Rick Perry, student

The New Neo Posted on by

Rick Perry has not yet formally announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in 2012, although most people are pretty sure he will run. But early though it may be, we already have his college transcripts, which were published at HuffPo via “a source in Texas.”

I guess the intrepid HuffPo detectives have no “sources” in Hawaii, Los Angeles, New York City, or Boston, because in the four and a half years since Obama formally announced his candidacy in February of 2007, we have yet to see a single grade of his from Punahou, Occidental, Columbia, or Harvard Law.

Not that I much care what grades any of them got. I actually do not think that college grades matter for much of anything except academia, or to indicate that one is a scholarly sort of person (and I say this as just that sort of person, possessing uniformly excellent college grades from stellar institutions—except for integral calculus at the college level, which I failed). I just don’t see that much of a connection between college grades and what we might call Real Life.

Perry might be suffering from the Student Anxiety Dream right about now—you know, the one where you’re at an exam and you find you’re sweating bullets because you suddenly realize you haven’t studied and you know you’re going to flunk, even though you’re all grown up now and haven’t been in school for decades? Even though your accomplishments since school might be quite impressive?

Some of those mocking Perry for his grades also point out that the school he received them from, Texas A&M, is hardly Harvard. True enough–but it’s probably more difficult to get a good grade at the former than the latter, with its rampant grade inflation. In addition, Perry is sixty-one years old (that was a surprise to me; he looks mighty good for his age). You young whippersnappers may not realize that when he attended college a “C” was a far more respectable grade than it is now. Perry also seems to have taken a lot of heavy-duty science courses, known far and wide as a generally more difficult and labor-intensive course of study than a concentration in the humanities.

Not that Perry was a big scholar. Clearly, he was not. And just as clearly, he (and others) should be evaluated on his job performance since then, and what he intends to do if he were to be elected president.

[NOTE: I hardly knew a thing about Texas A&M before this, but I looked it up in Wiki, and it’s a well-respected university:

In the 2011 U.S. News and World Report ranking of public universities, Texas A&M is listed 22nd; among “national universities” the school tied for 63rd place…In 2009 the National Science Foundation has recognized Texas A&M as one of the top 20 research institutions.

Internationally, the university is also well-regarded. Newsweek International ranked Texas A&M as the 77th university globally on the basis of “openness and diversity” as well as “distinction in research”. In a comparison of educational quality, faculty quality, and research output, Shanghai Jiao Tong University ranked Texas A&M 53rd in the Americas and 88th internationally. The Times Higher Education Supplement listed Texas A&M 60th among the world’s top 100 technology universities, 24th among America’s top biomedicine universities, and 50th among North America’s top 50 universities.

Not too shabby. Any graduates here care to defend your alma mater?]

More creative metaphors to describe the Tea Party Republicans

The New Neo Posted on by

They’re not terrorists any more. Now they’re carjackers.

[ADDENDUM: Salon’s Joan Walsh says the Republicans are out to “destroy” Obama, like they did Clinton before him. I wonder whether she thinks either man might have done anything to cooperate in his own “destruction.” As for Bush and what the Democrats said about him, Walsh doesn’t seem to think it’s worthy of mention.]

Want to reach 100? Just do whatever you want…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and hope for the best.

The latest suggestion is that nothing much that you can do matters—although of course it’s best not to off yourself prematurely if you want to reach three figures. One thing that might help would be if you could pick your parents, because genes seem to be most important thing of all in the big crapshoot of long life.

That doesn’t mean that if your ancestors are long-lived, you will be, too. It just means you have a greater chance of it. And it also means that even a lot of clean living (as clean living is defined today, which is different than it was defined yesterday and different than it will be defined tomorrow) won’t necessarily do much for you if your goal is to be a centenarian.

However—at least, according to the article—if you want to live to 80 or so and you don’t have the greatest genes, be prepared to toe the line:

Barzilai said that it would be wrong to forego health advice with the assumption that your genes will determine how long you will live. For the general population, there is a preponderance of evidence that diet and exercise can postpone or ward off chronic disease and extend life. Many studies on Seventh Day Adventists ”” with their limited consumption of alcohol, tobacco and meat ”” attribute upward of 10 extra years of life as a result of lifestyle choices.

Then again, there’s something about this paragraph that fills me with glee:

Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that many very old people ”” age 95 and older ”” could be poster children for bad health behavior with their smoking, drinking, poor diet, obesity and lack of exercise.

I’ve got a mother who’s very close to being a centenarian at 97, and a father who died rather young. When I look at what my mother did right or wrong, I can’t say anything stands out too much. She smoked heavily till her early forties, and then she quit cold turkey. She ate whatever she pleased, and a lot of what she pleased was sweets and meat. She was thin in her youth and a tiny bit overweight in middle age, but always looked good and always was roughly average in weight. She exercised by playing tennis maybe once or twice a week when the weather was nice, which was less than half the year. She quit doing that when she was 83, because her vision was getting bad. She drove practically everywhere. She and my father liked to ballroom dance. They had a lot of friends and a vast social network, but they drank hardly at all (imbibing that supposedly-good-for-you-red-wine only a couple of times a year). She was a tremendous worrywart.

Does that sound like a recipe for extreme longevity? Well, it turned out to be. And her genes, although good, gave only a slight hint of the great longevity to come. Her parents died at the ages of 80 and 83 (ripe old ages but nothing special), and her maternal grandparents (the only grandparents she knew) were 83 and 93 when they went.

The latter—the outlier at 93—was my great-grandfather. Here he is around the year 1915, holding my toddler mother:

At the time he was probably about 63. He looks older to me, although he’s a handsome man. He still had 30 more years of life in him, and didn’t look all that different in his 90s than he does in this photo.

As for my mother, she looks pretty different in her 90s. But then, it’s been almost 100 years for her between then and now.

It was this grandfather of hers who said, in his later years (according to her report), “It’s hard being the last leaf on the tree.” Indeed, as my mother has learned, it is. Although she’s very glad to still be alive (and we are very glad to have her), extreme old age is most assuredly not for sissies.

THE LAST LEAF

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone!”

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said–
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago–
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

[NOTE: Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who wrote “The Last Leaf” when he was a young man, lived to be 85, dying in 1894:

Towards the end of his life, Holmes noted that he had outlived most of his friends, including Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. As he said, “I feel like my own survivor… We were on deck together as we began the voyage of life… Then the craft which held us began going to pieces.”

Holmes’ equally famous son, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., lived to be 93, like my great-grandfather.]

Falling stocks, rising fear

The New Neo Posted on by

Stocks are falling sharply today, and some of the cause is bad news from Europe. Many countries are having the same crises of benefits outstripping the financial resources to provide them, and populations grown accustomed to their perks and angry at the prospect of losing them. And the global economy is so intertwined that the bell tolls for us all.

It’s small comfort that the US is not alone in its travails—and, in fact, is by no means the closest to the brink. We all know about Greece’s troubles, and now Italy and Spain give special cause for concern. In the understatement of the week:

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso urged European Union officials to reassess the recent bailout funds, as “markets remain to be convinced that we are taking the appropriate steps to resolve the crisis.”

Yes indeed, “markets remain to be convinced.” And the “appropriate steps” are either too disputed or too painful for many to contemplate, or both.

The US has just been through a Congressional struggle over the debt ceiling that has left the markets “to be convinced” as well. Congress and the President took the easy way out and deferred the real decisions for manana and a committee. It’s a recipe for increasing anxiety and uncertainty—and those are not good things for markets.

But what would be a good thing for the market? To allow the debt to skyrocket, increase the spending, and postpone the day of reckoning? Even if that reassured the market temporarily in the short term (and I don’t think it would), it’s hard to dispute the fact that it is postponing the inevitable. Those who believe the deficit must be reined in would like to do it sooner rather than later, knowing that there will be pain in the short term. That’s called a “correction” by those who believe the temporary grief will forestall greater problems later.

Today’s stock market fall does not seem to be mainly about what has recently occurred in the US with respect to the deficit and the debt ceiling crisis. The consensus is that it primarily reflects events in Europe, as well as an expected dearth of good news in the US unemployment figures about to come out. But still, the debt ceiling crisis could hardly have reassured a single person, with its length and its wrangling and its ultimate “solution” that solves nothing except the immediate issue of raising the ceiling itself.

And then “fear itself” adds to the brew, as none other than FDR once said.

Keynes vs. Hayek: the fight continues

The New Neo Posted on by

I must confess to feeling a bit weary now that the debt ceiling negotiations have been concluded. And this is only the first of many bitter fights to come. What to cut? Who’s to decide? How much is enough? How much is too much? What to do about taxes? And what effect will the whole thing have on the struggling economy? I can’t say I have much faith in the ability and will of our elected officials to deal effectively with it all.

I’d also dearly love to be able to actually understand—I mean, really deeply understand, and in detail—what both Keynes and Hayek were saying, and why. That would probably take a couple of years of study; a crash course won’t do, and I’d probably never master the math. I doubt very much I’m going to invest the time and effort.

My preliminary opinion, based on what is admittedly very incomplete knowledge, is pro-Hayek. But that doesn’t mean Keynes didn’t make some good points.

Speaking of points, and of fights—here’s round #2 of the wonderfully clever (and hugely entertaining) Keynes/Hayek rap video that has been a sensation on YouTube:

[NOTE: I wrote about the first Keynes/Hayek rap video here, including photos of the real guys, who look quite a bit like their talented impersonators.]

Politicians bare all

The New Neo Posted on by

Memo to politicians: not a good idea to send naked photos of self to an online acquaintance.

Memo to people in general: not a good idea to take naked photos of self in the mirror while holding camera, standing in front of unmade bed.

Memo to everyone over 35 who’s not in fabulous shape: maybe naked photos of self are not the best way to go. Getting naked with your honey in real life is just fine, but photos (especially with the acuity of digital cameras) can be much less forgiving than the eye of a loved one.

Memo to men: women are not generally as keen on naked photos of men as men are of naked photos of women. Sending a woman one, unless it’s specifically requested, is a bit like gifting her with a power saw. It may be something you want. But she might be happier with some earrings.

The raid that got Osama

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s the sort of article the New Yorker often does well—a detailed description of something. In this case, the “something” is the planning and execution of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

There are few surprises there, but one of them (for me, at least) is the fact that Obama really did make a few tough calls prior to the raid. Another previously unknown (to me, at least) fact is that the designers of the operation had the presence of mind to include a native-speaking translator, who stood outside the compound and warned curious passers-by drawn by the sounds to move along:

“Go back to your houses,” [translator] Ahmed said, in Pashto, as Cairo [the dog] stood watch. “There is a security operation under way.”

Although the beginning of the raid was filmed by drone and watched live in the White House, there was a blackout period of about 20 to 25 minutes where there was no information transmitted. It must have been a long twenty minutes.

As you read the article, you can just picture the movie that will be made some day. Those SEALS are very tough cookies:

After a few minutes, the twelve SEALs inside helo one recovered their bearings and calmly relayed on the radio that they were proceeding with the raid. They had conducted so many operations over the past nine years that few things caught them off guard. In the months after the raid, the media have frequently suggested that the Abbottabad operation was as challenging as Operation Eagle Claw and the “Black Hawk Down” incident, but the senior Defense Department official told me that “this was not one of three missions. This was one of almost two thousand missions that have been conducted over the last couple of years, night after night.” He likened the routine of evening raids to “mowing the lawn.” On the night of May 1st alone, special-operations forces based in Afghanistan conducted twelve other missions; according to the official, those operations captured or killed between fifteen and twenty targets. “Most of the missions take off and go left,” he said. “This one took off and went right.”

Here is a description of the moment right before Bid Laden was killed:

The Americans hurried toward the bedroom door. The first SEAL pushed it open. Two of bin Laden’s wives had placed themselves in front of him. Amal al-Fatah, bin Laden’s fifth wife, was screaming in Arabic. She motioned as if she were going to charge; the SEAL lowered his sights and shot her once, in the calf. Fearing that one or both women were wearing suicide jackets, he stepped forward, wrapped them in a bear hug, and drove them aside. He would almost certainly have been killed had they blown themselves up, but by blanketing them he would have absorbed some of the blast and potentially saved the two SEALs behind him. In the end, neither woman was wearing an explosive vest.

It’s not that the operation went flawlessly. It did not, beginning with the crash of one of the helicopters as it descended into the compound. But the SEALS were fully up to the task of improvising when things did not go as planned—and in the end, they got their man.

From horseheads to war paint

The New Neo Posted on by

Ann Althouse wonders how those Mafioso managed to get that horse’s head into the bed with Jack Woltz:

In that scene in “The Godfather”… we just see the guy slowly waking up and finally noticing there’s a bleeding horse head in his bed. It’s great cinema. You never forget it. But what the hell kind of a heavy sleeper was Jack Woltz anyway? I’d love to see the missing part of the story, where guys holding a giant, dripping horse head open the bedroom door, walk across the room, peel back the covers ”” I guess they’d have to set the head down ”” put the head in the bed, gently replace the bed clothes, and sneak back out of there. All that time, Woltz is snoozing peacefully.

Well, I guess Althouse never slept with some of my bed companions, because if she had, she’d know there are a lot of sound sleepers in this world. It’s not necessarily a bad trait, especially if you want to make a statement, as did the guys in “The Godfather.”

Speaking of statements—the whole thing reminds me of the summer camp I went to as a child. The horses there were for riding (although not by me!), and mercifully they kept their heads on their bodies.

But at the camp we had an institution known as Color War. It had nothing to do with race and everything to do with the speed contests known as races. Every year, kids from the city came to the Berkshire establishment for the entire summer, and the attendees were divided into two competing factions that fought (in the metaphoric sense) the whole time for hegemony on land and lake. There were track meets, volleyball games, and war canoe demonstrations, and archery and tennis and singing competitions and battles on every camp front imaginable.

It was all very intense. One of the most exciting parts of the whole thing was the beginning (isn’t that often the case?), when Color War was said to “break”—meaning the entire camp was divided into two teams, and each camper learned what team she was on. This was always done in some surprise way on about the second week of camp. We knew it was coming, and the tension built and built. How would it happen this year? Could they outdo the last?

The Color War break I remember best—and one never to be surpassed—was the morning we all woke up to the usual grating sounds of a scratchy record playing reveille, and as we opened our sleepy eyes, each of us noticed that all the other girls in the bunk had paint on their faces (of course, we were each unaware of our own painted face). Some were bright green and some stark white, the colors of the camp and the colors and names of the teams. As we pointed, whooped, hollered, and raced to the single tiny mirror to see our own faces, we realized that Color War had broken and the teams had been announced.

We also realized that our counselors must have sneaked into the cabin in the middle of the night and painted us while we slept. This was exciting in a disturbing way. There was a sense of vague violation and, at least for me, the shock that I had completely slept through such a thing. Since I was not a heavy sleeper, I could not understand it; how could it be? But the undeniable evidence was there for all to see in my bright green face.

The painters must have had a light and deft touch, because there were several hundred girls at the camp that summer, and the report was that no one had woken up.

Who won that year? Can’t remember.

[NOTE: This comment at the Althouse thread is mean mean mean, but hysterical.]

[ADDENDUM: Another connection between movies, Al Pacino, and a horse’s head. But this one’s musical.]

Oh, that civility!

The New Neo Posted on by

Apparently it ends when talking about the Tea Partiers.

Joe Nocera of the NY Times writes:

You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them.

Can’t really disagree with that. Except the next sentence is this:

These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people.

It goes on in that vein. And on and on—extending the metaphor and ending with this:

For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests. But rest assured: They’ll have them on again soon enough. After all, they’ve gotten so much encouragement.

Ah, it’s just words, right?

[ADDENDUM: It seems to be the meme du jour, although Joe Biden denies ever saying it.

See also this. And Jonah Goldberg observes:

Tom Friedman ”” who knows a bit about Hezbollah ”” calls the tea partiers the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP bent on taking the country on a “suicide mission.” All over the place, conservative Republicans are “hostage takers” and “terrorists,” “terrorists” and “traitors.” They want to “end life as we know it on this planet,” says Nancy Pelosi. ]

Christian terrorism?

The New Neo Posted on by

The logic of those who claim that Breivik was the Christian equivalent of a Muslim terrorist leaves a lot to be desired.

Are there Christian clerics clamoring for the murder of Young Socialists in Europe, in order to preserve the continent for Christiandom, and protect it from the Muslim invasion? If there are, I certainly haven’t heard of them. And Breivik himself wrote the following about his religious beliefs in his lengthy manifesto:

“A majority of so called agnostics and atheists in Europe are cultural conservative Christians without even knowing it,” [Breivik] wrote.

“If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian,” he wrote.

Breivik’s initial explanation comes in a segment of the manifesto entitled “Distinguishing between cultural Christendom and religious Christendom – reforming our suicidal church.”

Later in the manifesto, when attempting to justify his “martyrdom operation” Breivik did not see himself as being religious.

“I’m not going to pretend I’m a very religious person as that would be a lie. I’ve always been very pragmatic and influenced by my secular surroundings and environment,” he wrote in a section of the manifesto.

“Religion is a crutch for many weak people and many embrace religion for self serving reasons as a source for drawing mental strength,” he wrote.

“I’ll say directly that this is my agenda as well,” he wrote.

So, Breivik seems to see Christianity as part of a Western culture he is interested in preserving, rather than being a Christian himself. His terrorist act was, of course, contrary to every teaching of Christianity and every statement of every Christian cleric—sanctioned by none, and condemned by all.

Compare and contrast this to Islam’s reaction to its own jihadis. It is split. All too many Muslim clerics sanction and glorify terrorists’ deeds and suicide bombers’ martyrdom—and encourage more of the same, all directly in the name of Islam. The contrast with Christianity could not be greater. But there are many people—and some of them are quoted in the article I linked to in the first paragraph of this post—who would like to argue otherwise, and hope that readers will be too stupid and/or ignorant to notice the difference.