Happy New Year!

The New Neo Posted on by

Happy New Year to all!

Anyone out there with the traditional hangover? It puzzled me, however, when I checked Google’s top searches for today, to see “hangover remedies” only ranked at number 80. Far earlier came Rose Bowl information, mummers parades, stores open New Years Day, and a curious desire to cook cabbage. There were several versions of recipe searches for that particular vegetable, including one for sauerkraut.

That gave me an idea: could it be that cabbage and/or sauerkraut is itself a hangover remedy? Aha! It turns out that my supposition was correct:

Casey reckons “I know only a few people who will try this hangover remedy but those who do it swear by it, sauerkraut. It makes some sense – the acid/nadh balance and the nutritional value – but from first hand experience it works rediculously well. I’ve seen it work in the most extreme cases.” If you can’t bring yourself to eat the actually chunky bits, try sauerkraut juice (out of the sauerkraut bottle) mixed with tomato juice, or a good helping of Sauerkraut Hangover Soup (recipe below). Actually while doing a bit of poking around checking out the vailidity of this claim, it appears that eating raw cabbage has been used right through history for preventing as well as curing hangovers, so Casey could well be onto something here.

Google, ain’t it wonderful? And here’s the recipe, for those so inclined. Hangover or no, it sounds pretty tasty:

Sauerkraut Hangover Soup

* 3 slices bacon
* 1 small onion chopped
* 1 teaspoon paprika
* 4 cups water
* 1 ham hock
* 1 green pepper seeded, deribbed, and sliced
* 1 tomato sliced
* 16 ounces sauerkraut
* 1 tablespoon flour
* 1 cup sour cream, plus sour cream for accompaniment
* 1/2 pound spicy smoked sausage thinly sliced

In a Dutch oven over medium-high heat, brown bacon until fat is rendered. Remove bacon with a slotted utensil and reserve for another use. Add onion to bacon drippings and saute until translucent (about 5 minutes). Add paprika, the water, ham hock, pepper, and tomato. Cover, bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until meat is tender (about 1 1/2 hours).

Drain sauerkraut and turn into a colander. Briefly under cold water and drain again. sauerkraut to Dutch oven and simmer 20 minutes; do not overcook.

Remove ham hockfrom pot; pull meat from bones and return meat to pot. In a small bowl stir together flour and the 1 cup sour cream. Add to soup mixture along with sausage. Reheat to serving temperature, stirring; do not boil.

To serve, ladle into soup bowls and serve immediately. Pass a bowl of sour cream.

This is the Year of the Co-Regent

The New Neo Posted on by

And here you thought this was the Year of the Ox? Well, it is. But far more important, it is the year of the neo-neocon and Tammy Bruce Co-Regency in the Grande Conservative Blogress Diva contest.

Yes, that’s a mouthful. I felt the need to look up the definition of the word “regent” myself to ascertain just what my duties might be, since my previous association with the term involved the dread exams we New York students used to be required to take at the end of every high school course:

(1) One who rules during the minority, absence, or disability of a monarch.
(2) One acting as a ruler or governor.
(3) A member of a board that governs an institution, such as a state university

Somehow I don’t think any of that will be coming into play. However, at some point I will be getting an exceptionally nifty eagle/high-heel logo to display on this blog. Every time you gaze on it, you can have the satisfaction of knowing you had some small part in making it all happen. My heartfelt thanks.

Last act of shameless self-promotion—for this year

The New Neo Posted on by

You can celebrate by voting once again for neo-neocon for Diva. Remember, one vote a day is allowed, until 5 PM EST today. I am very close to my stated goal of second place. Just think, you could be the very one to put me over the top!

[ADDENDUM: I seem to have tied for second place with my illustrious co-Regent Tammy Bruce. Couldn’t have done it without you!]

It was a very good year

The New Neo Posted on by

i just thought I’d be contrarian with the title above, because all over the MSM and the blogosphere one can read lamentations about the terrible year that’s ending.

Yes, of course, the economy is bad. But it’s nothing compared to the 1930s—at least not yet, and hopefully not ever.

Otherwise, I don’t quite see the awful awfulness of it all. We’ve had our usual peaceful transition of power, or are about to. The Iraq War is no longer a war, and signs there are relatively good. Israel and Palestine are not at peace—and just how does that differ from any other year? Most of us are hardly starving, although we’ve had to cut back. And for those who hate President Bush, he’s finally on the way out!

So, be of good cheer, folks. Jules Crittenden is.

New Years Eve: what are you doing?

The New Neo Posted on by

I have a confession to make: I’m not extraordinarily fond of New Years Eve.

Oh, back when I was a very little kid I remember liking it very much indeed. It was an opportunity to beg my parents to be allowed to stay up, and often I won that battle and had the thrill of watching the ball drop on TV.

Back then each year had seemed almost endless, and the punctuation of that last day, with its celebrations and dramatic turning of the number of the year into one we’d never seen before (wow! 1959! next, 1960!) was exciting and fresh. It also meant I was growing up, gaining in privilege and stature.

In high school it was still sort of fun—we went out in big packs, once or twice to Times Square to watch the whole thing in person. In college it became more problematic because I went home for Christmas vacation and was away from the boy friend de jour.

Then later on I was married. What do married people do on New Years? Parties still happened, but they were starting to end earlier and earlier (New Englanders don’t tend to be nightowls or wild partygoers, I’m afraid). For me they functioned mostly as an excuse for getting dressed up. It doesn’t help that I don’t drink much. Watching others get drunk has been an interesting spectator sport over the years, but not really my favorite activity.

As for that “growing in stature and privilege” thing—well, I’m kind of on the other side of that particular slope. Gaining in wisdom, perhaps; at least, that’s a consummation devoutly to be wished. And the passage of time seems to have accelerated at an alarming rate.

This year? There will be a small dinner party with friends, and some Malbec has been laid in, which should keep me a bit more in tune with the festivities.

So folks—what are you doing New Years Eve?

Give this ball girl a raise

The New Neo Posted on by

Ever see a person fly? The play on this video, by a lowly ball girl at a minor league game between Tacoma and Fresno, qualifies as not only perhaps the best catch in baseball history, but the only human levitation ever captured on tape.

[RETRACTION: A reader has informed me the catch was computer-generated. I haven’t independently confirmed that fact, but it makes sense. Too good to be true, I guess.]

Still in the Diva running

The New Neo Posted on by

Hey folks, I may not be in line to become Grande Conservative Blogress Diva—that honor seems to be sewn up by Pamela of Atlas Shrugs, and who am I to argue? But I’m in the running for second place (actually, I’m third right now, but only slightly behind Tammy Bruce). Second place confers the title Conservative Blogress Diva Regent, which is another mouthful.

It’s a fun game, anyway, so here’s the way to vote. Voting is allowed till 5 PM tomorrow, and even if you’ve already voted, you’re allowed to do so once a day.

The politics of the DSM

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s that time again—time for revision of the DSM, the diagnostic bible of therapy. This will be the fifth edition, and although it won’t be out for three more years, the controversies and jockeying for position are intense.

For those of you unfamiliar with this tome, it is essentially a list of psychological syndromes. As such, it is quite different from its medical equivalent, although it is based on the medical model (see this for some of the complex history behind the endeavor). The difference is that, as inexact a science as medicine is, the classification of mental and/or behavioral problems is barely a science at all. Politics, fashion, pragmatism, and special interests (all of which enter into medical diagnoses as well) are even more dramatically involved in the DSM system.

The main use of the book today is as a guide to treatment and medication, and especially as the key that opens the door to reimbursement. Insurance companies are focused on the categories listed by the DSM, and woe be the patient who does not fall into one of them. Fortunately, it’s almost always possible to find a niche for every patient, and to justify it.

According to the article, some of today’s arguments focus on whether problems such as binge eating and transgender issues should be included, or whether Asperger’s and high-functioning autism should be merged. The drug companies have an interest in many of these matters, as well, and their interest is in expanding the definitions of treatable problems to include more and more of the population.

This is not to say that the DSM is without merit. For example, whether a person is diagnosed as depressed or bipolar can point the way to the more effective medication for treament for that particular person, and save the time and trouble of trying so many ineffective remedies with major side effects. But anyone who thinks the DSM is not a reflection of politics and economics is just—well, there must be a diagnosis for that somewhere.

Anticipation: waiting for Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

Journalist Chris Smith is impatient for Obama to take office. He’s sick of that long countdown to Bush’s final day as President, even though the numbers have now become so small, and the clear and brilliant light can be viewed at the end of that long dark tunnel. In this, Smith probably has a lot of company.

Smith’s remedy? Move the date of Obama’s office-taking forward. Time for preparation? Obama don’t need no steenking preparation—or at least he’s had enough time for it already.

And what does Smith think we need? Why, Obama in charge, that’s what, and we need him now.

It’s probably not necessary to point out that this sort of thinking—the idea that Obama will magically soothe us, heal us, kiss our foreheads and make it all better—is part of a dangerous trend originally noted when Obama first became a candidate. I wrote “thinking” in the previous sentence, but it’s really more of a feeling that Obama will fix it. Or, if he can’t fix it, at least he’ll talk about it in a way that doesn’t involve abominations such as “nucular. And even if he doesn’t talk about it right, we’ll all experience such a sense of relief about his mere presence that maybe that will be enough. Because feeling good is a major part of what this is all about.

The idea of a magical transformation to be wrought by Obama as President is not just a strange characteristic invested in him by his followers and supporters. It is an idea he consciously and systematically fostered during his campaign—in fact, you might say it pretty much was the core of his campaign. So it’s not surprising that the raised expectations of supporters such as Smith have now reached a fever pitch after all the interminable waiting. And delayed gratification doesn’t appear to be the strong suit of Obamaphiles.

There are two possibilities for their reaction when Obama actually takes office and harsh, fickle, complex reality intrudes on the dream. Either he will disappoint his followers when they understand that he cannot work the unrealistic transformations they expect and yearn for, or they are so in thrall that they will forgive him everything and just be happy this cool, liberal, smooth dude is in there at last. That just might be enough.

In the meantime:

Milgram revisited

The New Neo Posted on by

This is fascinating news: the classic “Obedience to Authority” experiments of Stanley Milgram, one of the most famous and influential pieces of research in the annals of psychology, have more or less been duplicated.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Milgram experiments, here’s a summary. The gist of it was Milgram’s shocking (literally) finding that ordinary people in this country could be persuaded to inflict what they thought were painful electric jolts to “subjects” (actually, actors) in what was billed as a learning experiment, if an authoritative “researcher” (also an actor) told them it was okay.

This was true for most subjects even if the “victim” was screaming in pain and complained of a weak heart. It was also true if the “doctor” didn’t have a white coat, and was in a lab in a seedier part of town. No actual shocks were administered, but I recall that, in follow-up interviews, most of the subjects thought the shocks were real.

Milgram varied the details of the experiment over and over (read his book if you have time; it’s a masterpiece of its genre), but the results always pointed to the troubling fact that the majority of people failed to “question authority” (see this, this, this, and this for my four-part series on questioning authority).

I had always thought Milgram’s experiments, which were performed in the 1960s, could not be reproduced today because the ethics of psychology research have changed so much in the interim, partly as a result of the publicity about experiments such as his. The current researchers have gotten around that problem by stopping the experiment at an earlier level of “pain,” when the subjects think they are administering a shock amounting to 150 volts, the level at which the “subject” is “crying out” in pain but has not reached the histrionic levels of the earlier experiments. Even then, fewer people today went as far as 150 volts as compared to the original experiments. But the change, although in a good direction, was not statistically significant.

One difference that might be significant, however, is that the current researchers limited their experiment to people unfamiliar with the earlier one. I have no idea what percentage of the population that represents, but it definitely would be a selected group, which could easily have affected the findings.

Like almost everyone who hears of Milgram’s work, I have always assumed I would be among those people who refused to go on as soon as the “subject” cried out in pain. Since everyone feels that way, however, and we know that most people did not desist from administering the “shocks,” my assumptions about myself are suspect, as well. But I do know from my own life that in other, admittedly less dramatic settings, I have refused many times to go along with instructions or orders that I find ethically questionable. So perhaps I’m correct—after all, somebody’s got to be in that percentage of people who refused, right? Why not me?

Hamas and Israel: same old same old, despite Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

Hamas attacks. Israel has a right to defend itself. Israel will be criticized for doing so. The number of Palestinian casualties is emphasized by the press, and Palesinian reports of how many civilians have been hurt are accepted uncritically.

So, what else is new?

Not much. Oh, there’s the O-factor—that is, how does all of this affect our incoming President? Headlines that read, like this one in the WaPo, “Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Strip Imperil Obama’s Peace Chances,” show a puzzling and yet persistent belief in the power of a single person to somehow cut through the desire of a terror group such as Hamas to destroy Israel.

I’ve got news for the WaPo, and the analysts quoted at length in the article: the current violence is not an aberration in a situation that would otherwise be amenable to the magic of Obama. And by that statement I am not criticizing Obama; I’m taking issue with those who think any person, or any diplomatic policy of the US, could have the desired effect.

Prior to the 90s and then the post-Camp-David Second Intifada, people could be excused for thinking so. But that avenue has been tried—and tried, and tried—and it does not work. If it did, President Clinton’s efforts would have succeeded. What we have here is a situation that appears to be beyond the reach of diplomacy.