What’s your first memory?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve always had an excellent recollection for early events in my life, with the peculiarity that my memories tend to be visual as well as auditory and emotional. That is, not only can I remember a great many incidents occurring at a very young age—what happened, what was said, how I felt—but there’s also a sort of theatrical scene-setting. I can often recall where I was standing in relation to the other players—and, more oddly, what everyone was wearing at the time.

It took me a while to learn that most people don’t remember things that way. I would be reminiscing with a friend and would say, “Don’t you remember? You were standing over there, and you were wearing that black and white suit with the red silk blouse,” and the friend would gaze at me in puzzlement, wondering what I was talking about.

Of course, no independent corroboration exists to tell me whether I’m right or wrong. So perhaps I’m full of it; there’s no way to know for sure. Continue reading →

I dreamed I was oh-so-fashionable in my…

The New Neo Posted on by

…underwear.

Maybe they should rename it, though. Apparently, underwear isn’t so very “under” any more. It’s come out of the closet, as it were, according to the NY Times, which reports that “showing off your lingerie has become very much a fashion trend.”

And by “showing off,” they don’t mean in the time-honored sense of showing it off to your love object of choice. No, they mean the following, as seen recently on fashion runways:

fashionunderwear.jpg

I’ve witnessed the equivalent of the sight on the right walking the streets—a black bra displayed with a top with a scooped-out back. Usually, for some reason, it’s being worn by a young woman who also sports tattoos down the entire length of her slender arms. Continue reading →

Giuliani and the Red Sox: strange bedfellows

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Ah, the compromises politicians will make.

Now it turns out that New Yorker Giuliani, the quintessential Yankee fan, is rooting for the Red Sox in the World Series. This has earned him no end of condemnation.

It’s also a bit puzzling in political terms. Surely he doesn’t expect to wrest Massachusetts from Hilary.

Giuliani explains his turncoat act as a pitch for the American League vs. the National. But to diehard Yankee fans, cheering for the Red Sox is treason, no matter what the reason.

Hillary, of course, tried to establish her Yankee bona fides back when she was running for New York Senator against none other than Giuliani. She claimed at the time that she’d been a long-term Yankee fan: since her beloved Cubs were in the National League, she’d picked the Yankees as her American League team. Many were exceeedingly skeptical.

In the end, Giuliani dropped out of that race for health reasons, but not before he had the following to say about Hillary:

Funny, I haven’t seen her at a Yankee game,” the mayor said yesterday. “I’ve been at Yankee Stadium maybe 1,000 times and I haven’t seen Mrs. Clinton.”

At least Giuliani isn’t claiming long-time Sox fan status. As for the Sox, they’re doing just fine, thank you very much—not that I’m counting any chickens, knowing Red Sox history.

‘Twas ever thus: the press vs. the military, and vice versa

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As Exhibit A, we have the exquisite sarcasm of General Robert E. Lee:

It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers. In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late.

“Accordingly, I am readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I will, in turn, do my best for the
Cause by writing editorials – after the fact.

And then there’s Exhibit B, the more direct approach of General William Tecumseh Sherman:

I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.

It seems the journalistic tradition of second-guessing, error, and disclosure of sensitive information in war is a long one. The needs of the press are antithetical to the needs of the military. The first seeks “scoops” and sensational information; it’s just too boring to be supportive cheerleaders. The press has its macho need for bravery as well, and that is defined quite differently from the valor of the military. Perhaps some members of the press are even envious of the latter, and seek to challenge it with their own feats of daring.

The press serves a needed function, of course: to inform the public. But during a war, this is a delicate balancing act. Too much emphasis on the death, destruction, and setbacks that inevitably go with any war can hamper the war effort in a way that serves neither the country nor its people. Unfortunately, all too often, the press errs on the side of being oppositional in a kneejerk manner, rather than achieving the balance that would be most beneficial to everyone.

Case in point.

Why did it take so long to install General Petraeus?

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Here’s another article about the success of the the so-called “surge.” In it, Jeff Emanual writes that the results—which so far have exceeded expectations—are attributable not only to the increase in numbers that the word “surge” signifies, but to a basic change of strategy that involves engaging the Iraqi people in a consistent way rather than withdrawing into secure bases and relying primarily on unstable Iraqi forces to do the job:

A sustained presence within the cities and rural areas that each unit is tasked with securing, involving spending the maximum amount of time possible out amongst the people who live and work there, is a major element of counterinsurgency strategy. It not only allows the unit responsible for an area to be present and able to respond at a moment’s notice to any event or emergency, but also allows the members of that unit to become more familiar with the district (and the people, including who should and should not be there) that they are responsible for policing.

Such a policy also allows the civilians in the area to become familiar with and begin to begin to trust their military protectors. Building this bond of trust between military personnel and civilians in each area should lead at some point to cooperation, both in the form of providing information (the first step) and (later) in the form of the organization of an armed resistance working with the Coalition and against the insurgents and terrorists in the region. This is a very long, tortuous process, and it literally depends on the clichéd ”˜winning of the hearts and minds’ of the people. This is done not only by providing security and quality of life improvements in an area, but also by convincing the citizenry that such a sustained presence (and the security that it is capable of providing) will be a long-term reality.

This is the essence of the General Petraeus approach. Whether or not it ultimately succeeds long term in the extremely difficult task of rebuilding Iraqi society into a functioning democracy, there is no question it has made the necessary initial inroads towards that goal. Continue reading →

Perceptions about Iraq: why so impervious to change?

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Michael Yon describes the extreme disconnect he sees between the facts in Iraq and perceptions about it. Never the twain shall meet; at least not yet, although he’s doing his bit to change that.

Why has the corrective news of progress had so much difficulty penetrating American consciousness? The summary version of the answer is, “A mind is a difficult thing to change.” The longer version, of course, is much more complex.

Yon touches on one factor, which is that press coverage of violence is almost always far better than coverage of good news, a variant of the old “if it bleeds, it ledes” maxim. In this case, of course, there’s extra motivation for the failure to emphasize progress in Iraq—which is that, for most of the press, it would be the equivalent of saying “I was wrong,” something most human beings are exceedingly reluctant to do. And journalists are certainly all too human. Continue reading →

Let’s hear it from everybody who’s tired of the 2008 election: so how about it, baseball fans?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t know about you, but I’m bone tired of the 2008 election already.

I can’t remember ever feeling this level of fatigue so early in a campaign before. Maybe in previous years I didn’t follow politics so closely, although by the 2004 election I certainly did. Maybe in previous years the elections didn’t begin quite so early. Maybe in previous years the candidates were more inspiring.

Or maybe not. At any rate, there’s something about this year that makes me want to put down the entire topic and only take it up again after a year has passed. That would seem about right; discuss it a couple of weeks before the election. After all, how relevant can what is said today—a year early—possibly be? Continue reading →

Pakistan: which conspiracy theory do you prefer?

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There’s no dearth of conspiracy theories to explain the audacious attack on Bhutto’s convoy, and Bhutto herself has hinted that the government may have been involved.

Has she just been watching too many Oliver Stone movies? No. The sad fact is that there are so many possibile suspects that the culprits may never be known, although the complexity of the mode of attack has al Qaeda written all over it. But it’s also possible that copycats are involved.

One fact that seems relatively new in the field of political assassinations is that the perpetrators of this one didn’t care how many Pakistani citizens they killed in reaching their target. Usually assassinations are—well, more targeted towards the political figure him/herself and perhaps his/her bodyguards and family, and there’s some sort of effort made not to blast away huge crowds. Lee Harvey Oswald seems extremely restrained compared to this Pakistani crew.

Insider assassinations are not all that unusual in thrid world countries, as I’ve written in this post that focuses on the facts behind Indira Gandhi’s killing, and the ways in which India clamped down on the forces responsible. It’s a sobering tale.

The judgment of history takes time

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Those who are so certain they know how history will judge George Bush—or any other president, for that matter—show their ignorance of history itself.

It’s not just that contemporary perceptions of a leader are often quite different from their evaluations when seen from the perspective of time and subsequent events, although that’s part of it. Churchill’s warnings in the 1930s about the Nazi menace were widely seen as preposterous, and he himself was thought to be a washed-up has-been. Later developments turned him into a wise man, a Cassandra who saw only too clearly truths to which others had closed their eyes.

Another change that occurs over the passage of years is the uncovering of new information about the past itself. The availability of journals and private papers previously unknown sometimes reveals what may have been hidden previously. Continue reading →

Bhutto’s back

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After eight years of exile, Benazir Bhutto has returned to Pakistan in a deal brokered with President Musharraf.

She’s talking the democracy talk as she walks the comeback walk:

“Restoration of democracy is the only guarantee to the people’s progress and prosperity,’ she added before departing in a slow-moving convoy from the airport to the centre of the metropolis along roads lined with thousands of supporters and onlookers.

Bhutto has written a piece extolling democracy, appearing as an op-ed in today’s Boston Globe. In its high-minded rhetoric, she declares her determination to achieve none other than:

…the reconciliation of the values of Islam and the West, and a prescription for a moderate and modern Islam that marginalizes religious extremists, returns the military from politics to their barracks, treats all citizens and especially women with full and equal rights, selects its leaders by free and fair elections, and provides for transparent, democratic governance that addresses the social and economic needs of the people as its highest priority.

It’s a plan that sounds as good as Benazir looks—and that’s pretty good, since Benazir is undoubtedly the best-looking female head of state ever:

bhutto_benazir.jpg Continue reading →

The family that eats together…

The New Neo Posted on by

…eats more nutritious meals together.

So saith the NY Times. Research indicates that families who eat a regular meal together—be they troubled or un, and their ubiquitous TVs on or off—are eating better, as well.

No one knows quite why, although researchers have tried to control for the obvious possibility that families who eat together are different in additional ways from those who don’t. It would be instructive to see what would happen if one could take families who don’t ordinarily eat together and assign half of them to do so, and then measure the differences between the two groups. Of course, in that instance there might be some subtle differences between families who comply with the order and those who don’t, and this could affect the findings.

That’s the way social science research tends to be: sketchy. I know; it’s a field in which I’ve worked.

But what interests me most about this particular article is the topic of the family meal itself, and its devolution over time. When I was growing up, the evening meal was nearly sacred in almost every family I knew. It happened at a certain appointed hour, and one violated the call to table at one’s peril.

In my family, when my father came home from work at 6 PM, dinner was placed on the table, and woe to the child who hadn’t come in from playing outside, or who was unfindable. The food itself was plain but tasty and well-balanced, and we were expected to at least sample a bit of everything. And if we didn’t like what was served that night, tough. It was understood we wouldn’t starve if most of a single meal was skipped.

I had trouble with, of all things, steak. The vegetarian option so many girls take nowadays wasn’t common back then, so it really didn’t occur to me to stop eating it even if such a thing had been allowed, which it wasn’t.

But worst of all was a dish one almost never sees nowadays, and mercifully so: tongue. Continue reading →