My partial eclipse photos

The New Neo Posted on by

Hot off the press.

I borrowed someone’s special glasses and looked for a moment when there was just a small crescent of sun. Pretty impessive.

But mostly I used a colander. That was fun, too. So here’s my self-portrait with eclipse-colander:

And here are some images projected from the colander onto a white paper which for some reason looks blue:

I noticed shadows of the bare tree branches were hyper-sharp. I’d never seen that before; anybody know why it happens? Here’s a photo of tree branch shadows on a white car:

It was incredibly sunny today, absolutely perfect for viewing.

Warning: Israeli products!

The New Neo Posted on by

I was in the supermarket a couple of days ago and noticed a display of Passover goods: matzoh, gefilte fish, macaroons, the usual.

And it struck me for the very first time in my life that somebody might deface it in some way with Jew-hating graffiti, although no one had yet done so.

And now I see the following, which is a more organized effort than what I had envisioned. But much of today’s anti-Semitism is quite organized, just like in the olden days in Germany:

And of course our government is just itching to get into the act:

The Biden administration is considering requiring labels on imported goods made by Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, according to a report by the Financial Times citing U.S. officials familiar with the plan.

According to the report, the Biden administration hasn’t determined the timing for the move or issued its final approval for the policy – though it almost announced it last month following the announcement of a large land seizure in the West Bank by Israel.

The administration reportedly views the label requirement as a means of ratcheting up pressure on Israel to tamp down violence by settlers in the West Bank, as well as to show frustration with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government amid Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

The FT reported that the labeling policy, if it’s approved and implemented, would come as a reversal of a 2020 policy advanced by the Trump administration that required goods made in the West Bank be labeled as “Made in Israel.”

The Trump administration’s policy itself was a reversal of a prior U.S. policy to label products made in the West Bank as being from there, rather than Israel. Prior to the Trump-era change, the Obama administration in 2016 reiterated the West Bank labeling requirements and noted that fines could be issued for non-compliance.

You can always count on Biden and Company to implement the Obama Doctrine.

ADDENDUM: Caroline Glick on “settler violence.”

Trump on abortion: leave it to the states

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump has taken an official position on abortion policy, which is that it should be left to the states to decide without any national policy. This is basically Dobbs, and it is in my opinion the correct legal stance. It won’t make most people on the more extreme ends of either side happy, but nothing he would have said would have done that either. I think his statement is the best thing he could have done politically, as well.

Here’s the gist of it:

Trump explicitly affirmed his support for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and he emphasized his support for states determining their own laws for abortion so long as there are exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

“The states will determine by vote, or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land – in this case, the law of the state,” Trump said. Many states will be different. Many states will have a different number of weeks…at the end of the day it is all about the will of the people.”

You may never have heard of Vladimir Vasiliev, one of the greatest male ballet dancers who ever lived

The New Neo Posted on by

In fact, he might just be the greatest male ballet dancer who ever lived. Such comparisons are subjective, after all.

When I was young (probably some time in the 1960s) I saw Vasiliev dance in person, along with many other Russian dance luminaries of the day. He never defected. He was married to another great dancer, Ekaterina Maximova, an Audrey Hepburn-ish type with great charm and lightness.

I can’t seem to discover how tall Vasiliev is (he’s still alive at 83 although Maximova died in 2009), but he seemed a giant on stage. He had a highly unusual quality for a ballet dancer because the initial impression he gave was of tremendous physical power allied with the usual grace that ballet dancers posses, and a very masculine power at that. It’s hard to describe him and, although luckily we have videos, as I’ve said many times videos can’t capture dance except as a pale echo.

But even on videos you can see the tremendous height of Vasiliev’s jumps. In this video the camera angles are sometimes odd, and I have no idea what sort of surface he’s on. It looks as though it could even be concrete, which would be awful. But no matter; Vasiliev soars to a height surprising. Keep in mind that the year was 1969 and ballet technique back then was nothing like as advanced as today. And yet most of today’s dancers can’t hold a candle to him (I’ve cued up a very short excerpt from this pas de deux):

Here you can see his tremendous upper body strength when he does some famous one-armed lifts of his wife. This is from the Soviet ballet “Spartacus,” a work I saw in person and which bored me unutterably. But that certainly wasn’t Vasiliev’s fault; for me, it was the choreography that was such a snooze:

I actually think that one of the best ways to see Vasiliev is in this later video – I believe he’s in his late forties here – that records him teaching a class to four other male dancers. The video shows the tremendous ease and unified harmony of his movements and his emphasis on head and shoulders, otherwise known in ballet as epaulement. It’s absolutely vital to ballet and much-neglected today (be sure to read the captions, which translate what Vasiliev is saying):

I said it’s hard to describe Vasiliev’s special qualities. But I found this 2023 interview with him in which he manages to do it, so I’ll just quote him. Here he is answering the question “For you, what is the most important thing in a performer?” [emphasis mine]:

V. Vasiliev: Everything is important in a performer. I never tire of repeating what my great teachers told me: there is nothing unimportant or secondary in a performing art. Therefore the rarest quality in an artist is a sense of a natural organic source from which everything melds into a single and inseparable harmonic whole which is impossible to separate out into its components or explain, and this all works well for the development of the character. This is what we observe in truly great performers. And this is a great gift, it is unlikely that it can be learned.

I couldn’t agree more.

Some details of the World Community Kitchen killings in Gaza

The New Neo Posted on by

We have more perspective now on what happened to cause the Israelis to bomb the World Community Kitchen convoy.

An excerpt:

Things begin to go pear-shaped at Implementation Point 2. That point marks what is essentially the line of contact between the IDF and Hamas. At this point, at least one armed man climbed onto the aid trucks.

Let’s stop here for a moment. There appears to be an agreement between the IDF and Hamas that Hamas fighters can ride shotgun on aid trucks to safeguard the supplies. If you recall, when Biden announced the construction of a temporary port in Gaza, I pointed out that issue.

Astounding. Apparently it’s not enough to aid the enemy population; actual terrorists are the foxes guarding the aid henhouse. What could possibly go wrong?

Israel has dismissed two senior officers as a result:

The probe found that the strike was ordered against the convoy of WCK vehicles after officers suspected they carried a Hamas gunman, despite a low level of confidence, and against army regulations. The officers did not identify the vehicles as belonging to WCK when the strike was ordered, according to the investigation.

So protocols were also violated in what was already an exceptionally volatile situation.

And now – as is petty much always the case regarding Israel – the world is outraged at something Israel did which was almost inevitable in a war. Mistakes will be made and innocent people will die as a result.

The larger issue is why so much aid is being given to a population that started this war with a massive series of aggressive atrocities in a sudden and unprovoked attack when a ceasefire was supposedly in operation. That population continues its heavy support for its own longstanding use of terrorism in general and the terrorism of October 7 in particular. That population elected a terrorist operation to be its government. And yet nearly the entire world has dedicated itself to helping them.

Another terribly dangerous J6 insurrectionist faces the possibility of prison: meet Rebecca Lavrenz

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, the title of this post contains sarcasm.

This 72-year-old woman’s crime appears to have been praying near the Capitol on J6, then entering the building through an open door, walking around for 10 minutes quite peacefully, and exiting. Horrors!

Here’s the story:

Rebecca Lavrenz, dubbed the “praying grandmother,” attended the Stop the Steal rally on January 6, 2021, prayed with a group of people outside the Capitol Building, and went into the Capitol Building, where she stayed for just 10 minutes. She has been on trial this week in Washington, DC, facing prosecution at the hands of Biden’s Department of Justice.

By her own admission, she spent about 10 minutes inside the Capitol Building on J6, over an hour praying outside, and for that, she has been charged with four misdemeanor counts. Surveillance footage shows her peacefully walking around inside the Capitol Building and even speaking to a Capitol Police Officer, who leaned forward slightly to hear her.

That’s it.

The charges against her are “entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol Building.” So, what was her “disorderly conduct”? They don’t quite say, but the FBI claims this:

… there is also probable cause to believe that Lavrenz violated additional laws “which make it a crime to willfully and knowingly utter loud, threatening or abusive language, or engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct, at any place in the Grounds or in any of the Capitol Buildings with the intent to impede, disrupt, or disturb the orderly conduct of a session of Congress or either House of Congress, or the orderly conduct of a session of Congress or either House of Congress, or the orderly conduct in that building of a hearing before, or any deliberations of, a committee of Congress or either House of Congress; and parade, demonstrate, or picket in any of the U.S. Capitol Buildings.”

Was it the praying?

She was convicted on all four counts, and the penalty might be up to a year in prison and/or a fine of $200K. The jury took an uncharacteristically long time to convict her – for a DC jury in a J6 kangaroo court, that is:

Defense attorneys from John Pierce Law presented seven witnesses, while four people testified on behalf of prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, who argued that Lavrenz entered the Capitol without having the authority to do so.

She testified for five hours Monday, and the jury started deliberations at 4:45 p.m., released at 5:30 p.m. Monday and resumed deliberations Tuesday, Wednesday and nearly all day Thursday. Lavrenz said she was called in to answer clarification questions several times. The verdict was announced late Thursday afternoon.

She also says that, “I’m going to make my voice so loud that if they try to put me in prison to shut it up, it won’t work.” Lavrenz is already getting a fair amount of attention because the charges are so ludicrous and she’s such a sympathetic defendant. But it doesn’t and won’t stop the over-the-top political prosecution/persecution. The Democrats have invested way too much in this and way too much is riding on it.

Meanwhile, actual criminals, and actual destructive rioters on the left …. Well, you know the drill.

You really have to hand it to the Babylon Bee

The New Neo Posted on by

Sometimes they are just spot on.

Injecting humor into the often-horrible news we read every day requires a good ear, a delicate touch, a sense of the absurd, and a strong stomach. The folks at the Bee seem to have all four.

Case in point:

There’s a new study telling us what we already knew: that most adolescents unhappy with their sex grow out of that feeling if you just let them grow up without medical intervention

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a description of the study:

The majority of gender-confused children grow out of that feeling by the time they are fully grown adults, according to a long-term study.

Researchers in the Netherlands tracked more than 2,700 children from age 11 to their mid-twenties, asking them every three years of feelings about their gender.

Results showed at the start of the research, around one-in-10 children (11 percent) expressed ‘gender non-contentedness’ to varying degrees.

But by age 25, just one-in-25 (4 percent) said they ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’ were discontent with their gender.

The researchers concluded: ‘The results of the current study might help adolescents to realize that it is normal to have some doubts about one’s identity and one’s gender identity during this age period and that this is also relatively common.’

Relatively common as well as transient:

The authors said: ‘Gender non-contentedness, while being relatively common during early adolescence, in general decreases with age and appears to be associated with a poorer self-concept and mental health throughout development.’

Back in the olden days – and by that I mean before about 2014, when gender nonconformity and medical intervention weren’t being pushed so hard and hadn’t become trendy – adolescents who had those feelings weren’t told the solution was to take drugs like puberty blockers and hormones, or to remove their genitalia (and try to construct new ones out of parts of the old) and secondary sexual characteristics like breasts. Lo and behold, most of them emerged from adolescence none the worse for wear, sexually mature and with fully functioning body parts. Some of them would be homosexual in orientation and some would be heterosexual, but the vast majority would adjust to whatever sex they had at birth.

There’s a lot more at the link, including charts and maps showing the trends in transgender diagnoses and care in recent years. There’s also this quote, which underlines what I wrote in the title of this post – the fact that we already knew that most adolescents will grow out of their dissatisfaction with their sex and that we have known it for quite some time:

Dr. Jay Richards, director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, told DailyMail.com: ‘We’ve known for over a decade that most kids who experience distress with their sexed bodies resolve those feelings after they pass through natural puberty.

‘Indeed, we can infer from the DSM 5 [2013] and other sources that as many as 88 percent of gender-dysphoric girls and as many as 98 percent of gender-dysphoric boys in previous generations desisted if allowed to go through natural puberty.

‘These two facts make it clear why “gender-affirming care” on minors is such an outrage. It leads, in the end, to sterilization and in many cases to a complete loss of natural sexual function.

‘There is no good evidence that this helps minors long term. Moreover, it medicalizes what could very well be temporary psychological symptoms.

‘History will judge this medicalized “gender-affirming care” on minors as we now judge eugenics and lobotomies.’

Puberty blockers make sure that such children don’t go through “natural puberty,” and then the blockers are followed by opposite-sex hormones which have the additional effect of halting the process of sexual maturity that would be normal for the actual sex of the child and substituting some elements of the sexual characteristics of the opposite sex. The result for many people is that their ability to experience sexual satisfaction is blunted, and they often find it hard to attract partners who are mainstream. Transgender surgery can be a real nightmare as well.

You can find the study at this link.

NOTE: By the way, although I haven’t written much about it, J. K. Rowling has been heroic on this issue and especially on freedom of speech related to the subject.

Biden and his foreign policy aides: weak, accusative, inconsistent, cowardly, corrupt

The New Neo Posted on by

When the US is led by corrupt weaklings, its enemies rejoice and see tremendous opporunity.

That’s what’s been going on during the Biden administration. And now, Iran thinks it had better hurry up and attack, because it’s possible that the golden opportunity afforded by Biden and Company won’t last past January of 2025.

Here’s Caroline Glick discussing the situation:

More here, from Ace.

My reaction to all of this is similar to what I remember when Obama was president and in particular when he was pushing the Iran Deal. It was both infuriating and frustrating to watch helplessly while he sold the country and the West out and catered to some of the worst government leaders with some of the most pernicious goals on earth. All the while, Obama and his aides pretended that they had our country’s best interests in mind and that somehow all of this would stop Iran rather than enabling it. Meanwhile, Israel and particularly Netanyahu were treated as some sort of errant-child nation, misbehaving and needing putting in its place.

I began calling that sort of thing “The Obama Doctrine” back in 2009. From that post:

Obama is counting on Iran taking a long time to develop a nuclear capacity. Whether Obama actually believes this or not (or whether we even have the capability to correctly predict such a timetable), it suits him to underestimate Iran’s nuclear program in his continuing efforts to appease enemies (Iran) and hostile potential enemies (Russia) while simultaneously doublecrossing friends.

How did the Russians return Obama’s favor? The answer is: why should they return the favor? Maybe I don’t get the intricacies of the famous three-dimensional chess Obama is supposed to be playing these days, but it seems to me that he’s given a freebie to Iran and the Russians in exchange for nothing except the opportunity for them to view him as a weakling and a pushover.

A few weeks earlier I had stated the basic principle of Obama’s foreign policy: “offend our allies and friends, and cozy up to our enemies.” It really wasn’t hard to see that was the case, and it was the first time I can ever remember thinking a president was purposely making foreign policy decisions that could be described that way.

And now, for whatever reason, the policy is the same only intensified. Biden was Obama’s vice president and went along with what he did. Biden himself had a history of having been wrong about foreign policy for most of his political life, but I had never gotten the impression he had a malign intent towards the US and its allies, until he became Obama’s VP.

Now that Biden is president, it’s difficult to ascertain how much Biden himself is in charge and how much others are in charge, and whether those “others” include Obama (I think the answer is a strong “yes”) or whether they merely consist of many of the same people who advised and helped Obama.

No matter. The effect is the same. And the effect has been pernicious.

When Trump brags that the Ukraine War and October 7 wouldn’t have happened on his watch, even though it’s his usual braggadocio I believe that he is correct. Other leaders were afraid of what he’d do in retaliation to their aggression, and that was a good thing. In contrast, they are completely unafraid of Biden and his foreign policy aides and in fact have contempt for them – and rightly so.