The war on smokers reaches a new level

The New Neo Posted on by

First we had the hazards of smoking itself. They are real and well-documented, but affect only the smoker, who can sometimes be persuaded to quit after learning about the dangers but sometimes chooses to continue the habit.

Then there were the dangers to the non-smoking public of smoking, the so-called second-hand smoke problem. I wrote about it here, and my position is that although I can’t stand being around cigarette smoke and am in favor of banning it in enclosed public places, I remain unconvinced of the long-term negative health effects for anyone other than people with asthma or other lung diseases.

Now we have third-hand smoke, which is the residue that clings to clothing and curtains and carpets and cars and other surroundings of the smoker. I hate it with a passion—my hair is very porous, and when I’m around smokers I can smell it in my hair until I wash it, and on my clothes likewise. It’s a sour, stale, and generally disgusting odor that clings to apartments, motel rooms, and homes long after the smoker has left the premises. But the evidence for long-term problems due to third-hand smoke is even weaker than that for second-hand smoke (which is already weak enough). In addition, it seems to me that the campaign against third-hand smoke is potentially far more pernicious than the one against second-hand smoke, because the aim of the one against third-hand smoke must be to ban smoking altogether, and/or make the practice legally actionable, and/or scare people half to death about it, even if it’s practiced in the privacy of one’s home or out in the open air.

To wit:

…[A] mother who doesn’t smoke in front of her kids, smokes outside, then comes inside and holds the baby is exposing that child to thirdhand smoke. The new compounds are difficult to clean up, have a long life of their own, and many may be carcinogenic.

…”Thirdhand smoke is harmful to our genetic material,” Bo Hang, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said at a news conference this week…”And the contamination becomes more toxic with time.”…

“In homes where we know no smoker has lived for 20 years, we’ve still found evidence of these compounds in dust, in wallboard,” says Neal Benowitz, chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco. Benowitz leads the California Consortium on Thirdhand Smoke, started in 2010…

Those who move into houses or apartments formerly owned by smokers might be exposed as well. And thirdhand smoke is difficult to eliminate. “So far, we have not found an exposed environment where you cannot measure it any more,” says Georg Matt, chair of the Department of Psychology at San Diego State University in California. “It’s virtually impossible to remove this stuff unless you remove the flooring and drywall.”

Buried in the article, however, is this:

Science hasn’t yet quantified the amount of exposure that poses a health risk, and hasn’t determined with certainty what those health risks might be.

In other words: we know almost nothing.

We’ve come along way, baby, haven’t we? From a time when the very real and very negative health effects of cigarettes on smokers themselves were covered up, to a time when the smallest undocumented/imagined effects on everyone else are hyped to the skies. Once smokers were trying to kill only themselves; in the future we’re supposed to think they’re out to kill us all.

Malaysian PM announces Flight 370 went down in Indian Ocean

The New Neo Posted on by

According to “a new analysis of satellite data by a British satellite company and accident investigators,” that is. Although he doesn’t specify exactly what that data or analysis might be, I’m hearing on the news that it has to do with a re-analysis of the satellite pings that points to the southern rather than northern arc as the final “ping” point of the airplane, and the fact that the entire area is extremely remote from a safe landing place.

Given the multiple errors that have been made so far, one wonders. But IMHO, signs have been pointing in this direction for quite some time.

I use the words “signs” rather than “evidence,” because we have so little substantiated evidence. But as the days have gone by and there has been no demand from hijackers and no sign of the airplane in a new terrorist act, the idea of a kidnapping of the plane (with or without the death of the passengers) has slowly seemed less plausible, although it’s not been eliminated. And with the sighting of not just one, but several pieces of debris in the general area of the south Indian Ocean more or less at the site of one of the last possible pings from the plane, the likelihood of it having crashed in that area has slowly gone up.

So I’m inclined to tentatively believe this announcement is probably the truth. Although I’m sad for the families, I’ve been sad for them for them from the start. At least this would offer the chance of that cliched and elusive and perhaps impossible concept, closure, and the possibility of the plane’s black box being found someday when it is still operative enough to piece together the all-important story of why Flight 370 went down.

[NOTE: Also see this.]

Illusion of a tiny waist?

The New Neo Posted on by

Who wouldn’t want a “waist-whittling illusion dress”? Me, for one, because I think these look like lampshades. Only a certain small (and I mean small) subgroup of women would look good in this style, and they are women who would probably look good in anything.

And although yes, their waists do look even smaller because of the wider tops, it’s not really an illusion that they have tiny waists. They really do have tiny waists.

Picky, picky, picky, I know.

But anyway, here are the weird silhouettes:

ittybittywaist

It’s actually the larger tops and bottoms that are the illusions. I predict this look will not catch on.

Unlike the trapeze:

trapeze

The chemise (on the left here):

chemise

And the balloon:

balloon

I remember each of those styles in its heyday. And I also remember this song, which may be obscure enough that you’ve never heard it before, unless you’re of a certain age:

If only Obama only had the right partners, his brilliance and wisdom would be known

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama is nothing if not a self-confident man. There’s nothing that needs to be revised, nothing he would do differently, and nothing he should learn. Back in late January, this is how he evaluated the foreign policy situation:

Obama told me [David Remnick of The New Yorker] that what he needs isn’t any new grand strategy””“I don’t really even need George Kennan right now”””but, rather, the right strategic partners.

This brings us up against that old, old question: Obama, fool or knave? Is he purposely sabotaging our foreign policy, or is he just that naive and puffed up with narcissism? I vote the former, and have for quite some time, but I consider that the latter is a possibility.

In a sense, though, it doesn’t matter, because whether he can’t change his approach or won’t change his approach, it’s the effect of his policies that matter most rather than his intent. Richard Fernandez of Belmont Club comments on the real world consequences of Obama’s foreign policy:

Obama was chosen by unserious people to face very serious thugs like Vladimir Putin. People for whom everything to this point has been a cocktail party and games. And American allies ”” those who are on the front line ”” know it.

Stripped of its euphemisms America’s position in the Middle East, Europe and Asia has collapsed and the world is arming up nukes. And the troops in Afghanistan ”” aren’t they dependent on the route through Russia for logistics? Isn’t that the size of it? Does the situation have the attention of people in the New York Times yet?

Nope not yet.

The intellectual elite who endorsed Obama are a population who’ve never been hungry or felt paralyzing danger. They grew to manhood and old age in the bosom of a Pax Americana and were vain enough to throw away because they felt guilty for the security it provided. They don’t realize they’ve opened the door and the tigers are staring out at them. They’re still thinking in terms of “tests” with the ruffians of the world and instead of realizing that they are playing in a casino for real money.

The sad thing is that this was easily foreseen, and yet it didn’t seem to matter. Way back in April of 2008 Obama foreshadowed what was going to happen due to his attitude:

…[F]oreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain.

It’s ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags ”˜I’ve met leaders from eighty countries’”“I know what those trips are like! I’ve been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There’s a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then – you go.”

“You do that in eighty countries – you don’t know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa – knowing the leaders is not important – what I know is the people. . . .”

“I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college – I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It was ominous even then to contemplate having a president with that much arrogance and that much naivete. It’s disturbing to realize he was elected despite that, and re-elected despite many bad consequences in the real world already having resulted from such arrogance and naivete in a president.

This is what I wrote at the time:

If there’s a better example of the arrogance of youth, I can’t think of it offhand. The glorification of “self-confidence” as an improvement on knowledge and experience. The description of the trips to foreign countries as meaningless, including those tedious briefings (sort of like a visit to a boring relative””can’t we go out and play now?) The idea that hazy memories of a few years spent in a country””in this case, Indonesia””about forty years ago as a child of six to ten years old would have any relevance to understanding what’s going on in terms of power or politics or economics in that country or any other part of the world today.

Likewise the college trip to Pakistan. Give me a break.

If Obama really were in his teens or early twenties, these sorts of statements might be understandable. And his “foreign policy” experience of living for a while in these countries would at least have the advantage of being relatively recent.

But Obama is now forty-six years old, and will be forty-seven at the time of the election. Not such a child after all. And although youthful exuberance and innocence can be charming even in an adult, youthful arrogance and ignorance never is.

But the real problem is an electorate that didn’t see this all as a grave warning sign that electing Obama would be a very, very bad idea—and an MSM that not only failed to make it clear to them, but that actively promoted the opposite notion.

This is what we’re up against: the WaPo and truth

The New Neo Posted on by

Last Thursday the WaPo published the usual takedown of the nefarious Koch brothers, purporting to show that “biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands” is a Koch brothers holding, and that they would be a big beneficiary of the Keystone Pipeline. John Hinderaker took them on, then the WaPo replied, and now Hinderaker has replied to their reply.

It’s not just a reply by Hinderaker, it’s an evisceration of the WaPo article, its authors, and the WaPo editors. You have to read the whole thing to get the details, but here’s an excerpt:

So in the Post’s view, it is acceptable to publish articles that are both literally false (Koch is the largest tar sands leaseholder) and massively misleading (the Keystone Pipeline is all about Koch Industries), if by doing so the paper can “stir and inflame public debate in this election year?”…

Let me offer an alternative explanation of why the Washington Post published their Keystone/Koch smear: 1) The Washington Post in general, and Mufson and Eilperin in particular, are agents of the Left, the environmental movement and the Democratic Party. 2) The Keystone Pipeline is a problem for the Democratic Party because 60% of voters want the pipeline built, while the party’s left-wing base insists that it not be approved. 3) The Keystone Pipeline is popular because it would broadly benefit the American people by creating large numbers of jobs, making gasoline more plentiful and bringing down the cost of energy. 4) Therefore, the Democratic Party tries to distract from the real issues surrounding the pipeline by claiming, falsely, that its proponents are merely tools of the billionaire Koch brothers”“who, in fact, have nothing to do with Keystone one way or the other. 5) The Post published its article to assist the Democratic Party with its anti-Keystone talking points.

There’s more, much more, about the relationships of one of the article’s authors to various leftwing “green” causes with an interest in sinking the pipeline. It’s a very convincing indictment of the WaPo and the writer.

Hinderaker is a formidable foe in terms of his knowledge and his ability to write. As a blogger, he has a wide audience—on the right. But there’s little question in my mind that the WaPo knows that its desired message “Koch Brothers evil, Keystone Pipeline benefits them, Keystone Pipeline evil,” will be received (and quoted) by far more people than will ever hear Hinderaker’s on-target reply.

The WaPo appears to have factored in all of this, and has decided that—in the words of Churchill—“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” I can almost guarantee that the “Kochs own the Keystone Pipeline” meme is already widely established, and that Hinderaker’s excellent refutation will hardly make a dent in it.

That’s the power of the press and the power of propaganda. The esteem in which papers like the WaPo are held has dropped in recent years, but not nearly enough to cow it into telling the truth or to end its influence.

Dino-chick

The New Neo Posted on by

Not a pretty sight, except to another oviraptorosaur, is this newly-discovered species called Anzu wyliei:

dino

Eleven feet tall and 500 pounds in weight, looks like a chicken but acts like a dinosaur.

With its toothless beak, long legs, huge feet, and claw-tipped arms, A. wyliei looked like a devilish version of the modern cassowary, a large ground bird found in Australia.

It was “as close as you can get to a bird without being a bird,” said study leader Matt Lamanna, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

Tastes like chicken.

When Ryan says it, it’s racism. When Obama says it…

The New Neo Posted on by

…it’s perfectly fine.

Racism is defined by the messenger, not the message. And any time a Republican says something he’s guilty until proven innocent. That goes for black Republicans, too, because they don’t exist—once a black person becomes a conservative he becomes an enemy of the black people.

So, now that we’ve got that straightened out, let’s look at this:

Data to be released Friday by the Education Department’s civil rights arm finds that black children represent about 18 percent of children enrolled in preschool programs in schools, but almost half of the students suspended more than once. Six percent of the nation’s districts with preschools reported suspending at least one preschool child.

Advocates have long said that get-tough suspension and arrest policies in schools have contributed to a “school-to-prison” pipeline that snags minority students, but much of the emphasis has been on middle school and high school policies. This data shows the disparities starting in the youngest of children.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration issued guidance encouraging schools to abandon what it described as overly zealous discipline policies that send students to court instead of the principal’s office.

If the results of a policy show a disparity, it must be a result of racism and the standards adjusted until we have equality of outcome rather than equality of standards. It’s even defined as racist to suggest that black students may be suspended at higher rates because a higher percentage of them exhibit behavior that is actually unacceptable in the classroom, so we can’t even look more deeply at that question (at least so far):

The data doesn’t explain why the disparities exist or why the students were suspended. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder were to appear at J.O. Wilson Elementary School Friday in Washington to discuss the data.

The article goes on to discuss whether suspension is in fact an appropriate remedy for pre-schoolers. Perhaps it’s not; perhaps there are way too many suspensions at that level. But if so, that evaluation should have nothing to do with race or racial disparity.

This statement by Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of a think tank specializing in social issues affecting minority communities, seems out-of-touch to me:

I think most people would be shocked that those numbers would be true in preschool, because we think of 4- and 5-years-olds as being innocent.

I haven’t thought of 4-5-year-olds as innocent in a long, long while. I recall visiting a friend who worked in a summer camp serving inner-city youngsters when I was a teenager (which I can assure you was a long time ago), and I was stunned at the highly sexualized and aggressive acting out there by the very youngest. What’s more, about thirty-five years ago when I had moved to a lovely New England town, the first spring I lived there I opened my windows when the weather got nice and was shocked to hear the language and sentiments of the little five-year-olds walking home from school. Let’s just say they were not innocent, nor were they black; they were as white as white could be.

Flight 370 and the limits

The New Neo Posted on by

The search for Flight 370 “has exposed the technological limits of satellites” which can see the globe but are not designed to hone in on every section of it equally. Understandably, they concentrate their strongest attention on parts of the world other than the vast stretches of uninhabited ocean.

As for those pieces of supposed debris spotted near Australia:

“It looks to me like possibly just an exceptionally large patch of sun glint,” said John Amos, president of SkyTruth, which uses satellite imagery to raise awareness of environmental issues. “We’re down in the subtle and ambiguous weeds of human image analysis, where we desperately are trying to find patterns in what we’re seeing.”

Because it takes so long to thoroughly study satellite imagery over a large area, there was a gap between the time the photos were taken and the time it was decided that there might be something special in that area, even though the visual hunt was assisted by many worldwide volunteers scouring the photos.

What’s more, the search for Flight 370 has also has exposed the limits of radar. This may even be more disturbing, because radar is an old technology specifically designed (unlike satellite imaging) to detect planes that are where they shouldn’t be. That Flight 370 didn’t trigger more alarms is not a good sign, especially if it flew over land for some part of its rogue journey. Perhaps that was part of the motivation for the flight—to test the limits of radar, for future reference?

Rand Paul speaks at Berkeley

The New Neo Posted on by

And it seems to go rather well:

Delivering a rare speech for a Republican at this bastion of liberalism, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday was given multiple standing ovations by the left-wing audience after railing against government surveillance and warning the students: “Your right to privacy is under assault.”

This is a smart move by Paul. Get in there and state the things that would have an appeal to your audience, even if it’s a hostile audience. Libertarians have a message with an inherent attractiveness to the young, of course. Get in there and tell them who you are before the press tells them who you are.

Of course, the press reaches more people. But still—

And I’ve just noticed that most of my posts today have something to do with press coverage. Hmmm.

Michael Totten on Putin’s motives

The New Neo Posted on by

This seems reasonable to me:

Putin has a strategy. And it’s working.

What he most fears is that Ukraine might join NATO, removing yet another buffer state between himself and the West and kiboshing his plans for the Eurasian Union, a euphemism for a 21st century Russian empire. (Does anyone seriously believe Kazakhstan will be an equal partner with Moscow?)

Keeping his former Ukrainian vassal out of NATO will be easy now even if a militant anti-Russian firebrand comes to power in Kiev. The Crimean referendum””whether it was free and fair or rigged is no matter””creates a disputed territory conflict that will never be resolved in Ukraine’s favor. It will freeze and fester indefinitely. There isn’t a chance that NATO would accept a member that has a disputed territory conflict with Russia. No chance at all. Ukraine is as isolated as it could possibly be from the West without getting re-absorbed into Russia entirely.

Putin did the same thing to Georgia in 2008 when he lopped off the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and he did it for the same reason.

A similar dynamic fell into his lap in Moldova, the poor and battered country east of Romania. The far eastern Slavic region of (Latin) Moldova declared independence after the Soviet period and calls itself Transnistria.

The world does not recognize the existence of a state called Transnistria, which is perhaps just as well. It’s still basically Soviet. The hammer and sickle are right there on the flag. Its first president, Igor Smirnov, groomed himself into a dead-ringer for Vladimir Lenin.

Putin couldn’t care less about what happens in Transnistria, but he keeps Russian troops there because they ensure Moldova stays out of NATO.

That’s not one, not two, but three times Russia has pulled this stunt since the end of the Cold War. Putin is doing it to Ukraine because it worked in Moldova and Georgia.

Does the White House get news conference questions in advance?

The New Neo Posted on by

Maybe, although Carney has denied it.

It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if it happened. And Carney’s disclaimer is more or less irrelevant; he has no credibility left. However, it hardly matters if they get the questions ahead or not, because the MSM is so in league with this administration that the White House pretty much knows that it’s not going to really be challenged, either with difficult questions or with follow-ups to the answers it provides. The press is almost wholly under the administration’s thumb anyway.

So in essence, as a leading light of the Democratic Party would say, “What difference at this point does it make” whether they get the answers in advance or not? It would be merely a slight intensification of something we already know to be true.