Zimmerman case and second-degree murder

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the odd things about the latest announcement in the Zimmerman case is that the charge was second-degree murder. That’s much heftier than was expected, but it could have been done in order to temporarily placate those crying for Zimmerman’s blood. It doesn’t mean the charge will hold. Even the NY Times says:

Under second-degree murder, the jury must find that a death was caused by a criminal act “demonstrating a depraved mind without regard for human life,” said Eric Abrahamsen, a criminal defense lawyer in Tallahassee, reading from the state’s standard jury instructions. The maximum sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison; the minimum penalty under these charges is 25 years.

Dan Markel, a law professor at Florida State University, said he was “very surprised” by the severity of the charges “in light of the evidence that seems to have been brought to the attention of the public so far.” Many legal experts had predicted that Mr. Zimmerman would be charged with manslaughter.

The charge of second-degree murder also means that Mr. Zimmerman will not be entitled to be released on bail before his trial. Instead, his lawyer will be able to ask for what Florida calls an Arthur hearing, which can take place weeks after the arrest, to determine whether he should be allowed to post bond.

Jeff Weiner, a former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers who practices in Miami, said an Arthur hearing “is not a mini-trial, but it’s a very good preview of the evidence that the state has at this point.”

Mr. Weiner suggested that the prosecutor might have “overcharged” to retain the option, should she feel a murder conviction is slipping away, of asking the judge to instruct the jury to consider lesser offenses, like manslaughter. It is also possible, he said, that she might be trying to coax Mr. Zimmerman to the negotiating table to plead guilty to such a lesser charge. But, he added, it is impossible to say whether it is overly tough, since evidence has not yet been produced.

The case will almost certainly include a pretrial hearing to determine whether the state’s Stand Your Ground law, which grants broad protections to people who claim to have killed in self-defense, applies; if the judge finds that Mr. Zimmerman acted appropriately, the case will end there. If the judge decides that the protections of the law do not apply, the case will go forward.

George Zimmerman…

The New Neo Posted on by

…has been arrested and charged with 2nd degree murder.

You may have noticed that so far I have refrained from drawing any conclusions about Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence, because we just don’t know enough about the facts of the case. We still don’t. What we do know is that a prosecutor has considered the case against Zimmerman strong enough to arrest and charge him. And that this is going to continue to be a very divisive situation for a long time to come.

Special prosecutor Angela Corey announced the charges but would not discuss how she arrived at them or disclose other details of her investigation, saying: “That’s why we try cases in a courtroom.”

Second-degree murder is typically brought in cases when there is a fight or other confrontation that results in death but involves no premeditation to kill. It carries a mandatory minimum of 25 years behind bars when a gun is used…

Corey said the decision to bring charges was based on the facts and the law, declaring: “We do not prosecute by public pressure or by petition.”…

Corey repeatedly declined to answer questions about details in the case.

“So much information got released on this case that never should have been released. We have to protect this prosecution and this investigation for Trayvon, for George Zimmerman,” she said.

The following, however, is a ridiculous conclusion to come to, and typical of the sort of inflammatory comments that have been standard in this case right from the start:

“That indicates they have evidence (Zimmerman) was chasing Trayvon because he was black,” said Florida defense attorney Richard Hornsby.

Zimmerman could easily have been charged with second-degree murder without the issue of race coming into it at all. We just don’t know on what evidence the charges are based, and Corey is absolutely correct in trying to keep it that way at this point.

Right brain left brain, right and left

The New Neo Posted on by

There was a lot of discussion in this thread yesterday about liberals being right-brained and conservatives left-brained, and/or liberals “feeling” and conservatives “thinking.” I think that’s an oversimplification.

Sorry, but I know lots of very logical and rational liberals, very intelligent, with lots of practical experience in the real world. I think some of them keep their liberal politics separate from their conservative lives, and don’t see the two as clashing (that was true of me when I was a liberal). Still others are against conservatism because they see it as irrational rather than rational, an attempt to control people’s lives for religious reasons, or composed of people not believing in science in general (or in evolution, but instead that man was created by the deity 10,000 years ago). Also bigots.

And listen, let’s be frank: there are strains like that in conservatism. I see it all over the place in the blogsophere. Of course there’s plenty of bigotry on the left, too, and a different sort of anti-scientific thinking (that vaccinations cause autism, for example, or that the government purposely gave black people AIDS, or that the WTC could not have collapsed from the fire on 9/11). Over time, I happen to have observed more rational thinking in general on the right than on left, but not always by any means. And I happen to think that the right’s positions on the nature of man are much more on target, and that the right is more dedicated to individual liberty. But not everyone on the right conforms to that ideal.

Also, “left brain rationality, right brain feelings” is an enormous misunderstanding. People’s brains are organized differently and with more complexity. Lefties, for example (and now I’m referring to handedness, not politics!), can have speech centers in either side of the brain or both. Wiki may be only Wiki, but it’s correct on this score:

Broad generalizations are often made in popular psychology about one side or the other having characteristic labels such as “logical” or “creative”. These labels need to be treated carefully; although a lateral dominance is measurable, these characteristics are in fact existent in both sides, and experimental evidence provides little support for correlating the structural differences between the sides with functional differences…

While functions are lateralized, these are only a tendency. The trend across many individuals may also vary significantly as to how any specific function is implemented.

I don’t believe that politics is inherited, as I wrote in that thread yesterday. And I don’t subscribe to the idea that the difference between liberals and conservatives lies in brain lateralization, either. However, there may be some sort of trend for liberals to value feelings more highly, and to use them more when making decisions, and for conservatives to value rationality and use it more in making decisions. But even that difference is probably quite small.

There is some evidence for that here. If you look at the chart, based on the Myers-Briggs personality test, you’ll see that people categorized as “feeling” (the “F” dimension) seem to be more likely to be Democrats, and those characterized as “thinking” in their style (the “T” dimension) are more likely to be Republicans. But there are tons of exceptions and a great deal of overlap.

The personality

The New Neo Posted on by

I agree with this:

Romney’s personality is appropriate to the task [of running in 2012] because it’s so smooth and calming. It defies the stereotypes of button-pressing, Bible-thumping, government-hating conservatives, even as Romney exploits those issues in his rhetoric. That’s Mitt’s genius: even as he moves further to the right, moderate voters still believe he is one of them.

And that last sentence is the key to Romney’s problem with conservatives: even as he moves further to the right, conservative voters still believe he’s not one of them.

Is being gay a choice?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: There was some mention yesterday in the comments section about the question of whether being gay is a choice or not, which made me think it might be a good idea to clarify some of my thoughts on the matter.]

What do we really know about gay people and society at this point? Here is my own idiosyncratic summary:

(1) Being gay is neither is wholly biological nor wholly environmental, but most likely some roughly equal mix of the two.

(2) The predilection to be gay is not wholly a choice, although the act most definitely is. However, the only viable alternative for many or most gay people people is lifelong celibacy, an exceedingly difficult road.

Then there are bisexuals, people who report attractions to both sexes to a greater or lesser extent. For example, I’ve personally known two men who identify as mostly gay but who each were strongly attracted—and in fact in love with—a woman, whom they later married. In the first case the wife didn’t know of her husband’s bisexuality, and in the second she did.

In the first case, there was a divorce after a few years, when the husband decided he was so much more attracted to men than to his wife that the marriage could not work out over time. They were quite young and had no children, and she went on to marry someone else and have children by him.

In the second case, the marriage lasted very happily for many many decades and several children, till death did them part. During the marriage, the man was completely faithful to his wife and never strayed, with man or woman. But after her death he formed a stable, long-lasting relationship with a man.

I offer these examples not to say they are typical of the gay population (they are not), but to offer them as instances where the choice to live life as a heterosexual seemed possible, and in at least one instance of the two that choice seemed to work very nicely. But the possibility was predicted on the fact that, for this man, there was a woman to whom he was highly enough attracted to live a life with her. That is not the situation with the huge number of people who are predominantly gay rather than bisexual.

Attraction is a funny thing, whether for gays, bisexuals, or heterosexuals. We can’t will ourselves to be sexually attracted to and to love someone, no matter how nice that person may be, or how wonderful a spouse they might make, even if they love us and want us. And although we could will ourselves to live in a loveless, attractionless marriage, it’s hard to see whom that particular choice would benefit.

But when we are attracted, we also have a choice on how to act. For heterosexuals, the choice is whether to marry this person or that person, or whether to marry at all. For bisexuals, it’s more complicated because the choices are more vast, but—as with the men I described above—a bisexual person can choose to live a heterosexual life and be faithful. For a gay person, the choice is to express the sexual part of his/her being or to be celibate for life.

Why should a gay person choose celibacy? I can see no reason except if that person subscribes deeply to a religion that believes that gay behavior is a sin to be avoided at all costs. Celibacy’s a hard life, though, one that usually only a Catholic priest takes on for religious reasons. But these people are not priests, they are just ordinary people trying to live their lives. I would never ask anyone to make that choice, even if they are religious; it is between them, their conscience, and God.

[ADDENDUM: I’d like to emphasize the link above to this article, which contains a brief summary of research on the nature/nurture question. The following seems especially interesting to me [MZ twins are identical, DZ are fraternal, and the twins and brothers who were recruited for the study had at least one member of the pair who was gay]:

J. Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard also studied the gayness between MZ twins, DZ twins, and non-related adopted brothers. They examined how many of the sample population examined were gay and how many were straight. They found that 52% of MZ twins were both self-identified homosexuals, 22% of DZ twins were so, and only 5% of non-related adopted brothers were so. This evidence, repeated and found to be true a second time, showed to the biological camp that the more closely genetically linked a pair is, the more likely they both are to exhibit gay or straight tendencies. Later experimenters found similar evidence in females.

Other twin studies using somewhat different methodology seem to have replicated the basic finding, so it seems they’re on to something. It would be much better if we had a study that used twins reared apart, but it would be nearly impossible nowadays to get a big enough sample of such people.]

Santorum’s out

The New Neo Posted on by

Rick Santorum is dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination.

The polls in Pennsylvania must have been brutal.

So the last viable non-Romney standing has been defeated—and that leaves Romney, standing. (Ron Paul remains standing as well, but he was never really the non-Romney alternative, he was always a phenomenon unto himself. And Newt Gingrich is kind of lying down.)

I think Romney has shown us a couple of things about his personality. One is that he’s not afraid of a fight, or even fighting dirty if need be. Another is that he’s very organized. A third is that he isn’t easily rattled or disheartened. All those things will come in handy for the main event.

Hard-wired politics: what about changers?

The New Neo Posted on by

New York magazine’s Sasha Issenberg has a weak article on a topic that interests me, the difference between liberals and conservatives, and whether it’s hard-wired.

In it, he (and some of the researchers he quotes) not only displays the typical stereotypes about right and left, but shows a good deal of ignorance about what would constitute strong evidence for nature in the nature-nurture fight. Most interestingly of all, for me, is that fact that he also ignores the formidable problem that changers such as yours truly present to anyone who would consider politics to be hard-wired. Did we changers all get updated wiring in mid-life?

The phenomenon is dismissed this way:

Rare midlife conversions aside, our parties are groups of two different kinds of people, [certain researchers] said, divided not by class or geography or education but by temperament.

Rare? Not really. It may be somewhat rare to change at the advanced age I did, but I’ve certainly come across the phenomenon time and again. More importantly, such conversions are actually pretty standard in early adulthood, as in the famous observation (sometimes attributed to Churchill), “A man who isn’t a liberal at 20 has no heart, and a man who isn’t a conservative at 40 has no head.”

Personally, I think nurture has a great, great deal to do with politics, although I would imagine that basic personality types (including where one falls on the heart/head continuum) come into play too. So do gender, age, and the ability to gather and process information. But it’s not a simple heart/head thing either; I know quite a few liberals with very formidable powers of thinking and analysis, and quite a few conservatives who lack them—and of course the opposite as well, people who conform to the standard “liberals who feel and conservatives who think” dichotomy.

The Hunger Games

The New Neo Posted on by

What do you get when you cross the TV show “Survivor” with the Roman Colosseum, “The Lottery,” dystopian sci-fi, Lord of the Flies, “The Most Dangerous Game,” and “The Wizard of Oz,” and then pitch it to the audience for the Twilight Saga? Why, the movie “The Hunger Games,” of course.

Which I went to see last night. I’d been assigned the novels (count ’em, three) for my book group, and they’d held my interest long enough for me to read them, albeit quickly. The first in the trilogy is the best, and that’s the one this movie depicts.

The books have become astonishingly popular, and although they’re not great works of art, they’re pretty well done. When I’d absorbed just a few pages of the first one I realized it was destined to become a blockbuster movie, and had almost certainly been written with that exact purpose in mind, so cinematic were its plot and characters. The film has to simplify some of the more complex thoughts in a book not known for complexity in the first place, but that’s nearly always the way of movies.

Although there are some things wrong with the film, one of them is certainly not lead actress Jennifer Lawrence, who is perfection itself in the role of heroine Katniss Everdeen. “Spunky” doesn’t even begin to describe her; this girl is fierce. Katniss isn’t a big talker, but Lawrence doesn’t need many words to convey a lot more than is in the script.

I was worried that the movie would be a visual bloodbath, because the book certainly describes killing after killing after killing, and there would be no way for the film to avoid this major plot device. But when the first deaths came I immediately realized the distractingly jerky camerawork was meant to obscure the violence rather than reveal it, the better to earn its PG-13 rating. I experienced this as a relief, because I don’t like graphic violence, but it had the curious effect of muting the thrust of the story, which relies in good measure for its intensity on the extremity and viciousness of the deaths. These kids seemed like they were just playing, and the outcome was never in doubt.

District 12, the impoverished coal-mining area where Katniss and her family live, looked for all the world like Walker Evans photos of the Depression come to life, including even the style of the clothing. The design of the Capitol where the Games and the pageantry for their opening ceremonies are held drew on several evocative sources, including Rome and Nazi Germany, with a bit of Oz’s Emerald City thrown in. The Capitol’s residents, on the other hand, were straight out of a Fellini movie. I was expecting something similarly over-the-top for the Games themselves, but somehow that part seemed more like a low-budget made-for-TV afternoon special for teens, filmed in a local state park.

So, what about the politics? Is a dystopia of the left or the right being depicted? Well, I don’t think the Hunger Games’ political philosophy was well-thought-out enough to answer that question, although you could claim that it lauds a vaguely libertarian ideal. And the fact that the heroine is a hunter indicates it’s not entirely an anti-right screed. The film’s villains are part of the central government. On the other hand, the plot emphasizes the evil of class differences. But mostly it depicts a dystopia of the mean, since its comic book perpetrators seem to relish doing evil for its own sake.

The strongest element of the book was its treatment of the ethical dilemmas that Katniss and the others in the Game face: in a situation that seems to call for inhumanity in order to survive, what compromises can a moral person make and stay moral, and which are worse than death? Now, that’s a good question, and the book—with its more leisurely pace—has time to explore it in greater depth than the movie ever does.

Today is the day…

The New Neo Posted on by

…when Easter candy is half price.

Just sayin. Of course, I wouldn’t ever go out and buy any.

No, I wouldn’t. Wouldn’t…shouldn’t…couldn’t…[trails off, staring into space]…

Those conservative candidates who would have won instead

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting comment (the language is not quite what I’d use, but the sentiment is):

there is no evidence, in the modern era, that a person more conservative than Reagan can win on a national level.

the last person who did so successfully was fuckin’ Coolidge in the 20’s.

and Reagan, as we all know, was an abortion flip-flopper, signed international climate change treaties, was pro-amnesty, raised taxes, and was a former Democrat.

now if you want to say “hey, the country has shifted further to the right, so maybe we are ready for a guy more conservative than Reagan” – fine, make that argument. but in doing so you are purposefully going for a riskier strategy than simply “I want SCOAMF out unconditionally”. you are saying instead “I want SCOAMF out, but only if it means a *real conservative* is elected, otherwise, no thanks”.

A while back I ran a post with a list of every Republican who has run in the primaries since 1976 (at least all those who stayed in for any length of time, and even some who didn’t). Let’s take another look at it, and please tell me what available winner-conservative candidate should have been nominated instead of loser-RINO candidates Bush I (1992), Dole (1996), and McCain (2008).

Because I don’t see it. Really, what you’ve got there for conservative candidates after 1980 is Pat Buchanan (several times), Alan Keyes, Steve Forbes, Mike Huckabee—and (drum roll, please) Mitt Romney in 2008, when Romney was considered a conservative alternative to McCain:

2008: McCain, Romney, Huckabee
2004: Bush was the incumbent
2000: Bush, McCain, Alan Keyes (originally running but early dropouts were the likes of Gary Bauer, Steve Forbes, Orrin Hatch, Lamar Alexander, Elizabeth Dole, John Kasich, and Dan Quayle).
1996: Bob Dole, Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes
1992: incumbent George H.W. Bush was primaried by Pat Buchanan
1988: VP George H.W. Bush (one of the few VPs running in recent years), Bob Dole, Pat Robertson
1984: no challenge to incumbent Reagan
1980: Reagan, George H.W. Bush, John Anderson (an interesting primary in which Reagan was hugely popular and his nomination a foregone conclusion, based on his showing in 1976 when he primaried incumbent Gerald Ford and did well).

So I’d love for people to stop railing that if those real conservative candidates had been nominated during those years, he/she would have won, and how the Republican establishment shoved this or that candidate down your reluctant throats. It’s somewhat moot, because there were no winner-type conservative candidates running in those years—unless you think the good ones were being held in some basement and forcibly restrained from running by the nefarious Republican establishment.

Repeat after me: in 2008, the alternative conservative candidates running against McCain were Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. Which one of those would have beaten Obama?

By the way, I happen to think Romney actually might have done better against Obama than McCain did in 2008, for the same reason that McCain lost: the financial crisis that came right before the election and turned the tide for Obama. McCain was perceived (and even self-identified) as being ignorant about economics and finance, whereas Romney was considered knowledgeable and experienced on that topic. But that’s moot, too, because the nomination process locks someone in long before mid September, when the crisis hit the fan.

Autism and…maternal obesity?

The New Neo Posted on by

This seems an odd and unexpected finding:

Children born to obese or very overweight mothers are at higher risk of having autism or developmental delays, new research suggests.

The study of more than 1,000 children found that the offspring of obese mothers had a 67 percent higher risk of autism than the children of normal-weight moms, and more than double the risk of having developmental delays, such as language impairment.

That sort of thing—“double the risk”—sounds huge. But the rarer a phenomenon is, the less big a deal such an increase would be in practical terms. For example, if the incidence of something is generally one in ten thousand, double the risk would make it one in five thousand.

Autism, of course, is more common than that, perhaps one in eighty-eight. It is not only still basically a mystery as to cause, but it’s a diagnosis that has lent itself to wild speculation about its genesis. When I was a child, the whole thing was blamed on cold, rejecting moms. Now that’s not considered the case at all. And the once-popular vaccination theory has been debunked, too, but that doesn’t stop a lot of people from believing in it. Now it could be blame-the-mother time again (at least in the popular imagination), only the new cause would be obesity.

Well, although it may be a contributing factor, it’s certainly not the cause: most autistic children do not have obese mothers, and most obese mothers do not have autistic kids.

The headline of the article emphasizes the obesity link, but buried in the text is something else quite interesting:

Indeed, other research published last week identified several spontaneous genetic mutations as the cause of a fraction of autism cases. Parents’ ages, especially fathers older than 35, were also associated with autism in those recent studies, published online in the journal Nature.

[NOTE: Here’s a post I wrote on the phenomenon of the rising incidence of autism and what might explain it. And here’s one I wrote about the fake vaccination link.]