The ancient tsunami on Mars

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s forget politics for a moment.

Mull this over:

Mars’ big, salty northern ocean likely formed about 3.4 billion years ago. The ocean’s existence is widely accepted by Mars researchers, Rodriguez said, but there is considerable debate about its nature.

For example, some scientists believe the ocean was relatively long-lived, if quite cold. But others don’t think the ancient Martian climate could have supported stable bodies of surface water for long, and therefore argue that the ocean froze over very quickly — perhaps in a few thousand years or less.

The new study, which was published in late June in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, bolsters the former viewpoint.

Rodriguez and his colleagues, led by François Costard of the French National Center for Scientific Research, built upon several years of previous research into the ocean and its imprints on the landscape of ancient Mars.

For example, Rodriguez led a 2016 study that identified huge lobes in the northern plains — features that strongly resemble marks left by tsunamis here on Earth. The team determined that the lobes were carved out by two different mega-tsunamis, which flooded the region more than 3 billion years ago.

Mars does not have significant plate-tectonic activity, so the big waves were probably unleashed by impacts. So, Costard, Rodriguez and their colleagues hunted for craters left behind by the cosmic culprits, narrowing the search over the next few years.

That search may now be over, at least for one of the two impactors. Multiple lines of evidence point to Lomonosov, the scientists report in the new study. For example, Lomonosov is in the right place, it’s the right age (as determined by crater counts), and it looks a lot like marine craters here on Earth.

Lomonosov fits the bill in other ways as well. For instance, the crater is about as deep as scientists think the shallow northern ocean was at the time of impact.

Crazy: the left has doubled down, post-Mueller

The New Neo Posted on by

For years they were riding on “Wait for the Mueller report!” hype and hope.

It was going to sink Trump. It was going to destroy him on collusion and/or obstruction, and that in turn would lead to Trump’s impeachment or at the very least a sure and ignominious defeat for him in 2020.

Funny thing, though. Despite enormous expense and the marshaling of many partisan forces, the Mueller report – and then the testimony of the diminished Mueller himself – was a bust.

The left was then faced with two choices. The first was to accept the inevitable and engage Trump on the issues, offering the public their own agenda as an alternative along with some candidate who might seem to the public to be better than Trump. Or, as many others have put it: all they needed to do was not be crazy.

They’ve chosen crazy – but they’re hoping it’s “crazy like a fox.” You be the judge:

A former FBI assistant director used numerology on MSNBC Monday to link neo-Nazism to President Donald Trump’s decision to fly flags at half-staff to honor the victims of shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

Frank Figluizzi floated the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory during an interview with Brian Williams.

Figluizzi, an MSNBC contributor, said Trump’s decision will appeal to neo-Nazis and supporters of Adolf Hitler because of the date that the flags will return to full mast. Earlier on Monday, Aug. 5, Trump ordered flags to be lowered for three days in order to honor the 31 victims of the two mass shootings.

Figluizzi said that he was “not going to imply” that Trump deliberately timed the flag maneuvers to appeal to neo-Nazis, but then he laid out his theory to an unflinching Brian Williams.

“The president said that we will fly our flags at half mast, until August 8th. That’s 8/8. Now, I’m not going to imply that he did this deliberately, but I am using it as an example of the ignorance of the adversary that’s being demonstrated by the White House,” he said…

“The numbers 88 are very significant in neo-Nazi and white supremacy movement. Why? Because the letter ‘H’ is the eighth letter of the alphabet, and to them the numbers 88 together Stand for ‘Heil Hitler.’ So we’re going to be raising the flag back up at dusk on 8/8,” he continued.

Williams appeared to accept Figliuzzi’s rationale….

However, I think we can safely say that Figliuzzi isn’t actually crazy. If he was, he wouldn’t be using the transparent “I’m not going to imply that he did this deliberately” ploy. If Figliuzzi actually were crazy, he would say that Trump did this deliberately, and he would believe what he said.

But despite his denial, the un-crazy Figliuzzi is indeed implying that Trump did this deliberately – at least, Figliuzzi is implying that to the portion of his audience that has gone off the deep end into utter paranoia about Trump. What portion that is I don’t know, but I think the numbers are sizeable who believe Trump to be an actual Nazi.

But Figliuzzi is also implying much more than that. He’s also implying that even if Trump isn’t a neo-Nazi outright, he’s in sympathy with neo-Nazis and the neo-Nazis understand that. And Figliuzzi is also implying that even if Trump isn’t giving a deliberate “Heil Hitler!” dog whistle, Trump is nevertheless so stupid that he doesn’t know that obviously his followers will see a US flag at half-staff until 8/8 as a clear and unequivocal shout-out of support for Hitler.

Of course. Doesn’t everyone understand this?

Furthermore, whatever the small number of neo-Nazis in this country might think, Figliuzzi wants all Democrats to know that Trump’s supporters are indeed neo-Nazis and that Trump keeps throwing them fish, either purposely or stupidly, and that if you vote for Trump you’re voting for the encouragement of neo-Nazis.

That’s my theory on what he’s doing – and on what a lot of other people on the left are doing as well. They are playing on the suggestibility of their listeners and deliberately stoking their hatred and fear, hoping to motivate them to go to the polls in 2020 and vote for Anyone But Trump.

It has become clear that whoever the Democratic nominee ultimately is, he or she will be a very strange and very weak candidate. And Democratic leaders and operatives are realizing that they must hype fear of Trump to bigger and bigger heights if they want to have any hope of winning in 2020.

As I said, crazy like a fox.

Red flags redux

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Since red flag laws are under serious consideration in the wake of various new shootings, I thought I’d recycle a two-year-old post on the subject, slightly edited. The post was originally written about Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, but it could apply to any number of shooters who have been known to be trouble a long time before they go on their murderous rampages, and yet nothing effective is done to prevent the violence from happening.]

Omar Mateen was adorned with red flags, absolutely festooned with them.

We already know that law enforcement was warned about Mateen, investigated him, and decided there was nothing they could do because he had not acted on his beliefs.

But were you aware of this?:

According to Omar Mateen’s fifth-grade classmates, the 10-year-old future terrorist was once suspended for two weeks after he threatened to bring a gun to school and kill all of his classmates.

Leslie Hall – one of Mateen’s classmates at Marisopa Elementary School – told TMZ that Mateen was a bully and frequently harassed both students and teachers.

Mateen reportedly told a group of students that he planned on bringing a gun to school to kill everyone there, a threat which “was not received as a joke.” Multiple former classmates confirmed the incident to TMZ.

Or his high school behavior?:

Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen’s troubled school days included an incident where he was charged with battery and another where a school official said he was suspended for cheering the Sept. 11 attacks two days after they took place.

On Thursday, the Martin County School District released records showing Mateen was suspended 15 times when he attended junior high and high school from 1999 until 2003. At least two of those suspensions were the result of violent incidents.

Mateen’s final suspension was on Sept. 13, 2001, and was issued by a school administrator named Evelyn Stettin. In a conversation with Yahoo News on Thursday, Stettin said Mateen was suspended for celebrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which [had] occurred two days earlier.

He was very pleased to see it happen,” Stettin said of the attacks. “We took him out of class, and we were trying to, you know, talk with him, and we had a school psych present, but basically he didn’t show any remorse. Nothing. I mean he was pretty happy it happened.”

Stettin said school officials discussed Mateen’s reaction to the terrorist attacks with his parents. She suggested Mateen’s parents were unconcerned by the incident.

“We spoke to the parents and they didn’t really do very much about it, let’s put it that way,” Stettin recounted.

And this guy Mateen was later accepted to become a prison guard, and then a security guard:

When he applied for the Department of Corrections job, Mateen had to explain a 2001 criminal charge for battery and disturbing a school function.

In a one-page handwritten letter to prison officials, Mateen said he was charged following a May 2001 fight with another student in his math class at Martin High School. The letter, dated Sept. 26, 2006, says the disruption charge was later dismissed and that he received probation for the battery charge.

Mateen was later let go for other reasons. And I suppose that, in the absence of other evidence, that note of his could have been convincing. It does happen, after all; people do reform, they do see the light. But put it all together—which no one did—especially the 9/11 cheering, and you get a very bad picture of an explosive human ready to go off, and already in sympathy with Islamic terrorists.

And he later fulfilled that early potential through action, with terrible consequences.

The problem is that, even knowing all this, it’s unclear what could have been done to have prevented it. We don’t do preventive detention for thoughtcrime or speech in the absence of criminal acts. Mateen was born here as a citizen and could not be deported. You might say that his parents should not have been let into this country back in the 80s (that’s the ideological test for immigration that I’ve suggested before), but once it had already happened it couldn’t be remedied without violating his rights as a citizen.

Whether it’s a terrorist or a “regular” mass murderer, when you look back there are almost always these sorts of signs, often beginning in childhood. For example, how often do we hear of a mass murderer that he had long been perceived as a dangerous person, and yet until he (it’s most often a “he,” so I’m not being sexist here) acts out some violence there is little to be done that wouldn’t compromise liberty, because any proactive remedy is likely to be overused and/or misused against others.

Remember how the Soviets misused their mental health system to incarcerate dissidents.

How do we separate the truly dangerous from those who are verbally threatening but won’t do much? How can we do it without compromising our basic liberties? We must figure out how to protect ourselves, but protection and liberty are often at odds, and it can be very difficult to know where and how to draw the line when a threat of this magnitude presents itself. But the threat is to liberty itself, in the end.

Quite a conundrum.

[NOTE II: The following is a slightly-edited portion of another post I wrote a while back, explaining how “red flag” laws work.]

“Red flag” laws are statutes that allow for preventive and temporary removal of firearms from persons deemed dangerous who have not yet committed any crimes, with a court hearing coming later. These laws work like this [emphasis mine]:

The laws allow weapons to be seized for a brief time – typically two or three weeks – after which a petitioner, usually a police agency, must go back to court to let a judge decide whether the gun owner’s behavior amounts to a threat to himself or others and whether the weapons should be held longer.

Such laws would have to be carefully crafted and administered to avoid abuse, because the potential for abuse is clear. Is it possible to do this? Is the will there to do this? I have to say I don’t trust the government to use these laws only wisely and well.

As I said earlier, it’s a conundrum.

Biden owes everything to Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

The attack on Obama’s record by some of the more far-left Democratic presidential candidates is unsurprising, despite the fact that Obama is still a highly regarded figure among Democrats.

For one thing, they want to take this country much further to the left than he ever did, because they seem to think that’s a winning hand. I hope they’re wrong about that, but that’s their calculation. Obama paved the way, of course, and the Overton window has moved quite a bit. But if they were to praise Obama unduly, they would inadvertently be praising Biden, who peddled along as his Veep and would get the draft if the other candidates lauded Obama overly.

Thus, the condemnation—not of Obama himself, but of some of his policies.

Meanwhile, think about Biden himself. What does he bring to the plate, other than having a lot of experience in government (not necessarily good experience, but experience nonetheless) and having been Obama’s VP?

Biden never had much of a following prior to being picked by Obama. Maybe he did in Delaware; after all he was the US senator from Delaware for 36 years, from January 1973 to January 2009, beginning when Biden was 30 years old. Delaware is a very blue state, and unless someone had tried to unseat Biden, he was going to be elected term after term.

Biden ran for president in 1988 and didn’t do all that well. Among other things, he was dogged by plagiarism charges. He didn’t try again till 2007-2008:

Overall, Biden had difficulty raising funds, struggled to draw people to his rallies, and failed to gain traction against the high-profile candidacies of Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton; he never rose above single digits in the national polls of the Democratic candidates. In the initial contest on January 3, 2008, Biden placed fifth in the Iowa caucuses, garnering slightly less than one percent of the state delegates. Biden withdrew from the race that evening, saying “There is nothing sad about tonight. … I feel no regret.”

Biden’s appeal seemed relatively local and limited to habit and to Delaware. He was perceived as affable and somewhat mediocre. But Obama saw that he could be useful to Obama’s candidacy, acting as the voice of experience and moderation:

Despite the lack of success, Biden’s stature in the political world rose as the result of his 2008 campaign. In particular, it changed the relationship between Biden and Obama. Although the two had served together on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, they had not been close, with Biden having resented Obama’s quick rise to political stardom, and Obama having viewed Biden as garrulous and patronizing. Now, having gotten to know each other during 2007, Obama appreciated Biden’s campaigning style and appeal to working class voters, and Biden was convinced that Obama was “the real deal.”

But now, in what ordinarily would have been his sunset years, Biden is the frontrunner in the Democratic race against opponents half his age, merely because he is perceived as relatively safe. No one is enthusiastic about him, as far as I can tell. Few people ever were. But although never popular, he is the happy beneficiary of a set of unusual circumstances, and at the age of 76 (he would be about two weeks from 78 at the time of the 2020 election, and if he won he would be 78 when sworn in, the oldest president ever by quite a few years) he is poised for at least the possibility of the greatest success of his life.

No wonder Biden’s defending Obama. Obama’s choice of him as VP is what gave Biden this shining moment.

What happens when you step outside the circle: “real friends”

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve often written about the social aspects of personal political change from left (or liberal) to right (or conservative). It often has negative repercussions socially and will cause some people to shun the changer, a little or a lot or even totally.

At times when I’ve written about this, I’ve had quite a few people on the right respond by telling me, “Well, if they shun you, then they weren’t really your friends in the first place. Good riddance!”

It’s probably meant well, but I think that’s poor advice. I wonder whether those offering it might either be natural loners, or people whose friends and family are nearly all on the right and/or who live in a red state. For many of us, real friends can be lost, or friends who previously seemed to all intents and purposes to be extremely real. Even previously close family can be lost.

“Lost” isn’t always the correct word. Some do break off entirely. But it’s much more likely that the relationship will continue but become much more contentious and difficult, or at the very least strained, cooler, and more distant. It can be subtle, too, leaving the changer wondering whether it’s a natural cooling that might have happened anyway, or whether the motive is politics. And it’s not as though people can be relied on to be honest about it when asked, either.

Plus, not all our friends are good friends—“real” friends—to begin with, but that doesn’t mean that mild friendships don’t have value. Even that sort of friend is part of one’s wider social circle and it matters to lose them and to have the circle shrink down or even evaporate. It depends how sociable one is, of course, but in general human beings are sociable animals and losing pleasant acquaintances matters to one’s mood and general happiness.

I avoid talking about politics except with a few friends who seem to be able to tolerate different viewpoints and be curious what I think. But just about all my friends know about my politics, and the avoidance of political talk can become stressful for them, too. Simply put, if they want to sit around and have some good clean fun like trashing Republicans, my presence puts a damper on it and in some cases causes them to self-censor. So it might just be more comfortable for them not to include me much. That’s what I suspect at times, anyway.

I’m used to it now, because it happened quite some time ago. But it’s ongoing, and Trump’s presidency certainly hasn’t improved things.

And I don’t think it helps to say, “Well, get some new friends.” For some that might work, but it’s not a solution for losing old friends, and it’s not something you can necessarily get by snapping your fingers. I’ve made a few new friends in recent years, but only a few, and new friends don’t replace those old ones with a shared and deep history.

Wrong number; right number

The New Neo Posted on by

If you want to see something heartwarming, take a look at this. It happened twenty years ago. But I had never heard of it before, and it’s quite a story:

I love those kids at the end. So precise!

I don’t know exactly why the father wasn’t searching for the daughters also, except that perhaps they were his stepdaughters and the half-siblings of the son.

Stop calling white supremacists “far right”

The New Neo Posted on by

I notice it constantly, even at times on conservative sites: white supremacist groups are routinely referred to as “far right.”

Maybe I’ve even carelessly referred to them that way at times in the past. I actually don’t know. But at any rate, I don’t plan to do so in the future, because tying these people to “the right” in any way, even with words such as “far” (or “alt”) prefacing them, is wrong. They do not espouse ideas that can be recognized as “the right.” They are their own entity.

The widespread practice of calling them “right” is a good example of how language is shaped by a media and a left intent on linking the right to abominable ideas such as racism, which is not part of the right. Do some white supremacists vote for Republicans? I wouldn’t doubt it. But that doesn’t make them of the right or on the right, far or near.

You might as well say that white supremacists are on the left, because they hate Jews and the left is the political party that seems to harbor the highest number of anti-Semites these days. But no, white supremacists are not really “far left.” As I said, they are their own entity.

The whole thing reminds me of the arguments around whether or not Hitler and the Nazis were on the right or the left. It’s absurd to think that either Hitler’s vicious racial policies or his central state control constitute anything even remotely on the right, but he is routinely referred to as being on the right and this idea has taken firm hold. And yet it is incorrect:

The Nazis certainly weren’t conventional socialists, if there can be said to be such a thing…

It is true…that Communists were among the most fervent anti-Nazis, both in Germany and elsewhere. But—as the Federalist article points out—this does not change the fact that both were primarily on the left. They were definitely different (as could be seen, for example, by the distinction between Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR). But it was in part a turf war. Both were devoted to statism vs. individualism, and both believed in government control of business as well.

In the end, I believe that Hitler actually is unclassifiable as either right or left. He advocated a unique combination of extremely bad and even evil ideas. He was a statist, however, which leans more firmly in the “left” camp. And yet propaganda to the contrary has had its effect, and Hitler is firmly labeled in most people’s minds as having been on the right.

And to the degree that white supremacists resemble Hitler in their racial views (although if you study Hitler, he hated a lot of white people, too, such as the Poles), there is a carryover in people’s minds from “Hitler was on the far right” to “white supremacists are on the far right.”

This perfectly fits the needs of the left, who have fostered this idea for generations. The fact that many of the white supremacists of the past were southern Democrats is purposely forgotten, like so many other inconvenient facts.

Mass murderers and the politics blame game

The New Neo Posted on by

The shooter was a Trump supporter! No, the shooter was a socialist! So many shooters, so much opportunity for politicians and pundit alike:

In the case of El Paso, the murderer’s writings are anti-immigrant, but also apparently socialist in some respects. In the case of Dayton, the writings reportedly are avowedly socialist, anti-Trump, pro-Elizabeth Warren, and sympathetic to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Who cares? These are deeply disturbed, evil men. Their political views deserve no attention.

But they do get attention, plenty of it, heaps and heaps of it, in order to pin blame on some politician or political movement or other. And of course, the MSM conveniently minimizes coverage of manifestos (or portions of manifestos) that express leftist views, and maximizes and focuses on those that express views that can be spun as being on the right, such as white supremacy and racism in general, whether they are actually on the right or not.

And on and on it goes. The attempt to pigeonhole a crazy sociopathic murderer into one political group or other, in particular in order to hurt Trump, is standard and predictable.

All of it is garbage.

And, if anything, all this attention feeds copycats rather than discouraging them.

Even if a certain shooter writes in support of a certain candidate, this isn’t what drives the person. Emotional issues are the drivers. These manifestos are typically a pastiche of ideas, cobbled together from this and that and the other thing, baked in the heat of their feverish minds.

Remember the old saying “Even negative attention is better than no attention at all”? Shooters want attention, and they get it. If they can’t be the best at something good, they’ll be the best at something evil and try to have the highest kill count. And if they die in the attempt, they think so be it on some level, because their lives are wretched anyway.

Maybe their lives wretched because they have no social skills, or because they have a lousy family life, or because they’re hooked on drugs, or because they aren’t very bright, or because they just were born that way, or some combination of all of those things. Maybe they haven’t a clue why their lives are wretched, but they know it’s somebody else’s fault and the world owes them something. Even if shooters write down their reasons for killing, we will never know the truth because they themselves haven’t a clue.

They often egg each other on to greater heights via the internet. Weapon bans will not stop them; they will find the weapons they need to do the things they want to do.

And it seems they value their lives not at all, so it’s no problem for them to contemplate throwing their lives away and taking the lives of others as well, in a paroxysm of revenge on the world.

[NOTE: If you want to read a disturbing article, see this at Vox, reporting on a recent poll about loneliness:

…22 percent of millennials in the poll said they had zero friends. Twenty-seven percent said they had “no close friends,” 30 percent said they have “no best friends,” and 25 percent said they have no acquaintances.

It seems that approximately 25% of millennials in that poll consider themselves extremely alone and socially isolated. In that same poll, the figures were far lower for other demographics.

If true, this amount of isolation among young people is very alarming. Of course, the vast quantity of those who feel alone never go on to harm anyone. But social isolation is definitely a factor for many mass killers.]

20 killed in El Paso Walmart shooting

The New Neo Posted on by

It looks very bad, with 20 reported dead, many more injured, and the suspect in custody:

The suspected gunman has not been publicly named, but two law enforcement officials identified him to The Associated Press as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius of Allen, Texas. It was unclear what connection the suspect had to El Paso.

As usual, there are a lot of rumors that are as yet unverified. The ones I’ve read so far indicate that Crusius may be the type of shooter the left will be able to use politically: a white guy who hated Mexicans. I have no idea whether that’s true or not, but that’s the drift of most of the news reports. I have also heard rumors that the Walmart (unlike some other Walmarts) was a gun-free zone. I also don’t know whether that rumor is true.

It usually takes 24 to 48 hours to sort these stories out, or more.

RIP to all the dead. A terrible act.

YouTube star Li ZiQi: imaginary life

The New Neo Posted on by

Li ZiQi is a phenomenally successful YouTube star from China who seems to me to be a cross between Martha Stewart and Vermeer, 21st Century style. I discovered her recently via Gerard Vanderleun’s American Digest blog, and I find her mesmerizing.

Li ZiQi gives off the sense of being utterly unhurried—of having all the time in the world, or at least all the time she needs to do whatever she is doing. Her videos are small vignettes, artfully produced. The visuals tell the viewer that not only is this woman beautiful, the landscape beautiful, and the final product beautiful, but the activity itself is beautiful from start to finish. Even the gathering of the fruits or the vegetables or the mushrooms, or the peeling or the stripping or the chopping or the spinning—every single stage is beautiful when this person is doing it in this way.

And the dream is that you could do this, too. Or that people once lived this way, long ago.

And maybe some really did. And maybe some still do. I’ve encountered such people myself on occasion, who seem to have a rare calm and groundedness and grace.

I doubt it was ever all that many, but what do I know? And I don’t think Li ZiQi herself makes any claims that this represents her complete reality (you can find a lot of background information about her here). What she has said is “I am shooting [videos] about my imaginary life in the future.”

[NOTE: Please see this previous post of mine regarding my early love for Cezanne and Vermeer. It’s relevant.]

The old blogspot blog spot

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday this blog went down briefly. I hope none of you had too much trouble getting here. If it happens more often, I will be needing to up my bandwidth. But for now it’s not been all that much of a problem, except on rare occasions.

But during the down time, a reader kindly alerted me to the fact that my old blog—I mean my old old old blog, the one with the “blogspot” URL that I abandoned in 2007 but still use as emergency backup—has been unceremoniously dismantled by Blogger.

Maybe that happens automatically after a certain time of relative inactivity, although I see plenty of other old blogs still on Blogger/blogspot. At any rate, it happened to mine, and I was never informed so I’m not sure when it happened or why.

One other thing they did, strangely enough, was to keep just a couple of much more recent posts up, but at a different URL which they assigned to the blog. So I thought I’d let you know that, in case of some sort of downage on the present WordPress blog (the one you’re reading right now). Please mark the following URL as the one to go to for backup in a situation like that: https://neoneoneocon.blogspot.com/

Note that the new name there is “neoneoneocon”—three “neo”s—so apparently they decided to add one “neo” to my old “neo-neocon” appellation, and remove any hyphens.

Interesting.