De-extinction: should we do it?

The New Neo Posted on by

The NY Times Magazine has an article about the looming possibility of what’s called “de-extinction”—that is, bringing back extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, or something close to them. It seems to be within our grasp to bring to life a few individuals, anyway; it’s hard to believe that the flocks of gazillions that darkened the skies could be revived, because the habitat on which they depended has changed also.

I wrote the world “could” in the above sentence, but the more appropriate word might be “should.” Humans have brought science to the point where we can (or think we can) do a lot of things that used to be science fiction dreams, but should we? Science fiction, in addition to speculating about what might be possible someday, has usually dealt with the more philosophical question of how it would effect human beings and the world itself.

There are people with the idea that any creature that vanishes, especially a pretty bird like the passenger pigeon whose demise was in large measure the result of human predation, represents a tragedy at the hands of a guilty humankind—and that it follows that if humans can undo that tragedy, they should. But it ain’t necessarily so.

A group called “Retrieve and Restore” has scientific arguments for the process:

Just as the loss of a species decreases the richness of an ecosystem, the addition of new animals could achieve the opposite effect. The grazing habits of mammoths, for instance, might encourage the growth of a variety of grasses, which could help to protect the Arctic permafrost from melting ”” a benefit with global significance, as the Arctic permafrost contains two to three times as much carbon as the world’s rain forests. “We’ve framed it in terms of conservation,” Brand told me. “We’re bringing back the mammoth to restore the steppe in the Arctic.

Others who argue for de-extinction just think it would be cool.

Those who argue against it mount the habitat argument I mentioned above, as well as the idea of introducing opportunities for pathogens. Some conservationists are worried that de-extinction will inure the public to the idea of extinction, and that people will then start to see extinction as a temporary and reversible thing.

But by far the best argument against de-extinction, to my way of thinking, is the possibility of “unacceptable ecological or socioeconomic impacts.” The re-introduced creature could disrupt the ecology of the environment into which it is placed, in unforeseen ways. What’s more, these are not really clones; they are composites resulting from the insertion of the extinct animal’s DNA into an already-existing and somewhat-related species.

Even though the details are new, the dilemma is an old one: Frankenstein, Faust, Prometheus, the introduction of the dandelion into the Americas. Be careful what you wish for.

The lawless lawyer of the Obama administration

The New Neo Posted on by

Attorney General Eric Holder to state AGs: disregard your oaths of office. I did!:

Holder said state attorneys general do not have to enforce laws they disagree with, specifically when it comes to the issue of gay marriage.

“It is highly unusual for the United States attorney general to advise his state counterparts on how and when to refuse to defend state laws. But Mr. Holder said when laws touch on core constitutional issues like equal protection, an attorney general should apply the highest level of scrutiny before reaching a decision on whether to defend it. He said the decision should never be political or based on policy objections.”

That last sentence is Holder’s idea of an Orwellian joke.

To clarify what the law should be: a state attorney general is sworn to uphold and defend his/her state’s laws. If he/she can’t do that, resign. Better yet, stay and uphold one’s oath by defending the law competently in an appeal. That way the issue will have its day in a higher court with a proper defense, so that the higher court can decide the law’s constitutionality and determine how that particular case stands in terms of a “core constitutional issue” such as equal protection.

An AG is not a judge. If an AG wants to become an appeals court judge and decide such questions, he/she is free to attempt to do so. AGs have some discretion, of course, in the cases they choose to prosecute in their own state. But they should not have discretion in choosing whether or not to defend a duly-passed and never-declared-unconstitutional law of their own state. And the AG of the US should not be encouraging them to choose not to defend such laws, either.

Eric Holder knows that. And the fact that he is ignoring it, and dictating otherwise to state AGs (a highly unusual action for a US Attorney General, as even the NY Times admits), is in fact “political and based on policy objections.”

Disgraceful. And yet so typical of this administration.

Fukushima cancer risk negligible

The New Neo Posted on by

It turns out that the amount of radiation exposure from the Fukushima reactor accident and any resultant projected increase in cancer cases has been minimal.

But people in the comments section at the article refuse to believe this, so strong is the assumption that it must be otherwise.

My previous, fairly lengthy article on the real health consequences of Chernobyl et. al., can be found here. Fukushima, of course, involved a much smaller amount of radiation exposure.

So much of what people are certain they know is actually wrong. The after-the-fact facts don’t seem to ever reach them. This seems to me to be a combination of media hype, scientific illiteracy, and how difficult it is to change one’s mind about something, even when preconceptions are confronted by evidence.

D’Souza versus other campaign finance cases

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I originally wrote some of this as part of a comment of mine, but I thought I’d highlight it in a post of its own.]

The D’Souza case has sent a chill up the spines of conservatives and other Obama opponents, exactly as it probably was intended to do. The talking point about the case from the left is that, of course, there’s nothing special about D’Souza and that he is not the subject of special “consideration” in being prosecuted for this offense. Others have been so prosecuted—including, for example, Hillary Clinton contributor William Danielczyk.

But the Danielczyk case is not really parallel to the D’Souza case. The similarity is that campaign contributions were involved, and straw donors. However, the Danielczyk case involved direct corporate contributions (which have been banned for a century), ten times as much money as with D’Souza, as well as many more people:

Prosecutors had accused Danielczyk and Biagi of lining up individual donors to contribute to former secretary of state Clinton’s senate and presidential campaigns in 2006 and 2008, then reimbursing them with money from Galen. They used at least 35 other employees or friends to disguise more than $186,000 in contributions, then paid back the so-called straw donors with money from Galen’s corporate coffers, court filings show.

A better comparison to the D’Souza case would be the Pierce O’Donnell case. Here are the facts in O’Donnell:

O’Donnell was indicted in 2007 and charged with arranging “conduit contributions” to John Edwards’ presidential campaign. O’Donnell was accused of working with an unnamed co-conspirator to solicit contributions for Edwards from employees from O’Donnell’s law firm, with the promise to reimburse them for the contributions. In all, O’Donnell and his co-conspirator raised $26,000 in conduit contributions, according to the grand jury’s indictment.

But O’Donnell was allowed to plead guilty to misdemeanors and got by with basically a wrist slap. And in fact, it was his second campaign finance offense, not his first (see this), which may explain why authorities decided to prosecute him.

So, cases such as D’Souza’s are indeed sometimes prosecuted. Accent is on the “sometimes.” In fact, compared to the frequency of the offense itself, one can assume that they are probably quite rare. But there’s no doubt that sometimes Democrats are prosecuted as well as Republicans, and that it can be hard to know what motivates any particular prosecution.

However, see this for an overview:

Dominic Gentile of Gordon Silver, who represented Nevada campaign finance defendant Harvey Whittemore, conducted exhaustive research on so-called conduit payments of the sort D’Souza is accused of making. In Whittemore’s sentencing memo, he documented civil and criminal penalties in “straw donor” cases. “Twenty thousand dollars?” Gentile told me. “I’ve never heard of a $20,000 criminal case” for campaign finance violations.” And at D’Souza’s arraignment Friday in Manhattan federal court, his own lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, told U.S. District Judge Richard Berman that whatever D’Souza did, his conduct wasn’t criminal.

So even if one concedes that D’Souza was guilty, he is not guilty as charged. The charge is excessive and highly unusual.

Would there have been the same sort of headlines had D’Souza been charged with a misdemeanor? I doubt it, although the MSM would still have made the most of it. But criminal charges are so much more effective, and how many people pay attention to these fine distinctions?

Perhaps the goal (other than tarnishing D’Souza) is to make him plead guilty to a misdemeanor in some sort of plea bargain. That would at least make the punishment fit the crime, although there would always be the added punishment of harming his reputation. But if he is guilty and copped a plea to a misdemeanor, at least that would be roughly equivalent to what happened to other people (such as lawyer Tab Turner) under somewhat similar circumstances.

Note that, as in the O’Donnell and Danielczyk cases, Turner solicited the contributions from co-workers or employees. In addition, Turner (as in Danielczyk) used corporate funds for the reimbursement of the straw donors. Turner, like O’Donnell, was also a lawyer:

Tab Turner solicited four $2,000 contributions from his co-workers at Little Rock law firm Turner & Associates in January 2003 and illegally reimbursed them for their contributions using a company credit card, according to the FEC. He also used a company credit card to make an illegal campaign contribution in his own name and to pay for various campaign expenses. Federal law prohibits donors from making contributions in others’ names and prohibits direct corporate contributions to a federal candidate.

I’ve been having difficulty finding the names/status of the people D’Souza is alleged to have involved as straw donors. But so far I have found no evidence his actions involved a corporation, corporate funds, or co-workers or employees. If there is no such involvement, that would further bolster the argument that D’Souza should be charged with a lesser offense, not a greater one, than the others, and would support the idea of political motivated prosecution/persecution—or, at the very least, politically motivated overcharging.

The latest salvo in the war to discredit Scott Walker…

The New Neo Posted on by

…would be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that this sort of stuff works.

First let’s look at the offense, which occurred in 1988 while Walker was running for student body president at Marquette University. Yes, you heard that right:

By speaking before a meeting of the Delta Chi fraternity Jan. 24, Walker, an arts and sciences sophomore, violated the rule which states, “No campaigning may begin before a candidate is registered,” the committee ruled…

At the meeting, according to a student in attendance, Walker asked the fraternity members, “What can ASMU do for the Inter-Fraternity council?” and told them he intended to run for president of ASMU in a few weeks.

There’s more, some of it involving the improper distribution of flyers (under doors at the Y) by a supporter.

How does this sort of thing work? Well, read the comments at the article, for starters. The first thing it does is rally the troops for a rousing good anti-Walker hate-and-mockery fest. Walker is obviously crooked as the day is long, and a Koch Brothers tool as well (not that the brothers had anything to do with his campaign back in college, but they’re so evil that they must be brought in somehow).

The second way it works is by innuendo, because the article clearly links Walker’s behavior with the email problems some of his underlings have had more recently, the ones he was cleared of any involvement with or culpability for. What’s the link? Why, he’s blaming things on subordinates, you know. And the article further links all of this with Christie and Bridgegate, in a vast and nefarious right-wing loosely-connected-yet-dangerous web of corruption.

Never mind the parallels that could be drawn to Obama’s early career and his presidency, acts and denials and buck-passing so much worse that they belong in another realm. Never mind.

One other thing that comes up fairly early in the comments section of the article is mockery for Walker because he did not actually get his college degree. You can bet that little bit of elitist glee will surface, big time, if Walker ever does run for president.

But all of this is not just preaching to the choir. The whole thing also works on the low information voter, who (outside Wisconsin) doesn’t know much about Walker yet and might even like him if he/she learned something about him. Might even vote for him, for goodness’ sake. So the idea is to get in on the ground floor, to brand Walker as corrupt and get people to form a negative opinion of him before they know much else.

It works. The template, of course, is what happened to Sarah Palin at the hands of Democrats and the MSM during the campaign of 2008. I saw and heard it occur in real time, and it happened quickly and was incredibly effective.

They are starting earlier now, that’s all. And although Walker’s life doesn’t give them much ammunition, they will find what they can and make the most of it.

RIP Harold Ramis

The New Neo Posted on by

Funny, funny guy Harold Ramis has died at 69.

I wasn’t a big “Ghostbusters” or “Caddyshack” fan. So sue me. But I’m one of the biggest “Groundhog Day” fans in the world. If Ramis had only helped to provide the world with that one movie I’d be intensely grateful. But he was prolific in directing, writing, and acting in a long string of films that gave extraordinary pleasure to so many people. Let’s include “Animal House,” of course.

Here’s a New Yorker profile from a few years ago.

And although this interview unfortunately can’t embedded, if you click on it and watch, you’ll get an idea of Ramis’ personality as well as some of his thoughts on “Groundhog Day.”

RIP.

The bell tolls not just for D’Souza

The New Neo Posted on by

The D’Souza case: a warning to all who would challenge or offend Obama. You’ll be next.

The activities with which he’s charged are unlikely to have been uncovered in a “routine review,” as John Hinderaker writes at Powerline:

Here is a prediction: the four [Republican] senators will never get coherent answers to their questions. In particular, they will never get a truthful answer to question number four, “How and why was this particular review initiated?” I think the U.S. Attorney’s claim that D’Souza’s prosecution resulted from a “routine review” of FEC filings by FBI agents was a lie, for these reasons: 1) I don’t believe that the FBI carries out such “routine reviews.” 2) Routinely reviewing FEC filings would be a colossal waste of time for FBI agents. 3) A “routine review” of filings relating to the New York Senate race in question would not have generated any suspicion with regard to D’Souza. The violation with which he is charged would not have been revealed by a “routine review,” but would have required further digging to discover relationships between D’Souza and the friends for whom he allegedly reimbursed campaign donations. 4) Felony prosecutions for the sort of violation with which D’Souza is charged are unheard of. 5) If the FBI conducted a “routine review” of contributions to President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, particularly online donations, they would find many obvious violations, like my contribution in the name of “Illegal Contributor,” residence, Stillwater State Prison, Stillwater, Minnesota”“a donation that was returned by the Obama campaign after I wrote about it here on Power Line. Mine was one of many contributions to the Obama campaign, the illegality of which would, in fact, be disclosed by a “routine review.” Yet there have been no prosecutions arising out of any such investigation, because there has been no such investigation.

And here’s an excellent comment to Hinderaker’s post:

This stuff is scary and I suspect it chills the enthusiasm of backers of conservative causes and candidates. Even more scary is the fact most of the media haven’t covered it. I suspect the percentage of Americans who know about the political prosecution of D’Souza, the federal attack on Gibson Guitars, the multiple federal bureaucracies bullying Catherine Engelbrecht and others is very small. Without heavy news coverage of these events and the potential public outcry it “should” generate, there is little hope of stopping this stuff. Are there NO Democrats who are appalled by this or are they just as scared as the Republicans or are they all totally in the tank for a totalitarian leftist government (or should I say regime)?

I think it’s option 3 for most Democratic pundits and politicians: “totally in the tank.” For regular liberal folk, most are just not aware. But I fear that if they were to become aware they would shrug, because it’s done by their guys. “Taking the gloves off” and all that.

It turns out that most people aren’t that concerned with their own liberty, until they really and truly lose it. Even then, not enough are concerned.

Obama has a long, long history—in fact, his entire political history—of using legal means to destroy and/or discourage his opponents. By “legal” I don’t just mean “not against the law;” I mean using the legal system and the law itself, as in lawsuits or challenges to petition signatures (scroll down to the second comment at the link to find the text of the article I’m talking about). I also mean legal proceedings initiated by others, which Obama can use to harm his opponents by making sure that hidden and private information that is potentially embarrassing (for example, sealed divorce proceedings) becomes public.

Obama has always been dangerous in just this fashion. Too bad Americans haven’t paid much attention to his history.

The pseudoscience of Whole Foods

The New Neo Posted on by

Whole Foods peddles a lot of stuff that makes upscale liberals feel good about themselves but has little evidence to back it up as especially healthful.

But Whole Foods continues to rake it in. That’s because, IMHO, Whole Foods is actually a place where the health-conscious can go to get really decadent food and not feel so bad about it. Much of what is sold there is dessert that’s every bit as fat-filled and sugar-laden as anywhere, but it looks beautiful and most of it tastes pretty darn good and after all, we bought it at Whole Foods, so the calorie count doesn’t matter.

I am as guilty as the next person, although my relative but not absolute distance from a Whole Foods protects me somewhat:

Yesterday I went to Whole Foods.

I don’t live very close to one. But not too very far away, either. Perhaps just right (in the Goldilocks sense), because any closer and I’d be a lot poorer and a lot fatter, and any further away and I’d be sadder.

Yesterday I succumbed, as I sometimes do, to the seductive call of a piece of Whole Foods almond cream cake. After I’d partaken of its delicately perfumed, almond scented, moist and tender””well, you get the idea””it occurred to me that, unlike its policy with much of the rest of its food, Whole Foods is mum on the calorie content.

That stuff is ambrosia. I’d better stop writing right now before I get a yen for it that I’ll need to satisfy.

Will Russia let Ukraine go?

The New Neo Posted on by

What’s going on in Ukraine, and what’s likely to happen next? Here’s one analysis:

A real democracy in Ukraine is an existential threat to the entire system that Vladimir Putin has built since 2000. Ironically because Putin is right ”“ most Russians regard Ukraine as a kin state, or not really a different state at all. They are used to stepping in tandem; so if something changes in Ukraine, why not in Russia too? And now the dominoes might fall in the other direction…

…[T]he new government in Ukraine, however it’s made up, will be given the briefest of ritualistic honeymoons before Russia uses every instrument at its disposal to try to make it fail. Unfortunately, Russia holds most of the economic cards. Ukraine’s coffers are almost empty, and the old guard is busy looting what is left. It has less than $18bn (£10.9bn) in hard currency reserves, its currency is dropping and immediate debt-repayment needs are more than $10bn.

Russia tied Ukraine to a $15bn bailout deal in December, which is parcelled out by the month to maximise leverage, and periodically suspended whenever the opposition looked like getting the upper hand. But Russia’s real aim was to provide just enough money to support the old semi-authoritarian system (helping Viktor Yanukovych pay the police) and keep Ukrainian society post-Soviet, that is, still dependent on government. So Ukraine’s new leaders will have to be honest and say their aim is to dismantle both. They cannot declare victory now, but will have to plead for popular support during what will be two or three difficult years.

The new Ukraine will pay more for gas, which will be regularly cut off for “technical reasons”. Russia’s crazy “food safety” agency will declare that everything that comes out of Ukraine is radioactive. Ukrainian migrant workers will be sent home now they have finished helping to rebuild Sochi.

Worst of all, Russia will work hard to try to re-corrupt the political system.

I freely admit that I know very little about Ukraine—including the fact that until recently I kept calling it the Ukraine. But the above seems credible to me.

Hagel starts doing what he was hired for

The New Neo Posted on by

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is set to announce the administration’s intent to make the biggest cuts in decades to the US military, returning it to its smallest size since 1940.

I get tired of writing “this is no surprise.” But this is definitely no surprise.

Notice that I’m not saying nothing in the military budget should be cut. No doubt there are plenty of things that could go in a cost-saving move. But the military should not be asked to bear almost all the sacrifices. And we cannot trust this administration to do what’s in our best interests in terms of the military. In fact, we can trust it to want to weaken our ability to wage war, and strengthen our resemblance to western Europe in every way.

Our enemies are well aware of this, of course.

The next question is what Congress will do—that’s assuming that Congress is still involved, and that Obama’s pen and phone won’t end up finessing Congress if he doesn’t get the cuts he wants. After all, what’s to keep him from switching some monies around? Who’s going to stop him?

Circle dancing: the media is the message

The New Neo Posted on by

The Anchoress has a lot to say about the Obama’s administration’s proposal to use the FCC to “study” the newsrooms:

…[The administration is] thinking no one in the mainstream press has asked them a difficult or challenging question in 7 years, so why would they start now…

The biggest problem in our nation is not the Democrats, or the Republicans; it is not the Obama Administration, just as it wasn’t the Bush Administration, and it won’t be future Clinton or Warren Administrations. Our biggest problem is that the press has voluntarily surrendered its freedoms for the sake of idols and ideologies..

Because this is true, our government is either factionalized, fictionalized and bombarded with daily media outrage and indignation, or it is given an utterly free pass, with no accountability required…

I’ve been saying this for a long time. We’ve all been saying if for a long time, but the Anchoress says it especially well (please read the whole thing). I would only add that the press is only one half of the equation; the other half is a receptive audience that lacks the historic and/or critically aware background to evaluate what it reads, or perhaps even to pay much attention.

I read the liberal press’ spin on something, and then I hear it parroted back by a group of acquaintances of mine, who all nod their heads in synchrony and agreement. And yet if I ask them a few questions about something that reflects poorly on liberals or the administration, something only the right has covered, they’ve never even heard of it and don’t want to hear of it. If a tree falls in the conservative forest, does anyone other than conservatives hear it?

Even if you try to mention any particular offense (for example, the recent effort re the FCC monitoring newsrooms, with which I began this post), its significance is only really understood in context. It’s the totality of the picture that is especially alarming. But it’s the totality that is especially hidden, and even if news of one or two suspicious actions of this administration manages to seep through the information barrier, without the whole picture a conservative’s reaction can easily sound paranoid to the liberal listener. That is by design.

Some people wonder why I bother to write about the egregious bias of the press anymore. After all, there’s nothing new there, and what good does it do to belabor the fact? I do it because the press continues to be one of the most important things in our lives, and has the power to shape our future.

In closing, I’ll reprint something I’ve posted here before. It’s the words of the Czech author Milan Kundera, from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which he wrote in the late 70s:

Circle dancing is magic. It speaks to us through the millennia from the depths of human memory. Madame Raphael had cut the picture out of the magazine and would stare at it and dream. She too longed to dance in a ring. All her life she had looked for a group of people she could hold hands with and dance with in a ring. First she looked for them in the Methodist Church (her father was a religious fanatic), then in the Communist Party, then among the Trotskyites, then in the anti-abortion movement (A child has a right to life!), then in the pro-abortion movement (A woman has a right to her body!); she looked for them among the Marxists, the psychoanalysts, and the structuralists; she looked for them in Lenin, Zen Buddhism, Mao Tse-tung, yogis, the nouveau roman, Brechtian theater, the theater of panic; and finally she hoped she could at least become one with her students, which meant she always forced them to think and say exactly what she thought and said, and together they formed a single body and a single soul, a single ring and a single dance.

Apparently, Carina Kolodny was placed in a time capsule in 1958…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and it was just opened.

On her release, she appears to have made the happy discovery that gay marriage is here, and that furthermore it will save us in the following manner:

As same-sex couples marry, they will be forced to re-imagine many tenets of your “traditional marriage.” In doing so, they will face a series of complicated questions:

Should one of us change our last name? And if so, who?

Should we have kids? Do we want to have kids? How do we want to have kids? Whose last name do our kids take?

How about housework, work-work, childcare? How do we assign these roles equitably? How do we cultivate a partnership that honors each of our professional and personal ambitions?

As questions continually arise, heterosexual couples will take notice — and be forced to address how much “traditional marriage” is built on gender roles and perpetuates a nauseating inequality that has no place in 2014.

Having just arrived in the year 2014, Carina can be forgiven for not realizing that these are topics about which heterosexual men and women have been duking it out ad nauseam, with great and voluble intensity, in speech and in print, for over fifty years. Despite this, there has been no unanimity or resolution on the subjects, although one can hardly say the issues are the least bit unexamined.

I know quite a few gay and lesbian couples, and I can’t say I ever noticed they don’t fight over the usual things like who will do the dishes and which name to give the kiddies and whose job should take precedence. What’s more, when I studied domestic abuse in grad school I learned that—somewhat surprisingly, since gender differences were originally thought to be part of the impetus—gays even have very similar rates of domestic violence compared to heterosexual couples. We are far more the same than we are different, it seems.

But Carina believes that gay married couples have a magically better approach to the questions she lists, because there will be no gender-based power struggles between them, and their wonderful influence will seep into the lives of heterosexuals and affect them for the better, ushering in the Brave New World of which Carina dreams.

And that’s why Carina has never before admitted that yes, gay marriage will influence straight marriage:

So yes, I told a white lie while soldiering on toward this inevitable outcome. I bit my lip in favor of dignity and equality — not just for the LGBTQ community but for heterosexual women. I have done nothing for which I am ashamed.

…I believe that marriage equality will stomp out the remaining misogyny that you call “tradition.”
And that’s a win, not just for the LGBTQ community but for heterosexual women and the heterosexual men who see them as equals.

Carina Kolodny isn’t a writer for the Onion. She a real live person and she’s very, very serious. What she doesn’t know about marriage—heterosexual and gay—could fill a book. And it probably will some day.