Instead of star wars …

The New Neo Posted on by

… it’s laser wars versus drones:

Ballistic missiles are cheap. Anti-ballistic missiles are expensive.

But drones are dirt cheap — like switching to Walmart from Tiffany’s — and interceptors are still expensive.

Lasers are cheap to fire, but can be expensive to develop — if the military really did spend just half a billion dollars to put laser defenses in the field, that’s something to cheer. It was a year ago almost to the day that the New York Times reported the Army would “soon” field lasers, and quoted Electro Optic Systems’ chief executive Andreas Schwer saying, “The Ukrainian war and the Gaza war were key trigger events that everybody thought, ‘It’s the time now to make this operational. We should not spend any more years in doing demonstrations, tests and prototyping.'” …

Lasers also come with extreme power requirements and some serious limitations, particularly distance. But when it comes to point defense, there might not be a better solution to the drone problem, and it’s good to see them getting a workout in Iran.

“Somewhat surprisingly,” the Post claimed, “the laser weapons are operated by soldiers using reconfigured Xbox game console controllers.”

Winning wars is about many things, but one of them is technology. That goes way way back into antiquity. For example, there was the crossbow:

Thought to have been invented about the time of the First Crusade by western Europeans, the crossbow actually arose around 500 BC simultaneously in China and Greece. The impetus for its creation was the desire to improve upon bows of the time. It would come to later redefine war in the Middle Ages. …

The medieval crossbow, or “arbalist” as it was called during the Middle Ages, was resurrected in the form of a hand-held weapon in the 10th century, and its use spread rapidly across Europe. From 1200 to 1480 it evolved through several stages to become a powerful and deadly weapon. Its popularity had much to do with the ability of its missile, called a bolt, to penetrate mail body armor at close range. As such, the crossbow became a class leveler—a man of even modest means could afford one, it was very easy to mster, and unlike the knight who had to maintain armor, horse, and retainers at enormous expense, the owner of a crossbow needed only bring bow strings and bolts to the field of combat.

The medieval crossbow and its user were disparaged by the era’s military elite, i.e., the horse-borne knight. But aristocratic disdain could not erase the fact that the mounted warrior of the Middle Ages was at great risk from this plebeian, generally infantry, weapon.

Sounds as though the crossbow was slightly analogous to the drone in terms of lowering the expense of a weapon.

Before the crossbow, there was the chariot:

The first evidence of humans using vehicle in warfare are Sumerian depictions of four-wheeled wagons pulled by semi-domesticated onagers. These war wagons were slow and cumbersome, but provided a protected elevated platform for javelineers and slingers. Chariots with spoke-wheels pulled by horses were lightweight and fast which made it feasible to outrun light infantry and wagons. Although horses have been ridden as from at least the 4th millennium BC they were most likely largely relegated to transporting warriors, who fought on foot. Until the invention and widespread adoption of the saddle, chariots remained the primary form of cavalry, as they offered a controllable and reliable platform from which fighters could rapidly manoeuvre around the battlefield and engage with projectile and melee weapons, dismount and fight on foot or climb on to make a swift retreat.

The list is long and I don’t see it ending any time soon, unless it ends catastrophically. About the latter – I grew up thinking I wouldn’t grow up, because of nuclear weapons, but fortunately that turned out to be untrue.

Milei tells the UN bureaucrats some harsh truths

The New Neo Posted on by

Not that they care. But he didn’t pull his punches:

That’s to say, [the UN has] become a useless organization whose only purpose is to sustain a cast of fatally arrogant parasites, masquerading as well-intentioned bureaucrats.

I would remind them of what Mises said: good people do not think about controlling the lives of their fellow human beings.

Those who were supposed to guarantee collective security and human rights failed in their task.

Instead, they allowed chaos, violence, and international terrorism to flourish.

The alleged defenders of human rights have sheltered bloodthirsty dictatorships and regimes that stone women in the streets.

They have systematically voted against Israel while remaining silent in the face of Islamic terrorism and the genocide of Christians in Africa.

It’s really quite simple as well as obvious. But the institution is fatally flawed and the words will fall on deaf ears.

MAiD in Canada (plus a few personal notes)

The New Neo Posted on by

People have been committing suicide when terminally ill or in terrible pain for a long long time, and it’s sad and troubling although understandable. But health care institutions and the state haven’t usually been involved until more recently. When they are, it seems that nightmare scenarios turn up with some frequency.

Consider the case of 83-year-old Brigitte Stegemann, whose assisted suicide under Canada’s MAiD program sounds more like it may have been a murder. It’s necessary to read the whole thing to understand the story, but the gist of it is that the elderly grandmother seemed to have lacked the ability to understand what MAiD was intending to do, and she was nowhere near the point of agreeing anyway:

… [A]ccording to [her granddaughter and primary caregiver] Kranendonk, her grandmother still had a good appetite even following a stomach cancer diagnosis, and rejected the idea of using MAiD when it was presented as an option.

Everything changed, however, in June when Kranendonk left to go on a 10-day road trip with her husband.

… [O]n July 3, near the end of her trip, Kranendonk said she received a call informing her that the home planned to arrange a MAiD assessment for Stegemann, despite her grandmother previously telling her that she did not want an assisted death.

Kranendonk said, according to The Daily Mail, that when she returned, she asked a nurse at The Pearl about who had initiated the MAiD conversation. …

When Kranendonk interjected and said, “She doesn’t understand what you’re saying,” the doctor allegedly looked at Stegemann and said, “We’re going to make sure you won’t have any more pain.”

According to a doctor, Stegemann was “deemed fit for MAID, and we’re going to proceed,” The Daily Mail reported.

It’s a chilling story, one of many under such programs. It has a special resonance for me at the moment because, although the details were very very different from that of Brigette Stegemann, I have recently experienced what it is like to feel that a hospital gave up on an older patient prematurely and to have nearly all my input and all my requests fall on deaf ears.

The distinct impression I got was that, once my ex-husband became very ill (at least in part because of what I consider to have been doctor negligence), many of the doctors seemed to ignore the fact that I kept telling them that his quality of life prior to this surgery had been pretty decent despite his Parkinson’s, and that he had been living completely independently.

I never got the impression they believed me. They didn’t seem to be able to adapt by changing interventions. Their concern seemed fake and unctuous, and it was combined with a condescension and early pessimism that were infuriating.

The hospital has a good reputation. Would another have been better? I’m not at all sure, and at any rate I didn’t know how to find that hospital or how to accomplish a transfer. The hospitalist system, in which doctors (some of whom don’t have particularly good English skills) rotate constantly, is extremely frustrating as well. The doctors didn’t take much time with my ex, and I’m virtually sure they didn’t read the bulk of the notes on his case. With a long hospital stay (three and a half weeks from relatively good health to death), the number of notes became enormous and would have taken hours to plow through.

No hospitalist was going to do that, and therefore in my opinion they missed what was really going on. Nor did they particularly care about a patient whom they barely saw – and would not be likely to see again after their days or week on that floor ended and they rotated out again. My distinct impression was that they wrote him off very early on and spent a great deal of time sending palliative care doctors to speak to me and try to convince me to write him off, too.

If I sound angry, it’s because I am.

Bravo Rubio

The New Neo Posted on by

The administration might not be able to ban birth tourism, but that doesn’t mean it’s powerless against it.

For example, there’s this:

The State Department’s new policy uses powers under the Immigration and Nationality Act to yank visas from those “who knowingly engage in, have engaged in, or facilitate birth tourism to the United States,” including so-called visa fixers, or individuals who coach foreigners on ways to lie or exploit America’s immigration laws.

The US has long maintained a set of rules intended to prevent birth tourism.

The words “a set of rules” links to this article dated January 23, 2020, written at the beginning of the final year of Trump’s first term as president. This tidbit of information is of interest:

Chinese citizens do not require a visa to visit certain U.S. territories, such as the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. The birth tourism industry is rampant there, with more annual births to Chinese visitors than native residents.

Birthright citizenship tends to be organized by those who make money off it, so this move against them is an excellent idea.

First they take Manhattan, then they take Berlin

The New Neo Posted on by

Leonard Cohen, circa 1988:

And then there’s Sunday’s election in Berlin in which the Left Party got a plurality of the votes. The party’s campaign modeled itself after that of New York’s Mayor Mamdani. Fancy that [emphasis mine]:

In Sunday’s state election, the Left Party (Die Linke), the successor to the East German Communist Party, won first place with 26 percent of the vote. The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) trailed in second at 19 percent, followed closely by the AfD at 16 percent.

This came as the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) extended its winning streak in regional elections, taking first place in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, two weeks after winning in Saxony-Anhalt.

The Left Party sought its inspiration from Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York and fielded a Turkish-origin candidate, Elif Eralp. Ahead of the election, Germany’s DW TV observed that the “party wants to replicate the ‘miracle of New York,’ where the socialist Democrat Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor despite significant opposition.”

“If a left-wing candidate can win in New York, then there’s no reason it can’t happen in Berlin,” Eralp hoped.

Berlin has a large and growing Muslim population that supports the party 51%. Here’s a description of the victory celebration – the usual incoherent and contradictory blend of red and green causes:

Visibly gay and queer party supporters chanted “Viva Palestina.” The party’s top candidate Eralp ended her victory speech with “Free Palestine.”

First Manhattan, then Berlin.

Nevertheless, Democrats don’t think they’re the bad guys

The New Neo Posted on by

They just want Trump gone, gone, gone.

In a way, it’s understandable. It must seem like forever to them that he’s been in office. Not only does he tweak and poke and tease them, but he was first elected ten years ago. I suspect that those four years of Biden between Trump’s two terms has only served to make it seem as though Trump’s been in charge much longer than he actually has.

They would dearly like it to end ASAP:

That 29% for the assassination seems a trifle low, by the way – I get 32% when I add the figures up.

If you can’t access X and can’t see the chart, the five routes are the following:

(1) Impeached and convicted, which draws 87%, 75% of them very strongly. For what would he be impeached? Who cares, really?

(2) Declared unfit under the 25th Amendment, which draws 84%, 70% of them very strongly.

(3) Died overnight in his sleep, which draws 55%, 45% of them very strongly. Well, at least they don’t want him to suffer.

(4) Removed by military coup, which draws 59%, 43% of them very strongly. Nothing like a little “our democracy” action.

(5) Assassinated while speaking at a rally, which draws 32%, 23% of them very strongly. That’s about a third of respondents. What’s more, another 25% would be indifferent/neutral if that happened.

Rather astounding, except for the fact that I’ve known many people to voice a wish that Trump would die. They seem otherwise normal, living normal and even kindly lives. TDS is very very real.

Nikole Hannah-Jones and her daughter’s education

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a great deal of commentary around the blogosphere on this article by Nikole Hannah-Jones in The New York Times Magazine. You remember NHJ, don’t you? She was the mind behind the 1619 Project, the duplicitous Times rewriting of the American founding to be all about slavery.

This time NHJ is in a confessional mood. I haven’t read all of the article because it’s behind a paywall, but there are copious excerpts at Ace’s: see this. Here are some samples, which should give you the general idea. The title is “In Fighting For Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?”:

A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice. …

“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” [my daughter] asked.

My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I worked to keep my face neutral, buying a few moments to gather my thoughts. …

I had braced myself for this moment, spent nearly a decade expecting it, preparing for it. When Najya was entering pre-K, my husband, Faraji, and I decided to send her to the type of school that wealthier families with choices uniformly avoid — one that is low-income and mostly Black. Our decision had been informed by values shaped by my years of reporting on the enduring and too often seemingly hopeless battle for school integration.

Leftist race activists are often accused of compromising by sending their own children to elite private schools in order to protect them from a terrible public school system, opening the activists to accusations of hypocrisy. NHJ made a very different decision, which was to sacrifice her own child’s education in order to avoid such charges. When her daughter realized what had happened, she was angry – rightfully so, I think.

It’s amazing to me that NHJ wrote the piece at all, although apparently she sees herself as a well-meaning idealist rather than someone with insufficient regard for her daughter. I wonder if her daughter okayed the article, because it also seems like a possible invasion of privacy (as I said, I didn’t have access to the whole thing, so perhaps that issue is addressed in the article).

I think most leftists with the money probably opt for protecting their children and giving them a good education, unlike NHJ. But her approach has adherents, too – people for whom the principle overrides the person of the child. One such father was Leo Tolstoy, and the fight over the issue of education was a prominent and recurrent feature of his tumultuous relationship with his wife Sonya. Tolstoy had come to disbelieve in the value of education, but his wife Sonya wanted their children to have every advantage in that realm and she made sure they did.

[NOTE: I haven’t found much information online about the details of the Tolstoy battle over the children’s education, but I recall quite a bit about it after having read two books years ago that were devoted to the stormy Tolstoy marriage, and here’s a post I wrote on the subject.]

Writers write

The New Neo Posted on by

I am so grateful for your many heartfelt and touching condolences.

Thinking about the question of when to resume writing the blog, I think it’s a good idea for me to just plunge in – maybe not at quite the usual rate right away, though. I find that thinking about other things than myself and my own personal woes is a good distraction for me for a while each day.

Also, if you think about what makes a person want to write – and I certainly have thought about it – for most there’s an impulse to tell the tale. Although I’m not the most self-disclosing writer around – as you can tell from the green apple – I still feel compelled to tell what I’ve been going through or at least the part of it. So I plan to be adding some personal reflections on, for instance, how hospitals are run these days. I’ve had far more experience with that topic lately than I’d ever have liked.

Open thread 9/22/2026

The New Neo Posted on by

Spring and Fall
– to a young child

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.