Reacting to the death of Steve Jobs

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been amazed at the scope and depth of the reaction to the death of Apple’s Steve Jobs. It goes beyond the fact that he was relatively young and very prominent and influential. We’re seeing what looks like deep grief and personal loss on the part of people who didn’t even know him.

I was sad to hear he’d died, as I’d be sad to hear of the death of almost anyone relatively young, with four children and a wife and a lot of life in him, and more innovative work he could have done. But I’m not a Mac aficionado nor am I a techie, and I hadn’t followed the career or life of Jobs in anything except the most cursory way.

So I don’t share that intensely personal reaction of others, and at first I didn’t understand their grief. But on reflection I think I get it. Jobs was one of those people who really did “follow his bliss.” He seems to have been a unique and powerful mind almost from the start, with strengths in various areas: technical innovation combined with an esthetic sense, knowing what people would want even before they did, and organizing and managing things and people to produce the products that would profitably fulfill those wants and create more.

In doing this he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Those who worked for him often found him abrasive and difficult. But most of us didn’t work for him; we only got to look in from the outside, and to use his products for work or play. And that’s part of the secret to the strong emotional reaction to his death: we may not have known Jobs personally, but Jobs as innovator affected us in extremely personal ways—by changing the methods and technology by which we learn, work, and entertain ourselves.

The other thing about Jobs’s death that I believe struck people is the more conventional one: the relatively early death of a guy who seemed to have it all but who couldn’t stave off fate. The memento mori proves the truth of the poet’s words, that death is also a universal and an equalizer:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

I’ve been trying to think of someone who else whose life and death has affected people similarly. I can’t. The closest I can come is a combination of Thomas Edison (can’t find much about the reaction to his death, but I doubt it was anything like the grief over Jobs) and Walt Disney.

It’s the latter, strangely enough, whom I think Job resembles more than the former. Disney was an innovator who affected people in terms of entertainment, creating a huge empire that began with cartoons but expanded into amusement parks of unprecedented scope.

It seems I’m hardly the first person to make the Jobs/Disney comparison, although it occurred to me independently; I hadn’t read articles like this one when it came to me. But even Jobs’s associate Steve Wozniak seems to think it’s Disney whom Jobs most resembled, not Edison (the relevant passage begins at minute 4:15—and my guess is that Wozniak thinks that Wozniak resembles Edison more than Jobs did):

The comparison is even more clear than that, because one of Jobs’s lesser-known business interests was acquiring Pixar and developing the film “Toy Story,” an extension of the computer into the cartoon world. The connection between Jobs and Disney later became even more direct, as you may be surprised to discover:

The bulk of [Jobs’s] wealth came from his 7.4 percent stake in The Walt Disney Co. — 138 million shares — worth $4.4 billion. Jobs acquired Pixar in 1986 and Disney bought the computer animation studio in 2006, placing Jobs on Disney’s board of directors. According to Bloomberg, Jobs’ Disney stock paid him at least $242 million in dividends before taxes since 2006. Jobs was the single largest shareholder in Disney, the parent company of ABC News.

Jobs was a very rich man, and he probably enjoyed that wealth. But he seems to have been driven by something else:

In 1993, Jobs told the Wall Street Journal: “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me”¦Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful”¦that’s what matters to me.”

Much of the world seems to agree that Steve Jobs did something wonderful.

[ADDENDUM: And here, right on schedule, is a comparison of the grief at the death of Edison to the death of Jobs.]

PSA test for prostate cancer screening: should he or shouldn’t he?

The New Neo Posted on by

Even his doctor doesn’t know for sure.

In some ways the news that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has stopped recommending routine prostate cancer screening through the mechanism of the PSA blood test mirrors the same group’s finding in 2009 that routine mammograms for women between 40-50 should no longer be suggested.

The problems the panel faces are very similar to those it was grappling with in the mammogram situation: a simple and relatively inexpensive screening test for a fairly common but extraordinarily nasty disease, confusing and difficult-to-evaluate statistics about whether or not the test really decreases mortality, and a treatment that has its own negatives in terms of pain and suffering (both physical and emotional). Now as then, the task force will be accused by some of cutting back on a benefit in order to save the money that would otherwise be spent to cover the test and its results. The doctors will be seen as hard-hearted and/or scientifically incompetent or simply wrong in their conclusions.

But although the two situations (mammograms and PSA tests) are somewhat similar they are not identical, with the mammogram decision actually being somewhat easier. As I wrote in November of 2009, when I disagreed somewhat with the panel’s recommendations:

The listed harms of extra mammograms seem minor although more frequent [than the harms of not doing them], the benefits admittedly less frequent but rather more major””life vs. death, for example. And deaths in the age group specified””women in their forties””involve a population of young mothers. We’re not talking about death squads for grandma here; we’re talking about mommy.

Prostate cancer is a related but somewhat different disease with even more confusing demographics and more serious (and common) side effects of treatment, presenting doctors with a host of conundrums [emphasis mine]:

Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death among men, after lung cancer. In 2009, it was diagnosed in approximately 192,000 men. A small number of tumors are very aggressive, but the majority of prostate tumors are not likely to cause death. They grow very slowly, and only a fraction break out of the prostate, seed new tumors in other parts of the body and kill the patient. The current thinking is that about 30 percent of men in their 40s have prostate cancer, 40 percent of men in their 50s and so on, right up to 70 percent of men in their 80s. Yet only 3 percent of all men die from the disease. In other words, far more men die with prostate cancer than from it, and only a tiny fraction of prostate cancers ever cause symptoms, much less death.

But here is the tricky part: Unless there are symptoms or a finding on a physical exam, doctors generally cannot accurately predict which cancers are destined to be indolent, to sit around for years growing slowly, if at all, and those that will ultimately prove lethal.

You can see the dilemma, and it’s far worse than that facing doctors advising women about mammograms, because breast cancer—although common—is both less frequent than prostate cancer and far more reliably lethal if left untreated. What’s more, the interventions for prostate cancer are especially troubling and common in their possible side effects:

About half of men who undergo radiation or surgery [for prostate cancer] will have permanent side effects like impotence and incontinence. Up to 1 in 200 men die within 30 days from complications related to the surgery.

Those who advocate routine screening say it’s worth it in lives saved. But opponents point to studies that show no difference in mortality between the screened and the unscreened.

Until we know more, the best solution is probably (as the article concludes) to inform men of the risks and benefits of screening before they take the PSA test and let them decide whether they want to roll those iffy dice. This follows a recent trend in medicine in which patients are more and more often being asked to take responsibility for decisions that used to be the province of doctors. This is either good or bad depending on how much you want to depend on your doctor.

[NOTE: And, of course, the entire issue has insurance consequences: will PSA tests now be removed from routine coverage?]

[ADDENDUM: On a lighter note, those of a certain age may get the reference in the title and first line of this post. But for the others, here’s some help:

One of the most successful ad campaigns ever.]

Reid uses the nuclear option—or does he?

The New Neo Posted on by

Word is that Harry Reid has invoked the so-called nuclear option, although to me it seems different (and less comprehensive in effect) than my previous understanding of how a nuclear option would work.

Allahpundit takes a stab at explaining; Reid’s move appears to be aimed at restricting a minority party’s attempt to offer amendments after cloture has already occurred. That’s what Philip Klein says, too.

So although everybody seems to be calling Reid’s gambit “shocking,” I’m not so very shocked. After all, Reid had originally planned to do far worse at the beginning of this Congress. The recent move is along the lines he’d promised but far less dramatic in its effects. That said, it still sets a bad precedent for minority party rights in the Senate—a precedent that could backfire on Reid and the Democrats if they lose control of the Senate after 2012. That’s why both parties have so far refrained form this type of action before; it can come back to haunt them later when the pendulum swings.

More on the Michael Morton case

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not done with this one yet; I plan to follow the proceedings against the original prosecutor—if and when he is investigated and charged with something. But in the meantime, this will give you a good idea of what Morton was up against in the current DA, John Bradley, and just how many fortuitous events had to finally come together to allow DNA testing of evidence and free an innocent man. It also shows how a person’s actual innocence and integrity can work against him or her after conviction, when DAs insist on a showing of remorse or an admission of guilt for a crime the person never committed.

This video from a while back explains the long chain of events that finally propelled the testing of the bloody bandanna that exonerated Michael Morton; it required the relatives of another crime victim to put two and two together:

Thoughts on Palin’s non-candidacy and the reaction to it

The New Neo Posted on by

Regular readers of this blog probably know that Sarah Palin wasn’t my preferred candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012. So I greet her announcement that she isn’t going to run for president without much emotion either way.

But I’ve always been her champion in other ways, right from the start. If you look at the entries here under the category “Palin” on the right sidebar, you’ll see article after article in which, stunned by the vitriol directed at her, I try to puzzle out its origins.

One of my first efforts was called, “It’s the class war, stupid.” A number of my posts were about how and why Palin drew special ire from women on the left, especially feminists (see this and this, for example). Then there was her non-Ivy education.

Here was one of my efforts to sum it all up:

Palin-hatred has mysterious irrational aspects, but it also has explicable and indentifiable ones. And although no single one of them is sufficient to account for the phenomenon, together they have a powerful synergistic effect. You might say that Palin-hated represents the perfect storm, the confluence of flashpoints regarding class, education, beauty, sexuality, Christianity (don’t discount the latter…

So, will the press have Sarah Palin to kick around any more? I think so. She remains an influential figure in the Republican Party and especially the conservative movement, and I see no indication she plans to return to private life, although she could be forgiven for wanting to. She’s still very young (47), and could run in the future.

But I’ve been astounded once more (although I know; I shouldn’t be) by the petty and unjustified venom and contempt directed at her even now, when she’s out of the fray. Not atypical is this one in the Guardian that begins like this:

Long past the time many had ceased caring, Sarah Palin announced on Wednesday night that she was not running for the presidency in 2012. Fox News alone of America’s cable networks thought her announcement was more significant than the death of Steve Jobs. Everyone else reacted with a quick shrug and moved on.

It had become obvious that Palin was not going to be a candidate. The reality is that Palin didn’t stand a chance, so badly has she squandered her political capital within the Republican party over the past year with cheap stunts, such as an on-again, off-again grandiose national bus tour. Her career in national politics as a candidate is over.

But the most shameful piece I’ve seen is by David Frum, supposed Republican conservative. I’ll let his words speak for themselves. They tell us far less about Sarah Palin than they do about David Frum:

Sarah Palin’s political voice had dwindled well before she announced her decision not to run. Now it will sink altogether into inaudibility. She will be no kind of force in future national discussions. She will have no sway over party debates. She will retain some starpower for a little while longer. She may for another cycle or two be able to help certain candidates for certain political offices raise some money. Even that will fade within two more years or four. Her political career was brief, bizarre, and sordid. But now at least it is definitively finished.

Palin will never become a party elder stateswoman. Over the past three years, it became apparent to all but a handful of cultists that her only interests were money and celebrity. She had no concept of public service, and no capacity to serve even if she had wished to do so. Soon even those last cultists will quietly abandon the argument. We talk often these days about makers and takers. Sarah Palin was the ultimate taker. She abandoned her post as governor of Alaska to cash in on lectures and TV. She squeezed her supporters for political donations and spent the money on herself. To adapt an old phrase, she seen her opportunities and she took ”˜em.

In the end, she exploited, abused, or embarrassed almost everyone who had believed in her. Most embarrassing of all: she was never even a very good con artist. Everything that was false and petty and unqualified in her was visible within the first minutes of encountering her. The people she fooled were people who passionately wished to be fooled. To that extent, what was important in her story was not the faults and failings of Sarah Palin. There have always been grifters in politics. What was important in her story was the revelation of conservatism’s lack of antibodies against somebody with the faults and failings of Sarah Palin. That’s the story that should trouble us still.

What’s particularly interesting about the Frum piece is how well the last paragraph (with one change: substitute “the US voters'” for the word “convervatism’s”) applies to President Obama. That someone like Frum doesn’t seem to see that should trouble us still.

I would say in closing that reports of Sarah Palin’s political death are greatly exaggerated.

Man released from prison after 25 years: the Morton case

The New Neo Posted on by

Call me a bleeding heart liberal if you want (or a bleeding-heart ex-liberal, or whatever suits your fancy). But I am outraged whenever I hear of a miscarriage of justice, especially in a murder case. And although the issue of the death penalty sometimes comes into it—after all, if a person has already been put to death, the remedies for a false conviction leave a lot to be desired—it’s not really about the death penalty. One can favor the death penalty in certain cases and still be very disturbed by incidents in which the evidence was inadequate in the first place and/or the conviction was the result of prosecutorial misconduct.

Case in point: Michael Morton. Morton can’t cry “racism,” because he’s white and his supposed victim (his wife) was also white. But he was falsely imprisoned anyway for 25 years, and it’s only because some DNA was tested that pointed to the guilt of another man that Morton was finally released yesterday at the age of 57 after spending the majority of his adult years in prison. Fortunately for him and his family, both his parents were still alive to see him walk free (or nearly free; he has to remain in Texas until some legal details are cleared up).

So, what happened? It now appears that there was almost certainly prosecutorial misconduct in Morton’s case: suppression of exculpatory evidence. It seems to have been an instance of a terrible murder and a lack of alternative suspects, and so the full court press was on to convict Morton because he was all the authorities had. Morton is especially lucky that some DNA was finally found; without it it would have been almost impossible to prove what’s called “actual innocence,” as the Troy Davis case demonstrated. Morton is also very lucky that the DNA not only matched that of another man with a record, but that it was also linked to a nearby crime with the same m.o., which had been committed after Morton was already in prision. Otherwise Morton would probably still be in prison despite a nearly complete lack of evidence against him in the case.

Did I say “lack of evidence”? You bet:

Michael Morton has always maintained his innocence of the murder of his wife Christine, who was found dead in their home by a neighbor the morning of August 13, 1986. At trial, the prosecution argued that Michael beat his wife to death after she refused to have sex with him upon returning from his 32nd birthday celebration at a restaurant. There were no witnesses or physical evidence linking Michael to the crime. The prosecution relied largely on the fact that Michael left a note to Christine on the bathroom vanity expressing his disappointment with the fact that she fell asleep on him. (The note closed with the words “I love you.”) Michael’s co-workers testified that he arrived at work at about 6 a.m. that morning and didn’t notice anything unusual about his behavior.

In addition, the state of Texas fought and successfully blocked Morton’s request to test the bandana for six long years. The following ought to outrage you, also:

In response to a Public Information Act request, the Innocence Project obtained the transcripts of the state’s chief investigator’s interview with the Christine’s mother that was conducted less than two weeks after the murder. In the transcript, she describes a conversation with the couple’s three-year-old son Eric, who told her in chilling detail that he witnessed an unknown man murder his mother.

The court papers note that this newly discovered evidence was turned over by the state Attorney General’s office in 2008 over the objection of Bradley, who personally reviewed the material and asked that it not be turned over because of the ongoing litigation over DNA testing.

There’s more about the suppressed evidence here.

I don’t see this as a liberal vs. conservative issue, or even primarily as a death penalty issue—although I think that before the death penalty is applied there should be a much higher standard of evidence against the defendant that was present in the Morton case (or Troy Davis’s, for that matter). I would think that conservatives, especially those concerned with the preservation of liberty, would be dedicated to making the legal system as airtight as possible. Not only is it a question of justice, but every single wrongful conviction undermines the public’s faith in that justice system. Preventing these incidents in the first place would be a whole lot better.

Another factor that’s not usually considered in these cases is the reaction of jurors on learning that they voted to convict a person and were deceived by a prosecutor into doing so. One of Morton’s jurors, Lou Bryon, speaks out on that very subject:

“Until this morning when I saw the headline, I thought [Morton] was still guilty,” she said.

News reports of the discovery of DNA on a bandana matching that of a convicted felon in California, coupled with the Innocence Project’s claims of suppressed evidence shocked her to her core.

“It’s criminal that I didn’t know all of these things that were never introduced to us,” she said…

I’ve been crying all day. You know, 25 years is a long time,” Bryan said. “He probably just doesn’t know how to cope what’s going on right this second; I guess I feel the same way. I feel for him. I really do.”

The state has a duty not just to the defendant to get it right and to come as close as it can to meting out justice. It has a duty to the general public, the family of the victim, and even to the jurors, who bear the solemn responsibility and burden of either executing or putting another human being away for life.

Photoshop is not for the birds

The New Neo Posted on by

Quite a few people in the comments section on the thread with the gull riding on the eagle’s back thought the image was photoshopped. That was my first thought, too, but I don’t think it’s correct. Here’s the image again; it’s quite lovely and almost painterly, like something out of Audobon:

Here’s a piece about the photographer, a Finn named Markus Varesvuo who’s noted for his bird images and has a new book out that features them, Birds: Magic Moments:

The unpredictability is stimulating. You can make the best of plans and get zero pictures or, by sheer luck, stumble into a fantastic opportunity and get super shots. The success rate is improved in direct relation to the level of species knowledge but success is never guaranteed, there’s always a challenge. It’s a hunt. As a wildlife photographer you get to go to amazing places and see the wonders of the natural world…

My main gear is a 500 mm telelens that I got as soon as it came out nine years ago. Camera bodies have changed many times, even during the digital era, but not the 500mm. Weight of the camera bag is a problem. With two digital bodies, 500mm and 300mm and many smaller lenses, my bag’s soon bigger than me. And tripods. I keep leaving them behind. They should be trained to follow the photographer…

Birds have been my thing since early childhood so I know the species and the behaviour of the Western Palearctic birds. So, as a basis, I am a good bird photographer, and my trademark is action shots. I work without flash, in authentic surroundings. I try to tell it as it is without compromising photography.

So there. I don’t think any of his images are photoshopped. But it is interesting that photoshopping is so ubiquitous that we almost automatically assume it now when we see something improbable in a picture.

Funny quote from MoDo

The New Neo Posted on by

Now whenever I read Maureen Dowd (which is as seldom as possible, although every now and then I succumb) I will be thinking of this nicely devastating put-down by Andrew Ferguson, who was describing her piece on Cheney’s memoir:

Her column might have been written by an upset high schooler, so vast was her rage, so limited was her ability to express it.

“Upset high schooler” pretty much covers it for all of Ms. Dowd’s columns, although perhaps middle schooler would be more appropriate.

And now Dowd takes on Chris Christie’s non-candidacy announcement in her usual unserious and noninsightful manner:

It’s not the puffed up body that’s off-putting. It’s the puffed up ego.

It’s also unintentionally funny; is she really criticizing Christie for being an egomaniac, and ignoring Obama’s proclivities in that direction? Plus, in the very same column she manages to make this risible statement:

Americans who have been hurt want to identify the villains, and Obama is loath to target villains.

Christie can be a bully, but that may seem better than the alternative: a president who lets himself be bullied, and who lets the bullies run wild.

Poor pitiful nice-guy gentleman Obama, so loath to point fingers at those who are out to get him.

Seeing double Obamas

The New Neo Posted on by

This is quite a resemblance:

The guy on the right is Ilham Anas, an Indonesian man of Kenyan/American descent who’s parlayed his resemblance to you-know-who into a career. The guy on the left is…the guy on the left.