’s an observation on this from Anand Gnanadesikan, who is an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins.

“What is worrisome,” he said, “is that our result points out how little we know about how complex ecosystems function.”

Here’s blogger Richard Fernandez:

This is important because phytoplankton are the foundation of the food chain.

Conventional wisdom held they should be dying. For years the numbers of phytoplankton were thought to be in decline due to Global Warming…Just as nuclear power and radiation explained everything in the 1950s, in 2015 the usual suspect in all modern mysteries is Global Warming…The way the narrative works is the Usual Suspect is guilty in every case. Things are simpler that way.

I am not a scientist, although I am more science and math literate than most people. But I’ve long been worried about the belief that the current state of computer modeling can deal with some of the most complex systems in nature adequately enough to predict the future or understand how an intervention would actually affect the system in the real world.

Fernandez quotes a work in which the late Michael Crichton has a character explain:

Computers were built in the late 1940s because mathematicians like John von Neumann thought that if you had a computer-a machine to handle a lot of variables simultaneously-you would be able to predict the weather…They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything.

Our very short-time weather prediction is excellent. But chaos theory throws off weather prediction if it’s just a bit beyond a week or so ahead. Weather prediction of that type (which is still relatively short-term) and climate prediction (which is far more long-term) are different creatures from each other, of course. However, the basic idea that we have enough variables and enough knowledge to reliably predict these things—and particularly to be able to intervene productively in them—appears to be a form of scientific and political hubris.

And that is true even without postulating that some scientists or especially government officials have an interest in fudging data or misrepresenting data, a question we don’t even have to consider for the purposes of this post. Even if it’s all on the up and up, how trustworthy would the conclusions be?

[NOTE: I highly recommend the work of Judith Curry, a respected climatologist who also respects some of the doubts of the so-called “AGW skeptics.” Here’s a sample of the sort of thing she writes at her website, which is worth a visit.]

Liberty: yesterday and today

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are some quotes about liberty that seem timely today. Perhaps quotes about liberty are always timely.

From George Washington:

“The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.”

From Ronald Reagan:

“It is freedom itself that still hangs in the balance, and freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

Or less than one generation.

Here’s another timely quote, if not about liberty exactly, then about the sensation of the threat today and our current reaction:

“We are, I am afraid, drifting in a state of semi-animation, towards the rapids.” Those were the words of Hugh Dalton, Clement Attlee’s chancellor of the exchequer, describing the state of Britain in the winter of 1947, on the eve of the end of Empire.

Seems very apt, doesn’t it?

On Enrique Marquez

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s as though the San Bernardino shooting were a primer designed to demonstrate several of the possible ways to be a jihadi in the US.

First, we have Syed Farook, a man whose parents were immigrants from a Muslim country but who was born in this country. Then we have his wife, a woman from Pakistan who had lived at times in Saudi Arabia and who came here recently as Farook’s bride under a special fiance visa program that seems to have involved almost no vetting at all of any use.

Now we have a new variation on the theme, the Hispanic Muslim-convert gun-supplier-childhood-friend Enrique Marquez. He’s a bit of a mystery man, but the story so far is exceedingly odd. I haven’t yet seen a word about whether he’s a citizen or not, but he was raised next door to Farook in Riverside, California, so I’d guess “citizen” (no idea about the original immigration status of his parents).

Marquez’s conversion to Islam is part of the mystery. We know it happened a few years ago, and I will speculate it may have had something to do with his friendship with Farook. The guns he gave to his friend were purchased three years ago, and it’s not clear when the transfer was made because there’s no record of it (no surprise there). It’s also not clear how much Marquez knew about the attack, but it is highly possible he knew quite a bit, since he and Farook are reported to have planned a previous attack in 2012 that they then abandoned:

The FBI has labeled the killings a terrorist attack and investigators are also trying to determine if Farook had abandoned plans to launch an attack in 2012, according to two people familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Federal authorities questioned Marquez, 24, after searching his mother’s Riverside house over the weekend, but have not charged him with a crime. They are still trying to determine how the couple got the weapons.

Marquez told investigators that he and Farook planned an attack in the United States in 2012 but never followed through, according to one law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. It was unclear what caused them to cancel the plan.

But there’s more about Farook, Marquez, and immigration, although it’s unclear how the rest relates to their terrorism. Farook’s elder brother, whose name is also Syed (as is the father’s) but who goes by middle name “Raheel” (more about him a bit later) and Marquez each married one of a pair of Russian sisters who came here on J-1 visas, “which allow foreign individuals to enter for work-study cultural exchange programs.” Marquez’s marriage had some very odd characteristics that make me think it was not a real marriage:

Marquez did not live with his wife, [Ramirez, a friend of Marquez’s] said, and he never explained his living arrangements…

Brittani Adams, a neighbor of Syed Raheel Farook, said she had seen Marquez and Chernykh around the family home but the two looked like anything but a married couple.

“He would never leave with her, come with her, not hug her,” Adams, 24, said. “None of them seemed like they were married. It was very weird.”

They were married in November of 2014; Raheel and the other Russian sister had been married in 2011. Marquez is also reported to have been eager to enlist in the Navy, which is a prospect I don’t want to even think about.

Syed Raheel, the older brother of shooting perpetrator Syed Rizwan, is reported to be a very different sort of person than his younger brother:

One brother [Raheel] liked to party and chase girls. After high school, moved by what he saw as his patriotic duty, he enlisted in the Navy and received two medals recognizing his contributions to “the global war on terror.”

The other was deeply religious and became increasingly intolerant, ultimately nursing a growing hatred that led him, along with his wife, to open fire on a San Bernardino holiday party last week, in what law enforcement officials have termed a terrorist attack.

Syed Raheel Farook and his younger brother Syed Rizwan Farook grew up in the same house, attended the same high school two years apart and, as teenagers, often socialized in the same groups. But as they grew older their paths diverged.

Raheel seems to have always been more easygoing and outgoing, and well-assimilated. We know, of course, from Boston bomber Dzohkhar Tsarnaev that those signs don’t always mean anything at all, but in Raheel’s case they seem to have indicated he’s a relatively non-religious Muslim who probably married a non-Muslim (although even that isn’t all too clear, since we know little about these Russian sisters). According to the family’s attorney:

Attorney David Chesley told CNN on Monday that Raheel “is very upset with his brother.”

“He’s totally depressed and broken with grief.”

Whether the attorney is telling the truth or not is still another question. We simply don’t know, and that’s part of the horror of the situation. But if the description of Raheel in Haaretz is accurate, it’s exactly how I would think he’d feel.

What a tangled web of deception—and all of it undetected until too late, and much of it still unknown.

Still another reason not to let in Syrian refugees

The New Neo Posted on by

Whatever could go wrong?:

American authorities are warning the terror group’s followers may have infiltrated American borders with authentic-looking passports ISIS has printed itself with its own machines, according to an intelligence report obtained by ABC News.

The 17-page Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Intelligence Report, issued to law enforcement last week, says ISIS likely has been able to print legitimate-looking Syrian passports since taking over the city of Deir ez-Zour last summer, home to a passport office with “boxes of blank passports” and a passport printing machine. Another passport office was located in Raqqa, Syria, which has long been ISIS’s de facto capital…

Fake Syrian passports have already been discovered in Europe, most notably two used by suicide bombers in the horrific terrorist attack on Paris last month. The two men are believed to have slipped into Europe with a flood of Syrian refugees fleeing the violence in their homeland.

According to the source that provided the passport information to homeland security officials, Syria is awash in fake documents.

“The source further stated that fake Syrian passports are so prevalent in Syria that Syrians do not even view possessing them as illegal,” the report says. “The source stated fake Syrian passports can be obtained in Syria for $200 to $400 and that backdated passport stamps to be placed in the passport cost the same.”

It sounds as though these passports are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. And since we apparently can’t cross-check them against official Syrian records (whatever and wherever and however accurate they might be), it’s hard to know how these passports could be authenticated by authorities.

I repeat: whatever could go wrong?

Or rather: whatever already has gone wrong, and will go wrong in the future?

And again, there’s Amazon for the holidays

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s that time. Again.

Christmas, Chanukah, and whatever other holiday might suit your diverse fancies are all coming up sooner than you think. In fact, Chanukah is already here; we’re just about smack in the middle of it.

So I’m encouraging you to feel their hot panting breaths on your neck, and to solve all your gift-giving dilemmas by turning to that online colossus, Amazon.

And if you use those widgets on my right sidebar to click through for all your Amazon purchases (now and at any other time of year) you will also be giving a small but still not insignificant gift to neo-neocon (it adds up, folks), and all without spending any extra money yourself. What could be more wonderful?

I thank you all in advance, and I thank all of you who’ve already done your shopping through my blog. I’ll be bumping this up and/or re-posting it every now and then until Christmas.

[NOTE: In case you have ad blocker or something of that sort, and the Amazon widgets don’t show up on your computer, go here. You can also click on any Amazon book link within a post and anything you order during that click-through gets credited to me. I believe it’s true even for things you put in your cart but don’t order till a bit later, although there’s a time limit on how long they can be there and still get credited when ordered (I’m not sure what that limit is, though, so best to order sooner rather than later).]

Happy Chanukah

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly edited version of a previous post.]

Chanukah began last Sunday at sundown. But since it has eight days I still get a chance to wish you a happy one—tonight and for three more days, anyway.

The words of this Chanukah song in Yiddish—written in 1924 before the Holocaust and before the establishment of Israel—are not happy. But I didn’t know that when I first heard it, and I post it anyway because I think it’s very beautiful:

Here are the lyrics, as translated by Theodore Bikel (you can hear an excerpt of him singing it—or rather, reciting it, quite hauntingly— here):

O little lights of mystery
You recall our history
And all that went before
The battles and the bravery
And our release from slavery
Miracles galore.

As my eyes behold your flames
I recall our heroes’ names
And our ancient dream:
“Jews were learning how to fight
To defeat an awesome might
They could reign supreme”

“They would rule their own domain
When the enemy was slain,
The Temple cleansed and whole.
Once there was a Jewish land
And a mighty Jewish hand.”
Oh, how it moves my soul!

O little lights of mystery
You retell our history
Your tales are tales of pain.
My heart is filled with fears
My eyes are filled with tears
“What now?” says the haunting refrain.

Remember: written in 1924.

Bikel translated the song that way in order to make the rhymes come out. But a more literal translation of that last verse might be:

Oh little candles,
your old stories
awaken my anguish;
deep in my heart there
stirs
a tearful question:
What will be next?

Indeed.

Obama the coward? (Part II)

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Part I is here. In it, I discuss the idea that Obama’s reluctance to go after ISIS is the result of cowardice, and I suggest that it stems from a strategic and philosophical group of motivations that I then describe. Here in Part II I offer an additional ideological reason that may contribute to why Obama isn’t going after ISIS. Now, it’s possible that he’s a coward, too—but I think it’s more important to understand the ideological underpinnings of his belief system, because even if he were not a coward I do not believe he’d be fighting ISIS more vigorously.]

I wrote in Part I yesterday that Obama still thinks ISIS is the jayvee. Here’s an article by Peter Beinart indicating much the same idea [emphasis mine]:

While Obama doesn’t say it outright, he appears to be subtly referencing Robert Pape’s influential argument that the great driver of suicide terrorism is not jihadist ideology but occupation. Because Obama, unlike Bush and Rubio, believes the Islamic State is ideologically weak, he thinks America’s current strategy will eventually defeat it unless America commits a large occupying force, which would give the jihadists a massive shot in the arm.

The other unforced error America must avoid, according to Obama, is “letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That, too, is what groups like ISIL want.” Because the GOP candidates see violent jihadism as a powerful, seductive ideology, they think that many American Muslims are at risk of becoming terrorists, and thus that the United States must monitor them more aggressively. Because Obama sees violent jihadism as ideologically weak and unattractive, he thinks that few American Muslims will embrace it unless the United States makes them feel like enemies in their own country””which is exactly what Donald Trump risks doing.

Curiously enough, The Atlantic—where Beinart’s article appears—had earlier published Graeme Wood’s excellent piece on just how very appealing and seductive ISIS is to Muslims. Wood’s article presents facts that contradict what Obama is apparently saying and thinking according to Beinart. The Atlantic also kindly helps us out in realizing this by placing an interview with Wood at the end of the Beinart article, although I’m not sure why they did it. Note the part that begins at 2:59, in which Wood describes just how very attractive violent jihadism is to young people in Western countries. Perhaps Obama should watch, although I strongly doubt it would do a particle of good:

When I read the Beinart piece, I was intrigued by mention of that Pape book that Beinart said was so very influential. Seeing this summary of its main thesis, it seems to me that Beinart is almost certainly correct that Obama is basing his approach to ISIS on Pape’s book (which was written, by the way, back in 2003). It seems highly plausible that Obama encountered Pape’s thesis and that it really did influence him—and in fact, I discovered that Pape had been an adviser to Obama (and Ron Paul) in 2008.

Read the review and you’ll see what I mean (I have not read the book myself; I’ve only just heard of it). The thesis of Pape’s work seems to fit in perfectly with Obama’s predilection for blaming the US and the West for all the ills of the world, and blaming colonialism or occupation in particular.

Here are a couple of quotes from the description of the book:

…Pape articulates his belief that the popular conception of a “connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is misleading and may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies likely to worsen America’s situation and to harm many Muslims needlessly.” Based a detailed examination of every suicide bombing and attack by non-state actors from 1980-2003, Pape identifies several underlying trends. First, that there is little or no connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. Second, that almost every attack is directed towards compelling modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that terrorists consider to be their homeland.

If the idea that Pape has influenced Obama is correct, it would seem that Obama may actually believe that that will happen if he just waits it out. It’s too good to not be true. It fits both his preference for inaction and his tendency to blame colonial westerners for the problems of third world countries, as well as reflecting his warm feelings for Islam and his disinclination to say that Islam is part of the problem. It wraps the problem of ISIS up in a nice neat ball that won’t require him to do anything that goes against the grain of his previous beliefs. In short, it’s perfect.

Here, Pape proposes a solution to the problem of terrorism, particularly suicide terrorism (which is hardly the only kind, as the Farooks demonstrated last week)):

…[W]e should affect a withdrawal from the Middle East and remove the reasons that Al-Qaeda has for attacking us. Now, in case you are worried, this is not giving in to a bunch of lunatics simply because if we do (even though historical examples prove otherwise) they might stop. Oh no, we should get out of the Middle East and resort to a policy of “off-shore balancing” where we attempt to exert influence without actual troops on the ground. Oh by the way, Pape thinks that energy independence would also be awesome. Along the way, Pape also discusses how we cannot possibly prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons so we should just try to talk them out of using them against Israel (who we should stop supporting so much because it makes Al-Qaeda really really really angry).

As I said, perfect.

[NOTE: If you’d like to see some criticism of Pape’s book, read this, this, and this.]

One more try and then I’m finished with this for now

The New Neo Posted on by

During this most recent Trump immigration flap, I’ve noticed an enormous amount of misunderstanding of my positions on the subject. So here’s another attempt to make it crystal clear, and then I’ll leave the subject for a while. Go on the Trump wagon, as it were. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Luckily, Andrew C. McCarthy has summarized the basic position I was trying to explain in this post of mine. So read McCarthy’s article, and you’ll have the background for what I’m about to add.

My objections to what Trump said were basically twofold: he seemed to include citizens, which is unconstitutional (later he walked that back, so that objection is no longer applicable), and religion itself is not a good criteria for making the cuts.

I agree that there is no right to immigrate here. I’m for limiting immigration from what it is now in terms of numbers, and for completely revamping the system to do away with the automatic preference for family members, and to change the process of vetting to a more rigorous one the includes questions about political beliefs that are antithetical to liberty. I’ve written in more detail about these things recently in other posts and comments, so please go back and take a look because I’m not going to make this post book-length by setting it out all over again.

But fortunately, McCarthy has done it for me. I hadn’t read his article until just now, but I am pretty much in total agreement with the following statements of his:

That program of Islamic supremacism is fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution, and we should strive to minimize the number of people living in our country who hold such beliefs…

The narrowest solution would be to restore the principle of “ideological exclusion” to U.S. immigration law. With the end of the Cold War ”” which too many imagined to be the End of History ”” we eliminated the legal bar to enemies of America who were not actual members of terrorist organizations or card-carrying members of totalitarian political parties. Specifically, the law says the State Department is prohibited from keeping a foreigner out “because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States.” In other words, since 1990 we have applied the First Amendment to all foreigners abroad seeking admission to our country…

At the very least, we should be asking things [of immigrants] like whether they support freedom of religion and speech, regardless of content, even if it is insulting to other faiths. Of course people could, and would, lie, but the very fact that such a question is asked would send a message about what we expect of people hoping to live among us…

But large-scale immigration of non-violent Islamic supremacists also facilitates violence, by forming and sustaining neighborhoods that serve as cover and incubators for jihad attacks, however unintentionally…

And many of those recruits are native-born, having grown up steeped in Islamic supremacism and alienated from the values of their native land…Even with our smaller [than in Europe] Muslim population, we have trouble keeping track…

There’s really no way around it: Continuing to admit 1 million Muslim immigrants per decade will translate into more attacks. We need to cut Muslim immigration. But limiting the cuts to Muslim-majority countries would exclude Christians and other non-Muslims and also ignore Muslim immigration from non-Muslim countries such as India, Russia, France, and England…

So alongside ideological screening we need to cut immigration overall, focusing on the categories most likely to cause problems. That means eliminating the visa lottery, an absurd program in its own right but also the source of a disproportionate share of Muslim immigration; limiting family immigration to the closest relations, to prevent a cascading chain of relatives; dramatically curbing refugee resettlement, allowing us to help many more people while keeping the potential security threats off shore; and reducing the number of foreign-student admissions, the feeder program for a large share of new permanent immigration from the Islamic world. None of these measures is a magic solution. Efforts to screen out Islamic supremacists will often fail. Limiting family migration to spouses would still permit the immigration of people like San Bernardino jihadist Tashfeen Malik. Full assimilation of existing Muslim communities, even if new inflows were reduced to a trickle, would still take time, if it’s possible at all. But if we just keep doing what we’re doing now, we can’t expect a different result. Trump’s sweeping call to stop all Muslim travel to the U.S. will resonate with people rightly frustrated with our rulers’ insouciant approach to the threat we face. Rather than simply point in outrage at Trump’s crude prescription, responsible policymakers should offer a grown-up alternative.

Thank you Andrew McCarthy—for saying much of what I was trying to say, only much better.

A couple of small disagreements/additions, though. Trump’s prescription was crude, but not in the way many people indicated. It was crude because he used the wrong criteria and left out things like ideological screening, a better criteria. Also, if better and more restrictive screening had been applied to the fiance visa program, I believe that Farook’s wife-to-be Malik probably would not have been allowed into this country, because her false address would have been discovered and red-flagged, and some of her extremist history would have been discovered as well, even if she had lied about her belief system. As it was, she wasn’t even allowed to be questioned about her belief system, and her history wasn’t studied for evidence of extremist viewpoints. Present-day screening for Islamist extremism antithetical to our liberties appears to only involve matching names to lists of known terrorists, which is not nearly enough.

Obama the coward? Part II will appear tomorrow. Meanwhile…

The New Neo Posted on by

Promises, shmomises.

I had said I would publish Part II of “Obama the coward?” today, but I got busier than I thought I’d be and it’s really too late to polish it up for today.

So, something to look forward to tomorrow.

In the meantime, let’s chill out for a moment and enjoy this repeat of an old post of mine about Isadora Duncan.

When I was a kid I was fascinated by Isadora Duncan. What was her dancing really like? How could simple movements entrance an audience so, all around the world?

There are no movies of her (despite a YouTube few seconds of video that claims to be). Only stills, which I studied to try to divine the secret.

They were impressive in a monumental way, like a massive Greek statue, or a work by Michaelangelo. Surely something powerful was going on here, neither dainty nor ethereal:

Her choreography was deceptively simple, based on natural movements like skipping and running. She usually wore a sort of toga or drape (she famously bared one breast at the end of a dance—in Boston, yet). That seeming simplicity lured imitators into thinking they could do it too—but usually when they tried they ended up looking trite and silly. Perhaps they lacked her absolute conviction of her own genius, although that hasn’t stopped them from the attempt.

The most successful, in my opinion, has been one of my favorite ballet dancers, Lynn Seymour. A ballet dancer would seem to be the last type of dancer to be able to convey the weightedness of Duncan, but as you can see from the following video, Seymour was no ordinary ballet dancer, and no featherweight (although she’s not actually fat, except for a ballet dancer, and she’s clearly very fit). Here she is performing “Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan” choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton, who saw the real Duncan when he was young, and who relied on memories of that experience to create this dance:

I think that may be the closest thing we’ll ever get to watching Isadora Duncan herself. I’m not so sure it’s really close, though I think it may be (Ashton apparently approved).

Now take a look at how not to do it. This is the very same choreography (the first two parts, anyway) performed by Tamara Rojo, a Canadian/Spanish/British dancer in her thirties who might indeed be wonderful at ballet (I’ve never seen her) but who seems to me to convey little to nothing matching the descriptions or photos I’ve ever read or seen of Isadora. Oh, maybe the drape of her costume:

In the 1968 film “Isadora,” Vanessa Redgrave gave it a go. Her politics came pretty close to matching Isadora’s leftist ones, and for a non-dancer (with long thin gangly arms and an ectomorphic body very unlike Duncan’s) she didn’t do too badly with the dance sequences. It is reported that she trained for six months to be able to pull it off:

I’ll take Lynn Seymour any old day.