Rescue 911

The New Neo Posted on by

When my son was little in the 80s and early 90s, the whole family used to love the TV show “Rescue 911.”

It was one of my guilty pleasures. A reality show that featured staged reenactments of actual 911 calls and their aftermath, it was something I watched often although I learned that people would make fun of me when I’d talk about it so enthusiastically. It was on TV in reruns for a while, and although even those ended a long time ago I still recall many of the most dramatic and/or touching tales.

Did I say “touching”? Yes. Rare was the show (most of them featuring three or four vignettes) when at least one of its tales didn’t make me cry.

Was I a softie? Maybe. But part of the reason the show engendered such emotional responses was that the episodes were believably done, and part of the reason for that was that the actors were frequently the original participants, who often seemed to experience a sort of psychodrama effect during the reenactments. Another reason was that you never knew how it would end (unless you saw the original participant narrating at the outset; then at least you knew that that person had survived). Most had happy outcomes, but not all by any means.

Last night it occurred to me that I might be able to go to YouTube and watch some of the shows. Sure enough, that turned out to be the case. In fact, one could spend many many MANY hours doing so. Therefore I warn you that if you’re of a certain cast of mind, this activity could be addictive.

YouTube doesn’t feature all the episodes, but an awful lot of them are there. I chose to watch the following one first, almost at random. I didn’t remember seeing it originally and still don’t remember whether I did, but it didn’t disappoint this time. Something about these little girls (who now would be grown women) touched my heart—their sweetness and kindness, and then the surprising twist at the end when…well, I won’t tell you. Watch for yourself:

It struck me as I watched this episode and then several others that, even though it was only 20 years ago, it seems longer ago than that because the people seem quite different from now—more innocent, more loving, more old-fashioned in some basic way. Maybe it was just these particular people, of course. But maybe there have been more changes in the culture since then than I realize.

Boys won’t be boys, and men…

The New Neo Posted on by

…aren’t being rewarded for being men:

If women have adapted well to the new economy, the same cannot be said for many men. Why not? It easy to paint the rise of working women as the reason why working men are losing ground, but that’s an oversimplification. In Boys Adrift (2007), psychologist Leonard Sax argues that men aren’t getting the training they need and blames the education system. The school curriculum is all wrong for boys. They’re taught reading and writing at too young an age. Competitive activities and hands-on learning are discouraged. Boys are reprimanded when they show an interest in war and violence. Taken together, these changes lead to the “widespread belief among the children themselves that school isn’t welcoming to real boys.” Restless and bored, boys are diagnosed as ADHD and medicated accordingly. If Tom Sawyer were a boy today, says Sax, he would be on Adderall.

Sax makes his case well, but I don’t believe the challenges facing men can be pinned solely on a female-centric education. Schools by themselves can’t affect a child’s life trajectory as much as we sometimes imagine. Overlapping political, economic and cultural factors are far more significant.

Government social programs are the culprit for the libertarian scholar Charles Murray. In a 2010 address to the American Enterprise Institute Murray relates the story of the janitor:

“When the government takes the trouble out of being a spouse and parent (through a range of government social programs like welfare, healthcare and daycare), it doesn’t affect the sources of deep satisfaction for the CEO. Rather, it makes life difficult for the janitor. A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. Think of all the phrases we used to have for it: “He is a man who pulls his own weight.” “He’s a good provider.” If that same man lives under a system that says that the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing some theoretical outcome. I am describing American neighborhoods where, once, working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn’t.”

Murray’s poignant description of the impact of welfare state programs is on the mark; it has been played out to devastating effect in many inner-city communities. However, the moral hazard created by government overreach is overstated for those men in working class and middle income communities whose lives have been dislocated by the recession and long-term economic changes.

Journalist Hanna Rosin describes a group of men in Kansas City who could be Murray’s janitors. In her essay “The End of Men” (Atlantic, June 2010) she calls them “casualties of the end of the manufacturing era.”

“The 30 men sitting in the classroom aren’t there by choice: Having failed to pay their child support, they were given the choice by a judge to go to jail or attend a weekly class on fathering, which to them seemed the better deal. Like them, he [the social worker running the class] explains, he grew up watching Bill Cosby living behind his metaphorical ‘white picket fence’ — one man, one woman, and a bunch of happy kids. ‘Well, that check bounced a long time ago,’ he says…’All you are is a paycheck, and now you ain’t even that…What is our role? Everyone’s telling us we’re supposed to be the head of a nuclear family, so you feel like you got robbed. It’s toxic, and poisonous, and it’s setting us up for failure.’ He writes on the board: $85,000. ‘This is her salary.’ Then: $12,000. ‘This is your salary. Who’s the damn man? Who’s the man now?’ A murmur rises. ‘That’s right. She’s the man.'”

It’s a case of unintended consequences—or, if you believe this is all part of the left’s plan, it would be a case of intended consequences.

Obama: all the Republican candidates are the same because…

The New Neo Posted on by

…they’re all Republicans.

Somehow I don’t think that’s a good approach for Obama to take in his re-election campaign. After all, most polls indicate that a generic Republican does better against Obama than any of the individual candidates we actually have. Emphasizing their generic Republicanism is more likely to enhance their chances of being elected than reduce them. Emphasizing their individual and personal failings and crochets seems much more likely to do the trick.

But why am I giving Obama advice, anyway?

Sad,…

The New Neo Posted on by

…fascinating, but extremely chilling reading: what happened aboard Air France 447.

And here’s an article written two years earlier by the same author, long before the black boxes for Air France 447 had been found. In it, he speculates on what might have happened to the flight. It’s interesting to compare his guesses at that time about the flight’s scenario to the facts as later revealed by the cockpit recordings:

Without the box’s data, the only physical evidence of the airplane available to investigators was the mangled wreckage. From the way it had been deformed””in particular, the way the floor of the crew’s rest compartment had buckled upward””French investigators determined that the fuselage hit the water more or less intact, belly first, at a high rate of vertical speed. Added to the ACARS messages and the satellite weather data, the evidence began to conform to a possible scenario.

By 10:45 pm, 10 minutes after the last radio transmission, the plane hit the first, small storm cell in the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Fifteen minutes later, it hit a larger, fast””growing system. And then, just before its last ACARS transmissions, the plane hit a whopper, a multicell storm whose roiling thermal energy rose more than 3 miles higher than AF 447’s altitude. Buffeted by turbulence, near the heart of a strong thunderstorm, the pitot tubes froze over. Lacking reliable speed indicators, the airplane’s computerized Flight Management System automatically disengaged the autopilot, forcing the co-pilots to fly the airplane manually.

Without autopilot, the pilots had no envelope protection restrictions, which are designed to keep the pilot from making control inputs that could overstress the aircraft. This is particularly dangerous for airliners at high altitudes. The thin air demands that airplanes fly faster to achieve lift, but they still must remain below speed limits. Flying too fast can create a phenomenon known as mach tuck, when supersonic shock waves along the wings shift the aircraft’s center of pressure aft and can make it pitch into an uncontrollable nose-dive. Flying too slow can cause a plane to stall.

Seems to me his got it pretty close to the truth.

But what was going on in the minds of the hapless pilots when they made their fateful decisions will never really be known.

[NOTE: The comments to the first article are excellent as well, many of them by pilots.]

The decline of the duel

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m reading—slowly, slowly—Steven Pinker’s long but fascinating The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Don’t laugh at the title because it seems absurd. Pinker presents a strong case to defend his thesis (although so far I’m only slightly into the book). I don’t agree with everything in it, but it’s certainly thought-provoking.

Here’s a little passage I just read about dueling:

Formal dueling was not, of course, an American invention. It emerged during the Renaissance as a measure to curtail assassinations, vendettas, and street brawls among aristocrats and their retinues. When one man felt that his honor had been impugned, he could challenge the other to a duel and cap the violence at a single death, with no hard feelings among the defeated man’s clan or entourage. But as the essayist Arnold Krystal observes, “The gentry…took honor so seriously that just about every offense became an offense against honor. Two Englishman dueled because their dogs had fought. Two Italian men feel out over the respective merits of Tasso and Ariosto, an argument that ended when one combatant, mortally wounded, admitted that he had not read the poet he was championing.”

Things have changed, haven’t they, among the aristocracy. Not so much among gangs.

And they’ve certainly changed in politics. Refresh yourself with some details of the story of the fatal duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton.

And the hottest woman of all time is…

The New Neo Posted on by

…(drum roll please)….

Jennifer Aniston???

Are you kidding? Please look at the woman on the left, and then compare her to the two others:

Aniston and Spears don’t even look like women, they look like girls. And although they’re attractive enough, you can see equally attractive teens every day at your local mall.

I don’t get it. But then again, I’m not a man.

Somehow…

The New Neo Posted on by

…I missed this the first time around:

Certain events of Michael Bublé’s early life and teen years, detailed here, give strong clues as to why he may have invited this kid onstage, and why he got so very excited when the young man turned out to really have talent.

[NOTE: Yeah, I know, gratuitous obscenities. I still think it’s rather sweet nonetheless.]

Kinsley on what Obama left out of his Kansas speech

The New Neo Posted on by

Michael Kinsley dissects Obama’s Kansas speech—otherwise known as his attempt-to-channel-Teddy-Roosevelt speech—and finds it wanting in several telling ways:

…[I]n addition to being unfair, [Obama’s] conflating actual crooks and the innocent affluent makes it hard to claim that raising their taxes isn’t punishment for some form of misbehavior. Taxes are not a punishment; they are a source of necessary revenue. But if you tie them to the financial scandal, they sound pretty punitive.

A second big problem with Obama’s philosophy, as revealed in this speech, is really the biggest economic problem facing the U.S. in general. That is, the middle-class sense of entitlement…

In Obama’s speech, he went into great detail about the first part — the spending part, the part about how unfair life has been to the middle class — and somehow forgot to mention the second part — the savings part, the part about how the middle class is going to have to fork over like everyone else to get us out of this jam…

I also wrote a piece last night on Obama’s Kansas speech, one that probably will appear at PJ within a couple of days. My focus was on the concept of “fairness” and why it’s—well, an unfair one, at least as Obama defines it (or actually, cleverly fails to define it).

I also agree with Kinsley. However, when I read Obama’s speech in its entirety, I was struck by a larger and more global (although closely related) omission than the one Kinsley mentions about middle class entitlement. It was the apportioning of responsibility and the failure to appoint responsibility.

In Obama’s world (his rhetorical, speechifying world that is; one really doesn’t know what goes on in the recesses of his mind) the act of assigning blame is a simple thing: bankers and rich people are guilty unless they’re penitent Democrats like him who are ever-so-eager to fork over more money if only the government would make them do so. Anyone who earns under $250,000 is by definition innocent, and the less they earn the more innocent they are and the more clearly they segue into being not just innocent, but automatic victims of the others. Poor people in particular have no responsibility for their lot and no need to do anything about it other than to get a handout that will level the uneven playing field at least a little bit, and hopefully more than a little bit.

In the world of Obama’s Kansas speech, consumers are always the victims, and it’s never of their own greed. The greed is always on the part of the bankers. Now there’s no doubt that some people were convinced to take out mortgages they couldn’t cover without the real terms and real costs being properly explained to them, and they are victims of a sort (although what ever happened to caveat emptor?). But surely not all of those people were innocent, and perhaps not even most. There were many who wanted a house that they simply couldn’t afford, and they thought the ever-rising [sic] housing market would allow them to get one rather easily.

But Obama does not acknowledge that possibility because to do so would be to criticize too many of his own supporters. No, the only greed was, and still is, on the part of the lenders, never the consumers.

Another annoying reminder…

The New Neo Posted on by

…to please use the neo-neocon portal when buying Amazon. Just click through on one of the widgets in the right sidebar, and enjoy the hassle-free shopping experience at Amazon while giving a bit of holiday cheer to moi.

And thanks to those who’ve already done so. Much, much appreciated!

Democrats enjoying the Republican fray

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s often noted that incumbents have an advantage over their opponents. It’s usually assumed that’s because incumbents have an inherent gravitas, familiarity, and seeming inevitability. But it’s also because incumbents ordinarily don’t have to duke it out anymore with anyone to gain the nomination, while the opposition—unless there’s a clear frontrunner—spends months and/or years tearing into each other and spotlighting each other’s weaknesses.

That’s been happening on the Republican side, and the Democrats are understandably enjoying both watching the fun and entering into it. The emergence of Newt Gingrich as a surprise leader has momentarily left the Democrats a bit unprepared, but never fear, they are catching up quickly while making sure they don’t ignore Romney in the process.

After all, it’s not as though Gingrich is an unfamiliar figure. It doesn’t take much work to recycle the old arguments and the old attacks, and no doubt Gingrich will oblige by tossing them some new grist for the mill.

But this NY Times article cites two ways in which Gingrich gives the Democrats more cause to worry than Romney does. The first is that it’s harder to paint him as warring on the middle class, which they feel they can do more easily with Romney because of his history with Bain. The second is that Gingrich has more appeal to Hispanics.

I would imagine there’s a third, although they’re not owning up to it. Both Gingrich and Romney are quick on their feet and fast with the comebacks in debate, but Gingrich is more aggressive and will be far less polite to Obama. In 2008 that might have been a drawback, since voters were inclined to like Obama and dislike those who critiqued him, as well as to be receptive to the idea that the latter were racists, a charge the Obama camp was quick to make. But now that the public has seen a great deal more of Obama, they are less inclined to defend him and more inclined to nod their heads when he is attacked.

And when did you last hear the old “criticism of Obama is racism” charge? Now that it’s Democrats who’ve been criticizing him as well, funny how that approach has fallen by the wayside.