More lies and lying liars

The New Neo Posted on by

DrewM. at Ace’s takes on that “Lie of the Year” Romney supposedly told, and why it wasn’t actually a lie, much less “of the Year.”

That PolitiFact piece naming Romney’s ad the Lie of the Year was the featured story when I went to my Yahoo email last night, by the way. How many people do you think it reached?

And although Ace’s blog is very popular and gets excellent traffic (for a blog), how many people do you think that refutation of PolitiFact’s claim reached? No contest, right?

So PolitiFact’s “facts” get more than halfway around the world, and become truths in people’s minds: Romney=Liar.

Is Christie a big fat liar?

The New Neo Posted on by

Ann Althouse thinks so.

When asked by Barbara Walters why he’s so overweight, Christie answered, “If I could figure that out, I’d fix it.” Althouse comments:

Then he says it doesn’t mean he’s not capable of serving as President. But, come on, when you’re President, all the world’s problems are yours, and you’d better be good at figuring out what’s wrong. These problems are much more complicated than why he’s fat! He not just a bit chubby. He’s very fat. Whatever the subtleties of why people get fat, a good percentage of what he’s carting around has got to be from just plain gorging himself. How can he sit there with a straight, sincere face and say “If I could figure out why, I’d fix it”? At least we have video showing us how he looks when he’s lying.

Christie may be big, and there’s no doubt he’s fat, but the jury’s out on whether or not he’s a liar, and my guess is that he’s not (at least, not on this point). “Whatever the subtleties of why people get fat,” a good percentage is not necessarily or invariably “from just plain gorging” themselves—unless you define “gorging” as anything over the amount they need to sustain a supposedly normal weight, which in the case of many (not all, but many) fat people can be a surprisingly low amount of food.

Yes indeed, in a very narrow (pun intended) sense, fat people do take in more than they burn. But why? And how much is that? I know quite a few fat people who eat no more and are not less active than the thin people I know. I’ve lived with thin roommates who cannot put on weight no matter how much they eat, which is already quite a bit. I’ve lived with heavy roommates who eat 1200 calories a day and can barely lose weight.

Of course, there are fat people who eat a lot more than average. They’re the people you see featured on TV programs where you can watch them having twenty hamburgers at a sitting. I have no idea whether Christie is one of them, but I tend to doubt it, especially with his schedule. Short of that type of true gorging situation, the “subtleties of why people get fat,” as Althouse puts it, are not only subtle but also poorly understood (although we’re learning more all the time), complex, and powerful factors for most people in their own personal fat-thin equation.

I’ve already written about my own efforts in this direction. I’ll recap by saying I’m not fat. But, like so many women, I’d like to lose ten or fifteen pounds to look my best. But to lose that weight it takes cutting back to ridiculously low levels of food intake (and in case you’re going to suggest I go on a lo-carb or paleo or other diet of that type—I have, many times, and they don’t work for me, and I find them singularly unpleasant as well, and I’ve written about it before). I’ve also noticed that if I eat a lot I’m only about seven pounds or so heavier than if I eat very little. My range seems to be very narrow, because my body seems to defend a certain weight quite tenaciously. And that was even true when I was young. When I was a dancer, I had to keep my intake to around 1000 calories a day, day after day, despite intense exercise, to achieve anywhere near the requisite thinness.

If you want to read some interesting articles on current theories about weight gain and the “why” of it, take a look at this. Also see this:

Like many other medical conditions, obesity is the result of an interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Polymorphisms in various genes controlling appetite and metabolism predispose to obesity under certain dietary conditions. The percentage of obesity that can be attributed to genetics varies widely, depending on the population examined, from 6% to 85%. As of 2006, more than 41 sites on the human genome have been linked to the development of obesity when a favorable environment is present….Numerous studies of laboratory rodents provide strong evidence that genetics plays an important role in obesity.

And then there’s this:

And this.

As well as this:

When the body needs food, rising levels of the hormone ghrelin, produced in the upper stomach and pancreas, signal the brain and trigger a desire to eat. At the end of a meal, specialized endocrine cells in the wall of the small intestine release other hormones (like cholecystokinin, glucagon-like peptide-1, and oxyntomodulin) that signal satiation. In obese individuals these signaling networks malfunctioned, Laferré¨re [an endocrinologist specializing in obestiy] knew, leaving them perpetually hungry.

“Perpetually hungry.” Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

And those are just a few random articles written for popular consumption. I could go on and on and on, and include the scientific literature as well. But I think the point is clear, which is that the “why” of obesity is not clear, for many if not most people suffering from it.

The shrinking milk market

The New Neo Posted on by

Apparently you do outgrow your need for milk; sales of milk in this country have been plummeting.

Well, you may or may not outgrow your need for it, but a lot of people outgrow their ability to digest it without a lot of discomfort. According to the article, one of the reasons for the milk sales decline is that the population has a lower percentage of children in it. I would add that it may also be that because of changing demographics, a growing percentage of children are lactose intolerant.

Lactose intolerance develops after the age of weaning in the majority of people worldwide. In fact, the ability to digest milk as an adult without experiencing any negative symptoms (gas, bloating, etc.) is the exception rather than the rule:

The frequency of decreased lactase activity ranges from 5% in northern Europe through 71% for Sicily to more than 90% in some African and Asian countries. This distribution is now thought to have been caused by recent natural selection favoring lactase persistant individuals in cultures that rely on dairy products. While it was first thought that this would mean that populations in Europe, India, and Africa had high frequencies of lactase persistence because of a particular mutation, it has now been shown that lactase persistence is caused by several independently occurring mutations.

As for me—well, I detest milk, and have ever since I was a very small child. You’d have to hold a gun to my head to get me to drink it. At some point in early adulthood, a somewhat sadistic doctor ordered a test during which I had to drink twelve ounces of lactose (milk sugar, the stuff lactose intolerant people can’t digest) on an empty stomach, and he then measured my rise in blood sugar afterward for several hours. There was no rise at all, meaning that I’m one of those people who lacks all ability to digest lactose (some people have a partial inability).

I will spare you a description of how I felt during the hours after I swilled down that abominable stuff. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.

So, are you a milk drinker?

Union thugs

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t written about this because others have done a good job of it, and there’s not much more to say. But I’m providing some links and a thread to discuss it, if you’ve a mind to.

I’ll just say that it’s no surprise that these things are happening. The stakes are high, the unions have been calling the shots for a long time, and they know Obama stands behind them and will not even condemn them, so they are emboldened:

At Legal Insurrection.

What Jay Carney has to say.

Jimmy Hoffa the Younger and “civil war.”

The perpetrator of this assault has been identified. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens to him.

And here’s a discussion of some of the details of right to work laws and what they actually do.

Okay, these spambots are getting scary now

The New Neo Posted on by

Spambots often come in waves. Most of them are caught by my spam filter (typically hundreds a day). But a few always get by and show up in the regular comments section. I delete them, but every now and then one amuses me and I feature it in a “spambot of the day” post. And sometimes there are a whole bunch that get by at once, usually from the same source (which, like most bots, is advertising another website, usually pushing a product or service).

That’s what happened earlier today. The product being promoted was a particular type of cellphone which shall remain nameless. But the strange thing was that, instead of the usual mindless spam, sometimes tangentially related but more often unrelated to the subject matter of the post on which it’s dumped, these were much more finely targeted and written in a way that made them sound more like real comments.

Example: on a thread entitled “The Periodic Table” (and here it is; it’s about, yes, the periodic table), I found the following. Unfinished, yet pertinent and all-too-human-sounding:

I can relate to your feelings about the periodic table, both in junior high science and beyond, but I can go further than that. As a kid growing up, we had various old games in the basement.

Well, I wish the bot had gone further than that, because I’d love to hear about those old games in the basement.

The very same bot (different names, but the same website was being advertised) made three comments on a post of mine entitled “Ah, Brave New World,” in which I’d linked to this article about a woman who wrote a book discussing the future of reproduction without sex. Here are the bot’s three comments, all posted under different but related names:

You listening, Lord? I’m ready to turn Amish now.

In fact, I think I’d prefer it to the world this woman envisions.

Talk about narcissism gone beserk! Thank you, thank you God I’m not a child of these people.

So, here’s my question: did the bot read the post and compose those rather on point comments (with a bit of humor thrown in, too) to fit it? Is the bot therefore an actual person? Or has the program automatically generating these things become that sophisticated?

Ah, Brave New World indeed!

[UPDATE: I just found some more, same source, but they came in earlier today. This one was on a post of mine titled “Netflix thinks,” and it mentions the film “Fiddler on the Roof.” The bot had this to say (and I am not making this up, believe me):

Speaking of Zero Mostel, we just threw out a toilet seat he had autographed. It said “Zero Mostel shat here” and had a cartoon sketch of himself. He “created” it when he played my father-in-law’s tent theater, loafing through Tevye, and still bringing the house down.

Next up, same bot on same post:

The sort of statistical data mining used by Netflix, Amazon, and other online merchants is a rather inexact science, but they keep using it because it does work a lot of the time. Of course, it’s only as good as the data sets that they are working with

My guess is that whoever is generating this particular bot has it down to a more exact science.]

Movies have become torture

The New Neo Posted on by

I pretty much stopped going to the movies in theaters quite some time ago, and I don’t even watch many at home any more. I don’t remember when the turning point was, but I do know that at some point the violence and the empty soulless sex got to me. I never knew when I would be assaulted by some dreadful scene that, once viewed, could not be unviewed. And all in the service of stories that had no emotional resonance for me.

There were exceptions, great exceptions. One of my absolute favorite movies is “Groundhog Day,” for example—which may not count, because it already is an archaic film I guess, since it was made in 1993. I also thought this one from 2006 was very fine, although I’m mainly talking about Hollywood and that was a German production.

Those are the only really really good movies of the last twenty years that come to mind at the moment, although there are probably others. There must be others.

But I’ll not be going to the new movie “Zero Dark Thirty” which is presently the talk of the blogosphere, a film about the CIA and finding Bin Laden that features harrowing scenes of the CIA torturing its poor interrogees. It’s not just the violence, either, it’s the metaphoric violence done to history, in which real events are distorted and the film narrative comes to replace reality in so many people’s minds.

As an antidote, perhaps I’ll take a look at this recent documentary, suggested by commenter “M of Hollywood,” who writes:

At the risk of sounding racist, note how these children have picked up and ennobled music of old white guys and made it their own. We must not let those who enthrone the cultural coarseners in DC and Hollowood to make us think poorly of ourselves. We desire to allow a world that allows the human soul: this is the fervent aspiration of human kind, the aspiration that we (mistakenly) thought was boldly held by the “GOP.” Ha. Something new will emerge ”“ maybe not in my lifetime, but for life on the planet to go on, it will. There is too much God in us to be extinguished.

Here’s the trailer:

I’ve heard instruments with better tone, and of course the strings and bows seem to be standard ones—and instead of making the movie they could probably have just gotten the kids some regular instruments with the money.

But still—very fine, isn’t it?

[NOTE: For anyone who wants to know what I’ve already written about my views on actual (non-movie) torture, see this and this.]

Please, convince me I’m wrong here

The New Neo Posted on by

Okay, I’ll get this Hillary Clinton thing over with.

I don’t usually go out on a limb with predictions this way, but I believe she will run in 2016, and that she has an excellent chance of winning. Here’s why (skip the rest if you don’t want to get depressed).

If you think Hillary is tired, think again. The prospect of becoming the first woman president will infuse her with energy like nothing else has before. Sixty-nine (in 2016) is not all that old for a woman in terms of life expectancy, and her parents lived to be 82 (father) and 92 (mother), a pretty good run for members of their generation.

She looks too old and worn out, you say? Ah, but she’s beyond fashion and into gravitas. She’s going for the dignified elder stateswoman look, and she’s nailed it (think Golda Meir, think Indira Gandhi). What’s more, she’s not trying to appeal to men to be elected. Her coalition will be the exact same one Obama assembled: the black vote in the 90-something percent range (which recent Democratic nominees have all received), the lion’s share of Hispanics, and women.

Ah, women. It’s women in particular who will vote for Hillary in even greater numbers than they did for Obama, and that’s saying a lot. To liberal and moderate women she is a role model, a hero(ine), an intrepid trailblazer (somewhat ironic, since her path to political prominence came through the traditional female route of linkage to a powerful male), and highly-respected star. Men would have to vote against her in a phalanx to overcome that advantage—and they won’t.

It was puzzling when Hillary agreed to become Obama’s Secretary of State after all the seeming bad blood between them back in 2008. But perhaps the explanation is that there was a “you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” agreement between them. Hillary would get to burnish her resume with one thing it seemed to lack, significant foreign policy experience (Secretary of State isn’t usually an entry-level job for that, but so be it). Now that it’s been sufficiently polished—and she has carefully stayed away from getting too caught up in the Benghazi fracas, leaving Susan Rice in the position of being the administration’s Benghazi shill rather than the more obviously responsible Hillary—she’s ready. After obediently doing his bidding as Secretary of State, as well as husband Bill going on the stump and lending his formidable campaign skills to help re-elect Obama, the bargain is that in 2016 Obama will return the favor by anointing her his successor and campaigning for her.

Obviously I don’t have any inside info; that’s all speculation on my part. But it’s the one thing that makes sense to me in terms of why Hillary agreed to be Secretary of State, and Obama’s lackey, in the first place. If so, it was a canny move.

Of course, even if that was the deal between them, there was never any guarantee that Obama wouldn’t renege on it. But why would he, and what else has he got to do? Being the elder (although younger-than-Hillary) statesman helping to elect the next Democratic president to carry on his legacy and glorify his reputation could be appealing to him at that point, and although there are those who think Michelle Obama might want the job of president instead of Hillary, he is probably too realistic to believe that a complete political neophyte who has never held any elective office could win, even if she is his wife.

As for Hillary’s other potential rivals on the Democratic side, is there anyone on the horizon with anything near her combination of White House experience, Senate experience, and foreign policy experience? Forget the question of what she’s actually accomplished during all those years. As we’ve learned from Obama’s election, first term, and re-election, a record of positive accomplishments is no longer necessary for the job.

Republicans could try to play the identity politics game in return. You bid one female? We’ll raise you a female and Hispanic–which would be Susana Martinez, Republican governor of New Mexico, up for re-election in 2014. Or of course we have Marco Rubio, a Hispanic but a male. There’s also Condi Rice, who would present the interesting prospect of a double-female-former-Sceretary-of-State contest, although it’s highly doubtful Rice would choose to run. Nikki Haley has a chance, too, but although she’s a woman, the idea of electing the first Sikh president is probably only slightly more compelling than the idea of the first Mormon president was in 2012. Same for Bobby Jindal (not a woman), who is also of Indian extraction but is a Christian convert.

The American electorate appears to be highly motivated to elect “firsts” these days. It’s very likely that the prospect of electing the first black president was responsible for at least some of Obama’s initial attraction, and that same “first” impulse would be operating strongly for Hillary in 2016. And speaking of firsts, she would also be the first former First Lady elected. What’s more, Bill is very popular right now, and I bet he would love being the first First Man, not to mention the first former president to hold the position.

Remember, though, that GOP women (or GOP Hispanics or blacks) aren’t real women (or real Hispanics or real blacks).

I’ve got a question

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m still relatively new to intense focus on this political game, especially the conservative side of it. So I’m asking you older hands a question: what is it about Republicans that makes them so unable to fight for what they say they believe?

I’m with Bryan Preston on this, and I’m beginning to understand why it is that so many conservatives are so disgusted with what they call “establishment Republicans.”

Oh, I know we’re talking about politicians here, and politicians are out for themselves for the most part, and want to stay in Washington, and suck up to power. But somehow the Democratic politicians seem to hang together and fight—dirty, if necessary—for what they want. The Republicans don’t even fight clean.

Are they really stealth Democrats?

Casting about for post-election topics

The New Neo Posted on by

Ever since the election it’s been harder to write this blog. Not that there’s any lack of topics—au contraire; the ideas come fast and furious. I’ve got so many unfinished drafts for new posts that it feels overwhelming.

Why so many unfinished? Well, they’re all pretty gloomy. And somewhat redundant, in a way. I’m torn between putting them all out there and depressing my readers, and writing about fluff or art or so many of the other things that interest me and are more pleasant topics to take up.

For example, not long after the election it occurred to me that Hillary Clinton would be unbeatable in 2016, and why. I wrote a big long (as yet unfinished) draft about it, and was waiting for a slow day to publish it. While I waited, “Hillary’s unstoppable in 2016” seems to have become the meme du jour. So others beat me to it.

I still might publish it some time. But what stays my hand even now is that it may just be more of the same “woe is us, all is lost” business that doesn’t seem the least bit helpful. I’d rather point to possible solutions (for Hillary’s candidacy, by the way, that might be trumping her as the possible “First Female President” with the possible “First Female and Hispanic President Combined, and Younger As Well” card, in the form of Susana Martinez. Remember, you heard it here first—I think.)

And boy, how I hate identity politics, and how I hate playing that game. And maybe it’s a losing one. But Martinez has a lot going for her in addition to being a Hispanic woman: articulate, personable, and even charismatic. I can already see the coming Democratic attack though: she’s pro-life, anti same-sex marriage, and against medical marijuana.

I know this is a rambling post. But I’m in a rambling mood. And I don’t see what purpose it serves to continually beat our breasts and rend our garments. I’d rather cast about for solutions, and also enjoy a bit of levity and distraction in the meantime. But sometimes I think people think that means I don’t get how dire things are.

I get it. Believe me, I get it.

[ADDENDUM: I just saw this. Pretty relevant.]

Two great articles by Jay Nordlinger

The New Neo Posted on by

Read this one first (and by the way, this foundation that he mentions sounds like a very worthy cause, and should be more well-known).

Then take in this one.

So much to think about there. But the following quote had particular resonance for me, because I often find myself in this “emperor’s new clothes” position regarding performances:

At the Salzburg Festival, in particular, people will say to me, “Wasn’t that a wonderful production?” (This will refer to an opera production.) I’ll say, “No, actually. I thought it was abominable, a disgrace. It did violence to the score and the libretto. The director hijacked the opera. It made no artistic sense whatsoever.”

They’ll say, “Really? I think so too.”

You see, all they needed to know was that it was okay to stand up to the commissars ”” not even to stand up to them, merely to disagree with them, in private. They needed to know that it was okay to think what they actually thought. They needed someone to say, “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

People are terrified of being thought uncool, conservative, square, not with-it. Bold others can help them get over their terror.

A lot of people know it’s wrong that junior-high kids are screwing one another. They just need to know that it’s all right to think that ”” that they are not bad, repressive people.

I have a friend who works for a celebrity. The celebrity often mouths left-wing views. Has all the left-wing attitudes and poses. My friend says, “It’s not that he has come to these views on his own. They were not formed from years of study, thinking, and experience. He’s just impressionable. If it were cool in his circles to be right-wing, that’s what he’d be.”

Exactly.

Nordlinger goes on to talk about people coming out to him and to others as secret conservatives. I’ve had that happen to me many times, both in groups (especially of women) in which I’ve spoken out as the sole conservative voice, and in emails I’ve received from people in the arts and/or academia. People come up to me and tell me, in a voice no one else can hear (or in emails), that they agree with me but must keep it quiet because of fear of the consequences. As many times as it’s happened, it remains a shock to learn of the extent and reach of the thought police out there.

We all need to keep speaking out as conservatives, in order to show others that we don’t have horns and are quite intelligent and well-informed (I was once told by a liberal man I had just met, in tones of stunned disbelief, “I can’t believe it; you’re so intelligent, and yet you’re a conservative!”). This is especially true of those in academia and the arts. Their fear, of course, is job loss and/or lack of promotion as much as social ostracism. Both are, unfortunately, very real risks.

[NOTE: Sometimes people assume that in my private life my friends and family don’t know about my politics. I just want to make it clear that they do. I don’t always speak up in more public ways—such as, for example, at parties or in groups where I don’t know people all that well. It depends on the situation. But I often do, much to my social detriment. I’ve actually seen people who were previously cordial recoil in horror, even if all I’ve done is say I disagree with some viewpoint being expressed.]