Horrific stampede in Germany

The New Neo Posted on by

A deadly stampede has occurred in Germany, especially terrible because most of those killed were young people. As Matthias Roeingh, one of the organizers of the event (ironically) called the Love Parade said, “one single entrance through a tunnel lends itself to disaster.”

I have written at length about stampedes before, and I can attest to the truth of what he says. There are certain commonalities in fatal stampedes, and they need to be heeded in all planning of large events:

The situation, as far as I can determine, is a bit analogous to the elements that go into a tsunami, strangely enough. That is, a huge and extremely powerful force (in the case of crowds, the moving people; in the case of tsunamis, the moving water) is initially spread out horizontally. Then, some sort of blockage impedes that horizontal movement and converts it, at least partially, into a vertical one. I haven’t found a website that explains this too clearly, so I’m not linking to any source for it, but it appears that, in the case of a stampede, people become stacked up and those on the bottom are the ones who are crushed by the force of those above….Any sort of bottleneck or narrow passage through which the crowd must funnel itself represents a grave danger, because it potentially impedes that flow of horizontal movement.

See also this.

My big fat size 10

The New Neo Posted on by

Model Crystal Renn is what passes for “plus-size” in the distorted world of modeling. Take a look at Ms. Renn, who is 5’9″ and wears a size 10:

crystal-renn-300é—400.jpg

To me, Renn looks attractive and robust but still relatively trim and fit, although certainly not skinny. The fact that a woman of Renn’s size is considered plus by anyone is rather sad, although I suppose if a person were under five feet tall and wore a 10 she might be a trifle plump.

Plus-size stores tend to begin around size 14 or even 16, and go up from there, so technically Renn is not plus at all. But to models and those who manage them, 10 is gargantuan, gigantic, swollen, rolling in mounds of flesh. Models used to be bigger, but now the industry’s sample size is a big fat 0 (yes, you read that right, zero), a size that didn’t used to exist when I was growing up. And remember, these are not petite women; they’re tall, and a tall 0 size represents either a rarity in nature or a woman who has starved herself.

Renn is the participant in a recent controversy over what she claims was some overzealous photoshopping of a magazine article that showcased her. For anyone interested, here’s a statement by the photographer, featuring the original photos and the photoshopped ones; I can’t see a ton of difference myself, although the “afters” are slightly thinner.

But I’m more interested in the idea that this woman and her size-10 body represent some sort of fatness. If you go to comment threads on the subject—like this one—you’ll see the raging arguments that have ensued. Many say the idea of Renn’s plus-ness is a ridiculous absurdity, while others claim that a size-10 woman is a fat pig who ought to be ashamed of herself.

And for comparison, here’s Renn in her anorexic days. Feast your eyes:

renn.jpg

Shirley Sherrod should have quit while she was ahead: accuses Breitbart of wanting to enslave blacks

The New Neo Posted on by

Gee, give Shirley Sherrod enough rope and she proves she’s got a racial chip on her shoulder the size of the rock of Gibraltar, and a finely-honed and relentless ability to play the race card [the relevant part begins around 1:50]:

For those who don’t have the patience to listen to the video, I’ve kindly provided a transcript. The important section begins with Anderson Cooper quoting Breitbart—“If anybody reads the sainted, martyred Sherrod’s entire speech, this person certainly has not gotten past black vs. white”—and asking her to comment on whether she has in fact gotten past black vs. white. Sherrod replies emphatically, “I know I’ve gotten past black vs. white,” and then proceeds to show just how very far she’s gotten past it (that is, not at all):

SHERROD: [Breitbart’s] probably the person who’s never gotten past [black vs. white] and never attempted to get past it. He can’t see, because he’s never tried…he can’t see what I’ve done to get past it, and he’s not interested in what I’ve done to get past it.

I don’t think he’s interested in seeing anyone get past it, cause I think he’d like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That’s where I think he’d like to see all black people end up again. And that’s why…

I think he’s so vicious—yes, I do—and I think that’s why he’s so vicious against a black president, you know…I don’t even think it was the NAACP he was totally after. I think he was after a black president.

It goes on, and at one point Sherrod demands that Breitbart prove he’s not a racist. She stops just short of asking him to prove he’s stopped beating his wife.

But Sherrod has rather convincingly proven herself to be a person who sees all criticism through the lens of black vs. white, the very thing she claims to have gotten past. Unfortunately, that sort of attitude is now rampant in the ranks of the Democratic Party.

Goosicide

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Althouse]

New York State’s got a plan to eliminate 170,000 Canada geese—not by deportation, but by wholesale slaughter:

The captured geese [would be] placed alive in commercial turkey crates. The geese would be brought to a secure location and euthanized with methods approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association. Euthanized geese would be buried.”

There’s an interesting comment thread afterward; the very first one should chill the blood if nothing else does:

Funny how often humans figure the best solution is massive slaughter. Seems to me that reducing the human population of the state by about the same number would have a huge beneficial impact on the environment, general safety, the economy, and so forth.

Anyway I hope this dastardly plan comes back to haunt them, when some unforseen result like population booms in even more invasive, destructive species, shows up.

Most of the commenters are strongly against the goose killings, although they don’t all express themselves in quite the violently anti-human manner as that first one. As for me, I question whether the plan isn’t just a stopgap measure—won’t the remaining ones reproduce fast enough to replenish their numbers in almost no time at all?

Where I live, Canada geese are known as flying rats. There’s a whole bunch of them and their now-grown-up goslings in the neighborhood. They’re cute but create vast quantities of poop. Basically, I can’t stand the bloody things, although they’re attractive—and they also sometimes cause air crashes, which is the point of the NY goosicide in the first place.

This comment is reasonable, IMHO:

It’s about time. The goose population is, as the article says, completely out balance. There are no predators to reduce their numbers or control their tremendous rate of reproduction. They don’t even migrate anymore because the living is so good here. Do nothing?????!!!!! Are you insane???!!!

How many of you want yourself or your loved ones to be the unfortunate air travellers who die on impact because Capt. Sully wasn’t there to land them in the Hudson?

This commenter makes an interesting point—although I part company with him on the final part of his last sentence:

These over-populations are an example of both the lack of natural predation together with the decline of hunting as a recreational activity in New York.

If the hand-wringers here don’t want the state to engage in such culls ”” let them be supportive of introducing natural predators. Adding a few foxes and wolves to Prospect Park would do wonders for cutting down the numbers of both the over-populated, non-migratory, Canada geese as well as those yappy little dogs one finds there.

It strikes me that the softhearted naysayers are profoundly ignorant of what they profess to revere, ecology.

And a lot of people say “eat the geese,” which sounds reasonable but is rated as not a great solution by those who claim to know what Canada geese taste like.

Talking to liberals

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back, commenter “Steve H.” asked a question. It’s one to which I unfortunately still don’t have a good answer, although I’m highlighting it because it’s a question I’ve been increasingly asking myself for some months now:

We all know people and perhaps have friends who support this administration. How do we even converse with them after this? Do they not see the rage, polarization and tearing at the social fabric of this country they are causing?

Of course,the more general question of how to deal with friends whose political persuasion is so different is one I’ve been wrestling with in one form or another for many years. In fact, it used to be one of the main topics on this blog. That’s because my “conversion” happened gradually but quietly. Call me naive, but when I finally began to talk to liberal friends and family (which for me meant nearly everyone I know) about that political change of mine, I expected interesting but cordial discussions on the merits.

Was I ever in for a surprise—the rage and in some cases shunning that met me was a profound shock. You see, as a moderate liberal, I had always assumed that liberals believed in “tolerance” of the ideas of others.

But apparently I had gone over to the dark side. And as time progressed, I wrestled with my own feelings that they were the ones on the dark side, if only the side of the sort of ignorance that can allow evil to triumph. This latter notion was helped along by the fact that some of these friends—not all, but a goodly percentage—really were relatively uninformed about everything except the headlines and maybe the first paragraphs of the version of the news offered by the MSM, especially the NY Times or the Boston Globe. Some, of course, had a greater interest—those who read the Nation or loved Michael Moore or Howard Zinn or did have a special interest in history, but they were far fewer in number.

So I thought my task might be to gently urge them to at least read other sources of information, and if they agreed to receive them, I sent them links to articles I thought especially good. It didn’t change any minds as far as I knew (well, maybe one or two), but at least I’d tried.

Now I don’t know what to do. I am not sure whether any of my friends are paying much attention to events now (when I ask them, they mostly say they are not). I don’t think they would agree with me about how deeply liberty is threatened right now even if they were paying close attention, and I’m not even sure how much they value liberty versus PC thinking. And anyway, they’re used to dismissing such notions of threatened individual freedoms as scaremongering right-wing nutjob tactics (unless the one doing the threatening of liberty is George Bush or Dick Cheney, that is) and McCarthyism (the actual history of which they are also mostly unaware). If I were to voice my concerns, they would think it evidence that I’ve lost my mind and that I’m becoming dangerous. So I must tread carefully if I wish to retain my credibility.

I have no desire to become a hermit. People here have given me the advice to make new friends. But that’s difficult to do at my age, and new friends almost never can replace old. These are people I know and love—sometimes from childhood, sometimes from when our now-very-grown-up children were babies or even from when we were pregnant, some from college or high school. I cannot suddenly desert them, and I don’t think I should.

But I have come to believe that they are enemies to liberty, although not intentionally. Do intentions matter? I think they do. Will they wake up? Perhaps if things get much worse—but then will it already be too late? And in the meantime, what do I do with my own anger? And how much do I try to engage them in conversations that might be not only futile but actively counterproductive? And if I do engage them, what approach do I take—rage does not cut it or convince anyone; that much I know.

I don’t have the answers, but I certainly have the questions.

[ADDENDUM: I added this in the comments section, to clarify: Intentions matter in terms whether change in opinion can occur. It has to do with how susceptible people are to rational argument and facts””in other words, whether they are fools or knaves. It matters in terms of whether you are wasting time talking to them or not.]

From Buckley to Breitbart?

The New Neo Posted on by

Scott at Powerline thinks that Andrew Breitbart is the new William Buckley for the conservative movement.

I wish. I agree that both men demonstrate[d] a good sense of theater, but I stand by my comparison yesterday of Breitbart to Yippies Hoffman and Rubin. Buckley’s most salient characteristic, apart from wit, was an extraordinary intellect and a rapier-sharp ability to express it in either spoken or written words. Breitbart’s a smart man, but he’s no Buckley in that regard—few are.

A few more thoughts on Sherrod and racism

The New Neo Posted on by

Thinking more about the larger context of Sherrold’s remarks, I will add:

(1) I am heartily sick and tired of the racism thought police on either side.

(2) Let us take as a given that members of all races and ethnic groups have been molded at least in part by their racial and ethnic experiences, and have certain conceptions and perceptions based on those experiences.

(3) We all must struggle against unfair assumptions based on our race and ethnic background, and focus on the individual rather than the group.

(4) The most important thing is how we treat people: the goal is to be fair. Definitions of how to do that will differ (affirmative action being one glaring example), but actions are the key. Therefore we should be most interested in how officials perform in their official capacities, and whether their acts are racist or not.

[NOTE: I understand that thoughts influence acts. But our legal system is mostly act-oriented rather than thought-oriented, and I believe accusations of racism should have that focus as well. Of course, this does not avoid manufactured accusations about acts, such as the alleged—but most likely untrue—racial epithets supposedly voiced by Tea Party members towards Lewis and others. But it would minimize the almost-unending activities of the racism thought police.]

Lanny Davis pleads for the Democrats to reset to center

The New Neo Posted on by

Lanny Davis would like the Democrats to retreat from their leftward march and return to the center. It is not completely clear whether he thinks this should happen because it would be good for the country, or whether he believes it should be done in order to win an election or two, but I strongly suspect it is the latter.

Davis focuses on the message, stupid:

It’s time to hit the reset button and return to the progressive centrist message that worked not just in 2006 and 2008 with Barack Obama’s campaign but really back to 1992, when Bill Clinton was first elected…Such a pivot and return to a progressive-center message is the only hope for Democrats to minimize the usual midterm losses this November and win back many independent voters. That message is where most voters are. Returning to the pragmatic “solutions business” ”” whether coming from the left, right or a third way ”” is what most Americans need and want, now more than ever.

Yeah, but they want it to really happen, not just to be promised and then reneged on.

I doubt the current Democratic Party is capable of listening to Davis,anyway. And even if they could and would, present-day Democrats have already dropped the mask and shown voters their true face, and anything else will (or at least should) be regarded as a strategic ploy.

That is why Davis must also make the truly extraordinary claim that the Democrats’ leftward tendencies are only an illusion:

…[T]oo often the voice of congressional Democrats, especially in the House, seems more left of center ”” seems more big-government, big-spending, big-deficits, anti-business and -growth.

I think this perception is wrong and unfair. But it is a reality. The loss of independent voter support is a result of that perception and why President Obama and Democrats are looking at what could be a debacle in the November election.

So, voters, which do you believe: Lanny Davis or your lying eyes?

Breitbart on Breitbart

The New Neo Posted on by

One thing you can say about the Shirley Sherrold flap is that it sure has gotten Andrew Breitbart some attention.

Actually, he’s gotten quite a bit of it ever since Obama took office. Breitbart is one of the few on the right who is willing to be just as confrontational as the left. Whatever else you might say about him, the man’s got cojones.

I criticized Breitbart the other day for undue haste in not having been careful enough in vetting the Sherrold video. But in an interview, he states he’s happy with the fallout from the incident:

He says he considers it a victory to have panicked the Obama administration and precipitated a public apology from the White House.

Breitbart is an internet maven, having worked for both Drudge and Arianna Huffington in the past. As the article puts it, he has “a genius for buzz” and is “a provocateur, a rabble-rouser, a master manipulator of the media’s appetite for controversy — real or fake.”

Breitbart’s hard-hitting theatricality would not be nearly as unique if he resided on the left, but as a man of the right he is very unusual. It is therefore not at all surprising to learn that Breitbart is a political changer. He grew up in Los Angeles, and dates his political transformation from the time of the Clarence Thomas hearings:

He was, he said, a typical West Coast liberal — until the Clarence Thomas hearings lit him up with the fires of conservative resentment against the liberal establishment…”It was the moment that I saw a glimpse of the matrix,” Breitbart said. “And I started to ask some very tough questions of myself, and my peer group, and my parents and their friends.”

I sometimes think of Breitbart as the modern-day, conservative (or libertarian?) version of fellow-provocateurs Hoffman and Rubin of Sixties Yippie fame. He shares with them a streak of wildness and a knack for publicity, and the ability to use the media to get a message across in creative and somewhat novel ways, as a well as an irreverence and a sense of humor—although just about everything else about Breitbart and the Yippies (political aims, specific methods, and substance) is very different.